“I heaped all manner of curse upon them, all the while trying to reach my sheath knife to slash those ropes—then I recalled I’d not strapped on my weapons that morning, as I had intended to don my traveling togs before the day was through, that way I’d be ready to hit the trail when I woke, you get me?”
Again, I nodded.
“Good, now here’s where it gets interesting.” Jack leaned forward, eyes wide.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The closer he got to me the worse Maple Jack looked. What in the hell had happened to him? He looked like a bear cub I’d found half dead after a forest fire. Its hair had been a blackened, pasty smear. Jack’s eyebrows and some of his beard and hair bore the same look. The rest of it was still wild, as usual, sticking up even when a hat was thrust on it.
“You know what those rogues did? They rummaged through all my worldly goods, took what they wanted, unbundled everything I’d packed up to take with me, and tossed the rest thither and yon like there was a cyclone in the cabin. Soon enough they all three came back out, stood looking down at me in the dirt.
“ ‘What do you want now?’ I said, eyeing them. ‘Seems like you got my goods, you vile, thieving so and sos!’ ”
Jack winked at me. “Those weren’t my exact words, Roamer, but I am not certain you can take a dose of my full verbalizing, given your weak condition.
“ ‘Where’s your horses at?’ said one of the men, a rangy-looking varmint with a big, long face like a swayback old plow horse.
“ ‘Ain’t got no horses!’ I shouted, which ain’t no lie, as I only have Ol’ Mossback, my mule.
“ ‘You expect me to believe that, you rank old critter?’
“That’s what he called me! Me! You believe that, boy? I am one of the most tidy persons you will ever come across in all your life’s travels, Roamer. I wash pretty near every week, whether I need it or not.” He nodded, not requiring my response, so convinced was he of his cleanliness. Truth is, Maple Jack can at times be hard on the nostrils, especially if you’re downwind of him. But I am not about to utter a word to him on that score. I have been on the receiving end when his dander’s up, and when he’s irritated he’s like a crazed bantam rooster flying full in your face.
“The man commenced to kicking me with those stovepipe boots of his, the dog ears flapping in time with his kicks. They didn’t hurt none, except where he snapped a few ribs.” Jack rubbed his torn, blackened buckskin shirt above the rise where his belly paunched out. Then he groaned for effect.
“What happened next?” I said, wanting to know the story as much as he wanted to tell me. He grinned, his eyes sparking like flint scraping steel.
“They all three muckled onto me then, and you know what they did? They tossed me like a log for the fire right back into my own cabin! ‘Well thank you very much!’ I shouted, ‘For seeing me to my own door and then through it, besides!’
“ ‘Shut up your yapping!’ that horsey, toothy bastard shouted, then they slammed my door and I heard them jam something in front of it. At least I’d be shed of them quick, I thought to myself, laying there in my own cabin, all trussed up, stoved up, and bruised and bleeding, too. But I knew where I had a old hatchet leaned against my wintertime fireplace. For kindling. You know the one, you’ve used it enough. Never have I seen a man big as yourself, Roamer, need to make more fuss over kindling.
“Where was I? Yes, yes, in the dark in my cabin when I heard their voices outside, first along one wall, then from another, then up on the roof as well. ‘Now what do you suppose they are up to, Maple Jack?’ I said to myself.
“And I answered myself, though only in my own head, because you get yourself locked up for talking to yourself. At least in a town, that’s my experience, anyway. My old, dear, sainted mother back in the hills of Vermont always talked to herself, though, and she ended up all right. Said you meet a better class of people when you natter on with yourself. So I do it, too. Then I tell you what happened next.”
Jack leaned forward again, and whispered, “I smelled smoke!”
“They fired your cabin?” Given his singed appearance, I’d seen it coming, but to hear him say it broke my heart. The old man loved his little place in the woods, had built it himself decades before I ever knew him, and had a right tidy place there. And all my fault for bringing Thomas and, in turn, his pursuers through there. “Is it gone, Jack?”
