by Twain, Mark
“Course not.”
“Just as I expected. She don’t know what she’s talking about. Has she ever been amongst the Injuns?”
“No.”
“Well, then, what right has she got to be blackguarding them and telling what ain’t so about them?”
“Well, anyway, ole Gin’l Gaines, he’s ben amongst ’m, anyway.”
“All right, so he has. Been with them lots of times, hasn’t he?”
“Yes—lots of times.”
“Been with them years, hasn’t he?”
“Yes, sir! Why, Mars Tom, he—”
“Very well, then. Has he been skinned? You answer me that.”
Jim see Tom had him. He couldn’t say a word. Tom Sawyer was the keenest boy for laying for a person and just leading him along by the nose without ever seeming to do it till he got him where he couldn’t budge and then bust his arguments all to flinders I ever see. It warn’t no use to argue with Tom Sawyer—a body never stood any show.
Jim he hem’d and haw’d, but all he could say was, that he had somehow got the notion that Injuns was powerful ornery, but he reckoned maybe—then Tom shut him off.
“You reckon maybe you’ve been mistaken. Well, you have. Injuns ornery! It’s the most ignorant idea that ever—why, Jim, they’re the noblest human beings that’s ever been in the world. If a white man tells you a thing, do you know it’s true? No, you don’t; because generally it’s a lie. But if an Injun tells you a thing, you can bet on it every time for the petrified fact; because you can’t get an Injun to lie, he would cut his tongue out first. If you trust to a white man’s honor, you better look out; but you trust to an Injun’s honor, and nothing in the world can make him betray you—he would die first, and be glad to. An Injun is all honor. It’s what they’re made of. You ask a white man to divide his property with you—will he do it? I think I see him at it; but you go to an Injun, and he’ll give you everything he’s got in the world. It’s just the difference between an Injun and a white man. They’re just all generousness and unstingeableness. And brave? Why, they ain’t afraid of anything. If there was just one Injun, and a whole regiment of white men against him, they wouldn’t stand the least show in the world,—not the least. You’d see that splendid gigantic Injun come war-whooping down on his wild charger all over paint and feathers waving his tomahawk and letting drive with his bow faster than anybody could count the arrows and hitting a soldier in any part of his body he wanted to, every time, any distance, and in two minutes you’d see him santering off with a wheelbarrow-load of scalps and the rest of them stampeding for the United States the same as if the menagerie was after them. Death?—an Injun don’t care shucks for death. They prefer it. They sing when they’re dying—sing their death-song. You take an Injun and stick him full of arrows and splinters, and hack him up with a hatchet, and skin him, and start a slow fire under him, and do you reckon he minds it? No sir; he will just set there in the hot ashes, perfectly comfortable, and sing, same as if he was on salary. Would a white man? You know he wouldn’t. And they’re the most gigantic magnificent creatures in the whole world, and can knock a man down with a barrel of flour as far as they can see him. They’re awful strong, and fiery, and eloquent, and wear beautiful blankets, and war paint, and moccasins, and buckskin clothes, all over beads, and go fighting and scalping every day in the year but Sundays, and have a noble good time, and they love friendly white men, and just dote on them, and can’t do too much for them, and would ruther die than let any harm come to them, and they think just as much of niggers as they do of anybody, and the young squaws are the most beautiful be-utiful maidens that was ever in the whole world, and they love a white hunter the minute their eye falls on him, and from that minute nothing can ever shake their love loose again, and they’re always on the watch-out to protect him from danger and get themselves killed in the place of him—look at Pocahontas!—and an Injun can see as far as a telescope with the naked eye, and an enemy can’t slip around anywhere, even in the dark, but he knows it; and if he sees one single blade of grass bent down, it’s all he wants, he knows which way to go to find the enemy that done it, and he can read all kinds of trifling little signs just the same way with his eagle eye which you wouldn’t ever see at all, and if he sees a little whiff of smoke going up in the air thirty-five miles off, he knows in a second if it’s a friend’s camp fire or an enemy’s, just by the smell of the smoke, because they’re the most giftedest people in the whole world, and the hospitablest and the happiest, and don’t ever have anything to do from year’s end to year’s end but have a perfectly supernatural good time and piles and piles of adventures! Amongst the Injuns, life is just simply a circus, that’s what it is. Anybody that knows, will tell you you can’t praise it too high and you can’t put it too strong.”
