adventures of huckleberry finn by mark twain
huckleberry finn

you dont know about me without you have read a book by the name of the adventures of tom sawyer but that aint no matter that book was made by mr mark twain and he told the truth mainly there was things which he stretched but mainly he told the truth that is nothing i never seen anybody but lied one time or another without it was aunt polly or the widow or maybe mary aunt pollytoms aunt polly she isand mary and the widow douglas is all told about in that book which is mostly a true book with some stretchers as i said before
now the way that the book winds up is this tom and me found the money that the robbers hid in the cave and it made us rich we got six thousand dollars apieceall gold it was an awful sight of money when it was piled up well judge thatcher he took it and put it out at interest and it fetched us a dollar a day apiece all the year roundmore than a body could tell what to do with the widow douglas she took me for her son 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 couldnt stand it no longer i lit out i got into my old rags and my sugarhogshead 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 couldnt 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 couldnt 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 warnt really anything the matter with themthat 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 didnt care no more about him because i dont take no stock in dead people
pretty soon i wanted to smoke and asked the widow to let me but she wouldnt she said it was a mean practice and wasnt 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 dont know nothing about it here she was abothering about moses which was no kin to her and no use to anybody being gone you see yet finding a power of fault with me for doing a thing that had some good in it and she took snuff too of course that was all right because she done it herself
her sister miss watson a tolerable slim old maid with goggles on had just come to live with her and took a set at me now with a spellingbook she worked me middling hard for about an hour and then the widow made her ease up i couldnt stood it much longer then for an hour it was deadly dull and i was fidgety miss watson would say dont put your feet up there huckleberry and dont scrunch up like that huckleberryset up straight and pretty soon she would say dont gap and stretch like that huckleberrywhy dont you try to behave then she told me all about the bad place and i said i wished i was there she got mad then but i didnt mean no harm all i wanted was to go somewheres all i wanted was a change i warnt particular she said it was wicked to say what i said said she wouldnt say it for the whole world she was going to live so as to go to the good place well i couldnt see no advantage in going where she was going so i made up my mind i wouldnt try for it but i never said so because it would only make trouble and wouldnt do no good
now she had got a start and she went on and told me all about the good place she said all a body would have to do there was to go around all day long with a harp and sing forever and ever so i didnt think much of it but i never said so i asked her if she reckoned tom sawyer would go there and she said not by a considerable sight i was glad about that because i wanted him and me to be together
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 warnt 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 whowhooing 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 couldnt 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 thats on its mind and cant make itself understood and so cant rest easy in its grave and has to go about that way every night grieving i got so downhearted 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 didnt 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 hadnt no confidence you do that when youve lost a horseshoe that youve found instead of nailing it up over the door but i hadnt ever heard anybody say it was any way to keep off bad luck when youd killed a spider
i set down again ashaking all over and got out my pipe for a smoke for the house was all as still as death now and so the widow wouldnt know well after a long time i heard the clock away off in the town go boomboomboomtwelve licks and all still againstiller than ever pretty soon i heard a twig snap down in the dark amongst the treessomething was astirring i set still and listened directly i could just barely hear a meyow meyow down there that was good says i meyow meyow as soft as i could and then i put out the light and scrambled out of the window on to the shed then i slipped down to the ground and crawled in among the trees and sure enough there was tom sawyer waiting for me

we went tiptoeing along a path amongst the trees back toward the end of the widows garden stooping down so as the branches wouldnt scrape our heads when we was passing by the kitchen i fell over a root and made a noise we scrouched down and laid still miss watsons big nigger named jim was setting in the kitchen door we could see him pretty clear because there was a light behind him he got up and stretched his neck out about a minute listening then he says
who dah
he listened some more then he came tiptoeing down and stood right between us we could a touched him nearly well likely it was minutes and minutes that there warnt a sound and we all there so close together there was a place on my ankle that got to itching but i dasnt scratch it and then my ear begun to itch and next my back right between my shoulders seemed like id die if i couldnt scratch well ive noticed that thing plenty times since if you are with the quality or at a funeral or trying to go to sleep when you aint sleepyif you are anywheres where it wont do for you to scratch why you will itch all over in upward of a thousand places pretty soon jim says
say who is you whar is you dog my cats ef i didn hear sumfn well i know what is gwyne to do is 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 dasnt scratch then it begun to itch on the inside next i got to itching underneath i didnt 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 couldnt stand it moren 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 snoreand then i was pretty soon comfortable again
tom he made a sign to mekind of a little noise with his mouthand 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 disturbance and then theyd find out i warnt in then tom said he hadnt got candles enough and he would slip in the kitchen and get some more i didnt 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
as soon as tom was back we cut along the path around the garden fence and by and by fetched up on the steep top of the hill the other side of the house tom said he slipped jims hat off of his head and hung it on a limb right over him and jim stirred a little but he didnt wake afterward jim said the witches bewitched him and put him in a trance and rode him all over the state and then set him under the trees again and hung his hat on a limb to show who done it and next time jim told it he said they rode him down to new orleans and after that every time he told it he spread it more and more till by and by he said they rode him all over the world and tired him most to death and his back was all over saddleboils jim was monstrous proud about it and he got so he wouldnt hardly notice the other niggers niggers would come miles to hear jim tell about it and he was more looked up to than any nigger in that country strange niggers would stand with their mouths open and look him all over same as if he was a wonder niggers is always talking about witches in the dark by the kitchen fire but whenever one was talking and letting on to know all about such things jim would happen in and say hm what you know bout witches and that nigger was corked up and had to take a back seat jim always kept that fivecenter piece round his neck with a string and said it was a charm the devil give to him with his own hands and told him he could cure anybody with it and fetch witches whenever he wanted to just by saying something to it but he never told what it was he said to it niggers would come from all around there and give jim anything they had just for a sight of that fivecenter piece but they wouldnt touch it because the devil had had his hands on it jim was most ruined for a servant because he got stuck up on account of having seen the devil and been rode by witches
well when tom and me got to the edge of the hilltop 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 joe 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 wouldnt 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 well start this band of robbers and call it tom sawyers 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 mustnt eat and he mustnt sleep till he had killed them and hacked a cross in their breasts which was the sign of the band and nobody that didnt 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 killed and if anybody that belonged to the band told the secrets he must have his throat cut and then have his carcass burnt up and the ashes scattered all around and his name blotted off the list with blood and never mentioned again by the gang but have a curse put on it and be forgot forever
everybody said it was a real beautiful oath and asked tom if he got it out of his own head he said some of it but the rest was out of piratebooks and robberbooks and every gang that was hightoned had it
some thought it would be good to kill the families of boys that told the secrets tom said it was a good idea so he took a pencil and wrote it in then ben rogers says
heres huck finn he haint got no family what you going to do bout him
well haint he got a father says tom sawyer
yes hes got a father but you cant never find him these days he used to lay drunk with the hogs in the tanyard but he haint been seen in these parts for a year or more
they talked it over and they was going to rule me out because they said every boy must have a family or somebody to kill or else it wouldnt be fair and square for the others well nobody could think of anything to doeverybody was stumped and set still i was most ready to cry but all at once i thought of a way and so i offered them miss watsonthey could kill her everybody said
oh shell do thats all right huck can come in
then they all stuck a pin in their fingers to get blood to sign with and i made my mark on the paper
now says ben rogers whats the line of business of this gang
nothing only robbery and murder tom said
but who are we going to robhouses or cattle or
stuff stealing cattle and such things aint robbery its burglary says tom sawyer we aint burglars that aint no sort of style we are highwaymen 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 its best some authorities think different but mostly its considered best to kill themexcept some that you bring to the cave here and keep them till theyre ransomed
ransomed whats that
i dont know but thats what they do ive seen it in books and so of course thats what weve got to do
but how can we do it if we dont know what it is
why blame it all weve got to do it dont i tell you its in the books do you want to go to doing different from whats in the books and get things all muddled up
oh thats all very fine to say tom sawyer but how in the nation are these fellows going to be ransomed if we dont know how to do it to themthats the thing i want to get at now what do you reckon it is
well i dont know but peraps if we keep them till theyre ransomed it means that we keep them till theyre dead
now thats something like thatll answer why couldnt you said that before well keep them till theyre ransomed to death and a bothersome lot theyll be tooeating up everything and always trying to get loose
how you talk ben rogers how can they get loose when theres a guard over them ready to shoot them down if they move a peg
a guard well that is good so somebodys got to set up all night and never get any sleep just so as to watch them i think thats foolishness why cant a body take a club and ransom them as soon as they get here
because it aint in the books sothats why now ben rogers do you want to do things regular or dont youthats the idea dont you reckon that the people that made the books knows whats the correct thing to do do you reckon you can learn em anything not by a good deal no sir well just go on and ransom them in the regular way
all right i dont mind but i say its a fool way anyhow say do we kill the women too
well ben rogers if i was as ignorant as you i wouldnt let on kill the women no nobody ever saw anything in the books like that you fetch them to the cave and youre always as polite as pie to them and by and by they fall in love with you and never want to go home any more
well if thats the way im agreed but i dont take no stock in it mighty soon well have the cave so cluttered up with women and fellows waiting to be ransomed that there wont be no place for the robbers but go ahead i aint 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 didnt want to be a robber any more
so they all made fun of him and called him crybaby 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 couldnt 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 together and fix a day as soon as they could and then we elected tom sawyer first captain and joe 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 dogtired

well i got a good goingover in the morning from old miss watson on account of my clothes but the widow she didnt 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 day and whatever i asked for i would get it but it warnt so i tried it once i got a fishline but no hooks it warnt any good to me without hooks i tried for the hooks three or four times but somehow i couldnt make it work by and by one day i asked miss watson to try for me but she said i was a fool she never told me why and i couldnt make it out no way
i set down one time back in the woods and had a long think about it i says to myself if a body can get anything they pray for why dont deacon winn get back the money he lost on pork why cant the widow get back her silver snuffbox that was stole why cant miss watson fat up no says i to myself there aint nothing in it i went and told the widow about it and she said the thing a body could get by praying for it was spiritual gifts this was too many for me but she told me what she meanti must help other people and do everything i could for other people and look out for them all the time and never think about myself this was including miss watson as i took it i went out in the woods and turned it over in my mind a long time but i couldnt see no advantage about itexcept for the other people so at last i reckoned i wouldnt worry about it any more but just let it go sometimes the widow would take me one side and talk about providence in a way to make a bodys mouth water but maybe next day miss watson would take hold and knock it all down again i judged i could see that there was two providences and a poor chap would stand considerable show with the widows providence but if miss watsons got him there warnt no help for him any more i thought it all out and reckoned i would belong to the widows if he wanted me though i couldnt make out how he was agoing to be any better off then than what he was before seeing i was so ignorant and so kind of lowdown and ornery
pap he hadnt been seen for more than a year and that was comfortable for me i didnt 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 couldnt make nothing out of the face because it had been in the water so long it warnt 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 warnt comfortable long because i happened to think of something i knowed mighty well that a drownded man dont float on his back but on his face so i knowed then that this warnt pap but a woman dressed up in a mans clothes so i was uncomfortable again i judged the old man would turn up again by and by though i wished he wouldnt
we played robber now and then about a month and then i resigned all the boys did we hadnt robbed nobody hadnt killed any people but only just pretended we used to hop out of the woods and go charging down on hogdrivers 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 couldnt 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 spanish merchants and rich arabs was going to camp in cave hollow with two hundred elephants and six hundred camels and over a thousand sumter mules all loaded down with dimonds and they didnt have only a guard of four hundred soldiers and so we would lay in ambuscade as he called it and kill the lot and scoop the things he said we must slick up our swords and guns and get ready he never could go after even a turnipcart but he must have the swords and guns all scoured up for it though they was only lath and broomsticks and you might scour at them till you rotted and then they warnt worth a mouthful of ashes more than what they was before i didnt believe we could lick such a crowd of spaniards and arabs but i wanted to see the camels and elephants so i was on hand next day saturday in the ambuscade and when we got the word we rushed out of the woods and down the hill but there warnt no spaniards and arabs and there warnt no camels nor no elephants it warnt anything but a sundayschool picnic and only a primer class at that we busted it up and chased the children up the hollow but we never got anything but some doughnuts and jam though ben rogers got a rag doll and joe harper got a hymnbook and a tract and then the teacher charged in and made us drop everything and cut i didnt see no dimonds and i told tom sawyer so he said there was loads of them there anyway and he said there was arabs there too and elephants and things i said why couldnt we see them then he said if i warnt so ignorant but had read a book called don quixote i would know without asking he said it was all done by enchantment he said there was hundreds of soldiers there and elephants and treasure and so on but we had enemies which he called magicians and they had turned the whole thing into an infant sundayschool 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 spose we got some genies to help uscant we lick the other crowd then
how you going to get them
i dont 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 aripping around and the smoke arolling and everything theyre told to do they up and do it they dont think nothing of pulling a shottower up by the roots and belting a sundayschool superintendent over the head with itor 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 theyve got to do whatever he says if he tells them to build a palace forty miles long out of dimonds and fill it full of chewinggum or whatever you want and fetch an emperors daughter from china for you to marry theyve got to do itand theyve got to do it before sunup next morning too and more theyve 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 flatheads for not keeping the palace themselves stead of fooling them away like that and whats moreif i was one of them i would see a man in jericho before i would drop my business and come to him for the rubbing of an old tin lamp
how you talk huck finn why youd have to come when he rubbed it whether you wanted to or not
what and i as high as a tree and as big as a church all right then i would come but i lay id make that man climb the highest tree there was in the country
shucks it aint no use to talk to you huck finn you dont seem to know anything somehowperfect saphead
i thought all this over for two or three days and then i reckoned i would see if there was anything in it i got an old tin lamp and an iron ring and went out in the woods and rubbed and rubbed till i sweat like an injun calculating to build a palace and sell it but it warnt no use none of the genies come so then i judged that all that stuff was only just one of tom sawyers lies i reckoned he believed in the arabs and the elephants but as for me i think different it had all the marks of a sundayschool

well three or four months run along and it was well into the winter now i had been to school most all the time and could spell and read and write just a little and could say the multiplication table up to six times seven is thirtyfive and i dont reckon i could ever get any further than that if i was to live forever i dont take no stock in mathematics anyway
at first i hated the school but by and by i got so i could stand it whenever i got 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 widows ways too and they warnt 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 warnt ashamed of me
one morning i happened to turn over the saltcellar 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 warnt 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 wasnt one of them kind so i never tried to do anything but just poked along lowspirited and on the watchout
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 somebodys tracks they had come up from the quarry and stood around the stile awhile and then went on around the garden fence it was funny they hadnt come in after standing around so i couldnt make it out it was very curious somehow i was going to follow around but i stooped down to look at the tracks first i didnt notice anything at first but next i did there was a cross in the left bootheel made with big nails to keep off the devil
i was up in a second and shinning down the hill i looked over my shoulder every now and then but i didnt see nobody i was at judge thatchers as quick as i could get there he said
why my boy you are all out of breath did you come for your interest
no sir i says is there some for me
oh yes a halfyearly is in last nightover a hundred and fifty dollars quite a fortune for you you had better let me invest it along with your six thousand because if you take it youll spend it
no sir i says i dont want to spend it i dont want it at allnor the six thousand nuther i want you to take it i want to give it to youthe six thousand and all
he looked surprised he couldnt seem to make it out he says
why what can you mean my boy
i says dont you ask me no questions about it please youll take itwont you
he says
well im puzzled is something the matter
please take it says i and dont ask me nothingthen i wont have to tell no lies
he studied awhile and then he says
ohoo i think i see you want to sell all your property to menot give it thats the 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 heres a dollar for you now you sign it
so i signed it and left
miss watsons nigger jim had a hairball 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 hairball 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 warnt no use he said it wouldnt talk he said sometimes it wouldnt talk without money i told him i had an old slick counterfeit quarter that warnt no good because the brass showed through the silver a little and it wouldnt pass nohow even if the brass didnt show because it was so slick it felt greasy and so that would tell on it every time i reckoned i wouldnt say nothing about the dollar i got from the judge i said it was pretty bad money but maybe the hairball would take it because maybe it wouldnt know the difference jim smelt it and bit it and rubbed it and said he would manage so the hairball 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 couldnt see no brass and it wouldnt feel greasy no more and so anybody in town would take it in a minute let alone a hairball well i knowed a potato would do that before but i had forgot it
jim put the quarter under the hairball and got down and listened again this time he said the hairball was all right he said it would tell my whole fortune if i wanted it to i says go on so the hairball talked to jim and jim told it to me he says
yo ole father doan know yit what hes agwyne to do sometimes he spec hell go way en den agin he spec hell stay de bes way is to res easy en let de ole man take his own way deys two angels hoverin roun bout him one uv em is white en shiny en tother one is black de white one gits him to go right a little while den de black one sail in en bust it all up a body cant tell yit which one gwyne to fetch him at de las but you is all right you gwyne to have considable trouble in yo life en considable joy sometimes you gwyne to git hurt en sometimes you gwyne to git sick but every time yous gwyne to git well agin deys two gals flyin bout you in yo life one uv ems light en tother one is dark one is rich en tother is po yous gwyne to marry de po one fust en de rich one by en by you wants to keep way fum de water as much as you kin en dont run no resk kase its down in de bills dat yous gwyne to git hung
when i lit my candle and went up to my room that night there sat paphis own self

