Then one day, Moth was out nibbling at the world like that pest always done if you didn’t watch him, and he et a couple a holes in the curtain. Time seen then who was behind it and what they was doing. He tore up the curtain in a furisome rage and throwed Sun and Moon back in their own lodges. Time was the boss. He was stupid maybe, but he didn’t give nobody no choice.
We didn’t have none nuther. The trees around us was commencing to show theirselves more like pictures than shadows, and that meant that dawn’d be a-breaking soon. We had to clear out before that happened, so what was done was done and we couldn’t do no more for the old man.
We throwed his old rags on top of him, picked up the plank with him strapped on it and scuttled in a hurry down the ravine, alongside of the crick, and up to his shack. The hollering and groaning and gunshots was all stopped. Fog was a-rolling in and, except for the distant rumble of snores, it was so quiet you could hear toads burping and the far-off howls of wolves. The moon was swimming in the fog and glowing in her grievous way, and Eeteh, looking up at her as we clumb, says that after Time broke them up, Moon went on showing herself in twenty-eight ways as a meloncholical rememberer of the beautiful time when they done them all together. Sun could see her from his lodge on t’other side the world and he was grieving, too, though every day he got up and pretended he warn’t, not to give Time no satisfaction. I says I most wished he’d show a little more spine and not get up today.
When we set Deadwood down on the floor, his eyes peeped open in their bruised sockets. Both of them was staring in panic at the mud cast on his broke nose. One of his eyes swiveled round to look up at me. He yelped horribly and passed out again. “He’s a-going to blame us for what happened to him,” I says.
Eeteh nodded, pointed to the old prospector’s head. “Many strange bumps,” he says, pointing.
“Must be where all his lies is lodged,” I says. “You think he’ll live?”
“No.”
“Me nuther. But Deadwood’s got one good advantage. He don’t worry none about it.” I set out Zeb’s rum flask for him and some corn-bread crumbles from my vest pocket, and me and Eeteh struck for the tepee and the horses down below. There was already light leaking into the sky, so we was heeling it as hard as we could put. We heard somebody beating a drum, and we unfurled our heels and run all the faster, trying not to make no noise.
Then I heard people shouting—“Help! It’s old Zeb!”—and my heart jumped up amongst my lungs. I turned and shot towards the shouting without thinking what I was doing. Only that Zeb was in trouble. Somebody hollered out my name, asking for help. Behind me, Eeteh called out: “Hahza! Stop!” Men was riding in on horseback. That chap in the goggles and black derby was slowly banging his army drum. One of the horses was carrying a limp body over its back. With white hair hanging down. His back was full of bullet holes. It most froze me. “It’s Zeb! He’s been murdered!” The man riding in front was Eyepatch, wearing his black headband and raggedy black shirt with a silvry star on it that looked cut out of a tin can. Riding longside him was his two pals and them two pock-faced robber varmints who’d crippled up Deadwood. Flashing his mouth of gold teeth, Eyepatch raised up a finger and pointed straight at me. I turned to run but there was a stampeed of human varmints all round me and they grabbed my beard and hair and throwed me to the mud and give me a most powerful thrashing and there warn’t nothing I could do.
CHAPTER XIX
ULCH HISTORY GOT made by ’lowing me the novelness of a trial, but they didn’t lose no time in their charging, convicting and condamning drills. After my licking, they hauled me up out a the mud and got right to it. Dawn warn’t even completely broke. They was dragging me straight to the tree where that country boy was a-dangling, but Eyepatch stopped them and says that warn’t sivilized, they had to give testimony and take a vote, and THEN hang me.
Eyepatch he was the persecuter, his pal Bill whose hand I shot was chairman of the jury, and his other pal Pegleg, who was earless and couldn’t read or write, was who they give me like a lawyer. Yaller Whiskers was the judge and the jury was all the scoundrels left over, mostly sick red-eyed emigrants just raising up from the mud or crawling out a their shackly wagons, not knowing what they was s’posed to be doing or even where in creation they was, but madder’n hell. To keep order in the court, Eyepatch hired on them two ugly pock-faced robbers who nearly done old Deadwood in, and they watched over the trial doings like turkey buzzards with clubs in their claws and their hat brims down over their beaks.
