“I won’t,” replied Don. “That man has been up to something,” he said to himself, as he shouldered his gun and hurried along the path. “If he is hiding there to escape arrest, I am glad that I am in no danger of being called upon to serve a warrant on him, for he looks to me like a bad darkey.”
While Don was trying hard to convince himself that the path he was following led toward the bay, and not directly away from it, he was hurrying forward at his best pace. The path was very crooked, for it kept to the high ground all the way, and the turns in it were many and abrupt. As he ran around one of these turns, he came face to face with a couple of men who were making equally good time in the opposite direction; that is, they were going toward the cabin Don had just left. He was so close upon them that if they had not stopped on the instant, as he did, he and the foremost man would have run against each other. The surprise on both sides was great. One of the men turned part way around, as if he had a good mind to take to his heels, while the other, quickly recovering himself, laid hold of Don’s gun with both hands. Then the boy began to believe that he was going to see trouble. He took a second look at the repulsive face that was scarcely more than a foot away from his own, and recognized in it the features of Barr, the professional big-gunner.
Did the latter recognize him also, and did he mean to punish him for being on board the cutter when she frightened away the ducks?
“Look here,” said Don, without the least tremor in his voice, “I’ll trouble you to let go my gun. What do you intend to do? I know who you are, and——”
“And I know who you are, too,” interrupted Barr; and there was something in the way he uttered the words which made Don see very plainly that he might as well prepare for the worst. “You are one of the chaps who runs around with Gus Egan, taking the bread out of poor men’s mouths—dog-gone you; that’s who you be. Your name’s Gordon, ain’t it?”
“What’s that to you?” replied Don. “Let go my gun!”
“Yes, I reckon you’re the feller I’ve been looking for,” continued Barr, “and I’m going to put you where you won’t never bother hard-working men who are trying to make an honest living.”
Don in the Hands of the Duck-shooters.
The duck-shooter had been a little uncertain as to the boy’s identity, but the way Don answered his question, set all his fears at rest. When he seized the gun he did not know who it was that was confronting him. Like all guilty men, he was easily startled, and Don’s sudden and wholly unexpected appearance frightened him almost out of his wits; but when he found that his path had been blocked by a boy and not by a police-officer, his courage came back to him, and he was about to let go his hold upon the double-barrel, when Lester Brigham’s hasty words came into his mind. When he told Don that he was about to put him where he would never again trouble hard-working men who were trying to make an honest living, he made a sudden effort to twist the gun out of his grasp; but, to his intense amazement, he found himself jerked clear off the ground and thrown headlong into the reeds and out of the path, where the water was two feet deep. Turning the butt of his weapon to the front, Don rushed upon Pete, intending to knock him out of his way and take to his heels; but that move was fatal to him. Pete was quicker than Barr, and besides, he was on the alert. Like a flash he dodged the vicious blow which Don aimed at his face, and springing up again under his guard, struck him, with stunning force, on the head, felling him to the ground. His gun dropped from his hands, and he lay so still where he had fallen that Barr, who was in a towering rage when he crawled out of the water, grew frightened while he looked at him.