Huckleberry Finn, Dave Mckay, Mark Twain [new books to read TXT] 📗

two young women. They all smoked and talked, and I eat and talked. The young women had quilts around them, and their hair down their backs. They all asked me questions, and I told them how pap and me and all the family was living on a little farm down at the bottom of Arkansas, and my sister Mary Ann run off and got married and never was heard of no more, and Bill went to hunt them and he weren’t heard of no more, and Tom and Mort died, and then there weren’t nobody but just me and pap left, and he was just cut down to nothing, because of his troubles; so when he died I took what there was left, because the farm didn’t belong to us, and started up the river, sleeping out on the floor of the ship, and fell over into the river; and that was how I come to be here. So they said I could have a home there as long as I wanted it. With Jim gone and all, I could see this was as good a plan as any I could think of.

 

Then it was almost morning and everybody went to bed, and I went to bed with Buck, and when I waked up in the morning, end it all, I couldn’t remember what my name was. So I was lying there about an hour trying to think, and when Buck waked up I says:

 

“Can you spell, Buck?”

 

“Yes,” he says.

 

“I don’t think you can spell my name,” says I.

 

“What you don’t think I can? I can,” says he.

 

“All right,” says I, “go ahead.”

 

“G-e-o-r-g-e J-a-x-o-n -- there now,” he says.

 

“Well,” says I, “you done it, but I didn’t think you could. It ain’t no easy name to spell -- right off without studying.”

 

I wrote it down secretly, because someone might want me to spell it next, and so I wanted to be good with it and spell it easy, like I did it all the time.

 

It was a mighty nice family, and a mighty nice house. I hadn’t seen no house out in the country before that was so nice.

 

 

They had pictures hanging on the walls -- mostly soldiers and wars. But there was some that one of the daughters, Emmeline, which was dead now, had made herself when she was only fifteen years old. Everybody was sorry she died, because she had planned out a lot more of these pictures to do, and a body could see by what she had done what they had lost. They kept Emmeline’s room clean and nice, and all her things in it just the way she liked to have them when she was alive, and nobody ever used the room to sleep in. The old woman took care of it herself, when it was easy to see there was enough slaves to do it, and she sewed there a lot and read her Bible there. All in all I was thinking that I had landed in the nicest family I could think of.

 

Chapter 18

Chapter 18

The old man, Mr. Grangerford was well born, and that’s worth as much in a man as it is in a horse, so the Widow Douglas said, and nobody ever argued that she wasn’t the most well born in our town; and pap he always said it, too,even if he weren’t no more quality than a skunk himself.

 

Mr. Grangerford was very tall and very thin, with the thinnest kind of lips, and the thinnest kind of high nose, and the blackest kind of eyes, so deep back that they seemed like they was looking out of caves at you, as you may say.His hair was black and straight, hanging down to his shoulders. His hands was long and thin, and every day of his life he put on a clean shirt and a full suit from head to foot made out of cloth so white it hurt your eyes to look at it; and on Sundays he put on a blue coat with a tail and gold-coloured buttons on it. There weren’t no foolishness about him, not at all, and he weren’t ever loud. He was as kind as he could be you could feel that, you know, and so you had confidence around him.

 

Sometimes he smiled, and it was good to see; but when he pulled himself up straight, and the lightning started to come out from his eyes, you wanted to climb a tree first, and find out what the trouble was later. He didn’t ever have to tell anyone to be good -- everybody was always good acting where he was. Everybody loved to have him around, too; he was like the sun most always -- I mean he made it seem like good weather. When he turned into a dark cloud it was awful for half a minute, and that was enough; there wouldn’t nothing go wrong again for a week.

 

When him and the old woman come down in the morning all the family got up from their chairs and give them good-day, and didn’t sit down again until they had sat down. Then Tom and Bob would mix a glass of whiskey and hand it to him, and he held it in his hand and waited until Tom’s and Bob’s was mixed, and then they would say, “We are here to serve you, sir, and madam.” And they said thank you, and so they would all three drink.

 

Bob was the oldest and Tom next -- tall, beautiful men with very wide shoulders and brown faces, and long black hair and black eyes. They dressed in white from head to foot too, like the old man, and each had wide hats made from leaves, from South America.

 

Then there was Miss Charlotte; she was twenty-five, and tall and proud and wonderful, but as good as she could be when she weren’t angry; and when she was angry she had a look that would make you stop dead, like her father. She was beautiful.

 

So was her sister, Miss Sophia, but it was a different kind. She was kind and sweet and soft, and she was only twenty.

Each person had their own slave to wait on them -- Buck too. My slave had a very easy time, because I never had anyone to do things for me, but Buck’s was on the jump most of the time.

