TOM SAWYER, DETECTIVE

and puts on that disguise.”

Tom waited a little here, for some more “effect” —

then he says, very deliberate:

“The man that put on that dead man’s disguise was

— JUBITER DUNLAP!”

“Great Scott!” everybody shouted, all over the

house, and old Uncle Silas he looked perfectly

astonished.

“Yes, it was Jubiter Dunlap. Not dead, you see.

Then they pulled off the dead man’s boots and put

Jubiter Dunlap’s old ragged shoes on the corpse and put

the corpse’s boots on Jubiter Dunlap. Then Jubiter

Dunlap stayed where he was, and the other man lugged

the dead body off in the twilight; and after midnight

he went to Uncle Silas’s house, and took his old green

work-robe off of the peg where it always hangs in the

passage betwixt the house and the kitchen and put it on,

and stole the long-handled shovel and went off down

into the tobacker field and buried the murdered man.”

He stopped, and stood half a minute. Then —

“And who do you reckon the murdered man WAS?

It was — JAKE Dunlap, the long-lost burglar!”

“Great Scott!”

“And the man that buried him was — BRACE Dunlap,

his brother!”

“Great Scott!”

“And who do you reckon is this mowing idiot here

that’s letting on all these weeks to be a deef and dumb

stranger? It’s — JUBITER Dunlap!”

My land, they all busted out in a howl, and you

never see the like of that excitement since the day you

was born. And Tom he made a jump for Jubiter and

snaked off his goggles and his false whiskers, and there

was the murdered man, sure enough, just as alive as

anybody! And Aunt Sally and Benny they went to

hugging and crying and kissing and smothering old

Uncle Silas to that degree he was more muddled and

confused and mushed up in his mind than he ever was

before, and that is saying considerable. And next,

people begun to yell:

“Tom Sawyer! Tom Sawyer! Shut up every-

body, and let him go on! Go on, Tom Sawyer!”

Which made him feel uncommon bully, for it was

nuts for Tom Sawyer to be a public character that-

away, and a hero, as he calls it. So when it was all

quiet, he says:

“There ain’t much left, only this. When that man

there, Bruce Dunlap, had most worried the life and

sense out of Uncle Silas till at last he plumb lost his

mind and hit this other blatherskite, his brother, with a

club, I reckon he seen his chance. Jubiter broke for

the woods to hide, and I reckon the game was for him

to slide out, in the night, and leave the country.

Then Brace would make everybody believe Uncle Silas

killed him and hid his body somers; and that would

ruin Uncle Silas and drive HIM out of the country —

hang him, maybe; I dunno. But when they found

their dead brother in the sycamores without knowing

him, because he was so battered up, they see they had

a better thing; disguise BOTH and bury Jake and dig

him up presently all dressed up in Jubiter’s clothes,

and hire Jim Lane and Bill Withers and the others to

swear to some handy lies — which they done. And

there they set, now, and I told them they would be

looking sick before I got done, and that is the way

they’re looking now.

“Well, me and Huck Finn here, we come down on

the boat with the thieves, and the dead one told us all

about the di’monds, and said the others would murder

him if they got the chance; and we was going to help

him all we could. We was bound for the sycamores

when we heard them killing him in there; but we was

in there in the early morning after the storm and

allowed nobody hadn’t been killed, after all. And

when we see Jubiter Dunlap here spreading around in

the very same disguise Jake told us HE was going to

wear, we thought it was Jake his own self — and he was

goo-gooing deef and dumb, and THAT was according to

agreement.

“Well, me and Huck went on hunting for the corpse

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