Red Prophet ttoam-2

by Orson Scott Card

  The only inkling Hooch got was something one of the brawlers said. “I reckon I'm broke till tax season.” The others whooped and hollered a little. “I got to say I don't mind government service, but it sure ain't steady work.”

  Hooch knew better than to ask them what they meant. No need to call attention to himself. He sure didn't want word getting around about how he looked all beat up the night he spent in jail. That kind of idea starts spreading and pretty soon everybody thinks he can beat a body up, and Hooch didn't reckon to start all over as a common street brawler, not at his age.

  In the morning the soldiers came for him. Different ones, and this time they wasn't so careless with their feet and their musket butts. They just marched Hooch on out of the jail and now, finally, he got to see Bill Harrison.

  But not in his office. It was in his own Governor's mansion, in a cellar room. And the way they got there was peculiar. The soldiers– must have been a dozen of them– just marched along behind the house, when all of a sudden one of them dashed over, flung up the cellar door, and two others half dragged Hooch down the steps. Cellar door slammed shut almost before their heads were clear of it, and in all that time the soldiers just kept right on marching, as if nothing was happening. Hooch didn't like that at all. It meant that Harrison didn't want anybody to see that Hooch was with him. Which meant this meeting could get pretty ugly, cause Harrison could deny it ever happened. Oh, the soldiers knew, of course, but they all knew about a certain corporal who got his knee bent the wrong way last night; they weren't about to testify on Hooch Palmer's behalf.

  Harrison was his old self, though, smiling and shaking Hooch by the hand and clapping him on the shoulder. “How are you, Hooch?”

  “I been better, Gov. How's your wife? And that little boy of yours?”

  “She's healthy as you could hope for, a refined lady like her being out here on the frontier. And my little boy, he's quite a soldier, we even stitched him up a little uniform, you should see him strutting on parade.”

  "It's talk like that makes me think I ought to take a wife someday. "

  "I heartily recommend it. Oh, here, Hooch, what am I thinking of? You set down, set down right there.

  Hooch sat. “Thanks, Bill.”

  Harrison nodded, satisfied. "It's good to see you, it's been so long.

  “Wisht I'd've seen you yesterday,” said Hooch.

  Harrison smiled ruefully. “Well, I get busy. Didn't my boys tell you I had a full-up schedule?”

  “Schedule never used to be full for me, Bill.”

  “You know how it gets sometimes. Real busy, and what can I do about it?”

  Hooch shook his head. “Now, Bill, we've lied to each other just about long enough, I think. What happened was part of a plan, and it wasn't my plan.”

  “What are you talking about, Hooch?”

  “I'm saying maybe that corporal didn't want his leg broke, but I have a feeling his job was to get me swinging at him.”

  “His job was to see that nobody disturbed me unless they were on my schedule, Hooch. That's the only plan I know about.” Harrison looked sad. “Hooch, I got to tell you, this is real ugly. Assaulting an officer of the U.S. Army.”

  “A corporal ain't no officer, Bill.”

  “I only wish I could ship you back to Suskwahenny for trial, Hooch. They got lawyers there, and juries, and so on. But the trial has to be here, and juries around here ain't too partial to folks who go around breaking corporals' knees.”

  “Suppose you stop the threats and tell me what you really want?”

  “Want? I ain't asking for favors, Hooch. Just concerned about a friend of mine who's got himself in trouble with the law.”

  “It must be something real sickening or you'd bribe me to do it instead of trying to strong-arm me. It must be something that you think I wouldn't be willing to do unless you scare me to death, and I keep trying to imagine what you think is so bad that you think I wouldn't do it. It ain't much of a list, Bill.”

  Harrison shook his head. “Hooch, you got me wrong. Just plain wrong.”

  “This town is dying, Bill,” said Hooch. “Things ain't working out like you planned. And I think it's cause you done some real dumb things. I think the Reds started going away– or maybe they all died off– and you made the stupid mistake of trying to make up for all that lost likker income by bringing in the scum of the earth, the worst kind of White man, the river rats who spent the night in jail with me. You've used them to collect taxes, right? Farmers don't like taxes. They specially don't like taxes when they're collected by scum like this.”

