CHAPTER IX.
I WANTED to go and look at a place right about the middle of the islandthat I'd found when I was exploring; so we started and soon got to it,because the island was only three miles long and a quarter of a milewide.
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 steep andthe bushes so thick. We tramped and clumb around all over it, and by andby found a good big cavern in the rock, most up to the top on the sidetowards Illinois. The cavern was as big as two or three rooms bunchedtogether, and Jim could stand up straight in it. It was cool in there.Jim was for putting our traps in there right away, but I said we didn'twant 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 the trapsin the cavern, we could rush there if anybody was to come to the island,and they would never find us without dogs. And, besides, he said themlittle birds had said it was going to rain, and did I want the things toget wet?
So we went back and got the canoe, and paddled up abreast the cavern, andlugged all the traps up there. Then we hunted up a place close by tohide the canoe in, amongst the thick willows. We took some fish off ofthe 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 on oneside of the door the floor stuck out a little bit, and was flat and agood place to build a fire on. So we built it there and cooked dinner.
We spread the blankets inside for a carpet, and eat our dinner in there.We put all the other things handy at the back of the cavern. Pretty soonit darkened up, and begun to thunder and lighten; so the birds was rightabout it. Directly it begun to rain, and it rained like all fury, too,and I never see the wind blow so. It was one of these regular summerstorms. It would get so dark that it looked all blue-black outside, andlovely; and the rain would thrash along by so thick that the trees off alittle ways looked dim and spider-webby; and here would come a blast ofwind that would bend the trees down and turn up the pale underside of theleaves; and then a perfect ripper of a gust would follow along and setthe branches to tossing their arms as if they was just wild; and next,when it was just about the bluest and blackest--FST! it was as bright asglory, and you'd have a little glimpse of tree-tops a-plunging about awayoff yonder in the storm, hundreds of yards further than you could seebefore; dark as sin again in a second, and now you'd hear the thunder letgo with an awful crash, and then go rumbling, grumbling, tumbling, downthe sky towards 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 bendown dah in de woods widout any dinner, en gittn' mos' drownded, too; datyou would, honey. Chickens knows when it's gwyne to rain, en so do debirds, 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 on theisland in the low places and on the Illinois bottom. On that side it wasa good many miles wide, but on the Missouri side it was the same olddistance across--a half a mile--because the Missouri shore was just awall of high bluffs.
Daytimes we paddled all over the island in the canoe, It was mighty cooland shady in the deep woods, even if the sun was blazing outside. Wewent winding in and out amongst the trees, and sometimes the vines hungso thick we had to back away and go some other way. Well, on every oldbroken-down tree you could see rabbits and snakes and such things; andwhen the island had been overflowed a day or two they got so tame, onaccount of being hungry, that you could paddle right up and put your handon them if you wanted to; but not the snakes and turtles--they wouldslide off in the water. The ridge our cavern was in 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 pine planks.It was twelve foot wide and about fifteen or sixteen foot long, and thetop stood above water six or seven inches--a solid, level floor. Wecould 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 got aboard--clumb in at an upstairs window. But it was too dark to see yet, so wemade 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. Then welooked in at the window. We could make out a bed, and a table, and twoold chairs, and lots of things around about on the floor, and there wasclothes hanging against the wall. There was something laying on thefloor 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' lookat his face--it's too gashly."
I didn't look at him at all. Jim throwed some old rags over him, but heneedn't done it; I didn't want to see him. There was heaps of old greasycards scattered around over the floor, and old whisky bottles, and acouple of masks made out of black cloth; and all over the walls was theignorantest kind of words and pictures made with charcoal. There was twoold dirty calico dresses, and a sun-bonnet, and some women's underclotheshanging against the wall, and some men's clothing, too. We put the lotinto the canoe--it might come good. There was a boy's old speckled strawhat on the floor; I took that, too. And there was a bottle that had hadmilk in it, and it had a rag stopper for a baby to suck. We would a tookthe bottle, but it was broke. There was a seedy old chest, and an oldhair trunk with the hinges broke. They stood open, but there warn'tnothing left in them that was any account. The way things was scatteredabout we reckoned the people left in a hurry, and warn't fixed so as tocarry off most of their stuff.
We got an old tin lantern, and a butcher-knife without any handle, and abran-new Barlow knife worth two bits in any store, and a lot of tallowcandles, and a tin candlestick, and a gourd, and a tin cup, and a rattyold bedquilt off the bed, and a reticule with needles and pins andbeeswax and buttons and thread and all such truck in it, and a hatchetand some nails, and a fishline as thick as my little finger with somemonstrous hooks on it, and a roll of buckskin, and a leather dog-collar,and a horseshoe, and some vials of medicine that didn't have no label onthem; and just as we was leaving I found a tolerable good curry-comb, andJim he found a ratty old fiddle-bow, and a wooden leg. The straps wasbroke off of it, but, barring that, it was a good enough leg, though itwas too long for me and not long enough for Jim, and we couldn't find theother 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 was prettybroad day; so I made Jim lay down in the canoe and cover up with thequilt, because if he set up people could tell he was a nigger a good waysoff. I paddled over to the Illinois shore, and drifted down most a halfa mile doing it. I crept up the dead water under the bank, and hadn't noaccidents and didn't see nobody. We got home all safe.