Huck Out West(85)

“Like your lie about the general. General Hard Ass ain’t sending out messages, Tom. He got killed yesterday.”

Tom probably don’t know that, but he didn’t even blink. “Then you got no reason to leave, Huck. You and me can get up that circus you sejested. Your injun friend can be in it. We can try it out on the sinteenery, and then take it all through the Territory and the States. The sinteenery’s just a week away. You can leastways stay that long. It’ll be the bulliest thing ever, and you and me can ride in it together!”

“You’re my pard, Tom, always was. But it ain’t tolerable here for me no more. If you want to ride together again, come along with us now.”

Tom smiled like he might be tempted. “I think I read a story about that,” he says. “It was about two brothers.”

“Great, Tom. Let’s live it.”

“I think one a the brothers got killed by t’other one. An accident. You’d best stay here with me, Hucky.”

I seen it warn’t no use. I smiled back at him and says, “Good-bye, Tom.”

“Aw shucks, Hucky.” He set back on Storm, looking low-downer’n I ever seen him. Even his moustaches seemed to droop. “Well, all right, we can save the gallows for your next crime, you damn muggins! Soon enough you’ll be back here making a fool a yourself again!”

I turned my back on him and walked Rain over to Eeteh, now setting on Heyokha, his rumpled derby back on over his headband.

“HUCKY!” Tom called out. I reached for my rifle and looked back over my shoulder. He’d found his old face again. He’d took his hat off. There was a twinkle in his eyes and an easy grin on his moustachioed face. “It ain’t going to be much fun here without you, pard,” he says. “But if Becky takes that house away, I’ll build another one. Come back and live in it whenever you want. Bring your injun pal if you like.” He raised his hand to me and I raised mine. “And be careful, Hucky! I’ll miss you!” Then he turned back to his posse to lead them away towards their camp, his bald spot gleaming like it was polished, big wart-nosed Bear riding at the rear to make sure nobody got out a line.

I watched him go. I was going to miss him, too. But I warn’t noway ever coming back to the Gulch.





CHAPTER XXXIV


HE TRIBE SAYS they wanted to walk a mile or two with us to be sure there warn’t no trouble. First, I stopped down by the crick shore, and says to Shadrack that my Mexican friend was homesick, so me and him was lighting out for his old Mexico home. We’d sell him our claim for whatever whisky he had left. He still ain’t found no glitter down at the shore, but he was a good fellow and he give us the mostly empty whisky bottle and some jerky as well, and says, “Adios, amigos.”

The tribe was relaxed now and laughing amongst theirselves, and when we’d got a hill or two between us and the camp, they seen their job was done and begun peeling off. Eeteh says something that made everybody snort and laugh in their deadpan way, and when they said good-bye, Eeteh’s brother give him a little money pouch, so’s we could buy some food and tobacco and maybe a skillet and blankets and shoes for the horses.

We headed south towards the old wore-down emigrants’ trail, which I reckoned might be more safer for Eeteh, though it warn’t easy to hide there. Maybe we could see if Nookie’s little sod cabin was still there and nobody in it, and rest up for a few days.

Whilst we was poking along under the sun, Eeteh says that when Snake thronged Coyote’s sliced-up carcass into the sky, he missed one part. His talking member.

“Yay!” I says, and I laughed. Coyote was back! “It could still talk without the rest of him? Don’t it need a brain to think with?”

Eeteh says Coyote never really had a separate brain. He thought with ALL his body parts, most SPECIALLY his member. That was what made it possible for him to change into so many different creturs. When he changed into a lark, he didn’t even HAVE a member, not so’s a body could see, so before he got chopped up, he was lucky Snake Woman made him change into a snake who has TWO. That is, he WAS lucky, till both of them begun fighting with each other.

I asked him, laughing, how Coyote moved around now he ain’t got no feet. Like a worm? Eeteh sighed and says I ain’t never understood proper how stories work, but if I had to know, he borrowed his cousin Fox who was happy to sport a couple extras. They didn’t give Fox no pleasure, but they made him popular with the ladies, and give him some new ideas. I says I was glad I asked because I felt more comfortable now with Coyote’s talking member, or members, but how did Snake miss them when he was filling up the sky? When Coyote was still a snake, Eeteh says, he was worried about Snake’s tricks, so he hid his members in the end of his tail. He was a pisonous snake, and Snake judged the pison was low down in the tail and warn’t the right thing for making new worlds, so he throwed it away.

“He should a burnt it,” I says, and Eeteh sighed again and shook his head and says, if he done that, how could he be telling this story about what happened next?

I says I’m sorry and won’t bust in on him again, and I asked him what DID happen next?

He says that Coyote’s talking members warn’t having much fun living on Fox’s body because Fox always favored his own member when it come to the main part. They sometimes felt like nothing more’n advertisings for it. So they decided to collect some limbs and organs and other bits from their friends and make a new body out a them. Fox didn’t care because the novelness was wore off and Coyote’s members had took to shouting out rude sejestions to the ladies, most ruining Fox’s fun. So they made a new cretur out a parts borrowed from Whooping Crane, Prairie Dog, Mountain Goat, Rainbow Trout, Turkey Vulture, Jack Rabbit, and Porkypine.