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Pretty soon I wanted to smoke,
and asked the widow
to let me.
But she wouldn't.
She said it was a mean practice
and wasn't clean, and I must try to not do it.
That is just the way
with some people.
They get down on a thing when they don't know nothing
about it.
Here she was a-bothering about
Moses, which was no kin to her,
and no use to anybody, being gone, you see, yet
finding a power of fault with me for doing
a thing that had some good in it.
And
she took snuff, too; of course
that was fine, because she done it herself.
Miss Watson would say,
"Don't put your feet up there, Huckleberry;" and "Don't scrunch up like that,
Huckleberry -- set up straight;" and pretty soon she would say, "Don't gap and
stretch like that, Huckleberry -- why don't you try to behave?"
Then she told me all about
the bad place, and I said I wished I was there.
She got mad then,
but I didn't mean no harm.
I wanted to go somewheres; all I wanted was
a change, I warn't particular.
She said it was wicked to say what I
said; said she wouldn't say it for the whole
world; she was going to
live so as to go to the good place.
Well, I couldn't see no
advantage in going where she was going, so
I made up my mind I wouldn't
try for it.
But I never said so, as it would only make trouble, and
wouldn't do no good.
I asked her if she reckoned Tom Sawyer would go
there, and she said not by a considerable sight.
I was glad about that,
because I wanted him and me to be together.
I felt so lonesome I most
wished I was dead.
The stars were shining, and the leaves rustled
in the woods ever so mournful.
I heard an owl, away off,
who-whooing about somebody that was dead, and a whippowill and a dog crying
about somebody that was going to die.
The wind was trying to whisper
something to me, and I couldn't make out what it was, and so it made the cold
shivers run over me.
Then away out in the woods
I heard that category of a sound that
a ghost makes when it wants to tell about something that's on its mind and
can't make itself understood, and so
can't rest easy in its grave,
and has to go about that way every
night grieving.
Pretty soon a spider went crawling up my shoulder,
and I flipped it off and it lit in the candle; and before I could budge it was
all shriveled up.
I didn't need anybody to tell me that that was an
awful bad sign and would fetch me some bad luck;
I was scared and most shook the
clothes off of me.
I got up;
turned around in my tracks three
times; crossed my breast
every time; I tied up a little lock of my hair with
a thread to
keep witches away.
But
I hadn't no confidence.
You do that when you've lost a horseshoe that you've found, instead of
nailing it up over the door, but I hadn't
ever heard anybody say it was any way to keep off bad luck when you'd
killed a spider.
"Now, start
this band of robbers and
call it Tom Sawyer's Gang. To join you has got to
take an oath, and write your
name in blood."
Everybody was
willing. So Tom got out a sheet of paper that he had wrote the
oath on, and
read it.
It swore
every boy to stick to the band, and never tell any of the secrets; and if
anybody done anything to any boy in the band, whichever boy was ordered to kill
that individual and his family must do it, and he mustn't
eat and he mustn't sleep till he had
killed them and hacked a cross in their
breasts, which was the
sign of the band.
And nobody that didn't belong to the band could use
that mark, and if he did he must be sued; and if he done it again he must be
killed.
And if anybody that
belonged to the band told the secrets, he must have his throat cut, and
then have his carcass burnt up and the
ashes scattered all around, and his name blotted off of the list with blood
and never mentioned again by the gang, but have a curse put on it and be forgot
forever.
Everybody said it was a real
oath, and asked Tom if he got it out of his own head.
He said, some
of it, but the rest was out of pirate-books and robber-books, and every gang
that was high-toned had it.
"Now," says Ben Rogers, "what's the line of
business of this Gang?"
"Nothing only
robbery and
murder," Tom said.
"Must we always kill the
victims?"
"Oh, certainly. It's best.
Some authorities think
different, but mostly it's considered best to kill them - except some that
you bring to the cave here, and keep them till they're ransomed."
We
played robbers now and then about a month, and then I resigned.
All the
boys did.
We hadn't robbed nobody, hadn't killed any
victims, only just
pretended.
