Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (good book club books .TXT) 📖

I did wish Aunt Sally would come, and get done with me, and lick me, if she wanted to, and let me get away and tell Tom how we’d overdone this thing, and what a thundering hornet’s-nest we’d got ourselves into, so we could stop fooling around straight off, and clear out with Jim before these rips got out of patience and come for us.

At last she come and begun to ask me questions, but I couldn’t answer them straight, I didn’t know which end of me was up; because these men was in such a fidget now that some was wanting to start right NOW and lay for them desperadoes, and saying it warn’t but a few minutes to midnight; and others was trying to get them to hold on and wait for the sheep-signal; and here was Aunty pegging away at the questions, and me a-shaking all over and ready to sink down in my tracks I was that scared; and the place getting hotter and hotter, and the butter beginning to melt and run down my neck and behind my ears; and pretty soon, when one of them says, “I’M for going and getting in the cabin first and right now, and catching them when they come,” I most dropped; and a streak of butter come a-trickling down my forehead, and Aunt Sally she see it, and turns white as a sheet, and says:

“For the land’s sake, what is the matter with the child?  He’s got the brain-fever as shore as you’re born, and they’re oozing out!”

And everybody runs to see, and she snatches off my hat, and out comes the bread and what was left of the butter, and she grabbed me, and hugged me, and says:

“Oh, what a turn you did give me! and how glad and grateful I am it ain’t no worse; for luck’s against us, and it never rains but it pours, and when I see that truck I thought we’d lost you, for I knowed by the color and all it was just like your brains would be if—Dear, dear, whyd’nt you tell me that was what you’d been down there for, I wouldn’t a cared.  Now cler out to bed, and don’t lemme see no more of you till morning!”

I was up stairs in a second, and down the lightning-rod in another one, and shinning through the dark for the lean-to.  I couldn’t hardly get my words out, I was so anxious; but I told Tom as quick as I could we must jump for it now, and not a minute to lose—the house full of men, yonder, with guns!

His eyes just blazed; and he says:

“No!—is that so?  ain’t it bully!  Why, Huck, if it was to do over again, I bet I could fetch two hundred!  If we could put it off till—”

“Hurry!  Hurry!”  I says.  "Where’s Jim?”

“Right at your elbow; if you reach out your arm you can touch him.  He’s dressed, and everything’s ready.  Now we’ll slide out and give the sheep-signal.”

But then we heard the tramp of men coming to the door, and heard them begin to fumble with the pad-lock, and heard a man say:

“I told you we’d be too soon; they haven’t come—the door is locked. Here, I’ll lock some of you into the cabin, and you lay for ’em in the dark and kill ’em when they come; and the rest scatter around a piece, and listen if you can hear ’em coming.”

So in they come, but couldn’t see us in the dark, and most trod on us whilst we was hustling to get under the bed.  But we got under all right, and out through the hole, swift but soft—Jim first, me next, and Tom last, which was according to Tom’s orders.  Now we was in the lean-to, and heard trampings close by outside.  So we crept to the door, and Tom stopped us there and put his eye to the crack, but couldn’t make out nothing, it was so dark; and whispered and said he would listen for the steps to get further, and when he nudged us Jim must glide out first, and him last.  So he set his ear to the crack and listened, and listened, and listened, and the steps a-scraping around out there all the time; and at last he nudged us, and we slid out, and stooped down, not breathing, and not making the least noise, and slipped stealthy towards the fence in Injun file, and got to it all right, and me and Jim over it; but Tom’s britches catched fast on a splinter on the top rail, and then he hear the steps coming, so he had to pull loose, which snapped the splinter and made a noise; and as he dropped in our tracks and started somebody sings out: