“I have been in that there cove waiting for you, and I want to see Brigham,” was the reply.
“What do you want to see me for?” demanded Lester, who was not a little nettled by the man’s familiarity.
“Come over here, and I’ll tell you,” said the duck-shooter; and the way he said it aroused the boys’ curiosity to the highest pitch. They moved to the side, and Barr continued, as he nodded his head toward Enoch and Jones: “You don’t mind if these fellers hear it, I suppose?”
“Certainly not,” answered Lester, whose surprise began to give way to alarm. “I am perfectly willing they should hear anything you have to say to me.”
“Well, then,” said Barr, and the boys afterward told one another that there was something like a defiant ring in his voice as he uttered the words, “I’ll trouble you for them thousand.”
“That thousand!” repeated Lester, with no suspicion of the truth in his mind. “What thousand?”
“Have you forgot all about it so soon?” exclaimed Barr, angrily. “I ain’t, if you have. I mean them thousand dollars you said you would give if somebody would send that Don Gordon so far out’n the country that you wouldn’t never see him no more. Remember it now, I reckon, don’t you?”
Lester was thunder-struck. He tried to speak, but the words he would have uttered seemed to stick fast in his throat. He reeled as if Barr had dealt him a stunning blow, and would have fallen to the deck if he had not clung to the rail for support.
“Great Scott! what have you done?” cried Enoch, who was the first to recover the use of his tongue.
“I’ve give Gus Egan something to busy himself with, so that he will have no time to spend in running around and skeering away my ducks,” said Barr, savagely. “He didn’t seem to know how to spend his vacation, but he won’t be troubled that way no more.”