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Chapter 33
WITHIN a few minutes the news had spread, and a dozen skiff-loads of men were on their
way to McDougal's cave, and the ferryboat, well filled with passengers, soon followed.
Tom Sawyer was in the skiff that bore Judge Thatcher.
When the cave door was unlocked, a sorrowful sight presented itself in the dim twilight
of the place. *** Joe lay stretched upon the ground, dead, with his face close to the
crack of the door, as if his longing eyes had been fixed, to the latest moment, upon
the light and the cheer of the free world outside. Tom was touched, for he knew by his
own experience how this wretch had suffered. His pity was moved, but nevertheless he felt
an abounding sense of relief and security, now, which revealed to him in a degree which
he had not fully appreciated before how vast a weight of dread had been lying upon him
since the day he lifted his voice against this bloody-minded outcast.
*** Joe's bowie-knife lay close by, its blade broken in two. The great foundation-beam
of the door had been chipped and hacked through, with tedious labor; useless labor, too, it
was, for the native rock formed a sill outside it, and upon that stubborn material the knife
had wrought no effect; the only damage done was to the knife itself. But if there had
been no stony obstruction there the labor would have been useless still, for if the
beam had been wholly cut away *** Joe could not have squeezed his body under the door,
and he knew it. So he had only hacked that place in order to be doing something — in
order to pass the weary time — in order to employ his tortured faculties. Ordinarily
one could find half a dozen bits of candle stuck around in the crevices of this vestibule,
left there by tourists; but there were none now. The prisoner had searched them out and
eaten them. He had also contrived to catch a few bats, and these, also, he had eaten,
leaving only their claws. The poor unfortunate had starved to death. In one place, near at
hand, a stalagmite had been slowly growing up from the ground for ages, builded by the
water-drip from a stalactite overhead. The captive had broken off the stalagmite, and
upon the stump had placed a stone, wherein he had scooped a shallow hollow to catch the
precious drop that fell once in every three minutes with the dreary regularity of a clock-tick
— a dessertspoonful once in four and twenty hours. That drop was falling when the Pyramids
were new; when Troy fell; when the foundations of Rome were laid when Christ was crucified;
when the Conqueror created the British empire; when Columbus sailed; when the massacre at
Lexington was "news." It is falling now; it will still be falling when all these things
shall have sunk down the afternoon of history, and the twilight of tradition, and been swallowed
up in the thick night of oblivion. Has everything a purpose and a mission? Did this drop fall
patiently during five thousand years to be ready for this flitting human insect's need?
and has it another important object to accomplish ten thousand years to come? No matter. It
is many and many a year since the hapless half-breed scooped out the stone to catch
the priceless drops, but to this day the tourist stares longest at that pathetic stone and
that slow-dropping water when he comes to see the wonders of McDougal's cave. ***
Joe's cup stands first in the list of the cavern's marvels; even "Aladdin's Palace"
cannot rival it. *** Joe was buried near the mouth of the
cave; and people flocked there in boats and wagons from the towns and from all the farms
and hamlets for seven miles around; they brought their children, and all sorts of provisions,
and confessed that they had had almost as satisfactory a time at the funeral as they
could have had at the hanging. This funeral stopped the further growth of
one thing — the petition to the governor for *** Joe's pardon. The petition had been
largely signed; many tearful and eloquent meetings had been held, and a committee of
sappy women been appointed to go in deep mourning and wail around the governor, and implore
him to be a merciful *** and trample his duty under foot. *** Joe was believed to have
killed five citizens of the village, but what of that? If he had been Satan himself there
would have been plenty of weaklings ready to scribble their names to a pardon-petition,
and drip a tear on it from their permanently impaired and leaky water-works.
The morning after the funeral Tom took Huck to a private place to have an important talk.
Huck had learned all about Tom's adventure from the Welshman and the Widow Douglas, by
this time, but Tom said he reckoned there was one thing they had not told him; that
thing was what he wanted to talk about now. Huck's face saddened. He said:
"I know what it is. You got into No. 2 and never found anything but whiskey. Nobody told
me it was you; but I just knowed it must 'a' ben you, soon as I heard 'bout that whiskey
business; and I knowed you hadn't got the money becuz you'd 'a' got at me some way or
other and told me even if you was mum to everybody else. Tom, something's always told me we'd
never get holt of that swag." "Why, Huck, I never told on that tavern-keeper.
YOU know his tavern was all right the Saturday I went to the picnic. Don't you remember you
was to watch there that night?" "Oh yes! Why, it seems 'bout a year ago. It
was that very night that I follered *** Joe to the widder's."
"YOU followed him?" "Yes — but you keep mum. I reckon ***
Joe's left friends behind him, and I don't want 'em souring on me and doing me mean tricks.
If it hadn't ben for me he'd be down in Texas now, all right."
Then Huck told his entire adventure in confidence to Tom, who had only heard of the Welshman's
part of it before. "Well," said Huck, presently, coming back
to the main question, "whoever nipped the whiskey in No. 2, nipped the money, too, I
reckon — anyways it's a goner for us, Tom." "Huck, that money wasn't ever in No. 2!"
"What!" Huck searched his comrade's face keenly. "Tom, have you got on the track of that money
again?" "Huck, it's in the cave!"
Huck's eyes blazed. "Say it again, Tom."
"The money's in the cave!" "Tom — honest ***, now — is it fun,
or earnest?" "Earnest, Huck — just as earnest as ever
I was in my life. Will you go in there with me and help get it out?"
"I bet I will! I will if it's where we can blaze our way to it and not get lost."
"Huck, we can do that without the least little bit of trouble in the world."
"Good as wheat! What makes you think the money's —"
"Huck, you just wait till we get in there. If we don't find it I'll agree to give you
my drum and every thing I've got in the world. I will, by jings."
"All right — it's a ***. When do you say?" "Right now, if you say it. Are you strong
enough?" "Is it far in the cave? I ben on my pins a
little, three or four days, now, but I can't walk more'n a mile, Tom — least I don't
think I could." "It's about five mile into there the way anybody
but me would go, Huck, but there's a mighty short cut that they don't anybody but me know
about. Huck, I'll take you right to it in a skiff. I'll float the skiff down there,
and I'll pull it back again all by myself. You needn't ever turn your hand over."
"Less start right off, Tom." "All right. We want some bread and meat, and
our pipes, and a little bag or two, and two or three kite-strings, and some of these new-fangled
things they call lucifer matches. I tell you, many's the time I wished I had some when I
was in there before." A trifle after noon the boys borrowed a small
skiff from a citizen who was absent, and got under way at once. When they were several
miles below "Cave Hollow," Tom said: "Now you see this bluff here looks all alike
all the way down from the cave hollow — no houses, no wood-yards, bushes all alike. But
do you see that white place up yonder where there's been a landslide? Well, that's one
of my marks. We'll get ashore, now." They landed.
"Now, Huck, where we're a-standing you could touch that hole I got out of with a fishing-pole.
See if you can find it." Huck searched all the place about, and found
nothing. Tom proudly marched into a thick clump of sumach bushes and said:
"Here you are! Look at it, Huck; it's the snuggest hole in this country. You just keep
mum about it. All along I've been wanting to be a robber, but I knew I'd got to have
a thing like this, and where to run across it was the bother. We've got it now, and we'll
keep it quiet, only we'll let Joe Harper and Ben Rogers in — because of course there's
got to be a Gang, or else there wouldn't be any style about it. Tom Sawyer's Gang — it
sounds splendid, don't it, Huck?" "Well, it just does, Tom. And who'll we rob?"
"Oh, most anybody. Waylay people — that's mostly the way."
"And kill them?" "No, not always. Hive them in the cave till
they raise a ransom." "What's a ransom?"
"Money. You make them raise all they can, off'n their friends; and after you've kept
them a year, if it ain't raised then you kill them. That's the general way. Only you don't
kill the women. You shut up the women, but you don't kill them. They're always beautiful
and rich, and awfully scared. You take their watches and things, but you always take your
hat off and talk polite. They ain't anybody as polite as robbers — you'll see that in
any book. Well, the women get to loving you, and after they've been in the cave a week
or two weeks they stop crying and after that you couldn't get them to leave. If you drove
them out they'd turn right around and come back. It's so in all the books."
"Why, it's real bully, Tom. I believe it's better'n to be a pirate."
"Yes, it's better in some ways, because it's close to home and circuses and all that."
By this time everything was ready and the boys entered the hole, Tom in the lead. They
toiled their way to the farther end of the tunnel, then made their spliced kite-strings
fast and moved on. A few steps brought them to the spring, and Tom felt a shudder quiver
all through him. He showed Huck the fragment of candle-wick perched on a lump of clay against
the wall, and described how he and Becky had watched the flame struggle and expire.
The boys began to quiet down to whispers, now, for the stillness and gloom of the place
oppressed their spirits. They went on, and presently entered and followed Tom's other
corridor until they reached the "jumping-off place." The candles revealed the fact that
it was not really a precipice, but only a steep clay hill twenty or thirty feet high.
Tom whispered: "Now I'll show you something, Huck."
He held his candle aloft and said: "Look as far around the corner as you can.
Do you see that? There — on the big rock over yonder — done with candle-smoke."
"Tom, it's a CROSS!" "NOW where's your Number Two? 'UNDER THE CROSS,'
hey? Right yonder's where I saw *** Joe poke up his candle, Huck!"
Huck stared at the mystic sign awhile, and then said with a shaky voice:
"Tom, less git out of here!" "What! and leave the treasure?"
"Yes — leave it. *** Joe's ghost is round about there, certain."
"No it ain't, Huck, no it ain't. It would ha'nt the place where he died — away out
at the mouth of the cave — five mile from here."
"No, Tom, it wouldn't. It would hang round the money. I know the ways of ghosts, and
so do you." Tom began to fear that Huck was right. Misgivings
gathered in his mind. But presently an idea occurred to him —
"Lookyhere, Huck, what fools we're making of ourselves! *** Joe's ghost ain't a going
to come around where there's a cross!" The point was well taken. It had its effect.
"Tom, I didn't think of that. But that's so. It's luck for us, that cross is. I reckon
we'll climb down there and have a hunt for that box."
Tom went first, cutting rude steps in the clay hill as he descended. Huck followed.
Four avenues opened out of the small cavern which the great rock stood in. The boys examined
three of them with no result. They found a small recess in the one nearest the base of
the rock, with a pallet of blankets spread down in it; also an old suspender, some bacon
rind, and the well-gnawed bones of two or three fowls. But there was no money-box. The
lads searched and researched this place, but in vain. Tom said:
"He said UNDER the cross. Well, this comes nearest to being under the cross. It can't
be under the rock itself, because that sets solid on the ground."
They searched everywhere once more, and then sat down discouraged. Huck could suggest nothing.
By-and-by Tom said: "Lookyhere, Huck, there's footprints and some
candle-grease on the clay about one side of this rock, but not on the other sides. Now,
what's that for? I bet you the money IS under the rock. I'm going to dig in the clay."
"That ain't no bad notion, Tom!" said Huck with animation.
Tom's "real Barlow" was out at once, and he had not dug four inches before he struck wood.
"Hey, Huck! — you hear that?" Huck began to dig and scratch now. Some boards
were soon uncovered and removed. They had concealed a natural chasm which led under
the rock. Tom got into this and held his candle as far under the rock as he could, but said
he could not see to the end of the rift. He proposed to explore. He stooped and passed
under; the narrow way descended gradually. He followed its winding course, first to the
right, then to the left, Huck at his heels. Tom turned a short curve, by-and-by, and exclaimed:
"My goodness, Huck, lookyhere!" It was the treasure-box, sure enough, occupying
a snug little cavern, along with an empty powder-keg, a couple of guns in leather cases,
two or three pairs of old moccasins, a leather belt, and some other rubbish well soaked with
the water-drip. "Got it at last!" said Huck, ploughing among
the tarnished coins with his hand. "My, but we're rich, Tom!"
"Huck, I always reckoned we'd get it. It's just too good to believe, but we HAVE got
it, sure! Say — let's not fool around here. Let's snake it out. Lemme see if I can lift
the box." It weighed about fifty pounds. Tom could lift
it, after an awkward fashion, but could not carry it conveniently.
"I thought so," he said; "THEY carried it like it was heavy, that day at the ha'nted
house. I noticed that. I reckon I was right to think of fetching the little bags along."
The money was soon in the bags and the boys took it up to the cross rock.
