Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer among the Indians

by Twain, Mark

  So we both rushed. He was all right again and hopeful, and I was glad I thought of that idea, though I didn’t take no stock in it, much. I knowed Tom’s notion that the men had broke for Illinois was worth six of it. He would know it, too, when his mind got settled, then we would go home, and if that pal’s leg was much hurt there would be new trails in a day or two, and not so very deep in the woods, either.

  It was as dark as pitch on the foc’sle, and I fell over a man, and he storms out—

  “What in hell are you doin’!” and grabbed me by the leg.

  I sunk right down where I was, pulpy and sick, and begun to whimper, for it was the King’s voice! Another voice says—

  “Seems to be only a boy, you old hog—he didn’t do it a-purpose. You’ve got no bowels—and never had any.”

  By George, it was the Duke!

  And there I was!

  The King spoke up again—

  “A boy, are ye? Why didn’t you say so? I took you for a cow. What do you want here—hey? Who are ye? What’s your name?”

  Of course I didn’t want to answer, but I knowed I had to. But I tried to make my voice different—

  “Bill Parsons, please sir.”

  “Ger-reat Scott!” says the Duke, setting up, and poking his face in mine, “what’s brought you here, Huck Finn?”

  He talked ruther thick, and I judged he was drunk; but that was all right, becuz if the Duke was more good-natureder one time than another it was when he was drunk. I had to tell them about myself, I knowed there warn’t any way to get around it; so I done it as judicious as I could, caught sudden thataway, and unloaded considerable many lies onto them. When I got done they grunted, and the Duke says—

  “Now tell some truth for a change.”

  I started painting again, but the Duke stopped me, and says—

  “Wait, Huckleberry, you better let me help, I reckon.”

  My time was come, and I knowed it. He was sharp, and he would begin to chase me up with questions and follow me right to my hole. Of course I knowed his game, and was scared. The time I let Jim get away, down there in Arkansaw, it took a pile of money out of him and the King’s pocket, and they had me, now. They wouldn’t let up till they found out where Jim was—that was certain. The Duke begun; then the King begun to shove in questions, but the Duke shut him up and told him he was only botching the business, and didn’t know enough to come in when it rained. It made the King pretty grouty.

  It warn’t long till they had it out of me—Jim was in jail, in our town.

  “What for?”

  Now the minute the Duke asked that, I see my way perfectly clear. If Jim was to get clear they could come with their sham papers and run him South and sell him, but if I showed them he was going to get hung, and hung for sure, they wouldn’t bother about him no more, and we would be shut of them. I was glad I had that idea, and I made up my mind to put the murder on Jim and do it strong.

  “What for?” the Duke says.

  “Murder,” I says, perfectly ca’m.

  “Great guns!”

  “Yes,” I says, “he done it, and he done right—but he done it, ain’t any doubt about that.”

  “It’s an awful pity, becuz he warn’t a bad nigger at bottom; but how do you know he done it?”

  “Becuz old Cap. Haines and Buck Fisher come on him in the very act. He had hit a nigger-trader over the head with his own musket, and stumbled and fell on him, and was getting up when the men come running. It was dark, but they heard the row and warn’t far off. I wisht they had been somewheres else. If Jim hadn’t fell he might a got away.”

  “Too bad. Is the man really dead?”

  “I reckon so. They buried him this afternoon.”

  “It’s awful. Does Jim give in that he done it?”

  “No. Only just says it ain’t any use for a nigger to talk when there’s two white men against him.”

  “Well, that’s so—hey, Majesty?”

  “Head’s level for a nigger—yes.”

  “Why, maybe he didn’t kill the man. Any suspicious characters around?”

  “Nary.”

  “Hasn’t anybody seen any?”

  “No. And besides, if there’d been any, where’s their motive? They wouldn’t kill a man just for fun, would they?”

  “Well, no. And maybe Jim hadn’t any motive, either.”

  “Why, your grace, the motive’s the very worst thing against him. Everybody knows what he done to Jim once, and two men heard Jim tell him he was going to lay him out for it one of these days. It was only talk, and I know it, but that ain’t any difference, it’s white man’s talk and Jim’s only a nigger.”

  “It does look bad for Jim.”

  “Poor old Jim, he knows it. Everybody says he’ll be hung, and of course he hain’t got any friends, becuz he’s free.”

