“What are you waiting for, Jim? Say the spell and we can get some sleep.”
“I can’t do it, Huck,” he says, and hung his head.
“Did you forget the words?”
“I got ’em in my head still, Huck, but I ain’t goin’ to say ’em.”
“Why not? Do you want Grace to tell on us and finish your days on the end of a rope?”
“I don’t want dat, Huck, but I reckon we cain’t rightly kill Grace jest on accounter she knows ’bout us. It ain’t right.”
“Well tell me the spell again and I’ll do it.”
“I ain’t goin’ to, Huck.”
“I can’t let her ride roughshod over me no more, Jim. It ain’t dignificated. She’s got a hold on me she don’t deserve to have. I just got to break it or never hold my head up again.”
“Das true, Huck, but dis ain’t de way to do it. Usin’ de hex doll ain’t no diff’rent to usin’ a knife like dey say you done wid de judge.”
I turned it over some and he’s right; hexing ain’t nothing short of murder like he says. It must of been a panic come over me to even give it consideration, and I was all of a sudden ashamed. You can argue a way around it if you got a way with words, but murder is murder however. If it hadn’t of been for Jim I would of gone ahead and allowed Grace to get struck down by the hex and have to live with it the rest of my life. It was a mighty narrow escape.
We dug up the doll and wondered what to do with it. If we stomped on it a wagon might tip over onto Grace and squash her flat, and if we pulled it apart she might fall off a mountain and be shattered all to flinders. Finally we figured we’d let it stay where it was and let the sun and rain break it down gradual. It give me a good feeling to know we spared her life like that, and I pulled out the needle to give Grace relief from the belly pain she reckoned I give her. I felt right noble over the whole thing. There’s still the problem of her treating me like a nigger, but I’d give it some ponderation and figure out a way to make her quit without a need for hexing or murder.
We started back to the wagons, then Jim grabbed my arm and pulled me down onto the ground and whispers:
“Someone comin’, Huck.”
We lay there like logs and along come two people talking low, a man and a woman, and when they was close enough I heard it’s Grace herself. They strolled by just a short piece away and we could hear every word.
“You know I’m just seventeen, Hewley,” says Grace. “It’s awful young to be wed.”
“That’s no answer,” says Hewley. “My own mother was married at fifteen and never regretted it.”
“It makes me nervous just to think of,” says Grace. “At the orphanage they taught me to lead a life of the spirit, not of the flesh. I never once thought I’d be faced with such a choice as this.”
“You mean … children?”
“Yes …” she says, all modest and shy.
“But that’s nothing to be afraid of, Grace. I’ve been watching you, and in my opinion your hips are made for childbearing.”
“Oh really?” she says, going prim. “I’ll thank you not to look at my person with such lewdness in your head, Hewley Peterson. I find myself distressed by your unseemly attitude, I really do.”
“Please forgive me, Grace,” begs Hewley. “I never meant to give offense. I’d sooner bite my tongue off than cause you grief, you know that.”
“Well, maybe just this once I’ll forgive you, only never let me hear such talk from you again. I was raised to be of delicate disposition with regard to marriage and … and things.”
“I won’t ever mention it again, Grace, only promise me you’ll think on what I asked.”
“What was it you asked again, Hewley? It’s flown right out of my head.”
“Don’t tease, Grace. I mean about wanting you to marry me. I don’t expect an answer straight off, but maybe by the time we reach Fort Kearney you’ll make a decision.”
“I’ll think about it, and that’s all I’m promising,” she says. “Now you can escort me back.”
And away they went. It was hard to credit, and I give my ears a rub to make sure they was still working normal. I got two hot ears and a helping of perplexion out of it.
“Jim,” says I, “what kind of game do you reckon Grace is playing at?”
“I don’ know, Huck. ’Pears to me she stringin’ dat boy along for de pleasure she kin get outer tellin’ him no.”
“Where’s the pleasure in that?”
“Some women likes to do it, Huck. Dey jest loves to get a man all fired up so’s dey kin pour ice water on him. Dere ain’t no reason for it I kin figure, only devilment an’ tricksiness.”
Now at least I knowed who her new friend is, and next day rode along with Thaddeus and asked if he heard of someone in the train called Hewley Peterson.
“Peterson,” he says, and sucked his teeth some. “There’s Petersons I recall on the colonel’s list. Father and two sons. Your Hewley might be among ’em.”
“Which wagon is theirs?”
“I disremember. Ask the colonel.”
So I done just that, and the colonel wants to know why I want to know.
“My Ma’s folks was called Peterson,” says I. “I just wondered if we’re related.”
That satisfied him and he says they’re somewhere halfway along the train. I rode along and asked at a few wagons and finally hit the right one. There’s a man on the seat with a boy around twenty beside him.
“Would you be Mr. Peterson?” I ask.
“I am,” he says.
“From Evanstown, Illinois?”
“No, we’re from Ohio.”
“Oh, I just wondered if you might be related to my Ma’s folks.”
“Not if she came from anywhere but Ohio. Us Petersons have lived there two generations.”
“Then I reckon it’s a different family. Evanstown was started by her grandpa on her mother’s side, Hewley Evans, and she lived there all her life.”
“Hewley, did you say? Why, that’s a coincidence. My boy here is called Hewley, but we never heard of Evanstown so that’s all it is, coincidence.”
“Well, never mind. Thank you, sir.”
I only went to all that trouble so’s I know what Hewley looks like. Off I rode, and when I passed the Shaughnessy wagon I seen Grace sat on the tailboard with her legs swinging free so you can see her ankles right up to her knees, and there’s a man on horseback riding alongside talking to her. They was both smiling at each other and the man give her ankles a look every now and then. Grace seen me and waved so I rode over and joined them, curious as a cat.
“Hello, Jeff,” she says, like I’m her favorite brother.
“Hello yourself, Grace,” says I with a smile and waited for an introduction, but when it come I had to grab hard with both legs to keep from falling off my horse.
“Jeff, this is a friend of mine, Mr. Peterson.”
“Peterson?”
“Duane,” he says, and reaches over to shake my hand. The resemblance was there but Duane is bigger and stronger-looking than Hewley, meaner too. I could tell he wanted me to backpaddle and leave them alone but I stayed there trying to figure out what Grace is up to, just jawing about how many miles we come and such, till Grace got impatient and says:
“You run along now, Jeff. Duane and I are talking grownup talk.”
“Oh, pardon me, Grace, I never realized. I’ll run right along directly.”
I told Jim about it that night and he warn’t approving.
“Dat girl runnin’ aroun’ wid two brothers. You reckon dey knows ’bout de other, Huck?”
“I guess not. The Petersons has got just one horse apart from their team and I reckon one or other rides it turn and turn about, and whichever one is on it goes straight to Grace and jaws away, and next day it’s his brother that does it, both of them thinking he’s the only one she’s giving the glad-eye to.”
“She cain’t keep it goin’ forever, Huck. Sooner or later she goin’ to make a sli
p an’ de boys come face to face wid Grace in between. Den what she goin’ to say?”
“Being acquainted with Grace like I am, I reckon she’ll find a way to make out like she’s innocent. But wait on, Jim. If she’s playing them both against the other, it’s something she’ll want to keep secret, just like I want her to keep my name secret.”
Jim got excited and says:
“Das it, Huck! You kin trade off wid Grace, her secret for your’n! Ain’t no way she goin’ to blab wid you knowin’ ’bout de brothers. Maybe now we kin rest easy.”
I hunted up Grace that night to play at being her lapdog like always, but she warn’t hardly interested in me no more, so I started spying on her from behind wagons, keeping track of her. It was worth it too, on account of she’s romancing both Petersons away from the firelight where no one can see them, only never at the same time. I got to admit I was kind of impressed at the brassy way she done it. She had two kinds of acting, one for each. With Hewley she’s a lilywhite maiden that don’t piss nothing but springwater and with Duane she let her natural self come up for air, not fornicatering or nothing, but she let him squeeze her real hard and kiss her on the lips. It was downright deceitful but awful clever, like watching a show with actors.
