Chapter XXXVI
Chapter XXXVII
Chapter XXXVIII
Chapter XXXIX
Chapter XL
Chapter XLI
Chapter XLII
Chapter THE LAST

NOTICE

PERSONS attempting to find a motive in
this narrative will be prosecuted; persons
attempting to find a moral in it will be
banished; persons attempting to find a plot
in it will be shot.

BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR,

Per G.G., Chief of Ordnance.

EXPLANATORY

IN this book a number of dialects are used,
to wit: the Missouri negro dialect; the
extremest form of the backwoods
Southwestern dialect; the ordinary "Pike
County" dialect; and four modified varieties
of this last. The shadings have not been
done in a haphazard fashion, or by
guesswork; but painstakingly, and with the

-1-

and allowed she would sivilize me; but it
was rough living in the house all the time,
considering how dismal regular and decent
the widow was in all her ways; and so when
I couldn't stand it no longer I lit out. I got into
my old rags and my sugar-hogshead again,
and was free and satisfied. But Tom
Sawyer he hunted me up and said he was
going to start a band of robbers, and I might
join if I would go back to the widow and be
respectable. So I went back.

The widow she cried over me, and called
me a poor lost lamb, and she called me a lot
of other names, too, but she never meant no
harm by it. She put me in them new clothes
again, and I couldn't do nothing but sweat
and sweat, and feel all cramped up. Well,
then, the old thing commenced again. The
widow rung a bell for supper, and you had to
come to time. When you got to the table you
couldn't go right to eating, but you had to
wait for the widow to tuck down her head
and grumble a little over the victuals, though
there warn't really anything the matter with
them, that is, nothing only everything was
cooked by itself. In a barrel of odds and
ends it is different; things get mixed up, and
the juice kind of swaps around, and the
things go better.

After supper she got out her book and
learned me about Moses and the
Bulrushers, and I was in a sweat to find out
all about him; but by and by she let it out that
Moses had been dead a considerable long
time; so then I didn't care no more about
him, because I don't take no stock in dead
people.

Pretty soon I wanted to smoke, and asked
the widow to let me. But she wouldn't. She
said it was a mean practice and wasn't
clean, and I must try to not do it any more.
That is just the way with some people. They
get down on a thing when they don't know

-2-

Miss Watson she kept pecking at me, and it
got tiresome and lonesome. By and by they
fetched the niggers in and had prayers, and
then everybody was off to bed. I went up to
my room with a piece of candle, and put it
on the table. Then I set down in a chair by the
window and tried to think of something
cheerful, but it warn't no use. I felt so
lonesome I most wished I was dead. The
stars were shining, and the leaves rustled in
the woods ever so mournful; and I heard an
owl, away off, who-whooing about
somebody that was dead, and a whippowill
and a dog crying about somebody that was
going to die; and the wind was trying to
whisper something to me, and I couldn't
make out what it was, and so it made the
cold shivers run over me. Then away out in
the woods I heard that kind of a sound that a
ghost makes when it wants to tell about
something that's on its mind and can't make
itself understood, and so can't rest easy in
its grave, and has to go about that way
every night grieving. I got so down-hearted
and scared I did wish I had some company.
Pretty soon a spider went crawling up my
shoulder, and I flipped it off and it lit in the
candle; and before I could budge it was all
shriveled up. I didn't need anybody to tell me
that that was an awful bad sign and would
fetch me some bad luck, so I was scared
and most shook the clothes off of me. I got
up and turned around in my tracks three
times and crossed my breast every time;
and then I tied up a little lock of my hair with
a thread to keep witches away. But I hadn't
no confidence. You do that when you've lost
a horseshoe that you've found, instead of
nailing it up over the door, but I hadn't ever
heard anybody say it was any way to keep
off bad luck when you'd killed a spider.

I set down again, a-shaking all over, and
got out my pipe for a smoke; for the house
was all as still as death now, and so the
widow wouldn't know. Well, after a long time

-3-

scratch, why you will itch all over in upwards
of a thousand places. Pretty soon Jim says:

"Say, who is you? Whar is you? Dog my cats
ef I didn' hear sumf'n. Well, I know what I's
gwyne to do: I's gwyne to set down here and
listen tell I hears it agin."

So he set down on the ground betwixt me
and Tom. He leaned his back up against a
tree, and stretched his legs out till one of
them most touched one of mine. My nose
begun to itch. It itched till the tears come into
my eyes. But I dasn't scratch. Then it begun
to itch on the inside. Next I got to itching
under neath. I didn't know how I was going
to set still. This miserableness went on as
much as six or seven minutes; but it seemed
a sight longer than that. I was itching in
eleven different places now. I reckoned I
couldn't stand it more'n a minute longer, but
I set my teeth hard and got ready to try. Just
then Jim begun to breathe heavy; next he
begun to snore and then I was pretty soon
comfortable again.

Tom he made a sign to me kind of a little
noise with his mouth and we went creeping
away on our hands and knees. When we
was ten foot off Tom whispered to me, and
wanted to tie Jim to the tree for fun. But I
said no; he might wake and make a dis
turbance, and then they'd find out I warn't in.
Then Tom said he hadn't got candles
enough, and he would slip in the kitchen and
get some more. I didn't want him to try. I said
Jim might wake up and come. But Tom
wanted to resk it; so we slid in there and got
three candles, and Tom laid five cents on
the table for pay. Then we got out, and I was
in a sweat to get away; but nothing would do
Tom but he must crawl to where Jim was,
on his hands and knees, and play
something on him. I waited, and it seemed a
good while, everything was so still and
lonesome.

-4-

Well, when Tom and me got to the edge of
the hill top we looked away down into the
village and could see three or four lights
twinkling, where there was sick folks,
maybe; and the stars over us was sparkling
ever so fine; and down by the village was
the river, a whole mile broad, and awful still
and grand. We went down the hill and found
Jo Harper and Ben Rogers, and two or
three more of the boys, hid in the old
tanyard. So we unhitched a skiff and pulled
down the river two mile and a half, to the big
scar on the hillside, and went ashore.

We went to a clump of bushes, and Tom
made everybody swear to keep the secret,
and then showed them a hole in the hill, right
in the thickest part of the bushes. Then we lit
the candles, and crawled in on our hands
and knees. We went about two hundred
yards, and then the cave opened up. Tom
poked about amongst the passages, and
pretty soon ducked under a wall where you
wouldn't a noticed that there was a hole. We
went along a narrow place and got into a
kind of room, all damp and sweaty and
cold, and there we stopped. Tom says:

"Now, we'll start this band of robbers and
call it Tom Sawyer's Gang. Everybody that
wants to join has got to take an oath, and
write his name in blood."

Everybody was willing. So Tom got out a
sheet of paper that he had wrote the oath
on, and read it. It swore every boy to stick to
the band, and never tell any of the secrets;
and if anybody done anything to any boy in
the band, whichever boy was ordered to kill
that person and his family must do it, and he
mustn't eat and he mustn't sleep till he had
killed them and hacked a cross in their
breasts, which was the sign of the band.
And nobody that didn't belong to the band
could use that mark, and if he did he must
be sued; and if he done it again he must be

-5-

get blood to sign with, and I made my mark
on the paper.

"Now," says Ben Rogers, "what's the line of
busi ness of this Gang?"

"Nothing only robbery and murder," Tom
said.

"But who are we going to rob? houses, or
cattle, or --"

"Stuff! stealing cattle and such things ain't
rob bery; it's burglary," says Tom Sawyer.
"We ain't burglars. That ain't no sort of style.
We are high waymen. We stop stages and
carriages on the road, with masks on, and
kill the people and take their watches and
money."

"Must we always kill the people?"

"Oh, certainly. It's best. Some authorities
think different, but mostly it's considered
best to kill them except some that you bring
to the cave here, and keep them till they're
ransomed."

"Ransomed? What's that?"

"I don't know. But that's what they do. I've
seen it in books; and so of course that's
what we've got to do."

"But how can we do it if we don't know what
it is?"

"Why, blame it all, we've GOT to do it. Don't I
tell you it's in the books? Do you want to go
to doing different from what's in the books,
and get things all muddled up?"

"Oh, that's all very fine to SAY, Tom
Sawyer, but how in the nation are these
fellows going to be ran somed if we don't
know how to do it to them? that's the thing I

-6-

"Well, if that's the way I'm agreed, but I don't
take no stock in it. Mighty soon we'll have
the cave so cluttered up with women, and
fellows waiting to be ransomed, that there
won't be no place for the rob bers. But go
ahead, I ain't got nothing to say."

Little Tommy Barnes was asleep now, and
when they waked him up he was scared,
and cried, and said he wanted to go home
to his ma, and didn't want to be a robber
any more.

So they all made fun of him, and called him
cry baby, and that made him mad, and he
said he would go straight and tell all the
secrets. But Tom give him five cents to keep
quiet, and said we would all go home and
meet next week, and rob somebody and kill
some people.

Ben Rogers said he couldn't get out much,
only Sundays, and so he wanted to begin
next Sunday; but all the boys said it would
be wicked to do it on Sunday, and that
settled the thing. They agreed to get to
gether and fix a day as soon as they could,
and then we elected Tom Sawyer first
captain and Jo Harper second captain of
the Gang, and so started home.

I clumb up the shed and crept into my
window just before day was breaking. My
new clothes was all greased up and clayey,
and I was dog-tired.

CHAPTER III

WELL, I got a good going-over in the
morning from old Miss Watson on account of
my clothes; but the widow she didn't scold,
but only cleaned off the grease and clay,
and looked so sorry that I thought I would
behave awhile if I could. Then Miss Watson
she took me in the closet and prayed, but
nothing come of it. She told me to pray every

-7-

Pap he hadn't been seen for more than a
year, and that was comfortable for me; I
didn't want to see him no more. He used to
always whale me when he was sober and
could get his hands on me; though I used to
take to the woods most of the time when he
was around. Well, about this time he was
found in the river drownded, about twelve
mile above town, so people said. They
judged it was him, anyway; said this
drownded man was just his size, and was
ragged, and had uncommon long hair,
which was all like pap; but they couldn't
make nothing out of the face, be cause it
had been in the water so long it warn't much
like a face at all. They said he was floating
on his back in the water. They took him and
buried him on the bank. But I warn't
comfortable long, because I happened to
think of something. I knowed mighty well
that a drownded man don't float on his
back, but on his face. So I knowed, then,
that this warn't pap, but a woman dressed
up in a man's clothes. So I was
uncomfortable again. I judged the old man
would turn up again by and by, though I
wished he wouldn't.

We played robber now and then about a
month, and then I resigned. All the boys did.
We hadn't robbed nobody, hadn't killed any
people, but only just pre tended. We used to
hop out of the woods and go charging down
on hog-drivers and women in carts taking
garden stuff to market, but we never hived
any of them. Tom Sawyer called the hogs
"ingots," and he called the turnips and stuff
"julery," and we would go to the cave and
powwow over what we had done, and how
many people we had killed and marked. But
I couldn't see no profit in it. One time Tom
sent a boy to run about town with a blazing
stick, which he called a slogan (which was
the sign for the Gang to get together), and
then he said he had got secret news by his
spies that next day a whole parcel of

-8-

school, just out of spite. I said, all right; then
the thing for us to do was to go for the
magicians. Tom Sawyer said I was a
numskull.

"Why," said he, "a magician could call up a
lot of genies, and they would hash you up
like nothing before you could say Jack
Robinson. They are as tall as a tree and as
big around as a church."

"Well," I says, "s'pose we got some genies
to help US can't we lick the other crowd
then?"

"How you going to get them?"

"I don't know. How do THEY get them?"

"Why, they rub an old tin lamp or an iron ring,
and then the genies come tearing in, with
the thunder and lightning a-ripping around
and the smoke a-rolling, and everything
they're told to do they up and do it. They
don't think nothing of pulling a shot-tower
up by the roots, and belting a Sunday-
school superinten dent over the head with it
or any other man."

"Who makes them tear around so?"

"Why, whoever rubs the lamp or the ring.
They belong to whoever rubs the lamp or the
ring, and they've got to do whatever he
says. If he tells them to build a palace forty
miles long out of di'monds, and fill it full of
chewing-gum, or whatever you want, and
fetch an emperor's daughter from China for
you to marry, they've got to do it and they've
got to do it before sun-up next morning, too.
And more: they've got to waltz that palace
around over the country wherever you want
it, you understand."

"Well," says I, "I think they are a pack of flat
heads for not keeping the palace

-9-

uncommon tired I played hookey, and the
hiding I got next day done me good and
cheered me up. So the longer I went to
school the easier it got to be. I was getting
sort of used to the widow's ways, too, and
they warn't so raspy on me. Living in a
house and sleeping in a bed pulled on me
pretty tight mostly, but before the cold
weather I used to slide out and sleep in the
woods sometimes, and so that was a rest
to me. I liked the old ways best, but I was
getting so I liked the new ones, too, a little
bit. The widow said I was coming along
slow but sure, and doing very satisfactory.
She said she warn't ashamed of me.

One morning I happened to turn over the
salt-cellar at breakfast. I reached for some
of it as quick as I could to throw over my left
shoulder and keep off the bad luck, but Miss
Watson was in ahead of me, and crossed
me off. She says, "Take your hands away,
Huckleberry; what a mess you are always
making!" The widow put in a good word for
me, but that warn't going to keep off the bad
luck, I knowed that well enough. I started
out, after breakfast, feeling worried and
shaky, and wondering where it was going to
fall on me, and what it was going to be.
There is ways to keep off some kinds of
bad luck, but this wasn't one of them kind;
so I never tried to do anything, but just
poked along low-spirited and on the watch-
out.

I went down to the front garden and clumb
over the stile where you go through the high
board fence. There was an inch of new
snow on the ground, and I seen
somebody's tracks. They had come up from
the quarry and stood around the stile a
while, and then went on around the garden
fence. It was funny they hadn't come in,
after standing around so. I couldn't make it
out. It was very curious, somehow. I was
going to follow around, but I stooped down

-10-

correct idea."

