“Don’t I wish I had a gun!” exclaimed Dan, raising himself on his knees and going through all the motions he would make in covering the horsemen.
“Who was it?” asked Cale.
“It was Leon, that worthless Tom Howe, and that rebel fellow that they have been running with since yesterday,” said Dan. “Now I wish your squad of cavalry would come along. But you see we hain’t got no guns, and each one of them has got a six-shooter.”
Cale had never been more astonished in his life.
CHAPTER XI.
MR. DAWSON’S STRATEGY.
“Yes, sir, I wish I had a gun in my hands,” said Dan, rising to his feet and gazing down the road in the direction in which the horsemen had disappeared. “I could have tumbled that Leon Sprague off his horse just as easy as not. And I might have had if there had been any way for me to earn it.”
There had been plenty of ways for him to earn a gun, or, for the matter of that, some better clothes than he wore, if it had not been for his disinclination to work. He could have gone into the woods almost any time and made a man’s wages by chopping, but that was niggers’ work and a little too low down for him. Mr. Newman and his boys had tried it once, but the men who had charge of them were so cross and snappish, and wanted them to do so much more work than they did, that they could no longer stand it. At the end of three days they came home with their axes, put them up in a corner, and vowed that they would hunt wild hogs with their dogs and stick them with their knives rather than work under such task-masters. And if their father wouldn’t do it they might be sure that the boys would not, for Dan and Cale looked for better times without doing a thing to bring them about. They preferred to be idle—they were squatters; even the ground their house was built upon did not belong to them—and whenever anybody came near losing his life, as Tom Howe had come near losing his during the last spring drive, it pleased them wonderfully. That little episode added to their enmity against Leon Sprague. According to their belief, Leon ought to have stood on a log and seen him go under.
“I didn’t see anybody go by,” said Cale.
“I don’t suppose you did,” said Dan, with something like a sneer. “You are like an ostrich. Whenever they get frightened they hide their heads and think their body can’t be seen. Now let’s go down this way a little further, and then we’ll lay in the bushes and see what’s going to happen.”
“What do you suppose that rebel fellow has come out here with Leon for?” said Cale. “Has he got any relatives or things down here that he is going after?”