The Best of the Bureau/The_Best_of_the_Bureau_Bureau_Development_Inc._1992.iso/dp/0134/01344.txt

Text File | 1992-08-07 | 20KB | 413 lines

$Unique_ID{bob01344}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn, The
Overreaching Don't Pay}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Twain, Mark}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{says
ain't
mary
tell
miss
say
get
i'll
jane
come}
$Date{}
$Log{}
Title:       Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn, The
Author:      Twain, Mark

Overreaching Don't Pay

     By and by it was getting-up time.  So I come down the ladder and started
for down-stairs; but as I come to the girls' room the door was open, and I
see Mary Jane setting by her old hair trunk, which was open and she'd been
packing things in it - getting ready to go to England.  But she had stopped
now with a folded gown in her lap, and had her face in her hands, crying.  I
felt awful bad to see it; of course anybody would.  I went in there and says:

     "Miss Mary Jane, you can't a-bear to see people in trouble, and I can't -
most always.  Tell me about it."

     So she done it.  And it was the niggers - I just expected it.  She said
the beautiful trip to England was most about spoiled for her; she didn't know
how she was ever going to be happy there, knowing the mother and the children
warn't ever going to see each other no more - and then busted out bitterer
than ever, and flung up her hands, and says:

     "Oh, dear, dear, to think they ain't ever going to see each other any
more!"

     "But they will - and inside of two weeks - and I know it!" says I.

     Laws, it was out before I could think!  And before I could budge she
throws her arms around my neck and told me to say it again, say it again, say
it again!

     I see I had spoke too sudden and said too much, and was in a close place.
I asked her to let me think a minute; and she set there, very impatient and
excited and handsome, but looking kind of happy and eased-up, like a person
that's had a tooth pulled out.  So I went to studying it out. I says to
myself, I reckon a body that ups and tells the truth when he is in a tight
place is taking considerable many resks, though I ain't had no experience, and
can't say for certain; but it looks so to me, anyway; and yet here's a case
where I'm blest if it don't look to me like the truth is better and actuly
safer than a lie.  I must lay it by in my mind, and think it over some time or
other, it's so kind of strange and unregular.  I never see nothing like it.
Well, I says to myself at last I'm a-going to chance it; I'll up and tell the
truth this time, though it does seem most like setting down on a kag of powder
and touching it off just to see where you'll go to. Then I says:

     "Miss Mary Jane, is there any place out of town a little ways where you
could go and stay three or four days?"

     "Yes; Mr. Lothrop's.  Why?"

     "Never mind why yet.  If I'll tell you how I know the niggers will see
each other again - inside of two weeks - here in this house - and prove how I
know it - will you go to Mr. Lothrop's and stay four days?"

     "Four days!" she says; "I'll stay a year!"

     "All right," I says, "I don't want nothing more out of you than just
your word - I druther have it than another man's kiss-the-Bible."  She smiled
and reddened up very sweet, and I says, "If you don't mind it, I'll shut the
door - and bolt it."

     Then I come back and set down again, and says:

     "Don't you holler.  Just set still and take it like a man.  I got to
tell the truth, and you want to brace up, Miss Mary, because it's a bad kind,
and going to be hard to take, but there ain't no help for it.  These uncles
of yourn ain't no uncles at all; they're a couple of frauds - regular dead
beats.  There, now we're over the worst of it, you can stand the rest
middling easy."

     It jolted her up like anything, of course; but I was over the shoal
water now, so I went right along, her eyes a-blazing higher and higher all
the time, and told her every blame thing, from where we first struck that
young fool going up to the steamboat, clear through to where she flung
herself onto the king's breast at the front door and he kissed her sixteen or
seventeen times - and then up she jumps, with her face afire like sunset, and
says:

     "The brute!  Come, don't waste a minute - not a second - we'll have them
tarred and feathered, and flung in the river!"

     Says I:

     "Cert'nly.  But do you mean before you go to Mr. Lothrop's, or -"

     "Oh," she says, "what am I thinking about!" she says, and set right down
again.  "Don't mind what I said - please don't - you won't, now, will you?"
Laying her silky hand on mine in that kind of a way that I said I would die
first.  "I never thought, I was so stirred up," she says; "now go on, and I
won't do so any more.  You tell me what to do, and whatever you say I'll do
it."

     "Well," I says, "it's a rough gang, them two frauds, and I'm fixed so I
got to travel with them a while longer, whether I want to or not - I druther
not tell you why; and if you was to blow on them this town would get me out
of their claws, and I'd be all right; but there'd be another person that you
don't know about who'd be in big trouble.  Well, we got to save him, hain't
we?  Of course.  Well then we won't blow on them."

     Saying them words put a good idea in my head.  I see how maybe I could
get me and Jim rid of the frauds; get them jailed here, and then leave.  But
I didn't want to run the raft in the daytime without anybody aboard to
answer questions but me; so I didn't want the plan to begin working till
pretty late to-night.  I says:

     "Miss Mary Jane, I'll tell you what we'll do, and you won't have to stay
at Mr. Lothrop's so long, nuther.  How fur is it?"

     "A little short of four miles - right out in the country, back here."

     "Well, that 'll answer.  Now you go along out there, and lay low till
nine or half past to-night, and then get them to fetch you home again - tell
them you've thought of something.  If you get here before eleven put a candle
in this window, and if I don't turn up wait till eleven, and then if I don't
turn up it means I'm gone, and out of the way, and safe.  Then you come out
and spread the news around, and get these beats jailed."

     "Good," she says, "I'll do it."

     "And if it just happens so that I don't get away, but get took up along
with them, you must up and say I told you the whole thing before hand, and
you must stand by me all you can."

     "Stand by you! indeed I will.  They sha'n't touch a hair of your head!"
she says, and I see her nostrils spread and her eyes snap when she said it,
too.

     "If I get away I sha'n't be here," I says, "to prove these rapscallions
ain't your uncles, and I couldn't do it if I was here.  I could swear they
was beats and bummers, that's all, though that's worth something.  Well,
there's others can do that better than what I can, and they're people that
ain't going to be doubted as quick as I'd be.  I'll tell you how to find
them.  Gimme a pencil and a piece of paper.  There - 'Royal Nonesuch,
Brickville.'  Put it away, and don't lose it.  When the court wants to find
out something about these two, let them send up to Brickville and say they've
got the men that played the 'Royal Nonesuch,' and ask for some witnesses -
why, you'll have that entire town down here before you can hardly wink, Miss
Mary.  And they'll come a-biling, too."

     I judged we had got everything fixed about right now.  So I says:

     "Just let the auction go right along, and don't worry.  Nobody don't
have to pay for the things they buy till a whole day after the auction on
accounts of the short notice, and they ain't going out of this till they get
that money; and the way we've fixed it the sale ain't going to count, and
they ain't going to get no money.  It's just like the way it was with the
niggers - it warn't no sale, and the niggers will be back before long.  Why,
they can't collect the money for the niggers yet - they're in the worst kind
of a fix, Miss Mary."

     "Well," she says, "I'll run down to breakfast now, and then I'll start
straight for Mr. Loth