MUFF POTTER, in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, did odd (some might say shady ) jobs for people in Hannibal, Missouri. His last odd job almost had him convicted of, and executed for, murder. A murder, let the reader understand, he did not commit.Muff Potter's chief flaw, aside from alcoholism, was making bad choices of friends. His worst choice of friends was Injun Joe, a mean half-white, half-Beringian (or Indian as people called it then) cutthroat. This choice of friends landed him in trouble with the law.The trouble started when the town doctor (Doctor Robinson) hired the two to steal the body of one Horse Williams shortly after his burial. The doctor wanted Williams' body to dissect, to learn more about human anatomy. (Decades later, Dr. Abraham Flexner would issue his scathing report on the sorry state of medical education in the United States. This Flexner Report would later lead to institutions of medical education to whom people could will their bodies to science. But that would come at least sixty years after these events.)Everything went according to plan until Muff Potter and Injun Joe, with Doctor Robinson watching, dug up Horse Williams and loaded him into a wheelbarrow. Potter had just lashed the body down and cut off a loose rope end with his knife, when he demanded another five dollars as payment for the job. The doctor refused, saying he had paid both men in advance. That's when Injun Joe recited to Robinson a particular grievance he had against him.The doctor laid out Injun Joe with one punch.Muff Potter then dropped his knife and said, Here, you! Don't you hit my pard! And he closed with Robinson and started to wrestle with him. Eventually Robinson grabbed the headboard from the grave and hit Potter over the head with it, knocking him out cold.He awoke to find himself clasping his knife, Robinson dead, and Injun Joe telling him he had killed Robinson!Eventually the town constable arrested Potter. Injun Joe gave evidence against him at his trial.But when the State rested its case, his lawyer dumbfounded him: he called a young lad named Thomas Sawyer to testify in his defense! What was this? What could he tell?Plenty, as it turned out, for Tom Sawyer had seen everything. The key: Injun Joe, when the fight began, snatched up Potter's dropped knife and circled the two men, looking for an opening. When the doctor swung the grave headboard around and hit Potter on the side of the head, Injun Joe jumped with the knife and sank it into Robinson's stomach, killing him.Tom got about that far in telling his story when Injun Joe sprang for a window, tore his way through all opposers, and jumped.By the canonical account, Muff Potter never saw Injun Joe again. Some say Injun Joe got himself locked in McDougall's Cave and starved to death trying to break down the iron door--this after Judge Thatcher had sealed it after Tom and the judge's daughter Becky had gotten lost in it. Some say Tom Sawyer killed Injun Joe in desperation after Joe tried to kill Tom in that cave adventure. At least one account has Muff Potter joining the expedition to find the missing Tom and Becky, and throwing his torch at Joe when he caught Joe about to kill Tom.However Injun Joe's life ended, Muff was around to see Tom and his friend Huck Finn find a treasure of twenty-four thousand dollars in gold coin, which they split evenly between them. Show less «