The Adventures of Silk and Shakespeare

by Win Blevins

  “Powerful grateful,” murmured Hairy at a soft roar. “Eternally grateful.”

  “Doesn’t your ear hurt?” said Tal, a little sharply.

  “No,” allowed Hairy, rubbing his nose. “But my nose hurts. Never woke up that way before.” He flicked his glance up at Tal and back down. “Not meaning to be offensive,” he said. “This child is powerful grateful to ye.”

  “All right,” said Tal, “you’ll live.” In fact, Tal wasn’t so sure—Hairy’d lost a lot of blood.

  Tal got to his feet and offered his hand. “Tal Jones,” he said, sticking out his hand.

  Hairy was on his knees but he took the hand. “Ronald,” he said.

  Ronald. Giant Hairy—Hairy Giant—was Ronald. Hairy was struggling to his feet, and Tal nearly got pulled over.

  When Hairy got onto two legs, like a human critter, Tal grasped how big he was. Not only tall but broad. And thick. To weigh him, you’d have to hang him, like beef.

  Tal himself was slight in every way—not quite to middling height, reedy of build. People told him that his shock of buckeye-colored hair and green eyes were cute, especially in summer when his freckles set them off. They also told him he might grow some more. He hated both remarks—you didn’t tell men such things, and Tal was a sixteen-year-old man.

  “I own to the name my blessed parents gave me,” said Hairy. “Ronald Dupree Smythe, rhyming with scythe.” The huge voice made Tal feel like an aspen quaking in the breeze. “But I prefer the title given by my colleagues, my fellow hunters of the beaver. Shakespeare.” Said with a glint of pride.

  Shakespeare? “How come?” Tal didn’t want to say the name. His recollection of the Bard of Avon was memorizing lines by sing-song and reciting them in chorus with his father.

  The giant pondered Tal’s expression, of voice and of face. “That will come when we’re better acquainted,” Hairy said, smiling down at Tal. “You may call me what you want for now.”

  Tal didn’t think it would be Ronald or Shakespeare, but could he call the fellow Hairy? Hairy reached down for Tal’s rifle, still lying on the ground.

  “What’s this?” the big man said. The gun looked like a wiping stick in his big hand. He fingered the orange and blue silk handkerchief.

  “This dainty was the last thing I saw before you shot me,” Hairy went on. “A flash of orange, and then a roar.” He bared his boulder teeth, and clacked them once. “What a roar!” He shook his head, maybe clearing his ears, then challenged Tal with a hard eye. “How come you got an orange silk hanky tied on?”

  Tal flushed, and flushed some more. “Well,” he said, reaching for his rifle. “Well…” He covered his flag, his banner, with his hands.

  Hairy nodded. He smiled a smile as wide and deep as a canyon. “Never you mind. Let’s get that bear skinned out.”

  “By God,” roared Hairy gently, “you have shot the grizzly bear. You slew the mighty silvertip—he of the sharp claw, the prodigious paw, and the powerful jaw. You are the conqueror of Old Ephraim, the beast that strikes terror into the heart of ’ary a mortal man.” He grinned an immense grin at his little St. George.

  Hairy, who had been carrying on in this exuberant manner for some time, started cutting thin slices of meat. The naked bear lay on the stretched-out hide, pathetically male, looking not at all like a thousand pounds of terror.

  Tal was building a squaw fire nearby—he was hungry. Despite his aw-shucks gestures, he was not sufficiently embarrassed by Hairy’s carrying on to get him to stop. After all, he had killed griz, hadn’t he? And saved a man’s life? With a single clean shot in desperate circumstances? A tale for his notebook, a brag for the book he meant to make of his adventures.

  The old hands of the mountains had distinctive nicknames, Tal knew, names like Old Bill, Bad Hand, Blanket Chief, and Cut Face. Tal wondered if someone would name him Old One-Shot. He tried it on the tongue a little. Not bad. Old One-Shot. Or Man-in-a-Pinch. More Indian style—Man-in-a-Pinch. He didn’t like it as well. Old One-Shot.

  “Fire’s about ready,” Tal said.

  Hairy slid a couple of bacon-thin slices onto skewers and handed one to Tal. “Make sure she’s done, lad, make sure.” Hairy eyed Tal. “You ain’t slew bear before, have ye?”

  Tal, keeping his eyes down, shook his head no.

