Huck Out West

by Robert Coover

  “Me, too!” he says. “I think I am dead!” And he took my lantern and led me, limping, further along the crick and up through the pines. We passed his horse Heyokha along the way, hobbled and hid in the bushes. He loosed a noisy load as we clumb past. Eeteh’s pied Clown. Trying to be funny. Thunder Dreamer.

  We reached another cave. The new one warn’t so roomy as the one back in the Gulch, but there warn’t no bats and it was in a lonesomer place behind boulders where we could keep the lantern lit. I give Eeteh his vest and set down against the cave wall, wore out from all the walking and climbing, nor else just from the janders.

  Eeteh stepped out a the emigrant clothes, dressing down to his headband, breechcloth, and moccasins. His body was favorably bruised and tore up, and parts was still bleeding. He held up the bloody tatters of his vest and studied about it, then put it on.

  I opened up the mochila and brung out the elk meat and whisky and tinware. I still hadn’t got back a proper appetite for whisky, but I allowed it was the right time to have a nip or two. Eeteh sprinkled some on the worst of his wounds, whooping as he done so, then took a deep grateful drink from the bottle. He had collected nuts and berries and dug up some bitter potatoes, which we et raw with the roasted meat. It was the most amazing dinner I could ever remember, and I says so, and he looked up at me through the black tangle hanging down over his face, his dark eyes a-glitter in the candlelight like he might a been crying, and says the same.

  I told him about what I seen at the robbers’ cave after the explosion, about Peewee and all the dead bats, and he says he was sorry about the bats. It was night time, maybe most a the bats was already out having breakfast. He says he was in the cave earlier that day when they come to plant the explosives. He tried to crawl out like always at the back, but the opening was already blocked off with dynymite. He says my friend knowed all about that cave, he’d made a study of it. All the other ways in and out that Eeteh knowed was also triggered to blow up. He was trapped.

  He finally struck a narrow crack that he couldn’t squeeze through—he put his hands up to show how skinny it was—but he was able to open it up bigger with a heavy sharp stone. It was slow work and he calculated there was only minutes before the dynymite went off. He worried his stone hammerings might shiver through the cave and SET it off. It was dark inside the cave and growing dark outside, but he couldn’t light a lamp without showing up the opening he’d made to anybody scouting by.

  When he could poke his head through and fetch it back in again, he spread his buckskin vest for a carpet and took everything off down to his hide. He was in a most terrible hurry. He tossed his rifle and breechcloth and moccasins through the hole, clamped his knife in his teeth, and pushed his arms and head and shoulders through. He reckoned if they made it, the rest would follow. But it warn’t so. He got stuck halfway. He says it was the scaredest moment of his life. He couldn’t go back and he couldn’t go forwards. It took some desperate shoves to scrape on through. He says it was worse’n the tribe’s stupid Sun Dances for cutting a body up. He grabbed up his things and was barely started down the hill when everything blowed up. He throwed himself behind boulders and trees, but he still got hit by flying rock. He don’t remember getting on down the hill and away from there, but somehow he done it.

  He woke up in the dark with the knife still betwixt his teeth and hurting all over. He didn’t know where he was. He could hear water trickling noisily over stones, so he reckoned he must be down a-near the crick, without that sound was his blood trickling over his bones. He could also hear two men jawing. They was discussing about some gold dust they just stole off of a man they killed. Mostly they was disappointed. It warn’t pay enough for all their trouble. The robber life was a hard life, they said. But they’d heard the blast and says maybe they should crawl up and see if anything blowed up that was worth hiving. They passed by only an arm’s length away from where Eeteh was hid in some bushes, too scared to breathe. His head was worth more’n what was carried in most miners’ scrotum bags of gold dust, and robbers don’t mind about taking heads off if there’s bounty money in it, even if heads was a generl vexation to tote around.

  When they was gone, Eeteh slid along where they’d come from and struck a body. He could hear some wolves close by, prowling around, whining in their soft hungry way. He had to hurry not to become their supper. He was mostly naked, easy to see, easy to kill, so to cover himself up, he borrowed the dead man’s black pants and jacket. The hat was bonus and might fool people who he really was. I says it sure fooled me. The man’s boots was off and cut up and throwed away. Probably the robbers was looking for money hid in them. When the man fell, he’d fell on his kerosene lantern. Eeteh showed me the bullet holes in the back of the black jacket and how it was burnt in front, then he tossed everything into the darkness.

