Huck Out West

by Robert Coover

  The notice of that quality hanging party up in Minnysota had Tom so feverish he couldn’t set down, lest it was in the saddle heading north. “Just think of it, Huck! Over three hundred injuns all swinging and kicking at the same time! It’d be something to see! You could say you was THERE!” I druther be able to say I warn’t there. Gallows always make me feel powerful uncomfortable and clumsy, like I might stumble and fall into one of them scratchy loops by happenstance. But Tom, like always, had his way, and soon Jackson was saddled up and we was making the long trek north.

  Tom was afraid we’d be late and miss everything, so we clipped along at a fair pace, but it warn’t nothing like galloping across the plains. Winter was a-coming on, there were north winds and snow, worse weather than I ain’t never struck before nor since, not even in the Black Hills. We heaped blankets on us and on our horses and shoved our chins out and blowed up at our noses to keep them from freezing and dropping off. The days was ever shorter and seemed like nights, even at noon, and we didn’t always know, famous scouts that we was, where we was or where we was going.

  The people along the way was good to us, though. They fed us and our horses and let us sleep in their barns and pointed us towards the hanging grounds when we was misdirected. They all said they wished they was going with us, and told us horrible stories about what them filthy heathens had done to them and to people they knowed, and some of the stories was maybe true. They was all good Christians and said they prayed they’d hang every last one of them red hyenas, they was just pisoning the earth.

  Then come the bad news. They was only going to hang thirty-nine of them; the President had let the rest off. The people was madder’n blazes. The President and his spoilt wife was living high and mighty off in the east somewheres and couldn’t understand the feelings out here. They said they ought to make room on the gallows for that ugly string a bones. They was sorry they had voted for him. He had let them down and ruined their Christmas.

  It was Tom’s opinion that the President was a bumbler who ain’t got the brains nor the guts for the job and who was only against slavery because it won him votes. And now that he’d stumbled the country into a war, he was too dumb to know what to do next. When I says that it seems like everybody wants to shoot him, and that’d be a pity, Tom says, “Well, that’s just what makes this country so exciting, Huck. Just like in the time of King Arthur, and all them kings in the Bible.”

  “Was that the same time?”

  “Almost. We was born too late, Huck. This is what we got.”

  I agreed it warn’t much and sejested we turn back and go where it was warmer, but Tom wouldn’t have none of it. It was still the biggest hanging ever and he wanted to be there, though you could see he was awful disappointed.

  When we finally rode in, the sun was already gone down. Tom trotted us straight into town, afeard we might a missed it. A monstrous big gallows stood plumb in the middle of an open square betwixt the main street and the river, and there were crowds with lanterns milling about it in the dark, but the saloons was all closed and everything was stiller’n it should oughter be. There were candles in some of the windows. People was dressed up in their Sunday best and some of them was singing happy church songs, but we was pretty sure it warn’t a Sunday. Tom was anxiouser than I’d seen him since we left the New Mexico Territory. He was sure we’d fetched up there too late and he was pegging at me for always moving too slow. “You don’t have no respect for the BUSINESS of the world, Huck,” he says. When he asked if the hangings had already happened, though, they called him a damfool and said you don’t hang even injuns on Christmas Day. Christmas Day! We didn’t know that. “Happy Christmas!” they said, and we said it back. Tom looked mighty relieved. “After sun-up tomorry,” they told us. “We’re stayin’ up all night to git the best places.”

  We was most about starved, cold to the bone, and dog-tired. We couldn’t a-stayed up all night if we was ordered to nor else face a firing squad. Tom was carrying a letter for the preacher of a church in that town, signed by THE FIGHTING PARSON, which described Tom as a hero in the noble battles against Rebs, Savages, and Unbelievers, and me as his stable boy, and the preacher welcomed us and fed us a hot stew with something like meat in it and blessed us and prayed over us in his quavery way and let us sleep under our blankets on church pews. He lived in a little room off of it. It was my first time in a church since I was held captive by the Widow Douglas and her sister Miss Watson, churches comforting me about the same as gallows do, though I felt a surge a spiritual gratefulness when I was able to stretch out at full length for a whole night. It warn’t unlike the widow’s notions of salvation. Tom stayed up to write another inmortal tellygram for Becky Thatcher by lamplight, but without no help from his stable boy.

