The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - 05

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

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

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

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

He was barefooted, and the snake bit him right on the heel. That all
comes of my being such a fool as to not remember that wherever you leave a
dead snake its mate always comes there and curls around it. Jim told
me to chop off the snake’s head and throw it away, and then skin the
body and roast a piece of it. I done it, and he eat it and said it
would help cure him. He made me take off the rattles and tie them around
his wrist, too. He said that that would help. Then I slid out
quiet and throwed the snakes clear away amongst the bushes; for I warn’t
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 I’d druther been bit with a snake than pap’s
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 wouldn’t
ever take a-holt of a snake-skin 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 snake-skin was such awful bad luck that maybe we
hadn’t 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
snake-skin in his hand. Well, I was getting to feel that way myself,
though I’ve 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 shot-tower, 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 didn’t 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 couldn’t handle him, of course; he would a flung us into
Illinois. We just set there and watched him rip and tear around till
he drownded. We found a brass button in his stomach and a round
ball, and lots of rubbage. We split the ball open with the hatchet,
and there was a spool in it. Jim said he’d had it there a long
time, to coat it over so and make a ball of it. It was as big a fish
as was ever catched in the Mississippi, I reckon. Jim said he hadn’t
ever seen a bigger one. He would a been worth a good deal over at
the village. They peddle out such a fish as that by the pound in the
market-house there; everybody buys some of him; his meat’s as white
as snow and makes a good fry.

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

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

I started across to the town from a little below the ferry-landing, 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 hadn’t 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 didn’t know
her face; she was a stranger, for you couldn’t start a face in that
town that I didn’t 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 wouldn’t forget I was a girl.

---

CHAPTER XI.

“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.”

“Where ’bouts do you live? In this neighborhood?’

“No’m. In Hookerville, seven mile below. I’ve
walked all the way and I’m all tired out.”

“Hungry, too, I reckon. I’ll find you something.”

“No’m, I ain’t hungry. I was so hungry I had to
stop two miles below here at a farm; so I ain’t hungry no more.
It’s what makes me so late. My mother’s 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 hain’t
ever been here before. Do you know him?”

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

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

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

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

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

“No—is that so?”

“Most everybody thought it at first. He’ll 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
there’s a reward out for him—three hundred dollars. And
there’s a reward out for old Finn, too—two 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 hadn’t ben seen sence ten o’clock 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
boo-hooing 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 hard-looking
strangers, and then went off with them. Well, he hain’t come
back sence, and they ain’t 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 he’d get
Huck’s money without having to bother a long time with a lawsuit.
People do say he warn’t any too good to do it. Oh, he’s
sly, I reckon. If he don’t come back for a year he’ll be
all right. You can’t prove anything on him, you know;
everything will be quieted down then, and he’ll walk in Huck’s
money as easy as nothing.”

“Yes, I reckon so, ’m. I don’t 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
they’ll get the nigger pretty soon now, and maybe they can scare it
out of him.”

“Why, are they after him yet?”

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

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

“Three hundred dollars is a power of money. I wish my mother
could get it. Is your husband going over there to-night?”

“Oh, yes. He went up-town with the man I was telling you of,
to get a boat and see if they could borrow another gun. They’ll
go over after midnight.”

“Couldn’t they see better if they was to wait till daytime?”

“Yes. And couldn’t the nigger see better, too? After
midnight he’ll likely be asleep, and they can slip around through
the woods and hunt up his camp fire all the better for the dark, if he’s
got one.”

“I didn’t think of that.”

The woman kept looking at me pretty curious, and I didn’t feel a bit
comfortable. Pretty soon she says,

“What did you say your name was, honey?”

“M—Mary Williams.”

Somehow it didn’t seem to me that I said it was Mary before, so I
didn’t look up—seemed to me I said it was Sarah; so I felt
sort of cornered, and was afeared 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, yes’m, I did. Sarah Mary Williams. Sarah’s
my first name. Some calls me Sarah, some calls me Mary.”

“Oh, that’s the way of it?”

“Yes’m.”

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

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

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

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

“Come, now, what’s your real name?”

“Wh—what, mum?”

“What’s your real name? Is it Bill, or Tom, or Bob?—or
what is it?”

I reckon I shook like a leaf, and I didn’t know hardly what to do.
But I says:

“Please to don’t poke fun at a poor girl like me, mum. If
I’m in the way here, I’ll—”

“No, you won’t. Set down and stay where you are. I
ain’t going to hurt you, and I ain’t going to tell on you,
nuther. You just tell me your secret, and trust me. I’ll
keep it; and, what’s more, I’ll help you. So’ll my old
man if you want him to. You see, you’re a runaway ’prentice,
that’s all. It ain’t anything. There ain’t
no harm in it. You’ve been treated bad, and you made up your mind to
cut. Bless you, child, I wouldn’t tell on you. Tell me
all about it now, that’s a good boy.”

So I said it wouldn’t be no use to try to play it any longer, and I
would just make a clean breast and tell her everything, but she musn’t
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 couldn’t
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 daughter’s 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 a-plenty. 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 ain’t Goshen. This is St.
Petersburg. Goshen’s ten mile further up the river. Who
told you this was Goshen?”

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

“He was drunk, I reckon. He told you just exactly wrong.”

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

“Hold on a minute. I’ll put you up a snack to eat.
You might want it.”

So she put me up a snack, and says:

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

“The hind end, mum.”

“Well, then, a horse?”

“The for’rard end, mum.”

“Which side of a tree does the moss grow on?”

“North side.”

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

“The whole fifteen, mum.”

“Well, I reckon you have lived in the country. I
thought maybe you was trying to hocus me again. What’s your
real name, now?”

“George Peters, mum.”

“Well, try to remember it, George. Don’t forget and tell
me it’s Elexander before you go, and then get out by saying it’s
George Elexander when I catch you. And don’t 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
don’t hold the thread still and fetch the needle up to it; hold the
needle still and poke the thread at it; that’s the way a woman most
always does, but a man always does t’other way. And when you
throw at a rat or anything, hitch yourself up a tiptoe and fetch your hand
up over your head as awkward as you can, and miss your rat about six or
seven foot. Throw stiff-armed 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 don’t
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 I’ll
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 road’s
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 up-stream far enough to
make the head of the island, and then started across. I took off the
sun-bonnet, for I didn’t want no blinders on then. When I was
about the middle I heard the clock begin to strike, so I stops and
listens; the sound come faint over the water but clear—eleven.
When I struck the head of the island I never waited to blow, though
I was most winded, but I shoved right into the timber where my old camp
used to be, and started a good fire there on a high and dry spot.

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

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

Jim never asked no questions, he never said a word; but the way he worked
for the next half an hour showed about how he was scared. By that
time 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
camp fire at the cavern the first thing, and didn’t show a candle
outside after that.

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

---

CHAPTER XII.

IT must a been close on to one o’clock when we got below the island
at last, and the raft did seem to go mighty slow. If a boat was to
come along we was going to take to the canoe and break for the Illinois
shore; and it was well a boat didn’t come, for we hadn’t ever
thought to put the gun in the canoe, or a fishing-line, or anything to
eat. We was in ruther too much of a sweat to think of so many
things. It warn’t good judgment to put everything on
the raft.

If the men went to the island I just expect they found the camp fire 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 warn’t
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 cave-in in the bank there. A tow-head is a sandbar that has
cottonwoods on it as thick as harrow-teeth.

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
warn’t afraid of anybody running across us. We laid there all
day, and watched the rafts and steamboats spin down the Missouri shore,
and up-bound 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 wouldn’t
set down and watch a camp fire—no, sir, she’d fetch a dog.
Well, then, I said, why couldn’t 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 up-town to get a dog and
so they lost all that time, or else we wouldn’t be here on a towhead
sixteen or seventeen mile below the village—no, indeedy, we would be
in that same old town again. So I said I didn’t care what was
the reason they didn’t get us as long as they didn’t.

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

This second night we run between seven and eight hours, with a current
that was making over four mile an hour. We catched fish and talked,
and we took a swim now and then to keep off sleepiness. It was kind
of solemn, drifting down the big, still river, laying on our backs looking
up at the stars, and we didn’t ever feel like talking loud, and it
warn’t often that we laughed—only a little kind of a low
chuckle. We had mighty good weather as a general thing, and nothing
ever happened to us at all—that 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 o’clock that still night. There warn’t
a sound there; everybody was asleep.

Every night now I used to slip ashore towards ten o’clock 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 warn’t
roosting comfortable, and took him along. Pap always said, take a
chicken when you get a chance, because if you don’t want him
yourself you can easy find somebody that does, and a good deed ain’t
ever forgot. I never see pap when he didn’t 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 warn’t no harm to borrow things
if you was meaning to pay them back some time; but the widow said it warn’t
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 wouldn’t borrow them any more—then he
reckoned it wouldn’t 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 towards daylight we got it all settled
satisfactory, and concluded to drop crabapples and p’simmons. We
warn’t feeling just right before that, but it was all comfortable
now. I was glad the way it come out, too, because crabapples ain’t
ever good, and the p’simmons wouldn’t be ripe for two or three
months yet.

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

The fifth night below St. Louis we had a big storm after midnight, with a
power of thunder and lightning, and the rain poured down in a solid sheet.
We stayed in the wigwam and let the raft take care of itself. When the
lightning glared out we could see a big straight river ahead, and high,
rocky bluffs on both sides. By and by says I, “Hel-lo,
Jim, looky 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 chimbly-guy clean
and clear, and a chair by the big bell, with an old slouch hat hanging on
the back of it, when the flashes come.