The Adventures of Silk and Shakespeare (3 page)

Well. Tal kept his face straight. Who-o-o-o-p-e-e-e-e! he shouted in his head.

CHAPTER THREE

but all in honour

—
Othello
, V.ii

Hairy showed Tal how to take the claws off—big ones, the size of Tal’s fingers. “Takes a lot of griz to make a whole necklace,” Hairy observed. “And a lot of man to get a lot of griz.” Just let the claws lie in your possible sack, Hairy said, until the extra skin dried and then peel it off.

“Lad,” said Hairy, catching Tal in the act, “you don’t actual eat the hair of the bear. A man with the ha’r of the b’ar in him—that’s just a manner of speaking.” Tal spit the dry, gritty hairs into his hand. He didn’t think he could have swallowed them anyway.

Hairy skinned the head, a delicate job if you wanted to use it for a hat. He handed Tal the skull. “Hang the skull in front of your lodge,” he advised, “and use the jawbones for knife handles.”

Hey—a knife handle. Tal started drying off a jawbone. Hairy was fingering the head skin. Made Tal think.

He lifted the head skin on the point of his knife and faced Hairy ceremoniously. “Friend Ronald the Hairy Giant,” Tal said, “known to comrades as Shakespeare, as a token of my admiration for your bear-like courage, I hereby give you the head of this grizzly bear. May it protect your bare head from the enemy sun.”

Hairy took it, his face tangled in feeling.

“Being as I shot heck out of your previous hat,” added Tal, grinning.

Hairy extended one arm, made quick circles with the hand, and gave a deep bow. “True, this child tracked Old Silver Ring, didn’t he?” He sat down, looking reflective.

In a few minutes he had the head on, and Tal had to look at him through those huge teeth.

They made camp right on the spot of the kill, a plenty good place, said Hairy.

“We’ve told the Injuns where we are with all those shots,” Tal complained.

“Ah, lad,” Hairy answered easily, “there be no Injuns about here. Not a red critter in these entire Black Hills—not this time of year.”

So Tal dozed while Hairy collected Rosie and his pack horse. When Tal woke up, Hairy had a bigger fire going and more bear roast cooking. “Carry your spare rations here,” Hairy roared, patting his huge belly, “and you’ll allus have them handy.

“We’ll get some deer for the brigade tomorrow,” Hairy assured him. “Bloody hell, the boys shouldn’t have to get by on dried meat, sure not. Them booshways”—that was slang for brigade leaders—“they don’t care nothing for the ordinary chap, they sure don’t. Cap’n Fitzpatrick, he’s no better than the others, sure not.”

Hairy acted like, sure, Tal wanted and needed him for a partner. A youngster like you, his manner said, alone in these vasty mountains….Well, never you mind, lad, this hoss will help ye out. Seemed to Tal that things like this, unspoken things, were usually bigger than the ones that got spoken.

After lunch—Tal was twice as full as he thought he could be—Hairy got solicitous, or curious. He got Tal to tell how he came from St. Louis, and his father was a preacher man—“a bearer of Gospel,” Hairy said sonorously.

“How come ye to choose the mountain life?” queried Hairy. “Was your fantasy filled with those things that you read”—this was in his recitation voice—“of enchantment, quarrels, battles, challenges, wounds, wooings, loves, tempests, and other impossible follies?”

Tal could have hugged him. These lines were among Tal’s father’s favorites—one of their most cheering ways of passing times was telling tales of the knight errantry of the great Don Quixote. Why, wasn’t Rosie even named after Rosinante, Quixote’s gallant, broken-down steed? “I asked ye, lad, what impossible folly led ye to the mountain life?”

Well, Tal had a repertory of inventions for that: How he’d been apprenticed to a blacksmith but run away from the beatings. How he was the black sheep of a musical family, not being able to carry a tune. How he’d stabbed a man in a fight over a girl, and had to flee the law.

Right now none of those entertaining lies pleased him. “Somep’n like that,” Tal said meekly. “And I had to get shut of my aunt.

“Hairy,” Tal started tentatively, “you met anybody named Jones in the mountains afore? My dad, he come out in ’29.”

Hairy gave him a shrewd look. “Son, what’s his entire name?”

“David Dylan Jones.”

Hairy wiggled and scrunched and set his mind to recollecting. “No, lad, this child don’t recall. Who’d he come with?”

