Tom began—hesitatingly at first,but as he warmed to his subject his words flowed more and more easily;in a little while every sound ceased but his own voice;every eye fixed itself upon him;with parted lips and bated breath the audience hung upon his words,taking no note of time,rapt in the ghastly fascinations of the tale.The strain upon pent emotion reached its climax when the boy said:
“—and as the doctor fetched the board around and Muff Potter fell,Injun Joe jumped with the knife and—”
Crash!Quick as lightning the halfbreed sprang for a window,tore his way through all opposers, and was gone!
CHAPTER XXIV
Tom was a glittering hero once more—the pet of the old,the envy of the young.His name even went into immortal print,for the village paper magnified him.There were some that believed he would be President,yet, if he escaped hanging.
As usual, the fickle,unreasoning world took Muff Potter to its bosom and fondled him as lavishly as it had abused him before. But that sort of conduct is to the world’s credit; therefore it is not well to find fault with it.
Tom’s days were days of splendor and exultation to him,but his nights were seasons of horror.Injun Joe infested all his dreams,and always with doom in his eye.Hardly any temptation could persuade the boy to stir abroad after nightfall.Poor Huck was in the same state of wretchedness and terror,for Tom had told the whole story to the lawyer the night before the great day of the trial, and Huck was sore afraid that his share in the business might leak out, yet, notwithstanding Injun Joe’s flight had saved him the suffering of testifying in court. The poor fellow had got the attorney to promise secrecy, but what of that?Since Tom’s harassed conscience had managed to drive him to the lawyer’s house by night and wring a dread tale from lips that had been sealed with the dismalest and most formidable of oaths, Huck’s confidence in the human race was wellnigh obliterated.
Daily Muff Potter’s gratitude made Tom glad he had spoken;but nightly he wished he had sealed up his tongue.
Half the time Tom was afraid Injun Joe would never be captured;the other half he was afraid he would be.He felt sure he never could draw a safe breath again until that man was dead and he had seen the corpse.
Rewards had been offered, the country had been scoured,but no Injun Joe was found.One of those omniscient and awe-inspiring marvels,a detective, came up from St. Louis, moused around,shook his head, looked wise,and made that sort of astounding success which members of that craft usually achieve. That is to say, he “found a clew.” But you can’t hang a “clew” for murder, and so after that detective had got through and gone home, Tom felt just as insecure as he was before.
The slow days drifted on,and each left behind it a slightly lightened weight of apprehension.
CHAPTER XXV
There comes a time in every rightly-constructed boy’s life when he has a raging desire to go somewhere and dig for hidden treasure. This desire suddenly came upon Tom one day. He sallied out to find Joe Harper, but failed of success. Next he sought Ben Rogers; he had gone fishing. Presently he stumbled upon Huck Finn the Red-Handed. Huck would answer. Tom took him to a private place and opened the matter to him confidentially. Huck was willing. Huck was always willing to take a hand in any enterprise that offered entertainment and required no capital, for he had a troublesome superabundance of that sort of time which is not money. “Where’ll we dig?” said Huck.
“Oh, most anywhere.”
“Why, is it hid all around?”
“No, indeed it ain’t.It’s hid in mighty particular places,Huck—sometimes on islands,sometimes in rotten chests under the end of a limb of an old dead tree,just where the shadow falls at midnight;but mostly under the floor in ha’nted houses.”
“Who hides it?”
“Why, robbers, of course—who’d you reckon?Sunday-school sup’rintendents?”
“I don’t know. If ’twas mine I wouldn’t hide it;I’d spend it and have a good time.”
“So would I. But robbers don’t do that way.They always hide it and leave it there.”
“Don’t they come after it any more?”
“No, they think they will,but they generally forget the marks, or else they die.Anyway, it lays there a long time and gets rusty;and by and by somebody finds an old yellow paper that tells how to find the marks—a paper that’s got to be ciphered over about a week because it’s mostly signs and hy’roglyphics.”
“Hyro—which?”
“Hy’roglyphics—pictures and things, you know,that don’t seem to mean anything.”
“Have you got one of them papers, Tom?”
“No.”
“Well then, how you going to find the marks?”
“I don’t want any marks.They always bury it under a ha’nted house or on an island,or under a dead tree that’s got one limb sticking out.Well, we’ve tried Jackson’s Island a little,and we can try it again some time;and there’s the old ha’nted house up the Still-House branch,and there’s lots of dead-limb trees—dead loads of ’em.”
“Is it under all of them?”
“How you talk!No!”
“Then how you going to know which one to go for?”
“Go for all of ’em!”
“Why, Tom, it’ll take all summer.”
“Well, what of that?Suppose you find a brass pot with a hundred dollars in it,all rusty and gray, or rotten chest full of di’monds. How’s that?”
Huck’s eyes glowed.
“That’s bully. Plenty bully enough for me.Just you gimme the hundred dollars and I don’t want no di’monds. ”
“All right. But I bet you I ain’t going to throw off on di’monds.Some of ’em’s worth twenty dollars apiece—there ain’t any,hardly, but’s worth six bits or a dollar.”
“No!Is that so?”
“Cert’nly—anybody’ll tell you so.Hain’t you ever seen one, Huck?”
“Not as I remember.”
“Oh, kings have slathers of them.”
“Well, I don’ know no kings, Tom.”
“I reckon you don’t.But if you was to go to Europe you’d see a raft of’em hopping around. ”
“Do they hop?”
“Hop?—your granny!No!”
“Well, what did you say they did, for?”
“Shucks, I only meant you’d _see_ ’em—not hopping,of course—what do they want to hop for?—but I mean you’d just see ’em—scattered around,you know, in a kind of a general way.Like that old humpbacked Richard.”
“Richard?What’s his other name?”
“He didn’t have any other name.Kings don’t have any but a given name.”
“No?”
“But they don’t.”
“Well, if they like it, Tom, all right;but I don’t want to be a king and have only just a given name,like a nigger. But say—where you going to dig first?”
“Well, I don’t know.S’pose we tackle that old dead-limb tree on the hill t’other side of Still-House branch?”
“I’m agreed.”
So they got a crippled pick and a shovel,and set out on their three-mile tramp.They arrived hot and panting,and threw themselves down in the shade of a neighboring elm to rest and have a smoke.
“I like this,” said Tom.
“So do I.”
“Say, Huck, if we find a treasure here,what you going to do with your share?”
“Well, I’ll have pie and a glass of soda every day,and I’ll go to every circus that comes along.I bet I’ll have a gay time.”
“Well, ain’t you going to save any of it?”
“Save it?What for?”
“Why, so as to have something to live on, by and by.”
“Oh, that ain’t any use.Pap would come back to thish-yer town some day and get his claws on it if I didn’t hurry up, and I tell you he’d clean it out pretty quick. What you going to do with yourn, Tom?”
“I’m going to buy a new drum, and a sure’nough sword,and a red necktie and a bull pup, and get married.”
“Married!”
“That’s it.”
“Tom, you—why, you ain’t in your right mind.”
“Wait—you’ll see.”
“Well, that’s the foolishest thing you could do.Look at pap and my mother. Fight!Why, they used to fight all the time. I remember, mighty well.”
“That ain’t anything.The girl I’m going to marry won’t fight.”
“Tom, I reckon they’re all alike.They’ll all comb a body.Now you better think ’bout this awhile.I tell you you better. What’s the name of the gal?”
“It ain’t a gal at all—it’s a girl.”