The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and the Undead Page 10

  The young girl also kept a scrap-book when she was alive, and used to paste obituaries and stories of accidents and other calamities from the local newspaper, and wrote poems about the stories later out of her own head. It was very good poetry. This is what she wrote about a boy by the name of Stephen D Bott who was playing in his front yard, lost his balance, and fell down a well and drownded:

  Ode to Stephen D. Bott

  And did young Stephen sicken

  And did young Stephen die?

  And did his friends hearts quicken

  And did they sit and cry?

  No: Such was not the fate

  Of Stephen Dowling Bott;

  Though his friends will miss his friendship

  They will not miss the rot.

  No whooping-cough did wrack his frame

  No grain thresher on his clothing caught.

  No measles left him cold and lame,

  Poor Stephen Dowling Bott.

  He leaned too much, and forward fell

  Pitched down the dark abyss

  Of his family’s only drinking well.

  For the first day, hardly missed.

  They hauled him out then, lifeless, dead

  His eyes unseeing, his senses numb

  His father sheered off the twitching head

  Before they lost him to the Zum.

  If Emmaline Grangerford could write poetry like that when she was fourteen, there was no telling what she could ‘a’ done by and by. Buck said she could rattle off poetry like nothing; she’d slap down a line, and if she couldn’t find a word to rhyme it, she’d cross it off and write another. Every time a man died, or a woman died, or a child died, she would be on hand and start writing her ‘tribute’ before the body was cold. She was always finished before they was close to coming back as Zum. The neighbors said it was doctor first, then Emmaline, then the undertaker – the undertaker only beat her once, and then she locked up on the dead person’s name, which was Whistler. She asked the undertaker for a little more time, but the undertaker took out his blades and said he couldn’t take the chance. She warn’t the same after that, but kinder pined away and did not live long. Poor thing.

  I liked the whole family, dead ones and all, and felt I knew them more by Emmaline’s tributes. It didn’t seem right that there warn’t nobody around to make a poem about her now that she was gone; so I tried to sweat out a verse all by myself, but I couldn’t make it go somehow. They kept her room all nice and trim, but nobody ever slept there after she died. The old lady took care of the room herself, and read the Bible there by herself most evenings.

  As I was saying about the parlor, there was beautiful curtains on the window, with pictures painted on them of castles and sunsets, and cattle coming down to a stream to drink. There was an old piano, and nothing was ever so grand as when the family was in the right mood and sat down and sang old gospel songs and one of the boys would crank out a tune or two on the piano.

  It was a great house, large and comfortable in every way, and things couldn’t be better for me. And warn’t the cooking good, and just bushels of it, too.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The Hazards of Being a Gentleman

  Colonel Grangerford was a gentleman, you see. He was a gentleman all over, and so was his family. He was well born, and that’s worth as much in a man as it is in a horse, so the widow Douglas said. Pap always said it too, though he warn’t no more quality than a mudcat himself. Colonel Grangerford was very tall and very slim, with a pale complexion; he was clean-shaved every morning, and he had the thinnest kind of lips, a high nose, and heavy eyebrows, and the blackest, darkest eyes, sunk so deep that they seemed like they was looking out of a cavern at you. His forehead was high, and his hair was gray and long and hung to his shoulders. His hands were long and thin, and every day of his life he put on a clean shirt and a full suit made out of linen so white it made your eyes hurt to look at it. He carried a mahogany cane with a silver head to it. It was the exact duplicate of another cane he splintered to pieces on a pack of Zum when first they started roaming the earth. There warn’t no frivolousness about him, not a bit, and he warn’t ever loud. Sometimes he smiled at you, and it was good to see and made you feel you had done something awful good; but when he straightened himself up and the lightning began to flicker out from under his eyebrows, you wanted to climb a tree first, and not come down till someone told you it was safe. He didn’t ever have to tell someone to mind their manners – everyone was always good-mannered where he was. He was sunshine most always wherever he was, and he when he turned into a cloud bank it was awful dark for half a minute, and that was enough; there wouldn’t nothin’ go wrong for the next week.

  When him and his old lady came down in the morning all the family got out of their chairs, said good day, and didn’t set down again till they had sat down. In the evening, Tom and Bob went to the sideboard where the decanter was, and mixed a glass of bitters for him, and he held it and waited till they had mixed themselves a drink, and then they bowed and said “Our duty to you, sir and madam”; and they bowed back and said thank you, and then they drank. When Buck and I was there, Bob and Tom would poor a spoonful of water on some sugar and mix in some whisky or apple-jack and give it to us, and we drank to the old people too.

  Bob was the oldest and Tom next – tall, handsome men with long, black hair and dark, tanned faces. They dressed in linen like the old gentleman, and wore broad Panama hats whenever they went out in the sun.

  Then there was Miss Charlotte; she was twenty-five and tall and proud and grand. When she was stirred up, she could wilt you in your tracks like her father. She was beautiful. So was her sister, Miss Sophia, but it was a whole different kind. Miss Sophia was gentle and sweet like a dove, and she was only twenty.

