ny. You're the meanest, treacherousest hound in
this country."

By this time Jim was gone for the raft. I was just a-biling with
curiosity; and I says to myself, Tom Sawyer wouldn't back out now, and
so I won't either; I'm a-going to see what's going on here. So I
dropped on my hands and knees in the little passage, and crept aft in
the dark till there warn't but one stateroom betwixt me and the
cross-hall of the texas. Then in there I see a man stretched on the
floor and tied hand and foot, and two men standing over him, and one
of them had a dim lantern in his hand, and the other one had a pistol.
This one kept pointing the pistol at the man's head on the floor, and
saying:

"I'd _like_ to! And I orter, too--a mean skunk!"

The man on the floor would shrivel up and say, "Oh, please don't,
Bill; I hain't ever goin' to tell."

And every time he said that the man with the lantern would laugh and
say:

"'Deed you _ain't!_ You never said no truer thing 'n that, you bet
you." And once he said: "Hear him beg! and yit if we hadn't got the
best of him and tied him he'd 'a' killed us both. And what _for_? Jist
for noth'n'. Jist because we stood on our _rights_--that's what for.
But I lay you ain't a-goin' to threaten nobody any more, Jim Turner.
Put _up_ that pistol, Bill."

Bill says:

"I don't want to, Jake Packard. I'm for killin' him--and didn't he
kill old Hatfield jist the same way--and don't he deserve it?"

"But I don't _want_ him killed, and I've got my reasons for it."

"Bless yo' heart for them words, Jake Packard! I'll never forgit you
long's I live!" says the man on the floor, sort of blubbering.

Packard didn't take no notice of that, but hung up his lantern on a
nail and started toward where I was, there in the dark, and motioned
Bill to come. I crawfished as fast as I could about two yards, but the
boat slanted so that I couldn't make very good time; so to keep from
getting run over and catched I crawled into a stateroom on the upper
side. The man came a-pawing along in the dark, and when Packard got to
my stateroom, he says:

"Here--come in here."

And in he come, and Bill after him. But before they got in I was up in
the upper berth, cornered, and sorry I come. Then they stood there,
with their hands on the ledge of the berth, and talked. I couldn't see
them, but I could tell where they was by the whisky they'd been
having. I was glad I didn't drink whisky; but it wouldn't made much
difference