I got my clothes good and dirty sneaking along through the grass to spy on them night after night and Mrs. Ambrose made me stay in the wagon one time while she washed my shirt and britches out, so I had to stay naked in a blanket til morning and never seen what happened, but it was Hewley’s turn.
The days rolled on by and after you got used to the plains the scenery would send you to sleep faster than a Sunday sermon. There warn’t nothing to look at but little critturs that lived in holes and would duck out of sight whenever you come near, and what they are is gophers, cute to look at, but once you seen a few hundred you just wanted them to stay in their holes permanent. Thaddeus says they’re pesky on account of a horse can put its hoof down a gopher hole and break a leg, but I never seen it happen. And still no Injuns neither. Thaddeus says to me:
“They likely know we’re here. Any day now they’ll want payment for crossing their land.”
“What kind of payment?”
“Just the usual trinkets. They ain’t discovered money yet. When they do the price’ll go up, you can bet. Injuns always cotton onto white ways in the end, even when it don’t do ’em a lick of good. All I ever seen ’em get is hard liquor and pox, and neither one makes an Injun look pretty. But they won’t stay away from whites, not by a long haul. A trading post works on ’em like a candle to moths. They’ll come from miles around to get them beads and mirrors and such truck, and later on it’s whiskey. If they don’t have the pelts to pay for it, why, they’ll tell their wives to shuck off their clothes and go behind a bush with you. There ain’t no shame attached to it for Injuns, but it eats away gradual at a tribe till they’re all doing it insteader huntin’ and trappin’, and pretty soon all the women is whores and the men drunks, and that’s the finish of that particular tribe.”
“Ain’t there a way to stop it?”
“Not unless every white man west of the Missouri goes back home, and that ain’t about to happen. Fur trappers opened up the way, and settlers followed on. Now it’s forty-niners, and you can’t turn back a crowd that’s got gold fever. The Injuns’ days is numbered for sure. I seen the writing on the wall.”
“Does it give you the miseries, Thaddeus?”
He chewed on that awhile, then says:
“I reckon so. Injuns is just as decent as whites, maybe more so, but once they get white ways they ain’t Injun no more nor white neither, and they just die. But it ain’t just a matter of dead Injuns. It’s the prairie and the mountains too. I ain’t a religious man but the hand of God must of made ’em, they’re so big, and they warn’t ever intended to have humans crawling all over ’em. I seen the land when it was wide open and free just a dozen years back, and already it’s ending. They’ll dig up the mountains for gold and plow the plains for corn, and pretty soon there’ll just be the desert left for a man to find himself in. I hope I die before that time comes around.”
He can be mighty grim sometimes, can Thaddeus, but I always come away from him feeling respect. I had it for Colonel Naismith too, but his was the kind that got bred into him from the day he’s born and warn’t earned like Thaddeus’s wisdom which come from experience of life lived way out yonder under the big sky. If I had to take after one or the other I reckon it’d be Thaddeus. He told me about a place in California that’s got trees three hundred feet tall and as big around as a house. I never believed him at first but he swore it’s so, and after that whenever Thaddeus passed through my mind I seen the trees too, till I never thought of one without the other.
Two days later the Injuns showed, and it was me that seen them first just before noon. I rode up onto a rise ahead of the train and seen them waiting a mile ahead, maybe fifty or more all mounted on ponies. I raced down and give the word to Thaddeus and the colonel. They stopped the train and told everyone to wait right there while they went ahead to powwow, but first they got out a big chest and loaded it onto a pack mule to take with them. They set off and I begged to come along too.
“No, Jeff,” says the colonel. “I admire your spirit, but a boy has no place parleying with redskins. Stay here with the rest.”
