Transcriber's Note:

The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

Shooting the Cattle.

ROUGHING IT SERIES.

GEORGE IN CAMP:
OR,
LIFE ON THE PLAINS.

By HARRY CASTLEMON,

AUTHOR OF “THE GUNBOAT SERIES,” “THE FRANK NELSON SERIES,” “THE BOY TRAPPER SERIES,” &C.

PHILADELPHIA:

PORTER & COATES.

FAMOUS CASTLEMON BOOKS.

GUNBOAT SERIES. By Harry Castlemon. Illustrated. 6 vols. 16mo. Cloth, extra, black and gold.

Frank the Young Naturalist. Frank on a Gunboat. Frank in the Woods. Frank before Vicksburg. Frank on the Lower Mississippi. Frank on the Prairie.

ROCKY MOUNTAIN SERIES. By Harry Castlemon. Illustrated. 3 vols. 16mo. Cloth, extra, black and gold.

Frank among the Rancheros.

Frank at Don Carlos’ Rancho.

Frank in the Mountains.

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The Sportsman’s Club in the Saddle.

The Sportsman’s Club Afloat.

The Sportsman’s Club among the Trappers.

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Snowed Up. Frank in the Forecastle. Boy Traders.

BOY TRAPPER SERIES. By Harry Castlemon. Illustrated. 3 vols. 16mo. Cloth, extra, black and gold.

The Buried Treasure; or, Old Jordan’s Haunt.

The Boy Trapper; or, How Dave Filled the Order.

The Mail-Carrier.

ROUGHING IT SERIES. By Harry Castlemon. Illustrated. 16mo. Cloth, extra, black and gold.

George in Camp.

Other Volumes in Preparation.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1879, by

PORTER & COATES,

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

CONTENTS.

GEORGE IN CAMP;

OR,

LIFE ON THE PLAINS.

CHAPTER I.
AMONG THE TEXANS.

“I don’t like the way things are going at all, and I just wish those two people were back where they came from. They have turned the ranche upside down since they have been here, and now I begin to feel as though they were the masters, and that I have no more rights than a tramp who had dropped in to beg a night’s lodging!”

The speaker, a sturdy, broad-shouldered youth, about fifteen years of age, was sitting on the porch in front of the house in which he lived, busily engaged in mending a broken bridle with an awl and a piece of waxed-end. His name was George Ackerman, and he was one of the boys whom we introduced to the notice of the reader in the concluding volume of the “Boy Trapper Series,” and of whose adventures and exploits we promised to say something more than we said then. We find him now at his home in Texas, where he had been born, and where he had always lived, with the exception of the two years he had passed in a distant city attending school. He was dressed, as all the boys and men in that country were dressed, for hard work; and he had done a good deal of it during his comparatively short life—not because it was necessary, but because he had been brought up to it. His father was very wealthy—no one knew how many horses and cattle he owned—and he had left a property worth between thirty and forty thousand dollars a year.

If money is what makes people happy, one would suppose that George Ackerman ought to be one of the happiest boys in the world; and so he was, up to the time his only parent died, which was about a year and a half previous to the beginning of our story. He had everything a boy could possibly wish for—good health, a kind and indulgent father, a comfortable and happy home, and all the other aids to complete happiness so dear to the heart of most boys, and for which Bob Owens and Dan Evans so impatiently longed—such as horses, dogs, jointed fish-poles and breech-loading guns. He had made a start in business for himself, and was thought by the boys of his acquaintance to be pretty well off in the world. He began when he was only nine years old, by herding cattle for his father at forty dollars a month, taking his pay in young stock which he selected himself. These increased in numbers and value during the two years he was away at school, and now he was the owner of three hundred head of cattle which he had paid for by his own labor, and which he could have sold any day for twenty dollars apiece. He had a herdsman of his own and colts enough to mount all the cronies he had left at school, and who had faithfully promised to visit him at no distant day in his far-away home. It was two years and more since he parted from those same cronies, and not one of them had ever been to see him. He never heard from them now. His correspondents had dropped off, one after the other, until he had not a single one remaining. His father was gone, too, and poor George felt much as he would have felt if he had been dropped suddenly on Robinson Crusoe’s lonely island, without even a man Friday to keep him company.

