HEN TOM WAS gone east, there warn’t no way to tell one day from t’other. They just went a-slipping along like drift logs on the Big River, and near as dark. But now Tom was back, and the day was alive again, lit up and frisky. In less’n one of them, he rescued a pard from a lynching, showed off his shooting and lasso tricks, got himself elected mayor-govner of Deadwood Gulch, thought up a bunch a new laws, captured gangs a thieves and murderers, tried and hung some robbers, organized a funeral in a bran-new burying ground that he conjured himself, and let fly an amazing yellocution for an old whisky-maker he never even knowed.
And he warn’t done. Once Tom Sawyer set off adventuring, a body couldn’t hold him back. Whilst we was still lowering old Zeb into the ground—Zeb only had one gold tooth and, before they closed his box, I seen he didn’t have that one no more nuther—Tom asked me what happened to the traps and scrotum bag full a money stole last night from the old fellow? I says that probably his murderers has it all, and Tom says, “If so, they ain’t parading it. Le’s go find where he got killed while there’s still light out!”
Tom was in a sweat to do that right when he was still thinking about it, he couldn’t rest till his doing catched up to his thinking, so he signaled Wyndell to hurry up his amens and get to throwing in the dirt—“He ain’t called Wyndy for nothing,” he says—and next thing we was on our way. Tom decided to take along one of the murderers to show us what they done with their plunder. He chose Bill because he judged he’d crack quickest once he was away from the others, and with his shooting hand ruined he warn’t likely to cause no trouble. Tom and Bear tied Bill’s hands behind him, set him on an old mule, and slung a rope round his scrawny neck, which Tom says was to remember him of the meaning of life. Tom clumb up on his big white stallion Storm, who he says he named Spirit a the Storm after a famous pirate ship he once read about. He give me a skittery young pony the same style of our Express ponies, and the three of us rode the back trail out from the camp like Zeb done the night before.
After setting the saddle a while, I growed customed to it, but it warn’t comfortable. I was missing Tongo badly and worrying about him, and Eeteh, too. I didn’t know if they was alive nor dead. Them two was what I had like adventures, and I wanted to brag to Tom about them and go with him to look for them and rescue them if they was in trouble, but after what he said up on the gallows, I was afraid he might be disappointed with me and go away again. I was ever so happy he was back, I didn’t want nothing to spoil it, so I didn’t say nothing, not yet.
As we was moving slowly along, watching for what we could see, I says to Tom I was nation sorry to hear about his Aunt Sally.
“What’s wrong with her?”
“You know, them two robbers that KILLED her!”
Tom laughed. “Aunt Sally’s still kicking, Huck. She’s got almighty old and cranky and she can’t remember five minutes ago, but she can still haul off and give a body a rememberable larruping.”
“But the robbery, the massacre—!”
“Aw, Huck, there warn’t no such. We made it all up. I thought you seen that. I set the whole yarn down in Julesburg just so’s you’d have a laugh. Ain’t you got no sense a humor?” He bit off the end of a fresh seegar, and leaned away from Bill to spit it out. “Maybe we can round up forty of these scoundrels and get them all to fessing up to one awful crime or nother like them robbers done and set a new one-day hanging record,” he says with a grin, lighting up his seegar. I was also grinning, but I didn’t know why.
I reckoned the murderers had been waiting for the old distiller and begun following him as soon as he crumb out a the ravine, but they might of chased along behind him for a time till he got further alone. That would of give Zeb time to do something with the money and goods he was carrying after he heard the robbers back of him, so I kept my eyes peeled for hiding places. Bill had his head down and warn’t giving no sign. When Tom poked him with his rifle barrel and asked him what they done with all their booty, he cussed and says there warn’t none.
“Must of been the Cap’n who murdered the old fellow,” Tom says to me, but loud enough for Bill to hear. “He’s the one’s got money in his pockets.”
“He’s the one,” says Bill. “But he ain’t got nothin’ in his pockets except holes to push his fingers through to claw his itches with.”
We passed an old oak with a bole hole in it. On a hunch, I stuck my fist in, hoping only there warn’t no rattlers coiled up inside, and I fetched out some pocket watches and a string a black flea-bit scalps, some with dried-up ears on them. “Well, at least we ain’t rode out here for nothing,” Tom says with a laugh, pocketing the watches and settling the scalps over his saddle. Bill didn’t look happy at what he seen. “You judge these was the whisky-maker’s?”
“He was packing along any goods he could barter with. I reckonize them scalps.”