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- CHAPTER X
The two boys flew on and on, toward the village, speechless with
horror. They glanced backward over their shoulders from time to time,
apprehensively, as if they feared they might be followed. Every stump
that started up in their path seemed a man and an enemy, and made them
catch their breath; and as they sped by some outlying cottages that lay
near the village, the barking of the aroused watch-dogs seemed to give
wings to their feet.
“If we can only get to the old tannery before we break down!” whispered
Tom, in short catches between breaths. “I can’t stand it much longer.”
Huckleberry’s hard pantings were his only reply, and the boys fixed
their eyes on the goal of their hopes and bent to their work to win it.
They gained steadily on it, and at last, breast to breast, they burst
through the open door and fell grateful and exhausted in the sheltering
shadows beyond. By and by their pulses slowed down, and Tom whispered:
“Huckleberry, what do you reckon’ll come of this?”
“If Doctor Robinson dies, I reckon hanging’ll come of it.”
“Do you though?”
“Why, I _know_ it, Tom.”
Tom thought a while, then he said:
“Who’ll tell? We?”
“What are you talking about? S’pose something happened and Injun Joe
_didn’t_ hang? Why, he’d kill us some time or other, just as dead sure
as we’re a laying here.”
“That’s just what I was thinking to myself, Huck.”
“If anybody tells, let Muff Potter do it, if he’s fool enough. He’s
generally drunk enough.”
Tom said nothing—went on thinking. Presently he whispered:
“Huck, Muff Potter don’t know it. How can he tell?”
“What’s the reason he don’t know it?”
“Because he’d just got that whack when Injun Joe done it. D’you reckon
he could see anything? D’you reckon he knowed anything?”
“By hokey, that’s so, Tom!”
“And besides, look-a-here—maybe that whack done for _him_!”
“No, ’taint likely, Tom. He had liquor in him; I could see that; and
besides, he always has. Well, when pap’s full, you might take and belt
him over the head with a church and you couldn’t phase him. He says so,
his own self. So it’s the same with Muff Potter, of course. But if a man
was dead sober, I reckon maybe that whack might fetch him; I dono.”
After another reflective silence, Tom said:
“Hucky, you sure you can keep mum?”
“Tom, we _got_ to keep mum. You know that. That Injun devil wouldn’t
make any more of drownding us than a couple of cats, if we was to squeak
’bout this and they didn’t hang him. Now, look-a-here, Tom, less take
and swear to one another—that’s what we got to do—swear to keep mum.”
“I’m agreed. It’s the best thing. Would you just hold hands and swear
that we—”
“Oh no, that wouldn’t do for this. That’s good enough for little
rubbishy common things—specially with gals, cuz _they_ go back on you
anyway, and blab if they get in a huff—but there orter be writing ’bout
a big thing like this. And blood.”
Tom’s whole being applauded this idea. It was deep, and dark, and awful;
the hour, the circumstances, the surroundings, were in keeping with it.
He picked up a clean pine shingle that lay in the moon-light, took a
little fragment of “red keel” out of his pocket, got the moon on
his work, and painfully scrawled these lines, emphasizing each slow
down-stroke by clamping his tongue between his teeth, and letting up the
pressure on the up-strokes.
“Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer swears they will keep mum about This and
They wish They may Drop down dead in Their Tracks if They ever Tell
and Rot.”
Huckleberry was filled with admiration of Tom’s facility in writing, and
the sublimity of his language. He at once took a pin from his lapel and
was going to prick his flesh, but Tom said:
“Hold on! Don’t do that. A pin’s brass. It might have verdigrease on
it.”
“What’s verdigrease?”
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