Huck Out West(79)

We et and drank and jawed on into the night round the candlelight. We felt comfortabler than since the days we was helping out old Zeb. I told him about the changes in the Gulch and everything that’d happened, and about Cap’n Patch and how he lost his head, and Eeteh told all about after he escaped from the robbers’ cave. He says at first he hid in an abandoned one-room log cabin in the hills up above the crick, but it turned out to be the hideout for a bandit gang, so, after a bad night scrouched down in awful pain behind a woodpile, he had to move on. Whilst hiding, he couldn’t send out hoots, but he heard mine sometimes, weak and far off. Then he didn’t hear me no more. He didn’t think we’d ever see each other again. He thought he was going to die.

I says I couldn’t send out hoots, because I had a lookout dogging me all day and all night. He says he knows about that, the Cheyenne braves who’d moved in with the tribe was watching him close, too. It was mainly why he run away when they all went off to war. He was afraid a the plans they had for him. He tried to tell them funny stories, but they didn’t have no sense a humor. And, last he seen, things warn’t going so good for Tongo neither. The others said he was a devilish and vengeful cretur. They wanted to kill him, but some judged he was a spirit horse and bad things might happen to them if they did. But they probably killed him anyways, Eeteh says. If Tongo got stubborn when they all rode west, he wouldn’t a give them no choice.

I’d made up my mind I warn’t going back to the Gulch. Nothing to go back for. So, we talked about Mexico. Eeteh says he heard tell them Mexicans warn’t exceeding friendly. I says as long as you ain’t got nothing to steal, they’re the most friendliest people I ever met. They sing and joke like that’s the common way a body talks, and they love whisky like everybody else, but they give you some if they got any extra. They’re clever with a knife, though, even when they’re drunk. You can’t take your eyes off of them. Eeteh says some a them is Indian bounty hunters, and I says that’s right, but he was just another Mexican now like the rest of them, warn’t he? No, he don’t speak their jabber, he says, and I says that, well, his tongue got cut out by the dang Apaches, didn’t it? And he laughed and rolled up his tongue and grunted, and I grunted back, and we both laughed together and took another swallow of the whisky.

Talk about Mexico drawed us back to the main hitch in our plans. We couldn’t go nowheres if I didn’t have a horse. Eeteh says he seen some wild ones close by where the tribe was camped before they went west, and they maybe didn’t take all their broke-in horses with them, so we could start there. Also there might be some food and blankets and other things left behind we could borrow for our travels.

We was too excited to sleep, so we decided to leave the Gulch and go there straight away, riding double on Eeteh’s pinto. Eeteh put the emigrant clothes on again to hide himself and we slid down out a the cave with our traps to where Heyokha was hobbled. Heyokha warn’t all that happy about the extra freight, but he seemed as keen as us to leave the Gulch behind, and stumbled along, wagging his croup, without no complaint.

It would likely be raining by morning, but for now the sky was bright with the same mad scatter a stars Jim and me seen back on the Big River, or stars just like them, so we didn’t even need the lantern lit. Whilst we was moseying along, Eeteh told me a Snake story. Coyote warn’t in it, he was dead and gone, scattered all around the sky. Eeteh pointed up at parts of him. The rest a the stars, he says, was mica dust. He says Snake was the cleverest cretur a body ever knowed. Most people admired him for how smart he was, but not all the world. Some a them was missing Coyote. Life warn’t so hard or dangersome when Coyote was around. That’s what some was thinking, though nobody says it out loud. And back then it warn’t so dreadful gloomy. Coyote made them laugh. Mouse pipes up timidly and asks if they remembered the story about Coyote’s talking member? Everybody was grinning. Mouse was grinning. Snake’s forked tongue darted out and sweeped Mouse up, then he spitted out his remainders. Nobody was grinning now. Snake was a serene cretur, but he never tolerated no distractions. Some a Snake’s pards says that’s a good thing. It’s what was wrong in Coyote’s time. Argufying all the time about nothing, making stupid jokes. Nobody argufied or joked with Snake’s pards, nor not with Snake nuther.

I wanted to hear the story about Coyote’s talking member, but all Eeteh’s stories was about Snake now. I says they ain’t so funny like before, and Eeteh says he can’t help it, he only tells true stories. He says Snake maybe warn’t so good for laughs like Coyote, but he could be kind and generous, specially to his friends. He set up Lizard in a new tepee next to his own and sent him various ladies to company him there. When Lizard complained that Bee stung him on his tail for only helping himself to some a Bee’s honey, Snake went over to the hive to stomp him. But he warn’t home, so Snake stomped Bee’s family instead. Losing all his family like that made Bee mad, and he flew into Snake’s mouth to sting him mortally in the throat, but he didn’t get past Snake’s teeth. Snake, chomping, says he wished Bee tasted more like the honey he used to make. Eeteh says it’s a story children get told about not losing your temper.

We had to stop under an overhang for a morning storm to pass, so it was already noontime when we finally reached the tribe’s old camp. Eeteh went ahead to be sure none a the families warn’t still living there, but the camp was empty, they was all gone together. The camp set in a sweet spot in a broad grassy valley in the Hills alongside of a crick. The only broke-in horse we could find was an arthritic old nag with cracked heels and eye ulcers. But we seen a couple a wild stallions less’n a mile away and we set about calculating how we could catch one. Eeteh knowed where the tribe stored dried corn and other grains we could offer up like bait, and he dug some out so’s I could judge for myself. He found some desecrated fruit that we et and a couple of old ruined lodge covers we could use to tarpolin off the rain.