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

and flew for the house to get the bed ready, and giving shouts right and left to the servants and everybody else, as fast as her tongue could go, every jump of the way.

 

I followed the men to see what they was going to do with Jim; and the old doctor and Uncle Silas followed after Tom into the house. The men was very angry, and some of them wanted to hang Jim to teach all the other slaves around there, so they wouldn’t be trying to run away like Jim done, and making such a raft of trouble, and keeping a whole family scared almost to death for days and nights. But the others said, don’t do it, it wouldn’t answer at all; he ain’t our slave, and his owner would turn up and make us pay for him, sure. So that cooled them down a little, because the people that’s always the most enthusiastic about hanging a slave that ain’t done just right is always the very ones that ain’t the most enthusiastic to pay for him when they’ve got their fun out of him.

 

But they still shouted at Jim a lot, and give him a hit or two up side the head once in a while, but Jim never said nothing, and he never let on to know me, and they took him to the same shack, and put his own clothes on him, and chained him again, and not to no bed leg this time, but to a big piece of metal joined to the bottom log, and chained his hands too, and both legs, and said he weren’t to have nothing but bread and water to eat after this until his owner come, or until he was sold because the owner didn’t come in a set length of time; and they filled up our hole, and said two farmers with guns must stand watch around about the shack every night, and a mean dog tied to the door in the day-time; and about this time they was through with the job and was moving off with kind of general goodbye bad words, when the old doctor comes and takes a look, and says: “Don’t be no rougher on him than you’re forced to, because he ain’t a bad slave. When I got to where I found the boy I seen I couldn’t cut the bullet out without some help, and he weren’t in no way for me to leave to go and get help; and he got a little worse and a little worse, and after a long time he went out of his head, and wouldn’t let me come near him any more, and said if I chalked his raft he’d kill me, and no end of wild foolishness like that, and I see I couldn’t do anything at all with him; so I says, I got to have help; and the minute I says it out come this black man from somewhere and says he’ll help. He done it, too, and done it well. I judged he must be a runaway slave, and there I was! I had to stick right there the whole day and night. It was a problem, I tell you! I had two other sick people I needed to see, but I couldn’t, because the slave might get away, and then I’d be to blame; and yet never a boat come close enough for me to call out to. So there I had to stay until the sun was up this morning; but I never seen a black man that was a better or more faithful nurse, and yet he was throwing away his freedom to do it, and was all tired out, too. I liked the man for that; I tell you, men, a black like that is worth a thousand dollars -- and worth some kindness, too. I had everything I needed, and the boy was doing as well there as he would a done at home -- better, maybe, because it was so quiet; but there I was, with both of ‘em on my hands, and there I had to stick until about sun-up this morning when some men in a boat come by, and as good luck would have it the slave was sitting by the mattress with his head on his knees sound asleep; so I pointed to him, and they come up on him quietly and took hold of him and tied him before he knowed what he was about, and we never had no trouble. And the boy being only half asleep, we moved the oars quietly in the boat and pulled the raft over very nice and quiet, and the black man never made the least sound from the start. He ain’t no bad black, friends; that’s what I think of him.”

 

Somebody says: “It sounds very good, doctor, I must say.” Then the others went a little softer, too, and I was mighty thankful to that old doctor for doing Jim that good turn. When I first seen him I thought he had a good heart in him and was a good man. They all agreed that Jim had acted very well, and it was right to do something to reward him. So every one of them promised right out that they wouldn’t say no more bad words to him.

 

Then they come out and locked him up. I hoped they was going to say he could have one or two of the chains took off, because they was awful heavy, or could have meat and greens with his bread and water; but they didn’t think of it, and I thought it weren’t best for me to mix in, but I judged I’d get the doctor’s story to Aunt Sally in one way or another as soon as I’d got through the waves that was lying just ahead of me -- things like telling why I didn’t remember to say that 'Sid' had been hit in the leg with a bullet when I was telling how him and me put in that awful night going around hunting the runaway slave.

 

But I had time. Aunt Sally she stayed in the sick-room all day and all night, and every time I seen Uncle Silas going around looking sad I stayed away from him.

 

Next morning I heard Tom was a lot better, and they said Aunt Sally was gone to get a rest. So I goes to the sick-room, and if I found him awake I thought we could put up a story that would wash with Aunt Sally. But he was sleeping, and sleeping nicely, too; and white, not fire-faced the way he was when he come. So I sat down and waited for him to wake. In about half an hour Aunt Sally comes in, and there I was, up a tree again! She made a movement for me to be still, and she sat down by me, and started to whisper, and said we could all be happy now, because all the signs were good, and he’d been sleeping like that for ever so long, and looking better and more at peace all the time, and ten to one he’d wake up in his right mind.

