Mark Twain - Mark Twain - The Complete Novels (The Greatest Novelists of All Time – Book 5)

His eyes just blazed; and he says:

“No!—is that so? ain’t it bully! Why, Huck, if it was to do over again, I bet I could fetch two hundred! If we could put it off till—”

“Hurry! Hurry !” I says. "Where’s Jim?”

“Right at your elbow; if you reach out your arm you can touch him. He’s dressed, and everything’s ready. Now we’ll slide out and give the sheep-signal.”

But then we heard the tramp of men coming to the door, and heard them begin to fumble with the pad-lock, and heard a man say:

“I told you we’d be too soon; they haven’t come—the door is locked. Here, I’ll lock some of you into the cabin, and you lay for ‘em in the dark and kill ‘em when they come; and the rest scatter around a piece, and listen if you can hear ‘em coming.”

So in they come, but couldn’t see us in the dark, and most trod on us whilst we was hustling to get under the bed. But we got under all right, and out through the hole, swift but soft—Jim first, me next, and Tom last, which was according to Tom’s orders. Now we was in the lean-to, and heard trampings close by outside. So we crept to the door, and Tom stopped us there and put his eye to the crack, but couldn’t make out nothing, it was so dark; and whispered and said he would listen for the steps to get further, and when he nudged us Jim must glide out first, and him last. So he set his ear to the crack and listened, and listened, and listened, and the steps a-scraping around out there all the time; and at last he nudged us, and we slid out, and stooped down, not breathing, and not making the least noise, and slipped stealthy towards the fence in Injun file, and got to it all right, and me and Jim over it; but Tom’s britches catched fast on a splinter on the top rail, and then he hear the steps coming, so he had to pull loose, which snapped the splinter and made a noise; and as he dropped in our tracks and started somebody sings out:

“Who’s that? Answer, or I’ll shoot!”

But we didn’t answer; we just unfurled our heels and shoved. Then there was a rush, and a Bang, Bang, Bang! and the bullets fairly whizzed around us! We heard them sing out:

“Here they are! They’ve broke for the river! After ‘em, boys, and turn loose the dogs!”

So here they come, full tilt. We could hear them because they wore boots and yelled, but we didn’t wear no boots and didn’t yell. We was in the path to the mill; and when they got pretty close on to us we dodged into the bush and let them go by, and then dropped in behind them. They’d had all the dogs shut up, so they wouldn’t scare off the robbers; but by this time somebody had let them loose, and here they come, making powwow enough for a million; but they was our dogs; so we stopped in our tracks till they catched up; and when they see it warn’t nobody but us, and no excitement to offer them, they only just said howdy, and tore right ahead towards the shouting and clattering; and then we up-steam again, and whizzed along after them till we was nearly to the mill, and then struck up through the bush to where my canoe was tied, and hopped in and pulled for dear life towards the middle of the river, but didn’t make no more noise than we was obleeged to. Then we struck out, easy and comfortable, for the island where my raft was; and we could hear them yelling and barking at each other all up and down the bank, till we was so far away the sounds got dim and died out. And when we stepped on to the raft I says:

“ Now , old Jim, you’re a free man again, and I bet you won’t ever be a slave no more.”

“En a mighty good job it wuz, too, Huck. It ‘uz planned beautiful, en it ‘uz done beautiful; en dey ain’t nobody kin git up a plan dat’s mo’ mixed-up en splendid den what dat one wuz.”

We was all glad as we could be, but Tom was the gladdest of all because he had a bullet in the calf of his leg.

When me and Jim heard that we didn’t feel so brash as what we did before. It was hurting him considerable, and bleeding; so we laid him in the wigwam and tore up one of the duke’s shirts for to bandage him, but he says:

“Gimme the rags; I can do it myself. Don’t stop now; don’t fool around here, and the evasion booming along so handsome; man the sweeps, and set her loose! Boys, we done it elegant!—‘deed we did. I wish we’d a had the handling of Louis XVI., there wouldn’t a been no ‘Son of Saint Louis, ascend to heaven!’ wrote down in his biography; no, sir, we’d a whooped him over the border —that’s what we’d a done with him —and done it just as slick as nothing at all, too. Man the sweeps—man the sweeps!”

But me and Jim was consulting—and thinking. And after we’d thought a minute, I says:

“Say it, Jim.”

So he says:

“Well, den, dis is de way it look to me, Huck. Ef it wuz him dat ‘uz bein’ sot free, en one er de boys wuz to git shot, would he say, ‘Go on en save me, nemmine ‘bout a doctor f’r to save dis one?’ Is dat like Mars Tom Sawyer? Would he say dat? You bet he wouldn’t! well , den, is Jim gywne to say it? No, sah—I doan’ budge a step out’n dis place ‘dout a doctor , not if it’s forty year!”

I knowed he was white inside, and I reckoned he’d say what he did say—so it was all right now, and I told Tom I was a-going for a doctor. He raised considerable row about it, but me and Jim stuck to it and wouldn’t budge; so he was for crawling out and setting the raft loose himself; but we wouldn’t let him. Then he give us a piece of his mind, but it didn’t do no good.

So when he sees me getting the canoe ready, he says:

“Well, then, if you’re bound to go, I’ll tell you the way to do when you get to the village. Shut the door and blindfold the doctor tight and fast, and make him swear to be silent as the grave, and put a purse full of gold in his hand, and then take and lead him all around the back alleys and everywheres in the dark, and then fetch him here in the canoe, in a roundabout way amongst the islands, and search him and take his chalk away from him, and don’t give it back to him till you get him back to the village, or else he will chalk this raft so he can find it again. It’s the way they all do.”

So I said I would, and left, and Jim was to hide in the woods when he see the doctor coming till he was gone again.

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The doctor was an old man; a very nice, kind-looking old man when I got him up. I told him me and my brother was over on Spanish Island hunting yesterday afternoon, and camped on a piece of a raft we found, and about midnight he must a kicked his gun in his dreams, for it went off and shot him in the leg, and we wanted him to go over there and fix it and not say nothing about it, nor let anybody know, because we wanted to come home this evening and surprise the folks.

“Who is your folks?” he says.

“The Phelpses, down yonder.”

“Oh,” he says. And after a minute, he says:

“How’d you say he got shot?”

“He had a dream,” I says, “and it shot him.”

“Singular dream,” he says.

So he lit up his lantern, and got his saddle-bags, and we started. But when he sees the canoe he didn’t like the look of her—said she was big enough for one, but didn’t look pretty safe for two. I says:

“Oh, you needn’t be afeard, sir, she carried the three of us easy enough.”

“What three?”

“Why, me and Sid, and—and—and the guns ; that’s what I mean.”

“Oh,” he says.

But he put his foot on the gunnel and rocked her, and shook his head, and said he reckoned he’d look around for a bigger one. But they was all locked and chained; so he took my canoe, and said for me to wait till he come back, or I could hunt around further, or maybe I better go down home and get them ready for the surprise if I wanted to. But I said I didn’t; so I told him just how to find the raft, and then he started.