Huckleberry Finn Read online

  “Ransomed? What’s that?”

  “I don’t know. But that’s what they do. I’ve seen it in books; and so it’s only right that’s what we’ve got to do.”

  “But how can we do it if we don’t know what it is?”

  “Why, end it all, we’ve got to do it. Didn’t I tell you it’s in the books? Do you want to go to doing different from what’s in the books, and get things all confused?”

  “Oh, that’s all very nice to say, Tom Sawyer, but how in the world are these people going to be ransomed if we don’t know how to do it to them? -- that’s the thing I want to get at. Now, what do you think it is?”

  “Well, I don’t know. But maybe if we keep them until they’re ransomed, it means that we keep them until they’re dead. “

  “Now, that’s more like it. That’ll do. Why couldn’t you a said that before? We’ll keep them until they’re ransomed to death; and a pain in the neck they’ll be, too -- eating up everything, and always trying to get loose.”

  “How you talk, Ben Rogers. How can they get loose when there’s one of us watching them, ready to shoot them down if they move an inch?”

  “Watching them? Well, that’s good. So someone’s got to sit up all night and never get any sleep, just so as to watch them. I think that’s foolishness. Why can’t a body take a big strong club and ransom them to death as soon as they get here?”

  “Because it ain’t in the books so -- that’s why. Now, Ben Rogers, do you want to do things right, or don’t you? -- that’s the question. Don’t you think that the people that made the books knows what’s the right thing to do? Do you think you can learn ‘em anything? Not by a good way. No, sir, we’ll just go on and ransom them in the right way.”

  “All right. I don’t mind; but I say it’s foolishness, anyway. Say, do we kill the women, too?”

  “Well, Ben Rogers, if I was as stupid as you I wouldn’t let on. Kill the women? No; nobody ever saw anything in the books like that. You bring them to the cave, and you’re always nice as pie to them; and by and by they fall in love with you, and never want to go home any more.”

  “Well, if that’s the way, I’m agreed, but I don’t put no hope in it. Pretty soon we’ll have the cave so full up with women, and people waiting to be ransomed, that there won’t be no place for the robbers. But go ahead, I ain’t got nothing to say.”

  Little Tommy Barnes was asleep by then, and when they waked him up he was scared, and cried, and said he wanted to go home to his mama and didn’t want to be a robber any more.

  So they all made fun of him, and called him cry-baby, and that made him angry, and he said he would go straight and tell all the secrets. But Tom give him five cents to keep quiet, and said we would all go home and meet next week, and rob someone and kill some people.

  Ben Rogers said he couldn’t get out much, only Sundays, and so he wanted to start next Sunday; but all the boys said it would be very bad to do it on Sunday, and that ended the thing. They agreed to get together and fix a day as soon as they could, and then we chose Tom Sawyer first leader and Jo Harper second leader of the gang, and so we started home.

  I climbed up the tool room and into my window just before day was breaking. My new clothes was all dirtied up, and I was dog-tired.

  Chapter 3

  I got a good going-over in the morning from old Miss Watson because of my clothes; but the widow she didn’t say nothing, only cleaned off the mud and clay, and looked so sad that I thought I would try to be good for a while if I could.

  Then Miss Watson took me in a room and prayed, but nothing come of it. She told me to pray, and whatever I asked for I'd get. But it wasn’t so. I tried it. Once I got a fish-line, but no hooks. It was no good to me without hooks. I tried praying for them three or four times, but one way or another I couldn’t make it work. By and by, I asked Miss Watson to try for me, but she said that was foolish. She never said why, and I couldn’t make it out no way.

  I sat down one time back in the trees, and had a long think about it. I says to myself, if a body can get anything they pray for, why don’t Deacon Winn get back the money he lost on pigs? Why can’t the widow get back her silver tobacco box that was robbed? Why can’t Miss Watson fat up? No, says I, there ain’t nothing in it. I went and told the widow about it, and she said the only thing a body could get by praying was “spiritual gifts.” This was too much for me, but she told me the deeper mean- ing -- I must help other people, and do everything I could for them, and look out for them all the time, and never think about myself. Miss Watson had to be one of them, as I took it. I went out in the trees and turned it over in my mind a long time, but I couldn’t see no point of it -- only for the other people; so at last I said I wouldn’t worry about it no more, but just let it go.

