The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Марк Твен

texas-hall we see a light! and all in the same second we seem to hear low voices in 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 wail 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'n your share of the truck, and you've always got it, too, because you've swore 't if you didn't you'd tell. But this time you've said it jest one time too many. You're the meanest, treacherousest hound in this country."

      By this time Jim was gone for the raft. I was just a-biling with curiosity; and I says to myself, Tom Sawyer wouldn't back out now, and so I won't either; I'm a-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 warn't but one stateroom betwixt me and the cross-hall 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 orter, too – a mean skunk!"

      The man on the floor would shrivel up and say, "Oh, please don't, Bill; I hain't ever goin' 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 'n that, you bet you." And once he said: "Hear him beg! and yit if we hadn't got the best of him and tied him he'd 'a' killed us both. And what for? Jist for noth'n'. Jist because we stood on our rights– that's what for. But I lay you ain't a-goin' to threaten nobody any more, Jim Turner. Put up that pistol, Bill."

      Bill says:

      "I don't want to, Jake Packard. I'm for killin' him – and didn't he kill old Hatfield jist the same way – and don't he deserve it?"

      "But I don't want him killed, and I've got my reasons for it."

      "Bless yo' heart for them words, Jake Packard! I'll never forgit you long's 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 toward 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 a-pawing along in the dark, and when Packard got to my stateroom, he says:

      "Here – come in here."

      And in 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 whisky they'd been having. I was glad I didn't drink whisky; but it wouldn't made much difference anyway, because most of the time they couldn't 'a' treed 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: