Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

The doctor was an old man; a very nice, kind-looking old man when I got him up. I told him my brother and I were over on Spanish Island hunting yesterday afternoon, and camped on a piece of a raft we found, and about midnight he must have kicked his gun in his dreams, for it went off and shot him in the leg, and we wanted him to go over there and fix it and not say anything about it or let anybody know, because we wanted to come home this evening and surprise the folks.

“Who are your folks?” he said.

“The Phelpses, down yonder.”

“Oh,” he said. And after a minute, he said:

“How’d you say he got shot?”

“He had a dream,” I said, “and it shot him.”

“Strange dream,” he said.

So he lit up his lantern, and got his saddlebags, and we started. But when he saw the canoe he didn’t like the look of her—said she was big enough for one, but didn’t look very safe for two. I said:

“Oh, you don’t need to be afraid, sir, she carried the three of us easily enough.”

“What three?”

“Why, Sid and I, and—and—and the guns; that’s what I mean.”

“Oh,” he said.

But he put his foot on the gunwale and rocked her, and shook his head, and said he reckoned he’d look around for a bigger one. But they were all locked and chained; so he took my canoe, and said I should wait until he came back, or I could hunt around farther, or maybe I had better go down home and get them ready for the surprise if I wanted to. But I said I didn’t; so I told him just how to find the raft, and then he started.

I struck on an idea pretty soon. I said to myself, suppose he can’t fix that leg in just three shakes of a sheep’s tail, as the saying goes? Suppose it takes him three or four days? What are we going to do?—lie around there until he lets the cat out of the bag? No, sir; I know what I’ll do. I’ll wait, and when he comes back, if he says he has to go again, I’ll get down there, too, if I have to swim; and we’ll take and tie him, and keep him, and shove out down the river; and when Tom’s done with him we’ll give him what it’s worth, or all we have, and then let him get ashore.

So then I crept into a lumber pile to get some sleep; and the next time I woke up the sun was way up over my head! I shot out and went for the doctor’s house, but they told me he had gone away in the night sometime or other, and wasn’t back yet. Well, I thought, that looks mighty bad for Tom, and I’ll dig out for the island right off. So away I shoved, and turned the corner, and nearly rammed my head into Uncle Silas’s stomach! He said:

“Why, Tom! Where have you been all this time, you rascal?”

“I haven’t been anywhere,” I said, “only just hunting for the runaway enslaved man—Sid and I.”

“Why, wherever did you go?” he said. “Your aunt’s been mighty uneasy.”

“She doesn’t need to be,” I said, “because we were all right. We followed the men and the dogs, but they outran us, and we lost them; but we thought we heard them on the water, so we got a canoe and took out after them and crossed over, but couldn’t find anything of them; so we cruised along up the shore until we got kind of tired and worn out; and tied up the canoe and went to sleep, and never woke up until about an hour ago; then we paddled over here to hear the news, and Sid is at the post office to see what he can hear, and I’m branching out to get something to eat for us, and then we’re going home.”

So then we went to the post office to get “Sid”; but just as I suspected, he wasn’t there; so the old man got a letter out of the office, and we waited a while longer, but Sid didn’t come; so the old man said, come along, let Sid foot it home, or canoe it, when he got done fooling around—but we would ride. I couldn’t get him to let me stay and wait for Sid; and he said there was no use in it, and I must come along, and let Aunt Sally see we were all right.

When we got home Aunt Sally was so glad to see me that she laughed and cried both, and hugged me, and gave me one of those lickings of hers that don’t amount to shucks, and said she’d serve Sid the same when he came.

