Huck Out West(76)

As we stepped down off of the raised sidewalk, Tom was surrounded by grateful survivors of Cap’n Patch’s rain of terror. Some of them slapped his bare back or punched his arm, while others took off their hats and bowed their heads at him like he was the Awmighty. One a the new prostytutes who’d got horsewhipped by Eyepatch come over and give Tom a hug and kissed the X on his chest and says she’ll pray for him every night at bedtime, even if that’s at six in the morning. He was welcome to visit her any time at no charge once her awful wounds has healed, or even before if he wanted to see what that horrible pirate man done to her complexion.

Deadwood come staggering and loping towards us, his broke jaw set on a lopsided grin. Then he seen me with his crossed eyes and fell over in the mud in his anxiousness to get away. “That old sourdough has a new yarn about how he got that way,” Tom says as we slopped along. “He says whilst he was taking a squat in the woods, there was a giant powder explosion that near busted his eardrums, and drove the shit right back up his arsehole. Says he ain’t had no relief since. The blast throwed him all the way here into the street, where this stinking muck saved his life. It was the dynymite done all the bone-twisting, he says. Falling into the mud was like landing on a pile a feathers.”

“Glad to hear it’s good for something. Sure ain’t no joy in tracking round in it.”

“We’ll have to lay in some brick streets,” Tom says. He had lots of plans like that. Gas lamps on poles. Hitching posts. A newspaper. Stables to get the animals off the street. Tom can’t get up and NOT go. We passed a new brewery which he says he had some money in. “Also I’ve cleaned up the old whisky-maker’s copper worms and pot, so’s to try to still up a fresh batch from that yist mash you rescued. You got to admit, Huck, the Gulch is a better place now’n it ever was before.”

Remembering what Becky told me, I asked him whatever become a my treasure money that I left with the judge, and he says, “I got it with me. Just tell me when you want it.”

“I’ll take it now, then. See if I can’t buy me a train ticket to Mexico.”

“Trains don’t go there. And anyways I AIN’T giving it to you to run away on. Look, here we are.”

Where Tom had fetched me to was a place on a muddy hill slope overlooking the Gulch where the foundations for a house was being laid. “I’m building a fifteen-room mansion here, Huck. Ain’t nothing like it ever seen back in St. Petersburg. It’ll have colored glass windows and giant mirrors in rosewood frames, canopy beds with the finest horsehair mattresses and feather pillows, crystal shandy-leers and Paris wallpaper and China spittoons, even a most splendid bathroom with a French bathtub and a modern water closet like the one the Queen of England does her business on. I got a claim on nearly all Deadwood Gulch. People have to buy their lots from me, so I can pick and choose who my neighbors is. And I’m picking you, Huck! On that lot right there next to mine, I’m building a house just for you! It’ll have everything you need, even a barn out back for your horse and an ice box to keep your beer cold and a big bed for entertaining the ladies in! Four at a time if you like! I’ll find you some so’s you don’t get lonesome!”

“Can’t afford nothing like that.”

“One a the world’s richest men can afford whatever he wants, dang it. Anyways, I’m giving it to you free.”

“I thought when we left St. Pete we was running away from all this sivilizing.”

Tom looked awful disappointed. He looked like he always done back home when I didn’t answer him proper. It ain’t no use to talk to a numskull like you, he’d say. If I was as ignorant as you, Huck, I wouldn’t let on. I probably shouldn’t a said what I said about his house. It made me feel bad after all he was trying to do for me. But when I tried to thank him and say I was sorry, I couldn’t find the words for it.

Instead, I left Tom with all his worshippers and hiked up to the rubble that once was a bat cave to say my good-byes to Eeteh. I let out a couple a owl hoots and listened with all my ears for an answer, but it was dead silent. A powerful sadfulness come over me. The Gulch warn’t tolerable for me no more, but I didn’t know where else to go or what to do. The trails all led to one fort or nuther, and the general had pals in all of them. Tom had found the things I’d stowed under my cot to travel with and took them all. I didn’t even have a horse. Tom had hung a lot of emigrants and some a them had horses I could borrow, but they warn’t none a them Tongos nor not even Jacksons.

It warn’t long before Tom fetched up, toting along his rifle, as I reckoned he might. The light was fading into one a those long summer twilights. “Wyndell says you was up here,” he says. He had his shirt on again and he handled me Eeteh’s bloody vest, saying he thought I might be wanting to bury it up here with Eeteh’s remainders. I says there warn’t no advantage in burying nothing that only needs a wash, and Tom grinned and nodded at that. “Here, I also brung you the bear-claws that was round the Cap’n’s neck.”

“I got that neckless from the tribe,” I says. “Maybe they liked me less’n I judged they did. They said it was for good luck and I give it to old Zeb, and you seen what it done for me’n him. Now your Cap’n’s lost his head. I sejest you don’t keep the neckless yourself nuther, but pass it on to General Hard Ass for me, since you know him so good.”