CHAPTER I
“HARK BACK!”
“LOOK out thar, Dannie! Don’t run over a feller!”
Dan Evans, who was trudging along the dusty road, with his eyes fastened thoughtfully on the ground, and his mind so wholly given up to meditation that he did not know what was going on around him, stopped suddenly when these words fell upon his ear, and looked up to find himself confronted by a horseman, who had checked his nag just in time to prevent the animal from stepping on the boy. He was a small planter in the neighborhood, and Dan was well acquainted with him.
“You’re gettin’ to be sich rich folks up to your house that you look fur everybody to get outen your way, I reckon, don’t you?” continued the planter, with a good-natured smile.
“Rich!” repeated Dan, flushing angrily, as he drew his tattered coat about him. He did not know what the planter meant, and thought he was making sport of his poverty. “I can’t help it kase I don’t wear good clothes like Don and Bert, kin I? I work monstrous hard——”
“And get well paid fur it, too, I tell you,” interrupted the horseman. “I’d be glad of a chance to ’arn that much money myself. You needn’t wear sich clothes as them no longer, kase Dave an’ you is pardners, most likely, an’ he’ll do what’s right by you.”
“Dave!” echoed Dan, who now began to listen more eagerly.
“Yes. He’s a powerful smart boy, Dave is, an’ I’m glad to see him so lucky. He took home a wad of greenbacks this arternoon as big as that,” said the planter, pushing back his sleeve and showing his brawny wrist.
Dan fairly gasped for breath. He backed toward a log by the roadside and seated himself upon it, letting his rifle fall out of his hands in his excitement.