One a the robbers raised up his gold fob watch and says it’s time to get the blamed thing over with. Bill told his jury to ca’m down or he’d see personal to them being horsewhipped. There was some loud cussing in objection to his pronouncement, some declaring it was just as toothless as he was and stunk even worse, but Bill fired off some shots into the air with his good hand, and that settled the matter.
Eyepatch shoved a thumb in his waistband and raired back and declared that I was an arched crinimal who was on trial for the gashly Bear-Claw Murder. He held up my good-luck neckless and says they found it fastened like a noose round old Zeb’s throat, his both eyes popping their last pop, and all his traps and his packhorse stole, and he asks me if the neckless was mine. I says I give it to Zeb for good luck, and he says to shut up and answer his question: Was it mine? I says it was, but—and he cut me off again and says it didn’t bring nuther of us much luck, did it? And them loafers all had a good hoot.
I was in a tight place. Zeb’s killers was my accusers and judges, but if I raired a fuss and said so, Eyepatch’d just laugh and turn the others loose on me. They was only looking for an invite, feeling monstrous sick and unhappy. I couldn’t spy half a friend among them.
“And whar did this string a heathen julery come from, genlmen a the jury? Why, from them filthy iggorant Sooks who the killer has been pallin’ round with! You want to know whar your vegilanty rifles has got to? Ask them war-pathin’ redskins that give him this neckless in thanks for all he done for ’em! Finn ain’t only a cold-bloody murderer, genlmen, he’s a traiter to all white Christians everywheres! He’s a traiter to YOU’N ME!”
His rising voice had all them rapscallions roused up and it warn’t sure he could hold them back if they took after me. Already I was getting punched and kicked by the nearest ones. Worse, Eyepatch was right in parts, I couldn’t deny it. Helping Eeteh the way I done so’s we’d be free to leave together was a low-down thing. Ain’t never done a low-downer thing. But what was the low-downest of all was I warn’t sorry for it. I would hive them rifles for him all over again. I only wished I hain’t been such a fool as to go and get caught. That was the most low-downest thing I done: letting Eeteh down. I was feeling terrible worried and sorry about him, but at least they warn’t passing his head around like a trophy, so maybe he got away.
“And that ain’t ALL!” Eyepatch says. “Him and his brother and his dog catched the POX and they didn’t TELL no one—did any a you ever hear of it? NO! Them flat-heads went on recklessly spreadin’ their mortal sickness round THE WHOLE TERRITORY! They wanted everybody to catch it like they catched it theirselves! Now the brother is dead, the dog is dead, only this KILLER is still a-kickin’! But, genlmen—” he looked around at them all with his glittery one eye—“he only’s got JEST ONE KICK LEFT!”
They was all a-whooping and hollering for justice and saying they had to hang me NOW! They had a terrible itch in their pants and couldn’t wait no more. Yaller Whiskers had a hammer for a gavel, and he was belting a stump with it like he was trying to split it for kindling, and yelling for them to just hang on, ding-bust it, they’ll all get their chance.
“And even THAT ain’t all!” hollered Eyepatch above the ruckus. There still warn’t much light in the sky. The day was slow at waking up like it was afraid to open its eyes. “He also shot our jury boss when there warn’t no warrant for it and ruint his hand so bad the pore man cain’t even pan for gold no more! Jest look at it! Hold it up thar, Bill! Ain’t t
hat the horriblest mess you ever seen? If Finn ain’t been such a bad shot, he would a killt him, cuz he’s a natural-born crippler and killer! Why, jest last night he give our feller Gulch citizen Deadhead an unmerciless hiding that peart nigh destroyed the ole rip!”
“That ain’t so!” I says, though I knowed better than to say nothing at all. Huck, I says to myself, you ain’t never going to learn.
