CHAPTER V
GODFREY VISITS THE CABIN.
“MORE’N a hundred and sixty-four dollars, an’ it made a wad as big as that thar!” said Dan Evans, looking at his wrist as he hurried through the woods. He opened his eyes and fairly gasped for breath as he thought of it. His ideas of money, as we know, were not very clear, and he was of the opinion that a roll of greenbacks as large as one could conveniently grasp in his hand, must be utterly inexhaustible. “An’ that thar leetle Dave of our’n done made ’em all by trappin’ quails! That’s what I’m goin’ to be now—a trapper! Then won’t I have good clothes, an’ a circus-hoss, an’ a sail-boat, an’ a fish-pole, an’ one of them guns that break in two in the middle? How extonished the folks will be when they see me goin’ to church with a straw hat and shiny boots on!”
This was the way Dan talked to himself, while he was running through the woods toward his father’s camp, after his interview with the planter, which we have recorded in the first chapter. His astonishment was almost unbounded. How glad he was, now that he had followed his father’s instructions, and let David’s traps alone; and how amazed and delighted Godfrey would be when he heard the news!
Dan knew just where to go to find his father. He was still occupying his old camp—the one he made after Don Gordon’s hounds drove him off the island—and thither Dan hurried with all the speed he could command. But still he could not go half fast enough to suit him. It seemed to him that the astounding information he had just received would work some dreadful injury to him if he did not communicate it to his father at once. The nearer he approached the camp the faster he ran; and when, at last, he burst into the presence of his father, who was stretched out beside a blazing fire, enjoying a pipeful of the store-tobacco which Dan had purchased for him a few days before, he was so nearly exhausted that he could scarcely speak; but, after a good many questions, and a few threats, from the impatient Godfrey, he managed to repeat the substance of his conversation with the planter. His father listened with mouth and eyes wide open, and when, at last, he began to comprehend the matter, he jumped to his feet, and danced about like one demented.
“Whoop!” yelled Godfrey, so loudly that the woods rang again. “More’n a hundred an’ sixty dollars! No more toilin’, an’ workin’, an’ slavin’ for me. My fort’n’s made.”
“Your’n!” repeated Dan.
“Mine an’ your’n, Dannie,” replied Godfrey, seizing his son’s hand, and giving it a grip and a shake that made Dan writhe with pain. “Yer a good boy, Dannie. Ye hain’t like that thar mean, sneakin’ Dave, who goes off an’ ’arns a pocketful of greenbacks, and gives ’em all to his mam, and none to his pap, but ye’ve stuck by me, an’ been a dootiful son, and now ye’ll see what I’ll do by ye!”
“What be ye goin’ to do, pap?” asked Dan.
“I’m goin’ to have them thar greenbacks afore I sleep this night,” was Godfrey’s decided reply. “The money’s mine. It don’t b’long to Dave, not by no means, ’kase he’s got no rights in law. I’m his pap, an’ kin take his ’arnin’s till he’s twenty-one years old, an’ nobody can’t say nothing to me.”
“If it hadn’t been for me ye wouldn’t a knowed nothing ’bout this money, pap,” said Dan, “an’ I don’t want ye to forgit it.”