Jim’s eyes was shining, and so was mine, I reckon, and he was excited, and it was the same with both of us, as far as that was concerned. Jim drawed a long breath, and then says:
“Whoosh! Dem’s de ticket for Jim! Bust ef it doan’ beat all, how rotten ignornt a body kin be ’bout Injuns w’en ’e hain’t had no chance to study um up. Why, Mars Tom, ef I’d a knowed what Injuns reely is, I pledges you my word I’d—well, you jes’ count me in, dat’s all; count me in on de Injun-country business; I’s ready to go, I doan’ want no likelier folks aroun’ me d’n what dem Injuns is. En Huck’s ready, too—hain’t it so, Huck?”
Course I warn’t going to stay behind if they went, so I said I was.
Chapter 2
SO WE went to making preparations; and mighty private and secret, too, because Tom Sawyer wouldn’t have nothing to do with a thing if there warn’t no mystery about it. About three mile out in the woods, amongst the hills, there was an old tumble-down log house that used to be lived in, some time or other when people cut timber there, and we found it on a coon hunt one night, but nobody ever went there, now. So we let on it was infested with pirates and robbers, and we laid in the woods all one rainy night, perfectly still, and not showing fire or a light; and just before dawn we crept up pretty close and then sprung out, whooping and yelling, and took it by surprise, and never lost a man, Tom said, and was awful proud of it, though I couldn’t see no sense in all that trouble and bother, because we could a took it in the day time just as well, there warn’t nobody there. Tom called the place a cavern, though it warn’t a cavern at all, it was a house, and a mighty ornery house at that.
Every day we went up to the little town that was two mile from the farm, and bought things for the outfit and to barter with the Injuns—skillets and coffee pots and tin cups, and blankets, and three sacks of flour, and bacon and sugar and coffee, and fish hooks, and pipes and tobacco, and ammunition, and pistols, and three guns, and glass beads, and all such things. And we hid them in the woods; and nights we dumb out of the window and slid down the lightning rod, and went and got the things and took them to the cavern. There was an old Mexican on the next farm below ours, and we got him to learn us how to pack a pack-mule so we could do it first rate.
And last of all, we went down fifteen or twenty mile further and bought five good mules, and saddles, because we didn’t want to raise no suspicions around home, and took the mules to the cavern in the night and picketed them in the grass. There warn’t no better mules in the State of Missouri, Tom said, and so did Jim.
Our idea was to have a time amongst the Injuns for a couple of months or so, but we had stuff enough to last longer than that, I reckon, because Tom allowed we ought to be fixed for accidents. Tom bought a considerable lot of little odds and ends of one kind and another which it ain’t worth while to name, which he said they would come good with the Injuns.
Well, the last day that we went up to town, we laid in an almanac, and a flask or two of liquor, and struck a stranger that had a curiosity and was peddling it. It was little sticks about as long as my finger with some stuff like yellow wax on the ends, and all you had to do was to rake the yellow end on something, and the stick would catch f
ire and smell like all possessed, on account of part of it being brimstone. We hadn’t ever heard of anything like that, before. They were the convenientest things in the world, and just the trick for us to have; so Tom bought a lot of them. The man called them lucifer matches, and said anybody could make them that had brimstone and phosphorus to do it with. So he sold Tom a passel of brimstone and phosphorus, and we allowed to make some for ourselves some time or other.
We was all ready, now. So we waited for full moon, which would be in two or three days. Tom wrote a letter to his aunt Polly to leave behind, telling her good bye, and saying rest easy and not worry, because we would be back in two or three weeks, but not telling her anything about where we was going.
And then Thursday night, when it was about eleven and everything still, we got up and dressed, and slid down the lightning rod, and shoved the letter under the front door, and slid by the nigger-quarter and give a low whistle, and Jim come gliding out and we struck for the cavern, and packed everything onto two of the mules, and put on our belts and pistols and bowie knives, and saddled up the three other mules and rode out into the big moonlight and started west.
