Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain (free children's ebooks pdf .txt) š
- Author: Mark Twain
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The judge he felt kind of sore. He said he reckoned a body could reform the old man with a shotgun, maybe, but he didnāt 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 didnāt want to go to school much before, but I reckoned Iād go now to spite pap. That law trial was a slow businessāappeared like they warnāt ever going to get started on it; so every now and then Iād 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 suitedāthis kind of thing was right in his line.
He got to hanging around the widowās too much and so she told him at last that if he didnāt quit using around there she would make trouble for him. Well, wasnāt he mad? He said he would show who was Huck Finnās 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 warnāt no houses but an old log hut in a place where the timber was so thick you couldnāt find it if you didnāt 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 warnāt long after that till I was used to being where I was, and liked itāall 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 didnāt see how Iād ever got to like it so well at the widowās, 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 didnāt want to go back no more. I had stopped cussing, because the widow didnāt like it; but now I took to it again because pap hadnāt 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 hickāry, and I couldnāt 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 drownded, and I wasnāt 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 couldnāt find no way. There warnāt a window to it big enough for a dog to get through. I couldnāt 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 outābig enough to let me through. Well, it was a good long job, but I was getting towards the end of it when I heard papās 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 warnāt in a good humorāso 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 thereād 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 didnāt want to go back to the widowās 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 hadnāt 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 didnāt know the names of, and so called them whatās-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 couldnāt find me. That made me pretty uneasy again, but only for a minute; I reckoned I wouldnāt 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 wouldnāt 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 couldnāt 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 didnāt 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 Adamāhe was just all mud. Whenever his liquor begun to work he most always went for the govment, this time he says:
āCall this a govment! why, just look at it and see what itās like. Hereās the law a-standing ready to take a manās son away from himāa manās 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 suthinā for him and give him a rest, the law up and goes for him. And they call that govment! That aināt all, nuther. The law backs that old Judge Thatcher up and helps him to keep me out oā my property. Hereās what the law does: The law takes a man worth six thousand dollars and upāards, and jams him into an old trap of a cabin like this, and lets him go round in clothes that aināt fitten for a hog. They call that govment! A man canāt get his rights in a govment like this. Sometimes Iāve a mighty notion to just leave the country for good and all. Yes, and I told āem so; I told old Thatcher so to his face. Lots of āem heard me, and can tell what I said. Says I, for two cents Iād leave the blamed country and never come a-near it agin. Themās the very words. I says look at my hatāif you call it a hatābut the lid raises up and the rest of it goes down till itās below my chin, and then it aināt rightly a hat at all, but more like my head was shoved up through a jint oā stove-pipe. Look at it, says Iāsuch a hat for me to wearāone of the wealthiest men in this town if I could git my rights.
āOh, yes, this is a wonderful govment, wonderful. Why, looky here. There was a free nigger there from Ohioāa mulatter, most as white as a white man. He had the whitest shirt on you ever see, too, and the shiniest hat; and there aināt a man in that town thatās got as fine clothes as what he had; and he had a gold watch and chain, and a silver-headed caneāthe awfulest old gray-headed nabob in the State. And what do you think? They said he was a pāfessor in a college, and could talk all kinds of languages, and knowed everything. And that aināt 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 ālection day, and I was just about to go and vote myself if I warnāt too drunk to get there; but when they told me there was a State in this country where theyād let that nigger vote, I drawed out. I says Iāll never vote agin. Themās the very words I said; they all heard me; and the country may rot for all meāIāll never
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