  Sometimes the widow would take me one side and talk about God giving things in a way to make a body’s mouth water; but maybe next day Miss Watson would take hold and knock it all down again. I judged I could see that there was two ways God could give things, and a poor boy would stand a much better show with the widow’s way, but if Miss Watson got him there weren’t no help for him any more. I thought it all out, and thought I would belong to the widow’s God if he wanted me, but I couldn’t make out how he was going to be any better off then than what he was before, seeing I was so kind of low-down and bad.

  Pap hadn’t been seen for more than a year, and that was okay by me; I didn’t want to see him no more. He used to always hit into me when he wasn’t drunk and could get his hands on me; but I used to take to running into the trees most of the time when he was around.

  Well, about this time he was found in the river drowned, about twelve mile above town, so people said. They judged it was him, anyway; said this drowned man was just his size, and was in old dirty clothes, and had hair that was too long, which was all like pap; but they couldn’t make nothing out of the face, because it had been in the water so long it wasn’t much like a face at all. They said he was lying on his back in the water. They took him and buried him on the beach. But I wasn’t comfortable, because I knowed mighty well that a drowned man don’t lie in the water on his back, but on his face. So I knowed, then, that this wasn’t pap, but a woman dressed up in a man’s clothes. I judged the old man would turn up again by and by, but I wished he wouldn’t.

 

  We played robber now and then about a month, and then I quit. All the boys did. We hadn’t robbed nobody, hadn’t killed any people, but only just acted like we did. We used to jump out of the bushes and go running down on people driving pigs and women in wagons taking garden food to market, but we never took any of them. Tom Sawyer called the pigs “gold,” and he called the vegetables “jewelry,” and we would go to the cave and talk over what we had done, and how many people we had killed and marked. But I couldn’t see no good in it.

  One time Tom sent a boy to run about town with a burning stick, which he said was the sign for the gang to get together, and then he said he had got secret news that next day a whole group of Spanish businessmen and rich Muslims was going to camp on Cave Beach with two hundred elephants, and six hundred camels, and over a thousand donkeys, all weighed down with diamonds, and they didn’t have only four hundred soldiers to protect them, and so we would surprise them, and kill the lot and take the things. He said we must clean up our swords and guns, and get ready. He never would go after even a potato cart but he must have the swords and guns all cleaned up for it, even if they was only flat sticks and broom-sticks, and you might wash them until you died, and even then they wasn’t worth a mouth full of ashes more than what they was before. I didn’t believe we could win against such a crowd of Spanish men and Muslims, but I wanted to see the camels and elephants, so I was on hand next day, Saturday, in the hiding place; and when we got the word we raced out of the trees and down the hill. But there weren’t no Spanish people or Muslims, and there weren’t no camels or no elephants. It weren’t anything but a Sunday-school outing, and only the littlest children at that.<
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  We broke it up, and the children ran up the beach; but we never got anything but some biscuits and jam, and Ben Rogers found a cloth doll, and Jo Harper got a song-book. But then the teacher ran in, and made us drop everything and cut.

  I didn’t see no diamonds, and I told Tom Sawyer so. He said there was barrels of them there; and he said there was Muslims there, too, and elephants and things. I said, why couldn’t we see them, then? He said if I wasn’t so stupid, but had read a book called Don Quixote, I would know without asking. He said it was all done by magic. He said there was hundreds of soldiers there, and elephants and great wealth, and so on, but we had enemies which he called magicians; and they had turned the whole thing into little Sunday-school children, just to hurt us. I said, all right; then the thing for us to do was to go for the magicians. Tom Sawyer said I was stupid.

