 CHAPTER XVII. In about a half a minute somebody spoke out of a window, without putting his head out, and says, Be done boys, who's there? I says, it's me, who's me? George Jackson sir, what do you want? I don't want nothing sir, I only want to go along by, but the dogs won't let me. What are you prowling around here this time of night for, hey? I weren't prowling around sir, I fell overboard off of the steamboat. Oh you did did you? Like a life there, somebody. What do you say your name was? George Jackson sir, I'm only a boy. Look here, if you're telling the truth, you needn't be afraid, nobody'll hurt you. But don't try to budge, stand right where you are. Rouse out Bob and Tom, some of you, and fetch the guns. George Jackson, is there anybody with you? No sir, nobody. I heard the people stirring around in the house now, and see a light. The man's sung out, snatch that light away Betsy, you old fool, ain't you got any sense? Put it on the floor behind the front door. Bob, if you and Tom are ready, take your places, all ready. Now George Jackson, do you know the Shepherdsons? No sir, I never heard of them. Well that may be so in it made. Now all ready, step forward George Jackson, and mind don't you hurry, come mighty slow. If there's anybody with you, let him keep back, if he shows himself he'll be shot. Come along now. Come slow, push the door open yourself, just enough to squeeze in, do you hear? I didn't hurry. I couldn't if I'd have wanted to. I took one slow step at a time, and there warn't a sound, only I thought I could hear my heart. The dogs were as still as the humans, but they followed a little behind me. When I got to the three log doorsteps, I heard them unlocking and unbarring and unbolting. I put my hand on the door and pushed a little, and a little more, till somebody said, there, that's enough, put your head in. I'd done it, but I'd judged they would take it off. The candle was on the floor, and there they all was, looking at me, and me at them, for about a quarter of a minute. Three big men with guns pointed at me, which made me wince, I tell you. The oldest, Gray, and about sixty, the other two thirty or more, all of them fine and handsome, and the sweetest old gray-headed lady, and back of her two young women which I couldn't see right well. The old gentleman says, there, I reckon it's all right, come in. As soon as I was in, the old gentleman he locked the door and barred it and bolted it, and told the young men to come in with their guns, and they all went in a big parlor that had a new rag carpet on the floor, and got together in a corner that was out of range of the front windows. There weren't none on the side. They held the candle, and took a good look at me, and all said, Why, he ain't a Shepardson? No, there ain't any Shepardson about him. Then the old man said he hoped I wouldn't mind being searched for arms, because he didn't mean no harm by it, he was only to make sure. So he didn't pry into my pockets, but only felt outside with his hands, and said it was all right. He told me to make myself easy and at home, and tell all about myself. But the old lady says, Why, bless you, Saul, the poor things as wet as he can be. And don't you reckon it may be he's hungry? True for you, Rachel, I forgot. So the old lady says, Betsy, this was a nigger woman, you fly around and get him something to eat, as quick as you can, poor thing. And one of you girls go and wake up Buck and tell him, Oh, here he is himself. Buck, take this little stranger and get the wet clothes off from him and dress him up in some of yours that's dry. Buck looked about as old as me, thirteen or fourteen or along there, though he was a little bigger than me. He hadn't on anything but his shirt, and he was very frowsy headed. He'd come in gaping and digging one fist into his eyes, and he was dragging a gun along with the other one. He says, Ain't they no shepherd sense around? They said no, twas a false alarm. Well, he says, If they'd have been some, I reckon I'd have got one. They all laughed, and Bob says, Why, Buck, they might have scalped us all. You've been so slow in coming. Well, nobody come after me, and it ain't right. I'm always kept down, I don't get no show. Never mind, Buck, my boy, says the old man, You'll have show enough all in good time. Don't you fret about that. Go along with you now, and do as your mother told you. When we got upstairs to his room, he got me a coarse shirt and a roundabout and pants of his, and I put them on. While I was at it, he asked me what my name was. But before I could tell him, he started telling me about a blue jay and a young rabbit he had catched in the woods day before yesterday, and he asked me where Moses was when the candle went out. I said I didn't know. I hadn't heard about it before, no way. Well, guess, he says, How am I going to guess, says I, when I never heard tell about it before? But you can guess, can't you? It's just as easy. Which candle, I says. Why any candle, he says. I don't know where he was, says I. Where was he? Why, he was in the dark. That's where he was. Well, if you'd known where he was, what did you ask me for? Why blame it? It's a riddle, don't you see? Say, how long are you going to stay here? You got to stay always. We can just have booming times. They don't have no school now. Do you own a dog? I've got a dog, and he'll go in the river and bring out chips that you throw in. Do you like to comb up Sundays and all that kind of foolishness? You bet I don't. But Ma, she makes me. Confound these old britches I reckon I'd better put them on, but I'd rather not. It's so warm. Are you all ready? All right, come along, old hoss. Cold cornpone, cold corn beef, butter, and buttermilk. That is what they had for me down there, and there ain't nothing better that ever I've come across yet. Buck and his ma and all of them smoked cob pipes, except the nigger woman, which was gone, and the two young women. They all smoked and talked, and I eat and talked. The young women had quilts around them, and their hair down their backs. They all asked me questions, and I told them how Pap and me and all the family was living on a little farm down at the bottom of Arkansas, and my sister Marianne run off and got married and never was heard of no more. And Bill went to hunt them, and he weren't heard of no more. And Tom and Mort died, and then there weren't nobody but just me and Pap left. And he was just trimmed down to nothing, on account of his troubles. So when he died I took what there was left, because the farm didn't belong to us, and started up the river, deck passage, and fell overboard. And that was how I come to be here. So they said I could have a home there as long as I wanted it. Then it was most daylight, and everybody went to bed, and I went to bed with Buck. And when I was waked up in the morning, dreaded all, I had forgot what my name was. So I laid there about an hour trying to think. And when Buck waked up, I says, can you spell Buck? Yes, he says. I bet you can't spell my name, says I. I bet you what you dare I can, says he. All right, says I. Go ahead. G-O-R-G-E-J-A-X-O-N. There now, he says. Well, says I, you done it, but I didn't think you could. It ain't no slouch of a name to spell right off without studying. I set it down private, because somebody might want me to spell it next. And so I wanted to be handy with it and rattle it off like I was used to it. It was a mighty nice family, and a mighty nice house, too. I hadn't seen no house out in the country before that was so nice, and had so much style. You didn't have an iron latch on the front door, nor a wooden one with a Buck's skin string, but a brass knob to turn, the same as houses in a town. There weren't no bed in the parlor. Not a sign of a bed, but heaps of parlors in towns have beds in them. There was a big fireplace that was bricked on the bottom, and the bricks was kept clean and red by pouring water on them and scrubbing them with another brick. Sometimes they wash them over with red water paint that they call Spanish brown, same as they do in town. They had big brass dog irons that could hold up a saw log. There was a clock on the middle of the mantelpiece, with a picture of a town painted on the bottom half of the glass front, and a round place in the middle of it for the sun. And you could see the pendulum swing behind it. It was beautiful to hear that clock tick. And sometimes when one of these peddlers had been along and scoured her up and got her in good shape, she would start in and strike 150 before she got tuckered out. They wouldn't took any money for her. Well, there was a big outlandish parrot on each side of the clock, made out of something like chalk, and painted up gaudy. By one of the parrots was a cat made of crockery, and a crockery dog by the other, and when you pressed down on them they squeaked, but didn't open their mouths nor look different nor interested. They squeaked through underneath. There was a couple of big wild turkey wing fans spread out behind those things. On a table in the middle of the room was a kind of a lovely crockery basket that had apples and oranges and peaches and grapes piled up in it, which was much redder and yellower and prettier than real ones is, but they weren't real because you could see where pieces had got chipped off and showed the white chalk or whatever it was underneath. This table had a cover made out of beautiful oil cloth with a red and blue spread eagle painted on it and a painted border all around. It come all the way from Philadelphia, they said. There was some books too piled up perfectly exact on each corner of the table. One was a big family Bible, full of pictures. One was Pilgrim's Progress, about a man that left his family, he didn't say why. I read considerable in it now and then. The statements was interesting but tough. Another was Friendship's Offering, full of beautiful stuff and poetry, but I didn't read the poetry. Another was Henry Clay's Speeches, and another was Dr. Gunn's Family Medicine, which told you all about what to do if a body was sick or dead. There was a hymn book and a lot of other books, and there was nice split bottom chairs and perfectly sound too, not bagged down in the middle and busted like an old basket. They had pictures hung on the walls, mainly Washington's and Lafayette's and Battles and Highland Mary's, and one called Signing the Declaration. There was some that they called crayons, which one of the daughters which was dead made her own self when she was only fifteen years old. They was different from any pictures I ever seen before, blacker mostly than is common. One was a woman in a slim black dress, belted small under the armpits, with bulges like a cabbage in the middle of the sleeves, and a large black scooped shovel bonnet with a black veil, and white slim ankles crossed about with black tape, and very wee black slippers like a chisel. And she was lean and pensive on a tombstone on her right elbow, under a weeping willow, and her other hand hanging down her side holding a white handkerchief and a reticule. And underneath the picture it said, Shall I never see thee more alas? Another one was a young lady with her hair all combed up straight to the top of her head, and knotted there in front of a comb like a chair back, and she was crying into a handkerchief, and had a dead bird laying on its back in her other hand with its heels up. And underneath the picture it said, I shall never hear thy sweet churrup more alas. There was one where a young lady was at a window looking up at the moon, and tears running down her cheeks, and she had an open letter in one hand with black ceiling wax showing on one edge of it, and she was mashing a locket with the chain