Table of Contents

you go in there with me and help get it out?” “I bet I will! I will if it’s where we
can blaze our way to it and not get lost.” “Huck, we can do that without the least
little bit of trouble in the world.” “Good as wheat! What makes you think the
money’s-” “Huck, you just wait till we get in there. If we don’t find it I’ll agree
to give you my drum and everything I’ve got in the world. I will, by jings.” “All
right-it’s a whiz. When do you say?” “Right now, if you say it. Are you strong
enough?” “Is it far in the cave? I ben on my pins a little, three or four days, now,
but I can’t walk more’n a mile, Tom-least I don’t think I could.”

“It’s about five mile into there the way anybody but me would go, Huck, but
there’s a mighty short cut that they don’t anybody but me know about. Huck, I’ll
take you right to it in a skiff. I’ll float the skiff down there, and I’ll pull it back
again all by myself. You needn’t ever turn your hand over.” “Less start right off,
Tom.” “All right. We want some bread and meat, and our pipes, and a little bag
or two, and two or three kite-strings, and some of these newfangled things they
call lucifer matches. I tell you many’s the time I wished I had some when I was
in there before.” A trifle after noon the boys borrowed a small skiff from a
citizen who was absent, and got under way at once. When they were several
miles below “Cave Hollow,” Tom said: “Now you see this bluff here looks all
alike all the way down from the cave hollow-no houses, no wood-yards, bushes
all alike. But do you see that white place up yonder where there’s been a
landslide? Well that’s one of my marks.

We’ll get ashore, now.” They landed.
“Now Huck, where we’re a-standing you could touch that hole I got out of with
a fishing-pole. See if you can find it.” Huck searched all the place about, and
found nothing. Tom proudly marched into a thick clump of sumach bushes and
said “Here you are! Look at it, Huck; it’s the snuggest hole in this country. You
just keep mum about it. All along I’ve been wanting to be a robber, but I knew
I’d got to have a thing like this, and where to run across it was the bother. We’ve
got it now, and we’ll keep it quiet, only we’ll let Joe Harper and Ben Rogers in-
because of course there’s got to be a Gang, or else there wouldn’t be any style
about it. Tom Sawyer’s Gang-it sounds splendid, don’t it, Huck?” “Well it just
does, Tom. And who’ll we rob?” “O, most anybody. Waylay people-that’s
mostly the way.” “And kill them?” “No-not always. Hide them in the cave till
they raise a ransom.” “What’s a ransom?” “Money. You make them raise all they
can, off’n their friends; and after you’ve kept them a year, if it ain’t raised then
you kill them. That’s the general way. Only you don’t kill the women. You shut
up the women, but you don’t kill them. They’re always beautiful and rich, and
awfully scared. You take their watches and things, but you always take your hat
off and talk polite. They ain’t anybody as polite as robbers-you’ll see that in any
book. Well the women get to loving you, and after they’ve been in the cave a
week or two weeks they stop crying and after that you couldn’t get them to
leave. If you drove them out they’d turn right around and come back. It’s so in
all the books.” “Why it’s real bully, Tom. I b’lieve it’s better’n to be a pirate.”