In the morning we went up to the village and bought a wire rat-trap and brought it down, and opened the best rat-hole, and in about an hour we had fifteen of the best in it; and then we took the trap and put it in a safe place under Aunt Sally’s bed. But while we was gone for spiders little Thomas Franklin Benjamin Jefferson Alexander Phelps found it there, and opened it to see if the rats would come out, and they did; and Aunt Sally she come in, and when we got back she was a-standing on top of the bed half crazy, and the rats was doing what they could to keep off the boring times for her.
So she took to us both with a stick. We was as much as two hours catching another fifteen or sixteen for ourselves, thanks to that dirty little child, and they weren’t the best, either, because the first lot was the best of the family. I never seen a better lot of rats than that first trap was full of.
We got a wonderful box of mixed spiders, and insects, and frogs, and caterpillars, and one thing or another; and we close to got a wasp nest, but we didn’t, because the family was home. We didn’t give it right up, but stayed with them as long as we could; because we thought we’d tire them out or they’d tire us out, and they done it. We got some medicine and rubbed on the places where they got us, and was pretty near all right again, but couldn’t sit down easily. And so we went for the snakes, and found about twenty garden and house snakes, and put them in a bag, and put it in our room, and by then it was time to eat, and what a good honest day’s work it had been.
But there weren’t a blessed snake up there when we went back -- we didn’t half tie the bag, and it seems they worked out and left. But it wasn’t a big problem, because they was still in the house somewhere. So we judged we could get some of them again. There weren’t no real problem finding snakes about that house for a good long while after that. You’d see them hanging from the roof and other places every now and then; and they generally landed in your plate, or down the back of your neck, and most of the time where you didn’t want them.
Well, they was beautiful and striped, and there weren’t no danger in a million of them; but that never made no difference to Aunt Sally; she hated snakes, be them what they may, and she couldn’t stand them no way you could fix it. Every time one of them dropped on her, it didn’t make no difference what she was doing, she would just lay it down and run out. I never seen such a woman. And you could hear her shouting to Jericho. You couldn’t get her to take a-hold of one of them with a stick even; and if she turned over and found one in bed she would jump out and lift a cry that you would think the house was on fire. She worried the old man so that he said he could almost wish there hadn’t ever been no snakes made. After every last snake had been gone clear out of the house for as much as a week Aunt Sally weren’t over it yet; when she was sitting thinking about something you could touch her on the back of her neck with a feather and she would jump right out of her socks. It was very strange. But Tom said all women was just so. He said they was made that way for some reason or other.
We got a whipping every time one of our snakes come in her way, and she promised they weren’t nothing to what she would do if we ever filled up the place again with them. I didn’t mind the whippings, because they didn’t come to much; but I was angry about all the trouble we had to get another lot. But we got them, and all the other things; and you never seen a cabin as alive as Jim’s was when they’d all come out for music and go to him. Jim didn’t like the spiders, and the spiders didn’t like Jim; and so they’d go for him, and make it hard for him. He said that between the rats and the snakes and the big stone there weren’t hardly no room in bed for him; and when there was, a body couldn’t sleep, it was so alive with animals. It was always that way, he said, because they was never all asleep at one time, but took turns, so when the snakes was asleep the rats was on the job, and when the rats turned in the snakes come on watch, so he always had one gang under him, and t’other gang having a circus over him, and if he got up to hunt a new place the spiders would have a go at him as he crossed over. He said if he ever got out this time he wouldn’t ever be a prisoner again, not for pay.
Well, by the end of three weeks everything was in pretty good shape. The shirt was sent in early, in a pie, and every time a rat would bite Jim he'd get up and write a little in his diary while the blood was wet; the pens was made, the sayings and so on was all scratched on the stone; the bedleg was sawed in two, and we had eat up the saw-dust, and it give us a most awful stomach-pain. We believed we was all going to die, but didn’t. It was the most difficult sawdust to eat I ever see; and Tom said the same.
But as I was saying, we’d got all the work done now, at last; and we was all pretty much tired out, too, but mostly Jim. The old man had written a few times to the farm below New Orleans to come and get their runaway slave, but hadn’t got no answer, because there weren’t no such farm; so he said he would advertise Jim in the St. Louis and New Orleans papers; and when he said the St. Louis ones it give me the cold shakes, and I seen we hadn’t no time to lose.
