PLANS TO SECURE THE DIAMONDS
We tramped along behind Jim and Lem till we come to the back stile
where old Jim’s cabin was that he was captivated in, the time we set
him free, and here come the dogs piling around us to say howdy, and
there was the lights of the house, too; so we warn’t afeard any more,
and was going to climb over, but Tom says:
“Hold on; set down here a minute. By George!”
“What’s the matter?” says I.
“Matter enough!” he says. “Wasn’t you expecting we would be the first
to tell the family who it is that’s been killed yonder in the
sycamores, and all about them rapscallions that done it, and about the
di’monds they’ve smouched off of the corpse, and paint it up fine, and
have the glory of being the ones that knows a lot more about it than
anybody else?”
“Why, of course. It wouldn’t be you, Tom Sawyer, if you was to let such
a chance go by. I reckon it ain’t going to suffer none for lack of
paint,” I says, “when you start in to scollop the facts.”
“Well, now,” he says, perfectly ca’m, “what would you say if I was to
tell you I ain’t going to start in at all?”
I was astonished to hear him talk so. I says:
“I’d say it’s a lie. You ain’t in earnest, Tom Sawyer?”
“You’ll soon see. Was the ghost barefooted?”
[Illustration: Was the ghost barefooted?]
“No, it wasn’t. What of it?”
“You wait—I’ll show you what. Did it have its boots on?”
“Yes. I seen them plain.”
“Swear it?”
“Yes, I swear it.”
“So do I. Now do you know what that means?”
“No. What does it mean?”
“Means that them thieves _didn’t get the di’monds_.”
“Jimminy! What makes you think that?”
“I don’t only think it, I know it. Didn’t the breeches and goggles and
whiskers and hand-bag and every blessed thing turn to ghost-stuff?
Everything it had on turned, didn’t it? It shows that the reason its
boots turned too was because it still had them on after it started to
go ha’nting around, and if that ain’t proof that them blatherskites
didn’t get the boots, I’d like to know what you’d _call_ proof.”
Think of that now. I never see such a head as that boy had. Why, I had
eyes and I could see things, but they never meant nothing to me. But
Tom Sawyer was different. When Tom Sawyer seen a thing it just got up
on its hind legs and _talked_ to him—told him everything it knowed. I
never see such a head.
“Tom Sawyer,” I says, “I’ll say it again as I’ve said it a many a time
before: I ain’t fitten to black your boots. But that’s all right—that’s
neither here nor there. God Almighty made us all, and some He gives
eyes that’s blind, and some He gives eyes that can see, and I reckon it
ain’t none of our lookout what He done it for; it’s all right, or He’d
’a’ fixed it some other way. Go on—I see plenty plain enough, now, that
them thieves didn’t get way with the di’monds. Why didn’t they, do you
reckon?”
“Because they got chased away by them other two men before they could
pull the boots off of the corpse.”
“That’s so! I see it now. But looky here, Tom, why ain’t we to go and
tell about it?”
“Oh, shucks, Huck Finn, can’t you see? Look at it. What’s a-going to
happen? There’s going to be an inquest in the morning. Them two men
will tell how they heard the yells and rushed there just in time to not
save the stranger. Then the jury’ll twaddle and twaddle and twaddle,
and finally they’ll fetch in a verdict that he got shot or stuck or
busted over the head with something, and come to his death by the
inspiration of God. And after they’ve buried him they’ll auction off
his things for to pay the expenses, and then’s _our_ chance.” “How,
Tom?”
“Buy the boots for two dollars!”
Well, it ’most took my breath.
“My land! Why, Tom, _we’ll_ get the di’monds!”
“You bet. Some day there’ll be a big reward offered for them—a thousand
dollars, sure. That’s our money! Now we’ll trot in and see the folks.
And mind you we don’t know anything about any murder, or any di’monds,
or any thieves—don’t you forget that.”
I had to sigh a little over the way he had got it fixed. I’d ’a’ _sold_
them di’monds—yes, sir—for twelve thousand dollars; but I didn’t say
anything. It wouldn’t done any good. I says:
“But what are we going to tell your aunt Sally has made us so long
getting down here from the village, Tom?”
“Oh, I’ll leave that to you,” he says. “I reckon you can explain it
somehow.”
He was always just that strict and delicate. He never would tell a lie
himself.
