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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TOM SAWYER, DETECTIVE ***
[Illustration]
Tom Sawyer, Detective
By Mark Twain
Contents
CHAPTER I. AN INVITATION FOR TOM AND HUCK
CHAPTER II. JAKE DUNLAP
CHAPTER III. A DIAMOND ROBBERY
CHAPTER IV. THE THREE SLEEPERS
CHAPTER V. A TRAGEDY IN THE WOODS
CHAPTER VI. PLANS TO SECURE THE DIAMONDS
CHAPTER VII. A NIGHT’S VIGIL
CHAPTER VIII. TALKING WITH THE GHOST
CHAPTER IX. FINDING OF JUBITER DUNLAP
CHAPTER X. THE ARREST OF UNCLE SILAS
CHAPTER XI. TOM SAWYER DISCOVERS THE MURDERERS
CHAPTER I.
AN INVITATION FOR TOM AND HUCK
[Note: Strange as the incidents of this story are, they are not
inventions, but facts—even to the public confession of the accused. I
take them from an old-time Swedish criminal trial, change the actors,
and transfer the scenes to America. I have added some details, but
only a couple of them are important ones. — M. T.]
Well, it was the next spring after me and Tom Sawyer set our old nigger
Jim free, the time he was chained up for a runaway slave down there on
Tom’s uncle Silas’s farm in Arkansaw. The frost was working out of the
ground, and out of the air, too, and it was getting closer and closer
onto barefoot time every day; and next it would be marble time, and
next mumbletypeg, and next tops and hoops, and next kites, and then
right away it would be summer and going in a-swimming. It just makes a
boy homesick to look ahead like that and see how far off summer is.
Yes, and it sets him to sighing and saddening around, and there’s
something the matter with him, he don’t know what. But anyway, he gets
out by himself and mopes and thinks; and mostly he hunts for a lonesome
place high up on the hill in the edge of the woods, and sets there and
looks away off on the big Mississippi down there a-reaching miles and
miles around the points where the timber looks smoky and dim it’s so
far off and still, and everything’s so solemn it seems like everybody
you’ve loved is dead and gone, and you ’most wish you was dead and gone
too, and done with it all.
Don’t you know what that is? It’s spring fever. That is what the name
of it is. And when you’ve got it, you want—oh, you don’t quite know
what it is you _do_ want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you
want it so! It seems to you that mainly what you want is to get away;
get away from the same old tedious things you’re so used to seeing and
so tired of, and set something new. That is the idea; you want to go
and be a wanderer; you want to go wandering far away to strange
countries where everything is mysterious and wonderful and romantic.
And if you can’t do that, you’ll put up with considerable less; you’ll
go anywhere you _can_ go, just so as to get away, and be thankful of
the chance, too.
Well, me and Tom Sawyer had the spring fever, and had it bad, too; but
it warn’t any use to think about Tom trying to get away, because, as he
said, his Aunt Polly wouldn’t let him quit school and go traipsing off
somers wasting time; so we was pretty blue. We was setting on the front
steps one day about sundown talking this way, when out comes his aunt
Polly with a letter in her hand and says:
“Tom, I reckon you’ve got to pack up and go down to Arkansaw—your aunt
Sally wants you.”
I ’most jumped out of my skin for joy. I reckoned Tom would fly at his
aunt and hug her head off; but if you believe me he set there like a
rock, and never said a word. It made me fit to cry to see him act so
foolish, with such a noble chance as this opening up. Why, we might
lose it if he didn’t speak up and show he was thankful and grateful.
But he set there and studied and studied till I was that distressed I
didn’t know what to do; then he says, very ca’m, and I could a shot him
for it:
“Well,” he says, “I’m right down sorry, Aunt Polly, but I reckon I got
to be excused—for the present.”
His aunt Polly was knocked so stupid and so mad at the cold impudence
of it that she couldn’t say a word for as much as a half a minute, and
this gave me a chance to nudge Tom and whisper:
“Ain’t you got any sense? Sp’iling such a noble chance as this and
throwing it away?”
But he warn’t disturbed. He mumbled back:
“Huck Finn, do you want me to let her _see_ how bad I want to go? Why,
she’d begin to doubt, right away, and imagine a lot of sicknesses and
dangers and objections, and first you know she’d take it all back. You
lemme alone; I reckon I know how to work her.”
Now I never would ’a’ thought of that. But he was right. Tom Sawyer was
always right—the levelest head I ever see, and always _at_ himself and
ready for anything you might spring on him. By this time his aunt Polly
was all straight again, and she let fly. She says:
[Illustration: I reckon I got to be excused]
“You’ll be excused! _you_ will! Well, I never heard the like of it in
all my days! The idea of you talking like that to _me!_ Now take
yourself off and pack your traps; and if I hear another word out of you
about what you’ll be excused from and what you won’t, I lay _I’ll_
excuse you—with a hickory!”
She hit his head a thump with her thimble as we dodged by, and he let
on to be whimpering as we struck for the stairs. Up in his room he
hugged me, he was so out of his head for gladness because he was going
traveling. And he says:
“Before we get away she’ll wish she hadn’t let me go, but she won’t
know any way to get around it now. After what she’s said, her pride
won’t let her take it back.”
Tom was packed in ten minutes, all except what his aunt and Mary would
finish up for him; then we waited ten more for her to get cooled down
and sweet and gentle again; for Tom said it took her ten minutes to
unruffle in times when half of her feathers was up, but twenty when
they was all up, and this was one of the times when they was all up.
Then we went down, being in a sweat to know what the letter said.
She was setting there in a brown study, with it laying in her lap. We
set down, and she says:
“They’re in considerable trouble down there, and they think you and
Huck’ll be a kind of diversion for them—’comfort,’ they say. Much of
that they’ll get out of you and Huck Finn, I reckon. There’s a neighbor
named Brace Dunlap that’s been wanting to marry their Benny for three
months, and at last they told him point blank and once for all, he
_could’t;_ so he has soured on them, and they’re worried about it. I
reckon he’s somebody they think they better be on the good side of, for
they’ve tried to please him by hiring his no-account brother to help on
the farm when they can’t hardly afford it, and don’t want him around
anyhow. Who are the Dunlaps?”
“They live about a mile from Uncle Silas’s place, Aunt Polly—all the
farmers live about a mile apart down there—and Brace Dunlap is a long
sight richer than any of the others, and owns a whole grist of niggers.
He’s a widower, thirty-six years old, without any children, and is
proud of his money and overbearing, and everybody is a little afraid of
him. I judge he thought he could have any girl he wanted, just for the
asking, and it must have set him back a good deal when he found he
couldn’t get Benny. Why, Benny’s only half as old as he is, and just as
sweet and lovely as—well, you’ve seen her. Poor old Uncle Silas—why,
it’s pitiful, him trying to curry favor that way—so hard pushed and
poor, and yet hiring that useless Jubiter Dunlap to please his ornery
brother.”
“What a name—Jubiter! Where’d he get it?”
“It’s only just a nickname. I reckon they’ve forgot his real name long
before this. He’s twenty-seven, now, and has had it ever since the
first time he ever went in swimming. The school teacher seen a round
brown mole the size of a dime on his left leg above his knee, and four
little bits of moles around it, when he was naked, and he said it
minded him of Jubiter and his moons; and the children thought it was
funny, and so they got to calling him Jubiter, and he’s Jubiter yet.
He’s tall, and lazy, and sly, and sneaky, and ruther cowardly, too, but
kind of good-natured, and wears long brown hair and no beard, and
hasn’t got a cent, and Brace boards him for nothing, and gives him his
old clothes to wear, and despises him. Jubiter is a twin.”
“What’s t’other twin like?”
“Just exactly like Jubiter—so they say; used to was, anyway, but he
hain’t been seen for seven years. He got to robbing when he was
nineteen or twenty, and they jailed him; but he broke jail and got
away—up North here, somers. They used to hear about him robbing and
burglaring now and then, but that was years ago. He’s dead, now. At
least that’s what they say. They don’t hear about him any more.”
“What was his name?”
“Jake.”
There wasn’t anything more said for a considerable while; the old lady
was thinking. At last she says:
“The thing that is mostly worrying your aunt Sally is the tempers that
that man Jubiter gets your uncle into.”
Tom was astonished, and so was I. Tom says:
“Tempers? Uncle Silas? Land, you must be joking! I didn’t know he _had_
any temper.”
“Works him up into perfect rages, your aunt Sally says; says he acts as
if he would really hit the man, sometimes.”
“Aunt Polly, it beats anything I ever heard of. Why, he’s just as
gentle as mush.”
“Well, she’s worried, anyway. Says your uncle Silas is like a changed
man, on account of all this quarreling. And the neighbors talk about
it, and lay all the blame on your uncle, of course, because he’s a
preacher and hain’t got any business to quarrel. Your aunt Sally says
he hates to go into the pulpit he’s so ashamed; and the people have
begun to cool toward him, and he ain’t as popular now as he used to
was.”
“Well, ain’t it strange? Why, Aunt Polly, he was always so good and
kind and moony and absent-minded and chuckle-headed and lovable—why, he
was just an angel! What _can_ be the matter of him, do you reckon?”
CHAPTER II.
JAKE DUNLAP
We had powerful good luck; because we got a chance in a stern-wheeler
from away North which was bound for one of them bayous or one-horse
rivers away down Louisiana way, and so we could go all the way down the
Upper Mississippi and all the way down the Lower Mississippi to that
farm in Arkansaw without having to change steamboats at St. Louis; not
so very much short of a thousand miles at one pull.
A pretty lonesome boat; there warn’t but few passengers, and all old
folks, that set around, wide apart, dozing, and was very quiet. We was
four days getting out of the “upper river,” because we got aground so
much. But it warn’t dull—couldn’t be for boys that was traveling, of
course.
From the very start me and Tom allowed that there was somebody sick in
the stateroom next to ourn, because the meals was always toted in there
by the waiters. By and by we asked about it—Tom did and the waiter said
it was a man, but he didn’t look sick.
“Well, but _ain’t_ he sick?”
“I don’t know; maybe he is, but ’pears to me he’s just letting on.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Because if he was sick he would pull his clothes off _some_ time or
other—don’t you reckon he would? Well, this one don’t. At least he
don’t ever pull off his boots, anyway.”
“The mischief he don’t! Not even when he goes to bed?”
“No.”
It was always nuts for Tom Sawyer—a mystery was. If you’d lay out a
mystery and a pie before me and him, you wouldn’t have to say take your
choice; it was a thing that would regulate itself. Because in my nature
I have always run to pie, whilst in his nature he has always run to
mystery. People are made different. And it is the best way. Tom says to
the waiter:
“What’s the man’s name?”
“Phillips.”
“Where’d he come aboard?”
“I think he got aboard at Elexandria, up on the Iowa line.”
“What do you reckon he’s a-playing?”
“I hain’t any notion—I never thought of it.”
I says to myself, here’s another one that runs to pie.
“Anything peculiar about him?—the way he acts or talks?”
“No—nothing, except he seems so scary, and keeps his doors locked night
and day both, and when you knock he won’t let you in till he opens the
door a crack and sees who it is.”
“By jimminy, it’s int’resting! I’d like to get a look at him. Say—the
next time you’re going in there, don’t you reckon you could spread the
door and—”
“No, indeedy! He’s always behind it. He would block that game.”
Tom studied over it, and then he says:
“Looky here. You lend me your apern and let me take him his breakfast
in the morning. I’ll give you a quarter.”
The boy was plenty willing enough, if the head steward wouldn’t mind.
Tom says that’s all right, he reckoned he could fix it with the head
steward; and he done it. He fixed it so as we could both go in with
aperns on and toting vittles.
He didn’t sleep much, he was in such a sweat to get in there and find
out the mystery about Phillips; and moreover he done a lot of guessing
about it all night, which warn’t no use, for if you are going to find
out the facts of a thing, what’s the sense in guessing out what ain’t
the facts and wasting ammunition? I didn’t lose no sleep. I wouldn’t
give a dern to know what’s the matter of Phillips, I says to myself.
Well, in the morning we put on the aperns and got a couple of trays of
truck, and Tom he knocked on the door. The man opened it a crack, and
then he let us in and shut it quick. By Jackson, when we got a sight of
him, we ’most dropped the trays! and Tom says:
“Why, Jubiter Dunlap, where’d _you_ come from?”
Well, the man was astonished, of course; and first off he looked like
he didn’t know whether to be scared, or glad, or both, or which, but
finally he settled down to being glad; and then his color come back,
though at first his face had turned pretty white. So we got to talking
together while he et his breakfast. And he says:
“But I aint Jubiter Dunlap. I’d just as soon tell you who I am, though,
if you’ll swear to keep mum, for I ain’t no Phillips, either.”
Tom says:
“We’ll keep mum, but there ain’t any need to tell who you are if you
ain’t Jubiter Dunlap.”
“Why?”
“Because if you ain’t him you’re t’other twin, Jake. You’re the spit’n
image of Jubiter.”
“Well, I’m Jake. But looky here, how do you come to know us Dunlaps?”
Tom told about the adventures we’d had down there at his uncle Silas’s
last summer, and when he see that there warn’t anything about his
folks—or him either, for that matter—that we didn’t know, he opened out
and talked perfectly free and candid. He never made any bones about his
own case; said he’d been a hard lot, was a hard lot yet, and reckoned
he’d be a hard lot plumb to the end. He said of course it was a
dangerous life, and—He give a kind of gasp, and set his head like a
person that’s listening. We didn’t say anything, and so it was very
still for a second or so, and there warn’t no sounds but the screaking
of the woodwork and the chug-chugging of the machinery down below.