  Harrison poured himself three fingers of whisky in a tumbler and drank off half of it in a single gulp.

  “So you been losing your whisky-Reds, and you been losing your White farmers, and all you got left is your soldiers, the river rats, and whatever money you can steal from the United States Army appropriation for peace-keeping in the west.”

  Harrison drank the rest of the whisky and belched.

  “What that means is you've been unlucky and you've been stupid, and somehow you think you can make me get you out of it.”

  Harrison poured another three fingers into the glass.

  But instead of drinking it, he hauled off and threw it into Hooch's face. The whisky splashed in his eyes, the tumbler bounced off his forehead, and Hooph found himself rolling on the floor trying to dig the alcohol out of his eyes.

  A while later, with a wet cloth pressed against his forehead, Hooch was sitting in the chair again, acting a lot more meek and reasonable. But that was because he knew Harrison had a flush and his own hand was just two pair. Get out of here alive and then just see what comes next, right?

  “I wasn't stupid,” Harrison said.

  No, you're the smartest governor Carthage ever had, I'm surprised you ain't King. That's what Hooch would've said. But he was keeping his mouth shut.

  “It was that Prophet. That Red up north. Building his Prophetstown right across the Wobbish from Vigor Church-= you can't tell me that's just a coincidence. It's Armor-of-God, that's what it is, trying to take the state of Wobbish away from me. Using a Red to do it, too. I knew that a lot of Reds were going north, everybody knew that, but I still had me my whisky-Reds, them as hadn't died off. And with fewer Reds around here– especially the Shaw-Nee, when they left– well, I thought I'd get more White settlers. And you're wrong about my tax collectors. They didn't run the White settlers off. It was Ta-Kumsaw.”

  “I thought it was the Prophet.”

  "Don't get smart with me, Hooch, I don't have much patience these days.

  Why didn't you warn me before you threw the glass? No, no, don't say nothing to make him mad. “Sorry, Bill.”

  “Ta-Kumsaw's been real smart. He doesn't kill White folks. He just shows up at their farms with fifty Shaw-Nee. Doesn't shoot anybody, but when you got fifty painted-up warriors all around your house, these White folks didn't exactly figure it was smart to start shooting. So the White farmers watched while the Shaw-Nee opened every gate, every stable, every coop. Let them animals go on out. Horses, pigs, milk cows, chickens. Just like Noah bringing beasts into the ark, the Shaw-Nee walk into the woods and the animals trot on right behind. Just like that. Never see them again.”

  “You can't tell me they never round up at least some of their stock.”

  “All gone. Never find even their tracks. Never even a feather from a chicken. That's what run the White farmers off, is knowing that any day, all their animals can disappear.”

  “Shaw-Nee eating them or something? Ain't no chicken smart enough to live long in the woods. It's just Christmastime for foxes, that's all it is.”

  “How should I know? White folks come to me, they say, Get our animals back, or kill the Reds what took them. But my soldiers, my scouts, nobody can find where Ta-Kumsaw's people are. No villages at all! I tried raiding a Caska-Skeeaw village up the Little My-Ammy, but all that did was convince more Reds to leave, didn't even slow down what Ta-Kumsaw was doing.”
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  Hooch could imagine what that raid on the Caska-Skeeaw village was like. Old men, women, children, their corpses shot up and half-burnt– Hooch knew how Harrison dealt with Reds.

  “And then last month, here comes the Prophet. I knew he was coming– even the whisky-Reds couldn't talk about nothing else. Prophet's coming. Got to go see the Prophet. Well, I tried to find out where he was going to be, where he was going to give a speech, I even had some of my tame Reds try to find out for me, but no dice, Hooch. Not a clue. Nobody knew. Just one day the word went through the whole town, Prophet's here. Where? Just come on, Prophet's here. No one ever said where. I swear these Reds can talk without talking, if you know what I mean.”

  “Bill, tell me you had spies there, or I'll start to thinking you lost your touch.”

  “Spies? I went myself, how's that? And do you know how? Ta-Kumsaw sent me an invitation, if that don't beat all. No soldiers, no guns, just me.”

  “And you went? He could've captured you and–”

  “He gave me his word. Ta-Kumsaw may be a Red, but he keeps his word.”