“Sublette supply outfit. Stayed on.” Tal felt all twitchy. “Must have found the life suited him.” Tal stretched his arms for relief.

“Left ye with your aunt, did he?” Hairy mused.

Tal saw Hairy’s face full of questions and quick decided he’d better do the asking himself.

“Who you working for, Hairy, Hudson Bay?” Which would make sense from the British accent.

“This child labors for himself alone, lad,” Hairy retorted.

“Trapping been any good?”

He shook a huge finger at Tal. “There be things in heaven and earth greater than the wily one, lad, sure there be. Greater than putting money in the purse.”

“Such as?” Tal felt a little thrill.

Hairy got a bright old gleam in his eye. “Wagh! There be wrongs to right. Honors to win. Colors to strike. Fair maidens to woo. All more worthy of pursuit than filthy luchre.”

Hairy eyed Tal peculiarly, like sizing him up. “Yea and verily, lad, this child has had occasion to engage in the odd affair of honor. And acquitted himself valorously.”

“What happened?”

Hairy got a cagey look. “Nay, lad, that is for story-telling time. If’n you do something glo-o-orious, the Injuns make a tale of it in the winter, and pass it on among the legends of the people.”

The boy’s lower lip spoke disappointment.

Hairy shook his head decisively. “No, son, not even for you. Bad medicine.”

“Hai-r-r-e-ee!”

“Not even for you. Come winter, I’ll tell, or Injun comrades will tell for me. Remember, in the meantime—engaging in affairs of honor is not only ennobling, it’s practical. You do something for an Injun, and he’ll make a brother of ye. Or she’ll give you her favors. Yessir.”

Tal got all flushed.

For dinner they gorged on more bear, then laid back and watched the sky go lavender and then gray and then black. Tal had never seen so many stars, thick and clustery.

Hairy was muttering about getting another dream with another griz and being able to find the critter and having better luck in the fair and furious battle. Might not be so easy, he murmured, might not be easy at all.

“But lad, I got to have her. Swee-e-et Spring,” he crooned. “This child is misuble to have her. Oh, she’s scrumptious, she’s delectable.” He moaned, he mooned, he nearly swooned.

“Shall I compare ye to a summer’s day?”

Tal began to think Hairy had lost too much blood after all.

Hairy rethought his griz strategy. Maybe he should have got a medicine man to show him how to do a bear dance. Maybe should. That bear dance this child did was a slight, actually. But those medicine men didn’t give away such knowledge for nothing, and Hairy’s peltries, or plews was cached in the Hills, and…

It was getting nippy. Colder than nippy. Hairy built the fire up big, set his saddle by it, laid out some canvas and blankets, and crawled in. He lifted a keg and drank deep.

“’Night, lad,” he said. He grinned big as a harvest moon and pushed another keg toward Tal. “Surely do thank you for happening by today.” He laid back down. “It was providential. Providential.” Another deep swig from the keg.

Tal tasted his—good, sweet, mountain water. He stared at the fire until he started shivering. Then he got in his own bedroll. He was tired, and might have gone straight to sleep, if Hairy hadn’t snored like a steamboat whistle.

Tal could ignore it. Gorged, he lay back and closed his eyes, enjoying the cool night. I conquered Old Ephraim, he thought. With one shot. I’m Old One-Shot. And I have a griz skull and jaw bones and claws to start a necklace. Plus a robe to share with the lady of my dreams.

Medicine, magic, fateful dreams, totems, and a brave giant! Enchantments, battles, challenges, and dusky maidens! Wasn’t this what he came to the Shining Mountains for? Was this not a subject for heroic verses? Tal was a happy man. Boy. No, man.

Maybe he should write in his notebook now. No, he was embarrassed—Hairy might stir. He’d just think on putting the epic battle of Old Ephraim and Old One-Shot in it. And now he had a title—
Record of My Sojourn in the Shining Mountains: AN AFFAIR OF HONOR.

Tal squirmed in his blankets. He liked thinking such thoughts—chivalrous thoughts!—but they made him wonder about himself. Wonder if chivalrous thoughts were kid stuff. Maybe such stuff would earn him a name less fine than Old One-Shot. Like Idjit. Or, worse, Boy. It was hard to know.

CHAPTER FOUR

one man in his time plays many parts

—
As You Like It
, II. vii

He did not dream, though, of chivalry. He dreamt of wandering on foot, hungry and in rags, through a dark forest, pushed onward ever onward by the sense of some will o’ the wisp of foreboding.