Then he wrote something on a paper and
read it over, and says:

"There; you see it says 'for a consideration.'
That means I have bought it of you and paid
you for it. Here's a dollar for you. Now you
sign it."

So I signed it, and left.

Miss Watson's nigger, Jim, had a hair-ball
as big as your fist, which had been took out
of the fourth stomach of an ox, and he used
to do magic with it. He said there was a
spirit inside of it, and it knowed everything.
So I went to him that night and told him pap
was here again, for I found his tracks in the
snow. What I wanted to know was, what he
was going to do, and was he going to stay?
Jim got out his hair-ball and said something
over it, and then he held it up and dropped it
on the floor. It fell pretty solid, and only rolled
about an inch. Jim tried it again, and then
another time, and it acted just the same.
Jim got down on his knees, and put his ear
against it and listened. But it warn't no use;
he said it wouldn't talk. He said sometimes
it wouldn't talk without money. I told him I
had an old slick counterfeit quarter that
warn't no good because the brass showed
through the silver a little, and it wouldn't
pass nohow, even if the brass didn't show,
because it was so slick it felt greasy, and so
that would tell on it every time. (I reckoned I
wouldn't say nothing about the dollar I got
from the judge.) I said it was pretty bad
money, but maybe the hair-ball would take
it, because maybe it wouldn't know the
difference. Jim smelt it and bit it and rubbed
it, and said he would manage so the hair-
ball would think it was good. He said he
would split open a raw Irish potato and stick
the quarter in between and keep it there all
night, and next morning you couldn't see no

-11-

minute I see I was mistaken that is, after the
first jolt, as you may say, when my breath
sort of hitched, he being so unexpected; but
right away after I see I warn't scared of him
worth bothring about.

He was most fifty, and he looked it. His hair
was long and tangled and greasy, and hung
down, and you could see his eyes shining
through like he was behind vines. It was all
black, no gray; so was his long, mixed-up
whiskers. There warn't no color in his face,
where his face showed; it was white; not
like another man's white, but a white to
make a body sick, a white to make a body's
flesh crawl a tree-toad white, a fish-belly
white. As for his clothes just rags, that was
all. He had one ankle resting on t'other
knee; the boot on that foot was busted, and
two of his toes stuck through, and he
worked them now and then. His hat was
laying on the floor an old black slouch with
the top caved in, like a lid.

I stood a-looking at him; he set there a-
looking at me, with his chair tilted back a
little. I set the candle down. I noticed the
window was up; so he had clumb in by the
shed. He kept a-looking me all over. By and
by he says:

"Starchy clothes very. You think you're a
good deal of a big-bug, DON'T you?"

"Maybe I am, maybe I ain't," I says.

"Don't you give me none o' your lip," says
he. "You've put on considerable many frills
since I been away. I'll take you down a peg
before I get done with you. You're
educated, too, they say can read and write.
You think you're better'n your father, now,
don't you, because he can't? I'LL take it out
of you. Who told you you might meddle with
such hifalut'n foolishness, hey? who told
you you could?"

-12-

He set there a-mumbling and a-growling a
minute, and then he says:

"AIN'T you a sweet-scented dandy,
though? A bed; and bedclothes; and a
look'n'-glass; and a piece of carpet on the
floor and your own father got to sleep with
the hogs in the tanyard. I never see such a
son. I bet I'll take some o' these frills out o'
you before I'm done with you. Why, there
ain't no end to your airs they say you're rich.
Hey? how's that?"

"They lie that's how."

"Looky here mind how you talk to me; I'm a
standing about all I can stand now so don't
gimme no sass. I've been in town two days,
and I hain't heard nothing but about you
bein' rich. I heard about it away down the
river, too. That's why I come. You git me that
money to-morrow I want it."

"I hain't got no money."

"It's a lie. Judge Thatcher's got it. You git it. I
want it."

"I hain't got no money, I tell you. You ask
Judge Thatcher; he'll tell you the same."

"All right. I'll ask him; and I'll make him
pungle, too, or I'll know the reason why.
Say, how much you got in your pocket? I
want it."

"I hain't got only a dollar, and I want that to --
"

"It don't make no difference what you want it
for you just shell it out."

He took it and bit it to see if it was good, and
then he said he was going down town to get
some whisky; said he hadn't had a drink all
day. When he had got out on the shed he put

-13-

cried, and said he'd been a fool, and fooled
away his life; but now he was a-going to
turn over a new leaf and be a man nobody
wouldn't be ashamed of, and he hoped the
judge would help him and not look down on
him. The judge said he could hug him for
them words; so he cried, and his wife she
cried again; pap said he'd been a man that
had always been misunderstood before,
and the judge said he believed it. The old
man said that what a man wanted that was
down was sympathy, and the judge said it
was so; so they cried again. And when it
was bedtime the old man rose up and held
out his hand, and says:

"Look at it, gentlemen and ladies all; take a-
hold of it; shake it. There's a hand that was
the hand of a hog; but it ain't so no more; it's
the hand of a man that's started in on a new
life, and'll die before he'll go back. You
mark them words don't forget I said them.
It's a clean hand now; shake it don't be
afeard."

So they shook it, one after the other, all
around, and cried. The judge's wife she
kissed it. Then the old man he signed a
pledge made his mark. The judge said it
was the holiest time on record, or
something like that. Then they tucked the old
man into a beauti ful room, which was the
spare room, and in the night some time he
got powerful thirsty and clumb out on to the
porch-roof and slid down a stanchion and
traded his new coat for a jug of forty-rod,
and clumb back again and had a good old
time; and towards daylight he crawled out
again, drunk as a fiddler, and rolled off the
porch and broke his left arm in two places,
and was most froze to death when
somebody found him after sun-up. And
when they come to look at that spare room
they had to take soundings before they
could navigate it.

-14-

fished and hunted, and that was what we
lived on. Every little while he locked me in
and went down to the store, three miles, to
the ferry, and traded fish and game for
whisky, and fetched it home and got drunk
and had a good time, and licked me. The
widow she found out where I was by and by,
and she sent a man over to try to get hold of
me; but pap drove him off with the gun, and
it warn't long after that till I was used to
being where I was, and liked it all but the
cowhide part.

It was kind of lazy and jolly, laying off
comfortable all day, smoking and fishing,
and no books nor study. Two months or
more run along, and my clothes got to be all
rags and dirt, and I didn't see how I'd ever
got to like it so well at the widow's, where
you had to wash, and eat on a plate, and
comb up, and go to bed and get up regular,
and be forever bothering over a book, and
have old Miss Watson pecking at you all the
time. I didn't want to go back no more. I had
stopped cussing, because the widow didn't
like it; but now I took to it again because pap
hadn't no objec tions. It was pretty good
times up in the woods there, take it all
around.

But by and by pap got too handy with his
hick'ry, and I couldn't stand it. I was all over
welts. He got to going away so much, too,
and locking me in. Once he locked me in
and was gone three days. It was dreadful
lonesome. I judged he had got drowned,
and I wasn't ever going to get out any more. I
was scared. I made up my mind I would fix
up some way to leave there. I had tried to
get out of that cabin many a time, but I
couldn't find no way. There warn't a window
to it big enough for a dog to get through. I
couldn't get up the chimbly; it was too
narrow. The door was thick, solid oak slabs.
Pap was pretty careful not to leave a knife
or anything in the cabin when he was away; I

-15-

cussing.

He said he would like to see the widow get
me. He said he would watch out, and if they
tried to come any such game on him he
knowed of a place six or seven mile off to
stow me in, where they might hunt till they
dropped and they couldn't find me. That
made me pretty uneasy again, but only for a
minute; I reckoned I wouldn't stay on hand till
he got that chance.

The old man made me go to the skiff and
fetch the things he had got. There was a
fifty-pound sack of corn meal, and a side of
bacon, ammunition, and a four-gallon jug
of whisky, and an old book and two
newspapers for wadding, besides some
tow. I toted up a load, and went back and
set down on the bow of the skiff to rest. I
thought it all over, and I reckoned I would
walk off with the gun and some lines, and
take to the woods when I run away. I
guessed I wouldn't stay in one place, but
just tramp right across the country, mostly
night times, and hunt and fish to keep alive,
and so get so far away that the old man nor
the widow couldn't ever find me any more. I
judged I would saw out and leave that night
if pap got drunk enough, and I reckoned he
would. I got so full of it I didn't notice how
long I was staying till the old man hollered
and asked me whether I was asleep or
drownded.

I got the things all up to the cabin, and then it
was about dark. While I was cooking supper
the old man took a swig or two and got sort
of warmed up, and went to ripping again.
He had been drunk over in town, and laid in
the gutter all night, and he was a sight to
look at. A body would a thought he was
Adam he was just all mud. Whenever his
liquor begun to work he most always went
for the govment. his time he says:

-16-

knowed everything. And that ain't the wust.
They said he could VOTE when he was at
home. Well, that let me out. Thinks I, what is
the country a-coming to? It was 'lection day,
and I was just about to go and vote myself if
I warn't too drunk to get there; but when they
told me there was a State in this country
where they'd let that nigger vote, I drawed
out. I says I'll never vote agin. Them's the
very words I said; they all heard me; and the
country may rot for all me I'll never vote agin
as long as I live. And to see the cool way of
that nigger why, he wouldn't a give me the
road if I hadn't shoved him out o' the way. I
says to the people, why ain't this nigger put
up at auction and sold? that's what I want to
know. And what do you reckon they said?
Why, they said he couldn't be sold till he'd
been in the State six months, and he hadn't
been there that long yet. There, now that's a
specimen. They call that a govment that
can't sell a free nigger till he's been in the
State six months. Here's a govment that
calls itself a govment, and lets on to be a
govment, and thinks it is a govment, and
yet's got to set stock-still for six whole
months before it can take a hold of a
prowling, thieving, infernal, white-shirted
free nigger, and --"

Pap was agoing on so he never noticed
where his old limber legs was taking him to,
so he went head over heels over the tub of
salt pork and barked both shins, and the
rest of his speech was all the hottest kind of
language mostly hove at the nigger and the
gov ment, though he give the tub some, too,
all along, here and there. He hopped around
the cabin con siderable, first on one leg and
then on the other, hold ing first one shin and
then the other one, and at last he let out with
his left foot all of a sudden and fetched the
tub a rattling kick. But it warn't good
judgment, because that was the boot that
had a couple of his toes leaking out of the
front end of it; so now he raised a howl that

-17-

away off in the woods, and it seemed terri
ble still. He was laying over by the corner. By
and by he raised up part way and listened,
with his head to one side. He says, very low:

"Tramp tramp tramp; that's the dead; tramp
tramp tramp; they're coming after me; but I
won't go. Oh, they're here! don't touch me
don't! hands off they're cold; let go. Oh, let a
poor devil alone!"

Then he went down on all fours and crawled
off, begging them to let him alone, and he
rolled himself up in his blanket and
wallowed in under the old pine table, still a-
begging; and then he went to crying. I could
hear him through the blanket.

By and by he rolled out and jumped up on
his feet looking wild, and he see me and
went for me. He chased me round and
round the place with a clasp knife, calling
me the Angel of Death, and saying he would
kill me, and then I couldn't come for him no
more. I begged, and told him I was only
Huck; but he laughed SUCH a screechy
laugh, and roared and cussed, and kept on
chasing me up. Once when I turned short
and dodged under his arm he made a grab
and got me by the jacket between my
shoulders, and I thought I was gone; but I
slid out of the jacket quick as lightning, and
saved myself. Pretty soon he was all tired
out, and dropped down with his back
against the door, and said he would rest a
minute and then kill me. He put his knife
under him, and said he would sleep and get
strong, and then he would see who was
who.

So he dozed off pretty soon. By and by I got
the old split-bottom chair and clumb up as
easy as I could, not to make any noise, and
got down the gun. I slipped the ramrod down
it to make sure it was loaded, then I laid it
across the turnip barrel, pointing towards

-18-

I went along up the bank with one eye out for
pap and t'other one out for what the rise
might fetch along. Well, all at once here
comes a canoe; just a beauty, too, about
thirteen or fourteen foot long, riding high like
a duck. I shot head-first off of the bank like
a frog, clothes and all on, and struck out for
the canoe. I just expected there'd be
somebody lay ing down in it, because
people often done that to fool folks, and
when a chap had pulled a skiff out most to it
they'd raise up and laugh at him. But it
warn't so this time. It was a drift-canoe sure
enough, and I clumb in and paddled her
ashore. Thinks I, the old man will be glad
when he sees this she's worth ten dollars.
But when I got to shore pap wasn't in sight
yet, and as I was running her into a little
creek like a gully, all hung over with vines
and willows, I struck another idea: I judged
I'd hide her good, and then, 'stead of taking
to the woods when I run off, I'd go down the
river about fifty mile and camp in one place
for good, and not have such a rough time
tramping on foot.

It was pretty close to the shanty, and I
thought I heard the old man coming all the
time; but I got her hid; and then I out and
looked around a bunch of willows, and there
was the old man down the path a piece just
drawing a bead on a bird with his gun. So
he hadn't seen anything.

When he got along I was hard at it taking up
a "trot" line. He abused me a little for being
so slow; but I told him I fell in the river, and
that was what made me so long. I knowed
he would see I was wet, and then he would
be asking questions. We got five catfish off
the lines and went home.

While we laid off after breakfast to sleep up,
both of us being about wore out, I got to
thinking that if I could fix up some way to
keep pap and the widow from trying to

-19-

took the wadding; I took the bucket and
gourd; I took a dipper and a tin cup, and my
old saw and two blankets, and the skillet
and the coffee-pot. I took fish-lines and
matches and other things everything that
was worth a cent. I cleaned out the place. I
wanted an axe, but there wasn't any, only
the one out at the woodpile, and I knowed
why I was going to leave that. I fetched out
the gun, and now I was done.

