I've got an oldpick and shovel.'
'Hey, look!' he said. 'Nobody lives in that old house. Let's go there. Old houses are
always good for treasure.'
'Good for ghosts, too!' said Huck.
They took the pick and shovel with them, went down the hill, and into the old
house. They looked in all the rooms downstairs, and then went upstairs. But there
was no treasure, and no ghosts. Then they heard a noise.
'Sh!' said Tom, suddenly. 'What's that?'
'Ghosts!' whispered Huck.
There were holes in the floor, and through them the boys could see into the rooms
downstairs.
'No,' Tom whispered. 'It's two men. One is the old Spaniard. He came to live in
the village last week. I don't know the other man. Sh! Let's listen to them.'
The two men sat down on the floor. The Spaniard had a green hat and long white
hair; the other man was small and dark. He took out a bag and began to open it.
'It's hot in here,' the Spaniard said. He took off his green hat - and then he took off
his long white hair!
'Tom!' Huck whispered upstairs. 'That's Injun Joe!'
'We took six hundred and fifty dollars when we robbed that house,' said the
second man. He took some money out of the bag. 'We can take fifty dollars with us
now. What are we going to do with the six hundred?'
'Leave it here,' said Injun Joe. 'We can come back and get it next week. Here,
give me the bag.'
He walked across the room to the fireplace, moved two big stones from the floor,
and began to dig with his knife.
Upstairs, the two boys watched excitedly. Treasure! Six hundred dollars of
wonderful treasure!
Injun Joe stopped digging. 'Hello, what's this?' he said. 'There's something here.
It's an old box.'
The two men got the box out and opened it.
'It's money!' said Injun Joe's friend.
Injun Joe put his hand into the box. 'There are thousands of dollars here!' he said,
and the two men looked at the money with happy smiles.
'But who—' began Injun Joe's friend.
'Don't ask,' Injun Joe said. 'It's our money now.'
'We can't take it with us today,' said his friend. 'What can we do with it? Put it
back under the floor?'
'Yes,' said Injun Joe. (Happy faces upstairs.) 'No! (Very unhappy faces upstairs.)
Let's put it under the cross - nobody goes there. We can take it there tonight.'
When night came, the two men carried all the money away. The boys did not go
after them because they were afraid of Injun Joe. But they wanted very much to find
that ‘cross'.
For a week the two boys thought and thought about the treasure. It was 'under the
cross', but where was the cross? In St Petersburg the boys watched the 'Spaniard'
carefully, but they didn't see a cross, and they didn't find the treasure.
Chapter five
In the Cave
The next Saturday was Becky Thatcher's birthday, and all Becky's friends were very
excited.
It's going to be a wonderful day,' Becky told Tom. 'We're going to have a picnic
by the river, and after that, we can visit McDougal's Cave.'
So in the morning, a big boat took Becky, Tom, and all their friends down the
river. There were some older children on the boat too, but all the mothers and fathers
stayed at home. Picnics are better without them!
And it was a very happy, noisy picnic.
It was a very happy, noisy picnic.
After the picnic, the children took out their candles, and ran up the hill! to the
cave. The mouth of the cave was dark, and some of the children were afraid at first.
But caves are exciting, so in the end everybody went in.
McDougal's Cave was very, very big, with hundreds of tunnels and rooms. The
tunnels went up, down, and into the hill for. miles. You could walk for days in
McDougal's Cave. Nobody knew all the cave, but many people knew the tunnels near
the door. You could play all day in these tunnels. Torn, of course, knew them well.
For hours the children walked and ran through the cave, up and down the tunnels,
in and out of the rooms. In the evening they came out, and walked down the hill to the
boat, tired but happy.
When the boat arrived back in St Petersburg, it was dark. Huck Finn saw the boat,
but he did not know about the picnic. He did not go to birthday picnics, of course,
because the mothers of St Petersburg did not like him. But tonight Huck was only
interested in treasure - Injun Joe's treasure. Injun Joe was in an old building by the
river, and Huck waited in the street near the building.
'Perhaps,' he thought, 'Injun Joe's cross is in there. And the box of money. I must
wait and watch. I can tell Tom about it tomorrow.'
But Injun Joe didn't come out. At midnight it began to tain, and Huck waited all
night in the cold street. In the morning he could not move and he could not speak. He
felt cold, then hot, then cold, then hot again. Mrs. Douglas, a woman from the
church, found him in the street. She took him to her home and put him to bed. And
there he stayed for two weeks. He was very ill, and so he did not hear about Tom and
Becky.
But on Sunday morning all St Petersburg knew about Tom and Becky - because
they were not on the boat when it came back to the village. Where were they? Were
they lost in the cave? And were they alive, or dead?
At first Tom and Becky played with their friends in the cave. Then Tom wanted to
go down a new tunnel, and Becky went with him.
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