And the place was completely full of farmers and farmers’ wives, there for dinner; and such a clack as a person never heard. Old Mrs. Hotchkiss was the worst; her tongue was going all the time. She said:

“Well, Sister Phelps, I’ve ransacked that cabin over, and I believe the enslaved man was crazy. I said to Sister Damrell—didn’t I, Sister Damrell?—I said, he’s crazy, I said—those are the very words I said. You all heard me: he’s crazy, I said; everything shows it, I said. Look at that grindstone, I said; do you want to tell me that any creature in his right mind is going to scrabble all those crazy things onto a grindstone, I said? Here such-and-such a person busted his heart; and here so-and-so pegged along for thirty-seven years, and all that—natural son of Louis somebody, and such everlasting rubbish. He’s completely crazy, I said; it’s what I said in the first place, it’s what I said in the middle, and it’s what I said last and all the time—the enslaved man’s crazy—crazy as Nebuchadnezzar, I said.”

“And look at that ladder made out of rags, Sister Hotchkiss,” said old Mrs. Damrell; “what in the name of goodness could he ever want of—”

“Those are the very words I was saying no longer ago than this minute to Sister Utterback, and she’ll tell you so herself. She said, look at that rag ladder, she said; and I said, yes, look at it, I said—what could he have wanted of it, I said. She said, Sister Hotchkiss, she said—”

“But how in the nation did they ever get that grindstone in there, anyway? And who dug that hole? And who—”

“My very words, Brother Penrod! I was saying—pass that saucer of molasses, won’t you?—I was saying to Sister Dunlap, just this minute, how did they get that grindstone in there, I said. Without help, mind you—without help! That’s where it is. Don’t tell me, I said; there was help, I said; and there was plenty of help, too, I said; there have been a dozen helping that enslaved man, and I bet I’d skin every last enslaved person on this place, but I’d find out who did it, I said; and moreover, I said—”

“A dozen, you say!—forty couldn’t have done everything that’s been done. Look at those case-knife saws and things, how tedious they’ve been made; look at that bed leg sawed off with them, a week’s work for six men; look at that enslaved man made out of straw on the bed; and look at—”

“You may well say it, Brother Hightower! It’s just as I was saying to Brother Phelps himself. He said, what do you think of it, Sister Hotchkiss, he said? Think of what, Brother Phelps, I said? Think of that bed leg sawed off that way, he said? Think of it, I said? I bet it never sawed itself off, I said—somebody sawed it, I said; that’s my opinion, take it or leave it, it may be of no account, I said, but such as it is, it’s my opinion, I said, and if anybody can start a better one, I said, let him do it, I said, that’s all. I said to Sister Dunlap, I said—”

“Why, I’ll be darned, there must have been a houseful of enslaved people in there every night for four weeks to have done all that work, Sister Phelps. Look at that shirt—every last inch of it covered over with secret African writing done with blood! There must have been a raft of them at it right along, all the time, almost. Why, I’d give two dollars to have it read to me; and as for the enslaved people who wrote it, I reckon I’d take and lash them until—”

“People to help him, Brother Marples! Well, I reckon you’d think so if you’d been in this house for a while back. Why, they’ve stolen everything they could lay their hands on—and we watching all the time, mind you. They stole that shirt right off the line! and as for that sheet they made the rag ladder out of, there’s no telling how many times they didn’t steal that; and flour, and candles, and candlesticks, and spoons, and the old warming pan, and almost a thousand things that I can’t remember now, and my new calico dress; and Silas and I and my Sid and Tom on the constant watch day and night, as I was telling you, and not one of us could catch hide nor hair nor sight nor sound of them; and here at the last minute, lo and behold, they slide right in under our noses and fool us, and not only fool us but the Indian Territory robbers too, and actually get away with that enslaved man safe and sound, and that with sixteen men and twenty-two dogs right on their very heels at that very time! I tell you, it just beats anything I ever heard of. Why, spirits couldn’t have done better and been no smarter. And I reckon they must have been spirits—because you know our dogs, and there are none better; well, those dogs never even got on the track of them once! You explain that to me if you can!—any of you!”

