“Well, my brother’s buried in there and you’re spreading his pox all over the Hills by setting smoke a-flying out from that sick tent.”
Pegleg frowned and lifted his neckerchief over his nose. “Why the hell didn’t you tell us that in the first place, chief?”
The fellow with the scattered brown teeth says I’m a goddam liar and drawed his pistol, so I was obleeged to raise mine and fire off some damage to his hand, adding to all the old wounds he was already wearing like a thief’s campaign medals. The other two’s hands was twitching, but they warn’t taking no chances. “He’s a shooter,” Eyepatch snarls with a mean grin.
“I’m going to put out that fire and move my brother’s remains off of your claim. Him and me are going to be traveling soon. I’m a-taking him home. If you want to stay and watch, you got to come in there with me and help me dig him up.”
“If it’s so damn dangerous,” Pegleg says, “why’re YOU goin’ in there?”
“I got the impunity from tending Jacob. I catched the pox, too, but I only broke out in freckly spots. There ain’t pus leaking out a more’n one or two now. I can show you if you ain’t scared of drawing too close.” They didn’t show no signs of wanting to do that, so I says, “Zeb’s stilling up a special whisky to welcome folks to the Gulch tonight. It’ll be for free, so they’re already getting in line. Maybe I’ll see you up there later.”
“Awright, you carry on, chief,” Eyepatch says, holstering his pistol. The one who drawed on me was still moaning and cussing and clutching his wrist. “C’mon, Bill, le’s go git you doctored up.”
“How you going to do that?” whined Bill. “There ain’t no doctors.”
“There’s a dentist turned up. He prob’bly can do it. Git them bones shifted, chief. Pronto. We’ll be back.”
I watched them move up the slope till they was near out of sight, then ducked inside. It was all tore up in there. I grabbed up the blanket to beat out the fire, and I seen that the guns had been took. It was just what I was afeard of. Eyepatch and his gang had got to them first. Our plans was ruined.
But then I seen the eagle feather.
CHAPTER XVII
HEY WAS ALL having a grand time up in Zeb’s that night. Pap would a felt right at home. It only took one swallow of Zeb’s special brew to melt a body’s brains and knees, and two was good enough for delirium tremens. Of course Pap would a got in a fight with everybody, even if he couldn’t get his feet under him, but that was part a the revelment for Pap, maybe the importantest part—and it was just the sort of climacteric Zeb was aiming at that night so as to make our escape from the camp without resk of nobody on our tails. Zeb’s mastiff Abaddon was penned up and mighty unhappy about it, growling out something betwixt a snarl and a whimper all night, but Zeb didn’t want the dog to chase nobody off before he’d soused them up.
That yaller-whiskered banker-dentist turned land surveyor was there and he was the most popular man in the shack. Zeb’s bar was just a plank set on two hogsheads, and Yaller Whiskers was standing there, alongside of a chinless character with long droopy moustaches spread round a set of mule teeth. Mule Teeth was showing off a speck a gold, which he says he come on that day by following a map he bought off of the surveyor. The speck probably warn’t worth ten cents, but you’d a thought the fellow was become a millionaire, and now everybody wanted to buy a five-dollar map from Yaller Whiskers. There was some who’d already bought maps who hadn’t struck nothing. “They warn’t maps, they was more like newspaper cartoons,” one of them says, and Yaller Whiskers spit through his bushy beard and says, “Well, you prob’bly warn’t readin’ ’em proper, son, so you messed out the punchline.” They asked the millionaire over and over where he’d staked his claim, and he smiled round his big teeth like a king and slurped and unloosed a handsome heap a lies.
Some was complaining to Zeb about that hanged hayseed still blowing in the wind out a-front the shack, saying it warn’t an eddyfying sight and couldn’t be no good for business. Zeb says business right now was most all he could handle, but they was free to go cut him down if they warn’t afeard a being ha’nted by him after. Several was willing, saying ghosts don’t scare them none, except maybe spinster ghosts who was knowed to be the vilest sort, but they didn’t want to lose their approximity to the free whisky whilst it lasted, undrinkable hellbegot bomination though it was.