第 六 章 · 第6章

Well, pretty soon the old man was up and around again, and then he went

for Judge Thatcher in the courts to make him give up that money, and he

went for me, too, for not stopping school. He catched me a couple of

times and thrashed me, but I went to school just the same, and dodged

him or outrun him most of the time. I didn’t want to go to school much

before, but I reckoned I’d go now to spite pap. That law trial was a

slow business—appeared like they warn’t ever going to get started on

it; so every now and then I’d borrow two or three dollars off of the

judge for him, to keep from getting a cowhiding. Every time he got

money he got drunk; and every time he got drunk he raised Cain around

town; and every time he raised Cain he got jailed. He was just

suited—this kind of thing was right in his line.

He got to hanging around the widow’s too much and so she told him at

last that if he didn’t quit using around there she would make trouble

for him. Well, _wasn’t_ he mad? He said he would show who was Huck

Finn’s boss. So he watched out for me one day in the spring, and

catched me, and took me up the river about three mile in a skiff, and

crossed over to the Illinois shore where it was woody and there warn’t

no houses but an old log hut in a place where the timber was so thick

you couldn’t find it if you didn’t know where it was.

He kept me with him all the time, and I never got a chance to run off.

We lived in that old cabin, and he always locked the door and put the

key under his head nights. He had a gun which he had stole, I reckon,

and we fished and hunted, and that was what we lived on. Every little

while he locked me in and went down to the store, three miles, to the

ferry, and traded fish and game for whisky, and fetched it home and got

drunk and had a good time, and licked me. The widow she found out where

I was by-and-by, and she sent a man over to try to get hold of me; but

pap drove him off with the gun, and it warn’t long after that till I

was used to being where I was, and liked it—all but the cowhide part.

It was kind of lazy and jolly, laying off comfortable all day, smoking

and fishing, and no books nor study. Two months or more run along, and

my clothes got to be all rags and dirt, and I didn’t see how I’d ever

got to like it so well at the widow’s, where you had to wash, and eat

on a plate, and comb up, and go to bed and get up regular, and be

forever bothering over a book, and have old Miss Watson pecking at you

all the time. I didn’t want to go back no more. I had stopped cussing,

because the widow didn’t like it; but now I took to it again because

pap hadn’t no objections. It was pretty good times up in the woods

there, take it all around.

But by-and-by pap got too handy with his hick’ry, and I couldn’t stand

it. I was all over welts. He got to going away so much, too, and

locking me in. Once he locked me in and was gone three days. It was

dreadful lonesome. I judged he had got drownded, and I wasn’t ever

going to get out any more. I was scared. I made up my mind I would fix

up some way to leave there. I had tried to get out of that cabin many a

time, but I couldn’t find no way. There warn’t a window to it big

enough for a dog to get through. I couldn’t get up the chimbly; it was

too narrow. The door was thick, solid oak slabs. Pap was pretty careful

not to leave a knife or anything in the cabin when he was away; I

reckon I had hunted the place over as much as a hundred times; well, I

was most all the time at it, because it was about the only way to put

in the time. But this time I found something at last; I found an old

rusty wood-saw without any handle; it was laid in between a rafter and

the clapboards of the roof. I greased it up and went to work. There was

an old horse-blanket nailed against the logs at the far end of the

cabin behind the table, to keep the wind from blowing through the

chinks and putting the candle out. I got under the table and raised the

blanket, and went to work to saw a section of the big bottom log

out—big enough to let me through. Well, it was a good long job, but I

was getting towards the end of it when I heard pap’s gun in the woods.

I got rid of the signs of my work, and dropped the blanket and hid my

saw, and pretty soon pap come in.

Pap warn’t in a good humor—so he was his natural self. He said he was

down town, and everything was going wrong. His lawyer said he reckoned

he would win his lawsuit and get the money if they ever got started on

the trial; but then there was ways to put it off a long time, and Judge

Thatcher knowed how to do it. And he said people allowed there’d be

another trial to get me away from him and give me to the widow for my

guardian, and they guessed it would win this time. This shook me up

considerable, because I didn’t want to go back to the widow’s any more

and be so cramped up and sivilized, as they called it. Then the old man

got to cussing, and cussed everything and everybody he could think of,

and then cussed them all over again to make sure he hadn’t skipped any,

and after that he polished off with a kind of a general cuss all round,

including a considerable parcel of people which he didn’t know the

names of, and so called them what’s-his-name when he got to them, and

went right along with his cussing.

