3 Pap’s Cabin

CHAPTER 3 Pap's Cabin The next day Pap went to Judge Thatcher's office. He bullied the judge and tried to make him give up the money, but it didn't work. Then pap swore he'd get the money through the courts. There was a new judge in town and he didn't know my pap. The new judge said the courts must not separate families if they could help it. He said he'd rather not take a child away from his father. So Judge Thatcher and the widow had

to give up trying to keep pap away from me. Pretty soon my pap went after Judge Thatcher in the courts to make him give up that money. He chased after me, too, for not stopping school. He caught me a couple of times, but I went to school just the same. Most of the time I just dodged him or outran him. I hadn't liked school that much before, but now I liked it just to spite my pap. He started hanging around the widow's place, too. Finally she told him that she would make trouble for him if he didn't stop. Well that made him mad, so one day he waited for me in secret and grabbed me when I wasn't looking. He took me upriver to an old log hut. The hut was so deep in the forest that you couldn't find it if you didn't know where it was. He kept me with him all the time. I never had a chance to run off. We spent all day in that old cabin. At night he always locked the door and put the key under his head. He had a gun he'd stolen and we fished and hunted. That was how

we lived. Every once in a while he locked me in and went down to the store to trade fish and game for supplies. It was kind of lazy and jolly, lying around all day with no books or studying to do. Two months or more passed and my clothes were all rags and dirt again. I couldn't figure out how I had liked it so much at the widow's place, where you had to wash and eat off a plate, comb your hair, go to bed and get up at regular times, and always be bothering about a book. I didn't want to go back. On the other hand, I also didn't want to stay with pap. I had tried to get out of the cabin many times, but I could never find a way. The windows were too small and the chimney too narrow for me to climb. I had searched the place a hundred times. Finally, one day I found an old rusty wood-saw and started sawing at a section of the big bottom log. I wanted to make a hole just big enough to crawl through. It was a long job, but I was

getting toward the end of it when I heard pap's gun in the woods. I hid the signs of my work and pretty soon pap came in. He wasn't in a good mood, which was normal. He had been in town and everything was going wrong in the courts. It was a long, slow process. His lawyer said he might lose the case and I would have to go back to the widow. Well I didn't want that. At one point, pap got so angry talking about it that he kicked an old barrel and hurt his foot. He hopped around, yelling and cursing for a long time. He was angrier than ever. The old man made me go to the boat to fetch the things he had brought. Outside, I thought it all over and decided I would leave with the gun and some fishing lines. I would hide in the woods when I ran away. I wouldn't stay in one place, but just march right across the country, mostly at night. I could hunt and fish to stay alive. I would get so far away that neither the old

man nor the widow would ever find me. After supper, pap was in a very bad mood. I guessed he would be asleep soon. Then I could steal the key, or saw myself out. He didn't fall asleep, though. He groaned and moaned and thrashed around this way and that for a long time. At last I got so sleepy that I couldn't keep my eyes open. Before I knew it, I was sound asleep. All of a sudden there was an awful scream and I was up. Pap was looking wild. He was skipping around and yelling about snakes. He said they were crawling up his legs and then he would jump and scream. But I couldn't see any snakes. I've never seen a man look so wild in his eyes. He was seeing things and I thought he might be sick, or even crazy. Pretty soon he got tired and fell down. Then he rolled over and over very fast. He was kicking things, grabbing at the air with his hands, and screaming that there were devils all over him. Finally he got tired again and

laid still for a while, moaning. "Tramp-tramp-tramp. That's the dead," he said. "Tramp-tramp-tramp. They're coming after me, but I won't go. They're here! Don't touch me! Your hands are cold—let go! Oh, leave a poor devil alone." Then he crawled away, begging to be left alone. He wrapped himself in a blanket and started to cry. By and by, he jumped up and ran after me. He chased me around the hut calling me the Angel of Death. Once, he caught me by the jacket between my shoulders. I thought I was a goner, but I slid out of the jacket as quick as lightning and saved myself. Soon he was all tired out again and dropped down with his back against the door. He dozed off pretty soon. I climbed up on a chair as quietly as I could and got the gun. I made sure it was loaded and laid it across a barrel, pointing it toward pap. Then I sat and