by Mark Twain
CHAPTER VII.
"GIT up! What you 'bout?"
I opened my eyes and looked around, trying to make out where I was. Itwas after sun-up, and I had been sound asleep. Pap was standing over melooking sour and sick, too. He says:
"What you doin' with this gun?"
I judged he didn't know nothing about what he had been doing, so I says:
"Somebody tried to get in, so I was laying for him."
"Why didn't you roust me out?"
"Well, I tried to, but I couldn't; I couldn't budge you."
"Well, all right. Don't stand there palavering all day, but out with youand see if there's a fish on the lines for breakfast. I'll be along in aminute."
He unlocked the door, and I cleared out up the river-bank. I noticedsome pieces of limbs and such things floating down, and a sprinkling ofbark; so I knowed the river had begun to rise. I reckoned I would havegreat times now if I was over at the town. The June rise used to bealways luck for me; because as soon as that rise begins here comescordwood floating down, and pieces of log rafts--sometimes a dozen logstogether; so all you have to do is to catch them and sell them to thewood-yards and the sawmill.
I went along up the bank with one eye out for pap and t'other one out forwhat the rise might fetch along. Well, all at once here comes a canoe;just a beauty, too, about thirteen or fourteen foot long, riding highlike a duck. I shot head-first off of the bank like a frog, clothes andall on, and struck out for the canoe. I just expected there'd besomebody laying down in it, because people often done that to fool folks,and when a chap had pulled a skiff out most to it they'd raise up andlaugh at him. But it warn't so this time. It was a drift-canoe sureenough, and I clumb in and paddled her ashore. Thinks I, the old manwill be glad when he sees this--she's worth ten dollars. But when Igot to shore pap wasn't in sight yet, and as I was running her into alittle creek like a gully, all hung over with vines and willows, I struckanother idea: I judged I'd hide her good, and then, 'stead of taking tothe woods when I run off, I'd go down the river about fifty mile and campin one place for good, and not have such a rough time tramping on foot.
It was pretty close to the shanty, and I thought I heard the old mancoming all the time; but I got her hid; and then I out and looked arounda bunch of willows, and there was the old man down the path a piece justdrawing a bead on a bird with his gun. So he hadn't seen anything.
When he got along I was hard at it taking up a "trot" line. He abused mea little for being so slow; but I told him I fell in the river, and thatwas what made me so long. I knowed he would see I was wet, and then hewould be asking questions. We got five catfish off the lines and wenthome.
While we laid off after breakfast to sleep up, both of us being aboutwore out, I got to thinking that if I could fix up some way to keep papand the widow from trying to follow me, it would be a certainer thingthan trusting to luck to get far enough off before they missed me; yousee, all kinds of things might happen. Well, I didn't see no way for awhile, but by and by pap raised up a minute to drink another barrel ofwater, and he says:
"Another time a man comes a-prowling round here you roust me out, youhear? That man warn't here for no good. I'd a shot him. Next time youroust me out, you hear?"
Then he dropped down and went to sleep again; but what he had been sayinggive me the very idea I wanted. I says to myself, I can fix it now sonobody won't think of following me.
About twelve o'clock we turned out and went along up the bank. The riverwas coming up pretty fast, and lots of driftwood going by on the rise.By and by along comes part of a log raft--nine logs fast together. Wewent out with the skiff and towed it ashore. Then we had dinner.Anybody but pap would a waited and seen the day through, so as to catchmore stuff; but that warn't pap's style. Nine logs was enough for onetime; he must shove right over to town and sell. So he locked me in andtook the skiff, and started off towing the raft about half-past three. Ijudged he wouldn't come back that night. I waited till I reckoned he hadgot a good start; then I out with my saw, and went to work on that logagain. Before he was t'other side of the river I was out of the hole;him and his raft was just a speck on the water away off yonder.
I took the sack of corn meal and took it to where the canoe was hid, andshoved the vines and branches apart and put it in; then I done the samewith the side of bacon; then the whisky-jug. I took all the coffee andsugar there was, and all the ammunition; I took the wadding; I took thebucket and gourd; I took a dipper and a tin cup, and my old saw and twoblankets, and the skillet and the coffee-pot. I took fish-lines andmatches and other things--everything that was worth a cent. I cleanedout the place. I wanted an axe, but there wasn't any, only the one outat the woodpile, and I knowed why I was going to leave that. I fetchedout the gun, and now I was done.
I had wore the ground a good deal crawling out of the hole and draggingout so many things. So I fixed that as good as I could from the outsideby scattering dust on the place, which covered up the smoothness and thesawdust. Then I fixed the piece of log back into its place, and put tworocks under it and one against it to hold it there, for it was bent up atthat place and didn't quite touch ground. If you stood four or five footaway and didn't know it was sawed, you wouldn't never notice it; andbesides, this was the back of the cabin, and it warn't likely anybodywould go fooling around there.
It was all grass clear to the canoe, so I hadn't left a track. Ifollowed around to see. I stood on the bank and looked out over theriver. All safe. So I took the gun and went up a piece into the woods,and was hunting around for some birds when I see a wild pig; hogs soonwent wild in them bottoms after they had got away from the prairie farms.I shot this fellow and took him into camp.
I took the axe and smashed in the door. I beat it and hacked itconsiderable a-doing it. I fetched the pig in, and took him back nearlyto the table and hacked into his throat with the axe, and laid him downon the ground to bleed; I say ground because it was ground--hard packed,and no boards. Well, next I took an old sack and put a lot of big rocksin it--all I could drag--and I started it from the pig, and dragged itto the door and through the woods down to the river and dumped it in, anddown it sunk, out of sight. You could easy see that something had beendragged over the ground. I did wish Tom Sawyer was there; I knowed hewould take an interest in this kind of business, and throw in the fancytouches. Nobody could spread himself like Tom Sawyer in such a thing asthat.
