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Chapter IX.
I WANTED to go and look at a place right
about the middle of the island that I'd
found when I was exploring; so we started
and soon got to it, because the island was
only three miles long and a quarter of a
mile wide.
This place was a tolerable long, steep hill
or ridge about forty foot high.
We had a rough time getting to the top, the
sides was so steep and the bushes so thick.
We tramped and clumb around all over it,
and by and by found a good big cavern in
the rock, most up to the top on the side
towards Illinois.
The cavern was as big as two or three rooms
bunched together, and Jim could stand up
straight in it.
It was cool in there.
Jim was for putting our traps in there
right away, but I said we didn't want to be
climbing up and down there all the time.
Jim said if we had the canoe hid in a good
place, and had all the traps in the cavern,
we could rush there if anybody was to come
to the island, and they would never find us
without dogs.
And, besides, he said them little birds had
said it was going to rain, and did I want
the things to get wet?
So we went back and got the canoe, and
paddled up abreast the cavern, and lugged
all the traps up there.
Then we hunted up a place close by to hide
the canoe in, amongst the thick willows.
We took some fish off of the lines and set
them again, and begun to get ready for
dinner.
The door of the cavern was big enough to
roll a hogshead in, and on one side of the
door the floor stuck out a little bit, and
was flat and a good place to build a fire
on.
So we built it there and cooked dinner.
We spread the blankets inside for a carpet,
and eat our dinner in there.
We put all the other things handy at the
back of the cavern.
Pretty soon it darkened up, and begun to
thunder and lighten; so the birds was right
about it.
Directly it begun to rain, and it rained
like all fury, too, and I never see the
wind blow so.
It was one of these regular summer storms.
It would get so dark that it looked all
blue-black outside, and lovely; and the
rain would thrash along by so thick that
the trees off a little ways looked dim and
spider-webby; and here would come a blast
of wind that would bend the trees down and
turn up the pale underside of the leaves;
and then a perfect ripper of a gust would
follow along and set the branches to
tossing their arms as if they was just
wild; and next, when it was just about the
bluest and blackest--FST! it was as bright
as glory, and you'd have a little glimpse
of tree-tops a-plunging about away off
yonder in the storm, hundreds of yards
further than you could see before; dark as
sin again in a second, and now you'd hear
the thunder let go with an awful crash, and
then go rumbling, grumbling, tumbling, down
the sky towards the under side of the
world, like rolling empty barrels down
stairs--where it's long stairs and they
bounce a good deal, you know.
"Jim, this is nice," I says.
"I wouldn't want to be nowhere else but
here.
Pass me along another hunk of fish and some
hot corn-bread."
"Well, you wouldn't a ben here 'f it hadn't
a ben for Jim.
You'd a ben down dah in de woods widout any
dinner, en gittn' mos' drownded, too; dat
you would, honey.
Chickens knows when it's gwyne to rain, en
so do de birds, chile."
The river went on raising and raising for
ten or twelve days, till at last it was
over the banks.
The water was three or four foot deep on
the island in the low places and on the
Illinois bottom.
On that side it was a good many miles wide,
but on the Missouri side it was the same
old distance across--a half a mile--because
the Missouri shore was just a wall of high
bluffs.
Daytimes we paddled all over the island in
the canoe, It was mighty cool and shady in
the deep woods, even if the sun was blazing
outside.
We went winding in and out amongst the
trees, and sometimes the vines hung so
thick we had to back away and go some other
way.
Well, on every old broken-down tree you
could see rabbits and snakes and such
things; and when the island had been
overflowed a day or two they got so tame,
on account of being hungry, that you could
paddle right up and put your hand on them
if you wanted to; but not the snakes and
turtles--they would slide off in the water.
The ridge our cavern was in was full of
them.
We could a had pets enough if we'd wanted
them.
One night we catched a little section of a
lumber raft--nice pine planks.
It was twelve foot wide and about fifteen
or sixteen foot long, and the top stood
above water six or seven inches--a solid,
level floor.
We could see saw-logs go by in the daylight
sometimes, but we let them go; we didn't
show ourselves in daylight.
Another night when we was up at the head of
the island, just before daylight, here
comes a frame-house down, on the west side.
She was a two-story, and tilted over
considerable.
We paddled out and got aboard --clumb in at
an upstairs window.
But it was too dark to see yet, so we made
the canoe fast and set in her to wait for
daylight.
The light begun to come before we got to
the foot of the island.
Then we looked in at the window.
We could make out a bed, and a table, and
two old chairs, and lots of things around
about on the floor, and there was clothes
hanging against the wall.
There was something laying on the floor in
the far corner that looked like a man.
So Jim says:
"Hello, you!"
But it didn't budge.
So I hollered again, and then Jim says:
"De man ain't asleep--he's dead.
You hold still--I'll go en see."
He went, and bent down and looked, and
says:
"It's a dead man.
Yes, indeedy; naked, too.
He's ben shot in de back.
I reck'n he's ben dead two er three days.
Come in, Huck, but doan' look at his face--
it's too gashly."
I didn't look at him at all.
Jim throwed some old rags over him, but he
needn't done it; I didn't want to see him.
There was heaps of old greasy cards
scattered around over the floor, and old
whisky bottles, and a couple of masks made
out of black cloth; and all over the walls
was the ignorantest kind of words and
pictures made with charcoal.
There was two old dirty calico dresses, and
a sun-bonnet, and some women's underclothes
hanging against the wall, and some men's
clothing, too.
We put the lot into the canoe--it might
come good.
There was a boy's old speckled straw hat on
the floor; I took that, too.
And there was a bottle that had had milk in
it, and it had a rag stopper for a baby to
suck.
We would a took the bottle, but it was
broke.
There was a seedy old chest, and an old
hair trunk with the hinges broke.
They stood open, but there warn't nothing
left in them that was any account.
The way things was scattered about we
reckoned the people left in a hurry, and
warn't fixed so as to carry off most of
their stuff.
We got an old tin lantern, and a butcher-
knife without any handle, and a bran-new
Barlow knife worth two bits in any store,
and a lot of tallow candles, and a tin
candlestick, and a gourd, and a tin cup,
and a ratty old bedquilt off the bed, and a
reticule with needles and pins and beeswax
and buttons and thread and all such truck
in it, and a hatchet and some nails, and a
fishline as thick as my little finger with
some monstrous hooks on it, and a roll of
buckskin, and a leather dog-collar, and a
horseshoe, and some vials of medicine that
didn't have no label on them; and just as
we was leaving I found a tolerable good
curry-comb, and Jim he found a ratty old
fiddle-bow, and a wooden leg.
The straps was broke off of it, but,
barring that, it was a good enough leg,
though it was too long for me and not long
enough for Jim, and we couldn't find the
other one, though we hunted all around.
And so, take it all around, we made a good
haul.
When we was ready to shove off we was a
quarter of a mile below the island, and it
was pretty broad day; 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 *** a good ways off.
I paddled over to the Illinois shore, and
drifted down most a half a mile doing it.
I crept up the dead water under the bank,
and hadn't no accidents and didn't see
nobody.
We got home all safe.