The Best American Mystery Stories of the Nineteenth Century

by Penzler, Otto

  “How, Tom?”

  “Buy the boots for two dollars!”

  Well, it ’most took my breath.

  “My land! Why, Tom, we’ll get the di’monds!”

  “You bet. Some day there’ll be a big reward offered for them—a thousand dollars, sure. That’s our money! Now we’ll trot in and see the folks. And mind you we don’t know anything about any murder, or any di’monds, or any thieves—don’t you forget that.”

  I had to sigh a little over the way he had got it fixed. I’d ’a’ sold them di’monds—yes, sir—for twelve thousand dollars; but I didn’t say anything. It wouldn’t done any good. I says:

  “But what are we going to tell your aunt Sally has made us so long getting down here from the village, Tom?”

  “Oh, I’ll leave that to you,” he says. “I reckon you can explain it somehow.”

  He was always just that strict and delicate. He never would tell a lie himself.

  We struck across the big yard, noticing this, that, and t’other thing that was so familiar, and we so glad to see it again, and when we got to the roofed big passageway betwixt the double log house and the kitchen part, there was everything hanging on the wall just as it used to was, even to Uncle Silas’s old faded green baize working-gown with the hood to it, and raggedy white patch between the shoulders that always looked like somebody had hit him with a snowball; and then we lifted the latch and walked in. Aunt Sally she was just a-ripping and a-tearing around, and the children was huddled in one corner, and the old man he was huddled in the other and praying for help in time of need. She jumped for us with joy and tears running down her face and give us a whacking box on the ear, and then hugged us and kissed us and boxed us again, and just couldn’t seem to get enough of it, she was so glad to see us; and she says:

  “Where have you been a-loafing to, you good-for-nothing trash! I’ve been that worried about you I didn’t know what to do. Your traps has been here ever so long, and I’ve had supper cooked fresh about four times so as to have it hot and good when you come, till at last my patience is just plumb wore out, and I declare I—I—why I could skin you alive! You must be starving, poor things!—set down, set down, everybody; don’t lose no more time.”

  It was good to be there again behind all that noble corn-pone and spareribs, and everything that you could ever want in this world. Old Uncle Silas he peeled off one of his bulliest old-time blessings, with as many layers to it as an onion, and whilst the angels was hauling in the slack of it I was trying to study up what to say about what kept us so long. When our plates was all loadened and we’d got a-going, she asked me, and I says:

  “Well, you see,—er—Mizzes—”

  “Huck Finn! Since when am I Mizzes to you? Have I ever been stingy of cuffs or kisses for you since the day you stood in this room and I took you for Tom Sawyer and blessed God for sending you to me, though you told me four thousand lies and I believed every one of them like a simpleton? Call me Aunt Sally—like you always done.”

  So I done it. And I says:

  “Well, me and Tom allowed we would come along afoot and take a smell of the woods, and we run across Lem Beebe and Jim Lane, and they asked us to go with them blackberrying to-night, and said they could borrow Jubiter Dunlap’s dog, because he had told them just that minute—”

  “Where did they see him?” says the old man; and when I looked up to see how he come to take an intrust in a little thing like that, his eyes was just burning into me, he was that eager. It surprised me so it kind of throwed me off, but I pulled myself together again and says:

  “It was when he was spading up some ground along with you, towards sundown or along there.”

  He only said, “Um,” in a kind of a disappointed way, and didn’t take no more intrust. So I went on. I says:

  “Well, then, as I was a-saying—”

  “That’ll do, you needn’t go no furder.” It was Aunt Sally. She was boring right into me with her eyes, and very indignant. “Huck Finn,” she says, “how’d them men come to talk about going a-blackberrying in September—in this region?”

  I see I had slipped up, and I couldn’t say a word. She waited, still a-gazing at me, then she says:

  “And how’d they come to strike that idiot idea of going a-blackberrying in the night?”

  “Well, m’m, they—er—they told us they had a lantern, and—”

  “Oh, shet up—do! Looky here; what was they going to do with a dog?—hunt blackberries with it?”