Then we got him comfortable again, telling him about his people, and
how Brace’s wife had been dead three years, and Brace wanted to marry
Benny and she shook him, and Jubiter was working for Uncle Silas, and
him and Uncle Silas quarreling all the time—and then he let go and
laughed.
“Land!” he says, “it’s like old times to hear all this tittle-tattle,
and does me good. It’s been seven years and more since I heard any. How
do they talk about me these days?”
“Who?”
“The farmers—and the family.”
“Why, they don’t talk about you at all—at least only just a mention,
once in a long time.”
“The nation!” he says, surprised; “why is that?”
“Because they think you are dead long ago.”
“No! Are you speaking true?—honor bright, now.” He jumped up, excited.
“Honor bright. There ain’t anybody thinks you are alive.”
“Then I’m saved, I’m saved, sure! I’ll go home. They’ll hide me and
save my life. You keep mum. Swear you’ll keep mum—swear you’ll never,
never tell on me. Oh, boys, be good to a poor devil that’s being hunted
day and night, and dasn’t show his face! I’ve never done you any harm;
I’ll never do you any, as God is in the heavens; swear you’ll be good
to me and help me save my life.”
[Illustration: Swear you’ll be good to me and help me save my life.]
We’d a swore it if he’d been a dog; and so we done it. Well, he
couldn’t love us enough for it or be grateful enough, poor cuss; it was
all he could do to keep from hugging us.
We talked along, and he got out a little hand-bag and begun to open it,
and told us to turn our backs. We done it, and when he told us to turn
again he was perfectly different to what he was before. He had on blue
goggles and the naturalest-looking long brown whiskers and mustashes
you ever see. His own mother wouldn’t ’a’ knowed him. He asked us if he
looked like his brother Jubiter, now.
“No,” Tom said; “there ain’t anything left that’s like him except the
long hair.”
“All right, I’ll get that cropped close to my head before I get there;
then him and Brace will keep my secret, and I’ll live with them as
being a stranger, and the neighbors won’t ever guess me out. What do
you think?”
Tom he studied awhile, then he says:
“Well, of course me and Huck are going to keep mum there, but if you
don’t keep mum yourself there’s going to be a little bit of a risk—it
ain’t much, maybe, but it’s a little. I mean, if you talk, won’t people
notice that your voice is just like Jubiter’s; and mightn’t it make
them think of the twin they reckoned was dead, but maybe after all was
hid all this time under another name?”
“By George,” he says, “you’re a sharp one! You’re perfectly right. I’ve
got to play deef and dumb when there’s a neighbor around. If I’d a
struck for home and forgot that little detail—However, I wasn’t
striking for home. I was breaking for any place where I could get away
from these fellows that are after me; then I was going to put on this
disguise and get some different clothes, and—”
He jumped for the outside door and laid his ear against it and
listened, pale and kind of panting. Presently he whispers:
“Sounded like cocking a gun! Lord, what a life to lead!”
[Illustration: Sounded like a cocking gun!]
Then he sunk down in a chair all limp and sick like, and wiped the
sweat off of his face.
CHAPTER III.
A DIAMOND ROBBERY
From that time out, we was with him ’most all the time, and one or
t’other of us slept in his upper berth. He said he had been so
lonesome, and it was such a comfort to him to have company, and
somebody to talk to in his troubles. We was in a sweat to find out what
his secret was, but Tom said the best way was not to seem anxious, then
likely he would drop into it himself in one of his talks, but if we got
to asking questions he would get suspicious and shet up his shell. It
turned out just so. It warn’t no trouble to see that he _wanted_ to
talk about it, but always along at first he would scare away from it
when he got on the very edge of it, and go to talking about something
else. The way it come about was this: He got to asking us, kind of
indifferent like, about the passengers down on deck. We told him about
them. But he warn’t satisfied; we warn’t particular enough. He told us
to describe them better. Tom done it. At last, when Tom was describing
one of the roughest and raggedest ones, he gave a shiver and a gasp and
says:
“Oh, lordy, that’s one of them! They’re aboard sure—I just knowed it. I
sort of hoped I had got away, but I never believed it. Go on.”
Presently when Tom was describing another mangy, rough deck passenger,
he give that shiver again and says:
“That’s him!—that’s the other one. If it would only come a good black
stormy night and I could get ashore. You see, they’ve got spies on me.
They’ve got a right to come up and buy drinks at the bar yonder
forrard, and they take that chance to bribe somebody to keep watch on
me—porter or boots or somebody. If I was to slip ashore without anybody
seeing me, they would know it inside of an hour.”
So then he got to wandering along, and pretty soon, sure enough, he was
telling! He was poking along through his ups and downs, and when he
come to that place he went right along. He says:
“It was a confidence game. We played it on a julery-shop in St. Louis.
What we was after was a couple of noble big di’monds as big as
hazel-nuts, which everybody was running to see. We was dressed up fine,
and we played it on them in broad daylight. We ordered the di’monds
sent to the hotel for us to see if we wanted to buy, and when we was
examining them we had paste counterfeits all ready, and _them_ was the
things that went back to the shop when we said the water wasn’t quite
fine enough for twelve thousand dollars.”
“Twelve-thousand-dollars!” Tom says. “Was they really worth all that
money, do you reckon?”
“Every cent of it.”
“And you fellows got away with them?”
“As easy as nothing. I don’t reckon the julery people know they’ve been
robbed yet. But it wouldn’t be good sense to stay around St. Louis, of
course, so we considered where we’d go. One was for going one way, one
another, so we throwed up, heads or tails, and the Upper Mississippi
won. We done up the di’monds in a paper and put our names on it and put
it in the keep of the hotel clerk, and told him not to ever let either
of us have it again without the others was on hand to see it done; then
we went down town, each by his own self—because I reckon maybe we all
had the same notion. I don’t know for certain, but I reckon maybe we
had.”
“What notion?” Tom says.
“To rob the others.”
“What—one take everything, after all of you had helped to get it?”
“Cert’nly.”
It disgusted Tom Sawyer, and he said it was the orneriest, low-downest
thing he ever heard of. But Jake Dunlap said it warn’t unusual in the
profession. Said when a person was in that line of business he’d got to
look out for his own intrust, there warn’t nobody else going to do it
for him. And then he went on. He says:
“You see, the trouble was, you couldn’t divide up two di’monds amongst
three. If there’d been three—But never mind about that, there warn’t
three. I loafed along the back streets studying and studying. And I
says to myself, I’ll hog them di’monds the first chance I get, and I’ll
have a disguise all ready, and I’ll give the boys the slip, and when
I’m safe away I’ll put it on, and then let them find me if they can. So
I got the false whiskers and the goggles and this countrified suit of
clothes, and fetched them along back in a hand-bag; and when I was
passing a shop where they sell all sorts of things, I got a glimpse of
one of my pals through the window. It was Bud Dixon. I was glad, you
bet. I says to myself, I’ll see what he buys. So I kept shady, and
watched. Now what do you reckon it was he bought?”
“Whiskers?” said I.
“No.”
“Goggles?”
“No.”
“Oh, keep still, Huck Finn, can’t you, you’re only just hendering all
you can. What _was_ it he bought, Jake?”
“You’d never guess in the world. It was only just a screwdriver—just a
wee little bit of a screwdriver.”
“Well, I declare! What did he want with that?”
“That’s what I thought. It was curious. It clean stumped me. I says to
myself, what can he want with that thing? Well, when he come out I
stood back out of sight, and then tracked him to a second-hand
slop-shop and see him buy a red flannel shirt and some old ragged
clothes—just the ones he’s got on now, as you’ve described. Then I went
down to the wharf and hid my things aboard the up-river boat that we
had picked out, and then started back and had another streak of luck. I
seen our other pal lay in _his_ stock of old rusty second-handers. We
got the di’monds and went aboard the boat.
“But now we was up a stump, for we couldn’t go to bed. We had to set up
and watch one another. Pity, that was; pity to put that kind of a
strain on us, because there was bad blood between us from a couple of
weeks back, and we was only friends in the way of business. Bad anyway,
seeing there was only two di’monds betwixt three men. First we had
supper, and then tramped up and down the deck together smoking till
most midnight; then we went and set down in my stateroom and locked the
doors and looked in the piece of paper to see if the di’monds was all
right, then laid it on the lower berth right in full sight; and there
we set, and set, and by-and-by it got to be dreadful hard to keep
awake. At last Bud Dixon he dropped off. As soon as he was snoring a
good regular gait that was likely to last, and had his chin on his
breast and looked permanent, Hal Clayton nodded towards the di’monds
and then towards the outside door, and I understood. I reached and got
the paper, and then we stood up and waited perfectly still; Bud never
stirred; I turned the key of the outside door very soft and slow, then
turned the knob the same way, and we went tiptoeing out onto the guard,
and shut the door very soft and gentle.
[Illustration: We stood up and waited perfectly still.]
“There warn’t nobody stirring anywhere, and the boat was slipping
along, swift and steady, through the big water in the smoky moonlight.
We never said a word, but went straight up onto the hurricane-deck and
plumb back aft, and set down on the end of the sky-light. Both of us
knowed what that meant, without having to explain to one another. Bud
Dixon would wake up and miss the swag, and would come straight for us,
for he ain’t afeard of anything or anybody, that man ain’t. He would
come, and we would heave him overboard, or get killed trying. It made
me shiver, because I ain’t as brave as some people, but if I showed the
white feather—well, I knowed better than do that. I kind of hoped the
boat would land somers, and we could skip ashore and not have to run
the risk of this row, I was so scared of Bud Dixon, but she was an
upper-river tub and there warn’t no real chance of that.
“Well, the time strung along and along, and that fellow never come!
Why, it strung along till dawn begun to break, and still he never come.
‘Thunder,’ I says, ‘what do you make out of this?—ain’t it suspicious?’
‘Land!’ Hal says, ‘do you reckon he’s playing us?—open the paper!’ I
done it, and by gracious there warn’t anything in it but a couple of
little pieces of loaf-sugar! _that’s_ the reason he could set there and
snooze all night so comfortable. Smart? Well, I reckon! He had had them
two papers all fixed and ready, and he had put one of them in place of
t’other right under our noses.
“We felt pretty cheap. But the thing to do, straight off, was to make a
plan; and we done it. We would do up the paper again, just as it was,
and slip in, very elaborate and soft, and lay it on the bunk again, and
let on _we_ didn’t know about any trick, and hadn’t any idea he was
a-laughing at us behind them bogus snores of his’n; and we would stick
by him, and the first night we was ashore we would get him drunk and
search him, and get the di’monds; and _do_ for him, too, if it warn’t
too risky. If we got the swag, we’d _got_ to do for him, or he would
hunt us down and do for us, sure. But I didn’t have no real hope. I
knowed we could get him drunk—he was always ready for that—but what’s
the good of it? You might search him a year and never find—Well, right
there I catched my breath and broke off my thought! For an idea went
ripping through my head that tore my brains to rags—and land, but I
felt gay and good! You see, I had had my boots off, to unswell my feet,
and just then I took up one of them to put it on, and I catched a
glimpse of the heel-bottom, and it just took my breath away. You
remember about that puzzlesome little screwdriver?”
“You bet I do,” says Tom, all excited.
“Well, when I catched that glimpse of that boot heel, the idea that
went smashing through my head was, I know where he’s hid the di’monds!
You look at this boot heel, now. See, it’s bottomed with a steel plate,
and the plate is fastened on with little screws. Now there wasn’t a
screw about that feller anywhere but in his boot heels; so, if he
needed a screwdriver, I reckoned I knowed why.”
“Huck, ain’t it bully!” says Tom.
“Well, I got my boots on, and we went down and slipped in and laid the
paper of sugar on the berth, and sat down soft and sheepish and went to
listening to Bud Dixon snore. Hal Clayton dropped off pretty soon, but
I didn’t; I wasn’t ever so wide awake in my life. I was spying out from
under the shade of my hat brim, searching the floor for leather. It
took me a long time, and I begun to think maybe my guess was wrong, but
at last I struck it. It laid over by the bulkhead, and was nearly the
color of the carpet. It was a little round plug about as thick as the
end of your little finger, and I says to myself there’s a di’mond in
the nest you’ve come from. Before long I spied out the plug’s mate.
“Think of the smartness and coolness of that blatherskite! He put up
that scheme on us and reasoned out what we would do, and we went ahead
and done it perfectly exact, like a couple of pudd’nheads. He set there
and took his own time to unscrew his heelplates and cut out his plugs
and stick in the di’monds and screw on his plates again. He allowed we
would steal the bogus swag and wait all night for him to come up and
get drownded, and by George it’s just what we done! I think it was
powerful smart.”
“You bet your life it was!” says Tom, just full of admiration.
CHAPTER IV.
THE THREE SLEEPERS
Well, all day we went through the humbug of watching one another, and
it was pretty sickly business for two of us and hard to act out, I can
tell you. About night we landed at one of them little Missouri towns
high up toward Iowa, and had supper at the tavern, and got a room
upstairs with a cot and a double bed in it, but I dumped my bag under a
deal table in the dark hall while we was moving along it to bed, single
file, me last, and the landlord in the lead with a tallow candle. We
had up a lot of whisky, and went to playing high-low-jack for dimes,
and as soon as the whisky begun to take hold of Bud we stopped
drinking, but we didn’t let him stop. We loaded him till he fell out of
his chair and laid there snoring.
