Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Zombie Jim by Mark Twain, W. Bill Czolgosz Read Free Book Online Page A

you doin’ with this gun?"
    I judged he didn't know nothing about what he had been doing, so I says:
    "Somebody tried to get in, so I was laying for him."
    "Why didn't you roust me out?"
    "Well, I tried to, but I couldn't; I couldn't budge you."
    "Well, all right. Don't stand there palavering all day, but out with you and see if there's a fish on the lines for breakfast. I'll be along in a minute."
    He unlocked the door, and I cleared out up the river-bank. I noticed some pieces of limbs and such things floating down, and a sprinkling of bark; so I knowed the river had begun to rise. Pieces of people in there, too, on account of the graveyards bein’ so full that folks was dumping their loved ones in the water, nowadays. And maybe some few of them pieces might still been a little bit alive and attached to some wailin’ bagger who got himself too close to the edge.
    I reckoned I would have great times now if I was over at the town. The June rise used to be always luck for me; because as soon as that rise begins here comes cordwood floating down, and pieces of log rafts-sometimes a dozen logs together; so all you have to do is to catch them and sell them to the wood-yards and the sawmill.
    I went along up the bank with one eye out for pap and t'other one out for what the rise might fetch along. Well, all at once here comes a canoe; just a beauty, too, about thirteen or fourteen foot long, riding high like a duck. I shot head-first off of the bank like a frog, clothes and all on, and struck out for the canoe. I just expected there'd be somebody laying down in it, because people often done that to fool folks, and when a chap had pulled a skiff out most to it they'd raise up and laugh at him, and a fellow might get an awful fright ‘cause of all the unknown, unbranded baggers on the loose out there. But it warn't so this time. It was a drift-canoe sure enough, and I clumb in and paddled her ashore. Thinks I, the old man will be glad when he sees this-she's worth ten dollars. But when I got to shore pap wasn't in sight yet, and as I was running her into a little creek like a gully, all hung over with vines and willows, I struck another idea: I judged I'd hide her good, and then, ‘stead of taking to the woods when I run off, I'd go down the river about fifty mile and camp in one place for good, and not have such a rough time tramping on foot.
    It was pretty close to the shanty, and I thought I heard the old man coming all the time; but I got her hid; and then I out and looked around a bunch of willows, and there was the old man down the path a piece just drawing a bead on a bird with his gun. So he hadn't seen anything.
    When he got along I was hard at it taking up a “trot” line. He abused me a little for being so slow; but I told him I fell in the river, and that was what made me so long. I knowed he would see I was wet, and then he would be asking questions. We got five catfish off the lines and went home.
    I saw a group of young baggers up in the woods. Children, a few of them, what died of the fissythis and now come back. They was no harm or trouble. Didn't seem to know a thing in the world, like their eyes was blind and their ears was deaf and their tongues was dumb; and they just went about in rings, like there was no mind at all, but at least they wasn't mean and ferocious. Maybe they was looking for their mammies. I couldn't guess, really. One of ‘em, maybe the eldest of the bunch, looked to be in hard times. His right arm was hanging off by just a string, and the whole side of his face was caved in and festering black.
    He wouldn't be long, I figured, until the bugs eat to his brain-stem and turn his lights all out.
    While me an’ pap laid off after breakfast to sleep up, both of us being about wore out, I got to thinking that if I could fix up some way to keep pap and the widow from trying to follow me, it would be a certainer thing than trusting to luck to get far enough off before they missed me; you see, all