Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Part 2 - Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
"Well, it's all right anyway, Jim, long as you're going to be rich again
some time or other."
"Yes; en I's rich now, come to look at it. I owns mysef, en I's wuth
eight hund'd dollars. I wisht I had de money, I wouldn' want no mo'."
CHAPTER IX.
I WANTED to go and look at a place right about the middle of the island
that I'd 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 didn't
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 blue-black outside, and
lovely; and the rain would thrash along by so thick that the trees off a
little ways looked dim and spider-webby; 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 blackest--FST! it was as bright as
glory, and you'd have a little glimpse of tree-tops a-plunging 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 you'd 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
down stairs--where it's long stairs and they bounce a good deal, you
know.
"Jim, this is nice," I says. "I wouldn't want to be nowhere else but
here. Pass me along another hunk of fish and some hot corn-bread."
"Well, you wouldn't a ben here 'f it hadn't a ben for Jim. You'd a ben
down dah in de woods widout any dinner, en gittn' mos' drownded, too; dat
you would, honey. Chickens knows when it's 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 across--a half a mile--because 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
broken-down 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 turtles--they would
slide off in the water. The ridge our cavern was in was full of them.
We could a had pets enough if we'd wanted them.
One night we catched a little section of a lumber raft--nice pine planks.
It was twelve foot wide and about fifteen or sixteen foot long, and the
top stood above water six or seven inches--a solid, level floor. We
could see saw-logs go by in the daylight sometimes, but we let them go;
we didn't show ourselves in daylight.
Another night when we was up at the head of the island, just before
daylight, here comes a frame-house down, on the west side. She was a
two-story, and tilted over considerable. We paddled out and got aboard
--clumb 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 didn't budge. So I hollered again, and then Jim says:
"De man ain't asleep--he's dead. You hold still--I'll go en see."
He went, and bent down and looked, and says:
"It's a dead man. Yes, indeedy; naked, too. He's ben shot in de back.
I reck'n he's ben dead two er three days. Come in, Huck, but doan' look
at his face--it's too gashly."
I didn't look at him at all. Jim throwed some old rags over him, but he
needn't done it; I didn't want to see him. There was heaps of old greasy
cards scattered around over the floor, and old whisky bottles, 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 sun-bonnet, and some women's underclothes
hanging against the wall, and some men's clothing, too. We put the lot
into the canoe--it might come good. There was a boy's 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 warn't
nothing left in them that was any account. The way things was scattered
about we reckoned the people left in a hurry, and warn't fixed so as to
carry off most of their stuff.
We got an old tin lantern, and a butcher-knife without any handle, and a
bran-new 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 dog-collar,
and a horseshoe, and some vials of medicine that didn't have no label on
them; and just as we was leaving I found a tolerable good curry-comb, and
Jim he found a ratty old fiddle-bow, 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 couldn't 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 hadn't no
accidents and didn't see nobody. We got home all safe.
CHAPTER X.
AFTER breakfast I wanted to talk about the dead man and guess out how he
come to be killed, but Jim didn't want to. He said it would fetch bad
luck; and besides, he said, he might come and ha'nt us; he said a man
that warn't buried was more likely to go a-ha'nting around than one that
was planted and comfortable. That sounded pretty reasonable, so I didn't
say no more; but I couldn't keep from studying over it and wishing I
knowed who shot the man, and what they done it for.
We rummaged the clothes we'd 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 they'd a knowed the money
was there they wouldn't a left it. I said I reckoned they killed him,
too; but Jim didn't want to talk about that. I says:
"Now you think it's bad luck; but what did you say when I 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.