  The next morning, Tom was up and out well before the sun was, but I waked slower and stayed for bread and coffee with the preacher by the light of his whale oil lamp, setting at his rough-hewed pine table with him. He was scrawny and old, fifty year and more, with stringy gray hair down to his shoulders and dark pouches under his eyes like empty mochilas. He had a way of talking about Jesus and his friends like they was close kin of his, and praying come more natural to him than breathing done. He wore a raggedy black suit and peered over bent spectacles festooning the tip of a nose so thin and bluish it looked like a dead man’s nose.

  He seen that I warn’t in no hurry to attend the day’s revelments and, after mumbling a few more praise-the-Lords, he let it out that he’d preached against the hangings and all his congregation had upped and walked out on him. He knowed he shouldn’t a done it, and he was sorry about it, but he couldn’t help it. One of his deacons told him he resked getting lynched himself and he should best get out a town. He would a done, too, but he didn’t have no place to go. He’d been waiting for them to come after him ever since and was scared to answer the door when me and Tom knocked the night before. But he was glad that he done so. He wondered now if maybe we could stay and help protect him. He couldn’t pay nothing, he says, but he would pray for our souls three times a day, or even up to six times, if we wanted.

  I told him we’d be leaving before them poor devils was even cold, and he shuddered and muttered that it was an ungodly thing they was doing, and the baby Jesus only a day old. He said them fellows and their families was starving to death. The federal agents wouldn’t let them have no food without the govment paid them and the govment was too busy and broke fighting a war, so they could just starve, they didn’t like them anyway, and it would be the govment’s fault. Them poor people was always getting pushed around and most didn’t have no place to live no more. Finally, they got desperater than they could stand and they fought back and, when it was over, hundreds of Santee Sioux was taken prisoner and put straight on trial by the army without no lawyers nor jury, not even no one to translate for them so they could know what everyone was yattering about. As the preacher laid open the story, his nose flared up in splotches and a kind of sparkly light come into his pale blue eyes. You could see there warn’t no hope for him.

  The little town set on a shallow river like a shrinked-down version of St. Petersburg back home. The walk to the middle of it shouldn’t of took more’n a minute, but there was thousands of people to squeeze past on the streets. The night before, the streets was frozen mud. That morning, with all the tramping of them, they was just plain mud. It was the most people I ever seen clumped up together in one place. Some of them was locals, but most warn’t. A few was looking scared, others angry, most was laughing and cussing. The saloons was all shut till after the hangings, but most everybody was carrying flasks under their coats, which they sucked at from time to time and whooped for the pleasure of it. They was having a grand party. I hain’t seen nothing like it since in that river town when everybody come running to watch old man Boggs get shot dead by the Colonel.

  The gallows was a giant open box with nooses hanging like Christmas ribbons, ten to a side, and it was set on oak timbers eight foot high so’s
there’d be room for the bodies to drop without hitting the ground. It also give everybody all the way down to the river a good view when it got light enough. It was the lonesomest thing I ever seen. It turned out from people talking that another prisoner had been pardoned, so there was a spare halter for whoever wanted it, and folks was volunteering each other and shoving them towards the gallows and hee-hawing. They said they better hurry and string up the rest of them devils, or they’d all get off and go back to killing and raping decent white folk again.

  I didn’t have no trouble finding Tom. He was standing on a special raised platform next to the gallows hobnobbing with the quality. Now and then the crowd let out a big cheer and the man standing alongside of Tom in a black swallowtail coat raised his top hat and smiled and waved at everybody, and Tom he smiled and waved, too. Tom had trimmed his moustaches and scraped his cheeks clean. He was wearing his slouch hat and doeskin shirt and was smoking a seegar somebody must a gave him. He looked a western gentleman all over. When he took notice of me, he made a sign to come up and join him, but I shook my head. I seen all I wanted to see. He said something to the chap in the hat beside him and stepped down off of the platform, the slicked-up spurs on his boots shining bright as new silver, and made his way over to me. The crowd respected him and opened up to let him through.