  Each person in the house had their own owned folks to look after them – Buck and me too. Mine had a monstrous easy time, because I warn’t used to having anybody do things for me, but Buck kept his on the jump all the time.

  That was all there was to the family now, but there used to be more – three sons, besides Emmeline, and they all died the same way, and the Zum had nothing to do with it.

  The old gentleman owned a lot of farms and a lot of property, and owned enough folk to make up a nice-sized village. Sometimes they’d have get-togethers, and people would arrive on horseback from ten to twenty miles around, and stay five and six days. There would be junkets in the woods, and picnics, and dress balls at the house come nightfall. These people were mainly kinfolk of the family. All the men brought their guns with them. It was a handsome lot of quality, I tell you.

  There was another clan of aristocracy around there – five or six families – mostly by the name of Shepherdson. They was in every way as high-toned and well born and grand as the Grangerfords. The two families used the same steamboat-landing, so sometimes when I went there with some of the folk I would see some of the Grangerfords on their fine horses.

  One day Buck and me was in the woods hunting, and heard a horse coming. Buck says:

  “Quick! Jump into the weeds!”

  We done it, and pretty soon a splendid young man comes riding down the road, setting on his horse easy and looking as grand as someone in a painting. It was young Harney Shepherdson. I heard Buck’s gun go off at my ear, and Harney’s hat flew off his head. He grabbed his gun and rode straight to the place we was hid. But we didn’t wait. We started through the woods on a run, and heard the pop of Harney’s gun once or twice; and then he rode off the way he came – to get his hat, I reckon.

  When we got home and Buck told what happened to the old man, his eyes went a-blaze a moment – ‘twas pleasure, I judged – then his face sort of smoothed down, and he says, kind of gentle:

  “I don’t like that shooting from a bush. Why didn’t you step into the road, my son?”

  “The Shepherdson’s don’t, father.”

  Miss Charlotte held her head up like a queen while Buck was telling his tale, but never said nothing. M
iss Sophia turned pale, but her color came back when she found out the other man wasn’t hurt.

  Soon as I got Buck by himself, I says:

  “Did you mean to kill him, Buck?”

  “Well, I bet I did.”

  “What did he do to you?”

  “Him? He never done nothin’ to me.”

  “Well then, what do you want him dead for?”

  “Why, nothing – only, it’s on account of the feud.”

  “What’s a feud?”

  “Why, where on this green earth was you raised? You never heard of a feud?”

  “Never. Tell me about it.”

  “Well,” says Buck, “a feud is this way: a man has a quarrel with another man, and kills him; then that man’s brother kills him; then the other brothers, on both sides, go for each other; then the cousins chip in and by and by everyone’s killed off, and that’s the end of the feud. But it’s kind of slow, and the whole thing takes a long while.”

  “Has this been going on long, Buck?”

  “Well, I reckon! It started thirty years ago, or som’ers along there.”

  “What the trouble about, Buck?”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t know about that.”

  “Well, who done the first shooting? Was it a Grangerford or a Shepherdson?”

  “Laws, how would I know a thing like that? It was a long time ago.”

  “Has there been many people kilt over this?”

  “Sure, plenty, but it don’t always result in funerals. Pa’s got some buckshot in him; Bob’s been carved up with a Bowie knife, and Tom’s been hurt bad once or twice.”

  “Has anybody been kilt this year, Buck?”

  “Yes; we got one and they got one. My cousin Bud, fourteen, got ambushed by old Baldy Shepherdson. Didn’t even have a gun on him. Old Baldy just rode up and shot him in the middle of the road. But he didn’t get much chance to crow about it, for inside a week, our folk laid him out.”

  The next Sunday we all went to church, about three miles from the house, everybody a-horseback. The men took their guns along and kept them between their knees, and all the Shepherdsons sat on one side of the aisle, and all the Grangerfords sat on the other, and both sides had their guns handy somewhere around them. None of them looked sideways. It was one of the roughest Sundays I had ever spent.

  Back home after dinner, everyone was dozing and it got to be pretty dull. Buck was on in the grass, sound asleep. I found Miss Sophia standing in her door, and she took me in her room and shut the door very soft, and asked if I’d do a special favor for her and not tell anybody, and I said I would. She said she forgot her hymnal back at church, and would I slip out quiet and fetch it to her, and not say a word to nobody. I said I would.

  So I slipped out and walked back to church, and there warn’t anybody there anyway. There warn’t a lock on the door, neither. Says I to myself: something’s Zum about this whole thing; it ain’t natural for a girl to be in such a sweat over a hymnal. So I gives the book a shake, and out drops a little piece of paper with ‘Half past three’ wrote on it in pencil. I put the paper back and return it to Miss Sophia. As soon as she found the note, she lit up and seemed glad, and before a body could think, she squeezed me and called me the best boy in the world and not to tell anybody.

  I went down to the river, studying over this thing that just happened, and pretty soon I noticed that my owned folk, Jack, was follering behind me. By the time we’re out of sight of the house, he catches up to me and says:

  “Mars George, if you’ll come down to de swamp, I’ll show you a whole stack o’ water-moccasins.”

