“Where have you fellows kept yourselves so long?” asked one of the loafers, when Godfrey and Dan once more made their appearance at the landing, 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 agin, 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 nothin’ 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 amount 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 good-naturedly that Lester could not get angry at them.