Tom and Huck's Howling Adventure Read online

  TOM AND HUCK’S HOWLING

  ADVENTURE

  TOM AND HUCK’S

  HOWLING ADVENTURE

  THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF TOM

  SAWYER AND HUCKLEBERRY FINN

  * * *

  TIM CHAMPLIN

  FIVE STAR

  A part of Gale, Cengage Learning

  * * *

  Copyright © 2017 by Tim Champlin

  All scripture quotations, unless otherwise noted, are taken from the King James Bible.

  Five Star™ Publishing, a part of Gale, a Cengage Company.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously.

  No part of this work covered by the copyright herein may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.

  The publisher bears no responsibility for the quality of information provided through author or third-party Web sites and does not have any control over, nor assume any responsibility for, information contained in these sites. Providing these sites should not be construed as an endorsement or approval by the publisher of these organizations or of the positions they may take on various issues.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Names: Champlin, Tim, 1937– author.

  Title: Tom and Huck’s howling adventure : the further adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn / by Tim Champlin.

  Description: First edition. | Waterville, Maine : Five Star Publishing, a part of Cengage Learning, Inc., 2017.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017013566 (print) | LCCN 2017031828 (ebook) | ISBN 9781432837587 (ebook) | ISBN 1432837583 (ebook) | ISBN 9781432837549 (ebook) | ISBN 1432837540 (ebook) | ISBN 9781432837624 (hardback) | ISBN 1432837621 (hardcover)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Adventure and adventurers—Fiction. | Characters in literature—Fiction. | Time travel—Fiction. | Kidnapping—Fiction. | Coma— Fiction. | Missouri—History—19th century—Fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Historical. | FICTION / Action & Adventure.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.1.C476 (ebook) | LCC PZ7.1.C476 Tom 2017 (print) | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017013566

  First Edition. First Printing: September 2017

  Find us on Facebook− https://www.facebook.com/FiveStarCengage

  Visit our website− http://www.gale.cengage.com/fivestar/

  Contact Five Star Publishing at [email protected]

  Printed in the United States of America

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 21 20 19 18 17

  For my daughter, Liz,

  with all my Love

  and Admiration

  FOREWORD

  * * *

  Tim Champlin has succeeded where Mark Twain failed. Mark Twain tried several times to write successful sequels to Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, but for various reasons he could not finish them or they did not succeed when they were published.

  In 1884, the year Huckleberry Finn was published, Twain began wr iting “Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer Among the Indians,” starting the action where Huckleberry Finn ends, but for some reason he gave it up after writing more than 200 pages of manuscript. It centers around a kidnapping, and features some western scenes and gruesome events, but Twain gave up the idea without figuring out what would happen next. It remained unpublished until 1968.

  In 1892 he wrote Tom Sawyer Abroad, which was published as a book in 1894, and although it begins shortly after Huckleberry Finn ends, it’s not really a sequel and was not successful. In this tale, Tom, Huck, Jim, and a mad professor float across the Atlantic Ocean toward Africa in a balloon. The mad professor falls overboard along the way, and the story soon ends in Africa. A lot of other things happen, but there’s hardly a plot— just a lot of action that leads nowhere.

  The same year Tom Sawyer Abroad was published, Twain wrote another sequel, Tom Sawyer, Detective, which was published in book form in 1896. This story centers around a murder mystery and includes a lot of action that resembles Tom and Huck’s original adventures. Much of the action takes place along the Mississippi River in the same places as their original adventures. The tale ends in a dramatic trial with Tom and Huck splitting a reward like they did in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and although this story was indeed a sequel to Twain’s original story, it also met with little success.

  The year after Tom Sawyer, Detective was published, Twain wrote a sequel to that work called “Tom Sawyer’s Conspiracy,” but it remained unfinished like his first attempt and was not published until 1969. In this story Tom and Huck decide to pull a hoax on their village, but are instead swept up into a murder for which their friend Jim is falsely accused. The story takes place along the Mississippi River and includes some characters from their original adventures, and it also ends in a dramatic trial. There are scattered notes for other stories about Tom and Huck that Twain planned, but he never figured out exactly what to do with his two most famous characters after their famous adventures came to a conclusion at the end of Huckleberry Finn.