By and by we struck level country, and a pretty smooth path, and not so much woods, and the moonlight was perfectly splendid, and so was the stillness. You couldn’t hear nothing but the skreaking of the saddles. After while there was that cool and fresh feeling that tells you day is coming; and then the sun come up behind us, and made the leaves and grass and flowers shine and sparkle, on account of the dew, and the birds let go and begun to sing like everything.
So then we took to the woods, and made camp, and picketed the mules, and laid off and slept a good deal of the day. Three more nights we traveled that way, and laid up daytimes, and everything was mighty pleasant. We never run across anybody, and hardly ever see a light. After that, we judged we was so far from home that we was safe; so then we begun to travel by daylight.
The second day after that, when we was hoping to begin to see Injun signs, we struck a wagon road, and at the same time we struck an emigrant wagon with a family aboard, and it was near sundown, and they asked us to camp with them, and we done it. There was a man about fifty-five and his wife, named Mills, and three big sons, Buck and Bill and Sam, and a girl that said she was seventeen, named Peggy, and her little sister Flaxy, seven year old. They was from down in the lower end of Missouri, and said they was bound for Oregon—going to settle there. We said we was bound for the Injun country, and they said they was going to pass through it and we could join company with them if we would like to.
They was the simple-heartedest good-naturedest country folks in the world, and didn’t know anything hardly—I mean what you call “learning.” Except Peggy. She had read considerable many books, and knowed as much as most any girl, and was just as pretty as ever she could be, and live. But she warn’t no prettier than she was good, and all the tribe doted on her. Why they took as much care of her as if she was made out of sugar or gold or something. When she’d come to the camp fire, any of her brothers would get up in a minute and give her the best place. I reckon you don’t see that kind of brothers pretty often. She didn’t have to saddle her own mule, the way she’d have to do in most society, they always done it for her. Her and her mother never had anything to do but cook, that is all; the brothers got the wood, they built the fires, they skinned the game; and whenever they had time they helped her wash up the things. It ain’t often you see a brother kiss his own sister; fact is, I don’t know as I’d ever seen such a thing before; but they done it. I know, because I see them do it myself; and not just once, but plenty of times. Tom see it, too, and so did Jim. And they never said a cross word to her, not one. They called her “dear.” Plenty of times they called her that; and right before company, too; they didn’t care; they never thought nothing of it. And she didn’t, either. They’d say “Peggy dear,” to her, just in the naturalest off-handedest way, it didn’t make no difference who was around; and it took me two or three days to get so I could keep from blushing, I was so ashamed for them, though I knowed it warn’t the least harm, because they was right out of the woods and didn’t know no better. But I don’t wish to seem to be picking flaws in them, and abusing them, because I don’t. They was the splendidest people in the world; and after you got that fact stowed in your mind solid, you was very well satisfied, and perfectly willing to overlook their manners; because nobody can’t be perfect, anyway.
We all got to be uncommon friendly together; it warn’t any trouble at all. We traveled with them, and camped with them every night. Buck and Bill and Sam was wonderful with a lasso, or a gun, or a pistol, or horseback riding, and they learned us all these things so that we got to be powerful good at them, specially Tom; and though he couldn’t throw a lasso as far as a man could, he could throw it about as true. And he could cave in a squirrel’s or a wild turkey’s or a prairie chicken’s head any fair distance; and could send both loads from his pistol through your hat on a full gallop, at twenty yards, if you wanted him to. There warn’t ever any better people than the Millses; but Peggy she was the cap-sheaf of the lot, of course; so gentle, she was, and so sweet, and whenever you’d done any little thing for her it made you feel so kind of all over comfortable and blessed to see her smile. If you ever felt cut, about anything, she never asked about the rights of it, or who done it, but just went to work and never rested till she had coaxed the smart all out and made you forget all about it. And she was that kind of a girl that if you ever made a mistake and happened to say something that hurt her, the minute you saw by her face what you had done, you wanted to get down on your knees in the dirt, you felt so mean and sorry. You couldn’t ever get tired looking at her, all day long, she was so dear and pretty; and mornings it warn’t ever sun-up to me till she come out.
