“Oh, yes, this is a wonderful govment, wonderful. Why, looky here.There was a free nigger there from Ohio—a mulatter, most as white as a white man.He had the whitest shirt on you ever see, too, and the shiniest hat;and there ain’t a man in that town that’s got as fine clothes as what he had;and he had a gold watch and chain, and a silver-headed cane—the awfulest old gray-headed nabob in the State. And what do you think?They said he was a p’fessor in a college, and could talk all kinds of languages,and 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 govment,though he give the tub some, too, all along, here and there.He hopped around the cabin considerable, first on one leg and then on the other,holding 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 fairly made a body’s hair raise, and down he went in the dirt,and rolled there, and held his toes; and the cussing he done then laid over anything he had ever done previous.He said so his own self afterwards. He had heard old Sowberry Hagan in his best days,and he said it laid over him, too; but I reckon that was sort of piling it on, maybe.
After supper pap took the jug, and said he had enough whisky there for two drunks and one delirium tremens.That was always his word. I judged he would be blind drunk in about an hour,and then I would steal the key, or saw myself out, one or t’other. He drank and drank,and tumbled down on his blankets by-and-by; but luck didn’t run my way. He didn’t go sound asleep,but was uneasy. He groaned and moaned and thrashed around this way and that for a long time.At last I got so sleepy I couldn’t keep my eyes open all I could do,and so before I knowed what I was about I was sound asleep, and the candle burning.
I don’t know how long I was asleep, but all of a sudden there was an awful scream and I was up.There was pap looking wild, and skipping around every which way and yelling about snakes.He said they was crawling up his legs; and then he would give a jump and scream,and say one had bit him on the cheek—but I couldn’t see no snakes.He started and run round and round the cabin, hollering “Take him off!take him off!he’s biting me on the neck!” I never see a man look so wild in the eyes. Pretty soon he was all fagged out,and fell down panting; then he rolled over and over wonderful fast, kicking things every which way,and striking and grabbing at the air with his hands,and screaming and saying there was devils a-hold of him. He wore out by-and-by,and laid still a while, moaning. Then he laid stiller, and didn’t make a sound.I could hear the owls and the wolves away off in the woods, and it seemed terrible 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 pap, and set down behind it to wait for him to stir.And how slow and still the time did drag along.
CHAPTER VII.
“Git up!What you ’bout?”
I opened my eyes and looked around, trying to make out where I was. It was after sun-up,and I had been sound asleep. Pap was standing over me looking sour and sick, too. He says:
“What you doin’ with this gun?”
I judged he didn’t know nothing about what he had been doing, so I says:
“Somebody tried to get in, so I was laying for him.”
“Why didn’t you roust me out?”
“Well, I tried to, but I couldn’t; I couldn’t budge you.”
“Well, all right. Don’t stand there palavering all day,but out with you and see if there’s a fish on the lines for breakfast. I’ll be along in a minute.”
He unlocked the door, and I cleared out up the river-bank.I noticed some pieces of limbs and such things floating down, and a sprinkling of bark;so I knowed the river had begun to rise.I reckoned I would have great times now if I was over at the town.The June rise used to be always luck for me;because as soon as that rise begins here comes cordwood floating down,and pieces of log rafts—sometimes a dozen logs together;so all you have to do is to catch them and sell them to the wood-yards and the sawmill.
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 laying 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 follow me,it would be a certainer thing than trusting to luck to get far enough off before they missed me;you see, all kinds of things might happen. Well, I didn’t see no way for a while,but by-and-by pap raised up a minute to drink another barrel of water, and he says:
“Another time a man comes a-prowling round here you roust me out, you hear?That man warn’t here for no good. I’d a shot him. Next time you roust me out, you hear?”
Then he dropped down and went to sleep again;but what he had been saying give me the very idea I wanted. I says to myself,I can fix it now so nobody won’t think of following me.