  But Tim Champlin is not Mark Twain. Tim picks up where Twain left off, and knows exactly what to do, and the result is a page-turner that includes kidnappings, chase scenes, steamboats, gold treasure, a tornado, mystery, guns, knives, close calls, a wagon train, Indians, time travel, a girl who discovers she is tougher than she thought, and a boy who learns about modern life from the past in unexpected ways. Twain himself wrote other stories that include all of these things. In fact, his own attempts at sequels to Huckleberry Finn include most of these elements, and his 1889 book, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, features time travel. But Twain never managed to fit all of them into one of his failed sequels to his world-famous masterpiece.

  At the end of Tom Sawyer, Tom and Huck split a $12,000 reward, and at the end of Huckleberr y Finn, Huck decides he must light out for the territory. At the beginning of Tim’s tale, Tom and Huck are planning to do just that, and are about to ask Jim to join them in their scheme when events take an unexpected turn. Before they can act on their desire for more adventures, they meet somebody from the future who surprises them as much as they surprise him. Then someone dear to them goes missing, and the adventures begin. Tim’s themes are Twain’s themes, and Tim’s locales are Twain’s locales, and Tom, Huck, Jim, and others speak authentically, just as they did in Twain’s original tale. Their adventures are a logical extension of their earlier adventures—a true sequel. Many others have tried to bring Tom and Huck back to life in the more than one hundred years since Twain’s last failed attempt, but none have succeeded until now. More could be said, but why spoil the surprises and the fun? What are you waiting for? You’ve got a book full of pages in your hand waiting to be turned.

  Kevin Mac Donnell,

  Mark Twain Journal Legacy Scholar

  Austin, Texas

  “And then Tom he talked along and talked along, and says, le’s all three slide out of here one of these nights and get an outfit, and go for howling adventures amongst the Injuns, over in the Territory, for a couple of

  weeks or two; and I says, all right that suits me, but I ain’t got no money for to buy the outfit, and I reckon

  I couldn’t get none from home, because it’s likely pap’s been back before now and got it all away from Judge Thatcher and drunk it up.

  “ ‘No, he hain’t,’ Tom says; ‘it’s all there yet—six thousand dollars and more; and your pap hain’t ever been back since. Hadn’t when I come away, anyhow.’ ”

  —from the conclusion of Adventures of Hucklebe
rry Finn by Mark Twain

  CHAPTER 1

  * * *

  Monday, June 4, 1849

  St. Petersburg, Missouri

  The dusty village on the west bank of the Mississippi was about to explode, but nobody knew it.

  Least of all did Tom Sawyer know it, concerned only with his personal explosion of joy and relief that long-awaited summer vacation had arrived.

  Wiping the last of the sticky jam from his mouth with a sleeve, he stepped out the front door of the two-story white frame house where he lived with his Aunt Polly, older cousin, Mary, and half-brother, Sid. He paused and surveyed his domain, which consisted of the broad street and three or four buildings a half block in either direction. The whole world lay at his feet, and his head was bursting with possibilities.

  How to fill this first wonderful day of summer—swimming, fishing, kite flying, marbles, hoops? Naw! All that was child’s play, fine when he was younger, but he’d been through some mighty adventures these past two summers—enough for most boys to brag about for years. Yet, at thirteen and a half years old, he wasn’t satisfied—only poisoned for more.

  His pirate gang had fallen apart, due mostly to grown-up restrictions on robbery and murder. But that was simply make-believe, anyhow, with wooden swords and secret blood oaths. He was grown up now. And, as the Good Book said, “When I became a man, I put away childish things.”

