University of Virginia Library

Chapter II.

We went tip-toeing along a path amongst
the trees back towards the end of the
widow's garden, stooping down so as
the branches wouldn't scrape our heads.
When we was passing by the kitchen
I fell over a root and made a noise.
We scrouched down and laid still.
Miss Watson's big nigger, named
Jim, was setting in the kitchen door;
we could see him pretty clear, because
there was a light behind him. He
got up and stretched his neck out
about a minute, listening. Then he
says,
"Who dah?"

[ILLUSTRATION]

they tip-toed along.

He listened some more; then he
come tip-toeing down and stood
right between us; we could a touched
him, nearly. Well, likely it was minutes
and minutes that there warn't a
sound, and we all there so close
together. There was a place on my
ankle that got to itching; but I
dasn't scratch it; and then my ear begun to itch; and next my back, right between
my shoulders. Seemed like I'd die if I couldn't scratch. Well, I've
noticed that thing plenty of times since. If you are with the quality, or at a
funeral, or trying to go to sleep when you ain't sleepy—if you are anywheres

where it won't do for you to scratch, why you will itch all over in upwards of a
thousand places. Pretty soon Jim says:

"Say—who is you? Whar is you? Dog my cats ef I didn' hear sumf'n. Well,
I knows what I's gwyne to do. I's gwyne to set down here and listen tell I hears
it agin."

So he set down on the ground betwixt me and Tom. He leaned his back up
against a tree, and stretched his legs out till one of them most touched one of
mine. My nose begun to itch. It itched till the tears come into my eyes. But
I dasn't scratch. Then it begun to itch on the inside. Next I got to itching
underneath. I didn't know how I was going to set still. This miserableness
went on as much as six or seven minutes; but it seemed a sight longer than that.
I was itching in eleven different places now. I reckoned I couldn't stand it
more'n a minute longer, but I set my teeth hard and got ready to try. Just then
Jim begun to breathe heavy; next he begun to snore—and then I was pretty soon
comfortable again.

Tom he made a sign to me—kind of a little noise with his mouth—and we went
creeping away on our hands and knees. When we was ten foot off, Tom whispered
to me and wanted to tie Jim to the tree for fun; but I said no; he might
wake and make a disturbance, and then they'd find out I warn't in. Then Tom
said he hadn't got candles enough, and he would slip in the kitchen and get
some more. I didn't want him to try. I said Jim might wake up and come.
But Tom wanted to resk it; so we slid in there and got three candles, and Tom
laid five cents on the table for pay. Then we got out, and I was in a sweat to
get away; but nothing would do Tom but he must crawl to where Jim was, on
his hands and knees, and play something on him. I waited, and it seemed a good
while, everything was so still and lonesome.

As soon as Tom was back, we cut along the path, around the garden fence,
and by-and-by fetched up on the steep top of the hill the other side of the house.
Tom said he slipped Jim's hat off of his head and hung it on a limb right over
him, and Jim stirred a little, but he didn't wake. Afterwards Jim said the
witches bewitched him and put him in a trance, and rode him all over the State,
and then set him under the trees again and hung his hat on a limb to show who
done it. And next time Jim told it he said they rode him down to New Orleans:

and after that, every time he told it he spread it more and more, till by-and-by
he said they rode him all over the world, and tired him most to death, and his
back was all over saddle-boils. Jim was monstrous proud about it, and he got so he
wouldn't hardly notice the other niggers. Niggers would come miles to hear Jim
tell about it, and he was more looked up to than any nigger in that country.
Strange niggers would stand with their mouths
open and look him all over, same as if he was
a wonder. Niggers is always talking about
witches in the dark by the kitchen fire; but
whenever one was talking and letting on to
know all about such things, Jim would happen
in and say, "Hm! What you know 'bout
witches?" and that nigger was corked up and
had to take a back seat. Jim always kept that
five-center piece around his neck with a string
and said it was a charm the devil give to him
with his own hands and told him he could cure
anybody with it and fetch witches whenever he
wanted to, just by saying something to it; but
he never told what it was he said to it. Niggers
would come from all around there and give Jim
anything they had, just for a sight of that fivecenter
piece; but they wouldn't touch it, because
the devil had had his hands on it. Jim
was most ruined, for a servant, because he got
so stuck up on account of having seen the devil and been rode by witches.

[ILLUSTRATION]

JIM.

Well, when Tom and me got to the edge of the hill-top, we looked away
down into the village and could see three or four lights twinkling, where there
was sick folks, may be; and the stars over us was sparkling ever so fine; and
down by the village was the river, a whole mile broad, and awful still and grand.
We went down the hill and found Jo Harper, and Ben Rogers, and two or three
more of the boys, hid in the old tanyard. So we unhitched a skiff and pulled down
the river two mile and a half, to the big scar on the hillside, and went ashore.

We went to a clump of bushes, and Tom made everybody swear to keep the
secret, and then showed them a hole in the hill, right in the thickest part of
the bushes. Then we lit the candles and crawled in on our hands and knees.
We went about two hundred yards, and then the cave opened up. Tom poked
about amongst the passages and pretty soon ducked under a wall where you
wouldn't a noticed that there was a hole. We went along a narrow place and
got into a kind of room, all damp and sweaty and cold, and there we stopped.
Tom says:

[ILLUSTRATION]

tom sawyer's band of robbers.