  Thinks I, that’s mighty curious. He oughter know a body don’t love water-moccasins enough to go looking after them. What is he up to anyway? So I says:

  “All right, Jack; I’ll foller you.”

  I follered half a mile; then he struck out over the swamp, and we headed ankle-deep for maybe another half-mile. We came to a flat place that was a little higher, all dry, and thick with trees and vines. He says:

  “You go’s right in dah, Mars George; dah’s whah dey is.”

  Then he turned and went away. I poked my head in a little and pretty soon came to an open patch as big as a bedroom all hung around with vines, and found a man laying on the ground asleep. By Jings! It was my old Jim!

  I woke him up, and I reckoned it was going to be a grand surprise to him to see me again, but it warn’t. He nearly cried he was so glad, but he warn’t surprised. He said he was right behind me that night in the water, but didn’t shout out to me because he didn’t want nobody to pick him up and take him into slavery again. Says he:

  “I follered you up de river bank, and when I seen you go in dat house, I knew you was safe, so I struck out for de woods to hide in. Early in de mawnin’, some niggers came along and showed me dis place heah, which de dogs can’t track on account o’ the water. Dey brings me truck to eat every night, en tells me how you is a-getting’ along. Dat Jack is one smart feller.”

  “Why didn’t you fetch me here sooner, Jim?”

  “Well, twarn’t no use to bring you heah, Huck, till we could do sumf’n – but we’s all right now. I been buyin’ pots en pans en vittles, as I got a chance, en patchin’ up the raf’ nights when – “

  “What raft, Jim?”

  “Our raf’.”

  “Our raft! You mean to say our old raft wasn’t smashed to flinders?”

  “No, she warn’t. She was tore up a good deal, but she’s all fixed up ag’in an good as new, en now we’s got a lot ‘a’ new stuff to take the place of wut wuz lost.”

  “Why, how did you get ahold of the raft again, Jim – did you catch her?”

  “No; some fellers found her ketched up on a snag little a little ways down, en hid her in a creek ‘mongst the willows. I hears about it pretty soon, en tell ‘em she don’t belong to no one but you en me. And I ast them if dey plan on grabbin’ a young white genlman’s property, en most likely take a hid’n for it? Den I gives em ten cents apiece, en dey was happy enough fo’ it. Jack and the boys been mighty good to me, en whatever I wants, I doan’ have to ast ‘em twice, honey.”

  I don’t want to talk much about what happened the next day. I’ll cut it pretty short. I waked up about dawn, and was going to turn over and go back to sleep again when I noticed how quiet it was – I could hear the old clock bonging down on the first floor, but there didn’t seem to be a soul in the house a-stirring. That wasn’t usual. Next I noticed that Buck was up and gone. Well, I get up and head downstairs, and what’s down there? Nobody. Everything is as still as a mouse. Outside, down by the woodpile, I comes across Jack and ask him straight out what’s it mean?

  Says he:

  “Doan’ you know, Mars George?”

  “No,” says I, “no I don’t.”

  Then he tells me that Miss Sophia has gone and run off in the night sometime; run off to get married to Harney Shepherdson. Leastways, that is what they put together. All the men in the house strapped on their guns and the women went up and down the river the stir up their relatives. He said they planned to catch ole Harney and kill him before he crossed the river and ruin’t Miss Sophia’s name for the rest of her days.

  I says:

  “But Buck didn’t wake me up.”

  “Well, I reckon he wouldn’t. Dey warn’t gwyne to mix you up in it. Mars Buck loaded up his gun en ‘lowed he’ll fetch home a Shepherdson or bust, and I reckon he will if’en he gets a chance.”

  I took up the river road as hard as I could. By and by I begin to hear guns – guns a far ways off. When I come in sight of the general store and the woodpiles where the steamship lands, I clumb up into the forks of a cottonwood tree that was out of reach, and waited. I didn’t have to wait long.

  There was four or five men on horseback cavorting on their horses in the open place before the log store, cussing and whooping, trying to get at a couple of young chaps that was hiding behind the woodpile; but they kept themselves hidden and wouldn’t show themselves. Every t
ime one of them popped their heads up, they got shot at, and they dropped back down again.

  By and by the men stopped cavorting and started riding toward the store; then up pops one of the boys – and I can see now it was Buck – and he draws a bead over the top of a log, and drops one of the men out of his saddle. The other men jumped off their horses and dragged the hurt one to the store; the minute they do, the two boys started on the run. By the time the men sees them, they are now both at the woodpile that was in front of my tree, and slipped in behind it, so they had the bulge on the men again. The young chap with Buck was about nineteen.

  The men ripped around awhile, and then rode away. As soon as they was out of sight, I sung out to Buck and told him I was there. He was awful surprised. He began to yip and cry, and ‘lowed that he and his cousin Joe (that was the other young man) would make up for this day yet. He said his father and his two brothers were both killed, and two or three of the enemy. Said the Shepherdsons laid for them in an ambush. I asked him what had become of Harney and Miss Sophia. He said they’d got across the river earlier in the day before anyone knew what was going on. I was glad of that, but Buck was angry at himself for not killing Harney that day we was together and he took a shot at him.