  Stepping off the plank sidewalk, he took a deep breath of fresh air. None of his friends was in sight. Following the path of least resistance, he gravitated downhill toward the river a block away, feeling the cool cobblestones under his feet, the callused soles not yet leather-tough.

  It was time to pick up where he’d left off at the end of last summer’s adventure on the Phelps farm down in Arkansas. He’d been fired up to continue their adventures by lighting out for the territory with Huck and Jim.

  But the bullet wound in his own leg had prevented it. Instead, limping with a bandaged calf, he’d returned north on a steamboat to St. Petersburg with Huck and Jim and Aunt Polly. For two or three delicious weeks, he and Huck and Jim had been praised and honored as returning heroes, fawned over, written about in the newspaper, forced to tell their story over and over to eager ears.

  Tom gloried in the other boys’ wide-eyed hero worship, their secret envy, and the girls’ admiring glances. Continuing a slight limp long after it was necessary, he wore ragged pants cut off at the knee to exhibit the scar. And the grandest moment of all was when he showed off the lead bullet he wore around his neck on an old watch fob.

  Blacks gathered from far and near to hear Jim’s tale. Wild as his story was, he made his adventures better with each retelling, tossing in witches to account for being lost in the fog, for turning him into a blue-faced A-rab to scare strangers, for the sudden explosion of rats in his prison cabin.

  Now a free man, Jim had commenced working for the Widow Douglas for wages, vowing to buy his wife and children out of bondage “if it takes a hundert years.”

  “Hey, Tom!”

  The hail broke his reverie as Huck Finn approached from the foot of Cardiff Hill.

  “Hey, yourself. Where you headed?” It pained him to see Huck dressed in a clean cotton shirt and pants that were a decent fit. And his hair had been recently trimmed! Life at the widow’s was taking its toll on his old friend. But he didn’t feel so bad when Huck, with a glance over his shoulder, pulled a pipe from his pocket and stuck the stem between his teeth without filling or lighting it. Huck had also shucked his shoe leather.

  The boys fell into step continuing toward the river landing another block south.

  “The Annabelle is due down from Keokuk, this mornin’,” Huck said. “Reckon I’ll go see if anybody’s comin’ ashore here.”

  “If they is, ’tain’t likely nobody we know,” Tom said. But watching a steamboat land and discharge freight and passengers was always an exciting spectacle.

  The boys seated themselves on a stack of boxes above the sloping cobblestone landing, staring out at the mass of green water sliding past fifty feet away. Huck pulled out a leaf of limp, half-cured tobacco and began shredding it to pack his pipe.

  Tom fingered the lead bullet hanging from his neck. Its charm had fled, vanishing with their brief glory and fame months ago.

  “Huck, ’member when we come home last summer as heroes?”

  “Yeah. That was a fine time.”

  “But it didn’t last.”

  “Nothin’ ever does.”

  “Do you miss the old days before we was famous?”

  “Maybe a little. But I didn’t scarcely have enough to eat then. Now there’s plenty, even if I have to say grace over it all the time and use a knife and fork and napkin and all them things.” He paused with a faraway look as if recalling events of long ago. “Sleeping in the woods or a hogshead is fine in warm weather. But come winter, not even the old tannery or a hayloft can shut out the cold. These here clothes like to smother me, but I reckon there’s always a price to pay.”

  “So you’re sayin’ you like it at the widow’s better than when you was free?”

  Huck didn’t reply for a few seconds as he struck a lucifer and puffed his pipe to life.

  “Wal, things ain’t all bad. The widow’s old maid sister, Miss Watson, is dead and gone so she ain’t peckin’ at me no more. And the widow she lets up on me now and again when she sees things is scrapin’ too rough. I reckon it’s like drippin’ a tiny dose o’castor oil on your tongue every day ’til, by ’n’ by, it don’t taste too bad. I can still cuss and smoke if I go off by myself to do it. Take it all around, I do miss my freedom, but I reckon I had enough o’ that other life.”

