Now you see this bluff here looks all alike all the way down from the
cave hollow no houses, no wood-yards, bushes all alike. But do you see
that white place up yonder where there s been a landslide? Well, that s
one of my marks. We ll get ashore, now.
They landed.
Now, Huck, where we re a-standing you could touch that hole I got out
of with a fishing-pole. See if you can find it.
Huck searched all the place about, and found nothing. Tom proudly
marched into a thick clump of sumach bushes and said:
Here you are! Look at it, Huck; it s the snuggest hole in this country.
You just keep mum about it. All along I ve been wanting to be a robber,
but I knew I d got to have a thing like this, and where to run across
it was the bother. We ve got it now, and we ll keep it quiet, only we ll
let Joe Harper and Ben Rogers in because of course there s got to be a
Gang, or else there wouldn t be any style about it. Tom Sawyer s Gang it
sounds splendid, don t it, Huck?
Well, it just does, Tom. And who ll we rob?
Oh, most anybody. Waylay people that s mostly the way.
And kill them?
No, not always. Hive them in the cave till they raise a ransom.
What s a ransom?
Money. You make them raise all they can, off n their friends; and after
you ve kept them a year, if it ain t raised then you kill them. That s
the general way. Only you don t kill the women. You shut up the women,
but you don t kill them. They re always beautiful and rich, and awfully
scared. You take their watches and things, but you always take your hat
off and talk polite. They ain t anybody as polite as robbers you ll see
that in any book. Well, the women get to loving you, and after they ve
been in the cave a week or two weeks they stop crying and after that
you couldn t get them to leave. If you drove them out they d turn right
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