He woke with the foreboding. Silly, he told himself. Cautiously he opened his eyes to a gray, half-lit sky. Listened—something had woken him up.

Ummm, Hairy’s stoking up the fire. Wind’s up. Cold as heck.

He sure is building that fire big. Tal snuggled in his blankets, wary of sleep, reluctant to face the cold dawn.

Uh-oh. What’s…

Tal sat up, and it took him a moment to understand what he saw.

Hairy was in the bushes trying to get his pants pulled up.

The fire—much too big—was whipping in the wind.

Beyond it a grass fire was whipping in the wind.

Nearby the horses were about to go crazy trying to break their hobbles.

Holy heck.

Tal jumped up. His pants still down, Hairy grabbed some blankets and started beating at the grass fire.

Tal went for the horses, got the halters of all three, started pulling them away, down wind.

When he looked back, Hairy had the grass fire about out.

The main fire, still blowing, was spreading the other way, up the creek.

Tal let go the horses and sprinted toward the fire. He grabbed his water keg and started dousing the logs. Hairy was roaring up the creek with the pot, scooping water as he went, and tripping over his pants.

Tal grabbed Hairy’s water keg and emptied it on the logs. Funny smell.

“My whiske-e-ee,” Hairy bellowed.

Tal dropped the keg. Too late.

Still bellowing, Hairy waddled into the grass fire. Tal went after him with blankets—that grass fire was going wild. Lucky it was headed upstream.

Hairy turned to face Tal—his beard and hair were smoking and spurting flame at the ends.

Tal threw the blankets over Hairy’s head and dragged him back toward camp. To heck with the fire.

Hairy held the whisky keg overhead and poured the dregs on his head. His hair and beard steamed. He licked his lips. He held his pants. He gave way to tears. He cried a Falstaffian cry.

Tal looked toward the horses. They were bucking and jumping, moving away from the acrid smell, downstream. The pack horse had broken its hobbles.

Suddenly a yell. A shout of war. Or of fear. A cacophony of shouts.

Fear washed over Tal. The foreboding of his dream…

Upstream, where the grass fire was still racing away from camp, three Indians came tearing out of the bushes. A man and two boys.

They were shouting, like old women cursing pests. The man shook his fist and they started running—up the hill. And they kept going uphill, full speed ahead.

Lo, Tal thought, we have defeated our enemies.

He didn’t even reach for his rifle. He began to laugh.

Hairy, teary-faced, started laughing. They looked at each other.

“They were gonna get our horses,” yelled Tal, and laughed harder.

Hairy sobered. “Why do you think I burned them out?” He glared at Tal.

Tal stuck his tongue out at Hairy and made a raspberry.

Hairy looked scandalized. Then sheepish. Then amused. He guffawed. Tal guffawed. They clapped each other on the back, guffawing.

“They woulda got our horses,” yelled Hairy. He grabbed Tal by the shoulders and eyeballed him close. “You’re sump’n,” Hairy gasped between laughs. “My partner’s sump’n.”

Tal grabbed Hairy by his charred, ashen beard. “They woulda got our horses,” yelled Tal, crying as he laughed, and shaking Hairy’s lovable giant head. The whiskers were crumbling.

Then it came off—the whole belly-length beard, in Tal’s hands.

Tal gaped at Hairy’s chin.

Bare, except for glue.

Shakespeare!

“Bard of Avon!” cried Tal, busting with silliness.

“All the world’s a stage,” intoned Hairy, laughing and crying and slapping his legs and making sheepdog eyes.

Tal stuck the beard on his own boyish face. “One man in his time plays many parts!” he exclaimed.

Hairy lit up like a sun-struck gong. They cackled and clapped each other on the shoulders like giddy fools.

The bear meat would do for Tal’s booty—griz would be some for men new to the mountains—so they were off downhill to find the brigade. And Hairy—Shakespeare—regaled Tal with thespian tales as they rode.

After crossing from Olde England, he said, he’d worked the little towns along the Ohio, from Fort Pitt to Louisville to Cairo, enchanting audiences with Shakespeare, the sweetest songs e’er composed for the English tongue. When his small troupe toured these rustic places, they didn’t do entire plays, naturally—those gre-e-a-at cathedrals built of words—but piquant scenes, interspersed with singing and juggling. Hairy’s most magnificent role was the great King Lear:

Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks!

