FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   27   28   29   30   31   32   33   34   35   36   37   >>  
isoner writes on a tin plate, or anywhere else." "Well, then, what's the sense in wasting the plates?" "Why, blame it all, it ain't the PRISONER'S plates." "But it's SOMEBODY'S plates, ain't it?" "Well, spos'n it is? What does the PRISONER care whose--" He broke off there, because we heard the breakfast-horn blowing. So we cleared out for the house. Along during the morning I borrowed a sheet and a white shirt off of the clothes-line; and I found an old sack and put them in it, and we went down and got the fox-fire, and put that in too. I called it borrowing, because that was what pap always called it; but Tom said it warn't borrowing, it was stealing. He said we was representing prisoners; and prisoners don't care how they get a thing so they get it, and nobody don't blame them for it, either. It ain't no crime in a prisoner to steal the thing he needs to get away with, Tom said; it's his right; and so, as long as we was representing a prisoner, we had a perfect right to steal anything on this place we had the least use for to get ourselves out of prison with. He said if we warn't prisoners it would be a very different thing, and nobody but a mean, ornery person would steal when he warn't a prisoner. So we allowed we would steal everything there was that come handy. And yet he made a mighty fuss, one day, after that, when I stole a watermelon out of the nigger-patch and eat it; and he made me go and give the niggers a dime without telling them what it was for. Tom said that what he meant was, we could steal anything we NEEDED. Well, I says, I needed the watermelon. But he said I didn't need it to get out of prison with; there's where the difference was. He said if I'd a wanted it to hide a knife in, and smuggle it to Jim to kill the seneskal with, it would a been all right. So I let it go at that, though I couldn't see no advantage in my representing a prisoner if I got to set down and chaw over a lot of gold-leaf distinctions like that every time I see a chance to hog a watermelon. Well, as I was saying, we waited that morning till everybody was settled down to business, and nobody in sight around the yard; then Tom he carried the sack into the lean-to whilst I stood off a piece to keep watch. By and by he come out, and we went and set down on the woodpile to talk. He says: "Everything's all right now except tools; and that's easy fixed." "Tools?" I says. "Yes." "Tools for what?"
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   27   28   29   30   31   32   33   34   35   36   37   >>  



Top keywords:

prisoner

 

watermelon

 

representing

 

prisoners

 
plates
 

PRISONER

 

called

 

prison

 

borrowing


morning

 

niggers

 

telling

 

advantage

 
difference
 
wanted
 
couldn
 

smuggle

 

needed


isoner

 

seneskal

 

NEEDED

 

whilst

 

woodpile

 
Everything
 

carried

 

distinctions

 
chance

business
 

settled

 
waited
 
allowed
 

SOMEBODY

 
wasting
 

stealing

 
clothes
 

cleared


blowing

 
breakfast
 

borrowed

 

person

 

ornery

 
mighty
 

writes

 

nigger

 
perfect