Pap got too handy with his
hick'ry, and I couldn't stand it.
I was all over welts.
He got
to going away so much, too, and locking me in.
Once he
locked me in and was gone
three days.
It was dreadful lonesome.
I
judged he had got drowned,
and I wasn't ever going to get out any more.
I was scared. I made up my
mind I would fix up some way to leave there.
I had tried to get out of
that cabin many a time, but I couldn't find no way.
There warn't a
window to it big enough for a dog to get through.
I couldn't get up the
chimbly; it was too narrow.
The door was thick, solid oak
slabs.
Pap was pretty careful not to leave a knife or anything in
the cabin when he was away.
I reckon I had hunted the place over as
much as a hundred times.
I was most all the time at it, as it was about
the only way to put in the time.
This time I found something.
I
found an old rusty wood saw without any handle.
It was laid in between
a rafter and the clapboards of the roof.
I greased it up and went to
work. There was an
old horse-blanket nailed against the logs at the far end of the cabin
behind the table, to keep the wind from blowing through the chinks and putting
the candle out.
I got under the table and raised the blanket, and went
to work to saw a section of the big
bottom log out -- big enough to let me through.
Well, it was a good
long job, but I was getting towards the end of it when I heard pap's gun in the
woods.
I got rid of the signs of my work, and dropped the blanket and
hid my saw, and pretty soon
pap come in.
Pap warn't in a good humor -- so he
was his natural self.
After supper pap took the
jug, and said he had enough whisky there for
two drunks and one delirium tremens.
That was always his word.
I judged he would be blind drunk in
about an hour, and then I would steal the key, or saw myself out, one or
t'other.
He drank and drank, and tumbled down on his blankets by and by;
but luck didn't run my way.
He didn't go sound asleep, but was uneasy.
He groaned, moaned and thrashed around this way and that for a long
time.
At last I got so
sleepy I couldn't keep my eyes open, and so
before I knowed what I was about I was
sound asleep, and the
candle burning.
I don't know how long I was asleep, but all of a
sudden there was an awful scream and I was up.
There was pap looking
wild, and skipping around
every which way and yelling about snakes.
He said they was crawling
up his legs; and then he would give a jump and scream, and say one had bit
him on the cheek - but I couldn't see no snakes.
He
started and run round and round the cabin, hollering "Take him off! take him
off! He's biting me on the neck!"
Roundabout
I never seen a man look so wild in the
eyes.
Pretty soon he was all fagged out, and fell down panting.
Then he rolled over and over wonderful fast, kicking things every which
way, and striking and grabbing at the air with his hands, and
screaming and saying there was
devils a-hold of him.
He wore out by and by, and laid still a
while, moaning.
Then he laid stiller, and didn't make a sound.
I could hear the owls and the wolves away off in the woods, and it
seemed terrible still.
He was laying over by the
corner.
By and by
he raised up part way and listened, with his head to one side.
He says,
very low: "Tramp -- tramp -- tramp; that's the dead; tramp -- tramp -- tramp;
they're coming after me; but I won't go. Oh, they're here! don't
touch me! hands off -- they're cold;
let go. Oh, let a poor devil
alone!"
Then he went down on all fours and crawled off, begging
them to let him alone, and he rolled himself up in his blanket and wallowed in
under the old pine table, still a-begging; and then he went to crying.
I could hear him through the blanket.
By and by he rolled out
and jumped up on his feet looking wild, and he sees me and went for me.
He chased me round and round the place with a clasp-knife,
calling me the Angel of
Death, and saying he would kill me, and then I couldn't come for him no
more.
I begged, and told him I was only Huck; but he laughed such a
screechy laugh, and roared and cussed, and kept on chasing me up.
Once
when I turned short and dodged under his arm he made a grab and got me by the
jacket between my shoulders, and I thought I was gone.
I slid out of
the jacket quick as lightening, and saved myself.
Pretty soon he was
all tired out, and dropped down with his back against the door, and said
he would rest a minute and
then kill me.
He put his knife under him, and said he would sleep
and get strong, and then he would see who was who. |
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