to it against her mouth. And underneath the picture it said, And art thou gone, yes, thou art gone alas? These was all nice pictures, I reckon, but I didn't somehow seem to take to them, because if ever I was down a little they always give me the fantods. Everybody was sorry she died, because she had laid out a lot more of these pictures to do, and a body could see by what she had done what they had lost, but I reckon that with her disposition she was having a better time in the graveyard. She was at work on what they said was her greatest picture when she took sick, and every day and every night it was her prayer to be allowed to live till she got it done, but she never got the chance. It was a picture of a young woman in a long white gown, standing on the rail of a bridge, all ready to jump off, with her hair all down her back, and looking up to the moon, with tears running down her face. And she had two arms folded across her breast, and two arms stretched out in front, and two more reaching up towards the moon. And the idea was to see which pair would look the best, and then scratch out all the other arms. But as I was saying, she died before she got her mind made up, and now they kept this picture over the head of her bed in her room, and every time her birthday come they hung flowers on it. Other times it was hid with a little curtain. The young woman in the picture had kind of a nice sweet face, but there were so many arms that made her look too spidery, seemed to me. This young girl kept a scrapbook when she was alive, and used to paste obituaries and accidents and cases of patient suffering in it out of the Presbyterian observer and write poetry after them out of her own head. It was very good poetry. This is what she wrote about a boy by the name of Stephen Dowling-Botts, that fell down a well and was drowned. Ode to Stephen Dowling-Botts, deceased. And did young Stephen sicken? And did young Stephen die? And did the sad hearts thicken? And did the mourners cry? No, such was not the fate of young Stephen Dowling-Botts, though sad hearts round him thickened, twas not from sickness shots. No whooping cough did rack his frame, nor measles drear with spots. Not these impaired the sacred name of Stephen Dowling-Botts. Despised love struck not with woe, that head of curly knots, nor stomach troubles laid him low, young Stephen Dowling-Botts. Oh no, then list with tearful eye, whilst eye his fate do tell, his soul did from this cold world fly, by falling down a well. They got him out and emptied him, alas it was too late. His spirit was gone for to sport aloft, in the realms of the good and great. If Emeline Grangerford could make poetry like that before she was fourteen, there ain t no tellin what she could have done by and by. Buck said she could rattle off poetry like nothing. She didn t ever have to stop and think. He said she would slap down a line, and if she couldn t find anything to rhyme with it she would just scratch it out and slap down another one and go ahead. She weren t particular. She could write about anything you choose to give her to write about. Just so it was sadful. Every time a man died or a woman died or a child died, she would be on hand with her tribute before he was cold. She called them tributes. The neighbor said it was the doctor first, then Emeline, then the undertaker. The undertaker never got in ahead of Emeline but once, and then she hung fire on a rhyme for the dead person s name, which was Whistler. She weren t ever the same after that. She never complained, but she kind of pined away and did not live long, poor thing. Many s the time I made myself go up to the little room that used to be hers and get out her poor old scrapbook and read in it when her pictures had been aggravating me and I had soured on her a little. I liked all that family, dead ones in all, and weren t going to let anything come between us. Poor Emeline made poetry about all the dead people when she was alive and it didn t seem right that there weren t nobody to make some about her. Now she was gone. So I tried to sweat out a verse or two myself, but I couldn t seem to make it go somehow. They kept Emeline s room trim and nice and all the things fixed in it just the way she liked to have them when she was alive and nobody ever slept there. The old lady took care of the room herself, though there was plenty of niggers and she sewed there a good deal and read her Bible there mostly. Well, as I was saying about the parlor, there was beautiful curtains on the windows, white with pictures painted on them, of castles with vines all down the walls and cattle coming down to drink. There was a little old piano, too, that had ten pans in it, I reckon, and nothing was ever so lovely as to hear the young lady sing, the last link is broken and play the battle of plague on it. The walls of all the rooms was plastered and most had carpets on the floors and the whole house was whitewashed on the outside. It was a double house, and the big open place betwixt them was roofed and floored, and sometimes the table was set there in the middle of the day, and it was a cool, comfortable place. Nothing couldn t be better, and warrant the cooking good, and just bushels of it, too. CHAPTER XVIII. Colonel Grangerford was a gentleman, you see. He was a gentleman all over, and so was his family. He was well-born, as the saying is, and that s worth as much in a man as it is in a horse, so the way the Douglas said, and nobody ever denied that she was of the first aristocracy in our town. And Pat, he always said it, too, though he warn t no more quality than a mudcat himself. Colonel Grangerford was very tall and very slim, and had a darkish-paley complexion, not a sign of red in it any worse. He was clean-shaved every morning all over his thin face, and he had the thinnest kind of lips and the thinnest kind of nostrils, and a high nose and heavy eyebrows, and the blackest kind of eyes sunk so deep back that they seemed like they was looking out of caverns at you, as you may say. His forehead was high, and his hair was black and straight and hung to his shoulders. His hands was long and thin, and every day of his life he put on a clean shirt and a full suit from head to foot made out of linen so white it hurt your eyes to look at it, and on Sundays he wore a blue tailcoat with brass buttons on it. He carried a mahogany cane with a silver head to it. There warn't no frivolishness about him, not a bit, and he warn't ever loud. He was as kind as he could be. You could feel that, you know, and so you had confidence. Sometimes he smiled, and it was good to see, but when he straightened himself up like a liberty-pole, and the lightning began to flicker out from under his eyebrows, you wanted to climb a tree first and find out what the matter was afterwards. He didn't never have to tell anybody to bind their manners. Everybody was always good-mannered where he was. Everybody loved to have him around, too. He was sunshine most always. I mean, he made it seem like good weather. When he turned into a cloud bank, it was awful dark for half a minute, and that was enough. There wouldn't nothing go wrong again for a week. When him and the old lady come down in the morning, all the family got up out of their chairs and give them good day, and didn't set down again till they had set down. Then Tom and Bob went to the sideboard where the decanter was and mixed a glass of bitters and handed it to him, and he held it in his hand and waited till Tom's and Bob's was mixed, and then they bowed and said, Our duty to you, sir and madam, and they bowed the least bit in the world and said thank you, and so they drank all three. And Bob and Tom poured a spoonful of water on the sugar and the might of whiskey or apple brandy in the bottom of their tumblers and gave it to me in buck, and we drank to the old people, too. Bob was the oldest, and Tom next, tall, beautiful man with very broad shoulders and brown faces and long black hair and black eyes. They dressed in white linen from head to foot like the old gentleman and wore broad Panama hats. Then there was Miss Charlotte. She was twenty-five and tall and proud and grand, but as good as she could be when she weren't stirred up, but when she was she had a look that would make you wilt in your tracks like her father. She was beautiful. So was her sister, Miss Sophia, but it was a different kind. She was gentle and sweet like a dove, and she was only twenty. Each person had their own nigger to wait on them, buck, too. My nigger had a monstrous easy time because I weren't used to having anybody do anything for me, but buck's was on the jump most of the time. This was all there was of the family now, but there used to be more. Three sons. They got killed, an emeline that died. The old gentleman owned a lot of farms and over a hundred niggers. Sometimes a stack of people would come out their horseback from ten or fifteen mile around and stay five or six days, and have such junketings round about and on the river, and dances and picnics in the woods daytimes, and balls at the house nights. These people was mostly kinfolks of the family. The men brought their guns with them. It was a handsome lot of quality, I tell you. There was another clan of aristocracy round there. Five or six families, mostly of the name of Shepardson. They was as high-toned and well-born and rich and grand as the tribe of Grangerfords. The Shepardsons and Grangerfords used the same steamboat landing, which was about two mile above our house, so sometimes when I went up there with a lot of our folks, I used to see a lot of the Shepardsons there on their fine horses. One day buck and me was a way out in the woods hunting, and heard a horse coming. We was crossing the road, buck says. Quick, jump for the woods! We'd done it, and then peep down the woods through the leaves. Pretty soon a splendid young man come galloping down the road, setting his horse easy and looking like a soldier. He had his gun across his pommel. I had seen him before. It was young Harnie Shepardson. I heard buck's gun go off at my ear, and Harnie's hat tumbled off from his head. He grabbed his gun and rode straight to the place where we was hid. But we didn't wait. We started through the woods on a run. The woods weren't thick, so I looked over my shoulder to dodge the bullet, and twice I seen Harnie cover buck with his gun, and then he rode away the way he'd come. To get his hat I reckoned, but I couldn't see. We never stopped running till we got home. The old gentleman's eyes blazed a minute. To his pleasure, mainly I judged. Then his face sorta smoothed down, and he says kind of gentle. I don't like that shooting from behind a bush. Why didn't you step into the road, my boy? The Shepardsons don't, Father. They always take advantage. Miss Charlotte. She held her head up like a queen while buck was telling his tale, and her nostrils spread, and her eyes snapped. The two young men looked dark, but never said nothing. Miss Sophia, she turned pale, but the color come back when she found the man weren't hurt. Soon as I could get buck down by the corn-cribs under the trees by ourselves, I says, did you want to kill him, buck? Well, I bet I did. What did he do to you? Him? He never done nothing to me. Well, then what did you want to kill him for? Why, nothing. Only it's on account of the feud. What's a feud? Well, where was you raised? Don't you know what a feud is? Never heard of it before. Tell me about it. Well, says buck, a feud is this way. A man has a quarrel with another man, and kills him. Then that other man's brother kills him. Then the other brothers on both sides goes for one another. Then the cousins chip in, and by and by everybody's killed