by Mark Twain
“Hungry, too, I reckon. I’ll find you something.”
“No’m. I ain’t hungry. I had to stop a few miles back at a farm, so I ain’t hungry no more. It’s what made me so late. My mother’s down sick, and I came to tell my uncle, Abner Moore. He lives way at the upper end of town. I hain’t ever been here before. You ever hear of him?”
“No, but I don’t expect I would. We haven’t lived here quite two weeks. It’s a considerable ways to the upper end of the town. You better stay here tonight. Take off your bonnet.”
“No,” I says; “I’ll rest awhile, I reckon, and be on my way. I ain’t afeared of the dark, and I can outrun the Zum.”
She shook her head and said she wouldn’t let me go by myself, but that her husband would be back by and by, maybe in an hour or two, and she’d send him along with me, with a gun. Then she got to talking about her husband, and how much better everything used to be before the whole world seemed to fall under a curse, and how maybe they both made a mistake comin’ to our town, instead of letting well enough along where they was – and so on and so on, till I was thinking I made a mistake coming to her to find out what was going on in town; but by and by she started on pap and the murder, and then I was pretty willing to let her clatter along. She told me all about me and Tom Sawyer finding the twelve thousand dollars (only she got it twenty) and all about pap and what a hard man everyone thought he was, and what a hard lot I was, and at last she got down to where I was murdered. I says:
“Who done it? We’ve heard about these goings-on in Hookerville, but we don’t know who ‘twas that killed Huck Finn.”
“Well, I reckon there’s a lot of folk who’d like to know the answer to this one. They say it looked like a Zum thing at first.”
“That’s what I’d think it was.”
“And some think old man Finn done it himself.”
“No – is that so?”
“Most everyone thought it, sooner or later. It looked like Zum, and people said there was a fair amount of blood, but no parts – no pieces of meat. I never seen Zum tidy up after themselves like that. But then, before long they changed and judged it was done by a runaway nigger named Jim. He run off the very night Huck Finn was killed. So there’s a reward out for him – three hundred dollars. And there’s another reward out for old man Finn – two hundred dollars. You see, Finn came to town the morning after the murder and told about it, and was out on the ferryboat hunt, but right after that, he disappeared. Why would a father do a thing like this? So before night, they wanted to catch him and lynch him for killing his own son. Well, the next day the slave was gone, too – he hadn’t been seen since ten o’clock the night the murder was done. So then they put it all on him. Day after that, Finn comes back boo-hooing to Judge Thatcher’s people to get some money to start a manhunt. They give him some, he goes out and gets fair drunk, and later he’s seen with a few mighty hard-looking strangers, and off they went. Well, he ain’t been back since, and some people think he killed the boy hisself and made it just look like Zum did it, and then he’d get Huck’s money without having to bother paying a lawyer and go through a long lawsuit. People say he warn’t any too good to do it, neither. If he keeps low for a year or so I guess he’ll be all right. You can’t prove anything on him. Everything will be quieted down by then, and he’ll walk into Huck’s money easy as pie.”
“Yes, I reckon so, ‘m. Has everybody quit thinkin’ the owned folk done it?”
“You mean the nigger?”
“Yes’m. I call ‘em owned folk. ‘Nigger’ seems hateful; I mean, at least to me. Someone went and clapped ‘em in irons and throw’d ‘em onto a boat all trussed up, and the rest of their life is work and misery and getting bought and sold and moved here and there. Someone did that to me, I wouldn’t like it. So I calls ‘em owned folk, that’s all.”
“Well, ain’t you something, honey. Shows you have an independent mind. Anyways, whether people think he did it or not, they’re still looking, and when they get a holt of him, maybe they’ll scare the truth out of him.”
“Heck, why they after him if they ain’t sure he done it?”
“Well, you’re innocent, ain’t you! Does three hundred dollars lay around every day for people to pick up? Some folk think the nigger ain’t far from here – sorry, honey, that’s what I call ‘em – and I think so too. A few days ago I was talking to an old couple that lives nearby and they said hardly no one ever goes to that island yonder called Jackson’s Island, and certainly no one lives there. But I’m pretty near certain I seen smoke over there, about the head of the island. Seen it more than once. So I thinks your ‘owned folk’ is hiding over there, and maybe it’s worth the trouble to give the place a hunt. The husband’s going over to see – him and another man. He was gone up the river, but he gets back today, and soon.”
I got so uneasy I couldn’t set still. I had to do something with my hands, so I took a needle off the table and went to threadin’ it. I was making a bad job of it, and when I looked up the woman was looking at me pretty curious and smiling a little. I put down the needle and thread, and let on that I was interested in what she was sayin’ – and I was, too – and says:
“Three hundred dollars is a power of money. I wish I could find him and get the money fer my mother. Is your husband goin’ over there tonight?”
“Oh yes. He went up river to fetch the man I was telling you of. They’ve known each other for some time, and put down Zum together time and again whenever it was needed. They went off to get a proper boat, and they’ll go over after midnight.”
“Couldn’t they see better in the daytime?”
“My, yes. And so could anyone else that was hiding over there. Likely after midnight, the nigger’ll be asleep, and they can slip through the woods and hunt up the campfire all the better for the dark.”
