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did before. It was hurting him considerble, and bleeding; so we
laid him in the wigwam and tore up one of the duke's shirts for to
bandage him, but he says:
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"Gimme the rags, I can do it myself. Don't stop, now; don't fool
around here, and the evasion booming along so handsome; man the
sweeps, and set her loose! Boys, we done it elegant!- 'deed we did.
I wish we'd a had the handling of Louis XVI, there wouldn't a been
no 'Son of Saint Louis, ascend to heaven!' wrote down in his
biography: no, sir, we'd a whooped him over the border-that's what
we'd a done with him- and done it just as slick as nothing at all,
too. Man the sweeps- man the sweeps!"
But me and Jim was consulting- and thinking. And after we'd
thought a minute, I says:
"Say it, Jim."
So he says:
"Well, den, dis is de way it look to me, Huck. Ef it wuz him dat
'uz bein' sot free, en one er de boys wuz to git shot, would he say,
'Go on en save me, nemmine 'bout a doctor f'r to save dis one? Is
dat like Mars Tom Sawyer? Would he say dat? You bet he
wouldn't! Well, den, is Jim gwyne to say it? No, sah- I doan' budge
a step out'n dis place, 'dout a doctor; not if it's forty year!"
I knowed he was white inside, and I reckoned he'd say what he
did say- so it was all right, now, and I told Tom I was agoing for a
doctor. He raised considerble row about it, but me and Jim stuck to
it and wouldn't budge; so he was for crawling out and setting the
raft loose himself; but we wouldn't let him. Then he give us a piece
of his mind- but it didn't do no good.
So when he see me getting the canoe ready, he says:
"Well, then, if you're bound to go, I'll tell you the way to do,
when you get to the village. Shut the door, and blindfold the doctor
tight and fast, and make him swear to be silent as the grave, and
put a purse full of gold in his hand, and then take and lead him all
around the back alleys and everywheres, in the dark, and then fetch
him here in the canoe, in a roundabout way amongst the islands,
and search him and take his chalk away from him, and don't give it
back to him till you get him back to the village, or else he will
chalk this raft so he can find it again. It's the way they all do."
So I said I would, and left, and Jim was to hide in the woods
when he see the doctor coming, till he was gone again.
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262
Chapter Forty-One
The doctor was an old man; a very nice, kind-looking old man,
when I got him up. I told him me and my brother was over on
Spanish Island hunting, yesterday afternoon, and camped on a
piece of a raft we found, and about midnight he must a kicked his
gun in his dreams, for it went off and shot him in the leg, and we
wanted him to go over there and fix it and not say nothing about it,
nor let anybody know, because we wanted to come home this
evening, and surprise the folks.
"Who is your folks?" he says.
"The Phelpses, down yonder."
"Oh," he says. And after a minute, he says: "How'd you say he
got shot?"
"He had a dream," I says, "and it shot him."
"Singular dream," he says.
So he lit up his lantern, and got his saddle-bags, and we started.
But when he see the canoe, he didn't like the look of her- said she
was big enough for one, but didn't look pretty safe for two. I says:
"Oh, you needn't be afeard, sir, she carried the three of us, easy
enough."
"What three?"
"Why me and Sid, and- and- the guns; that's what I mean."
"Oh," he says.
But he put his foot on the gunnel, and rocked her; and shook his
head, and said he reckoned he'd look around for a bigger one. But
they was all locked and chained; so he took my canoe, and said for
me to wait till he come back, or I could hunt around further, or
maybe I better go down home and get them ready for the surprise,
if I wanted to. But I said I didn't; so I told him just how to find the
raft, and then he started.
I struck an idea, pretty soon. I says to myself, spos'n he can't fix
that leg just in three shakes of a sheep's tail, as the saying is? spos'n
it takes him three or four days? What are we going to do?- lay
around there till he lets the cat out of the bag? No, sir, I know what
I'll do. I'll wait, and when he comes back, if he says he's got to go
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any more, I'll get down there, too, if I swim; and we'll take and tie
him, and keep him, and shove out down the river; and when Tom's
done with him, we'll give him what it's worth, or all we got, and
then let him get shore.
So then I crept into a lumber pile to get some sleep; and next [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]