"Now less fetch the guns and things," said Huck.
"No, Huck — leave them there. They're just the tricks to have when we go to robbing.
We'll keep them there all the time, and we'll hold our *** there, too. It's an awful
snug place for ***." "What ***?"
"I dono. But robbers always have ***, and of course we've got to have them, too. Come
along, Huck, we've been in here a long time. It's getting late, I reckon. I'm hungry, too.
We'll eat and smoke when we get to the skiff." They presently emerged into the clump of sumach
bushes, looked warily out, found the coast clear, and were soon lunching and smoking
in the skiff. As the sun dipped toward the horizon they pushed out and got under way.
Tom skimmed up the shore through the long twilight, chatting cheerily with Huck, and
landed shortly after dark. "Now, Huck," said Tom, "we'll hide the money
in the loft of the widow's woodshed, and I'll come up in the morning and we'll count it
and divide, and then we'll hunt up a place out in the woods for it where it will be safe.
Just you lay quiet here and watch the stuff till I run and hook Benny Taylor's little
wagon; I won't be gone a minute." He disappeared, and presently returned with
the wagon, put the two small sacks into it, threw some old rags on top of them, and started
off, dragging his cargo behind him. When the boys reached the Welshman's house, they stopped
to rest. Just as they were about to move on, the Welshman stepped out and said:
"Hallo, who's that?" "Huck and Tom Sawyer."
"Good! Come along with me, boys, you are keeping everybody waiting. Here — hurry up, trot
ahead — I'll haul the wagon for you. Why, it's not as light as it might be. Got bricks
in it? — or old metal?" "Old metal," said Tom.
"I judged so; the boys in this town will take more trouble and fool away more time hunting
up six bits' worth of old iron to sell to the foundry than they would to make twice
the money at regular work. But that's human nature — hurry along, hurry along!"
The boys wanted to know what the hurry was about.
"Never mind; you'll see, when we get to the Widow Douglas'."
Huck said with some apprehension — for he was long used to being falsely accused:
"Mr. Jones, we haven't been doing nothing." The Welshman laughed.
"Well, I don't know, Huck, my boy. I don't know about that. Ain't you and the widow good
friends?" "Yes. Well, she's ben good friends to me,
anyway." "All right, then. What do you want to be afraid
for?" This question was not entirely answered in
Huck's slow mind before he found himself pushed, along with Tom, into Mrs. Douglas' drawing-room.
Mr. Jones left the wagon near the door and followed.
The place was grandly lighted, and everybody that was of any consequence in the village
was there. The Thatchers were there, the Harpers, the Rogerses, Aunt Polly, Sid, Mary, the minister,
the editor, and a great many more, and all dressed in their best. The widow received
the boys as heartily as any one could well receive two such looking beings. They were
covered with clay and candle-grease. Aunt Polly blushed crimson with humiliation, and
frowned and shook her head at Tom. Nobody suffered half as much as the two boys did,
however. Mr. Jones said: "Tom wasn't at home, yet, so I gave him up;
but I stumbled on him and Huck right at my door, and so I just brought them along in
a hurry." "And you did just right," said the widow.
"Come with me, boys." She took them to a bedchamber and said:
"Now wash and dress yourselves. Here are two new suits of clothes — shirts, socks, everything
complete. They're Huck's — no, no thanks, Huck — Mr. Jones bought one and I the other.
But they'll fit both of you. Get into them. We'll wait — come down when you are slicked
up enough." Then she left.
Chapter 34
HUCK said: "Tom, we can slope, if we can find a rope. The window ain't high from the ground."
"Shucks! what do you want to slope for?" "Well, I ain't used to that kind of a crowd.
I can't stand it. I ain't going down there, Tom."
"Oh, bother! It ain't anything. I don't mind it a bit. I'll take care of you."
Sid appeared. "Tom," said he, "auntie has been waiting for
you all the afternoon. Mary got your Sunday clothes ready, and everybody's been fretting
about you. Say — ain't this grease and clay, on your clothes?"
"Now, Mr. Siddy, you jist 'tend to your own business. What's all this blow-out about,
anyway?" "It's one of the widow's parties that she's
always having. This time it's for the Welshman and his sons, on account of that scrape they
helped her out of the other night. And say — I can tell you something, if you want
to know." "Well, what?"
