We hurried over to where Abaddon was penned and found him laying dead with his throat slit. Zeb groaned an awful groan and fell down to his knees and hugged the dead dog and bitterly cussed out whoever done it. Then, his eyes still tearing up, he unhitched his mare and his old packhorse, and we struck for the tepee. His goods was already packed up on the horse, and the saddlebags on the mare I was leading was loadened down, too. His stinking bucket a spent mash, the precious whisky-mother that give it its special taste, was sealed up inside a box with leather straps made for it by the coffin maker. The brawl was spreading outside where all the wagons was parked and the country jake was a-hanging, so we ducked down through a dark tangled ravine back a the shack towards the crick and tepee below.
About halfway down, I heard a most woeful moan and fetched up short. I thought it might a been a wild animal and I spun around with my rifle pointed at it, but it was Deadwood a-laying there in a patch a moonlight, looking half-ruined. His face was just raw meat, he was a-bleeding round the ears, and at least one of his arms was broke; a leg, too, looked like. He didn’t have many teeth before, now he didn’t have none. “Deadwood! Who done this to you?” I asked. He couldn’t talk, he could only groan. Anyways I knowed who. His fob watch was gone. Looked like his jaw might be busted. He needed a doctor, but there warn’t none anywheres I knowed of. Unless Eeteh could help. I started up my emigrant owl hoot.
Zeb limped up with the packhorse behind me. “We don’t have no time for this!” he says. You could still hear the hollering and the guns popping, but not so loud down here. “If that damfool’s in trouble, it’s trouble he’s made for hisself! WE GOT TO KEEP MOVIN’!”
“It was the fob watch, Zeb. Them robbers reckonized it. It’s them that’s done this. I told Deadwood to show it, so’s we could get everybody up to your shack tonight. He done it for US! And he ain’t got nobody else to help.” I could hear Eeteh far off answering me. I let out some more urgent hoots.
“We AIN’T takin’ that crazy old liar WITH us!”
“No, we ain’t. He’s anyways too beat up to travel. He might not even make it through the night. But we can’t leave him here to die where they throwed him!”
Me and Eeteh kept on hooting, and soon he was down in the ravine and crawling up. Zeb was still complaining, and when Eeteh took one look, he says he don’t know no medicine powerful enough for the mess Deadwood was in. “Zeb right, Hahza. We leave now.”
“You know some things that might help,” I says, staring into his black eyes, shining out from behind their curtain of ropy black hair like from behind hanging vines. “You and Coyote. You know.” Eeteh shrugged and looked down at the old prospector. “Leastways we can try to set what’s broke and carry him back to his shack where he can rest more easier. After that he can take care of himself.”
Eeteh sighed and shook his head. “Is right thing to do, Hahza,” he says solemnly in Zeb’s language and mine. “Is wrong thing to do. But I do what you do.” Zeb grunted irritably.
“You’re pulling a slow packhorse, Zeb,” I says. “You can get a head start.” I took off the bear-claw neckless I was wearing under my shirt, and give it to him. “This is for good luck, Zeb. It ain’t done me no favors, but maybe it’ll work for you. Watch you follow that back trail like we said, so’s we can find you. Me and Eeteh will settle Deadwood and catch you up before dawn.”
Zeb looked like his spirits was sunk in his boots, but he dropped the bear claws in his jacket pocket and clumb up into the mare’s saddle. He reached into his saddlebag and give me a small flask a that black rum he’d used for the vegilanty brew. “I was keepin’ this for the road,” he says. “But Deadwood’s gonna need it more.” Then, leading the packhorse behind him, he trudged off slowly, climbing up into the dark.
CHAPTER XVIII
HILST WE WAS setting Deadwood’s broke bones in the moonlight, using sticks and branches tied with rags tore from the shirts of emigrants laying dead-drunk in the mud up the hill above us, Eeteh got to telling the story of how Coyote tricked Time. Deadwood was favorably busted up, but he warn’t feeling no pain. He didn’t know where he was and he probably wouldn’t never know again. His nose was squashed and Eeteh had molded up a new one, pushing his fingers up the nostrils to press the inside papery bits back together. We scooped up mud and grass to make a cast for it.
When Eeteh was resetting Deadwood’s toothless jaw, I sneaked back up to Zeb’s to pry the bar plank out from under the drunks who’d fell over on it. Things was still pretty crazy in there, but sinking towards a generl stupidness. The hooting and hollering and gunshots was mostly moved outside where it warn’t so crowded up with bodies.