Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
down the river, too. That’s why I come. You git me that money
to-morrow—I want it.”
“I hain’t got no money.”
“It’s a lie. Judge Thatcher’s got it. You git it. I want it.”
“I hain’t got no money, I tell you. You ask Judge Thatcher; he’ll tell
you the same.”
“All right. I’ll ask him; and I’ll make him pungle, too, or I’ll know
the reason why. Say, how much you got in your pocket? I want it.”
“I hain’t got only a dollar, and I want that to—”
“It don’t make no difference what you want it for—you just shell it
out.”
He took it and bit it to see if it was good, and then he said he was
going down town to get some whisky; said he hadn’t had a drink all day.
When he had got out on the shed he put his head in again, and cussed me
for putting on frills and trying to be better than him; and when I
reckoned he was gone he come back and put his head in again, and told
me to mind about that school, because he was going to lay for me and
lick me if I didn’t drop that.
Next day he was drunk, and he went to Judge Thatcher’s and bullyragged
him, and tried to make him give up the money; but he couldn’t, and then
he swore he’d make the law force him.
The judge and the widow went to law to get the court to take me away
from him and let one of them be my guardian; but it was a new judge
that had just come, and he didn’t know the old man; so he said courts
mustn’t interfere and separate families if they could help it; said
he’d druther not take a child away from its father. So Judge Thatcher
and the widow had to quit on the business.
That pleased the old man till he couldn’t rest. He said he’d cowhide me
till I was black and blue if I didn’t raise some money for him. I
borrowed three dollars from Judge Thatcher, and pap took it and got
drunk, and went a-blowing around and cussing and whooping and carrying
on; and he kept it up all over town, with a tin pan, till most
midnight; then they jailed him, and next day they had him before court,
and jailed him again for a week. But he said _he_ was satisfied; said
he was boss of his son, and he’d make it warm for _him_.
When he got out the new judge said he was a-going to make a man of him.
So he took him to his own house, and dressed him up clean and nice, and
had him to breakfast and dinner and supper with the family, and was
just old pie to him, so to speak. And after supper he talked to him
about temperance and such things till the old man cried, and said he’d
been a fool, and fooled away his life; but now he was a-going to turn
over a new leaf and be a man nobody wouldn’t be ashamed of, and he
hoped the judge would help him and not look down on him. The judge said
he could hug him for them words; so _he_ cried, and his wife she cried
again; pap said he’d been a man that had always been misunderstood
before, and the judge said he believed it. The old man said that what a
man wanted that was down was sympathy, and the judge said it was so; so
they cried again. And when it was bedtime the old man rose up and held
out his hand, and says:
“Look at it, gentlemen and ladies all; take a-hold of it; shake it.
There’s a hand that was the hand of a hog; but it ain’t so no more;
it’s the hand of a man that’s started in on a new life, and’ll die
before he’ll go back. You mark them words—don’t forget I said them.
It’s a clean hand now; shake it—don’t be afeard.”
So they shook it, one after the other, all around, and cried. The
judge’s wife she kissed it. Then the old man he signed a pledge—made
his mark. The judge said it was the holiest time on record, or
something like that. Then they tucked the old man into a beautiful
room, which was the spare room, and in the night some time he got
powerful thirsty and clumb out on to the porch-roof and slid down a
stanchion and traded his new coat for a jug of forty-rod, and clumb
back again and had a good old time; and towards daylight he crawled out
again, drunk as a fiddler, and rolled off the porch and broke his left
arm in two places, and was most froze to death when somebody found him
after sun-up. And when they come to look at that spare room they had to
take soundings before they could navigate it.
The judge he felt kind of sore. He said he reckoned a body could reform
the old man with a shotgun, maybe, but he didn’t know no other way.
CHAPTER VI.
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 drownded, 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