You see Mitch was foolin' because we didn't think Nancy Allen had left her money there, if she had any. But Mitch didn't want to say that we was followin' the direction of Tom Sawyer for treasure. We kept the book hid under a log, and every now and then would take it out and read it to see if we missed any of the points. If we had told George Montgomery what we was doin', he would have laughed at us and told everybody, and had the whole town laughin' at us. Because we knew nobody but us had any faith in such things. But Mitch had faith and so had I. We agreed that there was treasure to be found, and if we worked we believed we could get it.
George Montgomery
It was a good thing that Nancy Allen died that winter and that Mitch said that, because it threw George off. Nobody believed in Tom Sawyer as a real person but us—we did. We knew he was real. Mitch was going to write a letter to him and send it to Hannibal, Missouri, for Mitch's dad said there was no town of St. Petersburg in Missouri—and that Mark Twain had used that name as a blind.
And just about then this here Nancy Allen disappeared. She was a funny little woman about as big as a 'leven year old girl, and wore a shawl around her head, and carried a cane and smoked a pipe. She allus came to town with Old Bender and his wife which was a friend or somethin' of Nancy, and a boy with a mouth as big as a colt's and as trembly, which was Old Bender's boy. They all lived together near town, and used to come in, first Old Bender, then his wife, then Nancy, then this boy walkin' in file, and they'd go to the grocery store and set around all day, and go home with bacon, tobacco and things.
The Bender Family
I said Nancy disappeared in the winter. But there was snow and they didn't come to town—so just when she died nobody knows. But as I said, Mitch and I found her body right near a creek in Montgomery's woods in April. The snow was gone, and there she lay, what was left of her, wrapped up in her shawl. And no one knew how she got there or anything about it.