Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
considerable many ways in my mind; and at last fixed up a plan that
suited me. So then I took the bearings of a woody island that was down
the river a piece, and as soon as it was fairly dark I crept out with
my raft and went for it, and hid it there, and then turned in. I slept
the night through, and got up before it was light, and had my
breakfast, and put on my store clothes, and tied up some others and one
thing or another in a bundle, and took the canoe and cleared for shore.
I landed below where I judged was Phelps’s place, and hid my bundle in
the woods, and then filled up the canoe with water, and loaded rocks
into her and sunk her where I could find her again when I wanted her,
about a quarter of a mile below a little steam sawmill that was on the
bank.
Then I struck up the road, and when I passed the mill I see a sign on
it, “Phelps’s Sawmill,” and when I come to the farm-houses, two or
three hundred yards further along, I kept my eyes peeled, but didn’t
see nobody around, though it was good daylight now. But I didn’t mind,
because I didn’t want to see nobody just yet—I only wanted to get the
lay of the land. According to my plan, I was going to turn up there
from the village, not from below. So I just took a look, and shoved
along, straight for town. Well, the very first man I see when I got
there was the duke. He was sticking up a bill for the Royal
Nonesuch—three-night performance—like that other time. _They_ had the
cheek, them frauds! I was right on him before I could shirk. He looked
astonished, and says:
“Hel-_lo!_ Where’d _you_ come from?” Then he says, kind of glad and
eager, “Where’s the raft?—got her in a good place?”
I says:
“Why, that’s just what I was going to ask your grace.”
Then he didn’t look so joyful, and says:
“What was your idea for asking _me?_” he says.
“Well,” I says, “when I see the king in that doggery yesterday I says
to myself, we can’t get him home for hours, till he’s soberer; so I
went a-loafing around town to put in the time and wait. A man up and
offered me ten cents to help him pull a skiff over the river and back
to fetch a sheep, and so I went along; but when we was dragging him to
the boat, and the man left me a-holt of the rope and went behind him to
shove him along, he was too strong for me and jerked loose and run, and
we after him. We didn’t have no dog, and so we had to chase him all
over the country till we tired him out. We never got him till dark;
then we fetched him over, and I started down for the raft. When I got
there and see it was gone, I says to myself, ‘they’ve got into trouble
and had to leave; and they’ve took my nigger, which is the only nigger
I’ve got in the world, and now I’m in a strange country, and ain’t got
no property no more, nor nothing, and no way to make my living;’ so I
set down and cried. I slept in the woods all night. But what _did_
become of the raft, then?—and Jim—poor Jim!”
“Blamed if _I_ know—that is, what’s become of the raft. That old fool
had made a trade and got forty dollars, and when we found him in the
doggery the loafers had matched half-dollars with him and got every
cent but what he’d spent for whisky; and when I got him home late last
night and found the raft gone, we said, ‘That little rascal has stole
our raft and shook us, and run off down the river.’”
“I wouldn’t shake my _nigger_, would I?—the only nigger I had in the
world, and the only property.”
“We never thought of that. Fact is, I reckon we’d come to consider him
_our_ nigger; yes, we did consider him so—goodness knows we had trouble
enough for him. So when we see the raft was gone and we flat broke,
there warn’t anything for it but to try the Royal Nonesuch another
shake. And I’ve pegged along ever since, dry as a powder-horn. Where’s
that ten cents? Give it here.”
I had considerable money, so I give him ten cents, but begged him to
spend it for something to eat, and give me some, because it was all the
money I had, and I hadn’t had nothing to eat since yesterday. He never
said nothing. The next minute he whirls on me and says:
“Do you reckon that nigger would blow on us? We’d skin him if he done
that!”
“How can he blow? Hain’t he run off?”
“No! That old fool sold him, and never divided with me, and the money’s
gone.”
“_Sold_ him?” I says, and begun to cry; “why, he was _my_ nigger, and
that was my money. Where is he?—I want my nigger.”
“Well, you can’t _get_ your nigger, that’s all—so dry up your
blubbering. Looky here—do you think _you’d_ venture to blow on us?
Blamed if I think I’d trust you. Why, if you _was_ to blow on us—”
He stopped, but I never see the duke look so ugly out of his eyes
before. I went on a-whimpering, and says:
“I don’t want to blow on nobody; and I ain’t got no time to blow,
nohow. I got to turn out and find my nigger.”
He looked kinder bothered, and stood there with his bills fluttering on
his arm, thinking, and wrinkling up his forehead. At last he says:
“I’ll tell you something. We got to be here three days. If you’ll
promise you won’t blow, and won’t let the nigger blow, I’ll tell you
where to find him.”
So I promised, and he says:
“A farmer by the name of Silas Ph—” and then he stopped. You see, he
started to tell me the truth; but when he stopped that way, and begun
to study and think again, I reckoned he was changing his mind. And so
he was. He wouldn’t trust me; he wanted to make sure of having me out
of the way the whole three days. So pretty soon he says:
“The man that bought him is named Abram Foster—Abram G. Foster—and he
lives forty mile back here in the country, on the road to Lafayette.”
“All right,” I says, “I can walk it in three days. And I’ll start this
very afternoon.”
