“Get up! What are you doing with this gun?”
It was after sunrise, and Pap was standing over me, looking angry and sick. He didn’t remember anything about the night, so I said, “Somebody tried to get in, so I was waiting for him.”
“Why didn’t you wake me?”
“I tried, but I couldn’t move you.”
“Well, all right. Go and see if there’s a fish on the lines for breakfast.”
Branches were floating down the river, so I knew the June rise had started. Then along came a canoe, a real beauty, about thirteen or fourteen feet long, riding high on the water like a duck. I jumped into the river, clothes and all, and swam out to it. It was empty. I paddled it to shore and thought, the old man will be glad; it’s worth ten dollars. But then I had another idea. I hid the canoe in a little creek under some willows. When I ran away, I would go down the river in it.
After breakfast we lay down to sleep. I wished I could find a way to stop Pap and the widow from following me. Then Pap woke up to drink some water and said:
“Next time a man comes around here, you wake me up, you hear? That man wasn’t here for any good. I would have shot him.”
Then he went back to sleep. But what he said gave me exactly the idea I wanted.
That afternoon Pap caught some logs from a log raft and took them to town to sell. He locked me in and started off in his boat at about half past three. When he had a good start, I got out my saw, and before he was across the river, I was out of the hole.
I carried everything to the canoe: the corn meal, the bacon, blankets, the coffee pot—everything that was worth a cent. There was only one ax, by the woodpile, and I knew why I was going to leave that. Then I took the gun and put the piece of log back in its place.
I went into the woods and shot a wild pig. I broke the door in with the ax, took the pig inside, cut its throat and laid it on the ground to bleed. Then I filled an old sack with big rocks and pulled it from the pig, through the door and the woods, down to the river, and threw it in. I wished Tom Sawyer was there. He would love this kind of thing.
Last of all, I pulled out some of my hair, put blood on the ax, stuck the hair on it, and threw the ax in the corner. I carried the pig away inside my jacket, so it couldn’t drip, and threw it into the river.
Then I had one more idea. I brought the sack of meal back from the canoe, cut a small hole in the bottom and carried it a hundred yards through the grass to a wide, shallow lake. A creek ran out of the lake on the other side, away from the river. The meal left a trail all the way to the lake. Then I tied up the hole with a string and took the sack back to the canoe.
By dark I was waiting in the canoe under some willows for the moon. They’ll follow the track of the heavy sack to the river, I said to myself, and search the river for my body. And they’ll follow the meal to the lake and down the creek, looking for the robbers who killed me. Soon they’ll get tired and stop thinking about me. Then I can go anywhere I want. Jackson’s Island is good enough for me. I know that island well, and nobody ever goes there.
I fell asleep. When I woke up, the moon was so bright that I could count the logs floating far out on the river. Everything was dead quiet, and it looked late, and smelled late. You know what I mean; I don’t know the words for it.
Then I heard oars across the water. A boat was coming, with one man in it. He passed so close that I could have touched him with the gun. It was Pap, and I could tell he was sober by the way he used his oars.
I didn’t lose any time. The next minute I was moving down the river, quietly but quickly, in the shadow of the bank. Before I reached the ferry landing, I went out to the middle of the river, lay down in the bottom of the canoe and let it float among the logs. The sky looks very deep when you lie on your back in the moonlight; I never knew that before. And how far you can hear on the water on nights like that! I could hear every word of some men talking and laughing at the ferry landing.
Then I sat up, and there was Jackson’s Island, two and a half miles down the river, big and dark with its trees, like a steamboat without any lights. I landed on the side toward the Illinois shore and hid the canoe behind the willows, where nobody could see it. The sky was turning gray, so I went into the woods and lay down to sleep a little before breakfast.