Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (34 page)

I says:

“No, your majesty, we warn‘t—
please
don’t, your majesty!”

“Quick, then, and tell us what was your idea, or I’ll shake the insides out o’ you!”

“Honest, I’ll tell you everything, just as it happened, your majesty. The man that had aholt of me was very good to me, and kept saying he had a boy about as big as me that died last year, and he was sorry to see a boy in such a dangerous fix; and when they was all took by surprise by finding the gold, and made a rush for the coffin, he lets go of me and whispers, ‘Heel it, now, or they’ll hang ye, sure!’ and I lit out. It didn’t seem no good for
me
to stay—I couldn’t do nothing, and I didn’t want to be hung if I could get away. So I never stopped running till I found the canoe; and when I got here I told Jim to hurry, or they’d catch me and hang me yet, and said I was afeard you and the duke wasn’t alive, now, and I was awful sorry, and so was Jim, and was awful glad when we see you coming, you may ask Jim if I didn’t.”

Jim said it was so; and the king told him to shut up, and said, “Oh, yes, it’s
mighty
likely!” and shook me up again, and said he reckoned he’d drownd me. But the duke says:

“Leggo the boy, you old idiot! Would
you
a done any different? Did you inquire around for
him,
when you got loose?
I
don’t remember it.”

So the king let go of me, and begun to cuss that town and everybody in it. But the duke says:

“You better a blame sight give
yourself a
good cussing, for you’re the one that’s entitled to it most. You hain’t done a thing, from the start, that had any sense in it, except coming out so cool and cheeky with that imaginary blue-arrow mark. That
was
bright—it was right down bully; and it was the thing that saved us. For if it hadn’t been for that, they’d a jailed us till them Englishmen’s baggage come—and then—the penitentiary, you bet! But that trick took‘em to the graveyard, and the gold done us a still bigger kindness; for if the excited fools hadn’t let go all holts and made that rush to get a look, we’d a slept in our cravats to-night—cravats warranted to
wear,
too—longer than
we’d
need ’em.”

They was still a minute—thinking—then the king says, kind of absent-minded like:

“Mf! And we reckoned the
niggers
stole it!”

That made me squirm!

“Yes,” says the duke, kinder slow, and deliberate, and sarcastic.
“We
did.”

After about a half a minute, the king drawls out:

“Leastways
—I
did.”

The duke says, the same way:

“On the contrary—
I
˝ did.”

The king kind of ruffles up, and says:

“Looky here, Bilgewater, what‘r you referrin’ to?”

The duke says, pretty brisk:

“When it comes to that, maybe you’ll let me ask, what was
you
referring to?”

“Shucks!” says the king, very sarcastic; “but
I
don’t know—maybe you was asleep, and didn’t know what you was about.”

The duke bristles right up, now, and says:

“Oh, let
up
on this cussed nonsense—do you take me for a blame’ fool? Don’t you reckon
I
know who hid that money in that coffin?”

“Yes,
sir! I know you
do
know—because you done it yourself!”

“It’s a lie!”—and the duke went for him. The king sings out:

“Take y‘r hands off!—leggo my throat!—I take it all back!”

The duke says:

“Well, you just own up, first, that you did hide that money there, intending to give me the slip one of these days, and come back and dig it up, and have it all to yourself.”

“Wait jest a minute, duke—answer me this one question, honest and fair; if you didn’t put the money there, say it, and I’ll b‘lieve you, and take back everything I said.”

“You old scoundrel, I didn‘t, and you know I didn’t. There, now!”

“Well, then, I b‘lieve you. But answer me only jest this one more— now
don’t
git mad; didn’t you have it in your
mind
to hook
^eo
the money and hide it?”

The duke never said nothing for a little bit; then he says:

“Well—I don’t care if I
did,
I didn’t
do
it, anyway. But you not only had it in mind to do it, but you
done
it.”

“I wisht I may never die if I done it, duke, and that’s honest. I won’t say I warn’t
goin’
to do it, because I
was;
but you—I mean somebody—got in ahead o’ me.”

“It’s a lie! You done it, and you got to
say
you done it, or—”

The king begun to gurgle, and then he gasps out:

“ ‘Nough!—
I own up!’