  Hairy put a shoulder roast into a pot of water and set it in the fire. “Well, great balls of fire,” he said, “how many eighteen-year-old kids have gone against Old Ephraim and won?” He eyeballed Tal, who in fact was only sixteen and looked less than that, but didn’t like to be called a lad, which sounded like kid.

  Just who’d saved whose tail here, anyhow? “How come you were luring that bear with that, uh, was it a medicine dance?”

  “That bear was big medicine, lad, big medicine.” Hairy watched the bear grease make the fire spit for a moment.

  “Let me tell you. I been hanging out with these ’Rapahoes up in North Park, living with them and all.” He looked up at Tal. “You lived with Injuns much?” Tal shook his head.

  “Hoss, it’s good living. Good living. The women are whoo-ee!” Hairy eyed Tal, who nonchalantly took a bite off his slice.

  “Well, this Red Horse, he’s got a daughter I fancy. Name of Sweet Spring. This child wishes to drink deep of that girl, he does.

  When birds do sing, hey ding-a-ding-ding, Sweet lovers love the spring.”

  Hairy orated these words musically, and glanced shyly at Tal, who was gape-mouthed. Hairy orated the words once more, even more musically.

  “Red Horse, however, took no fancy to this child. Though this child had pleasured a severalty of the ’Rapahoe women, Red Horse thought him not man enough for Sweet Spring. So I set a course to show myself a Launcelot” (he broadened it to Lawncelot) “for Sweet Spring, and perhaps Red Horse’s two younger daughters at the same time.”

  Hairy checked out Tal’s reaction, but Tal was a study in indifference. He reached for another slice.

  “Women have trouble keeping up with my appetites,” Hairy explained softly. (This turned out to be one boast of Hairy’s that could be verified.) “I could use three wives.” Hairy skewered two slices.

  “So I dreamed this griz. Dreamed him over and over, night after night. If I saw Sweet Spring in the evening, this child was sure to dream bear that night. Couldn’t say for sure what sex my dream bear was, but it had a big silver ring around its neck.”

  He pointed at the skin on the ground with his skewer and grinned. The bear had a wide silver ring around its neck.

  “This child had an idea. Conquer the mighty grizzly in fair and furious battle.” He made this phrase ring. “Make griz medicine. Eat the hair of the bear. Tote the talon of the silvertip.” He thumbed the necklace he was wearing, made of black-bear claws. “Give Red Horse a present of something griz. Give the robe to Sweet Spring for our bed. Big medicine.” He pondered that. Tal did too, and turned red.

  “So I took a sweat bath—you done a sweat bath?”

  Tal mumbled no. Felt he hadn’t done anything, being just a gosh darn lad.

  “Wagh! That’s where a child gets himself ready for something big. Like seeking a dream grizzly and slaying it and getting medicine from it.

  “So I set out into these hills to find the holy grail of a griz.” Hairy spread his arms to the sky. “And get a squaw for my connubial cave.”

  He chuckled, and his chuckle rolled like distant thunder. They both took more meat.

  “Hoss, it was some. I cut sign. I tracked, and tracked. I could smell griz. Could smell it wasn’t just some old bear but my dream bear, my medicine bear, the beast of the silver ring.

  “Got a glimpse of him two days ago. Silver ring, right there, yea verily. Wagh!”

  This last sound was a sharp bark, like the bark of a bear if bears could bark, beginning softly and throatily and growing to a pop like a bullwhip’s. It made Tal jump.

  “Waa-a-gh!” Hairy repeated, popping it with satisfaction.

  “This morning I cut fr
esh sign. Stowed my pack horse. Closed in. Moved dainty-like, got real close.”

  Tal considered putting in that it was the bear that moved dainty-like and got real close, but thought better of it.

  “Next, as you say, I did my medicine dance. How say? A coon imitates the animal he’s hunting to be more like it, get in good with it, get close like a brother. Some such anyway.”

  Hairy’s face suddenly dropped, like he’d changed from comic mask to tragic. He was a perfect pose of glumness.

  “Well, hoss, you saw what happened after that. I missed.” He stared at his stony knuckles. “You shot him and saved my skin.”

  Hairy whipped his skewer at the ground, where it stuck like a knife. They watched it quiver.

  “Can’t you make medicine of the griz anyhow?” Tal ventured.

  “Ho-o-o-ss,” said Hairy in an aggrieved tone. “That would be a dissembling.” He pierced Tal with a reprimanding eye. “Dissembling. Besides, you toy with medicine like that and it will toy with you. Wagh!”