It is true, that there were plenty of people around him. His Uncle John and Cousin Ned lived in the same house with him, and there were a score or more of men, Americans and Mexicans, employed on the ranche as house-servants and herdsmen. He had four playmates close at hand—that is, two of them lived five miles east of him and the others eight miles west—and they were jolly fellows and he liked to be in their company. The time never hung heavily on his hands, for he was very industrious, and could always find something useful to do; but still he was lonely and homesick every hour in the day. The old house was not the same now that it was during his father’s lifetime. Uncle John had built additions to it, rearranged the inside of it to suit himself, and filled it with the most expensive furniture, such as had never been seen in the wilds of Texas before.

Uncle John and his son, who dressed as fashionably now as they did when they came from the States, and who took as much pains with their toilet as a couple of city dandies would have done, were very much pleased with the new order of things. They seemed to have been made for no other purpose than to idle away their time on the luxurious sofas and easy-chairs with which the old rancho was now so plentifully supplied; but George, with his heavy cowhide boots, coarse clothing and sun-browned face and hands, was sadly out of place among them.

Uncle John Ackerman lived somewhere in the state of Ohio. He was a poor man, and, up to the time of the death of his only brother, George’s father, was obliged to work hard for his living. That sad event, which brought so much sorrow and trouble to George, was the making of Uncle John, for the time being. It took him and his scapegrace of a son from a life of toil and placed them just where they had always wanted to be—in a position to live without work. Uncle John was made his nephew’s guardian and the executor of his brother’s will, and to him the property was left in trust, to be cared for and managed for George until the latter became of age, when it was to be turned over to him, less a certain sum, which Uncle John was at liberty to keep in payment for his services. If George died before reaching his majority, Ned Ackerman, Uncle John’s son, was to be the heir.

As soon as the terms of the will were made known, Uncle John and Ned hastened to Texas, and took up their abode at the rancho. At first, everything passed off smoothly. George could see nothing to admire in either one of his relatives, whom he had met but once before; but still he did not absolutely dislike them, until Ned began to show, both by words and actions, that he considered himself the lawful master of the ranche and everything belonging to it, and that George had no rights that he or his father were bound to respect. One change after another was introduced, in spite of all the rightful owner could say or do to prevent it, until at last the old house was so changed in appearance, both inside and out, that George could hardly recognise it as his home. Then he grew angry and almost made up his mind that he would strike out for himself, and live on the prairie, with his cattle and his herdsman, as a good many of the early settlers had done before him.

But the fact that his cousin Ned was gradually crowding him to the wall, and usurping the place that George himself ought to have held in the house, was not the only thing that troubled the young rancheman. That was bad enough, but it was accompanied by something worse. If he was snubbed and kept in the background by his relatives while at home, he was treated but little, if any, better by the people, both young and old, who lived in the settlement, and that was what hurt him. He was acquainted with almost every farmer and rancheman in the county, and, until lately, he had always been very popular among them; but when Uncle John and his son arrived his troubles began. The neighbors would have nothing whatever to do with the newcomers. They would not even notice them when they met them on the highway, and it was not long before they began to extend the same treatment to George himself.

The young cattle-herder could not imagine what it was that caused this change, until one day, while he was riding to Palos, to purchase some supplies for himself and his hired man, he met one of his young friends, who, instead of stopping to talk with him, as he usually did, simply bowed and put spurs to his horse, as if he were in a hurry to pass by him; but George reined his own nag across the trail and stopped him.

“Now, Hank Short,” said he, “I want to know what you mean by such work as this? What’s the reason that you and the other fellows never come to see me any more, and that you take pains to pass me in this fashion? Do you take me for a horse-thief?”