We struck across the big yard, noticing this, that, and t’other thing
that was so familiar, and we so glad to see it again, and when we got
to the roofed big passageway betwixt the double log house and the
kitchen part, there was everything hanging on the wall just as it used
to was, even to Uncle Silas’s old faded green baize working-gown with
the hood to it, and raggedy white patch between the shoulders that
always looked like somebody had hit him with a snowball; and then we
lifted the latch and walked in. Aunt Sally she was just a-ripping and
a-tearing around, and the children was huddled in one corner, and the
old man he was huddled in the other and praying for help in time of
need. She jumped for us with joy and tears running down her face and
give us a whacking box on the ear, and then hugged us and kissed us and
boxed us again, and just couldn’t seem to get enough of it, she was so
glad to see us; and she says:
“Where _have_ you been a-loafing to, you good-for-nothing trash! I’ve
been that worried about you I didn’t know what to do. Your traps has
been here ever so long, and I’ve had supper cooked fresh about four
times so as to have it hot and good when you come, till at last my
patience is just plumb wore out, and I declare I—I—why I could skin you
alive! You must be starving, poor things!—set down, set down,
everybody; don’t lose no more time.”
It was good to be there again behind all that noble corn-pone and
spareribs, and everything that you could ever want in this world. Old
Uncle Silas he peeled off one of his bulliest old-time blessings, with
as many layers to it as an onion, and whilst the angels was hauling in
the slack of it I was trying to study up what to say about what kept us
so long. When our plates was all loadened and we’d got a-going, she
asked me, and I says:
“Well, you see,—er—Mizzes—”
“Huck Finn! Since when am I Mizzes to you? Have I ever been stingy of
cuffs or kisses for you since the day you stood in this room and I took
you for Tom Sawyer and blessed God for sending you to me, though you
told me four thousand lies and I believed every one of them like a
simpleton? Call me Aunt Sally—like you always done.”
So I done it. And I says:
“Well, me and Tom allowed we would come along afoot and take a smell of
the woods, and we run across Lem Beebe and Jim Lane, and they asked us
to go with them blackberrying to-night, and said they could borrow
Jubiter Dunlap’s dog, because he had told them just that minute—”
“Where did they see him?” says the old man; and when I looked up to see
how _he_ come to take an intrust in a little thing like that, his eyes
was just burning into me, he was that eager. It surprised me so it kind
of throwed me off, but I pulled myself together again and says:
“It was when he was spading up some ground along with you, towards
sundown or along there.”
He only said, “Um,” in a kind of a disappointed way, and didn’t take no
more intrust. So I went on. I says:
“Well, then, as I was a-saying—”
“That’ll do, you needn’t go no furder.” It was Aunt Sally. She was
boring right into me with her eyes, and very indignant. “Huck Finn,”
she says, “how’d them men come to talk about going a-black-berrying in
September—in _this_ region?”
I see I had slipped up, and I couldn’t say a word. She waited, still
a-gazing at me, then she says:
“And how’d they come to strike that idiot idea of going a-blackberrying
in the night?”
“Well, m’m, they—er—they told us they had a lantern, and—”
“Oh, _shet_ up—do! Looky here; what was they going to do with a
dog?—hunt blackberries with it?”
“I think, m’m, they—”
“Now, Tom Sawyer, what kind of a lie are you fixing _your_ mouth to
contribit to this mess of rubbage? Speak out—and I warn you before you
begin, that I don’t believe a word of it. You and Huck’s been up to
something you no business to—I know it perfectly well; I know you,
_both_ of you. Now you explain that dog, and them blackberries, and the
lantern, and the rest of that rot—and mind you talk as straight as a
string—do you hear?”
Tom he looked considerable hurt, and says, very dignified:
“It is a pity if Huck is to be talked to that way, just for making a
little bit of a mistake that anybody could make.”
“What mistake has he made?”
“Why, only the mistake of saying blackberries when of course he meant
strawberries.”
“Tom Sawyer, I lay if you aggravate me a little more, I’ll—”
“Aunt Sally, without knowing it—and of course without intending it—you
are in the wrong. If you’d ’a’ studied natural history the way you
ought, you would know that all over the world except just here in
Arkansaw they _always_ hunt strawberries with a dog—and a lantern—”
But she busted in on him there and just piled into him and snowed him
under. She was so mad she couldn’t get the words out fast enough, and
she gushed them out in one everlasting freshet. That was what Tom
Sawyer was after. He allowed to work her up and get her started and
then leave her alone and let her burn herself out. Then she would be so
aggravated with that subject that she wouldn’t say another word about
it, nor let anybody else. Well, it happened just so. When she was
tuckered out and had to hold up, he says, quite ca’m:
“And yet, all the same, Aunt Sally—”
“Shet up!” she says, “I don’t want to hear another word out of you.”
So we was perfectly safe, then, and didn’t have no more trouble about
that delay. Tom done it elegant.