  Hooch thought that was kind of funny. Harrison, the man who prided himself on never keeping a promise to a Red man, but he still counted on Ta-Kumsaw keeping a promise to him. Well, he got back alive, didn't he? So Ta-Kumsaw was as good as his word.

  “I went there. Must've been every Red in the whole My-Ammy country there. Must've been ten thousand. Squatting around in this old abandoned cornfield– there's plenty of them in these parts, you can bet, thanks to Ta-Kumsaw. If I'd had my two cannon there and a hundred soldiers, I could've ended the whole Red problem, then and there.”

  “Too bad you didn't,” said Hooch.

  “Ta-Kumsaw wanted me to sit right up front, but I wouldn't. I hung back and I listened. The Prophet got up, stood on an old stump in the field, and he talked and talked and talked.”

  “You understand any of it? I mean, you don't talk Shaw-Nee.”

  “He was talking English, Hooch. Too many different tribes there, the only language they all knew was English. Oh, sometimes he talked in that Red gibberish, but there was plenty of English. Talking about the destiny of the Red man. Stay pure from White contamination. Live all together and fill up a part of the land so the White man will have his place and the Red man will have his. Build a city– a crystal city, he said, it sounded real pretty except these Reds can't even build a proper shed, I hate to think how they'd do at building a city out of glass! But most of all, he said, Don't drink likker. Not a drop. Give it up, stay away from it. Likker is the chain of the White man, the chain and the whip, the chain and the whip and the knife. First he'll catch you, then he'll whip you, then he'll kill you, likker will, and when the White man's killed you with his whisky, he'll come in and steal your land, destroy it, make it unfit, dead, useless.”

  “Sounds like he made a real impression on you, Bill,” said Hooch. “Sounds like you memorized the speech he gave.”

  “Memorized? He talked for three straight hours. Talked about visions of the past, visions of the future. Talked about– oh, Hooch, it was crazy stuff, but those Reds were drinking it up like, like–”

  “Whisky.”

  “Like whisky except it was instead of whisky. They all went with him. Pretty near all of them, anyway. Only ones left are a few whisky-Reds that're bound to die soon. And of course my tame Reds, but that's different. And some wild Reds across the Hio.”

  “Went with him where?”

  "Prophetstown! That's what kills me, Hooch. They all go up to Prophetstown, or thereabouts, right across the river from Vigor Church. And that's exactly where all the Whites are going! Well, not all to Vigor Church, but up into the lands where Armor-of-Hell Weaver has his maps. They're in cahoots, Hooch, I promise you that. Ta-Kumsaw, Armor-of-God Weaver, and the Prophet.

  “Sounds like.”

  “The worst thing is I had that Prophet here in my own office must be a thousand times, I could have killed that boy and saved myself more trouble– but you never know, do you?”

  “You know this Prophet?”

  “You mean you don't know who it is?”

  “I don't know that many Reds by name, Bill.”

  “How about if I tell you that he's only got one eye?”

  “You ain't saying it's Lolla-Wossiky!”

  “Reckon so.”

  “That one-eyed drunk?”

  “God's own truth, Hooch. Calls himself Tenskwa-Tawa now. It means 'the open door' or something. I'd like to shut that door. I should've killed him when I had the chance. But I figured when he ran off– he ran off, you know, stole a keg and took off into the woods–”

  “I was here that night, I helped chase him.”

  “Well when he didn't come back, I figured he probably drank himself to death off that keg. But there he is telling Reds how he used to have to drink all the time, but God sent him visions and he's never had another drink.”

  “Send me visions, I'd give up drinking, too.”

  Harrison took another swallow of whisky. From the jug, this time, since the tumbler was on the floor in the corner of the room. “You see my problem, Hooch.”

  “I see you got lots of problems, Bill, and I don't know how any of them has a thing to do with me, except you weren't joking when you had the quartermaster tell me you only wanted four barrels.”

  “Oh, it's got more to do with you than that, count on it, Hooch. More than that. Because I ain't beat. The Prophet's took away all my whisky-Reds, and Ta-Kumsaw's got my White citizens scared, but I ain't quitting.”

