Huck Out West

by Robert Coover

  I studied hard about that, chawing slow on the jerky. I knowed it was a most shameful and low-down thing to do, and I could get hung for it and wouldn’t have nothing to say to my defense, but I was lonely and scared and I needed Eeteh’s company. He was the first proper friend I’d had since poor Dan Harper, and Eeteh was scared, too. It had been whilst I was feeling ever so mournful about Dan’s killing that I first got in trouble with General Hard Ass. I run away, but he found me again, and after what I’d done, he’d want to hang me, so I didn’t really have nothing to lose except my ruputation and that was considerable ruined anyways. I’d never learnt how to do right and it warn’t no use to try to learn me now. “I seen wagonloads of them for sale today,” I says. “And Zeb has took in guns on credit for his whisky. I reckon they’d be cheap. I could take them up to that cave where I first lived with the bats till you come.”

  “No. If they see you, bad trouble,” Eeteh says, giving me the pouch. “Leave guns in here. Go way. I find them.”

  CHAPTER XIV

  FTER EETEH LEFT, I couldn’t fall to sleep. I tried hard, knowing how pesky tight the next days was going to be, but it warn’t no use. I was too a-jitter. I was hearing all manner of rustlings outside the tepee like there was a mob of emigrants creeping round out there trying to see who they could rob and kill. Coyotes, wolves and wild bears would a been more welcomer; they was only hungry. It was cold, spring slow a-stirring up in the Hills, but I dasn’t light a fire and set the lodge cover aglow like an invite, so I shivered under blankets with my rifle across my knees and drunk more whisky just for the warmth in it, feeling most miserable.

  The Gulch’s easeful stillness was also gone, another unspiriting thing. Sounds was more muffled down by the crick, but there was still a power of sawing and hammering and hollering and cussing pouring down from up where Zeb’s old whisky shack was, and where a whole new town was suddenly festering up like a rash of warts on a toad’s back. There was shouts and twinklings of kerosene lanterns in the hills around and along the crick shore, and gunshots was going off everywheres like strings of firecrackers. Eeteh’s people could hear the racket, too. I don’t hold to nothing sacrid, but I knowed how they felt about the Hills—it was like how I felt about the Big River—and so they was suffering and resenting and a ruckus was a-biling up.

  Mostly, though, I couldn’t sleep for thinking about what was going to happen next. I’d growed comfortable in the Gulch, but it was plain ruined and was getting ruineder by the hour. It was filling up with something that was alive and looked human, but that warn’t human. Something older’n meaner. People was wearing it, but like they was wearing their grandpaps’ noses.

  Even worst, General Hard Ass was close by, and he couldn’t be happy till he seen me dangling. I had to get to somewheres he wouldn’t find me, but running away from him, I could as easy run into him like I done before, and if I did, mercy warn’t in his alphabet. I couldn’t be comfortable again till we crossed into Mexico, if we ever did. I warn’t sure they talked American there, but I’d cipher out their blatter like I done with the Lakota. And at least I’d be with Eeteh and not so lonely no more, and that was good, but thinking about all that couldn’t let me sleep, too.

  Tongo was snorting in a nervious way, fretting just like I was, so I took a blanket and the whisky and my rifle and went out and rested against him. Laying there under the open sky, I didn’t hear strangers sneaking about no more. Maybe the rustlings I heard was only how the breezes blowed on the tepee cover. We’ll be all right, Tongo, I says, and stroked his trembly neck. I don’t know if he believed me or not—if he was like me, he didn’t believe me—but he was breathing in his ca’m steady way again, and directly I begun to ease up, too.

  When I rode back to the tribe after that amazing adventure Tongo took me on, me setting native fashion a big wild horse who didn’t seem so wild no more, my ruputation raised up considerable. They treated me more solemner and fetched me buffalo meat and wild bird eggs and give me a bear-claw neckless for good luck and a beaded buckskin shirt like Eeteh’s vest, though without the porkypine quills. His warchief brother Rain-in-the-Face give me a pipe with a stone bowl carved like a horse’s head, but more like a spirit horse from t’other world with its mane flying behind like a war bonnet and its toothy jaws dangersomely a-gap.

