Chapter 4 A Discovery Get up!
What are you doing?
It was after sunrise and I had been sound asleep.
Pap was standing over me looking sour and sick.
He said, What are you doing with this gun?
I realized he didn't know anything about what he'd been doing last night.
So I said, Somebody tried to get in.
I was waiting for him.
Why didn't you wake me up?
Tried, but I couldn't.
I couldn't budge you.
Well, all right.
Don't stand there all day.
Go out and see if there's fish on the line for breakfast.
He unlocked the door and I ran out to the riverbank.
I noticed some tree branches and things floating downstream, so I knew the river had begun to rise.
I walked along the bank and saw a canoe.
A beauty, too, about thirteen to fourteen feet long.
I jumped into the water headfirst, clothes on and all, and swam for it.
At first, I thought my pap would be glad to see the canoe.
It would be worth ten dollars at least, but when I got to shore, pap wasn't in sight.
Just then, I had another idea.
I decided to hide the canoe.
Then, instead of hiding in the woods when I ran away, I could go down the river about fifty miles and camp in one place for good.
I was pretty close to the cabin by this time.
I kept thinking I could hear the old man coming, but I was finally able to get the canoe hidden.
Then I saw Pap down the path.
He was aiming the gun at some birds in the distance.
He hadn't seen anything.
While Pap and I rested after breakfast, I tried to think of a way to keep him and the widow from trying to follow me.
That would be better than just hoping I can get away before they noticed I was gone.
Couldn't figure it out for a while, but by and by Pap sat up to drink some water and said Next time a man comes prowling around here, you wake me up, hear.
That man was up to no good.
Next time you better wake me up.
Then he lay down and fell asleep.
What he said gave me the very idea I wanted.
I could fix it now so nobody would ever think of following me.
At about noon, we got up and walked along the bank.
The river was rising pretty fast, and lots of driftwood was going by.
Pretty soon, along came part of a raft, nine logs tied together.
We went out and pulled it ashore.
Pap wanted to head right down to town and sell the log, so he locked me in the cabin, took our little boat and started towing the raft.
Must have been about half past three.
I didn't think he'd come back that night.
I waited until I thought he was far enough away, and then I went to work with my saw.
I was out of the cabin before he was on the other side of the river.
Took all our supplies to the canoe the cornmeal, the side of bacon, all the coffee and sugar and the ammunition.
I took the bucket and gourd, a dipper, a tin cup.
My old saw two blankets, a skillet and a coffee pot.
I also took fish lines, matches, and a few other things, everything that was worth a cent.
I cleaned out the place.
I wanted an axe, but there was only one, and I had a special plan for it.
Finally, I packed up the gun.
I covered up the tracks I'd made and patched up the hole I'd cut in the back of the cabin.
I stood on the riverbank and looked out over the river, all safe.
Then I took the axe and smashed in the door.
It was all part of my plan.
I beat it and hacked at it a lot, and then I poured some old pig's blood all around and dragged a sack full of rocks along the ground toward the river.
That left gruesome-looking tracks, as if a body'd been dragged.
I wish Tom Sawyer was there.
I knew he'd have been interested in this kind of business and thrown in some fancy touches.
Next, I pulled out some of my hair.
I made sure the axe was covered with the pig's blood and stuck those bits of hair to the axe.
Threw the axe into the corner of the cabin.
Then I thought of one more thing.
I took the sack of cornmeal, tore a small hole in it and left a trail going in the other direction from my canoe.
Carried the sack through the grass to a shallow lake.
I dropped the stone that Pap used to sharpen a knife there, too, as if it was left by accident.
Then I tied up the hole in the sack of cornmeal and brought it back to the canoe.
It was about dark now, so I moved the canoe down the river under some willows that hung over the bank and waited for the moon to rise.
I ate a bit and laid down in the canoe to think up a plan.
Said to myself, they'll follow the tracks to the shore and look in the river for me.
Then they'll follow that trail of cornmeal to the lake and search around there.
They'll think a robber killed me and took all the things.
They won't ever look for anything but my dead body.
They'll soon get tired of that and then they won't look for me anymore.
I decided to hide out on Jackson's Island.
I knew the place pretty well, and nobody ever went there.
Then I could paddle to town at night and slink around and pick up the things I wanted.
I was pretty tired and soon fell asleep.
When I woke up, I didn't know where I was for a minute.
I sat up and looked around, a little scared.
Then I remembered.
The river looked miles and miles across.
The moon was so bright that I could have counted all the logs that drifted along, black and still.
Everything was dead quiet.
It looked late.
It even smelled late, if you know what I mean.
I don't know any other words to describe it.
I yawned and stretched and was about to unhitch and start paddling when I heard a sound on the water.
I listened and pretty soon I'd made it out.
It was that dull, regular kind of sound that comes from oars moving in the water when it's a still night.
I peeped out through the willow branches and there it was, a little boat away across the water.
I couldn't tell how many people were in it.
It kept coming.
When it got closer, I saw there was only one man on it.
Thought it might be Pap, even though I wasn't expecting him.
Soon he came so close I could have reached out and touched him.
Sure enough, it was Pap.
I didn't lose any time.
In a minute, I was moving the canoe quietly down the river.
I got a few miles away and then moved to the middle of the river.
Pretty soon I'd be passing the ferry landing, and people might see me if I got too close.
I got out among the driftwood, then I laid down in the bottom of the canoe so no one would see me, and just let it float.
I laid there and had a good rest, looking away into the sky.
Wasn't a cloud, innit?
The sky looks ever so deep when you lay down on your back in the moonlight.
I'd never known that before.
And how far a person can hear on the water.
I heard people talking at the ferry landing.
I heard what they said, too, every word of it.
One man said the days were getting longer now. the night shorter.
Another said that this wasn't one of the short ones, and then they laughed.
I heard one man say it was nearly three o'clock in the morning.
After that, the talk got further and further away.
I couldn't make out the words anymore, but I could hear the mumble and now and then a laugh too, but it seemed a long way off.
After a while, I set up.
There was Jackson's Island, covered with trees and looking big, dark and solid like a steamboat without any lights.
Didn't take me long to get there.
I paddled the canoe into a section of the bank that I knew about.
I hid among the willow branches.
When I was done, nobody could have seen the canoe from the outside.
I went and sat on a log at the head of the island.
I looked out on the big river and the black driftwood.
At the town a few miles away, there were three or four lights twinkling.
The very big lumber raft was about a mile upstream.
It was coming downstream and had a lantern in the middle of it.
I watched it come creeping down.
When it was nearby, I heard a man say, stern oars there, mover to starboard.
I heard it just clearly as if the man was at my side.
There was a little gray in the sky now, so I stepped into the woods and laid down for a nap before breakfast.
