Dan grinned again and fairly trembled with excitement. The prospect of owning all these aids to happiness was enough to excite anybody.
“Now, Dannie, I won’t forget all this if ye will promise to be a good boy an’ do jest what I tell yer,” said his father. “Will ye?”
“I will, pop,” replied the boy, shaking hands with his sire, to show that he was in earnest. “Ye jest see if I don’t.”
“I’m powerful glad to hear ye say so, Dannie,” continued Godfrey; and now he came to the point at which he had all the while been aiming, but he broached it with no little hesitation, and anxiety as to the result.
“Now, Dannie,” said he, “don’t ye think that to pay me fur all these things I’m a goin’ to do fur ye, that ye’d oughter give me the rest of the money ye’ve got in yer pocket?”
“No, I don’t,” said Dan, promptly.
“What fur?”
“Kase I want it myself. I’m agoin’ into the shootin’ match too.”
“An’ shoot agin yer poor old pop, what’s fit the Yanks, an’ worked so hard fur ye? Dan, I’m extonished at yer! Now, Dannie, I wouldn’t go in, if I was ye, kase ye can’t win nothin’, an’ ’sides ye want to save yer money, don’t ye? That’s the way to get rich, Dannie. Let yer pop do the shootin’, an’ we’ll have a quarter of beef to carry home to-night, I warrant ye.”
But Dan would make no promises, and neither could his father’s most earnest entreaties induce him to surrender even the smallest portion of the money he had in his pocket. What he had in his possession he was sure of—the barrel, with its eighty thousand dollars, he was not sure of; and believing that a single bird in the hand was worth a whole flock in the woods, he declared it to be his unalterable determination to hold fast to every cent he had. Godfrey was highly exasperated, but he took good care not to show it. Their near approach to the grove and to the men assembled there, obliged him to cease his entreaties, and with the mental resolve that Dan should be made to repent his refusal, Godfrey went to hunt up the man who had charge of the shooting. To his great delight he learned that there were so many contestants that the entrance fee was only seventy-five cents. This left him a quarter of a dollar to spend, and he made all haste to do it. Forgetting the resolution he had formed a short time before, to spend no more money with Silas Jones, he hurried off to the store, and returned with a plug of the tobacco for which the merchant had refused to credit him. When he came back, he saw Dan stretched out on the ground behind a small log squinting along the barrel of his rifle, which was pointed at a piece of white paper fastened to a board, and placed against a tree a few yards away.