Join Host Bree Carlile as she reads the sixth chapter of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

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Today we'll be continuing Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain.

Chapter Six well, pretty soon the old man was up and around again and then he went for Judge Thatcher in the courts to make him give up that money.

And he went for me too for not stopping school.

He catched me a couple of times and thrashed me, but I went to school just the same and dodged him or outrun him most of the time.

I didn't want to go to school much before, but I reckoned I'd go now.

Despite PAP that law trial was a slow business.

Appeared like they weren't ever going to get started on it.

So every now and then I'd borrow two or $3 off of Judge for him to keep him from getting a cow hiding.

Every time he got money he got drunk.

And every time he got drunk he raised Cain around town.

And every time he raised Cain he got jailed.

He was just suited.

This kind of thing was right in his line.

He got to hanging around the widows too much and so she told him at last that if he didn't quit using around there she would make trouble for him.

Well, wasn't he mad?

He said he would show who was Huckfin's boss.

So he watched out for me one day in the spring and catched me and took me up the river about three mile in a skiff and crossed over to the Illinois shore where it was woody and there weren't.

No houses, but an old log hut in a place where the timber was so thick you couldn't find it if you didn't know where it was.

He kept me with him all the time and I never got a chance to run off.

We lived in that old cabin and he always locked the door and put the key under his head.

Nights he had a gun, which he had stole, I reckon and we fished and hunted and that was what we lived on.

Every little while he locked me in and went down to the store 3 miles to the ferry and traded fish and game for whiskey and fetched it home and got drunk and had a good time and licked me.

The widow, she found where I was by and by and she sent a man over to try to get a hold of me but PAP drove him off with the gun and it weren't long after that till I was used to being where I was and liked it all but the cowhide part.

It was kind of lazy and jolly laying off comfortable all day smoking and fishing and no books nor study.

Two months or more.

Run along and my clothes got to be all rags and dirt.

And I didn't see how I'd ever got to like it so well.

At the widows where you had to wash and eat on.

A plate and comb up and go to bed and get up regular and be forever bothering over a book and have old Miss Watson pecking at you all the time.

I didn't want to go back no more.

I had stopped cussing because the widow didn't like it but now I took to it again because PAP hadn't no objections.

It was pretty good times up in the woods there.

Take it all around.

But by and by PAP got too handy with his hickory and I couldn't stand it.

I was all over.

Welts he got to going away so much too, and locking me in.

Once he locked me in and was gone three days.

It was dreadful lonesome.

I judged he had got drowned and I wasn't ever going to get out anymore.

I was scared.

I made up my mind I would fix up some way to leave there.

I had tried to get out of that cabin many a time but I couldn't find no way.

There weren't a window to it big enough for a dog to get through.

I couldn't get up the chimbly, it was too narrow.

The door was thick, solid oak slabs.

PAP was pretty careful not to leave a knife or anything in the cabin when he was away.

I reckon I had hunted the place over as much as a hundred times.

Well, I was most all the time at it because it was about the only way to put in the time.

But this time I found something at last.

I found an old rusty wood saw without any handle.

It was laid in between a rafter and the clapboards of the roof.

I greased it up and went to work.

There was an old horse blanket nailed against the logs at the far end of the cabin behind the table to keep the wind from blowing through the chinks and putting the candle out.

I got under the table and raised a blanket and went to work to saw a section of the big bottom log out big enough to let me through.

Well, it was a good long job, but I was getting towards the end of it when I heard PAP's gun in the woods.

I got rid of the signs of my work and dropped the blanket and hid my saw.

And pretty soon PAP come in.

PAP weren't in good humor.

He was his natural self.

He said he was downtown and everything was going wrong.

His lawyer said he reckoned he would win his lawsuit and get the money if they ever got started on the trial.

But then there was ways to put it off a long time and Judge Thatcher knowed how to do it.

And he said people allowed there'd be another trial to get me away from him and give me to the widow for my guardian.

And they guessed it would win this time.

This shook me up considerable because I didn't want to go back to the widows anymore and be so cramped up and civilized as they called it.

