“But you haven’t got money enough,” said Irv Strong. “A hundred and ninety dollars won’t much more than pay your steamboat fare to New Orleans and back. What are you going to live on down there—especially if you get sick?”
The irrepressible Phil selected this as the time to wake up. “Well,” he said, sitting up in the sand and locking his muscular arms around his knees, “I’m in this game a little bit myself. I’ve got one whole hundred and ninety dollars’ worth of stake in that big pile of iron; and from Mrs. Dupont down to the last one-suspendered chap in the lot of you, you are all always talking about my ‘obstinate pertinacity.’ Well, my ‘pertinacity’ just now ‘obstinately’ declares that Ed shall take my share in the stake and spend it for his health. He shakes his head, but if he won’t, then I ‘solemnly swear or affirm’ that I’ll take every dollar of it out to the channel there and throw it in. I’ll—”
But Phil had broken down. His affection for his half-invalid brother was the one thing that nothing could ever overcome. He didn’t weep. That is to say, none of the boys saw him shed tears, but instead of finishing the sentence he was uttering, he suddenly became interested in the pebbles along the river shore, fifty yards lower down the stream.
Ed, too, found it difficult just then to say anything. Ed had always been disposed to worry himself about Phil—to regulate him, and when he couldn’t do that, to suffer in his own mind and conscience for his brother’s misdeeds—which, after all, were usually nothing worse than manifestations of excessive boyish enthusiasm, the undue use of slang, and an excessive devotion to purposes which Ed’s calmer temper could not quite approve. Just now Ed had made a new discovery. He had found out something of the rattling, restless, reckless boy’s character which he had never fully known before. For he did not know, as the other boys did, how Phil, a year ago, had waited for half an hour behind the schoolhouse, and armed with stones had wreaked a fearful vengeance upon the big bully twice his size, who had used his strength cruelly to torment Ed’s weakness. That story had been kept from Ed, because it was well understood that he did not approve of fighting; and the boys, who fully sympathized with the little fellow’s animosity against the big bully, didn’t want him censured for his battle and victory.
So there was silence after Phil’s declaration of his purpose, which every boy there knew that he would fulfil to the letter. At last Ed said:—
“On my own share of the money I could go by taking deck passage.”
“Yes,” cried Phil, suddenly reappearing in a sort of wrath that was very unusual with him—“yes, and live on equal terms with a lot of dirty, low-lived wretches—ugh! Now see here, Ed! I’ve told you you are to take my share of the money. If you don’t, I’ll do exactly what I said,—I’ll get it changed into coin, and I’ll drop it into the river at a point where no diving will ever get it. I’ve said my say. I’ll do my do.”
“Look here,” drawled Irv Strong, after a moment. “Let’s all go to New Orleans, and don’t let’s pay any steamboat fare at all except to get back!”
“But how?” asked three boys, in a breath.
“Let’s run a flatboat! In my father’s day, pretty nearly all the hay, grain, bacon, apples, onions, and the like, grown in this part of the country, were sent to New Orleans in flatboats. I don’t see why it wouldn’t pay for us to take a flatboat down the river now. We’ve more than enough money to build and run her, and we can get a cargo, I’ll bet a brass button.”