  Nobody said anything, now, and I judged I had put it home good and strong, and they would quit bothering about Jim, and me and Tom would be let alone to go ahead and find the men and get Jim out of his scrape. So I was feeling good and satisfied. After a little bit the Duke says—

  “I’ve been a thinking. I’ll have a word with you, Majesty.”

  Him and the King stepped to the side and mumbled together, and come back, and the Duke says—

  “You like Jim, and you’re sorry for him. Now which would you druther—let him get sold down South, or get hung?”

  Chapter 8

  IT WAS sudden. It knocked me silly. I couldn’t seem to understand what his idea was. Before I could come to myself, he says—

  “It’s for you to say. Now and then and off and on me and the King have struck Jim’s trail and lost it again; for we’ve got a requisition for Jim from the Governor of Kentucky onto the Governor of Missouri and his acceptans of the same—all bogus, you know, but the seals and the paper, which is genuwyne—and on them papers we can go and grab Jim wherever we find him and there ain’t anybody can prevent us. First and last we’ve followed that trail but first and last we’ve followed it to Elexandry, sixty mile above here. Lost it again, and give it up for good and all, and took this boat there towards the middle of the afternoon to-day—”

  “Not knowin’ that a righteous overrulin’ Providence—”

  “Shut up, you old rum-barrel, and don’t interrupt. It’s with you, Huck, to save him or hang him. Which is it?”

  “Oh, goodness knows, your grace, I’m anxious enough—tell me how.”

  “It’s easy. Spose Jim murdered a man down yonder in Tennessee or Mississippi or Arkansaw fourteen months ago when you and Jim was helping me and the King run the raft, and me and the King was going to sell Jim for our nigger, becuz he was ourn, by rights of discovery, we having found him floating down the river without any owner—”

  “Yes, and he’s ourn yit,” says the King, in that snarly way of his’n.

  “Stick your feet in your mouth and stop some of your gas from escapin’, Majesty. Spose Jim done that, Huck—murdered a planter or somebody down there. Take it in? Get the idea?”

  “Not by a blame’ sight I don’t. Jim never done it. Jim warn’t scasely ever out of my sight a day on a stretch; and if he—”

  “There—don’t be a fool. Of course be never done it; that ain’t the idea. The idea is—spose he done it. See? Spose he had a done it. Now you see?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Shucks! Why, blame it, you couldn’t try him up here till after you had tried him down there, could you? Got to take his murders in the order of preseedence, hain’t you? ’Course. Any idiot knows that much. Very good. Now then, here’s the scheme that’ll give us back our nigger and save your black chum’s life. To-morrow in Sent Louis we’ll go to a friend of ourn that’s in a private business up a back alley and got up our papers for us, and he’ll change them so as to fit the case the way it stands now; change them from nigger ‘escaped from service’ to murder—murder done by Jim down South, you know. Then we’ll come straight up here to-morrow or next day and show the
papers and take Jim down South and sell him—not in Kentucky, of course, but ’way down towards the mouth of the river, where Missouri couldn’t ever get on his track when she found she’d been played. See it now, don’t you?”

  By gracious I felt that good, I reckon the angels don’t feel no better when they looks down Sabberday morning and sees the Catholic kids getting roped into the Presbyterium Sunday school. Well, the world, it’s curious, thataway. One minute your heart is away down and miserable, and don’t seem to be no way out of your troubles, and next minute some little thing or another happens you warn’t looking for and just lifts her to your teeth with a bounce, and all your worries is gone and you feel as happy and splendid as Sodom and Gomorrah or any other of them patriarchs. I says to myself, it’s nuts for Tom Sawyer, this is. And it’s nuts for Jim, too. Jim’s life’s safe by this game, if they play it good, and if he ain’t in England and free again three months after they sell him it’ll be becuz we’ve forgot how to run niggers out of slavery and better quit the business.

  So I told them to count me in, the ’rangement was satisfactry to me. They was very much pleased, and shuck me by the hand; the first time they ever come down onto my level like that, I reckon. And I said I wanted to help if they’d tell me how; and the Duke says—

  “You can be a prime help, Huck, and you won’t lose nothing by it, nuther. All you got to do is, keep mum—don’t talk.”

  “All right, I won’t.”

  “Tell Jim, if you want to; tell him to look awful scared and guilty when he sees us and finds we are sheriff’s officers and hears what we’ve come for—it’ll have a good effect; but he mustn’t show that he has seen us before. And you mustn’t. You want to be particular about that.”

