CHAPTER IX
At half-past nine, that night, Tom and Sid were sent to bed, as usual. They said their prayers, and Sid was soon asleep. Tom lay awake and waited, in restless impatience. When it seemed to him that it must be nearly daylight, he heard the clock strike ten! This was despair. He would have tossed and fidgeted, as his nerves demanded, but he was afraid he might wake Sid. So he lay still, and stared up into the dark. Everything was dismally still. By and by, out of the stillness, little, scarcely perceptible noises began to emphasize themselves. The ticking of the clock began to bring itself into notice. Old beams began to crack mysteriously. The stairs creaked faintly. Evidently spirits were abroad. A measured, muffled snore issued from Aunt Polly’s chamber. And now the tiresome chirping of a cricket that no human ingenuity could locate, began. Next the ghastly ticking of a death-watch in the wall at the bed’s head made Tom shudder—it meant that somebody’s days were numbered. Then the howl of a far-off dog rose on the night air, and was answered by a fainter howl from a remoter distance. Tom was in an agony. At last he was satisfied that time had ceased and eternity begun; he began to doze, in spite of himself; the clock chimed eleven, but he did not hear it. And then there came, mingling with his half-formed dreams, a most melancholy caterwauling. The raising of a neighboring window disturbed him. A cry of “Scat! you devil!” and the crash of an empty bottle against the back of his aunt’s woodshed brought him wide awake, and a single minute later he was dressed and out of the window and creeping along the roof of the “ell” on all fours. He “meow’d” with caution once or twice, as he went; then jumped to the roof of the woodshed and thence to the ground. Huckleberry Finn was there, with his dead cat. The boys moved off and disappeared in the gloom. At the end of half an hour they were wading through the tall grass of the graveyard.
It was a graveyard of the old-fashioned Western kind. It was on a hill, about a mile and a half from the village. It had a crazy board fence around it, which leaned inward in places, and outward the rest of the time, but stood upright nowhere. Grass and weeds grew rank over the whole cemetery. All the old graves were sunken in, there was not a tombstone on the place; round-topped, worm-eaten boards staggered over the graves, leaning for support and finding none. “Sacred to the memory of” So-and-So had been painted on them once, but it could no longer have been read, on the most of them, now, even if there had been light.
A faint wind moaned through the trees, and Tom feared it might be the spirits of the dead, complaining at being disturbed. The boys talked little, and only under their breath, for the time and the place and the pervading solemnity and silence oppressed their spirits. They found the sharp new heap they were seeking, and ensconced themselves within the protection of three great elms that grew in a bunch within a few feet of the grave.
Then they waited in silence for what seemed a long time. The hooting of a distant owl was all the sound that troubled the dead stillness. Tom’s reflections grew oppressive. He must force some talk. So he said in a whisper:
“Hucky, do you believe the dead people like it for us to be here?”
Huckleberry whispered:
“I wisht I knowed. It’s awful solemn like, ain’t it?”
“I bet it is.”
There was a considerable pause, while the boys canvassed this matter inwardly. Then Tom whispered:
“Say, Hucky—do you reckon Hoss Williams hears us talking?”
“O’ course he does. Least his sperrit does.”
Tom, after a pause:
“I wish I’d said Mister Williams. But I never meant any harm. Everybody calls him Hoss.”
“A body can’t be too partic’lar how they talk ’bout these-yer dead people, Tom.”
This was a damper, and conversation died again.
Presently Tom seized his comrade’s arm and said:
“Sh!”
“What is it, Tom?” And the two clung together with beating hearts.
“Sh! There ’tis again! Didn’t you hear it?”
“I—”
“There! Now you hear it.”
“Lord, Tom, they’re coming! They’re coming, sure. What’ll we do?”
“I dono. Think they’ll see us?”
“Oh, Tom, they can see in the dark, same as cats. I wisht I hadn’t come.”
“Oh, don’t be afeard. I don’t believe they’ll bother us. We ain’t doing any harm. If we keep perfectly still, maybe they won’t notice us at all.”
“I’ll try to, Tom, but, Lord, I’m all of a shiver.”
“Listen!”
The boys bent their heads together and scarcely breathed. A muffled sound of voices floated up from the far end of the graveyard.
“Look! See there!” whispered Tom. “What is it?”
