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 didn't want to go to school much
before, but I reckoned I'd go now to spite pap. That
law trial was a slow business -- appeared like they
warn't ever going to get started on it; so every now
and then I'd 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
suited -- this kind of thing was right in his line.
He got to hanging around the widow's too much and so
she told him at last that if he didn't quit using
around there she would make trouble for him. Well,
wasn't he mad? He said he would show who was Huck
Finn's 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 warn't
no houses but an old log hut in a place where
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the timber was so thick you couldn't find it if you
didn't 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 warn't
long after that till I was used to being where I
was, and liked it -- all 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 didn't
see how I'd ever got to like it so well at the
widow's, 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 didn't want to
go back no more. I had stopped cussing, because the
widow didn't like it; but now I took to it again
because pap hadn't 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 hick'ry,
and I couldn't 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
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dreadful lonesome. I judged he had got drowned, and
I wasn't 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 couldn't find no way. There
warn't a window to it big enough for a dog to get
through. I couldn't 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 out -- big enough to let me through. Well, it
was a good long job, but I was getting towards the
end of it when I heard pap's 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 warn't in a good humor -- so 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
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how to do it. And he said people allowed there'd 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 didn't want to go back to the widow's 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
hadn't 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 didn't know
the names of, and so called them what's-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 couldn't find me. That
made me pretty uneasy again, but only for a minute;
I reckoned I wouldn't 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
wouldn't stay in one place, but just tramp right
across the country, mostly night times, and hunt and
fish to
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keep alive, and so get so far away that the old man
nor the widow couldn't 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 didn't 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 Adam
-- he was just all mud. Whenever his liquor begun to
work he most always went for the govment. his time
he says:
"Call this a govment! why, just look at it and see
what it's like. Here's the law a-standing ready to
take a man's son away from him -- a man's 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 suthin' for him and give him
a rest, the law up and goes for him. And they call
that govment! That ain't all, nuther. The law backs
that old Judge Thatcher up and helps him to keep me
out o' my property. Here's what the law does: The
law takes a man worth six thousand dollars and
up'ards, and jams him into an old trap of a cabin
like this, and lets him go round in clothes that
ain't fitten for a hog. They call that govment! A
man can't get his rights in a govment like this.
Sometimes I've a mighty notion to just leave the
country for good and all. Yes,
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and I told 'em so; I told old Thatcher so to his
face. Lots of 'em heard me, and can tell what I
said. Says I, for two cents I'd leave the blamed
country and never come a-near it agin. Them's the
very words. I says look at my hat -- if you call it
a hat -- but the lid raises up and the rest of it
goes down till it's below my chin, and then it ain't
rightly a hat at all, but more like my head was
shoved up through a jint o' stove-pipe. Look at it,
says I -- such a hat for me to wear -- one of the
wealthiest men in this town if I could git my
rights.
"Oh, yes, this is a wonderful govment, wonderful.
Why, looky here. There was a free nigger there from
Ohio -- a mulatter, most as white as a white man. He
had the whitest shirt on you ever see, too, and the
shiniest hat; and there ain't a man in that town
that's got as fine clothes as what he had; and he
had a gold watch and chain, and a silver-headed cane
-- the awfulest old gray-headed nabob in the State.
And what do you think? They said he was a p'fessor
in a college, and could talk all kinds of languages,
and knowed everything. And that ain't 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 'lection day, and I was just about to go
and vote myself if I warn't too drunk to get there;
but when they told me there was a State in this
country where they'd let that nigger vote, I drawed
out. I says I'll never vote agin. Them's the very
words I said; they all heard me; and the country may
rot for all me -- I'll never vote agin as long as I
live. And to see the cool way of that nigger -- why,
he wouldn't a give me the road if I hadn't shoved
him out o' the way. I
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says to the people, why ain't this nigger put up at
auction and sold? -- that's what I want to know. And
what do you reckon they said? Why, they said he
couldn't be sold till he'd been in the State six
months, and he hadn't been there that long yet.
