The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Complete
robbery altogether—it’s _revenge_!” and a wicked light flamed in his
eyes. “I’ll need your help in it. When it’s finished—then Texas. Go home
to your Nance and your kids, and stand by till you hear from me.”
“Well—if you say so; what’ll we do with this—bury it again?”
“Yes. [Ravishing delight overhead.] _No_! by the great Sachem, no!
[Profound distress overhead.] I’d nearly forgot. That pick had fresh
earth on it! [The boys were sick with terror in a moment.] What business
has a pick and a shovel here? What business with fresh earth on
them? Who brought them here—and where are they gone? Have you heard
anybody?—seen anybody? What! bury it again and leave them to come and
see the ground disturbed? Not exactly—not exactly. We’ll take it to my
den.”
“Why, of course! Might have thought of that before. You mean Number
One?”
“No—Number Two—under the cross. The other place is bad—too common.”
“All right. It’s nearly dark enough to start.”
Injun Joe got up and went about from window to window cautiously peeping
out. Presently he said:
“Who could have brought those tools here? Do you reckon they can be
upstairs?”
The boys’ breath forsook them. Injun Joe put his hand on his knife,
halted a moment, undecided, and then turned toward the stairway. The
boys thought of the closet, but their strength was gone. The steps came
creaking up the stairs—the intolerable distress of the situation woke
the stricken resolution of the lads—they were about to spring for the
closet, when there was a crash of rotten timbers and Injun Joe landed on
the ground amid the debris of the ruined stairway. He gathered himself
up cursing, and his comrade said:
“Now what’s the use of all that? If it’s anybody, and they’re up there,
let them _stay_ there—who cares? If they want to jump down, now, and get
into trouble, who objects? It will be dark in fifteen minutes—and then
let them follow us if they want to. I’m willing. In my opinion, whoever
hove those things in here caught a sight of us and took us for ghosts or
devils or something. I’ll bet they’re running yet.”
Joe grumbled awhile; then he agreed with his friend that what daylight
was left ought to be economized in getting things ready for leaving.
Shortly afterward they slipped out of the house in the deepening
twilight, and moved toward the river with their precious box.
Tom and Huck rose up, weak but vastly relieved, and stared after them
through the chinks between the logs of the house. Follow? Not they. They
were content to reach ground again without broken necks, and take the
townward track over the hill. They did not talk much. They were too much
absorbed in hating themselves—hating the ill luck that made them take
the spade and the pick there. But for that, Injun Joe never would have
suspected. He would have hidden the silver with the gold to wait
there till his “revenge” was satisfied, and then he would have had the
misfortune to find that money turn up missing. Bitter, bitter luck that
the tools were ever brought there!
They resolved to keep a lookout for that Spaniard when he should come to
town spying out for chances to do his revengeful job, and follow him to
“Number Two,” wherever that might be. Then a ghastly thought occurred to
Tom.
“Revenge? What if he means _us_, Huck!”
“Oh, don’t!” said Huck, nearly fainting.
They talked it all over, and as they entered town they agreed to believe
that he might possibly mean somebody else—at least that he might at
least mean nobody but Tom, since only Tom had testified.
Very, very small comfort it was to Tom to be alone in danger! Company
would be a palpable improvement, he thought.
CHAPTER XXVII
The adventure of the day mightily tormented Tom’s dreams that night.
Four times he had his hands on that rich treasure and four times
it wasted to nothingness in his fingers as sleep forsook him and
wakefulness brought back the hard reality of his misfortune. As he lay
in the early morning recalling the incidents of his great adventure, he
noticed that they seemed curiously subdued and far away—somewhat as if
they had happened in another world, or in a time long gone by. Then it
occurred to him that the great adventure itself must be a dream! There
was one very strong argument in favor of this idea—namely, that the
quantity of coin he had seen was too vast to be real. He had never seen
as much as fifty dollars in one mass before, and he was like all boys of
his age and station in life, in that he imagined that all references to
“hundreds” and “thousands” were mere fanciful forms of speech, and that
no such sums really existed in the world. He never had supposed for
a moment that so large a sum as a hundred dollars was to be found in
actual money in any one’s possession. If his notions of hidden treasure
had been analyzed, they would have been found to consist of a handful of
real dimes and a bushel of vague, splendid, ungraspable dollars.
But the incidents of his adventure grew sensibly sharper and clearer
under the attrition of thinking them over, and so he presently found
himself leaning to the impression that the thing might not have been a
dream, after all. This uncertainty must be swept away. He would snatch a
hurried breakfast and go and find Huck.
Huck was sitting on the gunwale of a flatboat, listlessly dangling his
feet in the water and looking very melancholy. Tom concluded to let Huck
lead up to the subject. If he did not do it, then the adventure would be
proved to have been only a dream.
“Hello, Huck!”
“Hello, yourself.”
Silence, for a minute.
“Tom, if we’d ’a’ left the blame tools at the dead tree, we’d ’a’ got
the money. Oh, ain’t it awful!”
“’Tain’t a dream, then, ’tain’t a dream! Somehow I most wish it was.
Dog’d if I don’t, Huck.”
“What ain’t a dream?”
“Oh, that thing yesterday. I been half thinking it was.”
“Dream! If them stairs hadn’t broke down you’d ’a’ seen how much dream
it was! I’ve had dreams enough all night—with that patch-eyed Spanish
devil going for me all through ’em—rot him!”