“We was ready for business now. I said we better pull our boots off,
and his’n too, and not make any noise, then we could pull him and haul
him around and ransack him without any trouble. So we done it. I set my
boots and Bud’s side by side, where they’d be handy. Then we stripped
him and searched his seams and his pockets and his socks and the inside
of his boots, and everything, and searched his bundle. Never found any
di’monds. We found the screwdriver, and Hal says, ‘What do you reckon
he wanted with that?’ I said I didn’t know; but when he wasn’t looking
I hooked it. At last Hal he looked beat and discouraged, and said we’d
got to give it up. That was what I was waiting for. I says:
“‘There’s one place we hain’t searched.’
“‘What place is that?’ he says.
“‘His stomach.’
“‘By gracious, I never thought of that! _Now_ we’re on the homestretch,
to a dead moral certainty. How’ll we manage?’
“‘Well,’ I says, ‘just stay by him till I turn out and hunt up a drug
store, and I reckon I’ll fetch something that’ll make them di’monds
tired of the company they’re keeping.’
“He said that’s the ticket, and with him looking straight at me I slid
myself into Bud’s boots instead of my own, and he never noticed. They
was just a shade large for me, but that was considerable better than
being too small. I got my bag as I went a-groping through the hall, and
in about a minute I was out the back way and stretching up the river
road at a five-mile gait.
“And not feeling so very bad, neither—walking on di’monds don’t have no
such effect. When I had gone fifteen minutes I says to myself, there’s
more’n a mile behind me, and everything quiet. Another five minutes and
I says there’s considerable more land behind me now, and there’s a man
back there that’s begun to wonder what’s the trouble. Another five and
I says to myself he’s getting real uneasy—he’s walking the floor now.
Another five, and I says to myself, there’s two mile and a half behind
me, and he’s _awful_ uneasy—beginning to cuss, I reckon. Pretty soon I
says to myself, forty minutes gone—he _knows_ there’s something up!
Fifty minutes—the truth’s a-busting on him now! he is reckoning I found
the di’monds whilst we was searching, and shoved them in my pocket and
never let on—yes, and he’s starting out to hunt for me. He’ll hunt for
new tracks in the dust, and they’ll as likely send him down the river
as up.
“Just then I see a man coming down on a mule, and before I thought I
jumped into the bush. It was stupid! When he got abreast he stopped and
waited a little for me to come out; then he rode on again. But I didn’t
feel gay any more. I says to myself I’ve botched my chances by that; I
surely have, if he meets up with Hal Clayton.
“Well, about three in the morning I fetched Elexandria and see this
stern-wheeler laying there, and was very glad, because I felt perfectly
safe, now, you know. It was just daybreak. I went aboard and got this
stateroom and put on these clothes and went up in the pilot-house—to
watch, though I didn’t reckon there was any need of it. I set there and
played with my di’monds and waited and waited for the boat to start,
but she didn’t. You see, they was mending her machinery, but I didn’t
know anything about it, not being very much used to steamboats.
[Illustration: Walked ashore.]
“Well, to cut the tale short, we never left there till plumb noon; and
long before that I was hid in this stateroom; for before breakfast I
see a man coming, away off, that had a gait like Hal Clayton’s, and it
made me just sick. I says to myself, if he finds out I’m aboard this
boat, he’s got me like a rat in a trap. All he’s got to do is to have
me watched, and wait—wait till I slip ashore, thinking he is a thousand
miles away, then slip after me and dog me to a good place and make me
give up the di’monds, and then he’ll—oh, I know what he’ll do! Ain’t it
awful—awful! And now to think the _other_ one’s aboard, too! Oh, ain’t
it hard luck, boys—ain’t it hard! But you’ll help save me, _won’t_
you?—oh, boys, be good to a poor devil that’s being hunted to death,
and save me—I’ll worship the very ground you walk on!”
We turned in and soothed him down and told him we would plan for him
and help him, and he needn’t be so afeard; and so by and by he got to
feeling kind of comfortable again, and unscrewed his heelplates and
held up his di’monds this way and that, admiring them and loving them;
and when the light struck into them they _was_ beautiful, sure; why,
they seemed to kind of bust, and snap fire out all around. But all the
same I judged he was a fool. If I had been him I would a handed the
di’monds to them pals and got them to go ashore and leave me alone. But
he was made different. He said it was a whole fortune and he couldn’t
bear the idea.
Twice we stopped to fix the machinery and laid a good while, once in
the night; but it wasn’t dark enough, and he was afeard to skip. But
the third time we had to fix it there was a better chance. We laid up
at a country woodyard about forty mile above Uncle Silas’s place a
little after one at night, and it was thickening up and going to storm.
So Jake he laid for a chance to slide. We begun to take in wood. Pretty
soon the rain come a-drenching down, and the wind blowed hard. Of
course every boat-hand fixed a gunny sack and put it on like a bonnet,
the way they do when they are toting wood, and we got one for Jake, and
he slipped down aft with his hand-bag and come tramping forrard just
like the rest, and walked ashore with them, and when we see him pass
out of the light of the torch-basket and get swallowed up in the dark,
we got our breath again and just felt grateful and splendid. But it
wasn’t for long. Somebody told, I reckon; for in about eight or ten
minutes them two pals come tearing forrard as tight as they could jump
and darted ashore and was gone. We waited plumb till dawn for them to
come back, and kept hoping they would, but they never did. We was awful
sorry and low-spirited. All the hope we had was that Jake had got such
a start that they couldn’t get on his track, and he would get to his
brother’s and hide there and be safe.
He was going to take the river road, and told us to find out if Brace
and Jubiter was to home and no strangers there, and then slip out about
sundown and tell him. Said he would wait for us in a little bunch of
sycamores right back of Tom’s uncle Silas’s tobacker field on the river
road, a lonesome place.
We set and talked a long time about his chances, and Tom said he was
all right if the pals struck up the river instead of down, but it
wasn’t likely, because maybe they knowed where he was from; more likely
they would go right, and dog him all day, him not suspecting, and kill
him when it come dark, and take the boots. So we was pretty sorrowful.
CHAPTER V.
A TRAGEDY IN THE WOODS
We didn’t get done tinkering the machinery till away late in the
afternoon, and so it was so close to sundown when we got home that we
never stopped on our road, but made a break for the sycamores as tight
as we could go, to tell Jake what the delay was, and have him wait till
we could go to Brace’s and find out how things was there. It was
getting pretty dim by the time we turned the corner of the woods,
sweating and panting with that long run, and see the sycamores thirty
yards ahead of us; and just then we see a couple of men run into the
bunch and heard two or three terrible screams for help. “Poor Jake is
killed, sure,” we says. We was scared through and through, and broke
for the tobacker field and hid there, trembling so our clothes would
hardly stay on; and just as we skipped in there, a couple of men went
tearing by, and into the bunch they went, and in a second out jumps
four men and took out up the road as tight as they could go, two
chasing two.
We laid down, kind of weak and sick, and listened for more sounds, but
didn’t hear none for a good while but just our hearts. We was thinking
of that awful thing laying yonder in the sycamores, and it seemed like
being that close to a ghost, and it give me the cold shudders. The moon
come a-swelling up out of the ground, now, powerful big and round and
bright, behind a comb of trees, like a face looking through prison
bars, and the black shadders and white places begun to creep around,
and it was miserable quiet and still and night-breezy and graveyardy
and scary. All of a sudden Tom whispers:
“Look!—what’s that?”
“Don’t!” I says. “Don’t take a person by surprise that way. I’m ’most
ready to die, anyway, without you doing that.”
“Look, I tell you. It’s something coming out of the sycamores.”
“Don’t, Tom!”
“It’s terrible tall!”
“Oh, lordy-lordy! let’s—”
“Keep still—it’s a-coming this way.”
He was so excited he could hardly get breath enough to whisper. I had
to look. I couldn’t help it. So now we was both on our knees with our
chins on a fence rail and gazing—yes, and gasping too. It was coming
down the road—coming in the shadder of the trees, and you couldn’t see
it good; not till it was pretty close to us; then it stepped into a
bright splotch of moonlight and we sunk right down in our tracks—it was
Jake Dunlap’s ghost! That was what we said to ourselves.
[Illustration: It was Jake Dunlap’s ghost.]
We couldn’t stir for a minute or two; then it was gone. We talked about
it in low voices. Tom says:
“They’re mostly dim and smoky, or like they’re made out of fog, but
this one wasn’t.”
“No,” I says; “I seen the goggles and the whiskers perfectly plain.”
“Yes, and the very colors in them loud countrified Sunday clothes—plaid
breeches, green and black—”
“Cotton velvet westcot, fire-red and yaller squares—”
“Leather straps to the bottoms of the breeches legs and one of them
hanging unbottoned—”
“Yes, and that hat—”
“What a hat for a ghost to wear!”
You see it was the first season anybody wore that kind—a black
stiff-brim stove-pipe, very high, and not smooth, with a round top—just
like a sugar-loaf.
“Did you notice if its hair was the same, Huck?”
“No—seems to me I did, then again it seems to me I didn’t.”
“I didn’t either; but it had its bag along, I noticed that.”
“So did I. How can there be a ghost-bag, Tom?”
“Sho! I wouldn’t be as ignorant as that if I was you, Huck Finn.
Whatever a ghost has, turns to ghost-stuff. They’ve got to have their
things, like anybody else. You see, yourself, that its clothes was
turned to ghost-stuff. Well, then, what’s to hender its bag from
turning, too? Of course it done it.”
That was reasonable. I couldn’t find no fault with it. Bill Withers and
his brother Jack come along by, talking, and Jack says:
“What do you reckon he was toting?”
“I dunno; but it was pretty heavy.”
“Yes, all he could lug. Nigger stealing corn from old Parson Silas, I
judged.”
“So did I. And so I allowed I wouldn’t let on to see him.”
“That’s me, too.”
Then they both laughed, and went on out of hearing. It showed how
unpopular old Uncle Silas had got to be now. They wouldn’t ’a’ let a
nigger steal anybody else’s corn and never done anything to him.
We heard some more voices mumbling along towards us and getting louder,
and sometimes a cackle of a laugh. It was Lem Beebe and Jim Lane. Jim
Lane says:
“Who?—Jubiter Dunlap?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, I don’t know. I reckon so. I seen him spading up some ground along
about an hour ago, just before sundown—him and the parson. Said he
guessed he wouldn’t go to-night, but we could have his dog if we wanted
him.”
“Too tired, I reckon.”
“Yes—works so hard!”
“Oh, you bet!”
They cackled at that, and went on by. Tom said we better jump out and
tag along after them, because they was going our way and it wouldn’t be
comfortable to run across the ghost all by ourselves. So we done it,
and got home all right.
That night was the second of September—a Saturday. I sha’n’t ever
forget it. You’ll see why, pretty soon.
CHAPTER VI.
PLANS TO SECURE THE DIAMONDS
We tramped along behind Jim and Lem till we come to the back stile
where old Jim’s cabin was that he was captivated in, the time we set
him free, and here come the dogs piling around us to say howdy, and
there was the lights of the house, too; so we warn’t afeard any more,
and was going to climb over, but Tom says:
“Hold on; set down here a minute. By George!”
“What’s the matter?” says I.
“Matter enough!” he says. “Wasn’t you expecting we would be the first
to tell the family who it is that’s been killed yonder in the
sycamores, and all about them rapscallions that done it, and about the
di’monds they’ve smouched off of the corpse, and paint it up fine, and
have the glory of being the ones that knows a lot more about it than
anybody else?”
“Why, of course. It wouldn’t be you, Tom Sawyer, if you was to let such
a chance go by. I reckon it ain’t going to suffer none for lack of
paint,” I says, “when you start in to scollop the facts.”
“Well, now,” he says, perfectly ca’m, “what would you say if I was to
tell you I ain’t going to start in at all?”
I was astonished to hear him talk so. I says:
“I’d say it’s a lie. You ain’t in earnest, Tom Sawyer?”
“You’ll soon see. Was the ghost barefooted?”
[Illustration: Was the ghost barefooted?]
“No, it wasn’t. What of it?”
“You wait—I’ll show you what. Did it have its boots on?”
“Yes. I seen them plain.”
“Swear it?”
“Yes, I swear it.”
“So do I. Now do you know what that means?”
“No. What does it mean?”
“Means that them thieves _didn’t get the di’monds_.”
“Jimminy! What makes you think that?”
“I don’t only think it, I know it. Didn’t the breeches and goggles and
whiskers and hand-bag and every blessed thing turn to ghost-stuff?
Everything it had on turned, didn’t it? It shows that the reason its
boots turned too was because it still had them on after it started to
go ha’nting around, and if that ain’t proof that them blatherskites
didn’t get the boots, I’d like to know what you’d _call_ proof.”
Think of that now. I never see such a head as that boy had. Why, I had
eyes and I could see things, but they never meant nothing to me. But
Tom Sawyer was different. When Tom Sawyer seen a thing it just got up
on its hind legs and _talked_ to him—told him everything it knowed. I
never see such a head.
“Tom Sawyer,” I says, “I’ll say it again as I’ve said it a many a time
before: I ain’t fitten to black your boots. But that’s all right—that’s
neither here nor there. God Almighty made us all, and some He gives
eyes that’s blind, and some He gives eyes that can see, and I reckon it
ain’t none of our lookout what He done it for; it’s all right, or He’d
’a’ fixed it some other way. Go on—I see plenty plain enough, now, that
them thieves didn’t get way with the di’monds. Why didn’t they, do you
reckon?”
“Because they got chased away by them other two men before they could
pull the boots off of the corpse.”
“That’s so! I see it now. But looky here, Tom, why ain’t we to go and
tell about it?”
