Huck Out West

by Robert Coover

  I asked him how many he’d hanged so far, and he says only about four a day, though some days was busier than others. I asked him if he thought they all qualified, and he says there might a been an exception or two, but he was pretty sure most of them did. “Anyways, Huck, EVERYTHING’S a hanging offense. Being ALIVE is. Only thing that matters is who’s doing the hanging and who’s being hung.” The judge and Eyepatch warn’t yet amongst the hanged pests. I could see them peering out Zeb’s door over Bear’s shoulders, Yaller Whisker’s two eyes wide open and panicky, Eyepatch’s one eye full of dark fire like a wild animal’s.

  We slopped over to the claims registry and Tom told Caleb and Wyndell to shut down till the meeting was done. Their pine table was moved out a-front the ghost-town scavenger’s generl store onto a new wooden sidewalk hoisted up three feet off of the gumbo and the horse and ox muck. The store had a shingle front now and a new sign. At first, it was stocked mostly with secondhand goods left from disappeared miners, but now there were saws and hammers and guns and boots carted in from outfitting towns around. They fetched a camp chair out from the store and set me on it, and I was grateful for that. I was tired all the time now and the climb up from crickside had clean wore me out.

  The raised sidewalk was high enough it give me a view of a sea of dilapidated hats. I couldn’t hardly reckonize the place. It was becoming worse like a town every day. Now there were assay and law offices and grocery stores and tin shops and liquor dealers and a brewery and market stalls in the streets. Along with their fly-spackled meat, butchers was selling little leather sacks for gold dust. They was more expensive’n the meat on account of there was only two per cretur, and sometimes none.

  The streets was mostly filled with men, young and old, skinny, bearded, dressed in black jackets and vests, dirty white shirts, wrinkled pants, but a few women now, too, spruced up in flouncy calico gowns. They warn’t nothing to look at, but they was getting a power of attention. Their pretty clothes remembered me of Becky Thatcher up in Wyoming. I warn’t sure she was doing what these women was doing, but I judged she probably was. I was feeling sadful and it made me feel more sadfuller.

  Tom set at the table with his fancy white hat and wire-frame eye-glasses on, along with Caleb and Wyndell and two or three others picked out by Tom, and the folks out front give them a big cheer. The picture-taker come and made everybody set still for a picture. Tom took off his spectacles, stroked his bushy ear-to-ear moustaches, and raired his shoulders back for the photo, then he put his specs back on, banged on the table with a wooden hammer and says they’re all there to talk about the latest Sioux peace offer.

  That set the crowd to hooting and cussing and shouting that it was time to kill all them filthy lying heathens, they was a tarnal nuisance, le’s go do it now! “God give us guns, and we should use ’em, praise the Lord!”

  Tom held up a white-gloved hand and says he understood their feelings, they was mostly his feelings, too, but peace warn’t all bad, Jesus spoke pretty good about it, and they should at least give a thought to it. “You all know Huck Finn here as a famous Pony Express rider and one of the greatest injun fighters of all time, with more scalps than most of us got hairs on our heads!” Tom took off his white hat and patted his bald spot and the crowd broke out in whoops and guffaws and applauded all my scalps. “Out on the trail, Huck was our main bullwork against the savages till he catched a fever, and it’s only since he’s been laid low that things has got so worse out there. As a legendry scout he has considerable experience of the tribes. He has lived in their mist and has got to know their peculiar ways and he truly believes that they are pining for peace. He reckons it might save a lot of people from getting scalped and tomahawked if we can custom ourselves to the idea, so long as they don’t want nothing else of consequence.”

  A stormy howl went up that peace was only another injun word for meanness and trickry. They was treacherous animals, the crowd yelled, who don’t have no more idea what peace was’n a pack a wolves! “Look at the turrible mischeevousness Setting Bull and Crazy Hoss was up to right now! We ain’t got no time for pap-sucking Quaker poltroons! Everybody should ride straight over to their dad-fetched camp and shoot ’em all, afore it’s them that’s swarmed up and done the killing!”

  “Also they’s a crick over thar and it might have gold in it!”