  “Huck! Where you been? It’s about to start! I got us the bulliest place to watch, so close you can almost reach out and touch a body a-hanging there. But you got to come now. It’s starting up!”

  I could hear them, somewheres further off, making some awful racket which might a been singing. “I seen you up there with all them high hats and was wondering what lies you had to tell to get invited.”

  “Lies! Huck, how you talk! I only let them know we was famous scouts and injun fighters from out west and showed them the parson’s letter and I mentioned that you was the legendry H. Finn, breaker of wild horses, and all that was nearly mostly true.”

  You could see the prisoners by then, past the caps of the soldiers standing in two lines leading to the gallows. They was tied up and wearing what looked like rolled-up muslin meal sacks on their heads, which give them a comical aspect. They warn’t moving too slow, but they warn’t moving too fast nuther. Their faces was painted and they was singing to beat the band, but you couldn’t hardly hear them because of all the hooting and hollering of the crowd.

  “Who’s that big-bug beside you up there, the one been collecting all the cheers?”

  “Why, that’s the persecuting lawyer, the one who got over three hundred savages sentenced to death. And they would’ve hanged them all, too, he says, if we didn’t have such a weak injun-loving President. He says the heathen Sioux has got to be slayed to the last man and anybody who’d spare them is an enemy to his race and to his nation. That fellow ain’t had to shoot nobody nor get shot at, but still he’s the famousest hero here today. Ain’t that something?”

  “If that’s him, he warn’t nothing fair. Them people was getting badly misused. And they warn’t allowed no lawyers nor no—”

  “FAIR! Stuff! You’ve clean missed the POINT, Huck! Ain’t NOTHING fair, starting with getting born and having to die. THAT ain’t fair. But a body can’t do no more about it than them poor condamned injuns can. You can only live out what you got as fierce as you can and it don’t matter when or where it ends.” The prisoners was being marched towards the steps up to the platform. They was still chanting and singing their “hi-yi-yis” and the crowd was still trying to drown them out with whooping and cussing. Some was hollering out church songs. They was all round us and you couldn’t hardly hear nothing else. “Besides, Huck, they’re only injuns, who are mostly all ignorant savages and murderers and cannibals.”

  “What? They’re all cannibals?”

  “Ever last one of them, Huck. Come on now, it’s—”

  “You sold Jim to cannibals?”

  “Well, wait, there’s two kinds of injuns, the ones that keep slaves and the ones that’s cannibals.” The prisoners in their white nightcaps was starting up the steps, and folks was growing quiet, letting them sing if they wanted to. “But hurry! This is HISTORY, Huck! You don’t want to miss it!”

  “Tom? Huckleberry? Is that you?” It was Becky Thatcher, completely out a nowheres, pushing through the thick crowds. It took a moment to reckonize her because she’d growed up some and warn’t sporting yaller pigtails no more. Tom’s jaw dropped like its hinges was broke, and I s’pose mine was hanging, too. “My laws! How you boys have CHANGED! All that FACE hair! That long stringy beard makes you look a hundred years old, Huckleberry!”

  Tom had hauled his jaw back up, but he was struck dumb. He probably hain’t never planned on his audience visiting him head-on. He turned and walked off without nary a word. Up on the gallows they was unrolling them muslin bonnets into hoods that covered their painted faces. Some of them was holding hands.

  “Tom! Wait!” Becky called out, and went chasing after him. I should a stayed and watched, like Tom said, but that extra noose and the drumrolls was giving me the fantods.

  CHAPTER IV

  EADWOOD AND ME hadn’t got to the end of the bad luck fetched up by that consounded rock he found. I told him to throw it away or handle it off to one of them strangers in Zeb’s, but he give a snort and says I must be plumb loco. It was mighty hard to learn him anything. Jim, who knowed most everything about luck, told me that both good and bad luck has a way of smearing itself round in the generl neighborhood, and one of the certainest ways to shut off the good luck is to be too close with what you already got. Like Deadwood in Zeb’s that night with his jug, clinging to it like a cub to its mother. If he’d a showed a little more unstingeableness, maybe things would of turned out different. Of course if he’d let go of it, them scroungers in Zeb’s would of made short work of it, and THAT would of been bad luck, so it’s hard to calculate. I’d need Jim to cipher it out.