“Oh, shucks, Huck Finn, can’t you see? Look at it. What’s a-going to
happen? There’s going to be an inquest in the morning. Them two men
will tell how they heard the yells and rushed there just in time to not
save the stranger. Then the jury’ll twaddle and twaddle and twaddle,
and finally they’ll fetch in a verdict that he got shot or stuck or
busted over the head with something, and come to his death by the
inspiration of God. And after they’ve buried him they’ll auction off
his things for to pay the expenses, and then’s _our_ chance.” “How,
Tom?”
“Buy the boots for two dollars!”
Well, it ’most took my breath.
“My land! Why, Tom, _we’ll_ get the di’monds!”
“You bet. Some day there’ll be a big reward offered for them—a thousand
dollars, sure. That’s our money! Now we’ll trot in and see the folks.
And mind you we don’t know anything about any murder, or any di’monds,
or any thieves—don’t you forget that.”
I had to sigh a little over the way he had got it fixed. I’d ’a’ _sold_
them di’monds—yes, sir—for twelve thousand dollars; but I didn’t say
anything. It wouldn’t done any good. I says:
“But what are we going to tell your aunt Sally has made us so long
getting down here from the village, Tom?”
“Oh, I’ll leave that to you,” he says. “I reckon you can explain it
somehow.”
He was always just that strict and delicate. He never would tell a lie
himself.
We struck across the big yard, noticing this, that, and t’other thing
that was so familiar, and we so glad to see it again, and when we got
to the roofed big passageway betwixt the double log house and the
kitchen part, there was everything hanging on the wall just as it used
to was, even to Uncle Silas’s old faded green baize working-gown with
the hood to it, and raggedy white patch between the shoulders that
always looked like somebody had hit him with a snowball; and then we
lifted the latch and walked in. Aunt Sally she was just a-ripping and
a-tearing around, and the children was huddled in one corner, and the
old man he was huddled in the other and praying for help in time of
need. She jumped for us with joy and tears running down her face and
give us a whacking box on the ear, and then hugged us and kissed us and
boxed us again, and just couldn’t seem to get enough of it, she was so
glad to see us; and she says:
“Where _have_ you been a-loafing to, you good-for-nothing trash! I’ve
been that worried about you I didn’t know what to do. Your traps has
been here ever so long, and I’ve had supper cooked fresh about four
times so as to have it hot and good when you come, till at last my
patience is just plumb wore out, and I declare I—I—why I could skin you
alive! You must be starving, poor things!—set down, set down,
everybody; don’t lose no more time.”
It was good to be there again behind all that noble corn-pone and
spareribs, and everything that you could ever want in this world. Old
Uncle Silas he peeled off one of his bulliest old-time blessings, with
as many layers to it as an onion, and whilst the angels was hauling in
the slack of it I was trying to study up what to say about what kept us
so long. When our plates was all loadened and we’d got a-going, she
asked me, and I says:
“Well, you see,—er—Mizzes—”
“Huck Finn! Since when am I Mizzes to you? Have I ever been stingy of
cuffs or kisses for you since the day you stood in this room and I took
you for Tom Sawyer and blessed God for sending you to me, though you
told me four thousand lies and I believed every one of them like a
simpleton? Call me Aunt Sally—like you always done.”
So I done it. And I says:
“Well, me and Tom allowed we would come along afoot and take a smell of
the woods, and we run across Lem Beebe and Jim Lane, and they asked us
to go with them blackberrying to-night, and said they could borrow
Jubiter Dunlap’s dog, because he had told them just that minute—”
“Where did they see him?” says the old man; and when I looked up to see
how _he_ come to take an intrust in a little thing like that, his eyes
was just burning into me, he was that eager. It surprised me so it kind
of throwed me off, but I pulled myself together again and says:
“It was when he was spading up some ground along with you, towards
sundown or along there.”
He only said, “Um,” in a kind of a disappointed way, and didn’t take no
more intrust. So I went on. I says:
“Well, then, as I was a-saying—”
“That’ll do, you needn’t go no furder.” It was Aunt Sally. She was
boring right into me with her eyes, and very indignant. “Huck Finn,”
she says, “how’d them men come to talk about going a-black-berrying in
September—in _this_ region?”
I see I had slipped up, and I couldn’t say a word. She waited, still
a-gazing at me, then she says:
“And how’d they come to strike that idiot idea of going a-blackberrying
in the night?”
“Well, m’m, they—er—they told us they had a lantern, and—”
“Oh, _shet_ up—do! Looky here; what was they going to do with a
dog?—hunt blackberries with it?”
“I think, m’m, they—”
“Now, Tom Sawyer, what kind of a lie are you fixing _your_ mouth to
contribit to this mess of rubbage? Speak out—and I warn you before you
begin, that I don’t believe a word of it. You and Huck’s been up to
something you no business to—I know it perfectly well; I know you,
_both_ of you. Now you explain that dog, and them blackberries, and the
lantern, and the rest of that rot—and mind you talk as straight as a
string—do you hear?”
Tom he looked considerable hurt, and says, very dignified:
“It is a pity if Huck is to be talked to that way, just for making a
little bit of a mistake that anybody could make.”
“What mistake has he made?”
“Why, only the mistake of saying blackberries when of course he meant
strawberries.”
“Tom Sawyer, I lay if you aggravate me a little more, I’ll—”
“Aunt Sally, without knowing it—and of course without intending it—you
are in the wrong. If you’d ’a’ studied natural history the way you
ought, you would know that all over the world except just here in
Arkansaw they _always_ hunt strawberries with a dog—and a lantern—”
But she busted in on him there and just piled into him and snowed him
under. She was so mad she couldn’t get the words out fast enough, and
she gushed them out in one everlasting freshet. That was what Tom
Sawyer was after. He allowed to work her up and get her started and
then leave her alone and let her burn herself out. Then she would be so
aggravated with that subject that she wouldn’t say another word about
it, nor let anybody else. Well, it happened just so. When she was
tuckered out and had to hold up, he says, quite ca’m:
“And yet, all the same, Aunt Sally—”
“Shet up!” she says, “I don’t want to hear another word out of you.”
So we was perfectly safe, then, and didn’t have no more trouble about
that delay. Tom done it elegant.
CHAPTER VII.
A NIGHT’S VIGIL
Benny she was looking pretty sober, and she sighed some, now and then;
but pretty soon she got to asking about Mary, and Sid, and Tom’s aunt
Polly, and then Aunt Sally’s clouds cleared off and she got in a good
humor and joined in on the questions and was her lovingest best self,
and so the rest of the supper went along gay and pleasant. But the old
man he didn’t take any hand hardly, and was absent-minded and restless,
and done a considerable amount of sighing; and it was kind of
heart-breaking to see him so sad and troubled and worried.
By and by, a spell after supper, come a nigger and knocked on the door
and put his head in with his old straw hat in his hand bowing and
scraping, and said his Marse Brace was out at the stile and wanted his
brother, and was getting tired waiting supper for him, and would Marse
Silas please tell him where he was? I never see Uncle Silas speak up so
sharp and fractious before. He says:
“Am I his brother’s keeper?” And then he kind of wilted together, and
looked like he wished he hadn’t spoken so, and then he says, very
gentle: “But you needn’t say that, Billy; I was took sudden and
irritable, and I ain’t very well these days, and not hardly
responsible. Tell him he ain’t here.”
And when the nigger was gone he got up and walked the floor, backwards
and forwards, mumbling and muttering to himself and plowing his hands
through his hair. It was real pitiful to see him. Aunt Sally she
whispered to us and told us not to take notice of him, it embarrassed
him. She said he was always thinking and thinking, since these troubles
come on, and she allowed he didn’t more’n about half know what he was
about when the thinking spells was on him; and she said he walked in
his sleep considerable more now than he used to, and sometimes wandered
around over the house and even outdoors in his sleep, and if we catched
him at it we must let him alone and not disturb him. She said she
reckoned it didn’t do him no harm, and may be it done him good. She
said Benny was the only one that was much help to him these days. Said
Benny appeared to know just when to try to soothe him and when to leave
him alone.
So he kept on tramping up and down the floor and muttering, till by and
by he begun to look pretty tired; then Benny she went and snuggled up
to his side and put one hand in his and one arm around his waist and
walked with him; and he smiled down on her, and reached down and kissed
her; and so, little by little the trouble went out of his face and she
persuaded him off to his room. They had very petting ways together, and
it was uncommon pretty to see.
Aunt Sally she was busy getting the children ready for bed; so by and
by it got dull and tedious, and me and Tom took a turn in the
moonlight, and fetched up in the watermelon-patch and et one, and had a
good deal of talk. And Tom said he’d bet the quarreling was all
Jubiter’s fault, and he was going to be on hand the first time he got a
chance, and see; and if it was so, he was going to do his level best to
get Uncle Silas to turn him off.
And so we talked and smoked and stuffed watermelons much as two hours,
and then it was pretty late, and when we got back the house was quiet
and dark, and everybody gone to bed.
[Illustration: Smoked and stuffed watermelon]
Tom he always seen everything, and now he see that the old green baize
work-gown was gone, and said it wasn’t gone when he went out; so he
allowed it was curious, and then we went up to bed.
We could hear Benny stirring around in her room, which was next to
ourn, and judged she was worried a good deal about her father and
couldn’t sleep. We found we couldn’t, neither. So we set up a long
time, and smoked and talked in a low voice, and felt pretty dull and
down-hearted. We talked the murder and the ghost over and over again,
and got so creepy and crawly we couldn’t get sleepy nohow and noway.
By and by, when it was away late in the night and all the sounds was
late sounds and solemn, Tom nudged me and whispers to me to look, and I
done it, and there we see a man poking around in the yard like he
didn’t know just what he wanted to do, but it was pretty dim and we
couldn’t see him good. Then he started for the stile, and as he went
over it the moon came out strong, and he had a long-handled shovel over
his shoulder, and we see the white patch on the old work-gown. So Tom
says:
“He’s a-walking in his sleep. I wish we was allowed to follow him and
see where he’s going to. There, he’s turned down by the tobacker-field.
Out of sight now. It’s a dreadful pity he can’t rest no better.”
We waited a long time, but he didn’t come back any more, or if he did
he come around the other way; so at last we was tuckered out and went
to sleep and had nightmares, a million of them. But before dawn we was
awake again, because meantime a storm had come up and been raging, and
the thunder and lightning was awful, and the wind was a-thrashing the
trees around, and the rain was driving down in slanting sheets, and the
gullies was running rivers. Tom says:
“Looky here, Huck, I’ll tell you one thing that’s mighty curious. Up to
the time we went out last night the family hadn’t heard about Jake
Dunlap being murdered. Now the men that chased Hal Clayton and Bud
Dixon away would spread the thing around in a half an hour, and every
neighbor that heard it would shin out and fly around from one farm to
t’other and try to be the first to tell the news. Land, they don’t have
such a big thing as that to tell twice in thirty year! Huck, it’s
mighty strange; I don’t understand it.”
So then he was in a fidget for the rain to let up, so we could turn out
and run across some of the people and see if they would say anything
about it to us. And he said if they did we must be horribly surprised
and shocked.
We was out and gone the minute the rain stopped. It was just broad day
then. We loafed along up the road, and now and then met a person and
stopped and said howdy, and told them when we come, and how we left the
folks at home, and how long we was going to stay, and all that, but
none of them said a word about that thing; which was just astonishing,
and no mistake. Tom said he believed if we went to the sycamores we
would find that body laying there solitary and alone, and not a soul
around. Said he believed the men chased the thieves so far into the
woods that the thieves prob’ly seen a good chance and turned on them at
last, and maybe they all killed each other, and so there wasn’t anybody
left to tell.
First we knowed, gabbling along that away, we was right at the
sycamores. The cold chills trickled down my back and I wouldn’t budge
another step, for all Tom’s persuading. But he couldn’t hold in; he’d
_got_ to see if the boots was safe on that body yet. So he crope in—and
the next minute out he come again with his eyes bulging he was so
excited, and says:
[Illustration: Huck, it’s gone!]
“Huck, it’s gone!”
I _was_ astonished! I says:
“Tom, you don’t mean it.”
“It’s gone, sure. There ain’t a sign of it. The ground is trampled
some, but if there was any blood it’s all washed away by the storm, for
it’s all puddles and slush in there.”
At last I give in, and went and took a look myself; and it was just as
Tom said—there wasn’t a sign of a corpse.
“Dern it,” I says, “the di’monds is gone. Don’t you reckon the thieves
slunk back and lugged him off, Tom?”
“Looks like it. It just does. Now where’d they hide him, do you
reckon?”
“I don’t know,” I says, disgusted, “and what’s more I don’t care.
They’ve got the boots, and that’s all I cared about. He’ll lay around
these woods a long time before I hunt him up.”
Tom didn’t feel no more intrust in him neither, only curiosity to know
what come of him; but he said we’d lay low and keep dark and it
wouldn’t be long till the dogs or somebody rousted him out.
We went back home to breakfast ever so bothered and put out and
disappointed and swindled. I warn’t ever so down on a corpse before.
CHAPTER VIII.
TALKING WITH THE GHOST
It warn’t very cheerful at breakfast. Aunt Sally she looked old and
tired and let the children snarl and fuss at one another and didn’t
seem to notice it was going on, which wasn’t her usual style; me and
Tom had a plenty to think about without talking; Benny she looked like
she hadn’t had much sleep, and whenever she’d lift her head a little
and steal a look towards her father you could see there was tears in
her eyes; and as for the old man, his things stayed on his plate and
got cold without him knowing they was there, I reckon, for he was
thinking and thinking all the time, and never said a word and never et
a bite.
