第 4 页

you the same."

"All right. I'll ask him; and I'll make him pungle, too, or I'll know

the reason why. Say, how much you got in your pocket? I want it."

"I hain't got only a dollar, and I want that to--"

"It don't make no difference what you want it for--you just shell it

out."

He took it and bit it to see if it was good, and then he said he was

going down town to get some whisky; said he hadn't had a drink all day.

When he had got out on the shed he put his head in again, and cussed me

for putting on frills and trying to be better than him; and when I

reckoned he was gone he come back and put his head in again, and told me

to mind about that school, because he was going to lay for me and lick me

if I didn't drop that.

Next day he was drunk, and he went to Judge Thatcher's and bullyragged

him, and tried to make him give up the money; but he couldn't, and then

he swore he'd make the law force him.

The judge and the widow went to law to get the court to take me away from

him and let one of them be my guardian; but it was a new judge that had

just come, and he didn't know the old man; so he said courts mustn't

interfere and separate families if they could help it; said he'd druther

not take a child away from its father. So Judge Thatcher and the widow

had to quit on the business.

That pleased the old man till he couldn't rest. He said he'd cowhide me

till I was black and blue if I didn't raise some money for him. I

borrowed three dollars from Judge Thatcher, and pap took it and got

drunk, and went a-blowing around and cussing and whooping and carrying

on; and he kept it up all over town, with a tin pan, till most midnight;

then they jailed him, and next day they had him before court, and jailed

him again for a week. But he said HE was satisfied; said he was boss of

his son, and he'd make it warm for HIM.

When he got out the new judge said he was a-going to make a man of him.

So he took him to his own house, and dressed him up clean and nice, and

had him to breakfast and dinner and supper with the family, and was just

old pie to him, so to speak. And after supper he talked to him about

temperance and such things till the old man cried, and said he'd been a

fool, and fooled away his life; but now he was a-going to turn over a new

leaf and be a man nobody wouldn't be ashamed of, and he hoped the judge

would help him and not look down on him. The judge said he could hug him

for them words; so he cried, and his wife she cried again; pap said he'd

been a man that had always been misunderstood before, and the judge said

he believed it. The old man said that what a man wanted that was down

was sympathy, and the judge said it was so; so they cried again. And

when it was bedtime the old man rose up and held out his hand, and says:

"Look at it, gentlemen and ladies all; take a-hold of it; shake it.

There's a hand that was the hand of a hog; but it ain't so no more; it's

the hand of a man that's started in on a new life, and'll die before

he'll go back. You mark them words--don't forget I said them. It's a

clean hand now; shake it--don't be afeard."

So they shook it, one after the other, all around, and cried. The

judge's wife she kissed it. Then the old man he signed a pledge--made

his mark. The judge said it was the holiest time on record, or something

like that. Then they tucked the old man into a beautiful room, which was

the spare room, and in the night some time he got powerful thirsty and

clumb out on to the porch-roof and slid down a stanchion and traded his

new coat for a jug of forty-rod, and clumb back again and had a good old

time; and towards daylight he crawled out again, drunk as a fiddler, and

rolled off the porch and broke his left arm in two places, and was most

froze to death when somebody found him after sun-up. And when they come

to look at that spare room they had to take soundings before they could

navigate it.

The judge he felt kind of sore. He said he reckoned a body could reform

the old man with a shotgun, maybe, but he didn't know no other way.

CHAPTER VI.

WELL, pretty soon the old man was up and around again, and then he went

for Judge Thatcher in the courts to make him give up that money, and he

went for me, too, for not stopping school. He catched me a couple of

times and thrashed me, but I went to school just the same, and dodged him

or outrun him most of the time. I didn't want to go to school much

before, but I reckoned I'd go now to spite pap. That law trial was a

slow business--appeared like they warn't ever going to get started on

it; so every now and then I'd borrow two or three dollars off of the

judge for him, to keep from getting a cowhiding. Every time he got money

he got drunk; and every time he got drunk he raised Cain around town; and

every time he raised Cain he got jailed. He was just suited--this kind

of thing was right in his line.

He got to hanging around the widow's too much and so she told him at last

that if he didn't quit using around there she would make trouble for him.

Well, WASN'T he mad? He said he would show who was Huck Finn's boss. So

he watched out for me one day in the spring, and catched me, and took me

up the river about three mile in a skiff, and crossed over to the

Illinois shore where it was woody and there warn't no houses but an old

log hut in a place where the timber was so thick you couldn't find it if

you didn't know where it was.

He kept me with him all the time, and I never got a chance to run off.

We lived in that old cabin, and he always locked the door and put the key

under his head nights. He had a gun which he had stole, I reckon, and we

fished and hunted, and that was what we lived on. Every little while he

locked me in and went down to the store, three miles, to the ferry, and

traded fish and game for whisky, and fetched it home and got drunk and

had a good time, and licked me. The widow she found out where I was by

and by, and she sent a man over to try to get hold of me; but pap drove

him off with the gun, and it warn't long after that till I was used to

being where I was, and liked it--all but the cowhide part.

It was kind of lazy and jolly, laying off comfortable all day, smoking

and fishing, and no books nor study. Two months or more run along, and

my clothes got to be all rags and dirt, and I didn't see how I'd ever got

to like it so well at the widow's, where you had to wash, and eat on a

plate, and comb up, and go to bed and get up regular, and be forever

bothering over a book, and have old Miss Watson pecking at you all the

time. I didn't want to go back no more. I had stopped cussing, because

the widow didn't like it; but now I took to it again because pap hadn't

no objections. It was pretty good times up in the woods there, take it

all around.

