The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain [best novels for teenagers .txt] 📗

and went about from window to window cautiously peeping out. Presently he said:

“Who could have brought those tools here? Do you reckon they can be upstairs?”

The boys’ breath forsook them. Injun Joe put his hand on his knife, halted a moment, undecided, and then turned toward the stairway. The boys thought of the closet, but their strength was gone. The steps came creaking up the stairs⁠—the intolerable distress of the situation woke the stricken resolution of the lads⁠—they were about to spring for the closet, when there was a crash of rotten timbers and Injun Joe landed on the ground amid the debris of the ruined stairway. He gathered himself up cursing, and his comrade said:

“Now what’s the use of all that? If it’s anybody, and they’re up there, let them stay there⁠—who cares? If they want to jump down, now, and get into trouble, who objects? It will be dark in fifteen minutes⁠—and then let them follow us if they want to. I’m willing. In my opinion, whoever hove those things in here caught a sight of us and took us for ghosts or devils or something. I’ll bet they’re running yet.”

Joe grumbled awhile; then he agreed with his friend that what daylight was left ought to be economized in getting things ready for leaving. Shortly afterward they slipped out of the house in the deepening twilight, and moved toward the river with their precious box.

Tom and Huck rose up, weak but vastly relieved, and stared after them through the chinks between the logs of the house. Follow? Not they. They were content to reach ground again without broken necks, and take the townward track over the hill. They did not talk much. They were too much absorbed in hating themselves⁠—hating the ill luck that made them take the spade and the pick there. But for that, Injun Joe never would have suspected. He would have hidden the silver with the gold to wait there till his “revenge” was satisfied, and then he would have had the misfortune to find that money turn up missing. Bitter, bitter luck that the tools were ever brought there!

They resolved to keep a lookout for that Spaniard when he should come to town spying out for chances to do his revengeful job, and follow him to “Number Two,” wherever that might be. Then a ghastly thought occurred to Tom.

“Revenge? What if he means us, Huck!”

“Oh, don’t!” said Huck, nearly fainting.

They talked it all over, and as they entered town they agreed to believe that he might possibly mean somebody else⁠—at least that he might at least mean nobody but Tom, since only Tom had testified.

Very, very small comfort it was to Tom to be alone in danger! Company would be a palpable improvement, he thought.

XXVII Trembling on the Trail

The adventure of the day mightily tormented Tom’s dreams that night. Four times he had his hands on that rich treasure and four times it wasted to nothingness in his fingers as sleep forsook him and wakefulness brought back the hard reality of his misfortune. As he lay in the early morning recalling the incidents of his great adventure, he noticed that they seemed curiously subdued and far away⁠—somewhat as if they had happened in another world, or in a time long gone by. Then it occurred to him that the great adventure itself must be a dream! There was one very strong argument in favor of this idea⁠—namely, that the quantity of coin he had seen was too vast to be real. He had never seen as much as fifty dollars in one mass before, and he was like all boys of his age and station in life, in that he imagined that all references to “hundreds” and “thousands” were mere fanciful forms of speech, and that no such sums really existed in the world. He never had supposed for a moment that so large a sum as a hundred dollars was to be found in actual money in anyone’s possession. If his notions of hidden treasure had been analyzed, they would have been found to consist of a handful of real dimes and a bushel of vague, splendid, ungraspable dollars.

But the incidents of his adventure grew sensibly sharper and clearer under the attrition of thinking them over, and so he presently found himself leaning to the impression that the thing might not have been a dream, after all. This uncertainty must be swept away. He would snatch a hurried breakfast and go and find Huck. Huck was sitting on the gunwale of a flatboat, listlessly dangling his feet in the water and looking very melancholy. Tom concluded to let Huck lead up to the subject. If he did not do it, then the adventure would be proved to have been only a dream.

“Hello, Huck!”

“Hello, yourself.”

Silence, for a minute.

“Tom, if we’d ’a’ left the blame tools at the dead tree, we’d ’a’ got the money. Oh, ain’t it awful!”

“ ’Tain’t a dream, then, ’tain’t a dream! Somehow I most wish it was. Dog’d if I don’t, Huck.”

“What ain’t a dream?”

“Oh, that thing yesterday. I been half thinking it was.”

“Dream! If them stairs hadn’t broke down you’d ’a’ seen how much dream it was! I’ve had dreams enough all night⁠—with that patch-eyed Spanish devil going for me all through ’em⁠—rot him!”

“No, not rot him. Find him! Track the money!”

“Tom, we’ll never find him. A feller don’t have only one chance for such a pile⁠—and that one’s lost. I’d feel mighty shaky if I was to see him, anyway.”

“Well, so’d I; but I’d like to see him, anyway⁠—and track him out⁠—to his Number Two.”

“Number Two⁠—yes, that’s it. I been thinking ’bout that. But I can’t make nothing out of it. What do you reckon it is?”

“I dono. It’s too deep. Say, Huck⁠—maybe it’s the number of a house!”

“Goody!⁠ ⁠… No, Tom, that ain’t it. If it is, it ain’t in this one-horse town. They ain’t no numbers here.”

“Well, that’s so. Lemme think