now?"
"Yes, Uncle Abner says there is. He says they"ve got it in New York, and they put it on country people"s eyes and show them all the railroads in the world, and they go in and git them, and then when they rub the salve on the other eye the other man bids them goodbye and goes off with their railroads. Here"s the treasure-hill now. Lower away!"
We landed, but it warn"t as interesting as I thought it was going to be, because we couldn"t find the place where they went in to git the treasure. Still, it was plenty interesting enough, just to see the mere hill itself where such a wonderful thing happened. Jim said he wou"dn"t "a" missed it for three dollars, and I felt the same way.
And to me and Jim, as wonderful a thing as any was the way Tom could come into a strange big country like this and go straight and find a little hump like that and tell it in a minute from a million other humps that was almost just like it, and nothing to help him but only his own learning and his own natural smartness. We talked and talked it over together, but couldn"t make out how he done it. He had the best head on him I ever see; and all he lacked was age, to make a name for himself equal to Captain Kidd or George Washington. I bet you it would "a"
crowded either of THEM to find that hill, with all their gifts, but it warn"t nothing to Tom Sawyer; he went across Sahara and put his finger on it as easy as you could pick a n.i.g.g.e.r out of a bunch of angels.
We found a pond of salt water close by and sc.r.a.ped up a raft of salt around the edges, and loaded up the lion"s skin and the tiger"s so as they would keep till Jim could tan them.
CHAPTER XI. THE SAND-STORM
WE went a-fooling along for a day or two, and then just as the full moon was touching the ground on the other side of the desert, we see a string of little black figgers moving across its big silver face. You could see them as plain as if they was painted on the moon with ink. It was another caravan. We cooled down our speed and tagged along after it, just to have company, though it warn"t going our way. It was a rattler, that caravan, and a most bully sight to look at next morning when the sun come a-streaming across the desert and flung the long shadders of the camels on the gold sand like a thousand grand-daddy-long-legses marching in procession. We never went very near it, because we knowed better now than to act like that and scare people"s camels and break up their caravans. It was the gayest outfit you ever see, for rich clothes and n.o.bby style. Some of the chiefs rode on dromedaries, the first we ever see, and very tall, and they go plunging along like they was on stilts, and they rock the man that is on them pretty violent and churn up his dinner considerable, I bet you, but they make n.o.ble good time, and a camel ain"t nowheres with them for speed.
The caravan camped, during the middle part of the day, and then started again about the middle of the afternoon. Before long the sun begun to look very curious. First it kind of turned to bra.s.s, and then to copper, and after that it begun to look like a blood-red ball, and the air got hot and close, and pretty soon all the sky in the west darkened up and looked thick and foggy, but fiery and dreadful--like it looks through a piece of red gla.s.s, you know. We looked down and see a big confusion going on in the caravan, and a rushing every which way like they was scared; and then they all flopped down flat in the sand and laid there perfectly still.
Pretty soon we see something coming that stood up like an amazing wide wall, and reached from the Desert up into the sky and hid the sun, and it was coming like the nation, too. Then a little faint breeze struck us, and then it come harder, and grains of sand begun to sift against our faces and sting like fire, and Tom sung out:
"It"s a sand-storm--turn your backs to it!"
We done it; and in another minute it was blowing a gale, and the sand beat against us by the shovelful, and the air was so thick with it we couldn"t see a thing. In five minutes the boat was level full, and we was setting on the lockers buried up to the chin in sand, and only our heads out and could hardly breathe.
Then the storm thinned, and we see that monstrous wall go a-sailing off across the desert, awful to look at, I tell you. We dug ourselves out and looked down, and where the caravan was before there wasn"t anything but just the sand ocean now, and all still and quiet. All them people and camels was smothered and dead and buried--buried under ten foot of sand, we reckoned, and Tom allowed it might be years before the wind uncovered them, and all that time their friends wouldn"t ever know what become of that caravan. Tom said:
"NOW we know what it was that happened to the people we got the swords and pistols from."
Yes, sir, that was just it. It was as plain as day now. They got buried in a sand-storm, and the wild animals couldn"t get at them, and the wind never uncovered them again until they was dried to leather and warn"t fit to eat. It seemed to me we had felt as sorry for them poor people as a person could for anybody, and as mournful, too, but we was mistaken; this last caravan"s death went harder with us, a good deal harder.
You see, the others was total strangers, and we never got to feeling acquainted with them at all, except, maybe, a little with the man that was watching the girl, but it was different with this last caravan. We was huvvering around them a whole night and "most a whole day, and had got to feeling real friendly with them, and acquainted. I have found out that there ain"t no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them. Just so with these. We kind of liked them from the start, and traveling with them put on the finisher. The longer we traveled with them, and the more we got used to their ways, the better and better we liked them, and the gladder and gladder we was that we run across them. We had come to know some of them so well that we called them by name when we was talking about them, and soon got so familiar and sociable that we even dropped the Miss and Mister and just used their plain names without any handle, and it did not seem unpolite, but just the right thing. Of course, it wasn"t their own names, but names we give them. There was Mr. Elexander Robinson and Miss Adaline Robinson, and Colonel Jacob McDougal and Miss Harryet McDougal, and Judge Jeremiah Butler and young Bushrod Butler, and these was big chiefs mostly that wore splendid great turbans and simmeters, and dressed like the Grand Mogul, and their families. But as soon as we come to know them good, and like them very much, it warn"t Mister, nor Judge, nor nothing, any more, but only Elleck, and Addy, and Jake, and Hattie, and Jerry, and Buck, and so on.