“I didn’t think of that.”
The woman kept looking at me pretty curious, and I didn’t feet a bit comfortable. Pretty soon she says:
“What did you say your name was, honey?”
“M- Mary Williams.”
It didn’t seem I had said Mary the first time, so I didn’t look up – seemed to me I had Sarah; so I was feeling sort of cornered. And then she says:
“Honey, I thought you said it was Sarah when you first came in?”
“Yes’m, I did. Sarah Mary Williams. Sarah’s my first name. Some folk calls me Sarah, others calls me Mary.”
“Oh, that’s it, then?”
“Yes’m.”
I was feeling better then, I was wished I was out of there. I couldn’t look up and meet her eyes yet. Well, the woman started talking about how hard times was, and soon she went and brought out a hank of yarn and another huge ball which she wanted me to help her with. I held up two hands and she put the hank on them, and went to talking about her husband’s matters. But she broke off to say:
“I’m going to fix us both a hot cup of chicory. You hold onto the rest of the yarn.”
She dropped the ball of yarn into my lap at that moment, and I clapped my knees together to catch it from falling, and she went on talking, but only for a minute. Then she took off the hank, put it on the table, and looked me straight in the face, very pleasant, and says:
“Come on, what’s your real name?”
“Wh-hat, mum?”
“Your real name – is it Bill, or Tom, or Bob? – what is it?”
I reckon I shook like a leaf, and didn’t know hardly what to do, but I says:
“Please don’t poke fun at a poor girl like me, mum. If I’m in the way here –“
“Just set and stay where you are. I ain’t going to hurt you, and I ain’t going to tell on you, neither. You just tell me your secret, and I’ll keep it. What’s more, I’ll help you. So will my husband if you want him to. I can see you’re a runaway, that’s all. There ain’t no harm in it. You’ve been treated bad and you made up your mind to cut out. Bless you, child, I wouldn’t tell on you. Now tell me all about it.”
“Goshen?” She exclaimed. “Child, this ain’t Goshen. This is St. Petersburg. Goshen’s another ten miles further up the river. Who told you this was Goshen?”
“Why, some man I met on the road, ‘round daybreak. He pointed this way and told me five miles would fetch me to Goshen.”
“He was drunk, I reckon. He told you wrong.”
“Well, it ain’t no matter to me. I got to be movin’ on. I’ll fetch Goshen before daybreak, I suspect.”
“Hold on a minute. I’ll put together some food to take with you. You might need it.”
She as she’s putting together some food for me, she says:
“Now that I’ve agreed to keep your secret, you can tell me. What’s your name – your real name, now.”
“George Peters, mum.”
“Well, try to remember it, George. Don’t forget and tell me it’s Brendon before you go, and then get out by saying it’s George Brendon when I catch you. And don’t go about in that old calico. You do a girl tolerable poor, but you might fool men - maybe. Bless you, child, a girl don’t thread a needle like you do, or catch things with her lap by throwing her knees together. Mind you, when a girl catches something with her lap, she throws her knees apart. And when you was going on about ‘owned folk’ – why, a girl would be smart enough to keep that kind of opinion to herself. I spotted you as a boy almost as soon as you came in, and contrived a few things to make certain. Now trot along to your uncle, Sarah Mary Williams Brendon George Peters, and if you get into trouble, you send word to Mrs. Judith Loftus, which is me, and I’ll do what I can to get you back out again. Next time you decide to tramp along, remember to take shoes and socks with you. The river road’s a rocky one, and your feet’ll be in a condition by the time you hit Goshen, I reckon.”
I thanked her and said goodnight, then doubled back on my tracks and got to where the canoe was. I went far enough upstream to make the head of the island, then slipped across. I took off the sun-bonnet and flung it into the water. When I was about at the middle of the river, I heard the clock in town begin to strike, so I stops and counts – eleven. When I landed the canoe, I didn’t stop to rest, though I was most winded, but went right into the timber where my old camp used to be, and started a good fire on a nice open spot.
Then I jumped back into the canoe and headed out for our place, as fast as I could go. I landed, and lit through the timber and up the ridge as hard as I could. I went into the cavern, and there was Jim, asleep on the ground. I roused him up and says:
“Git up and hump yourself, Jim. There ain’t a minute to lose. They’re after us!”
Jim asked no questions and never said a word. We put out the camp-fire first thing, and did the rest in the light of the moon. In a half hour everything we had was on our raft, and she was ready to be shoved out from the willow cove where she was hid. If there was another boat anywhere around, I couldn’t see it, for stars and shadow and moon ain’t good enough to see by. Then we took the raft out past the foot of the island and kept goin’, neither of us saying a word.
Chapter Twelve
Letting Well Enough Alone
It must ‘a’ been close to one o’clock when we finally got below the foot of the island, and the raft did seem to go mighty slow. If another boat came along, we was going to take the canoe and make a break for the shore; and it was well that none did, for we hadn’t thought to put a gun in the canoe, or a fishing-line, or anything to eat. We was in ruther too much of a sweat to think of so many things.
