We was feeling pretty good after breakfast, and took my canoe and went
over the river a-fishing, with a lunch, and had a good time, and took
a look at the raft and found her all right, and got home late to
supper, and found them in such a sweat and worry they didn’t know
which end they was standing on, and made us go right off to bed the
minute we was done supper, and wouldn’t tell us what the trouble was,
and never let on a word about the new letter, but didn’t need to,
because we knowed as much about it as anybody did, and as soon as we
was half up-stairs and her back was turned we slid for the cellar
cubboard and loaded up a good lunch and took it up to our room and
went to bed, and got up about half past eleven, and Tom put on Aunt
Sally’s dress that he stole and was going to start with the lunch, but
says:
“Where’s the butter?”
“I laid out a hunk of it,” I says, “on a piece of a corn-pone.”
“Well, you _left_ it laid out, then—it ain’t here.”
“We can get along without it,” I says.
“We can get along _with_ it, too,” he says; “just you slide down
cellar and fetch it. And then mosey right down the lightning-rod and
come along. I’ll go and stuff the straw into Jim’s clothes to
represent his mother in disguise, and be ready to _ba_ like a sheep
and shove soon as you get there.”
So out he went, and down cellar went I. The hunk of butter, big as a
person’s fist, was where I had left it, so I took up the slab of
corn-pone with it on, and blowed out my light, and started up-stairs
very stealthy, and got up to the main floor all right, but here comes
Aunt Sally with a candle, and I clapped the truck in my hat, and
clapped my hat on my head, and the next second she see me; and she
says:
“You been down cellar?”
“Yes’m.”
“What you been doing down there?”
“Noth’n.”
“_Noth’n!_”
“No’m.”
“Well, then, what possessed you to go down there this time of night?”
“I don’t know ’m.”
“You don’t _know?_ Don’t answer me that way. Tom, I want to know what
you been _doing_ down there.”
“I hain’t been doing a single thing, Aunt Sally, I hope to gracious if
I have.”
I reckoned she’d let me go now, and as a generl thing she would; but I
s’pose there was so many strange things going on she was just in a
sweat about every little thing that warn’t yard-stick straight; so she
says, very decided:
“You just march into that setting-room and stay there till I come. You
been up to something you no business to, and I lay I’ll find out what
it is before _I’m_ done with you.”
So she went away as I opened the door and walked into the
setting-room. My, but there was a crowd there! Fifteen farmers, and
every one of them had a gun. I was most powerful sick, and slunk to a
chair and set down. They was setting around, some of them talking a
little, in a low voice, and all of them fidgety and uneasy, but trying
to look like they warn’t; but I knowed they was, because they was
always taking off their hats, and putting them on, and scratching
their heads, and changing their seats, and fumbling with their
buttons. I warn’t easy myself, but I didn’t take my hat off, all the
same.
I did wish Aunt Sally would come, and get done with me, and lick me,
if she wanted to, and let me get away and tell Tom how we’d overdone
this thing, and what a thundering hornet’s nest we’d got ourselves
into, so we could stop fooling around straight off, and clear out with
Jim before these rips got out of patience and come for us.
At last she come and begun to ask me questions, but I _couldn’t_
answer them straight, I didn’t know which end of me was up; because
these men was in such a fidget now that some was wanting to start
right _now_ and lay for them desperadoes, and saying it warn’t but a
few minutes to midnight; and others was trying to get them to hold on
and wait for the sheep-signal; and here was Aunty pegging away at the
questions, and me a-shaking all over and ready to sink down in my
tracks I was that scared; and the place getting hotter and hotter, and
the butter beginning to melt and run down my neck and behind my ears;
and pretty soon, when one of them says, “_I’m_ for going and getting
in the cabin _first_ and right _now_, and catching them when they
come,” I most dropped; and a streak of butter come a-trickling down my
forehead, and Aunt Sally she see it, and turns white as a sheet, and
says:
“For the land’s sake, what _is_ the matter with the child? He’s got
the brain-fever as shore as you’re born, and they’re oozing out!”
And everybody runs to see, and she snatches off my hat, and out comes
the bread and what was left of the butter, and she grabbed me, and
hugged me, and says:
“Oh, what a turn you did give me! and how glad and grateful I am it
ain’t no worse; for luck’s against us, and it never rains but it
pours, and when I see that truck I thought we’d lost you, for I knowed
by the color and all it was just like your brains would be if—Dear,
dear, whyd’nt you _tell_ me that was what you’d been down there for,
_I_ wouldn’t ’a’ cared. Now cler out to bed, and don’t lemme see no
more of you till morning!”
I was up-stairs in a second, and down the lightning-rod in another
one, and shinning through the dark for the lean-to. I couldn’t hardly
get my words out, I was so anxious; but I told Tom as quick as I could
we must jump for it now, and not a minute to lose—the house full of
men, yonder, with guns!
His eyes just blazed; and he says:
“No!—is that so? _Ain’t_ it bully! Why, Huck, if it was to do over
again, I bet I could fetch two hundred! If we could put it off till—”
“Hurry! _hurry!_” I says. “Where’s Jim?”
“Right at your elbow; if you reach out your arm you can touch him.
He’s dressed, and everything’s ready. Now we’ll slide out and give the
sheep-signal.”
But then we heard the tramp of men coming to the door, and heard them
begin to fumble with the padlock, and heard a man say:
“I _told_ you we’d be too soon; they haven’t come—the door is locked.
