第 二 章 · 第2章

We went tiptoeing along a path amongst the trees back towards the end

of the widow’s garden, stooping down so as the branches wouldn’t scrape

our heads. When we was passing by the kitchen I fell over a root and

made a noise. We scrouched down and laid still. Miss Watson’s big

nigger, named Jim, was setting in the kitchen door; we could see him

pretty clear, because there was a light behind him. He got up and

stretched his neck out about a minute, listening. Then he says:

“Who dah?”

He listened some more; then he come tiptoeing down and stood right

between us; we could a touched him, nearly. Well, likely it was minutes

and minutes that there warn’t a sound, and we all there so close

together. There was a place on my ankle that got to itching, but I

dasn’t scratch it; and then my ear begun to itch; and next my back,

right between my shoulders. Seemed like I’d die if I couldn’t scratch.

Well, I’ve noticed that thing plenty times since. If you are with the

quality, or at a funeral, or trying to go to sleep when you ain’t

sleepy—if you are anywheres where it won’t do for you to scratch, why

you will itch all over in upwards of a thousand places. Pretty soon Jim

says:

“Say, who is you? Whar is you? Dog my cats ef I didn’ hear sumf’n.

Well, I know what I’s gwyne to do: I’s gwyne to set down here and

listen tell I hears it agin.”

So he set down on the ground betwixt me and Tom. He leaned his back up

against a tree, and stretched his legs out till one of them most

touched one of mine. My nose begun to itch. It itched till the tears

come into my eyes. But I dasn’t scratch. Then it begun to itch on the

inside. Next I got to itching underneath. I didn’t know how I was going

to set still. This miserableness went on as much as six or seven

minutes; but it seemed a sight longer than that. I was itching in

eleven different places now. I reckoned I couldn’t stand it more’n a

minute longer, but I set my teeth hard and got ready to try. Just then

Jim begun to breathe heavy; next he begun to snore—and then I was

pretty soon comfortable again.

Tom he made a sign to me—kind of a little noise with his mouth—and we

went creeping away on our hands and knees. When we was ten foot off Tom

whispered to me, and wanted to tie Jim to the tree for fun. But I said

no; he might wake and make a disturbance, and then they’d find out I

warn’t in. Then Tom said he hadn’t got candles enough, and he would

slip in the kitchen and get some more. I didn’t want him to try. I said

Jim might wake up and come. But Tom wanted to resk it; so we slid in

there and got three candles, and Tom laid five cents on the table for

pay. Then we got out, and I was in a sweat to get away; but nothing

would do Tom but he must crawl to where Jim was, on his hands and

knees, and play something on him. I waited, and it seemed a good while,

everything was so still and lonesome.

As soon as Tom was back we cut along the path, around the garden fence,

and by-and-by fetched up on the steep top of the hill the other side of

the house. Tom said he slipped Jim’s hat off of his head and hung it on

a limb right over him, and Jim stirred a little, but he didn’t wake.

Afterwards Jim said the witches bewitched him and put him in a trance,

and rode him all over the State, and then set him under the trees

again, and hung his hat on a limb to show who done it. And next time

Jim told it he said they rode him down to New Orleans; and, after that,

every time he told it he spread it more and more, till by-and-by he

said they rode him all over the world, and tired him most to death, and

his back was all over saddle-boils. Jim was monstrous proud about it,

and he got so he wouldn’t hardly notice the other niggers. Niggers

would come miles to hear Jim tell about it, and he was more looked up

to than any nigger in that country. Strange niggers would stand with

their mouths open and look him all over, same as if he was a wonder.

Niggers is always talking about witches in the dark by the kitchen

fire; but whenever one was talking and letting on to know all about

such things, Jim would happen in and say, “Hm! What you know ’bout

witches?” and that nigger was corked up and had to take a back seat.

Jim always kept that five-center piece round his neck with a string,

and said it was a charm the devil give to him with his own hands, and

told him he could cure anybody with it and fetch witches whenever he

wanted to just by saying something to it; but he never told what it was

he said to it. Niggers would come from all around there and give Jim

anything they had, just for a sight of that five-center piece; but they

wouldn’t touch it, because the devil had had his hands on it. Jim was

most ruined for a servant, because he got stuck up on account of having

seen the devil and been rode by witches.

Well, when Tom and me got to the edge of the hilltop we looked away

down into the village and could see three or four lights twinkling,

where there was sick folks, maybe; and the stars over us was sparkling

ever so fine; and down by the village was the river, a whole mile

broad, and awful still and grand. We went down the hill and found Jo

Harper and Ben Rogers, and two or three more of the boys, hid in the

old tanyard. So we unhitched a skiff and pulled down the river two mile

and a half, to the big scar on the hillside, and went ashore.