“It’s devil-fire. Oh, Tom, this is awful.”
Some vague figures approached through the gloom, swinging an old-fashioned tin lantern that freckled the ground with innumerable little spangles of light. Presently Huckleberry whispered with a shudder:
“It’s the devils sure enough. Three of ’em! Lordy, Tom, we’re goners! Can you pray?”
“I’ll try, but don’t you be afeard. They ain’t going to hurt us. ‘Now I lay me down to sleep, I—’”
“Sh!”
“What is it, Huck?”
“They’re humans! One of ’em is, anyway. One of ’em’s old Muff Potter’s voice.”
“No—’tain’t so, is it?”
“I bet I know it. Don’t you stir nor budge. He ain’t sharp enough to notice us. Drunk, the same as usual, likely—blamed old rip!”
“All right, I’ll keep still. Now they’re stuck. Can’t find it. Here they come again. Now they’re hot. Cold again. Hot again. Red hot! They’re p’inted right, this time. Say, Huck, I know another o’ them voices; it’s Injun Joe.”
“That’s so—that murderin’ half-breed! I’d druther they was devils a dern sight. What kin they be up to?”
The whisper died wholly out, now, for the three men had reached the grave and stood within a few feet of the boys’ hiding-place.
“Here it is,” said the third voice; and the owner of it held the lantern up and revealed the face of young Doctor Robinson.
Potter and Injun Joe were carrying a handbarrow with a rope and a couple of shovels on it. They cast down their load and began to open the grave. The doctor put the lantern at the head of the grave and came and sat down with his back against one of the elm trees. He was so close the boys could have touched him.
“Hurry, men!” he said, in a low voice; “the moon might come out at any moment.”
They growled a response and went on digging. For some time there was no noise but the grating sound of the spades discharging their freight of mould and gravel. It was very monotonous. Finally a spade struck upon the coffin with a dull woody accent, and within another minute or two the men had hoisted it out on the ground. They pried off the lid with their shovels, got out the body and dumped it rudely on the ground. The moon drifted from behind the clouds and exposed the pallid face. The barrow was got ready and the corpse placed on it, covered with a blanket, and bound to its place with the rope. Potter took out a large spring-knife and cut off the dangling end of the rope and then said:
“Now the cussed thing’s ready, Sawbones, and you’ll just out with another five, or here she stays.”
“That’s the talk!” said Injun Joe.
“Look here, what does this mean?” said the doctor. “You required your pay in advance, and I’ve paid you.”
“Yes, and you done more than that,” said Injun Joe, approaching the doctor, who was now standing. “Five years ago you drove me away from your father’s kitchen one night, when I come to ask for something to eat, and you said I warn’t there for any good; and when I swore I’d get even with you if it took a hundred years, your father had me jailed for a vagrant. Did you think I’d forget? The Injun blood ain’t in me for nothing. And now I’ve got you, and you got to settle, you know!”
He was threatening the doctor, with his fist in his face, by this time. The doctor struck out suddenly and stretched the ruffian on the ground. Potter dropped his knife, and exclaimed:
“Here, now, don’t you hit my pard!” and the next moment he had grappled with the doctor and the two were struggling with might and main, trampling the grass and tearing the ground with their heels. Injun Joe sprang to his feet, his eyes flaming with passion, snatched up Potter’s knife, and went creeping, catlike and stooping, round and round about the combatants, seeking an opportunity. All at once the doctor flung himself free, seized the heavy headboard of Williams’ grave and felled Potter to the earth with it—and in the same instant the half-breed saw his chance and drove the knife to the hilt in the young man’s breast. He reeled and fell partly upon Potter, flooding him with his blood, and in the same moment the clouds blotted out the dreadful spectacle and the two frightened boys went speeding away in the dark.
Presently, when the moon emerged again, Injun Joe was standing over the two forms, contemplating them. The doctor murmured inarticulately, gave a long gasp or two and was still. The half-breed muttered:
“That score is settled—damn you.”
Then he robbed the body. After which he put the fatal knife in Potter’s open right hand, and sat down on the dismantled coffin. Three—four—five minutes passed, and then Potter began to stir and moan. His hand closed upon the knife; he raised it, glanced at it, and let it fall, with a shudder. Then he sat up, pushing the body from him, and gazed at it, and then around him, confusedly. His eyes met Joe’s.
