CHAPTER IX.
OLD JORDAN’S “HAUNT.”
DAN came back to his father with the money simply because he could think of no way of avoiding it that did not involve more personal risk than he cared to encounter. He took pains, however, to keep out his share, and gave Godfrey only two dollars and a half, accompanying it with the assurance that in his (Dan’s) estimation, his father had been guilty of a very mean trick, and one that he ought to be heartily ashamed of.
“Didn’t ye tell me ye was satisfied?” asked Godfrey.
“I know it, but I told ye so kase I was afeared if I said I wasn’t, I wouldn’t get none of the money. O, I know ye, pop, an’ I don’t see why ye can’t go to work an’ make some money of yer own, ’stead of ropin’ in on me an’ spilin’ my plans. If ye’d a kept outen the way, I’d a had ten dollars as easy as fallin’ off a log.”
Godfrey was too much interested in his own thoughts to carry the discussion any farther. He breathed easier when he felt the money in his fingers, and because he had no pocket that would hold it, he kept it in his hand, and stood around with the rest of the hangers-on, and saw the Emma Deane come up to the landing and deposit the passengers and cargo she had brought. Like the rest he wondered who the fashionably-dressed young gentlemen were who got into the general’s carriage and rode off with him; and he would have wondered still more had he been able to look far enough into the future to see that he, the ragged, worthless Godfrey Evans, would one day be the trusted companion of one of those spruce young fellows, and that he would be intimately connected with him in a certain piece of business which, when it became known, would set all the tongues in the country for miles around in motion.
The general and his nephews drove off; the Emma Deane, as soon as her freight and passengers were landed, backed out into the stream and once more turned her head toward New Orleans; the people who had been brought to the landing by the sound of her whistle spent a few minutes in exchanging notes, and then began to disperse; and finally the street was entirely deserted except by a few of the most persistent loafers, who sat on the boxes in front of Silas Jones’s store, and whittled and chewed tobacco for want of a better way of passing the time. Among these was Godfrey, who sunned himself for an hour or two like a turtle on his log, and then, with a deep sigh of regret, shouldered his rifle and bent his steps toward the woods in which his hopeful son Dan had long ago disappeared.
When the afternoon began to draw to a close, nearly the same scenes which we have already described were enacted at Godfrey’s humble abode. The scattered family began to come in, one after the other, and they found Godfrey sitting on the bench smoking his pipe. Dan had a bunch of squirrels and a fine wild turkey thrown over his shoulder; David brought another dozen of quails which Don Gordon’s pointer had stood for him; and Mrs. Evans carried in her pocket a dollar which she had earned with her needle that day. Fortunately Godfrey did not know of that. If he had he would at once have set his wits at work to conjure up some plan to obtain possession of it. David was again called upon to chop the wood, for Dan had disappeared immediately after skinning the squirrels he brought (he had gone off to hunt up another hiding-place for his valuables), and Godfrey was so wearied with his hard day’s work that he could not have lifted an axe if he had tried. So David cut the wood and kindled the fire, and his mother cooked the supper, and Godfrey ate two men’s share of it, and then once more seated himself on the bench and dozed until dark. He slept two hours or more, and was aroused by Dan, who wanted to know if he was going to make an effort to find the barrel that night. Godfrey replied that he was, and started up with much alacrity; but his enthusiasm seemed to die away utterly when he rubbed his eyes and looked about him. He could see literally nothing. It was as dark as it ever gets to be. The cabin and the clearing seemed to be surrounded by solid walls of ebony. There was not a ray of light to be seen in any direction, nor even a star.
“Splendid night,” said Dan. “Nothing can’t see us!”
“Yes,” answered his father, “an’ we can’t see nothing, too!”
“Wal, I reckon ye know whar that tater-patch was, don’t ye? Ye said ye did.”