OR A WHILE, it looked like Tongo warn’t going to live long. He couldn’t drink nor eat nothing at all. His breathing warn’t steady, and he showed all his teeth like dead horses done. I had to hold his jaws open and dribble water down his throat, careful not to drown him. I grinded up the dried corn into a paste and mixed it with crick water and spooned that into him, too, cautious and slow. Grains was richer for him than grass, I knowed that from my Pony days, so whenever Eeteh found some barley, pine nuts, or sunflower seeds, I mashed them in as well. It was so good, I added in some blueberries and wild bird eggs and cooked it into a flapjack for me and Eeteh. I slept curled up in the eagle pit with Tongo and give him a little to drink and eat every hour or so, and him and me mumbled together through the night. Eeteh kept watch outside best he could, but most nights he joined us, saying he was lonesome and scared a the wolves. We could hear them out there, roaming round together and howling in their woesome way.
The tribe had been living in a prime spot alongside of a crick at the foot of a woodsy hill full of berries and nuts and small animals scampering round. Eeteh brung back marmots and possums and wild turkeys he hunted for us, a pile a wild rice he harvested in the backwaters, and some timpsila, squash and sweet potatoes. There was honey, too, which Eeteh says Bee give him without him having to stomp nuther him nor his family, on account of it was the moon of the strong flow and there was a-plenty for everybody. Tongo always did have a sweet tooth and seemed to like it when I mixed in a little honey with the corn-mash. It went good on our flapjacks, too.
We was all alone and afeard, but we et well and lived a mostly peaceful life and slowly we got comfortabler. Eeteh’s gashly wounds crusted over, my yallerness begun to fade like fence paint in the sun, and, when we took the cover off of the pit, Tongo was able to get up on his feet again and look out over the edge, though he was still wobbledy, and pretty soon laid back down again.
Eeteh went on telling stories. He says he couldn’t stop himself, it was a kind of sickness. If it WAS a sickness—him telling stories, me listening—it was a sickness we’d both die of, because warn’t nuther of us going to stop.
Eeteh says Snake was mighty clever, but when Coyote’s pard Fox got sentenced to have his head chopped off for telling Snake to his face he warn’t nothing but a mean low-down bully, everybody rised up and chased Snake out, and Lizard, too, taking bites out a their backsides as they run. I was glad to see them go, and I says so. Eeteh nodded and says all stories is sad stories, but not all the time.
After Snake got throwed over, Eeteh says, they was shut of a cruel boss, but nobody knowed what to do next. Snake always told them what to do and that was that, but now some wanted one thing, some another, they couldn’t agree on nothing. They hollered out for help from the Great Spirits, but they didn’t get no answer. They needed someone to make them laugh, too. They’d forgot how. They remembered all Coyote’s jokes and tricks and stories and told them over again, but they warn’t funny no more. That was the worse thing. There warn’t NOTHING funny no more. It was something only Coyote could furnish out. I asked Eeteh if he might ever come back. Eeteh pointed up at the sky and shook his head and says it looked to him like Coyote was gone forever.
There was one morning we thought we was ALL gone forever. We just been considering we might stay right where we was for a spell longer, till Tongo got stronger. There warn’t nobody a-bothring us and life was easy. Eeteh was right at home now that everybody else was gone, and it suited me, too, though Tom and the Gulch warn’t fur enough away. We reckoned we could maybe at least see out the summer, and make ourselves well enough for our long travels southards.
But then General Hard Ass and his boys come a-storming through.