Chapter XL

We was feeling pretty good after breakfast, and took my canoe and went over the river a-fishing, with a lunch, and had a good time, and took a look at the raft and found her all right, and got home late to supper, and found them in such a sweat and worry they didn’t know which end they was standing on, and made us go right off to bed the minute we was done supper, and wouldn’t tell us what the trouble was, and never let on a word about the new letter, but didn’t need to, because we knowed as much about it as anybody did, and as soon as we was half up stairs and her back was turned we slid for the cellar cupboard and loaded up a good lunch and took it up to our room and went to bed, and got up about half-past eleven, and Tom put on Aunt Sally’s dress that he stole and was going to start with the lunch, but says:

“Where’s the butter?”

“I laid out a hunk of it,” I says, “on a piece of a corn-pone.”

“Well, you LEFT it laid out, then – it ain’t here.”

“We can get along without it,” I says.

“We can get along WITH it, too,” he says; “just you slide down cellar and fetch it. And then mosey right down the lightning-rod and come along. I’ll go and stuff the straw into Jim’s clothes to represent his mother in disguise, and be ready to BA like a sheep and shove soon as you get there.”

So out he went, and down cellar went I. The hunk of butter, big as a person’s fist, was where I had left it, so I took up the slab of corn-pone with it on, and blowed out my light, and started up stairs very stealthy, and got up to the main floor all right, but here comes Aunt Sally with a candle, and I clapped the truck in my hat, and clapped my hat on my head, and the next second she see me; and she says:

“You been down cellar?”

“Yes’m.”

“What you been doing down there?”

“Noth’n.”

“NOTH’N!”

“No’m.”

“Well, then, what possessed you to go down there this time of night?”

“I don’t know ’m.”

“You don’t KNOW? Don’t answer me that way. Tom, I want to know what you been DOING down there.”

“I hain’t been doing a single thing, Aunt Sally, I hope to gracious if I have.”

I reckoned she’d let me go now, and as a generl thing she would; but I s’pose there was so many strange things going on she was just in a sweat about every little thing that warn’t yardstick straight; so she says, very decided:

“You just march into that setting-room and stay there till I come. You been up to something you no business to, and I lay I’ll find out what it is before I’M done with you.”

So she went away as I opened the door and walked into the setting-room. My, but there was a crowd there! Fifteen farmers, and every one of them had a gun. I was most powerful sick, and slunk to a chair and set down. They was setting around, some of them talking a little, in a low voice, and all of them fidgety and uneasy, but trying to look like they warn’t; but I knowed they was, because they was always taking off their hats, and putting them on, and scratching their heads, and changing their seats, and fumbling with their buttons. I warn’t easy myself, but I didn’t take my hat off, all the same.

I did wish Aunt Sally would come, and get done with me, and lick me, if she wanted to, and let me get away and tell Tom how we’d overdone this thing, and what a thundering hornet’s-nest we’d got ourselves into, so we could stop fooling around straight off, and clear out with Jim before these rips got out of patience and come for us.

At last she come and begun to ask me questions, but I COULDN’T answer them straight, I didn’t know which end of me was up; because these men was in such a fidget now that some was wanting to start right NOW and lay for them desperadoes, and saying it warn’t but a few minutes to midnight; and others was trying to get them to hold on and wait for the sheep-signal; and here was Aunty pegging away at the questions, and me a-shaking all over and ready to sink down in my tracks I was that scared; and the place getting hotter and hotter, and the butter beginning to melt and run down my neck and behind my ears; and pretty soon, when one of them says, “I’M for going and getting in the cabin FIRST and right NOW, and catching them when they come,” I most dropped; and a streak of butter come a-trickling down my forehead, and Aunt Sally she see it, and turns white as a sheet, and says:

“For the land’s sake, what IS the matter with the child? He’s got the brain-fever as shore as you’re born, and they’re oozing out!”

And everybody runs to see, and she snatches off my hat, and out comes the bread and what was left of the butter, and she grabbed me, and hugged me, and says:

“Oh, what a turn you did give me! and how glad and grateful I am it ain’t no worse; for luck’s against us, and it never rains but it pours, and when I see that truck I thought we’d lost you, for I knowed by the color and all it was just like your brains would be if – Dear, dear, whyd’nt you TELL me that was what you’d been down there for, I wouldn’t a cared. Now cler out to bed, and don’t lemme see no more of you till morning!”

I was up stairs in a second, and down the lightning-rod in another one, and shinning through the dark for the lean-to. I couldn’t hardly get my words out, I was so anxious; but I told Tom as quick as I could we must jump for it now, and not a minute to lose – the house full of men, yonder, with guns!

His eyes just blazed; and he says:

“No! – is that so? AIN’T it bully! Why, Huck, if it was to do over again, I bet I could fetch two hundred! If we could put it off till —”

“Hurry! HURRY!” I says. “Where’s Jim?”

“Right at your elbow; if you reach out your arm you can touch him. He’s dressed, and everything’s ready. Now we’ll slide out and give the sheep-signal.”