i had shut the door to then i turned around and there he was i used to be scared of him all the time he tanned me so much i reckoned i was scared now too but in a minute i see i was mistakenthat 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 warnt 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 mixedup whiskers there warnt no color in his face where his face showed it was white not like another mans white but a white to make a body sick a white to make a bodys flesh crawla treetoad white a fishbelly white as for his clothesjust rags that was all he had one ankle resting on tother 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 flooran old black slouch with the top caved in like a lid
i stood alooking at him he set there alooking 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 alooking me all over by and by he says
starchy clothesvery you think youre a good deal of a bigbug dont you
maybe i am maybe i aint i says
dont you give me none o your lip says he youve put on considerable many frills since i been away ill take you down a peg before i get done with you youre educated too they saycan read and write you think youre bettern your father now dont you because he cant ill take it out of you who told you you might meddle with such hifalutn foolishness heywho told you you could
the widow she told me
the widow heyand who told the widow she could put in her shovel about a thing that aint none of her business
nobody never told her
well ill learn her how to meddle and looky hereyou drop that school you hear ill learn people to bring up a boy to put on airs over his own father and let on to be bettern what he is you lemme catch you fooling around that school again you hear your mother couldnt read and she couldnt write nuther before she died none of the family couldnt before they died i cant and here youre aswelling yourself up like this i aint the man to stand ityou hear say lemme hear you read
i took up a book and begun something about general washington and the wars when id read about a half a minute he fetched the book a whack with his hand and knocked it across the house he says
its so you can do it i had my doubts when you told me now looky here you stop that putting on frills i wont have it ill lay for you my smarty and if i catch you about that school ill tan you good first you know youll get religion too i never see such a son
he took up a little blue and yaller picture of some cows and a boy and says
whats this
its something they give me for learning my lessons good
he tore it up and says
ill give you something betterill give you a cowhide
he set there amumbling and agrowling a minute and then he says
aint you a sweetscented dandy though a bed and bedclothes and a looknglass and a piece of carpet on the floorand your own father got to sleep with the hogs in the tanyard i never see such a son i bet ill take some o these frills out o you before im done with you why there aint no end to your airsthey say youre rich heyhows that
they liethats how
looky heremind how you talk to me im astanding about all i can stand nowso dont gimme no sass ive been in town two days and i haint heard nothing but about you bein rich i heard about it away down the river too thats why i come you git me that money tomorrowi want it
i haint got no money
its a lie judge thatchers got it you git it i want it
i haint got no money i tell you you ask judge thatcher hell tell you the same
all right ill ask him and ill make him pungle too or ill know the reason why say how much you got in your pocket i want it
i haint got only a dollar and i want that to
it dont make no difference what you want it foryou just shell it out
he took it and bit it to see if it was good and then he said he was going downtown to get some whisky said he hadnt had a drink all day when he had got out on the shed he put his head in again and cussed me for putting on frills and trying to be better than him and when i reckoned he was gone he come back and put his head in again and told me to mind about that school because he was going to lay for me and lick me if i didnt drop that
next day he was drunk and he went to judge thatchers and bullyragged him and tried to make him give up the money but he couldnt and then he swore hed make the law force him
the judge and the widow went to law to get the court to take me away from him and let one of them be my guardian but it was a new judge that had just come and he didnt know the old man so he said courts mustnt interfere and separate families if they could help it said hed druther not take a child away from its father so judge thatcher and the widow had to quit on the business
that pleased the old man till he couldnt rest he said hed cowhide me till i was black and blue if i didnt raise some money for him i borrowed three dollars from judge thatcher and pap took it and got drunk and went ablowing around and cussing and whooping and carrying on and he kept it up all over town with a tin pan till most midnight then they jailed him and next day they had him before court and jailed him again for a week but he said he was satisfied said he was boss of his son and hed make it warm for him
when he got out the new judge said he was agoing to make a man of him so he took him to his own house and dressed him up clean and nice and had him to breakfast and dinner and supper with the family and was just old pie to him so to speak and after supper he talked to him about temperance and such things till the old man cried and said hed been a fool and fooled away his life but now he was agoing to turn over a new leaf and be a man nobody wouldnt 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 hed 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 ahold of it shake it theres a hand that was the hand of a hog but it aint so no more its the hand of a man thats started in on a new life andll die before hell go back you mark them wordsdont forget i said them its a clean hand now shake itdont be afeard
so they shook it one after the other all around and cried the judges wife she kissed it then the old man he signed a pledgemade his mark the judge said it was the holiest time on record or something like that then they tucked the old man into a beautiful room which was the spare room and in the night some time he got powerful thirsty and clumb out on to the porchroof and slid down a stanchion and traded his new coat for a jug of fortyrod and clumb back again and had a good old time and toward 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 sunup and when they come to look at that spare room they had to take soundings before they could navigate it
the judge he felt kind of sore he said he reckoned a body could reform the old man with a shotgun maybe but he didnt know no other way

well pretty soon the old man was up and around again and then he went for judge thatcher in the courts to make him give up that money and he went for me too for not stopping school he catched me a couple of times and thrashed me but i went to school just the same and dodged him or outrun him most of the time i didnt want to go to school much before but i reckoned id go now to spite pap that law trial was a slow businessappeared like they warnt ever going to get started on it so every now and then id borrow two or three dollars off of the judge for him to keep from getting a cowhiding every time he got money he got drunk and every time he got drunk he raised cain around town and every time he raised cain he got jailed he was just suitedthis kind of thing was right in his line
he got to hanging around the widows too much and so she told him at last that if he didnt quit using around there she would make trouble for him well wasnt he mad he said he would show who was huck finns boss so he watched out for me one day in the spring and catched me and took me up the river about three mile in a skiff and crossed over to the illinois shore where it was woody and there warnt no houses but an old log hut in a place where the timber was so thick you couldnt find it if you didnt know where it was
he kept me with him all the time and i never got a chance to run off we lived in that old cabin and he always locked the door and put the key under his head nights he had a gun which he had stole i reckon and we 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 warnt long after that till i was used to being where i was and liked itall 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 didnt see how id ever got to like it so well at the widows 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 didnt want to go back no more i had stopped cussing because the widow didnt like it but now i took to it again because pap hadnt no objections it was pretty good times up in the woods there take it all around
but by and by pap got too handy with his hickry and i couldnt 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 drownded and i wasnt 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 couldnt find no way there warnt a window to it big enough for a dog to get through i couldnt 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 reckon i had hunted the place over as much as a hundred times well i was most all the time at it because it was about the only way to put in the time but this time i found something at last i found an old rusty woodsaw without any handle it was laid in between a rafter and the clapboards of the roof i greased it up and went to work there was an old horseblanket nailed against the logs at the far end of the cabin behind the table to keep the wind from blowing through the chinks and putting the candle out i got under the table and raised the blanket and went to work to saw a section of the big bottom log outbig enough to let me through well it was a good long job but i was getting toward the end of it when i heard paps gun in the woods i got rid of the signs of my work and dropped the blanket and hid my saw and pretty soon pap come in
pap warnt in a good humorso he was his natural self he said he was downtown and everything was going wrong his lawyer said he reckoned he would win his lawsuit and get the money if they ever got started on the trial but then there was ways to put it off a long time and judge thatcher knowed how to do it and he said people allowed thered be another trial to get me away from him and give me to the widow for my guardian and they guessed it would win this time this shook me up considerable because i didnt want to go back to the widows any more and be so cramped up and sivilized as they called it then the old man got to cussing and cussed everything and everybody he could think of and then cussed them all over again to make sure he hadnt skipped any and after that he polished off with a kind of a general cuss all round including a considerable parcel of people which he didnt know the names of and so called them whatshisname when he got to them and went right along with his 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 couldnt find me that made me pretty uneasy again but only for a minute i reckoned i wouldnt 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 fiftypound sack of corn meal and a side of bacon ammunition and a fourgallon 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 wouldnt stay in one place but just tramp right across the country mostly nighttimes and hunt and fish to keep alive and so get so far away that the old man nor the widow couldnt 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 didnt 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 adamhe was just all mud whenever his liquor begun to work he most always went for the govment this time he says
call this a govment why just look at it and see what its like heres the law astanding ready to take a mans son away from hima mans own son which he has had all the trouble and all the anxiety and all the expense of raising yes just as that man has got that son raised at last and ready to go to work and begin to do suthin for him and give him a rest the law up and goes for him and they call that govment that aint all nuther the law backs that old judge thatcher up and helps him to keep me out o my property heres what the law does the law takes a man worth six thousand dollars and upards and jams him into an old trap of a cabin like this and lets him go round in clothes that aint fitten for a hog they call that govment a man cant get his rights in a govment like this sometimes ive a mighty notion to just leave the country for good and all yes and i told em so i told old thatcher so to his face lots of em heard me and can tell what i said says i for two cents id leave the blamed country and never come anear it agin thems the very words i says look at my hatif you call it a hatbut the lid raises up and the rest of it goes down till its below my chin and then it aint rightly a hat at all but more like my head was shoved up through a jint o stovepipe look at it says isuch a hat for me to wearone of the wealthiest men in this town if i could git my rights
oh yes this is a wonderful govment wonderful why looky here there was a free nigger there from ohioa mulatter most as white as a white man he had the whitest shirt on you ever see too and the shiniest hat and there aint a man in that town thats got as fine clothes as what he had and he had a gold watch and chain and a silverheaded canethe awfulest old grayheaded nabob in the state and what do you think they said he was a pfessor in a college and could talk all kinds of languages and knowed everything and that aint the wust they said he could vote when he was at home well that let me out thinks i what is the country acoming to it was lection day and i was just about to go and vote myself if i warnt too drunk to get there but when they told me there was a state in this country where theyd let that nigger vote i drawed out i says ill never vote agin thems the very words i said they all heard me and the country may rot for all meill never vote agin as long as i live and to see the cool way of that niggerwhy he wouldnt a give me the road if i hadnt shoved him out o the way i says to the people why aint this nigger put up at auction and soldthats what i want to know and what do you reckon they said why they said he couldnt be sold till hed been in the state six months and he hadnt been there that long yet there nowthats a specimen they call that a govment that cant sell a free nigger till hes been in the state six months heres a govment that calls itself a govment and lets on to be a govment and thinks it is a govment and yets got to set stockstill for six whole months before it can take ahold of a prowling thieving infernal whiteshirted 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 languagemostly 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 warnt 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 bodys 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 tother he drank and drank and tumbled down on his blankets by and by but luck didnt run my way he didnt 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 couldnt 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 dont 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 cheekbut i couldnt see no snakes he started and run round and round the cabin hollering take him off take him off hes 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 ahold of him he wore out by and by and laid still awhile moaning then he laid stiller and didnt 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
tramptramptramp thats the dead tramptramptramp theyre coming after me but i wont go oh theyre here dont touch medont hands offtheyre 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 abegging 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 claspknife calling me the angel of death and saying he would kill me and then i couldnt 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 splitbottom 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 and then i laid it across the turnipbarrel pointing towards pap and set down behind it to wait for him to stir and how slow and still the time did drag along

git up what you bout
i opened my eyes and looked around trying to make out where i was it was after sunup and i had been sound asleep pap was standing over me looking sourand sick too he says
what you doin with this gun
i judged he didnt know nothing about what he had been doing so i says
somebody tried to get in so i was laying for him
why didnt you roust me out
well i tried to but i couldnt i couldnt budge you
well all right dont stand there palavering all day but out with you and see if theres a fish on the lines for breakfast ill be along in a minute
he unlocked the door and i cleared out up the riverbank 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 raftssometimes a dozen logs together so all you have to do is to catch them and sell them to the woodyards and the sawmill
i went along up the bank with one eye out for pap and tother 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 headfirst off of the bank like a frog clothes and all on and struck out for the canoe i just expected thered 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 theyd raise up and laugh at him but it warnt so this time it was a driftcanoe sure enough and i clumb in and paddled her ashore thinks i the old man will be glad when he sees thisshes worth ten dollars but when i got to shore pap wasnt 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 id hide her good and then stead of taking to the woods when i run off id 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 hadnt 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 didnt 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 aprowling round here you roust me out you hear that man warnt here for no good id a shot him next time you roust me out you hear
then he dropped down and went to sleep again what he had been saying give me the very idea i wanted i says to myself i can fix it now so nobody wont think of following me
about twelve oclock 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 raftnine 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 warnt paps 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 wouldnt 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 tother side of the river i was out of the hole him and his raft was just a speck on the water away off yonder
illustration huckleberry finn
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 whiskyjug i took all the coffee and sugar there was and all the ammunition i took the wadding i took the bucket and gourd took a dipper and a tin cup and my old saw and two blankets and the skillet and the coffeepot i took fishlines and matches and other thingseverything that was worth a cent i cleaned out the place i wanted an ax but there wasnt 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 didnt quite touch ground if you stood four or five foot away and didnt know it was sawed you wouldnt never notice it and besides this was the back of the cabin and it warnt likely anybody would go fooling around there
it was all grass clear to the canoe so i hadnt 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 prairiefarms i shot this fellow and took him into camp
i took the ax and smashed in the door i beat it and hacked it considerable adoing it i fetched the pig in and took him back nearly to the table and hacked into his throat with the ax and laid him down on the ground to bleed i say ground because it was groundhard packed and no boards well next i took an old sack and put a lot of big rocks in itall i could dragand 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 ax good and stuck it on the back side and slung the ax in the corner then i took up the pig and held him to my breast with my jacket so he couldnt 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 warnt no knives and forks on the placepap done everything with his claspknife 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 rushesand 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 dont know where but it didnt go to the river the meal sifted out and made a little track all the way to the lake i dropped paps whetstone there too so as to look like it had been done by accident then i tied up the rip in the mealsack with a string so it wouldnt 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 theyll follow the track of that sackful of rocks to the shore and then drag the river for me and theyll 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 wont ever hunt the river for anything but my dead carcass theyll soon get tired of that and wont bother no more about me all right i can stop anywhere i want to jacksons 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 jacksons islands the place
i was pretty tired and the first thing i knowed i was asleep when i woke up i didnt 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 driftlogs that went aslipping 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 meani dont 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 its a still night i peeped out through the willow branches and there it wasa skiff away across the water i couldnt tell how many was in it it kept acoming and when it was abreast of me i see there warnt but one man in it thinks i maybe its pap though i warnt expecting him he dropped below me with the current and by and by he came aswinging 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 enoughand sober too by the way he laid his oars
i didnt lose no time the next minute i was aspinning downstream 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 toward the middle of the river because pretty soon i would be passing the ferrylanding 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 ferrylanding i heard what they said tooevery word of it one man said it was getting towards the long days and the short nights now tother one said this warnt one of the short ones he reckonedand 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 didnt laugh he ripped out something brisk and said let him alone the first fellow said he lowed to tell it to his old womanshe would think it was pretty good but he said that warnt nothing to some things he had said in his time i heard one man say it was nearly three oclock and he hoped daylight wouldnt wait more than about a week longer after that the talk got further and further away and i couldnt 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 jacksons island about two mile and a half downstream heavytimbered and standing up out of the middle of the river big and dark and solid like a steamboat without any lights there warnt any signs of the bar at the headit was all under water now
it didnt 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 lumberraft was about a mile upstream 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

the sun was up so high when i waked that i judged it was after eight oclock 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 comfortabledidnt 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 upabout abreast the ferry and there was the ferryboat full of people floating along down i knowed what was the matter now boom i see the white smoke squirt out of the ferryboats 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 warnt going to do for me to start a fire because they might see the smoke so i set there and watched the cannonsmoke and listened to the boom the river was a mile wide there and it always looks pretty on a summer morningso 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 ill keep a lookout and if any of thems floating around after me ill give them a show i changed to the illinois edge of the island to see what luck i could have and i warnt 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 shorei 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 bakers breadwhat the quality eat none of your lowdown cornpone
i got a good place amongst the leaves and set there on a log munching the bread and watching the ferryboat 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 aint no doubt but there is something in that thingthat is theres something in it when a body like the widow or the parson prays but it dont work for me and i reckon it dont 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 id have a chance to see who was aboard when she come along because she would come in close where the bread did when shed 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 joe 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 hes washed ashore and got tangled amongst the brush at the waters edge i hope so anyway
i didnt 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 firstrate but they couldnt 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 theyd a had some bullets in i reckon theyd a got the corpse they was after well i see i warnt 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 didnt 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 didnt yet awhile 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 ahunting 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 couldnt get at them i catched a catfish and haggled him open with my saw and towards sundown i started my campfire and had supper then i set out a line to catch some fish for breakfast
when it was dark i set by my campfire 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 driftlogs and rafts that come down and then went to bed there aint no better way to put in time when you are lonesome you cant stay so you soon get over it
and so for three days and nights no differencejust 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 warnt far from the foot of the island i had my gun along but i hadnt shot nothing it was for protection thought i would kill some game nigh home about this time i mighty near stepped on a goodsized 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 campfire 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 couldnt 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 warnt feeling very brash there warnt much sand in my craw but i says this aint 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 lastyears camp and then clumb a tree
i reckon i was up in the tree two hours but i didnt see nothing i didnt hear nothingi only thought i heard and seen as much as a thousand things well i couldnt 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 bankabout 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 plunketyplunk plunketyplunk and says to myself horses coming and next i hear peoples 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 hadnt 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 lets look around
i didnt wait but shoved out and paddled away easy i tied up in the old place and reckoned i would sleep in the canoe
i didnt sleep much i couldnt somehow for thinking and every time i waked up i thought somebody had me by the neck so the sleep didnt do me no good by and by i says to myself i cant live this way im agoing to find out who it is thats here on the island with me ill 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 outside 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 campfire stopping every minute or two to listen but i hadnt no luck somehow i couldnt 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 watsons 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
doan hurt medont i haint ever done no harm to a ghos i alwuz liked dead people en done all i could for em you go en git in de river agin whah you blongs en doan do nuffn to ole jim at uz alwuz yo fren
well i warnt long making him understand i warnt dead i was ever so glad to see jim i warnt lonesome now i told him i warnt afraid of him telling the people where i was i talked along but he only set there and looked at me never said nothing then i says
its good daylight les get breakfast make up your campfire good
whats de use er makin up de campfire to cook strawbries en sich truck but you got a gun haint you den we kin git sumfn better den strawbries
strawberries and such truck i says is that what you live on
i couldn git nuffn else he says
why how long you been on the island jim
i come heah de night arter yous killed
what all that time
yesindeedy
and aint you had nothing but that kind of rubbage to eat
no sahnuffn else
well you must be most starved aint you
i reckn i could eat a hoss i think i could how long you ben on de islan
since the night i got killed
no wy what has you lived on but you got a gun oh yes you got a gun dats good now you kill sumfn en ill 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 coffeepot and fryingpan 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 warnt you
then i told him the whole thing and he said it was smart he said tom sawyer couldnt get up no better plan than what i had then i says
how do you come to be here jim and howd you get here
he looked pretty uneasy and didnt say nothing for a minute then he says
maybe i better not tell
why jim
well deys reasons but you wouldn tell on me ef i uz to tell you would you huck
blamed if i would jim
well i blieve you huck ii run off
jim
but mind you said you wouldn tellyou know you said you wouldn tell huck
well i did i said i wouldnt and ill stick to it honest injun i will people would call me a lowdown abolitionist and despise me for keeping mumbut that dont make no difference i aint agoing to tell and i aint agoing back there anyways so now les know all about it
well you see it uz dis way ole missusdats miss watsonshe pecks on me all de time en treats me pooty rough but she awluz said she wouldn sell me down to orleans but i noticed dey wuz a nigger trader roun de place considable lately en i begin to git oneasy well one night i creeps to de do pooty late en de do warnt quite shet en i hear old missus tell de widder she gwyne to sell me down to orleans but she didn want to but she could git eight hundd dollars for me en it uz sich a big stack o money she couldn resis de widder she try to git her to say she wouldnt do it but i never waited to hear de res i lit out mighty quick i tell you
i tuck out en shin down de hill en spec to steal a skift long de sho somers bove de town but dey wuz people astirring yit so i hid in de ole tumbledown cooper shop on de bank to wait for everybody to go way well i wuz dah all night dey wuz somebody roun all de time long bout six in de mawnin skifts begin to go by en bout eight er nine every skift dat went long wuz talkin bout how yo pap come over to de town en say yous killed dese las skifts wuz full o ladies en genlmen agoin over for to see de place sometimes deyd pull up at de sho en take a res bfo dey started acrost so by de talk i got to know all bout de killin i uz powerful sorry yous killed huck but i aint no mo now
i laid dah under de shavins all day i uz hungry but i warnt afeard bekase i knowed ole missus en de widder wuz goin to start to de campmeetn 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 deyd shin out en take holiday soon as de ole folks uz outn de way
well when it come dark i tuck out up de river road en went bout two mile er more to whah dey warnt no houses id made up my mine bout what is 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 deyd miss dat skift you see en deyd know bout whah id lan on de yuther side en whah to pick up my track so i says a raff is what is arter it doan make no track
i see a light acomin roun de pint bymeby so i wade in en shove a log ahead o me en swum moren halfway acrost de river en got in mongst de driftwood 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 aholt 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 arisin en dey wuz a good current so i recknd at by fo in de mawnin id be twentyfive mile down de river en den id slip in jis bfo daylight en swim asho en take to de woods on de illinois side
but i didn have no luck when we uz mos down to de head er de islan a man begin to come aft wid de lantern i see it warnt no use fer to wait so i slid overboard en struck out fer de islan well i had a notion i could lan mos anywhers but i couldntbank too bluff i uz mos to de foot er de islan bfo i foun a good place i went into de woods en jedged i wouldn fool wid raffs no mo long as dey move de lantern roun so i had my pipe en a plug er dogleg en some matches in my cap en dey warnt wet so i uz all right
and so you aint had no meat nor bread to eat all this time why didnt you get mudturkles
how you gwyne to git m you cant slip up on um en grab um en hows a body gwyne to hit um wid a rock how could a body do it in de night en i warnt gwyne to show mysef on de bank in de daytime
well thats so youve had to keep in the woods all the time of course did you hear em shooting the cannon
oh yes i knowed dey was arter you i see um go by heahwatched um thoo de bushes
some young birds come along flying a yard or two at a time and lighting jim said it was a sign it was going to rain he said it was a sign when young chickens flew that way and so he reckoned it was the same way when young birds done it i was going to catch some of them but jim wouldnt let me he said it was death he said his father laid mighty sick once and some of them catched a bird and his old granny said his father would die and he did
and jim said you mustnt count the things you are going to cook for dinner because that would bring bad luck the same if you shook the tablecloth after sundown and he said if a man owned a beehive and that man died the bees must be told about it before sunup next morning or else the bees would all weaken down and quit work and die jim said bees wouldnt sting idiots but i didnt believe that because i had tried them lots of times myself and they wouldnt 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 warnt any goodluck signs he says
mighty fewan dey aint no use to a body what you want to know when good lucks acomin for want to keep it off and he said ef yous got hairy arms en a hairy breas its a sign dat yous agwyne to be rich well deys some use in a sign like dat kase its so fur ahead you see maybe yous got to be po a long time fust en so you might git discourage en kill yosef f you didn know by de sign dat you gwyne to be rich bymeby
have you got hairy arms and a hairy breast jim
whats de use to ax dat question dont 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 specalatn en got busted out
what did you speculate in jim
well fust i tackled stock
what kind of stock
why live stockcattle you know i put ten dollars in a cow but i ain gwyne to resk no mo money in stock de cow up n died on my hans
so you lost the ten dollars
no i didnt lose it all i ony los bout nine of it i sole de hide en taller for a dollar en ten cents
you had five dollars and ten cents left did you speculate any more
yes you know that onelaigged nigger dat blongs to old misto bradish well he sot up a bank en say anybody dat put in a dollar would git fo dollars mo at de en er de year well all de niggers went in but dey didnt have much i wuz de ony one dat had much so i stuck out for mo dan fo dollars en i said f i didn git it id start a bank mysef well o course dat nigger want to keep me out er de business bekase he says dey warnt business nough for two banks so he say i could put in my five dollars en he pay me thirtyfive at de en er de year
so i done it den i recknd id inves de thirtyfive dollars right off en keep things amovin dey wuz a nigger name bob dat had ketched a woodflat en his marster didn know it en i bought it offn him en told him to take de thirtyfive dollars when de en er de year come but somebody stole de woodflat dat night en nex day de onelaigged nigger say de banks busted so dey didn none uv us git no money
what did you do with the ten cents jim
well i uz gwyne to spen it but i had a dream en de dream tole me to give it to a nigger name balumbalums ass dey call him for short hes one er dem chuckleheads you know but hes lucky dey say en i see i warnt lucky de dream say let balum inves de ten cents en hed 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 hundd 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 kleck 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 hundd times de preacher says ef i could git de ten cents back id call it squah en be glad er de chanst
well its all right anyway jim long as youre going to be rich again some time or other
yes en is rich now come to look at it i owns mysef en is wuth eight hundd dollars i wisht i had de money i wouldn want no mo

