ind the other one, though we hunted all around.

And so, take it all around, we made a good haul. When we was ready to
shove off we was a quarter of a mile below the island, and it was
pretty broad day; so I made Jim lay down in the canoe and cover up
with the quilt, because if he set up people could tell he was a nigger
a good ways off. I paddled over to the Illinois shore, and drifted
down most a half a mile doing it. I crept up the dead water under the
bank, and hadn't no accidents and didn't see nobody. We got home all
safe.

CHAPTER X

After breakfast I wanted to talk about the dead man and guess out how
he come to be killed, but Jim didn't want to. He said it would fetch
bad luck; and besides, he said, he might come and ha'nt us; he said a
man that warn't buried was more likely to go a-ha'nting around than
one that was planted and comfortable. That sounded pretty reasonable,
so I didn't say no more; but I couldn't keep from studying over it and
wishing I knowed who shot the man, and what they done it for.

We rummaged the clothes we'd got, and found eight dollars in silver
sewed up in the lining of an old blanket overcoat. Jim said he
reckoned the people in that house stole the coat, because if they'd
'a' knowed the money was there they wouldn't 'a' left it. I said I
reckoned they killed him, too; but Jim didn't want to talk about that.
I says:

"Now you think it's bad luck; but what did you say when I fetched in
the snake-skin that I found on the top of the ridge day before
yesterday? You said it was the worst bad luck in the world to touch a
snake-skin with my hands. Well, here's your bad luck! We've raked in
all this truck and eight dollars besides. I wish we could have some
bad luck like this every day, Jim."

"Never you mind, honey, never you mind. Don't you git too peart. It's
a-comin'. Mind I tell you, it's a-comin'."

It did come, too. It was a Tuesday that we had that talk. Well, after
dinner Friday we was laying around in the grass at the upper end of
the ridge, and got out of tobacco. I went to the cavern to get some,
and found a rattlesnake in there. I killed him, and curled him up on
the foot of Jim's blanket, ever so natural, thinking there'd be some
fun when Jim found him there. Well, by night I forgot all about the
snake, and when Jim flung himself down on the blanket while I struck a
light the snake's mate was there, and bit him.

He jumped up yelling, and the first thing the lig