off, and there ain't no more feud. But it's kind of slow, and it takes a long time. Has this one been going on long, buck? Well, I should reckon. It started 30 years ago, or summers along there. There was trouble about something, and then a lawsuit to settle it. And then the suit went again one of the men, and so he up and shot the man who won the suit, which he would naturally do, of course, anybody would. What was the trouble about, buck, land? I reckon, maybe. I don't know. Well, who done the shooting? Was it a Grangerford or a Shepardson? Laws, how do I know? It was so long ago. Don't anybody know? Oh, yes, Pa knows, I reckon, and some of the other old people. But they don't know now what the row was about in the first place. Has there been many killed, buck? Yes, right, smart chance of funerals. But they don't always kill. Pa's got a few bucks shot in him, but he don't mind it, because he don't weigh much anyway. Bob's been carved up some with a bowie, and Tom's been hurt once or twice. Has anybody been killed this year, buck? Yes, we got one, and they got one. About three months ago, my cousin, Bud, 14-year-old, was riding through the woods on to other side of the river, and didn't have no weapon with him, which was blame foolishness. And in a lonesome place, he hears a horse are coming behind him, and sees old Baldi Shepardson alinking after him with his gun in his hand, and his white hair flying in the wind. Instead of jumping off and taking to the brush, Bud loud he could outrun him. So they had it nipped and tucked for five mile or more. The old man again and all the time. So at last, Bud, seen it, weren't any use. So he stopped and faced around, so as to have the bullet holes in the front, you know. And the old man, he rode up and shot him down. But he didn't get much chance to enjoy his luck. For inside of a week, our folks laid him out. I reckon that old man was a coward, buck. I reckon he weren't a coward, not by blame sight. There ain't a coward amongst them Shepardsons, not a one. And there ain't no cowards amongst the Grangerfords either. Why, that old man kept up his end in a fight one day for half an hour against three Grangerfords and come out winner. They was all a horse back. He lit off his horse and got behind a little wood pile and kept his horse before him to stop the bullets. But the Grangerfords stayed down their horses and capered around the old man and peppered away at him. And he peppered away at them. Him and his horse both went home pretty leaky and crippled, but the Grangerfords had to be fetched home, and one of them was dead and another died the next day. No, sir, if a body's out hunting for cowards, he don't want to fool away any time amongst them Shepardsons because they don't breed any of that kind. Next Sunday, we all went to church about three mile, everybody a horse back. The men took their guns along, so did Buck and kept them between their knees or stood them handy against the wall. The Shepardsons done the same. It was pretty ornery preaching, all about brotherly love and such like tiresomeness. But everybody said it was a good sermon and they all talked it over going home and had such a powerful lot to say about faith and good works and free grace and pre-fore or destination and I don't know what all. But it did seem to me to be one of the roughest Sundays I had run across yet. About an hour after dinner, everybody was dozing around, some in their chairs and some in their rooms and it got to be pretty dull. Buck and a dog was stretched out on the grass and the sun sound asleep. I went up to our room and judged I would take a nap myself. I found that sweet Miss Sophia standing in her door which was next to ours and she took me in her room and shut the door very soft and asked me if I liked her and I said I did and she asked me if I would do something for her and not tell anybody and I said I would. And then she said she'd forgot her testament and left it in the seat of church between two other books and would I slip out quiet and go there and fetch to her and not say nothing to nobody. I said I would so I slid out and slipped off up the road and there weren't anybody at the church except maybe a hog or two for there weren't any lock on the door and hogs like a punching floor in the summertime because it's cool. If you notice most folks don't go to church only when they've got to but a hog is different. Says I to myself something's up it ain't natural for a girl to be in such a sweat about a testament so I give it a shake and out drops a little piece of paper with half past two road on it with a pencil. I ransacked it but couldn't find anything else. I couldn't make anything out of that so I put the paper in the book again and when I got home and upstairs there was Miss Sophia in her door waiting for me. She pulled me in and shut the door then she looked in the testament till she found the paper and as soon as she read it she looked glad and before her body could think she grabbed me and give me a squeeze and said I was the best boy in the world and not to tell anybody. She was mighty red in the face for a minute and her eyes lighted up and it made her powerful pretty. I was a good deal astonished but when I got my breath I asked her what the paper was about and she asked me if I had read it and I said no and she asked me if I could read writing and I told her no only course hand and then she said the paper weren't anything but a bookmark to keep her place and I might go and play now. I went off down to the river studying over this thing and pretty soon I noticed that my nigger was falling along behind. When we was out of sight of the house he looked back in around a second and then comes a running and says, Mars George if you'll come down into this swamp I'll show you a whole stack of water moccasins. Thinks I, that's my decurious, he said that yesterday. He ought to know a body don't love water moccasins enough to go around hunting for them. What is he up to anyway? So I says, all right, try to head. I followed a half a mile then he struck out over the swamp and waited ankle deep as much as another half mile. We come to a little flat piece of land which was dry and very thick with trees and bushes and vines and he says, you shove right in there just a few steps, Mars George dies where they is. I see them before I don't care to see them no more. Then he slopped right along and went away and pretty soon the trees hit him. I poked into the place of ways and come to a little open patch as big as a bedroom all hung around with vines and found a man lying there asleep. And by jeans it was my old Jim. I waked him up and I reckoned it was going to be a grand surprise to him to see me again, but it weren't. He nearly cried, he was so glad, but he weren't surprised. Said he swung along behind me that night and heard me yell every time, but doesn't answer because he didn't want nobody to pick him up and take him into slavery again. Says he, I got hurt a little and couldn't swim fast. So I was a considerable ways behind you toward the last. When you landed I reckoned I could catch up with you on the land doubt having to shout at you, but when I see that house I begin to go slow. I was off too far to hear what they say to you. I was afraid of the dogs, but when it does all quiet again I know Jews in the house, so I struck out for the woods to wait for day. Early in the morning some of the niggers come along and go into the fields and they took me and show me this place where the dogs can't track me on the counts of the water and it brings me truck to eat every night and tells me how you's are getting along. Why didn't you tell my Jack to fetch me here sooner, Jim? Well, to aren't no use to stirb you hook till we could do something, but we's all right now. I've been abiding pots and pans and vitals as I got a chance and a patching up the raft nights when what raft, Jim? Our old raft. You mean to say our old raft weren't smashed by all the flinders? No, she weren't. She was tore up a good deal, one end of her was, but they weren't no great harm done. Only our traps was most all lost. If we hadn't dived so deep and swum so fur under the water and the night hadn't been so dark and we weren't so scared and been such punkin' heads as to say it is, we deceived the raft, but it's just as well we didn't because now she's all fixed up again most as good as new and we's got a new lot of stuff in the place of what was lost. Why, how did you get hold of the raft again, Jim? Did you catch her? How I went to catch her and I out in the woods. No, some of the niggers found her catched on a snag along here in the bend and they hid it in a creek amongst the willers and they were so much drawn about wishing them she belonged to the most that I come to hear about it pretty soon. So I ups and settles the trouble by telling them she don't belong to none of them but to you and me and I asked them if they'd go on to grab a young white gentleman's property and get a hiding for it. Then I get him 10 cents apiece and they is mighty well satisfied and wish some old rafts had come along and make them rich again. They's mighty good to me these niggers is and whatever I want some to do for me I don't have to ask them twice, honey. That jack's a good nigger and pretty smart. Yes he is, he ain't ever told me you was here told me to come and he'd show me a lot of water moccasins. If anything happens he ain't mixed up in it. He can say he'd never seen us together and it'll be the truth. I don't want to talk much about the next day. I reckon I'll cut it pretty short. I waked up about dawn and was a going to turn over and go to sleep again when I noticed how still it was. Didn't seem to be anybody stirring. That weren't usual. Next I noticed that buck was up and gone. Well I gets up a wondering and goes downstairs. Nobody around. Everything is still as a mouse. Just the same outside. Thinks I, what does it mean? Down by the wood pile I comes across my jack and says, what's it all about? Says he, don't you know my George? No says I, I don't. Well then Ms. Sophie has run off. Did she has? She run off in the night sometime. Nobody don't know just when. Run off to get married to that young Hawny Shepardson, you know, at least way so they speck. The family found it out about half an hour ago. Maybe a little more. And I tell you they want no time lost. Sit you know the hurrying up of guns and horses you never see. The woman folks has gone for to stir up the relations and old Mars Saul and the boys took the guns and rode up the river road for to try to catch that young man and kill him for he can't get across the river with Ms. Sophia. I reckon they's going to be my the rough times. Buck went off that wake me up. Well I reckon he did. They want Gwanda mix you up in it. Mars Buck he loaded up his gun and allowed he's going to fetch Homer Shepardson or bust. Well there'll be plenty of them there I reckon. And you bet he'll fetch one if he gets a chance. I took up the river road as hard as I could put. By and by I begin to hear guns a good ways off. When I came inside of the log store in the wood pile where the steamboats lands, I worked along under the trees and brushed till I got to a good place. And then I clump up into the forks of a cottonwood that was out of reach and watched. There was a wood rank four foot high little ways in front of the tree. And first I was going to hide behind that but maybe it was luckier I didn't. There was four or five men cavorting around on their horses in the open place before the log store cussing and yelling and trying to get at a couple of young chaps that was behind the wood rank alongside of the steamboat landing. But they couldn't come it. Every time one of them