“Didn’t I hear a gun go off in them alder bushes this morning?” inquired the game-warden. Byram made no reply, but hammered violently. “Anybody got a ice-house ’round here?” persisted the game-warden.
Byram turned a non-committal eye on the warden.
“I quit that business three years ago, an’ you know it,” he said. “I ’ain’t got no ice-house for to hide no pa’tridges, an’ I ain’t a-shootin’ out o’ season for the Saratogy market!”
The warden regarded him with composure.
“Who said you was shootin’ pa’tridges?” he asked. But Byram broke in:
“What would I go shootin’ them birds for when I ’ain’t got no ice-box?”
“Who says you got a ice-box?” replied the warden, calmly. “There is other folks in Foxville, ain’t there?”
Byram grew angrier. “If you want to stop this shootin’ out o’ season,” he said, “you go to them rich hotel men in Saratogy. Are you afraid jest because they’ve got a pull with them politicians that makes the game-laws and then pays the hotel men to serve ’em game out o’ season an’ reason? Them’s the men to ketch; them’s the men that set the poor men to vi’latin’ the law. Folks here ’ain’t got no money to buy powder ’n’ shot for to shoot nothin’. But when them Saratogy men offers two dollars a bird for pa’tridge out o’ season, what d’ye think is bound to happen?”
“Shootin’,” said the warden, sententiously. “An’ it’s been did, too. An’ I’m here for to find out who done that shootin’ in them alders.”
“Well, why don’t you find out, then?” sneered young Byram from his perch on the ridge-pole.