Then the old man got to cussing and cussed everything and everybody he could think of and then cussed them all over again to make sure he hadn't skipped any.

And after that he polished off with a kind of general cuss all around including a considerable parcel of people which he didn't know the names of and so called them what's his name when he got to them and went right along with his cussing he said he would like to see the widow get me.

He said he would watch out and if they tried to come any such game on him he note of a place six or seven mile off to stow me in where they might hunt till they dropped and they couldn't find me.

That made me pretty uneasy again, but only for a minute.

I reckoned I wouldn't stay on hand till he got that chance.

The old man made me go to the skiff and fetch the things he had got.

There was a 50 pound sack of cornmeal and a side of bacon ammunition and a four gallon jug of whiskey and an old book and two newspapers for wadding beside some toe.

I towed it up a load and went back and sat down on the bow of the skiff to rest.

I thought it all over and I reckoned I would walk off with the gun in some lines and take to the woods.

When I run away, I guess I wouldn't stay in one place but just tramp right across the country mostly night times and hunt and fish to keep alive and so get so far away that the old man nor the widow couldn't ever find me anymore.

I judged I would saw out and leave that night if PAP got drunk enough, and I reckoned he would.

I got so full of it, I didn't notice how long I was staying till the old man hollered and asked me whether I was asleep or drowned.

I got the things all up to the cabin, and then it was about dark.

While I was cooking supper, the old man took a swig or two and got sort of warmed up and went to ripping again.

He had been drunk over in town and laid in the gutter all night.

And he was a sight to look at.

A body would have thought he was Adam.

He was just all mud.

Whenever his liquor begun to work, he most always went for the government.

This time he says, Call this a government?

Why, just look at it and see what it's like.

Here's the law standing ready to take a man's son away from him.

A man's own son, which he has had all the trouble and all the anxiety and all the expense of raising.

Yes.

Just as that man has got that son raised at last and ready to go to work and begin to do sudden for him and give him a rest, the law up and goes for him.

And they call that government.

That ain't all.

Another, the law backs that old Judge Thatcher up and helps him to keep.

Me out of my property.

Here's what the law does.

The law takes a man worth $6,000 and upwards and jams him into an old trap of a cabin like this and lets him go round in clothes that ain't fitting for a hog.

They call that government.

A man can't get his rights in a government like this.

Sometimes I have a mighty notion to just leave the country for good and all.

Yes, and I told him so.

I told old Thatcher so to his face.

Lots of them heard me and can tell what I said.

Says I, for two since I'd leave the blamed country and never come in near it again.

NIMS the very words I says, look at my hat.

If you call it a hat.

But the lid raises up and the rest of it goes down till it's below my chin and then it ain't rightly a hat at all, but more like my head was shoved up through a gentle stove pipe.

Look at it, says I.

Such a hat for me to wear one of the wealthiest men in this town if I could get my rights.

Oh, yes, this is a wonderful government, wonderful.

Why, looky here.

There was a free servant there from Ohio, most as white as a white man.

He had the whitest shirt on you.

Ever see, too, and the shiniest hat.

And there ain't a man in that.

Town that's got as fine as clothes.

As what he had.

And he had a gold watch and chain and a silver headed cane.

The awfulst old grey headed man in the state.

And what do you think?

They said he was a professor in a college and could talk all kinds.

Of languages and note everything.

And that ain't the worst.

They said he could vote when he was at home.

Well, that let me out think.

Sigh.

What is this country a coming to?

It was election day, and I was just about to go and vote myself if I weren't too drunk to get there.

But when they told me there was a state in this country where they let that man vote, I draw it out, I says, I'll never vote again.

Them's the very words I said.

They all heard me and the country may rot for all me.

I'll never vote again as long as I live.

And to see the cool way of.

That man, why, he wouldn't have given.

Me the road if I hadn't shoved him out of the way.

I says to the people, why ain't this man put up at auction and sold?

That's what I want to know.

And what do you reckon they said?

Why, they said he couldn't be sold till he'd been in the state six months, and he hadn't been there that long yet.

There now, that's a specimen.

They call that a government can't sell a free man until he's been in.

The state six months.