This, according to a Texas boy’s way of thinking, was the worst term of reproach that could be applied to anybody. In Nantucket, if they want to convey the impression that a man is utterly detestable, they say he is mean enough to “mix oil.” In Massachusetts, he will “rob a hen-roost,” and in Texas, he will “steal horses.”

“Everybody in the settlement seems to have gone back on me since my father died,” said George, bitterly, “and I don’t know what to think of it. Now, Hank, you can’t go by here until you tell me what I have done to make all the folks angry at me. As soon as I know what it is, I will try to make amends for it.”

“You haven’t done anything,” was Hank’s reply. “We don’t take you for a horse-thief!”

“Then why do you——Eh? You don’t take me for a horse-thief! What do you mean by that?”

“Well, I—you know——” faltered Hank, “those northern relations of yours sling on a good many frills, and folks who wear store clothes and boiled shirts are not wanted in this country. We’re afraid of them.”

“Whew!” whistled George.

He looked steadily at his friend for a moment, then down at the ground, and finally he reined his horse out of Hank’s path and went slowly on his way toward Palos. It was all plain enough to him now. Uncle John and Ned wore store clothes and boiled shirts, and the settlers took them for horse-thieves and treated them accordingly. That was the English of it, and George wondered why he, knowing the customs of the country and the habits and opinions of the people as well as he did, had not been smart enough to see it without asking any questions. This was what he thought at first, and then he suddenly grew so angry that he could scarcely control himself. He drew up his horse with a jerk, faced about in his saddle and called after his friend.

“Look here, Hank,” he shouted, shaking his fist in the air, “you may tell those people who shun my relatives because they would rather wear good clothes than shabby ones, and who go back on me because I live with them—you can tell those people that we are just as good as they dare be any day and just as honest!”

“All right,” was Hank’s response.

“And bear another thing in mind,” cried George, growing angrier every minute, “and that is, I am boy enough to make you, or any fellow like you, who says anything against them take back his words. I am going to stand by them, no matter what happens.”

“I haven’t said anything against them,” answered Hank. “I think too much of you to do that. I’ll talk to you the next time I see you. Perhaps you will be better natured then.”

This reply completely disarmed George, who promptly turned about, intending to ride up to his friend and take back every harsh word he had uttered; but Hank touched his horse with his spurs as soon as he ceased speaking, and was now almost out of earshot. So George was compelled to face about again and go on his way toward Palos, without making things straight with his friend.

“Hank is a good fellow, that’s a fact,” said he to himself, “and I might have known that he wouldn’t say a word that he thought would offend me. But here’s one thing I can’t understand,” continued George, growing angry again. “If the settlers don’t want anything to do with Uncle John and Ned, is that any reason why they should give me the cold shoulder? If they don’t want to come to our rancho, they might at least treat me civilly when they meet me away from home. This is the strangest world I ever saw or heard of. If I should walk into Foxboro’, where Uncle John came from, with these clothes on, folks would look at me suspiciously, lock their back doors and keep an eye on their smoke-houses. He and Ned came into the country, dressed as I suppose all city folks dress, and every body is down on them, and ready to take them for anything in the world but an honest man and boy.”

Yes, it is a fact that Uncle John and Ned had been received by the settlers in about as cordial and friendly a manner as a couple of ragged, ill-looking tramps would be received if they suddenly made their appearance in the streets of some retired village in New England. It was just the sort of reception that these rough frontiersmen always extend to people of that stamp. This may seem like a strange statement, but it is nevertheless true. If you want to be certain of it read the following paragraphs, which have been condensed from a recently published book[^[1]] written by two men who have spent long years in the wilds of which we write.

[1]. Two Thousand Miles in Texas on Horseback; by McDanield and Taylor.

