The king kind of ruffles up, and says:
“Looky here, Bilgewater, what’r you referrin’ to?”
The duke says, pretty brisk:
“When it comes to that, maybe you’ll let me ask,what was _you_ referring to?”
“Shucks!” says the king, very sarcastic;“but _I_ don’t know—maybe you was asleep,and didn’t know what you was about.”
The duke bristles up now, and says:
“Oh, let _up_ on this cussed nonsense;do you take me for a blame’ fool?Don’t you reckon _I_ know who hid that money in that coffin?”
“_Yes_, sir!I know you _do_ know, because you done it yourself!”
“It’s a lie!”—and the duke went for him. The king sings out:
“Take y’r hands off!—leggo my throat!—I take it all back!”
The duke says:
“Well, you just own up, first,that you _did_ hide that money there,intending to give me the slip one of these days,and come back and dig it up,and have it all to yourself.”
“Wait jest a minute, duke—answer me this one question,honest and fair; if you didn’t put the money there,say it, and I’ll b’lieve you,and take back everything I said.”
“You old scoundrel, I didn’t, and you know I didn’t. There, now!”
“Well, then, I b’lieve you.But answer me only jest this one more—now _don’t_ git mad;didn’t you have it in your mind to hook the money and hide it?”
The duke never said nothing for a little bit; then he says:
“Well, I don’t care if I _did_, I didn’t _do_ it,anyway. But you not only had it in mind to do it, but you _done_ it.”
“I wisht I never die if I done it, duke,and that’s honest. I won’t say I warn’t _goin_’ to do it,because I _was;_ but you—I mean somebody—got in ahead o’ me. ”
“It’s a lie!You done it, and you got to _say_ you done it, or—”
The king began to gurgle, and then he gasps out:
“’Nough!—_I own up!_”
I was very glad to hear him say that;it made me feel much more easier than what I was feeling before.So the duke took his hands off and says:
“If you ever deny it again I’ll drown you.It’s _well_ for you to set there and blubber like a baby—it’s fitten for you,after the way you’ve acted.I never see such an old ostrich for wanting to gobble everything—and I a-trusting you all the time, like you was my own father. You ought to been ashamed of yourself to stand by and hear it saddled on to a lot of poor niggers, and you never say a word for ’em. It makes me feel ridiculous to think I was soft enough to _believe_ that rubbage. Cuss you, I can see now why you was so anxious to make up the deffisit—you wanted to get what money I’d got out of the Nonesuch and one thing or another, and scoop it _all!_”
The king says, timid, and still a-snuffling:
“Why, duke, it was you that said make up the deffisit; it warn’t me.”
“Dry up!I don’t want to hear no more _out_ of you!” says the duke. “And _now_ you see what you _got_ by it.They’ve got all their own money back,and all of _ourn_ but a shekel or two _besides_.G’long to bed, and don’t you deffersit _me_ no more deffersits, long ’s _you_ live!”
So the king sneaked into the wigwam and took to his bottle for comfort,and before long the duke tackled _his_ bottle;and so in about a half an hour they was as thick as thieves again,and the tighter they got, the lovinger they got,and went off a-snoring in each other’s arms.They both got powerful mellow,but I noticed the king didn’t get mellow enough to forget to remember to not deny about hiding the money-bag again. That made me feel easy and satisfied. Of course when they got to snoring we had a long gabble, and I told Jim everything.
CHAPTER XXXI.
We dasn’t stop again at any town for days and days;kept right along down the river.We was down south in the warm weather now,and a mighty long ways from home.We begun to come to trees with Spanish moss on them,hanging down from the limbs like long, gray beards.It was the first I ever see it growing,and it made the woods look solemn and dismal.So now the frauds reckoned they was out of danger,and they begun to work the villages again.
First they done a lecture on temperance;but they didn’t make enough for them both to get drunk on.Then in another village they started a dancing-school;but they didn’t know no more how to dance than a kangaroo does;so the first prance they made the general public jumped in and pranced them out of town. Another time they tried to go at yellocution; but they didn’t yellocute long till the audience got up and give them a solid good cussing, and made them skip out. They tackled missionarying, and mesmerizing, and doctoring, and telling fortunes, and a little of everything; but they couldn’t seem to have no luck. So at last they got just about dead broke, and laid around the raft as she floated along, thinking and thinking, and never saying nothing, by the half a day at a time, and dreadful blue and desperate.
And at last they took a change and begun to lay their heads together in the wigwam and talk low and confidential two or three hours at a time. Jim and me got uneasy. We didn’t like the look of it. We judged they was studying up some kind of worse deviltry than ever. We turned it over and over, and at last we made up our minds they was going to break into somebody’s house or store, or was going into the counterfeit-money business, or something. So then we was pretty scared, and made up an agreement that we wouldn’t have nothing in the world to do with such actions, and if we ever got the least show we would give them the cold shake and clear out and leave them behind. Well, early one morning we hid the raft in a good, safe place about two mile below a little bit of a shabby village named Pikesville, and the king he went ashore and told us all to stay hid whilst he went up to town and smelt around to see if anybody had got any wind of the Royal Nonesuch there yet. (“House to rob, you _mean_,” says I to myself; “and when you get through robbing it you’ll come back here and wonder what has become of me and Jim and the raft—and you’ll have to take it out in wondering.”) And he said if he warn’t back by midday the duke and me would know it was all right, and we was to come along.