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 drowned, 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 towards 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 agin. 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 agin.
Them's the very words I said; they all heard me; and the country may rot
for all me --I'll never vote agin 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 agoing 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 a
while, 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, 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.