  The Lakota call their horses medicine dogs, meaning they got some kind of unnatural powers. That’s too many for me, but it’s true that Ne Tongo warn’t like any horse I’d ever rode before. I thought I knowed everything about horses and riding, but all I really knowed before was my saddle. I had to learn horse all over again from Tongo.

  Tongo never tolerated nobody else to ride him, so if I warn’t on him, he was wild as he ever was. Some of the braves was jealous and pushed at me to take a turn, but he throwed or kicked anybody who tried him, and they warn’t always happy about that. One of Eeteh’s brothers decided I warn’t worthy of a horse like Tongo and claimed him for himself. He shoved me away and made to mount him, but Tongo galloped a few yards, stopped, and bucked him heels high into a cactus patch, making the whole tribe laugh. That brother blamed me and turned against me, and in the end he turned against the tribe, too.

  They all wanted to know what was so lively about t’other side, so with a little help from Eeteh I unloosed a few friendly stretchers about dancing with the dead, and got to know Coyote better that way, though I’d still never met him nor warn’t likely to. For the Lakota, Eeteh says, the next world was just like the one we was in, which was a considerable improvement over harps’n angels. Except IF it’s like this world, Eeteh says, he don’t know what they do with all the enemies they kill. Maybe there was another next world for them that gets killed twice. And so on . . .

  So I told them how Coyote and me met up with all the dead chiefs in their splendid lodges and went to their wild parties and et and drunk with them, though it was like eating and drinking air. The dead was all having a most joyful time, but when me and Coyote tried to join in the fun, they warn’t really there, just pictures of them that could talk to you, but didn’t have no surfaces you could lay your hands on. Being dead looked like a lot of fun, but they told us we warn’t ready for it. They laughed at our meatiness and sent us back to this side again. I did kiss one of the ghosty maidens, I says, and felt her lips for a minute, so maybe I was half-ready, and the tribe give me a few haws for that.

  Kiwi, who thought all the Lakota was crazy and me worse’n all them together, left me not long after that and moved in with the two old tyrants again, or maybe the joke was over and they made her do it. The tribe had plenty young widows of warriors who was killed in battle or in ambushes by settlers and soldiers or just betwixt theirselves—even the games they played for fun was mighty rough—and these widows come to my lodge from time to time to take care of me. They sometimes wanted to make a family, but I warn’t never a family man—Pap had cured me of that—so I didn’t let none of them move in. Some of them did try to ruin the lodge by cleaning it up all over, but it warn’t hard to mess it up again after I’d chased them out.

  I traveled with the tribe for many seasons, mostly hunting down the last of the buffalo herds, having about as good a life as I ever had. Me and Eeteh, we spent hours talking and riding together, sipping whisky, and beguiling ourselves by matching up Coyote against the Great Spirits, tripping them up and making clowns like us out a them so’s they’d be more tolerable. Eeteh, who don’t believe in nothing, not even Coyote, says it was Coyote who hitched him up again to his spirit side and helped him to see and hear with the eyes and ears of his heart. “Laughing all we have, Hahza. No Great Spirits. Only laughing.” I amenned him and laughed and raised the whisky-jug at him, then drank from it and passed it over.

  Leaning there now against Tongo, I was just sinking into a muddled doze with my eyes open but not seeing nothing, my thoughts not thoughts no more, just pictures, mostly of me and Eeteh or of them young widows, when a crunching noise and a curse over by the tepee startled me up again.
I grabbed my rifle and hunkered down and stared into the dark trying to make out who it was and what they was doing over there. There was a dark shape thrashing about a-near the opening like a wounded bear and I took aim at it. “Dag NAB it!” it cried out. “Somebody HELP me!”

  I lowered my rifle and went over to give old Deadwood a hand. When I lifted him to his feet, he just sunk down again. “It’s the dern rheumatics,” he whimpered.

  “You’re so blamed drunk, Deadwood,” I says, “I’m surprised you was able to find your way down here.” The old prospector mumbled something about worrying about me and coming to protect me, but a body could see how lonely and scared he really was. I lifted him inside and wrapped him in a blanket. There warn’t much of him, just pointy bones with dry skin stretched over.

  “I’m cold!” he says, shivering. “Cain’t you set a fire?”

