Summary—Chapter 27: Trembling on the Trail
The next morning, after a night of troubled sleep, Tom
considers the possibility that events of the previous day were a
dream. He finds Huck, and Huck rids him of this idea. The two boys
speculate about where hiding place “Number Two” might be, deciding
that “Two” probably refers to a room number in one of the town’s
two taverns. Tom visits the first tavern and learns that a lawyer
occupies room number two. In the second tavern, room number two
remains locked all the time. The tavern-keeper’s son claims that
no one ever enters or leaves the room except at night. He claims
to have noticed a light on in the room the previous night. The boys
decide to find all the keys they can and try them in the room’s
back door. Meanwhile, if Injun Joe appears, the boys plan to tail
him to see where he goes, in case they are wrong about the room.
Summary—Chapter 28: In the Lair of Injun Joe
On Thursday, the boys make their way to the tavern. Tom
slips inside, and Huck waits for him. Suddenly Tom rushes by, shouting for
them to run. Neither stops until he reaches the other end of the village,
where Tom recounts that he found the door unlocked and Injun Joe
asleep on the floor, surrounded by whiskey bottles. The tavern is
a “Temperance Tavern,” meaning that it purportedly serves no alcohol.
The boys realize that the room must be off-limits because it is
where the tavern secretly serves whiskey. The boys decide that Huck
will watch the room every night. If Injun Joe leaves, Huck will
get Tom, who will sneak in and take the treasure.
Summary—Chapter 29: Huck Saves the Widow
The next day, the Thatchers return from Constantinople.
When Tom sees Becky, he learns that her picnic is planned for the
following day, so the Injun Joe predicament drops to secondary importance. The
children plan to go downriver to a famous cavern, and Becky’s mother
tells Becky to spend the night with one of her friends who lives
near the ferry. Tom then persuades Becky to disobey her mother and
go with him to the Widow Douglas’s house instead, where the kind
woman will probably give them ice cream and let them spend the night.
As they take the ferry down the river, Tom worries briefly
that Injun Joe may go out that night, and he may miss the action.
But the promise of fun with Becky soon drives such worries from
his mind. The children arrive at a “woody hollow,” play in the forest,
and eat lunch. Afterward, they climb up to McDougal’s cave and spend
the afternoon excitedly exploring the passages. They stagger out
that evening happily covered in clay and board the ferry for home.
Huck sees the ferry arrive in town, and a short time
later he sees two men pass him carrying a box. Assuming them to
be Injun Joe and his companion, he decides that there is no time
to fetch Tom—the two men are escaping with the gold. He follows
them to the Widow Douglas’s house, where Injun Joe describes to
his friend how he plans to slit the widow’s nostrils and notch her
ears like a sow as revenge for an incident in which her husband,
then justice of the peace, had him horsewhipped for vagrancy.
While the two villains wait for the widow’s light to
go out, Huck races down the hill to the house of an old Welshman
and his sons. They let him in, and when he tells them what is about
to happen, they seize their guns and rush toward the widow’s house.
Huck follows them for a time, hears a burst of gunfire, and then
flees for his life.