“Well, it does beat—”

“Goodness alive, I never—”

“So help me, I wouldn’t have been—”

“House-thieves as well as—”

“Goodness gracious sakes, I’d have been afraid to live in such a—”

“Afraid to live!—why, I was so scared I hardly dared go to bed, or get up, or lie down, or sit down, Sister Ridgeway. Why, they’d steal the very—why, goodness sakes, you can guess what kind of a fluster I was in by the time midnight came last night. I swear to gracious, I was afraid they’d steal some of the family! I had just come to such a pass that I had no reasoning faculties anymore. It looks foolish enough now, in the daytime; but I said to myself, there are my two poor boys asleep, way upstairs in that lonesome room, and I declare to goodness I was so uneasy that I crept up there and locked them in! I did. And anybody would. Because, you know, when you get scared that way, and it keeps running on, and getting worse and worse all the time, and your wits get to addling, and you get to doing all sorts of wild things, and by and by you think to yourself, suppose I were a boy, and were away up there, and the door isn’t locked, and you—” She stopped, looking kind of wondering, and then she turned her head around slowly, and when her eye lit on me—I got up and took a walk.

I said to myself, I can explain better how we came not to be in that room this morning if I go out to one side and study over it a little. So I did it. But I didn’t dare go far, or she would have sent for me. And when it was late in the day the people all went, and then I came in and told her the noise and shooting woke up “Sid” and me, and the door was locked, and we wanted to see the fun, so we went down the lightning rod, and both of us got hurt a little, and we didn’t ever want to try that anymore. And then I went on and told her all that I had told Uncle Silas before; and then she said she’d forgive us, and maybe it was all right enough anyway, and about what a person might expect of boys, for all boys were a pretty harum-scarum lot as far as she could see; and so, as long as no harm had come of it, she judged she had better put in her time being grateful we were alive and well and she still had us, instead of fretting over what was past and done. So then she kissed me, and patted me on the head, and dropped into a kind of brown study; and pretty soon she jumped up and said:

“Why, mercy me, it’s almost night, and Sid hasn’t come yet! What has become of that boy?”

I saw my chance; so I skipped up and said:

“I’ll run right up to town and get him,” I said.

“No, you won’t,” she said. “You’ll stay right where you are; one is enough to be lost at a time. If he isn’t here for supper, your uncle will go.”

Well, he wasn’t there for supper; so right after supper Uncle went.

He came back about ten a little bit uneasy; he hadn’t run across Tom’s track. Aunt Sally was a good deal uneasy; but Uncle Silas said there was no occasion to be—boys will be boys, he said, and you’ll see this one turn up in the morning all sound and right. So she had to be satisfied. But she said she’d sit up for him a while anyway, and keep a light burning so he could see it.

And then when I went up to bed she came up with me and fetched her candle, and tucked me in, and mothered me so well that I felt mean, and as if I couldn’t look her in the face; and she sat down on the bed and talked with me a long time, and said what a splendid boy Sid was, and didn’t seem ever to want to stop talking about him; and kept asking me every now and then if I reckoned he could have gotten lost, or hurt, or maybe drowned, and might be lying at this minute somewhere suffering or dead, and she not by him to help him, and so the tears would drip down silently, and I would tell her that Sid was all right, and would be home in the morning, sure; and she would squeeze my hand, or maybe kiss me, and tell me to say it again, and keep on saying it, because it did her good, and she was in so much trouble. And when she was going away she looked down into my eyes so steadily and gently, and said:

“The door isn’t going to be locked, Tom, and there’s the window and the rod; but you’ll be good, won’t you? And you won’t go? For my sake.”

Goodness knows I wanted to go badly enough to see about Tom, and was all intending to go; but after that I wouldn’t have gone, not for kingdoms.

But she was on my mind and Tom was on my mind, so I slept very restlessly. And twice I went down the rod late in the night, and slipped around to the front, and saw her sitting there by her candle in the window with her eyes toward the road and the tears in them; and I wished I could do something for her, but I couldn’t, except to swear that I would never do anything to grieve her anymore. And the third time I woke up at dawn, and slid down, and she was still there, and her candle was almost out, and her old gray head was resting on her hand, and she was asleep.