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that way myself, though I've always reckoned that looking at the new moon over your left shoulder is one of the carelessest and
foolishest things a body can do. Old Hank Bunker done it once, and bragged about it; and in less than two years he got drunk and fell
off of the shot-tower, and spread himself out so that he was just a kind of a layer, as you may say; and they slid him edgeways
between two barn doors for a coffin, and buried him so, so they say, but I didn't see it. Pap told me. But anyway it all come of looking
at the moon that way, like a fool.
Well, the days went along, and the river went down between its banks again; and about the first thing we done was to bait one of the
big hooks with a skinned rabbit and set it and catch a catfish that was as big as a man, being six foot two inches long, and weighed
over two hundred pounds. We couldn't handle him, of course; he would a flung us into Illinois. We just set there and watched him rip
and tear around till he drownded. We found a brass button in his stomach and a round ball, and lots of rubbage. We split the ball open
with the hatchet, and there was a spool in it. Jim said he'd had it there a long time, to coat it over so and make a ball of it. It was as big
a fish as was ever catched in the Mississippi, I reckon. Jim said he hadn't ever seen a bigger one. He would a been worth a good deal
over at the village. They peddle out such a fish as that by the pound in the market-house there; everybody buys some of him; his
meat's as white as snow and makes a good fry.
Next morning I said it was getting slow and dull, and I wanted to get a stirring up some way. I said I reckoned I would slip over the
river and find out what was going on. Jim liked that notion; but he said I must go in the dark and look sharp. Then he studied it over
and said, couldn't I put on some of them old things and dress up like a girl? That was a good notion, too. So we shortened up one of the
calico gowns, and I turned up my trouser-legs to my knees and got into it. Jim hitched it behind with the hooks, and it was a fair fit. I
put on the sun-bonnet and tied it under my chin, and then for a body to look in and see my face was like looking down a joint of
stove-pipe. Jim said nobody would know me, even in the daytime, hardly. I practiced around all day to get the hang of the things, and
by and by I could do pretty well in them, only Jim said I didn't walk like a girl; and he said I must quit pulling up my gown to get at
my britches-pocket. I took notice, and done better.
I started up the Illinois shore in the canoe just after dark.
I started across to the town from a little below the ferry-landing, and the drift of the current fetched me in at the bottom of the town. I
tied up and started along the bank. There was a light burning in a little shanty that hadn't been lived in for a long time, and I wondered
who had took up quarters there. I slipped up and peeped in at the window. There was a woman about forty year old in there knitting by
a candle that was on a pine table. I didn't know her face; she was a stranger, for you couldn't start a face in that town that I didn't know.
Now this was lucky, because I was weakening; I was getting afraid I had come; people might know my voice and find me out. But if
this woman had been in such a little town two days she could tell me all I wanted to know; so I knocked at the door, and made up my
mind I wouldn't forget I was a girl.
CHAPTER XI
.
"COME in," says the woman, and I did. She says: "Take a cheer."
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The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
I done it. She looked me all over with her little shiny eyes, and says:
"What might your name be?"
"Sarah Williams."
"Where 'bouts do you live? In this neighborhood?'
"No'm. In Hookerville, seven mile below. I've walked all the way and I'm all tired out."
"Hungry, too, I reckon. I'll find you something."
"No'm, I ain't hungry. I was so hungry I had to stop two miles below here at a farm; so I ain't hungry no more. It's what makes me so
late. My mother's down sick, and out of money and everything, and I come to tell my uncle Abner Moore. He lives at the upper end of
the town, she says. I hain't ever been here before. Do you know him?"
"No; but I don't know everybody yet. I haven't lived here quite two weeks. It's a considerable ways to the upper end of the town. You
better stay here all night. Take off your bonnet."
"No," I says; "I'll rest a while, I reckon, and go on. I ain't afeared of the dark."
She said she wouldn't let me go by myself, but her husband would be in by and by, maybe in a hour and a half, and she'd send him
along with me. Then she got to talking about her husband, and about her relations up the river, and her relations down the river, and
about how much better off they used to was, and how they didn't know but they'd made a mistake coming to our town, instead of
letting well alone--and so on and so on, till I was afeard I had made a mistake coming to her to find out what was going on in the
town; but by and by she dropped on to pap and the murder, and then I was pretty willing to let her clatter right along. She told about
me and Tom Sawyer finding the six thousand dollars (only she got it ten) and all about pap and what a hard lot he was, and what a
hard lot I was, and at last she got down to where I was murdered. I says:
"Who done it? We've heard considerable about these goings on down in Hookerville, but we don't know who 'twas that killed Huck
Finn."
"Well, I reckon there's a right smart chance of people HERE that'd like to know who killed him. Some think old Finn done it himself."
"No--is that so?"
"Most everybody thought it at first. He'll never know how nigh he come to getting lynched. But before night they changed around and
judged it was done by a runaway nigger named Jim."
"Why HE--"
I stopped. I reckoned I better keep still. She run on, and never noticed I had put in at all:
"The nigger run off the very night Huck Finn was killed. So there's a reward out for him--three hundred dollars. And there's a reward
out for old Finn, too--two hundred dollars. You see, he come to town the morning after the murder, and told about it, and was out
with 'em on the ferryboat hunt, and right away after he up and left. Before night they wanted to lynch him, but he was gone, you see.
Well, next day they found out the nigger was gone; they found out he hadn't ben seen sence ten o'clock the night the murder was done.
So then they put it on him, you see; and while they was full of it, next day, back comes old Finn, and went boo-hooing to Judge
Thatcher to get money to hunt for the nigger all over Illinois with. The judge gave him some, and that evening he got drunk, and was
around till after midnight with a couple of mighty hard-looking strangers, and then went off with them. Well, he hain't come back
sence, and they ain't looking for him back till this thing blows over a little, for people thinks now that he killed his boy and fixed
things so folks would think robbers done it, and then he'd get Huck's money without having to bother a long time with a lawsuit.
People do say he warn't any too good to do it. Oh, he's sly, I reckon. If he don't come back for a year he'll be all right. You can't prove
anything on him, you know; everything will be quieted down then, and he'll walk in Huck's money as easy as nothing."
"Yes, I reckon so, 'm. I don't see nothing in the way of it. Has everybody quit thinking the nigger done it?"
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The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
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