Well, pretty soon the old man was up and around again, and then he
went for Judge Thatcher in the courts to make him give up that money,
and he went for me, too, for not stopping school. He catched me a
couple of times and thrashed me, but I went to school just the same,
and dodged him or outrun him most of the time. I didn’t want to go to
school much before, but I reckoned I’d go now to spite pap. That law
trial was a slow business—appeared like they warn’t ever going to get
started on it; so every now and then I’d borrow two or three dollars
off of the judge for him, to keep from getting a cowhiding. Every time
he got money he got drunk; and every time he got drunk he raised Cain
around town; and every time he raised Cain he got jailed. He was just
suited—this kind of thing was right in his line.
He got to hanging around the widow’s too much, and so she told him at
last that if he didn’t quit using around there she would make trouble
for him. Well, _wasn’t_ he mad? He said he would show who was Huck
Finn’s boss. So he watched out for me one day in the spring, and
catched me, and took me up the river about three mile in a skiff, and
crossed over to the Illinois shore where it was woody and there warn’t
no houses but an old log hut in a place where the timber was so thick
you couldn’t find it if you didn’t know where it was.
He kept me with him all the time, and I never got a chance to run off.
We lived in that old cabin, and he always locked the door and put the
key under his head nights. He had a gun which he had stole, I reckon,
and we fished and hunted, and that was what we lived on. Every little
while he locked me in and went down to the store, three miles, to the
ferry, and traded fish and game for whisky, and fetched it home and got
drunk and had a good time, and licked me. The widow she found out where
I was by and by, and she sent a man over to try to get hold of me; but
pap drove him off with the gun, and it warn’t long after that till I
was used to being where I was, and liked it—all but the cowhide part.
It was kind of lazy and jolly, laying off comfortable all day, smoking
and fishing, and no books nor study. Two months or more run along,
and my clothes got to be all rags and dirt, and I didn’t see how I’d
ever got to like it so well at the widow’s, where you had to wash, and
eat on a plate, and comb up, and go to bed and get up regular, and be
forever bothering over a book, and have old Miss Watson pecking at you
all the time. I didn’t want to go back no more. I had stopped cussing,
because the widow didn’t like it; but now I took to it again because
pap hadn’t no objections. It was pretty good times up in the woods
there, take it all around.
But by and by 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 drownded, 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; well,
I was most all the time at it, because it was about the only way to put
in the time. But this time I found something at last; 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 toward 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. He said he was
down-town, and everything was going wrong. His lawyer said he reckoned
he would win his lawsuit and get the money if they ever got started
on the trial; but then there was ways to put it off a long time, and
Judge Thatcher knowed how to do it. And he said people allowed there’d
be another trial to get me away from him and give me to the widow for
my guardian, and they guessed it would win this time. This shook me up
considerable, because I didn’t want to go back to the widow’s any more
and be so cramped up and sivilized, as they called it. Then the old
man got to cussing, and cussed everything and everybody he could think
of, and then cussed them all over again to make sure he hadn’t skipped
any, and after that he polished off with a kind of a general cuss all
round, including a considerable parcel of people which he didn’t know
the names of, and so called them what’s-his-name when he got to them,
and went right along with his cussing.
He said he would like to see the widow get me. He said he would watch
out, and if they tried to come any such game on him he knowed of a
place six or seven mile off to stow me in, where they might hunt till
they dropped and they couldn’t find me. That made me pretty uneasy
again, but only for a minute; I reckoned I wouldn’t stay on hand till
he got that chance.
The old man made me go to the skiff and fetch the things he had got.
There was a fifty-pound sack of corn meal, and a side of bacon,
ammunition, and a four-gallon jug of whisky, and an old book and two
newspapers for wadding, besides some tow. I toted up a load, and went
back and set down on the bow of the skiff to rest. I thought it all
over, and I reckoned I would walk off with the gun and some lines, and
take to the woods when I run away. I guessed I wouldn’t stay in one
place, but just tramp right across the country, mostly night-times, and
hunt and fish to keep alive, and so get so far away that the old man
nor the widow couldn’t ever find me any more. I judged I would saw out
and leave that night if pap got drunk enough, and I reckoned he would.
I got so full of it I didn’t notice how long I was staying till the old
man hollered and asked me whether I was asleep or drownded.