i wanted to go and look at a place right about the middle of the island that id 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 up to the top on the side towards illinois the cavern was as big as two or three rooms bunched together and jim could stand up straight in it it was cool in there jim was for putting our traps in there right away but i said we didnt want to be climbing up and down there all the time
jim said if we had the canoe hid in a good place and had all the traps in the cavern we could rush there if anybody was to come to the island and they would never find us without dogs and besides he said them little birds had said it was going to rain and did i want the things to get wet
so we went back and got the canoe and paddled up abreast the cavern and lugged all the traps up there then we hunted up a place close by to hide the canoe in amongst the thick willows we took some fish off of the lines and set them again and begun to get ready for dinner
the door of the cavern was big enough to roll a hogshead in and on one side of the door the floor stuck out a little bit and was flat and a good place to build a fire on so we built it there and cooked dinner
we spread the blankets inside for a carpet and eat our dinner in there we put all the other things handy at the back of the cavern pretty soon it darkened up and begun to thunder and lighten so the birds was right about it directly it begun to rain and it rained like all fury too and i never see the wind blow so it was one of these regular summer storms it would get so dark that it looked all blueblack outside and lovely and the rain would thrash along by so thick that the trees off a little ways looked dim and spiderwebby and here would come a blast of wind that would bend the trees down and turn up the pale underside of the leaves and then a perfect ripper of a gust 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 blackestfst it was as bright as glory and youd have a little glimpse of treetops aplunging 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 youd hear the thunder let go with an awful crash and then go rumbling grumbling tumbling down the sky towards the under side of the world like rolling empty barrels downstairswhere its long stairs and they bounce a good deal you know
jim this is nice i says i wouldnt want to be nowhere else but here pass me along another hunk of fish and some hot cornbread
well you wouldnt a ben here f it hadnt a ben for jim youd a ben down dah in de woods widout any dinner en gittin mos drownded too dat you would honey chickens knows when its 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 acrossa half a milebecause 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 brokendown tree you could see rabbits and snakes and such things and when the island had been overflowed a day or two they got so tame on account of being hungry that you could paddle right up and put your hand on them if you wanted to but not the snakes and turtlesthey would slide off in the water the ridge our cavern was in was full of them we could a had pets enough if wed wanted them
one night we catched a little section of a lumberraftnice pine planks it was twelve foot wide and about fifteen or sixteen foot long and the top stood above water six or seven inchesa solid level floor we could see sawlogs go by in the daylight sometimes but we let them go we didnt show ourselves in daylight
another night when we was up at the head of the island just before daylight here comes a framehouse down on the west side she was a twostory and tilted over considerable we paddled out and got aboardclumb in at an upstairs window but it was too dark to see yet so we made the canoe fast and set in her to wait for daylight
the light begun to come before we got to the foot of the island then we looked in at the window we could make out a bed and a table and two old chairs and lots of things around about on the floor and there was clothes hanging against the wall there was something laying on the floor in the far corner that looked like a man so jim says
hello you
but it didnt budge so i hollered again and then jim says
de man aint asleephes dead you hold stillill go en see
he went and bent down and looked and says
its a dead man yes indeedy naked too hes ben shot in de back i reckn hes ben dead two er three days come in huck but doan look at his faceits too gashly
i didnt look at him at all jim throwed some old rags over him but he neednt done it i didnt want to see him there was heaps of old greasy cards scattered around over the floor and old whiskybottles 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 sunbonnet and some womens underclothes hanging against the wall and some mens clothing too we put the lot into the canoeit might come good there was a boys 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 warnt nothing left in them that was any account the way things was scattered about we reckoned the people left in a hurry and warnt fixed so as to carry off most of their stuff
we got an old tin lantern and a butcherknife without any handle and a brannew 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 monstrous hooks on it and a roll of buckskin and a leather dogcollar and a horseshoe and some vials of medicine that didnt have no label on them and just as we was leaving i found a tolerable good currycomb and jim he found a ratty old fiddlebow and a wooden leg the straps was broke off of it but barring that it was a good enough leg though it was too long for me and not long enough for jim and we couldnt find the other one though we hunted all around
and so take it all around we made a good haul when we was ready to shove off we was a quarter of a mile below the island and it was pretty broad day so i made jim lay down in the canoe and cover up with the quilt because if he set up people could tell he was a nigger a good ways off i paddled over to the illinois shore and drifted down most a half a mile doing it i crept up the dead water under the bank and hadnt no accidents and didnt see nobody we got home all safe

after breakfast i wanted to talk about the dead man and guess out how he come to be killed but jim didnt want to he said it would fetch bad luck and besides he said he might come and hant us he said a man that warnt buried was more likely to go ahanting around than one that was planted and comfortable that sounded pretty reasonable so i didnt say no more but i couldnt keep from studying over it and wishing i knowed who shot the man and what they done it for
we rummaged the clothes wed got and found eight dollars in silver sewed up in the lining of an old blanket overcoat jim said he reckoned the people in that house stole the coat because if theyd a knowed the money was there they wouldnt a left it i said i reckoned they killed him too but jim didnt want to talk about that i says
now you think its bad luck but what did you say when i fetched in the snakeskin 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 snakeskin with my hands well heres your bad luck weve 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 dont you git too peart its acomin mind i tell you its acomin
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 jims blanket ever so natural thinking thered 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 snakes 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 paps whiskyjug 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 snakes 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 away amongst the bushes for i warnt going to let jim find out it was all my fault not if i could help it
jim sucked and sucked at the jug and now and then he got out of his head and pitched around and yelled but every time he come to himself he went to sucking at the jug again his foot swelled up pretty big and so did his leg but by and by the drunk begun to come and so i judged he was all right but id druther been bit with a snake than paps whisky
jim was laid up for four days and nights then the swelling was all gone and he was around again i made up my mind i wouldnt ever take aholt of a snakeskin again with my hands now that i see what had come of it jim said he reckoned i would believe him next time and he said that handling a snakeskin was such awful bad luck that maybe we hadnt got to the end of it yet he said he druther see the new moon over his left shoulder as much as a thousand times than take up a snakeskin in his hand well i was getting to feel that way myself though ive always reckoned that looking at the new moon over your left shoulder is one of the carelessest and foolishest things a body can do old hank bunker done it once and bragged about it and in less than two years he got drunk and fell off of the shottower and spread himself out so that he was just a kind of a layer as you may say and they slid him edgeways between two barn doors for a coffin and buried him so so they say but i didnt see it pap told me but anyway it all come of looking at the moon that way like a fool
well the days went along and the river went down between its banks again and about the first thing we done was to bait one of the big hooks with a skinned rabbit and set it and catch a catfish that was as big as a man being six foot two inches long and weighed over two hundred pounds we couldnt 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 hed 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 hadnt 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 markethouse there everybody buys some of him his meats 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 stirringup 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 couldnt 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 trouserlegs to my knees and got into it jim hitched it behind with the hooks and it was a fair fit i put on the sunbonnet 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 stovepipe jim said nobody would know me even in the daytime hardly i practised 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 didnt walk like a girl and he said i must quit pulling up my gown to get at my britchespocket i took notice and done better
i started up the illinois shore in the canoe just after dark
i started across to the town from a little below the ferrylanding and the drift of the current fetched me in at the bottom of the town i tied up and started along the bank there was a light burning in a little shanty that hadnt been lived in for a long time and i wondered who had took up quarters there i slipped up and peeped in at the window there was a woman about forty year old in there knitting by a candle that was on a pine table i didnt know her face she was a stranger for you couldnt start a face in that town that i didnt know now this was lucky because i was weakening i was getting afraid i had come people might know my voice and find me out but if this woman had been in such a little town two days she could tell me all i wanted to know so i knocked at the door and made up my mind i wouldnt forget i was a girl

come in says the woman and i did she says take a cheer
i done it she looked me all over with her little shiny eyes and says
what might your name be
sarah williams
wherebouts do you live in this neighborhood
nom in hookerville seven mile below ive walked all the way and im all tired out
hungry too i reckon ill find you something
nom i aint hungry i was so hungry i had to stop two miles below here at a farm so i aint hungry no more its what makes me so late my mothers down sick and out of money and everything and i come to tell my uncle abner moore he lives at the upper end of the town she says i haint ever been here before do you know him
no but i dont know everybody yet i havent lived here quite two weeks its a considerable ways to the upper end of the town you better stay here all night take off your bonnet
no i says ill rest awhile i reckon and go on i aint afeard of the dark
she said she wouldnt let me go by myself but her husband would be in by and by maybe in a hour and a half and shed send him along with me then she got to talking about her husband and about her relations up the river and her relations down the river and about how much better off they used to was and how they didnt know but theyd made a mistake coming to our town instead of letting well aloneand 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 twelve thousand dollars only she got it twenty 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 weve heard considerable about these goingson down in hookerville but we dont know who twas that killed huck finn
well i reckon theres a right smart chance of people here that d like to know who killed him some think old finn done it himself
nois that so
most everybody thought it at first hell never know how nigh he come to getting lynched but before night they changed around and judged it was done by a runaway nigger named jim
why he
i stopped i reckoned i better keep still she run on and never noticed i had put in at all
the nigger run off the very night huck finn was killed so theres a reward out for himthree hundred dollars and theres a reward out for old finn tootwo hundred dollars you see he come to town the morning after the murder and told about it and was out with em on the ferryboat hunt and right away after he up and left before night they wanted to lynch him but he was gone you see well next day they found out the nigger was gone they found out he hadnt ben seen sence ten oclock the night the murder was done so then they put it on him you see and while they was full of it next day back comes old finn and went boohooing to judge thatcher to get money to hunt for the nigger all over illinois with the judge gave him some and that evening he got drunk and was around till after midnight with a couple of mighty hardlooking strangers and then went off with them well he haint come back sence and they aint looking for him back till this thing blows over a little for people thinks now that he killed his boy and fixed things so folks would think robbers done it and then hed get hucks money without having to bother a long time with a lawsuit people do say he warnt any too good to do it oh hes sly i reckon if he dont come back for a year hell be all right you cant prove anything on him you know everything will be quieted down then and hell walk in hucks money as easy as nothing
yes i reckon so m i dont see nothing in the way of it has everybody quit thinking the nigger done it
oh no not everybody a good many thinks he done it but theyll get the nigger pretty soon now and maybe they can scare it out of him
why are they after him yet
well youre innocent aint you does three hundred dollars lay around every day for people to pick up some folks think the nigger aint far from here im one of thembut i haint 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 jacksons island dont anybody live there says i no nobody says they i didnt say any more but i done some thinking i was pretty near certain id 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 niggers hiding over there anyway says i its worth the trouble to give the place a hunt i haint seen any smoke sence so i reckon maybe hes gone if it was him but husbands going over to seehim and another man he was gone up the river but he got back today and i told him as soon as he got here two hours ago
i had got so uneasy i couldnt 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 interestedand i was tooand says
three hundred dollars is a power of money i wish my mother could get it is your husband going over there tonight
oh yes he went uptown with the man i was telling you of to get a boat and see if they could borrow another gun theyll go over after midnight
couldnt they see better if they was to wait till daytime
yes and couldnt the nigger see better too after midnight hell likely be asleep and they can slip around through the woods and hunt up his campfire all the better for the dark if hes got one
i didnt think of that
the woman kept looking at me pretty curious and i didnt feel a bit comfortable pretty soon she says
what did you say your name was honey
mmary williams
somehow it didnt seem to me that i said it was mary before so i didnt look upseemed to me i said it was sarah so i felt sort of cornered and was afeard maybe i was looking it too i wished the woman would say something more the longer she set still the uneasier i was but now she says
honey i thought you said it was sarah when you first come in
oh yesm i did sarah mary williams sarahs my first name some calls me sarah some calls me mary
oh thats the way of it
yesm
i was feeling better then but i wished i was out of there anyway i couldnt 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 youd 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 wouldnt 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 shed wrenched her arm a day or two ago and didnt 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 didnt let on i got the thing and the first rat that showed his nose i let drive and if hed a stayed where he was hed a been a tolerable sick rat she said that was firstrate 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 husbands 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
come now whats your real name
whhat mum
whats your real name is it bill or tom or bobor what is it
i reckon i shook like a leaf and i didnt know hardly what to do but i says
please to dont poke fun at a poor girl like me mum if im in the way here ill
no you wont set down and stay where you are i aint going to hurt you and i aint going to tell on you nuther you just tell me your secret and trust me ill keep it and whats more ill help you soll my old man if you want him to you see youre a runaway prentice thats all it aint anything there aint no harm in it youve been treated bad and you made up your mind to cut bless you child i wouldnt tell on you tell me all about it now thats a good boy
so i said it wouldnt be no use to try to play it any longer and i would just make a clean breast and tell her everything but she mustnt go back on her promise then i told her my father and mother was dead and the law had bound me out to a mean old farmer in the country thirty mile back from the river and he treated me so bad i couldnt stand it no longer he went away to be gone a couple of days and so i took my chance and stole some of his daughters old clothes and cleared out and i had been three nights coming the thirty miles i traveled nights and hid daytimes and slept and the bag of bread and meat i carried from home lasted me all the way and i had aplenty i said i believed my uncle abner moore would take care of me and so that was why i struck out for this town of goshen
goshen child this aint goshen this is st petersburg goshens 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 exactly wrong
well he did act like he was drunk but it aint no matter now i got to be moving along ill fetch goshen before daylight
hold on a minute ill put you up a snack to eat you might want it
so she put me up a snack and says
say when a cows laying down which end of her gets up first answer up prompt nowdont stop to study over it which end gets up first
the hind end mum
well then a horse
the forrard 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 whats your real name now
george peters mum
well try to remember it george dont forget and tell me its elexander before you go and then get out by saying its george elexander when i catch you and dont go about women in that old calico you do a girl tolerable poor but you might fool men maybe bless you child when you set out to thread a needle dont hold the thread still and fetch the needle up to it hold the needle still and poke the thread at it thats the way a woman most always does but a man always does tother way and when you throw at a rat or anything hitch yourself up atiptoe and fetch your hand up over your head as awkward as you can and miss your rat about six or seven foot throw stiffarmed from the shoulder like there was a pivot there for it to turn on like a girl not from the wrist and elbow with your arm out to one side like a boy and mind you when a girl tries to catch anything in her lap she throws her knees apart she dont clap them together the way you did when you catched the lump of lead why i spotted you for a boy when you was threading the needle and i contrived the other things just to make certain now trot along to your uncle sarah mary williams george elexander peters and if you get into trouble you send word to mrs judith loftus which is me and ill do what i can to get you out of it keep the river road all the way and next time you tramp take shoes and socks with you the river roads a rocky one and your feet ll be in a condition when you get to goshen i reckon
i went up the bank about fifty yards and then i doubled on my tracks and slipped back to where my canoe was a good piece below the house i jumped in and was off in a hurry i went upstream far enough to make the head of the island and then started across i took off the sunbonnet for i didnt 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 cleareleven 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 aint a minute to lose theyre 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 everything 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 campfire at the cavern the first thing and didnt 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 couldnt see it for stars and shadows aint good to see by then we got out the raft and slipped along down in the shade past the foot of the island dead stillnever saying a word