 

So we sat there watching, and by and by he moves a little, and opens his eyes very relaxed, and takes a look, and says: “Hello! -- why, I’m at home! How’s that? Where’s the raft?”

 

“It’s all right,” I says.

 

“And Jim?”

 

“The same,” I says, but couldn’t say it with much confidence.

 

He never saw that, but says: “Good! Wonderful! Now we’re all right and safe! Did you tell Aunty?”

 

I was going to say yes; but she cut in and says: “About what, Sid?”

 

“Why, about the way the whole thing was done.”

 

“What whole thing?”

 

“Why, the whole thing. There ain’t but one; how we set the runaway slave free -- me and Tom.”

“

Good land! Set the runaway -- What is the child talking about! My, my, out of his head again!”

 

“No, I ain’t out of my head; I know all what I’m talking about. We set him free -- me and Tom. We planned it, and we done it. And we done it well, too.” He’d started, and she never pulled him up, just sat and looked with her eyes wide open, and let him go on talking, and I seen it weren’t no use for me to put in.

 

“Why, Aunty, it cost us a power of work -- weeks of it -- hours and hours, every night, while you was all asleep. We had to take candles, and the sheet, and the shirt, and your dress, and spoons, and tin plates, and table-knives, and the warming-pan, and the stone, and flour, and just no end of things, and you can’t think what work it was to make the saws, and pens, and writings, and one thing or another. You can’t think half the fun it was too. We had to make up the pictures to put under the door, and secret letters from the robbers, and get up and down the lightning-rod, and dig the hole under the shack, and make the rope ladder and send it in cooked up in a pie, and send in spoons and things to work with in your apron pocket -- “

 

“Mercy!”

 

“ -- and fill up the shack with rats and snakes and so on, for company for Jim; and then you kept Tom here so long with the butter in his hat that you come near destroying the whole business, because the men come before we was out of the shack, and we had to hurry, and they heard us and started shooting, and I got my bullet, and we jumped out of the footpath and let them go by, and when the dogs come they weren’t interested in us, but went for the most noise, and we got our canoe, and made for the raft, and was all safe, and Jim was a free man, and we done it all by ourselves, and wasn’t it great, Aunty!”

 

“Well, I never heard the likes of it in all my born days! So it was you, you little devils, that’s been making all this trouble, and turned everybody’s brains clean inside out and scared us all almost to death. I’ve as good a reason as ever I had in my life to take it out of you this very minute. To think, here I’ve been, night after night -- you just get well once, you young fox, and I’ll whip the Old Harry out of both of you!”

 

But Tom, he was so proud and happy, he just couldn’t hold in, and his tongue just went at it -- she a-cutting in, and shooting fire all along, and both of them talking away at once, like a cat party; and she says: “Well, you get all the fun you can out of it now, for if I catch you talking with him again -- “

 

“Talking with who?” Tom says, dropping his smile and looking surprised.

 

With who? Why, the runaway slave. Who’d you think?”

 

Tom looks at me very serious, and says: “Tom, didn’t you just tell me he was all right? Hasn’t he got away?”

 

“Him?” says Aunt Sally. “The runaway slave? You can be sure he hasn’t. They’ve got him back, safe and whole, and he’s in that shack again, on bread and water, and covered with chains, until his owner comes or he’s sold!”

 

Tom sat square up in bed, with his eyes hot, and the holes in his nose opening and shutting like the openings on a fish, and sings out to me: “They ain’t no right to shut him up! Go! -- and don’t you lose a minute. Turn him loose! He ain’t no slave; he’s as free as any animal that walks this earth!”

 

“What does the child mean?”

 

“I mean every word I say, Aunt Sally, and if someone don’t go, I’ll go. I’ve knowed him all his life, and so has Tom, there. Old Miss Watson died two months ago, and she was feeling guilty that she ever was going to sell him down the river, and said so; she set him free in her will.”

 

“Then what on earth did you want to set him free for, seeing he was already free?”

 

“Well, that is a question, I must say; and just like a woman! Why, I wanted the adventure of it; and I’d a walked neck-deep in blood to -- Why, I never -- AUNT POLLY!”

 

If Tom's Aunt Polly weren’t standing right there, just inside the door, looking as sweet and happy as an angel half full of pie, I wish I may never!

 

Aunt Sally jumped for her, and almost hugged the head off of her, and cried over her, and I found a good enough place for me under the bed, for it was getting pretty hot for us, it seemed to me. And I looked out, and in a little while Tom’s Aunt Polly