  “Them new rapscallions up there mostly ain’t been round long enough to know where I’m living at, Deadwood, and I ain’t setting out a lantern for them. Many of them’s worse’n road agents, they ain’t even prospectors, just pure robbers and murderers, but you already know that.” Which give me a notion about collecting the rifles Eeteh needed without having to let out who they was for. “Some of us is joining up a vegilanty gang to do something about them varmints, Deadwood. We need good shooters like you, so we’d be honored to have you in the gang.” This chippered him up some. “I’ll be gathering up rifles for the shooters. But it’s a secret and you mustn’t tell no one.” Which was like telling a mosquito (I’d just got bit) it mustn’t bite no one. You can slap at it (I done that), but it’s always too late.

  To give Deadwood a little more to think about, I sejested a secret signal for who’s a friend and who ain’t, knowing he’d get it mixed up and tell everybody. “Just show them your fob watch. If a body don’t ask you where you got it, that’s a clue they’re in on the secret and you can tell them about the rifles. But if they do ask, watch out, don’t let on about the vegilanty gang. Just tell them that the railroad bosses give you the watch, like you done before.”

  “Railroad bosses?”

  “You know, like you was saying.”

  “What was I saying?”

  “For helping them spike the rails together on their new train tracks.”

  “Oh. The RILEroad bosses. Yup, I prob’bly done that. It’s why they gimme this fob watch.” He showed it to me.

  “And one other thing I got to tell you about, Deadwood. My brother Jacob he come a-visiting and he died of the pox here in the tepee.”

  “Your brother—?”

  “You recall Jake. The tall skinny baldy with wire spectacles.”

  “No front teeth?”

  “That’s him.”

  “He was your brother? I didn’t know he catched the pox.”

  “Sure, you remember, Deadwood. He broke out in all them runny green sores from head to foot. You SEEN him. It was horrible. Both him’n his dog Ranger.”

  “His dawg?”

  “They was laying dead right there where you’re setting.” Deadwood stared down in alarm at the ground betwixt his legs. “But it’s all right now. They both got buried proper up on the hill and everything in here’s all cleaned up.”

  Deadwood worried this over. I could see he was already remembering Jacob into his yarns. I reckoned to take the tepee cover with me when me and Eeteh lit out, and Deadwood, I knowed, wouldn’t even notice I was gone. He’d only miss the tepee and make up stories about who lived in it and what outrageous things they done. “Afore Jake got ruint by the pox,” he mumbled, though his voice was so slurry you had to’ve heard the yarn or one like it a thousand times before to understand a word of it, “me’n him useter do shootin’ contests.” His eyes was closing, and he was snoring and mumbling at the same time. “He’d throw a silver dollar in the air’n shoot it’n afore it come down I ud . . . I ud . . .”

  I left Deadwood sleeping in the tepee and walked down to the crick to wash some cold water on my face. Deadwood’s snores might keep wild beasts away, but human beasts was likely to get drawed to them, so I’d have to keep awake. The next thing was to find some rifles for Eeteh and stow them in the tepee. Zeb is always up hobbling round before dawn, so I reckoned I’d start there, maybe get it all done before the sun come up.

  CHAPTER XV

  HENEVER WIDOW DOUGLAS grabbed me and scrubbed my face, she called it washing my sins away. She always said that some day we’d have to pay for our sins. The widow didn’t have no sins, so I judged it was only her way of bullyragging me. But paying for sins is like getting the bad luck a body deserves for doing what he oughtn’t done, like handling a snake-skin or stealing a dead man’s boots. So when the tribe and me packed up our lodges a few seasons ago and struck for the Montana border to chase after the few small buffalo herds still remaining, I should a reckoned on bad luck because it was partly my fault the buffalo was extincting. My soldier friend Dan Harper had told me that long ago, and I hadn’t forgot, I only hadn’t cared to remember.

  Before we struck northards, the tribe sent one of Eeteh’s brothers to scout out what the calvary was doing, and he come back with the news that General Hard Ass was marching his bluecoats south into Comanche territory, so our route was clear. That seemed like good luck, but though the troops was maybe marching, General Hard Ass warn’t. I didn’t know that then. I was feeling light and easy. But we was heading up towards where Dan got himself killed and that was even a worse thing for luck than handling snake-skins, specially when Eeteh told me it was most likely his own cousins who laid the trap for Dan’s patrol. Learning that was like bad luck was already happening. When I asked Eeteh if he was there, he says maybe, and then he don’t want to talk no more about it.