it must a been close on to one oclock 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 didnt come for we hadnt ever thought to put the gun in the canoe or a fishingline or anything to eat we was in ruther too much of a sweat to think of so many things it warnt good judgment to put everything on the raft
if the men went to the island i just expect they found the campfire i built and watched it all night for jim to come anyways they stayed away from us and if my building the fire never fooled them it warnt no fault of mine i played it as low down on them as i could
when the first streak of day began to show we tied up to a towhead in a big bend on the illinois side and hacked off cottonwood branches with the hatchet and covered up the raft with them so she looked like there had been a cavein in the bank there a towhead is a sandbar that has cottonwoods on it as thick as harrowteeth
we had mountains on the missouri shore and heavy timber on the illinois side and the channel was down the missouri shore at that place so we warnt afraid of anybody running across us we laid there all day and watched the rafts and steamboats spin down the missouri shore and upbound steamboats fight the big river in the middle i told jim all about the time i had jabbering with that woman and jim said she was a smart one and if she was to start after us herself she wouldnt set down and watch a campfireno sir shed fetch a dog well then i said why couldnt she tell her husband to fetch a dog jim said he bet she did think of it by the time the men was ready to start and he believed they must a gone uptown to get a dog and so they lost all that time or else we wouldnt be here on a towhead sixteen or seventeen mile below the villageno indeedy we would be in that same old town again so i said i didnt care what was the reason they didnt get us as long as they didnt
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 steeringoar 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 downstream to keep from getting run over but we wouldnt have to light it for upstream 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 upbound boats didnt 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 laying on our backs looking up at the stars and we didnt ever feel like talking loud and it warnt often that we laughedonly a little kind of a low chuckle we had mighty good weather as a general thing and nothing ever happened to us at allthat night nor the next nor the next
every night we passed towns some of them away up on black hillsides nothing but just a shiny bed of lights not a house could you see the fifth night we passed st louis and it was like the whole world lit up in st petersburg they used to say there was twenty or thirty thousand people in st louis but i never believed it till i see that wonderful spread of lights at two oclock that still night there warnt a sound there everybody was asleep
every night now i used to slip ashore toward ten oclock at some little village and buy ten or fifteen cents worth of meal or bacon or other stuff to eat and sometimes i lifted a chicken that warnt roosting comfortable and took him along pap always said take a chicken when you get a chance because if you dont want him yourself you can easy find somebody that does and a good deed aint ever forgot i never see pap when he didnt want the chicken himself but that is what he used to say anyway
mornings before daylight i slipped into cornfields and borrowed a watermelon or a mushmelon or a punkin or some new corn or things of that kind pap always said it warnt no harm to borrow things if you was meaning to pay them back some time but the widow said it warnt anything but a soft name for stealing and no decent body would do it jim said he reckoned the widow was partly right and pap was partly right so the best way would be for us to pick out two or three things from the list and say we wouldnt borrow them any morethen he reckoned it wouldnt be no harm to borrow the others so we talked it over all one night drifting along down the river trying to make up our minds whether to drop the watermelons or the cantelopes or the mushmelons or what but toward daylight we got it all settled satisfactory and concluded to drop crabapples and psimmons we warnt feeling just right before that but it was all comfortable now i was glad the way it come out too because crabapples aint ever good and the psimmons wouldnt be ripe for two or three months yet
we shot a waterfowl now and then that got up too early in the morning or didnt 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 hello jim looky yonder 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 chimblyguy 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 mysteriouslike i felt just the way any other boy would a felt when i seen 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
les land on her jim
but jim was dead against it at first he says
i doan want to go fooln long er no wrack wes doin blame well en we better let blame well alone as de good book says like as not deys a watchman on dat wrack
watchman your grandmother i says there aint nothing to watch but the texas and the pilothouse and do you reckon anybodys going to resk his life for a texas and a pilothouse such a night as this when its likely to break up and wash off down the river any minute jim couldnt say nothing to that so he didnt try and besides i says we might borrow something worth having out of the captains stateroom seegars i bet youand cost five cents apiece solid cash steamboat captains is always rich and get sixty dollars a month and they dont care a cent what a thing costs you know long as they want it stick a candle in your pocket i cant rest jim till we give her a rummaging do you reckon tom sawyer would ever go by this thing not for pie he wouldnt hed call it an adventurethats what hed call it and hed land on that wreck if it was his last act and wouldnt he throw style into itwouldnt he spread himself nor nothing why youd think it was christopher clumbus discovering kingdom come i wish tom sawyer was here
jim he grumbled a little but give in he said we mustnt talk any more than we could help and then talk mighty low the lightning showed us the wreck again just in time and we fetched the stabboard derrick and made fast there
the deck was high out here we went sneaking down the slope of it to labboard in the dark towards the texas feeling our way slow with our feet and spreading our hands out to fend off the guys for it was so dark we couldnt see no sign of them pretty soon we struck the forward end of the skylight and clumb on to it and the next step fetched us in front of the captains door which was open and by jimminy away down through the texashall 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 dont boys i swear i wont ever tell
another voice said pretty loud
its a lie jim turner youve acted this way before you always want moren your share of the truck and youve always got it too because youve swore t if you didnt youd tell but this time youve said it jest one time too many youre the meanest treacherousest hound in this country
by this time jim was gone for the raft i was just abiling with curiosity and i says to myself tom sawyer wouldnt back out now and so i wont either im agoing to see whats going on here so i dropped on my hands and knees in the little passage and crept aft in the dark till there warnt but one stateroom betwixt me and the crosshall 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 mans head on the floor and saying
id like to and i orter tooa mean skunk
the man on the floor would shrivel up and say oh please dont bill i haint ever goin to tell
and every time he said that the man with the lantern would laugh and say
deed you aint you never said no truer thing n that you bet you and once he said hear him beg and yit if we hadnt got the best of him and tied him hed a killed us both and what for jist for nothn jist because we stood on our rightsthats what for but i lay you aint agoin to threaten nobody any more jim turner put up that pistol bill
bill says
i dont want to jake packard im for killin himand didnt he kill old hatfield jist the same wayand dont he deserve it
but i dont want him killed and ive got my reasons for it
bless yo heart for them words jake packard ill never forgit you longs i live says the man on the floor sort of blubbering
packard didnt take no notice of that but hung up his lantern on a nail and started toward where i was there in the dark and motioned bill to come i crawfished as fast as i could about two yards but the boat slanted so that i couldnt make very good time so to keep from getting run over and catched i crawled into a stateroom on the upper side the man came apawing along in the dark and when packard got to my stateroom he says
herecome in here
and in he come and bill after him but before they got in i was up in the upper berth cornered and sorry i come then they stood there with their hands on the ledge of the berth and talked i couldnt see them but i could tell where they was by the whisky theyd been having i was glad i didnt drink whisky but it wouldnt made much difference anyway because most of the time they couldnt a treed me because i didnt breathe i was too scared and besides a body couldnt breathe and hear such talk they talked low and earnest bill wanted to kill turner he says
hes said hell tell and he will if we was to give both our shares to him now it wouldnt make no difference after the row and the way weve served him shores youre born hell turn states evidence now you hear me im for putting him out of his troubles
som i says packard very quiet
blame it id sorter begun to think you wasnt well then thats all right les go and do it
hold on a minute i haint had my say yit you listen to me shootings good but theres quieter ways if the things got to be done but what i say is this it aint good sense to go courtn around after a halter if you can git at what youre up to in some way thats jist as good and at the same time dont bring you into no resks aint that so
you bet it is but how you goin to manage it this time
well my idea is this well rustle around and gather up whatever pickins weve overlooked in the staterooms and shove for shore and hide the truck then well wait now i say it aint agoin to be moren two hours befo this wrack breaks up and washes off down the river see hell be drownded and wont have nobody to blame for it but his own self i reckon thats a considerable sight better n killin of him im unfavorable to killin a man as long as you can git aroun it it aint good sense it aint good morals aint i right
yes i reckn you are but spose she dont break up and wash off
well we can wait the two hours anyway and see cant we
all right then come along
so they started and i lit out all in a cold sweat and scrambled forward it was dark as pitch there but i said in a kind of a coarse whisper jim and he answered up right at my elbow with a sort of a moan and i says
quick jim it aint no time for fooling around and moaning theres a gang of murderers in yonder and if we dont hunt up their boat and set her drifting down the river so these fellows cant get away from the wreck theres one of em going to be in a bad fix but if we find their boat we can put all of em in a bad fixfor the sheriff ll get em quickhurry ill hunt the labboard side you hunt the stabboard you start at the raft and
oh my lordy lordy raf dey ain no raf no mo she done broke loose en goneen here we is

well i catched my breath and most fainted shut up on a wreck with such a gang as that but it warnt no time to be sentimentering wed got to find that boat nowhad to have it for ourselves so we went aquaking and shaking down the stabboard side and slow work it was tooseemed a week before we got to the stern no sign of a boat jim said he didnt believe he could go any fartherso scared he hadnt 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 crosshall 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 readyshove off
i couldnt hardly hang on to the shutters i was so weak but bill says
hold ond you go through him
no didnt you
no so hes got his share o the cash yet
well then come along no use to take truck and leave money
say wont he suspicion what were up to
maybe he wont but we got to have it anyway come along
so they got out and went in
the door slammed to because it was on the careened side and in a half second i was in the boat and jim come tumbling after me i out with my knife and cut the rope and away we went
we didnt touch an oar and we didnt speak nor whisper nor hardly even breathe we went gliding swift along dead silent past the tip of the paddlebox and past the stern then in a second or two more we was a hundred yards below the wreck and the darkness soaked her up every last sign of her and we was safe and knowed it
when we was three or four hundred yards downstream we see the lantern show like a little spark at the texas door for a second and we knowed by that that the rascals had missed their boat and was beginning to understand that they was in just as much trouble now as jim turner was
then jim manned the oars and we took out after our raft now was the first time that i begun to worry about the meni reckon i hadnt had time to before i begun to think how dreadful it was even for murderers to be in such a fix i says to myself there aint no telling but i might come to be a murderer myself yet and then how would i like it so says i to jim
the first light we see well land a hundred yards below it or above it in a place where its a good hidingplace for you and the skiff and then ill go and fix up some kind of a yarn and get somebody to go for that gang and get them out of their scrape so they can be hung when their time comes
but that idea was a failure for pretty soon it begun to storm again and this time worse than ever the rain poured down and never a light showed everybody in bed i reckon we boomed along down the river watching 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 showedup 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 doublehull ferryboat i skimmed around for the watchman awondering 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 whats up dont cry bub whats the trouble
i says
pap and mam and sis and
then i broke down he says
oh dang it now dont take on so we all has to have our troubles and this n ll come out all right whats the matter with em
theyretheyreare you the watchman of the boat
yes he says kind of prettywellsatisfied like im the captain and the owner and the mate and the pilot and watchman and head deckhand and sometimes im the freight and passengers i aint as rich as old jim hornback and i cant be so blame generous and good to tom dick and harry as what he is and slam around money the way he does but ive told him a many a time t i wouldnt trade places with him for says i a sailors lifes the life for me and im derned if id live two mile out o town where there aint nothing ever goin on not for all his spondulicks and as much more on top of it says i
i broke in and says
theyre in an awful peck of trouble and
who is
why pap and mam and sis and miss hooker and if youd take your ferryboat and go up there
up where where are they
on the wreck
what wreck
why there aint but one
what you dont mean the walter scott
yes
good land what are they doin there for gracious sakes
well they didnt go there apurpose
i bet they didnt why great goodness there aint no chance for em if they dont git off mighty quick why how in the nation did they ever git into such a scrape
easy enough miss hooker was avisiting up there to the town
yes booths landinggo on
she was avisiting there at booths landing and just in the edge of the evening she started over with her nigger woman in the horseferry to stay all night at her friends house miss whatyoumaycallheri disremember her nameand they lost their steeringoar and swung around and went afloating down stern first about two mile and saddlebaggsed 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 tradingscow and it was so dark we didnt notice the wreck till we was right on it and so we saddlebaggsed but all of us was saved but bill whippleand oh he was the best creturi most wish t it had been me i do
my george its the beatenest thing i ever struck and then what did you all do
well we hollered and took on but its so wide there we couldnt 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 didnt strike help sooner come here and hunt up her uncle and hed 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 aint no sense in it go for the steamferry now if youll go and
by jackson id like to and blame it i dont know but i will but who in the dingnations agoing to pay for it do you reckon your pap
why thats all right miss hooker she tole me particular that her uncle hornback
great guns is he her uncle looky here you break for that light over yonderway and turn out west when you git there and about a quarter of a mile out youll come to the tavern tell em to dart you out to jim hornbacks and hell foot the bill and dont you fool around any because hell want to know the news tell him ill have his niece all safe before he can get to town hump yourself now im agoing up around the corner here to roust out my engineer
i struck for the light but as soon as he turned the corner i went back and got into my skiff and bailed her out and then pulled up shore in the easy water about six hundred yards and tucked myself in among some woodboats for i couldnt rest easy till i could see the ferryboat start but take it all around i was feeling ruther comfortable on accounts of taking all this trouble for that gang for not many would a done it i wished the widow knowed about it i judged she would be proud of me for helping these rapscallions because rapscallions and deadbeats is the kind the widow and good people takes the most interest in
well before long here comes the wreck dim and dusky sliding along down a kind of cold shiver went through me and then i struck out for her she was very deep and i see in a minute there warnt much chance for anybody being alive in her i pulled all around her and hollered a little but there wasnt any answer all dead still i felt a little bit heavyhearted about the gang but not 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 downstream slant and when i judged i was out of eyereach i laid on my oars and looked back and see her go and smell around the wreck for miss hookers 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 abooming down the river
it did seem a powerful long time before jims 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

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 hadnt 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 didnt 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 didnt get saved he would get drownded and if he did get saved whoever saved him would send him back home so as to get the reward and then miss watson would sell him south sure well he was right he was most always right he had an uncommon level head for a nigger i read considerable to jim about kings and dukes and earls and such and how gaudy they dressed and how much style they put on and called each other and so on stead of mister and jims eyes bugged out and he was interested he says
i didn know dey was so many un um i haint hearn bout none un um skasely but ole king sollermun onless you counts dem kings dats in a pack er kyards how much do a king git
get i says why they get a thousand dollars a month if they want it they can have just as much as they want everything belongs to them
ain dat gay en what dey got to do huck
they dont do nothing why how you talk they just set around
no is dat so
of course it is they just set aroundexcept maybe when theres a war then they go to the war but other times they just lazy around or go hawkingjust hawking and spshdyou hear a noise
we skipped out and looked but it warnt nothing but the flutter of a steamboats wheel away down coming around the point so we come back
yes says i and other times when things is dull they fuss with the parlyment and if everybody dont go just so he whacks their heads off but mostly they hang round the harem
roun de which
harem
whats de harem
the place where he keeps his wives dont you know about the harem solomon had one he had about a million wives
why yes dats so iid done forgot it a harems a bodnhouse i reckn mos likely dey has rackety times in de nussery en i reckn 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 blimblammin all de time nodeed he wouldnt a wise man ud take en buil a bilerfactry en den he could shet down de bilerfactry when he want to res
well but he was the wisest man anyway because the widow she told me so her own self
i doan kyer what de widder say he warnt no wise man nuther he had some er de dadfetchedes 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 dahs de stump dahdats one er de women heahs youdats de yuther one is sollermun en dish yer dollar bills de chile bofe un you claims it what does i do does i shin aroun mongs de neighbors en fine out which un you de bill do blong to en han it over to de right one all safe en soun de way dat anybody dat had any gumption would no i take en whack de bill in two en give half un it to you en de yuther half to de yuther woman dats de way sollermun was gwyne to do wid de chile now i want to ast you whats de use er dat half a billcant buy nothn wid it en what use is a half a chile i wouldn give a dern for a million un um
but hang it jim youve clean missed the pointblame it youve missed it a thousand mile
who me go long doan talk to me bout yo pints i reckn i knows sense when i sees it en dey ain no sense in sich doins as dat de spute warnt bout a half a chile de spute was bout a whole chile en de man dat think he kin settle a spute bout a whole chile wid a half a chile doan know enough to come in outn de rain doan talk to me bout sollermun huck i knows him by de back
but i tell you you dont get the point
blame de point i reckn i knows what i knows en mine you de real pint furderits down deeper it lays in de way sollermun was raised you take a man dats got ony one or two chillen is dat man gwyne to be waseful o chillen no he aint he cant ford it he know how to value em but you take a man dats got bout five million chillen runnin roun de house en its diffunt he as soon chop a chile in two as a cat deys plenty mo a chile er two mo er less warnt no consekens to sollermun dad fetch him
i never see such a nigger if he got a notion in his head once there warnt no getting it out again he was the most down on 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
dats good but hell be pooty lonesomedey ain no kings here is dey huck
no
den he caint git no situation what he gwyne to do
well i dont 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 couldnt understand a word they saidnot a single word
well now i be dingbusted how do dat come
i dont know but its so i got some of their jabber out of a book spose a man was to come to you and say pollyvoofranzywhat would you think
i wouldn think nuffn id take en bust him over de headdat is if he warnt white i wouldnt low no nigger to call me dat
shucks it aint calling you anything its only saying do you know how to talk french
well den why couldnt he say it
why he is asaying it thats a frenchmans way of saying it
well its a blame ridicklous way en i doan want to hear no mo bout it dey ain no sense in it
looky here jim does a cat talk like we do
no a cat dont
well does a cow
no a cow dont nuther
does a cat talk like a cow or a cow talk like a cat
no dey dont
its natural and right for em to talk different from each other aint it
course
and aint it natural and right for a cat and a cow to talk different from us
why mos sholy it is
well then why aint it natural and right for a frenchman to talk different from us you answer me that
is a cat a man huck
no
well den dey aint no sense in a cat talkin like a man is a cow a maner is a cow a cat
no she aint either of them
well den she aint 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 warnt no use wasting wordsyou cant learn a nigger to argue so i quit