"Why, old Mr. Jones is going to try to spring something on the people here to-night, but
I overheard him tell auntie to-day about it, as a secret, but I reckon it's not much of
a secret now. Everybody knows — the widow, too, for all she tries to let on she don't.
Mr. Jones was bound Huck should be here — couldn't get along with his grand secret without Huck,
you know!" "Secret about what, Sid?"
"About Huck tracking the robbers to the widow's. I reckon Mr. Jones was going to make a grand
time over his surprise, but I bet you it will drop pretty flat."
Sid chuckled in a very contented and satisfied way.
"Sid, was it you that told?" "Oh, never mind who it was. SOMEBODY told
— that's enough." "Sid, there's only one person in this town
mean enough to do that, and that's you. If you had been in Huck's place you'd 'a' sneaked
down the hill and never told anybody on the robbers. You can't do any but mean things,
and you can't bear to see anybody praised for doing good ones. There — no thanks,
as the widow says"— and Tom cuffed Sid's ears and helped him to the door with several
kicks. "Now go and tell auntie if you dare — and to-morrow you'll catch it!"
Some minutes later the widow's guests were at the supper-table, and a dozen children
were propped up at little side-tables in the same room, after the fashion of that country
and that day. At the proper time Mr. Jones made his little speech, in which he thanked
the widow for the honor she was doing himself and his sons, but said that there was another
person whose modesty — And so forth and so on. He sprung his secret
about Huck's share in the adventure in the finest dramatic manner he was master of, but
the surprise it occasioned was largely counterfeit and not as clamorous and effusive as it might
have been under happier circumstances. However, the widow made a pretty fair show of astonishment,
and heaped so many compliments and so much gratitude upon Huck that he almost forgot
the nearly intolerable discomfort of his new clothes in the entirely intolerable discomfort
of being set up as a target for everybody's gaze and everybody's laudations.
The widow said she meant to give Huck a home under her roof and have him educated; and
that when she could spare the money she would start him in business in a modest way. Tom's
chance was come. He said: "Huck don't need it. Huck's rich."
Nothing but a heavy strain upon the good manners of the company kept back the due and proper
complimentary laugh at this pleasant joke. But the silence was a little awkward. Tom
broke it: "Huck's got money. Maybe you don't believe
it, but he's got lots of it. Oh, you needn't smile — I reckon I can show you. You just
wait a minute." Tom ran out of doors. The company looked at
each other with a perplexed interest — and inquiringly at Huck, who was tongue-tied.
"Sid, what ails Tom?" said Aunt Polly. "He — well, there ain't ever any making of that
boy out. I never —" Tom entered, struggling with the weight of
his sacks, and Aunt Polly did not finish her sentence. Tom poured the mass of yellow coin
upon the table and said: "There — what did I tell you? Half of it's
Huck's and half of it's mine!" The spectacle took the general breath away.
All gazed, nobody spoke for a moment. Then there was a unanimous call for an explanation.
Tom said he could furnish it, and he did. The tale was long, but brimful of interest.
There was scarcely an interruption from any one to break the charm of its flow. When he
had finished, Mr. Jones said: "I thought I had fixed up a little surprise
for this occasion, but it don't amount to anything now. This one makes it sing mighty
small, I'm willing to allow." The money was counted. The sum amounted to
a little over twelve thousand dollars. It was more than any one present had ever seen
at one time before, though several persons were there who were worth considerably more
than that in property. Chapter 35
THE reader may rest satisfied that Tom's and Huck's windfall made a mighty stir in the
poor little village of St. Petersburg. So vast a sum, all in actual cash, seemed next
to incredible. It was talked about, gloated over, glorified, until the reason of many
of the citizens tottered under the strain of the unhealthy excitement. Every "haunted"
house in St. Petersburg and the neighboring villages was dissected, plank by plank, and
its foundations dug up and ransacked for hidden treasure — and not by boys, but men — pretty
grave, unromantic men, too, some of them. Wherever Tom and Huck appeared they were courted,
admired, stared at. The boys were not able to remember that their remarks had possessed
weight before; but now their sayings were treasured and repeated; everything they did
seemed somehow to be regarded as remarkable; they had evidently lost the power of doing
and saying commonplace things; moreover, their past history was raked up and discovered to
bear marks of conspicuous originality. The village paper published biographical sketches
of the boys. The Widow Douglas put Huck's money out at
six per cent., and Judge Thatcher did the same with Tom's at Aunt Polly's request. Each
lad had an income, now, that was simply prodigious — a dollar for every week-day in the year
and half of the Sundays. It was just what the minister got — no, it was what he was
promised — he generally couldn't collect it. A dollar and a quarter a week would board,
lodge, and school a boy in those old simple days — and clothe him and wash him, too,
for that matter. Judge Thatcher had conceived a great opinion
of Tom. He said that no commonplace boy would ever have got his daughter out of the cave.
