The Kemosabee - Mike Resnick, ebook
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THE KEMOSABEby Mike ResnickSo me and the Masked Man, we decide to hook up and bringevildoers to justice, which is a pretty full-time occupationconsidering just how many of these _momzers_ there are wanderingthe West. Of course, I don't work on Saturdays, but this is nevera problem, since he's usually sleeping off Friday night's bingeand isn't ready to get back in the saddle until about half pastMonday.We get along pretty well, though we don't talk much to eachother -- my English is a little rusty, and his Yiddish is non-existent -- but we share our food when times are tough, and we'realways saving each other's life, just like it says in the dimenovels.Now, you'd think two guys who spend a whole year ridingtogether wouldn't have any secrets from each other, but actuallythat's not the case. We respect each other's privacy, and it isalmost twelve months to the day after we form a team that we findourselves answering a call of Nature at the very same time, and Ilook over at him, and I am so surprised I could just _plotz_, youknow what I mean?It's then that I start calling him Kemosabee, and finally oneday he asks me what it means, and I tell him that it means"uncircumcized goy", and he kind of frowns and tells me that hedoesn't know what _either_ word means, so I sit him down andexplain that Indians are one of the lost Hebrew tribes, only wearen't as lost as we're supposed to be, because Custer and therest of those _meshugginah_ soldiers keeps finding us and blowingus to smithereens. And the Kemosabee, he asks if Hebrew is asuburb of Hebron, and right away I see we've got an enormouscultural gap to overcome.But what the hell, we're pardners, and we're doing a prettyfair job of ridding the West of horse thieves and stage robbersand other varmints, so I say, "Look, Kemosabee, you're a _mensch_and I'm proud to ride with you, and if you wanna get drunk and_shtup_ a bunch of _shikses_ whenever we go into town, that's yourbusiness and who am I to tell you what to do? But Butch Cavendishand his gang are giving me enough _tsouris_ this month, so if westop off at any Indian villages, let's let this be our littlesecret, okay?"And the Kemosabee, who is frankly a lot quicker with his gunsthan his brain, just kind of frowns and looks hazy and finallynods his head, though I'm sure he doesn't know what he's noddingabout.Well, we ride on for another day or two, and finally reachhis secret silver mine, and he melts some of it down and shoves itinto his shells, and like always I ride off and hunt up RebRunning Bear and have him say Kaddish over the bullets, and when Ihunt up the Masked Man again I find he has had the _chutzpah_ totake on the whole Cavendish gang single-handed, and since theyknow he never shoots to kill and they ain't got any suchcompunctions, they leave him lying there for dead with a couple ofnew _pupiks_ in his belly.So I make a sled and hook it to the back of his horse, whichhe calls Silver but which he really ought to call White, or atleast White With The Ugly Brown Blotch On His Belly, and I hop upmy pony, and pretty soon we're in front of Reb Running Bear'stent, and he comes out and looks at the Masked Man lying therewith his ten-gallon stetson for a long moment, and then he turnsto me and says, "You know, that has got to be the ugliest_yarmulkah_ I've ever seen.""This is my pardner," I say. "Some goniffs drygulched him.You got to make him well."Reb Running Bear frowns. "He doesn't look like one of theChosen People to me. Where was he _bar mitzvahed_?""He wasn't," I say. "But he's one of the Good Guys. He and Iare cleaning up the West.""Six years in Hebrew school and you settle for being ajanitor?" he says."Don't give me a hard time," I said. "We got bad guys toshoot and wrongs to right. Just save the Kemosabee's life.""The Kemosabee?" he repeats. "Would I be very far off thetrack if I surmised that he doesn't keep kosher?""Look," I say, deciding that it's time to play hardball, "Ihadn't wanted to bring this up, but I know what you and Mrs.Screaming Hawk were doing last time I visited this place.""Keep your voice down or that _yenta_ I married will make mylife hell!" he whispers, glancing back toward his teepee. Then hegrimaces. "Mrs. Screaming Hawk. Serves me right for taking her toEcho Canyon. _Feh!_"I stare at him. "So _nu_?""All right, all right, Jehovah and I will nurse the Kemosabeeback to health.""Good," I say.He glares at me. "But just this one time. Then I pass theword to all the other Rabbis: we don't cure no more _goys_. Whathave they ever done for us?"Well, I am all prepared to argue the point, because I'm apretty open-minded kind of guy, but just then the Kemosabee startsmoaning and I realize that if I argue for more than a couple ofminutes we could all be sitting _shivah_ for him beforedinnertime, so I wander off and pay a visit to Mrs. Rutting Elk toconsole her on the sudden passing of her husband and see if thereis anything I can do to cheer her up, and Reb Running Bear gets towork, and lo and behold, in less than a week the Masked Man is upand around and getting impatient to go out after desperados, so wethank Reb Running Bear for his services, and he loads my pardnerdown with a few canteens of chicken soup, and we say a fond_shalom_ to the village.I am hoping we have a few weeks for the Kemosabee to regainhis strength, of which I think he is still missing an awful lot,but as Fate would have it, we are riding for less than two hourswhen we come across the Cavendish gang's trail."Aha!" he says, studying the hoofprints. "All thirty of them!This is our chance for revenge!"My first thought is to say something like, "What do you mean_we_, mackerel eater?" -- but then I remember that Good Guys neverback down from a challenge, so I simply say "Ugh!", which is myopinion of taking on thirty guys at once, but which he insists oninterpreting as an affirmative.We follow the trail all day, and when it's too dark to followit any longer, we make camp on a small hill."We should catch up with them just after sunrise," says theMasked Man, and I can see that his trigger finger is gettingitchy."Ugh," I say."We'll meet them on the open plain, where nobody can hide.""Double ugh with cherries on it," I say."You look very grim, old friend," he says."Funny you should mention it," I say, but before I cansuggest that we just forget the whole thing, he speaks again."You can have the other twenty-nine, but Cavendish is mine.""You're all heart, Kemosabee," I say.He stands up, stretches, and walks over to his bedroll."Well, we've got a hard day's bloodletting ahead of us. We'd bestget some sleep."He lays down, and ten seconds later he's snoring like allget-out, and I sit there staring at him, and I just know he's notgonna come through this unscathed, and I remember Reb RunningBear's promise that no medicine man would ever again treat a goy.And the more I think about it, the more I think that it's upto me, the loyal sidekick, to do something about it. And finallyit occurs to me just what I have to do, because if I can't savehim from the Cavendish gang, the least I can do is save him fromhimself.So I go over to my bedroll, and pull out a bottle of MogenDavid, and pour a little on my hunting knife, and try to rememberthe exact words the medicine man recites during the _bris_, and Iknow that someday, when he calms down, he'll thank me for this.In the meantime, I'm gonna have to find a new nickname forfor my pardner.-end-
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