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 wouldnt do to try to run in a fog but when i paddled ahead in the canoe with the line to make fast there warnt anything 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 booming 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 couldnt budge for most a half a minute it seemed to meand then there warnt no raft in sight you couldnt 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 didnt come i was in such a hurry i hadnt untied her i got up and tried to untie her but i was so excited my hands shook so i couldnt hardly do anything with them
as soon as i got started i took out after the raft hot and heavy right down the towhead that was all right as far as it went but the towhead warnt sixty yards long and the minute i flew by the foot of it i shot out into the solid white fog and hadnt no more idea which way i was going than a dead man
thinks i it wont do to paddle first i know ill run into the bank or a towhead or something i got to set still and float and yet its mighty fidgety business to have to hold your hands still at such a time i whooped and listened away down there somewheres i hears a small whoop and up comes my spirits i went tearing after it listening sharp to hear it again the next time it come i see i warnt heading for it but heading away to the right of it and the next time i was heading away to the left of itand not gaining on it much either for i was flying around this way and that and tother but it was going straight ahead all the time
i did wish the fool would think to beat a tin pan and beat it all the time but he never did and it was the still places between the whoops that was making the trouble for me well i fought along and directly i hears the whoop behind me i was tangled good now that was somebody elses whoop or else i was turned around
i throwed the paddle down i heard the whoop again it was behind me yet but in a different place it kept coming and kept changing its place and i kept answering till by and by it was in front of me again and i knowed the current had swung the canoes head downstream and i was all right if that was jim and not some other raftsman hollering i couldnt tell nothing about voices in a fog for nothing dont look natural nor sound natural in a fog
the whooping went on and in about a minute i come abooming down on a cut bank with smoky ghosts of big trees on it and the current throwed me off to the left and shot by amongst a lot of snags that fairly roared the current 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 didnt 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 tother side of it it warnt 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 dont 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 dont think to yourself how fast youre going but you catch your breath and think my how that snags tearing along if you think it aint dismal and lonesome out in a fog that way by yourself in the night you try it onceyoull 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 couldnt do it and directly i judged id got into a nest of towheads for i had little dim glimpses of them on both sides of mesometimes just a narrow channel between and some that i couldnt see i knowed was there because id hear the wash of the current against the old dead brush and trash that hung over the banks well i warnt long loosing the whoops down amongst the towheads and i only tried to chase them a little while anyway because it was worse than chasing a jackolantern you never knowed a sound dodge around so and swap places so quick and so much
i had to claw away from the bank pretty lively four or five times to keep from knocking the islands out of the river and so i judged the raft must be butting into the bank every now and then or else it would get further ahead and clear out of hearingit was floating a little faster than what i was
well i seemed to be in the open river again by and by but i couldnt hear no sign of a whoop nowheres i reckoned jim had fetched up on a snag maybe and it was all up with him i was good and tired so i laid down in the canoe and said i wouldnt bother no more i didnt want to go to sleep of course but i was so sleepy i couldnt help it so i thought i would take jest one little catnap
but i reckon it was more than a catnap for when i waked up the stars was shining bright the fog was all gone and i was spinning down a big bend stern first first i didnt know where i was i thought i was dreaming and when things began to come back to me they seemed to come up dim out of last week
it was a monstrous big river here with the tallest and the thickest kind of timber on both banks just a solid wall as well as i could see by the stars i looked away downstream and seen a black speck on the water i took after it but when i got to it it warnt nothing but a couple of sawlogs made fast together then i see another speck and chased that then another and this time i was right it was the raft
when i got to it jim was setting there with his head down between his knees asleep with his right arm hanging over the steeringoar the other oar was smashed off and the raft was littered up with leaves and branches and dirt so shed had a rough time
i made fast and laid down under jims nose on the raft and began to gap and stretch my fists out against jim and says
hello jim have i been asleep why didnt you stir me up
goodness gracious is dat you huck en you ain deadyou ain drowndedyous back agin its too good for true honey its too good for true lemme look at you chile lemme feel o you no you ain dead yous back agin live en soun jis de same ole huckde same ole huck thanks to goodness
whats the matter with you jim you been adrinking
drinkin has i ben adrinkin has i had a chance to be adrinkin
well then what makes you talk so wild
how does i talk wild
how why haint you been talking about my coming back and all that stuff as if id been gone away
huckhuck finn you look me in de eye look me in de eye haint you ben gone away
gone away why what in the nation do you mean i haint been gone anywheres where would i go to
well looky here boss deys sumfn wrong dey is is i me or who is i is i heah or whah is i now dats what i wants to know
well i think youre here plain enough but i think youre a tangleheaded old fool jim
i is is i well you answer me dis didnt you tote out de line in de canoe fer to make fas to de towhead
no i didnt what towhead i haint seen no towhead
you haint seen no towhead looky here didnt de line pull loose en de raf go ahummin down de river en leave you en de canoe behine in de fog
what fog
why de fogde fog dats been aroun all night en didnt you whoop en didnt i whoop tell we got mix up in de islands en one un us got los en tother one was jis as good as los kase he didn know whah he wuz en didnt i bust up agin a lot er dem islands en have a turrible time en mos git drownded now ain dat so bossaint it so you answer me dat
well this is too many for me jim i haint seen no fog nor no islands nor no troubles nor nothing i been setting here talking with you all night till you went to sleep about ten minutes ago and i reckon i done the same you couldnt a got drunk in that time so of course youve been dreaming
dad fetch it how is i gwyne to dream all dat in ten minutes
well hang it all you did dream it because there didnt any of it happen
but huck its all jis as plain to me as
it dont make no difference how plain it is there aint nothing in it i know because ive been here all the time
jim didnt say nothing for about five minutes but set there studying over it then he says
well den i reckn i did dream it huck but dog my cats ef it aint de powerfulest dream i ever see en i haint ever had no dream bfo dats tired me like dis one
oh well thats 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 didnt try hard to make out to understand them theyd just take us into bad luck stead of keeping 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 didnt 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 wouldnt 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 thats all interpreted well enough as far as it goes jim i says but what does these things stand for
it was the leaves and rubbish on the raft and the smashed oar you could see them firstrate now
jim looked at the trash and then looked at me and back at the trash again he had got the dream fixed so strong in his head that he couldnt seem to shake it loose and get the facts back into its place again right away but when he did get the thing straightened around he looked at me steady without ever smiling and says
what do dey stan for is gwyne to tell you when i got all wore out wid work en wid de callin for you en went to sleep my heart wuz mos broke bekase you wuz los en i didn kyer no mo what become er me en de raf en when i wake up en fine you back agin all safe en soun de tears come en i could a got down on my knees en kiss yo foot is so thankful en all you wuz thinkin bout wuz how you could make a fool uv ole jim wid a lie dat truck dah is trash en trash is what people is dat puts dirt on de head er dey frens en makes em ashamed
then he got up slow and walked to the wigwam and went in there without saying anything but that but that was enough it made me feel so mean i could almost kissed his foot to get him to take it back
it was fifteen minutes before i could work myself up to go and humble myself to a nigger but i done it and i warnt ever sorry for it afterward neither i didnt do him no more mean tricks and i wouldnt done that one if id a knowed it would make him feel that way

we slept most all day and started out at night a little ways behind a monstrous long 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 campfire in the middle and a tall flagpole 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 couldnt 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 wouldnt because i had heard say there warnt but about a dozen houses there and if they didnt 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 jimand 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 tradingscow 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 warnt nothing to do now but to look out sharp for the town and not pass it without seeing it he said hed be mighty sure to see it because hed be a free man the minute he seen it but if he missed it hed be in a slave country again and no more show for freedom every little while he jumps up and says
dah she is
but it warnt it was jackolanterns or lightningbugs so he set down again and went to watching same as before jim said it made him all over trembly and feverish to be so close to freedom well i can tell you it made me all over trembly and feverish too to hear him because i begun to get it through my head that he was most freeand who was to blame for it why me i couldnt get that out of my conscience no how nor no way it got to troubling me so i couldnt rest i couldnt stay still in one place it hadnt ever come home to me before what this thing was that i was doing but now it did and it stayed with me and scorched me more and more i tried to make out to myself that i warnt to blame because i didnt run jim off from his rightful owner but it warnt no use conscience up and says every time but you knowed he was running for his freedom and you could a paddled ashore and told somebody that was soi couldnt get around that no way that was where it pinched conscience says to me what had poor miss watson done to you that you could see her nigger go off right under your eyes and never say one single word what did that poor old woman do to you that you could treat her so mean why she tried to learn you your book she tried to learn you your manners she tried to be good to you every way she knowed how thats what she done
i got to feeling so mean and so miserable i most wished i was dead i fidgeted up and down the raft abusing myself to myself and jim was fidgeting up and down past me we neither of us could keep still every time he danced around and says dahs cairo it went through me like a shot and i thought if it was cairo i reckoned i would die of miserableness
jim talked out loud all the time while i was talking to myself he was saying how the 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 children and if their master wouldnt sell them theyd get an ablitionist to go and steal them
it most froze me to hear such talk he wouldnt 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 hell 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 flatfooted and saying he would steal his childrenchildren that belonged to a man i didnt even know a man that hadnt 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 meit aint too late yetill 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 singing to myself by and by one showed jim sings out
wes safe huck wes safe jump up and crack yo heels dats de good ole cairo at las i jis knows it
i says
ill take the canoe and go and see jim it mightnt be you know
he jumped and got the canoe ready and put his old coat in the bottom for me to set on and give me the paddle and as i shoved off he says
pooty soon ill be ashoutn for joy en ill say its all on accounts o huck is a free man en i couldnt ever ben free ef it hadn ben for huck huck done it jim wont ever forgit you huck yous de bes fren jims ever had en yous de only fren ole jims got now
i was paddling off all in a sweat to tell on him but when he says this it seemed to kind of take the tuck all out of me i went along slow then and i warnt right down certain whether i was glad i started or whether i warnt when i was fifty yards off jim says
dah you goes de ole true huck de ony white genlman dat ever kep his promise to ole jim
well i just felt sick but i says i got to do iti cant get out of it right then along comes a skiff with two men in it with guns and they stopped and i stopped one of them says
whats that yonder
a piece of a raft i says
do you belong on it
yes sir
any men on it
only one sir
well theres five niggers run off tonight up yonder above the head of the bend is your man white or black
i didnt answer up prompt i tried to but the words wouldnt come i tried for a second or two to brace up and out with it but i warnt man enoughhadnt the spunk of a rabbit i see i was weakening so i just give up trying and up and says
hes white
i reckon well go and see for ourselves
i wish you would says i because its pap thats there and maybe youd help me tow the raft ashore where the light is hes sickand so is mam and mary ann
oh the devil were in a hurry boy but i spose weve got to come buckle to your paddle and lets 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 cant do it by myself
well thats infernal mean odd too say boy whats the matter with your father
its theathewell it aint anything much
they stopped pulling it warnt but a mighty little ways to the raft now one says
boy thats 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 honestbut dont leave us please its thethegentlemen if youll only pull ahead and let me heave you the headline you wont have to come anear the raftplease do
set her back john set her back says one they backed water keep away boykeep to looard confound it i just expect the wind has blowed it to us your paps got the smallpox and you know it precious well why didnt you come out and say so do you want to spread it all over
well says i ablubbering ive told everybody before and they just went away and left us
poor devil theres something in that we are right down sorry for you but wewell hang it we dont want the smallpox you see look here ill tell you what to do dont you try to land by yourself or youll smash everything to pieces you float along down about twenty miles and youll come to a town on the lefthand side of the river it will be long after sunup then and when you ask for help you tell them your folks are all down with chills and fever dont be a fool again and let people guess what is the matter now were trying to do you a kindness so you just put twenty miles between us thats a good boy it wouldnt do any good to land yonder where the light isits only a woodyard say i reckon your fathers poor and im bound to say hes in pretty hard luck here ill put a twentydollar gold piece on this board and you get it when it floats by i feel mighty mean to leave you but my kingdom it wont do to fool with smallpox dont you see
hold on parker says the man heres a twenty to put on the board for me goodby boy you do as mr parker told you and youll be all right
thats so my boygoodby goodbye if you see any runaway niggers you get help and nab them and you can make some money by it
goodby sir says i i wont let no 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 warnt no use for me to try to learn to do right a body that dont get started right when hes little aint got no showwhen the pinch comes there aint 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 spose youd a done right and give jim up would you felt better than what you do now no says i id feel badid feel just the same way i do now well then says i whats the use you learning to do right when its troublesome to do right and aint no trouble to do wrong and the wages is just the same i was stuck i couldnt answer that so i reckoned i wouldnt bother no more about it but after this always do whichever come handiest at the time
i went into the wigwam jim warnt there i looked all around he warnt anywhere i says
jim
here i is huck is dey out o sight yit dont 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 alistenin 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 jimole jim aint going to forgit you for dat honey
then we talked about the money it was a pretty good raisetwenty dollars apiece jim said we could take deck passage on a steamboat now and the money would last us as far as we wanted to go in the free states he said twenty mile more warnt far for the raft to go but he wished we was already there
towards daybreak we tied up and jim was mighty particular about hiding the raft good then he worked all day fixing things in bundles and getting all ready to quit rafting
that night about ten we hove in sight of the lights of a town away down in a lefthand bend
i went off in the canoe to ask about it pretty soon i found a man out in the river with a skiff setting a trotline i ranged up and says
mister is that town cairo
cairo no you must be a blame fool
what town is it mister
if you want to know go and find out if you stay here botherin around me for about a half a minute longer youll get something you wont want
i paddled to the raft jim was awful disappointed but i said never mind cairo would be the next place i reckoned
we passed another town before daylight and i was going out again but it was high ground so i didnt go no high ground about cairo jim said i had forgot it we laid up for the day on a towhead tolerable close to the lefthand bank i begun to suspicion something so did jim i says
maybe we went by cairo in the fog that night
he says
doan les talk about it huck po niggers cant have no luck i awluz spected dat rattlesnakeskin warnt done wid its work
i wish id never seen that snakeskin jimi do wish id never laid eyes on it
it aint yo fault huck you didnt know dont you blame yoself 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 wouldnt do to take to the shore we couldnt take the raft up the stream of course there warnt 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 didnt say a word for a good while there warnt anything to say we both knowed well enough it was some more work of the rattlesnakeskin 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 luckand 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 warnt 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 warnt going to borrow it when there warnt anybody around the way pap would do for that might set people after us
so we shoved out after dark on the raft
anybody that dont believe yet that its foolishness to handle a snakeskin after all that that snakeskin done for us will believe it now if they read on and see what more it done for us
the place to buy canoes is off of rafts laying up at shore but we didnt see no rafts laying up so we went along during three hours and more well the night got gray and ruther thick which is the next meanest thing to fog you cant tell the shape of the river and you cant see no distance it got to be very late and still and then along comes a steamboat up the river we lit the lantern and judged she would see it upstream boats didnt generly come close to us they go out and follow the bars and hunt for easy water under the reefs but nights like this they bull right up the channel against the whole river
we could hear her pounding along but we didnt see her good till she was close she aimed right for us often they do that and try to see how close they can come without touching sometimes the wheel bites off a sweep and then the pilot sticks his head out and laughs and thinks hes mighty smart well here she comes and we said she was going to try and shave us but she didnt seem to be sheering off a bit she was a big one and she was coming in a hurry too looking like a black cloud with rows of glowworms around it but all of a sudden she bulged out big and scary with a long row of wideopen furnace doors shining like redhot teeth and her monstrous bows and guards hanging right over us there was a yell at us and a jingling of bells to stop the engines a powwow of cussing and whistling of steamand as jim went overboard on one side and i on the other she come smashing straight through the raft
i divedand i aimed to find the bottom too for a thirtyfoot 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 didnt 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 lefthand shore which meant that i was in a crossing so i changed off and went that way
it was one of these long slanting twomile crossings so i was a good long time in getting over i made a safe landing and clumb up the bank i couldnt 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 oldfashioned 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 howling and barking at me and i knowed better than to move another peg

in about a minute somebody spoke out of a window without putting his head out and says
be done boys whos there
i says
its me
whos me
george jackson sir
what do you want
i dont want nothing sir i only want to go along by but the dogs wont let me
what are you prowling around here this time of night forhey
i warnt prowling around sir i fell overboard off of the steamboat
oh you did did you strike a light there somebody what did you say your name was
george jackson sir im only a boy
look here if youre telling the truth you neednt be afraidnobody ll hurt you but dont try to budge stand right where you are rouse out bob and tom some of you and fetch the guns george jackson is there anybody with you
no sir nobody
i heard the people stirring around in the house now and see a light the man sung out snatch that light away betsy you old foolaint you got any sense put it on the floor behind the front door bob if you and tom are ready take your places
all ready
now george jackson do you know the shepherdsons
no sir i never heard of them
well that may be so and it maynt now all ready step forward george jackson and mind dont you hurrycome mighty slow if theres anybody with you let him keep backif he shows himself hell be shot come along now come slow push the door open yourselfjust enough to squeeze in dyou hear
i didnt hurry i couldnt if id awanted to i took one slow step at a time and there warnt 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 thats enoughput 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 moreall of them fine and handsomeand the sweetest old grayheaded lady and back of her two young women which i couldnt see right well the old gentleman says
there i reckon its 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 windowsthere warnt none on the side they held the candle and took a good look at me and all said why he aint a shepherdsonno there aint any shepherdson about him then the old man said he hoped i wouldnt mind being searched for arms because he didnt mean no harm by itit was only to make sure so he didnt pry into my pockets but only felt outside with his hands and said it was all right he told me to make myself easy and at home and tell all about myself but the old lady says
why bless you saul the poor things as wet as he can be and dont you reckon it may be hes hungry
true for you racheli forgot
so the old lady says
betsy this was a nigger woman you fly around and get him something to eat as quick as you can poor thing and one of you girls go and wake up buck and tell himoh here he is himself buck take this little stranger and get the wet clothes off from him and dress him up in some of yours thats dry
buck looked about as old as methirteen or fourteen or along there though he was a little bigger than me he hadnt on anything but a shirt and he was very frowzyheaded he came in gaping and digging one fist into his eyes and he was dragging a gun along with the other one he says
aint they no shepherdsons around
they said no twas a false alarm
well he says if theyd a ben some i reckon id a got one
they all laughed and bob says
why buck they might have scalped us all youve been so slow in coming
well nobody come after me and it aint right im always kept down i dont get no show
never mind buck my boy says the old man youll have show enough all in good time dont you fret about that go long with you now and do as your mother told you
when we got upstairs 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 didnt know i hadnt heard about it before no way
well guess he says
howm i going to guess says i when i never heard tell of it before
but you can guess cant you its just as easy
which candle i says
why any candle he says
i dont know where he was says i where was he
why he was in the dark thats where he was
well if you knowed where he was what did you ask me for
why blame it its a riddle dont you see say how long are you going to stay here you got to stay always we can just have booming timesthey dont have no school now do you own a dog ive got a dogand hell go in the river and bring out chips that you throw in do you like to comb up sundays and all that kind of foolishness you bet i dont but ma she makes me confound these ole britches i reckon id better put em on but id ruther not its so warm are you all ready all right come along old hoss
cold cornpone cold cornbeef butter and buttermilkthat is what they had for me down there and there aint nothing better that ever ive come across yet buck and his ma and all of them smoked cob pipes except the nigger woman which was gone and the two young women they all smoked and talked and i eat and talked the young women had quilts around them and their hair down their backs they all asked me questions and i told them how pap and me and all the family was living on a little farm down at the bottom of arkansaw and my sister mary ann run off and got married and never was heard of no more and bill went to hunt them and he warnt heard of no more and tom and mort died and then there warnt nobody but just me and pap left and he was just trimmed down to nothing on account of his troubles so when he died i took what there was left because the farm didnt belong to us and started up the river deck passage and fell overboard and that was how i come to be here so they said i could have a home there as long as i wanted it then it was most daylight and everybody went to bed and i went to bed with buck and when i waked up in the morning drat it all i had forgot what my name was so i laid there about an hour trying to think and when buck waked up i says
can you spell buck
yes he says
i bet you cant spell my name says i
i bet you what you dare i can says he
all right says i go ahead
george jaxonthere now he says
well says i you done it but i didnt think you could it aint no slouch of a name to spellright 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 hadnt seen no house out in the country before that was so nice and had so much style it didnt 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 warnt 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 sometimes they wash them over with red waterpaint that they call spanishbrown same as they do in town they had big brass dogirons that could hold up a sawlog there was a clock on the middle of the mantelpiece 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 start in and strike a hundred and fifty before she got tuckered out they wouldnt took any money for her
well there was a big outlandish parrot on each side of the clock made out of something like chalk and painted up gaudy by one of the parrots was a cat made of crockery and a crockery dog by the other and when you pressed down on them they squeaked but didnt open their mouths nor look different nor interested they squeaked through underneath there was a couple of big wildturkeywing fans spread out behind those things on the table in the middle of the room was a kind of a lovely crockery basket that had apples and oranges and peaches and grapes piled up in it which was much redder and yellower and prettier than real ones is but they warnt real because you could see where pieces had got chipped off and showed the white chalk or whatever it was underneath
this table had a cover made out of beautiful oilcloth with a red and blue spreadeagle painted on it and a painted border all around it come all the way from philadelphia they said there was some books too piled up perfectly exact on each corner of the table one was a big family bible full of pictures one was pilgrims progress about a man that left his family it didnt say why i read considerable in it now and then the statements was interesting but tough another was friendships offering full of beautiful stuff and poetry but i didnt read the poetry another was henry clays speeches and another was dr gunns family medicine which told you all about what to do if a body was sick or dead there was a hymnbook and a lot of other books and there was nice splitbottom chairs and perfectly sound toonot bagged down in the middle and busted like an old basket
they had pictures hung on the wallsmainly washingtons and lafayettes and battles and highland 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 beforeblacker 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 scoopshovel 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 chairback 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 sealingwax showing on one edge of it and she was mashing a locket with a chain to it against her mouth and underneath the picture it said and art thou gone yes thou art gone alas these was all nice pictures i reckon but i didnt somehow seem to take to them because if ever i was down a little they always give me the fantods 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 that with her disposition she was having a better time in the graveyard she was at work on what they said was her greatest picture when she took sick and every day and every night it was her prayer to be allowed to live till she got it done but she never got the chance it was a picture of a young woman in a long white gown standing on the rail of a bridge all ready to jump off with her hair all down her back and looking up to the moon with the tears running down her face and she had two arms folded across her breast and two arms stretched out in front and two more reaching up toward the moonand the idea was to see which pair would look best and then scratch out all the other arms but as i was saying she died before she got her mind made up and now they kept this picture over the head of the bed in her room and every time her birthday come they hung flowers on it other times it was hid with a little curtain the young woman in the picture had a kind of a nice sweet face but there was so many arms it made her look too spidery seemed to me
this young girl kept a scrapbook when she was alive and used to paste obituaries and accidents and cases of patient suffering in it out of the presbyterian observer and write poetry after them out of her own head it was very good poetry this is what she wrote about a boy by the name of stephen dowling bots that fell down a well and was drownded
ode to stephen dowling bots decd
and did young stephen sicken and did young stephen die and did the sad hearts thicken and did the mourners cry
no such was not the fate of young stephen dowling bots though sad hearts round him thickened twas not from sickness shots
no whoopingcough 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 aint no telling what she could a done by and by buck said she could rattle off poetry like nothing she didnt ever have to stop to think he said she would slap down a line and if she couldnt find anything to rhyme with it would just scratch it out and slap down another one and go ahead she warnt 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 undertakerthe undertaker never got in ahead of emmeline but once and then she hung fire on a rhyme for the dead persons name which was whistler she warnt ever the same after that she never complained but she kinder pined away and did not live long poor thing manys the time i made myself go up to the little room that used to be hers and get out her poor old scrapbook and read in it when her pictures had been aggravating me and i had soured on her a little i liked all that family dead ones and all and warnt going to let anything come between us poor emmeline made poetry about all the dead people when she was alive and it didnt seem right that there warnt nobody to make some about her now she was gone so i tried to sweat out a verse or two myself but i couldnt seem to make it go somehow they kept emmelines room trim and nice and all the things fixed in it just the way she liked to have them when she was alive and nobody ever slept there the old lady took care of the room herself though there was plenty of niggers and she sewed there a good deal and read her bible there mostly
well as i was saying about the parlor there was beautiful curtains on the windows white with pictures painted on them of castles with vines all down the walls and cattle coming down to drink there was a little old piano too that had tin pans in it i reckon and nothing was ever so lovely as to hear the young ladies sing the last link is broken and play the battle of prague on it the walls of all the rooms was plastered and most had carpets on the floors and the whole house was whitewashed on the outside
it was a double house and the big open place betwixt them was roofed and floored and sometimes the table was set there in the middle of the day and it was a cool comfortable place nothing couldnt be better and warnt the cooking good and just bushels of it too