“The men who follow this business of stock raising are peculiar. They are a stalwart, sinewy race, bronzed and bearded, and always go armed to the teeth; but they wear their weapons just as other people wear coats and vests, mainly because it is fashionable. A more peaceably-disposed people I never saw; and they seem to vie with one another in hospitality to the stranger. They are nearly all young or middle-aged men. To subdue the wilderness and stand guard over the watch-towers of civilization, do not belong to the old; and yet I see a few strong old men here whose heads are as white as if a hundred winters had sprinkled their snows upon them—old men youthful in everything except years. They are a sharp, quick and intelligent people, and there are some who are evidently of superior education. These are doubtless stray young gentlemen whom a restless spirit of adventure decoyed from their homes in the old states, finally stranding them on the shores of this far-away country. They are appreciated here, for these rough frontiersmen dearly love to have educated and sensible young men settle among them. But let no pin-feather youth think that he can come here and be made a lion of at once. A pretentious, foppish young fellow would be heavily discounted by them, in spite of all his book learning and elegance of manner. He must have a good store of common sense and understand how to adapt himself to the situation. He must throw on no airs, for these frontiersmen are nearly all men of as much sharpness of wit as boldness of heart. They have seen a good deal of the world and quickly detect the spurious. The newcomer must show a heart for honest, manly work, be companionable, bear himself toward all respectfully and courteously, and he will soon find that he has a noble army of friends around him who will always be glad to advance him, and who will feel proud of him as one of themselves.

“I have often thought of my first appearance among those frontier people with considerable amusement. When a boy, almost beardless and just from the schools, I came on horseback to San Saba, wearing a nice silk hat, carrying a silver-headed cane, and dressed as young gentlemen generally dress in the best communities of the older states. The old frontiersmen looked upon me with almost intolerable scorn, and there was some serious talk of hanging me as a suspected horse-thief, for no other reason in the world than because I was well-dressed, well-educated and decidedly well-behaved, though rather a reserved young fellow.

“One old chap, rough and bearded, and to my eye quite a monster in appearance, actually talked of this within my hearing. The look of scorn he cast upon me was sublime. I was quick to perceive the drift of things; and as the Indians were then stealing and scalping at a great rate, I threw aside my nice clothes, and silver-headed cane, put on a rough suit and went Indian hunting with the frontiersmen, sleeping with them in their houses, in the woods and on the prairie. They soon grew fond of me, and I have never been in a country where I had so many warm friends; but they never ceased to joke me about my three-story hat and silver-headed cane. Had I not thrown aside these articles it is not at all impossible that I might have been hanged.”

This was the kind of people among whom Uncle John and Ned lived now.

CHAPTER II.
A NEIGHBORHOOD ROW.

What was true of the people who lived in San Saba, during the days when the incident we have just recorded happened, was equally true of the people who lived in Palos and the surrounding country, at the time of which we write. They were nearly all rich—there was hardly a man among them who could tell how many horses and cattle bore his brand,—but every man and boy of them kept busy at something, and strangers who came to that country, and sported their fine clothes and did nothing, were always objects of suspicion. All the settlers knew that Uncle John and Ned were the brother and nephew of one of the most popular men who had ever lived in the county, but that did not alter the facts of the case. If the newcomers expected to be kindly received and hospitably treated, they must come down from the high position they had assumed and act like other folks.

George mourned in secret over this disagreeable state of affairs, but he knew that it could not be remedied in any way, unless his relatives could be prevailed upon to conform to the customs of the people among whom they lived. When he returned from Palos, after his interview with Hank Short, he waited and watched for an opportunity to give them a little advice, and one morning, at the breakfast-table, the chance was presented.

“I have always heard that Texans were a friendly and hospitable set of people,” said Uncle John, as he pushed his chair away from the table; “but I have learned that they are just the reverse. I have been among them a good many months, and there hasn’t been a person here to see me—not one.”

“They’re a set of boors,” observed Ned. “You and I want nothing to do with them, father. We must live entirely within ourselves, while we stay here, and we’re able to do it.”

“But they won’t let you,” said George.

“They! Who?” demanded Ned.

“The settlers about here.”

“How are they going to help themselves, I’d like to know? Isn’t this a free country?”

“Yes, it’s a free country,” answered George, with a smile, “almost too free, you would think, if you had seen what I have. If you are going to live among these people, you must be one of them.”

