Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer among the Indians

by Twain, Mark

  “You say the prisoner was to go and report to your aunt, and then follow you. What time was that?”

  And by Jackson Tom couldn’t tell him. We hadn’t noticed. Tom had to guess; it was all he could do, and guessing warn’t worth much. It was mighty bad—and it showed in people’s faces. Mr. Lawson was looking comfortable again.

  “Why were you three going to Bradish’s house?”

  Then Tom told them that part of the conspiracy; how he was going to play runaway nigger and I was going to play him onto Bradish, but Bradish had already got one—and so on; and how Tom examined the nigger in the night and see that he warn’t a nigger at all, and had a key in his shoe, and he judged he was going to escape, and he wanted to be there and get the clews and hunt him down after he got away. And the people and the judge listened right along, and it was just as good as a tale out of a book.

  And he told how me and him got there at daylight and see Bat laying dead, and he told me to go for the undertaker, and then found Jim’s track and called me back and said it was all right, Jim had been there and of course he was gone to tell about the murder.

  A lot of them smiled at that, and Mr. Lawson laughed right out.

  But Tom went right along, and told how we followed the tracks to the hanted house and he crope in under there and listened and heard the murderers talk, but didn’t see them.

  “Didn’t see them?”

  “No, sir;” and he told why.

  “Imaginary ones, maybe,” says Mr. Lawson, and laughed; and a lot of the others laughed, too, and a fellow close to me says to a friend, “he better stopped when he was well off—he’s got to embroiderin’, now.” “Yes,” says the other one, “he’s spiling it.”

  “Go on,” says the judge; “tell what you heard.”

  “It was like this. One was a thrashing around a little now and then and growling, and the other one was groaning; and by and by the one that thrashed around says in a low voice, ‘Shut up, you old cry-baby, and let a person get some sleep.’ Then the groaner says, ‘If your leg was hurt as bad as mine, you’d be a cry-baby too, I reckon, and it’s all your fault, anyway; when Bradish come and catched us escaping, if you had a helped me ‘stead of trying to prevent me, I would a busted his head right there in the lean-to, ’stead of outside, and he wouldn’t a had a chance to yell and fetch them men a-running, and we wouldn’t a had to take a short cut and hurt my leg and have to lay up here and p’raps get catched before the day’s over—and yet here you are a-growling about cry-babies, and it shows you hain’t got no real heart, and no Christian sentiments and bringing up.’ Then the other one says, ‘The whole blame’s your own, for coming three or four hours late—drunk, as usual.’ ‘I warn’t drunk, neither; I got lost—ain’t no crime in that, I don’t reckon.’ ‘All right,’ says the other one, ‘have it your own way, but shut up and keep still now; you want to be thinking up your last dying speech, becuz you’re going to need it on the gallows for this piece of work, which was just unnecessary blame foolishness, and I’ll be hung too, and serve me right, for being in such dam company.’ The other one wanted to growl some more about his leg, but this one said if he didn’t shut up he would pull it out and belt him over the head with it. So then they quieted down and I come away.”

  When Tom got done it was dead still, just the way it always is when people has been listening to a yarn they don’t take no stock in and are sorry for the person that has told it. It was kind of miserable, that stillness. At last the judge he cleared his throat and says, very grave—

  “If this is true, how is it you didn’t come straight and tell the sheriff? How do you explain that?”

  Tom was working at a button with his fingers and looking down at the floor. It was too many for him, that question, and I knowed it. How was he going to tell them he didn’t do it becuz he was going to work the thing out on detective principles and git glory out of it? And how was he going to tell them he wanted to make the glory bigger by making it seem Jim killed the man, and even crowded him into a motive, and then went and told about the motive where Mr. Lawson could get on it—and so just by reason of him and his foolishness the murderers got away and now Jim was going to be hung for what they done. No, sir, he couldn’t say a word. And so when the judge waited a while, everybody’s eyes on Tom a fooling with his button, and then asked him again why he didn’t go and tell the sheriff, he swallowed two or three times, and the tears come in his eyes, and he says, very low—

  “I don’t know, sir.”