Eyepatch he only smiled his cold gold smile at me and signaled to his jury chairman to go for Cross-Eyes. They fetched the old toothless prospector on his plank and set him down and Eyepatch pointed at me and asked him if I was the one who give him his awful thrashing. Deadwood raired his head an inch or two and aimed one or t’other of his crossed eyes at me, groaned and nodded, and he fell back and they carted him away again. “I cain’t hardly believe how any human person could be so despicable crool and mean!” Eyepatch says. “Such a varmint don’t DESERVE to live!” Them two robbers was shaking their heads sadfully, like they couldn’t believe it nuther.
If all them red-eyed emigrants reckoned I was the one who beat up Deadwood, they also reckoned I doctored him afterwards, because when they seen that his bandages was ripped from their own missing shirts, they shouted that if they catched the new-monia and died, there’d be even more murders to hang me for. Others was cussing me out for pisoning Zeb’s whisky, saying I was the worse killer since Ulysses Grant, nor else Robert Lee, they warn’t all agreed which one was prime.
Eyepatch says Zeb was toting some a that pison in a fancy box which probably his killer hid there to be shut of it after he stole everything else. When they smelt its horrible stink, he says, they poured it out so’s it wouldn’t harm nobody never again, hoping only it didn’t kill off all the trees.
“You oughtn’t a done that,” I says. “That was his mother.”
“Sure it was,” says Eyepatch, “and you’re my sister.” And they all fell about snorting and hee-hawing.
I asked Pegleg why he don’t point out the bullet holes in Zeb’s back which was what killed him, and he spit a gob and says, “What bullet holes?” The old whisky-maker’s body was still a-drooped over the mare’s back and them holes was in plain view.
“You can see how desprate he is, yeronner,” Eyepatch says to Yaller Whiskers with a meloncholical smile, fingering his badge, “unloosing bare-face lies like that to try’n save his wretchid hide whilst losing forever his pit-black soul.”
The jury thought that was the splendidest thing that they ever heard and they clapped their hands together in testimony of it, leastways those of them that warn’t back to sleep again or throwing up or drifting off to attend to the biling disturbance in their bellies, grabbing their guts and holding up two fingers to ask Bill’s permission.
My lawyer he stuffed a plug of chaw in his jaws and says I should ought to plead guilty. I says I warn’t guilty a nothing and I ain’t saying I was. “The defender says he’s guilty, Judge,” Pegleg says, and Yaller Whiskers rapped the hammer down on the tree trunk, and says there ain’t nothin’ for it, I got to be hanged till I’m completely mortified, the trial was done and over.
They swarmed over me again. I thought I was about to join that rube in the tree and my heart was in my throat, but they fetched me along to Zeb’s shack and throwed me in it. The chinless mule-toothed prospector who struck the gold fleck the day before was posted at the door with an old shotgun, looking like he’d only made it partways into the new day and warn’t inclined to go no further. His moustaches hung like sad stringy curtains around his big front teeth.
The old whisky shack stunk more’n it commonly done, not only of sick and privies and stale whisky like always, but also from a couple of carcasses laying about and starting to go off. They’d stay there till somebody decided they wanted the shack for theirselves, and then they’d get throwed in the woods for the wolves to supper on. Which was where I was headed. Wolf vittles. My feelings was sunk low and such thoughts warn’t of a nature to raise them up again.
CHAPTER XX
ULE TEETH WAS soon tipping back in a chair, taking a snooze, the shotgun leaning against the wall, and I judged I could walk out past him and just keep on going. He half opened one bloodshot eye under his floppy hat brim and seen me calculating. “I know what you’re thinkin’,” he drawls from under his two monster teeth. “I don’t sejest you try it. I don’t give a keer, one way or t’other, and I ain’t goin’ to stop you, but they’s a posse a hongry bounty hunters out thar jest a-waitin’ for sumthin live to shoot at.” He raised the other eyelid halfway up and struggled slow to his feet like his bones was made a lead. “C’mere. Look at behind all them wagons and trees. See ’em?” I seen them. All watching my way. “I don’t reckon you done what they say you done, and I’m nation sorry for you, but there ain’t nothin’ I kin do, nor not you nuther.”
“It warn’t me who killed Zeb. It was that one-eyed persecuter and his pals who done it.”
