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

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

Chapter Twelve It must have been close on to 01:00 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 rather too much of a sweat to think of so many things.

It weren't good judgment to put everything on the raft.

If the men went to the island, I just expect they found the campfire 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 weren'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 tow head 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 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 weren't afraid of anybody running across us.

We laid there all day and watched the rafts and steamboats spin down the Missouri shore and upbound 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 sit down and watch a campfire, 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 have gone uptown to get a dog.

And so they lost all that time or else we wouldn't be here on a tow head 16 or 17 miles below the village.

No indeed, 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.

When it was beginning to come on dark, we poked our heads out of the cottonwood thicket and looked up and down and across.

Nothing in sight.

So Jim took up some of the top planks of the raft and built a snug wigwam to get under in blazing weather and rainy and to keep the things dry.

Jim made a floor for the wigwam and raised it a foot or more above the level of the raft.

So now the blankets and all the traps was out of reach of steamboat waves.

Right in the middle of the wigwam we made a layer of dirt about five or six inches deep with a frame around it for to hold it to its place.

This was to build a fire on in sloppy weather or chilly.

The wigwam would keep it from being seen.

We made an extra steering or two because one of the others might get broke on a snag or something.

We fixed up a short forked stick to hang the old lantern on because we must always light the lantern whenever we see a steamboat coming downstream to keep from getting run over.

But we wouldn't have to light it up for upstream boats unless we see.

We was in what they call a crossing, for the river was pretty high, yet very low banks being still a little underwater.

So upbound boats didn't always run the Channel, but hunted easy water.

This second night we run between seven and 8 hours with a current that was making over four mile an hour.

We catched fish and talked and we took a swim now and then to keep off sleepiness.

It was kind of solemn, drifting down the big still river, laying on our backs, looking up at the stars, and we didn't ever feel like talking loud.

And it weren't often that we laughed, only a little, kind of a low chuckle.

We had mighty good weather as a general thing and nothing ever happened to us at all that night.

Nor the next.

Nor the next.

Every night we passed towns, some of them away up on black hillsides.

Nothing but just a shiny bed of lights.

Not a house.

Could you see?

The fifth night we passed St.

Louis and it was like the whole world lit up.

In St.

Petersburg.

They used to say there was 20 or 30,000 people in St.

Louis, but I never believed it till I see that wonderful spread of lights at 02:00 that still night.

There weren't a sound there.

Everybody was asleep every night now.

I used to slip ashore towards 10:00 at some little village and buy ten or $0.15 worth of meal or bacon or other stuff to eat.

And sometimes I lifted a chicken that weren't roosting comfortable and took him along.

PAP always said, take a chicken when you get a chance because if you don't want him yourself, you can easily find somebody that does, and a good deed ain't ever forgot.

I never see PAP when he didn't want the chicken himself but that is what he used to say anyway.

Mornings before daylight I slipped into cornfields and borrowed a watermelon or a mushmelon or pumpkin or some new corn or things of that kind.

PAP always said it weren't no harm to borrow things if he was meaning to pay them back sometime.

But the widow said it weren't anything but a soft name for stealing and no decent body would do it.

Jim said he reckoned the widow was partly right and PAP was partly right, so the best way would be for us to pick out two or three things from the list and say we wouldn't borrow them anymore.

Then he reckoned it wouldn't be no harm to borrow the others.

So we talked it over all one night drifting along down the river, trying to make up our minds whether to drop the watermelons or the cantaloupes or the mushmelons or what.

But towards daylight we got it all settled, satisfactory and concluded to drop crab apples and persimmons.

We weren't feeling just right before that, but it was all comfortable now.

I was glad the way it come out too, because crab apples ain't ever good and the persimmons wouldn't be ripe for two or three months yet.

We shot a waterfowl now and then that got up too early in the morning or didn't go to bed early enough in the evening.

Take it all around.

We lived pretty high.

The fifth night below St.

Louis we had a big storm after midnight with a power of thunder and lightning, and the rain poured down in a solid sheet.

We stayed in the wig wham and let the raft take care of itself.

When the lightning glared out, we could see a big straight river ahead and high rocky bluffs on both sides.

By and by, says I, hello, Jim.

Looky yonder.

It was a steamboat that had killed herself on a rock.

We was drifting straight down for her.

The lightning showed her very distinct.

She was leaning over with part of her upper deck above water and you could see every little chimly guy clean and clear and a chair by the big bell with an old slouch hat hanging on the back of it when the flashes come, will it being away in the night and stormy and also mysterious like.

I felt just the way any other boy would have felt.

When I see that wreck laying there so mournful and lonesome in the middle of the river I wanted to get abroad of her and slink around a little and see what there was there.

So I says, let's land on her, Jim.

But Jim was dead against it at first.

He says, I don't want a fool and no longer in rack.

We's doing blame well and we better let blame well alone, as the Good Book says, like, is not there's a watchman on that rack?

Watchman your grandmother, I says.

There ain't nothing to watch but the Texas and the pilot house.

And do you reckon anybody's going to risk his life for a Texas in a pilot house such a night as this when it's likely to break up and wash off down the river any minute?

Jim couldn't say nothing to that, so he didn't try.

And besides, I says, we might borrow something worth having out of the Captain's stateroom.

Cgars, I bet you.

And cost $0.05 apiece, solid cash.

Steamboat captains is always rich and get $60 a month.

And they don't care a cent what a thing costs, you know, long as they want it.

Stick a candle in your pocket.

I can't rest, Jim, till we give her a rummaging.

Do you reckon Tom Sawyer would ever go buy this thing?

Not for pie, he wouldn't.

He'd call it an adventure, that's what he'd call it.