  “Why,” says he, “a magician could call up a lot of spirit people, and they would cut you up like nothing before you could say Jack Robinson. They're tall as a tree and big around as a church.”

  “Well,” I says, “what if we got some spirit people to help us -- can’t we win against the other crowd then?”

  “How you going to get them?”

  “I don’t know. How do they get them?”

  “Why, they rub an old tin lantern or an iron ring, and then the spirit people come pouring out, with lightning shooting around and smoke everywhere; and anything they’re told to do they up and do it. They don’t think nothing of pulling a whole brick tower up by the roots, and hitting a Sunday-school teacher over the head with it -- or any other person.”

  “Who makes them run around so?”

  “Why, whoever rubs the lantern. They belong to whoever rubs the lantern or the ring, and they’ve got to do whatever he says. If he tells them to build a king’s palace forty miles long out of diamonds, and fill it full of lollies, or whatever you want, and bring a king’s daughter from China for you to marry, they’ve got to do it -- and they’ve got to do it before the sun comes up the next morning, too. And more: they’ve got to dance that house around over the country wherever you want it, you understand.”

  “Well,” says I, “I think they're a gang of empty heads for not keeping the palace themselves instead of giving it away like that. And what’s more -- if I was one of them I would see a man in Jericho before I'd drop my business and come to him for the rubbing of an old tin lantern.”

  “How you talk, Huck Finn. Why, you’d have to come when he rubbed it, if you wanted to or not.”

  “What! and I as tall as a tree and as big as a church? All right, then; I would come; but I promise I’d make that man climb the highest tree there was in the country.”

  “Shoot, it ain’t no use to talk to you, Huck Finn. You don’t seem to know anything, for some reason. You’re a perfect air head.”

  I thought this over for a few days, and then I thought I would see if there was anything in it. I got an old tin lantern and an iron ring, and went out in the trees and rubbed and rubbed until I was as hot as an Indian, planning to build a palace and sell it; but it weren’t no use, none of the spirit people come. So then I judged that all that talk was just one of Tom Sawyer’s lies. I could see that he believed in the Muslims and the elephants, but as for me I think different. It had all the marks of a Sunday-school story.

  Chapter 4

  Well, three or four months run along, and it was well into the winter now. I had been to school most all the time and could read and write just a little, and could say the times table up to six times seven is thirty-five, and I don’t think I could ever get any farther than that if I was to live forever. I don’t put no worth in sums, anyway.

  At first I hated the school, but by and by I got so I could stand it. Whenever I got too tired I wouldn’t go, and the trouble I got into next day for doing it done me good and made me feel better. So the longer I went to school the easier it got to be. I was getting kind of used to the widow’s ways, too, and they weren’t so rough on me. Living in a house and sleeping in a bed pulled on me pretty tight mostly, but before the cold weather I used to go out secretly and sleep in under the trees sometimes, and so that was a rest to me. I liked the old ways best, but I was getting so I liked the new ones, too, a little. The widow said I was coming along slow but sure, and doing very much okay. She said she wasn’t embarrassed by me at all.

  One morning I happened to turn over the salt at breakfast. I reached for some of it as quickly as I could to throw over my left shoulder and keep off the bad luck, but Miss Watson was in ahead of me, and cut me off. She says, “Take your hands away, Huckleberry; you’re always so messy!” The widow put in a good word for me, but that weren’t going to keep off the bad luck, I knowed that well enough.

  I started out, after breakfast, feeling worried and weak, and thinking about where it was going to fall on me, and what it was going to be. There's ways to keep off some kinds of bad luck, but this weren’t one of them kind; so I never tried to do anything, but just went along slowly and low-spirited and on the watch for it.

  I went down to the front garden and climbed over the gate where you go through the high board fence. There was an inch of new snow on the ground, and I seen someone’s footprints.

  They had come up from the rock yard and stood around the gate a while, and then went on around the garden fence. It was funny they hadn’t come in, after standing around so. I couldn’t make it out. It was very strange. I was going to follow around, but I bent down to look at the footprints first. I didn’t see anything special at first, but then I did. There was a cross in the left heel made with big nails, to keep off the devil.

