Huckleberry Finn - Dave Mckay, Mark Twain (reading books for 7 year olds TXT) 📗

up -- from down toward New Orleans. But that didn’t help me much, because I didn’t know the names of the sand bars down that way. I needed to make up a name, or forget the name, or -- Now I knew what to do and I did it:

 

“It weren’t the grounding -- that didn’t keep us back but a little. We blowed up a motor.”

 

“Good Lord! Anyone hurt?”

 

“No ma'am. Killed a slave.”

 

“Well, it’s lucky; because sometimes people do get hurt when that happens. Two years ago last Christmas your Uncle Silas was coming up from New Orleans on the old Lally Rook, and she blowed up a motor and crippled a man. And I think he died later. He was a Baptist. Your uncle’s been up to the town every day to meet you. And he’s gone again, not more than an hour ago; he’ll be back any minute now. You must a met him on the road, didn’t you? -- older man, with a -- “

 

“No, I didn’t see nobody, Aunt Sally. The boat landed just as the sun was coming up. I left my bags there and went looking around town and out a piece in the country, to put in the time and not get here too soon; and so I come down the back way.”

 

“Who’d you give the bags to?”

 

“Nobody.”

 

“Why, child, it’ll be robbed!”

 

“Not where I put it, I think it won’t,” I says.

 

“How’d you get your breakfast so early on the boat?”

 

It was kind of thin ice, but I says: “The driver seen me standing around, and told me I better have something to eat before I landed; so he took me in to where he and the others eat, and give me all I wanted.”

 

I was getting so worried I couldn’t listen well. I was thinking about the children; I wanted to get them to one side and pump them a little, and find out who I was. But I couldn’t get no show, Mrs. Phelps kept it up and run on so. She made my blood run cold, when she says: “But here we’re a-running on this way, and you ain’t told me a word about my sister, or any of them. Now I’ll rest my mouth a little, and you start up yours; just tell me everything -- tell me all about ‘em all, every one of ‘em; and how they are, and what they’re doing, and what they told you to tell me; every last thing you can think of.”

 

Well, I see I was up a tree – and up it good. God had stood by me this far all right, but I was hard and tight trapped now. I see it weren’t no use to try to go ahead -- I’d got to throw up my hand. So I says to myself, here’s another place where I got to tell the truth. I opened my mouth to start; but she took hold of me and pulled me in behind the bed, and says: “Here he comes! pull your head down lower -- there, that’ll do; you can’t be seen now. Don’t you let on you’re here. I’ll play a joke on him. Children, don’t you say a word.”

 

I see I was in a trap now. But it weren’t no good to worry; there weren’t nothing to do but just try and be ready to stand from under when the lightning hit.

 

I had just one little look of the old man when he come in; then the bed was between me and him. Mrs. Phelps she jumps for him, and says:

“Has he come?”

 

“No,” says her husband.

 

“My, my!” she says. “What on earth has become of him?”

 

“I can’t think,” says the old man; “and I must say it makes me very worried.”

 

“Worried?” she says; “I’m ready to go crazy! He must a come; and you’ve missed him. I know it’s so -- something tells me.”

 

“Why, Sally, I couldn’t of missed him along the road – you know that.”

 

“But oh, my, my, what will my sister say! He must a come! You must a missed him. He -- “

 

“Oh, don’t trouble me any more than I’m already troubled. I don’t know what in the world to make of it. I’m at the end of what I can do, and the truth is I’m right down scared. But there’s no hope that he’s come; for he couldn’t come and me miss him. Sally, it’s awful -- just awful -- something’s happened to the boat, sure!”

 

“Why, Silas! Look there, up the road! Ain’t that someone?”

 

He jumped to the window at the head of the bed, and that give Mrs. Phelps what she wanted. She leaned down quickly at the foot of the bed and give me a pull, and out I come; and when he turned back from the window there she stood, smiling like a house on fire, and me standing shy and scared beside her. The old man looked, and says: “Why, who’s that?”

 

“Who do you think it is?”

 

“I ain’t never seen him. Who is it?”

 

“It’s Tom Sawyer!”

 

I almost fell through the floor! But there weren’t no time to change knives; the old man took me by the hand and shook, and kept on shaking; and all the time how the woman did dance around and laugh and cry; and then how they both did fire off questions about Sid, and Mary, and the rest of the family.

 

 

But if they was happy, it weren’t nothing to what I was; for it was like being born again, I was so glad to find out who I was. Well, they stayed at it for two hours; and at last, when my mouth was so tired it couldn’t hardly go any more, I had told them more about my family -- I mean the Sawyer family -- than ever happened to any six Sawyer families. And I told all about how we blowed a motor up at the mouth of White River, and it took us three days to fix it. Which was all right, and worked well; because they didn’t know but what it would take three days to fix it. If I’d a said a screw fell off it would a done just as well.

