Huck Out West(75)

“And now, a hundred years on, where can the sivilizing consequences of such get-up-and-go Americaness be most best seen? Why, right here in the Gulch, Hucky! We ARE America, clean to the bone! This is where the wonderfullest nation the world has ever seen is getting born! I BELIEVE that! It’ll be GREAT! A new land of freedom and progress and brotherhood! A perfect new Jerusalem right here on earth! And you and me are PART of it! It’s US that’s making it happen! That being so, we are obleeged to throw the best damn sinteenery party in the nation, which these Territories is directly going to be a natural part of! They call us outlaws because they say we’re on tribal land, so we got to show our amaz’n American PATRIOTICS! These lands is rightfully OURN and we’re going to set up a Liberty Pole and raise the American flag on it to PROVE it! I aim to have a parade and fireworks and rifle squads banging away all through the night so’s Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse and all their dumb savages can hear it plain. Maybe we can even run a circus. I can rescue back your horse from the injuns and you can show off your bareback riding and your shooting and roping. They say Wild Bill is on his way here. If he gets here in time, maybe we can get him to do some fancy pistol tricks. I can’t manage all that by myself. I need you to help me, pard!”

I told General Hard Ass a stretcher about Wild Bill so’s to save Tongo. If them two turned up here at the same time, I was in even more desperater trouble, if that was possible. “You got all them friends you come with. Ask them. Ask Bear.”

“Bear ain’t got over the pison arrow jimjams. He’s out hugging trees again right now. And the others ain’t friends. I’m making them rich. When I can’t do that, they’ll find somebody else. It ain’t like you’n me, Hucky. We’re real pards. We can count on us, no matter what.” The cookie had brung us bowls of wild razberries in fresh cow milk, still warm from the udder. Tom lifted his bowl to his mouth, et it all down. “First of all,” he says, licking his moustaches off, “we need the best shooter in the Hills to lead our new Black Hills Brigade, and I allow that should oughter be you.”

“LISTEN to me, Tom! General Hard Ass is left Fort Lincoln by now, and him and his army probably ain’t a day away from here. If he comes here and finds me, he HANGS me. I GOT to GO!”

“Confound it, Huck, you shouldn’t never’ve got in trouble with that general in the first place.”

“Couldn’t help it. He asked me to do things I warn’t able to do. I just ain’t fitten for the army life.”

“All right, but keep your britches on. I know that jackanapes personal. His vixenish young wife has him wrapt round her little finger. He got court-martialed because he couldn’t stay away from her, the dog, and if I’d been persecuting him, he’d a wound up on the end of a rope. He’s a lecher and a crinimal. But I can manage the bugger.”

“All your generals is the same to me. Ain’t a one a them wouldn’t want to hang me, and with every right to go and do it. I don’t NEED to keep on living, but if I WANT to, I got to get clear of them all.”

“Hang it all, Hucky, it’s just too dangersome. A white man alone don’t stand a chance out there, specially now the Sioux War’s hotted up.”

“I know it. I do wish I had somebody to travel with, but I don’t, so I ain’t got no choice.”

“Well, it’s too bad about your Lakota friend, but, honest, Huck, I didn’t have nothing to do with that. Peewee got killed, too. I loved Peewee like a brother and I’m mighty afflicted by what happened. Nobody had no idea your friend was in there. You should a told us. But you can’t go now. Here, me’n you are together, and together we can lick anyTHING and anyBODY. It just don’t make no sense to go off on your lonesome and get scalped.”

“I been out here on my lonesome for a stretch now. I got learnt a few western trades I can follow, and I can palaver a bit with some a the tribes. There’s a couple a fur trappers you and me used to know down a-near the Indian Territory. If I can get that far, maybe I can ride with them.”

“But you’re going to be one a the richest men in the WORLD! You can BUY the blamed general! You can’t believe how RICH we are, Hucky! You’re my pard, I’m sharing EVERYTHING with you, just like we always done.”

“Being rich don’t work for me, Tom.”

“That’s plain stupid,” he says, getting mad.

“Give it to Becky or Deadwood.”

“You don’t give Deadwood money now. He don’t even know what it is. You just take care of him. I’m doing that. And I don’t need to give nothing to Becky, she’s grabbing all she wants. She’s aiming to turn the whole Gulch against me, if I don’t do like she says.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Well, the Gulch is a dangersome place. If she ain’t careful, she may have an accident.”

The Chinaman cookie brung us some whisky. Tom drank his down the same furisome way he chawed up the burnt birds. I passed him my glass. He looked me over. “You’re still yallerer than our cookie. Ain’t the janders over yet?”

“Comes and goes. I feel dog-tired all the time.”

“Well, that’s another reason you can’t go. You ain’t healthy enough.” He drank down my whisky and rose up, causing a stir out in the street. “Come along now. I got a surprise for you.”