“So there will!” exclaimed Silas, who saw at once what Joe was trying to get at. “That’s the business I’ve been looking for, Joey, and it’s an easy one, too. Of course, I can let all my boats at so much an hour, and I won’t have nothing to do but sit on the beach and take in my money.”
“And what’ll I be doing?” inquired Dan, who had not spoken before.
“You!” cried Silas, who seemed to have forgotten that Dan was one of the party. “You will keep on chopping cord wood, to pay you for the mean trick you played on me this morning. You see what you made by it, don’t you? I reckon you wish you’d stayed by me now, don’t you? How much will them boats cost me, Joey?”
“I should think that ten or a dozen skiffs would be enough to begin with,” answered Joe, “and they will cost you between three and four hundred dollars; but you would have enough left to rent a piece of ground of Mr. Warren and put up a snug little house on it.”
“Then I’ll be a gentleman like the rest of ’em, won’t I?” exclaimed Silas, gleefully.
“No, you won’t,” said Dan, to himself. “That bridge ain’t been built yet, and I don’t reckon Hobson means to have it there. He is going to bust it up some way or ’nother, and I’m just the man to help him, if he’ll pay me for it. Everybody is getting rich ’cepting me, and I ain’t going to be treated this way no longer!”
Silas was so completely carried away by Joe’s plan for making money without work that he could think of nothing else. He forgot how determined and vindictive Dan was, and how easy it would be for him to place a multitude of obstacles in his way, but Joe didn’t.
The latter knew well enough that Dan intended to make trouble if he were left out in the cold, but what could be done for so lazy and unreliable a fellow as he was? That was the question.
While Joe was turning it over in his mind, he led the way through Mr. Warren’s gate and up to the porch, where he found his employer sitting in company with the sheriff and both Uncle Hallet’s
game-wardens. The deputy was in an upper room, keeping guard over the other prisoner.