University of Virginia Library

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 out-run
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 be 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.

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getting out of the way.

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 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.

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solid comfort.

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 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 enought 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
to 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
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 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.

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thinking it over.

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. This
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
ail 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 upards, 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, 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 anear
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 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 ahold 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 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 'tother. 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.

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raising a howl.

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 ahold 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:

"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,
and 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.