“Yes,” continued the planter, who seemed to be a little surprised at Dan’s behavior; “them quails reached that man up North all right, an’ to-day the money come—a hundred an’ ninety-two dollars an’ a half.”
Dan gasped again, and, taking off his hat, drew his coat-sleeve across his forehead.
“Yes. Silas Jones, he done took twenty-eight dollars outen it fur freight an’ give Dave the balance—a trifle over a hundred an’ sixty-four dollars. I was in the store at the time, an’ it done me good to see Dave take them thar greenbacks an’ walk out.”
“Whar—whar’s the money now?” Dan managed to ask at last.
“Why, he took it home with him, I reckon. What else should he do with it? Now, Dannie, don’t you get on a high hoss an’ say that you won’t look at us common folks any more.”
With this parting advice the planter rode off, leaving Dan sitting on his log, lost in wonder. It was a long time before he recovered himself, and when he did, he jumped to his feet as if he had just thought of something that ought to have been attended to long ago, caught up his rifle and disappeared in the woods.
This incident happened on the same day on which Silas Jones paid David for the quails he had shipped by the steamer Emma Deane. At the close of the second volume of this series, we saw that as soon as David had received the reward of his labors he made all haste to reach home. He found his mother there, but before he said a word to her about his good fortune he walked around the cabin two or three times and looked sharply in every direction, to make sure that his brother Dan was nowhere in the vicinity; and having satisfied himself on this point, he went in and laid the roll of greenbacks in his mother’s lap.
David had reason to feel proud, for he had earned the money in spite of many obstacles. In the first place, there was Dan, who, when he learned that his brother was in a fair way to earn a handsome sum of money by trapping quails and shipping them to a man in the North, who had advertised for them, determined to share in the proceeds of his work, and offered to go into partnership with him; but David would not consent, and this made Dan his enemy. Dan declared that not a quail should be caught in those fields. He would make it his business to hunt up his brother’s traps, and if there were any birds in them he would either liberate them or wring their necks, and then he would smash the traps. But, as it happened, Dan did not carry this threat into execution. An older and wiser person than himself, with whom he held frequent consultations, had another plan to propose, and Dan readily fell in with it.
Godfrey Evans, Dan’s father and David’s, was in deep disgrace. He had robbed Clarence Gordon of twenty dollars on the highway, and for fear that he would be arrested and punished for it, he took to the woods and stayed there. He lived on a little island in the bayou, about two miles from the settlement, which had been his hiding-place during the war, when the Union forces were raiding that part of Mississippi. Here he lived in a miserable brush lean-to, with no companion but his rifle, until his hiding-place was accidentally discovered by Dan, during one of his rambles in the woods.
Of course Godfrey was anxious to know what had been going on in the settlement since he left, and among other things Dan told him that David was going to make himself rich by catching quails, but that he (Dan) had resolved to put a stop to it by breaking his traps. After hearing a statement of the case, Godfrey told his hopeful son that if he wished to be revenged upon David for his refusal to go into partnership with him, there was a better way than that. It was not to their interest to interfere with the Boy Trapper in any manner. Let him go on and catch the birds, and when his work was done and he had received the money for it, then it would be time for them to act. They would take the money themselves and divide it equally between them. Godfrey did not say what he intended to do with his share when he got it, but he drew the most glowing pictures of the comforts and luxuries with which Dan could provide himself when he received the money that would fall to his lot. Dan wanted to live just as Don and Bert Gordon lived. He wanted a spotted pony, a breech-loading shot-gun, a jointed fish-pole and a sail-boat; and in order to insure his earnest assistance in the scheme he proposed, Godfrey held out the idea that for seventy-five dollars (they expected that David would receive one hundred and fifty dollars for his birds, and that would give them just seventy-five dollars apiece, if the money were equally divided) all these nice things could be purchased, and besides something would be left to be invested in good clothes.