A NIGHT’S VIGIL
Benny she was looking pretty sober, and she sighed some, now and then;
but pretty soon she got to asking about Mary, and Sid, and Tom’s aunt
Polly, and then Aunt Sally’s clouds cleared off and she got in a good
humor and joined in on the questions and was her lovingest best self,
and so the rest of the supper went along gay and pleasant. But the old
man he didn’t take any hand hardly, and was absent-minded and restless,
and done a considerable amount of sighing; and it was kind of
heart-breaking to see him so sad and troubled and worried.
By and by, a spell after supper, come a nigger and knocked on the door
and put his head in with his old straw hat in his hand bowing and
scraping, and said his Marse Brace was out at the stile and wanted his
brother, and was getting tired waiting supper for him, and would Marse
Silas please tell him where he was? I never see Uncle Silas speak up so
sharp and fractious before. He says:
“Am I his brother’s keeper?” And then he kind of wilted together, and
looked like he wished he hadn’t spoken so, and then he says, very
gentle: “But you needn’t say that, Billy; I was took sudden and
irritable, and I ain’t very well these days, and not hardly
responsible. Tell him he ain’t here.”
And when the nigger was gone he got up and walked the floor, backwards
and forwards, mumbling and muttering to himself and plowing his hands
through his hair. It was real pitiful to see him. Aunt Sally she
whispered to us and told us not to take notice of him, it embarrassed
him. She said he was always thinking and thinking, since these troubles
come on, and she allowed he didn’t more’n about half know what he was
about when the thinking spells was on him; and she said he walked in
his sleep considerable more now than he used to, and sometimes wandered
around over the house and even outdoors in his sleep, and if we catched
him at it we must let him alone and not disturb him. She said she
reckoned it didn’t do him no harm, and may be it done him good. She
said Benny was the only one that was much help to him these days. Said
Benny appeared to know just when to try to soothe him and when to leave
him alone.
So he kept on tramping up and down the floor and muttering, till by and
by he begun to look pretty tired; then Benny she went and snuggled up
to his side and put one hand in his and one arm around his waist and
walked with him; and he smiled down on her, and reached down and kissed
her; and so, little by little the trouble went out of his face and she
persuaded him off to his room. They had very petting ways together, and
it was uncommon pretty to see.
Aunt Sally she was busy getting the children ready for bed; so by and
by it got dull and tedious, and me and Tom took a turn in the
moonlight, and fetched up in the watermelon-patch and et one, and had a
good deal of talk. And Tom said he’d bet the quarreling was all
Jubiter’s fault, and he was going to be on hand the first time he got a
chance, and see; and if it was so, he was going to do his level best to
get Uncle Silas to turn him off.
And so we talked and smoked and stuffed watermelons much as two hours,
and then it was pretty late, and when we got back the house was quiet
and dark, and everybody gone to bed.
[Illustration: Smoked and stuffed watermelon]
Tom he always seen everything, and now he see that the old green baize
work-gown was gone, and said it wasn’t gone when he went out; so he
allowed it was curious, and then we went up to bed.
We could hear Benny stirring around in her room, which was next to
ourn, and judged she was worried a good deal about her father and
couldn’t sleep. We found we couldn’t, neither. So we set up a long
time, and smoked and talked in a low voice, and felt pretty dull and
down-hearted. We talked the murder and the ghost over and over again,
and got so creepy and crawly we couldn’t get sleepy nohow and noway.
By and by, when it was away late in the night and all the sounds was
late sounds and solemn, Tom nudged me and whispers to me to look, and I
done it, and there we see a man poking around in the yard like he
didn’t know just what he wanted to do, but it was pretty dim and we
couldn’t see him good. Then he started for the stile, and as he went
over it the moon came out strong, and he had a long-handled shovel over
his shoulder, and we see the white patch on the old work-gown. So Tom
says:
“He’s a-walking in his sleep. I wish we was allowed to follow him and
see where he’s going to. There, he’s turned down by the tobacker-field.
Out of sight now. It’s a dreadful pity he can’t rest no better.”
We waited a long time, but he didn’t come back any more, or if he did
he come around the other way; so at last we was tuckered out and went
to sleep and had nightmares, a million of them. But before dawn we was
awake again, because meantime a storm had come up and been raging, and
the thunder and lightning was awful, and the wind was a-thrashing the
trees around, and the rain was driving down in slanting sheets, and the
gullies was running rivers. Tom says:
“Looky here, Huck, I’ll tell you one thing that’s mighty curious. Up to
the time we went out last night the family hadn’t heard about Jake
Dunlap being murdered. Now the men that chased Hal Clayton and Bud
Dixon away would spread the thing around in a half an hour, and every
neighbor that heard it would shin out and fly around from one farm to
t’other and try to be the first to tell the news. Land, they don’t have
such a big thing as that to tell twice in thirty year! Huck, it’s
mighty strange; I don’t understand it.”
So then he was in a fidget for the rain to let up, so we could turn out
and run across some of the people and see if they would say anything
about it to us. And he said if they did we must be horribly surprised
and shocked.
We was out and gone the minute the rain stopped. It was just broad day
then. We loafed along up the road, and now and then met a person and
stopped and said howdy, and told them when we come, and how we left the
folks at home, and how long we was going to stay, and all that, but
none of them said a word about that thing; which was just astonishing,
and no mistake. Tom said he believed if we went to the sycamores we
would find that body laying there solitary and alone, and not a soul
around. Said he believed the men chased the thieves so far into the
woods that the thieves prob’ly seen a good chance and turned on them at
last, and maybe they all killed each other, and so there wasn’t anybody
left to tell.
First we knowed, gabbling along that away, we was right at the
sycamores. The cold chills trickled down my back and I wouldn’t budge
another step, for all Tom’s persuading. But he couldn’t hold in; he’d
_got_ to see if the boots was safe on that body yet. So he crope in—and
the next minute out he come again with his eyes bulging he was so
excited, and says:
[Illustration: Huck, it’s gone!]
“Huck, it’s gone!”
I _was_ astonished! I says:
“Tom, you don’t mean it.”
“It’s gone, sure. There ain’t a sign of it. The ground is trampled
some, but if there was any blood it’s all washed away by the storm, for
it’s all puddles and slush in there.”
At last I give in, and went and took a look myself; and it was just as
Tom said—there wasn’t a sign of a corpse.
“Dern it,” I says, “the di’monds is gone. Don’t you reckon the thieves
slunk back and lugged him off, Tom?”
“Looks like it. It just does. Now where’d they hide him, do you
reckon?”
“I don’t know,” I says, disgusted, “and what’s more I don’t care.
They’ve got the boots, and that’s all I cared about. He’ll lay around
these woods a long time before I hunt him up.”
Tom didn’t feel no more intrust in him neither, only curiosity to know
what come of him; but he said we’d lay low and keep dark and it
wouldn’t be long till the dogs or somebody rousted him out.
We went back home to breakfast ever so bothered and put out and
disappointed and swindled. I warn’t ever so down on a corpse before.