Chapter 06 (Adventures of Huckleberry Finn)

01CHAPTER VI.

02Well, 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.

03He 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.

04I didn't want to go to school much before, but I reckon I'd go now to spite Pap.

05That law trial was a slow business.

06Appeared like they weren't ever going to get started on it.

07So every now and then I'd borrow two or three dollars off of the Judge for him to keep from getting a cowhiding.

08Every time he got money he got drunk.

09And every time he got drunk he raised cane around town.

10And every time he raised cane he got jailed.

11He was just suited.

12This kind of thing was right in his line.

13He got to hanging round the widders too much, and so she told him at last that if he didn't quit using around there she would make trouble for him.

14Well wasn't he mad?

15He said he would show who was Huck Finn's boss.

16So 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, crossed over to Illinois Shore where it was woody, and there weren't no houses but an old log hut in a place where the timber was so thick you couldn't find it if he didn't know where it was.

17He kept me with him all the time, and I never got a chance to run off.

18He lived in that old cabin, and he always locked the door and put the key under his head nights.

19He had a gun which he had stole, I reckon, and we fished and hunted, and that was what we lived on.

20Every 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.

21The 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 a 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.

22It was kind of lazy and jolly, laying off comfortable all day, smoking and fishing, and no books nor study.

23Two 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 Ole Miss Watson pecking at you all the time.

24I didn't want to go back no more.

25I had stopped cussing, because the widow didn't like it, but now I took to it again, because Pap hadn't no objections.

26It was pretty good times up in the woods there, take it all around.

27But by and by Pap got too handy with his hickory, and I couldn't stand it.

28I was all over welts.

29He got to goin' away so much, too, an lockin' me in.

30Once he locked me in an was gone three days.

31It was dreadful lonesome.

32I judged he had got drownded, and I wasn't ever goin' to get out any more.

33I was scared.

34I made up my mind I would fix up some way to leave there.

35I had tried to get out of that cabin many a time, but I couldn't find no way.

36There weren't a window to it big enough for a dog to get through.

37I couldn't get up the Chimbley.

38It was too narrow.

39The door was thick, solid oak slabs.

40Pap was pretty careful not to leave a knife or anything in the cabin when he was away.

41I reckon I had hunted the place over as much as a hundred times.

42Well, I was most all the time at it, because it was about the only thing to put in the time.

43But this time I found something at last.

44I found an old rusty wood-saw without any handle.

45It was laid in between a rafter and the clapboards of the roof.

46I greased it up and went to work.

47There was an old horse-blanket kneeled against the logs at the far end of the cabin behind the table, to keep the wind from blowin' through the chinks and puttin' the candle out.

48I 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.

49Well, it was a good long job, but I was gettin' towards the end of it when I heard Pap's gun in the woods.

50I got rid of the signs of my work, and dropped the blanket and hid my saw, and pretty soon Pap come in.

51Pap weren't in a good humour, so he was his natural self.

52He said he was downtown, and everything was goin' wrong.

53His lawyer said he reckoned he would win his lawsuit and get the money if they ever got started up on the trial.

54But then there was ways to put it off a long time, and Judge Thatcher knowed how to do it.

55And he said people allowed there 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.

56This shook me up considerable, because I didn't want to go back to the widow's any more, and be so cramped up and civilized, as they called it.

57Then 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.

58And after that he polished off with a kind of 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.

59He said he would like to see the widow get me.

60He 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.

61That made me pretty uneasy again, but only for a minute.

62I reckoned I wouldn't stay on hand till he got that chance.

63The old man made me go to the skiff and fetch the things he had got.

64There was a fifty-pound sack of cornmeal, and a side of bacon, ammunition, and a four-gallon jug of whisky, and an old book and two newspapers for a wadding beside some towel.

65I towed it up a load, and went back and set down in the bow of the skiff to rest.

66I thought it all over, and I reckoned I would walk off with a gun and some lines, and take to the woods when I run away.

67I 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.

68I judged I would saw out and leave that night if Pap got drunk enough, and I reckoned he would.

69I 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.

70I got the things all up to the cabin, and then it was about dark.

71While I was cooking supper the old man took a swig or two and got sort of warmed up, and went to ripping again.

72He had been drunk over in town, and laid in the gutter all night, and he was a sight to look at.

73Body would have thought he was at him, he was just all mud.

74Whenever his liquor begun to work he most always went for the government, and this time he says, call this a government.

75Why, just look at it and see what it's like.

76Here's the law a-standin' 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 raisin.

77Yes, just as that man has got that son raised at last, and ready to go to work and begin to do something for him and give him a rest, the law up and goes for him.

78And they call that government.

79That ain't all, nother.

80The law backs that old Judge Thatcher up, and helps him to keep me out of my property.

81Here's what the law does.

82The law takes a man worth six thousand dollars and upwards, and jams him into an old trap of a cabin like this, and lets him go round in clothes that ain't fitting for a hog.

83They call that government.

84Man can't get his rights in a government like this.