“No, not rot him. _Find_ him! Track the money!”
“Tom, we’ll never find him. A feller don’t have only one chance for such
a pile—and that one’s lost. I’d feel mighty shaky if I was to see him,
anyway.”
“Well, so’d I; but I’d like to see him, anyway—and track him out—to his
Number Two.”
“Number Two—yes, that’s it. I been thinking ’bout that. But I can’t make
nothing out of it. What do you reckon it is?”
“I dono. It’s too deep. Say, Huck—maybe it’s the number of a house!”
“Goody!... No, Tom, that ain’t it. If it is, it ain’t in this one-horse
town. They ain’t no numbers here.”
“Well, that’s so. Lemme think a minute. Here—it’s the number of a
room—in a tavern, you know!”
“Oh, that’s the trick! They ain’t only two taverns. We can find out
quick.”
“You stay here, Huck, till I come.”
Tom was off at once. He did not care to have Huck’s company in public
places. He was gone half an hour. He found that in the best tavern, No.
2 had long been occupied by a young lawyer, and was still so occupied.
In the less ostentatious house, No. 2 was a mystery. The tavern-keeper’s
young son said it was kept locked all the time, and he never saw anybody
go into it or come out of it except at night; he did not know any
particular reason for this state of things; had had some little
curiosity, but it was rather feeble; had made the most of the mystery
by entertaining himself with the idea that that room was “ha’nted”; had
noticed that there was a light in there the night before.
“That’s what I’ve found out, Huck. I reckon that’s the very No. 2 we’re
after.”
“I reckon it is, Tom. Now what you going to do?”
“Lemme think.”
Tom thought a long time. Then he said:
“I’ll tell you. The back door of that No. 2 is the door that comes out
into that little close alley between the tavern and the old rattle trap
of a brick store. Now you get hold of all the doorkeys you can find, and
I’ll nip all of auntie’s, and the first dark night we’ll go there and
try ’em. And mind you, keep a lookout for Injun Joe, because he said he
was going to drop into town and spy around once more for a chance to get
his revenge. If you see him, you just follow him; and if he don’t go to
that No. 2, that ain’t the place.”
“Lordy, I don’t want to foller him by myself!”
“Why, it’ll be night, sure. He mightn’t ever see you—and if he did,
maybe he’d never think anything.”
“Well, if it’s pretty dark I reckon I’ll track him. I dono—I dono. I’ll
try.”
“You bet I’ll follow him, if it’s dark, Huck. Why, he might ’a’ found
out he couldn’t get his revenge, and be going right after that money.”
“It’s so, Tom, it’s so. I’ll foller him; I will, by jingoes!”
“Now you’re _talking_! Don’t you ever weaken, Huck, and I won’t.”
CHAPTER XXVIII
That night Tom and Huck were ready for their adventure. They hung about
the neighborhood of the tavern until after nine, one watching the alley
at a distance and the other the tavern door. Nobody entered the alley or
left it; nobody resembling the Spaniard entered or left the tavern
door. The night promised to be a fair one; so Tom went home with the
understanding that if a considerable degree of darkness came on, Huck
was to come and “maow,” whereupon he would slip out and try the keys.
But the night remained clear, and Huck closed his watch and retired to
bed in an empty sugar hogshead about twelve.
Tuesday the boys had the same ill luck. Also Wednesday. But Thursday
night promised better. Tom slipped out in good season with his aunt’s
old tin lantern, and a large towel to blindfold it with. He hid the
lantern in Huck’s sugar hogshead and the watch began. An hour before
midnight the tavern closed up and its lights (the only ones thereabouts)
were put out. No Spaniard had been seen. Nobody had entered or left the
alley. Everything was auspicious. The blackness of darkness reigned,
the perfect stillness was interrupted only by occasional mutterings of
distant thunder.
Tom got his lantern, lit it in the hogshead, wrapped it closely in the
towel, and the two adventurers crept in the gloom toward the tavern.
Huck stood sentry and Tom felt his way into the alley. Then there was
a season of waiting anxiety that weighed upon Huck’s spirits like a
mountain. He began to wish he could see a flash from the lantern—it
would frighten him, but it would at least tell him that Tom was alive
yet. It seemed hours since Tom had disappeared. Surely he must have
fainted; maybe he was dead; maybe his heart had burst under terror and
excitement. In his uneasiness Huck found himself drawing closer
and closer to the alley; fearing all sorts of dreadful things, and
momentarily expecting some catastrophe to happen that would take away
his breath. There was not much to take away, for he seemed only able to
inhale it by thimblefuls, and his heart would soon wear itself out, the
way it was beating. Suddenly there was a flash of light and Tom came
tearing by him: “Run!” said he; “run, for your life!”
He needn’t have repeated it; once was enough; Huck was making thirty or
forty miles an hour before the repetition was uttered. The boys never
stopped till they reached the shed of a deserted slaughter-house at the
lower end of the village. Just as they got within its shelter the storm
burst and the rain poured down. As soon as Tom got his breath he said:
“Huck, it was awful! I tried two of the keys, just as soft as I could;
but they seemed to make such a power of racket that I couldn’t hardly
get my breath I was so scared. They wouldn’t turn in the lock, either.
Well, without noticing what I was doing, I took hold of the knob, and
open comes the door! It warn’t locked! I hopped in, and shook off the
towel, and, _Great Caesar’s Ghost!_”
“What!—what’d you see, Tom?”