When Becky told her father, in strict confidence, how Tom had taken her whipping at school,
the Judge was visibly moved; and when she pleaded grace for the mighty lie which Tom
had told in order to shift that whipping from her shoulders to his own, the Judge said with
a fine outburst that it was a noble, a generous, a magnanimous lie — a lie that was worthy
to hold up its head and march down through history breast to breast with George Washington's
lauded Truth about the hatchet! Becky thought her father had never looked so tall and so
superb as when he walked the floor and stamped his foot and said that. She went straight
off and told Tom about it. Judge Thatcher hoped to see Tom a great lawyer
or a great soldier some day. He said he meant to look to it that Tom should be admitted
to the National Military Academy and afterward trained in the best law school in the country,
in order that he might be ready for either career or both.
Huck Finn's wealth and the fact that he was now under the Widow Douglas' protection introduced
him into society — no, dragged him into it, hurled him into it — and his sufferings
were almost more than he could bear. The widow's servants kept him clean and neat, combed and
brushed, and they bedded him nightly in unsympathetic sheets that had not one little spot or stain
which he could press to his heart and know for a friend. He had to eat with a knife and
fork; he had to use napkin, cup, and plate; he had to learn his book, he had to go to
church; he had to talk so properly that speech was become insipid in his mouth; whithersoever
he turned, the bars and shackles of civilization shut him in and bound him hand and foot.
He bravely bore his miseries three weeks, and then one day turned up missing. For forty-eight
hours the widow hunted for him everywhere in great distress. The public were profoundly
concerned; they searched high and low, they dragged the river for his body. Early the
third morning Tom Sawyer wisely went poking among some old empty hogsheads down behind
the abandoned slaughter-house, and in one of them he found the refugee. Huck had slept
there; he had just breakfasted upon some stolen odds and ends of food, and was lying off,
now, in comfort, with his pipe. He was unkempt, uncombed, and clad in the same old ruin of
rags that had made him picturesque in the days when he was free and happy. Tom routed
him out, told him the trouble he had been causing, and urged him to go home. Huck's
face lost its tranquil content, and took a melancholy cast. He said:
"Don't talk about it, Tom. I've tried it, and it don't work; it don't work, Tom. It
ain't for me; I ain't used to it. The widder's good to me, and friendly; but I can't stand
them ways. She makes me get up just at the same time every morning; she makes me wash,
they comb me all to thunder; she won't let me sleep in the woodshed; I got to wear them
blamed clothes that just smothers me, Tom; they don't seem to any air git through 'em,
somehow; and they're so rotten nice that I can't set down, nor lay down, nor roll around
anywher's; I hain't slid on a cellar-door for — well, it 'pears to be years; I got
to go to church and sweat and sweat — I hate them ornery sermons! I can't ketch a
fly in there, I can't chaw. I got to wear shoes all Sunday. The widder eats by a bell;
she goes to bed by a bell; she gits up by a bell — everything's so awful reg'lar a
body can't stand it." "Well, everybody does that way, Huck."