showed himself on the river side of the wood pile he got shot at. The two boys was squatting back to back behind the pile so they could watch both ways. By and by the men stopped cavorting around and yelling. They started riding towards the store. Then up gets one of the boys, draws a steady bead over the wood rank and drops one of them out of his saddle. All the men jumped off their horses and grabbed the hurt one and started to carry him to the store and that minute the two boys started on the run. They got halfway to the tree I was in before the men noticed. Then the men see them and jumped on their horses and took out after them. They gained on the boys but it didn't do no good. The boys had too good a start. They got to the wood pile that was in front of my tree and slipped in behind it and so they had the bulge on the men again. One of the boys was Buck and the other was a slim young chap about 19 years old. The men ripped around a while and then rode away. As soon as they was out of sight I sung out to Buck and told him. He didn't know what to make of my voice coming out of the tree at first. He was awful surprised. He told me to watch out sharp and let him know when the men come inside again. Said they was up to some devil men or other wouldn't be gone long. I wished I was out of that tree but I doesn't come down. Buck began to cry and rip and loud that him and his cousin Joe that was the other young chap would make up for this day yet. He said his father and his two brothers was killed and two or three of the enemy said the shepherds and slayed for them in ambush. Buck said his father and brothers ought to waited for their relations. Shepherds and was too strong for them. I asked him what was become a young Harnie and Miss Sophia. He said they'd got across the river and was safe. I was glad of that but the way Buck did take on because he didn't manage to kill Harnie that day he shot at him. I ain't ever heard anything like it. All of a sudden, bang, bang, bang goes three or four guns. The men had slipped around through the woods and come in from behind without their horses. The boys jumped for the river, both of them hurt. And as they swum down the current the men running along the bank shooting at them and singing out, kill them, kill them. It made me so sick I almost fell out of the tree. I ain't going to tell all that happened. It would make me sick again if I was to do that. I wished I hadn't ever come assured that not to see such things. I ain't ever going to get shut of them. Lots of times I dream about them. I stayed in the tree till it begun to get dark, afraid to come down. Sometimes I heard guns away off in the woods and twice I seen little gangs of men gallop past the log store with guns so I reckoned the trouble was still going on. I was mighty downhearted so I made up my mind I wouldn't ever go near that house again because I reckoned I was to blame somehow. I judged that that piece of paper meant that Miss Sophia was to meet Harnes somewhere's at half past two and run off. And I judged I ought to told her father about that paper and the curious way she acted and then maybe he would have locked her up and this awful mess wouldn't ever happened. When I got out of the tree I crept along down the river bank apiece and found the two bodies laying in the edge of the water and tugged at them till I got them ashore. Then I covered up their faces and got away as quick as I could. I cried a little when I was covering up Buck's face for he was mighty good to me. It was just dark now. I never went near the house but struck through the woods and made for the swamp. Jim weren't on his island so I tramped off in a hurry for the creek and crowded through the willows, red hot to jump aboard and get out of that awful country. The raft was gone. My souls but I was scared. I couldn't get my breath for most a minute. Then I raised a yell. A voice not 25 foot from me says, Good land, is that you honey? Don't make no noise. It was Jim's voice. Nothing ever sounded so good before. I run along the bank apiece and got aboard and Jim he grabbed me and hugged me. He was so glad to see me. He says, laws bless you child. I was right down show you's dead again. Jack's been here. He say, he reckon you's been shot cause you didn't come home no more. So I just this minute are starting to raft down towards the mouth of the creek. Sows to be all ready for to shove out and leave soon as Jack comes again and tells me for certain you is dead. Lawsy, I was mighty glad to get you back again honey. I says, all right. That's mighty good. They won't find me and they'll think I've been killed and floated down the river. There's something up there that'll help them think so. So don't you lose no time Jim but just shove off for the big water as fast as ever you can. I never felt easy till the raft was two mile below there and out in the middle of the Mississippi. Then we hung up our signal lantern and judged that we was free and safe once more. I hadn't had a bite to eat since yesterday. So Jim, he got out some corn dodgers and buttermilk and pork and cabbage and greens. There ain't nothing in the world so good when it's cooked right. And whilst I eat my supper, we talked and had a good time. I was powerful glad to get away from the feuds and so was Jim to get away from the swamp. We said there weren't no home like a raft after all. Other places do seem so cramped up and smothery but a raft don't. You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft. End of Chapter 18. Recording by Barony. Chapter 19 of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. Chapter 19. Two or three days and nights went by. I reckon I might say they swum by. They slid along so quiet and smooth and lovely. Here is the way we put in the time. It was a monstrous big river down there, sometimes a mile and a half wide. We run nights and laid up and hid day times. Soon as night was most gone, we stopped navigating and tied up, nearly always in the dead water under a tow head and then cut young cotton woods and willows and hid the raft with them. Then we set out the lines. Next we slid into the river and had a swim, so as to freshen up and cool off. Then we sat down on the sandy bottom where the water was about knee deep and watched the daylight come. Not a sound anywhere, perfectly still. Just like the whole world was asleep, only the bullfrogs are cluttering maybe. The first thing to see looking away over the water was a kind of dull line. That was the woods on Tother's side. You couldn't make nothing else out. Then a pale place in the sky. Then more paleness spreading around. Then the river softened up way off and weren't black anymore but gray. You could see little dark spots drifting along ever so far away, trading scows and such things and long black streaks, rafts. Sometimes you could hear a sweep squeaking or jumbled up voices it was so still and sounds came so far. And by and by you could see a streak on the water which you knew by the look of the streak that there's a snake there in a swift current which breaks on it and makes that streak look that way. And you see the mist curl up off the water and the east reddens up and the river and you make out a log cabin in the edge of the woods away on the bank on Tother's side of the river being a woodyard likely and piled by them cheats so you can throw a dog through it anywhere. Then the nice breeze springs up and comes fanning you from over there so cool and fresh and sweet to smell on account of the woods and the flowers but sometimes not that way because they've left dead fish lying around, guards and such and they do get pretty rang. And next you've got the full day and everything smiling in the sun and the songbirds just going it. A little smoke couldn't be noticed now so we would take some fish off of the lines and cook up a hot breakfast. And afterwards we would watch the lonesomeness of the river and kind of lazy along and by and by lazy off to sleep. Wake up by and by and look to see what done it and maybe see a steamboat coughing along upstream so far off towards the other side you couldn't tell nothing about her only whether she was a stern wheel or a side wheel. Then for about an hour there wouldn't be nothing to hear nor nothing to see just solid lonesomeness. Next you'd see a raft sliding by a way off yonder and maybe a galoot on it chopping because they're almost always doing it on a raft. You'd see the ax flash and come down, you don't hear nothing, you see that ax go up again and by the time it's above the man's head then you hear the chunk. It had took all that time to come over the water. So we would put in the day lazing around listening to the stillness. Once there was a thick fog and the rafts and things that went by was beating tin pans so the steamboats wouldn't run over them. A scow or a raft went by so close we could hear them talking and cussing and laughing, heard them playing, but we couldn't see no sign of them. It made you feel crawly. It was like spirits carrying on that way in the air. Jim said he believed it was spirits but I says, no spirits wouldn't say during the darn fog. Soon as it was night out we shoved. When we got her out into the middle we let her alone and let her float wherever the current wanted her to. Then we lit the pipes and dangled our legs in the water and talked about all kinds of things. We was always naked day and night whenever the mosquitoes would let us. The new clothes bucks folks made for me was too good to be comfortable and besides I didn't go much on clothes know-how. Sometimes we'd have that whole river all to ourselves for the longest time. Yonder was the banks and the islands across the water and maybe a spark which was a candle in a cabin window and sometimes on the water you could see a spark or two on a raft or a scow you know or maybe you could hear a fiddle or a song coming over from one of them crafts. It's lovely to live on a raft. We had the sky up there all speckled with stars and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them and discuss about whether they was made or only just happened. Jim he allowed they was made but I allowed they happened. I judged it would have took too long to make so many. Jim said the moon could have laid them while that looked kind of reasonable so I didn't say nothing against it because I've seen a frog lay most as many so of course it could be done. We used to watch the stars that fell too and see them streak down. Jim allowed they'd got spoiled and was hove out of the nest. Once or twice of a night we would see a steamboat slipping along in the dark and now and then she would belch a whole world of sparks up out of her chimblies and they would rain down in the river and look awful pretty. Then she would turn a corner and her lights would wink out and her pow wow shot off and leave the river still again and by and by her waves would get to us a long time after she was gone and juggle the raft a bit and after that you couldn't hear nothing for you couldn't tell how long except maybe frogs or something. After midnight the people on shore went to bed and then for two or three hours the shores was black no more sparks in the cabin windows. These sparks was our clock the first one that showed again meant morning was coming so we hunted a place to hide and tie up right away. One morning about daybreak I found a canoe and crossed over a chute to the main shore it was only two hundred yards and paddled about a mile up a creek amongst the cypress woods to see if I couldn't get some berries. Just as I was passing a place where a kind of a cow path crossed the creek here comes a couple of men tearing up the path as tight as they could put it. I thought I was a goner for whenever anybody was after anybody I judged it was me or maybe Jim. I was about to dig out from there in a hurry but they was pretty close to me then and sung out and begged me to save their lives said they hadn't been doing nothing and was being chased for it said there was men and dogs are coming they wanted to jump right in but I says don't you do it I don't hear the dogs and horses yet you've got time to crowd through the brush and get up the creek a little ways then you take to the water and wade down to me and get in that'll throw the dogs off the scent they'd done it and as soon as they was aboard I lit out for our toe head and in about five or ten minutes we heard the dogs and the men away off shouting we heard them come along towards the creek but couldn't see them they seemed to stop and fool around a while then as we got further and further away all the time we couldn't hardly hear them at all by the time we had left a mile of woods behind us and struck the river everything was quiet and we paddled over to the toe head and hid in the cotton woods and was safe one of these fellows was about seventy or upwards and had a bald head and very gray whiskers he had an old battered up slouch hat on and a greasy blue woolen shirt and ragged old blue jeans britches stuffed into his boot tops and home knit galluses no he only had one he had an old long-tailed blue jeans coat with slick brass buttons flung over his arm and both of them had big, fat, ratty looking carpet bags the other fellow was about thirty and dressed about as ornery after breakfast we all laid off and talked and the first thing that came out was that these chaps didn't know one another what got you into trouble says the bald head to tether chap well I'd been selling an article to take the tartar off the teeth and it does take it off too and generally the enamel along with it but I stayed about one night longer than I ought to and was just in the act of sliding out when I ran across you on the trail this side of town and you told me they were coming and begged me to help you to get off so I told you I was expecting trouble myself and would scatter out with you that's the whole yarn, what's your yarn? well I'd been a run in a little temperance revival there about a week and was the pet of the women folks big and little for I was making it mighty warm for the rummies I tell you and taken as much as five or six dollars a night ten cents ahead children and niggers free and business had grown all the time when somehow or another a little report got around last night that I had a way of putting in my time with a private jug on the sly a nigger rousted me out this morning and told me the people was gathering on the quiet with their dogs and horses and they'd be along pretty soon and give me about half an hour start and then run me down if they could and if they got me they'd tar and feather me and ride me on a rail sure I didn't wait for no breakfast I weren't hungry old man said the young one I reckon we might double team it together what do you think I ain't undisposed what's your line mainly drawer printer by trade do a little in patent medicines theater actor tragedy you know take a turn to mesmerism and for knowledge you when there's a chance teach singing geography school for a change sling a lecture sometimes all I do lots of things most anything that comes handy so it ain't work what's your lay I've done considerable in the doctoring way in my time laying on a hands is my best hold for cancer and paralysis and such things and I can tell a fortune pretty good when I've got somebody along to find out the facts for me preaches my line to and work in camp meetings and missionary in around nobody never said anything for a while then the young man hovah sigh and says alas what are you alas and about says the bald head to think I should have lived to be leading such a life and be degraded down into such company and he began to wipe the corner of his eye with a rag during your skin ain't the company good enough for you says the bald head pretty pertin upish yes it is good enough for me it's as good as I deserve for who fetched me so low when I was so high I did myself I don't blame you gentlemen far from it I don't blame anybody I deserve it all let the cold world do its worst one thing I know there's a grave somewhere for me the world may go on just as it's always done and take everything from me loved one's property everything but it can't take that someday I'll lie down in it and forget it all and my poor broken heart will be at rest he went on a wiping brought your poor broken heart says the bald head what are you even your poor broken heart at us for we ain't done nothing no I know you haven't I ain't blaming you gentlemen I brought myself down yes I did it myself it's right I should suffer perfectly right I don't make any moan brought you down from war where was you brought down from I you would not believe me the world never believes let it pass tis no matter the secret of my birth the secret of your birth do you mean to say gentlemen says the young man very solemn I will reveal it to you for I feel I may have confidence in you by rights I am a duke Jim's eyes bugged out when he heard that and I reckon minded too then the bald head says no you can't mean it yes my great-grandfather eldest son of the Duke of Bridgewater fled to this country about the end of the last century to breathe the pure air of freedom married here and died leaving a son his own father dying about the same time the second son of the late Duke seized the titles and estates the infant real duke was ignored I am the lineal descendant of that infant I am the rightful Duke of Bridgewater and here am I forlorn torn from my highest state hunted of men despised by the cold world ragged worn heartbroken and degraded to the companionship of felons on a raft Jim pitied him ever so much and so did I we tried to comfort him but he said it weren't much use he couldn't be much comforted said if we was a mind to acknowledge him that would do him more good than most anything else so we said we would if he would tell us how he said we ought to bow when we spoke to him and say your grace or my lord or your lordship and he wouldn't mind it if we called him plain Bridgewater which he said was a title anyway and not a name and one of us ought to wait on him at dinner and do any little thing for him that he wanted done well that was all easy so we done it all through dinner Jim stood around and waited on him and says will your grace have some a diss or some a dat and so on and a body could see it was mighty pleasing to him but the old man got pretty silent by and by didn't have much to say and didn't look pretty comfortable over all that petting that was going on around that Duke he seemed to have something on his mind so along in the afternoon he says looky here Bilgewater he says I'm nation sorry for you but you ain't the only person that's had troubles like that no no you ain't you ain't the only person that's been snaked down wrongfully out in the high place alas no you ain't the only person that's had a secret of his birth and by jing's he begins to cry hold what do you mean Bilgewater can I trust you says the old man still sort of sobbing to the bitter death he took the old man by the hand and squeezed it and says that secret of your being speak Bilgewater I am the late Dauphin you bet you Jim and me stared this time then the Duke says you are what yes my friend it is too true your eyes is looking at this very moment on the poor disappeared Dauphin Louis the 17 son of Louis the 16 in Mary Antoinette you at your age no you mean you're the late Charlemagne you must be six or seven hundred years old at the very least trouble has done it Bilgewater trouble has done it trouble has brung these gray hairs and this premature balditude yes gentlemen you see before you in blue jeans and misery the wanderin exiled trampled on and suffering rightful king of France well he cried and took on so that me and Jim didn't know hardly what to do we was so sorry and so glad and proud we'd got him with us too so we set in like we done before with the Duke and tried to comfort him but he said it weren't no use nothing but to be dead and done with it all could do him any good though he said it often made him feel easier and better for a while if people treated him according to his rights and got down on one knee to speak to him and always called him Your Majesty and waited on him first at meals and didn't set down in his presence till he asked them so Jim and me set to majestying him and doing this and that and tether for him and standing up till he told us we might set down this done him heaps of good and so he got cheerful and comfortable but the Duke kind of soured on him and didn't look a bit satisfied with the way things was going still the King acted real friendly towards him and said the Duke's great-grandfather and all the other Duke's of Bilgewater was a good deal thought of by his father and was allowed to come to the palace considerable but the Duke stayed huffy a good while till by and by the King says like as not we got to be together a blamed long time on this here raft Bilgewater and so what's the use of your being sour it'll only make things uncomfortable it ain't my fault I weren't born a Duke it ain't your fault you weren't born a King so what's the use to worry make the best of things the way you find them says I that's my motto this ain't no bad thing that we've struck here plenty grub and an easy life come give us your hand Duke and let's all be friends the Duke done it and Jim and me was pretty glad to see it it took away all the uncomfortableness and we felt mighty good over it because it would have been a miserable business to have any unfriendliness on the raft for what you want above all things on a raft is for everybody to be satisfied and feel right and kind towards the others it didn't take me long to make up my mind that these liars weren't no King's nor Duke's at all but just low down humbugs and frauds but I never said nothing never let on kept it to myself it's the best way then you don't have no quarrels and don't get into no trouble if they wanted us to call them King's and Duke's I hadn't no objections long as it would keep peace in the family and it weren't no use to tell Jim so I didn't tell him if I never learned nothing else out of path I learned that the best way to get along with his kind of people is to let them have their own way end of chapter nineteen recording by Tricia G chapter twenty of the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Bridget the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain chapter twenty they asked us considerable many questions wanted to know what we covered up the raft that way for and laid by in the daytime instead of running was Jim a runaway nigger? says I goodness sakes, would a runaway nigger run south? no they allowed he wouldn't I had to account for things some way so I says my folks was living in Pike County in Missouri where I was born and they all died off but me and Pa and my brother Ike Pa he allowed he'd break up and go down and live with Uncle Ben who's got a little one horse place on the river forty four mile below Orleans Pa was pretty poor and had some debts so when he'd squared up there weren't nothing left but sixteen dollars in our nigger Jim that weren't enough to take us fourteen hundred mile deck passage no no other way well when the river rose Pa had a streak of luck one day he catch this piece of a raft so we reckoned we'd go down to Orleans on it Pa's luck didn't hold out a steamboat run over the forward corner of the raft one night and we all went overboard and dove under the