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

We said in the second chapter that after Bob Owens ran away from home to become a hunter, and Godfrey Evans and his son Dan went to work to earn an honest living, and David Evans became mail carrier, and Lester Brigham withdrew himself from the society of the boys in the neighborhood, the inhabitants of Rochdale and the surrounding country settled back into their old ways, and waited for something to happen that would create an excitement. Unfortunately they were not obliged to wait long.

After one has spent years of his life in idleness, he finds it an exceedingly difficult task to turn over a new leaf and make a radical and permanent change in his whole course of conduct, and Godfrey and Dan were no exceptions to this rule. So long as they worked for General Gordon, who took pains to keep a close watch over them, and to encourage them by every means in his power, 286there was no fault to be found with them. They labored early and late; Godfrey, as we know, saving enough from his hard earnings to refund the money of which he had robbed Clarence Gordon on the highway, the old cabin in which they lived was repaired and refurnished, and everything seemed to be well with them; but when they had cut all the wood the general could use that year, and the latter went away on business leaving them to take care of themselves, the trouble began. They made a few feeble attempts to find more work, and in their efforts to do so they came in contact with the professional loafers about the landing, whose influence over them was anything but beneficial. The majority of them spent their time in watching the steamboats, taking part in shooting-matches and making a pretense of hunting and trapping for a livelihood; while those who had work, and were able to pay for having it done, did not want Godfrey and Dan to do it. Mr. Owens, Bob’s father, was mainly responsible for this state of affairs. He had not yet got over being angry at General Gordon for putting in a bid for the mail-route when he wanted it himself, and he never allowed 287an opportunity to abuse him to pass unimproved.

“Gordon seems to have taken Godfrey and his family under his protecting wing, and now he can provide for them and welcome,” Mr. Owens often said. “I want some wood cut the worst way, but I’ll see Godfrey and Dan in Jerusalem before they shall have the job. If it hadn’t been for Gordon I might have had my boy at home with me now.”

“Yes, and my boy would not have been obliged to make a hermit of himself,” Mr. Brigham would always remark when he heard Mr. Owens talking in this way. These two men had been rather distant toward each other after Mr. Brigham’s refusal to go on Bob’s bond, but they were firm friends now. They both hated General Gordon, and for nearly the same reason. Mr. Brigham had come to Rochdale with the idea that his money would at once make him the head man of the county; but in this he was most sadly disappointed. He found that the general was worth just as much, if not more than he was; that he was everybody’s friend and adviser, a member of the legislature and a candidate for 288governor, and that it would be of no use for anybody to try to usurp his place. That was the reason he didn’t want the general to have the contract for carrying the mail; and when he learned that the latter had influence enough to secure it without any of his help, he was greatly enraged, and felt quite as bitter toward his rich neighbor as Bob’s father did.

“Never mind,” said Mr. Owens. “It is a long lane that has no turning, and we shall some day be able to get square with Gordon for that piece of business. Mark my words: David Evans will sooner or later prove himself to be utterly unworthy the confidence that is placed in him. It can’t be otherwise, for he is——”

Mr. Owens was about to add that David was the son of a thief as well as the brother of one; but he didn’t say it, for he recollected in time that his own son was not above reproach—that he had left Rochdale having in his possession more than a hundred and sixty dollars that did not belong to him.

“Where have you fellows kept yourselves so long?” asked one of the loafers, when Godfrey and Dan once more made their appearance at the 289landing, carrying their rifles on their shoulders as in the days gone by. “Been spendin’ some of Dave’s money in a tower to Europe? O, been cuttin’ wood for Gordon, eh? Well, that’s what I call nigger’s work, and I wouldn’t do it for no ’ristocrat. It’s right smart easier to hunt and trap. There’s going to be a power of deer and turkey this fall, and Silas Jones has agreed to pay cash for all I can bring him. He’d be willing to make the same bargain with you, I know, for he wants all he can get to ship to some commission merchant in St. Louis. He gives eight cents a pound for the deer, and sixty cents apiece for the turkeys.”

