Boone's Lick Read Free Page B

could build a new city hall for a hundred dollars.”
    â€œYes, but once you got it built you’d still have the Millers to worry with,” Uncle Seth pointed out. “What’s problem number two?”
    â€œI haven’t asked Hickok yet,” the sheriff admitted. “That’s problem number two.”
    â€œThen go ask him,” Uncle Seth advised. He strolled over my way, meaning to stick me with Marcy, but I sidestepped him. Marcy didn’t like me near as much as she liked Uncle Seth. If I took her she would be bawling within a minute, which would make it hard to listen to the conversation.
    â€œI’m scared to ask him, Seth,” the sheriff said. “I ain’t a bit scared of Jake Miller but the mere sight of Billy Hickok makes me quake in my boots.”
    G.T. arrived with Old Sam and I helped him tie on to the dead horse, after which Old Sam dragged the big roan gelding over to the butchering tree, freeing the sheriff’s saddle in the process.
    â€œWould you mind asking him for me, Seth, since the two of you are old friends?” the sheriff said.
    â€œâ€˜Old friends’ might be putting it a little too strongly, but I don’t mind asking him to help out,” Uncle Seth said. “I’ll do it as soon as I can get shut of this baby girl, which might not be until tomorrow, the way things are looking.”
    â€œTomorrow would be fine,” Sheriff Baldy said.

3
    O NCE we got the carcass of the big roan hitched up to a good stout limb of the butchering tree, Sheriff Baldy threw his saddle on Old Sam and rode back down to Boone’s Lick.
    â€œPlease don’t forget about Bill Hickok, Seth,” he said, before he left. “The Millers ain’t getting nicer, they’re getting meaner.”
    Uncle Seth just waved. I don’t think he was too pleased about his commission, but I had no time to dwell on the matter. The horse had just seemed to be a horse when Old Sam was dragging his carcass off, but by the time we had been butchering for thirty minutes it felt like we had a dead elephant on our hands. Ma worked neat, but G.T. had never known neat from dirty. By the time he got thehorse’s leg unjointed he was so bloody that Ma tried to get him to take his clothes off and work naked, a suggestion that shocked him.
    The sight of G.T. shocked Granpa Crackenthorpe too, when he tottered out to give us a few instructions. Granpa Crackenthorpe liked to comment that he had long since forgotten more useful things than most people would ever know. He claimed to be expert at butchering horseflesh, but the sight of G.T., bloody from head to foot, shocked him so that he completely lost track of whatever instructions he had meant to give us.
    â€œI was in the battle of the Bad Axe River,” he remarked. “That was when we killed off most of the Sauk Indians and quite a few of the Fox Indians too. The Mississippi River was red as a ribbon that day, from all the Indian blood in it, but it wasn’t no redder than G.T. here.”
    â€œThat’s right,” Ma said. “He’s ruined a perfectly good shirt. I tried to get him to undress before he started hacking, but I guess he’s too modest to think about saving his clothes.”
    â€œMa!” G.T. said—he could not accept the thought of nakedness.
    I was put in charge of the gut tubs. It was plain that Ma didn’t intend to waste an ounce of that horse—she even cracked the bones and scraped out the marrow. Of course, it had been a hungry month—Ma hadn’t even allowed us to kill a chicken.
    â€œA chicken is just an egg-laying machine,” she pointed out. “We can live on eggs if we have to, although I’d rather not.”
    Uncle Seth didn’t help us with the butchering, not one bit. He rarely turned his hand to mundane labor—this irritated G.T. but didn’t seem to bother Ma.
    â€œSomebody’s got to watch Marcy, and Neva