I was very glad to hear him say that, it made me feel much more easier than what I was feeling before. So the duke took his hands off, and says:

“If you ever deny it again, I’ll drown you. It’s
well
for you to set there and blubber like a baby—it’s fitten for you, after the way you’ve acted. I never see such an old ostrich for wanting to gobble everything—and I a trusting you all the time, like you was my own father. You ought to been ashamed of yourself to stand by and hear it saddled onto a lot of poor niggers and you never say a word for ‘em. It makes me feel ridiculous to think I was soft enough to
believe
that rubbage. Cuss you, I can see, now, why you was so anxious to make up the deffesit
^ep
—you wanted to get what money I’d got out of the Nonesuch and one thing or another, and scoop it
all!
”

The king says, timid, and still a snuffling:

“Why, duke, it was you that said make up the deffersit, it warn’t me.”

“Dry up! I don’t want to hear no more
out
of you!” says the duke. “And
now
you see what you
got
by it. They’ve got all their own money back, and all of
ourn
but a shekel or two, besides. G‘long to bed—and don’t you deffersit
me
no more deffersits, long ’s
you
live!”

So the king sneaked into the wigwam, and took to his bottle for comfort; and before long the duke tackled
his
bottle; and so in about a half an hour they was as thick as thieves again, and the tighter they got, the lovinger they got; and went off a snoring in each other’s arms. They both got powerful mellow, but I noticed the king didn’t get mellow enough to forget to remember to not deny about hiding the moneybag again. That made me feel easy and satisfied. Of course when they got to snoring, we had a long gabble,
^eq
and I told Jim everything.

W
edasn’t stop again at any town, for days and days; kept right along down the river. We was down south in the warm weather, now, and a mighty long ways from home. We begun to come to trees with Spanish moss on them, hanging down from the limbs like long gray beards. It was the first I ever see it growing, and it made the woods look solemn and dismal. So now the frauds reckoned they was out of danger, and they begun to work the villages again.

First they done a lecture on temperance;
^er
but they didn’t make enough for them both to get drunk on. Then in another village they started a dancing school; but they didn’t know no more how to dance than a kangaroo does; so the first prance they made, the general public jumped in and pranced them out of town. Another time they tried a go at yellocution;
^es
but they didn’t yellocute long till the audience got up and give them a solid good cussing and made them skip out. They tackled missionarying, and mesmerizering, and doctoring, and telling fortunes, and a little of everything; but they couldn’t seem to have no luck. So at last they got just about dead broke, and laid around the raft, as she floated along, thinking, and thinking, and never saying nothing, by the half a day at a time, and dreadful blue and desperate.

And at last they took a change, and begun to lay their heads together in the wigwam and talk low and confidential two or three hours at a time. Jim and me got uneasy. We didn’t like the look of it. We judged they was studying up some kind of worse deviltry than ever. We turned it over and over, and at last we made up our minds they was going to break into somebody’s house or store, or was going into the counterfeit-money business, or something. So then we was pretty scared, and made up an agreement that we wouldn’t have nothing in the world to do with such actions, and if we ever got the least show we would give them the cold shake, and clear out and leave them behind. Well, early one morning we hid the raft in a good safe place about two mile below a little bit of a shabby village, named Pikesville, and the king he went ashore, and told us all to stay hid whilst he went up to town and smelt around to see if anybody had got any wind of the Royal Nonesuch there yet. (“House to rob, you
mean,”
says I to myself; “and when you get through robbing it you’ll come back here and wonder what’s become of me and Jim and the raft—and you’ll have to take it out in wondering.”) And he said if he warn’t back by midday, the duke and me would know it was all right, and we was to come along.

So we staid where we was. The duke he fretted and sweated around, and was in a mighty sour way. He scolded us for everything, and we couldn’t seem to do nothing right; he found fault with every little thing. Something was a-brewing, sure. I was good and glad when midday come and no king; we could have a change, anyway—and maybe a chance for
the
change, on top of it. So me and the duke went up to the village, and hunted around there for the king, and by-and-by we found him in the back room of a little low doggery,
^et
very tight, and a lot of loafers bul lyragging him for sport, and he a cussing and threatening with all his might, and so tight he couldn’t walk, and couldn’t do nothing to them. The duke he began to abuse him for an old fool, and the king begun to sass back; and the minute they was fairly at it, I lit out, and shook the reefs out of my hind legs, and spun down the river road like a deer—for I see our chance; and I made up my mind that it would be a long day before they ever see me and Jim again. I got down there all out of breath but loaded up with joy, and sung out—

“Set her loose, Jim, we’re all right, now!”