  We et and drank and jawed on into the night round the candlelight. We felt comfortabler than since the days we was helping out old Zeb. I told him about the changes in the Gulch and everything that’d happened, and about Cap’n Patch and how he lost his head, and Eeteh told all about after he escaped from the robbers’ cave. He says at first he hid in an abandoned one-room log cabin in the hills up above the crick, but it turned out to be the hideout for a bandit gang, so, after a bad night scrouched down in awful pain behind a woodpile, he had to move on. Whilst hiding, he couldn’t send out hoots, but he heard mine sometimes, weak and far off. Then he didn’t hear me no more. He didn’t think we’d ever see each other again. He thought he was going to die.

  I says I couldn’t send out hoots, because I had a lookout dogging me all day and all night. He says he knows about that, the Cheyenne braves who’d moved in with the tribe was watching him close, too. It was mainly why he run away when they all went off to war. He was afraid a the plans they had for him. He tried to tell them funny stories, but they didn’t have no sense a humor. And, last he seen, things warn’t going so good for Tongo neither. The others said he was a devilish and vengeful cretur. They wanted to kill him, but some judged he was a spirit horse and bad things might happen to them if they did. But they probably killed him anyways, Eeteh says. If Tongo got stubborn when they all rode west, he wouldn’t a give them no choice.

  I’d made up my mind I warn’t going back to the Gulch. Nothing to go back for. So, we talked about Mexico. Eeteh says he heard tell them Mexicans warn’t exceeding friendly. I says as long as you ain’t got nothing to steal, they’re the most friendliest people I ever met. They sing and joke like that’s the common way a body talks, and they love whisky like everybody else, but they give you some if they got any extra. They’re clever with a knife, though, even when they’re drunk. You can’t take your eyes off of them. Eeteh says some a them is Indian bounty hunters, and I says that’s right, but he was just another Mexican now like the rest of them, warn’t he? No, he don’t speak their jabber, he says, and I says that, well, his tongue got cut out by the dang Apaches, didn’t it? And he laughed and rolled up his tongue and grunted, and I grunted back, and we both laughed together and took another swallow of the whisky.

  Talk about Mexico drawed us back to the main hitch in our plans. We couldn’t go nowheres if I didn’t have a horse. Eeteh says he seen some wild ones close by where the tribe was camped before they went west, and they maybe didn’t take all their broke-in horses with them, so we could start there. Also there might be some food and blankets and other things left behind we could borrow for our travels.

  We was too excited to sleep, so we decided to leave the Gulch and go there straight away, riding double on Eeteh’s pinto. Eeteh put the emigrant clothes on again to hide himself and we slid down out a the cave with our traps to where Heyokha was hobbled. Heyokha warn’t all that happy about the extra freight, but he seemed as keen as us to leave the Gulch behind, and stumbled along, wagging his croup, without no complaint.

  It would likely be raining by morning, but for now the sky was bright with the same mad scatter a stars Jim and me seen back on the Big River, or st
ars just like them, so we didn’t even need the lantern lit. Whilst we was moseying along, Eeteh told me a Snake story. Coyote warn’t in it, he was dead and gone, scattered all around the sky. Eeteh pointed up at parts of him. The rest a the stars, he says, was mica dust. He says Snake was the cleverest cretur a body ever knowed. Most people admired him for how smart he was, but not all the world. Some a them was missing Coyote. Life warn’t so hard or dangersome when Coyote was around. That’s what some was thinking, though nobody says it out loud. And back then it warn’t so dreadful gloomy. Coyote made them laugh. Mouse pipes up timidly and asks if they remembered the story about Coyote’s talking member? Everybody was grinning. Mouse was grinning. Snake’s forked tongue darted out and sweeped Mouse up, then he spitted out his remainders. Nobody was grinning now. Snake was a serene cretur, but he never tolerated no distractions. Some a Snake’s pards says that’s a good thing. It’s what was wrong in Coyote’s time. Argufying all the time about nothing, making stupid jokes. Nobody argufied or joked with Snake’s pards, nor not with Snake nuther.