Ned ran his eye over his cousin’s sturdy figure taking in at a glance his copper-colored face, large, rough hands and coarse clothing, and then he looked down at himself.

“How must I do it?” he asked.

“You must pull off that finery, the first thing you do,” was George’s blunt reply. “Throw it away. It is of no use to you in this country.”

“I found that out long ago,” sneered Ned. “These people look upon a red shirt as a badge of respectability.”

“And so it is, in one sense of the word,” returned George. “When you are dressed for work, you are ready for it; and when people see you at work, they know that you have an honest way of making a living. People who do nothing are of no more use here in Texas, than they are in Ohio.”

“That’s just what I have been trying to drum into his head ever since we have been here,” said Uncle John, who had not been known to do a stroke of work of any kind during the long months he had lived in the rancho. “Go on and tell him what to do, George.”

“It must be something that will bring me money,” chimed in Ned. “I shan’t work for nothing.”

“There are plenty of things that will bring you money,” replied George. “You can rent a piece of ground, fence it in and go to farming; or you can be a cattle or pig-raiser.”

“Pig-raiser!” exclaimed Ned, in great disgust.

“There’s money in it, I tell you. These post-oak belts that run across the state, afford the finest pasturage in the world—hundreds of bushels of acorns to the acre,—and all you would have to do would be to build you a little hut in some place that suited you, and call up your pigs twice a day and feed them a little corn, to keep them from straying away and going wild. If you want to make money without work,” added George, who knew very well that that was just what his cousin did want, “you can’t select a better business.”

“I’m not going to live among pigs!” declared Ned, emphatically. “That’s settled. If I had a herd of cattle like yours, I might take some interest in it.”

“You can get it, if you are willing to work for it, as I did.”

“That would take too long. If I go into any business, it must be something that will yield me immediate returns. I think the easiest thing I could do would be to put in fifty or a hundred acres of wheat. That is a crop that will require the least work.”

“Well, there is land enough at your disposal,” said George. “There are ten thousand acres in this ranche. But where are you going to get the money to fence your field?”

“I don’t see why I should fence it at all. Our own cattle (Ned and his father always spoke of the ranche, and everything belonging to it, as though it were their own property) will not trouble it, for I shall tell the herders to keep them at a distance.”

“But they couldn’t always do it. Besides, suppose some of the neighbors’ cattle should stray away from the herdsmen and trespass on your field: what would you do?”

“I should tell those neighbors, whoever they were, to keep their cattle at home; and if they didn’t do it, I should watch my field and shoot the first steer that came into it. That thing has been done in this country.”

“Yes, it has,” returned George, “and what was the consequence?”

“O, it created a neighborhood row, I believe,” answered Ned, indifferently.

“It certainly did; and you would never want to live through another if you had lived through that one. You will need a fence around your field, and it must be high and strong, too; and if anybody’s cattle break in, as they will, most likely, no matter how good your fence may be, you mustn’t take satisfaction by shooting them.”

“You’ll see whether I will or not. If I can raise a fuss as easily as that, I’ll do it. The people here seem to think that I’m a nobody, but they will find that they are very badly mistaken. I can draw a trigger as well as the next man.”

“I hope you won’t draw it on anybody’s cattle,” said George, earnestly. “If you do, you’ll set the whole settlement together by the ears. I’ve seen one ‘neighborhood row,’ as you call it, and I never want to see another. I can remember, for it was not so very long ago, when my father did not dare go to the door after dark for fear that there might be somebody lying in wait to shoot him. I can remember when I used to lie awake night after night with my head under the bed clothes, starting at every sound, and expecting every minute to hear the crackling of flames, and to rush out to find the house surrounded by armed men, who would shoot us down as fast as we came out. That very thing was threatened more than once. You don’t know anything about it, for you were not here at the time; but I do, and I—Whew!” exclaimed George, pushing his chair away from the table and drawing his hand across his forehead, at the same time shuddering all over as he recalled to mind some of the thrilling scenes through which he had passed during those days and nights of horror. “If you are going to bring those times back to us you had better make arrangements to leave here at once, for the country will be too hot to hold you.”

