IT must a been close on to one o'clock when we got
below the island at last, and the raft did seem to go
mighty slow. If a boat was to come along we was going to
take to the canoe and break for the Illinois shore; and
it was well a boat didn't come, for we hadn't ever
thought to put the gun in the canoe, or a fishing-line,
or anything to eat. We was in ruther too much of a sweat
to think of so many things. It warn't good judgment to
put EVERYTHING on the raft.
If the men went to the island I just expect they found
the camp fire I built, and watched it all night for Jim
to come. Anyways, they stayed away from us, and if my
building the fire never fooled them it warn't no fault of
mine. I played it as low down on them as I could.
When the first streak of day began to show we tied up
to a towhead in a big bend on the Illinois side, and
hacked off cottonwood branches with the hatchet, and
covered up the raft with them so she looked like there
had been a cave-in in the bank there. A towhead is a
sandbar that has cottonwoods on it as thick as harrow-teeth.
We had mountains on the Missouri shore and heavy
timber on the Illinois side, and the channel was down the
Missouri shore at that place, so we warn't afraid of
anybody running across us. We laid there all day, and
watched the rafts and steamboats spin down the Missouri
shore, and up-bound steamboats fight the big river in the
middle. I told Jim all about the time I had jabbering
with that woman; and Jim said she was a smart one, and if
she was to start after us herself she wouldn't set down
and watch a camp fire — no, sir, she'd fetch a dog.
Well, then, I said, why couldn't she tell her husband to
fetch a dog? Jim said he bet she did think of it by the
time the men was ready to start, and he believed they
must a gone up-town to get a dog and so they lost all
that time, or else we wouldn't be here on a towhead
sixteen or seventeen mile below the village — no,
indeedy, we would be in that same old town again. So I
said I didn't care what was the reason they didn't get us
as long as they didn't.
When it was beginning to come on dark we poked our
heads out of the cottonwood thicket, and looked up and
down and across; nothing in sight; so Jim took up some of
the top planks of the raft and built a snug wigwam to get
under in blazing weather and rainy, and to keep the
things dry. Jim made a floor for the wigwam, and raised
it a foot or more above the level of the raft, so now the
blankets and all the traps was out of reach of steamboat
waves. Right in the middle of the wigwam we made a layer
of dirt about five or six inches deep with a frame around
it for to hold it to its place; this was to build a fire
on in sloppy weather or chilly; the wigwam would keep it
from being seen. We made an extra steering-oar, too,
because one of the others might get broke on a snag or
something. We fixed up a short forked stick to hang the
old lantern on, because we must always light the lantern
whenever we see a steamboat coming down-stream, to keep
from getting run over; but we wouldn't have to light it
for up-stream boats unless we see we was in what they
call a "crossing"; for the river was pretty
high yet, very low banks being still a little under
water; so up-bound boats didn't always run the channel,
but hunted easy water.
This second night we run between seven and eight
hours, with a current that was making over four mile an
hour. We catched fish and talked, and we took a swim now
and then to keep off sleepiness. It was kind of solemn,
drifting down the big, still river, laying on our backs
looking up at the stars, and we didn't ever feel like
talking loud, and it warn't often that we laughed — only
a little kind of a low chuckle. We had mighty good
weather as a general thing, and nothing ever happened to
us at all — that night, nor the next, nor the next.
Every night we passed towns, some of them away up on
black hillsides, nothing but just a shiny bed of lights;
not a house could you see. The fifth night we passed St.
Louis, and it was like the whole world lit up. In St.
Petersburg they used to say there was twenty or thirty
thousand people in St. Louis, but I never believed it
till I see that wonderful spread of lights at two o'clock
that still night. There warn't a sound there; everybody
was asleep.
Every night now I used to slip ashore towards ten
o'clock at some little village, and buy ten or fifteen
cents' worth of meal or bacon or other stuff to eat; and
sometimes I lifted a chicken that warn't roosting
comfortable, and took him along. Pap always said, take a
chicken when you get a chance, because if you don't want
him yourself you can easy find somebody that does, and a
good deed ain't ever forgot. I never see pap when he
didn't want the chicken himself, but that is what he used
to say, anyway.