col grangerford was a gentleman you see he was a gentleman all over and so was his family he was well born as the saying is and thats 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 warnt no more quality than a mudcat himself col grangerford was very tall and very slim and had a darkishpaly complexion not a sign of red in it anywheres he was cleanshaved 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 gray 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 tailcoat with brass buttons on it he carried a mahogany cane with a silver head to it there warnt no frivolishness about him not a bit and he warnt ever loud he was as kind as he could beyou could feel that you know and so you had confidence sometimes he smiled and it was good to see but when he straightened himself up like a libertypole 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 didnt ever have to tell anybody to mind their mannerseverybody was always goodmannered where he was everybody loved to have him around too he was sunshine most alwaysi 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 wouldnt nothing go wrong again for a week
when him and the old lady come down in the morning all the family got up out of their chairs and give them good day and didnt set down again till they had set down then tom and bob went to the sideboard where the decanter was and mixed a glass of bitters and handed it to him and he held it in his hand and waited till toms and bobs was mixed and then they bowed and said our duty to you sir and madam and they bowed the least bit in the world and said thank you and so they drank all three and bob and tom poured a spoonful of water on the sugar and the mite of whisky or applebrandy in the bottom of their tumblers and give it to me and buck and we drank to the old people too
bob was the oldest and tom nexttall beautiful men with very broad shoulders and brown faces and long black hair and black eyes they dressed in white linen from head to foot like the old gentleman and wore broad panama hats
then there was miss charlotte she was twentyfive and tall and proud and grand but as good as she could be when she warnt stirred up but when she was she had a look that would make you wilt in your tracks like her father she was beautiful
so was her sister miss sophia but it was a different kind she was gentle and sweet like a dove and she was only twenty
each person had their own nigger to wait on thembuck too my nigger had a monstrous easy time because i warnt used to having anybody do anything for me but bucks was on the jump most of the time
this was all there was of the family now but there used to be morethree sons they got killed and emmeline that died
the old gentleman owned a lot of farms and 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 handsome lot of quality i tell you
there was another clan of aristocracy around therefive or six familiesmostly of the name of shepherdson they was as hightoned and well born and rich and grand as the tribe of grangerfords the shepherdsons and grangerfords used the same steamboatlanding 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 came 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 bucks gun go off at my ear and harneys hat tumbled off from his head he grabbed his gun and rode straight to the place where we was hid but we didnt wait we started through the woods on a run the woods warnt 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 cometo get his hat i reckon but i couldnt see we never stopped running till we got home the old gentlemans eyes blazed a minutetwas pleasure mainly i judgedthen his face sort of smoothed down and he says kind of gentle
i dont like that shooting from behind a bush why didnt you step into the road my boy
the shepherdsons dont father they always take advantage
miss charlotte she held her head up like a queen while buck was telling his tale and her nostrils spread and her eyes snapped the two young men looked dark but never said nothing miss sophia she turned pale but the color come back when she found the man warnt hurt
soon as i could get buck down by the corncribs under the trees by ourselves i says
did you want to kill him buck
well i bet i did
what did he do to you
him he never done nothing to me
well then what did you want to kill him for
why nothingonly its on account of the feud
whats a feud
why where was you raised dont you know what a feud is
never heard of it beforetell me about it
well says buck a feud is this way a man has a quarrel with another man and kills him then that other mans brother kills him then the other brothers on both sides goes for one another then the cousins chip inand by and by everybodys killed off and there aint no more feud but its 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 somers 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 suitwhich he would naturally do of course anybody would
what was the trouble about buckland
i reckon maybei dont know
well who done the shooting was it a grangerford shepherdson
laws how do i know it was so long ago
dont anybody know
oh yes pa knows i reckon and some of the other old people but they dont 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 dont always kill pas got a few buckshot in him but he dont mind it cuz he dont weigh much anyway bobs been carved up some with a bowie and toms been hurt once or twice
has anybody been killed this year buck
yes we got one and they got one bout three months ago my cousin bud fourteen year old was riding through the woods on tother side of the river and didnt have no weapon with him which was blame foolishness and in a lonesome place he hears a horse acoming behind him and sees old baldy shepherdson alinkin after him with his gun in his hand and his white hair aflying in the wind and stead of jumping off and taking to the brush bud lowed he could outrun him so they had it nip and tuck for five mile or more the old man againing all the time so at last bud seen it warnt any use so he stopped and faced around so as to have the bulletholes in front you know and the old man he rode up and shot him down but he didnt git much chance to enjoy his luck for inside of a week our folks laid him out
i reckon that old man was a coward buck
i reckon he warnt a coward not by a blame sight there aint a coward amongst them shepherdsonsnot a one and there aint no cowards amongst the grangerfords either why that old man kep up his end in a fight one day for half an hour against three grangerfords and come out winner they was all ahorseback he lit off of his horse and got behind a little woodpile and kep his horse before him to stop the bullets but the grangerfords stayed on their horses and capered around the old man and peppered away at him and he peppered away at them him and his horse both went home pretty leaky and crippled but the grangerfords had to be fetched homeand one of em was dead and another died the next day no sir if a bodys out hunting for cowards he dont want to fool away any time amongst them shepherdsons becuz they dont breed any of that kind
next sunday we all went to church about three mile everybody ahorseback the 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 preachingall about brotherly love and suchlike tiresomeness but everybody said it was a good sermon 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 dont 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 shed 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 warnt anybody at the church except maybe a hog or two for there warnt any lock on the door and hogs likes a puncheon floor in summertime because its cool if you notice most folks dont go to church only when theyve got to but a hog is different
says i to myself somethings up it aint 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 couldnt find anything else i couldnt make anything out of that so i put the paper in the book again and when i got home and upstairs there was miss sophia in her door waiting for me she pulled me in and shut the door then she looked in the testament till she found the paper and as soon as she read it she looked glad and before a body could think she grabbed me and give me a squeeze and said i was the best boy in the world and not to tell anybody she was mighty red in the face for a minute and her eyes lighted up and it made her powerful pretty i was a good deal astonished but when i got my breath i asked her what the paper was about and she asked me if i had read it and i said no and she asked me if i could read writing and i told her no only coarsehand and then she said the paper warnt anything but a bookmark to keep her place and i might go and play now
i went off down to the river studying over this thing and pretty soon i noticed that my nigger was following along behind when we was out of sight of the house he looked back and around a second and then comes arunning and says
mars jawge if youll come down into de swamp ill show you a whole stack o watermoccasins
thinks i thats mighty curious he said that yesterday he oughter know a body dont love watermoccasins enough to go around hunting for them what is he up to anyway so i says
all right trot ahead
i followed a half a mile then he struck out over the swamp and waded ankledeep as much as another halfmile we come to a little flat piece of land which was dry and very thick with trees and bushes and vines and he says
you shove right in dah jist a few steps mars jawge dahs whah dey is is seed m befo i dont kyer 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 aways and come to a little open patch as big as a bedroom all hung around with vines and found a man laying there asleepand 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 warnt he nearly cried he was so glad but he warnt surprised said he swum along behind me that night and heard me yell every time but dasnt answer because he didnt want nobody to pick him up and take him into slavery again says he
i got hurt a little en couldnt swim fas so i wuz a considerable ways behine you towards de las when you landed i reckned 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 youi wuz fraid o de dogs but when it uz all quiet agin i knowed yous 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 cant track me on accounts o de water en dey brings me truck to eat every night en tells me how yous agittin along
why didnt you tell my jack to fetch me here sooner jim
well twarnt no use to sturb you huck tell we could do sumfnbut wes all right now i ben abuyin pots en pans en vittles as i got a chanst en apatchin up de raf nights when
what raft jim
our ole raf
you mean to say our old raft warnt smashed all to flinders
no she warnt she was tore up a good dealone en of her was but dey warnt no great harm done ony our traps was mos all los ef we hadn dive so deep en swum so fur under water en de night hadnt ben so dark en we warnt so skyerd en ben sich punkinheads as de sayin is wed a seed de raf but its jis as well we didnt kase now shes all fixed up agin mos as good as new en wes got a new lot o stuff in de place o what uz los
why how did you get hold of the raft again jimdid you catch her
how i gwyne to ketch her en i out in de woods no some er de niggers foun her ketched on a snag along heah in de ben en dey hid her in a crick mongst de willows en dey wuz so much jawin bout which un um she blong to de mos dat i come to heah bout it pooty soon so i ups en settles de trouble by tellin um she dont blong to none uv um but to you en me en i ast m if dey gwyne to grab a young white genlmans propaty en git a hidn for it den i gin m ten cents apiece en dey uz mighty well satisfied en wisht some mo rafs ud come along en make m rich agin deys mighty good to me dese niggers is en whatever i wants m to do fur me i doan have to ast m twice honey dat jacks a good nigger en pooty smart
yes he is he aint ever told me you was here told me to come and hed show me a lot of watermoccasins if anything happens he aint mixed up in it he can say he never seen us together and it ll be the truth
i dont want to talk much about the next day i reckon ill cut it pretty short i waked up about dawn and was agoing to turn over and go to sleep again when i noticed how still it wasdidnt seem to be anybody stirring that warnt usual next i noticed that buck was up and gone well i gets up awondering and goes downstairsnobody around everything as still as a mouse just the same outside thinks i what does it mean down by the woodpile i comes across my jack and says
whats it all about
says he
dont you know mars jawge
no says i i dont
well den miss sophias run off deed she has she run off in de night some timenobody dont know jis when run off to get married to dat young harney shepherdson you knowleastways so dey spec de fambly foun it out bout half an hour agomaybe a little moen i tell you dey warnt 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 reckn deys gwyne to be mighty rough times
buck went off thout waking me up
well i reckn he did dey warnt gwyne to mix you up in it mars buck he loaded up his gun en lowed hes gwyne to fetch home a shepherdson or bust well deyll be plenty un m dah i reckn en you bet you hell fetch one ef he gits a chanst
i took up the river road as hard as i could put by and by i begin to hear guns a good ways off when i came in sight of the log store and the woodpile where the steamboats lands i worked along under the trees and brush till i got to a good place and then i clumb up into the forks of a cottonwood that was out of reach and watched there was a woodrank four foot high a little ways in front of the tree and first i was going to hide behind that but maybe it was luckier i didnt
there was four or five men cavorting around on their horses in the open place before the log store cussing and yelling and trying to get at a couple of young chaps that was behind the woodrank alongside of the steamboatlanding but they couldnt come it every time one of them showed himself on the river side of the woodpile he got shot at the two boys was squatting back to back behind the pile so they could watch both ways
by and by the men stopped cavorting around and yelling they started riding towards the store then up gets one of the boys draws a steady bead over the woodrank and drops one of them out of his saddle all the men jumped off of their horses and grabbed the hurt one and started to carry him to the store and that minute the two boys started on the run they got halfway to the tree i was in before the men noticed then the men see them and jumped on their horses and took out after them they gained on the boys but it didnt do no good the boys had too good a start they got to the woodpile that was in front of my tree and slipped in behind it and so they had the bulge on the men again one of the boys was buck and the other was a 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 didnt 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 otherwouldnt be gone long i wished i was out of that tree but i dasnt 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 relationsthe shepherdsons was too strong for them i asked him what was become of young harney and miss sophia he said theyd got across the river and was safe i was glad of that but the way buck did take on because he didnt manage to kill harney that day he shot at himi haint ever heard anything like it
all of a sudden bang bang bang goes three or four gunsthe men had slipped around through the woods and come in from behind without their horses the boys jumped for the riverboth of them hurtand 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 aint agoing to tell all that happenedit would make me sick again if i was to do that i wished i hadnt ever come ashore that night to see such things i aint ever going to get shut of themlots 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 seen little gangs of men gallop past the log store with guns so i reckoned the trouble was still agoing on i was mighty downhearted so i made up my mind i wouldnt ever go anear that house again because i reckoned i was to blame somehow i judged that that piece of paper meant that miss sophia was to meet harney somewheres at half past two and run off and i judged i ought to told her father about that paper and the curious way she acted and then maybe he would a locked her up and this awful mess wouldnt ever happened
when i got down out of the tree i crept along down the riverbank a piece and found the two bodies laying in the edge of the water and tugged at them till i got them ashore then i covered up their faces and got away as quick as i could i cried a little when i was covering up bucks face for he was mighty good to me
it was just dark now i never went near the house but struck through the woods and made for the swamp jim warnt on his island so i tramped off in a hurry for the crick and crowded through the willows redhot to jump aboard and get out of that awful country the raft was gone my souls but i was scared i couldnt get my breath for most a minute then i raised a yell a voice not twentyfive foot from me says
good lan is dat you honey doan make no noise
it was jims voicenothing ever sounded so good before i run along the bank a piece and got aboard and jim he grabbed me and hugged me he was so glad to see me he says
laws bless you chile i uz right down sho yous dead agin jacks been heah he say he reckn yous ben shot kase you didn come home no mo so is jes dis minute astartin startin de raf down towards de mouf er de crick sos to be all ready for to shove out en leave soon as jack comes agin en tells me for certain you is dead lawsy is mighty glad to git you back agin honey
i says
all rightthats mighty good they wont find me and theyll think ive been killed and floated down the rivertheres something up there that ll help them think soso dont 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 hadnt had a bite to eat since yesterday so jim he got out some corndodgers and buttermilk and pork and cabbage and greensthere aint nothing in the world so good when its cooked rightand 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 warnt no home like a raft after all other places do seem so cramped up and smothery but a raft dont you feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft

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 theresometimes 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 upnearly always in the dead water under a towhead and then cut young cottonwoods and willows and hid the raft with them then we set out the lines next we slid into the river and had a swim so as to freshen up and cool off then we set down on the sandy bottom where the water was about kneedeep and watched the daylight come not a sound anywheresperfectly stilljust like the whole world was asleep only sometimes the bullfrogs acluttering maybe the first thing to see looking away over the water was a kind of dull linethat was the woods on tother side you couldnt make nothing else out then a pale place in the sky then more paleness spreading around then the river softened up away off and warnt black any more but gray you could see little dark spots drifting along ever so far awaytradingscows and such things and long black streaksrafts sometimes you could hear a sweep screaking or jumbledup voices it was so still and sounds come so far and by and by you could see a streak on the water which you know by the look of the streak that theres a snag there in a swift current which breaks on it and makes that streak look that way and you see the mist curl up off of the water and the east reddens up and the river and you make out a log cabin in the edge of the woods away on the bank on tother side of the river being a woodyard likely and piled by them cheats so you can throw a dog through it anywheres then the nice breeze springs up and comes fanning you from over there so cool and fresh and sweet to smell on account of the woods and the flowers but sometimes not that way because theyve left dead fish laying around gars and such and they do get pretty rank and next youve got the full day and everything smiling in the sun and the songbirds just going it
a little smoke couldnt be noticed now so we would take some fish off of the lines and cook up a hot breakfast and afterwards we would watch the lonesomeness 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 upstream so far off towards the other side you couldnt tell nothing about her only whether she was a sternwheel or sidewheel then for about an hour there wouldnt be nothing to hear nor nothing to seejust solid lonesomeness next youd see a raft sliding by away off yonder and maybe a galoot on it chopping because theyre most always doing it on a raft youd see the ax flash and come downyou dont hear nothing you see that ax go up again and by the time its above the mans head then you hear the kchunkit 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 wouldnt run over them a scow or a raft went by so close we could hear them talking and cussing and laughingheard them plain but we couldnt 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 wouldnt 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 thingswe was always naked day and night whenever the mosquitoes would let usthe new clothes bucks folks made for me was too good to be comfortable and besides i didnt go much on clothes nohow
sometimes wed have that whole river all to ourselves for the longest time yonder was the banks and the islands across the water and maybe a sparkwhich was a candle in a cabin window and sometimes on the water you could see a spark or twoon a raft or a scow you know and maybe you could hear a fiddle or a song coming over from one of them crafts its lovely to live on a raft we had the sky up there all speckled with stars and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them and discuss about whether they was made or only just happened jim he allowed they was made but i allowed they happened i judged it would have took too long to make so many jim said the moon could a laid them well that looked kind of reasonable so i didnt say nothing against it because ive seen a frog lay most as many so of course it could be done we used to watch the stars that fell too and see them streak down jim allowed theyd got spoiled and was hove out of the nest
once or twice of a night we would see a steamboat slipping along in the dark and now and then she would belch a whole world of sparks up out of her chimbleys and they would rain down in the river and look awful pretty then she would turn a corner and her lights would wink out and her powwow shut off and leave the river still again and by and by her waves would get to us a long time after she was gone and joggle the raft a bit and after that you wouldnt hear nothing for you couldnt tell how long except maybe frogs or something
after midnight the people on shore went to bed and then for two or three hours the shores was blackno more sparks in the cabin windows these sparks was our clockthe first one that showed again meant morning was coming so we hunted a place to hide and tie up right away
one morning about daybreak i found a canoe and crossed over a chute to the main shoreit was only two hundred yardsand paddled about a mile up a crick amongst the cypress woods to see if i couldnt 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 meor 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 livessaid they hadnt been doing nothing and was being chased for itsaid there was men and dogs acoming they wanted to jump right in but i says
dont you do it i dont hear the dogs and horses yet youve 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 inthat 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 couldnt see them they seemed to stop and fool around awhile then as we got further and further away all the time we couldnt 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 batteredup slouch hat on and a greasy blue woolen shirt and ragged old blue jeans britches stuffed into his boottops and homeknit gallusesno he only had one he had an old longtailed blue jeans coat with slick brass buttons flung over his arm and both of them had big fat rattylooking carpetbags
the other fellow was about thirty and dressed about as ornery after breakfast we all laid off and talked and the first thing that come out was that these chaps didnt know one another
what got you into trouble says the baldhead to tother chap
well id been selling an article to take the tartar off the teethand it does take it off too and generly the enamel along with itbut i stayed about one night longer than i ought to and was just in the act of sliding out when i ran across you on the trail this side of town and you told me they were coming and begged me to help you to get off so i told you i was expecting trouble myself and would scatter out with you thats the whole yarnwhats yourn
well id ben arunnin a little temperance revival thar bout a week and was the pet of the women folks big and little for i was makin it mighty warm for the rummies i tell you and takin as much as five or six dollars a nightten cents a head children and niggers freeand business agrowin all the time when somehow or another a little report got around last night that i had a way of puttin in my time with a private jug on the sly a nigger rousted me out this mornin and told me the people was getherin on the quiet with their dogs and horses and theyd be along pretty soon and give me bout half an hours start and then run me down if they could and if they got me theyd tar and feather me and ride me on a rail sure i didnt wait for no breakfasti warnt hungry
old man said the young one i reckon we might doubleteam it together what do you think
i aint undisposed whats your linemainly
jour printer by trade do a little in patent medicines theateractortragedy you know take a turn to mesmerism and phrenology when theres a chance teach singinggeography school for a change sling a lecture sometimesoh i do lots of thingsmost anything that comes handy so it aint work whats your lay
ive done considerble in the doctoring way in my time layin on o hands is my best holtfor cancer and paralysis and sich things and i kn tell a fortune pretty good when ive got somebody along to find out the facts for me preachins my line too and workin campmeetins 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 baldhead
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 aint the company good enough for you says the baldhead pretty pert and uppish
yes it is good enough for me its as good as i deserve for who fetched me so low when i was so high i did myself i dont blame you gentlemenfar from it i dont blame anybody i deserve it all let the cold world do its worst one thing i knowtheres a grave somewhere for me the world may go on just as its always done and take everything from meloved ones property everything but it cant take that some day ill lie down in it and forget it all and my poor broken heart will be at rest he went on awiping
drot your pore broken heart says the baldhead what are you heaving your pore broken heart at us fr we haint done nothing
no i know you havent i aint blaming you gentlemen i brought myself downyes i did it myself its right i should sufferperfectly righti dont make any moan
brought you down from whar whar was you brought down from
ah you would not believe me the world never believeslet it passtis no matter the secret of my birth
the secret of your birth do you mean to say
gentlemen says the young man very solemn i will reveal it to you for i feel i may have confidence in you by rights i am a duke
jims eyes bugged out when he heard that and i reckon mine did too then the baldhead says no you cant mean it
yes my greatgrandfather eldest son of the duke of bridgewater fled to this country about the end of the last century to breathe the pure air of freedom married here and died leaving a son his own father dying about the same time the second son of the late duke seized the titles and estatesthe infant real duke was ignored i am the lineal descendant of that infanti am the rightful duke of bridgewater and here am i forlorn torn from my high estate hunted of men despised by the cold world ragged worn heartbroken and degraded to the companionship of felons on a raft
jim pitied him ever so much and so did i we tried to comfort him but he said it warnt much use he couldnt 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 lordshipand he wouldnt 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 bydidnt have much to say and didnt 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 im nation sorry for you but you aint the only person thats had troubles like that
no
no you aint you aint the only person thats ben snaked down wrongfully outn a high place
alas
no you aint the only person thats had a secret of his birth and by jings he begins to cry
hold what do you mean
bilgewater kin i trust you says the old man still sort of sobbing
to the bitter death he took the old man by the hand and squeezed it and says that secret of your being speak
bilgewater i am the late dauphin
you bet you jim and me stared this time then the duke says
you are what
yes my friend it is too trueyour eyes is lookin at this very moment on the pore disappeared dauphin looy the seventeen son of looy the sixteen and marry antonette
you at your age no you mean youre the late charlemagne you must be six or seven hundred years old at the very least
trouble has done it bilgewater trouble has done it trouble has brung these gray hairs and this premature balditude yes gentlemen you see before you in blue jeans and misery the wanderin exiled trampledon and sufferin rightful king of france
well he cried and took on so that me and jim didnt know hardly what to do we was so sorryand so glad and proud wed got him with us too so we set in like we done before with the duke and tried to comfort him but he said it warnt no use nothing but to be dead and done with it all could do him any good though he said it often made him 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 didnt set down in his presence till he asked them so jim and me set to majestying him and doing this and that and tother 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 didnt look a bit satisfied with the way things was going still the king acted real friendly towards him and said the dukes greatgrandfather 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 hyer raft bilgewater and so whats the use o your bein sour it ll only make things oncomfortable it aint my fault i warnt born a duke it aint your fault you warnt born a kingso whats the use to worry make the best o things the way you find em says ithats my motto this aint no bad thing that weve struck hereplenty grub and an easy lifecome give us your hand duke and les 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 didnt take me long to make up my mind that these liars warnt no kings nor dukes at all but just lowdown humbugs and frauds but i never said nothing never let on kept it to myself its the best way then you dont have no quarrels and dont get into no trouble if they wanted us to call them kings and dukes i hadnt no objections long as it would keep peace in the family and it warnt no use to tell jim so i didnt tell him if i never learnt nothing else out of pap i learnt that the best way to get along with his kind of people is to let them have their own way

they asked us considerable many questions wanted to know what we covered up the raft that way for and laid by in the daytime instead of runningwas jim a runaway nigger says i
goodness sakes would a runaway nigger run south
no they allowed he wouldnt i had to account for things some way so i says
my folks was living in pike county in missouri where i was born and they all died off but me and pa and my brother ike pa he lowed hed break up and go down and live with uncle ben whos got a little onehorse place on the river fortyfour mile below orleans pa was pretty poor and had some debts so when hed squared up there warnt nothing left but sixteen dollars and our nigger jim that warnt enough to take us fourteen hundred mile deck passage nor no other way well when the river rose pa had a streak of luck one day he ketched this piece of a raft so we reckoned wed go down to orleans on it pas luck didnt hold out a steamboat run over the forrard corner of the raft one night and we all went overboard and dove under the wheel jim and me come up all right but pa was drunk and ike was only four years old so they never come up no more well 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 believed he was a runaway nigger we dont run daytimes no more now nights they dont bother us
the duke says
leave me alone to cipher out a way so we can run in the daytime if we want to ill think the thing overill invent a plan that ll fix it well let it alone for today because of course we dont want to go by that town yonder in daylightit mightnt be healthy
towards night it begun to darken up and look like rain the heatlightning was squirting around low down in the sky and the leaves was beginning to shiverit 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 tickbetter than jims which was a cornshuck tick theres 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 wouldnt he says
i should a reckoned the difference in rank would a sejested to you that a cornshuck bed warnt 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 mire under the iron heel of oppression misfortune has broken my once haughty spirit i yield i submit tis my fate i am alone in the worldlet me suffer i can bear it
we got away as soon as it was good and dark the king told us to stand well out towards the middle of the river and not show a light till we got a long ways below the town we come in sight of the little bunch of lights by and bythat was the town you knowand slid by about a half a mile out all right when we was threequarters of a mile below we hoisted up our signal lantern and about ten oclock it come on to rain and blow and thunder and lighten like everything so the king told us to both stay on watch till the weather got better then him and the duke crawled into the wigwam and turned in for the night it was my watch below till twelve but i wouldnt a turned in anyway if id had a bed because a body dont see such a storm as that every day in the week not by a long sight my souls how the wind did scream along and every second or two thered come a glare that lit up the whitecaps for a half a mile around and youd see the islands looking dusty through the rain and the trees thrashing around in the wind then comes a hwhackbum bum bumbleumbleumbumbumbumbumand the thunder would go rumbling and grumbling away and quitand then rip comes another flash and another sockdolager the waves most washed me off the raft sometimes but i hadnt any clothes on and didnt mind we didnt have no trouble about snags the lightning was glaring and flittering around so constant that we could see them plenty soon enough to throw her head this way or that and miss them
i had the middle watch you know but i was pretty sleepy by that time so jim he said he would stand the first half of it for me he was always mighty good that way jim was i crawled into the wigwam but the king and the duke had their legs sprawled around so there warnt no show for me so i laid outsidei didnt mind the rain because it was warm and the waves warnt running so high now about two they come up again though and jim was going to call me but he changed his mind because he reckoned they warnt high enough yet to do any harm but he was mistaken about that for pretty soon all of a sudden along comes a regular ripper and washed me overboard it most killed jim alaughing he was the easiest nigger to laugh that ever was anyway
i took the watch and jim he laid down and snored away and by and by the storm let up for good and all and the first cabinlight that showed i rousted him out and we slid the raft into hidingquarters for the day
the king got out an old ratty deck of cards after breakfast and him and the duke played sevenup awhile five cents a game then they got tired of it and allowed they would lay out a campaign as they called it the duke went down into his carpetbag and fetched up a lot of little printed bills and read them out loud one bill said the celebrated dr armand de montalban of paris would lecture on the science of phrenology at such and such a place on the blank day of blank at ten cents admission and furnish charts of character at twentyfive cents apiece the duke said that was him in another bill he was the worldrenowned shakespearian tragedian garrick the younger of drury lane london in other bills he had a lot of other names and done other wonderful things like finding water and gold with a diviningrod dissipating witch spells and so on by and by he says
but the histrionic muse is the darling have you ever trod the boards royalty
no says the king
you shall then before youre three days older fallen grandeur says the duke the first good town we come to well hire a hall and do the swordfight in richard iii and the balcony scene in romeo and juliet how does that strike you
im in up to the hub for anything that will pay bilgewater but you see i dont know nothing about playactin and haint ever seen much of it i was too small when pap used to have em at the palace do you reckon you can learn me
easy
all right im jist afreezin for something fresh anyway les commence right away
so the duke he told him all about who romeo was and who juliet was and said he was used to being romeo so the king could be juliet
but if juliets such a young gal duke my peeled head and my white whiskers is goin to look oncommon odd on her maybe
no dont you worry these country jakes wont ever think of that besides you know youll be in costume and that makes all the difference in the world juliets in a balcony enjoying the moonlight before she goes to bed and shes got on her nightgown and her ruffled nightcap here are the costumes for the parts
he got out two or three curtaincalico suits which he said was meedyevil armor for richard iii and tother chap and a long white cotton nightshirt and a ruffled nightcap to match the king was satisfied so the duke got out his book and read the parts over in the most splendid spreadeagle way prancing around and acting at the same time to show how it had got to be done then he give the book to the king and told him to get his part by heart
there was a little onehorse town about three mile down the bend and after dinner the duke said he had ciphered out his idea about how to run in daylight without it being dangersome for jim so he allowed he would go down to the town and fix that thing the king allowed he would go too and see if he couldnt strike something we was out of coffee so jim said i better go along with them in the canoe and get some
when we got there there warnt nobody stirring streets empty and perfectly dead and still like sunday we found a sick nigger sunning himself in a back yard and he said everybody that warnt too young or too sick or too old was gone to campmeeting about two mile back in the woods the king got the directions and allowed hed go and work that campmeeting for all it was worth and i might go too
the duke said what he was after was a printingoffice we found it a little bit of a concern up over a carpentershopcarpenters and printers all gone to the meeting and no doors locked it was a dirty litteredup place and had inkmarks and handbills with pictures of horses and runaway niggers on them all over the walls the duke shed his coat and said he was all right now so me and the king lit out for the campmeeting
we got there in about a half an hour fairly dripping for it was a most awful hot day there was as much as a thousand people there from twenty mile around the woods was full of teams and wagons hitched everywheres feeding out of the wagontroughs and stomping to keep off the flies there was sheds made out of poles and roofed over with branches where they had lemonade and gingerbread to sell and piles of watermelons and green corn and suchlike truck
the preaching was going on under the same kinds of sheds only they was bigger and held crowds of people the benches was made out of outside slabs of logs with holes bored in the round side to drive sticks into for legs they didnt have no backs the preachers had high platforms to stand on at one end of the sheds the women had on sunbonnets and some had linseywoolsey frocks some gingham ones and a few of the young ones had on calico some of the young men was barefooted and some of the children didnt have on any clothes but just a towlinen shirt some of the old women was knitting and some of the young folks was courting on the sly
the first shed we come to the preacher was lining out a hymn he lined out two lines everybody sung it and it was kind of grand to hear it there was so many of them and they done it in such a rousing way then he lined out two more for them to singand so on the people woke up more and more and sung louder and louder and towards the end some begun to groan and some begun to shout then the preacher begun to preach and begun in earnest too and went weaving first to one side of the platform and then the other and then aleaning down over the front of it with his arms and his body going all the time and shouting his words out with all his might and every now and then he would hold up his bible and spread it open and kind of pass it around this way and that shouting its the brazen serpent in the wilderness look upon it and live and people would shout out gloryaamen and so he went on and the people groaning and crying and saying amen
oh come to the mourners bench come black with sin amen come sick and sore amen come lame and halt and blind amen come pore and needy sunk in shame aamen come all thats worn and soiled and sufferingcome with a broken spirit come with a contrite heart come in your rags and sin and dirt the waters that cleanse is free the door of heaven stands openoh enter in and be at rest aamen glory glory hallelujah
and so on you couldnt make out what the preacher said any more on account of the shouting and crying folks got up everywheres in the crowd and worked their way just by main strength to the mourners bench with the tears running down their faces and when all the mourners had got up there to the front benches in a crowd they sung and shouted and flung themselves down on the straw just crazy and wild
well the first i knowed the king got agoing and you could hear him over everybody and next he went acharging up onto the platform and the preacher he begged him to speak to the people and he done it he told them he was a piratebeen a pirate for thirty years out in the indian oceanand his crew was thinned out considerable last spring in a fight and he was home now to take out some fresh men and thanks to goodness hed been robbed last night and put ashore off of a steamboat without a cent and he was glad of it it was the blessedest thing that ever happened to him because he was a changed man now and happy for the first time in his life and poor as he was he was going to start right off and work his way back to the indian ocean and put in the rest of his life trying to turn the pirates into the true path for he could do it better than anybody else being acquainted with all pirate crews in that ocean and though it would take him a long time to get there without money he would get there anyway and every time he convinced a pirate he would say to him dont you thank me dont you give me no credit it all belongs to them dear people in pokeville campmeeting natural brothers and benefactors of the race and that dear preacher there the truest friend a pirate ever had
and then he busted into tears and so did everybody then somebody sings out take up a collection for him take up a collection well a half a dozen made a jump to do it but somebody sings out let him pass the hat around then everybody said it the preacher too
so the king went all through the crowd with his hat swabbing his eyes and blessing the people and praising them and thanking them for being so good to the poor pirates away off there and every little while the prettiest kind of girls with the tears running down their cheeks would up and ask him would he let them kiss him for to remember him by and he always done it and some of them he hugged and kissed as many as five or six timesand he was invited to stay a week and everybody wanted him to live in their houses and said theyd think it was an honor but he said as this was the last day of the campmeeting he couldnt do no good and besides he was in a sweat to get to the indian ocean right off and go to work on the pirates
when we got back to the raft and he come to count up he found he had collected eightyseven dollars and seventyfive cents and then he had fetched away a threegallon jug of whisky too that he found under a wagon when he was starting home through the woods the king said take it all around it laid over any day hed ever put in in the missionarying line he said it warnt no use talking heathens dont amount to shucks alongside of pirates to work a campmeeting with
the duke was thinking hed been doing pretty well till the king come to show up but after that he didnt think so so much he had set up and printed off two little jobs for farmers in that printingofficehorse billsand took the money four dollars and he had got in ten dollars worth of advertisements for the paper which he said he would put in for four dollars if they would pay in advanceso they done it the price of the paper was two dollars a year but he took in three subscriptions for half a dollar apiece on condition of them paying him in advance they were going to pay in cordwood and onions as usual but he said he had just bought the concern and knocked down the price as low as he could afford it and was going to run it for cash he set up a little piece of poetry which he made himself out of his own headthree verseskind of sweet and saddishthe name of it was yes crush cold world this breaking heartand he left that all set up and ready to print in the paper and didnt charge nothing for it well he took in nine dollars and a half and said hed done a pretty square days work for it
then he showed us another little job hed printed and hadnt charged for because it was for us it had a picture of a runaway nigger with a bundle on a stick over his shoulder and reward under it the reading was all about jim and just described him to a dot it said he run away from st jacquess plantation forty mile below new orleans last winter and likely went north and whoever would catch him and send him back he could have the reward and expenses
now says the duke after tonight we can run in the daytime if we want to whenever we see anybody coming we can tie jim hand and foot with a rope and lay him in the wigwam and show this handbill and say we captured him up the river and were too poor to travel on a steamboat so we got this little raft on credit from our friends and are going down to get the reward handcuffs and chains would look still better on jim but it wouldnt go well with the story of us being so poor too much like jewelry ropes are the correct thingwe must preserve the unities as we say on the boards
we all said the duke was pretty smart and there couldnt be no trouble about running daytimes we judged we could make miles enough that night to get out of the reach of the powwow we reckoned the dukes work in the printingoffice was going to make in that little town then we could boom right along if we wanted to
we laid low and kept still and never shoved out till nearly ten oclock then we slid by pretty wide away from the town and didnt hoist our lantern till we was clear out of sight of it
when jim called me to take the watch at four in the morning he says
huck does you reckn we gwyne to run acrost any mo kings on dis trip
no i says i reckon not
well says he dats all right den i doan mine one er two kings but dats enough dis ones powerful drunk en de duke ain much better
i found jim had been trying to get him to talk french so he could hear what it was like but he said he had been in this country so long and had so much trouble hed forgot it