“Lord, how is this, Joe?” he said.
“It’s a dirty business,” said Joe, without moving.
“What did you do it for?”
“I! I never done it!”
“Look here! That kind of talk won’t wash.”
Potter trembled and grew white.
“I thought I’d got sober. I’d no business to drink to-night. But it’s in my head yet—worse’n when we started here. I’m all in a muddle; can’t recollect anything of it, hardly. Tell me, Joe—honest, now, old feller—did I do it? Joe, I never meant to—’pon my soul and honor, I never meant to, Joe. Tell me how it was, Joe. Oh, it’s awful—and him so young and promising.”
“Why, you two was scuffling, and he fetched you one with the headboard and you fell flat; and then up you come, all reeling and staggering like, and snatched the knife and jammed it into him, just as he fetched you another awful clip—and here you’ve laid, as dead as a wedge til now.”
“Oh, I didn’t know what I was a-doing. I wish I may die this minute if I did. It was all on account of the whiskey and the excitement, I reckon. I never used a weepon in my life before, Joe. I’ve fought, but never with weepons. They’ll all say that. Joe, don’t tell! Say you won’t tell, Joe—that’s a good feller. I always liked you, Joe, and stood up for you, too. Don’t you remember? You won’t tell, will you, Joe?” And the poor creature dropped on his knees before the stolid murderer, and clasped his appealing hands.
“No, you’ve always been fair and square with me, Muff Potter, and I won’t go back on you. There, now, that’s as fair as a man can say.”
“Oh, Joe, you’re an angel. I’ll bless you for this the longest day I live.” And Potter began to cry.
“Come, now, that’s enough of that. This ain’t any time for blubbering. You be off yonder way and I’ll go this. Move, now, and don’t leave any tracks behind you.”
Potter started on a trot that quickly increased to a run. The half-breed stood looking after him. He muttered:
“If he’s as much stunned with the lick and fuddled with the rum as he had the look of being, he won’t think of the knife till he’s gone so far he’ll be afraid to come back after it to such a place by himself—chicken-heart!”
Two or three minutes later the murdered man, the blanketed corpse, the lidless coffin, and the open grave were under no inspection but the moon’s. The stillness was complete again, too.
CHAPTER X
The two boys flew on and on, toward the village, speechless with horror. They glanced backward over their shoulders from time to time, apprehensively, as if they feared they might be followed. Every stump that started up in their path seemed a man and an enemy, and made them catch their breath; and as they sped by some outlying cottages that lay near the village, the barking of the aroused watch-dogs seemed to give wings to their feet.
“If we can only get to the old tannery before we break down!” whispered Tom, in short catches between breaths. “I can’t stand it much longer.”
Huckleberry’s hard pantings were his only reply, and the boys fixed their eyes on the goal of their hopes and bent to their work to win it. They gained steadily on it, and at last, breast to breast, they burst through the open door and fell grateful and exhausted in the sheltering shadows beyond. By and by their pulses slowed down, and Tom whispered:
“Huckleberry, what do you reckon’ll come of this?”
“If Doctor Robinson dies, I reckon hanging’ll come of it.”
“Do you though?”
“Why, I know it, Tom.”
Tom thought a while, then he said:
“Who’ll tell? We?”
“What are you talking about? S’pose something happened and Injun Joe didn’t hang? Why, he’d kill us some time or other, just as dead sure as we’re a laying here.”
“That’s just what I was thinking to myself, Huck.”
“If anybody tells, let Muff Potter do it, if he’s fool enough. He’s generally drunk enough.”
Tom said nothing—went on thinking. Presently he whispered:
“Huck, Muff Potter don’t know it. How can he tell?”
“What’s the reason he don’t know it?”
“Because he’d just got that whack when Injun Joe done it. D’you reckon he could see anything? D’you reckon he knowed anything?”
“By hokey, that’s so, Tom!”
“And besides, look-a-here—maybe that whack done for him!”
“No, ’taint likely, Tom. He had liquor in him; I could see that; and besides, he always has. Well, when pap’s full, you might take and belt him over the head with a church and you couldn’t phase him. He says so, his own self. So it’s the same with Muff Potter, of course. But if a man was dead sober, I reckon maybe that whack might fetch him; I dono.”
