Huck wants to know about the dead man and who shot him, but Jim won't talk about it. He says it will bring bad luck.
A couple of days prior to this, Huck touched a snakeskin with his hands and Jim said that bad luck would come. It finally did. Huck recounts the story of what happened to bring the bad luck.
Huck went into the cavern for some tobacco and found a rattlesnake in it. He killed it and put it on Jim's blanket for some fun. When Jim went to lie down on the blanket that night, the snake's mate bit Jim on the heel.
Jim drinks himself drunk so as to ease the pain of the bite. He is drunk for a few days, and the swelling finally goes away. They fish and catch a huge catfish as big as a man.
Huck wants to know what has been going on in the town. He dresses up as a girl with the clothes they stole from the house. He rows over to town and comes across a beat up house in the woods. He looks through the window and sees a woman, about forty years old, who he's never seen before. He knocks and hopes that she won't recognize he's not really a girl.
