The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Complete
The whisper died wholly out, now, for the three men had reached the
grave and stood within a few feet of the boys’ hiding-place.
“Here it is,” said the third voice; and the owner of it held the lantern
up and revealed the face of young Doctor Robinson.
Potter and Injun Joe were carrying a handbarrow with a rope and a couple
of shovels on it. They cast down their load and began to open the grave.
The doctor put the lantern at the head of the grave and came and sat
down with his back against one of the elm trees. He was so close the
boys could have touched him.
“Hurry, men!” he said, in a low voice; “the moon might come out at any
moment.”
They growled a response and went on digging. For some time there was no
noise but the grating sound of the spades discharging their freight of
mould and gravel. It was very monotonous. Finally a spade struck upon
the coffin with a dull woody accent, and within another minute or two
the men had hoisted it out on the ground. They pried off the lid with
their shovels, got out the body and dumped it rudely on the ground. The
moon drifted from behind the clouds and exposed the pallid face.
The barrow was got ready and the corpse placed on it, covered with a
blanket, and bound to its place with the rope. Potter took out a large
spring-knife and cut off the dangling end of the rope and then said:
“Now the cussed thing’s ready, Sawbones, and you’ll just out with
another five, or here she stays.”
“That’s the talk!” said Injun Joe.
“Look here, what does this mean?” said the doctor. “You required your
pay in advance, and I’ve paid you.”
“Yes, and you done more than that,” said Injun Joe, approaching the
doctor, who was now standing. “Five years ago you drove me away from
your father’s kitchen one night, when I come to ask for something to
eat, and you said I warn’t there for any good; and when I swore I’d get
even with you if it took a hundred years, your father had me jailed for
a vagrant. Did you think I’d forget? The Injun blood ain’t in me for
nothing. And now I’ve _got_ you, and you got to _settle_, you know!”
He was threatening the doctor, with his fist in his face, by this time.
The doctor struck out suddenly and stretched the ruffian on the ground.
Potter dropped his knife, and exclaimed:
“Here, now, don’t you hit my pard!” and the next moment he had grappled
with the doctor and the two were struggling with might and main,
trampling the grass and tearing the ground with their heels. Injun Joe
sprang to his feet, his eyes flaming with passion, snatched up Potter’s
knife, and went creeping, catlike and stooping, round and round about
the combatants, seeking an opportunity. All at once the doctor flung
himself free, seized the heavy headboard of Williams’ grave and felled
Potter to the earth with it—and in the same instant the half-breed saw
his chance and drove the knife to the hilt in the young man’s breast. He
reeled and fell partly upon Potter, flooding him with his blood, and in
the same moment the clouds blotted out the dreadful spectacle and the
two frightened boys went speeding away in the dark.
Presently, when the moon emerged again, Injun Joe was standing over the
two forms, contemplating them. The doctor murmured inarticulately, gave
a long gasp or two and was still. The half-breed muttered:
“_That_ score is settled—damn you.”
Then he robbed the body. After which he put the fatal knife in Potter’s
open right hand, and sat down on the dismantled coffin. Three—four—five
minutes passed, and then Potter began to stir and moan. His hand closed
upon the knife; he raised it, glanced at it, and let it fall, with a
shudder. Then he sat up, pushing the body from him, and gazed at it, and
then around him, confusedly. His eyes met Joe’s.
“Lord, how is this, Joe?” he said.
“It’s a dirty business,” said Joe, without moving. “What did you do it
for?”
“I! I never done it!”
“Look here! That kind of talk won’t wash.”
Potter trembled and grew white.
“I thought I’d got sober. I’d no business to drink to-night. But it’s
in my head yet—worse’n when we started here. I’m all in a muddle;
can’t recollect anything of it, hardly. Tell me, Joe—_honest_, now,
old feller—did I do it? Joe, I never meant to—’pon my soul and honor, I
never meant to, Joe. Tell me how it was, Joe. Oh, it’s awful—and him so
young and promising.”
“Why, you two was scuffling, and he fetched you one with the headboard
and you fell flat; and then up you come, all reeling and staggering
like, and snatched the knife and jammed it into him, just as he fetched
you another awful clip—and here you’ve laid, as dead as a wedge til
now.”
“Oh, I didn’t know what I was a-doing. I wish I may die this minute if I
did. It was all on account of the whiskey and the excitement, I reckon.
I never used a weepon in my life before, Joe. I’ve fought, but never
with weepons. They’ll all say that. Joe, don’t tell! Say you won’t tell,
Joe—that’s a good feller. I always liked you, Joe, and stood up for you,
too. Don’t you remember? You _won’t_ tell, _will_ you, Joe?” And the
poor creature dropped on his knees before the stolid murderer, and
clasped his appealing hands.
“No, you’ve always been fair and square with me, Muff Potter, and I
won’t go back on you. There, now, that’s as fair as a man can say.”
“Oh, Joe, you’re an angel. I’ll bless you for this the longest day I
live.” And Potter began to cry.
“Come, now, that’s enough of that. This ain’t any time for blubbering.
You be off yonder way and I’ll go this. Move, now, and don’t leave any
tracks behind you.”
Potter started on a trot that quickly increased to a run. The half-breed
stood looking after him. He muttered:
“If he’s as much stunned with the lick and fuddled with the rum as he
had the look of being, he won’t think of the knife till he’s gone so
far he’ll be afraid to come back after it to such a place by
himself—chicken-heart!”
Two or three minutes later the murdered man, the blanketed corpse, the
lidless coffin, and the open grave were under no inspection but the
moon’s. The stillness was complete again, too.