Well, last I pulled out some of my hair, and blooded the axe good, andstuck it on the back side, and slung the axe in the corner. Then I tookup the pig and held him to my breast with my jacket (so he couldn't drip)till I got a good piece below the house and then dumped him into theriver. Now I thought of something else. So I went and got the bag ofmeal and my old saw out of the canoe, and fetched them to the house. Itook the bag to where it used to stand, and ripped a hole in the bottomof it with the saw, for there warn't no knives and forks on the place--pap done everything with his clasp-knife about the cooking. Then Icarried the sack about a hundred yards across the grass and through thewillows east of the house, to a shallow lake that was five mile wide andfull of rushes--and ducks too, you might say, in the season. There was aslough or a creek leading out of it on the other side that went milesaway, I don't know where, but it didn't go to the river. The meal siftedout and made a little track all the way to the lake. I dropped pap'swhetstone there too, so as to look like it had been done by accident.Then I tied up the rip in the meal sack with a string, so it wouldn'tleak no more, and took it and my saw to the canoe again.
It was about dark now; so I dropped the canoe down the river under somewillows that hung over the bank, and waited for the moon to rise. I madefast to a willow; then I took a bite to eat, and by and by laid down inthe canoe to smoke a pipe and lay out a plan. I says to myself, they'llfollow the track of that sackful of rocks to the shore and then drag theriver for me. And they'll follow that meal track to the lake and gobrowsing down the creek that leads out of it
to find the robbers thatkilled me and took the things. They won't ever hunt the river foranything but my dead carcass. They'll soon get tired of that, and won'tbother no more about me. All right; I can stop anywhere I want to.Jackson's Island is good enough for me; I know that island pretty well,and nobody ever comes there. And then I can paddle over to town nights,and slink around and pick up things I want. Jackson's Island's the place.
I was pretty tired, and the first thing I knowed I was asleep. When Iwoke up I didn't know where I was for a minute. I set up and lookedaround, a little scared. Then I remembered. The river looked miles andmiles across. The moon was so bright I could a counted the drift logsthat went a-slipping along, black and still, hundreds of yards out fromshore. Everything was dead quiet, and it looked late, and SMELT late.You know what I mean--I don't know the words to put it in.
I took a good gap and a stretch, and was just going to unhitch and startwhen I heard a sound away over the water. I listened. Pretty soon Imade it out. It was that dull kind of a regular sound that comes fromoars working in rowlocks when it's a still night. I peeped out throughthe willow branches, and there it was--a skiff, away across the water. Icouldn't tell how many was in it. It kept a-coming, and when it wasabreast of me I see there warn't but one man in it. Think's I, maybeit's pap, though I warn't expecting him. He dropped below me with thecurrent, and by and by he came a-swinging up shore in the easy water, andhe went by so close I could a reached out the gun and touched him. Well,it WAS pap, sure enough--and sober, too, by the way he laid his oars.
I didn't lose no time. The next minute I was a-spinning down stream softbut quick in the shade of the bank. I made two mile and a half, and thenstruck out a quarter of a mile or more towards the middle of the river,because pretty soon I would be passing the ferry landing, and peoplemight see me and hail me. I got out amongst the driftwood, and then laiddown in the bottom of the canoe and let her float. I laid there, and hada good rest and a smoke out of my pipe, looking away into the sky; not acloud in it. The sky looks ever so deep when you lay down on your backin the moonshine; I never knowed it before. And how far a body can hearon the water such nights! I heard people talking at the ferry landing.I heard what they said, too--every word of it. One man said it wasgetting towards the long days and the short nights now. T'other one saidTHIS warn't one of the short ones, he reckoned--and then they laughed,and he said it over again, and they laughed again; then they waked upanother fellow and told him, and laughed, but he didn't laugh; he rippedout something brisk, and said let him alone. The first fellow said he'lowed to tell it to his old woman--she would think it was pretty good;but he said that warn't nothing to some things he had said in his time.I heard one man say it was nearly three o'clock, and he hoped daylightwouldn't wait more than about a week longer. After that the talk gotfurther and further away, and I couldn't make out the words any more; butI could hear the mumble, and now and then a laugh, too, but it seemed along ways off.
I was away below the ferry now. I rose up, and there was Jackson'sIsland, about two mile and a half down stream, heavy timbered andstanding up out of the middle of the river, big and dark and solid, likea steamboat without any lights. There warn't any signs of the bar at thehead--it was all under water now.
It didn't take me long to get there. I shot past the head at a rippingrate, the current was so swift, and then I got into the dead water andlanded on the side towards the Illinois shore. I run the canoe into adeep dent in the bank that I knowed about; I had to part the willowbranches to get in; and when I made fast nobody could a seen the canoefrom the outside.
I went up and set down on a log at the head of the island, and looked outon the big river and the black driftwood and away over to the town, threemile away, where there was three or four lights twinkling. A monstrousbig lumber-raft was about a mile up stream, coming along down, with alantern in the middle of it. I watched it come creeping down, and whenit was most abreast of where I stood I heard a man say, "Stern oars,there! heave her head to stabboard!" I heard that just as plain as ifthe man was by my side.
There was a little gray in the sky now; so I stepped into the woods, andlaid down for a nap before breakfast.