Thaddeus give a sort of cough and says:
“Well now, Colonel, it mayn’t be such a bad idea to have the boy along. It ain’t expected, and Injuns has got admiration for any kind of gumption we care to show. I reckon it’ll do us a power of good to have a young’un along to show we ain’t afraid. It’s the way their minds work.”
The colonel tugged his mustache some, then says:
“Very well. You may accompany us, Jeff, but make no sudden movements, especially with your rifle.”
“Yessir. Thank you.”
And off we rode with me leading the pack mule. The Injuns was waiting same as I first seen them and never moved a muscle when we come near, just sat on their ponies and watched us till we come right up close. They all looked mighty fine with black hair long as a woman’s, braided and tricked out with feathers, and their clothes was buckskin all beaded and fringed. Every one of them rode bareback or with a little blanket, and their horses never had nothing but a rope through the mouth for a bridle and had feathers in their manes and tails and here and there a painted circle around the eye or a colored handprint on the rump. They looked just like I always wanted Injuns to look, proud and handsome and free.
Thaddeus told me and the colonel to stay back while he rode up in front of an Injun older than the rest with a feather bonnet reaching clear down his back, so he must be the chief. They grunted at each other some, then Thaddeus says:
“Lay out the goods, but only a third. Leave the rest in the chest.”
We wrestled it onto the ground and opened it and an Injun spread a blanket. I started taking out all kinds of bright things, necklaces mostly and mirrors and a few frying pans, even a couple rolls of red cloth.
“That’s enough,” says Thaddeus.
The chief got down off his horse and sat on the blanket so’s he can see it all, then him and Thaddeus done some more grunting with chopped-down little words and Thaddeus says to the colonel:
“He says it ain’t enough. He wants more.”
“Is that usual?” asks the colonel.
“Just regular bargaining. Jeff, haul out a hatchet and lay it down.”
I fetched out a brand-new one from the bottom of the chest. All the other Injuns was off their horses by now and crowding around to see what else I had in there.
“Close it and sit on it,” says Thaddeus.
I done it and the Injuns looked peevish at me, but I just give them a smile and a “How do.”
“He likes the hatchet,” says Thaddeus after more Injun talk, “but he wants cattle too, Colonel. He figures we’re pioneers like them that come through eight year ago with plenty of livestock in tow.”
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br /> “Explain to him that we are not farmers and only have sufficient animals to pull our wagons.”
Thaddeus done it and says:
“He’s agreeable, but now he wants more trinkets instead.”
“What would you advise?”
“Don’t give him no more’n what he’s got. He knows we got to pass through other tribes’ territory and need the rest of that stuff in reserve.”
There’s more talk, then Thaddeus says:
“It’s a standoff. He says we ain’t given him enough so we can’t go through.”
“Then why not give him more? We have plenty left.”
“That ain’t the point, Colonel. If we do that he’ll have no respect for us. He’ll let us through, sure, but the next train that happens along’ll get charged twice as much, and if they give in the one after’ll get walloped for twice as much again. These Pawnee are great bluffers, but they can’t abide weakness. I already told him no, so if we give in now he’ll figure we’re cowards, and rightly so.”
“Is there no way around the problem?”
“Bound to be, but it’s the chief here who’ll come up with it. He’s got all the cards right now and he’ll take his time about showing his hand.”
Nothing happened for awhile and I fetched out my pipe to pass the time. The Injun next to me was mighty interested.
“Why’s he watching me so, Thaddeus; Injuns smoke, don’t they?”
“Not on such an itty bitty pipe as your’n. Theirs are longer’n your arm.”
I puffed away some then offered it to the Injun, and he was all set to take it when the chief barks something and he pulled his hand back quick. The chief and Thaddeus talked some more and he says:
“Now he’s pertending he’s real upset by Jeff smoking a pipe before we got things settled. They generally smoke after.”
“I’m sorry, Thaddeus,” says I. “I never knowed.”
The Further Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Page 18