“I’ll just tell ye what’s the gospel truth, Dannie,” said Godfrey, after some of his old friends had talked to him in this way a few times. “I’ve got just as much right to hire somebody to chop my wood as Gordon has, an’ I ain’t goin’ to cut no more fur him nor no other ’ristocrat. I’m goin’ huntin’.”

“So be I,” said Dan, who was delighted at the prospect of going back to his old way of living.

“So ye shall, Dannie. We’ve done niggers’ work long enough, an’ now we’ll be gentlemen 290agin, like we used to be. Thar ain’t no call fur you an’ me to work so hard every day, when everybody else takes it so easy down thar at the landin’; an’ we won’t do it, neither. Here’s Dave makin’ a power of money, and as he ain’t of age yet, every cent he ’arns ought to go into my own pocket. It shall go thar too, or I’ll make a bigger furse here in the settlement nor I did afore. Gordon needn’t go to pokin’ his nose into the matter, either, for he won’t scare me as easy as he did the last time.”

“How much would a deer be worth at eight cents a pound, pap?” inquired Dan.

“Wal, that depends. If he weighed a hundred an’ twenty pounds, he’d bring as much as five or six dollars, I reckon; an’ if he weighed two hundred an’ fifty pounds, like the one I killed three winters ago, he’d be worth fifteen, an’ mebbe twenty-five dollars,” answered Godfrey, who was no quicker at figures than he used to be.

“That’s a heap more nor I could make chopping wood,” said Dan.

“Course it is. A smart hunter like yourself oughter be able to get a deer every day, to say 291nothin’ of the turkeys ye might trap an’ shoot. ’Sides ye’d be doin’ a gentleman’s work an’ not a nigger’s.”

This conversation took place between Dan and his father one bright summer’s day when they were returning home from the landing, whither they had gone under pretense of looking for work. Mrs. Evans knew there was something wrong the moment they appeared at the door, and she was not long in finding out what it was. Godfrey and Dan had worked faithfully during the whole of the winter and spring, and Mrs. Evans, although she did not see a cent of the money they earned, David being expected to look out for her comfort, began to believe that their reformation was complete, and that it would prove to be lasting; but now she learned, to her great sorrow, that she had been too hasty in coming to these conclusions. When she saw that the axes were thrown aside, and that the rifles, which had so long been idle, were daily taken down from their hooks, she knew that bad times were coming again. And they came apace, too. Godfrey and Dan seemed to have lost all their skill as hunters, for the game they brought to the landing did not 292amount to much. It is true that they made some money, but it all slipped through their fingers without doing them any good, and by the time cold weather came they were as ragged and lazy as they had ever been, and just as ready to engage in any scheme that would bring them money without work.

Meanwhile Lester Brigham mustered up courage enough to come out of his retirement, and was somewhat surprised as well as vexed to learn that he might have done so long ago if he had felt so disposed, and that his voluntary banishment was entirely needless. Nobody paid much attention to him. Fred and Joe Packard, and all the other decent boys who lived in the neighborhood, greeted him pleasantly whenever they passed him on the road, and no one except the loafers at the landing had anything to say to him concerning his past conduct. These gentlemen of leisure could not resist the temptation to question him regarding that terrible bear-fight on Bruin’s Island, in which he and the absent Bob had won so much renown, and now and then they reminded him that he had assisted in burning Don Gordon’s shooting-box; but they did it all so 293good-naturedly that Lester could not get angry at them.

“Don’s got another shantee over there on the point, and I shouldn’t be sorry to see that go up in smoke like the old one did,” a man of the Godfrey Evans stamp said to Lester one day. “’Tain’t no use to him and Bert, and by building it there they have taken the bread out of the mouths of a good many folks who live about here. As soon as school is out they’ll come home, get a party of their friends together, and kick up such a rumpus there on the lake that all the birds will be driven out of the country; and when a poor man gets out of bacon he can’t have a duck or goose for dinner, for there won’t be any for him to shoot.”

Every time Lester Brigham rode away from the landing—he very soon fell into the habit of going there as regularly as Godfrey and Dan did—he carried with