THE THREE SLEEPERS
Well, all day we went through the humbug of watching one another, and
it was pretty sickly business for two of us and hard to act out, I can
tell you. About night we landed at one of them little Missouri towns
high up toward Iowa, and had supper at the tavern, and got a room
upstairs with a cot and a double bed in it, but I dumped my bag under a
deal table in the dark hall while we was moving along it to bed, single
file, me last, and the landlord in the lead with a tallow candle. We
had up a lot of whisky, and went to playing high-low-jack for dimes,
and as soon as the whisky begun to take hold of Bud we stopped
drinking, but we didn’t let him stop. We loaded him till he fell out of
his chair and laid there snoring.
“We was ready for business now. I said we better pull our boots off,
and his’n too, and not make any noise, then we could pull him and haul
him around and ransack him without any trouble. So we done it. I set my
boots and Bud’s side by side, where they’d be handy. Then we stripped
him and searched his seams and his pockets and his socks and the inside
of his boots, and everything, and searched his bundle. Never found any
di’monds. We found the screwdriver, and Hal says, ‘What do you reckon
he wanted with that?’ I said I didn’t know; but when he wasn’t looking
I hooked it. At last Hal he looked beat and discouraged, and said we’d
got to give it up. That was what I was waiting for. I says:
“‘There’s one place we hain’t searched.’
“‘What place is that?’ he says.
“‘His stomach.’
“‘By gracious, I never thought of that! _Now_ we’re on the homestretch,
to a dead moral certainty. How’ll we manage?’
“‘Well,’ I says, ‘just stay by him till I turn out and hunt up a drug
store, and I reckon I’ll fetch something that’ll make them di’monds
tired of the company they’re keeping.’
“He said that’s the ticket, and with him looking straight at me I slid
myself into Bud’s boots instead of my own, and he never noticed. They
was just a shade large for me, but that was considerable better than
being too small. I got my bag as I went a-groping through the hall, and
in about a minute I was out the back way and stretching up the river
road at a five-mile gait.
“And not feeling so very bad, neither—walking on di’monds don’t have no
such effect. When I had gone fifteen minutes I says to myself, there’s
more’n a mile behind me, and everything quiet. Another five minutes and
I says there’s considerable more land behind me now, and there’s a man
back there that’s begun to wonder what’s the trouble. Another five and
I says to myself he’s getting real uneasy—he’s walking the floor now.
Another five, and I says to myself, there’s two mile and a half behind
me, and he’s _awful_ uneasy—beginning to cuss, I reckon. Pretty soon I
says to myself, forty minutes gone—he _knows_ there’s something up!
Fifty minutes—the truth’s a-busting on him now! he is reckoning I found
the di’monds whilst we was searching, and shoved them in my pocket and
never let on—yes, and he’s starting out to hunt for me. He’ll hunt for
new tracks in the dust, and they’ll as likely send him down the river
as up.
“Just then I see a man coming down on a mule, and before I thought I
jumped into the bush. It was stupid! When he got abreast he stopped and
waited a little for me to come out; then he rode on again. But I didn’t
feel gay any more. I says to myself I’ve botched my chances by that; I
surely have, if he meets up with Hal Clayton.
“Well, about three in the morning I fetched Elexandria and see this
stern-wheeler laying there, and was very glad, because I felt perfectly
safe, now, you know. It was just daybreak. I went aboard and got this
stateroom and put on these clothes and went up in the pilot-house—to
watch, though I didn’t reckon there was any need of it. I set there and
played with my di’monds and waited and waited for the boat to start,
but she didn’t. You see, they was mending her machinery, but I didn’t
know anything about it, not being very much used to steamboats.
[Illustration: Walked ashore.]
“Well, to cut the tale short, we never left there till plumb noon; and
long before that I was hid in this stateroom; for before breakfast I
see a man coming, away off, that had a gait like Hal Clayton’s, and it
made me just sick. I says to myself, if he finds out I’m aboard this
boat, he’s got me like a rat in a trap. All he’s got to do is to have
me watched, and wait—wait till I slip ashore, thinking he is a thousand
miles away, then slip after me and dog me to a good place and make me
give up the di’monds, and then he’ll—oh, I know what he’ll do! Ain’t it
awful—awful! And now to think the _other_ one’s aboard, too! Oh, ain’t
it hard luck, boys—ain’t it hard! But you’ll help save me, _won’t_
you?—oh, boys, be good to a poor devil that’s being hunted to death,
and save me—I’ll worship the very ground you walk on!”
We turned in and soothed him down and told him we would plan for him
and help him, and he needn’t be so afeard; and so by and by he got to
feeling kind of comfortable again, and unscrewed his heelplates and
held up his di’monds this way and that, admiring them and loving them;
and when the light struck into them they _was_ beautiful, sure; why,
they seemed to kind of bust, and snap fire out all around. But all the
same I judged he was a fool. If I had been him I would a handed the
di’monds to them pals and got them to go ashore and leave me alone. But
he was made different. He said it was a whole fortune and he couldn’t
bear the idea.
Twice we stopped to fix the machinery and laid a good while, once in
the night; but it wasn’t dark enough, and he was afeard to skip. But
the third time we had to fix it there was a better chance. We laid up
at a country woodyard about forty mile above Uncle Silas’s place a
little after one at night, and it was thickening up and going to storm.
So Jake he laid for a chance to slide. We begun to take in wood. Pretty
soon the rain come a-drenching down, and the wind blowed hard. Of
course every boat-hand fixed a gunny sack and put it on like a bonnet,
the way they do when they are toting wood, and we got one for Jake, and
he slipped down aft with his hand-bag and come tramping forrard just
like the rest, and walked ashore with them, and when we see him pass
out of the light of the torch-basket and get swallowed up in the dark,
we got our breath again and just felt grateful and splendid. But it
wasn’t for long. Somebody told, I reckon; for in about eight or ten
minutes them two pals come tearing forrard as tight as they could jump
and darted ashore and was gone. We waited plumb till dawn for them to
come back, and kept hoping they would, but they never did. We was awful
sorry and low-spirited. All the hope we had was that Jake had got such
a start that they couldn’t get on his track, and he would get to his
brother’s and hide there and be safe.
He was going to take the river road, and told us to find out if Brace
and Jubiter was to home and no strangers there, and then slip out about
sundown and tell him. Said he would wait for us in a little bunch of
sycamores right back of Tom’s uncle Silas’s tobacker field on the river
road, a lonesome place.
We set and talked a long time about his chances, and Tom said he was
all right if the pals struck up the river instead of down, but it
wasn’t likely, because maybe they knowed where he was from; more likely
they would go right, and dog him all day, him not suspecting, and kill
him when it come dark, and take the boots. So we was pretty sorrowful.