  “I think, m’m, they—”

  “Now, Tom Sawyer, what kind of a lie are you fixing your mouth to contribit to this mess of rubbage? Speak out—and I warn you before you begin, that I don’t believe a word of it. You and Huck’s been up to something you no business to—I know it perfectly well; I know you, both of you. Now you explain that dog, and them blackberries, and the lantern, and the rest of that rot—and mind you talk as straight as a string—do you hear?”

  Tom he looked considerable hurt, and says, very dignified:

  “It is a pity if Huck is to be talked to that way, just for making a little bit of a mistake that anybody could make.”

  “What mistake has he made?”

  “Why, only the mistake of saying blackberries when of course he meant strawberries.”

  “Tom Sawyer, I lay if you aggravate me a little more, I’ll—”

  “Aunt Sally, without knowing it—and of course without intending it—you are in the wrong. If you’d ’a’ studied natural history the way you ought, you would know that all over the world except just here in Arkansaw they always hunt strawberries with a dog—and a lantern—”

  But she busted in on him there and just piled into him and snowed him under. She was so mad she couldn’t get the words out fast enough, and she gushed them out in one everlasting freshet. That was what Tom Sawyer was after. He allowed to work her up and get her started and then leave her alone and let her burn herself out. Then she would be so aggravated with that subject that she wouldn’t say another word about it, nor let anybody else. Well, it happened just so. When she was tuckered out and had to hold up, he says, quite ca’m:

  “And yet, all the same, Aunt Sally—”

  “Shet up!” she says, “I don’t want to hear another word out of you.”

  So we was perfectly safe, then, and didn’t have no more trouble about that delay. Tom done it elegant.

  CHAPTER VII: A NIGHT’S VIGIL

  BENNY SHE WAS looking pretty sober, and she sighed some, now and then; but pretty soon she got to asking about Mary, and Sid, and Tom’s aunt Polly, and then Aunt Sally’s clouds cleared off and she got in a good humor and joined in on the questions and was her lovingest best self, and so the rest of the supper went along gay and pleasant. But the old man he didn’t take any hand hardly, and was absent-minded and restless, and done a considerable amount of sighing; and it was kind of heartbreaking to see him so sad and troubled and worried.

  By and by, a spell after supper, come a nigger and knocked on the door and put his head in with his old straw hat in his hand bowing and scraping, and said his Marse Brace was out at the stile and wanted his brother, and was getting tired waiting supper for him, and would Marse Silas please tell him where he was? I never see Uncle Silas speak up so sharp and fractious before. He says:

  “Am I his brother’s keeper?” And then he kind of wilted together, and looked like he wished he hadn’t spoken so, and then he says, very gentle: “But you needn’t say that, Billy; I was took sudden and irritable, and I ain’t very well these days, and not hardly responsible. Tell him he ain’t here.”

  And when the nigger was gone he got up and walked the floor, backwards and forwards, mumbling and muttering to himself and plowing his hands through his hair. It was real pitiful to see him. Aunt Sally she whispered to us and told us not to take notice of him, it embarrassed him. She said he was always thinking and thinking, since these troubles come on, and she allowed he didn’t more’n about half know what he was about when the t
hinking spells was on him; and she said he walked in his sleep considerable more now than he used to, and sometimes wandered around over the house and even outdoors in his sleep, and if we catched him at it we must let him alone and not disturb him. She said she reckoned it didn’t do him no harm, and may be it done him good. She said Benny was the only one that was much help to him these days. Said Benny appeared to know just when to try to soothe him and when to leave him alone.

  So he kept on tramping up and down the floor and muttering, till by and by he begun to look pretty tired; then Benny she went and snuggled up to his side and put one hand in his and one arm around his waist and walked with him; and he smiled down on her, and reached down and kissed her; and so, little by little the trouble went out of his face and she persuaded him off to his room. They had very petting ways together, and it was uncommon pretty to see.

  Aunt Sally she was busy getting the children ready for bed; so by and by it got dull and tedious, and me and Tom took a turn in the moonlight, and fetched up in the watermelon-patch and et one, and had a good deal of talk. And Tom said he’d bet the quarreling was all Jubiter’s fault, and he was going to be on hand the first time he got a chance, and see; and if it was so, he was going to do his level best to get Uncle Silas to turn him off.

  And so we talked and smoked and stuffed watermelons much as two hours, and then it was pretty late, and when we got back the house was quiet and dark, and everybody gone to bed.

  Tom he always seen everything, and now he see that the old green baize work-gown was gone, and said it wasn’t gone when he went out; so he allowed it was curious, and then we went up to bed.

  We could hear Benny stirring around in her room, which was next to ourn, and judged she was worried a good deal about her father and couldn’t sleep. We found we couldn’t, neither. So we set up a long time, and smoked and talked in a low voice, and felt pretty dull and downhearted. We talked the murder and the ghost over and over again, and got so creepy and crawly we couldn’t get sleepy nohow and noway.

  By and by, when it was away late in the night and all the sounds was late sounds and solemn, Tom nudged me and whispers to me to look, and I done it, and there we see a man poking around in the yard like he didn’t know just what he wanted to do, but it was pretty dim and we couldn’t see him good. Then he started for the stile, and as he went over it the moon came out strong, and he had a long-handled shovel over his shoulder, and we see the white patch on the old work-gown. So Tom says:

  “He’s a-walking in his sleep. I wish we was allowed to follow him and see where he’s going to. There, he’s turned down by the tobacker field. Out of sight now. It’s a dreadful pity he can’t rest no better.”

  We waited a long time, but he didn’t come back any more, or if he did he come around the other way; so at last we was tuckered out and went to sleep and had nightmares, a million of them. But before dawn we was awake again, because meantime a storm had come up and been raging, and the thunder and lightning was awful, and the wind was a-thrashing the trees around, and the rain was driving down in slanting sheets, and the gullies was running rivers. Tom says:

  “Looky here, Huck, I’ll tell you one thing that’s mighty curious. Up to the time we went out last night the family hadn’t heard about Jake Dunlap being murdered. Now the men that chased Hal Clayton and Bud Dixon away would spread the thing around in a half an hour, and every neighbor that heard it would shin out and fly around from one farm to t’other and try to be the first to tell the news. Land, they don’t have such a big thing as that to tell twice in thirty year! Huck, it’s mighty strange; I don’t understand it.”

  So then he was in a fidget for the rain to let up, so we could turn out and run across some of the people and see if they would say anything about it to us. And he said if they did we must be horribly surprised and shocked.

  We was out and gone the minute the rain stopped. It was just broad day then. We loafed along up the road, and now and then met a person and stopped and said howdy, and told them when we come, and how we left the folks at home, and how long we was going to stay, and all that, but none of them said a word about that thing; which was just astonishing, and no mistake. Tom said he believed if we went to the sycamores we would find that body laying there solitary and alone, and not a soul around. Said he believed the men chased the thieves so far into the woods that the thieves prob’ly seen a good chance and turned on them at last, and maybe they all killed each other, and so there wasn’t anybody left to tell.

  First we knowed, gabbling along that away, we was right at the sycamores. The cold chills trickled down my back and I wouldn’t budge another step, for all Tom’s persuading. But he couldn’t hold in; he’d got to see if the boots was safe on that body yet. So he crope in—and the next minute out he come again with his eyes bulging he was so excited, and says:

  “Huck, it’s gone!”

  I was astonished! I says:

  “Tom, you don’t mean it.”

  “It’s gone, sure. There ain’t a sign of it. The ground is trampled some, but if there was any blood it’s all washed away by the storm, for it’s all puddles and slush in there.”

  At last I give in, and went and took a look myself; and it was just as Tom said—there wasn’t a sign of a corpse.

  “Dern it,” I says, “the di’monds is gone. Don’t you reckon the thieves slunk back and lugged him off, Tom?”

