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- 2026-01-28T17:35:34.233Z
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- all this trouble if it hadn’t ’a’ been for that money; now you just take
my sheer of it along with your’n, and gimme a ten-center sometimes—not
many times, becuz I don’t give a dern for a thing ’thout it’s tollable
hard to git—and you go and beg off for me with the widder.”
“Oh, Huck, you know I can’t do that. ’Tain’t fair; and besides if you’ll
try this thing just a while longer you’ll come to like it.”
“Like it! Yes—the way I’d like a hot stove if I was to set on it long
enough. No, Tom, I won’t be rich, and I won’t live in them cussed
smothery houses. I like the woods, and the river, and hogsheads, and
I’ll stick to ’em, too. Blame it all! just as we’d got guns, and a cave,
and all just fixed to rob, here this dern foolishness has got to come up
and spile it all!”
Tom saw his opportunity—
“Lookyhere, Huck, being rich ain’t going to keep me back from turning
robber.”
“No! Oh, good-licks; are you in real dead-wood earnest, Tom?”
“Just as dead earnest as I’m sitting here. But Huck, we can’t let you
into the gang if you ain’t respectable, you know.”
Huck’s joy was quenched.
“Can’t let me in, Tom? Didn’t you let me go for a pirate?”
“Yes, but that’s different. A robber is more high-toned than what a
pirate is—as a general thing. In most countries they’re awful high up in
the nobility—dukes and such.”
“Now, Tom, hain’t you always ben friendly to me? You wouldn’t shet me
out, would you, Tom? You wouldn’t do that, now, _would_ you, Tom?”
“Huck, I wouldn’t want to, and I _don’t_ want to—but what would people
say? Why, they’d say, ‘Mph! Tom Sawyer’s Gang! pretty low characters in
it!’ They’d mean you, Huck. You wouldn’t like that, and I wouldn’t.”
Huck was silent for some time, engaged in a mental struggle. Finally he
said:
“Well, I’ll go back to the widder for a month and tackle it and see if I
can come to stand it, if you’ll let me b’long to the gang, Tom.”
“All right, Huck, it’s a whiz! Come along, old chap, and I’ll ask the
widow to let up on you a little, Huck.”
“Will you, Tom—now will you? That’s good. If she’ll let up on some of
the roughest things, I’ll smoke private and cuss private, and crowd
through or bust. When you going to start the gang and turn robbers?”
“Oh, right off. We’ll get the boys together and have the initiation
tonight, maybe.”
“Have the which?”
“Have the initiation.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s to swear to stand by one another, and never tell the gang’s
secrets, even if you’re chopped all to flinders, and kill anybody and
all his family that hurts one of the gang.”
“That’s gay—that’s mighty gay, Tom, I tell you.”
“Well, I bet it is. And all that swearing’s got to be done at midnight,
in the lonesomest, awfulest place you can find—a ha’nted house is the
best, but they’re all ripped up now.”
“Well, midnight’s good, anyway, Tom.”
“Yes, so it is. And you’ve got to swear on a coffin, and sign it with
blood.”
“Now, that’s something _like_! Why, it’s a million times bullier than
pirating. I’ll stick to the widder till I rot, Tom; and if I git to be
a reg’lar ripper of a robber, and everybody talking ’bout it, I reckon
she’ll be proud she snaked me in out of the wet.”
- title
- Chunk 3