Dan faced about on his seat, and took a good look at the party in question.
There were ninety cents in the load instead of eighty. There were three sportsmen in brown hunting-suits, who were walking restlessly about as if they did not know what to do with themselves, and they had a double team, with a negro to drive it.
With them were half a dozen setters and pointers, which were exercising their muscles by racing up and down the bank.
The sight of the negro set the ferryman's tongue in motion again, while the good clothes the strangers wore had about the same effect upon Dan that a piece of red cloth is supposed to have upon a pugnacious turkey gobbler.
"More 'ristocrats!" sneered Silas. "Why don't they drive their own team?"
"Probably they don't want to," replied Joe. "Besides, they are able to hire some one to drive it for them."
"Of course they are!" exclaimed Silas, who was angry in an instant. "But I ain't able to hire a nigger to run this ferry for me. I say that such a state of things ain't right."
"Well, it isn't their fault, is it?" said Joe.
"I didn't say it was," snapped his father. "It ain't my fault, neither, that I haven't got as much money as the richest of them, but it will be my fault if I don't have it before the season's over. They're going after woodcock," added Silas, who was a market-shooter as well as a ferryman and wood-cutter. "I would like to bet them something that they won't get enough birds to pay them for crossing the river. I've got all the covers pretty well cleaned out."
"Them's the sort of fellers I despise," said Dan, turning around on his seat and resuming his work at the sweep—or, rather, his pretence of it. "The money them dogs cost would keep me in the best kind of grub and clothes for a whole year. Just look at the clothes they've got on, and then cast your eye at these I've got on. Dog-gone such luck! I hope they won't get nothing, and if they should hire me for a guide, I would take good care to lead them where such a bird as a woodcock wasn't never seen."