Likely his most popular was Falstaff:

Why then the world’s mine oyster

or perhaps Caliban:

’Ban, ’Ban, Ca-Caliban,

Has a new master—Get a new man.

But then all changed. The manager fired the lads playing the female parts—that’s how the Bard wanted it, you know, teen-age boys as women—and got some actresses.

The troupe switched from the Ohio to the Mississippi, playing Hannibal and St. Louis and Cairo again and Natchez and New Orleans. Hairy could tell some tales about Natchez-under-the-Hill and the French Quarter that would…never you mind. All went well until they began playing the actual river boats. Then the actresses started to mingle with the spectators, and imbibe with them….Well, hoss, Hairy began to tipple more often himself—sometimes, verily, he had trouble remembering his lines. And then the women began to supplement their incomes by dallying with the gentlemen spectators, well, never you mind.

It gave the troupe a bad name, it did, and none of the better theatres would book them anymore. They had to forego the Bard, which the vulgar audience did not appreciate, and sing more songs, songs of the common sort.

And then, ah, hoss, the manager tried to demote Hairy to stage manager. Said Hairy was so drunk he sounded more Kentuck than Shakespearean. A bald-faced lie about the most splendiferous voice in the land, Hairy said resonantly. Fellow just wanted Lear and Falstaff for himself. Hairy couldn’t stand still for such impertinence, and broke the fellow’s pate.

“But hoss, this child got square, he did.” Hairy beamed. “He got square in beards, such as you see, make-up, costumes, and other tools of the actor’s subtile art and craft. I have a rich stores of such things,” Hairy said and chuckled thunderously, “if ever the Injuns should want to lift their spirits by the Bard.”

When Hairy wasn’t showing off his Shakespeare, he was complaining about Tal dumping his good whisky on the fire. That
aguardiente
cost him five plews the keg to Taos, he said, and they might not see Taos again for months and months.

“You wasn’t exactly sharing that awerdenty, now, was ye?” complained Tal mildly. From his dad he learned never to cuss—a matter of style, not morality—but he was willing to try an experimental tipple. Just like his dad.

“That was a fault,” admitted Hairy. “Truly, that was a fault.”

So down they went, amid story and song. Hairy’s riding horse was an odd-looking Indian pony, a gelding. Odd-looking on its own because it was a paint with a patchy, scrofulous coat and a red circle around one blind, gray-mottled eye. Odd-looking under Hairy because the poor creature was no more than thirteen hands high, and sway-backed, while Hairy probably weighed three hundred pounds. Little beast sure was game, though—never slowed or faltered, burdened as it was.

After a while they rode into a thunderstorm, but it gave Hairy no pause.

“This is fine, ain’t it lad? “rumbled the giant. “Fine, fine, this child loves the tempest.” He raised his voice into the wind.

Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks!

Rage! Blow! You cataracks and hurricanoes, spout

Till you have drench’d our noggins, drown’d our cocks!

When Hairy spoke as Lear, it sounded like organ music. Tal thought maybe it was fine to be here, in foul weather, in the Black Hills of the Shining Mountains. Until he began to shiver and shake. And chatter. While Hairy carried on in grand style, oblivious.

That night they camped in the foothills and, despite incredible heat, went hard the next day. At evening they came onto camp. They put their horses with the others, and sauntered casually into Louie’s mess.

“Cap’n Fitzpatrick, he’s summat colicky, Jones,” Louie volunteered. Louie was old as the hills, a Frenchy who’d been H. B. C.—Hudson Bay Co., or Here Before Christ, as the men joked.

Louis was looking past Tal to Hairy. Tal had to admit Hairy looked a little strange, his hair singed and broken and his face fishbelly white where the false beard had covered it. He was making sheepdog eyes again, too.

“Louie, this here’s my friend, uh, Shakespeare,” said Tal.

“What’s that smell? “said Louie, eyeing Hairy.

Hairy flushed all the colors of the sunset.

“Our bear meat turned ripe, Louie.” The hundred-degree day had overcome their improvised refrigeration. “We made meat, but…”

Louie grinned a grin that seemed almost lecherous. “What you do, sleep with it? Put your bedrolls down wind of me,” he said, “and save your explanations for Cap’n Fitzpatrick.”