 

Now I was feeling pretty comfortable all down one side, and pretty much the opposite all up the other. Being Tom Sawyer was easy and comfortable, and it stayed easy and comfortable until by and by I hear a river-boat coughing along down the river. Then I says to myself, what if Tom Sawyer come down on that boat? And what if he steps in here any minute, and sings out my name before I can throw him a wink to keep quiet?

 

Well, I couldn’t have it that way; it wouldn’t do at all. I must go up the road and stop him. So I told them I would go up to the town and bring down my bags. The old man was for going along with me, but I said no, I could drive the horse myself, and I didn’t want him to take no trouble about me.

 

Chapter 33

Chapter 33

So I started for town in the wagon, and when I was half-way I see another wagon coming, and sure enough it was Tom Sawyer, and I stopped and waited until he come along. I says “Hold on!” and it stopped beside me, and his mouth opened up like a suitcase, and stayed so; and he worked his mouth like a person that’s got a dry throat, with no words coming out until he says: “I ain’t ever hurt you. You know that. So, then, what you want to come back and follow me for?”

 

I says: “I ain’t come back -- I ain’t been gone.”

 

When he heard my voice it righted him up some, but he weren’t quite sure yet. He says: “Don’t you play nothing on me, because I wouldn’t on you. Honest Indian, you ain’t a ghost?”

 

“Honest Indian, I ain’t,” I says.

 

“Well, I -- that should be good enough; but I can’t seem to understand it no way. Look here, weren’t you ever killed at all?”

 

“No. I weren’t ever killed at all -- I played it on them. You come in here and feel of me if you don’t believe me.”

 

So he done it; and it was enough for him; he was that glad to see me again he didn’t know what to do. He wanted to know all about it right off, because it was a great adventure, and so it hit him right where he lived. But I said, leave it alone until by and by; and I told his driver to wait, and we pulled off a little piece, and I told him the kind of trouble I was in, and what did he think we should do? He said, let him alone a minute, and don’t say nothing. So he thought and thought, and pretty soon he says: “It’s all right; I’ve got it. Take my suitcase in your wagon, and let on it’s yours, Turn back and go along very slowly, so as to get to the house about the time you should; and I’ll go toward town a piece, and take a new start, and get there fifteen minutes after you; and you needn’t let on to know me at first.”

I says: “All right; but wait a minute. There’s one more thing -- one that nobody knows but me. There’s a slave here that I’m a-trying to free, and his name is Jim -- old Miss Watson’s Jim.”

 

He says: “What! Why, Jim is -- “

 

He stopped and went to studying. I says: “I know what you’ll say. You’ll say it’s dirty, low-down business; but what if it is? I’m low down; and I’m a-going to rob him free, and I want you to keep quiet and not let on. Will you?”

 

His eyes opened wide, and he says: “I’ll help you free him!”

 

Well, I let go all holds then, like I was dying. It was the most surprising thing I ever heard -- and I must say Tom Sawyer dropped a lot in my thinking about him. I couldn’t believe it. Tom Sawyer a slave-robber!

 

“No way!” I says. “You’re joking.”

 

“I ain’t joking, either.”

 

“Well, then,” I says, “joking or no joking, if you hear anything said about a runaway slave, remember that you don’t know nothing about him, and I don’t know nothing either.”

 

Then we took the suitcase and put it in my wagon, and he went riding off his way and I went mine. But I didn’t remember about driving slow because of being glad and full of thinking; so I got home way too early. The old man was at the door, and he says: “This is wonderful! Who would a thought it was in that horse to do it? I wish we’d a timed her. And she ain’t even breathing heavy. It’s wonderful. Why, I wouldn’t take a hundred dollars for that horse now -- honest; and yet I would a sold her for fifteen before, and thought it was all she was worth.”

 

That’s all he said. He was the most trusting old soul I ever seen. But it weren’t surprising; because he weren’t only just a farmer, he was a preacher, too, and had a little one-horse log church down back of the farm, which he built himself with his own money, for a church and a school. He never asked nothing for his preaching, and it was worth it, too.

 

In about half an hour Tom’s wagon come up to the front fence, and Aunt Sally she seen it through the window, because it was only about fifty yards, and says: “Why, there’s some- body come! Who could it be? Why, I do believe it’s a stranger. Jimmy,” (That’s one of the children.) “run and tell Lize to put on another plate for dinner.”

 

Everybody ran to the front door, because a stranger don’t come every year, and so he brings more interest than the smallpox when he does come. Tom was over the fence and starting for the house; the wagon was driving back up the road to the village, and we was all crowded in the front door. Tom had his good clothes on, and a