Don Gordon's Shooting-Box, Harry Castlemon [first ebook reader .TXT] 📗

Squatter Sovereignty.

“What do you want here?” demanded the 273man with the axe, as Don walked up the bank followed by his companions.

“I think that is a proper question for me to ask you,” replied Don, who did not at all like the surly tone in which he had been addressed. “This house belongs to my brother and myself, and we would thank you to vacate it without the loss of a moment.”

“Wal, I reckon we shall do as we please about that,” drawled one of the men who stood in the door.

“Well, I reckon you won’t. You’ll do as I please about it. I want possession here, and I want it now. I see you broke the lock in order to gain admittance, and you had no business to do that.”

“Do you live here?” asked the man with the axe.

“I’m going to live here.”

“Wal, thar’s two rooms in the shantee, an’ why can’t you-uns take one of ’em an’ let we-uns——”

“We don’t want company,” exclaimed Don, who was fairly staggered by the proposition. “We want you to clear out bag and baggage, 274and to be quick about it, too. My father is a magistrate, and this shooting-box is on his land.”

The word “magistrate” had a magical effect upon the members of the dirty group in the door-way. It put life into them, and at the same time set the women’s tongues in motion. They began packing up their scanty belongings, declaring, with much vociferation, that it was a sin and a shame that they should be turned out of such snug quarters just to accommodate the whims of a party of young aristocrats who wanted to come there and shoot a few ducks. Why couldn’t they go elsewhere for their ducks and leave honest people alone? That was always the way with rich folks. They didn’t care how others suffered so long as they had their own pleasure. But it was a great comfort to know that it wouldn’t always be so. There was a time coming, and it wasn’t so very far distant either, when rich folks would be required to give up some of their ill-gotten gains.

“That sounds like communism, doesn’t it?” said Curtis.

“Yes; and that sounds very much like incendiarism,” answered Hopkins; and so it did, for 275just then one of the men in the cabin was heard to say:—

“Never mind, Luke. The old shantee is dry an’ fire’ll burn it.”

“Let them burn it if they dare,” said Bert, his slight form swelling with indignation. “I wouldn’t give a picayune for the life of the person who attempts it. Cuff,” he added, turning to the negro, “as soon as we get things straightened up here, I want you to go back to the plantation after Don’s hounds. It looks now as though we should need them.”

The tramps, if such they were, seemed to be in no hurry to leave the shooting-box. They bundled up their goods with great deliberation, abusing the boys roundly all the while, and finally came out and turned their faces toward the river. As soon as they were out of sight Don and Bert began an investigation of the premises. The cabin looked as though it had been occupied for a long time. The wood which they had provided for their own use was all gone, the stove had been copiously bedewed with tobacco juice, the floor was littered with nut-shells, and everything was dingy and smoky.

276“We can’t live in any such looking hole as this,” said Don, in deep disgust. “Cuff, build up a good fire, put on the kettle and scrub out. Let’s have things neat and clean, as they used to be. Bert, suppose you take somebody with you and watch those people and see where they go”go”

Bert at once started off with Hopkins for a companion, and while they were gone the others employed themselves in setting things to rights. The bones, squirrel skins and turkey feathers that were scattered about in front of the door were raked into a pile and set on fire; a fresh supply of stove-wood was cut; and the boats were unloaded and their cargoes piled up outside of the cabin in readiness to be transferred to the interior as soon as the purifying process had been completed. By the time this work was done Bert and Hopkins came back.

“They’re n. g. on the books—no good,” said the former. “They have a little house-boat in the river——”

“That’s all we want to know,” interrupted Don. “They are thieves and vagabonds of the first water.”

“What makes you say that?” asked Curtis.

277“What’s a house-boat?” inquired Egan.

“I will answer the last question first,” said Don. “A house-boat is simply a scow twenty-five or thirty feet long and six or eight feet wide with a cabin amidships. This cabin takes up the whole of the boat with the exception of two or three feet at each end, where the crew stand when they are handling the lines and the steering oar. These boats are generally the property of fishermen and hunters, who float about looking for a suitable place to ply their occupation. For example, there is a house-boat in the bayou above Mound City—that’s in Illinois, you know—which has been there four or five years, its solitary occupant making a good living by trapping minks and raccoons in the winter, and catching buffalo and catfish the rest of the year.”

“Buffalo!” repeated Egan.

“Yes. I didn’t say bison.”

“What’s the difference?” asked Hopkins, who, although he was a splendid fox-hunter, was not very well posted in natural history.history.