I had wore the ground a good deal crawling
out of the hole and dragging out so many
things. So I fixed that as good as I could
from the outside by scattering dust on the
place, which covered up the smoothness
and the sawdust. Then I fixed the piece of
log back into its place, and put two rocks
under it and one against it to hold it there, for
it was bent up at that place and didn't quite
touch ground. If you stood four or five foot
away and didn't know it was sawed, you
wouldn't never notice it; and besides, this
was the back of the cabin, and it warn't
likely anybody would go fooling around
there.

It was all grass clear to the canoe, so I
hadn't left a track. I followed around to see. I
stood on the bank and looked out over the
river. All safe. So I took the gun and went up
a piece into the woods, and was hunting
around for some birds when I see a wild
pig; hogs soon went wild in them bottoms
after they had got away from the prairie
farms. I shot this fel low and took him into
camp.

I took the axe and smashed in the door. I
beat it and hacked it considerable a-doing
it. I fetched the pig in, and took him back
nearly to the table and hacked into his throat
with the axe, and laid him down on the
ground to bleed; I say ground because it
was ground hard packed, and no boards.
Well, next I took an old sack and put a lot of

-20-

moon to rise. I made fast to a willow; then I
took a bite to eat, and by and by laid down in
the canoe to smoke a pipe and lay out a
plan. I says to myself, they'll follow the track
of that sack ful of rocks to the shore and
then drag the river for me. And they'll follow
that meal track to the lake and go browsing
down the creek that leads out of it to find the
robbers that killed me and took the things.
They won't ever hunt the river for anything
but my dead carcass. They'll soon get tired
of that, and won't bother no more about me.
All right; I can stop anywhere I want to.
Jackson's Island is good enough for me; I
know that island pretty well, and nobody
ever comes there. And then I can paddle
over to town nights, and slink around and
pick up things I want. Jackson's Island's the
place.

I was pretty tired, and the first thing I knowed
I was asleep. When I woke up I didn't know
where I was for a minute. I set up and looked
around, a little scared. Then I remembered.
The river looked miles and miles across.
The moon was so bright I could a counted
the drift logs that went a-slipping along,
black and still, hundreds of yards out from
shore. Every thing was dead quiet, and it
looked late, and SMELT late. You know
what I mean I don't know the words to put it
in.

I took a good gap and a stretch, and was
just going to unhitch and start when I heard
a sound away over the water. I listened.
Pretty soon I made it out. It was that dull kind
of a regular sound that comes from oars
working in rowlocks when it's a still night. I
peeped out through the willow branches,
and there it was a skiff, away across the
water. I couldn't tell how many was in it. It
kept a-coming, and when it was abreast of
me I see there warn't but one man in it.
Think's I, maybe it's pap, though I warn't
expecting him. He dropped below me with

-21-

I was away below the ferry now. I rose up,
and there was Jackson's Island, about two
mile and a half down stream, heavy
timbered and standing up out of the middle
of the river, big and dark and solid, like a
steamboat without any lights. There warn't
any signs of the bar at the head it was all
under water now.

It didn't take me long to get there. I shot past
the head at a ripping rate, the current was
so swift, and then I got into the dead water
and landed on the side towards the Illinois
shore. I run the canoe into a deep dent in the
bank that I knowed about; I had to part the
willow branches to get in; and when I made
fast nobody could a seen the canoe from
the outside.

I went up and set down on a log at the head
of the island, and looked out on the big river
and the black driftwood and away over to
the town, three mile away, where there was
three or four lights twinkling. A monstrous
big lumber-raft was about a mile up stream,
coming along down, with a lantern in the
middle of it. I watched it come creeping
down, and when it was most abreast of
where I stood I heard a man say, "Stern
oars, there! heave her head to stab board!" I
heard that just as plain as if the man was by
my side.

There was a little gray in the sky now; so I
stepped into the woods, and laid down for a
nap before break fast.

CHAPTER VIII

THE sun was up so high when I waked that I
judged it was after eight o'clock. I laid there
in the grass and the cool shade thinking
about things, and feeling rested and ruther
comfortable and satisfied. I could see the
sun out at one or two holes, but mostly it was
big trees all about, and gloomy in there

-22-

by along comes another one, and this time I
won. I took out the plug and shook out the
little dab of quick silver, and set my teeth in.
It was "baker's bread" what the quality eat;
none of your low-down corn-pone.

I got a good place amongst the leaves, and
set there on a log, munching the bread and
watching the ferry boat, and very well
satisfied. And then something struck me. I
says, now I reckon the widow or the parson
or somebody prayed that this bread would
find me, and here it has gone and done it.
So there ain't no doubt but there is
something in that thing that is, there's
something in it when a body like the widow
or the parson prays, but it don't work for me,
and I reckon it don't work for only just the
right kind.

I lit a pipe and had a good long smoke, and
went on watching. The ferryboat was
floating with the current, and I allowed I'd
have a chance to see who was aboard
when she come along, because she would
come in close, where the bread did. When
she'd got pretty well along down towards
me, I put out my pipe and went to where I
fished out the bread, and laid down behind
a log on the bank in a little open place.
Where the log forked I could peep through.

By and by she come along, and she drifted
in so close that they could a run out a plank
and walked ashore. Most everybody was on
the boat. Pap, and Judge Thatcher, and
Bessie Thatcher, and Jo Harper, and Tom
Sawyer, and his old Aunt Polly, and Sid and
Mary, and plenty more. Everybody was
talking about the murder, but the captain
broke in and says:

"Look sharp, now; the current sets in the
closest here, and maybe he's washed
ashore and got tangled amongst the brush
at the water's edge. I hope so, anyway."

-23-

stars and drift logs and rafts that come
down, and then went to bed; there ain't no
better way to put in time when you are
lonesome; you can't stay so, you soon get
over it.

And so for three days and nights. No
difference just the same thing. But the next
day I went explor ing around down through
the island. I was boss of it; it all belonged to
me, so to say, and I wanted to know all
about it; but mainly I wanted to put in the
time. I found plenty strawberries, ripe and
prime; and green summer grapes, and
green razberries; and the green
blackberries was just beginning to show.
They would all come handy by and by, I
judged.

Well, I went fooling along in the deep woods
till I judged I warn't far from the foot of the
island. I had my gun along, but I hadn't shot
nothing; it was for protection; thought I
would kill some game nigh home. About this
time I mighty near stepped on a good-sized
snake, and it went sliding off through the
grass and flowers, and I after it, trying to get
a shot at it. I clipped along, and all of a
sudden I bounded right on to the ashes of a
camp fire that was still smoking.

My heart jumped up amongst my lungs. I
never waited for to look further, but
uncocked my gun and went sneaking back
on my tiptoes as fast as ever I could. Every
now and then I stopped a second amongst
the thick leaves and listened, but my breath
come so hard I couldn't hear nothing else. I
slunk along an other piece further, then
listened again; and so on, and so on. If I see
a stump, I took it for a man; if I trod on a stick
and broke it, it made me feel like a person
had cut one of my breaths in two and I only
got half, and the short half, too.

When I got to camp I warn't feeling very

-24-

island with me; I'll find it out or bust. Well, I
felt better right off.

So I took my paddle and slid out from shore
just a step or two, and then let the canoe
drop along down amongst the shadows.
The moon was shining, and out side of the
shadows it made it most as light as day. I
poked along well on to an hour, everything
still as rocks and sound asleep. Well, by this
time I was most down to the foot of the
island. A little ripply, cool breeze begun to
blow, and that was as good as saying the
night was about done. I give her a turn with
the paddle and brung her nose to shore;
then I got my gun and slipped out and into
the edge of the woods. I sat down there on a
log, and looked out through the leaves. I see
the moon go off watch, and the darkness
begin to blanket the river. But in a little while I
see a pale streak over the treetops, and
knowed the day was coming. So I took my
gun and slipped off towards where I had run
across that camp fire, stopping every
minute or two to listen. But I hadn't no luck
somehow; I couldn't seem to find the place.
But by and by, sure enough, I catched a
glimpse of fire away through the trees. I
went for it, cautious and slow. By and by I
was close enough to have a look, and there
laid a man on the ground. It most give me the
fantods. He had a blanket around his head,
and his head was nearly in the fire. I set
there behind a clump of bushes in about six
foot of him, and kept my eyes on him
steady. It was getting gray daylight now.
Pretty soon he gapped and stretched
himself and hove off the blanket, and it was
Miss Watson's Jim! I bet I was glad to see
him. I says:

"Hello, Jim!" and skipped out.

He bounced up and stared at me wild. Then
he drops down on his knees, and puts his
hands together and says:

-25-

"Since the night I got killed."

"No! W'y, what has you lived on? But you got
a gun. Oh, yes, you got a gun. Dat's good.
Now you kill sumfn en I'll make up de fire."

So we went over to where the canoe was,
and while he built a fire in a grassy open
place amongst the trees, I fetched meal and
bacon and coffee, and coffee-pot and
frying-pan, and sugar and tin cups, and the
nigger was set back considerable,
because he reckoned it was all done with
witchcraft. I catched a good big catfish, too,
and Jim cleaned him with his knife, and
fried him.

When breakfast was ready we lolled on the
grass and eat it smoking hot. Jim laid it in
with all his might, for he was most about
starved. Then when we had got pretty well
stuffed, we laid off and lazied. By and by
Jim says:

"But looky here, Huck, who wuz it dat 'uz
killed in dat shanty ef it warn't you?"

Then I told him the whole thing, and he said
it was smart. He said Tom Sawyer couldn't
get up no better plan than what I had. Then I
says:

"How do you come to be here, Jim, and
how'd you get here?"

He looked pretty uneasy, and didn't say
nothing for a minute. Then he says:

"Maybe I better not tell."

"Why, Jim?"

"Well, dey's reasons. But you wouldn' tell on
me ef I uz to tell you, would you, Huck?"

"Blamed if I would, Jim."

-26-

so by de talk I got to know all 'bout de killin'. I
'uz powerful sorry you's killed, Huck, but I
ain't no mo' now.

"I laid dah under de shavin's all day. I 'uz
hungry, but I warn't afeard; bekase I
knowed ole missus en de widder wuz goin'
to start to de camp meet'n' right arter
breakfas' en be gone all day, en dey knows
I goes off wid de cattle 'bout daylight, so
dey wouldn' 'spec to see me roun' de
place, en so dey wouldn' miss me tell arter
dark in de evenin'. De yuther servants
wouldn' miss me, kase dey'd shin out en
take holiday soon as de ole folks 'uz out'n
de way.

"Well, when it come dark I tuck out up de
river road, en went 'bout two mile er more to
whah dey warn't no houses. I'd made up my
mine 'bout what I's agwyne to do. You see,
ef I kep' on tryin' to git away afoot, de dogs
'ud track me; ef I stole a skift to cross over,
dey'd miss dat skift, you see, en dey'd
know 'bout whah I'd lan' on de yuther side,
en whah to pick up my track. So I says, a raff
is what I's arter; it doan' MAKE no track.

"I see a light a-comin' roun' de p'int
bymeby, so I wade' in en shove' a log
ahead o' me en swum more'n half way
acrost de river, en got in 'mongst de drift
wood, en kep' my head down low, en
kinder swum agin de current tell de raff
come along. Den I swum to de stern uv it en
tuck a-holt. It clouded up en 'uz pooty dark
for a little while. So I clumb up en laid down
on de planks. De men 'uz all 'way yonder in
de middle, whah de lantern wuz. De river
wuz a risin', en dey wuz a good current; so I
reck'n'd 'at by fo' in de mawnin' I'd be
twenty-five mile down de river, en den I'd
slip in jis b'fo' daylight en swim asho', en
take to de woods on de Illinois side.

"But I didn' have no luck. When we 'uz mos'

-27-

shook the table-cloth after sundown. And
he said if a man owned a beehive and that
man died, the bees must be told about it
before sun-up next morning, or else the
bees would all weaken down and quit work
and die. Jim said bees wouldn't sting idiots;
but I didn't believe that, be cause I had tried
them lots of times myself, and they wouldn't
sting me.

I had heard about some of these things
before, but not all of them. Jim knowed all
kinds of signs. He said he knowed most
everything. I said it looked to me like all the
signs was about bad luck, and so I asked
him if there warn't any good-luck signs. He
says:

"Mighty few an' DEY ain't no use to a body.
What you want to know when good luck's a-
comin' for? Want to keep it off?" And he
said: "Ef you's got hairy arms en a hairy
breas', it's a sign dat you's agwyne to be
rich. Well, dey's some use in a sign like dat,
'kase it's so fur ahead. You see, maybe
you's got to be po' a long time fust, en so
you might git discourage' en kill yo'sef 'f
you didn' know by de sign dat you gwyne to
be rich bymeby."

"Have you got hairy arms and a hairy breast,
Jim?"

"What's de use to ax dat question? Don't
you see I has?"

"Well, are you rich?"

"No, but I ben rich wunst, and gwyne to be
rich agin. Wunst I had foteen dollars, but I
tuck to specalat'n', en got busted out."

"What did you speculate in, Jim?"

"Well, fust I tackled stock."

-28-

him for short; he's one er dem
chuckleheads, you know. But he's lucky,
dey say, en I see I warn't lucky. De dream
say let Balum inves' de ten cents en he'd
make a raise for me. Well, Balum he tuck de
money, en when he wuz in church he hear
de preacher say dat whoever give to de po'
len' to de Lord, en boun' to git his money
back a hund'd times. So Balum he tuck en
give de ten cents to de po', en laid low to
see what wuz gwyne to come of it."

"Well, what did come of it, Jim?"

"Nuffn never come of it. I couldn' manage to
k'leck dat money no way; en Balum he
couldn'. I ain' gwyne to len' no mo' money
'dout I see de security. Boun' to git yo'
money back a hund'd times, de preacher
says! Ef I could git de ten CENTS back, I'd
call it squah, en be glad er de chanst."

