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

Chapter 7

“ Get up! What're you about?”

I opened my eyes and looked around, trying to make out where I was. The sun was up, and I had been fully asleep. Pap was standing over me looking sour and sick, too.

He says: “What you doing with this gun?”

I judged he didn’t know what he had been doing, so I says: “Someone tried to get in, so I was waiting for him.”

“Why didn’t you wake me up?”

“I tried to, but I couldn’t; I couldn’t move you.”

“Well, don’t stand there talking all day. Outside and see if there’s fish on the lines for breakfast. I’ll be along in a minute.”

He opened the lock on the door, and I ran out up to the river. I saw some logs and other things moving on the water, so I knowed the river had started to come up. I knew it would have been great times now if I was over at the town. The June rains used to be always good luck for me; because as soon as that happens here comes firewood down the river, and pieces of timber rafts -- sometimes ten or more logs together; so all you have to do is to catch them and sell them to the timber yards.

I went along up the river with one eye out for pap and t’other one out for what the waters might bring along. Well, all at once here comes a canoe; just a perfect one, too, about thirteen or fourteen foot long, riding high like a duck. I jumped head-first off the side of the river, like a frog, clothes and all on, and started swimming for the canoe. I was thinking there’d be someone lying down in it, because people often done that to trick people, and when a boy had pulled a boat out almost to it they’d jump up and laugh at him. But it weren’t so this time. It was a free canoe sure enough, and I climbed in and pushed her to the beach. Thinks I, the old man will be glad when he sees this -- she’s worth ten dollars. But when I got to land pap weren’t around yet, and as I was running her into a little place by a cliff, with willows hanging all over, I come up with a plan: I judged I’d hide her good. The n, instead of taking to the trees when I run off, I’d go down the river about fifty miles and camp in one place for good, and not have such a rough time walking out on foot.

It was pretty close to the cabin, and I thought I heard the old man coming all the time; but I got her covered; and then I looked around a few trees, and there was the old man down a piece just lining up a bird with his rifle. So he hadn’t seen anything.

When he got along I was hard at it taking up a fish line. He shouted at me for being so slow; but I told him I fell in the river, and that was what made me take so long. I knowed he would see I was wet, and then he would be asking questions. We got five fish off the lines and went home.

While we rested up after breakfast, both of us being tired, I got to thinking that if I could fix up some way to keep pap and the widow from trying to follow me, it would be better than trusting to luck to get far enough off before they missed me.

Well, I didn’t see no way for a while, but by and by pap got up a minute to get a drink of water, and he says: “Another time a man comes a-looking around here you wake me up, you hear? That man weren’t here for no good. If I see him, I’ll shoot him. Next time you wake me up, you hear?”

Then he dropped down and went to sleep again; but what he had been saying give me the very plan I needed. I says to myself, I can fix it now so nobody won’t think of following me.

About twelve o’clock we got up and went along up the river. The water was coming up pretty fast, and lots of timber was going by. By and by along comes part of a raft -- nine logs tied together. We went out with the boat and pulled it to the beach. Then we had lunch. Anyone but pap would a waited and seen the day through, so as to catch more timber; but that weren’t pap’s way. Nine logs was enough for one time; he must go straight over to town and sell. So he locked me in and took the boat, and started off pulling the raft about half-past three. I judged he wouldn’t come back that night. I waited until I believed he had got a good start; then I come out with my saw, and went to work on cutting a way out again. Before he was to the other side of the river I was out of the hole; him and his raft was just a little black spot on the water away off in the distance.

I took the bag of corn meal to where the canoe was, and pushed the willow branches apart and put it in; then I done the same with the side of salted pig meat; then the whiskey. I took all the coffee and sugar there was, and all the bullets; I took the bucket and a tin cup, and my old saw and two blankets, and a heavy iron cooking pan and the coffee pot. I took fish lines and matches and other things -- everything that was worth a cent. I cleaned out the place. I wanted an axe, but there weren’t any, only the one out where we cut firewood, and I knowed why I was going to leave that. I took out the rifle, and was done.

I had marked the ground a lot by climbing out of the hole and pulling out so many things through it. So I fixed that as good as I could from the outside by shaking loose dirt all over the place.

That covered up my footprints and it covered the sawdust from cutting the log too. I fixed the piece of timber back into place, and put two rocks under it and one against it to hold it there. If you stood four or five foot away and didn’t know it was cut, you wouldn’t never think any different; besides, this was the back of the cabin; it weren’t like anyone would go looking around there.

It was all grass between there and the canoe, so I hadn’t left footprints. I followed around to see. I stood on the high ground and looked out over the river. All safe. So I took the rifle and went up a piece into the trees, and was hunting around for some birds when I seen a wild pig; pigs soon go wild in them parts after they get away from the farms. I used the gun to kill this one and took the body into camp.

I took the axe and broke in the door. I cut it a lot a-doing it. I brought the pig in, took him back almost to the table and cut his throat with the axe, and put him down on the ground to bleed; I say ground because it was ground -- hard dirt, and no boards. Well, next I took an old bag and put a lot of big rocks in it -- all I could put in and still pull it -- and I started it from the pig, and pulled it to the door and through the trees down to the river and pushed it in, and down it went, to the bottom. You could easy see that something had been pulled over the ground. I did wish Tom Sawyer was there; I knowed he would take an interest in this kind of business, and throw in the special touches. Nobody could show himself like Tom Sawyer in such a thing as that.

Well, last I pulled out some of my hair, and blooded the axe good, and made it stick on the back side, and threw the axe in the corner. Then I took up the pig and held him to my chest with my coat (so he couldn’t drop blood) until I got a good piece below the cabin and then pushed him into the river too.

Now I thought of something else. So I went and got the bag of corn meal and my old saw blade out of the canoe, and brought them to the house. I took the bag to where it used to stand, and cut a hole in the bottom of it with the saw, for there weren’t no knives and forks on the place -- pap done everything with his pocket-knife about the cooking. Then I carried the bag about a hundred yards across the grass and through the trees east of the house, to a shallow lake that was five miles wide and full of bullrushes -- and ducks too at the right time of year. There was a very little river coming into it on the other side from miles away, I don’t know where, but it was away from the Mississippi. Some of the meal come out and made a little line all the way to the lake. I dropped pap’s stone for making his knife sharp there too, so as to look like it had been done by accident. Then I tied up the hole in the meal bag with a string, so it wouldn’t come out no more, and took it and my saw to the canoe again.

It was about dark now; so I dropped the canoe down the river under some willows that was hanging over the bank, and waited for the moon to rise. I tied up to one of the trees; then took a bite to eat, and by and by leaned back in the canoe to smoke a pipe and lay out a plan. I says to myself, they’ll follow the marks from that bag of rocks to the beach and then go into the river to look for me. And they’ll follow the marks from the bag of meal to the lake and go up the little river that leads into it to find the robbers that killed me and took the things. They won’t ever hunt the river for anything but my dead body. They’ll soon get tired of that, and won’t think no more about me. So I can stop anywhere I want to. Jackson’s Island is good enough for me; I know that island pretty well, and nobody ever comes there. And then I can take the boat over to town nights, and go around in secret and pick up things I want. Jackson’s Island’s the place.

I was pretty tired, and the first thing I knowed I was asleep. When I come awake I didn’t know where I was for a minute. I sat up and looked around, a little scared. Then I remembered. The river looked miles and miles across. The moon was so big I could a counted the logs that went a-moving along, black and quiet, hundreds of yards out from the sides. Everything was dead quiet, and it looked late, and it smelled late. You know what I mean -- I don’t know the words to put it in.

I took a good look, and was just going to cut loose from the tree and start, when I heard a sound away over the water. I lis- tened. Pretty soon I made it out. It was that boring kind of over and over sound that comes from oars working in the locks on the side of a boat when it’s a quiet night. I took a little look out through the branches, and there it was -- a boat, away across the water. I couldn’t tell how many was in it. It kept a-coming, and when