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CHAPTER X. |
After breakfast I wanted to talk about the dead man and guess out how he come to be killed, but Jim didn’t want to. He said it would fetch bad luck; and besides, he said, he might come and ha’nt us; he said a man that warn’t buried was more likely to go a-ha’nting around than one that was planted and comfortable. That ... |
We rummaged the clothes we’d got, and found eight dollars in silver sewed up in the lining of an old blanket overcoat. Jim said he reckoned the people in that house stole the coat, because if they’d a knowed the money was there they wouldn’t a left it. I said I reckoned they killed him, too; but Jim didn’t want to talk... |
“Now you think it’s bad luck; but what did you say when I fetched in the snake-skin that I found on the top of the ridge day before yesterday? You said it was the worst bad luck in the world to touch a snake-skin with my hands. Well, here’s your bad luck! We’ve raked in all this truck and eight dollars besides. I wish ... |
“Never you mind, honey, never you mind. Don’t you git too peart. It’s a-comin’. Mind I tell you, it’s a-comin’.” |
It did come, too. It was a Tuesday that we had that talk. Well, after dinner Friday we was laying around in the grass at the upper end of the ridge, and got out of tobacco. I went to the cavern to get some, and found a rattlesnake in there. I killed him, and curled him up on the foot of Jim’s blanket, ever so natural, ... |
He jumped up yelling, and the first thing the light showed was the varmint curled up and ready for another spring. I laid him out in a second with a stick, and Jim grabbed pap’s whisky-jug and begun to pour it down. |
He was barefooted, and the snake bit him right on the heel. That all comes of my being such a fool as to not remember that wherever you leave a dead snake its mate always comes there and curls around it. Jim told me to chop off the snake’s head and throw it away, and then skin the body and roast a piece of it. I done i... |
Jim sucked and sucked at the jug, and now and then he got out of his head and pitched around and yelled; but every time he come to himself he went to sucking at the jug again. His foot swelled up pretty big, and so did his leg; but by-and-by the drunk begun to come, and so I judged he was all right; but I’d druther bee... |
Jim was laid up for four days and nights. Then the swelling was all gone and he was around again. I made up my mind I wouldn’t ever take a-holt of a snake-skin again with my hands, now that I see what had come of it. Jim said he reckoned I would believe him next time. And he said that handling a snake-skin was such awf... |
Well, the days went along, and the river went down between its banks again; and about the first thing we done was to bait one of the big hooks with a skinned rabbit and set it and catch a catfish that was as big as a man, being six foot two inches long, and weighed over two hundred pounds. We couldn’t handle him, of co... |
Next morning I said it was getting slow and dull, and I wanted to get a stirring up some way. I said I reckoned I would slip over the river and find out what was going on. Jim liked that notion; but he said I must go in the dark and look sharp. Then he studied it over and said, couldn’t I put on some of them old things... |
I started up the Illinois shore in the canoe just after dark. |
I started across to the town from a little below the ferry-landing, and the drift of the current fetched me in at the bottom of the town. I tied up and started along the bank. There was a light burning in a little shanty that hadn’t been lived in for a long time, and I wondered who had took up quarters there. I slipped... |
CHAPTER XI. |
“Come in,” says the woman, and I did. She says: “Take a cheer.” |
I done it. She looked me all over with her little shiny eyes, and says: |
“What might your name be?” |
“Sarah Williams.” |
“Where ’bouts do you live? In this neighborhood?’ |
“No’m. In Hookerville, seven mile below. I’ve walked all the way and I’m all tired out.” |
“Hungry, too, I reckon. I’ll find you something.” |
“No’m, I ain’t hungry. I was so hungry I had to stop two miles below here at a farm; so I ain’t hungry no more. It’s what makes me so late. My mother’s down sick, and out of money and everything, and I come to tell my uncle Abner Moore. He lives at the upper end of the town, she says. I hain’t ever been here before. Do... |
“No; but I don’t know everybody yet. I haven’t lived here quite two weeks. It’s a considerable ways to the upper end of the town. You better stay here all night. Take off your bonnet.” |
“No,” I says; “I’ll rest a while, I reckon, and go on. I ain’t afeared of the dark.” |
She said she wouldn’t let me go by myself, but her husband would be in by-and-by, maybe in a hour and a half, and she’d send him along with me. Then she got to talking about her husband, and about her relations up the river, and her relations down the river, and about how much better off they used to was, and how they ... |
“Who done it? We’ve heard considerable about these goings on down in Hookerville, but we don’t know who ’twas that killed Huck Finn.” |
“Well, I reckon there’s a right smart chance of people here that’d like to know who killed him. Some think old Finn done it himself.” |
“No—is that so?” |
“Most everybody thought it at first. He’ll never know how nigh he come to getting lynched. But before night they changed around and judged it was done by a runaway nigger named Jim.” |
“Why he—” |
I stopped. I reckoned I better keep still. She run on, and never noticed I had put in at all: |
“The nigger run off the very night Huck Finn was killed. So there’s a reward out for him—three hundred dollars. And there’s a reward out for old Finn, too—two hundred dollars. You see, he come to town the morning after the murder, and told about it, and was out with ’em on the ferry-boat hunt, and right away after he u... |
“Yes, I reckon so, ’m. I don’t see nothing in the way of it. Has everybody quit thinking the nigger done it?” |
“Oh, no, not everybody. A good many thinks he done it. But they’ll get the nigger pretty soon now, and maybe they can scare it out of him.” |
“Why, are they after him yet?” |
“Well, you’re innocent, ain’t you! Does three hundred dollars lay around every day for people to pick up? Some folks think the nigger ain’t far from here. I’m one of them—but I hain’t talked it around. A few days ago I was talking with an old couple that lives next door in the log shanty, and they happened to say hardl... |
I had got so uneasy I couldn’t set still. I had to do something with my hands; so I took up a needle off of the table and went to threading it. My hands shook, and I was making a bad job of it. When the woman stopped talking I looked up, and she was looking at me pretty curious and smiling a little. I put down the need... |
“Three hundred dollars is a power of money. I wish my mother could get it. Is your husband going over there to-night?” |
“Oh, yes. He went up-town with the man I was telling you of, to get a boat and see if they could borrow another gun. They’ll go over after midnight.” |
“Couldn’t they see better if they was to wait till daytime?” |
“Yes. And couldn’t the nigger see better, too? After midnight he’ll likely be asleep, and they can slip around through the woods and hunt up his camp fire all the better for the dark, if he’s got one.” |
“I didn’t think of that.” |
The woman kept looking at me pretty curious, and I didn’t feel a bit comfortable. Pretty soon she says, |
“What did you say your name was, honey?” |
“M—Mary Williams.” |
Somehow it didn’t seem to me that I said it was Mary before, so I didn’t look up—seemed to me I said it was Sarah; so I felt sort of cornered, and was afeared maybe I was looking it, too. I wished the woman would say something more; the longer she set still the uneasier I was. But now she says: |
“Honey, I thought you said it was Sarah when you first come in?” |
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