CHAPTER X
The two boys flew on and on, toward the village, speechless with
horror. They glanced backward over their shoulders from time to time,
apprehensively, as if they feared they might be followed. Every stump
that started up in their path seemed a man and an enemy, and made them
catch their breath; and as they sped by some outlying cottages that lay
near the village, the barking of the aroused watch-dogs seemed to give
wings to their feet.
“If we can only get to the old tannery before we break down!” whispered
Tom, in short catches between breaths. “I can’t stand it much longer.”
Huckleberry’s hard pantings were his only reply, and the boys fixed
their eyes on the goal of their hopes and bent to their work to win it.
They gained steadily on it, and at last, breast to breast, they burst
through the open door and fell grateful and exhausted in the sheltering
shadows beyond. By and by their pulses slowed down, and Tom whispered:
“Huckleberry, what do you reckon’ll come of this?”
“If Doctor Robinson dies, I reckon hanging’ll come of it.”
“Do you though?”
“Why, I _know_ it, Tom.”
Tom thought a while, then he said:
“Who’ll tell? We?”
“What are you talking about? S’pose something happened and Injun Joe
_didn’t_ hang? Why, he’d kill us some time or other, just as dead sure
as we’re a laying here.”
“That’s just what I was thinking to myself, Huck.”
“If anybody tells, let Muff Potter do it, if he’s fool enough. He’s
generally drunk enough.”
Tom said nothing—went on thinking. Presently he whispered:
“Huck, Muff Potter don’t know it. How can he tell?”
“What’s the reason he don’t know it?”
“Because he’d just got that whack when Injun Joe done it. D’you reckon
he could see anything? D’you reckon he knowed anything?”
“By hokey, that’s so, Tom!”
“And besides, look-a-here—maybe that whack done for _him_!”
“No, ’taint likely, Tom. He had liquor in him; I could see that; and
besides, he always has. Well, when pap’s full, you might take and belt
him over the head with a church and you couldn’t phase him. He says so,
his own self. So it’s the same with Muff Potter, of course. But if a man
was dead sober, I reckon maybe that whack might fetch him; I dono.”
After another reflective silence, Tom said:
“Hucky, you sure you can keep mum?”
“Tom, we _got_ to keep mum. You know that. That Injun devil wouldn’t
make any more of drownding us than a couple of cats, if we was to squeak
’bout this and they didn’t hang him. Now, look-a-here, Tom, less take
and swear to one another—that’s what we got to do—swear to keep mum.”
“I’m agreed. It’s the best thing. Would you just hold hands and swear
that we—”
“Oh no, that wouldn’t do for this. That’s good enough for little
rubbishy common things—specially with gals, cuz _they_ go back on you
anyway, and blab if they get in a huff—but there orter be writing ’bout
a big thing like this. And blood.”
Tom’s whole being applauded this idea. It was deep, and dark, and awful;
the hour, the circumstances, the surroundings, were in keeping with it.
He picked up a clean pine shingle that lay in the moon-light, took a
little fragment of “red keel” out of his pocket, got the moon on
his work, and painfully scrawled these lines, emphasizing each slow
down-stroke by clamping his tongue between his teeth, and letting up the
pressure on the up-strokes.
“Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer swears they will keep mum about This and
They wish They may Drop down dead in Their Tracks if They ever Tell
and Rot.”
Huckleberry was filled with admiration of Tom’s facility in writing, and
the sublimity of his language. He at once took a pin from his lapel and
was going to prick his flesh, but Tom said:
“Hold on! Don’t do that. A pin’s brass. It might have verdigrease on
it.”
“What’s verdigrease?”
“It’s p’ison. That’s what it is. You just swaller some of it once—you’ll
see.”
So Tom unwound the thread from one of his needles, and each boy pricked
the ball of his thumb and squeezed out a drop of blood. In time, after
many squeezes, Tom managed to sign his initials, using the ball of his
little finger for a pen. Then he showed Huckleberry how to make an H and
an F, and the oath was complete. They buried the shingle close to the
wall, with some dismal ceremonies and incantations, and the fetters
that bound their tongues were considered to be locked and the key thrown
away.
A figure crept stealthily through a break in the other end of the ruined
building, now, but they did not notice it.
“Tom,” whispered Huckleberry, “does this keep us from _ever_
telling—_always_?”
“Of course it does. It don’t make any difference _what_ happens, we got
to keep mum. We’d drop down dead—don’t _you_ know that?”
“Yes, I reckon that’s so.”
They continued to whisper for some little time. Presently a dog set up
a long, lugubrious howl just outside—within ten feet of them. The boys
clasped each other suddenly, in an agony of fright.
“Which of us does he mean?” gasped Huckleberry.
“I dono—peep through the crack. Quick!”
“No, _you_, Tom!”
“I can’t—I can’t _do_ it, Huck!”
“Please, Tom. There ’tis again!”
“Oh, lordy, I’m thankful!” whispered Tom. “I know his voice. It’s Bull
Harbison.” *
[* If Mr. Harbison owned a slave named Bull, Tom would have spoken of
him as “Harbison’s Bull,” but a son or a dog of that name was “Bull
Harbison.”]
“Oh, that’s good—I tell you, Tom, I was most scared to death; I’d a bet
anything it was a _stray_ dog.”
The dog howled again. The boys’ hearts sank once more.
“Oh, my! that ain’t no Bull Harbison!” whispered Huckleberry. “_Do_,
Tom!”
Tom, quaking with fear, yielded, and put his eye to the crack. His