"Well, it's all right anyway, Jim, long as
you're going to be rich again some time or
other."

"Yes; en I's rich now, come to look at it. I
owns mysef, en I's wuth eight hund'd
dollars. I wisht I had de money, I wouldn'
want no mo'."

CHAPTER IX

I WANTED to go and look at a place right
about the middle of the island that I'd found
when I was exploring; so we started and
soon got to it, because the island was only
three miles long and a quarter of a mile
wide.

This place was a tolerable long, steep hill or
ridge about forty foot high. We had a rough
time getting to the top, the sides was so
steep and the bushes so thick. We tramped
and clumb around all over it, and by and by
found a good big cavern in the rock, most

-29-

would follow along and set the branches to
tossing their arms as if they was just wild;
and next, when it was just about the bluest
and blackest FST! it was as bright as glory,
and you'd have a little glimpse of tree tops
a-plunging about away off yonder in the
storm, hundreds of yards further than you
could see before; dark as sin again in a
second, and now you'd hear the thunder let
go with an awful crash, and then go rum
bling, grumbling, tumbling, down the sky
towards the under side of the world, like
rolling empty barrels down stairs where it's
long stairs and they bounce a good deal,
you know.

"Jim, this is nice," I says. "I wouldn't want to
be nowhere else but here. Pass me along
another hunk of fish and some hot corn-
bread."

"Well, you wouldn't a ben here 'f it hadn't a
ben for Jim. You'd a ben down dah in de
woods widout any dinner, en gittn' mos'
drownded, too; dat you would, honey.
Chickens knows when it's gwyne to rain, en
so do de birds, chile."

The river went on raising and raising for ten
or twelve days, till at last it was over the
banks. The water was three or four foot
deep on the island in the low places and on
the Illinois bottom. On that side it was a
good many miles wide, but on the Missouri
side it was the same old distance across a
half a mile because the Missouri shore was
just a wall of high bluffs.

Daytimes we paddled all over the island in
the canoe, It was mighty cool and shady in
the deep woods, even if the sun was
blazing outside. We went winding in and out
amongst the trees, and sometimes the
vines hung so thick we had to back away
and go some other way. Well, on every old
broken-down tree you could see rabbits

-30-

says:

"It's a dead man. Yes, indeedy; naked, too.
He's ben shot in de back. I reck'n he's ben
dead two er three days. Come in, Huck, but
doan' look at his face it's too gashly."

I didn't look at him at all. Jim throwed some
old rags over him, but he needn't done it; I
didn't want to see him. There was heaps of
old greasy cards scattered around over the
floor, and old whisky bottles, and a couple
of masks made out of black cloth; and all
over the walls was the ignorantest kind of
words and pictures made with charcoal.
There was two old dirty calico dresses, and
a sun-bonnet, and some women's
underclothes hanging against the wall, and
some men's clothing, too. We put the lot into
the canoe it might come good. There was a
boy's old speckled straw hat on the floor; I
took that, too. And there was a bottle that
had had milk in it, and it had a rag stopper
for a baby to suck. We would a took the
bottle, but it was broke. There was a seedy
old chest, and an old hair trunk with the
hinges broke. They stood open, but there
warn't nothing left in them that was any
account. The way things was scattered
about we reckoned the people left in a
hurry, and warn't fixed so as to carry off
most of their stuff.

We got an old tin lantern, and a butcher-
knife with out any handle, and a bran-new
Barlow knife worth two bits in any store, and
a lot of tallow candles, and a tin candlestick,
and a gourd, and a tin cup, and a ratty old
bedquilt off the bed, and a reticule with
needles and pins and beeswax and buttons
and thread and all such truck in it, and a
hatchet and some nails, and a fishline as
thick as my little finger with some mon
strous hooks on it, and a roll of buckskin,
and a leather dog-collar, and a horseshoe,
and some vials of medicine that didn't have

-31-

"Now you think it's bad luck; but what did
you say when I fetched in the snake-skin
that I found on the top of the ridge day
before yesterday? You said it was the worst
bad luck in the world to touch a snake-skin
with my hands. Well, here's your bad luck!
We've raked in all this truck and eight dollars
besides. I wish we could have some bad
luck like this every day, Jim."

"Never you mind, honey, never you mind.
Don't you git too peart. It's a-comin'. Mind I
tell you, it's a-comin'."

It did come, too. It was a Tuesday that we
had that talk. Well, after dinner Friday we
was laying around in the grass at the upper
end of the ridge, and got out of tobacco. I
went to the cavern to get some, and found a
rattlesnake in there. I killed him, and curled
him up on the foot of Jim's blanket, ever so
natural, thinking there'd be some fun when
Jim found him there. Well, by night I forgot all
about the snake, and when Jim flung
himself down on the blanket while I struck a
light the snake's mate was there, and bit
him.

He jumped up yelling, and the first thing the
light showed was the varmint curled up and
ready for another spring. I laid him out in a
second with a stick, and Jim grabbed pap's
whisky-jug and begun to pour it down.

He was barefooted, and the snake bit him
right on the heel. That all comes of my being
such a fool as to not remember that
wherever you leave a dead snake its mate
always comes there and curls around it. Jim
told me to chop off the snake's head and
throw it away, and then skin the body and
roast a piece of it. I done it, and he eat it and
said it would help cure him. He made me
take off the rattles and tie them around his
wrist, too. He said that that would help. Then
I slid out quiet and throwed the snakes clear

-32-

man, being six foot two inches long, and
weighed over two hundred pounds. We
couldn't handle him, of course; he would a
flung us into Illinois. We just set there and
watched him rip and tear around till he
drownded. We found a brass button in his
stomach and a round ball, and lots of
rubbage. We split the ball open with the
hatchet, and there was a spool in it. Jim
said he'd had it there a long time, to coat it
over so and make a ball of it. It was as big a
fish as was ever catched in the Mississippi,
I reckon. Jim said he hadn't ever seen a
bigger one. He would a been worth a good
deal over at the village. They peddle out
such a fish as that by the pound in the
market house there; everybody buys some
of him; his meat's as white as snow and
makes a good fry.

Next morning I said it was getting slow and
dull, and I wanted to get a stirring up some
way. I said I reckoned I would slip over the
river and find out what was going on. Jim
liked that notion; but he said I must go in the
dark and look sharp. Then he studied it over
and said, couldn't I put on some of them old
things and dress up like a girl? That was a
good notion, too. So we shortened up one
of the calico gowns, and I turned up my
trouser-legs to my knees and got into it. Jim
hitched it behind with the hooks, and it was
a fair fit. I put on the sun-bonnet and tied it
under my chin, and then for a body to look in
and see my face was like looking down a
joint of stove pipe. Jim said nobody would
know me, even in the daytime, hardly. I
practiced around all day to get the hang of
the things, and by and by I could do pretty
well in them, only Jim said I didn't walk like a
girl; and he said I must quit pulling up my
gown to get at my britches-pocket. I took
notice, and done better.

I started up the Illinois shore in the canoe
just after dark.

-33-

money and everything, and I come to tell my
uncle Abner Moore. He lives at the upper
end of the town, she says. I hain't ever been
here before. Do you know him?"

"No; but I don't know everybody yet. I
haven't lived here quite two weeks. It's a
considerable ways to the upper end of the
town. You better stay here all night. Take off
your bonnet."

"No," I says; "I'll rest a while, I reckon, and
go on. I ain't afeared of the dark."

She said she wouldn't let me go by myself,
but her husband would be in by and by,
maybe in a hour and a half, and she'd send
him along with me. Then she got to talking
about her husband, and about her rela tions
up the river, and her relations down the
river, and about how much better off they
used to was, and how they didn't know but
they'd made a mistake coming to our town,
instead of letting well alone and so on and
so on, till I was afeard I had made a mistake
coming to her to find out what was going on
in the town; but by and by she dropped on to
pap and the murder, and then I was pretty
willing to let her clatter right along. She told
about me and Tom Sawyer finding the six
thousand dollars (only she got it ten) and all
about pap and what a hard lot he was, and
what a hard lot I was, and at last she got
down to where I was murdered. I says:

"Who done it? We've heard considerable
about these goings on down in Hookerville,
but we don't know who 'twas that killed
Huck Finn."

"Well, I reckon there's a right smart chance
of people HERE that'd like to know who
killed him. Some think old Finn done it
himself."

"No is that so?"

-34-

"Yes, I reckon so, 'm. I don't see nothing in
the way of it. Has everybody guit thinking the
nigger done it?"

"Oh, no, not everybody. A good many thinks
he done it. But they'll get the nigger pretty
soon now, and maybe they can scare it out
of him."

"Why, are they after him yet?"

"Well, you're innocent, ain't you! Does three
hundred dollars lay around every day for
people to pick up? Some folks think the
nigger ain't far from here. I'm one of them
but I hain't talked it around. A few days ago I
was talking with an old couple that lives next
door in the log shanty, and they happened to
say hardly anybody ever goes to that island
over yonder that they call Jackson's Island.
Don't any body live there? says I. No,
nobody, says they. I didn't say any more, but
I done some thinking. I was pretty near
certain I'd seen smoke over there, about the
head of the island, a day or two before that,
so I says to myself, like as not that nigger's
hiding over there; anyway, says I, it's worth
the trouble to give the place a hunt. I hain't
seen any smoke sence, so I reckon maybe
he's gone, if it was him; but husband's
going over to see him and another man. He
was gone up the river; but he got back to-
day, and I told him as soon as he got here
two hours ago."

I had got so uneasy I couldn't set still. I had to
do something with my hands; so I took up a
needle off of the table and went to threading
it. My hands shook, and I was making a bad
job of it. When the woman stopped talking I
looked up, and she was looking at me pretty
curious and smiling a little. I put down the
needle and thread, and let on to be
interested and I was, too and says:

"Three hundred dollars is a power of money.

-35-

I was feeling better then, but I wished I was
out of there, anyway. I couldn't look up yet.

Well, the woman fell to talking about how
hard times was, and how poor they had to
live, and how the rats was as free as if they
owned the place, and so forth and so on,
and then I got easy again. She was right
about the rats. You'd see one stick his nose
out of a hole in the corner every little while.
She said she had to have things handy to
throw at them when she was alone, or they
wouldn't give her no peace. She showed
me a bar of lead twisted up into a knot, and
said she was a good shot with it generly, but
she'd wrenched her arm a day or two ago,
and didn't know whether she could throw
true now. But she watched for a chance,
and directly banged away at a rat; but she
missed him wide, and said "Ouch!" it hurt
her arm so. Then she told me to try for the
next one. I wanted to be getting away before
the old man got back, but of course I didn't
let on. I got the thing, and the first rat that
showed his nose I let drive, and if he'd a
stayed where he was he'd a been a
tolerable sick rat. She said that was first-
rate, and she reckoned I would hive the next
one. She went and got the lump of lead and
fetched it back, and brought along a hank of
yarn which she wanted me to help her with. I
held up my two hands and she put the hank
over them, and went on talking about her
and her husband's matters. But she broke
off to say:

"Keep your eye on the rats. You better have
the lead in your lap, handy."

So she dropped the lump into my lap just at
that moment, and I clapped my legs
together on it and she went on talking. But
only about a minute. Then she took off the
hank and looked me straight in the face,
and very pleasant, and says:

-36-

St. Petersburg. Goshen's ten mile further up
the river. Who told you this was Goshen?"

"Why, a man I met at daybreak this morning,
just as I was going to turn into the woods for
my regular sleep. He told me when the
roads forked I must take the right hand, and
five mile would fetch me to Goshen."

"He was drunk, I reckon. He told you just ex
actly wrong."

"Well,,he did act like he was drunk, but it
ain't no matter now. I got to be moving
along. I'll fetch Goshen before daylight."

"Hold on a minute. I'll put you up a snack to
eat. You might want it."

So she put me up a snack, and says:

"Say, when a cow's laying down, which end
of her gets up first? Answer up prompt now
don't stop to study over it. Which end gets up
first?"

"The hind end, mum."

"Well, then, a horse?"

"The for'rard end, mum."

"Which side of a tree does the moss grow
on?"

"North side."

"If fifteen cows is browsing on a hillside,
how many of them eats with their heads
pointed the same direction?"

"The whole fifteen, mum."

"Well, I reckon you HAVE lived in the country.
I thought maybe you was trying to hocus me
again. What's your real name, now?"

-37-

want no blinders on then. When I was about
the middle I heard the clock begin to strike,
so I stops and listens; the sound come faint
over the water but clear eleven. When I
struck the head of the island I never waited
to blow, though I was most winded, but I
shoved right into the timber where my old
camp used to be, and started a good fire
there on a high and dry spot.

Then I jumped in the canoe and dug out for
our place, a mile and a half below, as hard
as I could go. I landed, and slopped through
the timber and up the ridge and into the
cavern. There Jim laid, sound asleep on the
ground. I roused him out and says:

"Git up and hump yourself, Jim! There ain't
a minute to lose. They're after us!"

Jim never asked no questions, he never
said a word; but the way he worked for the
next half an hour showed about how he was
scared. By that time every thing we had in
the world was on our raft, and she was
ready to be shoved out from the willow cove
where she was hid. We put out the camp fire
at the cavern the first thing, and didn't show
a candle outside after that.

I took the canoe out from the shore a little
piece, and took a look; but if there was a
boat around I couldn't see it, for stars and
shadows ain't good to see by. Then we got
out the raft and slipped along down in the
shade, past the foot of the island dead still
never saying a word.

CHAPTER XII

IT must a been close on to one o'clock when
we got below the island at last, and the raft
did seem to go mighty slow. If a boat was to
come along we was going to take to the
canoe and break for the Illinois shore; and it
was well a boat didn't come, for we hadn't

-38-

long as they didn't.

