Huck Out West(78)

After about an hour, the hoots started getting clearer. He warn’t fur away. And the closer I got to him, the less stupid and spooky my thoughts was. But then, all of a sudden, an emigrant in a dark suit and crumpled derby come sliding out a the woods straight into my lantern light! Just when I was thinking about wizzerds! I fell back and raised my rifle. I didn’t want to shoot nobody, but there warn’t nothing going to stop me reaching Eeteh. He throwed off the derby and called out my Lakota name. It WAS Eeteh! It was the splendidest sight that ever was! I run to him and give him a hug and he give me a hug. Didn’t nuther of us want to let go. It was like we was hanging on to life itself. “I was sure you was dead!” I says.

“Me, too!” he says. “I think I am dead!” And he took my lantern and led me, limping, further along the crick and up through the pines. We passed his horse Heyokha along the way, hobbled and hid in the bushes. He loosed a noisy load as we clumb past. Eeteh’s pied Clown. Trying to be funny. Thunder Dreamer.

We reached another cave. The new one warn’t so roomy as the one back in the Gulch, but there warn’t no bats and it was in a lonesomer place behind boulders where we could keep the lantern lit. I give Eeteh his vest and set down against the cave wall, wore out from all the walking and climbing, nor else just from the janders.

Eeteh stepped out a the emigrant clothes, dressing down to his headband, breechcloth, and moccasins. His body was favorably bruised and tore up, and parts was still bleeding. He held up the bloody tatters of his vest and studied about it, then put it on.

I opened up the mochila and brung out the elk meat and whisky and tinware. I still hadn’t got back a proper appetite for whisky, but I allowed it was the right time to have a nip or two. Eeteh sprinkled some on the worst of his wounds, whooping as he done so, then took a deep grateful drink from the bottle. He had collected nuts and berries and dug up some bitter potatoes, which we et raw with the roasted meat. It was the most amazing dinner I could ever remember, and I says so, and he looked up at me through the black tangle hanging down over his face, his dark eyes a-glitter in the candlelight like he might a been crying, and says the same.

I told him about what I seen at the robbers’ cave after the explosion, about Peewee and all the dead bats, and he says he was sorry about the bats. It was night time, maybe most a the bats was already out having breakfast. He says he was in the cave earlier that day when they come to plant the explosives. He tried to crawl out like always at the back, but the opening was already blocked off with dynymite. He says my friend knowed all about that cave, he’d made a study of it. All the other ways in and out that Eeteh knowed was also triggered to blow up. He was trapped.

He finally struck a narrow crack that he couldn’t squeeze through—he put his hands up to show how skinny it was—but he was able to open it up bigger with a heavy sharp stone. It was slow work and he calculated there was only minutes before the dynymite went off. He worried his stone hammerings might shiver through the cave and SET it off. It was dark inside the cave and growing dark outside, but he couldn’t light a lamp without showing up the opening he’d made to anybody scouting by.

When he could poke his head through and fetch it back in again, he spread his buckskin vest for a carpet and took everything off down to his hide. He was in a most terrible hurry. He tossed his rifle and breechcloth and moccasins through the hole, clamped his knife in his teeth, and pushed his arms and head and shoulders through. He reckoned if they made it, the rest would follow. But it warn’t so. He got stuck halfway. He says it was the scaredest moment of his life. He couldn’t go back and he couldn’t go forwards. It took some desperate shoves to scrape on through. He says it was worse’n the tribe’s stupid Sun Dances for cutting a body up. He grabbed up his things and was barely started down the hill when everything blowed up. He throwed himself behind boulders and trees, but he still got hit by flying rock. He don’t remember getting on down the hill and away from there, but somehow he done it.

He woke up in the dark with the knife still betwixt his teeth and hurting all over. He didn’t know where he was. He could hear water trickling noisily over stones, so he reckoned he must be down a-near the crick, without that sound was his blood trickling over his bones. He could also hear two men jawing. They was discussing about some gold dust they just stole off of a man they killed. Mostly they was disappointed. It warn’t pay enough for all their trouble. The robber life was a hard life, they said. But they’d heard the blast and says maybe they should crawl up and see if anything blowed up that was worth hiving. They passed by only an arm’s length away from where Eeteh was hid in some bushes, too scared to breathe. His head was worth more’n what was carried in most miners’ scrotum bags of gold dust, and robbers don’t mind about taking heads off if there’s bounty money in it, even if heads was a generl vexation to tote around.

When they was gone, Eeteh slid along where they’d come from and struck a body. He could hear some wolves close by, prowling around, whining in their soft hungry way. He had to hurry not to become their supper. He was mostly naked, easy to see, easy to kill, so to cover himself up, he borrowed the dead man’s black pants and jacket. The hat was bonus and might fool people who he really was. I says it sure fooled me. The man’s boots was off and cut up and throwed away. Probably the robbers was looking for money hid in them. When the man fell, he’d fell on his kerosene lantern. Eeteh showed me the bullet holes in the back of the black jacket and how it was burnt in front, then he tossed everything into the darkness.