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to spite pap. That law trial was a slow business; appeared like they
warn't ever going to get started on it; so every now and then I'd
borrow two or three dollars off of the judge for him, to keep from
getting a cowhiding. Every time he got money he got drunk; and
every time he got drunk he raised Cain around town; and every
time he raised Cain he got jailed. He was just suited- this kind of
thing was right in his line.
He got to hanging around the widow's too much, and so she told
him at last, that if he didn't quit using around there she would make
trouble for him. Well, wasn't he mad? He said he would show who
was Huck Finn's boss. So he watched out for me one day in the
spring, and catched me, and took me up the river about three miles,
in a skiff, and crossed over to the Illinois shore where it was
woody and there warn't no houses but an old log hut in a place
where the timber was so thick you couldn't find it if you didn't
know where it was.
He kept me with him all the time, and I never got a chance to
run off. We lived in that old cabin, and he always locked the door
and put the key under his head, nights. He had a gun which he had
stole, I reckon, and we fished and hunted, and that was what we
lived on. Every little while he locked me in and went down to the
store, three miles, to the ferry, and traded fish and game for whisky
and fetched it home and got drunk and had a good time, and licked
me. The widow she found out where I was, by-and-by, and she
sent a man over to try to get hold of me, but pap drove him off
with the gun, and it warn't long after that till I was used to being
where I was, and liked it, all but the cowhide part.
It was kind of lazy and jolly, laying off comfortable all day,
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smoking and fishing, and no books nor study. Two months or more
run along, and my clothes got to be all rags and dirt, and I didn't
see how I'd ever got to like it so well at the widow's, where you
had to wash, and eat on a plate, and comb up, and go to bed and
get up regular, and be forever bothering over a book and have old
Miss Watson pecking at you all the time. I didn't want to go back
no more. I had stopped cussing, because the widow didn't like it;
but now I took to it again because pap hadn't no objections. It was
pretty good times up in the woods there take it all around.
But by-and-by pap got too handy with his hick'ry, and I couldn't
stand it. I was all over welts. He got to going away so much, too,
and locking me in. Once he locked me in and was gone three days.
It was dreadful lonesome. I judged he had got drowned and I
wasn't ever going to get out any more. I was scared. I made up my
mind I would fix up some way to leave there. I had tried to get out
of that cabin many a time, but I couldn't find no way. There warn't
a window to it big enought for a dog to get through. I couldn't get
up the chimbly, it was too narrow. The door was thick solid oak
slabs. Pap was pretty careful not to leave a knife or anything in the
cabin when he was away; I reckon I had hunted the place over as
much as a hundred times; well, I was most all the time at it,
because it was about the only way to put in the time. But this time I
found something at last; I found an old rusty wood-saw without
any handle; it was laid in between a rafter and the clapboards of
the roof. I greased it up and went to work. There was an old
horse-blanket nailed against the logs at the far end of the cabin
behind the table, to keep the wind from blowing through the chinks
and putting the candle out. I got under the table and raised the
blanket and went to work to saw a section of the big bottom log
out, big enough to let me through. Well, it was a good long job, but
I was getting towards the end of it when I heard pap's gun in the
woods. I got rid of the signs of my work, and dropped the blanket
and hid my saw, and pretty soon pap came in.
Pap warn't in a good humor- so he was his natural self. He said
he was down to town, and everything was going wrong. His lawyer
said he reckoned he would win his lawsuit and get the money, if
they ever got started on the trial; but then there was ways to put it
off a long time, and Judge Thatcher knowed how to do it. And he
said people allowed there'd be another trial to get me away from
him and give me to the widow for my guardian, and they guessed it
would win, this time. This shook me up considerable, because I
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