“Come on, we’re like family, Hucky. I got to take CARE of you!” She put a big kettle on the stove and throwed in some wintergreen leaves. Then she took off her frock and hung it on a wall peg. She warn’t so skinny like before and she was adding on a second chin, but she was still lovely and round in her frilly white underclothes. I don’t know what to say, so I says it must be awful, trying to get in and out a them things in a hurry, and she laughs and says she DON’T get in and out, and she showed me how all the main bits opened up with pearl buttons and cloth hinges. I hain’t never seen nothing like it, and says so. She sighed and smiled. “It was my embroidered pantalettes that got Tom so agitated back when we were still in school together,” she says. “He was desperate to get them down and see what was under them, and he begged me to let him do that, but it didn’t seem right. Until we were dying in Injun Joe’s cave, and then he did it without asking. Now get out of those old rags. The water’s near hot.”
I didn’t appear to have no polite choice, so I took my clothes off and crawled into the fancy porcelain tub. “You got the haunches, Hucky, of a wild dog,” she says. “And you got an off complexion all over.” She hung my traps over the back of a chair next the stove to dry them out, asking if I’d been wearing those britches since I come out West. “All that buckskin in the crotch, it’s what makes them smell so pretty.” When I was settled, she poured the heated water over me and put another kettle on. Then she commenced to lather me up with a cotton cloth and a handful a soft soap that stunk like lavender. “You ever been in love, Hucky?”
“Once.”
“Did it make you feel wonderful?”
“I ain’t never been in so much trouble. Had to run away without my boots on.”
“Oh, Hucky, you’re SO romantic! Maybe what you need is to get married.”
“Done that. When I was living with the tribe, I found myself hitched to a native woman without no nose named Kiwi. She learnt me some things, so I warn’t such a dumb fool with a woman, and I felt sorry for her, but I didn’t like her. She didn’t do nothing for my loneliness neither. So when she got fed up and moved out, I reckoned that part was over, I didn’t have to do no more marrying.”
Becky laughed. “You married a squaw!”
“Well, they don’t like to be called that. I had to learn that the hard way. Kiwi had a punch could floor a man.”
“Kiwi. Does that translate to something?”
“Probably. She had a longer name I couldn’t never remember. But they all grinned and snorted when anybody announced it, so I was afeard to ask.”
I told Becky all about them giving me a love potion and what it done to a body and how it somehow worked on the whole tribe at the same time, and she unloosed her little-girl laugh and says, “Are you making this up, Hucky?”
“Maybe.”
Wyndy was banging on the door and calling out my name and damning degenrates and fornycators, but we didn’t pay him no mind. The second kettleful was ready, so Becky poured it over me. “I’m reminded that back home,” she says as she poured, “the locust trees’ll be in bloom.”
“You still think of it like home?”
“Only when I’m away from it.” She set the empty kettle on the back of the stove, peeled out of her underclothes, and snuggled down into the warm water beside me. “Tom has all your treasure money, you know. He talked my pappy out of it, saying he was bringing it out to you. I don’t suppose you’ve ever seen it.”
“No. Don’t matter.”
“Tom always said giving money to you was just a waste.”
“He’s mostly right. Your pap probably says the same.”
“Pappy’s not doing well. His mind’s jellying up. The village idiot is smarter’n him nowadays. He still thinks Tom is the prince of princes. Tom couldn’t stand him and cussed him behind his back, calling him a pompous old fart, and sometimes to his face when he seemed blanked out. Tom never ever got his law degree. He was too impatient. And he didn’t really need it. He’s smarter’n most lawyers anyways. He took one of my pappy’s diplomas and doctored it up and, next thing I knew, he was gone. He’d got tired of me right away. He liked Amy Lawrence better and saw more of her than me, though he had to pay for it with her. He said I was boring in bed and scared me with the things he wanted me to do. Now I do them with everybody.” She took my hand and squeezed it. “But you know what? I don’t specially like the life I’ve got, but I think I’d like housewifing Tom even less.”
“Life don’t rarely turn out like you think it might,” I says.
“No, that’s right. I’m hoping Tom’s don’t turn out like HE thinks it might,” she says with a wicked little grin. “I’ve hired me a real lawyer, a client who favors the rough stuff in bed and on the street, too, and we are going after Tom’s gold. I still got the marriage license. Either he shares up or we’ll expose what a fraud and liar he is. When all them claims he’s granted are shown to be worthless, the poor boy will have his hands full, without he does what I say.”