"Now we'll start this band of robbers and call it Tom Sawyer's Gang.
Everybody that wants to join has got to take an oath, and write his name in
blood."

Everybody was willing. So Tom got out a sheet of paper that he had wrote
the oath on, and read it. It swore every boy to stick to the band, and never
tell any of the secrets; and if anybody done anything to any boy in the band,
whichever boy was ordered to kill that person and his family must do it, and he
mustn't eat and he mustn't sleep till he had killed them and hacked a cross in

their breasts, which was the sign of the band. And nobody that didn't belong
to the band could use that mark, and if he did he must be sued; and if he done
it again he must be killed. And if anybody that belonged to the band told the
secrets, he must have his throat cut, and then have his carcass burnt up and
the ashes scattered all around, and his name blotted off of the list with blood
and never mentioned again by the gang, but have a curse put on it and be forgot,
forever.

Everybody said it was a real beautiful oath, and asked Tom if he got it out
of his own head. He said, some of it, but the rest was out of pirate books, and
robber books, and every gang that was high-toned had it.

Some thought it would be good to kill the families of boys that told the
secrets. Tom said it was a good idea, so he took a pencil and wrote it in. Then
Ben Rogers says:

"Here's Huck Finn, he hain't got no family—what you going to do 'bout
him?"

"Well, hain't he got a father?" says Tom Sawyer.

"Yes, he's got a father, but you can't never find him, these days. He used
to lay drunk with the hogs in the tanyard, but he hain't been seen in these
parts for a year or more."

They talked it over, and they was going to rule me out, because they said
every boy must have a family or somebody to kill, or else it wouldn't be fair
and square for the others. Well, nobody could think of anything to do—everybody
was stumped, and set still. I was most ready to cry; but all at once I
thought of a way, and so I offered them Miss Watson—they could kill her.
Everybody said:

"Oh, she'll do, she'll do. That's all right. Huck can come in."

Then they all stuck a pin in their fingers to get blood to sign with, and I
made my mark on the paper.

"Now," says Ben Rogers, "what's the line of business of this Gang?"

"Nothing only robbery and murder," Tom said.

"But who are we going to rob? houses—or cattle—or—"

"Stuff! stealing cattle and such things ain't robbery, it's burglary," says
Tom Sawyer. "We ain't burglars. That ain't no sort of style. We are highwaymen.

We stop stages and carriages on the road, with masks on, and kill
the people and take their watches and money."

"Must we always kill the people?"

"Oh, certainly. It's best. Some authorities think different, but mostly it's
considered best to kill them. Except some that you bring to the cave here and
keep them till they're ransomed."

"Ransomed? What's that?"

"I don't know. But that's what they do. I've seen it in books; and so of
course that's what we've got to do."

"But how can we do it if we don't know what it is?"

"Why blame it all, we've got to do it. Don't I tell you it's in the books?
Do you want to go to doing different from what's in the books, and get things
all muddled up?"

"Oh, that's all very fine to say, Tom Sawyer, but how in the nation are these
fellows going to be ransomed if we don't know how to do it to them? that's
the thing I want to get at. Now what do you reckon it is?"

"Well I don't know. But per'aps if we keep them till they're ransomed,
it means that we keep them till they're dead."

"Now, that's something like. That'll answer. Why couldn't you said that
before? We'll keep them till they're ransomed to death—and a bothersome lot
they'll be, too, eating up everything and always trying to get loose."

"How you talk, Ben Rogers. How can they get loose when there's a guard
over them, ready to shoot them down if they move a peg?"

"A guard. Well, that is good. So somebody's got to set up all night and
never get any sleep, just so as to watch them. I think that's foolishness. Why
can't a body take a club and ransom them as soon as they get here?"

"Because it ain't in the books so—that's why. Now Ben Rogers, do you
want to do things regular, or don't you?—that's the idea. Don't you reckon
that the people that made the books knows what's the correct thing to do?
Do you reckon you can learn 'em anything? Not by a good deal. No, sir,
we'll just go on and ransom them in the regular way."

"All right. I don't mind; but I say it's a fool way, anyhow. Say—do we
kill the women, too?"

"Well, Ben Rogers, if I was as ignorant as you I wouldn't let on. Kill the
women? No—nobody ever saw anything in the books like that. You fetch
them to the cave, and you're always as polite as pie to them; and by-and-by they
fall in love with you and never want to go home any more."

"Well, if that's the way, I'm agreed, but I don't take no stock in it. Mighty
soon we'll have the cave so cluttered up with women, and fellows waiting to be
ransomed, that there won't be no place for the robbers. But go ahead, I ain't
got nothing to say."

Little Tommy Barnes was asleep, now, and when they waked him up he was
scared, and cried, and said he wanted to go home to his ma, and didn't want
to be a robber any more.

So they all made fun of him, and called him cry-baby, and that made him
mad, and he said he would go straight and tell all the secrets. But Tom give
him five cents to keep quiet, and said we would all go home and meet next
week and rob somebody and kill some people.

Ben Rogers said he couldn't get out much, only Sundays, and so he wanted
to begin next Sunday; but all the boys said it would be wicked to do it on
Sunday, and that settled the thing. They agreed to get together and fix a day as
soon as they could, and then we elected Tom Sawyer first captain and Jo
Harper second captain of the Gang, and so started home.

I clumb up the shed and crept into my window just before day was breaking.
My new clothes was all greased up and clayey, and I was dog-tired.

[ILLUSTRATION]

huck creeps into his window.