<p>CHAPTER IX.</p>
<p>I wanted to go and look at a place right about the middle of the island
that 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 mile
wide.</p>
<p>This place was a tolerable long, steep hill or ridge about forty foot
high. We had a rough time getting to the top, the sides was so steep and
the bushes so thick. We tramped and clumb around all over it, and by
and by found a good big cavern in the rock, most up to the top on the side
towards Illinois. The cavern was as big as two or three rooms
bunched together, 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’t want to be climbing up and down there all the time.</p>
<p>Jim said if we had the canoe hid in a good place, and had all the traps in
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 them
little birds had said it was going to rain, and did I want the things to
get wet?</p>
<p>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 by to
hide the canoe in, amongst the thick willows. We took some fish off
of the lines and set them again, and begun to get ready for dinner.</p>
<p>The door of the cavern was big enough to roll a hogshead in, and on one
side of the door the floor stuck out a little bit, and was flat and a good
place to build a fire on. So we built it there and cooked dinner.</p>
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<p>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
soon it darkened up, and begun to thunder and lighten; so the birds was
right about 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 summer storms. It would get so dark that it looked all
blue-black outside, and lovely; and the rain would thrash along by so
thick 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 and turn up
the pale underside of the leaves; and then a perfect ripper of a gust
would follow along and set the branches to tossing their arms as if they
was just wild; and next, when it was just about the bluest and blackest—<i>FST</i>!
it was as bright as glory, and you’d have a little glimpse of
tree-tops a-plunging about away off yonder in the storm, hundreds of yards
further than you could see before; dark as sin again in a second, and now
you’d hear the thunder let go with an awful crash, and then go
rumbling, grumbling, tumbling, down the sky towards the under side of the
world, like rolling empty barrels down stairs—where it’s long
stairs and they bounce a good deal, you know.</p>
<p>“Jim, this is nice,” I says. “I wouldn’t want to
be nowhere else but here. Pass me along another hunk of fish and some hot
corn-bread.”</p>
<p>“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 gittn’ mos’ drownded, too; dat you would, honey. Chickens
knows when it’s gwyne to rain, en so do de birds, chile.”</p>
<p>The river went on raising and raising for ten or twelve days, till at last
it was over the banks. The water was three or four foot deep on the
island in the low places and on the Illinois bottom. On that side it
was a good many miles wide, but on the Missouri side it was the same old
distance across—a half a mile—because the Missouri shore was
just a wall of high bluffs.</p>
<p>Daytimes we paddled all over the island in the canoe, It was mighty cool
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 vines hung so
thick we had to back away and go some other way. Well, on every old
broken-down tree you could see rabbits and snakes and such things; and
when the island had been overflowed a day or two they got so tame, on
account of being hungry, that you could paddle right up and put your hand
on them if you wanted to; but not the snakes and turtles—they would
slide 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.</p>
<p>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 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.</p>
<p>Another night when we was up at the head of the island, just before
daylight, here comes a frame-house down, on the west side. She was a
two-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 we made the canoe fast and set in her to wait for daylight.</p>
<p>The light begun to come before we got to the foot of the island. Then
we looked in at the window. We could make out a bed, and a table,
and two old chairs, and lots of things around about on the floor, and
there was clothes hanging against the wall. There was something
laying on the floor in the far corner that looked like a man. So Jim
says:</p>
<p>“Hello, you!”</p>
<p>But it didn’t budge. So I hollered again, and then Jim says:</p>
<p>“De man ain’t asleep—he’s dead. You hold
still—I’ll go en see.”</p>
<p>He went, and bent down and looked, and says:</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
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<p>I didn’t look at him at all. Jim throwed some old rags over
him, but he needn’t done it; I didn’t want to see him. There
was heaps of old greasy cards scattered around over the floor, and old
whisky bottles, and a couple of masks made out of black cloth; and all
over the walls was the ignorantest kind of words and pictures made with
charcoal. There was two old dirty calico dresses, and a sun-bonnet,
and some women’s underclothes hanging against the wall, and some men’s
clothing, 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 rag stopper for a baby to suck. We would a took the bottle,
but it was broke. There was a seedy old chest, and an old hair trunk
with the hinges broke. They stood open, but there warn’t
nothing left in them that was any account. The way things was
scattered about we reckoned the people left in a hurry, and warn’t
fixed so as to carry off most of their stuff.</p>
<p>We got an old tin lantern, and a butcher-knife without any handle, and a
bran-new Barlow knife worth two bits in any store, and a lot of tallow
candles, and a tin candlestick, and a gourd, and a tin cup, and a ratty
old bedquilt off the bed, and a reticule with needles and pins and beeswax
and buttons and thread and all such truck in it, and a hatchet and some
nails, and a fishline as thick as my little finger with some monstrous
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 on
them; and just as we was leaving I found a tolerable good curry-comb, and
Jim he found a ratty old fiddle-bow, and a wooden leg. The straps
was broke off of it, but, barring that, it was a good enough 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.</p>
<p>And so, take it all around, we made a good haul. When we was ready
to shove off we was a quarter of a mile below the island, and it was
pretty broad day; so I made Jim lay down in the canoe and cover up with
the quilt, because if he set up people could tell he was a nigger a good
ways off. I paddled over to the Illinois shore, and drifted down
most a half a mile doing it. I crept up the dead water under the
bank, and hadn’t no accidents and didn’t see nobody. We
got home all safe.</p>
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