“Also they’s a crick over thar and it might have gold in it!”
It was his own complice Oren who first raised the howl and that surely must a nigh froze Tom, but he only took his spectacles off so’s he could see better and says it was easier to holler for war than to stop it once you cranked it up. “We thought that hellish conflictation twixt the States was cooled down ten years ago, but NO! It’s still a-blazing away!” That shut up some a them because they was all strangers and couldn’t be certain who was standing next to them, but others started cussing and bellowing like as if to set off the war again. People was listening to local ways a talking and was moving about, lining up sides like before a ballgame. Somewheres that fiddler had struck up “Dixie,” and the drummer was bashing his drum and blowing on a juice-harp, trying to drown him out.
Tom stood up and slapped his hat down and they all quieted down some. “Yesterday is dead as a coffin nail, my friends!” he shouted. “Let the past bury its own dang dead, whilst we bury the bloody hatchet and act, act in the living NOW!” He started getting applause again. “We got to toil upwards in the night together through the mud and scum of things without no fear and with a manly heart! No damn ifs, ands, or buts ABOUT it!” They was all making a racket and cheering him on, though it warn’t clear what he was talking about. Something he read in a book, maybe. “PEACE! There ain’t nothing preciouser even if you got to go to WAR to land it! Ain’t no man alive more keen on peace than me! Huck Finn KNOWS that!” He pointed at me and I jerked my head back like I’d been poked and everybody laughed and cheered again.
Caleb raised his hand. “Everybody here believes in peace, Tom. Jest look round. Them white folks out there is the most peace-loving people on earth. But how you going to git them bloody injuns to lay off massacreeing them?”
“Well, I s’pose, on account of it’s their land, we could offer them to share out the gold as, you know, a kind of levy.”
“But this AIN’T their land, Tom!” Caleb says above the loud boos. “It’s GOD’S land! And we’re God’s PEOPLE, ain’t we? We shorely ain’t obleeged to share out our rightful wealths with no godless savages!”
Tom did look like he just took a punch to his soler plexus. Even Caleb! Just when he was finding his old voice again! “Of course, I ain’t saying it wouldn’t be a damn sight more peaceful if there warn’t no hoss-tiles around,” Tom says, “but—”
“It’s like that fat little Irisher general says,” shouted Oren, putting in his shovel. “The only GOOD injun’s a DEAD injun!”
Bear hollered out something from the door of Zeb’s shack, but there was so much yelling and cussing and cheering and carrying on, he couldn’t be heard, so Tom asked him to come up closer. He squeezed his bulk in with the crowd surrounding us and says, “You and Huck’re acting in a most sivilized manner, Tom, and we all appreciate that and thank you for it! But them savages don’t deserve it! Like you said yourself, they ain’t even completely human!”
“Well, I have said that, Bear, and I do believe it, but I am prepared to change my mind if it ain’t true, or if it’s true, but inconvenient.”
You couldn’t hardly hear him. They was shouting him down again. He done his best but they was all against him. Poor Tom. He looked sadful and defeated. His best friends! He turned to me and shrugged.
Then suddenly, with Bear away from the door, Eyepatch and Yaller Whiskers broke out! Tom raired up with his gun and the judge spun around and throwed himself back into the shack and covered his head, but Eyepatch unfurled his heels and kept right on shoving. Tom shot—but MISSED! He only hit him in the LEG! Eyepatch stumbled and fell, staggered to his feet, limped away in a mad panic. Tom drawed a bead and emptied his revolver, but only hit him in the leg every time! Even Tom Sawyer warn’t perfect!
We all stepped down off the raised sidewalk to go look at Eyepatch. He was laying in the mud, snarling like old Abaddon, his left peg ruined from the knee down. Tom reloaded his revolver and put the barrel of it to Eyepatch’s head. Eyepatch spitted at him through his mouthful a gold teeth and throwed some mud at him. Tom grinned. “Sorry, Cap’n. That leg’s a sickly mess. Bad case a lead pisoning. Don’t leave us no choice. Go fetch Molly, Oren. Tell him supper’s on.”
CHAPTER XXVI