About twelve o’clock we turned out and went along up the bank. The river was coming up pretty fast,and lots of driftwood going by on the rise.By-and-by along comes part of a log raft—nine logs fast together.We went out with the skiff and towed it ashore. Then we had dinner.Anybody but pap would a waited and seen the day through, so as to catch more stuff;but that warn’t pap’s style. Nine logs was enough for one time;he must shove right over to town and sell. So he locked me in and took the skiff,and started off towing the raft about half-past three. I judged he wouldn’t come back that night.I waited till I reckoned he had got a good start; then I out with my saw,and went to work on that log again. Before he was t’other side of the river I was out of the hole;him and his raft was just a speck on the water away off yonder.
I took the sack of corn meal and took it to where the canoe was hid,and shoved the vines and branches apart and put it in; then I done the same with the side of bacon;then the whisky-jug. I took all the coffee and sugar there was, and all the ammunition;I 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 fellow 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 big rocks in it—all I could drag—and I started it from the pig,and dragged it to the door and through the woods down to the river and dumped it in,and down it sunk, out of sight. You could easy see that something had been dragged over the ground.I did wish Tom Sawyer was there; I knowed he would take an interest in this kind of business,and throw in the fancy touches. Nobody could spread himself like Tom Sawyer in such a thing as that.
Well, last I pulled out some of my hair, and blooded the axe good, and stuck it on the back side,and slung the axe in the corner. Then I took up the pig and held him to my breast with my jacket (so he couldn’t drip) till I got a good piece below the house and then dumped him into the river. Now I thought of something else. So I went and got the bag of meal and my old saw out of the canoe, and fetched them to the house. I took the bag to where it used to stand, and ripped a hole in the bottom of it with the saw, for there warn’t no knives and forks on the place—pap done everything with his clasp-knife about the cooking. Then I carried the sack about a hundred yards across the grass and through the willows east of the house, to a shallow lake that was five mile wide and full of rushes—and ducks too, you might say, in the season. There was a slough or a creek leading out of it on the other side that went miles away, I don’t know where, but it didn’t go to the river. The meal sifted out and made a little track all the way to the lake. I dropped pap’s whetstone there too, so as to look like it had been done by accident. Then I tied up the rip in the meal sack with a string, so it wouldn’t leak no more, and took it and my saw to the canoe again.
It was about dark now; so I dropped the canoe down the river under some willows that hung over the bank,and waited for the 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 sackful 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. Everything 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 the current,and by-and-by he came a-swinging up shore in the easy water,and he went by so close I could a reached out the gun and touched him. Well, it _was_ pap,sure enough—and sober, too, by the way he laid his oars.
I didn’t lose no time. The next minute I was a-spinning down stream soft but quick in the shade of the bank.I made two mile and a half, and then struck out a quarter of a mile or more towards the middle of the river,because pretty soon I would be passing the ferry landing, and people might see me and hail me.I got out amongst the driftwood, and then laid down in the bottom of the canoe and let her float.
I laid there, and had a good rest and a smoke out of my pipe, looking away into the sky;not a cloud in it. The sky looks ever so deep when you lay down on your back in the moonshine;I never knowed it before. And how far a body can hear on the water such nights!I heard people talking at the ferry landing. I heard what they said, too—every word of it.One man said it was getting towards the long days and the short nights now.T’other one said _this_ warn’t one of the short ones, he reckoned—and then they laughed,and he said it over again, and they laughed again; then they waked up another fellow and told him,and laughed, but he didn’t laugh; he ripped out something brisk, and said let him alone.The first fellow said he ’lowed to tell it to his old woman—she would think it was pretty good;but he said that warn’t nothing to some things he had said in his time.I heard one man say it was nearly three o’clock,and he hoped daylight wouldn’t wait more than about a week longer.After that the talk got further and further away, and I couldn’t make out the words any more;but I could hear the mumble, and now and then a laugh, too, but it seemed a long ways off.
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 stabboard!” 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 breakfast.
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 amongst them. There was freckled places on the ground where the light sifted down through the leaves,and the freckled places swapped about a little, showing there was a little breeze up there.A couple of squirrels set on a limb and jabbered at me very friendly.
I was powerful lazy and comfortable—didn’t want to get up and cook breakfast. Well,I was dozing off again when I thinks I hears a deep sound of “boom!” away up the river. I rouses up, and rests on my elbow and listens; pretty soon I hears it again.I hopped up, and went and looked out at a hole in the leaves,and I see a bunch of smoke laying on the water a long ways up—about abreast the ferry.And there was the ferry-boat full of people floating along down. I knowed what was the matter now. “Boom!” I see the white smoke squirt out of the ferry-boat’s side. You see,they was firing cannon over the water, trying to make my carcass come to the top.
