Huckleberry Finn by Dave Mckay, Mark Twain (recommended books to read TXT) 📕

The light started to come before we got to the foot of the island, so we looked in at the window. We could make out a bed, a table, two old chairs, and lots of things around the floor, and there was clothes hanging against the wall. There was something on the floor in the far corner that looked like a man.

So Jim says: “Hello, you!”

But it didn’t move. So I shouted again, then Jim says: “He ain’t asleep -- he’s dead. You hold here -- I’ll go see.” He went in, and got down close and looked, and says:

“It’s a dead man. Yes, it is; with no clothes on, too. He got a bullet in de back. I’d say he’s been dead two or three days. Come in, Huck, but don’t look at his face -- it’s too awful.”

I didn’t look at him at all. Jim throwed some old dirty cloths over him, but there was no need for that; I didn’t want to see him. There was lots of old dirty cards all around over the floor, and old whiskey bottles, and two masks made out of black cloth; and all over the walls was the stupidest kind of words and pictures made with coals from a fire. There was two old dirty dresses, and a sun hat, and some women’s under clothes hanging against the wall, and some men’s clothes, too. We put the lot into the canoe -- maybe we could find a use for them. There was a boy’s old hat on the floor; I took that, too. And there was a bottle that had had milk in it, and it had a piece of cloth in it for a baby to put in its mouth to get milk from it. We would of took the bottle, but it was broken. There was a dirty old timber box, and an old broken suitcase. They was open, but there weren’t nothing left in them that was of any good to us. The way things was all over the place we said to ourselves that the people must of left in a hurry, and weren’t fixed so as to carry off most of their things.

We got an old tin lantern, and a sharp meat knife without any handle, and a nice new knife worth money in any shop, and a lot of candles made from fat, and a tin stick to hold a candle, and a tin cup, and a dirty old quilt off the bed, and a hand bag with needles and wax and buttons and thread and all such things in it, and an axe and some nails, and a fish line as thick as my little finger with some very big hooks on it, and a big piece of leather, and a horse shoe, and some bottles of medicine that didn’t have no name on them; and just as we was leaving Jim found a dirty old violin bow, and a timber leg. The belts to hold it on was broken off of it, but, apart from that, it was a good enough leg, but it was too long for me and not long enough for Jim, and we couldn’t find the other one, even after hunting all around.

And so, take it all around, we made a good time of it. When we was ready to leave we was four hundred yards below the island, and it was pretty much light outside; so I made Jim lay down in the canoe and cover up with the quilt, because if he set up people could tell he was a black man a good ways off. I took the boat over to the Illinois side, and was pushed down the river almost a half a mile doing it. I worked my way back up to the island in the dead water under the high ground on that side, and hadn’t no accidents and didn’t see nobody. We got home all safe.

Chapter 10

After breakfast I wanted to talk about the dead man and about how he come to be killed, but Jim didn’t want to. He said it would bring bad luck; and on top of that, he said, his ghost might come looking for us; he said a man that weren’t buried would more often do that than one that was planted and com- fortable. That sounded pretty true, so I didn’t say no more; but I couldn’t stop from studying over it and wishing I knowed who killed the man, and what they done it for.

We went through the clothes we’d got, and found eight dollars in silver sewed up inside an old coat.

Jim said he had a feeling the people robbed the coat and didn’t know it had money in it, because if they’d a-knowed they wouldn’t a left it. I said I had a feeling they killed him, too; but Jim didn’t want to talk about that.

I says: “Now you think it’s bad luck; but what did you say when I showed you the snake skin that I found on the top of the hill day before yesterday? You said it was the worst bad luck in the world to touch a snake skin with my hands. Well, here’s your bad luck! We’ve brought in all these things and eight dollars on top of it. I wish we could have some bad luck like this every day, Jim.”

“Never you mind, honey, never you mind. Don’t you get too smart. It’s a-coming. Remember I tell you, it’s a-coming.”

