Mystery fiction; Sawyer, Tom (Fictitious character) -- Fiction
“There ain’t much left, only this. When that man there, Bruce Dunlap,
had most worried the life and sense out of Uncle Silas till at last he
plumb lost his mind and hit this other blatherskite, his brother, with
a club, I reckon he seen his chance. Jubiter broke for the woods to
hide, and I reckon the game was for him to slide out, in the night, and
leave the country. Then Brace would make everybody believe Uncle Silas
killed him and hid his body somers; and that would ruin Uncle Silas and
drive _him_ out of the country—hang him, maybe; I dunno. But when they
found their dead brother in the sycamores without knowing him, because
he was so battered up, they see they had a better thing; disguise
_both_ and bury Jake and dig him up presently all dressed up in
Jubiter’s clothes, and hire Jim Lane and Bill Withers and the others to
swear to some handy lies—which they done. And there they set, now, and
I told them they would be looking sick before I got done, and that is
the way they’re looking now.
“Well, me and Huck Finn here, we come down on the boat with the
thieves, and the dead one told us all about the di’monds, and said the
others would murder him if they got the chance; and we was going to
help him all we could. We was bound for the sycamores when we heard
them killing him in there; but we was in there in the early morning
after the storm and allowed nobody hadn’t been killed, after all. And
when we see Jubiter Dunlap here spreading around in the very same
disguise Jake told us _he_ was going to wear, we thought it was Jake
his own self—and he was goo-gooing deef and dumb, and _that_ was
according to agreement.
“Well, me and Huck went on hunting for the corpse after the others
quit, and we found it. And was proud, too; but Uncle Silas he knocked
us crazy by telling us _he_ killed the man. So we was mighty sorry we
found the body, and was bound to save Uncle Silas’s neck if we could;
and it was going to be tough work, too, because he wouldn’t let us
break him out of prison the way we done with our old nigger Jim.
“I done everything I could the whole month to think up some way to save
Uncle Silas, but I couldn’t strike a thing. So when we come into court
to-day I come empty, and couldn’t see no chance anywheres. But by and
by I had a glimpse of something that set me thinking—just a little wee
glimpse—only that, and not enough to make sure; but it set me thinking
hard—and _watching_, when I was only letting on to think; and by and
by, sure enough, when Uncle Silas was piling out that stuff about _him_
killing Jubiter Dunlap, I catched that glimpse again, and this time I
jumped up and shut down the proceedings, because I _knowed_ Jubiter
Dunlap was a-setting here before me. I knowed him by a thing which I
seen him do—and I remembered it. I’d seen him do it when I was here a
year ago.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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