If the men went to the island, I expect they found the ashes from the camp-fire I built, and likely hid by and watched all night for Jim to return. Anyways, they stayed away from us, which was fine by me.
When the first streaks of day began to show we tied up to a towhead in a big bend in the river, and hacked off a mess of cottonwood branches with a hatchet to cover up the raft with them. A towhead is a sandbar that has cottonwoods on it thick as harrow-teeth. We laid there all day, and watched the rafts and steamboats spin down the Missouri shore, and up-bound steamboats fight the big river in the middle. I told Jim about the woman I had been jabbering with, and he said she was a smart one. He said no marauding Zum would have a prayer with the likes of that one, and I agreed, even without the benefit of her old blunderbuss. She and I hadn’t really followed that line of conversation, but I bet she put down plenty of Zum in her time, and that her husband probably did, too.
Jim took some of the top planks of the raft and built a snug wigwam to get under in blazing weather and rainy, and to keep things dry. He made a floor for the wigwam and raised it a foot or more above the level of the craft, so now the blankets and the traps was out of reach of any steamboat waves. In the middle of the wigwam we made a layer of dirt about six inches deep, so we could built a fire in sloppy weather or chilly. We made an extra steering-oar, too, in case one of the ones we had got broke on a snag or something. We fixed up a lantern at the front of the raft, and lit it at night when we saw a steamboat coming down-stream, to keep from getting run over. We didn’t have to light it for upstream boats, for the river was high, so up-bound boats didn’t run the channel, but hunted easy water.
The second night we run between seven or eight hours, with a current that was making over four miles an hour. We catched fish and talked, and jumped in the river every now and then to keep off sleepiness. It was just us drifting down the big, still river, and we had mighty good weather as a rule, so nothing ever happened – that night, nor the next, nor the next night after that.
Every night we passed towns, some of them up on hills, and nothing but a few lights shining like stars on a cloudy night. The fifth night we passed St. Louis, and it was like the whole world lit up. Back at home, they said there was twenty or thirty thousand people in St. Louis, but I never believed it till I seen that wonderful spread of lights at two o’clock that still night. Warn’t a sound there as we drifted through; everyone was asleep.
Now, most every night I would slip ashore in the evening at some little village, and there was always a few armed men walking around paying attention to things, like old Mr. Branson used to do back at our school. I guess they had learned to do this cause the Zum didn’t care if it was day or night, so we learned to do the same. I’d buy ten or fifteen cents worth of meal or bacon or whatever else they had; and sometimes I lifted a chicken that warn’t paying attention and took him along. The Zum didn’t swipe chickens for food, so no one paid any attention to them, it being the least of anyone’s problems. Pap always said, take a chicken when you get a chance, because if you don’t want it you can easy find someone else who does. I never seen pap when he didn’t want the chicken himself, but that was what he used to say, and who was I to question it.
Mornings before daylight I slipped into cornfields, cause everyone was worried about watching something else, and borrowed a watermelon, or a mushmelon, or a punkin, or some new corn, or things of that kind. Jim was worried that what we was doing was stealing, so we talked it over and decided that it was tolerable close to stealing, so we made a list and decided we would only take certain things, and never take others. We talked about it one night, drifting down the river, trying to make up our minds whether to stop taking watermelons, or cantelopes, or mushme
lons, or what. Toward daylight we decided to drop cabbages, and crabapples, and p’simmons. We felt a lot better after that. Anyways, crabapples ain’t ever good, and p’simmons and cabbages wouldn’t be ripe for awhile yet.
We shot a water-fowl now and then when we had the chance, and take it all around, we lived pretty good.
The fifth night below St. Louis we had a big storm after midnight, all thunder and lightning, and the rain poured down in a solid sheet. We stayed in the wigwam and let the raft drift down and take care of itself. By and by, the lightning glared as I was looking out over the river, and I seen a steamboat that had killed herself on a rock. We was drifting straight down on her. It was leaning over, very distinct, with most of her upper deck above water. The river would pull her apart sooner or later, but at present it was still whole. Being as how we was drifting toward her anyway, I wanted to get aboard and slink around a little, and see what there was there. So I says:
“Let’s land on her, Jim.”
But Jim shook his head and was dead ag’inst it. He says:
“I doan’ want to fool ‘round with no wreck. We doin’ well, an we better let well enough alone, as de good book says. Like as not dey’s a watchman on dat wreck.”
“So’s your grandmother,” I says. “There ain’t no watchman to see to that wreck. Do you reckon anybody’s going to risk his neck on such a night as this, when it’s likely to break up in the current and wash down the river any minute?”
Jim don’t say a word, but his face was set.
“Besides,” says I, “we might find a thing or two in the captain’s stateroom. Seegars, I bet you – and other such. Steamboat captains is always rich, and get sixty dollars a month, and they don’t care what a thing costs, long as they want it. I can’t rest till we give her a rummagin’. Do you reckon Tom Sawyer would ever slide by a thing like this? Not for pie, he wouldn’t. He’d call it an adventure, and he’d land on that wreck if it was the last thing he ever done. Why, you’d think it was Christopher C’lumbus himself. I wish Tom was here.”