“No you wont, you’ll start _now;_ and don’t you lose any time about it,
neither, nor do any gabbling by the way. Just keep a tight tongue in
your head and move right along, and then you won’t get into trouble
with _us_, d’ye hear?”
That was the order I wanted, and that was the one I played for. I
wanted to be left free to work my plans.
“So clear out,” he says; “and you can tell Mr. Foster whatever you want
to. Maybe you can get him to believe that Jim _is_ your nigger—some
idiots don’t require documents—leastways I’ve heard there’s such down
South here. And when you tell him the handbill and the reward’s bogus,
maybe he’ll believe you when you explain to him what the idea was for
getting ’em out. Go ’long now, and tell him anything you want to; but
mind you don’t work your jaw any _between_ here and there.”
So I left, and struck for the back country. I didn’t look around, but I
kinder felt like he was watching me. But I knowed I could tire him out
at that. I went straight out in the country as much as a mile before I
stopped; then I doubled back through the woods towards Phelps’. I
reckoned I better start in on my plan straight off without fooling
around, because I wanted to stop Jim’s mouth till these fellows could
get away. I didn’t want no trouble with their kind. I’d seen all I
wanted to of them, and wanted to get entirely shut of them.
CHAPTER XXXII.
When I got there it was all still and Sunday-like, and hot and
sunshiny; the hands was gone to the fields; and there was them kind of
faint dronings of bugs and flies in the air that makes it seem so
lonesome and like everybody’s dead and gone; and if a breeze fans along
and quivers the leaves it makes you feel mournful, because you feel
like it’s spirits whispering—spirits that’s been dead ever so many
years—and you always think they’re talking about _you_. As a general
thing it makes a body wish _he_ was dead, too, and done with it all.
Phelps’ was one of these little one-horse cotton plantations, and they
all look alike. A rail fence round a two-acre yard; a stile made out of
logs sawed off and up-ended in steps, like barrels of a different
length, to climb over the fence with, and for the women to stand on
when they are going to jump on to a horse; some sickly grass-patches in
the big yard, but mostly it was bare and smooth, like an old hat with
the nap rubbed off; big double log-house for the white folks—hewed
logs, with the chinks stopped up with mud or mortar, and these
mud-stripes been whitewashed some time or another; round-log kitchen,
with a big broad, open but roofed passage joining it to the house; log
smoke-house back of the kitchen; three little log nigger-cabins in a
row t’other side the smoke-house; one little hut all by itself away
down against the back fence, and some outbuildings down a piece the
other side; ash-hopper and big kettle to bile soap in by the little
hut; bench by the kitchen door, with bucket of water and a gourd; hound
asleep there in the sun; more hounds asleep round about; about three
shade trees away off in a corner; some currant bushes and gooseberry
bushes in one place by the fence; outside of the fence a garden and a
watermelon patch; then the cotton fields begins, and after the fields
the woods.
I went around and clumb over the back stile by the ash-hopper, and
started for the kitchen. When I got a little ways I heard the dim hum
of a spinning-wheel wailing along up and sinking along down again; and
then I knowed for certain I wished I was dead—for that _is_ the
lonesomest sound in the whole world.
I went right along, not fixing up any particular plan, but just
trusting to Providence to put the right words in my mouth when the time
come; for I’d noticed that Providence always did put the right words in
my mouth if I left it alone.
When I got half-way, first one hound and then another got up and went
for me, and of course I stopped and faced them, and kept still. And
such another powwow as they made! In a quarter of a minute I was a kind
of a hub of a wheel, as you may say—spokes made out of dogs—circle of
fifteen of them packed together around me, with their necks and noses
stretched up towards me, a-barking and howling; and more a-coming; you
could see them sailing over fences and around corners from everywheres.
A nigger woman come tearing out of the kitchen with a rolling-pin in
her hand, singing out, “Begone _you_ Tige! you Spot! begone sah!” and
she fetched first one and then another of them a clip and sent them
howling, and then the rest followed; and the next second half of them
come back, wagging their tails around me, and making friends with me.
There ain’t no harm in a hound, nohow.
And behind the woman comes a little nigger girl and two little nigger
boys without anything on but tow-linen shirts, and they hung on to
their mother’s gown, and peeped out from behind her at me, bashful, the
way they always do. And here comes the white woman running from the
house, about forty-five or fifty year old, bareheaded, and her
spinning-stick in her hand; and behind her comes her little white
children, acting the same way the little niggers was doing. She was
smiling all over so she could hardly stand—and says:
“It’s _you_, at last!—_ain’t_ it?”
I out with a “Yes’m” before I thought.
She grabbed me and hugged me tight; and then gripped me by both hands
and shook and shook; and the tears come in her eyes, and run down over;
and she couldn’t seem to hug and shake enough, and kept saying, “You
don’t look as much like your mother as I reckoned you would; but law
sakes, I don’t care for that, I’m _so_ glad to see you! Dear, dear, it
does seem like I could eat you up! Children, it’s your cousin Tom!—tell
him howdy.”
But they ducked their heads, and put their fingers in their mouths, and
hid behind her. So she run on:
“Lize, hurry up and get him a hot breakfast right away—or did you get
your breakfast on the boat?”
I said I had got it on the boat. So then she started for the house,