The Adventures of Silk and Shakespeare (2 page)

CHAPTER TWO

O day and night, but this is wondrous strange!

—
Hamlet
, I.v

Light was seeping in, like water into a cellar. Tal moved, and noted that he felt sort of like himself. He blinked open and quickly shut. The daylight looked earthly enough. Then he realized what was wrong—he couldn’t move his chest to breathe. And he remembered something about the bear and the man and…

Tal had shot Hairy. He wondered if Hairy was dead. Probably so. Tal’s recollection was that the shot took Hairy in the face. He turned his head to the side a little (his neck still worked) and looked straight into the face of the bear—eyes dead and teeth gaping.

Whoa-a.

If Tal wasn’t pinned but good, that scare would have taken him out from under. Now Tal could see the side of Hairy’s huge head between the bear’s teeth, and remembered the bear hat. It was a black bear hat, he could see now. It must have gotten turned somehow. The side of Hairy’s head looked like a big wound, the long hair soaked with thickening blood.

Darn. Tal squirmed, got a little more breathing room. Didn’t seem worth the effort to get out from under. Maybe he couldn’t get out from under, and was headed for the Promised Land with Hairy. If so, he didn’t want to think on it yet.

Poor Hairy. He looked so magnificent challenging griz with griz. Even if griz was the other direction, and Hairy was roaring at the willows.

Where the devil could Hairy have got that idea? Tal had seen every sort of white man trap every sort of animal—it was done with a combination of placement, disguise, and bait. Those ways were clever, but what Hairy did was grand. Tal had heard medicine men brought the buffalo herds within range of the arrow by dressing like buffalo and doing a dance. Maybe…

Well, what had Tal come west for but to see the wondrous and the rare? Now Hairy was dead and couldn’t teach Tal the grizzly magic. Darn.

Tal looked sideways at Hairy’s bloody, blown-up head.

It turned.

Hairy’s face came into view. The mouth opened, the nose puckered, the eyes squinched. Lips and teeth quivered. It was a yawn, the most prodigious yawn Tal had ever been privileged to witness, especially at such close range—a yawn worthy of the ugliest giant of yore. Hairy’s features were gigantic anyway—nose like a butte, pores like caves, teeth like worn, cracked boulders. Hairy exhaled, and no dragon’s breath could have been more foul, more rank, more putrid.

Tal poked the big carcass. He had to get out from under before he suffocated. Jabbed with his knees. Grabbed the big nose and twisted hard.

“Ow!” said Hairy, and popped his eyes open. He stared at Tal close range for a moment, sat up shaking his head.

“Thought I done you in,” Hairy mumbled, fingering his nose gingerly.

“Thought I done you in,” answered Tal.

“Hearing’s funny,” Hairy said. He shook his monstrous head. “Now let me recollect…” His voice was resonant, orotund, cavernous, the voice in which the burning bush instructed Moses. And it had British inflections. He was thinking, moving his fingers like he was counting, the black-bear muzzle bobbing up and down. One of the fingers had a hard, wrinkled nail, like a walnut shell.

Tal felt for his belt knife, just in case.

When Hairy had it straight in his mind, he said meekly, “You likely saved my life.” He looked at Tal with sheepdog eyes in a black-bear head. “You likely saved my life. Griz had one up on me.”

“Why’d you try to kill me?” said Tal. He needed whatever advantage he could get before Hairy figured out who shot him.

“Went into one of my crazies, I guess.” He sounded meek. He twisted the bear head, and lifted it off. His huge, balding head was a mass of bleeding scratches, not counting the gunshot wound on the side. He looked mournfully at the bear head in his hands. “Bad medicine, I guess, to go for my griz wearing just a black bear. An insult, I guess.”

He turned his head toward Tal. “I’m powerful grateful to you,” he said resonantly. “Can’t recollect anyone saved my life before.” Gratitude dripped from him like blood.

“Let me help you with those cuts,” Tal offered, embarrassed. He fished a pinch of that belly fur out of his shot pouch.

Hairy put his hands on his scalp, looked at the blood on them, got on his knees, and presented the top of his head to Tal. “Powerful grateful,” he murmured, a murmur that would carry to the furthest peaks. “Reckon I owe you. This child surely does owe you.”

Tal was daubing on the fur. It stopped the flow right off. He wished he could stanch Hairy’s grateful, sheepdog glances. He turned the head sideways to inspect the gunshot wound, and get away from those eyes.