When it was beginning to come on dark we
poked our heads out of the cottonwood
thicket, and looked up and down and
across; nothing in sight; so Jim took up
some of the top planks of the raft and built a
snug wigwam to get under in blazing
weather and rainy, and to keep the things
dry. Jim made a floor for the wigwam, and
raised it a foot or more above the level of
the raft, so now the blankets and all the
traps was out of reach of steamboat waves.
Right in the middle of the wigwam we made
a layer of dirt about five or six inches deep
with a frame around it for to hold it to its
place; this was to build a fire on in sloppy
weather or chilly; the wigwam would keep it
from being seen. We made an extra
steering-oar, too, because one of the
others might get broke on a snag or
something. We fixed up a short forked stick
to hang the old lantern on, because we must
always light the lantern whenever we see a
steamboat coming down-stream, to keep
from getting run over; but we wouldn't have
to light it for up-stream boats unless we see
we was in what they call a "crossing"; for the
river was pretty high yet, very low banks
being still a little under water; so up-bound
boats didn't always run the channel, but
hunted easy water.

This second night we run between seven
and eight hours, with a current that was
making over four mile an hour. We catched
fish and talked, and we took a swim now
and then to keep off sleepiness. It was kind
of solemn, drifting down the big, still river,
lay ing on our backs looking up at the stars,
and we didn't ever feel like talking loud, and
it warn't often that we laughed only a little
kind of a low chuckle. We had mighty good
weather as a general thing, and noth ing
ever happened to us at all that night, nor the
next, nor the next.

-39-

concluded to drop crabapples and
p'simmons. We warn't feeling just right
before that, but it was all comfortable now. I
was glad the way it come out, too, because
crabapples ain't ever good, and the
p'simmons wouldn't be ripe for two or three
months yet.

We shot a water-fowl now and then that got
up too early in the morning or didn't go to
bed early enough in the evening. Take it all
round, we lived pretty high.

The fifth night below St. Louis we had a big
storm after midnight, with a power of
thunder and lightning, and the rain poured
down in a solid sheet. We stayed in the
wigwam and let the raft take care of itself.
When the lightning glared out we could see a
big straight river ahead, and high, rocky
bluffs on both sides. By and by says I, "Hel-
LO, Jim, looky yon der!" It was a steamboat
that had killed herself on a rock. We was
drifting straight down for her. The lightning
showed her very distinct. She was leaning
over, with part of her upper deck above
water, and you could see every little
chimbly-guy clean and clear, and a chair by
the big bell, with an old slouch hat hanging
on the back of it, when the flashes come.

Well, it being away in the night and stormy,
and all so mysterious-like, I felt just the way
any other boy would a felt when I see that
wreck laying there so mournful and
lonesome in the middle of the river. I wanted
to get aboard of her and slink around a little,
and see what there was there. So I says:

"Le's land on her, Jim."

But Jim was dead against it at first. He
says:

"I doan' want to go fool'n 'long er no wrack.
We's doin' blame' well, en we better let

-40-

door, which was open, and by Jimminy,
away down through the texas-hall we see a
light! and all in the same second we seem to
hear low voices in yonder!

Jim whispered and said he was feeling
powerful sick, and told me to come along. I
says, all right, and was going to start for the
raft; but just then I heard a voice wail out
and say:

"Oh, please don't, boys; I swear I won't ever
tell!"

Another voice said, pretty loud:

"It's a lie, Jim Turner. You've acted this way
before. You always want more'n your share
of the truck, and you've always got it, too,
because you've swore 't if you didn't you'd
tell. But this time you've said it jest one time
too many. You're the meanest,
treacherousest hound in this country."

By this time Jim was gone for the raft. I was
just a-biling with curiosity; and I says to
myself, Tom Sawyer wouldn't back out
now, and so I won't either; I'm a-going to
see what's going on here. So I dropped on
my hands and knees in the little passage,
and crept aft in the dark till there warn't but
one stateroom betwixt me and the cross-
hall of the texas. Then in there I see a man
stretched on the floor and tied hand and
foot, and two men standing over him, and
one of them had a dim lantern in his hand,
and the other one had a pistol. This one kept
pointing the pistol at the man's head on the
floor, and saying:

"I'd LIKE to! And I orter, too a mean skunk!"

The man on the floor would shrivel up and
say, "Oh, please don't, Bill; I hain't ever
goin' to tell."

-41-

but I could tell where they was by the whisky
they'd been having. I was glad I didn't drink
whisky; but it wouldn't made much
difference anyway, because most of the
time they couldn't a treed me because I
didn't breathe. I was too scared. And,
besides, a body COULDN'T breathe and
hear such talk. They talked low and earnest.
Bill wanted to kill Turner. He says:

"He's said he'll tell, and he will. If we was to
give both our shares to him NOW it wouldn't
make no difference after the row and the
way we've served him. Shore's you're
born, he'll turn State's evidence; now you
hear ME. I'm for putting him out of his
troubles."

"So'm I," says Packard, very quiet.

"Blame it, I'd sorter begun to think you
wasnÕt. Well, then, that's all right. Le's go
and do it."

"Hold on a minute; I hain't had my say yit.
You listen to me. Shooting's good, but
there's quieter ways if the thing's GOT to be
done. But what I say is this: it ain't good
sense to go court'n around after a halter if
you can git at what you're up to in some way
that's jist as good and at the same time
don't bring you into no resks. Ain't that so?"

"You bet it is. But how you goin' to manage it
this time?"

"Well, my idea is this: we'll rustle around and
gather up whatever pickins we've
overlooked in the state rooms, and shove
for shore and hide the truck. Then we'll wait.
Now I say it ain't a-goin' to be more'n two
hours befo' this wrack breaks up and
washes off down the river. See? He'll be
drownded, and won't have nobody to blame
for it but his own self. I reckon that's a
considerble sight better 'n killin' of him. I'm

-42-

he could go any further so scared he hadn't
hardly any strength left, he said. But I said,
come on, if we get left on this wreck we are
in a fix, sure. So on we prowled again. We
struck for the stern of the texas, and found it,
and then scrabbled along forwards on the
skylight, hanging on from shutter to shutter,
for the edge of the skylight was in the water.
When we got pretty close to the cross-hall
door there was the skiff, sure enough! I
could just barely see her. I felt ever so
thankful. In another second I would a been
aboard of her, but just then the door
opened. One of the men stuck his head out
only about a couple of foot from me, and I
thought I was gone; but he jerked it in again,
and says:

"Heave that blame lantern out o' sight, Bill!"

He flung a bag of something into the boat,
and then got in himself and set down. It was
Packard. Then Bill HE come out and got in.
Packard says, in a low voice:

"All ready shove off!"

I couldn't hardly hang on to the shutters, I
was so weak. But Bill says:

"Hold on 'd you go through him?"

"No. Didn't you?"

"No. So he's got his share o' the cash yet."

"Well, then, come along; no use to take truck
and leave money."

"Say, won't he suspicion what we're up to?"

"Maybe he won't. But we got to have it
anyway. Come along."

So they got out and went in.

-43-

for lights and watching for our raft. After a
long time the rain let up, but the clouds
stayed, and the lightning kept whimpering,
and by and by a flash showed us a black
thing ahead, floating, and we made for it.

It was the raft, and mighty glad was we to
get aboard of it again. We seen a light now
away down to the right, on shore. So I said I
would go for it. The skiff was half full of
plunder which that gang had stole there on
the wreck. We hustled it on to the raft in a
pile, and I told Jim to float along down, and
show a light when he judged he had gone
about two mile, and keep it burning till I
come; then I manned my oars and shoved
for the light. As I got down towards it three or
four more showed up on a hillside. It was a
village. I closed in above the shore light, and
laid on my oars and floated. As I went by I
see it was a lantern hanging on the jackstaff
of a double-hull ferryboat. I skimmed
around for the watchman, a wondering
whereabouts he slept; and by and by I found
him roosting on the bitts forward, with his
head down between his knees. I gave his
shoulder two or three little shoves, and
begun to cry.

He stirred up in a kind of a startlish way; but
when he see it was only me he took a good
gap and stretch, and then he says:

"Hello, what's up? Don't cry, bub. What's the
trouble?"

I says:

"Pap, and mam, and sis, and --"

Then I broke down. He says:

"Oh, dang it now, DON'T take on so; we all
has to have our troubles, and this 'n 'll come
out all right. What's the matter with 'em?"

-44-

"I bet they didn't! Why, great goodness,
there ain't no chance for 'em if they don't git
off mighty quick! Why, how in the nation did
they ever git into such a scrape?"

"Easy enough. Miss Hooker was a-visiting
up there to the town --"

"Yes, Booth's Landing go on."

"She was a-visiting there at Booth's
Landing, and just in the edge of the evening
she started over with her nigger woman in
the horse-ferry to stay all night at her
friend's house, Miss What-you-may-call-
herÑI disremember her name and they lost
their steering oar, and swung around and
went a-floating down, stern first, about two
mile, and saddle-baggsed on the wreck,
and the ferryman and the nigger woman and
the horses was all lost, but Miss Hooker she
made a grab and got aboard the wreck.
Well, about an hour after dark we come
along down in our trading-scow, and it was
so dark we didn't notice the wreck till we
was right on it; and so WE saddle-baggsed;
but all of us was saved but Bill Whipple and
oh, he WAS the best cretur ! I most wish 't it
had been me, I do."

"My George! It's the beatenest thing I ever
struck. And THEN what did you all do?"

"Well, we hollered and took on, but it's so
wide there we couldn't make nobody hear.
So pap said somebody got to get ashore
and get help somehow. I was the only one
that could swim, so I made a dash for it, and
Miss Hooker she said if I didn't strike help
sooner, come here and hunt up her uncle,
and he'd fix the thing. I made the land about
a mile below, and been fooling along ever
since, trying to get people to do something,
but they said, 'What, in such a night and such
a current? There ain't no sense in it; go for
the steam ferry.' Now if you'll go and --"

-45-

much, for I reckoned if they could stand it I
could.

Then here comes the ferryboat; so I shoved
for the middle of the river on a long down-
stream slant; and when I judged I was out of
eye-reach I laid on my oars, and looked
back and see her go and smell around the
wreck for Miss Hooker's remainders,
because the captain would know her uncle
Hornback would want them; and then pretty
soon the ferryboat give it up and went for the
shore, and I laid into my work and went a-
booming down the river.

It did seem a powerful long time before
Jim's light showed up; and when it did show
it looked like it was a thousand mile off. By
the time I got there the sky was beginning to
get a little gray in the east; so we struck for
an island, and hid the raft, and sunk the
skiff, and turned in and slept like dead
people.

CHAPTER XIV

BY and by, when we got up, we turned over
the truck the gang had stole off of the wreck,
and found boots, and blankets, and clothes,
and all sorts of other things, and a lot of
books, and a spyglass, and three boxes of
seegars. We hadn't ever been this rich
before in neither of our lives. The seegars
was prime. We laid off all the afternoon in
the woods talking, and me reading the
books, and having a general good time. I
told Jim all about what happened inside the
wreck and at the ferryboat, and I said these
kinds of things was adventures; but he said
he didn't want no more adventures. He said
that when I went in the texas and he crawled
back to get on the raft and found her gone
he nearly died, because he judged it was all
up with HIM anyway it could be fixed; for if
he didn't get saved he would get drownded;
and if he did get saved, whoever saved him

-46-

everybody don't go just so he whacks their
heads off. But mostly they hang round the
harem."

"Roun' de which?"

"Harem."

"What's de harem?"

"The place where he keeps his wives. Don't
you know about the harem? Solomon had
one; he had about a million wives."

"Why, yes, dat's so; I I'd done forgot it. A
harem's a bo'd'n-house, I reck'n. Mos'
likely dey has rackety times in de nussery.
En I reck'n de wives quarrels considable;
en dat 'crease de racket. Yit dey say
Sollermun de wises' man dat ever live'. I
doan' take no stock in dat. Bekase why:
would a wise man want to live in de mids' er
sich a blim-blammin' all de time? No 'deed
he wouldn't. A wise man 'ud take en buil' a
biler-factry; en den he could shet DOWN de
biler-factry when he want to res'."

"Well, but he WAS the wisest man, anyway;
be cause the widow she told me so, her
own self."

"I doan k'yer what de widder say, he
WARN'T no wise man nuther. He had some
er de dad-fetchedes' ways I ever see.
Does you know 'bout dat chile dat he 'uz
gwyne to chop in two?"

"Yes, the widow told me all about it."

"WELL, den! Warn' dat de beatenes' notion
in de worl'? You jes' take en look at it a
minute. Dah's de stump, dah dat's one er
de women; heah's you dat's de yuther one;
I's Sollermun; en dish yer dollar bill's de
chile. Bofe un you claims it. What does I do?
Does I shin aroun' mongs' de neighbors en

-47-

Solomon of any nigger I ever see. So I went
to talking about other kings, and let
Solomon slide. I told about Louis Sixteenth
that got his head cut off in France long time
ago; and about his little boy the dolphin, that
would a been a king, but they took and shut
him up in jail, and some say he died there.

"Po' little chap."

"But some says he got out and got away,
and come to America."

"Dat's good! But he'll be pooty lonesome
dey ain' no kings here, is dey, Huck?"

"No."

"Den he cain't git no situation. What he
gwyne to do?"

"Well, I don't know. Some of them gets on
the police, and some of them learns people
how to talk French."

"Why, Huck, doan' de French people talk de
same way we does?"

"NO, Jim; you couldn't understand a word
they said not a single word."

"Well, now, I be ding-busted! How do dat
come?"

"I don't know; but it's so. I got some of their
jabber out of a book. S'pose a man was to
come to you and say Polly-voo-franzy what
would you think?"

"I wouldn' think nuff'n; I'd take en bust him
over de head dat is, if he warn't white. I
wouldn't 'low no nigger to call me dat."

"Shucks, it ain't calling you anything. It's only
saying, do you know how to talk French?"