After another reflective silence, Tom said:
“Hucky, you sure you can keep mum?”
“Tom, we got to keep mum. You know that. That Injun devil wouldn’t make any more of drownding us than a couple of cats, if we was to squeak ’bout this and they didn’t hang him. Now, look-a-here, Tom, less take and swear to one another—that’s what we got to do—swear to keep mum.”
“I’m agreed. It’s the best thing. Would you just hold hands and swear that we—”
“Oh no, that wouldn’t do for this. That’s good enough for little rubbishy common things—specially with gals, cuz they go back on you anyway, and blab if they get in a huff—but there orter be writing ’bout a big thing like this. And blood.”
Tom’s whole being applauded this idea. It was deep, and dark, and awful; the hour, the circumstances, the surroundings, were in keeping with it. He picked up a clean pine shingle that lay in the moon-light, took a little fragment of “red keel” out of his pocket, got the moon on his work, and painfully scrawled these lines, emphasizing each slow down-stroke by clamping his tongue between his teeth, and letting up the pressure on the up-strokes.
“Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer swears they will keep mum about This and They wish They may Drop down dead in Their Tracks if They ever Tell and Rot.”
Huckleberry was filled with admiration of Tom’s facility in writing, and the sublimity of his language. He at once took a pin from his lapel and was going to prick his flesh, but Tom said:
“Hold on! Don’t do that. A pin’s brass. It might have verdigrease on it.”
“What’s verdigrease?”
“It’s p’ison. That’s what it is. You just swaller some of it once—you’ll see.”
So Tom unwound the thread from one of his needles, and each boy pricked the ball of his thumb and squeezed out a drop of blood. In time, after many squeezes, Tom managed to sign his initials, using the ball of his little finger for a pen. Then he showed Huckleberry how to make an H and an F, and the oath was complete. They buried the shingle close to the wall, with some dismal ceremonies and incantations, and the fetters that bound their tongues were considered to be locked and the key thrown away.
A figure crept stealthily through a break in the other end of the ruined building, now, but they did not notice it.
“Tom,” whispered Huckleberry, “does this keep us from ever telling—always?”
“Of course it does. It don’t make any difference what happens, we got to keep mum. We’d drop down dead—don’t you know that?”
“Yes, I reckon that’s so.”
They continued to whisper for some little time. Presently a dog set up a long, lugubrious howl just outside—within ten feet of them. The boys clasped each other suddenly, in an agony of fright.
“Which of us does he mean?” gasped Huckleberry.
“I dono—peep through the crack. Quick!”
“No, you, Tom!”
“I can’t—I can’t do it, Huck!”
“Please, Tom. There ’tis again!”
“Oh, lordy, I’m thankful!” whispered Tom. “I know his voice. It’s Bull Harbison.” *
[* If Mr. Harbison owned a slave named Bull, Tom would have spoken of him as “Harbison’s Bull,” but a son or a dog of that name was “Bull Harbison.” ]
“Oh, that’s good—I tell you, Tom, I was most scared to death; I’d a bet anything it was a stray dog.”
The dog howled again. The boys’ hearts sank once more.
“Oh, my! that ain’t no Bull Harbison!” whispered Huckleberry. “Do, Tom!”
Tom, quaking with fear, yielded, and put his eye to the crack. His whisper was hardly audible when he said:
“Oh, Huck, it’s a stray dog!”
“Quick, Tom, quick! Who does he mean?”
“Huck, he must mean us both—we’re right together.”
“Oh, Tom, I reckon we’re goners. I reckon there ain’t no mistake ’bout where I’ll go to. I been so wicked.”
“Dad fetch it! This comes of playing hookey and doing everything a feller’s told not to do. I might a been good, like Sid, if I’d a tried—but no, I wouldn’t, of course. But if ever I get off this time, I lay I’ll just waller in Sunday-schools!” And Tom began to snuffle a little.
“You bad!” and Huckleberry began to snuffle too. “Consound it, Tom Sawyer, you’re just old pie, ’long-side o’ what I am. Oh, lordy, lordy, lordy, I wisht I only had half your chance.”
Tom choked off and whispered:
“Look, Hucky, look! He’s got his back to us!”
Hucky looked, with joy in his heart.