He said he would like to see the widow get me. He said he would watch

out, and if they tried to come any such game on him he knowed of a

place six or seven mile off to stow me in, where they might hunt till

they dropped and they couldn’t find me. That made me pretty uneasy

again, but only for a minute; I reckoned I wouldn’t stay on hand till

he got that chance.

The old man made me go to the skiff and fetch the things he had got.

There was a fifty-pound sack of corn meal, and a side of bacon,

ammunition, and a four-gallon jug of whisky, and an old book and two

newspapers for wadding, besides some tow. I toted up a load, and went

back and set down on the bow of the skiff to rest. I thought it all

over, and I reckoned I would walk off with the gun and some lines, and

take to the woods when I run away. I guessed I wouldn’t stay in one

place, but just tramp right across the country, mostly night times, and

hunt and fish to keep alive, and so get so far away that the old man

nor the widow couldn’t ever find me any more. I judged I would saw out

and leave that night if pap got drunk enough, and I reckoned he would.

I got so full of it I didn’t notice how long I was staying till the old

man hollered and asked me whether I was asleep or drownded.

I got the things all up to the cabin, and then it was about dark. While

I was cooking supper the old man took a swig or two and got sort of

warmed up, and went to ripping again. He had been drunk over in town,

and laid in the gutter all night, and he was a sight to look at. A body

would a thought he was Adam—he was just all mud. Whenever his liquor

begun to work he most always went for the govment, this time he says:

“Call this a govment! why, just look at it and see what it’s like.

Here’s the law a-standing ready to take a man’s son away from him—a

man’s own son, which he has had all the trouble and all the anxiety and

all the expense of raising. Yes, just as that man has got that son

raised at last, and ready to go to work and begin to do suthin’ for

_him_ and give him a rest, the law up and goes for him. And they call

_that_ govment! That ain’t all, nuther. The law backs that old Judge

Thatcher up and helps him to keep me out o’ my property. Here’s what

the law does: The law takes a man worth six thousand dollars and

up’ards, and jams him into an old trap of a cabin like this, and lets

him go round in clothes that ain’t fitten for a hog. They call that

govment! A man can’t get his rights in a govment like this. Sometimes

I’ve a mighty notion to just leave the country for good and all. Yes,

and I _told_ ’em so; I told old Thatcher so to his face. Lots of ’em

heard me, and can tell what I said. Says I, for two cents I’d leave the

blamed country and never come a-near it agin. Them’s the very words. I

says look at my hat—if you call it a hat—but the lid raises up and the

rest of it goes down till it’s below my chin, and then it ain’t rightly

a hat at all, but more like my head was shoved up through a jint o’

stove-pipe. Look at it, says I—such a hat for me to wear—one of the

wealthiest men in this town if I could git my rights.

“Oh, yes, this is a wonderful govment, wonderful. Why, looky here.

There was a free nigger there from Ohio—a mulatter, most as white as a

white man. He had the whitest shirt on you ever see, too, and the

shiniest hat; and there ain’t a man in that town that’s got as fine

clothes as what he had; and he had a gold watch and chain, and a

silver-headed cane—the awfulest old gray-headed nabob in the State. And

what do you think? They said he was a p’fessor in a college, and could

talk all kinds of languages, and knowed everything. And that ain’t the

wust. They said he could _vote_ when he was at home. Well, that let me

out. Thinks I, what is the country a-coming to? It was ’lection day,

and I was just about to go and vote myself if I warn’t too drunk to get

there; but when they told me there was a State in this country where

they’d let that nigger vote, I drawed out. I says I’ll never vote agin.