  “I won’t let on to know you, your grace—I’ll be particular.”

  “That’s the idea. Say—what are you doing on this boat?”

  It took me ruther sudden, and I didn’t know what to say, so I said I was traveling for my health. But they was feeling good, now, and unparticular; so they laughed and asked me where was the resort, and I said the town down yonder where the lights is showing; so they let me go, then, and told me good-bye and said there was going to be trouble in the chicken coops of that resort before morning, but they reckoned I would pull through all right.

  I cleared for the pilot house, feeling first rate; then I remembered I had forgot to watch for the canoe, but I didn’t care; I knowed there hadn’t been any or the pilot and Tom would a seen it and chased it down. The mud-clerk was up there collecting our passages, and me and Tom come down on the texas roof, and I whispers and says—

  “What do you think—the King and the Duke’s down on the foc’sle!”

  “Go ’long—you don’t mean it!”

  “Wish I may never die. You want to have a sight of them?”

  “Well, I should reckon! Come along.”

  So we flew down. They was celebrated in our town on accounts of me and Jim’s adventures with them, and there wasn’t a person but would give his shirt for a look at them—including Tom. The time Tom saw them down in Arkansaw it was night, and they was tarred and feathered and the public was riding them on a rail in a torchlight procession and they was looking like the pillar of cloud that led Moses out of the bulrushers; but of course he would like to see them without the feathers on, becuz with the feathers on you couldn’t tell them from busted bolsters.

  But we didn’t make it. The boat was sidling in to the wharfboat, and of course the mates had cleared the foc’sle and there warn’t anybody there but a crowd of deckhands, now, bustling with the freight. They was red and vivid in the shine of the fire-doors and the torch-basket, but it was pitch dark everywheres else and you couldn’t see anything. So we hopped ashore and took out to the upper end of the town and found a long lumber raft there and went out and set down on the outside edge of it with our legs in the water and listened to the quietness and the little waves slapping soft against it, and begun to talk, and watch out for the canoe, and it was ever so summery and bammy and comfortable, and the mosquitoes a singing and the frogs a going it, the way they do, such nights.

  So then I told Tom the scheme and said we must keep mum, and not tell anybody but Jim. It cheered him up and nearly made him gay; and he said Jim was safe now; if we didn’t find the men the Duke’s plan would save him, sure, and we would have good times running him out of slavery again, and then we would take him over to England and hand him over to. the Queen ourselves to help in the kitchen and wait on table and be a body-guard and celebrated; and we would have the trip, and see the Tower and Shackspur’s grave and find out what kind of a country we all come from before we struck for taxation and misrepresentation and raised Cain becuz we couldn’t get it.

  But he said he’d got his lesson, and warn’t going to throw any more chances away for glory’s sake; no, let glory go, he was for business, from this out. He was going to save Jim the quickest way, never mind about the showiest.

  It sounded good, and I loved to hear it. He hadn’t ever been in his right mind before; I could see it plain. Sound? He was as sound as a nut, now. Why, he even said he wished the King and the Duke would come and take Jim out of jail and out of town in the night, so there wouldn’t be nary a sign of gaudiness and showiness about it, he was done with pow-wow, and didn’t want no more. By gracious that made me uncomfortable again, it looked like he’d gone off his balance the other way, now. But I didn’t say nothing.

  He said the new scheme was a hundred times the most likeliest, but he warn’t going to set down and take it easy on that account, becuz who knows but the Duke and the King will get into jail down there, which is always to be expected, and mightn’t get out till it was too late for Jim’s business—

  “Don’t, Tom!” says I, breaking in, “don’t let’s talk about it, don’t let’s even think about it.”

  “We’ve got to, Huck; it’s in the chances, and we got to give all the doubts a full show from this out—there ain’t going to be any more taking things for granted. We’ll hunt for the men a couple of days while we’re waiting—we won’t throw any chance away.” After a spell he drawed a sorrowful deep breath and says, “it was a prime good chance before the rain—I wish we hadn’t come down here.”

  We watched faithful, all night till most daylight, and warn’t going to go to sleep at all, but we did; and when we woke up it was noon and we was disgusted; and peeled and had a swim, and went down to town and et about 64 battercakes and things and felt crowded and better; and inquired around and didn’t hear of the canoe, and a steamboat come along late and we got home at dark and Jim was slated for first degree and Bat was in the ground, and everybody was talking about the watchful inscrutableness of Providence, and thankful for it and astonished at it, but didn’t das’t to say so right out.

