“What’d he say? What did Dan’l Boone say to me?”
“He says, Deadwood, he says, when strangers start a-crowding in, it’s time to pick up and move on. You got them greedy boys all in a froth, showing them that rock a yourn, and now they want it, and they look ornery enough to try’n get it, any which way. I reckon you best stay with me tonight, and hope only we don’t get followed.”
“Dad-burn it, I ain’t humpin’ myself over no mountains t’bunk down with a blamed panther!”
“Well, stay and get killed then. But just so’s you know, them mountains is all downhill from here and my panther has got better things to chaw on than smelly old prospectors.”
He glanced back over his shoulder. There were three of them hard-looking strangers standing in the doorway, watching our way and talking together. Deadwood fetched out his fob watch and squinted his cross-eyes and studied it a moment. “Well, awright then,” he says.
I throwed his gunny sack over my shoulder and walked us towards his shack until we got hid into the woods, shadowy now with the sun lost in the branches, then I made a quick turn down to the crick and hurried along it upstream to the tepee, moving faster’n suited Deadwood, grunting and complaining about his rheumatics behind me. There’s a sad creamy glow about twilight that smooths off the edges and mashes thoughts and things together, like memory does when it’s let loose on its own. It’s the time of day when I most find myself thinking about the faraway river town where I growed up and about all the things I done there and the folks I knowed, most specially Tom Sawyer, who always had a lively idea of what howling adventure to try on next. Long time ago. Felt like a hundred years or more. So many awful things had happened since then, so much outright meanness. It was almost like there was something wicked about growing up.
Deadwood was weaving about, having oversampled, and was panting like an old dog when we reached the tepee, so I set him down by the woodpile with his jug and sack and went to feed Tongo the forage Zeb give me, letting him nubble the sugar out of my hand. I was glad to see him and he was glad to see me, bobbing his big head and snorting like as if to say so.
It was the tribe that give me the horse, about the same time they give me the woman. They come in the same parcel. I mostly got on better with the horse. My old horse Jackson had been with me since our Pony days, and if you counted up the miles, he’d hoofed it round the world a hundred times and at least thirty times flat-out. He was plumb knackered. I’d named Jackson after an island in the Big River where my life took a change because, with me and Tom setting out on our western adventures, it was a-changing again and I wanted to mark that. The tribe cooked Jackson up and et him which they said was doing him a great honor. When I named the new horse, Eeteh says to the others, “Ne Tongo,” and they approved of that and give him a few baptizing slaps on his croup, and I approved of it, too.