The Boy Trapper

by Harry Castlemon

Dan's face relaxed a little, but his father's affected enthusiasm was not as contagious now as it was when the subject of the buried treasure was first brought up for discussion. Godfrey had no intention of renewing his efforts to find the barrel—he could not have been hired to go into that potato-patch after what had happened there—but it was well enough, he thought, to hold it up to Dan as an inducement. Besides, if he could get the boy interested in the matter again, and induce him to prosecute the search, and Dan should, by any accident, stumble upon the barrel, so much the better for himself. The great desire of his life would be attained. He would be rich, and that, too, without work.

“Why can't you steal the canoe yourself?” asked Dan.

“Kase I've got to pack up an' get ready to leave here; that's why. It'll take me from now till the time you come back to get all my traps together.”

Dan hurriedly made a mental inventory of the valuables his father possessed and which he had seen in the camp, and the result showed one rifle, one powder-horn and one bullet-pouch. All Godfrey had besides he carried on his back. It certainly would not take him three or four hours to gather these few articles together.

“Pap's mighty 'feared that he'll do something he can make somebody else do fur him,” thought the boy. “But he needn't think he's goin' to get me into a furse. I ain't agoin' to steal no canoe fur nobody.”

“An' since it's you,” added Godfrey, seeing that Dan did not readily fall in with his plans, “I'll give you a dollar of my hard-'arned money for doin' the job.”

“Wal, now that sounds like business,” exclaimed Dan, brightening up. “Whar's the money, an' how am I goin' to get off'n the island?”

“The money's safe, and I'll bring it to you in a minute,” replied Godfrey. “You stay here till I come back. As fur gettin' acrosst the bayou, that's easy done. Thar's plenty of drift wood at the upper end of the island, an' you kin get on a log an' pole yourself over. When you get home, Dannie, make friends with Dave the fust thing you do, an' tell him you was only foolin' when you said you was goin' agin him. Help him every way you kin, an' when he gits the money we'll show our hands.”

So saying, Godfrey walked down the path out of sight. After a few minutes' absence, he came back and handed Dan the money of which he had spoken, a five-dollar bill to be expended for himself at the store, and a one-dollar bill to pay Dan for stealing the canoe. When Dan had put them both carefully away in his pocket, he went back to the camp after his rifle, and then followed his father through the cane toward the upper end of the island. They found an abundance of drift wood there, and from it selected two small logs of nearly the same size and length. By fastening these together with green withes, a raft was made, which was sufficiently buoyant to carry Dan in safety to the main land. When it was completed, the boy swung his rifle over his shoulder by a piece of stout twine he happened to have in his pocket, and taking the pole his father handed him, pushed off into the stream.

Poling the raft was harder work than rowing the canoe, and Dan's progress was necessarily slow; but he accomplished the journey at last, and after waving his hand to his father, disappeared in the bushes. He took a straight course for the landing and after a little more than an hour's rapid walking, found himself in Silas Jones's store. He was greatly surprised at something he saw when he got there, and so bewildered by it that he forgot all about the money he had in his pocket, and the stockings, shoes and tobacco of which his father stood so much in need. There was David making the most extravagant purchases, and there was Silas bowing and smiling and acting as politely to him as he ever did to his richest customers. If Dan was astonished at this, he was still more astonished, when David threw down a ten-dollar bill and the grocer pushed it back to him with the remark, that his credit was good for six months. Dan could not imagine how David had managed to obtain possession of so much money, and when he found out, as he did when he and his brother were on their way home, he straightway went to work to think up some plan by which he might get it into his own hands. This problem and a bright idea, which suddenly suggested itself to him, occupied his mind during the walk; and shortly after parting from his brother at General Gordon's barn, Dan hit upon a second idea, which made his usually gloomy face brighten wonderfully while he thought about it.