  All the slices were gone. Hairy poked at the simmering roast with his knife and shook his head.

  “Tell you what, though, tell you what. You conquered the mighty griz in fair and furious battle. You make medicine of him.”

  Well. Tal kept his face straight. Who-o-o-o-p-e-e-e-e! he shouted in his head.

  CHAPTER THREE

  but all in honour

  —Othello, V.ii

  Hairy showed Tal how to take the claws off—big ones, the size of Tal’s fingers. “Takes a lot of griz to make a whole necklace,” Hairy observed. “And a lot of man to get a lot of griz.” Just let the claws lie in your possible sack, Hairy said, until the extra skin dried and then peel it off.

  “Lad,” said Hairy, catching Tal in the act, “you don’t actual eat the hair of the bear. A man with the ha’r of the b’ar in him—that’s just a manner of speaking.” Tal spit the dry, gritty hairs into his hand. He didn’t think he could have swallowed them anyway.

  Hairy skinned the head, a delicate job if you wanted to use it for a hat. He handed Tal the skull. “Hang the skull in front of your lodge,” he advised, “and use the jawbones for knife handles.”

  Hey—a knife handle. Tal started drying off a jawbone. Hairy was fingering the head skin. Made Tal think.

  He lifted the head skin on the point of his knife and faced Hairy ceremoniously. “Friend Ronald the Hairy Giant,” Tal said, “known to comrades as Shakespeare, as a token of my admiration for your bear-like courage, I hereby give you the head of this grizzly bear. May it protect your bare head from the enemy sun.”

  Hairy took it, his face tangled in feeling.

  “Being as I shot heck out of your previous hat,” added Tal, grinning.

  Hairy extended one arm, made quick circles with the hand, and gave a deep bow. “True, this child tracked Old Silver Ring, didn’t he?” He sat down, looking reflective.

  In a few minutes he had the head on, and Tal had to look at him through those huge teeth.

  They made camp right on the spot of the kill, a plenty good place, said Hairy.

  “We’ve told the Injuns where we are with all those shots,” Tal complained.

  “Ah, lad,” Hairy answered easily, “there be no Injuns about here. Not a red critter in these entire Black Hills—not this time of year.”

  So Tal dozed while Hairy collected Rosie and his pack horse. When Tal woke up, Hairy had a bigger fire going and more bear roast cooking. “Carry your spare rations here,” Hairy roared, patting his huge belly, “and you’ll allus have them handy.

  “We’ll get some deer for the brigade tomorrow,” Hairy assured him. “Bloody hell, the boys shouldn’t have to get by on dried meat, sure not. Them booshways”—that was slang for brigade leaders—“they don’t care nothing for the ordinary chap, they sure don’t. Cap’n Fitzpatrick, he’s no better than the others, sure not.”

  Hairy acted like, sure, Tal wanted and needed him for a partner. A youngster like you, his manner said, alone in these vasty mountains….Well, never you mind, lad, this hoss will help ye out. Seemed to Tal that things like this, unspoken things, were usually bigger than the ones that got spoken.

  After lunch—Tal was twice as full as he thought he could be—Hairy got solicitous, or curious. He got Tal to tell how he came from St. Louis, and his father was a preacher man—“a bearer of Gospel,” Hairy said sonorously.

  “How come ye to choose the mountain life?” queried Hairy. “Was your fantasy filled with those things that you read”—this was in his recitation voice—“of enchantment, quarrels, battles, challenges, wounds, wooings, loves, tempests, and other impossible follies?”

  Tal could have hugged him. These lines were among Tal’s father’s favorites—one of their most cheering ways of passing times was telling tales of the knight errantry of the great Don Quixote. Why, wasn’t Rosie even named after Rosinante, Quixote’s gallant, broken-down steed? “I asked ye, lad, what impossible folly led ye to the mountain life?”

  Well, Tal had a repertory of inventions for that: How he’d been apprenticed to a blacksmith but run away from the beatings. How he was the black sheep of a musical family, not being able to carry a tune. How he’d stabbed a man in a fight over a girl, and had to flee the law.

  Right now none of those entertaining lies pleased him. “Somep’n like that,” Tal said meekly. “And I had to get shut of my aunt.

  “Hairy,” Tal started tentatively, “you met anybody named Jones in the mountains afore? My dad, he come out in ’29.”

  Hairy gave him a shrewd look. “Son, what’s his entire name?”

