Chapter 10 (Adventures of Huckleberry Finn)

01X.

02After breakfast I wanted to talk about the dead man and guess out how he come to be killed.

03But Jim didn't want to.

04He said it would fetch bad luck.

05And besides, he said, he might come and haunt us.

06He said a man that weren't buried was more likely to go a-haunting around than one that was planted and comfortable.

07That sounded pretty reasonable, so I didn't say no more.

08But I couldn't keep from studying over it and wishing I knowed who shot the man and what they'd done it for.

09We rummaged the clothes we got and found eight dollars in silver sewed up in the lining of an old blanket overcoat.

10Jim said he reckoned the people in that house stole the coat.

11Because if they'd have knowed the money was there they wouldn't have left it.

12I said I reckoned they killed him, too.

13But Jim didn't want to talk about that.

14I says.

15Now you think it's bad luck.

16But what did you say when I fetched in the snake-skin that I found on the top of the ridge day before yesterday?

17You said it was the worst bad luck in the world to touch a snake-skin with my hands.

18Well, here's your bad luck.

19We've raked in all this truck and eight dollars besides.

20I wish we could have some bad luck like this every day, Jim.

21Never you mind, honey, never you mind.

22Don't you get too pert.

23It's a-coming.

24Mind I tell you, it's a-coming.

25It did come, too.

26It was a Tuesday that we had that talk.

27Well, after dinner Friday we was laying around in the grass at the upper end of the ridge and got out of tobacco.

28I went to the cavern to get some and found a rattlesnake in there.

29I killed him and curled him up on the foot of Jim's blanket, ever so natural, thinking there'll be some fun when Jim found him there.

30Well, by night I forgot all about the snake, and when Jim flung himself down on the blanket while I struck a light, the snake's mate was there and bit him.

31He jumped up yelling, and the first thing the light showed was the varmint curled up and ready for another spring.

32I laid him out in a second with a stick, and Jim grabbed Pap's whiskey-jug and began to pour it down.

33He was barefooted, and the snake bit him right on the heel.

34That all comes with my being such a fool as to not remember that wherever you leave a dead snake its mate always comes there and curls around it.

35Jim told me to chop off the snake's head and throw it away, and then skin the body and roast a piece of it.

36I done it, and he eat it, and said it would help cure him.

37He made me take off the rattles and tie them around his wrist, too.

38He said that would help.

39Then I slid out quiet and throwed the snakes clear away amongst the bushes, for I warn't going to let Jim find out it was all my fault, not if I could help it.

40Jim sucked and sucked at the jug, and now and then he got out of his head and pitched around and yelled, but every time he come to himself he went to sucking at the jug again.

41His foot swelled up pretty big, and so did his leg, but by and by the drunk begun to come, and so I judged he was all right, but I'd rather been bit with a snake than Pap's whiskey.

42Jim was laid up for four days and nights.

43Then the swelling was all gone, and he was around again.

44I made up my mind I wouldn't ever take a hold of a snake skin again with my hands, now that I'd seen what had come of it.

45Jim said he reckoned I would believe him next time, and he said that handling the snake skin was such awful bad luck that maybe we hadn't got to the end of it yet.

46He said he'd rather see the new moon over his left shoulder as much as a thousand times than take up a snake skin in his hand.

47Well, I was getting to feel that way myself, though I was always reckoned that looking at the new moon over your left shoulder is one of the carelessest and foolishest things a body can do.

48Old Hank Bunker done it once and bragged about it, and in less than two years he got drunk and fell off of the shot-tower, and spread himself out so that he was just a kind of a lair, as you may say, and they slid him edgewise between two barn-doors for a coffin, and buried him so, so they say, but I didn't see it.

49Pap told me.

50But anyway it all come of looking at the moon that way, like a fool.

51Well, the days went along, and the river went down between its banks again, and about the first thing we'd done was to bait one of the big hooks with a skinned rabbit, and set it and catch a catfish that was as big as a man, being six foot two inches long, and weighed over two hundred pounds.

52We couldn't handle him, of course.

53He would have flung us into Illinois.

54We just sat there and watched him rip and tear around till he drowned it.

55We found a brass button in his stomach, and a round ball, and lots of rubbish.

56We split the ball open with a hatchet, and there was a spoon in it.

57Jim said he'd had it there a long time, to coat it over so and make a ball of it.

58It was as big a fish as ever was catched in the Mississippi, I reckon.

59Jim said he hadn't ever seen a bigger one.

60He would have been worth a good deal over at the village.

61They peddle out such a fish as that by the pound in the market-house there, and everybody buys some of him.

62His meat's as white as snow and makes a good fry.

63Next morning I said it was getting slow and dull, and I wanted to get a stirring up some way.

64I said I reckoned I would slip over the river and find out what was going on.

65Jim liked that notion, but he said I must go in the dark and look sharp.

66Then he studied it over and said, Couldn't I put on some of those old things and dress up like a girl?

67That was a good notion, too.

68So we shortened up one of the calico gowns, and I turned up my trouser legs to my knees and got into it.

69Jim hitched it behind with the hooks, and it was a fair fit.

70I put on the sun bonnet and tied it under my chin, and then for a body to look in and see my face was like looking down a joint of stovepipe.

71Jim said nobody would know me, even in the daytime hardly.

72I practiced around all day to get the hang of the things, and by and by I could do pretty well in them.

73Only Jim said I didn't walk like a girl, and he said I must quit pulling up my gown to get at my breeches pocket.

74I took notice and done better.

75I started up the Illinois shore in the canoe just after dark.

76I started across to the town from a little below the ferry landing, and the drift of the current fetched me in at the bottom of the town.

77I tied up and started along the bank.

78There was a light burning in a little shanty that hadn't been lived in for a long time, and I wondered who had took up quarters there.

79I slipped up and peeped in at the window.

80There was a woman about forty-year-old in there, knitting by a candle that was on a pine table.

81I didn't know her face.

82She was a stranger, for you couldn't start a face in that town that I didn't know.

83Now this was lucky, because I was weakening.

84I was getting afraid I had come.

85People might know my voice and find me out.

86But if this woman had been in such a little town two days, she could tell me all I wanted to know.

87So I knocked at the door, and made up my mind I wouldn't forget I was a girl.