 

This was all there was of the family now, but in the past there was more -- three sons; they got killed; and Emmeline that died.

 

The old man owned a lot of farms and over a hundred slaves. That week a crowd of people come there on horses, from ten or fifteen mile around, and stayed a few days. We had parties round about and on the river, and dances and meals on the grass under the trees when it was day, and more dances at the house at night. These people was mostly relatives. The men brought their guns with them. It was a good looking lot of quality, I tell you.

 

There was another well born family around there -- five or six families -- mostly of the name of Shepherdson. They was as well born and rich and great as the Grangerfords. The Shepherdsons and Grangerfords used the same river-boat landing, which was about two miles above our house. When I went there I saw a lot of the Shepherdsons there on their nice horses.

 

Later the next week Buck and me was out in the country hunting, and heard a horse coming. We was crossing the road. Buck says: “Quickly! Jump behind the trees!”

 

We done it, and looked out secretly through the leaves. Pretty soon a good-looking young man come riding down the road, sitting easy on his horse and looking like a soldier. He had his rifle across the saddle. I had seen him before. It was young Harney Shepherdson.

 

I heard Buck’s gun go off at my ear, and Harney’s hat fell off. He lifted his rifle and came straight toward the place where we was hiding. But we didn’t wait. We started through the trees on a run. The trees weren’t thick, so I looked over my shoulder for bullets, and two times I seen Harney cover Buck with his gun, but not shoot; and then he turned and left the way he come -- to get his hat, I think, but I couldn’t see. We never stopped running until we got home.

 

When we told the old man, his eyes lighted up a minute -- He was happy mostly, I judged. -- then his face kind of smoothed down, and he says, quietly: “I don’t like that shooting from behind a bush. Why didn’t you step into the road, my boy?”

 

“The Shepherdsons don’t, father. They always take us by surprise.”

 

Miss Charlotte she held her head up like a queen while Buck was telling his story. The two young men looked dark, but never said nothing. Miss Sophia she turned white, but the colour come back when she found the man weren’t hurt.

 

Soon as I could get Buck alone down under the trees, I says: “Did you want to kill him, Buck?”

“Sure I did.”

 

“What did he do to you?”

 

“Him? He never done nothing to me.”

 

“Well, then, what did you want to kill him for?”

 

“Why, nothing -- only it’s because of the feud.”

 

“What’s a feud?”

 

“Where was you brought up? Don’t you know what a feud is?”

 

“Never heard of it before -- tell me about it.”

 

“Well,” says Buck, “a feud is this way: A man has a fight with another man, and kills him; then that other man’s brother kills him; then the other brothers, on both sides, goes for one another; then the cousins join in -- and by and by everyone’s killed off, and there ain’t no more feud. But it’s kind of slow, and takes a long time.”

 

“Has this one been going on long, Buck?”

 

“Well, I should think so! It started thirty years ago, or some-where along there. There was trouble about something, and then they went to court to fix it; and the court went against one of the men, and so he up and killed the man that won in the court -- which you could understand him doing. Anyone would.”

 

“What was the trouble about, Buck? -- land?”

 

“Maybe -- I don’t know.”

 

“Well, who done the shooting? Was it a Grangerford or a Shepherdson?”

 

“Lord, how do I know? It was so long ago.”

 

“Don’t anyone know?”

 

“Oh, yes, my father knows, I think, and some of the other old people; but they don’t know now what the argument was about in the first place.”

 

“Has there been many killed, Buck?”

 

“Yes; it makes for a lot of funerals. But they don’t always kill. Pa’s got some metal in him from their guns; but he don’t worry much about that because he don’t weigh much, anyway. Bob’s been cut up some with a knife, and Tom’s been hurt one or two times.”

 

“Has anyone been killed this year, Buck?”

 

“Yes; we got one and they got one. About three months ago my cousin Bud, fourteen years old, was riding through the trees on t’other side of the river, and didn’t have no weapon with him, which was just foolishness, and in a place away from any houses he hears a horse a-coming behind him, and sees old Baldy Shepherdson a-riding after him with his gun in his hand and his white hair a-flying in the wind; and instead of jumping off and taking to the bushes, Bud thought he could run away from him; so they had it, run and follow, for five mile or more, the old man a-getting closer all the time; so at last Bud seen he weren’t going to get away, so he stopped and turned around so as to have the bullet holes in front, you know, and the old man he come up and did just that. But he didn’t get much time to talk about his luck, for inside of a week our people killed him back.”

 

“I think it was low down of that old man to kill a boy who didn’t have a weapon, Buck.”

 

“I don’t think it was low down. Not at all. There ain’t any Shepherdsons who are low down -- not a one. And there