But by and by pap got too handy with his hick'ry, and I couldn't stand

it. I was all over welts. He got to going away so much, too, and locking

me in. Once he locked me in and was gone three days. It was dreadful

lonesome. I judged he had got drowned, and I wasn't ever going to get

out any more. I was scared. I made up my mind I would fix up some way

to leave there. I had tried to get out of that cabin many a time, but I

couldn't find no way. There warn't a window to it big enough for a dog

to get through. I couldn't get up the chimbly; it was too narrow. The

door was thick, solid oak slabs. Pap was pretty careful not to leave a

knife or anything in the cabin when he was away; I reckon I had hunted

the place over as much as a hundred times; well, I was most all the time

at it, because it was about the only way to put in the time. But this

time I found something at last; I found an old rusty wood-saw without any

handle; it was laid in between a rafter and the clapboards of the roof.

I greased it up and went to work. There was an old horse-blanket nailed

against the logs at the far end of the cabin behind the table, to keep

the wind from blowing through the chinks and putting the candle out. I

got under the table and raised the blanket, and went to work to saw a

section of the big bottom log out--big enough to let me through. Well,

it was a good long job, but I was getting towards the end of it when I

heard pap's gun in the woods. I got rid of the signs of my work, and

dropped the blanket and hid my saw, and pretty soon pap come in.

Pap warn't in a good humor--so he was his natural self. He said he was

down town, and everything was going wrong. His lawyer said he reckoned

he would win his lawsuit and get the money if they ever got started on

the trial; but then there was ways to put it off a long time, and Judge

Thatcher knowed how to do it. And he said people allowed there'd be

another trial to get me away from him and give me to the widow for my

guardian, and they guessed it would win this time. This shook me up

considerable, because I didn't want to go back to the widow's any more

and be so cramped up and sivilized, as they called it. Then the old man

got to cussing, and cussed everything and everybody he could think of,

and then cussed them all over again to make sure he hadn't skipped any,

and after that he polished off with a kind of a general cuss all round,

including a considerable parcel of people which he didn't know the names

of, and so called them what's-his-name when he got to them, and went

right along with his cussing.

He said he would like to see the widow get me. He said he would watch

out, and if they tried to come any such game on him he knowed of a place

six or seven mile off to stow me in, where they might hunt till they

dropped and they couldn't find me. That made me pretty uneasy again, but

only for a minute; I reckoned I wouldn't stay on hand till he got that

chance.

The old man made me go to the skiff and fetch the things he had got.

There was a fifty-pound sack of corn meal, and a side of bacon,

ammunition, and a four-gallon jug of whisky, and an old book and two

newspapers for wadding, besides some tow. I toted up a load, and went

back and set down on the bow of the skiff to rest. I thought it all

over, and I reckoned I would walk off with the gun and some lines, and

take to the woods when I run away. I guessed I wouldn't stay in one

place, but just tramp right across the country, mostly night times, and

hunt and fish to keep alive, and so get so far away that the old man nor

the widow couldn't ever find me any more. I judged I would saw out and

leave that night if pap got drunk enough, and I reckoned he would. I got

so full of it I didn't notice how long I was staying till the old man

hollered and asked me whether I was asleep or drownded.

I got the things all up to the cabin, and then it was about dark. While

I was cooking supper the old man took a swig or two and got sort of

warmed up, and went to ripping again. He had been drunk over in town,

and laid in the gutter all night, and he was a sight to look at. A body

would a thought he was Adam--he was just all mud. Whenever his liquor

begun to work he most always went for the govment, this time he says:

"Call this a govment! why, just look at it and see what it's like.

Here's the law a-standing ready to take a man's son away from him--a

man's own son, which he has had all the trouble and all the anxiety and

all the expense of raising. Yes, just as that man has got that son

raised at last, and ready to go to work and begin to do suthin' for HIM

and give him a rest, the law up and goes for him. And they call THAT

govment! That ain't all, nuther. The law backs that old Judge Thatcher

up and helps him to keep me out o' my property. Here's what the law

does: The law takes a man worth six thousand dollars and up'ards, and

jams him into an old trap of a cabin like this, and lets him go round in

clothes that ain't fitten for a hog. They call that govment! A man can't

get his rights in a govment like this. Sometimes I've a mighty notion to

just leave the country for good and all. Yes, and I TOLD 'em so; I told

old Thatcher so to his face. Lots of 'em heard me, and can tell what I

said. Says I, for two cents I'd leave the blamed country and never come

a-near it agin. Them's the very words. I says look at my hat--if you

call it a hat--but the lid raises up and the rest of it goes down till

it's below my chin, and then it ain't rightly a hat at all, but more like

my head was shoved up through a jint o' stove-pipe. Look at it, says I

--such a hat for me to wear--one of the wealthiest men in this town if I

could git my rights.

"Oh, yes, this is a wonderful govment, wonderful. Why, looky here.

There was a free nigger there from Ohio--a mulatter, most as white as a

white man. He had the whitest shirt on you ever see, too, and the

shiniest hat; and there ain't a man in that town that's got as fine

clothes as what he had; and he had a gold watch and chain, and a

silver-headed cane--the awfulest old gray-headed nabob in the State. And

what do you think? They said he was a p'fessor in a college, and could

talk all kinds of languages, and knowed everything. And that ain't the

wust. They said he could VOTE when he was at home. Well, that let me

out. Thinks I, what is the country a-coming to? It was 'lection day, and

I was just about to go and vote myself if I warn't too drunk to get

there; but when they told me there was a State in this country where

they'd let that nigger vote, I drawed out. I says I'll never vote agin.

Them's the very words I said; they all heard me; and the country may rot

for all me--I'll never vote agin as long as I live. And to see the cool

way of that nigger--why, he wouldn't a give me the road if I hadn't