But there warn’t no answer, and nobody come out of the wigwam. Jim was gone! I set up a shout—and then another—and then another one; and run this way and that in the woods, whooping and screeching; but it warn’t no use—old Jim was gone. Then I set down and cried; I couldn’t help it. But I couldn’t set still long. Pretty soon I went out on the road, trying to think what I better do, and I run across a boy walking, and asked him if he’d seen a strange nigger, dressed so and so, and he says:

“Yes.”

“Wherebouts?” says I.

“Down to Silas Phelps’s place, two mile below here. He’s a runaway nigger, and they’ve got him. Was you looking for him?”

“You bet I ain‘t! I run across him in the woods about an hour or two ago, and he said if I hollered he’d cut my livers out
^eu
—and told me to lay down and stay where I was; and I done it. Been there ever since; afeard to come out.”

“Well,” he says, “you needn’t be afeard no more, becuz they’ve got him. He run off f’m down South, som‘ers.”

“It’s a good job they got him.”

“Well, I
reckon!
There’s two hundred dollars reward on him. It’s like picking up money out’n the road.”

“Yes, it is—and
I
could a had it if I’d been big enough; I see him first. Who nailed him?”

“It was an old fellow—a stranger—and he sold out his chance in him for forty dollars, becuz he’s got to go up the river and can’t wait. Think o’ that, now! You bet
I’d
wait, if it was seven year.”

“That’s me, every time,” says I. “But maybe his chance ain’t worth no more than that, if he’ll sell it so cheap. Maybe there’s something ain’t straight about it.”

“But it
is,
though—straight as a string. I see the handbill myself. It tells all about him, to a dot—paints him like a picture, and tells the plantation he’s frum, below
Newrleans.
No-sirree-
bob
, they ain’t no trouble ‘bout
that
speculation, you bet you. Say, gimme a chaw tobacker, won’t ye?”

I didn’t have none, so he left. I went to the raft, and set down in the wigwam to think. But I couldn’t come to nothing. I thought till I wore my head sore, but I couldn’t see no way out of the trouble. After all this long journey, and after all we’d done for them scoundrels, here was it all come to nothing, everything all busted up and ruined, because they could have the heart to serve Jim such a trick as that, and make him a slave again all his life, and amongst strangers, too, for forty dirty dollars.

Once I said to myself it would be a thousand times better for Jim to be a slave at home where his family was, as long as he’d
got
to be a slave, and so I’d better write a letter to Tom Sawyer and tell him to tell Miss Watson where he was. But I soon give up that notion, for two things: she’d be mad and disgusted at his rascality and ungratefulness for leaving her, and so she’d sell him straight down the river again; and if she didn‘t, everybody naturally despises an ungrateful nigger, and they’d make Jim feel it all the time, and so he’d feel ornery and disgraced. And then think of
me!
It would get all around, that Huck Finn helped a nigger to get his freedom; and if I was to ever see anybody from that town again, I’d be ready to get down and lick his boots for shame. That’s just the way: a person does a low-down thing, and then he don’t want to take no consequences of it. Thinks as long as he can hide it, it ain’t no disgrace. That was my fix exactly. The more I studied about this, the more my conscience went to grinding me, and the more wicked and low-down and ornery I got to feeling. And at last, when it hit me all of a sudden that here was the plain hand of Providence slapping me in the face and letting me know my wickedness was being watched all the time from up there in heaven, whilst I was stealing a poor old woman’s nigger that hadn’t ever done me no harm, and now was showing me there’s One that’s always on the lookout, and ain’t agoing to allow no such miserable doings to go only just so fur and no further, I most dropped in my tracks I was so scared. Well, I tried the best I could to kinder soften it up somehow for myself, by saying I was brung up wicked, and so I warn’t so much to blame; but something inside of me kept saying, “There was the Sunday school, you could a gone to it; and if you’d a done it they’d a learnt you, there, that people that acts as I’d been acting about that nigger goes to everlasting fire.”