  It was still again, for a minute, then the lawyers made their speeches, and Mr. Lawson was terrible sarcastic on Tom and his fairy tale, as he called it, and so then the jury fetched Jim in guilty in the first degree in two minutes, and old Jim stood up and the judge begun to make his speech telling him why he’d got to die; and Tom he set there with his head down, crying.

  And just then, by George, the Duke and the King come a-working along through the crowd, and worked along up front, and the King says—

  “Pardon a moment, your honor,” and Tom glanced up; and the Duke says—

  “We’ve got a little matter of business which—”

  Tom jumps up and shouts—

  “I reconnize the voices—it’s the murderers!”

  Well, you never see such a stir. Everybody rose up and begun to stretch their necks to get a view, and the sheriff he stormed at them and made them set down; and the King and the Duke looked perfectly astonished, and turned pretty white, I tell you; and the judge says—

  “Why do you make such a charge as this?”

  “Becuz I know it, your honor,” Tom says.

  “How do you know it—you said, yourself, you didn’t see the men?”

  “It ain’t any difference, I’ve got the proofs.”

  “Where?”

  He fetched out the leaf from Bat’s book and showed the drawing, and says—

  “If this one hasn’t changed his shoes, this is the print of the left one.”

  And it was, sure enough, and the King looked very sick.

  “Very good indeed,” says the judge. “Proceed.”

  Tom fetched a set of false teeth out of his pocket, and says—

  “If they don’t fit the other one’s mouth he ain’t the white nigger that was in the lean-to.”

  1. Hell, printer’s term for broken and otherwise disabled type. 2. Printer’s Devil, apprentice. 3. Pi, printer’s term for a mass of mixed-up type. 4. The (composing) stick and rule are used in setting the type.—EDITOR.

  Schoolhouse Hill

  Chapter 1

  IT WAS not much short of fifty years ago—and a frosty morning. Up the naked long slant of Schoolhouse Hill the boys and girls of Petersburg village were struggling from various directions against the fierce wind, and making slow and difficult progress. The wind was not the only hindrance, nor the worst; the slope was steel-clad in frozen snow, and the foothold offered was far from trustworthy. Every now and then a boy who had almost gained the schoolhouse stepped out with too much confidence, thinking himself safe, lost his footing, struck upon his back and went skimming down the hill behind his freed sled, the straggling schoolmates scrambling out of his way and applauding as he sailed by; and in a few seconds he was at the bottom with all his work to do over again. But this was fun; fun for the boy, fun for the witnesses, fun all around; for boys and girls are ignorant and do not know trouble when they see it.

  Sid Sawyer, the good boy, the model boy, the cautious boy, did not lose his footing. He brought no sled, he chose his steps with care, and he arrived in safety. Tom Sawyer brought his sled and he, also, arrived without adventure, for Huck Finn was along to help, although he was not a member of the school in these days; he merely came in order to be with Tom until school “took in.” Henry Bascom arrived safely, too—Henry Bascom the new boy of last year, whose papa was a “nigger” trader and rich; a mean boy, he was, and proud of his clothes, and he had a play-slaughterhouse at home, with all the equipment, in little, of a regular slaughter
house, and in it he slaughtered puppies and kittens exactly as beeves were done to death down at the “Point;” and he was this year’s school-bully, and was dreaded and flattered by the timid and the weak and disliked by everybody. He arrived safely because his slave-boy Jake helped him up the hill and drew his sled for him; and it wasn’t a home-made sled but a “store” sled, and was painted, and had iron-tyred runners, and came from St. Louis, and was the only store-sled in the village.

  All the twenty-five or thirty boys and girls arrived at last, red and panting, and still cold, notwithstanding their yarn comforters and mufflers and mittens; and the girls flocked into the little schoolhouse and the boys packed themselves together in the shelter of its lee.