  It was his own complice Oren who first raised the howl and that surely must a nigh froze Tom, but he only took his spectacles off so’s he could see better and says it was easier to holler for war than to stop it once you cranked it up. “We thought that hellish conflictation twixt the States was cooled down ten years ago, but NO! It’s still a-blazing away!” That shut up some a them because they was all strangers and couldn’t be certain who was standing next to them, but others started cussing and bellowing like as if to set off the war again. People was listening to local ways a talking and was moving about, lining up sides like before a ballgame. Somewheres that fiddler had struck up “Dixie,” and the drummer was bashing his drum and blowing on a juice-harp, trying to drown him out.

  Tom stood up and slapped his hat down and they all quieted down some. “Yesterday is dead as a coffin nail, my friends!” he shouted. “Let the past bury its own dang dead, whilst we bury the bloody hatchet and act, act in the living NOW!” He started getting applause again. “We got to toil upwards in the night together through the mud and scum of things without no fear and with a manly heart! No damn ifs, ands, or buts ABOUT it!” They was all making a racket and cheering him on, though it warn’t clear what he was talking about. Something he read in a book, maybe. “PEACE! There ain’t nothing preciouser even if you got to go to WAR to land it! Ain’t no man alive more keen on peace than me! Huck Finn KNOWS that!” He pointed at me and I jerked my head back like I’d been poked and everybody laughed and cheered again.

  Caleb raised his hand. “Everybody here believes in peace, Tom. Jest look round. Them white folks out there is the most peace-loving people on earth. But how you going to git them bloody injuns to lay off massacreeing them?”

  “Well, I s’pose, on account of it’s their land, we could offer them to share out the gold as, you know, a kind of levy.”

  “But this AIN’T their land, Tom!” Caleb says above the loud boos. “It’s GOD’S land! And we’re God’s PEOPLE, ain’t we? We shorely ain’t obleeged to share out our rightful wealths with no godless savages!”

  Tom did look like he just took a punch to his soler plexus. Even Caleb! Just when he was finding his old voice again! “Of course, I ain’t saying it wouldn’t be a damn sight more peaceful if there warn’t no hoss-tiles around,” Tom says, “but—”

  “It’s like that fat little Irisher general says,” shouted Oren, putting in his shovel. “The only GOOD injun’s a DEAD injun!”

  Bear hollered out something from the door of Zeb’s shack, but there was so much yelling and cussing and cheering and carrying on, he couldn’t be heard, so Tom asked him to come up closer. He squeezed his bulk in with the crowd surrounding us and says, “You and Huck’re acting in a most sivilized manner, Tom, and we all appreciate that and thank you for it! But them savages don’t deserve it! Like you said yourself, they ain’t even completely human!”

  “Well, I have said that, Bear, and I do believe it, but I am prepared to change my mind if it ain’t true, or if it’s true, but inconvenient.”

  You couldn’t hardly hear him. They was shouting him down again. He done his best but they was all against him. Poor Tom. He looked sadful and defeated. His best friends! He turned to me and shrugged.

  Then suddenly, with Bear away from the door, Eyepatch and Yaller Whiskers broke out! Tom raired up with his gun and the judge spun around and throwed himself back into the shack and covered his head, but Eyepatch unfurled his heels and kept right on shoving. Tom shot—but MISSED! He only hit him in the LEG! Eyepatch stumbled and fell, staggered to his feet, limped away in a mad panic. Tom drawed a bead and emptied his revolver, but only hit him in the leg ever
y time! Even Tom Sawyer warn’t perfect!

  We all stepped down off the raised sidewalk to go look at Eyepatch. He was laying in the mud, snarling like old Abaddon, his left peg ruined from the knee down. Tom reloaded his revolver and put the barrel of it to Eyepatch’s head. Eyepatch spitted at him through his mouthful a gold teeth and throwed some mud at him. Tom grinned. “Sorry, Cap’n. That leg’s a sickly mess. Bad case a lead pisoning. Don’t leave us no choice. Go fetch Molly, Oren. Tell him supper’s on.”

