body’s honorableness, because he ain’t got none of his
own. I reckon there’s lots of people like that dervish.
They swindle, right and left, but they always make the
other person SEEM to swindle himself. They keep inside
of the letter of the law all the time, and there ain’t no
way to git hold of them. THEY don’t put the salve on
— oh, no, that would be sin; but they know how to
fool YOU into putting it on, then it’s you that blinds
yourself. I reckon the dervish and the camel-driver
was just a pair — a fine, smart, brainy rascal, and a
dull, coarse, ignorant one, but both of them rascals,
just the same.”
“Mars Tom, does you reckon dey’s any o’ dat kind
o’ salve in de worl’ now?”
“Yes, Uncle Abner says there is. He says they’ve
got it in New York, and they put it on country people’s
eyes and show them all the railroads in the world, and
they go in and git them, and then when they rub the
salve on the other eye the other man bids them good-
bye and goes off with their railroads. Here’s the
treasure-hill now. Lower away!”
We landed, but it warn’t as interesting as I thought
it was going to be, because we couldn’t find the place
where they went in to git the treasure. Still, it was
plenty interesting enough, just to see the mere hill
itself where such a wonderful thing happened. Jim
said he wou’dn’t ‘a’ missed it for three dollars, and I
felt the same way.
And to me and Jim, as wonderful a thing as any was
the way Tom could come into a strange big country
like this and go straight and find a little hump like that
and tell it in a minute from a million other humps that
was almost just like it, and nothing to help him but
only his own learning and his own natural smartness.
We talked and talked it over together, but couldn’t
make out how he done it. He had the best head on
him I ever see; and all he lacked was age, to make a
name for himself equal to Captain Kidd or George
Washington. I bet you it would ‘a’ crowded either of
THEM to find that hill, with all their gifts, but it warn’t
nothing to Tom Sawyer; he went across Sahara and
put his finger on it as easy as you could pick a nigger
out of a bunch of angels.
We found a pond of salt water close by and scraped
up a raft of salt around the edges, and loaded up the
lion’s skin and the tiger’s so as they would keep till Jim
could tan them.
CHAPTER XI.
THE SAND-STORM
WE went a-fooling along for a day or two, and then
just as the full moon was touching the ground
on the other side of the desert, we see a string of little
black figgers moving across its big silver face. You
could see them as plain as if they was painted on the
moon with ink. It was another caravan. We cooled
down our speed and tagged along after it, just to have
company, though it warn’t going our way. It was a
rattler, that caravan, and a most bully sight to look at
next morning when the sun come a-streaming across
the desert and flung the long shadders of the camels
on the gold sand like a thousand grand-daddy-long-
legses marching in procession. We never went very
near it, because we knowed better now than to act like
that and scare people’s camels and break up their cara-
vans. It was the gayest outfit you ever see, for rich
clothes and nobby style. Some of the chiefs rode on
dromedaries, the first we ever see, and very tall, and
they go plunging along like they was on stilts, and
they rock the man that is on them pretty violent and
churn up his dinner considerable, I bet you, but they
make noble good time, and a camel ain’t nowheres with
them for speed.
The caravan camped, during the middle part of the