So Tom said, "Now for the secret letters."
"What’s them?" I says.
"Warnings to the people that something is up. Sometimes it’s done one way, sometimes another. But there’s always someone looking around that gives a warning to the governor of the prison. When Louis XVI was going to get out a servant-girl done it. It’s a very good way, and so is the secret letters. We’ll use them both. And it’s the way for the prisoner’s mother to change clothes with him, and she stays in, and he goes out in her clothes. We’ll do that, too."
"But look here, Tom, what do we want to warn anyone for that something’s up? Let them find it out for themselves -- it’s their job."
"Yes, I know; but you can’t trust them. It’s the way they’ve acted from the very start -- left us to do everything. They’re so trusting and stupid they don’t see nothing at all. So if we don’t give them word there won’t be nobody or nothing to get in our way, and so after all our hard work and trouble this break out’ll go off perfectly flat; won’t come to nothing -- won’t be nothing to it."
"Well, as for me, Tom, that’s the way I’d like it."
"Shoot!" he says, and looked angry. So I says: "But I ain’t going to complain. Any way you like is good enough for me. What you going to do about the servant-girl?"
"You’ll be her. You go in, in the middle of the night, and borrow that yellow girl’s dress."
"Why, Tom, that’ll make trouble next morning; because she probably ain’t got any but that one."
"I know; but you don’t want it but fifteen minutes, to carry the secret letter and push it under the front door."
"All right, then, I’ll do it; but I could carry it just as easily in my own clothes."
"You wouldn’t look like a servant-girl then, would you?"
"No, but there won’t be nobody to see what I look like, anyway."
"That ain’t got nothing to do with it. The thing for us to do is just to do our job, and not worry about if anyone sees us do it or not. Ain’t you got no conscience at all?"
"All right, I ain’t saying nothing; I’m the servant-girl. Who’s Jim’s mother?"
"I’m his mother. I’ll hook a dress from Aunt Sally."
"Well, then, you’ll have to stay in the shack when me and Jim leaves."
"Not much. I’ll fill Jim’s clothes full of dry grass and lay it on his bed to take the place of his mother, and Jim’ll take the black woman’s dress off of me and wear it, and we’ll all leave together."
So Tom he wrote the secret letter, and I borrowed the yellow dress that night, and put it on, and pushed the letter under the front door, the way Tom told me to.
It said: Warning. Trouble is all around you. Keep a sharp watch. A SECRET FRIEND.
Next night we added a picture, which Tom made in blood, of a head without skin and crossed bones, on the front door; and next night another one of a box for a dead body on the back door. I never seen a family in such a worry over it. They couldn’t a been worse scared if the place had been full of ghosts waiting for them behind everything and under the beds and flying through the air. If a door banged, Aunt Sally would jump and say "ow!" if anything fell, she’d jump and say "ow!" if you happened to touch her, when she weren’t looking, she done the same; she couldn’t face no way and be at peace, because she believed there was something behind her every time -- so she was always a-turning around quickly, and saying "ow," and before she’d got two-thirds around she’d turn back again, and say it again; and she was afraid to go to bed, but afraid to sit up too. So the thing was working very well, Tom said; he said he never seen a thing work better. He said it showed it was done right.
So he said, now for the best part! So the very next morning at the first sign of the sun we got another letter ready, and was thinking about what we should do with it, because we heard them say the night before that they was going to have a servant on watch at both doors all night. Tom he went down the lightning-rod to look around; and the servant at the back door was asleep, and he put it in the back of his neck and come back.
This letter said:
Don’t turn on me, I want to be your friend. There is a dangerous gang of killers from over in the Indian lands going to rob your runaway slave tonight, and they have been trying to scare you so as you will stay in the house and not trouble them. I am one of the gang, but have got religion and wish to quit it and lead an honest life again, and will tell on their evil plans. They will come secretly down from the north, along the fence, right on midnight, with a false key, and go in the slave’s shack to get him. I am to be off a piece and blow a tin horn if I see any danger for them; but instead of that I will make a sound like a sheep soon as they get in and not blow at all; then while they are getting his chains loose, you run out and lock them in, and can kill them any time you like. Don’t do anything but just the way I am telling you; if you do they will see something is wrong and make all kinds of trouble. I do not wish any reward but to know I have done the right thing.
A SECRET FRIEND.