  CHAPTER XXVI

  YEPATCH WAS LUCKY that Tom’s aim was off that day, because it give Tom the idea of making him into a pirate stead of hanging him. The emigrants was probably more hoping for a hanging—some a them was so new they hadn’t seen a single one yet—but they all cheered Tom when he brung down Eyepatch. They had a hoot at the rascal’s sass and they was mostly happy to have him around to look at a while longer, specially when they learnt Tom’s plans for him. Tom was also lucky for having saved Pegleg’s wooden leg stead of burying it with him, if he ever did get buried, which just goes to show it was always good to hang on to such things as wooden legs in case a body needed them later. First, though, Eyepatch’s shot-up leg had to get chopped and healed, so they dragged him off, howling and cussing, to Doc Molligan.

  Whilst they was doing that, Tom and his pals gathered round the claims table on the raised wooden sidewalk to talk about what Tom called their stragety. The others wanted to attack the redskins right then and there, hitting them with all they got, and bring the calvary into it, too. But Tom he didn’t like the idea and says they ought to powwow again with the tribe first and see if they couldn’t be learnt to be more friendlier if maybe they paid them some money or beads. Nobody thought this was a good idea, so Tom looked at me sadfully and shrugged and says, “What do you reckon, Huck?”

  “I don’t see nobody getting out a nobody’s way,” I says. “So, what I reckon is that something really bad is a-going to happen.”

  Some a the others yayed at this, judging something bad was good, but Tom only nodded and sighed like to say he done all he could, and he ain’t been left with no choice. Tom says if they was meaning to attack the tribe, though he wishes they warn’t, they should choose a day when the enemy ain’t expecting it, like when it’s snowing or hurry-caning or some Sunday morning before dawn. I says we should wait for the hurry-cane, but nobody else was of that opinion. Caleb he says he don’t read the weather, so he don’t know about snow in June, but there was a Sunday coming up, three days away, and Tom says that should give him enough time. He says there’s been troubles at the claim, he already had to shoot at some pesky claim-jumpers, and though he had business partners now, he didn’t trust them, so him and Bear had to go make sure it didn’t all get stole away from him. But if Caleb could plan out the attack and round up a proper Black Hills Brigade and make sure all the best shootists was there, he’d get back before dawn Sunday. He looked at me and winked over his bushy moustaches and says he knowed the greatest injun hunter in the Territories wouldn’t want to miss a chance for a few more scalps, and he hoped I was out a my sickbed by then.

  Then Tom put on his white hat and slung a lecture about gold and freedom, and how a body could stake a claim to them and keep the claims safe, which I warn’t listening to. I was beginning to feel muddly and weak in the knees. After Tom had spoke, everybody got up and left except me and Caleb and Wyndell and a long line of miners waiting outside the claims registry office. Tom slapped my back before he stepped down into the mud and says I should go get some rest, I looked like a Chinaman with consumption. Somewheres further off, Eyepatch could be heard screaming and wailing and cussing the world and everybody in it. There warn’t much out here to heal with, and most of it hurt like the blazes.

  Whilst we was moving the table back into the office, Caleb says he ain’t never seen Tom so charged up on peace-talking the savages, I must be having a bad influence on him.

  “I hope I ain’t held responsible for his bad shooting, too,” I says, worrying if I could make it back down to the crick or not. “I been thinking about what if he’d missed the hanging rope and only shot me in the leg like Eyepatch.”

  “He wouldn’t never a done that, though I cain’t say he shouldn’ta,” says Caleb flatly. He lifted up his orange too-pay to scratch his balditude, set it back down again. “Why’re you such a favrit a his?”

  “Been pards since we was little.”

  “Well, you ain’t wuth it.”

  I had to find Eeteh before Sunday, but by the time I stumbled down the hill to the tent and fell over a couple a times on the way, I couldn’t do nothing more’n flop half-dead onto my cot. I maybe waked up enough to hear some owl hoots, but I might of only dreampt them. I was pretty sure when Tongo come and talked to me about freedom and power, it was a dream, if it warn’t his ghost ha’nting me. Tom’s horse come in to join the palaver, and probably he warn’t a ghost. Tom himself come back late and helped himself to a bedtime suck on a whisky bottle and says I should not go gallivanting off nowheres on my own whilst he’s away. Gallivanting ain’t my best trick right now, I says, or might a said, and the next thing I knowed it was morning and rain was drumming on the tent canvas and Tom was gone.

  Everybody was staying in out a the rain, so there warn’t Peewee or nobody else down at crickside. Tom and Bear was both away. It seemed like a good time to go search out Eeteh. I reckoned it best to start with the robbers’ cave in the hills above, which was where Eeteh first found me living when I come to the Gulch and where some of his hoots lately seemed to of come from. I could go up there and send off some hoots a my own, and see what happened.