  Tom’s stomach felt as if he’d swallowed a lead sinker. What he’d feared most was coming to pass—Huck Finn was becoming respectable. There would soon be nobody the boys could look up to and envy.

  “And, o’ course Jim’s there most o’ the time to talk over old times with,” Huck continued. “And you’re here.” He leaned his elbows on his knees and puffed, staring out over the vast sweep of water. The cool breeze whisked the pipe smoke away. “I figure we have ’most everythin’ we could ever want,” Huck continued, stretching his arms wide. “Each of us owns a pile o’ gold worth more ’an six thousand dollars from that treasure, Injun Joe’s dead, Pap’s dead, you was able to set Muff Potter free from that murder charge, Miss Watson give Jim his freedom in her will, and we had some mighty fine times along the way whilst all them things was happenin’.” He paused to tamp the fire in the corncob bowl with the head of a square nail. “Even school’s tole’ble, I reckon. Switchin’ don’t mean shucks after the beatings Pap give me. And I’m learnin’ to write a fair hand, and cipher and been discoverin’ lots o’ stuff about kings and revolutions and such I never knowed before.”

  Tom sunk further inside himself at this. A few seconds later, he mustered up strength to say, “Huck, are you sayin’ you’re done with havin’ adventures for the rest of your life?”

  “Wal . . . no, I reckon not. But I can’t think o’ nothin’ right now we ain’t done already.”

  “Don’t you recollect what we talked about last summer down on the Phelps farm?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Lighting out for new adventures in the territory amongst the Injuns and all that. And you said you was agreeable, but didn’t have no money to buy an outfit because you figured your pap had come back here and got it all away from Judge Thatcher and drunk it up.”

  “Yeah, I do sorta recollect that.”

  “Well, are you still ready to go?”

  “Hmm . . .”

  “What else you fixin’ to do all summer?” Tom insisted. “We’ll grab Jim and use some of our money to buy horses and gear and we’ll just haul off and go.”

  “Tom, you know I always been up for trying ’most anything you come up with, ’cepten for that crazy stuff like goin’ on a crusade and choppin’ off folks’ heads and all that.”

  “No, no. I’m ta
lking about a real grown-up adventure this time. If we like it well enough the first week or two, we can head farther west. I s’pect nearly half this village has already traipsed off toward California, chasin’ gold. To keep it from being too dangersome, we could hook up with a wagon train for safety. They say they’s herds of buffalo stretchin’ as far as you can see. And those wild Plains Injuns . . . Well, no telling what else we’d see or what could happen.”

  “You know your Aunt Polly ain’t gonna let you do nothin’ o’ the kind.”

  “I ain’t gonna ask her. I’ll leave her a note.”

  “Sid would find out and tell her sure.”

  “I’d bust his head if he did.”

  “And the widow, she ain’t gonna let Jim take off on some wild trip like that.”

  “Jim’s free. He can do what he wants.”

  “But he wants to keep workin’ so’s to buy his wife and children out of slavery.”

  “Huck, you and me both know Jim ain’t gonna live long enough to do that with the wages he’s earnin’.”

  “How much money d’ya reckon it’d take to buy Jim’s family?” Huck wondered, staring off across the river. “We oughta dig into our pile o’ gold to help him.”

  “Sure enough. I was thinkin’ the same. We can slip around and find out how much a mother and two little kids is sellin’ for these days. But we can’t let on we want to buy ’em or their owner’ll boost up the price.”

  “Yeah, and we’d best not tell Jim ’til they’re free, in case sumpin’ goes wrong,” Huck cautioned. “Could be Providence will detour another direction.”

  “That’s it! We could surprise him when we’re all back home from the territory,” Tom said, warming to his subject. “It’ll be the best thing that ever happened to Jim—besides gettin’ his own freedom.” But then Tom had a better idea. “Looky here, if I can’t convince Jim to go, I’ll use that for the clincher. We’ll promise to buy his family if he goes with us to the territory.”