he 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 light showed was the
varmint curled up and ready for another spring. I laid him out in a
second with a stick, and Jim grabbed pap's whisky-jug and begun to pour
it down.

He was barefooted, and the snake bit him right o