One day, about a couple of weeks after we had left the United States behind, and was ever so far away out on the Great Plains, we struck the Platte river and went into camp in a nice grassy place a couple of hours before sun-down, and there we run across a camp of Injuns, the first ones we had been close enough to, yet, to get acquainted with. Tom was powerful glad.
Chapter 3
IT WAS just the place for a camp; the likeliest we had found yet. Big stream of water, and considerable many trees along it. The rest of the country, as far as you could see, any which-way you looked, clear to where the sky touched the earth, was just long levels and low waves—like what I reckon the ocean would be, if the ocean was made out of grass. Away off, miles and miles, was one tree standing by itself, and away off the other way was another, and here and yonder another and another scattered around; and the air was so clear you would think they was close by, but it warn’t so, most of them was miles away.
Old Mills said he would stop there and rest up the animals. I happened to be looking at Peggy, just then, because I mostly always happened to be looking at her when she was around, and her cheeks turned faint red and beautiful, like a nigger’s does when he puts a candle in his mouth to surprise a child; she never said nothing, but pretty soon she got to singing low to herself and looking happy. I didn’t let on; but next morning when I see her slip off to the top of one of them grass-waves and stand shading her eyes with her hand and looking away off over the country, I went there and got it all out of her. And it warn’t no trouble, either, after she got started. It looked like the mainest trouble was going to be to stop her again.
She had a sweetheart—that was what was the matter of her. He had staid behind, to finish up things, and would be along when he got done. His name was Brace Johnson; big, and fine, and brave, and good, and splendid, and all that, as near as I could make out; twenty-six years old; been amongst the Injuns ever since he was a boy, trapping, hunting, scouting, fighting; knowed all about Injuns, knowed some of the languages, knowed the plains and the mountains, and all the whole country, from Texas to Oregon; and now he was done with all that kind of life, and her and him was going to settle down in Oregon, and get married, and g
o to farming it. I reckon she thought she only loved him; but I see by her talk it was upwards of that, she worshiped him. She said we was to stay where we was till he come, which might be in a week, and then we would stay as much longer as her pap thought the horses needed to.
There was five of the Injuns, and they had spry little ponies, and was camped tolerable close by. They was big, strong, grand looking fellows, and had on buckskin leggings and moccasins, and red feathers in their hair, and knives and tomahawks, and bows and arrows, and one of them had an old gun and could talk a little English, but it warn’t any use to him, he couldn’t kill anything with it because it hadn’t any flint—I mean the gun. They was naked from the waist up, when they hadn’t on their blankets.
They set around our fire till bedtime, the first night, and took supper with us, and passed around the pipe, and was very friendly, and made signs to us, and grunted back, when we signed anything they understood, and pretty much everything they see that they liked, they wanted it. So they got coffee, and sugar, and tobacco, and a lot of little things.
They was there to breakfast, next morning, and then me and Tom went over to their camp with them, and we all shot at a mark with their bows and arrows, and they could outshoot anything I ever see with a bow and arrow, and could stand off a good ways and hit a tree with a tomahawk every time.
They come back with us at noon and eat dinner, and the one with the gun showed it to Peggy, and made signs would she give him a flint, and she got one from her father, and put it in the gunlock and fixed it herself, and the Injun was very thankful, and called her good squaw and pretty squaw, and she was ever so pleased; and another one named Hog Face that had a bad old hurt on his shin, she bandaged it up and put salve on it, and he was very thankful too.
Tom he was just wild over the Injuns, and said there warn’t no white men so noble; and he warn’t by himself in it, because me and Jim, and all the rest of us got right down fond of them; and Peggy said she did wish Brace was here, he would change his notions about Injuns, which he was down on, and hated them like snakes, and always said he wouldn’t trust one any how or any where, in peace time or war time or any other time. She showed me a little dirk-knife which she got out of her bosom, and asked me what I reckoned it was for, and who give it to her.