“He told me a story one night about killing his own pap. It happened after he left you and he was out here scouting on his own. He says he found the old man over in Baker City, a sick muddled-up drunk, worse off’n a beggar. Tom was shamed of him. When he told his pap that his mam had died, and desperate poor, too, the old fellow busted out bawling and blubbering, and Tom was so disgusted, he shot him.”
“He told ME about killing his pa, too. It was on our wedding night up in Minnysota, when we were both wide awake, and still grabbing at each other by candlelight, and he told me the story to fill in the recess gaps. Says it was while you two were scouting somewheres down south and you got set upon by a gang of snarly bandits. You got scared and ran away, but he stood his ground, he said, and it was a dreadful battle, but he somehow managed to kill them all. When he took their masks off was when he discovered that the bandit chief was his own pa. He was carrying a tintype of Tom’s ma in his breast pocket, and the bullet he’d killed his pa with went clean through her nose. Which story you think was true?”
“My Lakota friend would a said both at the same time.”
She laughed, sighed. “You were born melancholic, Hucky. Me, I’ve had to grow into it.”
Wyndy was standing over us, wailing about sin. “I must’ve left the back door open,” Becky says. “Shut up, Wyndy. Take your clothes off and come on in. It’ll raise the water level.” Wyndy never stopped preaching, but he done what she told him to do. It was getting crowded, but me and Wyndy was both pretty skinny, and Becky had a way of making a body feel comfortable.
CHAPTER XXIX
FTER HER WATER-BATH, Becky wanted to take an air-bath, which she says a famous French doctor specially sejested as a wholesome practice for young ladies of a sensitive nature like herself. The sun finally come out so she allowed she’d take her air-bath out-of-doors, and she invited us to join her and maybe have a picnic or a mud-fight. But Wyndy says he had to get back and take me with him, so we put our clothes on and clumb up on his horse. She come out, all plump and rosy, to start her air-bath, and I says we might not see each other again for a time. Without Eeteh, I didn’t know where I’d go or what I’d do, but General Hard Ass was a-coming, and I had to get somewheres he couldn’t find me. If I need money, Becky says I better not take any off of Tom, even if he tried to give me some, because he’ll just chase me down and say I stole it. “That boy don’t give nothing away without he calculates how to get it back again.” She says she’ll go get some of her own to give me as a bone voyage, but I told her there warn’t nothing I needed except somewheres to go. I says I might try to get back to St. Petersburg and go look up Amy Lawrence, and she says don’t you dare.
The slow jog back to the Gulch took less’n an hour, but it was mighty uncomfortable on the backend of Wyndy’s horse, and me and the horse had to listen the whole time to Wyndy whining religious songs about sinners and what awful things land on them in this world and in others. I’d been sinning up a storm, so I reckoned Wyndy’s singing w
as one a them awful things and I had to bear it, though it warn’t fair to the horse. The sun was a-blazing away so bright it dazzled my eyes, but the ground below was still wet and soggy, slow going for the horse.
We’d just reached one a the hills leading into the camp, when we was set upon by a crowd a wagons and animals and people coming up t’other way in a mighty hurry, Caleb and Oren among them, yelling that Cap’n Patch and his pals had took over the Gulch and was unloosing a rain of terror. “Don’t GO there!”
“But where’s TOM?” Wyndy cries out.
“The Cap’n says his scouting party was ambushed by the redskins!”
“They’re all DEAD!”
“The Cap’n has pointed hisself mayor, sheriff, tax collector and judge!”
“They been stringin’ people up by threesomes every thirty minutes!”
“They got Molly! He’s NEXT! The Cap’n’s mad about what he done to him and wants to lop off both a Molly’s legs with his cutless’n THEN hang him!”
“Who they ain’t hangin’, they’re FLOGGIN’!”
“The whores is gettin’ flogged NEKKID! The Cap’n is layin’ it on the pore things personal!”
“They jest got here and don’t know what the heck’s happening!”
“They got nuthin on ME! I been here a month and I don’t know nuther!”