Mornings before daylight I slipped into cornfields and
borrowed a watermelon, or a mushmelon, or a punkin, or
some new corn, or things of that kind. Pap always said it
warn't no harm to borrow things if you was meaning to pay
them back some time; but the widow said it warn't
anything but a soft name for stealing, and no decent body
would do it. Jim said he reckoned the widow was partly
right and pap was partly right; so the best way would be
for us to pick out two or three things from the list and
say we wouldn't borrow them any more — then he reckoned
it wouldn't be no harm to borrow the others. So we talked
it over all one night, drifting along down the river,
trying to make up our minds whether to drop the
watermelons, or the cantelopes, or the mushmelons, or
what. But towards daylight we got it all settled
satisfactory, and concluded to drop crabapples and
p'simmons. We warn't feeling just right before that, but
it was all comfortable now. I was glad the way it come
out, too, because crabapples ain't ever good, and the
p'simmons wouldn't be ripe for two or three months yet.
We shot a water-fowl now and then that got up too
early in the morning or didn't go to bed early enough in
the evening. Take it all round, we lived pretty high.
The fifth night below St. Louis we had a big storm
after midnight, with a power of thunder and lightning,
and the rain poured down in a solid sheet. We stayed in
the wigwam and let the raft take care of itself. When the
lightning glared out we could see a big straight river
ahead, and high, rocky bluffs on both sides. By and by
says I, "Hel-LO, Jim, looky yonder!" It was a
steamboat that had killed herself on a rock. We was
drifting straight down for her. The lightning showed her
very distinct. She was leaning over, with part of her
upper deck above water, and you could see every little
chimbly-guy clean and clear, and a chair by the big bell,
with an old slouch hat hanging on the back of it, when
the flashes come.
Well, it being away in the night and stormy, and all
so mysterious-like, I felt just the way any other boy
would a felt when I see that wreck laying there so
mournful and lonesome in the middle of the river. I
wanted to get aboard of her and slink around a little,
and see what there was there. So I says:
"Le's land on her, Jim."
But Jim was dead against it at first. He says:
"I doan' want to go fool'n 'long er no wrack.
We's doin' blame' well, en we better let blame' well
alone, as de good book says. Like as not dey's a watchman
on dat wrack."
"Watchman your grandmother," I says; "there
ain't nothing to watch but the texas and the pilothouse;
and do you reckon anybody's going to resk his life for a
texas and a pilot-house such a night as this, when it's
likely to break up and wash off down the river any
minute?" Jim couldn't say nothing to that, so he
didn't try. "And besides," I says, "we
might borrow something worth having out of the captain's
stateroom. Seegars, I bet you — and cost five cents
apiece, solid cash. Steamboat captains is always rich,
and get sixty dollars a month, and THEY don't care a cent
what a thing costs, you know, long as they want it. Stick
a candle in your pocket; I can't rest, Jim, till we give
her a rummaging. Do you reckon Tom Sawyer would ever go
by this thing? Not for pie, he wouldn't. He'd call it an
adventure — that's what he'd call it; and he'd land on
that wreck if it was his last act. And wouldn't he throw
style into it? — wouldn't he spread himself, nor
nothing? Why, you'd think it was Christopher C'lumbus
discovering Kingdom-Come. I wish Tom Sawyer WAS here."
Jim he grumbled a little, but give in. He said we
mustn't talk any more than we could help, and then talk
mighty low. The lightning showed us the wreck again just
in time, and we fetched the stabboard derrick, and made
fast there.
The deck was high out here. We went sneaking down the
slope of it to labboard, in the dark, towards the texas,
feeling our way slow with our feet, and spreading our
hands out to fend off the guys, for it was so dark we
couldn't see no sign of them. Pretty soon we struck the
forward end of the skylight, and clumb on to it; and the
next step fetched us in front of the captain's door,
which was open, and by Jimminy, away down through the
texas-hall we see a light! and all in the same second we
seem to hear low voices in yonder!
Jim whispered and said he was feeling powerful sick,
and told me to come along. I says, all right, and was
going to start for the raft; but just then I heard a
voice wail out and say:
"Oh, please don't, boys; I swear I won't ever
tell!"
Another voice said, pretty loud:
"It's a lie, Jim Turner. You've acted this way
before. You always want more'n your share of the truck,
and you've always got it, too, because you've swore 't if
you didn't you'd tell. But this time you've said it jest
one time too many. You're the meanest, treacherousest
hound in this country."
