4 A Discovery

CHAPTER 4 A Discovery "Get up! What are you doing?" It was after sunrise and I had been sound asleep. Pap was standing over me looking sour and sick. He said: "What are you doing with this gun?" I realized he didn't know anything about what he had been doing last night, so I said: "Somebody tried to get in. I was waiting for him."

"Why didn't you wake me up?" "I tried, but I couldn't. I couldn't budge you." "Well, all right. Don't stand there all day. Go out and see if there's a fish on the line for breakfast." He unlocked the door and I ran out to the riverbank. I noticed some tree branches and things floating downstream, so I knew the river had begun to rise. I walked along the bank and saw a canoe. A beauty, too, about thirteen or fourteen feet long. I jumped into the water head first, clothes on and all, and swam for it. At first I thought my pap would be glad to see the canoe. It would be worth ten dollars at least. But when I got to shore, pap wasn't in sight. Just then I had another idea. I decided to hide the canoe. Then, instead of hiding in the woods when I ran away, I could go down the river about fifty miles and camp in one place for good. I was pretty close to the cabin by this time. I kept thinking I could hear the old man coming,

but I was finally able to get the canoe hidden. Then I saw pap down the path. He was aiming the gun at some birds in the distance. He hadn't seen anything. While pap and I rested after breakfast, I tried to think of a way to keep him and the widow from trying to follow me. That would be better than just hoping I could get away before they noticed I was gone. I couldn't figure it out for a while, but by and by pap sat up to drink some water and said: "The next time a man comes prowling around here you wake me up, you hear? That man was up to no good. The next time you better wake me up." Then he lay down and fell asleep. What he said gave me the very idea I wanted. I could fix it now so nobody would ever think of following me. At about noon we got up and walked along the bank. The river was rising pretty fast and lots of

driftwood was going by. Pretty soon, along came part of a raft—nine logs tied together. We went out and pulled it ashore. Pap wanted to head right to town and sell the logs, so he locked me in the cabin, took our little boat, and started towing the raft. It must have been around half- past three. I didn't think he would come back that night. I waited until I thought he was far enough away, and then I went to work with my saw. I was out of the cabin before he was on the other side of the river. I took all of our supplies to the canoe: the corn meal, side of bacon, all the coffee and sugar, and the ammunition. I took the bucket and gourd, a dipper, a tin cup, my old saw, two blankets, the skillet, and the coffee pot. I also took fish-lines, matches and a few other things—everything that was worth a cent. I cleaned out the place. I wanted an axe, but there was only one and I had a special plan for it. Finally I packed up the gun. I covered up the tracks I had made and

patched up the hole I had cut in the back of the cabin. I stood on the riverbank and looked out over the river. All safe. Then I took the axe and smashed in the door. It was all part of my plan. I beat it and hacked at it a lot. Then I poured some old pig's blood all around and dragged a sack full of rocks along the ground toward the river. That left gruesome- looking tracks, as if a body had been dragged. I wished Tom Sawyer was there. I knew he would have been interested in this kind of business and thrown in some fancy touches. Next I pulled out some of my hair. I made sure the axe was covered with the pig's blood and stuck those bits of hair to the axe. I threw the axe into the corner of the cabin. Then I thought of one more thing. I took the sack of corn meal, tore a small hole in it, and left a trail going in the other direction from my canoe. I carried the sack through the grass to a shallow lake. I dropped the stone that pap used to sharpen his knife there,

too, as if it was left by accident. Then I tied up the hole in the sack of corn meal and brought it back to the canoe. It was about dark now, so I moved the canoe down the river under some willows that hung over the bank and waited for the moon to rise. I ate a bit and laid down in the canoe to think up a plan. I said to myself, they'll follow the tracks to the shore and look in the river for me. Then they'll follow that trail of corn meal to the lake and search around there. They'll think a robber killed me and took all the things. They won't ever look for anything but my dead body. They'll soon get tired of that and then they won't look for me anymore. I decided to hide out on Jackson's Island. I knew the place pretty well and nobody ever went there. Then I could paddle to the town at night, slink around, and pick up things I wanted. I was pretty tired and soon fell asleep. When I woke up, I didn't know where I was for a