  I wanted to hear the story about Coyote’s talking member, but all Eeteh’s stories was about Snake now. I says they ain’t so funny like before, and Eeteh says he can’t help it, he only tells true stories. He says Snake maybe warn’t so good for laughs like Coyote, but he could be kind and generous, specially to his friends. He set up Lizard in a new tepee next to his own and sent him various ladies to company him there. When Lizard complained that Bee stung him on his tail for only helping himself to some a Bee’s honey, Snake went over to the hive to stomp him. But he warn’t home, so Snake stomped Bee’s family instead. Losing all his family like that made Bee mad, and he flew into Snake’s mouth to sting him mortally in the throat, but he didn’t get past Snake’s teeth. Snake, chomping, says he wished Bee tasted more like the honey he used to make. Eeteh says it’s a story children get told about not losing your temper.

  We had to stop under an overhang for a morning storm to pass, so it was already noontime when we finally reached the tribe’s old camp. Eeteh went ahead to be sure none a the families warn’t still living there, but the camp was empty, they was all gone together. The camp set in a sweet spot in a broad grassy valley in the Hills alongside of a crick. The only broke-in horse we could find was an arthritic old nag with cracked heels and eye ulcers. But we seen a couple a wild stallions less’n a mile away and we set about calculating how we could catch one. Eeteh knowed where the tribe stored dried corn and other grains we could offer up like bait, and he dug some out so’s I could judge for myself. He found some desecrated fruit that we et and a couple of old ruined lodge covers we could use to tarpolin off the rain.

  Eeteh showed me a big eagle pit and how it worked. It had a cover made a poles crossed together like bootlaces and covered over with brush and grass, which was now mostly dry and blowing away. A dead rabbit or other cretur was laid on the cover, Eeteh says, and the hunter kneeled in the pit under the cover till an eagle come down to chaw on it. The hunter had to wait till he could catch the eagle from behind and grab both his legs at the same time and tie him up without getting pecked or clawed to death. The eagle always fought like crazy and sometimes, if the hunter warn’t strong enough or fast enough, he got hurt and the bird flew away. Eeteh smiled sheepish and showed me the scars on his arm. He lifted the cover to show me the pit, and there was Tongo!

  They had trussed him up and throwed him in there and left him to starve to death, probably too afraid of him to kill him right out. He raired his big head when he heard me shout, then fell back again. Eeteh, cussing his cousins, jumped down into the pit and cut Tongo’s bonds with his knife, but the horse was too weak to stand, or even try. I was already in the pit with him, holding his head. He warn’t nothing but hide and bones. His hoofs moved like they was trying to write something in the dirt under him. “Water!” I says, still holding his head in my lap, and Eeteh sprung out a the pit. “And bring some a that corn!”

  CHAPTER XXXII

  OR A WHILE, it looked like Tongo warn’t going to live long. He couldn’t drink nor eat nothing at all. His breathing warn’t steady, and he showed all his teeth like dead horses done. I had to hold his jaws open and dribble water down his throat, careful not to drown him. I grinded up the dried corn into a paste and mixed it with crick water and spooned that into him, too, cautious and slow. Grains was richer for him than grass, I knowed that from my Pony days, so whenever Eeteh found some barley, pine nuts, or sunflower seeds, I mashed them in as well. It was so good, I added in some blueberries and wild bird eggs and cooked it into a flapjack for me and Eeteh. I slept curled up in the eagle pit with Tongo and give him a little to drink and eat every hour or so, and him and me mumbled together through the night. Eeteh kept watch outside best he could, but most nights he joined us, saying he was lonesome and scared a the wolves. We could hear them out there, roaming round together and howling in their woesome way.

  The tribe had been living in a prime spot alongside of a crick at the foot of a woodsy hill full of berries and nuts and small animals scampering round. Eeteh brung back marmots and possums and wild turkeys he hunted for us, a pile a wild rice he harvested in the backwaters, and some timpsila, squash and sweet potatoes. There was honey, too, which Eeteh says Bee give him without him having to stomp nuther him nor his family, on account of it was the moon of the strong flow and there was a-plenty for everybody. Tongo always did have a sweet tooth and seemed to like it when I mixed in a little honey with the corn-mash. It went good on our flapjacks, too.

