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

So in two seconds away we went a-moving down the river, and it did seem so good to be free again and all by ourselves on the big river, and nobody to trouble us. I had to run around a little, and jump up and hit my heels together a few times -- I couldn’t help it; but about the third jump I heard a sound that I knowed mighty well, and stopped breathing and listened and waited; and sure enough, when the next lightning broke out over the water, here they come! -- and just a-working their oars and making their boat fly! It was the king and the duke.

So I dropped right down on to the boards then, and give up; and it was all I could do to keep from crying.

Chapter 30

When they got on the raft the king went for me, and shook me by the neck, and says: “Trying to get away, was you, you little dog! Tired of our company, are you?”

I says: “No, my lord, we weren’t -- please don’t, my lord!”

“Be fast, then, and tell us what was your plan, or I’ll shake the insides out of you!”

“Honest, I’ll tell you everything just as it happened, my lord. The man that was holding me was good to me, and kept saying he had a boy about as big as me that died last year, and he was sorry to see a boy in such a dangerous way; and when they was all took by surprise by finding the gold, and moved forward, he lets go of me and whispers, ‘Run now, or they’ll hang you, sure!’ and I took off. It didn’t seem no good for me to stay -- I couldn’t do nothing, and I didn’t want to hang if I could get away. So I never stopped running until I found the canoe; and when I got here I told Jim to hurry, or they’d catch me and hang me yet, and said I was afraid you and the duke wasn’t alive now, and I was awful sorry, and so was Jim, and was awful glad when we seen you coming; you may ask Jim if I didn’t.”

Jim said it was so; and the king told him to shut up, and said, “Oh, yes, as if I should believe that!” and shook me up again, and said he thought he should drown me. But the duke says: “Let go of the boy, you crazy old man! Would you a done any different? Did you ask around for him when you got loose? I don’t remember it.”

So the king let go of me, and started to talk against that town and everybody in it. But the duke says: “You better, by a long way, give yourself a good talking to, for you’re the one that’s most to blame for what happened. You ain’t done a thing from the start that had any smartness in it, apart from coming out so cool and confident with that blue-arrow mark. That was smart -- it was one of the best things I’ve ever heard; and it was what saved us. For if it hadn’t been for that they’d a locked us up until them two English men’s bags had come -- and then -- prison for sure! But that trick took ‘em to the burying ground, and the gold done us an even bigger kindness; for if those crazy people hadn’t all let go of holding us and pushed forward to get a look we’d be sleeping with ties around our necks tonight -- ties made to last as long as we lived -- and longer too.”

They was quiet a minute -- thinking; then the king says, kind of like there weren’t any great meaning to it: “Hmm! And to think, we thought the slaves robbed it!”

That made me start shaking a little!

“Yes,” says the duke, kind of slow and with a lot of meaning to it, “We did.”

After half a minute the king says slowly: “At least, I did.”

The duke says, the same way: “Not to disagree, but it was I who did.”

The king kind of pulls himself up, and says: “Look here, Bilgewater, what are you trying to say?”

The duke comes back quickly with: “When it comes to that, maybe you’ll let me ask, what was you trying to say?”

“Maybe I don’t know what I’m trying to say!” says the king, not meaning a word of it. “Maybe you was asleep, and didn’t know what you was doing.”

The duke pulls himself up now, and says: “Oh, stop the foolishness; do you think I’m stupid? Don’t you think I know who put the money in that box?”

“Yes, sir! I know you know, because you done it yourself!”

“It’s a lie!” -- and the duke went for him.

The king sings out: “Take your hands off! -- let go of my throat! -- I take it all back!”

The duke says: “Well, you just own up, first, that you did hide that money there, planning to leave me one of these days, and come back and dig it up, and have it all to yourself.”

“Wait just a minute, duke -- answer me this one question, honest and fair; if you didn’t put the money there, say it, and I’ll believe you, and take back everything I said.”