Here's a government that calls itself a government and let on to be a.

Government and thinks it is a government.

And yet they've got stock still for six whole months before it can take.

Ahold of that prowling thieving infernal white shirted.

Free servant.

And pat was going on so he never noticed where his old limber legs was taking him to.

So he went head over heels over the tub of salt pork and barked both shins.

And the rest of his speech was all the hottest kind of language mostly Hovet the servant and the government, though he gave the tub some too.

All along here and there he hopped around the cabin considerable, first on one leg and then on the other, holding first one shin and then the other one.

And at last he let out with his left foot all of a sudden and fetched the tub rattling kick.

But it weren't good judgment because that was the boot that had a couple of his toes leaking out the front end of it.

So now he raised a howl that fairly made a body's hair raise and downey went in the dirt and rolled there and held his toes and The Cussing he'd Done then Laid Over Anything He Had Ever Done Previous.

He said so his own self afterwards.

He had heard old Sawberry Hagen in his best days.

And he said it laid over him, too.

But I reckon that was sort of piling it on.

Maybe.

After supper, PAP took the jug and said he had enough whiskey there for two drunks and one delirium tremons.

That was always his word.

I judged he would be blind drunk in about an hour.

And then I would steal the key or saw myself out, one or the other.

He drank and drank and tumbled down on his blankets by and by.

But luck didn't run my way.

He didn't go sound asleep, but was uneasy.

He groaned and moaned and thrashed around this way and that for a long time.

At last.

I got so sleepy I couldn't keep my eyes open.

All I could do.

And so before I knowed what I was about, I was sound asleep in the candle burning.

I don't know how long I was asleep, but all of a sudden there was an awful scream and I was up.

There was PAP looking wild and skipping around every which way and yelling about snakes.

He said they was crawling up his legs.

And then he would give a jump and scream and say one had bit him on the cheek.

But I couldn't see no snakes.

He started and run round and round the cabin.

Hollering, take him off.

Take him off.

He's biting me on the neck.

I never seen a man look so wild in the eyes.

Pretty soon he was all phased out and fell down, panting.

Then he rolled over and over, wonderful fast, kicking things every which way and striking and grabbing at the air with his hands and screaming and saying there was devils ahold of him.

He wore out, by and by and laid still a while.

Moaning.

Then he laid stiller and didn't make a sound.

I could hear the owls and the wolves away in the woods and it seemed terrible.

Still.

He was laying over by the corner.

By and by he raised up partway and listened with his head to one side he says.

Very low.

Tramp.

Tramp?

Tramp.

That's the dead.

Tramp.

Tramp.

Tramp.

They're coming after me.

But I won't go.

Oh, they're here.

Don't touch me.

Don't.

Hands off.

They're Cold.

Let Go.

Oh, let a poor devil alone.

Then he went down on all fours and crawled off, begging them to let him alone.

And he rolled himself up in his blanket and wallowed in under that old pine table, still a begging.

And then he went to crying.

I could hear him through the blanket by and by.

He rolled out and jumped up on his feet looking wild and he see me and went for me.

He chased me round and round the place with a clasp knife, calling me the angel of Death.

And saying he would kill me and then I couldn't come for him no more.

I begged and told him I was only huck but he laughed such a screechy laugh and roared and cussed and kept on chasing me up.

Once when I turned short and dodged under his arm, he made a grab and got me by the jacket between my shoulders and I thought I was gone but I slid out of the jacket quick as lightning and saved myself.

Pretty soon he was all tired out and dropped down with his back against the door and said he would rest a minute and then kill me.

He put his knife under him and said he would sleep and get strong and then he would see who was who so he dozed off pretty soon.

By and by.

I got the old split bottom chair and clum up as easy as I could not to make any noise and got down the gun.

I slipped the ram rod down it to make sure it was loaded.

Then I laid it across the turnip barrel pointing towards PAP and sat down behind it to wait for him to stir and how slow and still the time did drag along.

Thank you for joining Bite at a Time books today while we read a bite of one of your favorite classics.

Again, my name is Brie Carlyle and I hope you come back tomorrow for the next bite of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

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