"Of course you do; and the best way to do it is to make him give something toward your support. Joe ain't of age yet, and you can compel him to hand over every cent he earns."
"That's so!" exclaimed the ferryman, who now began to see what his friend Hobson was aiming at. "That Joe of our'n makes right smart by acting as guide and pack-horse to the strangers who come here to shoot and fish; but I never thought to ask him for any of it. He always gives it to his mother."
"Why don't you make him give it to you, and then you can spend it as you please?" said Hobson, hoping that the ferryman would act upon his advice, and so increase his wealth by the addition of Joe's hard earnings that he could squander more at the bar of the Halfway House than he was in the habit of doing. "The head of the family ought to have the handling of all the money that comes into the house—that's my creed."
"And a very good creed it is, too," replied Silas, who told himself that he must be very stupid indeed not to have seen the matter in its true light long ago. "I'll turn over a new leaf this very day. Joe shall give me every cent of them hundred and twenty dollars, and I'll have what I can make out of them birds besides."
"There you go again," said Hobson, in a tone of disgust. "You mustn't go to work the first thing and kill the goose that lays the golden egg. If you begin on the first day of September, when the pa'tridge season opens, and shoot all them birds, there won't be none left for Joe to watch; and then old man Warren will tell Joe that he don't need him any longer. See the point?"
"I'd be stone blind if I couldn't see it," answered Silas, "and it makes me madder than I was before. Don't you understand that old Warren means to perfect them birds till they have increased to as many as a million, mebbe, and then he'll bring in a lot of his city friends and shoot 'em for fun—for fun, mind you—while poor folks like me and you, who need the money we could make out of 'em to buy grub and clothes—we'll be took up if we so much as set foot on t'other side his fences. Dog-gone such doings! 'Tain't right nor justice that it should be so, and I ain't going to stand it no longer. Thank goodness, I won't have to! I've got a plan in my head that'll—hum!"
Hobson made no response. Indeed, he did not seem to hear what Silas said to him, for he was straining his ears to catch the conversation that was-carried on by Mr. Warren and the surveyor, who were now coming up the bank.
He must have heard more than he wanted to, for, with an oath and a threat that made the ferryman's hair stand on end, Hobson hurried toward the place where he had left his horse. He mounted and rode away.
Mr. Warren and the surveying party left a few minutes later, followed by the commissioner and his jury; and Silas turned about and walked slowly toward his cabin.