paid him back. I snapped off his ear with my teeth, and then his nose. Want to see his thumb?
You told them, said Clemence, who was intent on getting nourishment into his old gullet. But Mooshum wanted to talk.
Listen here, you boys. People say Liver-Eating Johnson was supposed to have escaped some Indians by chewing through a rawhide that bound his hands. The story had it he killed the young Indian who was guarding him and cut off that poor boy’s leg. Supposedly that scoundrel run off with that leg into the wilderness and survived by eating it until he made his way into friendlier territory.
Open up, said Clemence, and filled his mouth.
But that was not how it happened, said Mooshum. For I was there. I was hunting with some Blackfeet warriors when they caught Liver Eater. They planned on delivering him to the Crow Indians because he had killed so many of their people. I was sitting with that young Blackfeet who was supposed to guard him, but he wanted to kill Johnson so bad his hands twitched.
I talked to Liver Eater in the Blackfeet language, which he sort of understood. Liver Eater, I said, half the Blackfeet hate you so much they’re gonna stake you down buck-naked and skin you alive. But they’ll cut off your balls first and feed them to their old ladies right in front of your eyes.
Say there! said Clemence.
The Blackfeet’s eyes just glowed, said Mooshum. I said to Liver Eater that the other half of the Blackfeet wanted to tie him securely between their two best war ponies and then charge the opposite directions. The Blackfeet boy’s eyes sparked like candles at that. I told Liver-Eating Johnson that he was supposed to decide which of these fates he would prefer, so that the tribe could make preparations. Then we turned our backs on Liver Eater and warmed our hands over the fire. We left him to work on the rawhide thongs that bound his wrists. His ankles, too, were bound with strong ropes. Another rawhide at his waist fixed him to a tree. He had plenty to work on with his teeth, which were none too sturdy and that’s the point. You never saw a white trapper’s teeth, but they hadn’t the habits we Indians had of scrubbing our teeth clean with a birch twig. They let their teeth rot. You could smell his breath a mile before a trapper came into view. His breath generally smelled worse than the rest of him and that is saying a lot, eh? Liver Eater’s teeth were no different from any trapper’s. And now he was trying to chew off his cords. Every so often, we would hear him curse and spit—there went one tooth, then another broke off. We panicked him into chawing until he was all gum. Never again could he bite into an Indian. But we planned to make him helpless altogether. This young Blackfeet and me. He had a potion from his grandma that would make your eyes cross. As soon as Liver Eater fell asleep and snored, we dabbed that medicine onto his eyes. Now he couldn’t shoot straight. He would have to become a sheriff. That is, if the Crows did not kill him. Still, you don’t leave a rattlesnake alive to bite you next time you walk the path, I said to the Blackfeet, even if he don’t have fangs.
I wish we didn’t have to give him to the Crows, said the young man.
They need their fun, I said. But just in case he gets loose we should make sure he cannot pull the trigger on a gun. We could chop off his fingers, but then the Crow would say we’d stolen some of him.
There is a centipede if it bites a man his hands will swell up like mittens for the rest of his life, the Blackfeet told me. So we made little torches for ourselves and went around hunting for this bug, but while we were away Liver Eater did manage to escape. When we returned all we saw was the chewed straps on the ground surrounded by broken brown teeth. He got away. Then he made up the story about eating the Indian’s leg because unless he had a good story who’d believe a toothless cross-eyed old bugger?
Exactly, said Clemence.
Awee, I’m going to miss that Sonja, said Mooshum, winking at me.
What?
Oh, said Clemence. Whitey says she cleared out. She played sick yesterday and he came home