  It was noticed now that a new boy was present, and this was a matter of extraordinary interest, for a new boy in the village was a rarer sight than a new comet in the sky. He was apparently about fifteen; his clothes were neat and tasty above the common, he had a good and winning face, and he was surpassingly handsome—handsome beyond imagination! His eyes were deep and rich and beautiful, and there was a modesty and dignity and grace and graciousness and charm about him which some of the boys, with a pleased surprise, recognised at once as familiar—they had encountered it in books about fairy-tale princes and that sort. They stared at him with a trying backwoods frankness, but he was tranquil and did not seem troubled by it. After looking him over, Henry Bascom pushed forward in front of the others and began in an insolent tone to question him:

  “Who are you? What’s your name?”

  The boy slowly shook his head, as if meaning by that that he did not understand.

  “Do you hear? Answer up!”

  Another slow shake.

  “Answer up, I tell you, or I’ll make you!”

  Tom Sawyer said—

  “That’s no way, Henry Bascom—it’s against the rules. If you want your fuss, and can’t wait till recess, which is regular, go at it right and fair; put a chip on your shoulder and dare him to knock it off.”

  “All right; he’s got to fight, and fight now, whether he answers or not; and I’m not particular about how it’s got at.” He put a flake of ice on his shoulder and said, “There—knock it off if you dare!”

  The boy looked inquiringly from face to face, and Tom stepped up and answered by signs. He touched the boy’s right hand, then flipped off the ice with his own, put it back in its place, and indicated that that was what the boy must do. The lad smiled, put out his hand, and touched the ice with his finger. Bascom launched a blow at his face which seemed to miss; the energy of it made Bascom slip on the ice, and he departed on his back for the bottom of the hill, with cordial laughter and mock applause from the boys to cheer his way.

  The bell began to ring, and the little crowd swarmed into the schoolhouse and hurried to their places. The stranger found a seat apart, and was at once a target for the wondering eyes and eager whisperings of the girls. School now “began.” Archibald Ferguson, the old Scotch schoolmaster, rapped upon his desk with his ruler, rose upon his dais and stood, with his hands together, and said “Let us pray.” After the prayer there was a hymn, then the buzz of study began, and the multiplication class was called up. It recited, up to “twelve times twelve;” then the arithmetic class followed and exposed its slates to much censure and little commendation; next came the grammar class of parsing parrots, who knew everything about grammar except how to utilize its rules in common speech.

  “Spelling class!” The schoolmaster’s wandering eye now fell upon the new boy, and he countermanded that order. “Hm—a stranger? Who is it? What is your name, my boy?”

  The lad rose and bowed, and said—

  “Pardon, monsieur—je ne comprends pas.”

  Ferguson looked astonished and pleased, and said, in French—

  “Ah, French—how pleasant! It is the first time I have heard that tongue in many years. I am the only person in this village who speaks it. You are very welcome; I shall be glad to renew my practice. You speak no English?”

  “Not a word, sir.”

  “You must try to learn it.”

  “Gladly, sir.”

  “It is your purpose to attend my school regularly?”

  “If I may have the privilege, sir.”

  “That is well. Take English only, for the present. The grammar has about thirty rules. It will be necessary to learn them by heart.”

  “I already know them, sir, but I do not know what the words mean.”

  “What is it you say? You know the rules of the grammar, and yet don’t know English? How can that be? When did you learn them?”

  “I heard your grammar class recite the rules before entering upon the rest of their lesson.”

  The teacher looked over his glasses at the boy a while, in a puzzled way, then said—

  “If you know no English words, how did you know it was a grammar lesson?”

  “From similarities to the French—like the word grammar itself.”

  “True! You have a headpiece! You will soon get the rules by heart.”

  “I know them by heart, sir.”

  “Impossible! You are speaking extravagantly; you do not know what you are saying.”

  The boy bowed respectfully, resumed his upright position, and said nothing. The teacher felt rebuked, and said gently—

  “I should not have spoken so, and am sorry. Overlook it, my boy; recite me a rule of grammar—as well as you can—never mind the mistakes.”