After a moment, Tal said, “You’d best not be so grateful. Seems I blew your ear off.” That explained all the blood—nothing would bleed like an ear. Tal started in with the belly fur on the remaining stub of ear. He ought to wash it out, he knew, but he was worried about the amount of blood this fellow was losing—Hairy’s patriarchal beard was getting crimson with it. The wounds could be washed later.

“Powerful grateful,” murmured Hairy at a soft roar. “Eternally grateful.”

“Doesn’t your ear hurt?” said Tal, a little sharply.

“No,” allowed Hairy, rubbing his nose. “But my nose hurts. Never woke up that way before.” He flicked his glance up at Tal and back down. “Not meaning to be offensive,” he said. “This child is powerful grateful to ye.”

“All right,” said Tal, “you’ll live.” In fact, Tal wasn’t so sure—Hairy’d lost a lot of blood.

Tal got to his feet and offered his hand. “Tal Jones,” he said, sticking out his hand.

Hairy was on his knees but he took the hand. “Ronald,” he said.

Ronald. Giant Hairy—Hairy Giant—was Ronald. Hairy was struggling to his feet, and Tal nearly got pulled over.

When Hairy got onto two legs, like a human critter, Tal grasped how big he was. Not only tall but broad. And thick. To weigh him, you’d have to hang him, like beef.

Tal himself was slight in every way—not quite to middling height, reedy of build. People told him that his shock of buckeye-colored hair and green eyes were cute, especially in summer when his freckles set them off. They also told him he might grow some more. He hated both remarks—you didn’t tell men such things, and Tal was a sixteen-year-old man.

“I own to the name my blessed parents gave me,” said Hairy. “Ronald Dupree Smythe, rhyming with scythe.” The huge voice made Tal feel like an aspen quaking in the breeze. “But I prefer the title given by my colleagues, my fellow hunters of the beaver. Shakespeare.” Said with a glint of pride.

Shakespeare? “How come?” Tal didn’t want to say the name. His recollection of the Bard of Avon was memorizing lines by sing-song and reciting them in chorus with his father.

The giant pondered Tal’s expression, of voice and of face. “That will come when we’re better acquainted,” Hairy said, smiling down at Tal. “You may call me what you want for now.”

Tal didn’t think it would be Ronald or Shakespeare, but could he call the fellow Hairy? Hairy reached down for Tal’s rifle, still lying on the ground.

“What’s this?” the big man said. The gun looked like a wiping stick in his big hand. He fingered the orange and blue silk handkerchief.

“This dainty was the last thing I saw before you shot me,” Hairy went on. “A flash of orange, and then a roar.” He bared his boulder teeth, and clacked them once. “What a roar!” He shook his head, maybe clearing his ears, then challenged Tal with a hard eye. “How come you got an orange silk hanky tied on?”

Tal flushed, and flushed some more. “Well,” he said, reaching for his rifle. “Well…” He covered his flag, his banner, with his hands.

Hairy nodded. He smiled a smile as wide and deep as a canyon. “Never you mind. Let’s get that bear skinned out.”

“By God,” roared Hairy gently, “you have shot the grizzly bear. You slew the mighty silvertip—he of the sharp claw, the prodigious paw, and the powerful jaw. You are the conqueror of Old Ephraim, the beast that strikes terror into the heart of ’ary a mortal man.” He grinned an immense grin at his little St. George.

Hairy, who had been carrying on in this exuberant manner for some time, started cutting thin slices of meat. The naked bear lay on the stretched-out hide, pathetically male, looking not at all like a thousand pounds of terror.

Tal was building a squaw fire nearby—he was hungry. Despite his aw-shucks gestures, he was not sufficiently embarrassed by Hairy’s carrying on to get him to stop. After all, he had killed griz, hadn’t he? And saved a man’s life? With a single clean shot in desperate circumstances? A tale for his notebook, a brag for the book he meant to make of his adventures.

The old hands of the mountains had distinctive nicknames, Tal knew, names like Old Bill, Bad Hand, Blanket Chief, and Cut Face. Tal wondered if someone would name him Old One-Shot. He tried it on the tongue a little. Not bad. Old One-Shot. Or Man-in-a-Pinch. More Indian style—Man-in-a-Pinch. He didn’t like it as well. Old One-Shot.

“Fire’s about ready,” Tal said.

Hairy slid a couple of bacon-thin slices onto skewers and handed one to Tal. “Make sure she’s done, lad, make sure.” Hairy eyed Tal. “You ain’t slew bear before, have ye?”

Tal, keeping his eyes down, shook his head no.