By and by when it was stillest, that nigger’s head was poked in at the
door again, and he said his Marse Brace was getting powerful uneasy
about Marse Jubiter, which hadn’t come home yet, and would Marse Silas
please—He was looking at Uncle Silas, and he stopped there, like the
rest of his words was froze; for Uncle Silas he rose up shaky and
steadied himself leaning his fingers on the table, and he was panting,
and his eyes was set on the nigger, and he kept swallowing, and put his
other hand up to his throat a couple of times, and at last he got his
words started, and says:
[Illustration: What does he think?]
“Does he—does he—think—_what_ does he think! Tell him—tell him—” Then
he sunk down in his chair limp and weak, and says, so as you could
hardly hear him: “Go away—go away!”
The nigger looked scared and cleared out, and we all felt—well, I don’t
know how we felt, but it was awful, with the old man panting there, and
his eyes set and looking like a person that was dying. None of us could
budge; but Benny she slid around soft, with her tears running down, and
stood by his side, and nestled his old gray head up against her and
begun to stroke it and pet it with her hands, and nodded to us to go
away, and we done it, going out very quiet, like the dead was there.
Me and Tom struck out for the woods mighty solemn, and saying how
different it was now to what it was last summer when we was here and
everything was so peaceful and happy and everybody thought so much of
Uncle Silas, and he was so cheerful and simple-hearted and
pudd’n-headed and good—and now look at him. If he hadn’t lost his mind
he wasn’t much short of it. That was what we allowed.
It was a most lovely day now, and bright and sunshiny; and the further
and further we went over the hills towards the prairie the lovelier and
lovelier the trees and flowers got to be and the more it seemed strange
and somehow wrong that there had to be trouble in such a world as this.
And then all of a sudden I catched my breath and grabbed Tom’s arm, and
all my livers and lungs and things fell down into my legs.
“There it is!” I says. We jumped back behind a bush shivering, and Tom
says:
“’Sh!—don’t make a noise.”
It was setting on a log right in the edge of a little prairie,
thinking. I tried to get Tom to come away, but he wouldn’t, and I
dasn’t budge by myself. He said we mightn’t ever get another chance to
see one, and he was going to look his fill at this one if he died for
it. So I looked too, though it give me the fan-tods to do it. Tom he
_had_ to talk, but he talked low. He says:
“Poor Jakey, it’s got all its things on, just as he said he would.
_Now_ you see what we wasn’t certain about—its hair. It’s not long now
the way it was: it’s got it cropped close to its head, the way he said
he would. Huck, I never see anything look any more naturaler than what
It does.”
“Nor I neither,” I says; “I’d recognize it anywheres.”
“So would I. It looks perfectly solid and genuwyne, just the way it
done before it died.”
So we kept a-gazing. Pretty soon Tom says:
“Huck, there’s something mighty curious about this one, don’t you know?
IT oughtn’t to be going around in the daytime.”
“That’s so, Tom—I never heard the like of it before.”
“No, sir, they don’t ever come out only at night—and then not till
after twelve. There’s something wrong about this one, now you mark my
words. I don’t believe it’s got any right to be around in the daytime.
But don’t it look natural! Jake was going to play deef and dumb here,
so the neighbors wouldn’t know his voice. Do you reckon it would do
that if we was to holler at it?”
“Lordy, Tom, don’t talk so! If you was to holler at it I’d die in my
tracks.”
“Don’t you worry, I ain’t going to holler at it. Look, Huck, it’s
a-scratching its head—don’t you see?”
“Well, what of it?”
“Why, this. What’s the sense of it scratching its head? There ain’t
anything there to itch; its head is made out of fog or something like
that, and can’t itch. A fog can’t itch; any fool knows that.”
“Well, then, if it don’t itch and can’t itch, what in the nation is it
scratching it for? Ain’t it just habit, don’t you reckon?”
“No, sir, I don’t. I ain’t a bit satisfied about the way this one acts.
I’ve a blame good notion it’s a bogus one—I have, as sure as I’m
a-sitting here. Because, if it—Huck!”
“Well, what’s the matter now?”
“_You can’t see the bushes through it!_”
“Why, Tom, it’s so, sure! It’s as solid as a cow. I sort of begin to
think—”
“Huck, it’s biting off a chaw of tobacker! By George, _they_ don’t
chaw—they hain’t got anything to chaw _with_. Huck!”
“I’m a-listening.”
“It ain’t a ghost at all. It’s Jake Dunlap his own self!”
“Oh your granny!” I says.
“Huck Finn, did we find any corpse in the sycamores?”
“No.”
“Or any sign of one?”
“No.”
“Mighty good reason. Hadn’t ever been any corpse there.”
“Why, Tom, you know we heard—”
“Yes, we did—heard a howl or two. Does that prove anybody was killed?
Course it don’t. And we seen four men run, then this one come walking
out and we took it for a ghost. No more ghost than you are. It was Jake
Dunlap his own self, and it’s Jake Dunlap now. He’s been and got his
hair cropped, the way he said he would, and he’s playing himself for a
stranger, just the same as he said he would. Ghost? Hum!—he’s as sound
as a nut.”
Then I see it all, and how we had took too much for granted. I was
powerful glad he didn’t get killed, and so was Tom, and we wondered
which he would like the best—for us to never let on to know him, or
how? Tom reckoned the best way would be to go and ask him. So he
started; but I kept a little behind, because I didn’t know but it might
be a ghost, after all. When Tom got to where he was, he says:
“Me and Huck’s mighty glad to see you again, and you needn’t be afeared
we’ll tell. And if you think it’ll be safer for you if we don’t let on
to know you when we run across you, say the word and you’ll see you can
depend on us, and would ruther cut our hands off than get you into the
least little bit of danger.”
First off he looked surprised to see us, and not very glad, either; but
as Tom went on he looked pleasanter, and when he was done he smiled,
and nodded his head several times, and made signs with his hands, and
says:
[Illustration: Goo-goo—goo-goo]
“Goo-goo—goo-goo,” the way deef and dummies does.
Just then we see some of Steve Nickerson’s people coming that lived
t’other side of the prairie, so Tom says:
“You do it elegant; I never see anybody do it better. You’re right;
play it on us, too; play it on us same as the others; it’ll keep you in
practice and prevent you making blunders. We’ll keep away from you and
let on we don’t know you, but any time we can be any help, you just let
us know.”
Then we loafed along past the Nickersons, and of course they asked if
that was the new stranger yonder, and where’d he come from, and what
was his name, and which communion was he, Babtis’ or Methodis’, and
which politics, Whig or Democrat, and how long is he staying, and all
them other questions that humans always asks when a stranger comes, and
animals does, too. But Tom said he warn’t able to make anything out of
deef and dumb signs, and the same with goo-gooing. Then we watched them
go and bullyrag Jake; because we was pretty uneasy for him. Tom said it
would take him days to get so he wouldn’t forget he was a deef and
dummy sometimes, and speak out before he thought. When we had watched
long enough to see that Jake was getting along all right and working
his signs very good, we loafed along again, allowing to strike the
schoolhouse about recess time, which was a three-mile tramp.
I was so disappointed not to hear Jake tell about the row in the
sycamores, and how near he come to getting killed, that I couldn’t seem
to get over it, and Tom he felt the same, but said if we was in Jake’s
fix we would want to go careful and keep still and not take any
chances.
The boys and girls was all glad to see us again, and we had a real good
time all through recess. Coming to school the Henderson boys had come
across the new deef and dummy and told the rest; so all the scholars
was chuck full of him and couldn’t talk about anything else, and was in
a sweat to get a sight of him because they hadn’t ever seen a deef and
dummy in their lives, and it made a powerful excitement.
Tom said it was tough to have to keep mum now; said we would be heroes
if we could come out and tell all we knowed; but after all, it was
still more heroic to keep mum, there warn’t two boys in a million could
do it. That was Tom Sawyer’s idea about it, and I reckoned there warn’t
anybody could better it.
CHAPTER IX.
FINDING OF JUBITER DUNLAP
In the next two or three days Dummy he got to be powerful popular. He
went associating around with the neighbors, and they made much of him,
and was proud to have such a rattling curiosity among them. They had
him to breakfast, they had him to dinner, they had him to supper; they
kept him loaded up with hog and hominy, and warn’t ever tired staring
at him and wondering over him, and wishing they knowed more about him,
he was so uncommon and romantic. His signs warn’t no good; people
couldn’t understand them and he prob’ly couldn’t himself, but he done a
sight of goo-gooing, and so everybody was satisfied, and admired to
hear him go it. He toted a piece of slate around, and a pencil; and
people wrote questions on it and he wrote answers; but there warn’t
anybody could read his writing but Brace Dunlap. Brace said he couldn’t
read it very good, but he could manage to dig out the meaning most of
the time. He said Dummy said he belonged away off somers and used to be
well off, but got busted by swindlers which he had trusted, and was
poor now, and hadn’t any way to make a living.
Everybody praised Brace Dunlap for being so good to that stranger. He
let him have a little log-cabin all to himself, and had his niggers
take care of it, and fetch him all the vittles he wanted.
Dummy was at our house some, because old Uncle Silas was so afflicted
himself, these days, that anybody else that was afflicted was a comfort
to him. Me and Tom didn’t let on that we had knowed him before, and he
didn’t let on that he had knowed us before. The family talked their
troubles out before him the same as if he wasn’t there, but we reckoned
it wasn’t any harm for him to hear what they said. Generly he didn’t
seem to notice, but sometimes he did.
Well, two or three days went along, and everybody got to getting uneasy
about Jubiter Dunlap. Everybody was asking everybody if they had any
idea what had become of him. No, they hadn’t, they said: and they shook
their heads and said there was something powerful strange about it.
Another and another day went by; then there was a report got around
that praps he was murdered. You bet it made a big stir! Everybody’s
tongue was clacking away after that. Saturday two or three gangs turned
out and hunted the woods to see if they could run across his
remainders. Me and Tom helped, and it was noble good times and
exciting. Tom he was so brimful of it he couldn’t eat nor rest. He said
if we could find that corpse we would be celebrated, and more talked
about than if we got drownded.
The others got tired and give it up; but not Tom Sawyer—that warn’t his
style. Saturday night he didn’t sleep any, hardly, trying to think up a
plan; and towards daylight in the morning he struck it. He snaked me
out of bed and was all excited, and says:
“Quick, Huck, snatch on your clothes—I’ve got it! Bloodhound!”
In two minutes we was tearing up the river road in the dark towards the
village. Old Jeff Hooker had a bloodhound, and Tom was going to borrow
him. I says:
“The trail’s too old, Tom—and besides, it’s rained, you know.”
“It don’t make any difference, Huck. If the body’s hid in the woods
anywhere around the hound will find it. If he’s been murdered and
buried, they wouldn’t bury him deep, it ain’t likely, and if the dog
goes over the spot he’ll scent him, sure. Huck, we’re going to be
celebrated, sure as you’re born!”
He was just a-blazing; and whenever he got afire he was most likely to
get afire all over. That was the way this time. In two minutes he had
got it all ciphered out, and wasn’t only just going to find the
corpse—no, he was going to get on the track of that murderer and hunt
_him_ down, too; and not only that, but he was going to stick to him
till—“Well,” I says, “you better find the corpse first; I reckon that’s
a-plenty for to-day. For all we know, there _ain’t_ any corpse and
nobody hain’t been murdered. That cuss could ’a’ gone off somers and
not been killed at all.”
That graveled him, and he says:
“Huck Finn, I never see such a person as you to want to spoil
everything. As long as _you_ can’t see anything hopeful in a thing, you
won’t let anybody else. What good can it do you to throw cold water on
that corpse and get up that selfish theory that there ain’t been any
murder? None in the world. I don’t see how you can act so. I wouldn’t
treat you like that, and you know it. Here we’ve got a noble good
opportunity to make a ruputation, and—”
“Oh, go ahead,” I says. “I’m sorry, and I take it all back. I didn’t
mean nothing. Fix it any way you want it. _He_ ain’t any consequence to
me. If he’s killed, I’m as glad of it as you are; and if he—”
“I never said anything about being glad; I only—”
“Well, then, I’m as _sorry_ as you are. Any way you druther have it,
that is the way I druther have it. He—”
“There ain’t any druthers _about_ it, Huck Finn; nobody said anything
about druthers. And as for—”
He forgot he was talking, and went tramping along, studying. He begun
to get excited again, and pretty soon he says:
“Huck, it’ll be the bulliest thing that ever happened if we find the
body after everybody else has quit looking, and then go ahead and hunt
up the murderer. It won’t only be an honor to us, but it’ll be an honor
to Uncle Silas because it was us that done it. It’ll set him up again,
you see if it don’t.”
But Old Jeff Hooker he throwed cold water on the whole business when we
got to his blacksmith shop and told him what we come for.
“You can take the dog,” he says, “but you ain’t a-going to find any
corpse, because there ain’t any corpse to find. Everybody’s quit
looking, and they’re right. Soon as they come to think, they knowed
there warn’t no corpse. And I’ll tell you for why. What does a person
kill another person for, Tom Sawyer?—answer me that.”
“Why, he—er—”
“Answer up! You ain’t no fool. What does he kill him _for?_”
“Well, sometimes it’s for revenge, and—”
“Wait. One thing at a time. Revenge, says you; and right you are. Now
who ever had anything agin that poor trifling no-account? Who do you
reckon would want to kill _him?_—that rabbit!”
Tom was stuck. I reckon he hadn’t thought of a person having to have a
_reason_ for killing a person before, and now he sees it warn’t likely
anybody would have that much of a grudge against a lamb like Jubiter
Dunlap. The blacksmith says, by and by:
“The revenge idea won’t work, you see. Well, then, what’s next?
