Huck Out West(82)

The first thing we had to do was help Tongo out a the pit. Every day he was stronger, but he warn’t never going to be strong enough to jump out a that hole. We dug up earth and built a step a foot or so high in half the pit, stood him up on it, then built another step a foot higher in t’other half, and moved him over on it. We didn’t have no proper shovel nor cart, only Eeteh’s knife, our tin plates and cups, and our shirts for humping the dirt to the pit. It was distressid hard work and was going to take a million moons.

Emigrant miners was beginning to swarm up at the crick shore now, too, looking in the water for glittery traces. I found some wood and staked a claim, though I misdoubted nobody would take it seriously. Eeteh put on his black emigrant clothes with the derby tipped down low, and set on the edge of the eagle pit with his rifle on his knees. I fired my guns a few times to chase off the peskier ones.

Then I spied a gnarly old miner with a shovel and a pan and a bottle he attended to regular. I went over and told him we was looking for a partner with a shovel, and he was happy to obleege. He says his name was Shadrack and he was from Ohio where he’d been a farmer mostly till the grasshoppers et him out. I knowed Tom would a somehow got him to pay for the chance to shovel up the steps in the pit, but I was grateful just to have the shovel, and mostly let Shadrack lay off. Him and Eeteh nodded at each other without saying nothing, and Shadrack went down to the water with his pan to poke around. He didn’t find no gold, but he catched a big fish, which he shared with his partners.

Me and Eeteh built the third step on top of the first one, and then, taking turns, the fourth, fifth, and sixth, and from there Tongo was able to climb out and look around. He warn’t too impressed. He stumbled down to the crick for a long drink and then he come and laid down again, but he et the mash I made for him and generly made himself at home. He spent a few days walking about slowly like he was customing himself to the idea.

But then one day, all of a sudden Tongo shook his whole body like wet dogs do and broke into a slow trot. He circled round us a few times, snorting and wheezing—and the next second, he was galloping away! I called out to him, but he never even turned round. My chest felt like it had got kicked. I should a picketed him. But if he was of a mind to go, a picket wouldn’t a stopped him. I was afraid he was going back to the wild and I’d never see him again. But Eeteh only says to wait. An hour went by, two hours, night come. I couldn’t sleep for fretting. And then finally, at dawn, there he was, pounding towards us, splashing through the crick, looking his old self.

I was ever so glad to have him back. I fed him some corn-mash with honey and talked to him about how happy I was and stroked the sweat off of his neck. I didn’t know how fur he’d traveled, though I judged he’d been running fast as he could, ever since he galloped away. But he still seemed lively. He bowed his neck a couple of times and snorted. Eeteh throwed a soft piece of old lodge-skin over him and cinched it. He made a thong out a strips from his ruined buckskin vest and, finally, after tossing his head around in protest, Tongo let us loop it over his jaw for a bridle. I kicked off my boots and clumb aboard. He was quivering like something was about to bust inside him—and then all of a sudden we was off!





CHAPTER XXXIII


E RIPPED UP and down them hills just like the first time, running all day through chopped-down forests and lonely shantytowns and cricks lined with raggedy prospectors, till, just as the bloody-red sunball was sinking out a-front of us, we come to the end of the Hills and struck out on a broad grassy plain with a swelled-up river churning through it. We passed wagon trains and log cabins and tepees and herds of cattle and horses. “Look! It’s the Pony Express!” somebody shouted out. “No, it ain’t! That beardy coot ain’t no boy!”

Tongo favored running towards the setting sun to see if he could beat it to the horizon. Evenings did stretch out this time a year and seemed to give him a chance, but the sun was only teasing. It got there first like always and the night growed dark. The river valley deepened under ridges and bluffs all round, and up ahead, I could see big fires a-blazing up and a war party of dancing braves blowing war whistles and yipping like coyotes like they was getting ready for a friendly massacre, nor else they was having a holiday. It was exactly where I didn’t want to go, and I leaned back and tugged most desperately on the buckskin thong, but Tongo he charged right into the middle of them and they all fell back like they was seeing a ghost. They WAS seeing a ghost! It was Eeteh’s brothers and cousins, the ones who’d thronged Tongo into the pit to die, and here he was, come back to ha’nt them! They dropped their weapons and let loose a great warbling. They was wild-eyed and bloodied up and showing off scalps that they held up for us to see.

The tribe wailed out for us to stay and I let go one hand and give them a wave, but Tongo was already on a tear again, racing back by night the way he come by day, across the plain under the moon and stars and back up into the Hills again, just as the dawn beyond begun to turn them into silly-wets. Stead of going to where Eeteh was, though, I seen he was striking straight for the mining camp in the Gulch. I tried to guide him away from there with my knees and by jerking on the thong, but his mind was clean made up. He was the willfullest cretur I ever knowed. I was being delivered up to Tom and his pals, and there warn’t nothing I could do to stop him.

It was early morning when we rode into the mining camp. We hain’t stopped running since yesterday. The muddy street was packed with people, but Tongo galloped right through them, knocking down food stalls and tool racks and beer tents and sending citizens skaddling for their lives. Old cross-eyed Deadwood COULDN’T run nor even WALK, and when I seen him bumbling along cripple-crablike in his union suit and talking to himself, I was afeard for him. But Tongo jumped right OVER him whilst he had his nose down, consulting his fob watch. The picture-taker warn’t so lucky. He was trying to set up his camera, and Tongo, hammering straight ahead, sent him on a flying belly-flop into the mud, his camera tromped by the horse’s hoofs.