wheel Jim and me come up alright but Pa was drunk and Ike was only four years old so they never come up no more well for the next day or two we had considerable trouble because people was always coming out in skiffs and trying to take Jim away from me saying they believed he was a runaway nigger we don't run day times no more now nights they don't bother us the Duke says leave me alone to cipher out away so we can run in the daytime if we want to I'll think the thing over I'll invent a plan that'll fix it we'll let it alone for today because of course we don't want to go by that town yonder in daylight it mightn't be healthy towards night it begun to darken up and look like rain the heat lightning was squirting around low down in the sky and the leaves was beginning to shiver it was going to be pretty ugly it was easy to see that so the Duke and the King went to overhauling our wigwam to see what the beds was like my bed was a straw tick better than Jim's which was a corn shuck tick there's always cobs around about in a shuck tick and they poke into you and hurt and when you roll over the dry shuck sound like he was rolling over in a pile of dead leaves it makes such a rustling that you wake up well the Duke allowed he would take my bed but the King allowed he wouldn't he says I should reckon the difference in rank would have suggested to you that a corn shuck bed weren't just fitting for me to sleep on your grace will take the shuck bed yourself Jim and me was in a sweat again for a minute being afraid there is going to be some more trouble amongst them so we was pretty glad when the Duke says tis my fate to be always ground into the mire under the iron heel of oppression misfortune has broken my once-hottie spirit I yield I submit tis my fate I'm alone in the world let me suffer I can bear it we got away as soon as it was good and dark the King told us to stand well out towards the middle of the river and not show a light till we got a long ways below the town we come in sight of the little bunch of lights by and by that was the town you know and slid by about a half mile out alright when we was three quarters of a mile below we hoisted up our signal lantern and about ten o'clock it come on to rain and blow and thunder and lighten like everything so the King told us both to stay on watch till the weather got better then him and the Duke crawled into the wigwam and turned in for the night it was my watch below till twelve but I wouldn't have turned in anyway if I'd hit a bed because a body don't see such a storm as that every day in the week not by a long sight my souls how the winded scream along and every second or two there'd come a glare that lit up the whitecaps for a half a mile around and you'd see the islands looking dusty through the rain and the trees thrashing around in the wind then comes a whole whack bum bum bumble umble um bum bum bum bum and the thunder would go rumbling and grumbling away and quit and then rip comes another flash and another socked allager the waves most washed me off the raft sometimes but I hadn't any clothes on and didn't mind we didn't have no trouble about snags the lightning was glaring and flittering around so constant that we could see them plenty soon enough to throw her head this way or that and miss them I had the middle watch you know but I was pretty sleepy by that time so Jim said he would stand the first half of it for me he was always mighty good that way, Jim was I crawled into the wigwam but the King and the Duke had their legs sprawled around so there weren't no show for me so I laid outside I didn't mind the rain because it was warm and the waves weren't running so high now about two they come up again though and Jim was going to call me but he changed his mind because he reckoned they weren't high enough yet to do any harm but he was mistaken about that for pretty soon all of a sudden along comes a regular ripper and washed me overboard it most killed Jim a laughing he was the easiest nigger to laugh that ever was anyway I took the watch and Jim he laid down and snored away but by and by the storm led up for good and all and the first cabin light that showed I roused it him out and we slid the raft into hiding quarters for the day the King gout out an old ratty deck of cards after breakfast and him and the Duke played seven up a while five cents a game then they got tired of it and allowed they would lay out a campaign as they called it the Duke went down into his carpet bag and fetched up a lot of little printed bills and read them out loud one bill said the celebrated Dr. Armand de Montalban of Paris would lecture on the science of phrenology at such and such a place on the blank day of blank at ten cents admission and furnished charts of character at twenty five cents apiece the Duke said that was him in another bill he was the world-renowned Shakespearean tragedy in Garrick the Younger of Drury Lane, London in other bills he had a lot of other names and done other wonderful things like finding water and gold with a divining rod dissipating witch spells and so on by and by he says but the histrionic muse is the darling have you ever tried the Borge royalty no says the King you shall then before your three days older fallen grandeur says the Duke the first good town we come to will hire a hall and do the sword fight in Richard III and the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet how does that strike you I'm in up to the hub for anything that will pay Bilgewater but you see I don't know nothing about play acting and he ever seen much of it I was too small on Papus to have him at the palace do you reckon you can learn me easy all right I'm just a freezing for something fresh anyway let's commence right away so the Duke he told him all about who Romeo was and who Juliet was and said he was used to being Romeo so the King could be Juliet but if Juliet such a young gal Duke my peeled head and my white whiskers is going to look uncommon odd on her maybe no don't you worry these country jakes won't ever think of that besides you know you'll be in costume and that makes all the difference in the world Juliet's in a balcony enjoying the moonlight before she goes to bed and she's got on her nightgown and her ruffled nightcap here are the costumes for the parts he got out to a three curtain calico suits which he said was medieval armor for Richard III and other chap and a long white cotton night shirt and a ruffled nightcap to match the king was satisfied so the Duke got out his book and read the parts over in the most splendid spread eagle way prancing around and acting at the same time to show how it got to be done then he give the book to the king and told him to get his part by heart there was a little one horse town about three mile down the bend and after dinner the Duke said he had ciphered out his idea about how to run in daylight without it being dangerous for Jim so he allowed he would go to the town and fix that thing the king allowed he would go to and see if he couldn't strike something we was out of coffee so Jim said I'd better go along with them in the canoe and get some when we got there there weren't nobody stirring streets empty and perfectly dead and still like Sunday we found a sick nigger sending himself in a backyard and he said everybody that weren't too young or too sick or too old was gone to camp meeting about two mile back in the woods the king got the directions and allowed he'd go and work that camp meeting for all it was worth and I might go too the Duke said what he was after was a printing office we found it a little bit of a concern up over a carpenter shop carpenters and printers all gone to the meeting and no doors locked it was a dirty littered up place and had ink marks and handbills with pictures of horses and runaway niggers on them all over the walls the Duke shed his coat and said he was all right now so me and the king lit out for camp meeting we got there in about a half an hour fairly dripping for it was a most awful hot day there was as much as a thousand people there from twenty mile around the woods was full of teams and wagons hitched everywhere feeding out of the wagon troughs and stomping to keep off the flies there was sheds made out of poles and roofed over with branches where they had lemonade and gingerbread to sell and piles of watermelons and green corn and such like truck the preaching was going on under the same kinds of sheds only they was bigger and held crowds of people the benches was made out of outside slabs of logs with holes bored in the round side to drive sticks into for legs they didn't have no backs the preachers had high platforms to stand on at one end of the sheds the woman had on sunbonnets and some had lindsey woozy frocks some gingham ones and a few of the young ones had on calico some of the young men was barefooted and some of the children didn't have on any clothes but just a tolin and shirt some of the old woman was knitting and some of the young folks was courting on the sly the first shed we come to the preacher was lining out of him he lined out two lines everybody sung it and it was kind of grand to hear it there was so many of them and they done it in such a rousing way then he lined out two more for them to sing and so on the people woke up more and more and sung louder and louder and towards the end some begun to groan and some begun to shout then the preacher begun to preach and begun in earnest too and went weaving first to one side of the platform and then the other and then leaning down over the front of it with his arms in his body going all the time and shouting his words out with all his might and every now and then he would hold up his bible and spread it open and kind of pass it around this way and that shouting it's the brazen serpent in the wilderness look upon it and live and the people would shout glory amen and so he went on and the people groaning and crying and saying amen oh come to the mourners bench come blackwood sin amen come sick and sore amen come lame and halt and blind amen come poor and needy sunk in shame amen come all that's worn and soiled and suffering come with a broken spirit come with a contrite heart come in your rags and sin and dirt the waters that cleanses free the door of heaven stands open oh enter in and be at rest amen glory glory hallelujah and so on you couldn't make out what the preacher said anymore on account of the shouting and crying folks got up everywhere in the crowd and work their way just by main strength to the mourners bench with the tears running down their faces and when all the mourners had got up there to the front benches in a crowd they sung and shouted and flung themselves down on the straw just crazy and wild well the first I knowed the king got a going and you could hear him over everybody and next he went a charging up onto the platform and the preacher he begged him to speak to the people and he done it he told them he was a pirate been a pirate for thirty years out in the Indian Ocean and his crew was thinned out considerable last spring in a fight and he was home now to take out some fresh men and thanks to goodness he'd been robbed last night and put a shore off a steamboat without a scent and he was glad of it it was the blessedest thing that ever happened to him because he was a changed man now and happy for the first time in his life and poor as he was he was going to start right off and work his way back to the Indian Ocean and put in the rest of his life trying to turn the pirates into the true path for he could do it better than anybody else being acquainted with all pirate crews in that ocean and though it would take him a long time to get there without money he would