By this time Jim was gone for the raft. I was just a-biling
with curiosity; and I says to myself, Tom Sawyer wouldn't
back out now, and so I won't either; I'm a-going to see
what's going on here. So I dropped on my hands and knees
in the little passage, and crept aft in the dark till
there warn't but one stateroom betwixt me and the cross-hall
of the texas. Then in there I see a man stretched on the
floor and tied hand and foot, and two men standing over
him, and one of them had a dim lantern in his hand, and
the other one had a pistol. This one kept pointing the
pistol at the man's head on the floor, and saying:
"I'd LIKE to! And I orter, too — a mean skunk!"
The man on the floor would shrivel up and say, "Oh,
please don't, Bill; I hain't ever goin' to tell."
And every time he said that the man with the lantern
would laugh and say:
"'Deed you AIN'T! You never said no truer thing
'n that, you bet you." And once he said: "Hear
him beg! and yit if we hadn't got the best of him and
tied him he'd a killed us both. And what FOR? Jist for
noth'n. Jist because we stood on our RIGHTS — that's
what for. But I lay you ain't a-goin' to threaten nobody
any more, Jim Turner. Put UP that pistol, Bill."
Bill says:
"I don't want to, Jake Packard. I'm for killin'
him — and didn't he kill old Hatfield jist the same way
— and don't he deserve it?"
"But I don't WANT him killed, and I've got my
reasons for it."
"Bless yo' heart for them words, Jake Packard!
I'll never forgit you long's I live!" says the man
on the floor, sort of blubbering.
Packard didn't take no notice of that, but hung up his
lantern on a nail and started towards where I was there
in the dark, and motioned Bill to come. I crawfished as
fast as I could about two yards, but the boat slanted so
that I couldn't make very good time; so to keep from
getting run over and catched I crawled into a stateroom
on the upper side. The man came apawing along in the
dark, and when Packard got to my stateroom, he says:
"Here — come in here."
And in he come, and Bill after him. But before they
got in I was up in the upper berth, cornered, and sorry I
come. Then they stood there, with their hands on the
ledge of the berth, and talked. I couldn't see them, but
I could tell where they was by the whisky they'd been
having. I was glad I didn't drink whisky; but it wouldn't
made much difference anyway, because most of the time
they couldn't a treed me because I didn't breathe. I was
too scared. And, besides, a body COULDN'T breathe and
hear such talk. They talked low and earnest. Bill wanted
to kill Turner. He says:
"He's said he'll tell, and he will. If we was to
give both our shares to him NOW it wouldn't make no
difference after the row and the way we've served him.
Shore's you're born, he'll turn State's evidence; now you
hear ME. I'm for putting him out of his troubles."
"So'm I," says Packard, very quiet.
"Blame it, I'd sorter begun to think you wasnÕt.
Well, then, that's all right. Le's go and do it."
"Hold on a minute; I hain't had my say yit. You
listen to me. Shooting's good, but there's quieter ways
if the thing's GOT to be done. But what I say is this: it
ain't good sense to go court'n around after a halter if
you can git at what you're up to in some way that's jist
as good and at the same time don't bring you into no
resks. Ain't that so?"
"You bet it is. But how you goin' to manage it
this time?"
"Well, my idea is this: we'll rustle around and
gather up whatever pickins we've overlooked in the
staterooms, and shove for shore and hide the truck. Then
we'll wait. Now I say it ain't a-goin' to be more'n two
hours befo' this wrack breaks up and washes off down the
river. See? He'll be drownded, and won't have nobody to
blame for it but his own self. I reckon that's a
considerble sight better 'n killin' of him. I'm
unfavorable to killin' a man as long as you can git
aroun' it; it ain't good sense, it ain't good morals.
Ain't I right?"
"Yes, I reck'n you are. But s'pose she DON'T
break up and wash off?"
"Well, we can wait the two hours anyway and see,
can't we?"
"All right, then; come along."
So they started, and I lit out, all in a cold sweat,
and scrambled forward. It was dark as pitch there; but I
said, in a kind of a coarse whisper, "Jim !"
and he answered up, right at my elbow, with a sort of a
moan, and I says:
"Quick, Jim, it ain't no time for fooling around
and moaning; there's a gang of murderers in yonder, and
if we don't hunt up their boat and set her drifting down
the river so these fellows can't get away from the wreck
there's one of 'em going to be in a bad fix. But if we
find their boat we can put ALL of 'em in a bad fix — for
the sheriff 'll get 'em. Quick — hurry! I'll hunt the
labboard side, you hunt the stabboard. You start at the
raft, and —"
"Oh, my lordy, lordy! RAF'? Dey ain' no raf' no
mo'; she done broke loose en gone I — en here we is!"