There, now -- that's a specimen. They call that a
govment that can't sell a free nigger till he's been
in the State six months. Here's a govment that calls
itself a govment, and lets on to be a govment, and
thinks it is a govment, and yet's got to set
stock-still for six whole months before it can take
a hold of a prowling, thieving, infernal,
white-shirted free nigger, and -- "
Pap was agoing on so he never noticed where his old
limber legs was taking him to, so he went head over
heels over the tub of salt pork and barked both
shins, and the rest of his speech was all the
hottest kind of language -- mostly hove at the
nigger and the govment, though he give the tub some,
too, all along, here and there. He hopped around the
cabin considerable, first on one leg and then on the
other, holding first one shin and then the other
one, and at last he let out with his left foot all
of a sudden and fetched the tub a rattling kick. But
it warn't good judgment, because that was the boot
that had a couple of his toes leaking out of the
front end of it; so now he raised a howl that fairly
made a body's hair raise, and down he went in the
dirt, and rolled there, and held his toes; and the
cussing he done then laid over anything he had ever
done previous. He said so his own self afterwards.
He had heard old Sowberry Hagan in his best days,
and he said it laid over him, too; but I reckon that
was sort of piling it on, maybe.
After supper pap took the jug, and said he had
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enough whisky there for two drunks and one delirium
tremens. That was always his word. I judged he would
be blind drunk in about an hour, and then I would
steal the key, or saw myself out, one or t'other. He
drank and drank, and tumbled down on his blankets by
and by; but luck didn't run my way. He didn't go
sound asleep, but was uneasy. He groaned and moaned
and thrashed around this way and that for a long
time. At last I got so sleepy I couldn't keep my
eyes open all I could do, and so before I knowed
what I was about I was sound asleep, and the candle
burning.
I don't know how long I was asleep, but all of a
sudden there was an awful scream and I was up. There
was pap looking wild, and skipping around every
which way and yelling about snakes. He said they was
crawling up his legs; and then he would give a jump
and scream, and say one had bit him on the cheek --
but I couldn't see no snakes. He started and run
round and round the cabin, hollering "Take him off!
take him off! he's biting me on the neck!" I never
see a man look so wild in the eyes. Pretty soon he
was all fagged out, and fell down panting; then he
rolled over and over wonderful fast, kicking things
every which way, and striking and grabbing at the
air with his hands, and screaming and saying there
was devils a-hold of him. He wore out by and by, and
laid still a while, moaning. Then he laid stiller,
and didn't make a sound. I could hear the owls and
the wolves away off in the woods, and it seemed
terrible still. He was laying over by the corner. By
and by he raised up part way and listened, with his
head to one side. He says, very low:
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"Tramp -- tramp -- tramp; that's the dead; tramp --
tramp -- tramp; they're coming after me; but I won't
go. Oh, they're here! don't touch me -- don't! hands
off -- they're cold; let go. Oh, let a poor devil
alone!"
Then he went down on all fours and crawled off,
begging them to let him alone, and he rolled himself
up in his blanket and wallowed in under the old pine
table, still a-begging; and then he went to crying.
I could hear him through the blanket.
By and by he rolled out and jumped up on his feet
looking wild, and he see me and went for me. He
chased me round and round the place with a
clasp-knife, calling me the Angel of Death, and
saying he would kill me, and then I couldn't come
for him no more. I begged, and told him I was only
Huck; but he laughed such a screechy laugh, and
roared and cussed, and kept on chasing me up. Once
when I turned short and dodged under his arm he made
a grab and got me by the jacket between my
shoulders, and I thought I was gone; but I slid out
of the jacket quick as lightning, and saved myself.
Pretty soon he was all tired out, and dropped down
with his back against the door, and said he would
rest a minute and then kill me. He put his knife
under him, and said he would sleep and get strong,
and then he would see who was who.
So he dozed off pretty soon. By and by I got the old
split-bottom chair and clumb up as easy as I could,
not to make any noise, and got down the gun. I
slipped the ramrod down it to make sure it was
loaded, then I laid it across the turnip barrel,
pointing towards pap, and set down behind it to wait
for him to stir. And how slow and still the time did
drag along.
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