Robbery? B’gosh, that must ’a’ been it, Tom! Yes, sirree, I reckon
we’ve struck it this time. Some feller wanted his gallus-buckles, and
so he—”
But it was so funny he busted out laughing, and just went on laughing
and laughing and laughing till he was ’most dead, and Tom looked so put
out and cheap that I knowed he was ashamed he had come, and he wished
he hadn’t. But old Hooker never let up on him. He raked up everything a
person ever could want to kill another person about, and any fool could
see they didn’t any of them fit this case, and he just made no end of
fun of the whole business and of the people that had been hunting the
body; and he said:
“If they’d had any sense they’d ’a’ knowed the lazy cuss slid out
because he wanted a loafing spell after all this work. He’ll come
pottering back in a couple of weeks, and then how’ll you fellers feel?
But, laws bless you, take the dog, and go and hunt his remainders. Do,
Tom.”
Then he busted out, and had another of them forty-rod laughs of hisn.
Tom couldn’t back down after all this, so he said, “All right, unchain
him;” and the blacksmith done it, and we started home and left that old
man laughing yet.
It was a lovely dog. There ain’t any dog that’s got a lovelier
disposition than a bloodhound, and this one knowed us and liked us. He
capered and raced around ever so friendly, and powerful glad to be free
and have a holiday; but Tom was so cut up he couldn’t take any intrust
in him, and said he wished he’d stopped and thought a minute before he
ever started on such a fool errand. He said old Jeff Hooker would tell
everybody, and we’d never hear the last of it.
So we loafed along home down the back lanes, feeling pretty glum and
not talking. When we was passing the far corner of our tobacker field
we heard the dog set up a long howl in there, and we went to the place
and he was scratching the ground with all his might, and every now and
then canting up his head sideways and fetching another howl.
[Illustration: Fetching another howl.]
It was a long square, the shape of a grave; the rain had made it sink
down and show the shape. The minute we come and stood there we looked
at one another and never said a word. When the dog had dug down only a
few inches he grabbed something and pulled it up, and it was an arm and
a sleeve. Tom kind of gasped out, and says:
“Come away, Huck—it’s found.”
I just felt awful. We struck for the road and fetched the first men
that come along. They got a spade at the crib and dug out the body, and
you never see such an excitement. You couldn’t make anything out of the
face, but you didn’t need to. Everybody said:
“Poor Jubiter; it’s his clothes, to the last rag!”
Some rushed off to spread the news and tell the justice of the peace
and have an inquest, and me and Tom lit out for the house. Tom was all
afire and ’most out of breath when we come tearing in where Uncle Silas
and Aunt Sally and Benny was. Tom sung out:
“Me and Huck’s found Jubiter Dunlap’s corpse all by ourselves with a
bloodhound, after everybody else had quit hunting and given it up; and
if it hadn’t a been for us it never _would_ ’a’ been found; and he
_was_ murdered too—they done it with a club or something like that; and
I’m going to start in and find the murderer, next, and I bet I’ll do
it!”
Aunt Sally and Benny sprung up pale and astonished, but Uncle Silas
fell right forward out of his chair on to the floor and groans out:
“Oh, my God, you’ve found him _Now!_”
CHAPTER X.
THE ARREST OF UNCLE SILAS
Them awful words froze us solid. We couldn’t move hand or foot for as
much as half a minute. Then we kind of come to, and lifted the old man
up and got him into his chair, and Benny petted him and kissed him and
tried to comfort him, and poor old Aunt Sally she done the same; but,
poor things, they was so broke up and scared and knocked out of their
right minds that they didn’t hardly know what they was about. With Tom
it was awful; it ’most petrified him to think maybe he had got his
uncle into a thousand times more trouble than ever, and maybe it
wouldn’t ever happened if he hadn’t been so ambitious to get
celebrated, and let the corpse alone the way the others done. But
pretty soon he sort of come to himself again and says:
“Uncle Silas, don’t you say another word like that. It’s dangerous, and
there ain’t a shadder of truth in it.”
Aunt Sally and Benny was thankful to hear him say that, and they said
the same; but the old man he wagged his head sorrowful and hopeless,
and the tears run down his face, and he says;
“No—I done it; poor Jubiter, I done it!”
It was dreadful to hear him say it. Then he went on and told about it,
and said it happened the day me and Tom come—along about sundown. He
said Jubiter pestered him and aggravated him till he was so mad he just
sort of lost his mind and grabbed up a stick and hit him over the head
with all his might, and Jubiter dropped in his tracks. Then he was
scared and sorry, and got down on his knees and lifted his head up, and
begged him to speak and say he wasn’t dead; and before long he come to,
and when he see who it was holding his head, he jumped like he was
’most scared to death, and cleared the fence and tore into the woods,
and was gone. So he hoped he wasn’t hurt bad.
“But laws,” he says, “it was only just fear that gave him that last
little spurt of strength, and of course it soon played out and he laid
down in the bush, and there wasn’t anybody to help him, and he died.”
Then the old man cried and grieved, and said he was a murderer and the
mark of Cain was on him, and he had disgraced his family and was going
to be found out and hung. But Tom said:
“No, you ain’t going to be found out. You _didn’t_ kill him. _One_ lick
wouldn’t kill him. Somebody else done it.”
“Oh, yes,” he says, “I done it—nobody else. Who else had anything
against him? Who else _could_ have anything against him?”
He looked up kind of like he hoped some of us could mention somebody
that could have a grudge against that harmless no-account, but of
course it warn’t no use—he _had_ us; we couldn’t say a word. He noticed
that, and he saddened down again, and I never see a face so miserable
and so pitiful to see. Tom had a sudden idea, and says:
“But hold on!—somebody _buried_ him. Now who—”
He shut off sudden. I knowed the reason. It give me the cold shudders
when he said them words, because right away I remembered about us
seeing Uncle Silas prowling around with a long-handled shovel away in
the night that night. And I knowed Benny seen him, too, because she was
talking about it one day. The minute Tom shut off he changed the
subject and went to begging Uncle Silas to keep mum, and the rest of us
done the same, and said he _must_, and said it wasn’t his business to
tell on himself, and if he kept mum nobody would ever know; but if it
was found out and any harm come to him it would break the family’s
hearts and kill them, and yet never do anybody any good. So at last he
promised. We was all of us more comfortable, then, and went to work to
cheer up the old man. We told him all he’d got to do was to keep still,
and it wouldn’t be long till the whole thing would blow over and be
forgot. We all said there wouldn’t anybody ever suspect Uncle Silas,
nor ever dream of such a thing, he being so good and kind, and having
such a good character; and Tom says, cordial and hearty, he says:
“Why, just look at it a minute; just consider. Here is Uncle Silas, all
these years a preacher—at his own expense; all these years doing good
with all his might and every way he can think of—at his own expense,
all the time; always been loved by everybody, and respected; always
been peaceable and minding his own business, the very last man in this
whole deestrict to touch a person, and everybody knows it. Suspect
_him?_ Why, it ain’t any more possible than—”
“By authority of the State of Arkansaw, I arrest you for the murder of
Jubiter Dunlap!” shouts the sheriff at the door.
It was awful. Aunt Sally and Benny flung themselves at Uncle Silas,
screaming and crying, and hugged him and hung to him, and Aunt Sally
said go away, she wouldn’t ever give him up, they shouldn’t have him,
and the niggers they come crowding and crying to the door and—well, I
couldn’t stand it; it was enough to break a person’s heart; so I got
out.
They took him up to the little one-horse jail in the village, and we
all went along to tell him good-bye; and Tom was feeling elegant, and
says to me, “We’ll have a most noble good time and heaps of danger some
dark night getting him out of there, Huck, and it’ll be talked about
everywheres and we will be celebrated;” but the old man busted that
scheme up the minute he whispered to him about it. He said no, it was
his duty to stand whatever the law done to him, and he would stick to
the jail plumb through to the end, even if there warn’t no door to it.
It disappointed Tom and graveled him a good deal, but he had to put up
with it.
But he felt responsible and bound to get his uncle Silas free; and he
told Aunt Sally, the last thing, not to worry, because he was going to
turn in and work night and day and beat this game and fetch Uncle Silas
out innocent; and she was very loving to him and thanked him and said
she knowed he would do his very best. And she told us to help Benny
take care of the house and the children, and then we had a good-bye cry
all around and went back to the farm, and left her there to live with
the jailer’s wife a month till the trial in October.
CHAPTER XI.
TOM SAWYER DISCOVERS THE MURDERERS
Well, that was a hard month on us all. Poor Benny, she kept up the best
she could, and me and Tom tried to keep things cheerful there at the
house, but it kind of went for nothing, as you may say. It was the same
up at the jail. We went up every day to see the old people, but it was
awful dreary, because the old man warn’t sleeping much, and was walking
in his sleep considerable and so he got to looking fagged and
miserable, and his mind got shaky, and we all got afraid his troubles
would break him down and kill him. And whenever we tried to persuade
him to feel cheerfuler, he only shook his head and said if we only
knowed what it was to carry around a murderer’s load in your heart we
wouldn’t talk that way. Tom and all of us kept telling him it _wasn’t_
murder, but just accidental killing! but it never made any
difference—it was murder, and he wouldn’t have it any other way. He
actu’ly begun to come out plain and square towards trial time and
acknowledge that he _tried_ to kill the man. Why, that was awful, you
know. It made things seem fifty times as dreadful, and there warn’t no
more comfort for Aunt Sally and Benny. But he promised he wouldn’t say
a word about his murder when others was around, and we was glad of
that.
[Illustration: Kept me up ’most all night.]
Tom Sawyer racked the head off of himself all that month trying to plan
some way out for Uncle Silas, and many’s the night he kept me up ’most
all night with this kind of tiresome work, but he couldn’t seem to get
on the right track no way. As for me, I reckoned a body might as well
give it up, it all looked so blue and I was so downhearted; but he
wouldn’t. He stuck to the business right along, and went on planning
and thinking and ransacking his head.
So at last the trial come on, towards the middle of October, and we was
all in the court. The place was jammed, of course. Poor old Uncle
Silas, he looked more like a dead person than a live one, his eyes was
so hollow and he looked so thin and so mournful. Benny she set on one
side of him and Aunt Sally on the other, and they had veils on, and was
full of trouble. But Tom he set by our lawyer, and had his finger in
everywheres, of course. The lawyer let him, and the judge let him. He
’most took the business out of the lawyer’s hands sometimes; which was
well enough, because that was only a mud-turtle of a back-settlement
lawyer and didn’t know enough to come in when it rains, as the saying
is.
They swore in the jury, and then the lawyer for the prostitution got up
and begun. He made a terrible speech against the old man, that made him
moan and groan, and made Benny and Aunt Sally cry. The way _he_ told
about the murder kind of knocked us all stupid it was so different from
the old man’s tale. He said he was going to prove that Uncle Silas was
_seen_ to kill Jubiter Dunlap by two good witnesses, and done it
deliberate, and _said_ he was going to kill him the very minute he hit
him with the club; and they seen him hide Jubiter in the bushes, and
they seen that Jubiter was stone-dead. And said Uncle Silas come later
and lugged Jubiter down into the tobacker field, and two men seen him
do it. And said Uncle Silas turned out, away in the night, and buried
Jubiter, and a man seen him at it.
I says to myself, poor old Uncle Silas has been lying about it because
he reckoned nobody seen him and he couldn’t bear to break Aunt Sally’s
heart and Benny’s; and right he was: as for me, I would ’a’ lied the
same way, and so would anybody that had any feeling, to save them such
misery and sorrow which _they_ warn’t no ways responsible for. Well, it
made our lawyer look pretty sick; and it knocked Tom silly, too, for a
little spell, but then he braced up and let on that he warn’t
worried—but I knowed he _was_, all the same. And the people—my, but it
made a stir amongst them!
[Illustration: Our lawyer.]
And when that lawyer was done telling the jury what he was going to
prove, he set down and begun to work his witnesses.
First, he called a lot of them to show that there was bad blood betwixt
Uncle Silas and the diseased; and they told how they had heard Uncle
Silas threaten the diseased, at one time and another, and how it got
worse and worse and everybody was talking about it, and how diseased
got afraid of his life, and told two or three of them he was certain
Uncle Silas would up and kill him some time or another.
Tom and our lawyer asked them some questions; but it warn’t no use,
they stuck to what they said.
Next, they called up Lem Beebe, and he took the stand. It come into my
mind, then, how Lem and Jim Lane had come along talking, that time,
about borrowing a dog or something from Jubiter Dunlap; and that
brought up the blackberries and the lantern; and that brought up Bill
and Jack Withers, and how they passed by, talking about a nigger
stealing Uncle Silas’s corn; and that fetched up our old ghost that
come along about the same time and scared us so—and here _he_ was too,
and a privileged character, on accounts of his being deef and dumb and
a stranger, and they had fixed him a chair inside the railing, where he
could cross his legs and be comfortable, whilst the other people was
all in a jam so they couldn’t hardly breathe. So it all come back to me
just the way it was that day; and it made me mournful to think how
pleasant it was up to then, and how miserable ever since.
_Lem Beebe_, sworn, said—“I was a-coming along, that day, second of
September, and Jim Lane was with me, and it was towards sundown, and we
heard loud talk, like quarrelling, and we was very close, only the
hazel bushes between (that’s along the fence); and we heard a voice
say, ‘I’ve told you more’n once I’d kill you,’ and knowed it was this
prisoner’s voice; and then we see a club come up above the bushes and
down out of sight again, and heard a smashing thump and then a groan or
two: and then we crope soft to where we could see, and there laid
Jupiter Dunlap dead, and this prisoner standing over him with the club;
and the next he hauled the dead man into a clump of bushes and hid him,
and then we stooped low, to be out of sight, and got away.”