Them’s the very words I said; they all heard me; and the country may

rot for all me—I’ll never vote agin as long as I live. And to see the

cool way of that nigger—why, he wouldn’t a give me the road if I hadn’t

shoved him out o’ the way. I says to the people, why ain’t this nigger

put up at auction and sold?—that’s what I want to know. And what do you

reckon they said? Why, they said he couldn’t be sold till he’d been in

the State six months, and he hadn’t been there that long yet. There,

now—that’s a specimen. They call that a govment that can’t sell a free

nigger till he’s been in the State six months. Here’s a govment that

calls itself a govment, and lets on to be a govment, and thinks it is a

govment, and yet’s got to set stock-still for six whole months before

it can take a hold of a prowling, thieving, infernal, white-shirted

free nigger, and—”

Pap was agoing on so he never noticed where his old limber legs was

taking him to, so he went head over heels over the tub of salt pork and

barked both shins, and the rest of his speech was all the hottest kind

of language—mostly hove at the nigger and the govment, though he give

the tub some, too, all along, here and there. He hopped around the

cabin considerable, first on one leg and then on the other, holding

first one shin and then the other one, and at last he let out with his

left foot all of a sudden and fetched the tub a rattling kick. But it

warn’t good judgment, because that was the boot that had a couple of

his toes leaking out of the front end of it; so now he raised a howl

that fairly made a body’s hair raise, and down he went in the dirt, and

rolled there, and held his toes; and the cussing he done then laid over

anything he had ever done previous. He said so his own self afterwards.

He had heard old Sowberry Hagan in his best days, and he said it laid

over him, too; but I reckon that was sort of piling it on, maybe.

After supper pap took the jug, and said he had enough whisky there for

two drunks and one delirium tremens. That was always his word. I judged

he would be blind drunk in about an hour, and then I would steal the

key, or saw myself out, one or t’other. He drank and drank, and tumbled

down on his blankets by-and-by; but luck didn’t run my way. He didn’t

go sound asleep, but was uneasy. He groaned and moaned and thrashed

around this way and that for a long time. At last I got so sleepy I

couldn’t keep my eyes open all I could do, and so before I knowed what

I was about I was sound asleep, and the candle burning.

I don’t know how long I was asleep, but all of a sudden there was an

awful scream and I was up. There was pap looking wild, and skipping

around every which way and yelling about snakes. He said they was

crawling up his legs; and then he would give a jump and scream, and say

one had bit him on the cheek—but I couldn’t see no snakes. He started

and run round and round the cabin, hollering “Take him off! take him

off! he’s biting me on the neck!” I never see a man look so wild in the

eyes. Pretty soon he was all fagged out, and fell down panting; then he

rolled over and over wonderful fast, kicking things every which way,

and striking and grabbing at the air with his hands, and screaming and

saying there was devils a-hold of him. He wore out by-and-by, and laid

still a while, moaning. Then he laid stiller, and didn’t make a sound.

I could hear the owls and the wolves away off in the woods, and it

seemed terrible still. He was laying over by the corner. By-and-by he

raised up part way and listened, with his head to one side. He says,

very low:

“Tramp—tramp—tramp; that’s the dead; tramp—tramp—tramp; they’re coming

after me; but I won’t go. Oh, they’re here! don’t touch me—don’t! hands

off—they’re cold; let go. Oh, let a poor devil alone!”

Then he went down on all fours and crawled off, begging them to let him

alone, and he rolled himself up in his blanket and wallowed in under

the old pine table, still a-begging; and then he went to crying. I

could hear him through the blanket.

By-and-by he rolled out and jumped up on his feet looking wild, and he

see me and went for me. He chased me round and round the place with a

clasp-knife, calling me the Angel of Death, and saying he would kill

me, and then I couldn’t come for him no more. I begged, and told him I

was only Huck; but he laughed _such_ a screechy laugh, and roared and

cussed, and kept on chasing me up. Once when I turned short and dodged

under his arm he made a grab and got me by the jacket between my

shoulders, and I thought I was gone; but I slid out of the jacket quick

as lightning, and saved myself. Pretty soon he was all tired out, and

dropped down with his back against the door, and said he would rest a

minute and then kill me. He put his knife under him, and said he would

sleep and get strong, and then he would see who was who.

So he dozed off pretty soon. By-and-by I got the old split-bottom chair

and clumb up as easy as I could, not to make any noise, and got down

the gun. I slipped the ramrod down it to make sure it was loaded, then

I laid it across the turnip barrel, pointing towards pap, and set down

behind it to wait for him to stir. And how slow and still the time did

drag along.