“Are you going out?” exclaimed Enoch, eagerly.
“I am. There’s a big bed of ducks up at Bush River, and the wind is from the right quarter to keep them there till to-morrow, any way. If some fool or ’nother don’t come along and bang into ’em, I’ll have a few dozen of ’em in Baltimore by morning. I’ve been powerful oneasy for fear that Egan and them restless fellers that’s stopping with him would stumble onto them ducks and skeer them away. What brung them here, I’d like to know! They don’t stay nowhere. They’re all over the bay in a minute, and I can’t go any place without meeting ’em. I’ve kinder suspicioned that they’re watching me.”
“And so they are,” explained Lester, who was always glad of an opportunity to say something spiteful about the boy he did not like. “That Don Gordon would blow on you in a minute if he could. He lives near me in Mississippi, and I dread the idea of going home, just because he will be there. I’d give something handsome if he could be sent so far out of the country that he would never find his way back again.”
“That’s easy done,” said Barr, as he ran the bow of his canoe upon the beach and held it there with his paddle, so that the boys could get out. “How much would you be willing to give?”
“He said last night that he would give a thousand dollars,” observed Jones.
“Would you, now?” said Barr, looking earnestly at Lester.
“Yes, I would,” replied the latter, little dreaming what desperate thoughts his idle words had aroused in the mind of the man before him. “He and his brother have snubbed me until I am tired of it. Although I am one of his nearest neighbors, and have been to school with him for two years, Don has never given me a helping hand.”
“Well, Egan has served me the same way,” chimed in Enoch. “Instead of helping me, he picked up that Don Gordon, who was one of the biggest rascals in the school, and he and Curtis and Hopkins have boosted him along until they have made him lieutenant-colonel of the academy battalion. Where is the big gun, Mr. Barr? I should like to have my friends see it, if you don’t object.”
“All right,” replied Barr. “I’ll take my double-barrel along, so that we can see them together.”