There was more desperate crowds heeling it up our way. Looked like the whole camp might be emptying out. But just then the picture-taker come a-galloping in from the opposite direction, hauling all his apparatuses. “THE AMAZ’N TOM SAWYER’S A-COMIN’!” he shouted as he clopped past. “THE SIVILIZER OF THE WEST!”
And sure enough, there he was, riding towards us in white pants and shiny boots, chest bare, his cremson bandanna tied round his head, long curly hair gathered up in a knot behind. A black skull-and-crossbones flag was a-flying from Storm’s pommel like from a ship’s mast, and there was a cutless slapping at Tom’s side. Bear rode right behind him, looking mostly like himself.
Tom stopped long enough to give the picture-taker time to set up his camera down at the camp and to order everybody up here not to shoot, no matter what happens. “Just don’t get in HIS way, or MINE! Bear’s got orders to shoot ANYBODY that butts in or raires a gun! TELL EVERYBODY!” Then he snatched Eeteh’s vest out a my hands, and he and Bear galloped away. We chased after them, fast as we could, but we knowed he’d wait for us. We was his audience.
Three poor fellows was a-dangling from the gallows as we come riding in. Molly was up on the platform, next in line, along with that twangy fiddle-player and a Chinese fellow who’d been selling grilled beefsteaks and fried rabbits in the street, which everybody judged was really hammered buffalo hide and mud rats. The fiddler was the gent who serenaded me on the gallows with a whiny song about jumping off into the other world, but he warn’t singing it now, without his teary whimpering were such a song.
The stubby yaller-whiskered tavern-keeper and his toothless pal Mule Teeth was holding Doc Molligan up, and Cap’n Patch was standing over him with his cutless raired high. The Cap’n was wearing the bear-claw neckless the tribe give me and I give to Zeb, and the neckless and the blood spattered on him give him a most savage look. The army drummer in the goggles and black derby was playing a drumroll. Molly’s left leg was already chopped off below the knee, the blood tied off above it, and the Cap’n was taking aim at the other one. Molly’s eyes was crossed with fear or drunkness or most probably both. When the Cap’n seen the picture-taker setting up his camera, he stopped still for a moment, blade in the air, looking like he warn’t sure whether to hold his pose, whack off Molly’s other leg, or bust out a there.
The emigrants who hadn’t run off was cheering Cap’n Patch, just like they’d cheered Tom, but now they started cheering Tom again as he come galloping in on Storm, Eeteh’s raggedy vest flapping behind him, black jack a-flutter from Storm’s pommel. “AARRRGH!” Tom roared from deep in his throat, and whushed his cutless round in the air. “AVAST, ye filthy bilge rat! Prepare to DIE!”
Cap’n Patch only grinned in a mean bloody-face gold-tooth way, the loops in his ears glinting in the sun. He dropped his cutless, ca’mly hauled out his horse-pistols, aimed them both at Tom, and fired. Little flags popped out the barrels that said BANG! and GOT YOU! Yaller whiskers and Mule Teeth dropped Molly and cut. The Cap’n rolled down off of the platform to follow them, but now there warn’t no way through the whooping crowd. He backed up against the gallows like a snarly trapped rat, rocking unsteady on his pegleg. Tom sprung off of his horse and stepped up to the Cap’n through the gawkers and poked at his chest with the curved point of his cutless blade. “Man your weapon, you scurvy one-eyed dog!” he growled down deep in his chest. “Or be ye too afeard?”
It took Cap’n Patch a moment to cipher out Tom’s intentions. Then he grabbed up the cutless where it had fell and spun round on his peg to face Tom. He growled like a mad bear, holding his cutless out with both hands. Tom grinned and growled back, and swung at the Cap’n. The Cap’n jerked his cutless up to meet the blow and there was a powerful clash of steel, and Tom grinned again. The Cap’n took a swing at him, his blade swishing through the air, Tom jumping back and clattering his cutless against the Cap’n’s.
And now the battle begun in earnest. There was a grand battering of steel on steel, Tom and the Cap’n a-growling and a-grunting, ducking and swinging, their hairknots flying. The emigrants was all yowling, nor else standing spillbounded with their jaws gapping like in Tom’s Sarah Sod stories.