“I’m getting to that, don’t rush a man when he’s telling a story. My, but this is thirsty work.” Jack looked around him, at our spare camp. “And me without a jug at hand. I tell you never was a man more distressed than I am when there ain’t the comforts of a crock of the fire juice within reach.”
He ran a knobby hand down his face and winced once more as he felt the damage there. “Where was I? Oh, yes, the fire. Well I heard them hooting like a passel of owls outside, apparently enjoying watching my cabin turn from log to flame. I yipped a few rounds of ‘Help!’ and shouted enough to color the experience for them, so they’d believe I perished in the fire.
“Pretty soon I saw flame myself, only from the inside, bright yellow and orange tongues chewing at my roof. And the smoke! I tell you it was like being curled up inside a cookstove. I knew I had to do something right quick. Then it come to me, the solution to my salvation. You know what I did right there in that burning hovel? I smiled, yes, sir, I smiled at those flames. Not for long, though, as I remembered I was tied up and could barely crawl around on my belly like a worm. I used my chin and my knees and inched forward over by the wobbly old table. You know in my kitchen area by the back wall?
“Well, under that keg where I keep, or used to keep, my flour—you know, it’s the same one you rattled your big mitts in that first night you come along in that blizzard like a big, half-naked grizz cub. You was trying to help me fix biscuits as I recall, only you weren’t none too good at the task, I tell you. Back there, in the dirt, under a few layers of this and that, I have me a hidey-hole. But that ain’t all. That hidey-hole leads to a tunnel.”
He laid a finger alongside his nose again and nodded at me as if in conspiracy.
“A tunnel?” I said, my eyes widening despite my pain. “You never told me about that.”
“You think I tell you everything about Maple Jack’s life and times? Not a prayer, boy. You got to learn the facts as I dribble them out, and be glad of them.” He winked. “Truth is I’d all but forgotten about it myself. It had been so long since I built it, and never have needed it, when it did come to me, it was as if placed in my head by the hand of the Almighty himself. Still, I feared the tunnel had long since collapsed in on itself.”
“What did you build it for?”
“For the Sioux, of course,” he said, shaking his head at my glaring ignorance. Of course, the Sioux.
“What about the Sioux, don’t they use the door when they visit?” I knew that would rile him. He clucked like a flustered chicken, waved his arms and shook his frazzled head at me. That was the Jack I knew. Back to his old riled-up self.
“I dug it oh, twenty, thirty years back, when the Sioux had their breechclouts in a twist. They were on the warpath, raiding all over the land. I figured it was only a matter of time before they come upon me, trapping on their lands as I was. But they simmered down before I could put the tunnel to use.
“Before I could explore that old tunnel, I had to fetch that hatchet, cut off the ropes that bound me. But the smoke got so thick so quick, I knew time spent looking for the hatchet was too precious. I had to use my last moments in there to uncover my hidey-hole right quick, else I’d never live to find it. By then I was coughing enough to send a lung right up my windpipe.”
“You found it, then?”
“What? My lung?”
Sometimes Jack can be thick.
“No, your hidey-hole.”
“Course I did, how else you think I got here? I worry about you, Roamer.” Jack shook his head. “You take one more knock to the bean and you ain’t going to be worth much more tha
n grizz bait. A whole heap of it, but still.”
He tapped his temple and narrowed his eyes, as if trying to see into my own head. “Now where was I? Oh, yes, so I used my teeth and my face to drag away the dirt and knobby old logs I’d covered that hole with. It was dusty work, what with the smoke above me and the dirt in my face. I felt ready for a swig from the jug. And do you know, I had myself a jug in another hidey-hole elsewhere in the cabin, but it was too far away in the smoky dark to find.
“Of a sudden, I heard my roof timbers crackle and snap! And I knew it was but a matter of minutes, maybe seconds, before they fell in on me. I kept at it and soon enough I broke on through into that musty old dirt hole. And none too soon—that fire was hotting up right quick and too close to my raised backside for my comfort, I tell you. Then it commenced to burning my face, my head, and these buckskins. Oh, but I yearned for a swig from the whiskey jug.”
“Not water?”
“No, no, never! Water don’t do nothing in a situation like that. A man has to have whiskey, plain and simple.
