“It’s a fact,” said the boy, “and Don Gordon is the one who put me in the way to do it. You know his father takes lots of papers, and among them is the Rod and Gun, which tells all about fishing and hunting. Well, Don was reading this paper the other day, and he found in it an advertisement asking for live quail—fifty dozen of them. He showed it to me last night, and asked me why couldn’t I catch them and send them to the man.”
“Who wants them, and what is he going to do with them after he gets them?” asked Mrs. Evans.
“O, somebody up North wants ’em. Don says they had a hard time up there last winter. The weather was awful cold, the snow was so deep that the birds couldn’t get anything to eat, and the quail all died. This man belongs to some kind of a club—a ‘sportsman’s club,’ I think Don called it—and he wants these quail to stock the country again. When he gets them, he’s going to turn them loose and let them go. He offers three dollars and a half a dozen. Don says it will cost something to send them there, but that I can make three dollars on every dozen just as easy as falling off a log. Say, mother, don’t say anything to father or Dan about it, will you?”
Mrs. Evans promised that she would not.
“You see,” added David, by way of explanation, “they always want me to divide when I’ve got any money, but they never say a word about sharing with me when they have any. Besides, what they get never does anybody any good, not even themselves; and, mother, if I get this hundred and fifty, I want it to do you some good. You need stockings, and shoes, and a new dress.”
Mrs. Evans placed her hand tenderly on the boy’s head, and told herself that if all her family cared as much for her comfort as he did, she would fare better.
“Do you think you can catch so many?” she asked. “Fifty dozen is a large number.”
“I know it, but just see what I’ve done already. Last winter, when we were so poor that nobody would trust us for anything to eat, and we couldn’t raise money to buy powder and shot to shoot game with, I kept the family in food, didn’t I?”
Mrs. Evans remembered it perfectly, and knew that providing the family with something to eat was not all this fifteen year old boy had done during that hard winter. By the aid of his traps he had kept his mother comfortably clothed, and it was seldom indeed that he could not produce a dollar for the purchase of such luxuries as tea and coffee.
“Well,” continued David, “one trap did it all. It caught just as many quail as we could eat and sell. One day I took twenty-seven out of it. This winter I shall set a dozen traps, and suppose I catch five a day in each one of them! If I do, it will take me just ten days to fill the order.”