it was after sunup now but we went right on and didnt tie up the king and the duke turned out by and by looking pretty rusty but after theyd jumped overboard and took a swim it chippered them up a good deal after breakfast the king he took a seat on the corner of the raft and pulled off his boots and rolled up his britches and let his legs dangle in the water so as to be comfortable and lit his pipe and went to getting his romeo and juliet by heart when he had got it pretty good him and the duke begun to practise it together the duke had to learn him over and over again how to say every speech and he made him sigh and put his hand on his heart and after a while he said he done it pretty well only he says you mustnt bellow out romeo that way like a bullyou must say it soft and sick and languishy soroomeo that is the idea for juliets a dear sweet mere child of a girl you know and she doesnt bray like a jackass
well next they got out a couple of long swords that the duke made out of oak laths and begun to practise the swordfightthe duke called himself richard iii and the way they laid on and pranced around the raft was grand to see but by and by the king tripped and fell overboard and after that they took a rest and had a talk about all kinds of adventures theyd had in other times along the river
after dinner the duke says
well capet well want to make this a firstclass show you know so i guess well add a little more to it we want a little something to answer encores with anyway
whats onkores bilgewater
the duke told him and then says
ill answer by doing the highland fling or the sailors hornpipe and youwell let me seeoh ive got ityou can do hamlets soliloquy
hamlets which
hamlets soliloquy you know the most celebrated thing in shakespeare ah its sublime sublime always fetches the house i havent got it in the bookive only got one volumebut i reckon i can piece it out from memory ill just walk up and down a minute and see if i can call it back from recollections vaults
so he went to marching up and down thinking and frowning horrible every now and then then he would hoist up his eyebrows next he would squeeze his hand on his forehead and stagger back and kind of moan next he would sigh and next hed let on to drop a tear it was beautiful to see him by and by he got it he told us to give attention then he strikes a most noble attitude with one leg shoved forwards and his arms stretched away up and his head tilted back looking up at the sky and then he begins to rip and rave and grit his teeth and after that all through his speech he howled and spread around and swelled up his chest and just knocked the spots out of any acting ever i see before this is the speechi learned it easy enough while he was learning it to the king
to be or not to be that is the bare bodkin that makes calamity of so long life for who would fardels bear till birnam wood do come to dunsinane but that the fear of something after death murders the innocent sleep great natures second course and makes us rather sling the arrows of outrageous fortune than fly to others that we know not of theres the respect must give us pause wake duncan with thy knocking i would thou couldst for who would bear the whips and scorns of time the oppressors wrong the proud mans contumely the laws delay and the quietus which his pangs might take in the dead waste and middle of the night when churchyards yawn in customary suits of solemn black but that the undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveler returns breathes forth contagion on the world and thus the native hue of resolution like the poor cat i the adage is sicklied oer with care and all the clouds that lowered oer our housetops with this regard their currents turn awry and lose the name of action tis a consummation devoutly to be wished but soft you the fair ophelia ope not thy ponderous and marble jaws but get thee to a nunnerygo
well the old man he liked that speech and he mighty soon got it so he could do it first rate it seemed like he was just born for it and when he had his hand in and was excited it was perfectly lovely the way he would rip and tear and rair up behind when he was getting it off
the first chance we got the duke he had some showbills printed and after that for two or three days as we floated along the raft was a most uncommon lively place for there warnt nothing but swordfighting and rehearsingas the duke called itgoing on all the time one morning when we was pretty well down the state of arkansaw we come in sight of a little onehorse town in a big bend so we tied up about threequarters of a mile above it in the mouth of a crick which was shut in like a tunnel by the cypress trees and all of us but jim took the canoe and went down there to see if there was any chance in that place for our show
we struck it mighty lucky there was going to be a circus there that afternoon and the countrypeople was already beginning to come in in all kinds of old shackly wagons and on horses the circus would leave before night so our show would have a pretty good chance the duke he hired the courthouse and we went around and stuck up our bills they read like this
shaksperean revival wonderful attraction for one night only the world renowned tragedians david garrick the younger of drury lane theatre london and edmund kean the elder of the royal haymarket theatre whitechapel pudding lane piccadilly london and the royal continental theatres in their sublime shaksperean spectacle entitled the balcony scene in romeo and juliet romeomr garrick julietmr kean assisted by the whole strength of the company new costumes new scenery new appointments also the thrilling masterly and bloodcurdling broadsword conflict in richard iii richard iiimr garrick richmondmr kean also by special request hamlets immortal soliloquy by the illustrious kean done by him consecutive nights in paris for one night only on account of imperative european engagements admission cents children and servants cents
then we went loafing around town the stores and houses was most all old shackly driedup frame concerns that hadnt ever been painted they was set up three or four foot above ground on stilts so as to be out of reach of the water when the river was overflowed the houses had little gardens around them but they didnt seem to raise hardly anything in them but jimpsonweeds and sunflowers and ashpiles and old curledup boots and shoes and pieces of bottles and rags and playedout tinware the fences was made of different kinds of boards nailed on at different times and they leaned every which way and had gates that didnt generly have but one hingea leather one some of the fences had been whitewashed some time or another but the duke said it was in columbuss time like enough there was generly hogs in the garden and people driving them out
all the stores was along one street they had white domestic awnings in front and the countrypeople hitched their horses to the awningposts there was empty drygoods boxes under the awnings and loafers roosting on them all day long whittling them with their barlow knives and chawing tobacco and gaping and yawning and stretchinga mighty ornery lot they generly had on yellow straw hats most as wide as an umbrella but didnt wear no coats nor waistcoats they called one another bill and buck and hank and joe and andy and talked lazy and drawly and used considerable many cusswords there was as many as one loafer leaning up against every awningpost and he most always had his hands in his britches pockets except when he fetched them out to lend a chaw of tobacco or scratch what a body was hearing amongst them all the time was
gimme a chaw v tobacker hank
caint i haint got but one chaw left ask bill
maybe bill he gives him a chaw maybe he lies and says he aint got none some of them kinds of loafers never has a cent in the world nor a chaw of tobacco of their own they get all their chawing by borrowing they say to a fellow i wisht youd len me a chaw jack i jist this minute give ben thompson the last chaw i hadwhich is a lie pretty much every time it dont fool nobody but a stranger but jack aint no stranger so he says
you give him a chaw did you so did your sisters cats grandmother you pay me back the chaws youve awready borryd offn me lafe buckner then ill loan you one or two ton of it and wont charge you no back intrust nuther
well i did pay you back some of it wunst
yes you didbout six chaws you borryd store tobacker and paid back niggerhead
store tobacco is flat black plug but these fellows mostly chaws the natural leaf twisted when they borrow a chaw they dont generly cut it off with a knife but set the plug in between their teeth and gnaw with their teeth and tug at the plug with their hands till they get it in two then sometimes the one that owns the tobacco looks mournful at it when its handed back and says sarcastic
here gimme the chaw and you take the plug
illustrationgimme a chaw
all the streets and lanes was just mud they warnt nothing else but mudmud as black as tar and nigh about a foot deep in some places and two or three inches deep in all the places the hogs loafed and grunted around everywheres youd see a muddy sow and a litter of pigs come lazying along the street and whollop herself right down in the way where folks had to walk around her and shed stretch out and shut her eyes and wave her ears whilst the pigs was milking her and look as happy as if she was on salary and pretty soon youd hear a loafer sing out hi so boy sick him tige and away the sow would go squealing most horrible with a dog or two swinging to each ear and three or four dozen more acoming and then you would see all the loafers get up and watch the thing out of sight and laugh at the fun and look grateful for the noise then theyd settle back again till there was a dogfight there couldnt anything wake them up all over and make them happy all over like a dogfightunless it might be putting turpentine on a stray dog and setting fire to him or tying a tin pan to his tail and see him run himself to death
on the riverfront some of the houses was sticking out over the bank and they was bowed and bent and about ready to tumble in the people had moved out of them the bank was caved away under one corner of some others and that corner was hanging over people lived in them yet but it was dangersome because sometimes a strip of land as wide as a house caves in at a time sometimes a belt of land a quarter of a mile deep will start in and cave along and cave along till it all caves into the river in one summer such a town as that has to be always moving back and back and back because the rivers always gnawing at it
the nearer it got to noon that day the thicker and thicker was the wagons and horses in the streets and more coming all the time families fetched their dinners with them from the country and eat them in the wagons there was considerable whiskydrinking going on and i seen three fights by and by somebody sings out
here comes old boggsin from the country for his little old monthly drunk here he comes boys
all the loafers looked glad i reckoned they was used to having fun out of boggs one of them says
wonder who hes agwyne to chaw up this time if hed achawed up all the men hes ben agwyne to chaw up in the last twenty year hed have considerable ruputation now
another one says i wisht old boggs d threaten me cuz then id know i warnt gwyne to die for a thousan year
boggs comes atearing along on his horse whooping and yelling like an injun and singing out
cler the track thar im on the wawpath and the price uv coffins is agwyne to raise
he was drunk and weaving about in his saddle he was over fifty year old and had a very red face everybody yelled at him and laughed at him and sassed him and he sassed back and said hed attend to them and lay them out in their regular turns but he couldnt wait now because hed come to town to kill old colonel sherburn and his motto was meat first and spoon vittles to top off on
he see me and rode up and says
whard you come fm boy you prepared to die
then he rode on i was scared but a man says
he dont mean nothing hes always acarryin on like that when hes drunk hes the bestnaturedest old fool in arkansawnever hurt nobody drunk nor sober
boggs rode up before the biggest store in town and bent his head down so he could see under the curtain of the awning and yells
come out here sherburn come out and meet the man youve swindled youre the houn im after and im agwyne to have you too
and so he went on calling sherburn everything he could lay his tongue to and the whole street packed with people listening and laughing and going on by and by a proudlooking man about fiftyfiveand he was a heap the bestdressed man in that town toosteps out of the store and the crowd drops back on each side to let him come he says to boggs mighty cam and slowhe says
im tired of this but ill endure it till one oclock till one oclock mindno longer if you open your mouth against me only once after that time you cant travel so far but i will find you
then he turns and goes in the crowd looked mighty sober nobody stirred and there warnt no more laughing boggs rode off blackguarding sherburn as loud as he could yell all down the street and pretty soon back he comes and stops before the store still keeping it up some men crowded around him and tried to get him to shut up but he wouldnt they told him it would be one oclock in about fifteen minutes and so he must go homehe must go right away but it didnt do no good he cussed away with all his might and throwed his hat down in the mud and rode over it and pretty soon away he went araging down the street again with his gray hair aflying everybody that could get a chance at him tried their best to coax him off of his horse so they could lock him up and get him sober but it warnt no useup the street he would tear again and give sherburn another cussing by and by somebody says
go for his daughterquick go for his daughter sometimes hell listen to her if anybody can persuade him she can
so somebody started on a run i walked down street a ways and stopped in about five or ten minutes here comes boggs again but not on his horse he was areeling across the street towards me bareheaded with a friend on both sides of him aholt of his arms and hurrying him along he was quiet and looked uneasy and he warnt hanging back any but was doing some of the hurrying himself somebody sings out
boggs
i looked over there to see who said it and it was that colonel sherburn he was standing perfectly still in the street and had a pistol raised in his right handnot aiming it but holding it out with the barrel tilted up towards the sky the same second i see a young girl coming on the run and two men with her boggs and the men turned round to see who called him and when they see the pistol the men jumped to one side and the pistolbarrel come down slow and steady to a levelboth barrels cocked boggs throws up both of his hands and says o lord dont shoot bang goes the first shot and he staggers back clawing at the airbang goes the second one and he tumbles backwards onto the ground heavy and solid with his arms spread out that young girl screamed out and comes rushing and down she throws herself on her father crying and saying oh hes killed him hes killed him the crowd closed up around them and shouldered and jammed one another with their necks stretched trying to see and people on the inside trying to shove them back and shouting back back give him air give him air
colonel sherburn he tossed his pistol onto the ground and turned around on his heels and walked off
they took boggs to a little drug store the crowd pressing around just the same and the whole town following and i rushed and got a good place at the window where i was close to him and could see in they laid him on the floor and put one large bible under his head and opened another one and spread it on his breast but they tore open his shirt first and i seen where one of the bullets went in he made about a dozen long gasps his breast lifting the bible up when he drawed in his breath and letting it down again when he breathed it outand after that he laid still he was dead then they pulled his daughter away from him screaming and crying and took her off she was about sixteen and very sweet and gentle looking but awful pale and scared
well pretty soon the whole town was there squirming and scrouging and pushing and shoving to get at the window and have a look but people that had the places wouldnt give them up and folks behind them was saying all the time say now youve looked enough you fellows taint right and taint fair for you to stay thar all the time and never give nobody a chance other folks has their rights as well as you
there was considerable jawing back so i slid out thinking maybe there was going to be trouble the streets was full and everybody was excited everybody that seen the shooting was telling how it happened and there was a big crowd packed around each one of these fellows stretching their necks and listening one long lanky man with long hair and a big white fur stovepipe hat on the back of his head and a crookedhandled cane marked out the places on the ground where boggs stood and where sherburn stood and the people following him around from one place to tother and watching everything he done and bobbing their heads to show they understood and stooping a little and resting their hands on their thighs to watch him mark the places on the ground with his cane and then he stood up straight and stiff where sherburn had stood frowning and having his hatbrim down over his eyes and sung out boggs and then fetched his cane down slow to a level and says bang staggered backwards says bang again and fell down flat on his back the people that had seen the thing said he done it perfect said it was just exactly the way it all happened then as much as a dozen people got out their bottles and treated him
well by and by somebody said sherburn ought to be lynched in about a minute everybody was saying it so away they went mad and yelling and snatching down every clothesline they come to to do the hanging with

they swarmed up towards sherburns house awhooping and raging like injuns and everything had to clear the way or get run over and tromped to mush and it was awful to see children was heeling it ahead of the mob screaming and trying to get out of the way and every window along the road was full of womens heads and there was nigger boys in every tree and bucks and wenches looking over every fence and as soon as the mob would get nearly to them they would break and skaddle back out of reach lots of the women and girls was crying and taking on scared most to death
they swarmed up in front of sherburns palings as thick as they could jam together and you couldnt hear yourself think for the noise it was a little twentyfoot yard some sung out tear down the fence tear down the fence then there was a racket of ripping and tearing and smashing and down she goes and the front wall of the crowd begins to roll in like a wave
just then sherburn steps out onto the roof of his little front porch with a doublebarrel gun in his hand and takes his stand perfectly cam and deliberate not saying a word the racket stopped and the wave sucked back
sherburn never said a wordjust stood there looking down the stillness was awful creepy and uncomfortable sherburn run his eye slow along the crowd and wherever it struck the people tried a little to outgaze him but they couldnt they dropped their eyes and looked sneaky then pretty soon sherburn sort of laughed not the pleasant kind but the kind that makes you feel like when you are eating bread thats got sand in it
then he says slow and scornful
the idea of you lynching anybody its amusing the idea of you thinking you had pluck enough to lynch a man because youre brave enough to tar and feather poor friendless castout women that come along here did that make you think you had grit enough to lay your hands on a man why a mans safe in the hands of ten thousand of your kindas long as its daytime and youre not behind him
do i know you i know you clear through i was born and raised in the south and ive lived in the north so i know the average all around the average mans a coward in the north he lets anybody walk over him that wants to and goes home and prays for a humble spirit to bear it in the south one man all by himself has stopped a stage full of men in the daytime and robbed the lot your newspapers call you a brave people so much that you think you are braver than any other peoplewhereas youre just as brave and no braver why dont your juries hang murderers because theyre afraid the mans friends will shoot them in the back in the darkand its just what they would do
so they always acquit and then a man goes in the night with a hundred masked cowards at his back and lynches the rascal your mistake is that you didnt bring a man with you thats one mistake and the other is that you didnt come in the dark and fetch your masks you brought part of a manbuck harkness thereand if you hadnt had him to start you youd a taken it out in blowing
you didnt want to come the average man dont like trouble and danger you dont like trouble and danger but if only half a manlike buck harkness thereshouts lynch him lynch him youre afraid to back downafraid youll be found out to be what you arecowardsand so you raise a yell and hang yourselves onto that halfamans coattail and come raging up here swearing what big things youre going to do the pitifulest thing out is a mob thats what an army isa mob they dont fight with courage thats born in them but with courage thats borrowed from their mass and from their officers but a mob without any man at the head of it is beneath pitifulness now the thing for you to do is to droop your tails and go home and crawl in a hole if any real lynchings going to be done it will be done in the dark southern fashion and when they come theyll bring their masks and fetch a man along now leaveand take your halfaman with youtossing his gun up across his left arm and cocking it when he says this
the crowd washed back sudden and then broke all apart and went tearing off every which way and buck harkness he heeled it after them looking tolerable cheap i could a stayed if i wanted to but i didnt want to
i went to the circus and loafed around the back side till the watchman went by and then dived in under the tent i had my twentydollar gold piece and some other money but i reckoned i better save it because there aint no telling how soon you are going to need it away from home and amongst strangers that way you cant be too careful i aint opposed to spending money on circuses when there aint no other way but there aint no use in wasting it on them
it was a real bully circus it was the splendidest sight that ever was when they all come riding in two and two and gentleman and lady side by side the men just in their drawers and undershirts and no shoes nor stirrups and resting their hands on their thighs easy and comfortablethere must a been twenty of themand every lady with a lovely complexion and perfectly beautiful and looking just like a gang of real sureenough queens and dressed in clothes that cost millions of dollars and just littered with diamonds it was a powerful fine sight i never see anything so lovely and then one by one they got up and stood and went aweaving around the ring so gentle and wavy and graceful the men looking ever so tall and airy and straight with their heads bobbing and skimming along away up there under the tentroof and every ladys roseleafy dress flapping soft and silky around her hips and she looking like the most loveliest parasol
and then faster and faster they went all of them dancing first one foot out in the air and then the other the horses leaning more and more and the ringmaster going round and round the center pole cracking his whip and shouting hihi and the clown cracking jokes behind him and by and by all hands dropped the reins and every lady put her knuckles on her hips and every gentleman folded his arms and then how the horses did lean over and hump themselves and so one after the other they all skipped off into the ring and made the sweetest bow i ever see and then scampered out and everybody clapped their hands and went just about wild well all through the circus they done the most astonishing things and all the time that clown carried on so it most killed the people the ringmaster couldnt ever say a word to him but he was back at him quick as a wink with the funniest things a body ever said and how he ever could think of so many of them and so sudden and so pat was what i couldnt no way understand why i couldnt a thought of them in a year and by and by a drunken man tried to get into the ringsaid he wanted to ride said he could ride as well as anybody that ever was they argued and tried to keep him out but he wouldnt listen and the whole show come to a standstill then the people begun to holler at him and make fun of him and that made him mad and he begun to rip and tear so that stirred up the people and a lot of men begun to pile down off of the benches and swarm toward the ring saying knock him down throw him out and one or two women begun to scream so then the ringmaster he made a little speech and said he hoped there wouldnt be no disturbance and if the man would promise he wouldnt make no more trouble he would let him ride if he thought he could stay on the horse so everybody laughed and said all right and the man got on the minute he was on the horse begun to rip and tear and jump and cavort around with two circus men hanging on to his bridle trying to hold him and the drunk man hanging on to his neck and his heels flying in the air every jump and the whole crowd of people standing up shouting and laughing till tears rolled down and at last sure enough all the circus men could do the horse broke loose and away he went like the very nation round and round the ring with that sot laying down on him and hanging to his neck with first one leg hanging most to the ground on one side and then tother one on tother side and the people just crazy it warnt funny to me though i was all of a tremble to see his danger but pretty soon he struggled up astraddle and grabbed the bridle areeling this way and that and the next minute he sprung up and dropped the bridle and stood and the horse agoing like a house afire too he just stood up there asailing around as easy and comfortable as if he warnt ever drunk in his lifeand then he begun to pull off his clothes and sling them he shed them so thick they kind of clogged up the air and altogether he shed seventeen suits and then there he was slim and handsome and dressed the gaudiest and prettiest you ever saw and he lit into that horse with his whip and made him fairly humand finally skipped off and made his bow and danced off to the dressingroom and everybody just ahowling with pleasure and astonishment
then the ringmaster he see how he had been fooled and he was the sickest ringmaster you ever see i reckon why it was one of his own men he had got up that joke all out of his own head and never let on to nobody well i felt sheepish enough to be took in so but i wouldnt a been in that ringmasters place not for a thousand dollars i dont know there may be bullier circuses than what that one was but i never struck them yet anyways it was plenty good enough for me and wherever i run across it it can have all of my custom every time
well that night we had our show but there warnt only about twelve people therejust enough to pay expenses and they laughed all the time and that made the duke mad and everybody left anyway before the show was over but one boy which was asleep so the duke said these arkansaw lunkheads couldnt come up to shakespeare what they wanted was low comedyand maybe something ruther worse than low comedy he reckoned he said he could size their style so next morning he got some big sheets of wrappingpaper and some black paint and drawed off some handbills and stuck them up all over the village the bills said
at the court house for nights only the worldrenowned tragedians david garrick the younger and edmund kean the elder of the london and continental theatres in their thrilling tragedy of the kings cameleopard or the royal nonesuch admission cents
then at the bottom was the biggest line of all which said
ladies and children not admitted
there says he if that line dont fetch them i dont know arkansaw