Tom Sawyer Abroad | Page 4

Of course, people got to avoiding him and
shaking their heads and whispering, because, the way he was looking
and acting, they judged he had killed somebody or done something
terrible, they didn't know what, and if he had been a stranger they
would've lynched him.
Well, as I was saying, it got so he couldn't stand it any longer; so he
made up his mind to pull out for Washington, and just go to the
President of the United States and make a clean breast of the whole
thing, not keeping back an atom, and then fetch the letter out and lay it
before the whole gov'ment, and say, "Now, there she is -- do with me
what you're a mind to; though as heaven is my judge I am an innocent
man and not deserving of the full penalties of the law and leaving
behind me a family that must starve and yet hadn't had a thing to do
with it, which is the whole truth and I can swear to it."
So he did it. He had a little wee bit of steamboat- ing, and some
stage-coaching, but all the rest of the way was horseback, and it took
him three weeks to get to Washington. He saw lots of land and lots of
vil- lages and four cities. He was gone 'most eight weeks, and there
never was such a proud man in the village as he when he got back. His
travels made him the greatest man in all that region, and the most
talked about; and people come from as much as thirty miles back in the
country, and from over in the Illinois bottoms, too, just to look at him --
and there they'd stand and gawk, and he'd gabble. You never see
anything like it.
Well, there wasn't any way now to settle which was the greatest
traveler; some said it was Nat, some said it was Tom. Everybody
allowed that Nat had seen the most longitude, but they had to give in
that what- ever Tom was short in longitude he had made up in latitude
and climate. It was about a stand-off; so both of them had to whoop up
their dangerous adventures, and try to get ahead THAT way. That
bullet-wound in Tom's leg was a tough thing for Nat Parsons to buck

against, but he bucked the best he could; and at a disadvantage, too, for
Tom didn't set still as he'd orter done, to be fair, but always got up and
sauntered around and worked his limp while Nat was painting up the
adventure that HE had in Washington; for Tom never let go that limp
when his leg got well, but prac- ticed it nights at home, and kept it good
as new right along.
Nat's adventure was like this; I don't know how true it is; maybe he got
it out of a paper, or some- where, but I will say this for him, that he
DID know how to tell it. He could make anybody's flesh crawl, and
he'd turn pale and hold his breath when he told it, and sometimes
women and girls got so faint they couldn't stick it out. Well, it was this
way, as near as I can remember:
He come a-loping into Washington, and put up his horse and shoved
out to the President's house with his letter, and they told him the
President was up to the Capitol, and just going to start for Philadelphia
-- not a minute to lose if he wanted to catch him. Nat 'most dropped, it
made him so sick. His horse was put up, and he didn't know what to do.
But just then along comes a darky driving an old ramshackly hack, and
he see his chance. He rushes out and shouts: "A half a dollar if you git
me to the Capitol in half an hour, and a quarter extra if you do it in
twenty minutes!"
"Done!" says the darky.
Nat he jumped in and slammed the door, and away they went a-ripping
and a-tearing over the roughest road a body ever see, and the racket of
it was some- thing awful. Nat passed his arms through the loops and
hung on for life and death, but pretty soon the hack hit a rock and flew
up in the air, and the bottom fell out, and when it come down Nat's feet
was on the ground, and he see he was in the most desperate danger if he
couldn't keep up with the hack. He was horrible scared, but he laid into
his work for all he was worth, and hung tight to the arm-loops and
made his legs fairly fly. He yelled and shouted to the driver to stop,