get there anyway and every time he convinced the pirate he would say to him don't you thank me don't you give me no credit it all belongs to them dear people in poke bill camp meeting natural brothers and benefactors of the race and that dear preacher there the truest friend a pirate ever had and then he busted into tears and so did everybody then somebody sings out take up a collection for him take up a collection well a half a dozen made a jump to do it but somebody sings out let him pass the hat around then everybody said it the preacher too so the king went all through the crowd with his hat swabbing his eyes and blessing the people and praising them and thanking them for being so good to the poor pirates away off there and every little while the prettiest kind of girls with the tears running down their cheeks would up and ask him would he let them kiss him for to remember him by and he always done it and some of them he hugged and kissed as many as five or six times and he was invited to stay a week and everybody wanted him to live in their houses and said they think it was an honor but he said as this was the last day of the camp meeting he couldn't do no good and besides he was in a sweat to get to the indian ocean right off and go to work on the pirates when we got back to the raft and he come to count up he found he had collected eighty seven dollars and seventy five cents and then he had fetched away a three gallon jug of whiskey to that he found under a wagon when he was starting home through the woods the king said take it all around it laid over any day he'd ever put in in the missionary in line he said it weren't no use talking he then stoned amount of shucks alongside of pirates to work a camp meeting with the duke was thinking he'd been doing pretty well till the king come to show up but after that he didn't think so so much he had set up and printed off two little jobs for farmers in that printing office horse-pills and took the money four dollars and he had gotten ten dollars worth of advertisements for the paper which he said he would put in for four dollars if they would pay in advance so they done it the price of the papers was two dollars a year but he took in three subscriptions for half a dollar a piece on condition of them paying him in advance they were going to pay in cordwood and onions as usual but he said he had just bought the concern and knocked down the price as low as he could afford it and was going to run it for cash he set up a little piece of poetry which he made himself out of his own head three verses kind of sweet and saddish the name of it was crush cold world this breaking heart and he left that all set up and ready to print in the paper and didn't charge nothing for it well he took in nine dollars and a half and said he'd done a pretty square days work for it then he showed us another little job he'd printed and hadn't charged for because it was for us he had a picture of a runaway nigger with a bundle on a stick over his shoulder and two hundred dollar reward under it the reading was all about jim and just described him to a dot it said he run away from st. jock's plantation forty mile below new orleans last winter and likely went north and whoever would catch him and send him back he could have the reward and expenses now says the duke after tonight we can run in the daytime if we want to whenever we see anybody coming we can tie jim hand and foot with a rope and lay him in the wigwam and show the sandbill and say we captured him up the river and were too poor to travel on a steamboat so we got this little raft on credit from our friends and are going down to get the reward handcuffs and chains would look still better on jim but it wouldn't go well with the story of us being so poor too much like jewelry ropes are the correct thing we must preserve the unities as we say on the boards we all said the duke was pretty smart and there couldn't be no trouble about running day times we judged we could make miles enough that night to get out of the reach of the powwow we reckon the duke's work in the printing office was going to make in that little town then we could boom right along if we wanted to we laid low and kept still and never shoved out till nearly ten o'clock then we slid by pretty wide away from the town and didn't hoist our lantern till we was clear out of sight of it when jim called me to take the watch at four in the morning he says huck, does you reckon we guine to run across any mo kings on this trip? no i says i reckon not well sissy that's alright then i don't mind one or two kings but that's enough this one's powerful drunk andy duke ain't much better i found jim had been trying to get him to talk french so he could hear what it was like but he said he had been in this country so long and had so much trouble he'd forgot it end of chapter twenty recording by bridgett chapter twenty one of the adventures of huckleberry finn this is a libravox recording all libravox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit libravox.org recording by glenn simonson the adventures of huckleberry finn by mark twain chapter twenty one it was after sun up now but we went right on and didn't tie up the king and the duke turned out by and by looking pretty rusty but after they jumped overboard and took a swim it chippered them up a good deal after breakfast the king he took a seat on the corner of the raft and pulled off his boots and rolled up his britches and let his legs dangle in the water so as to be comfortable and lit his pipe and went to get in his romeo and juliet by heart when he had got it pretty good him and the duke began to practice it together the duke had to learn him over and over again how to say every speech and he made him sigh and put his hand on his heart and after a while he said he'd done it pretty well only he says you mustn't bellow out romeo that way like a bull you must say it's soft and sick and languishy so romeo that is the idea for juliet's a dear sweet mere child of a girl you know and she don't bray like a jackass well next they got out a couple of long swords that the duke made out of oak laughs and begun to practice the sword fight the duke called himself richard the third and the way they laid on and pranced around the raft was grand to see but by and by the king tripped and fell overboard and after that they took a rest and had to talk about all kinds of adventures they'd had in other times along the river after dinner the duke says well cap it we'll want to make this a first class show you know so i guess we'll add a little more to it we want a little something to answer on course with anyway what's on course bills water the duke told him and then says i'll answer by doing a highland fling or the sailors horn pipe and you well let me see oh i've got it you can do hamlet soliloquy hamlet's witch hamlet soliloquy you know the most celebrated thing in shakespeare ah it's sublime sublime always fetches the house i haven't got it in the book i've only got one volume but i reckon i can piece it out from memory i'll just walk up and down a minute and see if i can call it back from recollections vaults so he went to marching up and down thinking and frowning horrible ever now and then then he would hoist up his eyebrows next he would squeeze his hand on his forehead and stagger back and kind of moan next he would sigh and next he'd let on to drop a tear it was beautiful to see by and by he got it he told us to give attention then he strikes a most noble attitude with one leg shoved forwards and his arms stretched away up and his head tilted back looking up at the sky and then he begins to rip and rave and grit his teeth and after that all through his speech he howled and spread around and swelled up his chest and just knocked the spots out of any acting ever i see before this is the speech i learned it easy enough while he was learning it to the king to be or not to be that is the bear bodkin that makes calamity of so long life for who would fartles bear tell bernham wood do come to duncinane but that the fear of something after death murders the innocent sleep great nature's second course it makes us rather sling the arrows of outrageous fortune than fly to others that we know not of there's the respect must give us pause wake duncin with thine knocking i would thou couldst for who would bear the whips and scorns of time the oppressor's wrong the proud man's contumely the law's delay and the quietess which his pangs might take in the dead waste and middle of the night when churchyard's yawn in customary suits of solemn black but that the undiscovered country from whose born no traveler returns breathes forth contagion on the world and thus the native hue of resolution like the poor caddy the adage is sickly dore with care and all the clouds that lowered over our house tops with this regard their currents turn awry and lose the name of action tis a consummation devoutly to be wished but soft you the pharaoh feel ya op not thy ponderous and marble jaws but get thee to a nunnery go well the old man he liked that speech and he might he soon got it so he could do it first rate it seemed like he was just born for it and when he had his hand in and was excited it was perfectly lovely the way he would rip and tear and rare up behind when he was getting it off the first chance we got the duke he had some show bills printed and after that for two or three days as we floated along the raft was a most uncommon lively place for there weren't nothing but sword fighting and rehearsing as the duke called it going on all the time one morning when we was pretty well down the state of arkansas we come inside of a little one horse town in a big bend so we tied up about three quarters of a mile above it in the mouth of a creek which was shut in like a tunnel by the cypress trees and all of us but jim took the canoe and went down there to see if there was any chance in that place for our show we struck it mighty lucky there was going to be a circus there that afternoon and the country people was already beginning to come in in all kinds of old shackley wagons and on horses the circus would leave before night so our show would have a pretty good chance the duke he hired the courthouse and we went around and stuck up our bills the red like this Shakespearean revival wonderful attraction for one night only the world renowned tragedians david garrick the younger of dreary lane theater london edmund keen the elder of the royal he market theater whitechapel pudding lane piccadilly london and the royal continental theaters in their sublime shakespearean spectacle entitled the balcony scene romeo and juliet romeo mister garrick juliet mister keen assisted by the whole strength of the company new costumes new scenery new appointments also the thrilling masterly and blood curling broadsword conflict in richard the third richard the third mister garrick richmond mister keen also by special request hamlet's immortal soliloquy by the illustrious keen done by him three hundred consecutive nights in paris for one night only on account of imperative european engagements admission twenty five cents children and servants ten cents then we went loafing around the town the stores and houses was most all old shackley dried up frame concerns that had never been painted they was set up three or four foot above ground on stilts so as to be out of reach of the water when the river was overflowed the houses had little gardens around them but they didn't seem to raise hardly anything in them but gypsum weeds and sunflowers and ash piles and old curled up boots and shoes and pieces of bottles and rags and played out tinware the fences was made of different kinds