Here, I’ll lock some of you into the cabin, and you lay for ’em in the
dark and kill ’em when they come; and the rest scatter around a piece,
and listen if you can hear ’em coming.”
So in they come, but couldn’t see us in the dark, and most trod on us
whilst we was hustling to get under the bed. But we got under all
right, and out through the hole, swift but soft—Jim first, me next,
and Tom last, which was according to Tom’s orders. Now we was in the
lean-to, and heard trampings close by outside. So we crept to the
door, and Tom stopped us there and put his eye to the crack, but
couldn’t make out nothing, it was so dark; and whispered and said he
would listen for the steps to get further, and when he nudged us Jim
must glide out first, and him last. So he set his ear to the crack and
listened, and listened, and listened, and the steps a-scraping around
out there all the time; and at last he nudged us, and we slid out, and
stooped down, not breathing, and not making the least noise, and
slipped stealthy towards the fence in Injun file, and got to it all
right, and me and Jim over it; but Tom’s britches catched fast on a
splinter on the top rail, and then he hear the steps coming, so he had
to pull loose, which snapped the splinter and made a noise; and as he
dropped in our tracks and started somebody sings out:
“Who’s that? Answer, or I’ll shoot!”
But we didn’t answer; we just unfurled our heels and shoved. Then
there was a rush, and a _bang_, _bang_, _bang!_ and the bullets fairly
whizzed around us! We heard them sing out:
“Here they are! They’ve broke for the river! After ’em, boys, and turn
loose the dogs!”
So here they come, full tilt. We could hear them because they wore
boots and yelled, but we didn’t wear no boots and didn’t yell. We was
in the path to the mill; and when they got pretty close onto us we
dodged into the bush and let them go by, and then dropped in behind
them. They’d had all the dogs shut up, so they wouldn’t scare off the
robbers; but by this time somebody had let them loose, and here they
come, making powwow enough for a million; but they was our dogs; so we
stopped in our tracks till they catched up; and when they see it
warn’t nobody but us, and no excitement to offer them, they only just
said howdy, and tore right ahead towards the shouting and clattering;
and then we up-steam again, and whizzed along after them till we was
nearly to the mill, and then struck up through the bush to where my
canoe was tied, and hopped in and pulled for dear life towards the
middle of the river, but didn’t make no more noise than we was
obleeged to. Then we struck out, easy and comfortable, for the island
where my raft was; and we could hear them yelling and barking at each
other all up and down the bank, till we was so far away the sounds got
dim and died out. And when we stepped onto the raft I says:
“_Now_, old Jim, you’re a free man _again_, and I bet you won’t ever be
a slave no more.”
“En a mighty good job it wuz, too, Huck. It ’uz planned beautiful, en
it ’uz _done_ beautiful; en dey ain’t _nobody_ kin git up a plan dat’s
mo’ mixed up en splendid den what dat one wuz.”
We was all glad as we could be, but Tom was the gladdest of all
because he had a bullet in the calf of his leg.
When me and Jim heard that we didn’t feel as brash as what we did
before. It was hurting him considerable, and bleeding; so we laid him
in the wigwam and tore up one of the duke’s shirts for to bandage him,
but he says:
“Gimme the rags; I can do it myself. Don’t stop now; don’t fool around
here, and the evasion booming along so handsome; man the sweeps, and
set her loose! Boys, we done it elegant!—’deed we did. I wish _we’d_
’a’ had the handling of Louis XVI., there wouldn’t ’a’ been no ‘Son of
Saint Louis, ascend to heaven!’ wrote down in _his_ biography; no,
sir, we’d ’a’ whooped him over the _border_—that’s what we’d ’a’ done
with _him_—and done it just as slick as nothing at all, too. Man the
sweeps—man the sweeps!”
But me and Jim was consulting—and thinking. And after we’d thought a
minute, I says:
“Say it, Jim.”
So he says:
“Well, den, dis is de way it look to me, Huck. Ef it wuz _him_ dat ’uz
bein’ sot free, en one er de boys wuz to git shot, would he say, ’Go
on en save me, nemmine ’bout a doctor f’r to save dis one’? Is dat
like Mars Tom Sawyer? Would he say dat? You _bet_ he wouldn’t! _Well_,
den, is _Jim_ gywne to say it? No, sah—I doan’ budge a step out’n dis
place ’dout a _doctor_; not if it’s forty year!”
I knowed he was white inside, and I reckoned he’d say what he did
say—so it was all right now, and I told Tom I was a-going for a
doctor. He raised considerable row about it, but me and Jim stuck to
it and wouldn’t budge; so he was for crawling out and setting the raft
loose himself; but we wouldn’t let him. Then he give us a piece of his
mind, but it didn’t do no good.
So when he sees me getting the canoe ready, he says:
“Well, then, if you’re bound to go, I’ll tell you the way to do when
you get to the village. Shut the door and blindfold the doctor tight
and fast, and make him swear to be silent as the grave, and put a
purse full of gold in his hand, and then take and lead him all around
the back alleys and everywheres in the dark, and then fetch him here
in the canoe, in a roundabout way amongst the islands, and search him
and take his chalk away from him, and don’t give it back to him till
you get him back to the village, or else he will chalk this raft so he
can find it again. It’s the way they all do.”
So I said I would, and left, and Jim was to hide in the woods when he
see the doctor coming till he was gone again.