-48-

"Well, den, she ain't got no business to talk
like either one er the yuther of 'em. Is a
Frenchman a man?"

"Yes."

"WELL, den! Dad blame it, why doan' he
TALK like a man? You answer me DAT!"

I see it warn't no use wasting words you
can't learn a nigger to argue. So I quit.

CHAPTER XV

WE judged that three nights more would
fetch us to Cairo, at the bottom of Illinois,
where the Ohio River comes in, and that
was what we was after. We would sell the
raft and get on a steamboat and go way up
the Ohio amongst the free States, and then
be out of trouble.

Well, the second night a fog begun to come
on, and we made for a towhead to tie to, for
it wouldn't do to try to run in a fog; but when I
paddled ahead in the canoe, with the line to
make fast, there warn't any thing but little
saplings to tie to. I passed the line around
one of them right on the edge of the cut
bank, but there was a stiff current, and the
raft come boom ing down so lively she tore
it out by the roots and away she went. I see
the fog closing down, and it made me so
sick and scared I couldn't budge for most a
half a minute it seemed to me and then there
warn't no raft in sight; you couldn't see
twenty yards. I jumped into the canoe and
run back to the stern, and grabbed the
paddle and set her back a stroke. But she
didn't come. I was in such a hurry I hadn't
untied her. I got up and tried to untie her, but I
was so excited my hands shook so I
couldn't hardly do anything with them.

As soon as I got started I took out after the
raft, hot and heavy, right down the towhead.

-49-

and the current throwed me off to the left
and shot by, amongst a lot of snags that
fairly roared, the currrent was tearing by
them so swift.

In another second or two it was solid white
and still again. I set perfectly still then,
listening to my heart thump, and I reckon I
didn't draw a breath while it thumped a
hundred.

I just give up then. I knowed what the matter
was. That cut bank was an island, and Jim
had gone down t'other side of it. It warn't no
towhead that you could float by in ten
minutes. It had the big timber of a regular
island; it might be five or six miles long and
more than half a mile wide.

I kept quiet, with my ears cocked, about
fifteen minutes, I reckon. I was floating
along, of course, four or five miles an hour;
but you don't ever think of that. No, you
FEEL like you are laying dead still on the
water; and if a little glimpse of a snag slips
by you don't think to yourself how fast
YOU'RE going, but you catch your breath
and think, my! how that snag's tearing
along. If you think it ain't dismal and lone
some out in a fog that way by yourself in the
night, you try it once you'll see.

Next, for about a half an hour, I whoops now
and then; at last I hears the answer a long
ways off, and tries to follow it, but I couldn't
do it, and directly I judged I'd got into a nest
of towheads, for I had little dim glimpses of
them on both sides of me sometimes just a
narrow channel between, and some that I
couldn't see I knowed was there because
I'd hear the wash of the current against the
old dead brush and trash that hung over the
banks. Well, I warn't long loosing the
whoops down amongst the towheads; and I
only tried to chase them a little while,
anyway, be cause it was worse than

-50-

oar. The other oar was smashed off, and
the raft was littered up with leaves and
branches and dirt. So she'd had a rough
time.

I made fast and laid down under Jim's nose
on the raft, and began to gap, and stretch
my fists out against Jim, and says:

"Hello, Jim, have I been asleep? Why didn't
you stir me up?"

"Goodness gracious, is dat you, Huck? En
you ain' dead you ain' drownded you's
back agin? It's too good for true, honey, it's
too good for true. Lemme look at you chile,
lemme feel o' you. No, you ain' dead! you's
back agin, 'live en soun', jis de same ole
Huck de same ole Huck, thanks to good
ness!"

"What's the matter with you, Jim? You been
a drinking?"

"Drinkin'? Has I ben a-drinkin'? Has I had a
chance to be a-drinkin'?"

"Well, then, what makes you talk so wild?"

"How does I talk wild?"

"HOW? Why, hain't you been talking about
my coming back, and all that stuff, as if I'd
been gone away?"

"Huck Huck Finn, you look me in de eye;
look me in de eye. HAIN'T you ben gone
away?"

"Gone away? Why, what in the nation do you
mean? I hain't been gone anywheres.
Where would I go to?"

"Well, looky here, boss, dey's sumf'n
wrong, dey is. Is I ME, or who IS I? Is I heah,
or whah IS I? Now dat's what I wants to

-51-

there ain't nothing in it. I know, because I've
been here all the time."

Jim didn't say nothing for about five
minutes, but set there studying over it. Then
he says:

"Well, den, I reck'n I did dream it, Huck; but
dog my cats ef it ain't de powerfullest
dream I ever see. En I hain't ever had no
dream b'fo' dat's tired me like dis one."

"Oh, well, that's all right, because a dream
does tire a body like everything sometimes.
But this one was a staving dream; tell me all
about it, Jim."

So Jim went to work and told me the whole
thing right through, just as it happened, only
he painted it up considerable. Then he said
he must start in and "'terpret" it, because it
was sent for a warning. He said the first
towhead stood for a man that would try to do
us some good, but the current was another
man that would get us away from him. The
whoops was warnings that would come to
us every now and then, and if we didn't try
hard to make out to understand them they'd
just take us into bad luck, 'stead of keep ing
us out of it. The lot of towheads was
troubles we was going to get into with
quarrelsome people and all kinds of mean
folks, but if we minded our business and
didn't talk back and aggravate them, we
would pull through and get out of the fog and
into the big clear river, which was the free
States, and wouldn't have no more trouble.

It had clouded up pretty dark just after I got
on to the raft, but it was clearing up again
now.

"Oh, well, that's all interpreted well enough
as far as it goes, Jim," I says; "but what
does THESE things stand for?"

-52-

raft that was as long going by as a
procession. She had four long sweeps at
each end, so we judged she carried as
many as thirty men, likely. She had five big
wigwams aboard, wide apart, and an open
camp fire in the mid dle, and a tall flag-pole
at each end. There was a power of style
about her. It AMOUNTED to something
being a raftsman on such a craft as that.

We went drifting down into a big bend, and
the night clouded up and got hot. The river
was very wide, and was walled with solid
timber on both sides; you couldn't see a
break in it hardly ever, or a light. We talked
about Cairo, and wondered whether we
would know it when we got to it. I said likely
we wouldn't, because I had heard say there
warn't but about a dozen houses there, and
if they didn't happen to have them lit up, how
was we going to know we was passing a
town? Jim said if the two big rivers joined
together there, that would show. But I said
maybe we might think we was passing the
foot of an island and coming into the same
old river again. That disturbed Jim and me
too. So the question was, what to do? I
said, paddle ashore the first time a light
showed, and tell them pap was behind,
coming along with a trading-scow, and was
a green hand at the business, and wanted
to know how far it was to Cairo. Jim thought
it was a good idea, so we took a smoke on
it and waited.

There warn't nothing to do now but to look
out sharp for the town, and not pass it
without seeing it. He said he'd be mighty
sure to see it, because he'd be a free man
the minute he seen it, but if he missed it
he'd be in a slave country again and no
more show for freedom. Every little while he
jumps up and says:

"Dah she is?"

-53-

first thing he would do when he got to a free
State he would go to saving up money and
never spend a single cent, and when he got
enough he would buy his wife, which was
owned on a farm close to where Miss
Watson lived; and then they would both work
to buy the two chil dren, and if their master
wouldn't sell them, they'd get an Ab'litionist
to go and steal them.

It most froze me to hear such talk. He
wouldn't ever dared to talk such talk in his
life before. Just see what a difference it
made in him the minute he judged he was
about free. It was according to the old
saying, "Give a nigger an inch and he'll take
an ell." Thinks I, this is what comes of my not
thinking. Here was this nigger, which I had
as good as helped to run away, coming
right out flat-footed and saying he would
steal his children children that belonged to a
man I didn't even know; a man that hadn't
ever done me no harm.

I was sorry to hear Jim say that, it was such
a lowering of him. My conscience got to
stirring me up hotter than ever, until at last I
says to it, "Let up on me it ain't too late yet I'll
paddle ashore at the first light and tell." I felt
easy and happy and light as a feather right
off. All my troubles was gone. I went to
looking out sharp for a light, and sort of sing
ing to myself. By and by one showed. Jim
sings out:

"We's safe, Huck, we's safe! Jump up and
crack yo' heels! Dat's de good ole Cairo at
las', I jis knows it!"

I says:

"I'll take the canoe and go and see, Jim. It
mightn't be, you know."

He jumped and got the canoe ready, and
put his old coat in the bottom for me to set

-54-

two to brace up and out with it, but I warn't
man enough hadn't the spunk of a rabbit. I
see I was weakening; so I just give up
trying, and up and says:

"He's white."

"I reckon we'll go and see for ourselves."

"I wish you would," says I, "because it's pap
that's there, and maybe you'd help me tow
the raft ashore where the light is. He's sick
and so is mam and Mary Ann."

"Oh, the devil! we're in a hurry, boy. But I
s'pose we've got to. Come, buckle to your
paddle, and let's get along."

I buckled to my paddle and they laid to their
oars. When we had made a stroke or two, I
says:

"Pap'll be mighty much obleeged to you, I
can tell you. Everybody goes away when I
want them to help me tow the raft ashore,
and I can't do it by myself."

"Well, that's infernal mean. Odd, too. Say,
boy, what's the matter with your father?"

"It's the a the well, it ain't anything much."

They stopped pulling. It warn't but a mighty
little ways to the raft now. One says:

"Boy, that's a lie. What IS the matter with
your pap? Answer up square now, and it'll
be the better for you."

"I will, sir, I will, honest but don't leave us,
please. It's the the Gentlemen, if you'll only
pull ahead, and let me heave you the
headline, you won't have to come a-near
the raft please do."

"Set her back, John, set her back!" says

-55-

runaway niggers get by me if I can help it."

They went off and I got aboard the raft,
feeling bad and low, because I knowed very
well I had done wrong, and I see it warn't no
use for me to try to learn to do right; a body
that don't get STARTED right when he's
little ain't got no show when the pinch
comes there ain't nothing to back him up
and keep him to his work, and so he gets
beat. Then I thought a minute, and says to
myself, hold on; s'pose you'd a done right
and give Jim up, would you felt better than
what you do now? No, says I, I'd feel bad I'd
feel just the same way I do now. Well, then,
says I, what's the use you learning to do
right when it's troublesome to do right and
ain't no trouble to do wrong, and the wages
is just the same? I was stuck. I couldn't
answer that. So I reckoned I wouldn't bother
no more about it, but after this always do
whichever come handiest at the time.

I went into the wigwam; Jim warn't there. I
looked all around; he warn't anywhere. I
says:

"Jim!"

"Here I is, Huck. Is dey out o' sight yit? Don't
talk loud."

He was in the river under the stern oar, with
just his nose out. I told him they were out of
sight, so he come aboard. He says:

"I was a-listenin' to all de talk, en I slips into
de river en was gwyne to shove for sho' if
dey come aboard. Den I was gwyne to
swim to de raf' agin when dey was gone.
But lawsy, how you did fool 'em, Huck! Dat
WUZ de smartes' dodge! I tell you, chile,
I'spec it save' ole Jim ole Jim ain't going to
forgit you for dat, honey."

Then we talked about the money. It was a

-56-

night."

He says:

"Doan' le's talk about it, Huck. Po' niggers
can't have no luck. I awluz 'spected dat
rattlesnake-skin warn't done wid its work."

"I wish I'd never seen that snake-skin, Jim I
do wish I'd never laid eyes on it."

"It ain't yo' fault, Huck; you didn' know.
Don't you blame yo'self 'bout it."

When it was daylight, here was the clear
Ohio water inshore, sure enough, and
outside was the old regular Muddy! So it
was all up with Cairo.

We talked it all over. It wouldn't do to take to
the shore; we couldn't take the raft up the
stream, of course. There warn't no way but
to wait for dark, and start back in the canoe
and take the chances. So we slept all day
amongst the cottonwood thicket, so as to
be fresh for the work, and when we went
back to the raft about dark the canoe was
gone!

We didn't say a word for a good while.
There warn't anything to say. We both
knowed well enough it was some more
work of the rattlesnake-skin; so what was
the use to talk about it? It would only look like
we was finding fault, and that would be
bound to fetch more bad luck and keep on
fetching it, too, till we knowed enough to
keep still.

By and by we talked about what we better
do, and found there warn't no way but just
to go along down with the raft till we got a
chance to buy a canoe to go back in. We
warn't going to borrow it when there warn't
anybody around, the way pap would do, for
that might set people after us.

-57-

I dived and I aimed to find the bottom, too,
for a thirty-foot wheel had got to go over
me, and I wanted it to have plenty of room. I
could always stay under water a minute; this
time I reckon I stayed under a minute and a
half. Then I bounced for the top in a hurry, for
I was nearly busting. I popped out to my
armpits and blowed the water out of my
nose, and puffed a bit. Of course there was
a booming current; and of course that boat
started her engines again ten seconds after
she stopped them, for they never cared
much for raftsmen; so now she was
churning along up the river, out of sight in the
thick weather, though I could hear her.

I sung out for Jim about a dozen times, but I
didn't get any answer; so I grabbed a plank
that touched me while I was "treading
water," and struck out for shore, shoving it
ahead of me. But I made out to see that the
drift of the current was towards the left hand
shore, which meant that I was in a crossing;
so I changed off and went that way.

It was one of these long, slanting, two-mile
cross ings; so I was a good long time in
getting over. I made a safe landing, and
clumb up the bank. I couldn't see but a little
ways, but I went poking along over rough
ground for a quarter of a mile or more, and
then I run across a big old-fashioned double
log-house before I noticed it. I was going to
rush by and get away, but a lot of dogs
jumped out and went to howl ing and
barking at me, and I knowed better than to
move another peg.

CHAPTER XVII

IN about a minute somebody spoke out of a
window without putting his head out, and
says:

"Be done, boys! Who's there?"

-58-

Shepherd sons?"