“Oh, but that tunnel was filled to brimming with all manner of creeping slinkers, spiders, mostly, and their tangly leavings. Why don’t they clean up after themselves, anyhow? The worst was that bull rattler, Leopold. You recall I told you about him? Well, that’s where he lives. Never told you that, ’cause I didn’t rightly know it myself. Not until I met up with him, that is. He keeps the rats and mice from populating my larder. But I reckon he figures he has full run of the tunnel, ’cause he set up a rattle-tail commotion like none I ever did hear in all my days. And me without a lamp or torch.”
“What did you do?” I said.
“About what?”
Jack could be infuriating. “You know darn well about what—Leopold, the snake.”
“Oh, him. Well, I had to creep forward like a legless coyote, dragging myself along by my chin hairs. When I reckoned I was out of striking range, I commenced to talking to that old, coiled bastard.”
“Oh, so you bored him to sleep, eh?”
“What? You ungrateful whelp. I ought to . . .”
“Kidding, Jack.”
“Okay, then. So I come to a truce with him. Remember now, it was all I could do to move along like a woolly worm, using my chin and my knees, sort of flopping my way along. By the time I got to old Leopold, he wasn’t there. I reckon I talked him out of sinking fang on me that day.”
“You think it might have been the smoke that got to him?” I said, goading him too much, perhaps.
“Smoke? Why don’t you know nothing I’ve told you, boy? Snakes can’t smell! Leastways not like you or me. Why, to them, smoke smells like day and night like water.”
I had no idea what he was talking about and I’ve known Maple Jack long enough to know he likely didn’t either. He talks sometimes to fill the air with words, especially when he didn’t have a ready answer. With a little formal schooling the man might have made a prime poet or a politician.
I admit his story left me feeling better in some ways, though heartsick knowing I’d brought all this down on his poor, singed head. “Jack,” I said. “How’d you get here? You walk?”
You would have thought I’d smacked him with a dead fish the way he recoiled and looked at me with a sneer. “Walk! Walk? Do I look like the sort of fella who’d walk, especially to save your mangy hide?” He poked the coals with a stick, then winked at me.
“Them rascals didn’t know about the tunnel, see, and they sure as hell didn’t know about the meadow. I had Ol’ Mossback pastured up back. That’s where the tunnel peeks out. I’d near forgotten where it might end up dumping me. I was more concerned with dragging myself along on my blasted face, smoke chasing me the entire way. I half thought flame would follow it, and visions of that tunnel turning into some sort of a sideways chimney kept me scootin’ right along, I tell you, mister.” He nodded as if agreeing with himself.
“I made it out all right, though. By then it was near dark, so I laid low, did my best to keep my sounds to an occasional low fart and belch, though I will allow as how I may have let a few curses fly. They sort of bubbled up and out before I could stop ’em. I was irate, I tell you. Plumb fit to be tied.”
“You were tied, Jack.”
“Yes, that’s true. But not for long. See . . .” He grinned again and leaned close.
I think he almost enjoyed the entire awful escapade. Or at least the bits where he was able to triumph. The man will take pleasure in even the most minor victory.
“That whole time I spent trying to be quiet, and not looking downslope through the trees at my burning cabin, I sat sidled up to a jag of rock with enough edge on it to hack through those ropes. Wasn’t but the work of an hour or so before I had one length cut through. Problem was it didn’t do no good. No matter how I twisted and squirmed like a head-caught snake I couldn’t loosen that wrap.”
“What did you do?”
“I started in on another one. Took a spell but it was worth it, freed me up in no time. By then, of course, it was dark as a gravedigger’s backside, and getting nippy, too. I was missing my bed, I tell you. All them skins soft as silk laid on me—and all burnt up. I hunkered down and pulled leaves over myself, managed to get an hour or two of shut-eye. I dreaded morning. I reckoned them that did it to me would be long gone—I would flee was I in their shoes. But what I was most fearful of was seeing my little cabin all caved in on itself.
