Jim/Huck Encounter 4 - Chapter 10

Huck is curious about the dead man in the house, but Jim doesn't want to talk about it. He deflects saying it is bad luck.

Huck recalls that just a few days earlier they found a snake skin, and Jim said it was bad luck to touch it. Now with all the treasure (truck) from the house, Huck challenges that notion. But Jim insists bad luck is coming.

In the first of Huck's mean tricks, He kills a rattlesnake and puts the carcass in Jim's bed. But the snake's 'mate' found the carcass in the bed, and when Jim laid down, it bit him.

Huck sees that he has put Jim in danger from his trick:

That all comes of my being such a fool as to not remember that wherever you leave a dead snake its mate always comes there and curls around it. 

and

Then I slid out quiet and throwed the snakes clear away amongst the bushes; for I warn’t going to let Jim find out it was all my fault, not if I could help it.

It's not much of a regret. Had Jim not gotten bitten, the trick would have entertained Huck I'm sure. It's a Tom Sawyer type of trick, with no regard for the other person's feelings. But the occurrence of the snake bite has perhaps shifted how Huck will feel in the future about Jim. As we know, it's not the last trick he will play on Jim.

Jim suffers for 4 days. Eventually, with whiskey, he gets better.

Huck decides that it's time to go on reconnaissance on the shore. Jim convinces Huck to dress up like a girl, and Huck does just that. He canoes over to the shore and finds an old cabin that he thought had been abandoned, with an lady (40 years old) knitting by a table.