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 door-keys 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 slaughterhouse 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?’

‘Huck, I most stepped onto Injun Joe’s hand!’

‘No!’

‘Yes! He was lying there, sound asleep on the floor, with his old patch on his eye and his arms spread out.’

‘Lordy, what did you do? Did he wake up?’

‘No, never budged. Drunk, I reckon. I just grabbed that towel and started!’

‘I’d never ’a’ thought of the towel, I bet!’

‘Well, I would. My aunt would make me mighty sick if I lost it.’

‘Say, Tom, did you see that box?’

‘Huck, I didn’t wait to look around. I didn’t see the box, I didn’t see the cross. I didn’t see anything but a bottle and a tin cup on the floor by Injun Joe; yes, I saw two barrels and lots more bottles in the room. Don’t you see, now, what’s the matter with that ha’nted room?’

‘How?’

‘Why, it’s ha’nted with whiskey! Maybe ALL the Temperance Taverns have got a ha’nted room, hey, Huck?’

‘Well, I reckon maybe that’s so. Who’d ’a’ thought such a thing? But say, Tom, now’s a mighty good time to get that box, if Injun Joe’s drunk.’

‘It is, that! You try it!’

Huck shuddered.

‘Well, no – I reckon not.’

‘And I reckon not, Huck. Only one bottle alongside of Injun Joe ain’t enough. If there’d been three, he’d be drunk enough and I’d do it.’

There was a long pause for reflection, and then Tom said:

‘Lookyhere, Huck, less not try that thing any more till we know Injun Joe’s not in there. It’s too scary. Now, if we watch every night, we’ll be dead sure to see him go out, some time or other, and then we’ll snatch that box quicker’n lightning.’

‘Well, I’m agreed. I’ll watch the whole night long, and I’ll do it every night, too, if you’ll do the other part of the job.’

‘All right, I will. All you got to do is to trot up Hooper Street a block and maow – and if I’m asleep, you throw some gravel at the window and that’ll fetch me.’

‘Agreed, and good as wheat!’

‘Now, Huck, the storm’s over, and I’ll go home. It’ll begin to be daylight in a couple of hours. You go back and watch that long, will you?’

‘I said I would, Tom, and I will. I’ll ha’nt that tavern every night for a year! I’ll sleep all day and I’ll stand watch all night.’

‘That’s all right. Now, where you going to sleep?’

‘In Ben Rogers’ hayloft. He lets me, and so does his pap’s nigger man, Uncle Jake. I tote water for Uncle Jake whenever he wants me to, and any time I ask him he gives me a little something to eat if he can spare it. That’s a mighty good nigger, Tom. He likes me, becuz I don’t ever act as if I was above him. Sometime I’ve set right down and eat WITH him. But you needn’t tell that. A body’s got to do things when he’s awful hungry he wouldn’t want to do as a steady thing.’

‘Well, if I don’t want you in the daytime, I’ll let you sleep. I won’t come bothering around. Any time you see something’s up, in the night, just skip right around and maow.’