And you know the more you join in with people in their joys and their sorrows, the more nearer and dearer they come to be to you. Now we warn"t cold and indifferent, the way most travelers is, we was right down friendly and sociable, and took a chance in everything that was going, and the caravan could depend on us to be on hand every time, it didn"t make no difference what it was.
When they camped, we camped right over them, ten or twelve hundred feet up in the air. When they et a meal, we et ourn, and it made it ever so much home-liker to have their company. When they had a wedding that night, and Buck and Addy got married, we got ourselves up in the very starchiest of the professor"s duds for the blow-out, and when they danced we jined in and shook a foot up there.
But it is sorrow and trouble that brings you the nearest, and it was a funeral that done it with us. It was next morning, just in the still dawn. We didn"t know the diseased, and he warn"t in our set, but that never made no difference; he belonged to the caravan, and that was enough, and there warn"t no more sincerer tears shed over him than the ones we dripped on him from up there eleven hundred foot on high.
Yes, parting with this caravan was much more bitterer than it was to part with them others, which was comparative strangers, and been dead so long, anyway. We had knowed these in their lives, and was fond of them, too, and now to have death s.n.a.t.c.h them from right before our faces while we was looking, and leave us so lonesome and friendless in the middle of that big desert, it did hurt so, and we wished we mightn"t ever make any more friends on that voyage if we was going to lose them again like that.
We couldn"t keep from talking about them, and they was all the time coming up in our memory, and looking just the way they looked when we was all alive and happy together. We could see the line marching, and the shiny spearheads a-winking in the sun; we could see the dromedaries lumbering along; we could see the wedding and the funeral; and more oftener than anything else we could see them praying, because they don"t allow nothing to prevent that; whenever the call come, several times a day, they would stop right there, and stand up and face to the east, and lift back their heads, and spread out their arms and begin, and four or five times they would go down on their knees, and then fall forward and touch their forehead to the ground.
Well, it warn"t good to go on talking about them, lovely as they was in their life, and dear to us in their life and death both, because it didn"t do no good, and made us too down-hearted. Jim allowed he was going to live as good a life as he could, so he could see them again in a better world; and Tom kept still and didn"t tell him they was only Mohammedans; it warn"t no use to disappoint him, he was feeling bad enough just as it was.
When we woke up next morning we was feeling a little cheerfuller, and had had a most powerful good sleep, because sand is the comfortablest bed there is, and I don"t see why people that can afford it don"t have it more. And it"s terrible good ballast, too; I never see the balloon so steady before.
Tom allowed we had twenty tons of it, and wondered what we better do with it; it was good sand, and it didn"t seem good sense to throw it away. Jim says:
"Mars Tom, can"t we tote it back home en sell it? How long"ll it take?"
"Depends on the way we go."
"Well, sah, she"s wuth a quarter of a dollar a load at home, en I reckon we"s got as much as twenty loads, hain"t we? How much would dat be?"
"Five dollars."
"By jings, Mars Tom, le"s shove for home right on de spot! Hit"s more"n a dollar en a half apiece, hain"t it?"
"Yes."
"Well, ef dat ain"t makin" money de easiest ever I struck! She jes"
rained in--never cos" us a lick o" work. Le"s mosey right along, Mars Tom."
But Tom was thinking and ciphering away so busy and excited he never heard him. Pretty soon he says:
"Five dollars--sho! Look here, this sand"s worth--worth--why, it"s worth no end of money."
"How is dat, Mars Tom? Go on, honey, go on!"
"Well, the minute people knows it"s genuwyne sand from the genuwyne Desert of Sahara, they"ll just be in a perfect state of mind to git hold of some of it to keep on the what-not in a vial with a label on it for a curiosity. All we got to do is to put it up in vials and float around all over the United States and peddle them out at ten cents apiece.
We"ve got all of ten thousand dollars" worth of sand in this boat."
Me and Jim went all to pieces with joy, and begun to shout whoopjamboreehoo, and Tom says:
"And we can keep on coming back and fetching sand, and coming back and fetching more sand, and just keep it a-going till we"ve carted this whole Desert over there and sold it out; and there ain"t ever going to be any opposition, either, because we"ll take out a patent."
"My goodness," I says, "we"ll be as rich as Creosote, won"t we, Tom?"
"Yes--Creesus, you mean. Why, that dervish was hunting in that little hill for the treasures of the earth, and didn"t know he was walking over the real ones for a thousand miles. He was blinder than he made the driver."
"Mars Tom, how much is we gwyne to be worth?"
"Well, I don"t know yet. It"s got to be ciphered, and it ain"t the easiest job to do, either, because it"s over four million square miles of sand at ten cents a vial."
Jim was awful excited, but this faded it out considerable, and he shook his head and says:
"Mars Tom, we can"t "ford all dem vials--a king couldn"t. We better not try to take de whole Desert, Mars Tom, de vials gwyne to bust us, sho"."
Tom"s excitement died out, too, now, and I reckoned it was on account of the vials, but it wasn"t. He set there thinking, and got bluer and bluer, and at last he says:
"Boys, it won"t work; we got to give it up."
"Why, Tom?"
"On account of the duties."
I couldn"t make nothing out of that, neither could Jim. I says:
"What IS our duty, Tom? Because if we can"t git around it, why can"t we just DO it? People often has to."