Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Zombie Jim by Mark Twain, W. Bill Czolgosz Page B

roused him out and says:
    "Git up and hump yourself, Jim! There ain't a minute to lose. They're after us!"
    Jim never asked no questions, he never said a word; but the way he worked for the next half an hour showed about how he was scared. By that time everything we had in the world was on our raft, and she was ready to be shoved out from the willow cove where she was hid. We put out the camp fire at the cavern the first thing, and didn't show a candle outside after that.
    I took the canoe out from the shore a little piece, and took a look; but if there was a boat around I couldn't see it, for stars and shadows ain't good to see by. Then we got out the raft and slipped along down in the shade, past the foot of the island dead still-never saying a word.

CHAPTER XII
    It must a been close on to one o'clock when we got below the island at last, and the raft did seem to go mighty slow. If a boat was to come along we was going to take to the canoe and break for the Illinois shore; and it was well a boat didn't come, for we hadn't ever thought to put the gun in the canoe, or a fishing-line, or anything to eat. We was in ruther too much of a sweat to think of so many things. It warn't good judgment to put everything on the raft.
    If the men went to the island I just expect they found the camp fire I built, and watched it all night for Jim to come. Anyways, they stayed away from us, and if my building the fire never fooled them it warn't no fault of mine. I played it as low down on them as I could.
    When the first streak of day began to show we tied up to a towhead in a big bend on the Illinois side, and hacked off cottonwood branches with the hatchet, and covered up the raft with them so she looked like there had been a cave-in in the bank there. A tow-head is a sandbar that has cottonwoods on it as thick as harrow-teeth.
    We had mountains on the Missouri shore and heavy timber on the Illinois side, and the channel was down the Missouri shore at that place, so we warn't afraid of anybody running across us. We laid there all day, and watched the rafts and steamboats spin down the Missouri shore, and up-bound steamboats fight the big river in the middle. I told Jim all about the time I had jabbering with that woman; and Jim said she was a smart one, and if she was to start after us herself she wouldn't set down and watch a camp fire-no, sir, she'd fetch a dog. Well, then, I said, why couldn't she tell her husband to fetch a dog? Jim said he bet she did think of it by the time the men was ready to start, and he believed they must a gone up-town to get a dog and so they lost all that time, or else we wouldn't be here on a towhead sixteen or seventeen mile below the village-no, indeedy, we would be in that same old town again. So I said I didn't care what was the reason they didn't get us as long as they didn't.
    A bunderlug come along an’ I thought we was caught for certain. But then I saw this fella was buck naked and I knows full well that no man goes about buck naked unless he's out of his hat or dead. He was just freshly passed, this ‘un, an’ his skin was all rose red, still at a tint from the fever what kilt him. His eyes was all empty and the only thing he could speak was an oh-sound. Not much brains there at all. Not much of his self. But he din’ seem vicious.
    Naked I could see he wasn't no one's property. Not yet, bein’ freshly dead. No branding or nothin'. It be up to his family to sell ‘im, if he had any. Other'n that, the traders would get him. If he could be made to do certain tasks, he might be worth a few dollars. Certain agencies was startin’ to use baggers on work crews, ‘cause they din’ hafta pay no dollars in wages. That bagger went:
    "Oh, oh, oh."
    An’ Jim just waved him on. But he wouldn't go, and said:
    "Oh, oh, oh."
    An’ Jim picked up a couple rocks an’ hove ‘em at the fella. They hit him one in the head and one in the jewels, an’ that did the trick, an’ he shortly stumbled