第16章

Shortly Tom came upon the juvenile pariah of the village, Huckleberry Finn, son of the town drunkard.Huckleberry was cordially hated and dreaded by all the mothers of the town, because he was idle and lawless and vulgar and bad -- and because all their children admired him so, and delighted in his forbidden society, and wished they dared to be like him.Tom was like the rest of the respectable boys, in that he envied Huckleberry his gaudy outcast condition, and was under strict orders not to play with him.So he played with him every time he got a chance.Huckleberry was always dressed in the cast-off clothes of full-grown men, and they were in perennial bloom and fluttering with rags.His hat was a vast ruin with a wide crescent lopped out of its brim; his coat, when he wore one, hung nearly to his heels and had the rearward buttons far down the back; but one suspender supported his trousers; the seat of the trousers bagged low and contained nothing, the fringed legs dragged in the dirt when not rolled up.

Huckleberry came and went, at his own free will.He slept on doorsteps in fine weather and in empty hogsheads in wet; he did not have to go to school or to church, or call any being master or obey anybody; he could go fishing or swimming when and where he chose, and stay as long as it suited him; nobody forbade him to fight; he could sit up as late as he pleased; he was always the first boy that went barefoot in the spring and the last to resume leather in the fall; he never had to wash, nor put on clean clothes; he could swear wonderfully.In a word, everything that goes to make life precious that boy had.So thought every harassed, hampered, respectable boy in St.Petersburg.

Tom hailed the romantic outcast:

"Hello, Huckleberry!"

"Hello yourself, and see how you like it.""What's that you got?"

"Dead cat."

"Lemme see him, Huck.My, he's pretty stiff.Where'd you get him ?""Bought him off'n a boy."

"What did you give?"

"I give a blue ticket and a bladder that I got at the slaughter-house.""Where'd you get the blue ticket?"

"Bought it off'n Ben Rogers two weeks ago for a hoop-stick.""Say -- what is dead cats good for, Huck?""Good for? Cure warts with."

"No! Is that so? I know something that's better.""I bet you don't.What is it?"

"Why, spunk-water."

"Spunk-water! I wouldn't give a dern for spunk-water.""You wouldn't, wouldn't you? D'you ever try it?""No, I hain't.But Bob Tanner did."

"Who told you so!"

"Why, he told Jeff Thatcher, and Jeff told Johnny Baker, and Johnny told Jim Hollis, and Jim told Ben Rogers, and Ben told a nigger, and the nigger told me.There now!""Well, what of it? They'll all lie.Leastways all but the nigger.I don't know him.But I never see a nigger that wouldn't lie.Shucks! Now you tell me how Bob Tanner done it, Huck.""Why, he took and dipped his hand in a rotten stump where the rain-water was.""In the daytime?"

"Certainly."

"With his face to the stump?"

"Yes.Least I reckon so."

"Did he say anything?"

"I don't reckon he did.I don't know."

"Aha! Talk about trying to cure warts with spunk-water such a blame fool way as that! Why, that ain't a-going to do any good.You got to go all by yourself, to the middle of the woods, where you know there's a spunk-water stump, and just as it's midnight you back up against the stump and jam your hand in and say:

'Barley-corn, barley-corn, injun-meal shorts,Spunk-water, spunk-water, swaller these warts,'

and then walk away quick, eleven steps, with your eyes shut, and then turn around three times and walk home without speaking to anybody.Because if you speak the charm's busted.""Well, that sounds like a good way; but that ain't the way Bob Tanner done.""No, sir, you can bet he didn't, becuz he's the wartiest boy in this town; and he wouldn't have a wart on him if he'd knowed how to work spunk-water.I've took off thousands of warts off of my hands that way, Huck.I play with frogs so much that I've always got considerable many warts.Sometimes I take 'em off with a bean.""Yes, bean's good.I've done that."

"Have you? What's your way?"

"You take and split the bean, and cut the wart so as to get some blood, and then you put the blood on one piece of the bean and take and dig a hole and bury it 'bout midnight at the crossroads in the dark of the moon, and then you burn up the rest of the bean.You see that piece that's got the blood on it will keep drawing and drawing, trying to fetch the other piece to it, and so that helps the blood to draw the wart, and pretty soon off she comes.""Yes, that's it, Huck -- that's it; though when you're burying it if you say 'Down bean; off wart; come no more to bother me!' it's better.That's the way Joe Harper does, and he's been nearly to Coonville and most everywheres.But say -- how do you cure 'em with dead cats?""Why, you take your cat and go and get in the graveyard 'long about midnight when somebody that was wicked has been buried; and when it's midnight a devil will come, or maybe two or three, but you can't see 'em, you can only hear something like the wind, or maybe hear 'em talk; and when they're taking that feller away, you heave your cat after 'em and say, 'Devil follow corpse, cat follow devil, warts follow cat, I'm done with ye!' That'll fetch any wart.""Sounds right.D'you ever try it, Huck?"

"No, but old Mother Hopkins told me."