“I know it,” he says, sinking dozily back into the chair. He slurped noisily and says he judged the Cap’n was setting to take over here, him and the judge together, and my hanging was their ticket for that, so it didn’t matter whether I done nothing crinimal or not. Mule Teeth was right. The rule a law warn’t about such matters. Eyepatch and his pals was rich now after robbing Zeb, and they was calculating how to use the law to get richer. Mule Teeth says that like enough they was the ones who robbed all my goods, too, because there warn’t nothing left down by the crick except the tepee poles.
Mule Teeth called Eyepatch Cap’n on account of that’s what he was in the Confederal army in the recent troubles. He lost his eye at the Battle of Shiloh, and he come out west after that to help the Rebs cut a trail to California through the New Mexico Territory to where the gold was. Leastways, that’s what Mule Teeth says that Eyepatch says. Me and Tom was scouting down there for the Rebs back then, so, until we got lost and ended up scouting for the Union instead, us and Eyepatch was maybe traveling together. But though I seen plenty one-eyed bandits like old Ben Rogers, I ain’t got no recollection of any long-haired one-eyed captains. Lying come easy to Eyepatch. Most probably he was a plain deserter, living off of robbing and killing like other ordinary runaway soldiers.
When Mule Teeth warn’t drowsing under his hat, him and me talked away the morning. It was my last one and it seemed as how there must probably be liver things to do with it, even penned up in a smelly old shack, but I couldn’t think of them. It was just only a morning like any other morning and it slipped by like they all done.
The bounty hunters was still outside, watching the open door, hoping I’d make a run for it, so I held my nose and stayed back in the shadows in case them fellows’ fingers got itchy. I could a broke out and got it over with, dying the way Dan Harper died, but I warn’t brave enough. Maybe, if Tongo was out there waiting for me, I might a took a chance. Nobody mentioned a wild horse down where the tepee was, so maybe he was with Eeteh or maybe he run away to live wild again, but I was scared for him, and for Eeteh, too.
Mule Teeth told me about having to pay extra for prostytutes on account of his teeth, and asked me what it was like to kiss a woman because ain’t none a them ever allowed him to do that. I says I ain’t done much kissing neither, because there warn’t nothing romantic about most a the women I knowed, except for one maybe, and my Crow wife she didn’t have no nose and was uncomfortable about a body getting anywheres close to the area.
“You had a squaw?”
“For a while, till she cussed me out one day and walked out a the tepee and never come back.”
“You lived with injuns? That’s innaresting,” he drawls and slurps again. “They say a squaw’s business runs sidewise ’stead of fore’n aft. Is that how you found it?”
“No, just ordinary,” I says. I was worried to know more about Eeteh and Tongo, but this didn’t seem the right way to get at it. “Old Man Coyote, though, had a wife with one that was like the mouth of a coiled-up snake that swallowed you down in like a whirlpool.”
<
br /> “That must of been fun. But who was Old Man Coyote?”
“They have stories about him. A friend told me.”
“Injun friend?”
“Fellow who used to help the owner of this shack trade with the tribes.”
“The one you murdered. Or they say you did.”
Out a-front the shack, men was hacking away at the foot of the hanging tree, making the dead country jake jiggle and dance on his rope like a puppet till his straw hat fell off. Mule Teeth says they was chopping the tree down to knock up a gallows there. “The persecuter and the judge reckon it ain’t possible to sivilize a place without you got a proper insterment to hang a body. The coffin-maker’s busy a-buildin’ it, so you still got a little time. Wisht I could find somethin’ to help you pass it better, but we pretty much drunk the camp dry last night, and I’m anyways dead sick from it and ain’t got no stake left to buy nothin’. Don’t even have a dang chaw to share.”
I asked him what he done with the gold fleck the yaller-whiskered land surveyor helped him find. “I give it back to him,” he says. Yaller Whiskers was setting up a table in the street and there was already a line of emigrant prospectors waiting to buy one of his hand-drawed survey maps. “The judge only borry’d it to me to set out his bonyfydies, as he called ’em, so’s he’d fetch a fair price for his maps.” Yaller Whiskers was drawing pictures fast as he could, but new-comers was rolling in by the minute, he couldn’t keep up. He was finally only putting a few marks down on each page, and yelling cusswords whenever a body complained.
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