It did come, too. It was a Tuesday that we had that talk. Well, after dinner Friday we was lying around in the grass at the highest end of the hill, and got out of tobacco. I went to the cave to get some, and found a rattlesnake in there. I killed him, and put him on the foot of Jim’s blanket, ever so alive looking, thinking there’d be some fun when Jim found him there. Well, that night I wasn't thinking about the snake, and when Jim threw himself down on the blanket as I was lighting a candle the snake’s mate was there, and took a bite of him.

He jumped up shouting, and the first thing the light showed was the snake coiled up for another jump at him. I killed it in a second with a stick, and Jim picked up pap’s whiskey bottle and started to pour it down his throat.

He had no shoes on, and the snake went for him right on the heel. That all comes of my being so stupid as to not remember that wherever you leave a dead snake its mate always comes there and hugs it. Jim told me to cut off the snake’s head and throw it away, and then skin the body and cook a piece of it. I done it, and he eat it and said it would help him heal. He made me take off the rattles and tie them around his wrist, too. Then I went out quiet and throwed the snakes clear away in the bushes; for I weren’t going to let Jim find out it was me that brought the snake’s mate there, not if I could help it.

Jim kept on drinking at the whiskey, and now and then he got out of his head and ran around and shouted; but every time he come to himself he went to drinking whiskey again. His foot went up pretty big, and so did his leg; but by and by the effect of drinking started to come, and so I judged he was all right; but I think it would be better the snake’s bite than pap’s whiskey.

Jim was sick for four days and nights. Then his leg went back down and he was around again. I said to myself then I wouldn’t ever take hold of a snake skin again with my hands, now that I see what had come of it. Jim said he could see I would believe him next time. And he said that handling a snake skin was such awful bad luck that maybe we hadn’t got to the end of it yet. He said he would be happier to see the new moon over his left shoulder as much as a thousand times than take up a snake skin in his hand. Well, I was getting to feel that way myself. Still, I’ve always said that looking at the new moon over your left shoulder is one of the most dangerous and foolish things a body can do. Old Hank Bunker done it once, and talked proud of it; and in less than two years he got drunk and fell off of a tower, and hit the ground so hard that he was just as thin as a blanket, as you may say; and they put him like that between two barn doors, and buried him like that, so they say, but I didn’t see it. Pap told me. But anyway it all come of looking at the moon that way, like a stupid person.

Well, the days went along, and the river went down between its sides again; and about the first thing we done was to put meat from a skinned rabbit on one of the big hooks and catch a catfish that was as big as a man, being six foot two inches long, and weighed over two hundred pounds. It’s easy to see that we couldn’t handle him; he would a throwed us into Illinois. We just sat there and watched him throw himself around until he died. We found a metal button in his stomach and a round ball, and lots of other things. We cut the ball open with the axe, and there was a thread cylinder in it. Jim said he’d had it there a long time, to cover it over so with chemicals from his stomach and make a ball of it. It was as big a fish as was ever caught in the Mississippi, I’d say. Jim said he hadn’t ever seen a bigger one. He would a been worth a lot of money over at the village. They sell out such a fish as that one by the pound in the market there; everybody buys some of him; his meat’s as white as snow and makes a good meal.

Next morning I said it was getting slow and boring, and I wanted to get some action up some way. I said I would just go quietly over the river and find out what was happening. Jim liked that plan; but he said I must go in the dark and look sharp. Then he studied it over and said, couldn’t I put on some of them old things and dress up like a girl? That was a good plan, too. So we made one of the dresses a little shorter, and I turned up my pant legs to my knees and got into it. Jim tied it behind with the hooks, and it was a good job. I put on the sun hat and tied it, so that for a body to look in and see my face was like looking down a stove pipe with a bend in it. Jim said nobody would know me, even in the light of day. I worked at it all day to get the feel of the things, and by and by I could do pretty well in them, only Jim said I didn’t walk like a girl; and he said I must quit pulling up my dress to get at my pocket. I listened to him, and done better.

I started up the Illinois side in the canoe just after dark. Then I started across to the town from a little below the ferry landing. The movement of the river brought me in at the bottom of the town. I tied up and walked along the side of the river. There was a light burning in a little cabin that hadn’t been lived in for a long time,