“I knew it had disappeared in flame because before full dark I couldn’t make out much of it from where I was holed-up above. I didn’t dare prairie dog my head much as I didn’t know if those rascals might have stayed.
“Come morning, I confirmed my suspicions. I stood, gave a good look-see, and that cabin was a black nub, all sunken like an old, toothless man’s mouth. Took me a spell but I found Mossback, still grazing along the north edge of the meadow. I’d hobbled him, thinking I’d have gone back for him the day before. None of it seemed to bother him. He’s yonder.”
Jack nodded backward over his right shoulder and I could make out the distinctive mule’s silvered snout and long perked ears. I’m sure he knew we’d been speaking of him.
“Steadfast and true, he is.” I smiled, leaned back. “I don’t suppose you know how badly I’ve been shot, do you?”
“Wondering when you were going to get around to asking.”
“No sense interrupting a man with a story to tell. Especially one so riveting.” I tried a smile, but I was fading.
“I won’t mince my words, boy. You been shot up pretty good. Looks like a razor-hoofed horse from hell drove a foot right into that shoulder.”
I looked down at my left shoulder, but all I could see was a charred Indian blanket.
“Done my best to doctor you. Got you packed up tight in there with a special comfrey poultice. It should draw out the badness as it seeps in. Rest of it, well, that’s flesh and bone and ain’t nothing can heal that but time, maybe with a nudge from the Good Lord.”
“That your way of telling me I might not die?”
Jack’s look was not one I was accustomed to seeing on his life-hard face. If I wasn’t in such dizzy condition, I could almost swear he was tearing up, that lip—what I could see of it anyway beneath those burnt and puckered beard hairs—was all atremble.
“Die?” he said, his voice quiet, threatening to crack. “Why, no, boy. No, you ain’t about to die off.” He stood and squared his shoulders. “Maple Jack ain’t lost a pard yet, and I don’t believe today is looking like a day he’s about to commence down that foul path. You get some rest. We’re safe here for now.”
“Jack, about Thomas. Do you think he’s . . .”
“He’s bound to be fine, for the same reason I give you before. He’s a good boy, bit soft in the balls, but good-hearted. In my experience, such fools end up well. You don’t worry about it. You can help him more by healing quick.”
“I have to go after them.”
“Smartest move is for us to head on back down out of t
hese hills and get the law interested in these shenanigans.”
“Can’t do it, Jack.” I shook my head and tried to rise, a wave of sudden cold crashed down on my head. I kept pushing, trying to work through it. “Have to go after them. I’ve had my fill of the law and it’s never served me well.”
Jack scuffed over to my side, eased me back down. It was then I saw my pillow was a gather of leaves with boughs laid over the top. We truly were stranded with nothing more than what was in our pockets.
“All of this palaver won’t amount to a hill of farts if you don’t heal up. You can’t move nohow, so rest while I tend to supper.”
Something about that struck me as odd. “What are we going to eat?”
“You never mind. Ol’ Jack didn’t come empty-handed to your little party. I rummaged in the ashes, managed to find a few items from the pile of black logs. Bits and bobs. It’ll be enough.”
I was feeling too weak and worked over to argue, but I wasn’t worried. Maple Jack can survive anywhere, and likely thrive in this, his home environment. The man can catch fish with his bare hands—tickling he calls it. The technique really works, too. You lay on your belly alongside a creek or river, and gently ease your hands into the water. Then you work around under there, slow and steady, until you feel a fish.
You might think they would spook, but most of the time they don’t, they stay right there. Then, and this will sound odd but it’s the truth, you tickle them. Sort of run your fingertips up and down their bellies, slow and easy. The technique is one that takes a bit of practice—I fancy I’ve become adept at it. But no one can catch bankside trouts like Maple Jack.
And then there’s snaring. I’ve been snaring rabbits and other edible critters for quite some time, but no method compares with Jack’s. He can catch those bunnies all day long and end up with a full belly and enough soft skins for a coat.
We ended up staying in that cursed camp for three days. It about killed me to wait that long. I spent every waking second trying to prove to him I was getting better. I worked like a demon at it, knowing full well that if an infection were to set in, I might be a goner.
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