  “David Dylan Jones.”

  Hairy wiggled and scrunched and set his mind to recollecting. “No, lad, this child don’t recall. Who’d he come with?”

  “Sublette supply outfit. Stayed on.” Tal felt all twitchy. “Must have found the life suited him.” Tal stretched his arms for relief.

  “Left ye with your aunt, did he?” Hairy mused.

  Tal saw Hairy’s face full of questions and quick decided he’d better do the asking himself.

  “Who you working for, Hairy, Hudson Bay?” Which would make sense from the British accent.

  “This child labors for himself alone, lad,” Hairy retorted.

  “Trapping been any good?”

  He shook a huge finger at Tal. “There be things in heaven and earth greater than the wily one, lad, sure there be. Greater than putting money in the purse.”

  “Such as?” Tal felt a little thrill.

  Hairy got a bright old gleam in his eye. “Wagh! There be wrongs to right. Honors to win. Colors to strike. Fair maidens to woo. All more worthy of pursuit than filthy luchre.”

  Hairy eyed Tal peculiarly, like sizing him up. “Yea and verily, lad, this child has had occasion to engage in the odd affair of honor. And acquitted himself valorously.”

  “What happened?”

  Hairy got a cagey look. “Nay, lad, that is for story-telling time. If’n you do something glo-o-orious, the Injuns make a tale of it in the winter, and pass it on among the legends of the people.”

  The boy’s lower lip spoke disappointment.

  Hairy shook his head decisively. “No, son, not even for you. Bad medicine.”

  “Hai-r-r-e-ee!”

  “Not even for you. Come winter, I’ll tell, or Injun comrades will tell for me. Remember, in the meantime—engaging in affairs of honor is not only ennobling, it’s practical. You do something for an Injun, and he’ll make a brother of ye. Or she’ll give you her favors. Yessir.”

  Tal got all flushed.

  For dinner they gorged on more bear, then laid back and watched the sky go lavender and then gray and then black. Tal had never seen so many stars, thick and clustery.

  Hairy was muttering about getting another dream with another griz and being able to find the critter and having better luck in the fair and furious battle. Might not be so easy, he murmured, might not be easy at all.

  “But lad, I got to have her. Swee-e
-et Spring,” he crooned. “This child is misuble to have her. Oh, she’s scrumptious, she’s delectable.” He moaned, he mooned, he nearly swooned.

  “Shall I compare ye to a summer’s day?”

  Tal began to think Hairy had lost too much blood after all.

  Hairy rethought his griz strategy. Maybe he should have got a medicine man to show him how to do a bear dance. Maybe should. That bear dance this child did was a slight, actually. But those medicine men didn’t give away such knowledge for nothing, and Hairy’s peltries, or plews was cached in the Hills, and…

  It was getting nippy. Colder than nippy. Hairy built the fire up big, set his saddle by it, laid out some canvas and blankets, and crawled in. He lifted a keg and drank deep.

  “’Night, lad,” he said. He grinned big as a harvest moon and pushed another keg toward Tal. “Surely do thank you for happening by today.” He laid back down. “It was providential. Providential.” Another deep swig from the keg.

  Tal tasted his—good, sweet, mountain water. He stared at the fire until he started shivering. Then he got in his own bedroll. He was tired, and might have gone straight to sleep, if Hairy hadn’t snored like a steamboat whistle.

  Tal could ignore it. Gorged, he lay back and closed his eyes, enjoying the cool night. I conquered Old Ephraim, he thought. With one shot. I’m Old One-Shot. And I have a griz skull and jaw bones and claws to start a necklace. Plus a robe to share with the lady of my dreams.

  Medicine, magic, fateful dreams, totems, and a brave giant! Enchantments, battles, challenges, and dusky maidens! Wasn’t this what he came to the Shining Mountains for? Was this not a subject for heroic verses? Tal was a happy man. Boy. No, man.

  Maybe he should write in his notebook now. No, he was embarrassed—Hairy might stir. He’d just think on putting the epic battle of Old Ephraim and Old One-Shot in it. And now he had a title—Record of My Sojourn in the Shining Mountains: AN AFFAIR OF HONOR.

  Tal squirmed in his blankets. He liked thinking such thoughts—chivalrous thoughts!—but they made him wonder about himself. Wonder if chivalrous thoughts were kid stuff. Maybe such stuff would earn him a name less fine than Old One-Shot. Like Idjit. Or, worse, Boy. It was hard to know.