Well, it was awful. It kind of froze everybody’s blood to hear it, and
the house was ’most as still whilst he was telling it as if there
warn’t nobody in it. And when he was done, you could hear them gasp and
sigh, all over the house, and look at one another the same as to say,
“Ain’t it perfectly terrible—ain’t it awful!”
Now happened a thing that astonished me. All the time the first
witnesses was proving the bad blood and the threats and all that, Tom
Sawyer was alive and laying for them; and the minute they was through,
he went for them, and done his level best to catch them in lies and
spile their testimony. But now, how different. When Lem first begun to
talk, and never said anything about speaking to Jubiter or trying to
borrow a dog off of him, he was all alive and laying for Lem, and you
could see he was getting ready to cross-question him to death pretty
soon, and then I judged him and me would go on the stand by and by and
tell what we heard him and Jim Lane say. But the next time I looked at
Tom I got the cold shivers. Why, he was in the brownest study you ever
see—miles and miles away. He warn’t hearing a word Lem Beebe was
saying; and when he got through he was still in that brown-study, just
the same. Our lawyer joggled him, and then he looked up startled, and
says, “Take the witness if you want him. Lemme alone—I want to think.”
Well, that beat me. I couldn’t understand it. And Benny and her
mother—oh, they looked sick, they was so troubled. They shoved their
veils to one side and tried to get his eye, but it warn’t any use, and
I couldn’t get his eye either. So the mud-turtle he tackled the
witness, but it didn’t amount to nothing; and he made a mess of it.
Then they called up Jim Lane, and he told the very same story over
again, exact. Tom never listened to this one at all, but set there
thinking and thinking, miles and miles away. So the mud-turtle went in
alone again and come out just as flat as he done before. The lawyer for
the prostitution looked very comfortable, but the judge looked
disgusted. You see, Tom was just the same as a regular lawyer, nearly,
because it was Arkansaw law for a prisoner to choose anybody he wanted
to help his lawyer, and Tom had had Uncle Silas shove him into the
case, and now he was botching it and you could see the judge didn’t
like it much. All that the mud-turtle got out of Lem and Jim was this:
he asked them:
“Why didn’t you go and tell what you saw?”
“We was afraid we would get mixed up in it ourselves. And we was just
starting down the river a-hunting for all the week besides; but as soon
as we come back we found out they’d been searching for the body, so
then we went and told Brace Dunlap all about it.”
“When was that?”
“Saturday night, September 9th.”
The judge he spoke up and says:
“Mr. Sheriff, arrest these two witnesses on suspicions of being
accessionary after the fact to the murder.”
The lawyer for the prostitution jumps up all excited, and says:
“Your honor! I protest against this extraordi—”
[Illustration: “Set down!” says the judge.]
“Set down!” says the judge, pulling his bowie and laying it on his
pulpit. “I beg you to respect the Court.”
So he done it. Then he called Bill Withers.
_Bill Withers_, sworn, said: “I was coming along about sundown,
Saturday, September 2d, by the prisoner’s field, and my brother Jack
was with me and we seen a man toting off something heavy on his back
and allowed it was a nigger stealing corn; we couldn’t see distinct;
next we made out that it was one man carrying another; and the way it
hung, so kind of limp, we judged it was somebody that was drunk; and by
the man’s walk we said it was Parson Silas, and we judged he had found
Sam Cooper drunk in the road, which he was always trying to reform him,
and was toting him out of danger.”
It made the people shiver to think of poor old Uncle Silas toting off
the diseased down to the place in his tobacker field where the dog dug
up the body, but there warn’t much sympathy around amongst the faces,
and I heard one cuss say “’Tis the coldest blooded work I ever struck,
lugging a murdered man around like that, and going to bury him like a
animal, and him a preacher at that.”
Tom he went on thinking, and never took no notice; so our lawyer took
the witness and done the best he could, and it was plenty poor enough.
Then Jack Withers he come on the stand and told the same tale, just
like Bill done.
And after him comes Brace Dunlap, and he was looking very mournful, and
most crying; and there was a rustle and a stir all around, and
everybody got ready to listen, and lots of the women folks said, “Poor
cretur, poor cretur,” and you could see a many of them wiping their
eyes.
_Brace Dunlap_, sworn, said: “I was in considerable trouble a long time
about my poor brother, but I reckoned things warn’t near so bad as he
made out, and I couldn’t make myself believe anybody would have the
heart to hurt a poor harmless cretur like that”—[by jings, I was sure I
seen Tom give a kind of a faint little start, and then look
disappointed again]—“and you know I _could’t_ think a preacher would
hurt him—it warn’t natural to think such an onlikely thing—so I never
paid much attention, and now I sha’n’t ever, ever forgive myself; for
if I had a done different, my poor brother would be with me this day,
and not laying yonder murdered, and him so harmless.” He kind of broke
down there and choked up, and waited to get his voice; and people all
around said the most pitiful things, and women cried; and it was very
still in there, and solemn, and old Uncle Silas, poor thing, he give a
groan right out so everybody heard him. Then Brace he went on,
“Saturday, September 2d, he didn’t come home to supper. By-and-by I got
a little uneasy, and one of my niggers went over to this prisoner’s
place, but come back and said he warn’t there. So I got uneasier and
uneasier, and couldn’t rest. I went to bed, but I couldn’t sleep; and
turned out, away late in the night, and went wandering over to this
prisoner’s place and all around about there a good while, hoping I
would run across my poor brother, and never knowing he was out of his
troubles and gone to a better shore—” So he broke down and choked up
again, and most all the women was crying now. Pretty soon he got
another start and says: “But it warn’t no use; so at last I went home
and tried to get some sleep, but couldn’t. Well, in a day or two
everybody was uneasy, and they got to talking about this prisoner’s
threats, and took to the idea, which I didn’t take no stock in, that my
brother was murdered so they hunted around and tried to find his body,
but couldn’t and give it up. And so I reckoned he was gone off somers
to have a little peace, and would come back to us when his troubles was
kind of healed. But late Saturday night, the 9th, Lem Beebe and Jim
Lane come to my house and told me all—told me the whole awful
’sassination, and my heart was broke. And _then_ I remembered something
that hadn’t took no hold of me at the time, because reports said this
prisoner had took to walking in his sleep and doing all kind of things
of no consequence, not knowing what he was about. I will tell you what
that thing was that come back into my memory. Away late that awful
Saturday night when I was wandering around about this prisoner’s place,
grieving and troubled, I was down by the corner of the tobacker-field
and I heard a sound like digging in a gritty soil; and I crope nearer
and peeped through the vines that hung on the rail fence and seen this
prisoner _shoveling_—shoveling with a long-handled shovel—heaving earth
into a big hole that was most filled up; his back was to me, but it was
bright moonlight and I knowed him by his old green baize work-gown with
a splattery white patch in the middle of the back like somebody had hit
him with a snowball. _He was burying the man he’d murdered!_”
And he slumped down in his chair crying and sobbing, and ’most
everybody in the house busted out wailing, and crying, and saying, “Oh,
it’s awful—awful—horrible!” and there was a most tremendous excitement,
and you couldn’t hear yourself think; and right in the midst of it up
jumps old Uncle Silas, white as a sheet, and sings out:
“_It’s true, every word—I murdered him in cold blood!_”
By Jackson, it petrified them! People rose up wild all over the house,
straining and staring for a better look at him, and the judge was
hammering with his mallet and the sheriff yelling “Order—order in the
court—order!”
And all the while the old man stood there a-quaking and his eyes
a-burning, and not looking at his wife and daughter, which was clinging
to him and begging him to keep still, but pawing them off with his
hands and saying he _would_ clear his black soul from crime, he _would_
heave off this load that was more than he could bear, and he _wouldn’t_
bear it another hour! And then he raged right along with his awful
tale, everybody a-staring and gasping, judge, jury, lawyers, and
everybody, and Benny and Aunt Sally crying their hearts out. And by
George, Tom Sawyer never looked at him once! Never once—just set there
gazing with all his eyes at something else, I couldn’t tell what. And
so the old man raged right along, pouring his words out like a stream
of fire:
[Illustration: I struck to kill.]
“I killed him! I am guilty! But I never had the notion in my life to
hurt him or harm him, spite of all them lies about my threatening him,
till the very minute I raised the club—then my heart went cold!—then
the pity all went out of it, and I struck to kill! In that one moment
all my wrongs come into my mind; all the insults that that man and the
scoundrel his brother, there, had put upon me, and how they laid in
together to ruin me with the people, and take away my good name, and
_drive_ me to some deed that would destroy me and my family that hadn’t
ever done _them_ no harm, so help me God! And they done it in a mean
revenge—for why? Because my innocent pure girl here at my side wouldn’t
marry that rich, insolent, ignorant coward, Brace Dunlap, who’s been
sniveling here over a brother he never cared a brass farthing for—” [I
see Tom give a jump and look glad _this_ time, to a dead certainty]
“—and in that moment I’ve told you about, I forgot my God and
remembered only my heart’s bitterness, God forgive me, and I struck to
kill. In one second I was miserably sorry—oh, filled with remorse; but
I thought of my poor family, and I _must_ hide what I’d done for their
sakes; and I did hide that corpse in the bushes; and presently I
carried it to the tobacker field; and in the deep night I went with my
shovel and buried it where—”
Up jumps Tom and shouts:
“_Now_, I’ve got it!” and waves his hand, oh, ever so fine and starchy,
towards the old man, and says:
“Set down! A murder _was_ done, but you never had no hand in it!”
[Illustration: A murder was done.]
Well, sir, you could a heard a pin drop. And the old man he sunk down
kind of bewildered in his seat and Aunt Sally and Benny didn’t know it,
because they was so astonished and staring at Tom with their mouths
open and not knowing what they was about. And the whole house the same.
I never seen people look so helpless and tangled up, and I hain’t ever
seen eyes bug out and gaze without a blink the way theirn did. Tom
says, perfectly ca’m:
“Your honor, may I speak?”
“For God’s sake, yes—go on!” says the judge, so astonished and mixed up
he didn’t know what he was about hardly.
Then Tom he stood there and waited a second or two—that was for to work
up an “effect,” as he calls it—then he started in just as ca’m as ever,
and says:
“For about two weeks now there’s been a little bill sticking on the
front of this courthouse offering two thousand dollars reward for a
couple of big di’monds—stole at St. Louis. Them di’monds is worth
twelve thousand dollars. But never mind about that till I get to it.
Now about this murder. I will tell you all about it—how it happened—who
done it—every _de_tail.”
You could see everybody nestle now, and begin to listen for all they
was worth.
“This man here, Brace Dunlap, that’s been sniveling so about his dead
brother that _you_ know he never cared a straw for, wanted to marry
that young girl there, and she wouldn’t have him. So he told Uncle
Silas he would make him sorry. Uncle Silas knowed how powerful he was,
and how little chance he had against such a man, and he was scared and
worried, and done everything he could think of to smooth him over and
get him to be good to him: he even took his no-account brother Jubiter
on the farm and give him wages and stinted his own family to pay them;
and Jubiter done everything his brother could contrive to insult Uncle
Silas, and fret and worry him, and try to drive Uncle Silas into doing
him a hurt, so as to injure Uncle Silas with the people. And it done
it. Everybody turned against him and said the meanest kind of things
about him, and it graduly broke his heart—yes, and he was so worried
and distressed that often he warn’t hardly in his right mind.
“Well, on that Saturday that we’ve had so much trouble about, two of
these witnesses here, Lem Beebe and Jim Lane, come along by where Uncle
Silas and Jubiter Dunlap was at work—and that much of what they’ve said
is true, the rest is lies. They didn’t hear Uncle Silas say he would
kill Jubiter; they didn’t hear no blow struck; they didn’t see no dead
man, and they didn’t see Uncle Silas hide anything in the bushes. Look
at them now—how they set there, wishing they hadn’t been so handy with
their tongues; anyway, they’ll wish it before I get done.
“That same Saturday evening Bill and Jack Withers _did_ see one man
lugging off another one. That much of what they said is true, and the
rest is lies. First off they thought it was a nigger stealing Uncle
Silas’s corn—you notice it makes them look silly, now, to find out
somebody overheard them say that. That’s because they found out by and
by who it was that was doing the lugging, and _they_ know best why they
swore here that they took it for Uncle Silas by the gait—which it
_wasn’t_, and they knowed it when they swore to that lie.
“A man out in the moonlight _did_ see a murdered person put under
ground in the tobacker field—but it wasn’t Uncle Silas that done the
burying. He was in his bed at that very time.
“Now, then, before I go on, I want to ask you if you’ve ever noticed
this: that people, when they’re thinking deep, or when they’re worried,
are most always doing something with their hands, and they don’t know
it, and don’t notice what it is their hands are doing, some stroke
their chins; some stroke their noses; some stroke up _under_ their chin
with their hand; some twirl a chain, some fumble a button, then there’s
some that draws a figure or a letter with their finger on their cheek,
or under their chin or on their under lip. That’s _my_ way. When I’m
restless, or worried, or thinking hard, I draw capital V’s on my cheek
or on my under lip or under my chin, and never anything _but_ capital
V’s—and half the time I don’t notice it and don’t know I’m doing it.”
That was odd. That is just what I do; only I make an O. And I could see
people nodding to one another, same as they do when they mean “_that’_
so.”