  It warn’t an easy hike, but I was rested up from sleeping most of a day and was feeling generly less peculiar. Before leaving the tent, I was even able to eat a dry biscuit dipped in fresh milk from an emigrant cow, and I pocketed a couple extra biscuits to munch on the way up. I still couldn’t tolerate whisky, but I fetched along one a Tom’s bottles in case Eeteh showed up. If he didn’t, I could leave it behind for him like a kind of eagle feather.

  It was a slow plod up to the cave. I warn’t customed to it, my legs was rubbry, and my boots was soon heavy with caked mud, but climbing into the hills chippered me up considerable. There was a soft light everywheres and the rain was hushing down through the leaves and pine needles and the forest was ever so cool and lovely.

  The cave stunk the same as it always done and thousands of bats was still hanging upside down in there, packed together, their wings shuttered up for their daytime doze, but I was glad to reach it. I was dog-tired from the climb and needed to set somewheres out a the weather and rest a spell. But first I stepped to the mouth of the cave to let out a hoot—and all of a sudden there was a hand smacked on my mouth!

  The ROBBERS was back!

  NO! It was EETEH! I was so happy to see him, I nearly shouted out, but he shushed me and led me to a chink in the cave wall where I could peek out. “Tu’wayuh,” he whispers, pointing. There he was, the spy Eeteh seen, far off down the gulch, creeping through the woods with a rifle, peering up through the rain in our direction: Tom’s heavy-bellied pal Oren.

  “Eeteh!” I whispered. “They had a meeting! They’re going to—”

  He clapped his hand over my mouth again. He pointed at me, at himself. “Kho-LAH.” Friends. Then he shook his head, pointing down at Oren. “Tu’wayuh shnee!” He grinned through the webby tangle of black hair that hung over his face. “Mah-kocheh!”

  I nodded. We warn’t scouting for nobody no more, not the Americans, not the tribe. We warn’t belongers to none a that now. We was only pards, running off on our own to Mexico. It was dangersome, but staying here was dangersomer, and leastways we could watch out for each other.

  Eeteh says the worse thing for him right now was Sitting Bull’s army. The Lakota camp was full of strange warriors from other tribes, who don’t respect a poor fool’s privileges. They was forever slapping him about for not braiding his hair or for dancing when it warn’t
proper or for telling stories out a season or not wanting to cut himself in their war dance rituals, and his brothers was out-powered and couldn’t do nothing to protect him, or didn’t want to. The others say they’ll make a warrior out of him or kill him. They was all planning to move west directly to join up with Sitting Bull’s army on the Heyhakha River. He says he ain’t going with them.

  Eeteh had brung me my stone pipe, the one with the carved head of a spirit horse on it that his war-chief brother give me. Feeling it in my hand remembered me how much I’d missed it. I fetched out the whisky bottle and biscuits, and thumbed tobacco from my vest pocket into the pipe bowl, feeling rich as a duke again. We watched Oren thrashing about in the wet bushes, looking for a way up. Eeteh uncorked the bottle, took a sniff, smiled, tipped it back for a swallow, then handled the bottle to me. It looked like melted gold and was a sore trial for me, but I handled it back. “Don’t set well with the yaller janders,” I says, and he looked closer at me and nodded.

  “Ne Tongo?” I asked. I was scared to ask. I was missing that horse more’n I ever missed nothing before, and I was still afeard I might a seen a dead horse’s ghost.

  Eeteh says Tongo was a heap of trouble that night and wouldn’t do nothing like he wanted him to do, but with a lot of tugging and talking and begging, he somehow got him and my goods back to where the tribe was camped. I was awful happy to hear it, and I says so, and thanked him, and then thanked him again, and struck a match over my stone pipe bowl. He says there warn’t nobody could ride Tongo, not even himself, but the tribe treated him like a Great Spirit and he could have anything he wanted from them. The new braves riding in warn’t so respectful, though, and they sometimes laid a whip on him when he didn’t do what they wanted him to. He says Tongo don’t have much to say, but a body could see he was restless to break out a there and shove for Mexico or wherever.