“Well, he has, by jingoes! Did he before?”
“Yes, he did. But I, like a fool, never thought. Oh, this is bully, you know. Now who can he mean?”
The howling stopped. Tom pricked up his ears.
“Sh! What’s that?” he whispered.
“Sounds like—like hogs grunting. No—it’s somebody snoring, Tom.”
“That is it! Where ’bouts is it, Huck?”
“I bleeve it’s down at ’tother end. Sounds so, anyway. Pap used to sleep there, sometimes, ’long with the hogs, but laws bless you, he just lifts things when he snores. Besides, I reckon he ain’t ever coming back to this town any more.”
The spirit of adventure rose in the boys’ souls once more.
“Hucky, do you das’t to go if I lead?”
“I don’t like to, much. Tom, s’pose it’s Injun Joe!”
Tom quailed. But presently the temptation rose up strong again and the boys agreed to try, with the understanding that they would take to their heels if the snoring stopped. So they went tiptoeing stealthily down, the one behind the other. When they had got to within five steps of the snorer, Tom stepped on a stick, and it broke with a sharp snap. The man moaned, writhed a little, and his face came into the moonlight. It was Muff Potter. The boys’ hearts had stood still, and their hopes too, when the man moved, but their fears passed away now. They tip-toed out, through the broken weather-boarding, and stopped at a little distance to exchange a parting word. That long, lugubrious howl rose on the night air again! They turned and saw the strange dog standing within a few feet of where Potter was lying, and facing Potter, with his nose pointing heavenward.
“Oh, geeminy, it’s him!” exclaimed both boys, in a breath.
“Say, Tom—they say a stray dog come howling around Johnny Miller’s house, ’bout midnight, as much as two weeks ago; and a whippoorwill come in and lit on the banisters and sung, the very same evening; and there ain’t anybody dead there yet.”
“Well, I know that. And suppose there ain’t. Didn’t Gracie Miller fall in the kitchen fire and burn herself terrible the very next Saturday?”
“Yes, but she ain’t dead. And what’s more, she’s getting better, too.”
“All right, you wait and see. She’s a goner, just as dead sure as Muff Potter’s a goner. That’s what the niggers say, and they know all about these kind of things, Huck.”
Then they separated, cogitating. When Tom crept in at his bedroom window the night was almost spent. He undressed with excessive caution, and fell asleep congratulating himself that nobody knew of his escapade. He was not aware that the gently-snoring Sid was awake, and had been so for an hour.
When Tom awoke, Sid was dressed and gone. There was a late look in the light, a late sense in the atmosphere. He was startled. Why had he not been called—persecuted till he was up, as usual? The thought filled him with bodings. Within five minutes he was dressed and down-stairs, feeling sore and drowsy. The family were still at table, but they had finished breakfast. There was no voice of rebuke; but there were averted eyes; there was a silence and an air of solemnity that struck a chill to the culprit’s heart. He sat down and tried to seem gay, but it was up-hill work; it roused no smile, no response, and he lapsed into silence and let his heart sink down to the depths.
After breakfast his aunt took him aside, and Tom almost brightened in the hope that he was going to be flogged; but it was not so. His aunt wept over him and asked him how he could go and break her old heart so; and finally told him to go on, and ruin himself and bring her gray hairs with sorrow to the grave, for it was no use for her to try any more. This was worse than a thousand whippings, and Tom’s heart was sorer now than his body. He cried, he pleaded for forgiveness, promised to reform over and over again, and then received his dismissal, feeling that he had won but an imperfect forgiveness and established but a feeble confidence.
He left the presence too miserable to even feel revengeful toward Sid; and so the latter’s prompt retreat through the back gate was unnecessary. He moped to school gloomy and sad, and took his flogging, along with Joe Harper, for playing hookey the day before, with the air of one whose heart was busy with heavier woes and wholly dead to trifles. Then he betook himself to his seat, rested his elbows on his desk and his jaws in his hands, and stared at the wall with the stony stare of suffering that has reached the limit and can no further go. His elbow was pressing against some hard substance. After a long time he slowly and sadly changed his position, and took up this object with a sigh. It was in a paper. He unrolled it. A long, lingering, colossal sigh followed, and his heart broke. It was his brass andiron knob!
This final feather broke the camel’s back.