of boards nailed on at different times and leaned every which way and had gates that didn't generally have but one hinge a leather one some other fences had been whitewashed sometime or another but the duke said it was in clumbest time like enough there was generally hogs in the garden and people driving them out all the stores was along one street they had white domestic awnings in front and the country people hitched their horses to the awning posts there was empty dry goods boxes under the awnings and loafers roosting on them all day long whittling them with their barlow knives and chawn tobacco and gaping and yawning and stretching a mighty ornery lot they generally had on yellow straw hats most as white as an umbrella but didn't wear no coats nor waistcoats they called one another bill and buck and hank and joe and andy and talked lazy and drawly and used considerable many cuss words there was as many as one loafer leaning up against every awning post and he most always had his hands in his britches pockets except when he fetched them out to lend a chawn tobacco or scratch what a body was hearing amongst them all the time was give me a chawn tobacco hank cain't i ain't got but one chawn left ask bill maybe bill gives him a chawn maybe he lies and says he ain't got none some of them kinds of loafers never has a scent in the world nor a chawn tobacco of their own they get all their chawn by borrowing they say to a fellow i wish you'd lend me a chawn jack i'd just this minute give ben thompson the last chawn i had which is a lie pretty much every time it don't fool nobody but a stranger but jack ain't no stranger so he says you give him a chawn did ya so did your sister's cat's grandmother you pay me back the chawns you've already borrowed off of me leif buckner then i'll loan you one or two ton of it and won't charge you no back interest another well i did pay you back some of it once yes you did about six chaws you'd borrow store tobacco and pay back niggerhead store tobacco is flat black plug but these fellows mostly chose the natural leaf twisted when they borrow a chaw they don't generally cut it off with the knife but they set the plug in between their teeth and gnaw with their teeth and tug at the plug with their hands till they get it in two then sometimes the one that owns the tobacco looks mournful at it when it's handed back and says sarcastic here give me the chaw and you take the plug all the streets and lanes was just mud and they weren't nothing else but mud mud is black as tar and nigh about a foot deep in some places and two or three inches deep in all the places the hogs loafed and grunted around everywhere you'd see a muddy silo and a litter of pigs come lazing along the street and wallop herself right down in the way where folks had to walk around her and she'd stretch out and shut her eyes and wave her ears whilst the pigs was milking her and look as happy as if she was on salary and pretty soon you'd hear a loafer sing out hi so boy sick him tug and away the sigh would go squealing most horrible with the dog or two swinging to each ear and three or four dozen more coming and then you would see all the loafers get up and watch the thing out of sight and laugh at the fun and look grateful for the noise then they'd settle back again till there was a dog fight there couldn't anything wake them up all over and make them happy all over like a dog fight unless it might be putting turpentine on a stray dog and setting fire to him or tying a tin pan to his tail and see him run himself to death on the riverfront some of the houses was sticking out over the bank and they was bowed and bent and about ready to tumble in the people had moved out of them the bank was caved away under one corner of some others and that corner was hanging over people lived in them yet but it was dangerous because sometimes a strip of land is wide as a house caves in at a time sometimes a belt of land a quarter of a mile deep will start in and cave along and cave along till it all caves into the river one summer such a town as that has to be always moving back and back and back because the river's always gnawing at it the near it got to noon that day the thicker and thicker was the wagons and horses in the streets and more coming all the time families fetched their dinners with them from the country and eat them in the wagons there was considerable whiskey drinking going on and I seen three fights by and by somebody sings out here comes all bogs in from the country for his little old monthly drunk here it comes boys all the loafers looked glad i reckon they was used to having fun out of bogs one of them says wonder who he's going to talk this time if he'd had taught up all the men he's been a going to talk in the last twenty year he'd have considerable reputation now another one says i wish the old box and threatened me cousin i'd know i'd want to die for a thousand year bogs comes a turn along on his horse whooping and yelling like an engine and singing out clear the track there i'm on the warpath and the price of coffins is going to raise he was drunk and weaving about in his saddle he was over fifty year old and had a very red face everybody yelled at him and laughed at him and sassed him and he sassed back said he'd attend to them and lay them out in their regular turns but he couldn't wait now because he'd come to town to kill old colonel sure burn and his motto was meet first and spoon vitals to top off on he see me and wrote up and says why'd you come from boy you prepared to die then he wrote on i was scared but a man says he don't mean nothing he's always a carrying on like that when he's drunk he's the best naturedest old fool in arkansas never hurt nobody drunk nor sober bogs wrote up before the biggest store in town and bent his head down so he could see into the curtain of the on and then yells come out here sure burn come out and meet the man you swindled you're the hound i'm after and i might want to have you too and so he went on calling sure burn everything he could lay his tongue to and the whole street packed with people listening and laughing and going on by and by a proud-looking man about fifty five and he was a heaped the best dress man in that town too steps out of the store and the crowd drops back on each side to let him come he says to bogs mighty calm and slow he says i'm tired of this but i'll endure it till one o'clock till one o'clock mind no longer if you open your mouth against me only once after that time you can't travel so far but i will find you then he turns and goes in the crowd look mighty sober nobody stirred and there weren't no more laughing bogs rolled off black garden sure burn as loud as he could yell all down the street and pretty soon back he comes and stops before the store still keeping it up some men crowded around him and tried to get him to shut up but he wouldn't they told him it would be one o'clock in about fifteen minutes and so he must go home he must go right away but it didn't do no good he cussed away with all his might and throwed his hat down in the mud and rode over it and pretty soon he went a raging down the street again with his gray hair flying everybody that could get a chance at him tried their best to coax him off of his horse so they could lock him up and get him sober but it warn't no use up the street he would tear again and give sure burn another cussing by and by somebody says go for his daughter quit go for his daughter sometimes he'll listen to her if anybody can't persuade him she can so somebody started on a run i walked down street aways and stopped in about five or ten minutes here comes bogs again but not on his horse he was a reeling across the street towards me bare headed with a friend on both sides of him a hope of his arms and her hurrying him along he was quiet and looked uneasy and he won't hang him back any but was doing some of the hurrying himself somebody sings out bogs i looked over there to see who it was and it was that colonel sure burn he was standing perfectly still in the street and had a pistol raised in his right hand not aiming it but holding it out with a barrel tilted up towards the sky the same second i see a young girl coming on the run and two men with her bogs and the men turned round to see who called him and when they see the pistol the men jump to one side and the pistol barrel come down slow and steady to a level both barrels cocked bogs throws up both of his hands and says oh lord don't shoot bang goes the first shot and he staggers back clawing at the air bang goes the second one and he tumbles backwards onto the ground heavy and solid with his arms spread out that young girl screamed out and comes rushing and down she throws herself on her father crying and saying oh he's killed him he's killed him the crowd closed up around them and shouldered and jammed one another with their next stretch trying to see and people on the inside trying to shove them back and shouting back back give him air give him air colonel sure burn he tossed his pistol onto the ground and turned around on his heels and walked off they took bogs to a little drugstore the crowd pressing around just the same and the whole town following and I rushed and got a good place at the window where I was close to him and could see in they laid him on the floor and put one large bible under his head and opened another one and spread it on his breast but they tore open his shirt first and I seen where one of the bullets went in he made about a dozen long gasps his breast lifting the bible up when he drawed in his breath and letting it down again when he breathed it out and after that he laid still he was dead then they pulled his daughter away from him screaming and crying and took her off she was about sixteen and very sweet and gentle looking but awful pale and scared well pretty soon the whole town was there squirming and scruging and pushing and shoving to get at the window and have a look but people that had the places wouldn't give them up and folks behind them were saying all the time said now you looked enough you fellows taint right and taint fair for you to stay there all the time and never give nobody a chance other folks had their rights as well as you there was considerable drawing back so I slid out thinking maybe there was going to be trouble the streets was full and everybody was excited everybody that seen the shooting was telling how it happened and there was a big crowd packed around each one of these fellows stretching their necks and listening one long lanky man with long hair and a big white fur stovepipe hat on the back of his head and a crooked handle cane marked out the places on the ground where bog stood and where sureburn stood and the people following him around from one place to another and watching everything he'd done and bobbing their heads to show they understood and stooping a little and resting their hands on their thighs to watch and mark the places on the ground with his cane and then he stood up straight and stiff where sureburn had stood frowning and having his hat brimmed down over his eyes and sung out bogs and then fetched his cane down slow to a level and says bang staggered backwards says bang again and fell down flat on his back the people that had seen the thing said he'd done it perfect said it was just exactly the way it all happened then as much as a dozen people got out their bottles and treated him well by and by somebody said sureburn ought to be lynched in about a minute everybody was saying it so away they went mad and yelling and snatching down every clothesline that come to to do the hanging with end of chapter twenty one recording by glenn simonson in Omaha nebraska