  I was up in a second and running down the hill. I looked over my shoulder every now and then, but I didn’t see nobody. I was at Judge Thatcher’s as fast as I could get there. He said: “Why, my boy, you are breathing so heavily. Did you come for your interest?”

  “No, sir,” I says; “Is there some for me?”

  “Oh, yes, come in last night for half a year -- over a hundred and fifty dollars. A lot of wealth for you. You had better let me put it back with your six thousand, because if you take it you’ll spend it.”

  “No, sir,” I says, “I don’t want to spend it. I don’t want it at all -- or the six thousand either. I want you to take it; I want to give it to you -- the six thousand and all.”

  He looked surprised. He couldn’t seem to make it out. He says: “Why, what can you mean, my boy?”

  I says, “Don’t you ask me no questions about it, please. You’ll take it -- won’t you?”

  He says: “Well, I’m confused. Is something wrong?”

  “Please take it,” says I, “and don’t ask me nothing -- then I won’t have to tell no lies.”

  He studied a while, and then he says: “Oh! I think I see what you’re saying. But you need to sell your wealth to me -- not give it. That’s the right way.”

  Then he wrote something on a paper and read it over, and says: “There; you see it says ‘for a sum.’ That means you have sold it to me. Here’s a dollar for you. Now you sign it.”

  So I signed it, and left.

  Miss Watson’s slave, Jim, had a hair-ball as big as your fist, which had been took out of the fourth stomach of a cow, and he used it to do magic. He said there was a spirit in it, and it knowed everything. So I went to him that night and told him pap was here again, for I found his footprints in the snow. What I wanted to know was, what he was going to do, and was he going to stay? Jim got out his hair-ball and said something over it, and then he held it up and dropped it on the floor. It fell pretty solid, and only moved about an inch. Jim tried it again, and then another time, and it acted just the same. Jim got down on his knees, and put his ear against it and listened. But it weren’t no use; he said it wouldn’t talk. He said sometimes it wouldn’t talk without money. I told him I had an old counterfeit coin that weren’t no good because the yellow metal showed through the silver a little, and it wouldn’t pass anyway, even if the yellow didn’t show,
because it was so smooth it felt like it had oil on it, and that would tell on it every time. (I wasn’t going to say nothing about the dollar I got from the judge.) I said it was pretty bad money, but maybe the hair-ball would take it, because maybe it wouldn’t know the difference. Jim smelled it and squeezed it with his teeth and rubbed it, and said he could do something so the hair-ball would think it was good. He said he would cut open a potato and put the coin in between and keep it there all night, and next morning you couldn’t see no yellow, and it wouldn’t feel like oil no more, and so anyone in town would take it in a minute, let alone a hair-ball. Well, I knowed a potato would do that before, but I didn’t think of it at the time.

  Jim put the coin under the hair-ball, and got down and listened again. This time he said the hair-ball was all right. He said it would tell my whole future if I wanted it to. I says, go on. So the hair-ball talked to Jim, and Jim told it to me.

  He says: “Your old father don’t know yet what he’s a-gwyne to do. Sometimes he thinks he’ll go away, den again he thinks he’ll stay. De best way is to rest easy and let de old man take his own way. Dey’s two angels hanging round about him. One of ‘em is white and full of light, and t’other is black. De white one gets him to go right a little, den de black one sails in and breaks it all up. A body can’t tell yet which one gwyne to lead him at de last. But you is all right. You gwyne to have a lot of trouble in your life, and a lot of happiness. Sometimes you gwyne to get hurt, and sometimes you gwyne to get sick; but every time you’s gwyne to get well again. Dey’s two girls flying about you in your life. One of ‘em’s light and t’other is dark. One is rich and t’other is poor. You’s gwyne to marry de poor one first and de rich one by and by. You wants to keep away from de water as much as you can, and don’t do anything dangerous, because it’s down in de ball dat you’s gwyne to be hanged.”