“Now, then, I’ll go on. That same Saturday—no, it was the night
before—there was a steamboat laying at Flagler’s Landing, forty miles
above here, and it was raining and storming like the nation. And there
was a thief aboard, and he had them two big di’monds that’s advertised
out here on this courthouse door; and he slipped ashore with his
hand-bag and struck out into the dark and the storm, and he was
a-hoping he could get to this town all right and be safe. But he had
two pals aboard the boat, hiding, and he knowed they was going to kill
him the first chance they got and take the di’monds; because all three
stole them, and then this fellow he got hold of them and skipped.
“Well, he hadn’t been gone more’n ten minutes before his pals found it
out, and they jumped ashore and lit out after him. Prob’ly they burnt
matches and found his tracks. Anyway, they dogged along after him all
day Saturday and kept out of his sight; and towards sundown he come to
the bunch of sycamores down by Uncle Silas’s field, and he went in
there to get a disguise out of his hand-bag and put it on before he
showed himself here in the town—and mind you he done that just a little
after the time that Uncle Silas was hitting Jubiter Dunlap over the
head with a club—for he _did_ hit him.
“But the minute the pals see that thief slide into the bunch of
sycamores, they jumped out of the bushes and slid in after him.
“They fell on him and clubbed him to death.
“Yes, for all he screamed and howled so, they never had no mercy on
him, but clubbed him to death. And two men that was running along the
road heard him yelling that way, and they made a rush into the sycamore
bunch—which was where they was bound for, anyway—and when the pals saw
them they lit out and the two new men after them a-chasing them as
tight as they could go. But only a minute or two—then these two new men
slipped back very quiet into the sycamores.
“_Then_ what did they do? I will tell you what they done. They found
where the thief had got his disguise out of his carpet-sack to put on;
so one of them strips and puts on that disguise.”
Tom waited a little here, for some more “effect”—then he says, very
deliberate:
“The man that put on that dead man’s disguise was—_Jubiter Dunlap!_”
“Great Scott!” everybody shouted, all over the house, and old Uncle
Silas he looked perfectly astonished.
“Yes, it was Jubiter Dunlap. Not dead, you see. Then they pulled off
the dead man’s boots and put Jubiter Dunlap’s old ragged shoes on the
corpse and put the corpse’s boots on Jubiter Dunlap. Then Jubiter
Dunlap stayed where he was, and the other man lugged the dead body off
in the twilight; and after midnight he went to Uncle Silas’s house, and
took his old green work-robe off of the peg where it always hangs in
the passage betwixt the house and the kitchen and put it on, and stole
the long-handled shovel and went off down into the tobacker field and
buried the murdered man.”
He stopped, and stood half a minute. Then—“And who do you reckon the
murdered man _was?_ It was—_Jake_ Dunlap, the long-lost burglar!”
“Great Scott!”
“And the man that buried him was—_Brace_ Dunlap, his brother!”
“Great Scott!”
“And who do you reckon is this mowing idiot here that’s letting on all
these weeks to be a deef and dumb stranger? It’s—_Jubiter_ Dunlap!”
[Illustration: And there was the murdered man.]
My land, they all busted out in a howl, and you never see the like of
that excitement since the day you was born. And Tom he made a jump for
Jubiter and snaked off his goggles and his false whiskers, and there
was the murdered man, sure enough, just as alive as anybody! And Aunt
Sally and Benny they went to hugging and crying and kissing and
smothering old Uncle Silas to that degree he was more muddled and
confused and mushed up in his mind than he ever was before, and that is
saying considerable. And next, people begun to yell:
“Tom Sawyer! Tom Sawyer! Shut up everybody, and let him go on! Go on,
Tom Sawyer!”
[Illustration: Which made him feel uncommon bully.]
Which made him feel uncommon bully, for it was nuts for Tom Sawyer to
be a public character that-away, and a hero, as he calls it. So when it
was all quiet, he says:
“There ain’t much left, only this. When that man there, Bruce Dunlap,
had most worried the life and sense out of Uncle Silas till at last he
plumb lost his mind and hit this other blatherskite, his brother, with
a club, I reckon he seen his chance. Jubiter broke for the woods to
hide, and I reckon the game was for him to slide out, in the night, and
leave the country. Then Brace would make everybody believe Uncle Silas
killed him and hid his body somers; and that would ruin Uncle Silas and
drive _him_ out of the country—hang him, maybe; I dunno. But when they
found their dead brother in the sycamores without knowing him, because
he was so battered up, they see they had a better thing; disguise
_both_ and bury Jake and dig him up presently all dressed up in
Jubiter’s clothes, and hire Jim Lane and Bill Withers and the others to
swear to some handy lies—which they done. And there they set, now, and
I told them they would be looking sick before I got done, and that is
the way they’re looking now.
“Well, me and Huck Finn here, we come down on the boat with the
thieves, and the dead one told us all about the di’monds, and said the
others would murder him if they got the chance; and we was going to
help him all we could. We was bound for the sycamores when we heard
them killing him in there; but we was in there in the early morning
after the storm and allowed nobody hadn’t been killed, after all. And
when we see Jubiter Dunlap here spreading around in the very same
disguise Jake told us _he_ was going to wear, we thought it was Jake
his own self—and he was goo-gooing deef and dumb, and _that_ was
according to agreement.
“Well, me and Huck went on hunting for the corpse after the others
quit, and we found it. And was proud, too; but Uncle Silas he knocked
us crazy by telling us _he_ killed the man. So we was mighty sorry we
found the body, and was bound to save Uncle Silas’s neck if we could;
and it was going to be tough work, too, because he wouldn’t let us
break him out of prison the way we done with our old nigger Jim.
“I done everything I could the whole month to think up some way to save
Uncle Silas, but I couldn’t strike a thing. So when we come into court
to-day I come empty, and couldn’t see no chance anywheres. But by and
by I had a glimpse of something that set me thinking—just a little wee
glimpse—only that, and not enough to make sure; but it set me thinking
hard—and _watching_, when I was only letting on to think; and by and
by, sure enough, when Uncle Silas was piling out that stuff about _him_
killing Jubiter Dunlap, I catched that glimpse again, and this time I
jumped up and shut down the proceedings, because I _knowed_ Jubiter
Dunlap was a-setting here before me. I knowed him by a thing which I
seen him do—and I remembered it. I’d seen him do it when I was here a
year ago.”
He stopped then, and studied a minute—laying for an “effect”—I knowed
it perfectly well. Then he turned off like he was going to leave the
platform, and says, kind of lazy and indifferent:
“Well, I believe that is all.”
Why, you never heard such a howl!—and it come from the whole house:
“What _was_ it you seen him do? Stay where you are, you little devil!
You think you are going to work a body up till his mouth’s a-watering
and stop there? What _was_ it he done?”
That was it, you see—he just done it to get an “effect”; you couldn’t
’a’ pulled him off of that platform with a yoke of oxen.
“Oh, it wasn’t anything much,” he says. “I seen him looking a little
excited when he found Uncle Silas was actually fixing to hang himself
for a murder that warn’t ever done; and he got more and more nervous
and worried, I a-watching him sharp but not seeming to look at him—and
all of a sudden his hands begun to work and fidget, and pretty soon his
left crept up and _his finger drawed a cross on his cheek_, and then I
_had_ him!”
Well, then they ripped and howled and stomped and clapped their hands
till Tom Sawyer was that proud and happy he didn’t know what to do with
himself.
And then the judge he looked down over his pulpit and says:
“My boy, did you _see_ all the various details of this strange
conspiracy and tragedy that you’ve been describing?”
“No, your honor, I didn’t see any of them.”
“Didn’t see any of them! Why, you’ve told the whole history straight
through, just the same as if you’d seen it with your eyes. How did you
manage that?”
Tom says, kind of easy and comfortable:
“Oh, just noticing the evidence and piecing this and that together,
your honor; just an ordinary little bit of detective work; anybody
could ’a’ done it.”
“Nothing of the kind! Not two in a million could ’a’ done it. You are a
very remarkable boy.”
Then they let go and give Tom another smashing round, and he—well, he
wouldn’t ’a’ sold out for a silver mine. Then the judge says:
“But are you certain you’ve got this curious history straight?”
“Perfectly, your honor. Here is Brace Dunlap—let him deny his share of
it if he wants to take the chance; I’ll engage to make him wish he
hadn’t said anything...... Well, you see _he’s_ pretty quiet. And his
brother’s pretty quiet, and them four witnesses that lied so and got
paid for it, they’re pretty quiet. And as for Uncle Silas, it ain’t any
use for him to put in his oar, I wouldn’t believe him under oath!”
Well, sir, that fairly made them shout; and even the judge he let go
and laughed. Tom he was just feeling like a rainbow. When they was done
laughing he looks up at the judge and says:
“Your honor, there’s a thief in this house.”
“A thief?”
“Yes, sir. And he’s got them twelve-thousand-dollar di’monds on him.”
By gracious, but it made a stir! Everybody went shouting:
“Which is him? which is him? p’int him out!”
And the judge says:
“Point him out, my lad. Sheriff, you will arrest him. Which one is it?”
Tom says:
“This late dead man here—Jubiter Dunlap.”
Then there was another thundering let-go of astonishment and
excitement; but Jubiter, which was astonished enough before, was just
fairly putrified with astonishment this time. And he spoke up, about
half crying, and says:
“Now _that’s_ a lie. Your honor, it ain’t fair; I’m plenty bad enough
without that. I done the other things—Brace he put me up to it, and
persuaded me, and promised he’d make me rich, some day, and I done it,
and I’m sorry I done it, and I wisht I hadn’t; but I hain’t stole no
di’monds, and I hain’t _got_ no di’monds; I wisht I may never stir if
it ain’t so. The sheriff can search me and see.”
Tom says:
“Your honor, it wasn’t right to call him a thief, and I’ll let up on
that a little. He did steal the di’monds, but he didn’t know it. He
stole them from his brother Jake when he was laying dead, after Jake
had stole them from the other thieves; but Jubiter didn’t know he was
stealing them; and he’s been swelling around here with them a month;
yes, sir, twelve thousand dollars’ worth of di’monds on him—all that
riches, and going around here every day just like a poor man. Yes, your
honor, he’s got them on him now.”
The judge spoke up and says:
“Search him, sheriff.”
[Illustration: Searched his seams and his pockets and his socks.]
Well, sir, the sheriff he ransacked him high and low, and everywhere:
searched his hat, socks, seams, boots, everything—and Tom he stood
there quiet, laying for another of them effects of hisn. Finally the
sheriff he give it up, and everybody looked disappointed, and Jubiter
says:
“There, now! what’d I tell you?”
And the judge says:
“It appears you were mistaken this time, my boy.”
Then Tom took an attitude and let on to be studying with all his might,
and scratching his head. Then all of a sudden he glanced up chipper,
and says:
“Oh, now I’ve got it! I’d forgot.”
Which was a lie, and I knowed it. Then he says:
“Will somebody be good enough to lend me a little small screwdriver?
There was one in your brother’s hand-bag that you smouched, Jubiter,
but I reckon you didn’t fetch it with you.”
“No, I didn’t. I didn’t want it, and I give it away.”
“That’s because you didn’t know what it was for.”
Jubiter had his boots on again, by now, and when the thing Tom wanted
was passed over the people’s heads till it got to him, he says to
Jubiter:
“Put up your foot on this chair.” And he kneeled down and begun to
unscrew the heel-plate, everybody watching; and when he got that big
di’mond out of that boot-heel and held it up and let it flash and blaze
and squirt sunlight everwhichaway, it just took everybody’s breath; and
Jubiter he looked so sick and sorry you never see the like of it. And
when Tom held up the other di’mond he looked sorrier than ever. Land!
he was thinking how he would ’a’ skipped out and been rich and
independent in a foreign land if he’d only had the luck to guess what
the screwdriver was in the carpet-bag for.
Well, it was a most exciting time, take it all around, and Tom got
cords of glory. The judge took the di’monds, and stood up in his
pulpit, and cleared his throat, and shoved his spectacles back on his
head, and says:
“I’ll keep them and notify the owners; and when they send for them it
will be a real pleasure to me to hand you the two thousand dollars, for
you’ve earned the money—yes, and you’ve earned the deepest and most
sincerest thanks of this community besides, for lifting a wronged and
innocent family out of ruin and shame, and saving a good and honorable
man from a felon’s death, and for exposing to infamy and the punishment
of the law a cruel and odious scoundrel and his miserable creatures!”
Well, sir, if there’d been a brass band to bust out some music, then,
it would ’a’ been just the perfectest thing I ever see, and Tom Sawyer
he said the same.
Then the sheriff he nabbed Brace Dunlap and his crowd, and by and by
next month the judge had them up for trial and jailed the whole lot.
And everybody crowded back to Uncle Silas’s little old church, and was
ever so loving and kind to him and the family and couldn’t do enough
for them; and Uncle Silas he preached them the blamedest jumbledest
idiotic sermons you ever struck, and would tangle you up so you
couldn’t find your way home in daylight; but the people never let on
but what they thought it was the clearest and brightest and elegantest
sermons that ever was; and they would set there and cry, for love and
pity; but, by George, they give me the jim-jams and the fan-tods and
caked up what brains I had, and turned them solid; but by and by they
loved the old man’s intellects back into him again, and he was as sound
in his skull as ever he was, which ain’t no flattery, I reckon. And so
the whole family was as happy as birds, and nobody could be gratefuler
and lovinger than what they was to Tom Sawyer; and the same to me,
though I hadn’t done nothing. And when the two thousand dollars come,
Tom give half of it to me, and never told anybody so, which didn’t
surprise me, because I knowed him.
[Illustration: Tom, give half of it to me.]
*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TOM SAWYER, DETECTIVE ***
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