  We was all alone and afeard, but we et well and lived a mostly peaceful life and slowly we got comfortabler. Eeteh’s gashly wounds crusted over, my yallerness begun to fade like fence paint in the sun, and, when we took the cover off of the pit, Tongo was able to get up on his feet again and look out over the edge, though he was still wobbledy, and pretty soon laid back down again.

  Eeteh went on telling stories. He says he couldn’t stop himself, it was a kind of sickness. If it WAS a sickness—him telling stories, me listening—it was a sickness we’d both die of, because warn’t nuther of us going to stop.

  Eeteh says Snake was mighty clever, but when Coyote’s pard Fox got sentenced to have his head chopped off for telling Snake to his face he warn’t nothing but a mean low-down bully, everybody rised up and chased Snake out, and Lizard, too, taking bites out a their backsides as they run. I was glad to see them go, and I says so. Eeteh nodded and says all stories is sad stories, but not all the time.

  After Snake got throwed over, Eeteh says, they was shut of a cruel boss, but nobody knowed what to do next. Snake always told them what to do and that was that, but now some wanted one thing, some another, they couldn’t agree on nothing. They hollered out for help from the Great Spirits, but they didn’t get no answer. They needed someone to make them laugh, too. They’d forgot how. They remembered all Coyote’s jokes and tricks and stories and told them over again, but they warn’t funny no more. That was the worse thing. There warn’t NOTHING funny no more. It was something only Coyote could furnish out. I asked Eeteh if he might ever come back. Eeteh pointed up at the sky and shook his head and says it looked to him like Coyote was gone forever.

  There was one morning we thought we was ALL gone forever. We just been considering we might stay right where we was for a spell longer, till Tongo got stronger. There warn’t nobody a-bothring us and life was easy. Eeteh was right at home now that everybody else was gone, and it suited me, too, though Tom and the Gulch warn’t fur enough away. We reckoned we could maybe at least see out the summer, and make ourselves well enough for our long travels southards.

  But then General Hard Ass and his boys come a-storming through.

  Eeteh was out hunting and seen them raising dust off to the north. Looked like the whole blamed calvary. Eeteh was out a breath when he come galloping back to camp to tell me. They warn’t shoving along very fast, Eeteh says, but they knowed where they was going. They was all in blue and spread out like a single blue eagle, the
general at the beak, flying in low and steady like attacking armies do.

  Tongo still warn’t fit to leave the pit, so we quick slung all our goods and rags into it, dragged the cover over the hole, and loaded it over with tore-up bushes and other rubbage. We knocked down our meat spit, tossed an old lodge-skin over the ashes of the fire we’d cooked on, and scuffed up the ground where we might a left a trace. Eeteh jumped up on Heyokha and says to climb on, but I couldn’t. I had to stay with Tongo. Eeteh wanted to stay then, too, but he had to hide Heyokha. The bluecoats shot enemy horses, it was a rule they had. Fact is, they shot just about anything that moved, he couldn’t resk it. He says if things start to go wrong, he’ll fire some shots to distract the soldiers away. I says they’ll just chase him down and kill him, he should try to get away while he can, but I knowed he wouldn’t. I crawled down into the pit to hide with Tongo, and Eeteh went heeling it up into the woods fast as old Thunder Dreamer could trot.

  I watched the horizon from under the pit cover, holding on to Tongo, feeling aloner than since the day they hanged me. We didn’t have to wait long. In they come at full gallop with terrible shouts and guns a-blazing, sad-eyed General Hard Ass out front in his slouch hat and buckskins, silver buckles, cremson tie, and shiny boots, his sword pointed high. He looked like he was trying to copy Tom Sawyer, but couldn’t grow proper face hair, his moustaches drooping down like his spirit was a-leaking out his nose, stead of bristling up ear to ear like Tom’s.

  As they drawed closer, I slunk down in the shadows, got the rifle and both pistols ready to fire. I s’posed I should probably shoot Tongo and me first, but I didn’t think I could do that, so I’d have to try some tricks and then let the general and his troopers shoot us both.