  “No, you're no quitter,” said Hooch. You're a slimy sneaky snake of a man, but you're no quitter. Didn't say that, of course, cause Harrison was bound to take it wrong– but to Hooch, it was all praise. His kind of man.

  “It's Ta-Kumsaw and the Prophet, simple as that. I got to kill them. No, no, I take it back. I got to beat them and kill them. I got to take them on and make them both look like fools and then kill them.”

  “Good idea. I'll handle the betting on it.”

  “I bet you would. Stand there taking bets. Well, I can't just take my soldiers up north to Vigor Church and wipe out Prophetstown, cause Armor-of-God would fight me every step of the way, probably get the army detachment at Fort Wayne to back him up. Probably get my commission stripped or something. So I've got to arrange things so the people in Vigor Church, all along the Wobbish, they all beg me to come up and get rid of them Reds.”

  Now, at last, Hooch understood what this was all about. “You want a provocation.”

  “That's my boy, Hooch. That's my boy. I want some Reds to go up north and make some real trouble, and tell everybody that Ta-Kumsaw and the Prophet told them to do it. Blame it all on them.”

  Hooch nodded. “I see. It couldn't be just running off their cows or nothing like that. No, the only thing that'll get those people up north screaming for Red blood is something real ugly. Like capturing children and torturing them to death and then signing Ta-Kumsaw's name on them and leaving them where they'll be found. Something like that.”

  “Well, I wouldn't go so far as to tell anybody to do something awful like that, Hooch. In fact I don't reckon I'd give them specific instructions at all. Just tell them to do something that'd rile up the Whites up north, and then spread the word that Ta-Kumsaw ordered it.”

  “But you wouldn't be surprised if it turned out to be rape and torture.”

  “I wouldn't want them to touch any White women, Hooch. That's out of line.”

  “Oh, that's right, pure truth,” said Hooch. “So it's definitely torturing children. Boy children.”

  “Like I said, I wouldn't ever tell somebody to do a thing like that.”

  Hooch nodded a little, his eyes closed. Harrison might not tell somebody to do it, but he sure wasn't telling him not to do it, either. “And of course it couldn't be any Reds from around here, could it, Bill, cause they're all gone, and your tame Reds are the most worthless scum that ever lived on the face of the earth.”

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p; “Pretty much, that's true.”

  “So you need Reds from south of the river. Reds who still haven't heard the Prophet's preaching, so they still want likker. Reds who still have brains enough to do the job right. Reds who have the blood thirst to kill children real slow. And you need my cargo as a bribe.”

  “Reckon so, Hooch.”

  “You got it, Bill. Dismiss charges against me, and you got all my likker free. Just give me enough money to pay off my poleboys so they don't knife me on the way home, I hope that ain't too much to ask.”

  “Now, Hooch, you know that ain't all I need.”

  “But Bill, that's all I'll do.”

  “I can't be the one to go ask them, Hooch. I can't be the one to go tell them Cree-Eks or Choc-Taws what I need done. It's got to be somebody else, somebody who if it gets found out I can say, I never told him to do that. He used his own whisky to do it, I didn't have any idea.”

  “Bill, I understand you, but you guessed right from the start. You actually found something so low that I won't be part of it.”

  Harrison glowered at him. “Assaulting an officer is a hanging offense in this fort, Hooch. Didn't I make that clear?”

  “Bill, I've lied, cheated, and sometimes killed to get ahead in the world. But one thing I've never done is bribe somebody to go steal some mother's children and torture them to death. I honestly never did that, and I honestly never will.”

  Harrison studied Hooch's face and saw that it was true. “Well, don't that beat all. There's actually a sin so bad that Hooch Palmer won't do it, even if he dies because of it.”

  “You won't kill me, Bill.”

  “Oh yes I will, Hooch. There's two reasons I will. First, you gave me the wrong answer to my request. And second, you heard my request in the first place. You're a dead man, Hooch.”

  "Fine with me," said Hooch. "Make it a real scratchy rope, too. A good and tall gallows, with a twenty-foot drop. I want a hanging that folks'll remember for a long time.

  “You'll get a tree limb and we'll raise the rope up slow, so you strangle instead of breaking your neck.”