I got the things all up to the cabin, and then it was about dark. While
I was cooking supper the old man took a swig or two and got sort of
warmed up, and went to ripping again. He had been drunk over in town,
and laid in the gutter all night, and he was a sight to look at. A body
would ’a’ thought he was Adam—he was just all mud. Whenever his liquor
begun to work he most always went for the govment. This time he says:
“Call this a govment! why, just look at it and see what it’s like.
Here’s the law a-standing ready to take a man’s son away from him—a
man’s own son, which he has had all the trouble and all the anxiety
and all the expense of raising. Yes, just as that man has got that
son raised at last, and ready to go to work and begin to do suthin’
for _him_ and give him a rest, the law up and goes for him. And they
call _that_ govment! That ain’t all, nuther. The law backs that old
Judge Thatcher up and helps him to keep me out o’ my property. Here’s
what the law does: The law takes a man worth six thousand dollars and
up’ards, and jams him into an old trap of a cabin like this, and lets
him go round in clothes that ain’t fitten for a hog. They call that
govment! A man can’t get his rights in a govment like this. Sometimes
I’ve a mighty notion to just leave the country for good and all. Yes,
and I _told_ ’em so; I told old Thatcher so to his face. Lots of ’em
heard me, and can tell what I said. Says I, for two cents I’d leave the
blamed country and never come a-near it ag’in. Them’s the very words. I
says, look at my hat—if you call it a hat—but the lid raises up and the
rest of it goes down till it’s below my chin, and then it ain’t rightly
a hat at all, but more like my head was shoved up through a jint o’
stove-pipe. Look at it, says I—such a hat for me to wear—one of the
wealthiest men in this town if I could git my rights.
“Oh, yes, this is a wonderful govment, wonderful. Why, looky here.
There was a free nigger there from Ohio—a mulatter, most as white as
a white man. He had the whitest shirt on you ever see, too, and the
shiniest hat; and there ain’t a man in that town that’s got as fine
clothes as what he had; and he had a gold watch and chain, and a
silver-headed cane—the awfulest old gray-headed nabob in the state. And
what do you think? They said he was a p’fessor in a college, and could
talk all kinds of languages, and knowed everything. And that ain’t the
wust. They said he could _vote_ when he was at home. Well, that let
me out. Thinks I, what is the country a-coming to? It was ’lection
day, and I was just about to go and vote myself if I warn’t too drunk
to get there; but when they told me there was a state in this country
where they’d let that nigger vote, I drawed out. I says I’ll never vote
ag’in. Them’s the very words I said; they all heard me; and the country
may rot for all me—I’ll never vote ag’in as long as I live. And to see
the cool way of that nigger—why, he wouldn’t ’a’ give me the road if
I hadn’t shoved him out o’ the way. I says to the people, why ain’t
this nigger put up at auction and sold?—that’s what I want to know. And
what do you reckon they said? Why, they said he couldn’t be sold till
he’d been in the state six months, and he hadn’t been there that long
yet. There, now—that’s a specimen. They call that a govment that can’t
sell a free nigger till he’s been in the state six months. Here’s a
govment that calls itself a govment, and lets on to be a govment, and
thinks it is a govment, and yet’s got to set stock-still for six whole
months before it can take a-hold of a prowling, thieving, infernal,
white-shirted free nigger, and—”
Pap was a-going on so he never noticed where his old limber legs was
taking him to, so he went head over heels over the tub of salt pork
and barked both shins, and the rest of his speech was all the hottest
kind of language—mostly hove at the nigger and the govment, though he
give the tub some, too, all along, here and there. He hopped around the
cabin considerable, first on one leg and then on the other, holding
first one shin and then the other one, and at last he let out with his
left foot all of a sudden and fetched the tub a rattling kick. But it
warn’t good judgment, because that was the boot that had a couple of
his toes leaking out of the front end of it; so now he raised a howl
that fairly made a body’s hair raise, and down he went in the dirt, and
rolled there, and held his toes; and the cussing he done then laid over
anything he had ever done previous. He said so his own self afterwards.
He had heard old Sowberry Hagan in his best days, and he said it laid
over him, too; but I reckon that was sort of piling it on, maybe.
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 and 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 all I could do, 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!” I never see 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 awhile, 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—don’t! 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
see 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; but I slid out of the jacket quick
as lightning, 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.
So he dozed off pretty soon. By and by I got the old split-bottom chair
and clumb up as easy as I could, not to make any noise, and got down
the gun. I slipped the ramrod down it to make sure it was loaded, and
then I laid it across the turnip-barrel, pointing towards pap, and set
down behind it to wait for him to stir. And how slow and still the time
did drag along.