“There’s a good deal of difference, the first thing you know. A buffalo is a fish, somewhat resembling a black-bass in shape, but possessing 278none of his game qualities, while a bison is an animal.”

“But there are such animals as buffaloes,” said Egan.

“Yes, in Africa and Asia, but not in this country. There are no partridges, pheasants, or wild rabbits here, either. As I was going on to say, this man will probably stay at Mound City until the fish and game begin to grow scarce, and then he will paddle his boat out into the current and float down the river until he finds another place that suits him. If he gets hard up for grub, he will not hesitate to visit anybody’s corn-field, potato-patch, or hen-roost.”

“No honest, industrious man ever lives in that way,” said Bert. “The planters along the river are suspicious of these house-boats, and when they find one tied up on their premises, they always order it off.”

“If these people had a shelter of their own, why did they take possession of your shooting-box?” asked Egan.

“O, for the sake of variety, probably,” answered Don. “Perhaps their house was too small for them; or it may be that the roof leaked, or that 279the scow was full of water. They always like to live ashore when they have the chance.”

There was much to be done about the shooting-box, and the boys were kept busy all the forenoon. Old Cuff grumbled lustily while he scrubbed, declaring over and over again that Don ought to set fire to the cabin and destroy it, for it never could be made fit for white folks to live in again. After eating a substantial lunch, which was served under the trees, Egan, Hopkins, and Curtis took their guns, and, accompanied by Bert and Fred Packard, strolled along the shore of the lake to see if they could find anything for supper, while Don and Joe remained behind to assist Cuff at his work. When Egan and Curtis returned at dark, they declared that they were more than satisfied with their prospects for sport. The lower end of the lake was full of ducks, they said, and Egan had astonished his companions by bringing fourteen of them down with a single discharge of his heavy double-barrel, while Curtis had showed his skill with the rifle by shooting four ducks on the wing, and killing a swan at the distance of more than two hundred yards. They were tired as well as hungry, and glad to see the inside of 280the shooting-box, which did not look now as it did when they first came there in the morning. A cheerful fire was burning in the stove, which had been blacked and polished until one could almost see his face in it; the room was brilliantly lighted by two lamps that were suspended from the ceiling; the floor was covered with rugs; pictures of hunting and fishing scenes adorned the walls, and camp chairs and stools were scattered about.

In the next apartment, which was used principally as a sleeping and sitting-room, the same scene of neatness and order was presented. The wide fire-place, which occupied nearly the whole of one end of it, was piled high with blazing logs, and comfortable beds were made up in the bunks. There were pictures on the walls of this room also, rugs on the floor (some of these rugs at once attracted the attention of Egan and his friends, for they were made of the skins of bears and deer that had fallen to Don’s rifle), and there were camp-chairs enough to accommodate all the boys that could crowd about the fire-place. The room looked cosey and comfortable, and the visitors no longer wondered why it was that Don thought so much of his shooting-box.

281“I am going to have one of my own,” said Curtis, “and it shall be modeled after this one. I shall build it this fall, so as to have it in readiness to receive you fellows when you go home with me next vacation. Now, then, where are those quails that Hop brought in? Can your darkey serve them up on toast in good shape?”

“Of course he can,” answered Don. “No one can do it better; but Hop hasn’t brought in any quails yet. Where did you leave him? I wondered why he didn’t come home with you.”

“Hasn’t he returned?” exclaimed Egan. “Then“Then he’s lost. We haven’t seen him since two o’clock, when he coaxed your pointers away from us—we owe him a grudge for that, for we wanted the dogs to stay by us and retrieve the ducks we shot—and went over into a field after a flock of quails he had marked down there. We heard him shoot several times after that, and as he is a good marksman, we made up our minds that we were to have quails for supper. There he is now,” added Egan, as an impatient yelp sounded at the door.

“I am afraid you are mistaken,” replied Don, and the sequel proved that he was; for just then 282the door was thrown open, and Don’s hounds, which Cuff, in obedience to Bert’s orders, had brought up to guard the shooting-box, came bounding in. There were six of them, and the one which held the foremost place in Don’s estimation was Carlo, the dog that had been the first to respond to his whistle when he was tied up in Godfrey Evans’s potato-hole. He was an immense brute, as well as a savage one, and when he raised himself on his hind feet and placed his paws on Don’s shoulders, his head was higher than his master’s.

“We will keep them in here with us until Hop comes; for as they