But then we heard the tramp of men coming to the door, and heard them begin to fumble with the padlock, and heard a man say:

“I TOLD you we’d be too soon; they haven’t come – the door is locked. Here, I’ll lock some of you into the cabin, and you lay for ’em in the dark and kill ’em when they come; and the rest scatter around a piece, and listen if you can hear ’em coming.”

So in they come, but couldn’t see us in the dark, and most trod on us whilst we was hustling to get under the bed. But we got under all right, and out through the hole, swift but soft – Jim first, me next, and Tom last, which was according to Tom’s orders. Now we was in the lean-to, and heard trampings close by outside. So we crept to the door, and Tom stopped us there and put his eye to the crack, but couldn’t make out nothing, it was so dark; and whispered and said he would listen for the steps to get further, and when he nudged us Jim must glide out first, and him last. So he set his ear to the crack and listened, and listened, and listened, and the steps a-scraping around out there all the time; and at last he nudged us, and we slid out, and stooped down, not breathing, and not making the least noise, and slipped stealthy towards the fence in Injun file, and got to it all right, and me and Jim over it; but Tom’s britches catched fast on a splinter on the top rail, and then he hear the steps coming, so he had to pull loose, which snapped the splinter and made a noise; and as he dropped in our tracks and started somebody sings out:

“Who’s that? Answer, or I’ll shoot!”

But we didn’t answer; we just unfurled our heels and shoved. Then there was a rush, and a BANG, BANG, BANG! and the bullets fairly whizzed around us! We heard them sing out:

“Here they are! They’ve broke for the river! After ’em, boys, and turn loose the dogs!”

So here they come, full tilt. We could hear them because they wore boots and yelled, but we didn’t wear no boots and didn’t yell. We was in the path to the mill; and when they got pretty close on to us we dodged into the bush and let them go by, and then dropped in behind them. They’d had all the dogs shut up, so they wouldn’t scare off the robbers; but by this time somebody had let them loose, and here they come, making powwow enough for a million; but they was our dogs; so we stopped in our tracks till they catched up; and when they see it warn’t nobody but us, and no excitement to offer them, they only just said howdy, and tore right ahead towards the shouting and clattering; and then we up-steam again, and whizzed along after them till we was nearly to the mill, and then struck up through the bush to where my canoe was tied, and hopped in and pulled for dear life towards the middle of the river, but didn’t make no more noise than we was obleeged to. Then we struck out, easy and comfortable, for the island where my raft was; and we could hear them yelling and barking at each other all up and down the bank, till we was so far away the sounds got dim and died out. And when we stepped on to the raft I says:

“NOW, old Jim, you’re a free man again, and I bet you won’t ever be a slave no more.”

“En a mighty good job it wuz, too, Huck. It ’uz planned beautiful, en it ’uz done beautiful; en dey ain’t NOBODY kin git up a plan dat’s mo’ mixed-up en splendid den what dat one wuz.”

We was all glad as we could be, but Tom was the gladdest of all because he had a bullet in the calf of his leg.

When me and Jim heard that we didn’t feel so brash as what we did before. It was hurting him considerable, and bleeding; so we laid him in the wigwam and tore up one of the duke’s shirts for to bandage him, but he says:

“Gimme the rags; I can do it myself. Don’t stop now; don’t fool around here, and the evasion booming along so handsome; man the sweeps, and set her loose! Boys, we done it elegant! – ’deed we did. I wish WE’D a had the handling of Louis XVI, there wouldn’t a been no ‘Son of Saint Louis, ascend to heaven!’ wrote down in HIS biography; no, sir, we’d a whooped him over the BORDER – that’s what we’d a done with HIM – and done it just as slick as nothing at all, too. Man the sweeps – man the sweeps!”

But me and Jim was consulting – and thinking. And after we’d thought a minute, I says:

“Say it, Jim.”

So he says:

“Well, den, dis is de way it look to me, Huck. Ef it wuz HIM dat ’uz bein’ sot free, en one er de boys wuz to git shot, would he say, ‘Go on en save me, nemmine ’bout a doctor f’r to save dis one?’ Is dat like Mars Tom Sawyer? Would he say dat? You BET he wouldn’t! WELL, den, is JIM gywne to say it? No, sah – I doan’ budge a step out’n dis place ’dout a DOCTOR, not if it’s forty year!”

I knowed he was white inside, and I reckoned he’d say what he did say – so it was all right now, and I told Tom I was a-going for a doctor. He raised considerable row about it, but me and Jim stuck to it and wouldn’t budge; so he was for crawling out and setting the raft loose himself; but we wouldn’t let him. Then he give us a piece of his mind, but it didn’t do no good.

So when he sees me getting the canoe ready, he says:

“Well, then, if you re bound to go, I’ll tell you the way to do when you get to the village. Shut the door and blindfold the doctor tight and fast, and make him swear to be silent as the grave, and put a purse full of gold in his hand, and then take and lead him all around the back alleys and everywheres in the dark, and then fetch him here in the canoe, in a roundabout way amongst the islands, and search him and take his chalk away from him, and don’t give it back to him till you get him back to the village, or else he will chalk this raft so he can find it again. It’s the way they all do.”

So I said I would, and left, and Jim was to hide in the woods when he see the doctor coming till he was gone again.