“You old robber, I didn’t, and you know I didn’t. There, now!”

“Well, then, I believe you. But answer me only just this one more -- now don’t get angry; didn’t you have it in your head to take the money and hide it?”

The duke never said nothing for a little while; then he says: “Well, I don’t care if I did, I didn’t do it, anyway. But you not only had it in mind to do it, but you done it.”

“I wish to die if I done it, duke, and that’s honest. I won’t say I weren’t going to do it, because I was too; but you -- I mean someone -- got in ahead of me.”

“It’s a lie! You done it, and you got to say you done it, or -- “

The king was having trouble breathing, so he shouts out: “’Enough! -- I did it!”

I was very glad to hear him say that; it made me feel much easier than what I was feeling before. So the duke took his hands off and says: “If you ever again say you didn’t take it, I’ll drown you. It’s well for you to sit there and cry like a baby -- it goes with the way you’ve acted. I never seen such an old pig for wanting to eat up everything -- and I a-trusting you all the time, like you was my own father. You should a been feeling mighty guilty to stand by and hear it put onto a lot of poor servants, and you never said a word for ‘em. It makes me feel stupid to think I was soft enough to believe such foolishness. I can see now why you was so enthusiastic about making up the difference -- you wanted to get what money I’d got out of The King’s Foolishness and one thing or another, and take it all!”

The king says, shyly, and still having trouble breathing: “Why, duke, it was you that said we could make up the difference. It weren’t me.”

“Dry up! I don’t want to hear no more out of you!” says the duke. “And now you see what you got by it. They’ve got all their own money back, and all of ours but for a coin or two. Go along to bed, and don’t you difference me no more differences, long as you live!”

So the king went quietly into the tent and took to his bottle to make himself feel better, and before long the duke took up his bottle; and so in about half an hour they was as close as robbers again, and the drunker they got the lovinger they got, and went off a-snoring in each other’s arms. They both got powerful drunk, but I could see the king didn’t get drunk enough to argue that he didn’t hide the money-bag after that. That made me feel easy and safe. Then, when they got to snoring, we had a long talk, and I told Jim everything.

Chapter 31

We didn't think it safe to stop again at any town for days and days; kept right along down the river. When those two robbers believed they was out of danger, they started to work the villages again. First they done a talk against drinking; but they didn’t make enough for them both to get drunk on. Then in another village they started a dancing-school; but they didn’t know no more how to dance than a kangaroo does; so the first step they made the village people jumped in and stepped them right out of town. They tried missionarying, and doctoring, and telling the future, and a little of everything; but they couldn’t seem to have no luck. So at last they was all out of money, and just sat on the raft as she sailed along, thinking and thinking, and never saying nothing for half a day at a time, and awful sad and hungry.

At last they took a change and started to put their heads together in the tent and talk low and secretly two or three hours at a time. Jim and me got worried. We didn’t like the look of it. We judged they was studying up some kind of worse trouble than ever. We turned it over and over, and at last we started to believe they was going to break into someone’s house or shop, or was going into the counterfeit money business, or something. So then we was pretty scared, and agreed that we wouldn’t have nothing in the world to do with such actions, and if we ever got the least show we would give them the cold shake and take off and leave them behind. Well, early one morning we put the raft in a good, safe place about two miles below a little piece of a poor village named Pikesville, and the king he went off and told us all to stay hiding while he went up to town and smelled around to see if anyone had got any wind of The King’s Foolishness there yet. (“House to rob, you mean,” says I to myself; “and when you get through robbing it you’ll come back here and want to know what has become of me and Jim and the raft -- and you’ll have to take it out in wanting to know.”) And he said if he weren’t back by noon the duke and me would know it was all right, and we was to come along.

So we stayed where we was. The duke he seemed worried and angry. He shouted at us for everything, and we couldn’t seem to do nothing right; he found something wrong with every little thing. Something was up, for sure. I was good and glad when noon come and no king; we