Chapter 10 - Page 2

to let
Jim find out it was all my fault, not if I could help it.

Jim sucked and sucked at the jug, and now and then
he got out of his head and pitched around and yelled;
but every time he come to himself he went to sucking
at the jug again. His foot swelled up pretty big, and
so did his leg; but by and by the drunk begun to
come, and so I judged he was all right; but I'd
druther been bit with a snake than pap's whisky.

Jim was laid up for four days and nights. Then
the swelling was all gone and he was around again. I
made up my mind I wouldn't ever take a-holt of a
snake-skin again with my hands, now that I see what
had come of it. Jim said he reckoned I would believe
him next time. And he said that handling a snake-
skin was such awful bad luck that maybe we hadn't
got to the end of it yet. He said he druther see the
new moon over his left shoulder as much as a thousand
times than take up a snake-skin in his hand. Well, I
was getting to feel that way myself, though I've always
reckoned that looking at the new moon over your left
shoulder is one of the carelessest and foolishest things
a body can do. Old Hank Bunker done it once, and
bragged about it; and in less than two years he got
drunk and fell off of the shot-tower, and spread him-
self out so that he was just a kind of a layer, as you
may say; and they slid him edgeways between two
barn doors for a coffin, and buried him so, so they
say, but I didn't see it. Pap told me. But anyway
it all come of looking at the moon that way, like a
fool.

Well, the days went along, and the river went down
between its banks again; and about the first thing we
done was to bait one of the big hooks with a skinned
rabbit and set it and catch a catfish that was as big as
a man, being six foot two inches long, and weighed
over two hundred pounds. We couldn't handle him,
of course; he would a flung us into Illinois. We just
set there and watched him rip and tear around till he
drownded. We found a brass button in his stomach
and a round ball, and lots of rubbage. We split the
ball open with the hatchet, and there was a spool in it.
Jim said he'd had it there a long time, to coat it over
so and make a ball of it. It was as big a fish as was
ever catched in the Mississippi, I reckon. Jim said he
hadn't ever seen a bigger one. He would a been
worth a good deal over at the village. They peddle
out such a fish as that by the pound in the market-
house there; everybody buys some of him; his meat's
as white as snow and makes a good fry.

Next morning I said it was getting slow and dull,
and I wanted to get a stirring up some way. I said I
reckoned I would slip over the river and find out what