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

Chapter 2

We went walking on our toes on our way through the trees back toward the end of the widow’s garden, bending down so as the branches wouldn’t hit our heads.

When we was passing by the kitchen I fell over a root and made a noise. We dropped down and laid still.

Miss Watson’s big slave, named Jim, was sitting in the kitchen door; we could see him pretty clear, because there was a light behind him.

He got up and put his neck out about a minute, listening.

Then he says: “Who dere?”

He listened some more; then he come walking quietly down and stood right between us; we could a touched him, nearly. Well, likely it was minutes and minutes that there weren’t a sound, and us all there so close together. There was a place on my ankle that needed to be scratched; and then my ear started to feel the same; and next my back, right between my shoulders. Seemed like I’d die if I couldn’t scratch. Well, I’ve seen that same thing happen lots of times since. If you are with high quality people, or at a funeral, or trying to go to sleep when you aren’t sleepy -- if you are anywhere where it won’t do for you to scratch, why you will feel like scratching all over in close to a thousand places.

Pretty soon Jim says:

“Say, who is you? Where is you? Dog my cats if I didn’t hear sumfin. Well, I know what I’s gwyne to do: I’s gwyne to sit down here and listen until I hears it again.”

So he sat down on the ground between me and Tom. He leaned his back up against a tree, and put his legs out until one of them almost touched one of mine. My nose started to feel like scratching. It went on until the tears come into my eyes. But I didn’t scratch. Then it started on the inside of my ear. Next I got to feeling the same way under my bottom. I didn’t know how I was going to keep from moving. This pain went on as much as six or seven minutes; but it seemed a lot longer than that. I was feeling it in eleven different places now. I thought I couldn’t stand it more than a minute longer, but I set my teeth hard and got ready to try. Just then Jim started to breathe heavy; next he started 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 quietly 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 noise, and then they’d find out I wasn’t in. Then Tom said he hadn’t got candles enough, and he would go secretly 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 try; so we went in there real quiet like and got three candles, and Tom put five cents on the table to pay for it. Then we got out, and I was in a hurry to get away; but nothing would make Tom happy if he couldn’t go up secretly to where Jim was, on his hands and knees, and play a trick on him. I waited, and it seemed a good while, everything was so dark and quiet.

As soon as Tom was back we cut along the footpath, around the garden fence, and by and by finished up on the steep top of the hill the other side of the house. Tom said he took Jim’s hat off of his head and hanged it on a branch right over him, and Jim moved a little, but he didn’t wake. The next day Jim said the witches took hold of him and controlled his mind so that they could ride him all over the towns around there, and then put him back under the trees again, and hanged his hat on a branch to show who done it. And next time Jim told it he said they forced him to carry them down to New Orleans; and, after that, every time he told it he put on more and more, until by and by he said they were riding him all over the world, and tired him most to death, and his back was all over saddle-sores. Jim was powerful proud about it, and he got so he wouldn’t so much as look at the other slaves. Black people would come miles to hear Jim tell about it, and he was more looked up to than any black man in that country. Slaves who never knew him would stand with their mouths open and look him all over, same as if he was a miracle. Slaves 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, “Hmm! What you know about witches?” and that slave was stopped up and had to take a back seat.

Jim always kept that five-cent piece round his neck with a string, and said it was magic the devil give to him with his own hands, and told him he could heal anyone with it and bring in witches whenever he wanted to just by saying something to it; but he never told what it was he said to it. Black people would come from all around there and give Jim anything they had, just for a look at that five-cent piece; but they wouldn’t touch it, because the devil had had his hands on it. Jim was not much good for a servant after that. He got a big head all because of having seen the devil and having witches ride on him.

Well, when Tom and me got to the top of the hill we looked away down into the village and could see three or four lights showing, where there was sick people maybe; and the stars over us was looking ever so nice; and down by the village was the river, a whole mile across, and awful quiet and powerful. We went down the hill and found Jo Harper and Ben Rogers, and two or three more of the boys hiding in the old leather works. So we cut loose a flat bottomed boat and pulled down the river two mile and a half, to the big cutting on the side of the hill, and pulled up on the beach.

We went to a big group of bushes growing close together, and Tom made everybody swear to keep it secret, before he showed them a hole in the hill, right behind the thickest part of the bushes. We put a match to the candles, and went in on our hands and knees. We went like this for about two hundred yards, and then the cave opened up. Tom went around from opening to opening, and pretty soon went down under a wall where you wouldn’t a seen that there was a hole. We followed him there, along a narrow place, and got into a kind of room, all wet and cold, and there we stopped. Tom says: “Now, we’ll start this gang of robbers and call it Tom Sawyer’s Gang. Everybody that wants to join has got to make a holy promise, and write his name in blood.”

Everybody was willing. So Tom got out a piece of paper that he had wrote the promise on, and read it. It said every boy would promise to stick to the gang, and never tell any of the secrets; and if anyone done anything to any boy in the gang, any boy who was told to kill that person and his family must do it, and he mustn’t eat and he mustn’t sleep until he had killed them and cut a cross on their chest, which was the sign of the gang. And nobody that didn’t belong to the gang could use that mark, and if he did he must be taken to court; and if he done it again he must be killed. And if anyone that belonged to the gang told the secrets, he must have his throat cut, and then have his dead body burned up and the ashes thrown all around, and his name taken off of the list with blood and never said again by the gang, but have a curse put on it forever.

Everybody said it was a real beautiful promise, and asked Tom if he got it out of his own head. He said, some of it, but other parts was out of pirate-books and robber-books, and every gang that was high quality had it.

Some thought it would be good to kill the families of boys that told the secrets. Tom said it was a good one, so he took a pencil and wrote it in. Then Ben Rogers says:

“Here’s Huck Finn, he ain’t got no family; what you going to do about him?”

“Well, ain’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 lie drunk with the pigs in the leather yard, but he ain’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 someone to kill, or else it wouldn’t be fair and square for the others. Well, nobody could think of anything to do, and they sat there saying nothing. I was almost ready to cry; but all at once I thought of a way, and so I said they could have Miss Watson -- they could kill her. Everybody said: “Oh, she’ll do. That’s perfect. Huck can come in.”

Then they all sticked a needle 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 robbing and killing,” Tom says.

“But who are we going to rob? -- houses, or cows, or -- “

“No way! Robbing cows and such things ain’t robbing; it’s burglary,” says Tom Sawyer. “We ain’t burglars. That ain’t no kind of quality. We are true robbers. We stop coaches on the road, with masks on, and kill the people and take their jewelry and money.”

“Must we always kill the people?”

“Oh, for sure. It’s best. Some people think different, but mostly it’s believed to be best to kill them -- all but some that you bring to the cave here, and keep them until 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 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