“Trains don’t go there. And anyways I AIN’T giving it to you to run away on. Look, here we are.”
Where Tom had fetched me to was a place on a muddy hill slope overlooking the Gulch where the foundations for a house was being laid. “I’m building a fifteen-room mansion here, Huck. Ain’t nothing like it ever seen back in St. Petersburg. It’ll have colored glass windows and giant mirrors in rosewood frames, canopy beds with the finest horsehair mattresses and feather pillows, crystal shandy-leers and Paris wallpaper and China spittoons, even a most splendid bathroom with a French bathtub and a modern water closet like the one the Queen of England does her business on. I got a claim on nearly all Deadwood Gulch. People have to buy their lots from me, so I can pick and choose who my neighbors is. And I’m picking you, Huck! On that lot right there next to mine, I’m building a house just for you! It’ll have everything you need, even a barn out back for your horse and an ice box to keep your beer cold and a big bed for entertaining the ladies in! Four at a time if you like! I’ll find you some so’s you don’t get lonesome!”
“Can’t afford nothing like that.”
“One a the world’s richest men can afford whatever he wants, dang it. Anyways, I’m giving it to you free.”
“I thought when we left St. Pete we was running away from all this sivilizing.”
Tom looked awful disappointed. He looked like he always done back home when I didn’t answer him proper. It ain’t no use to talk to a numskull like you, he’d say. If I was as ignorant as you, Huck, I wouldn’t let on. I probably shouldn’t a said what I said about his house. It made me feel bad after all he was trying to do for me. But when I tried to thank him and say I was sorry, I couldn’t find the words for it.
Instead, I left Tom with all his worshippers and hiked up to the rubble that once was a bat cave to say my good-byes to Eeteh. I let out a couple a owl hoots and listened with all my ears for an answer, but it was dead silent. A powerful sadfulness come over me. The Gulch warn’t tolerable for me no more, but I didn’t know where else to go or what to do. The trails all led to one fort or nuther, and the general had pals in all of them. Tom had found the things I’d stowed under my cot to travel with and took them all. I didn’t even have a horse. Tom had hung a lot of emigrants and some a them had horses I could borrow, but they warn’t none a them Tongos nor not even Jacksons.
It warn’t long before Tom fetched up, toting along his rifle, as I reckoned he might. The light was fading into one a those long summer twilights. “Wyndell says you was up here,” he says. He had his shirt on again and he handled me Eeteh’s bloody vest, saying he thought I might be wanting to bury it up here with Eeteh’s remainders. I says there warn’t no advantage in burying nothing that only needs a wash, and Tom grinned and nodded at that. “Here, I also brung you the bear-claws that was round the Cap’n’s neck.”
“I got that neckless from the tribe,” I says. “Maybe they liked me less’n I judged they did. They said it was for good luck and I give it to old Zeb, and you seen what it done for me’n him. Now your Cap’n’s lost his head. I sejest you don’t keep the neckless yourself nuther, but pass it on to General Hard Ass for me, since you know him so good.”
He grunted, looking around. “I thought I heard an owl up here.”
“There’s an old hoot owl lives in the crotch a that old Ponderosa over there,” I lied.
Tom took aim and fired and a darkness left the crotch and a big old bird come crashing down, wings beating at the air. “Well, it won’t hoot no more,” he says, but he sounded disappointed. I reckoned Tom was as surprised as I was. It just showed, some stretchers can turn out true. “Becky’s turning mean, Hucky,” he says. “I just found out she’s trying to take the mansion away from me and it ain’t even builded yet! She wants to use it for a dad-blamed WHOREhouse! So I’m on my way back to the claim to talk it over with my consortium. I mainly clumb up here to tell you that. Wyndy’ll be looking after you. Whatever you want, just let him know. When I get back, we’ll talk more about our plans for the sinteenery.” It was like he hadn’t heard a thing.
I give Tom time to clear out and then, while there was still enough light in the sky to see by, I stumbled back down the hill to our empty tent, feeling as condamned as when I was on the gallows with a rope round my neck. Couldn’t stay. Couldn’t go. Never felt so desperate ornery and low down.