Hairy put a shoulder roast into a pot of water and set it in the fire. “Well, great balls of fire,” he said, “how many eighteen-year-old kids have gone against Old Ephraim and won?” He eyeballed Tal, who in fact was only sixteen and looked less than that, but didn’t like to be called a lad, which sounded like kid.

Just who’d saved whose tail here, anyhow? “How come you were luring that bear with that, uh, was it a medicine dance?”

“That bear was big medicine, lad, big medicine.” Hairy watched the bear grease make the fire spit for a moment.

“Let me tell you. I been hanging out with these ’Rapahoes up in North Park, living with them and all.” He looked up at Tal. “You lived with Injuns much?” Tal shook his head.

“Hoss, it’s good living. Good living. The women are whoo-ee!” Hairy eyed Tal, who nonchalantly took a bite off his slice.

“Well, this Red Horse, he’s got a daughter I fancy. Name of Sweet Spring. This child wishes to drink deep of that girl, he does.

When birds do sing, hey ding-a-ding-ding, Sweet lovers love the spring.”

Hairy orated these words musically, and glanced shyly at Tal, who was gape-mouthed. Hairy orated the words once more, even more musically.

“Red Horse, however, took no fancy to this child. Though this child had pleasured a severalty of the ’Rapahoe women, Red Horse thought him not man enough for Sweet Spring. So I set a course to show myself a Launcelot” (he broadened it to Lawncelot) “for Sweet Spring, and perhaps Red Horse’s two younger daughters at the same time.”

Hairy checked out Tal’s reaction, but Tal was a study in indifference. He reached for another slice.

“Women have trouble keeping up with my appetites,” Hairy explained softly. (This turned out to be one boast of Hairy’s that could be verified.) “I could use three wives.” Hairy skewered two slices.

“So I dreamed this griz. Dreamed him over and over, night after night. If I saw Sweet Spring in the evening, this child was sure to dream bear that night. Couldn’t say for sure what sex my dream bear was, but it had a big silver ring around its neck.”

He pointed at the skin on the ground with his skewer and grinned. The bear had a wide silver ring around its neck.

“This child had an idea. Conquer the mighty grizzly in fair and furious battle.” He made this phrase ring. “Make griz medicine. Eat the hair of the bear. Tote the talon of the silvertip.” He thumbed the necklace he was wearing, made of black-bear claws. “Give Red Horse a present of something griz. Give the robe to Sweet Spring for our bed. Big medicine.” He pondered that. Tal did too, and turned red.

“So I took a sweat bath—you done a sweat bath?”

Tal mumbled no. Felt he hadn’t done anything, being just a gosh darn lad.

“Wagh! That’s where a child gets himself ready for something big. Like seeking a dream grizzly and slaying it and getting medicine from it.

“So I set out into these hills to find the holy grail of a griz.” Hairy spread his arms to the sky. “And get a squaw for my connubial cave.”

He chuckled, and his chuckle rolled like distant thunder. They both took more meat.

“Hoss, it was some. I cut sign. I tracked, and tracked. I could
smell
griz. Could
smell
it wasn’t just some old bear but my dream bear, my medicine bear, the beast of the silver ring.

“Got a glimpse of him two days ago. Silver ring, right there, yea verily. Wagh!”

This last sound was a sharp bark, like the bark of a bear if bears could bark, beginning softly and throatily and growing to a pop like a bullwhip’s. It made Tal jump.

“Waa-a-gh!” Hairy repeated, popping it with satisfaction.

“This morning I cut fresh sign. Stowed my pack horse. Closed in. Moved dainty-like, got real close.”

Tal considered putting in that it was the bear that moved dainty-like and got real close, but thought better of it.

“Next, as you say, I did my medicine dance. How say? A coon imitates the animal he’s hunting to be more like it, get in good with it, get close like a brother. Some such anyway.”

Hairy’s face suddenly dropped, like he’d changed from comic mask to tragic. He was a perfect pose of glumness.

“Well, hoss, you saw what happened after that. I missed.” He stared at his stony knuckles. “You shot him and saved my skin.”

Hairy whipped his skewer at the ground, where it stuck like a knife. They watched it quiver.

“Can’t you make medicine of the griz anyhow?” Tal ventured.

“Ho-o-o-ss,” said Hairy in an aggrieved tone. “That would be a dissembling.” He pierced Tal with a reprimanding eye. “Dissembling. Besides, you toy with medicine like that and it will toy with you. Wagh!”

All the slices were gone. Hairy poked at the simmering roast with his knife and shook his head.

“Tell you what, though, tell you what. You conquered the mighty griz in fair and furious battle.
You
make medicine of him.”