The answer to your question can be found in Chapter
Eighteen of this great novel. The conflict that the elopement of Harney and Sophia
triggered has resulted in an open shoot out between the remnants of the Grangerfords and
the Shepherdsons. Huck, trying to hide from the ensuing chaos, has climbed a tree, and
is able to watch what happens to Buck beneath him from his vantage point. As a group of
the Sheperdsons come looking for them and firing their guns, Buck and a friend jump for
the river and try to escape, even though they are injured, by swimming away. Note how
Huck describes what happens:
The boys jumped for the river--both of them
hurt--and as they swum down the current the men run along the bank shooting at them and
singing out, "Kill them, kill them!" It mad eme so sick I most fell out of the tree. I
ain't a-going to tell all that happened--it would make me sick again if I was to do
that. I wished I hadn't ever come ashore that night to see such things. I ain't ever
going to get shut fo them--lots of times I dream about
them.
Huck's reluctance to
reveal the true nature of what happened, combined with the way in which he comes across
Buck's body two paragraphs later, clearly indicates that Buck was shot to death as he
tried to swim away from the Shepherdsons, and that his death was gruesome and
painful.
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