  “Looks like it. It just does. Now where’d they hide him, do you reckon?”

  “I don’t know,” I says, disgusted, “and what’s more I don’t care. They’ve got the boots, and that’s all I cared about. He’ll lay around these woods a long time before I hunt him up.”

  Tom didn’t feel no more intrust in him neither, only curiosity to know what come of him; but he said we’d lay low and keep dark and it wouldn’t be long till the dogs or somebody rousted him out.

  We went back home to breakfast ever so bothered and put out and disappointed and swindled. I warn’t ever so down on a corpse before.

  CHAPTER VIII: TALKING WITH THE GHOST

  IT WARN’T VERY cheerful at breakfast. Aunt Sally she looked old and tired and let the children snarl and fuss at one another and didn’t seem to notice it was going on, which wasn’t her usual style; me and Tom had a plenty to think about without talking; Benny she looked like she hadn’t had much sleep, and whenever she’d lift her head a little and steal a look towards her father you could see there was tears in her eyes; and as for the old man, his things stayed on his plate and got cold without him knowing they was there, I reckon, for he was thinking and thinking all the time, and never said a word and never et a bite.

  By and by when it was stillest, that nigger’s head was poked in at the door again, and he said his Marse Brace was getting powerful uneasy about Marse Jubiter, which hadn’t come home yet, and would Marse Silas please—

  He was looking at Uncle Silas, and he stopped there, like the rest of his words was froze; for Uncle Silas he rose up shaky and steadied himself leaning his fingers on the table, and he was panting, and his eyes was set on the nigger, and he kept swallowing, and put his other hand up to his throat a couple of times, and at last he got his words started, and says:

  “Does he—does he—think—what does he think! Tell him—tell him—” Then he sunk down in his chair limp and weak, and says, so as you could hardly hear him: “Go away—go away!”

  The nigger looked scared and cleared out, and we all felt—well, I don’t know how we felt, but it was awful, with the old man panting there, and his eyes set and looking like a person that was dying. None of us could budge; but Benny she slid around soft, with her tears running down, and stood by his side, and nestled his old gray head up against her and begun to stroke it and pet it with her hands, and nodded to us to go away, and we done it, going out very quiet, like the dead was there.

  Me and Tom struck out for the woods mighty solemn, and saying how different it was now to what it was last summer when we was here and everything was so peace
ful and happy and everybody thought so much of Uncle Silas, and he was so cheerful and simple-hearted and pudd’n-headed and good—and now look at him. If he hadn’t lost his mind he wasn’t muck short of it. That was what we allowed.

  It was a most lovely day now, and bright and sunshiny; and the further and further we went over the hills towards the prairie the lovelier and lovelier the trees and flowers got to be and the more it seemed strange and somehow wrong that there had to be trouble in such a world as this. And then all of a sudden I catched my breath and grabbed Tom’s arm, and all my livers and lungs and things fell down into my legs.

  “There it is!” I says. We jumped back behind a bush shivering, and Tom says:

  “’Sh!—don’t make a noise.”

  It was setting on a log right in the edge of a little prairie, thinking. I tried to get Tom to come away, but he wouldn’t, and I dasn’t budge by myself. He said we mightn’t ever get another chance to see one, and he was going to look his fill at this one if he died for it. So I looked too, though it give me the fantods to do it. Tom he had to talk, but he talked low. He says:

  “Poor Jakey, it’s got all its things on, just as he said he would. Now you see what we wasn’t certain about—its hair. It’s not long now the way it was: it’s got it cropped close to its head, the way he said he would. Huck, I never see anything look any more naturaler than what It does.”

  “Nor I neither,” I says; “I’d recognize it anywheres.”

  “So would I. It looks perfectly solid and genuwyne, just the way it done before it died.”

  So we kept a-gazing. Pretty soon Tom says:

  “Huck, there’s something mighty curious about this one, don’t you know? It oughtn’t to be going around in the daytime.”

  “That’s so, Tom—I never heard the like of it before.”