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- 8322
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- 2026-01-28T02:36:01.312Z
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- 8232
- text
- first in the list of the cavern’s marvels; even “Aladdin’s Palace”
cannot rival it.
Injun Joe was buried near the mouth of the cave; and people flocked
there in boats and wagons from the towns and from all the farms and
hamlets for seven miles around; they brought their children, and
all sorts of provisions, and confessed that they had had almost as
satisfactory a time at the funeral as they could have had at the
hanging.
This funeral stopped the further growth of one thing—the petition to the
governor for Injun Joe’s pardon. The petition had been largely signed;
many tearful and eloquent meetings had been held, and a committee of
sappy women been appointed to go in deep mourning and wail around the
governor, and implore him to be a merciful ass and trample his duty
under foot. Injun Joe was believed to have killed five citizens of the
village, but what of that? If he had been Satan himself there would
have been plenty of weaklings ready to scribble their names to a
pardon-petition, and drip a tear on it from their permanently impaired
and leaky water-works.
The morning after the funeral Tom took Huck to a private place to have
an important talk. Huck had learned all about Tom’s adventure from the
Welshman and the Widow Douglas, by this time, but Tom said he reckoned
there was one thing they had not told him; that thing was what he wanted
to talk about now. Huck’s face saddened. He said:
“I know what it is. You got into No. 2 and never found anything but
whiskey. Nobody told me it was you; but I just knowed it must ’a’ ben
you, soon as I heard ’bout that whiskey business; and I knowed you
hadn’t got the money becuz you’d ’a’ got at me some way or other and
told me even if you was mum to everybody else. Tom, something’s always
told me we’d never get holt of that swag.”
“Why, Huck, I never told on that tavern-keeper. _You_ know his tavern
was all right the Saturday I went to the picnic. Don’t you remember you
was to watch there that night?”
“Oh yes! Why, it seems ’bout a year ago. It was that very night that I
follered Injun Joe to the widder’s.”
“_You_ followed him?”
“Yes—but you keep mum. I reckon Injun Joe’s left friends behind him, and
I don’t want ’em souring on me and doing me mean tricks. If it hadn’t
ben for me he’d be down in Texas now, all right.”
Then Huck told his entire adventure in confidence to Tom, who had only
heard of the Welshman’s part of it before.
“Well,” said Huck, presently, coming back to the main question, “whoever
nipped the whiskey in No. 2, nipped the money, too, I reckon—anyways
it’s a goner for us, Tom.”
“Huck, that money wasn’t ever in No. 2!”
“What!” Huck searched his comrade’s face keenly. “Tom, have you got on
the track of that money again?”
“Huck, it’s in the cave!”
Huck’s eyes blazed.
“Say it again, Tom.”
“The money’s in the cave!”
“Tom—honest injun, now—is it fun, or earnest?”
“Earnest, Huck—just as earnest as ever I was in my life. Will you go in
there with me and help get it out?”
“I bet I will! I will if it’s where we can blaze our way to it and not
get lost.”
“Huck, we can do that without the least little bit of trouble in the
world.”
“Good as wheat! What makes you think the money’s—”
“Huck, you just wait till we get in there. If we don’t find it I’ll
agree to give you my drum and every thing I’ve got in the world. I will,
by jings.”
“All right—it’s a whiz. When do you say?”
“Right now, if you say it. Are you strong enough?”
“Is it far in the cave? I ben on my pins a little, three or four days,
now, but I can’t walk more’n a mile, Tom—least I don’t think I could.”
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- Chunk 2