We went to a clump of bushes, and Tom made everybody swear to keep the

secret, and then showed them a hole in the hill, right in the thickest

part of the bushes. Then we lit the candles, and crawled in on our

hands and knees. We went about two hundred yards, and then the cave

opened up. Tom poked about amongst the passages, and pretty soon ducked

under a wall where you wouldn’t a noticed that there was a hole. We

went along a narrow place and got into a kind of room, all damp and

sweaty and cold, and there we stopped. Tom says:

“Now, we’ll start this band of robbers and call it Tom Sawyer’s Gang.

Everybody that wants to join has got to take an oath, and write his

name in blood.”

Everybody was willing. So Tom got out a sheet of paper that he had

wrote the oath on, and read it. It swore every boy to stick to the

band, and never tell any of the secrets; and if anybody done anything

to any boy in the band, whichever boy was ordered to kill that person

and his family must do it, and he mustn’t eat and he mustn’t sleep till

he had killed them and hacked a cross in their breasts, which was the

sign of the band. And nobody that didn’t belong to the band could use

that mark, and if he did he must be sued; and if he done it again he

must be killed. And if anybody that belonged to the band told the

secrets, he must have his throat cut, and then have his carcass burnt

up and the ashes scattered all around, and his name blotted off of the

list with blood and never mentioned again by the gang, but have a curse

put on it and be forgot forever.

Everybody said it was a real beautiful oath, and asked Tom if he got it

out of his own head. He said, some of it, but the rest was out of

pirate-books and robber-books, and every gang that was high-toned had

it.

Some thought it would be good to kill the _families_ of boys that told

the secrets. Tom said it was a good idea, so he took a pencil and wrote

it in. Then Ben Rogers says:

“Here’s Huck Finn, he hain’t got no family; what you going to do ’bout

him?”

“Well, hain’t he got a father?” says Tom Sawyer.

“Yes, he’s got a father, but you can’t never find him these days. He

used to lay drunk with the hogs in the tanyard, but he hain’t been seen

in these parts for a year or more.”

They talked it over, and they was going to rule me out, because they

said every boy must have a family or somebody to kill, or else it

wouldn’t be fair and square for the others. Well, nobody could think of

anything to do—everybody was stumped, and set still. I was most ready

to cry; but all at once I thought of a way, and so I offered them Miss

Watson—they could kill her. Everybody said:

“Oh, she’ll do. That’s all right. Huck can come in.”

Then they all stuck a pin in their fingers to get blood to sign with,

and I made my mark on the paper.

“Now,” says Ben Rogers, “what’s the line of business of this Gang?”

“Nothing only robbery and murder,” Tom said.

“But who are we going to rob?—houses, or cattle, or—”

“Stuff! stealing cattle and such things ain’t robbery; it’s burglary,”

says Tom Sawyer. “We ain’t burglars. That ain’t no sort of style. We

are highwaymen. We stop stages and carriages on the road, with masks

on, and kill the people and take their watches and money.”

“Must we always kill the people?”

“Oh, certainly. It’s best. Some authorities think different, but mostly

it’s considered best to kill them—except some that you bring to the

cave here, and keep them till they’re ransomed.”

“Ransomed? What’s that?”

“I don’t know. But that’s what they do. I’ve seen it in books; and so

of course that’s what we’ve got to do.”

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

“Why, blame it all, we’ve _got_ to do it. Don’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 muddled up?”

“Oh, that’s all very fine to _say_, Tom Sawyer, but how in the nation

are these fellows 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 _reckon_ it

is?”

“Well, I don’t know. But per’aps if we keep them till they’re ransomed,

it means that we keep them till they’re dead.”

“Now, that’s something _like_. That’ll answer. Why couldn’t you said

that before? We’ll keep them till they’re ransomed to death; and a

bothersome lot 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 a guard

over them, ready to shoot them down if they move a peg?”

“A guard! Well, that _is_ good. So somebody’s got to set 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 club and ransom them 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 regular, or don’t you?—that’s the idea. Don’t you

reckon that the people that made the books knows what’s the correct

thing to do? Do you reckon _you_ can learn ’em anything? Not by a good

deal. No, sir, we’ll just go on and ransom them in the regular way.”

“All right. I don’t mind; but I say it’s a fool way, anyhow. Say, do we

kill the women, too?”

“Well, Ben Rogers, if I was as ignorant as you I wouldn’t let on. Kill

the women? No; nobody ever saw anything in the books like that. You

fetch them to the cave, and you’re always as polite 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 take no stock in it.

Mighty soon we’ll have the cave so cluttered up with women, and fellows

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 now, and when they waked him up he was

scared, and cried, and said he wanted to go home to his ma, 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

mad, 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 somebody and kill some people.

Ben Rogers said he couldn’t get out much, only Sundays, and so he

wanted to begin next Sunday; but all the boys said it would be wicked

to do it on Sunday, and that settled the thing. They agreed to get

together and fix a day as soon as they could, and then we elected Tom

Sawyer first captain and Jo Harper second captain of the Gang, and so

started home.

I clumb up the shed and crept into my window just before day was

breaking. My new clothes was all greased up and clayey, and I was

dog-tired.