This morning, however, Pete had overslept, and as he took down his gun, Bill Larkim rose from the low bench by the door, where he had taken his accustomed seat to watch for driftwood.
“Naow look er hyar, Pete,” he said; “there hain’t no call fer yo’ ter go a huntin’ ev’ry day an’ leave me ter do the hull o’ the work. Yo’ got ’nough plovers yisterday ter las’ a week.”
“Naw thar wa’n’t nuther,” said Pete, with a grin. “They’re all gone a’ready.”
Bill looked up angrily, and blew a cloud of smoke from between his clenched teeth.
“Yo’ can’t fool yer old paw,” he said, with an emphatic gesture toward the Simonds shanty. “I ’low I know who et them plovers yisterday. Jack Simonds got ter feed hisself er starve!” and Bill shook his bushy head of hair and his massive fist toward the dilapidated shanty, which seemed to tremble in very fear.
Pete, who had been leaning on his gun, tightened his belt as he muttered, “Lize hain’t goin’ ter starve ef Jack Simonds does.”
“Ef Lize hed ruther starve than come ter live with us, as she’d orter, I ’low we can stan’ it,” continued Bill, without noticing the interruption. “What ’d yo’ git merred fur, ef Lize hain’t goin’ ter help me’n yer maw, naow we’re gittin’ old an’ rickety? D’ yo’ hyar, Pete Larkim?” he almost yelled, in his anger. “Thar hain’t one o’ that Simonds gang ez gits another drap from me. Ef yo’ ’re goin’ huntin, yo’ can go; but ef yo’ ’re to feed that cuss of a Jack Simonds, don’t yo’ never let me ketch yo’ round hyar agin. Yo’ kin take yo’r chice ter s’port yo’r paw an’ maw, ez yo’ orter, or them shiftless Simonds.’”
Pete had stood leaning on his gun, and digging with the toe of his cowhide boot a miniature crater in the soft earth. As his “ole man” sat down sullenly on his bench, Pete buttoned up his leather jacket, and, his gun on his shoulder, shambled down across the brook and out into the clearing beyond.
“Lize hain’t goin’ ter starve,” he kept saying to himself all day, as he tramped through the rocky woods of Sheep mountain in search of game.
It was early evening when Pete came down with his brace of plover from the open summit of the mountain into the shadows which had settled on the narrow valley.