And he'd land on that wreck if it was his last act.

And wouldn't he throw style into it?

Wouldn't he spread himself nor nothing?

Why, you'd think it was Christopher Columbus discovering kingdom come.

I wish Tom Sawyer was here, Jim.

He grumbled a little, but give in, he said.

We mustn't talk any more than we could help and then talk mighty low.

The lightning showed us the wreck again just in time and we fetched Stabbered Derek and made fast there.

The deck was high out here we went sneaking down the slope of it to Labyard in the dark towards the Texas, feeling our way slow with our feet and spreading our hands out to fend off the guys.

For it was so dark we couldn't see no sign of them.

Pretty soon we struck the forward end of the skylight and clum onto it and the next step fetched us in front of the captain's door, which was open.

And by Jiminy, away down through the Texas hall we see a light.

And all in the same second we seemed to hear low voices.

And yonder.

Jim whispered and said he was feeling powerful sick and told me to come along.

I says all right and was going to start for the raft.

But just then I heard a voice whale out and say oh, please don't, boys.

I swear I won't ever tell.

Another voice said pretty loud, it's a lie, Jim Turner.

You've acted this way before.

You always want more in your share of the truck.

And you've always got it too, because you've swore it if you didn't tell.

But this time you've said it just one time too many.

You're the meanest, treacherous hound in this country.

By this time, Jim was gone for the raft.

I was just billing with curiosity and I said to myself tom Sawyer wouldn't back out now, and so I won't either.

I'm going to see what's going on here.

So I dropped on my hands and knees in the little passage and crept aft in the dark till there weren't but one stateroom betwixt me and the Crosshall of the Texas.

Then in there I see a man stretched on the floor and tied hand and foot and two men standing over him.

And one of them had a dim lantern in his hand and the other one had a pistol.

This one kept pointing the pistol at the man's head on the floor and saying I'd like to, and I order too.

A mean skunk.

The man on the floor would shrivel up and say oh, please don't, Bill.

I ain't ever going to tell.

And every time he said that, the man with the lantern would laugh and say deed you ain't.

You never said no truer thing in that.

You bet you.

And once he said, here in Beg.

And yet, if we haven't got the best of him and tied him, he'd have killed us both.

And what for?

Just for nothing.

Just because we stood on our rights, that's what's for.

But I lay you ain't going to threaten nobody anymore.

Jim Turner.

Put up that pistol, Bill.

Bill says I don't want to.

Jake packard.

I'm for killing him.

And didn't he kill old Hatfield just the same way?

And don't he deserve it?

But I don't want him killed.

I've got my reasons for it.

Bless your heart for them words, Jake Packard.

I'll never forget you long as I live, says the man on the floor, sort of blubbering.

Packard didn't take no notice of that but hung up his lantern on a nail and started towards where I was there in the dark and motioned Bill to come.

I crawfished as fast as I could about two yards but the boat slanted so that I couldn't make very good time.

So to keep from getting run over and catched.

I crawled into a stateroom on the upper side.

The man came upon along in the dark.

And when Packard got to my stateroom, he says, here, come in here.

And then he come and Bill after him.

But before they got in, I was up in the upper berth cornered and sorry I come.

Then they stood there with their hands on the ledge of the berth and talked.

I couldn't see them, but I could tell where they was by the whiskey they'd been having.

I was glad I didn't drink whiskey.

But it wouldn't made much difference anyway because most of the time they couldn't retreat me because I didn't breathe.

I was too scared.

And besides, a body couldn't breathe and hear such talk.

They talked low and earnest.

Bill wanted to kill Turner, he says.

He said he'll tell, and he will.

If we was to give both our shares to him now, it wouldn't make no difference after the row in the way we've served him.

Sure as you're born, he'll turn to state's evidence.

Now, you hear me?

I'm for putting him out of his troubles.

So am I.

Said Packard.

Very quiet.

Blame it.

I'd sort of begun to think you wasn't.

Well, then that's all right.

Let's go and do it.

Hold on a minute.

I ain't had my say yet.

You listen to me.

Shooting's good, but there's quieter ways if the things got to be done.

But what I say is this it ain't good sense to go courting around after a halter if you can get it.

What you're up to in some way that's just as good and the same time don't bring you into no risks.

Ain't that so?

You bet it is.

But how are you going to manage it this time?

Well, my idea is this.

We'll rustle around and gather up whatever pickens we've overlooked in the staterooms and shove for sure and hide the truck.

Then we'll wait.

Now, I say it ain't going to be more than 2 hours before this rack breaks up and washes off down the river.

See, he'll be drowned and won't have nobody to blame for it but his own self.

I reckon that's a considerable sight better in killing of him.

I'm unfavorable to killing a man as long as you can get around it.

It ain't good sense.

It ain't good morals.

Ain't I right?

Yes, I reckon you are.

But suppose she don't break up and wash off?

Well, we can wait the 2 hours anyway and see, can't we?

All right, then.

Come along.

So they started, and I lit out all in a cold sweat and scrambled forward.

It was darkest pitch there, but I said in a kind of coarse whisper, Jim.

And he answered up right at my elbow with a sort of a moan.

And I says, quick, Jim, it ain't no time for fooling around and moaning.

There's a gang of murderers in Yonder.

And if we don't hunt up their boat instead, or drifting down the river so these fellows can't get away from the wreck there's one of them going to be in a bad fix.

But if we find their boat, we can put all of them in a bad fix, for the sheriff will get them quick.

Hurry.

I'll hunt the labyrinth side, you hunt the stabbard.

You start at the raft and oh my lordy, lordy raft.

There ain't no Rap no more.

She done broke loose and gone I and here we is.

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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