  And after 64 more we went to jail and comforted Jim up and told him about the new plan, and it joggled him considerable, and he couldn’t tell straight off whether to be glad or not, and says—

  “By jimminies, I don’t mo’n git outer one scrape tell I gits in a wuss one.” But when he see how down-hearted it made Tom to hear him say that, he was sorry, and put his old black hand on Tom’s head and says, “but I don’t mine, I don’t mine, honey, don’t you worry; I knows you’s gwyne to do de bes’ you kin, en it don’t make no diffunce what it is, ole Jim ain’t gwyne to complain.”

  Of course it was awful to him, the idea of the King and the Duke getting a grip on him again, and he could scasely bear to talk about it; still, he knowed me and Tom wouldn’t let him be a slave long if industriousness and enterprise and c’ruption was worth anything; so he quieted down, and reckoned if the Queen was satisfied with him after she tried him and found he was honest and willing, she would raise his wages next year; and Tom said she was young and inexperienced and would, he knowed it. So it was all satisfactry, and Tom went along home, and told me to come too, and I done it.

  His aunt Polly give him a hiding, but it didn’t hurt—nor me, nei
ther; we didn’t care for it. She was in a towering way, but when we explained we had been over on t’other side of the river fishing, about a couple of days and nights, and didn’t know the horn-signal had blowed and scared the town to death and there’d been a murder and a funeral and Jim done it, she forgot she was mad at us, and wouldn’t a sold out her chance for a basket of money, she being just busting to tell the news.

  So she started in, and never got a dern thing right, but enjoyed herself, and it took her two solid hours; and when she got done painting up the show it was worth four times the facts, and I reckon Tom was sorry he didn’t get her to run the conspiracy herself. But she was right down sorry for Jim, and said Bat must a tried to kill Jim or he never would a blowed his brains out with the musket.

  “Did blow them out, did he, aunt Polly?”

  “Such as he had—yes.”

  Then company come in to spend the evening, and amongst them was Flacker the detective, and he had been working up his clews and knowed all about the murder, same as if he’d seen it; and they all set with their mouths open a listening and holding their breath and wondering at his talents and marvelousness whilst he went on.

  Why, it was just rot and rubbage—clean, straight foolishness, but them people couldn’t see it. According to him, the Sons of Freedom was a sham—it was Burrell’s Gang, and he had the clews that would prove it. Burrell’s Gang—it made them fairly shudder and hitch their chairs clos’ter together when he said it. He said there was six members of it right here in town, friends of you all, you meet up and chat with them every day—it made them shudder again. Said he wouldn’t mention no names, he warn’t ready yet, but he could lay his hands on them whenever he wanted to. Said they had a plan to burn the town and rob it and run off the niggers, he had the proofs; and so they went on a shuddering, enough to shake the house and sour the milk. Said Jim was in leagues with them, he had the facts and could prove it any day; and said he had shaddered the Sons to their den—wouldn’t say where it was, just now; and he come onto provisions there cal’lated to feed sixteen men six weeks—(ourn, by jings!) And found their printing ’rangements, too, and lugged them off and hid them, and could show them whenever he got ready. Said he knowed the secret of the figures that was printed on the bills with red ink, and it was too awful to tell where there was senstive scary women. That made everybody scrunch together and look sick. And he said the man that got up them bills warn’t any common ornery person, he was a gigantic intelleck, and was prob’ly the worst man alive; and he knowed by some little marks on the bills that another person wouldn’t notice and wouldn’t understand them if he did, that it was Burrell his own self that done it; and said there warn’t another man in America could get up them bills but Burrell. And that very Burrell was in this town this minute, in disguise and running a shop, and it was him that blowed the signal-horn. Old Miss Watson fainted and fell onto the cat when she heard that, and she yowled, becuz it was her tail that got hurt, and they had a lot of trouble to fetch her to. And last of all, he said Jim had two ’complices to the murder and he seen their footprints—dwarfs, they was, one cross-eyed and t’other left-handed; didn’t say how he knowed it, but he was shaddering them, and although they had escaped out of town for now, he warn’t worrying, he allowed he would take them into camp when they was least expecting of it.