by Twain, Mark
So we went to the hanted house and struck up over Cardiff Hill, and Tom says—
“I reckon this ’ll learn you to have trust next time, Huck Finn.”
“What will?”
“Well, there was a plan and a program, wasn’t there?”
“There was, yes—and it got busted.”
“Did, did it? According to the plan and the program a runaway nigger was going to escape from there to-night—ain’t that so?”
“Yes.”
“Well, it’s going to happen.”
“Shucks—what are you talking?”
“It was going to be a white nigger wasn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“All right, that’s going to happen.”
“Tom, you don’t mean it.”
“Yes I do.”
“Honest Injun, Tom, is that man white?”
“Honest Injun, Huck, he is.”
“Why, it’s the most astonishing thing I ever see.”
“Huck, it’s the very same game we laid out to play ourselves. Providence hasn’t changed anything in the program except just the person—that’s all. Now I reckon you’ll have trust hereafter.”
“Why Tom, it’s the strangest thing that ever—”
“Happened? I told you it was the most mysterious and inscrutablest design in the whole conspiracy. I reckon you believe me now. We don’t know what the change is made for Huck, but we know one thing—it was for the best.”
He said it very solemn, and it made me feel thataway. Well, it was all very wonderful and strange. It made us kind of quiet a while, then I says—
“Tom, how’d you know he is white?”
“Oh, a lot of things. They couldn’t fooled old Bat if he had good eyesight. Huck, for one thing, the inside of that nigger’s hands are black.”
“Well, what’s the matter of that?”
“Why, you idiot, the inside of a nigger’s hands ain’t black.”
“That’s so, Tom, I didn’t think of it.”
“And he talked some words in his sleep; he talked white, not nigger; hasn’t learnt to talk nigger in his sleep, yet.”
“Tom, what makes you think he’s going to get out to-night.”
“Evidence of it in his shoe.”
“Something fell out of it; was that it?”
“Two things fell out; I put one back. It was a key. But I tried it in his padlock first, and it fitted.”
“By gracious!”
“He’s playing our scheme to a dot, don’t you see?”
“Why, Tom, it just beats anything that ever was. Say—what was the other thing that fell out?”
“I didn’t put that back—I’ve got it yet.”
“Lemme see it, Tom; what is it?”
But he put me off, and said it was too dark to see it; so I knowed he was working one of his mysteries and I’d got to wait till it suited him to come out with it. I asked him how he come to look in the nigger’s shoe. He sniffed, and says—
“Huck Finn, hain’t you got any reasoning powers at all? Where would a detective look? He looks everywheres—he don’t make any exceptions. First, he looks where he ain’t likely to find anything—becuz that is where he’d druther find it, of course, on account of the showiness of it; and if he is disappointed he turns to and hunts in the likely places. But he’s got to examine everything—it’s his business; and he must remember all about it at the trial, too. I didn’t want to find the things in the shoe, of course—”
“Why, Tom?”
“Didn’t I just tell you why? Becuz it was the likely place. A white nigger that’s playing a swindle knows his new marster might take a notion to search him; so he don’t hide his suspiciousest things in his pockets, does he?”
“Well, now, I wouldn’t a thought of that, but I reckon it’s so, Tom. You think of everything and you notice everything.”
“A detective’s got to. I noticed everything in that lean-to, and can tell all about it, from the musket on the hooks with no flint in the lock to Bat’s old silver-plated watch hanging under the shelf with the minute-hand broke off the same length as the hour-hand and you can’t come within two weeks of telling what time of day it is, to save you; and I noticed—”
All of a sudden I thought of something—
“Tom!”
“Well?”
“We are just foolish.”
“How?”
“To be fooling along here like this. The thing for us to do is to rush to the sheriff’s and tell him, so he can slip up here and catch this humbug and jail him for swindling Bat.”
He stopped where he was, and says, very sarcastic—
“You think so, do you?”
It made me feel sheepish, but I said “Yes,” anyway, though I didn’t say it very confident.
“Huck Finn,” he says, kind of sorrowful, “you can’t ever seem to see the noblest opportunities. Here is this conspiracy weaving along just perfect, and you want to turn him in in this ignorant way and spoil it all.”
“How is that going to spoil it, Tom Sawyer?”
“Well, just look at it a minute,” he says, “and I reckon you’ll see. How would a detective act? I’ll ask you that. Would he go in that simple girly way and catch this humbug and make him tell where the other one is, and then catch the other one and make him hand out the two hundred dollars, and have the whole thing over and done with before morning and not a rag of glory in it anywhere? I never see such a mud turtle as you, Huck Finn.”
“Well, then,” I says, “what would he do? It looks like the common sense way, to me, Tom Sawyer.”
“Common sense!” he says, as scornful as he could. “What’s common sense got to do with detecting, you leatherhead? It ain’t got anything to do with it. What is wanted is genius and penetration and marvelousness. A detective that had common sense couldn’t ever make a ruputation—couldn’t even make his living.”
“Well, then,” I says, “what is the right way?”
