“Come in,” said the woman, and I did. She looked me all over with her little shiny eyes and said:
“What’s your name?”
“Sarah Williams. I live seven miles down the river. My mother is sick, and I came to tell my uncle Abner Moore. He lives at the top end of the town.”
“I don’t know him. I’ve only lived here two weeks. Stay here till my husband comes home, and he can go with you.”
Then she talked and talked about her husband and her family, until I was afraid I had made a mistake coming to her. But at last she got to Pap and the murder, and then I was happy to let her talk.
“Who killed Huck Finn?” I asked. “We don’t know down where I live.”
“Well, at first nearly everybody thought old Finn did it himself. But before night they decided it was a runaway slave named Jim.”
“Why, he—”
I stopped. I thought I’d better be quiet. But she never noticed.
“The slave ran away the same night Huck Finn was killed. So there’s a reward for him, three hundred dollars. And there’s a reward for old Finn too, two hundred dollars. He got some money from Judge Thatcher to hunt for the slave, and that evening he got drunk and went off with two hard-looking strangers. He hasn’t come back. Now people think he killed his boy so he could get Huck’s money.”
“Are they still looking for the slave?”
“Well, aren’t you innocent! Does three hundred dollars lie around every day for people to pick up? I think he isn’t far from here. Hardly anybody ever goes to Jackson’s Island over there, and a few days ago I was almost sure I saw smoke on it. My husband and another man are going over to see. They’re getting a boat and another gun, and they’ll go over after midnight.”
I was so uneasy that I couldn’t sit still. I had to do something with my hands, so I picked up a needle and thread from the table and began to thread the needle. My hands were shaking. When I looked up, the woman was looking at me in a curious way and smiling a little.
“What did you say your name was, honey?”
“M—Mary Williams.”
Somehow I didn’t think I had said Mary before. I felt trapped.
“Honey, I thought you said Sarah when you came in?”
“Oh, yes, ma’am, I did. Sarah Mary Williams. Some people call me Sarah, and some call me Mary.”
“Oh, is that it?”
I wished I was out of there. Then she talked about the rats, which ran around the place as if they owned it. She had a piece of lead to throw at them, but she had hurt her arm, so she gave it to me to try. I threw it at the next rat, and if the rat had stayed where it was, it would have been a very sick rat. A little later she dropped the lead into my lap, and I closed my knees on it quickly. Then she looked me straight in the face, very pleasantly, and said:
“Come on now, what’s your real name? Is it Bill, or Tom, or Bob?”
I was shaking like a leaf. “Please don’t make fun of a poor girl like me, ma’am. If I’m in the way here, I’ll—”
“No, you won’t. Sit down. I’m not going to hurt you, and I’m not going to tell on you. You’re a runaway apprentice, that’s all. Somebody treated you badly, and you ran away. Tell me all about it now, that’s a good boy.”
So I told her a new story. My father and mother were dead, and the law gave me to a mean old farmer far from the river. He treated me so badly that I took his daughter’s old clothes and ran away to my uncle.
“Well, what’s your real name now?”
“George Peters, ma’am.”
“Well, try to remember it, George. And don’t go to women in that dress. You make a poor girl, but you might fool men. When a woman threads a needle, she holds the needle still and pushes the thread at it. When a girl throws at a rat, she throws with her hand up over her head and misses by six or seven feet. And when a girl catches something in her lap, she opens her knees; she doesn’t close them, the way you did. I saw you were a boy when you threaded the needle. I did the other things just to make sure. Now go on to your uncle, and if you get into trouble, send a message to Mrs. Judith Loftus—that’s me—and I’ll help you if I can.”
I went up the bank a little way, then turned back and ran to my canoe. I paddled to the top end of the island and made a big fire there, where my old camp used to be. I wanted the men to search there, not near our cave. Then I paddled as hard as I could down to our cave. Jim lay there, fast asleep. I woke him up and said:
“Get up, Jim! They’re after us!”
Jim didn’t ask any questions. He didn’t say a word. But the way he worked for the next half hour showed how scared he was. By then everything we had in the world was on our raft. We put out the fire at the cave, pushed the raft out from under the willows and floated quietly down in the shadows, past the end of the island, without saying a word.