CHAPTER SIX

Well, pretty soon the old man was up and around again, and then he went for Judge
Thatcher in the courts to make him give up that money, and he went for me, too, for
not stopping school. He catches me a couple of times and thrashed me, but I went to
school just the same, and dodged him or outrun him most of the time. I didn’t want to
go to school much before, but I reckoned I’d go now to spite pap. That law trial was a
slow business—appeared like they weren’t ever going to get started on it; so every
now and then I’d borrow two or three dollars off of the judge for him, to keep from
getting a cowhiding. Every time he got money he got drunk; and every time he got
drunk he raised Cain around town; and every time he raised Cain he got jailed. He was
just suited—this kind of thing was right in his line.
He got to hanging around the widow’s too much and so she told him at last that if he
didn’t quit using around there she would make trouble for him. Well, wasn’t he mad?
He said he would show who was Huck Finn’s boss. So he watched out for me one day
in the spring, and catches me, and took me up the river about three miles in a skiff, and
crossed over to the Illinois shore where it was woody and there weren’t houses but an
old log hut in a place where the timber was so thick you couldn’t find it if you didn’t
know where it was.
He kept me with him all the time, and I never got a chance to run off. We lived in that
old cabin, and he always locked the door and put the key under his head nights. He
had a gun which he had stolen, I reckon, and we fished and hunted, and that was what
we lived on.
Every little while he locked me in and went down to the store, three miles, to the ferry,
and traded fish and game for whisky, and fetched it home and got drunk and had a
good time, and licked me. The widow she found out where I was by and by, and she
sent a man over to try to get hold of me; but pap drove him off with the gun, and it
wasn’t long after that till I was used to being where I was, and liked it—all but the
cowhide part.
It was kind of lazy and jolly, laying off comfortable all day, smoking and fishing, and
no books nor study. Two months or more run along, and my clothes got to be all rags
and dirt, and I didn’t see how I’d ever got to like it so well at the widow’s, where you
had to wash, and eat on a plate, and comb up, and go to bed and get up regular, and be
forever bothering over a book, and have old Miss Watson pecking at you all the time. I
didn’t want to go back no more. I had stopped cussing, because the widow didn’t like
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it; but now I took to it again because pap hadn’t no objections. It was pretty good
times up in the woods there, take it all around.
But by and by pap got too handy with his hickory, and I couldn’t stand it. I was all
over welts. He got to going away so much, too, and locking me in. Once he locked me
in and was gone three days. It was dreadful lonesome. I judged he had got drowned,
and I wasn’t ever going to get out any more. I was scared. I made up my mind I would
fix up some way to leave there. I had tried to get out of that cabin many a time, but I
couldn’t find no way. There wasn’t a window to it big enough for a dog to get through.
I couldn’t get up the Chambly; it was too narrow. The door was thick, solid oak slabs.
Pap was pretty careful not to leave a knife or anything in the cabin when he was away;
I reckon I had hunted the place over as much as a hundred times; well, I was most all
the time at it, because it was about the only way to put in the time. But this time I
found something at last; I found an old rusty wood-saw without any handle; it was laid
in between a rafter and the clapboards of the roof. I greased it up and went to work.
There was an old horse-blanket nailed against the logs at the far end of the cabin
behind the table, to keep the wind from blowing through the chinks and putting the
candle out. I got under the table and raised the blanket, and went to work to saw a
section of the big bottom log out—big enough to let me through. Well, it was a good
long job, but I was getting towards the end of it when I heard pap’s gun in the woods. I
got rid of the signs of my work, and dropped the blanket and hid my saw, and pretty
soon pap come in.
Pap wasn’t in a good humor—so he was his natural self. He said he was down town,
and everything was going wrong. His lawyer said he reckoned he would win his
lawsuit and get the money if they ever got started on the trial; but then there were
ways to put it off a long time, and Judge Thatcher had known how to do it. And he
said people allowed there’d be another trial to get me away from him and give me to
the widow for my guardian, and they guessed it would win this time. This shook me
up considerable, because I didn’t want to go back to the widow’s anymore and be so
cramped up and civilized, as they called it. Then the old man got to cussing, and
cussed everything and everybody he could think of, and then cussed them all over
again to make sure he hadn’t skipped any, and after that he polished off with a kind of
a general cuss all round, including a considerable parcel of people which he didn’t
know the names of, and so called them what’s-his-name when he got to them, and
went right along with his cussing.
 HUCKLEBERRY FINN

He said he would like to see the widow get me. He said he would watch out, and if
they tried to come any such game on him he had known of a place six or seven mile
off to stow me in, where they might hunt till they dropped and they couldn’t find me.
That made me pretty uneasy again, but only for a minute;
I reckoned I wouldn’t stay on hand till he got that chance.
The old man made me go to the skiff and fetch the things he had got. There was a
fifty-pound sack of corn meal, and a side of bacon, ammunition, and a four-gallon jug
of whisky, and an old book and two newspapers for wadding, besides some tow. I
toted up a load, and went back and set down on the bow of the skiff to rest. I thought it
all over, and I reckoned I would walk off with the gun and some lines, and take to the
woods when I run away. I guessed I wouldn’t stay in one place, but just tramp right
across the country, mostly night times, and hunt and fish to keep alive, and so get so
far away that the old man nor the widow couldn’t ever find me anymore. I judged I
would saw out and leave that night if pap got drunk enough, and I reckoned he would.
I got so full of it I didn’t notice how long I was staying till the old man hollered and
asked me whether I was asleep or drowned.

I got the things all up to the cabin, and then it was about dark. While I was cooking
supper the old man took a swig or two and got sort of warmed up, and went to ripping
again. He had been drunk over in town, and laid in the gutter all night, and he was a
sight to look at. A body would a thought he was Adam—he was just all mud.
Whenever his liquor begun to work he most always went for the government. his time
he says:

“Call this a government! why, just look at it and see what it’s like. Here’s the law a-
standing ready to take a man’s son away from him— a man’s own son, which he has
had all the trouble and all the anxiety and all the expense of raising. Yes, just as that
man has got that son raised at last, and ready to go to work and begin to do such thing
for him and give him a rest, the law up and goes for him. And they call that
government! That isn’t all, nether. The law backs that old Judge Thatcher up and helps
him to keep me out o’ my property. Here’s what the law does: The law takes a man
worth six thousand dollars and upwards, and jams him into an old trap of a cabin like
this, and lets him go round in clothes that isn’t fitted for a hog. They call that
government! A man can’t get his rights in a government like this. Sometimes I’ve a
 HUCKLEBERRY FINN

mighty notion to just leave the country for good and all. Yes, and I told them so; I told
old Thatcher so to his face. Lots of them heard me, and can tell what I said. Says I, for
two cents I’d leave the blamed country and never come a-near it again. Theme’s the
very words. I say look at my hat—if you call it a hat—but the lid raises up and the rest
of it goes down till it’s below my chin, and then it ain’t rightly a hat at all, but more
like my head was shoved up through a joint o’ stove-pipe. Look at it, says I—such a
hat for me to wear—one of the wealthiest men in this town if I could get my rights.
“Oh, yes, this is a wonderful government, wonderful. Why, look here: There was a
free nigger there from Ohio—a muleteer, most as white as a white man. He had the
whitest shirt on you ever see, too, and the shiniest hat; and there ain’t a man in that
town that’s got as fine clothes as what he had; and he had a gold watch and chain, and
a silver-headed cane—the awful Est old gray-headed nabob in the State. And what do
you think? They said he was a professor in a college, and could talk all kinds of
languages, and known everything. And that ain't the waste. They said he could vote
when he was at home. Well, that let me out. Thinks I, what is the country a-coming to?
It was 'election day, and I was just about to go and vote myself if I wasn’t too drunk to
get there; but when they told me there was a State in this country where they'd let that
nigger vote, I drawled out. I say I'll never vote again. Theme’s the very words I said;
they all heard me; and the country may rot for all me—
I'll never vote again as long as I live. And to see the cool way of that nigger—why, he
wouldn't a give me the road if I hadn't shoved him out o' the way. I says to the people,
why ain't this nigger put up at auction and sold? —that's what I want to know. And
what do you reckon they said? Why, they said he couldn't be sold till he'd been in the
State six months, and he hadn't been there that long yet. There, now—that's a
specimen. They call that a government that can't sell a free nigger till he's been in the
State six months.
Here's a government that calls itself a government, and lets on to be a government,
and thinks it is a government, and yet too got to set stock-still for six whole months
before it can take a hold of a prowling, thieving, infernal, white-shirted free nigger,
and—”
Pap was ageing on so he never noticed where his old limber legs was taking him to, so
he went head over heels over the tub of salt pork and barked both shins; and the rest of
his speech was all the hottest kind of language—mostly hove at the nigger and the
government, though he gives the tub some, too, all along, here and there. He hopped
around the cabin considerable, first on one leg and then on the other, holding first one
 HUCKLEBERRY FINN

shin and then the other one, and at last he let out with his left foot all of a sudden and
fetched the tub a rattling kick. But it wasn’t good judgment, because that was the boot
that had a couple of his toes leaking out of the front end of it; so now he raised a howl
that fairly made a body's hair raise, and down he went in the dirt, and rolled there, and
held his toes; and the cussing he done then laid over anything he had ever done
previous. He said so his own self afterwards. He had heard old Snowberry Hagan in
his best days, and he said it laid over him, too; but I reckon that was sort of piling it
on, maybe.
After supper pap took the jug, and said he had enough whisky there for two drunks
and one delirium tremens. That was always his word. I judged he would be blind
drunk in about an hour, and then I would steal the key, or saw myself out, one or
other. He drank and drank, and tumbled down on his blankets by and by; but luck
didn’t run my way. He didn’t go sound asleep, but was uneasy. He groaned and
moaned and thrashed around this way and that for a long time. At last I got so sleepy I
couldn’t keep my eyes open all I could do, and so before I had known what I was
about I was sound asleep, and the candle burning.

I don’t know how long I was asleep, but all of a sudden there was an awful scream and
I was up. There was pap looking wild, and skipping around every which way and
yelling about snakes. He said they was crawling up his legs; and then he would give a
jump and scream, and say one had bit him on the cheek—but I couldn’t see no snakes.
He started and run round and round the cabin, hollering “Take him off! take him off!
he’s biting me on the neck!” I never see a man look so wild in the eyes. Pretty soon he
was all fagged out, and fell down panting; then he rolled over and over wonderful fast,
kicking things every which way, and striking and grabbing at the air with his hands,
and screaming and saying there was devils ahold of him. He wore out by and by, and
laid still a while, moaning. Then he laid stiller, and didn’t make a sound. I could hear
the owls and the wolves away off in the woods, and it seemed terrible still. He was
laying over by the corner. By and by he raised up part way and listened, with his head
to one side. He says, very low:
“Tramp—tramp—tramp; that’s the dead; tramp—tramp—tramp; they’re coming after
me; but I won’t go. Oh, they’re here! don’t touch me—don’t! hands off—they’re cold;
let go. Oh, let a poor devil alone!”
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Then he went down on all fours and crawled off, begging them to let him alone, and
he rolled himself up in his blanket and wallowed in under the old pine table, still a-
begging; and then he went to crying. I could hear him through the blanket.