I was pretty hungry, but it warn’t going to do for me to start a fire,because they might see the smoke. So I set there and watched the cannon-smoke and listened to the boom.The river was a mile wide there, and it always looks pretty on a summer morning—so I was having a good enough time seeing them hunt for my remainders if I only had a bite to eat. Well, then I happened to think how they always put quicksilver in loaves of bread and float them off, because they always go right to the drownded carcass and stop there. So, says I, I’ll keep a lookout, and if any of them’s floating around after me I’ll give them a show. I changed to the Illinois edge of the island to see what luck I could have, and I warn’t disappointed. A big double loaf come along, and I most got it with a long stick, but my foot slipped and she floated out further. Of course I was where the current set in the closest to the shore—I knowed enough for that. But by-and-by along comes another one, and this time I won. I took out the plug and shook out the little dab of quicksilver, 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 ferry-boat 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.”
I didn’t hope so. They all crowded up and leaned over the rails, nearly in my face, and kept still,watching with all their might. I could see them first-rate, but they couldn’t see me. Then the captain sung out:
“Stand away!” and the cannon let off such a blast right before me that it made me deef with the noise and pretty near blind with the smoke,and I judged I was gone. If they’d a had some bullets in,I reckon they’d a got the corpse they was after. Well, I see I warn’t hurt, thanks to goodness.The boat floated on and went out of sight around the shoulder of the island.I could hear the booming now and then, further and further off, and by-and-by, after an hour,I didn’t hear it no more. The island was three mile long. I judged they had got to the foot,and was giving it up. But they didn’t yet a while.They turned around the foot of the island and started up the channel on the Missouri side,under steam, and booming once in a while as they went.I crossed over to that side and watched them.When they got abreast the head of the island they quit shooting and dropped over to the Missouri shore and went home to the town.
I knowed I was all right now. Nobody else would come a-hunting after me.I got my traps out of the canoe and made me a nice camp in the thick woods.I made a kind of a tent out of my blankets to put my things under so the rain couldn’t get at them.I catched a catfish and haggled him open with my saw,and towards sundown I started my camp fire and had supper.Then I set out a line to catch some fish for breakfast.
When it was dark I set by my camp fire smoking, and feeling pretty well satisfied;but by-and-by it got sort of lonesome, and so I went and set on the bank and listened to the current swashing along,and counted the 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 exploring 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 another 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 brash, there warn’t much sand in my craw; but I says,this ain’t no time to be fooling around.So I got all my traps into my canoe again so as to have them out of sight,and I put out the fire and scattered the ashes around to look like an old last year’s camp, and then clumb a tree.
I reckon I was up in the tree two hours; but I didn’t see nothing,I didn’t hear nothing—I only _thought_ I heard and seen as much as a thousand things. Well,I couldn’t stay up there forever; so at last I got down,but I kept in the thick woods and on the lookout all the time.All I could get to eat was berries and what was left over from breakfast.
By the time it was night I was pretty hungry.So when it was good and dark I slid out from shore before moonrise and paddled over to the Illinois bank—about a quarter of a mile.I went out in the woods and cooked a supper,and I had about made up my mind I would stay there all night when I hear a _plunkety-plunk,plunkety-plunk_, and says to myself, horses coming; and next I hear people’s voices.I got everything into the canoe as quick as I could,and then went creeping through the woods to see what I could find out. I hadn’t got far when I hear a man say:
“We better camp here if we can find a good place; the horses is about beat out. Let’s look around.”
I didn’t wait, but shoved out and paddled away easy. I tied up in the old place,and reckoned I would sleep in the canoe.
I didn’t sleep much. I couldn’t, somehow, for thinking.And every time I waked up I thought somebody had me by the neck. So the sleep didn’t do me no good.By-and-by I says to myself, I can’t live this way;I’m a-going to find out who it is that’s here on the island with me; I’ll find it out or bust. Well, I felt better right off.