"No, sir; I never heard of them."

"Well, that may be so, and it mayn't. Now, all
ready. Step forward, George Jackson. And
mind, don't you hurry come mighty slow. If
there's any body with you, let him keep back
if he shows him self he'll be shot. Come
along now. Come slow; push the door open
yourself just enough to squeeze in, d' you
hear?"

I didn't hurry; I couldn't if I'd a wanted to. I
took one slow step at a time and there
warn't a sound, only I thought I could hear my
heart. The dogs were as still as the humans,
but they followed a little behind me. When I
got to the three log doorsteps I heard them
unlocking and unbarring and unbolting. I put
my hand on the door and pushed it a little
and a little more till somebody said, "There,
that's enough put your head in." I done it, but
I judged they would take it off.

The candle was on the floor, and there they
all was, looking at me, and me at them, for
about a quarter of a minute: Three big men
with guns pointed at me, which made me
wince, I tell you; the oldest, gray and about
sixty, the other two thirty or more all of them
fine and handsome and the sweetest old
gray-headed lady, and back of her two
young women which I couldn't see right well.
The old gentleman says:

"There; I reckon it's all right. Come in."

As soon as I was in the old gentleman he
locked the door and barred it and bolted it,
and told the young men to come in with their
guns, and they all went in a big parlor that
had a new rag carpet on the floor, and got
together in a corner that was out of the
range of the front windows there warn't
none on the side. They held the candle, and

-59-

"Why, Buck, they might have scalped us all,
you've been so slow in coming."

"Well, nobody come after me, and it ain't
right I'm always kept down; I don't get no
show."

"Never mind, Buck, my boy," says the old
man, "you'll have show enough, all in good
time, don't you fret about that. Go 'long with
you now, and do as your mother told you."

When we got up-stairs to his room he got
me a coarse shirt and a roundabout and
pants of his, and I put them on. While I was at
it he asked me what my name was, but
before I could tell him he started to tell me
about a bluejay and a young rabbit he had
catched in the woods day before yesterday,
and he asked me where Moses was when
the candle went out. I said I didn't know; I
hadn't heard about it before, no way.

"Well, guess," he says.

"How'm I going to guess," says I, "when I
never heard tell of it before?"

"But you can guess, can't you? It's just as
easy."

"WHICH candle?" I says.

"Why, any candle," he says.

"I don't know where he was," says I; "where
was he?"

"Why, he was in the DARK! That's where he
was!"

"Well, if you knowed where he was, what did
you ask me for?"

"Why, blame it, it's a riddle, don't you see?
Say, how long are you going to stay here?

-60-

"Yes," he says.

"I bet you can't spell my name," says I.

"I bet you what you dare I can," says he.

"All right," says I, "go ahead."

"G-e-o-r-g-e J-a-x-o-n there now," he
says.

"Well," says I, "you done it, but I didn't think
you could. It ain't no slouch of a name to
spell right off without studying."

I set it down, private, because somebody
might want ME to spell it next, and so I
wanted to be handy with it and rattle it off
like I was used to it.

It was a mighty nice family, and a mighty
nice house, too. I hadn't seen no house out
in the country before that was so nice and
had so much style. It didn't have an iron latch
on the front door, nor a wooden one with a
buckskin string, but a brass knob to turn, the
same as houses in town. There warn't no
bed in the parlor, nor a sign of a bed; but
heaps of parlors in towns has beds in them.
There was a big fireplace that was bricked
on the bottom, and the bricks was kept
clean and red by pouring water on them and
scrubbing them with another brick; some
times they wash them over with red water-
paint that they call Spanish-brown, same as
they do in town. They had big brass dog-
irons that could hold up a saw log. There
was a clock on the middle of the mantel
piece, with a picture of a town painted on
the bottom half of the glass front, and a
round place in the middle of it for the sun,
and you could see the pendulum swinging
behind it. It was beautiful to hear that clock
tick; and sometimes when one of these
peddlers had been along and scoured her
up and got her in good shape, she would

-61-

They had pictures hung on the walls mainly
Washingtons and Lafayettes, and battles,
and High land Marys, and one called
"Signing the Declaration." There was some
that they called crayons, which one of the
daughters which was dead made her own
self when she was only fifteen years old.
They was different from any pictures I ever
see before blacker, mostly, than is
common. One was a woman in a slim black
dress, belted small under the armpits, with
bulges like a cabbage in the middle of the
sleeves, and a large black scoop-shovel
bonnet with a black veil, and white slim
ankles crossed about with black tape, and
very wee black slippers, like a chisel, and
she was leaning pensive on a tombstone on
her right elbow, under a weeping willow,
and her other hand hanging down her side
holding a white handkerchief and a reticule,
and underneath the picture it said "Shall I
Never See Thee More Alas." Another one
was a young lady with her hair all combed
up straight to the top of her head, and
knotted there in front of a comb like a chair-
back, and she was crying into a
handkerchief and had a dead bird laying on
its back in her other hand with its heels up,
and underneath the picture it said "I Shall
Never Hear Thy Sweet Chirrup More Alas."
There was one where a young lady was at a
window looking up at the moon, and tears
running down her cheeks; and she had an
open letter in one hand with black sealing
wax showing on one edge of it, and she
was mashing a locket with a chain to it
against her mouth, and under neath the
picture it said "And Art Thou Gone Yes Thou
Art Gone Alas." These was all nice pictures,
I reckon, but I didn't somehow seem to take
to them, because if ever I was down a little
they always give me the fan-tods.
Everybody was sorry she died, because
she had laid out a lot more of these pictures
to do, and a body could see by what she
had done what they had lost. But I reckoned

-62-

Young Stephen Dowling Bots;
Though sad hearts round him thickened,
'Twas not from sickness' shots.
No whooping-cough did rack his frame,
Nor measles drear with spots;
Not these impaired the sacred name
Of Stephen Dowling Bots.
Despised love struck not with woe
That head of curly knots,
Nor stomach troubles laid him low,
Young Stephen Dowling Bots.
O no. Then list with tearful eye,
Whilst I his fate do tell.
His soul did from this cold world fly
By falling down a well.
They got him out and emptied him;
Alas it was too late;
His spirit was gone for to sport aloft
In the realms of the good and great.

If Emmeline Grangerford could make poetry
like that before she was fourteen, there ain't
no telling what she could a done by and by.
Buck said she could rattle off poetry like
nothing. She didn't ever have to stop to
think. He said she would slap down a line,
and if she couldn't find anything to rhyme
with it would just scratch it out and slap
down another one, and go ahead. She
warn't particular; she could write about
anything you choose to give her to write
about just so it was sadful. Every time a
man died, or a woman died, or a child died,
she would be on hand with her "tribute"
before he was cold. She called them
tributes. The neighbors said it was the
doctor first, then Emmeline, then the
undertaker the under taker never got in
ahead of Emmeline but once, and then she
hung fire on a rhyme for the dead person's
name, which was Whistler. She warn't ever
the same after that; she never complained,
but she kinder pined away and did not live
long. Poor thing, many's the time I made
myself go up to the little room that used to be
hers and get out her poor old scrap-book

-63-

saying is, and that's worth as much in a man
as it is in a horse, so the Widow Douglas
said, and nobody ever denied that she was
of the first aristocracy in our town; and pap
he always said it, too, though he warn't no
more quality than a mudcat himself. Col.
Grangerford was very tall and very slim, and
had a darkish-paly complexion, not a sign
of red in it anywheres; he was clean shaved
every morning all over his thin face, and he
had the thinnest kind of lips, and the thinnest
kind of nostrils, and a high nose, and heavy
eyebrows, and the blackest kind of eyes,
sunk so deep back that they seemed like
they was looking out of caverns at you, as
you may say. His forehead was high, and
his hair was black and straight and hung to
his shoulders. His hands was long and thin,
and every day of his life he put on a clean
shirt and a full suit from head to foot made
out of linen so white it hurt your eyes to look
at it; and on Sundays he wore a blue tail-
coat with brass buttons on it. He carried a
mahogany cane with a silver head to it.
There warn't no frivolishness about him, not
a bit, and he warn't ever loud. He was as
kind as he could be you could feel that, you
know, and so you had confidence.
Sometimes he smiled, and it was good to
see; but when he straightened him self up
like a liberty-pole, and the lightning begun
to flicker out from under his eyebrows, you
wanted to climb a tree first, and find out
what the matter was afterwards. He didn't
ever have to tell anybody to mind their
manners everybody was always good
mannered where he was. Everybody loved
to have him around, too; he was sunshine
most always I mean he made it seem like
good weather. When he turned into a
cloudbank it was awful dark for half a
minute, and that was enough; there
wouldn't nothing go wrong again for a
week.

When him and the old lady come down in the

-64-

over a hundred niggers. Sometimes a stack
of people would come there, horseback,
from ten or fifteen mile around, and stay five
or six days, and have such junketings round
about and on the river, and dances and
picnics in the woods daytimes, and balls at
the house nights. These people was mostly
kinfolks of the family. The men brought their
guns with them. It was a hand some lot of
quality, I tell you.

There was another clan of aristocracy
around there five or six families mostly of
the name of Shep herdson. They was as
high-toned and well born and rich and
grand as the tribe of Grangerfords. The
Shepherdsons and Grangerfords used the
same steam boat landing, which was about
two mile above our house; so sometimes
when I went up there with a lot of our folks I
used to see a lot of the Shepherdsons there
on their fine horses.

One day Buck and me was away out in the
woods hunting, and heard a horse coming.
We was crossing the road. Buck says:

"Quick! Jump for the woods!"

We done it, and then peeped down the
woods through the leaves. Pretty soon a
splendid young man come galloping down
the road, setting his horse easy and looking
like a soldier. He had his gun across his
pommel. I had seen him before. It was
young Harney Shepherdson. I heard Buck's
gun go off at my ear, and Harney's hat
tumbled off from his head. He grabbed his
gun and rode straight to the place where we
was hid. But we didn't wait. We started
through the woods on a run. The woods
warn't thick, so I looked over my shoulder to
dodge the bullet, and twice I seen Harney
cover Buck with his gun; and then he rode
away the way he come to get his hat, I
reckon, but I couldn't see. We never stopped

-65-

has a quarrel with another man, and kills
him; then that other man's brother kills HIM;
then the other brothers, on both sides, goes
for one another; then the COUSINS chip in
and by and by everybody's killed off, and
there ain't no more feud. But it's kind of
slow, and takes a long time."

"Has this one been going on long, Buck?"

"Well, I should RECKON! It started thirty year
ago, or som'ers along there. There was
trouble 'bout something, and then a lawsuit
to settle it; and the suit went agin one of the
men, and so he up and shot the man that
won the suit which he would naturally do, of
course. Anybody would."

"What was the trouble about, Buck? land?"

"I reckon maybe I don't know."

"Well, who done the shooting? Was it a
Granger ford or a Shepherdson?"

"Laws, how do I know? It was so long ago."

"Don't anybody know?"

"Oh, yes, pa knows, I reckon, and some of
the other old people; but they don't know
now what the row was about in the first
place."

"Has there been many killed, Buck?"

"Yes; right smart chance of funerals. But
they don't always kill. Pa's got a few
buckshot in him; but he don't mind it 'cuz he
don't weigh much, any way. Bob's been
carved up some with a bowie, and Tom's
been hurt once or twice."

"Has anybody been killed this year, Buck?"

"Yes; we got one and they got one. 'Bout

-66-

men took their guns along, so did Buck, and
kept them between their knees or stood
them handy against the wall. The
Shepherdsons done the same. It was pretty
ornery preaching all about brotherly love,
and such-like tiresomeness; but everybody
said it was a good ser mon, and they all
talked it over going home, and had such a
powerful lot to say about faith and good
works and free grace and
preforeordestination, and I don't know what
all, that it did seem to me to be one of the
roughest Sundays I had run across yet.

About an hour after dinner everybody was
dozing around, some in their chairs and
some in their rooms, and it got to be pretty
dull. Buck and a dog was stretched out on
the grass in the sun sound asleep. I went up
to our room, and judged I would take a nap
myself. I found that sweet Miss Sophia
standing in her door, which was next to
ours, and she took me in her room and shut
the door very soft, and asked me if I liked
her, and I said I did; and she asked me if I
would do something for her and not tell
anybody, and I said I would. Then she said
she'd forgot her Testament, and left it in the
seat at church between two other books,
and would I slip out quiet and go there and
fetch it to her, and not say nothing to
nobody. I said I would. So I slid out and
slipped off up the road, and there warn't
anybody at the church, except maybe a hog
or two, for there warn't any lock on the door,
and hogs likes a puncheon floor in summer-
time because it's cool. If you notice, most
folks don't go to church only when they've
got to; but a hog is different.

Says I to myself, something's up; it ain't
natural for a girl to be in such a sweat about
a Testament. So I give it a shake, and out
drops a little piece of paper with "HALF-
PAST TWO" wrote on it with a pencil. I
ransacked it, but couldn't find anything else.

-67-

and he says:

"You shove right in dah jist a few steps,
Mars Jawge; dah's whah dey is. I's seed 'm
befo'; I don't k'yer to see 'em no mo'."

Then he slopped right along and went away,
and pretty soon the trees hid him. I poked
into the place a-ways and come to a little
open patch as big as a bedroom all hung
around with vines, and found a man laying
there asleep and, by jings, it was my old
Jim!

I waked him up, and I reckoned it was going
to be a grand surprise to him to see me
again, but it warn't. He nearly cried he was
so glad, but he warn't sur prised. Said he
swum along behind me that night, and
heard me yell every time, but dasn't answer,
be cause he didn't want nobody to pick HIM
up and take him into slavery again. Says he:

"I got hurt a little, en couldn't swim fas', so I
wuz a considable ways behine you towards
de las'; when you landed I reck'ned I could
ketch up wid you on de lan' 'dout havin' to
shout at you, but when I see dat house I
begin to go slow. I 'uz off too fur to hear
what dey say to you I wuz 'fraid o' de dogs;
but when it 'uz all quiet agin I knowed you's
in de house, so I struck out for de woods to
wait for day. Early in de mawnin' some er
de niggers come along, gwyne to de fields,
en dey tuk me en showed me dis place,
whah de dogs can't track me on accounts o'
de water, en dey brings me truck to eat
every night, en tells me how you's a-gitt'n
along."