“There’s only one. Let these frauds go ahead and play their game and get away, then follow them up by clews—that’s the way. It may take weeks and weeks, but is full of glory. Clews is the thing.”
“All right,” I says, ruther aggravated, “have it your own way, but I think it’s an assful way.”
“What is there assful about it, Huck Finn?”
“It’s assful because you mayn’t ever catch them at all, and when you do they’ve spent all of Bat’s two hundred and he can’t get it back. Where’s the sense in that?”
“Don’t I tell you there ain’t any sense in detecting,—I never see such a clam. It’s nobler—and higher—and grander; and who cares for the money, anyway?—the glory’s the thing.”
“All right,” I says, “go it—I ain’t interfering. What’s your plan?”
“Now you’re getting into your right mind. Come along, and I’ll tell you as we climb. These two frauds think they are safe—they don’t know there’s any detectives around, in a little back settlement like ourn. They’d never think of such a thing. It makes them our meat. Why? Becuz the nigger will wash up, and both of them will get up some new disguises so as Bat and anybody else won’t know them, and like as not they’ll stay here a while and try to play some more swindles. Now then, the plan is this. Whenever you and Jim sees a stranger, you let me know. If he’s the nigger, I’ll reconnize him; and I’ll let him alone till I catch him with another stranger—then we’ll take them into camp.”
“You might get the wrong ones.”
“You leave it to me—I’ll show you.”
“Is that the whole plan, Tom?”
“You’ll find it’s a plenty. You lay for strangers and tell me—that’s all I want.”
So then we went ahead and clumb the tree and found Jim there and told him the whole thing, and he said it was splendid, and believed it was the best conspiracy that ever was, and was coming along judicious and satisfactory. And about half past one in the morning he blowed the signals and it was a perfectly
horrible noise, enough to make a person turn in his grave; and then we pulled out for town to sample the effects.
Chapter 6
IT COULDN’T a been better, it couldn’t a been finer. Tom said so his own self, and Jim said the same. The whole town was out in the streets, taking on like it was the Last Day. There was lights in all the houses, and people ranting up and down and carrying on and prophecying, and that scared they didn’t know what they was about. And the drums was rumbling and the fifes tooting and the soldiers tramp-tramping, and Colonel Elder and Sam Rumford shouting the orders, and the dogs howling—it was all beautiful and glorious.
When it got to be about an hour before dawn Tom said he must get back to Bat’s place, now, so as to get footprints and other clews while they was fresh, so he could begin to track out the escaped nigger. He knowed his aunt Polly would be uneasy about him, but it wouldn’t do for him to go there, he might get locked up for safety, and that could make no end of trouble with the conspiracy, so he told Jim to go and explain to her how he was out on detective work, and ask her permission and comfort her up; then he could rush and overtake us. Me and Tom struck out up the river road, then, and got to Bat’s just in the gray of the dawn.
And by gracious! Right before the lean-to was Bat Bradish stretched out on the ground, and seemed to be dead, and was all bloody; and his old musket was laying there with blood and hair on the barrel; and the lean-to was open and the nigger gone, and things upset and smashed around in a great way, and plenty of footprints and clews and things, all a person could want. Tom told me to rush for the undertaker—not the new one, give the job to the old one, Jake Trumbull, which was a friend of ourn—and said he would come along and catch up with me as soon as he had got the clews tallied up.
He was always quick, Tom was. I warn’t out of sight at the turn of the river road when I looked back and see him waving his hat for me. So I run back, and he says—
“We needn’t go for help, Huck, it’s been ’tended to.”
“What makes you reckon so, Tom?”
“I don’t reckon anything about it, I know it. Jim’s been here.”
And sure enough he had. Tom had found his tracks. Of course he had come the short way over the hill and beat us, becuz we come the long way, up the river road. I was dog-tired, and glad we didn’t have to go for anybody. I went behind the house, out of sight of the dead man, and set down and rested whilst Tom examined around amongst the clews. It warn’t but a few minutes till he come and said he was through, and said there’d been four men there besides Bat and Jim, and he had their prints, but nobody’s prints was inside the lean-to except Bat’s and the white nigger’s and another man’s—the nigger’s pal, he reckoned. He said Jim and two of the men was gone for help by the short way over the hill, and the nigger and his pal had made for the creek, and we would take out after them—come along.
It was an easy trail, through mangy poor little grass-patches with bare dust between; and where the tracks struck the dust they bored in heavy and showed that the men was running as hard as they could go. Tom says—
“They don’t know the country very well, you see; or they’re too excited; or they’ve got pointed a little wrong on account of it’s being dark. Anyway, if they don’t slew to the left pretty soon they’ll get into trouble.”
“Looks like it,” I says; “they’re aiming for the jumping-off place.”
The jumping-off place was twelve foot high, and had low bushes on it, and even in the daytime an ignorant person wouldn’t know it was there till he was over it. We chased the tracks plumb to the edge. Then we pulled off to the left and dumb down and got the trail again at the jumping-off place and followed it fifty yards to the Branch. The Branch was uncommon high but had begun to fall; so there was a flat wide belt of half-dry mud at the edge, shriveling and stinking, and Tom says—
“Good luck, Huck, the pal hurt his left leg when he fell over the jumping-off place, it only makes a dragging-print here, and the nigger had to help him along. It’s a clew, don’t you know!”
He would trade pie for a clew, any time. Next, he says—
“They’ve got old Cap. Haines’s canoe; hooked it, I reckon.”
Said he knowed it by the print the bow made in the mud. It might be—I didn’t know. I had stole the canoe lots of times, but never noticed. I says—
“Now we can go home. They’re safe in Illinois by this time and we ain’t going to hear of them no more.”
But he said no, it might be and it mightn’t be; he wouldn’t jump to no conclusions about it—best way was to go ahead and find out; and says—
“The only way to ascertain a thing is to ascertain; guessing ain’t any good. And besides—look at it all around. Suppose this pal’s leg is broke? Is he going to strike for Illinois and the everlasting woods? No; he’ll want a doctor. They haven’t been in town—they’d have been in jail in two minutes, becuz they’re strangers; it ain’t any healthy place for strangers in these conspiracy times. They’ve come from up river or over river; they know Bat; they’ve traded with him before, some time or other. If the leg’s broke they’ve got to have a doctor—”
“Well then, they’ve gone to town, Tom.”
“In Cap. Haines’s canoe?—from close to the murder?—a canoe that they stole, you can bet on it—it’s the kind of folks they are. I don’t think they’ve gone to town.”
“Well, I don’t, nuther, come to think. What will they do, Tom?”
We was tramping along down the Branch, all this time. Tom thought a while, then says—
“Huck, if they had plenty of time, they could manage, but I reckon they haven’t. Nearest town up-stream, twenty-five miles—an all-day trip with one paddle; nearest town down-stream, twenty-one miles—five hours; but it wouldn’t do any good; the news of the murder will be there to-day, and even if they sunk Haines’s canoe and stole another, people would still want to know where they got that leg.” After studying a little, he says “I hope they’ve done that. I hope they’ve had the time. We’d have them before night, dead sure!”
“Good!” says I.
We went tramping along, Tom a-watching for clews. Pretty soon he shook his head and pulled a long breath, and says—
“No, it won’t work, Huck; they’re around here somewheres—they hadn’t the time.”
“How do you know?”
“Well, the nigger overslept or something, the pal didn’t turn up till hours after he oughter, and so the thing didn’t come off till towards dawn.”
“What makes you think that, Tom?”
“Becuz Bat was warm yet, when we got there; I felt of him, under his waistcoat.”
It give me the cold shivers; I wouldn’t a done it.
“Go on,” I says.
“The nigger has got to wash up and change to white folks’ clothes before he can go and smuggle a doctor to his pal, and like enough the pal’s got a disguise, too. The nigger’s got another suit, anyway—that’s sure. He would want to make his change pretty soon after he escaped, before he met up with anybody. So I reckon the clothes must be hid around here somewheres, not very far. Well, by the time the washing and dressing and paddling three miles was done it would be daylight and they would be chased and caught as they passed the town, I don’t care which side of the river they went down. If they’ve tried it they’ve made a mistake.”
Well, when we had gone along down about a half a mile and was abreast the stretch of bushes back of the hanted house, right there we struck the trail again. Tom says—
“Ain’t it curious? They got in ahead of us on our scheme all around: play counterfeit-nigger like we was going to do, and jump our dressing-room, too. They’ve been around here before, Huck.”
The canoe warn’t anywhere in sight; they had hid her or turned her loose, we didn’t know which, and didn’t care anyway, it warn’t any matter. We crope through the bushes and there was the trail plowing straight for the house through the high weeds where the garden used to was. The windows was stil
l boarded up the way me and Tom done it the summer before, the time we let on to be a gang of counterfeiters and used to go there and cut out tin money in the night and contribbit it to the mishonary business Sundays, and she was looking awful lonesome and mournful, the way she always done. Tom said we’d got to get down on our hands and knees and crawl through the weeds, and go very, very slow, and not make the least noise or they might hear us. I says—
“Who? Me? I reckon I see myself a doing it. If you want to go and get into trouble with them hellions,” I says, “it’s your instincts and it’s all right, and I’ll wait for you; but nary a peg do I budge.”
So he took his course with his little compass and started, and I watched, out of the shadder of the bushes. He done it first rate. You would see the tops of the weeds wiggle a little, and after a quiet spell they would wiggle again, a little further along—the slowest business; but always I could keep track of him, and always he was getting ahead. So he got there by and by, and I waited the dullest longest time, and got afraid they had grabbed him and choked him to death; but at last I see by the weeds that he was coming again, and I was awful glad. As soon as he got to me he says—
“Come along, it’s all right—they’re there. I crep’ through the hole where the hogs get under the house, and it was dark as pitch in there and in the house, and I stuck my head up through the busted place in the floor—”
“What a fool!”
