CHAPTER IX
I WANTED to go and look at a place right about the
middle of the island that I'd found when I was
exploring; so we started and soon got to it, because
the island was only three miles long and a quarter
of a mile wide.
This place was a tolerable long, steep hill or ridge
about forty foot high. We had a rough time getting
to the top, the sides was so steep and the bushes so
thick. We tramped and clumb around all over it, and
by and by found a good big cavern in the rock, most
up to the top on the side towards Illinois. The
cavern was as big as two or three rooms bunched
together, and Jim could stand up straight in it. It
was cool in there. Jim was for putting our traps in
there right away, but I said we didn't want to be
climbing up and down there all the time.
Jim said if we had the canoe hid in a good place,
and had all the traps in the cavern, we could rush
there if anybody was to come to the island, and they
would never find us without dogs. And, besides, he
said them little birds had said it was going to
rain, and did I want the things to get wet?
So we went back and got the canoe, and paddled up
abreast the cavern, and lugged all the traps up
there. Then we hunted up a place close by to hide
the canoe in, amongst the thick willows. We took
some fish off
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of the lines and set them again, and begun to get
ready for dinner.
The door of the cavern was big enough to roll a
hogshead in, and on one side of the door the floor
stuck out a little bit, and was flat and a good
place to build a fire on. So we built it there and
cooked dinner.
We spread the blankets inside for a carpet, and eat
our dinner in there. We put all the other things
handy at the back of the cavern. Pretty soon it
darkened up, and begun to thunder and lighten; so
the birds was right about it. Directly it begun to
rain, and it rained like all fury, too, and I never
see the wind blow so. It was one of these regular
summer storms. It would get so dark that it looked
all blue-black outside, and lovely; and the rain
would thrash along by so thick that the trees off a
little ways looked dim and spider-webby; and here
would come a blast of wind that would bend the trees
down and turn up the pale under-side of the leaves;
and then a perfect ripper of a gust would follow
along and set the branches to tossing their arms as
if they was just wild; and next, when it was just
about the bluest and blackest -- fst! it was as
bright as glory, and you'd have a little glimpse of
tree-tops a-plunging about away off yonder in the
storm, hundreds of yards further than you could see
before; dark as sin again in a second, and now you'd
hear the thunder let go with an awful crash, and
then go rumbling, grumbling, tumbling, down the sky
towards the under side of the world, like rolling
empty barrels down stairs -- where it's long stairs
and they bounce a good deal, you know.
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"Jim, this is nice," I says. "I wouldn't want to be
nowhere else but here. Pass me along another hunk of
fish and some hot corn-bread."
"Well, you wouldn't a ben here 'f it hadn't a ben
for Jim. You'd a ben down dah in de woods widout any
dinner, en gittn' mos' drownded, too; dat you would,
honey. Chickens knows when it's gwyne to rain, en so
do de birds, chile."
The river went on raising and raising for ten or
twelve days, till at last it was over the banks. The
water was three or four foot deep on the island in
the low places and on the Illinois bottom. On that
side it was a good many miles wide, but on the
Missouri side it was the same old distance across --
a half a mile -- because the Missouri shore was just
a wall of high bluffs.
Daytimes we paddled all over the island in the
canoe, It was mighty cool and shady in the deep
woods, even if the sun was blazing outside. We went
winding in and out amongst the trees, and sometimes
the vines hung so thick we had to back away and go
some other way. Well, on every old broken-down tree
you could see rabbits and snakes and such things;
and when the island had been overflowed a day or two
they got so tame, on account of being hungry, that
you could paddle right up and put your hand on them
if you wanted to; but not the snakes and turtles --
they would slide off in the water. The ridge our
cavern was in was full of them. We could a had pets
enough if we'd wanted them.
One night we catched a little section of a lumber
raft -- nice pine planks. It was twelve foot wide
and about fifteen or sixteen foot long, and the top
stood
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above water six or seven inches -- a solid, level
floor. We could see saw-logs go by in the daylight
sometimes, but we let them go; we didn't show
ourselves in daylight.
Another night when we was up at the head of the
island, just before daylight, here comes a
frame-house down, on the west side. She was a
two-story, and tilted over considerable. We paddled
out and got aboard -- clumb in at an upstairs
window. But it was too dark to see yet, so we made
the canoe fast and set in her to wait for daylight.
The light begun to come before we got to the foot of
the island. Then we looked in at the window. We
could make out a bed, and a table, and two old
chairs, and lots of things around about on the
floor, and there was clothes hanging against the
wall. There was something laying on the floor in the
far corner that looked like a man. So Jim says:
"Hello, you!"
But it didn't budge. So I hollered again, and then
Jim says:
"De man ain't asleep -- he's dead. You hold still --
I'll go en see."
He went, and bent down and looked, and says:
"It's a dead man. Yes, indeedy; naked, too. He's ben
shot in de back. I reck'n he's ben dead two er three
days. Come in, Huck, but doan' look at his face --
it's too gashly."
I didn't look at him at all. Jim throwed some old
rags over him, but he needn't done it; I didn't want
to see him. There was heaps of old greasy cards
scattered around over the floor, and old whisky
bottles, and a couple of masks made out of black
cloth; and
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all over the walls was the ignorantest kind of words
and pictures made with charcoal. There was two old
dirty calico dresses, and a sun-bonnet, and some
women's underclothes hanging against the wall, and
some men's clothing, too. We put the lot into the
canoe -- it might come good. There was a boy's old
speckled straw hat on the floor; I took that, too.
And there was a bottle that had had milk in it, and
it had a rag stopper for a baby to suck. We would a
took the bottle, but it was broke. There was a seedy
old chest, and an old hair trunk with the hinges
broke. They stood open, but there warn't nothing
left in them that was any account. The way things
was scattered about we reckoned the people left in a
hurry, and warn't fixed so as to carry off most of
their stuff.
We got an old tin lantern, and a butcher-knife
without any handle, and a bran-new Barlow knife
worth two bits in any store, and a lot of tallow
candles, and a tin candlestick, and a gourd, and a
tin cup, and a ratty old bedquilt off the bed, and a
reticule with needles and pins and beeswax and
buttons and thread and all such truck in it, and a
hatchet and some nails, and a fishline as thick as
my little finger with some monstrous hooks on it,
and a roll of buckskin, and a leather dog-collar,
and a horseshoe, and some vials of medicine that
didn't have no label on them; and just as we was
leaving I found a tolerable good curry-comb, and Jim
he found a ratty old fiddle-bow, and a wooden leg.
The straps was broke off of it, but, barring that,
it was a good enough leg, though it was too long for
me and not long enough for Jim, and we couldn't find
the other one, though we hunted all around.
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And so, take it all around, we made a good haul.
When we was ready to shove off we was a quarter of a
mile below the island, and it was pretty broad day;
so I made Jim lay down in the canoe and cover up
with the quilt, because if he set up people could
tell he was a nigger a good ways off. I paddled over
to the Illinois shore, and drifted down most a half
a mile doing it. I crept up the dead water under the
bank, and hadn't no accidents and didn't see nobody.
We got home all safe.
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