  The boy began with the first rule and went along with his task quite simply and comfortably, dropping rule after rule unmutilated from his lips, while the teacher and the school sat with parted lips and suspended breath, listening in mute wonder. At the finish the boy bowed again, and stood, waiting. Ferguson sat silent a moment or two in his great chair, then said—

  “On your honor—those rules were wholly unknown to you when you came into this house?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Upon my word I believe you, on the veracity that is written in your face. No—I don’t—I can’t. It is beyond the reach of belief. A memory like that—an ear for pronunciation like that, is of course im—why, no one in the earth has such a memory as that!”

  The boy bowed, and said nothing. Again the old Scot felt rebuked, and said—

  “Of course I don’t mean—I don’t really mean—er—tell me: if you could prove in some way that you have never until now—for instance, if you could repeat other things which you have heard here. Will you try?”

  With engaging simplicity and serenity, and with apparently no intention of being funny, the boy began on the arithmetic lesson, and faithfully put into his report everything the teacher had said and everything the pupils had said, and imitated the voices and style of all concerned—as follows:

  “Well, I give you my word it’s enough to drive a man back to the land of his fathers, and make him hide his head in the charitable heather and never more give out that he can teach the race! Five slates—five of the chiefest intelligences in the school—and look at them! Scots wha hae wi’ Wallace bled—Harry Slater! Yes, sir. Since when, is it, that 17, and 45, and 68 and 21 make 155, ye unspeakable creature? I—I—if you please, sir, Sally Fitch hunched me and I reckon it made me make a figure 9 when I was intending to make a— There’s not a 9 in the sum, you blockhead!—and ye’ll get a black mark for the lie you’ve told; a foolish lie, ill wrought and clumsy in the invention; you have no talent—stick to the truth. Becky Thatcher! Yes, sir, please. Make the curtsy over again, and do it better. Yes, sir. Lower, still! Yes, sir. Very good. Now I’ll just ask you how you make out that 58 from 156 leaves 43? If you please, sir, I subtracted the 8 from the 6, which leaves—which leaves—I THINK it leaves 3—and then—Peace! ye banks and braes o’ bonny Doon but it’s a rare answer and a credit to my patient teaching! Jack Stillson! Yes, sir. Straighten up, and don’t d-r-a-w-1 like that—it’s a fatigue to hear ye! And what have you been setting down here: If a horse travel 96 feet in 4 seconds and two-ten
ths of a second, how much will a barrel of mackerel cost when potatoes are 22 cents a bushel? Answer—eleven dollars and forty-six cents. You incurable ass, don’t you see that ye’ve mixed three questions into one? The gauds and vanities o’ learning! Oh, here’s a hand, my trusty fere, and gie’s a hand o’ thine, and we’ll—out of my sight, ye maundering idiot!—”

  The show was become unendurable. The boy had forgotten not a word, nor a tone, nor a look, nor a gesture, nor any shade or trifle of detail—he was letter-perfect, and the house could shut its eyes anywhere in the performance and know which individual was being imitated. The boy’s deep gravity and sincerity made the exhibition more and more trying the longer he went on. For a time, in decorous, disciplined and heroic silence, house and teacher sat bursting to laugh, with the tears running down, the regulations requiring noiseless propriety and solemnity; but when the stranger recited the answer to the triple sum and then put his hands together and raised his despairing eyes toward heaven in exact imitation of Mr. Ferguson’s manner, the teacher’s face broke up; and with that concession the house let go with a crash and laughed its fill thenceforth. But the boy went tranquilly on and on, unheeding the screams and throes and explosions, clear to the finish; then made his bow and straightened up and stood, bland and waiting.

  It took some time to quiet the school; then Mr. Ferguson said—

  “It is the most extraordinary thing I have seen in my life. In this world there is not another talent like yours, lad; be grateful for it, and for the noble modesty with which you bear about such a treasure. How long would you be able to keep in your memory the things which you have been uttering?”

  “I cannot forget anything that I see or hear, sir.”

  “At all?”

  “No, sir.”

  “It seems incredible—just impossible. Let me experiment a little—for the pure joy of it. Take my English-French dictionary and sit down and study it while I go on with the school’s exercises. Shall you be disturbed by us?”