85Sometimes I got a mighty notion to just leave the country for good and all.

86Yes, and I told him so.

87I told old Thatcher so to his face.

88Lots of them heard me, and can tell what I said.

89Says I.

90For two cents I'd leave the blamed country and never come a-near it again.

91Them's the very words.

92I 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 joint of stove-pipe.

93Look at it, says I.

94Such a hat for me to wear.

95One of the wealthiest men in this town if I could get my rights.

96Oh, yes, this is a wonderful government, wonderful.

97Why, looky here.

98There was a free nigger there from Ohio.

99A mulatter.

100Most as white as a white man.

101He had the whitest shirt on you ever see, too, and the shiniest hat.

102And there ain't a man in that town that's got as fine clothes as what he had.

103And he had a gold watch and chain and a silver-headed cane, the awfulest old grey-headed nabob in the state.

104And what do you think?

105They said he was a professor in a college and could talk all kinds of languages and knowed everything.

106And that ain't the worst.

107They said he could vote when he was at home.

108Well, that let me out.

109Thinks I, what is the country a-comin' to?

110It was Election Day, and I was just about to go and vote myself if I warn't too drunk to get there.

111But when they told me there was a state in this country where they'd let that nigger vote, I draw it out.

112I says I'll never vote again.

113Them's the very words I said.

114They all heard me.

115And the country may rot for all me.

116I'll never vote again as long as I live.

117And to see the cool way of that nigger?

118Why, he wouldn't a give me the road if I hadn't shoved him out of the way.

119I says to the people, why ain't this nigger put up at auction and sold?

120That's what I want to know.

121And what do you reckon they said?

122Why, 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.

123There, now, that's a specimen.

124They call that a government that can't sell a free nigger till he's been in the state six months.

125Here's a government that calls itself a government, and lets on to be a government, and thinks it is a government, and yet's got to sit stock still for six whole months before it can take hold of a prowling, thieving, infernal, white-shirted free nigger, and— Pap was a-going on so he never noticed where his old limberlegs was taking him to.

126So 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.

127Mostly hove at the nigger and the government, though he gave the tub some, too, all along, here and there.

128He hopped around the cabin considerable, first on one leg, and then on the other, holding first one shin, and then the other.

129And at last he let out with his left foot all of a sudden and fetched the tub a rattling kick.

130But it warn't good judgment, because that was the boot that had a couple of his toes leaking out the front end of it.

131So now he raised a howl that fairly made a body's hair raise.

132And down he went in the dirt, and rolled there, and held his toes, and the cussing he'd done then laid over anything he had never done previous.

133He said so his own self, afterwards.

134He had heard old Salbury Hagen in his best days, and he said it laid over him, too.

135But I reckon that was sort of piling it on, maybe.

136After supper Pap took the jug, and said he had enough whisky there for two drunks and one delirium tremens.

137That was always his word.

138I judged he would be blind drunk in about an hour, and then I would steal the key, or saw myself out one or the other.

139He drank and drank, and tumbled down on his blankets by and by.

140But luck didn't run my way.

141He didn't go sound asleep, but was uneasy.

142He groaned and moaned and thrashed about this way and that for a long time.

143At last I got so sleepy I couldn't keep my eyes open all I could do.

144And so before I knowed what I was about I was sound asleep, and the candle burning.

145I don't know how long I was asleep, but all of a sudden there was an awful scream and I was up.

146There was Pap looking wild, and skipping about every which way, and yelling about snakes.

147He 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.

148But I couldn't see no snakes.

149He started and run around and round the cabin hollering, Take him off!

150Take him off!

151He's biting me on the neck!

152I never see a man look so wild in the eyes.

153Pretty soon he was all fagged out and fell down panting.

154Then he rolled over and over a 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.

155He wore out by and by, and laid still a while, moaning.

156Then he laid stiller, and didn't make a sound.

157I could hear the owls and the wolves away off in the woods, and it seemed terrible still.

158He was laying over by the corner.

159By and by he raised up part way and listened, with his head to one side.

160He says, very low, Tramp!

161Tramp!

162Tramp!

163Tramp!

164That's the dead.

165Tramp!

166Tramp!

167Tramp!

168They're coming after me, but I won't go.

169Oh, they're here!

170Don't touch me!

171Don't!

172Hands off!

173They're cold!

174Let go!

175Oh, let a poor devil alone!

176Then 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.

177I could hear him through the blanket.

178By and by he rolled out and jumped up on his feet, looking wild, and he see me and went for me.

179He 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.

180I 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.

181Once, 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.

182But I slid out of the jacket quick as lightning and saved myself.

183Pretty 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.

184He put his knife under him, and said he would sleep and get strong, and then he would see who was who.

185So he dozed off pretty soon.

186By 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.

187I slipped the ramrod down it to make sure it was loaded.

188Then I laid it across the turnip-barrel, pointing towards Pap, and sat down behind it to wait for him to stir.

189And how slow and still the time did drag along!

190End of chapter!

191End of chapter End of chapter