  I’d come to the Gulch to hide out from that general who was set on stretching my neck, but I judged I was safe in the Hills because the Lakota was after him for all the bad things he done to them—Long Hair, they called him, naming him by the scalp they wanted—and he surely warn’t such a fool as to come back here again. Well, I was exactly wrong, for one sunny morning there he was, sassy as you please, dolled up in his red cravat and silver stars and shiny knee boots. He was riding in with his calvary boys, a whole army of them, their blue coats sliding in out a the deep green pines, fields a flowers tickling their horses’ underbellies.

  The general had an Indian brave scouting for him. The brave’s gaze was flicking about, looking for someone. Me. It was Eeteh’s rascal brother. The tribe had throwed him out after his treachery up in Wyoming, and here he was, riding with their worse enemy. I laid low, peeking out through the gaps in Zeb’s plank walls, ready to skaddle if I had to. There was other loafers scrouched down at the gaps, so I warn’t the only one had got on the wrong side of General Hard Ass.

  Deadwood’s bragging had spread round. The general says he’d heard about a yaller rock somebody found, and he’d like to see it. A couple of loafers went running off and come back dragging Deadwood who was hollering out all the cusswords he could think of until he seen the general, and then he shut up. The general asked to see the rock and Deadwood says he ain’t got it no more, somebody stole it.

  The general smiled down at him under his drooping mous-taches. I reckonized that smile. It was what I seen when he told me what I had to do and what he’d do if I didn’t. All by my lonesome with nobody’s hand to hold. “If you no longer have the rock,” the general says, pulling out his revolver and pointing it at Deadwood’s head, “I have no further use for you. You have exactly one minute to steal it back.” And he cocked his revolver.

  It had growed ever so still. In the silence, the revolver click was like a mountain cracking. There warn’t nobody breathing. Maybe they was counting. It was like that moment of the three drum beats up in Minnysota just before the floor of the platform dropped
away. Probably less’n a minute went by, though it seemed like a century before Deadwood finally reached into his pants pocket and pulled out the rock. A soldier pried it out of his gnarly fist and handled it up to the general. The general holstered his revolver, hefted the rock to judge its weight, and showed it to his officers. They nodded and the general dropped it into a leather pouch hanging from his saddle.

  “That’s MY rock!” Deadwood yelped. “I found it! I own it!”

  “You own nothing,” the general says softly. Everywheres there was the smell of cinnamon. “Not even your poor sad arse.” The old prospector stared up at him defiantly and the general, still smiling his sorrowful smile, stared back, until Deadwood, cussing to himself, turned and stamped away. One of the troopers shot his hat off, and they all brayed like mules. He’d at last took my advice—or had my advice took for him—and had passed the bad luck on, but he hadn’t got shut of all of it. There was worst to come.

  The general was right to want to hang me. When you done something as wrong as I done, you can’t expect no better. A body who hires himself out to generals has a bounden duty to do what he’s asked, even when it ain’t his druthers. Dan Harper, that young soldier I met on the wagon trail, learned me that, though I most likely already knowed it. The general had trusted me and I let him down. I won’t say it was the shamefullest mistake I ever made, I made so many there ain’t no smart way to rank them, but it’s clean at the top for the troublesomest. When I done it, I set myself up for everlasting ducking and running, and what was worst, it was probably a mistake I couldn’t stop making over and over. Can’t you never learn nothing, Huck? Tom would say. The years rolling past just seemed to pile on more stupidness.

  When I turned my back on Tom and history all them years ago, I seen the Minnysota River a-front of me, and it called me down to walk it a stretch like rivers do. It still warn’t yet noon and, soon as the hangings was over, I was aiming to saddle up and light out whilst there was still daylight, but Tom was having a high time and I misdoubted he’d want to leave till he’d lined out a few more adventures.