CHAPTER II. THE BROTHERS.
"Toot! toot! t-o-ot!"
This was the third time the horn had been blown—first warningly, then persuasively, and at last angrily.
The hunters on the other side of the river, who had been trying for more than twenty minutes to bring the ferryman over to them, were beginning to get impatient. So was Joe Morgan, the ferryman's youngest son—a sturdy, sun-browned boy of fifteen, who stood in the flat, holding one of the heavy sweeps in his hand, all ready to shove off.
He looked toward the men on the opposite shore, and then he looked at his brother, who sat on the bank, with his elbows on his knees and his chin resting on his hands.
"There's eighty cents in that load," said Joe, who was in a great hurry to respond to the angry blasts of the horn. "If they get tired of waiting, and go down to the bridge, we shall be just that much out of pocket."
"Let 'em go, if they want to," replied the boy on the bank, in a lazy, indifferent tone. "There's no law to hinder 'em that I know of. Pap don't seem to be in no great hurry, and neither be I. I'm sick and tired of pulling that heavy flat over the river every time anybody takes a fool notion into his head to toot that horn. Some day I'll get mad and sink it so deep that it can't never be found again—I will so!"
"Now, Dan, what's the use of talking that way?" exclaimed Joe, impatiently. "You know well enough that as long as we run the ferry, we must hold ourselves in readiness to serve any one who may call upon us; and if you should destroy the flat, we would have to get another or give up the business."