  We was many days on the move and finally set up camp in a grove of cottonwood trees on the banks of a river in the Wyoming Territory, up a-near the Montana border, about a half day’s ride to the fort where Dan was a soldier. Me and Eeteh was volunteered to scout the area, and as him and me was moving through a deep gully, he says this was where it happened. But he warn’t with the others. He didn’t want to kill nobody nor get killed, he says, so when he come on a dead soldier in the woods—he showed me where—he stayed there and killed the dead soldier again, shooting all his arrows in him so he couldn’t have no more to shoot. His brother come to examine the body and when he seen what Eeteh done, he hit him in the chest so hard he couldn’t breathe and he thought he was going to die.

  “Did the dead soldier have any bullets in him?”

  “No see. He your friend, Hahza. Sorry.”

  “No, it’s all right. If Dan saved your life, even after he was dead, he’d a been happy to hear it.”

  In mining and cow towns and in settlers’ villages along the railroad and wagon trails, I often done the trading for the tribe, having the natural words for it. When we was settled in Wyoming, I done the same, and in a saloon up there where I’d gone to buy the tribe a parcel of whisky and cured tobacco, I come on General Hard Ass’s old scout Charlie setting a barstool, his scrawny back to me.

  Charlie had bolted from the army same time I did. His travels hadn’t treated him kindly. He looked well fried by the desert sun and he didn’t have no more meat on him than old Deadwood, just skin and bones and rags, that’s all he was. His whiskers was bushier’n before, but I could tell him by his twitchiness. I warn’t sure what kind of luck it was to meet up with him, but I judged it was most probably bad, so I set about to do my business as quiet as I could and sneak off before he seen me.

  Charlie was telling the drunken loafers in the saloon about things that happened to him out on the desert, and the loafers was hooting and snorting and spurring him on. “I seen the mother a God out there, boys, nekkid as a jaybird and scratching herself,” Charlie says, scratching himself. “I was a-dyin’ a thirst. She lemme suck her tits’n saved my life. I been a true believer ever since.”

  “Haw! What kinder tits did she have, Charlie?” one of the drunks asked. “Big ’un
s or small?”

  “They was like buckets,” Charlie says, and the loafers all hee-hawed. Charlie swung round to grab up his empty glass and seen me. His eyes looked like black pin dots in the middle of his thick brows and whiskers. “Why, I be damned! If it ain’t Huckerbelly Finn! I’d got wind you might show up. You come jest in time to rise a glass with me!”

  “It’s the middle a the day, Charlie, I don’t—”

  “I thought you was dead, Huckerbelly!” He waved one of his knotty sun-burnt fists at the barkeep and struck up two bony fingers. “And who’s t’say? Maybe you IS dead! I seen a power a mortalized bodies up bouncin’ round a late, like they’s a big party jest a-waitin’ to happen. Only last week I was drinkin’ in here with Aberham Lincoln, who’s been expired nigh onto ten years. You member him? Ole honest-to-God Abe! He was settin’ right where you’re settin’, stovepipe’n all. It’s the gospel truth! He was feelin’ low-spirited on accounta the desprit sinfulness of the nation, and was gittin’ well soaked t’fergit his stately keeres.”

  “He was a good man, I reckon,” I says.

  “Better one now he’s dead.” The barkeep set the whiskies down and told me I owed him for both of them. Charlie don’t have no money, he says. “Dyin’ improves EVERbody,” Charlie says, downing his drink in a single swallow. “Killin’ a body is a means a doin’ ’em a favor.”

  “Well, don’t do me no favors, Charlie. I ain’t looking for improvements.” I took a sip and felt it burn a hole clean through me. When I could talk again, I says, “You ain’t down at the fort no more?”

  He grunted, twitched around at the others, ducked his head, and leaned close. He smelt like something dead, like he’d already joined that big party that was a-waiting to happen. “You recollect that saucy jig dancer sung all them smutty songs?” he growled.