“Yes, because he knowed the man’s character.
It was just the kind of a man he was hunting for—a
man that never believes in anybody’s word or
anybody’s honorableness, because he ain’t
got none of his own. I reckon there’s lots
of people like that dervish. They swindle, right
and left, but they always make the other person seem
to swindle himself. They keep inside of the letter
of the law all the time, and there ain’t no way
to git hold of them. They don’t put
the salve on—oh, no, that would be sin;
but they know how to fool you into putting it
on, then it’s you that blinds yourself.
I reckon the dervish and the camel-driver was just
a pair—a fine, smart, brainy rascal, and
a dull, coarse, ignorant one, but both of them rascals,
just the same.”
“Mars Tom, does you reckon dey’s any o’
dat kind o’ salve in de worl’ 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 nigger
out of a bunch of angels.
We found a pond of salt water close by and scraped
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.