"Why didn't you tell my Jack to fetch me here
sooner, Jim?"

"Well, 'twarn't no use to 'sturb you, Huck, tell
we could do sumfn but we's all right now. I
ben a buyin' pots en pans en vittles, as I got

-68-

lot of water moccasins. If anything happens
HE ain't mixed up in it. He can say he never
seen us together, and it 'll be the truth."

I don't want to talk much about the next day. I
reckon I'll cut it pretty short. I waked up
about dawn, and was a-going to turn over
and go to sleep again when I noticed how
still it was didn't seem to be anybody
stirring. That warn't usual. Next I noticed that
Buck was up and gone. Well, I gets up, a-
wondering, and goes down stairs nobody
around; everything as still as a mouse. Just
the same outside. Thinks I, what does it
mean? Down by the wood pile I comes
across my Jack, and says:

"What's it all about?"

Says he:

"Don't you know, Mars Jawge?"

"No," says I, "I don't."

"Well, den, Miss Sophia's run off! 'deed she
has. She run off in de night some time
nobody don't know jis' when; run off to get
married to dat young Harney Shepherdson,
you know leastways, so dey 'spec. De
fambly foun' it out 'bout half an hour ago
maybe a little mo' en' I TELL you dey warn't
no time los'. Sich another hurryin' up guns
en hosses YOU never see! De women folks
has gone for to stir up de relations, en ole
Mars Saul en de boys tuck dey guns en rode
up de river road for to try to ketch dat young
man en kill him 'fo' he kin git acrost de river
wid Miss Sophia. I reck'n dey's gwyne to be
mighty rough times."

"Buck went off 'thout waking me up."

"Well, I reck'n he DID! Dey warn't gwyne to
mix you up in it. Mars Buck he loaded up his
gun en 'lowed he's gwyne to fetch home a

-69-

slim young chap about nineteen years old.

The men ripped around awhile, and then
rode away. As soon as they was out of sight
I sung out to Buck and told him. He didn't
know what to make of my voice coming out
of the tree at first. He was awful surprised.
He told me to watch out sharp and let him
know when the men come in sight again;
said they was up to some devilment or other
wouldn't be gone long. I wished I was out of
that tree, but I dasn't come down. Buck
begun to cry and rip, and 'lowed that him
and his cousin Joe (that was the other young
chap) would make up for this day yet. He
said his father and his two brothers was
killed, and two or three of the enemy. Said
the Shepherdsons laid for them in ambush.
Buck said his father and brothers ought to
waited for their relations the Shepherdsons
was too strong for them. I asked him what
was be come of young Harney and Miss
Sophia. He said they'd got across the river
and was safe. I was glad of that; but the way
Buck did take on because he didn't
manage to kill Harney that day he shot at
him I hain't ever heard anything like it.

All of a sudden, bang! bang! bang! goes
three or four guns the men had slipped
around through the woods and come in from
behind without their horses! The boys
jumped for the river both of them hurt and as
they swum down the current the men run
along the bank shooting at them and singing
out, "Kill them, kill them!" It made me so sick
I most fell out of the tree. I ain't a-going to
tell ALL that happened it would make me
sick again if I was to do that. I wished I
hadn't ever come ashore that night to see
such things. I ain't ever going to get shut of
them lots of times I dream about them.

I stayed in the tree till it begun to get dark,
afraid to come down. Sometimes I heard
guns away off in the woods; and twice I

-70-

he reck'n you's ben shot, kase you didn'
come home no mo'; so I's jes' dis minute a
startin' de raf' down towards de mouf er de
crick, so's to be all ready for to shove out en
leave soon as Jack comes agin en tells me
for certain you IS dead. Lawsy, I's mighty
glad to git you back again, honey.

I says:

"All right that's mighty good; they won't find
me, and they'll think I've been killed, and
floated down the river there's something up
there that 'll help them think so so don't you
lose no time, Jim, but just shove off for the
big water as fast as ever you can."

I never felt easy till the raft was two mile
below there and out in the middle of the
Mississippi. Then we hung up our signal
lantern, and judged that we was free and
safe once more. I hadn't had a bite to eat
since yesterday, so Jim he got out some
corn-dodgers and buttermilk, and pork and
cabbage and greens there ain't nothing in
the world so good when it's cooked right
and whilst I eat my supper we talked and
had a good time. I was powerful glad to get
away from the feuds, and so was Jim to get
away from the swamp. We said there warn't
no home like a raft, after all. Other places do
seem so cramped up and smothery, but a
raft don't. You feel mighty free and easy and
comfortable on a raft.

CHAPTER XIX

TWO or three days and nights went by; I
reckon I might say they swum by, they slid
along so quiet and smooth and lovely. Here
is the way we put in the time. It was a
monstrous big river down there sometimes
a mile and a half wide; we run nights, and
laid up and hid daytimes; soon as night was
most gone we stopped navigating and tied
up nearly always in the dead water under a

-71-

cook up a hot break fast. And afterwards
we would watch the lonesome ness of the
river, and kind of lazy along, and by and by
lazy off to sleep. Wake up by and by, and
look to see what done it, and maybe see a
steamboat coughing along up-stream, so
far off towards the other side you couldn't
tell nothing about her only whether she was
a stern-wheel or side-wheel; then for about
an hour there wouldn't be nothing to hear
nor nothing to see just solid lonesomeness.
Next you'd see a raft sliding by, away off
yonder, and maybe a galoot on it chopping,
because they're most always doing it on a
raft; you'd see the axe flash and come
down you don't hear nothing; you see that
axe go up again, and by the time it's above
the man's head then you hear the
K'CHUNK! it had took all that time to come
over the water. So we would put in the day,
lazying around, listening to the stillness.
Once there was a thick fog, and the rafts
and things that went by was beating tin pans
so the steamboats wouldn't run over them.
A scow or a raft went by so close we could
hear them talking and cussing and laughing
heard them plain; but we couldn't see no
sign of them; it made you feel crawly; it was
like spirits carrying on that way in the air.
Jim said he believed it was spirits; but I
says:

"No; spirits wouldn't say, 'Dern the dern
fog.'"

Soon as it was night out we shoved; when
we got her out to about the middle we let her
alone, and let her float wherever the current
wanted her to; then we lit the pipes, and
dangled our legs in the water, and talked
about all kinds of things we was always
naked, day and night, whenever the
mosquitoes would let us the new clothes
Buck's folks made for me was too good to
be comfortable, and besides I didn't go
much on clothes, nohow.

-72-

One morning about daybreak I found a
canoe and crossed over a chute to the main
shore it was only two hundred yards and
paddled about a mile up a crick amongst
the cypress woods, to see if I couldn't get
some berries. Just as I was passing a place
where a kind of a cowpath crossed the
crick, here comes a couple of men tearing
up the path as tight as they could foot it. I
thought I was a goner, for whenever
anybody was after anybody I judged it was
ME or maybe Jim. I was about to dig out
from there in a hurry, but they was pretty
close to me then, and sung out and begged
me to save their lives said they hadn't been
doing nothing, and was being chased for it
said there was men and dogs a-coming.
They wanted to jump right in, but I says:

"Don't you do it. I don't hear the dogs and
horses yet; you've got time to crowd through
the brush and get up the crick a little ways;
then you take to the water and wade down
to me and get in that'll throw the dogs off the
scent."

They done it, and soon as they was aboard I
lit out for our towhead, and in about five or
ten minutes we heard the dogs and the men
away off, shouting. We heard them come
along towards the crick, but couldn't see
them; they seemed to stop and fool around
a while; then, as we got further and further
away all the time, we couldn't hardly hear
them at all; by the time we had left a mile of
woods behind us and struck the river,
everything was quiet, and we paddled over
to the towhead and hid in the cottonwoods
and was safe.

One of these fellows was about seventy or
upwards, and had a bald head and very
gray whiskers. He had an old battered-up
slouch hat on, and a greasy blue woollen
shirt, and ragged old blue jeans britches
stuffed into his boot-tops, and home-knit

-73-

might double-team it together; what do you
think?"

"I ain't undisposed. What's your line mainly?"

"Jour printer by trade; do a little in patent
medi cines; theater-actor tragedy, you
know; take a turn to mesmerism and
phrenology when there's a chance; teach
singing-geography school for a change;
sling a lecture sometimes oh, I do lots of
things most anything that comes handy, so it
ain't work. What's your lay?"

"I've done considerble in the doctoring way
in my time. Layin' on o' hands is my best holt
for cancer and paralysis, and sich things;
and I k'n tell a fortune pretty good when I've
got somebody along to find out the facts for
me. Preachin's my line, too, and workin'
camp-meetin's, and missionaryin' around."

Nobody never said anything for a while;
then the young man hove a sigh and says:

"Alas!"

"What 're you alassin' about?" says the bald
head.

"To think I should have lived to be leading
such a life, and be degraded down into
such company." And he begun to wipe the
corner of his eye with a rag.

"Dern your skin, ain't the company good
enough for you?" says the baldhead, pretty
pert and uppish.

" Yes, it IS good enough for me; it's as good
as I deserve; for who fetched me so low
when I was so high? I did myself. I don't
blame YOU, gentlemen far from it; I don't
blame anybody. I deserve it all. Let the cold
world do its worst; one thing I know there's
a grave somewhere for me. The world may

-74-

forlorn, torn from my high estate, hunted of
men, despised by the cold world, ragged,
worn, heart-broken, and degraded to the
companion ship of felons on a raft!"

Jim pitied him ever so much, and so did I.
We tried to comfort him, but he said it warn't
much use, he couldn't be much comforted;
said if we was a mind to acknowledge him,
that would do him more good than most
anything else; so we said we would, if he
would tell us how. He said we ought to bow
when we spoke to him, and say "Your
Grace," or "My Lord," or "Your Lordship" and
he wouldn't mind it if we called him plain
"Bridgewater," which, he said, was a title
anyway, and not a name; and one of us
ought to wait on him at dinner, and do any
little thing for him he wanted done.

Well, that was all easy, so we done it. All
through dinner Jim stood around and waited
on him, and says, "Will yo' Grace have some
o' dis or some o' dat?" and so on, and a
body could see it was mighty pleasing to
him.

But the old man got pretty silent by and by
didn't have much to say, and didn't look
pretty comfortable over all that petting that
was going on around that duke. He seemed
to have something on his mind. So, along in
the afternoon, he says:

"Looky here, Bilgewater," he says, "I'm
nation sorry for you, but you ain't the only
person that's had troubles like that."

"No?"

"No you ain't. You ain't the only person that's
ben snaked down wrongfully out'n a high
place."

"Alas!"

-75-

feel easier and better for a while if people
treated him according to his rights, and got
down on one knee to speak to him, and
always called him "Your Majesty," and
waited on him first at meals, and didn't set
down in his presence till he asked them. So
Jim and me set to majestying him, and
doing this and that and t'other for him, and
standing up till he told us we might set down.
This done him heaps of good, and so he got
cheerful and comfortable. But the duke kind
of soured on him, and didn't look a bit
satisfied with the way things was going;
still, the king acted real friendly towards
him, and said the duke's great-grandfather
and all the other Dukes of Bilgewater was a
good deal thought of by HIS father, and was
allowed to come to the palace
considerable; but the duke stayed huffy a
good while, till by and by the king says:

"Like as not we got to be together a blamed
long time on this h-yer raft, Bilgewater, and
so what's the use o' your bein' sour? It 'll
only make things on comfortable. It ain't my
fault I warn't born a duke, it ain't your fault
you warn't born a king so what's the use to
worry? Make the best o' things the way you
find 'em, says I that's my motto. This ain't no
bad thing that we've struck here plenty grub
and an easy life come, give us your hand,
duke, and le's all be friends."

The duke done it, and Jim and me was
pretty glad to see it. It took away all the
uncomfortableness and we felt mighty good
over it, because it would a been a
miserable business to have any
unfriendliness on the raft; for what you want,
above all things, on a raft, is for everybody
to be satisfied, and feel right and kind
towards the others.

It didn't take me long to make up my mind
that these liars warn't no kings nor dukes at
all, but just low-down humbugs and frauds.

-76-

for the next day or two we had considerable
trouble, because people was always
coming out in skiffs and trying to take Jim
away from me, saying they be lieved he
was a runaway nigger. We don't run day
times no more now; nights they don't bother
us."

The duke says:

"Leave me alone to cipher out a way so we
can run in the daytime if we want to. I'll think
the thing over I'll invent a plan that'll fix it.
We'll let it alone for to-day, because of
course we don't want to go by that town
yonder in daylight it mightn't be healthy."

Towards night it begun to darken up and
look like rain; the heat lightning was
squirting around low down in the sky, and
the leaves was beginning to shiver it was
going to be pretty ugly, it was easy to see
that. So the duke and the king went to
overhauling our wigwam, to see what the
beds was like. My bed was a straw
tickÑbetter than Jim's, which was a corn
shuck tick; there's always cobs around
about in a shuck tick, and they poke into you
and hurt; and when you roll over the dry
shucks sound like you was rolling over in a
pile of dead leaves; it makes such a rustling
that you wake up. Well, the duke allowed he
would take my bed; but the king allowed he
wouldn't. He says:

"I should a reckoned the difference in rank
would a sejested to you that a corn-shuck
bed warn't just fitten for me to sleep on.
Your Grace 'll take the shuck bed yourself."

Jim and me was in a sweat again for a
minute, being afraid there was going to be
some more trouble amongst them; so we
was pretty glad when the duke says:

"'Tis my fate to be always ground into the