Then all of a sudden Cap’n Patch stumbled on his wooden leg and fell into the mud! He was at Tom’s mercy! But Tom backed off, used his cutless blade to bat the Cap’n’s weapon over where he could reach it, waited till he was up on his peg and foot again, and then they went at each other like before. First, one of them was near killing t’other, then it was t’other way around. People was whooping and screaming. Tom and the Cap’n was staggering about in the mud, cussing, flailing, their blades flashing about. Both of them was leaking blood variously. Sometimes they slapped down into the mud, but they always sprung up again with cutlesses clanging and with throaty growls.
Then Tom fell and lost his cutless. The Cap’n growled and grinned his gold-tooth grin and stood over Tom. Tom reached for his cutless and the Cap’n kicked it further away, stomped on Tom’s arm, raired up his own blade in both hands. People was reaching for their weapons. My own hands was twitching. But Bear fired off a shot into the air, so we all done just like Tom says, even though things was going badly for him. People was scared. I was scared. The Cap’n drawed an X on Tom’s chest with his cutless blade, then set to plunge it in where the lines crossed. It was all over for Tom! People cried out. Even Bear looked nervious and uncertain. But all of a sudden Tom twisted and grabbed the Cap’n’s ankle with his free hand and upended him, snaggled his cutless back out a the mud, wiped it off. The Cap’n, covered now in mud and blood, scrambled to his foot and peg, took up his cutless again, and unloosed a mighty swing, just as Tom’s own blade sliced clean through his neck. There warn’t no change in the Cap’n’s expression. It was like the blade had passed straight through without touching him, the way magicians do it in the circus sideshows. He still had a snarl on his face and was gripping his cutless with both hands. Then his head dropped off. The headless body took two steps and fell over, laying on the cutless.
At first, nobody says a word. We was all staring at the head, laying in the mud, its one eye still blinking. It seemed to be grinning, but it probably warn’t. Then they all commenced to roar and shout out Tom’s name. The picture-taker come over and took a photograph of Tom, all smeared with mud and blood, with his boot on the headless body and holding the head up by its hairknot. Zeb’s bear-claw neckless fell off into the mud and Tom picked it up, lifted it high like a trophy. The picture-taker took another photograph. “Prepare the Cap’n for burial,” Tom declares. “And save the wooden leg for Doc Molligan. He’s going to need it.”
CHAPTER XXX
“ATCH WARN’T SMART enough to practice proper like I told him,” Tom says, “but he had a natural talent.” We’d just been to the Cap’n’s funeral and the burying of the dozen emigrants he’d hung before Tom got there. Wyndy was doing the preaching, which was probably still going on. Tom had draped the Cap’n’s coffin with his pirate flag, though he says he might go dig it up later, he hates to lose it. The box was too small and the Cap’n’s head had to be set between his legs like it was being born there. The gold ear loops was gone, and his mouthful a gold teeth, too. A body couldn’t hardly reckonize him. Bear had made a wooden grave marker that said CAP’N PATCH. CUTHROTE PIRATE. HE HAD STILE. Tom says he’s going to have a proper gravestone carved out of Black Hills granite. The others was all buried together in a deep hole. They learnt the first names of four a them and made one name out a the four.
We was setting on the raised wooden sidewalk a-front of the claims office eating little wrens, finches, and bluebirds, sparrows and sapsuckers, grilled up for us by the grateful Chinese cookie Tom rescued from a hanging, who was also famous for buffalo-hide steaks and fried mud-rats. These birds was so small, they was skewered six at a time and held over the fire to burn the feathers off and roast the nubble of meat, then dipped in a sauce of honeyberries, chokecherries, and molasses, toasted again so’s to blacken the molasses, and finally et entire, heads, bones, feet, and all. The emigrants seemed to need molasses in and on everything, and it was mostly what you tasted. Lakota cooking’s a sight better. I was missing it.
I asked Tom about the twelve people who got hung before he turned up, couldn’t he have hurried up and maybe saved a few? Tom, chomping the birds between his teeth, says he done what he could, but it warn’t no consequence, they was all probably guilty of one hanging offense or nuther, just like the rest of us. Tom’s teeth was still strong and mostly all there. I calculated that before I was forty I wouldn’t have none, so, with the teeth I had left, I chawed the wee crispy creturs more cautious and slow. “It don’t matter, Huck. It really don’t. It was only the end a their stories, which probably warn’t exceeding good ones anyways. Ourn may be better, but they’ll end, too, and probably just as nonnamous.”
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