"Tom, it don't make no difference. I ain't everybody, and I can't STAND it. It's awful
to be tied up so. And grub comes too easy — I don't take no interest in vittles, that
way. I got to ask to go a-fishing; I got to ask to go in a-swimming — dern'd if I hain't
got to ask to do everything. Well, I'd got to talk so nice it wasn't no comfort — I'd
got to go up in the attic and rip out awhile, every day, to git a taste in my mouth, or
I'd a died, Tom. The widder wouldn't let me smoke; she wouldn't let me yell, she wouldn't
let me gape, nor stretch, nor scratch, before folks —" [Then with a spasm of special irritation
and injury]—"And dad fetch it, she prayed all the time! I never see such a woman! I
HAD to shove, Tom — I just had to. And besides, that school's going to open, and I'd a had
to go to it — well, I wouldn't stand THAT, Tom. Looky here, Tom, being rich ain't what
it's cracked up to be. It's just worry and worry, and sweat and sweat, and a-wishing
you was dead all the time. Now these clothes suits me, and this bar'l suits me, and I ain't
ever going to shake 'em any more. Tom, I wouldn't ever got into all this trouble if it hadn't
'a' ben for that money; now you just take my sheer of it along with your'n, and gimme
a ten-center sometimes — not many times, becuz I don't give a dern for a thing 'thout
it's tollable hard to git — and you go and beg off for me with the widder."
"Oh, Huck, you know I can't do that. 'Tain't fair; and besides if you'll try this thing
just a while longer you'll come to like it." "Like it! Yes — the way I'd like a hot stove
if I was to set on it long enough. No, Tom, I won't be rich, and I won't live in them
cussed smothery houses. I like the woods, and the river, and hogsheads, and I'll stick
to 'em, too. Blame it all! just as we'd got guns, and a cave, and all just fixed to rob,
here this dern foolishness has got to come up and spile it all!"
Tom saw his opportunity — "Lookyhere, Huck, being rich ain't going to
keep me back from turning robber." "No! Oh, good-licks; are you in real dead-wood
earnest, Tom?" "Just as dead earnest as I'm sitting here.
But Huck, we can't let you into the gang if you ain't respectable, you know."
Huck's joy was quenched. "Can't let me in, Tom? Didn't you let me go
for a pirate?" "Yes, but that's different. A robber is more
high-toned than what a pirate is — as a general thing. In most countries they're awful
high up in the nobility — dukes and such." "Now, Tom, hain't you always ben friendly
to me? You wouldn't shet me out, would you, Tom? You wouldn't do that, now, WOULD you,
Tom?" "Huck, I wouldn't want to, and I DON'T want
to — but what would people say? Why, they'd say, 'Mph! Tom Sawyer's Gang! pretty low characters
in it!' They'd mean you, Huck. You wouldn't like that, and I wouldn't."
Huck was silent for some time, engaged in a mental struggle. Finally he said:
"Well, I'll go back to the widder for a month and tackle it and see if I can come to stand
it, if you'll let me b'long to the gang, Tom." "All right, Huck, it's a ***! Come along,
old chap, and I'll ask the widow to let up on you a little, Huck."
"Will you, Tom — now will you? That's good. If she'll let up on some of the roughest things,
I'll smoke private and cuss private, and crowd through or bust. When you going to start the
gang and turn robbers?" "Oh, right off. We'll get the boys together
and have the initiation to-night, maybe." "Have the which?"
"Have the initiation." "What's that?"
"It's to swear to stand by one another, and never tell the gang's secrets, even if you're
chopped all to flinders, and kill anybody and all his family that hurts one of the gang."
"That's gay — that's mighty gay, Tom, I tell you."
"Well, I bet it is. And all that swearing's got to be done at midnight, in the lonesomest,
awfulest place you can find — a ha'nted house is the best, but they're all ripped
up now." "Well, midnight's good, anyway, Tom."
"Yes, so it is. And you've got to swear on a coffin, and sign it with blood."
"Now, that's something LIKE! Why, it's a million times bullier than pirating. I'll stick to
the widder till I rot, Tom; and if I git to be a reg'lar ripper of a robber, and everybody
talking 'bout it, I reckon she'll be proud she snaked me in out of the wet."
Conclusion
SO endeth this chronicle. It being strictly a history of a BOY, it must stop here; the
story could not go much further without becoming the history of a MAN. When one writes a novel
about grown people, he knows exactly where to stop — that is, with a marriage; but
when he writes of juveniles, he must stop where he best can.
Most of the characters that perform in this book still live, and are prosperous and happy.
Some day it may seem worth while to take up the story of the younger ones again and see
what sort of men and women they turned out to be; therefore it will be wisest not to
reveal any of that part of their lives at present.