CHAPTER IX
I wanted to go and look at a place right about the middle of theisland that I'd found when I was exploring; so we started and soon gotto it, because the island was only three miles long and a quarter of amile wide.
This place was a tolerable long, steep hill or ridge about forty foothigh. We had a rough time getting to the top, the sides was so steepand the bushes so thick. We tramped and clumb around all over it, andby and by found a good big cavern in the rock, most up to the top onthe side towards Illinois. The cavern was as big as two or three roomsbunched together, and Jim could stand up straight in it. It was coolin there. Jim was for putting our traps in there right away, but Isaid we didn't want to be climbing up and down there all the time.
Jim said if we had the canoe hid in a good place, and had all thetraps in the cavern, we could rush there if anybody was to come to theisland, and they would never find us without dogs. And, besides, hesaid them little birds had said it was going to rain, and did I wantthe things to get wet?
So we went back and got the canoe, and paddled up abreast the cavern,and lugged all the traps up there. Then we hunted up a place close byto hide the canoe in, amongst the thick willows. We took some fish offof the lines and set them again, and begun to get ready for dinner.
The door of the cavern was big enough to roll a hogshead in, and onone side of the door the floor stuck out a little bit, and was flatand a good place to build a fire on. So we built it there and cookeddinner.
We spread the blankets inside for a carpet, and eat our dinner inthere. We put all the other things handy at the back of the cavern.Pretty soon it darkened up, and begun to thunder and lighten; so thebirds was right about it. Directly it begun to rain, and it rainedlike all fury, too, and I never see the wind blow so. It was one ofthese regular summer storms. It would get so dark that it looked allblue-black outside, and lovely; and the rain would thrash along by sothick that the trees off a little ways looked dim and spider-webby;and here would come a blast of wind that would bend the trees down andturn up the pale underside of the leaves; and then a perfect ripper ofa gust would follow along and set the branches to tossing their armsas if they was just wild; and next, when it was just about the bluestand blackest--_fst!_ it was as bright as glory, and you'd have alittle glimpse of tree-tops a-plunging about away off yonder in thestorm, hundreds of yards further than you could see before; dark assin again in a second, and now you'd hear the thunder let go with anawful crash, and then go rumbling, grumbling, tumbling, down the skytowards the under side of the world, like rolling empty barrelsdown-stairs--where it's long stairs and they bounce a good deal, youknow.
"Jim, this is nice," I says. "I wouldn't want to be nowhere else buthere. Pass me along another hunk of fish and some hot corn-bread."
"Well, you wouldn't 'a' ben here 'f it hadn't 'a' ben for Jim. You'd'a' ben down dah in de woods widout any dinner, en gittin' mos'drownded, too; dat you would, honey. Chickens knows when it's gwyne torain, en so do de birds, chile."
The river went on raising and raising for ten or twelve days, till atlast it was over the banks. The water was three or four foot deep onthe island in the low places and on the Illinois bottom. On that sideit was a good many miles wide, but on the Missouri side it was thesame old distance across--a half a mile--because the Missouri shorewas just a wall of high bluffs.
Daytimes we paddled all over the island in the canoe. It was mightycool and shady in the deep woods, even if the sun was blazing outside.We went winding in and out amongst the trees, and sometimes the vineshung so thick we had to back away and go some other way. Well, onevery old broken-down tree you could see rabbits and snakes and suchthings; and when the island had been overflowed a day or two they gotso tame, on account of being hungry, that you could paddle right upand put your hand on them if you wanted to; but not the snakes andturtles--they would slide off in the water. The ridge our cavern wasin was full of them. We could 'a' had pets enough if we'd wanted them.
One night we catched a little section of a lumber-raft--nice pineplanks. It was twelve foot wide and about fifteen or sixteen footlong, and the top stood above water six or seven inches--a solid,level floor. We could see saw-logs go by in the daylight sometimes,but we let them go; we didn't show ourselves in daylight.
Another night when we was up at the head of the island, just beforedaylight, here comes a frame-house down, on the west side. She was atwo-story, and tilted over considerable. We paddled out and gotaboard--clumb in at an up-stairs window. But it was too dark to seeyet, so we made the canoe fast and set in her to wait for daylight.
The light begun to come before we got to the foot of the island. Thenwe looked in at the window. We could make out a bed, and a table, andtwo old chairs, and lots of things around about on the floor, andthere was clothes hanging against the wall. There was something layingon the floor in the far corner that looked like a man. So Jim says:
"Hello, you!"
But it didn't budge. So I hollered again, and then Jim says:
"De man ain't asleep--he's dead. You hold still--I'll go en see."
He went, and bent down and looked, and says:
"It's a dead man. Yes, indeedy; naked, too. He's ben shot in de back.I reck'n he's ben dead two er three days. Come in, Huck, but doan'look at his face--it's too gashly."
I didn't look at him at all. Jim throwed some old rags over him, buthe needn't done it; I didn't want to see him. There was heaps of oldgreasy cards scattered around over the floor, and old whisky-bottles,and a couple of masks made out of black cloth; and all over the wallswas the ignorantest kind of words and pictures made with charcoal.There was two old dirty calico dresses, and a sun-bonnet, and somewomen's underclothes hanging against the wall, and some men'sclothing, too. We put the lot into the canoe--it might come good.There was a boy's old speckled straw hat on the floor; I took that,too. And there was a bottle that had had milk in it, and it had a ragstopper for a baby to suck. We would 'a' took the bottle, but it wasbroke. There was a seedy old chest, and an old hair trunk with thehinges broke. They stood open, but there warn't nothing left in themthat was any account. The way things was scattered about we reckonedthe people left in a hurry, and warn't fixed so as to carry off mostof their stuff.
We got an old tin lantern, and a butcher-knife without any handle, anda bran-new Barlow knife worth two bits in any store, and a lot oftallow candles, and a tin candlestick, and a gourd, and a tin cup, anda ratty old bedquilt off the bed, and a reticule with needles and pinsand beeswax and buttons and thread and all such truck in it, and ahatchet and some nails, and a fish-line as thick as my little fingerwith some monstrous hooks on it, and a roll of buckskin, and a leatherdog-collar, and a horseshoe, and some vials of medicine that didn'thave no label on them; and just as we was leaving I found a tolerablegood currycomb, and Jim he found a ratty old fiddle-bow, and a woodenleg. The straps was broke off of it, but, barring that, it was a goodenough leg, though it was too long for me and not long enough for Jim,and we couldn't find the other one, though we hunted all around.
And so, take it all around, we made a good haul. When we was ready toshove off we was a quarter of a mile below the island, and it waspretty broad day; so I made Jim lay down in the canoe and cover upwith the quilt, because if he set up people could tell he was a niggera good ways off. I paddled over to the Illinois shore, and drifteddown most a half a mile doing it. I crept up the dead water under thebank, and hadn't no accidents and didn't see nobody. We got home allsafe.