There had indeed been troublous days in Miller county a few months previous to the beginning of our story. In the first place the county was settled by men who devoted themselves exclusively to raising cattle and horses for market. Some of them purchased land, but the majority did not own an acre. They lived in the saddle, slept in the open air the year round and subsisted principally upon the game that fell to their rifles. They followed their herds wherever they went, and the raising of them never cost their owners a dollar, for the prairie afforded abundant pasturage and was free to any one who might choose to occupy it. In process of time other settlers came in, some turning their attention to stock raising, while the others purchased farms from the government, surrounded them with fences to keep their neighbors’ cattle from trespassing on them, and put in crops.

Unfortunately ill-feeling existed between these two classes of men, the farmers and the ranchemen, almost from the very first. The latter did not want the farmers there for the reason that every farm that was fenced in took away just so many acres of their pasture; and the farmers declared that the ranchemen were a nuisance and ought to be driven out of the country, because their cattle broke through the fences and destroyed the crops that had cost so much labor.

These feelings of hostility grew stronger as the farmers increased in numbers, and the ranchemen saw their limits growing smaller every year, and the rich pastures they had so long occupied being turned up by the plough. The fences that were hastily erected by the farmers were not strong enough to keep out the half-wild cattle which roamed the unoccupied territory, and when one of these immense herds gained access to a cultivated field they made sad work with it. Whenever this happened the farmers sued the owners of the cattle in the courts for damages; and as they were by this time largely in the majority and could control the juries, they always gained their cause.

This made the stockmen very angry, and they had recourse to a law of their own—that of force. They drove off cattle belonging to the farmers, sold them and divided the proceeds among themselves. The farmers took revenge by shooting the cattle that broke into their fields; the ranchemen retaliated by shooting the farmers; and this led to a reign of terror of which our readers may have some very faint conception if they chanced to live in Chicago, Pittsburgh, Buffalo or Baltimore during the riots that took place in July 1877.

Things very soon came to such a pass that no man went abroad, even in the day time, unless he was loaded with weapons, and even then he expected to be bushwhacked by some angry neighbor. Every house was converted into a little fortress, and people were very careful how they ventured out of doors after dark, or showed themselves in front of a window opening into a lighted room.

This state of affairs might have continued until the present day, or until the thinly-settled county was entirely depopulated, had it not been for the interference of some lawless men who lived just over the border. One dark night, a party of Mexicans, headed by renegade Americans, made a raid across the Rio Grande and drove off a thousand head of cattle and horses. The robbers were so delighted with their success that they came again and again, and the settlers, being divided against themselves, could do nothing to protect their property. This brought them to their senses, as nothing else could have done. Advances and concessions were made on both sides; old differences were forgotten; the farmers repaired their dilapidated fences; the stock-raisers employed extra herdsmen to keep their cattle within bounds; and a company of Rangers was promptly organized, composed of the very men who had been bushwhacking one another for months.

The Mexican raiders did not come again immediately, for their spies told them of the preparations that had been made to receive them; and when at last all fears of another visit from them had passed away, the company which the settlers had called together for mutual protection ceased to exist as an organization. But it had served more than one good purpose. It had not only compelled the raiders to remain on their own side of the river, but it had brought the stockmen and farmers into intimate relations with one another, and led to the determination on the part of all of them that the cause of their troubles should be carefully avoided in the future.

Since that time Miller county had been one of the quietest and most orderly portions of the state. Peace and plenty reigned, and the farmers and stockmen were the firmest of friends. But now it appeared that a vindictive boy, who was too lazy to win a name for himself in any honorable way, was willing and even eager to put an end to this happy state of affairs just because he wanted the settlers to notice him—to see that he was not a nobody. The shooting of a single steer that had broken into a farmer’s field would have been like throwing a blazing fire-brand upon a dry prairie while the wind was blowing a gale. George was frightened at the bare thought of such a thing.

CHAPTER III.
NED’S EXPERIENCE IN CAMP.

It was plain enough to George that Ned wanted to take satisfaction out of the settlers for their refusal to notice him and make much of him, as he seemed to think they ought to have done. He said all he could to induce him to give up the idea, but Ned was stubborn, and George finally abandoned the attempt in despair, hoping that when the trouble came, as it certainly would come if Ned held to his resolution, he could in some way protect him from the consequences of his folly.

“I can at least guide him out of the country, for it will not be safe for him to stay here,” thought George. “Uncle John will go, too, if he is wise; but I shall have to remain and shoulder the whole of it.”

The conversation recorded in the preceding chapter was but one of the many Ned had with his father and cousin on the subject of farming, and the result was that the following winter saw him the owner, for the time being, of fifty acres of rich bottom land, which had been fenced and planted to wheat. By the terms of the contract made with his father in George’s hearing, Ned was to pay the same rent for the ground that he would have had to pay had he leased it from an entire stranger. “You know the ranche doesn’t belong to me,” said Uncle John. “I am managing it for George’s benefit, and must make all the money I can for him. You ought to clear a nice little sum by your venture, and can afford to pay the usual rent.”

“O, I’ll pay it after my crop is sold; that is, if I feel like it,” said Ned to himself. “George has money enough already. A boy who owns six thousand dollars’ worth of stock ought to be willing to allow his only cousin the free use of fifty acres of land. I shall have need of every red cent I make.”

Ned, who was extravagantly fond of company and pleasure, could hardly endure the lonely life he was compelled to lead. He hoped that as soon as it became known throughout the settlement that he had made up his mind to go to work, he would be in a fair way to gain the favor of the people; and perhaps he would, if he had gone about it in the right way. He laid aside the objectionable broadcloth suit and white shirt, it is true, and put on what he called “working clothes;” but they were more gorgeous than any that had ever been seen in that part of Texas before outside of an illustrated story paper. His boots were expensive Wellingtons, and were made of patent leather, too. He wore gray corduroy trowsers, a fawnskin vest, a finely-dressed buckskin coat, with silver buttons, and a Mexican sombrero ornamented with gold cord and tassels. It was a “nobby” suit, to quote from its delighted owner, and must have astonished the natives, if one might judge by the way they stared at him when they met him on the trail; but it did not bring him any more company than he had always had.

Ned led a lonely and discontented life all that winter. There were no boys with whom he could associate except his cousin, and Ned had come to the conclusion that he would much rather be alone than in George’s company. The latter did not suit him at all. He was much too industrious. He was in camp with his herdsman more than half the time, and when he was at home he was always busy. Ned had expected to see unbounded pleasure in living on the prairie and sleeping in the open air, as his cousin did more than six months in the year, and once he had spent two weeks with him in camp; but that was his first and last experience in cattle-herding, and as it was not at all to his liking, we must stop long enough to say something about it. This is a story of camp life, you know.

Ned had not been away from the ranche more than three days before he found, to his great surprise and disappointment, that life in the open air was not what his lively imagination had pictured it. Many a boy has been deceived on this point, just as others have been deceived in looking upon the life of a sailor as one of ease and romance. Ned thought that those who lived in camp had nothing to do but sit on the grass, under the spreading branches of some friendly tree, and dream away the days which would be all sunshine; and that when they grew hungry, some fat black-tail or antelope would walk up within easy range of their rifles just on purpose to be shot. The nights would be mild and pleasant, the fire would somehow keep itself burning all the time, whether the necessary fuel was supplied or not, and cook his meals for him without any care or exertion on his part. But one short week’s experience banished all these absurd ideas, and taught him what a cattle-herder’s camp-life really was. It was one of almost constant drudgery and toil. George had three hundred cattle to watch, and as he had only one herdsman to assist him, he was kept busy from morning until night. He and Zeke (that was the name of his herdsman, of whom we shall have a good deal to say by and by), were up and doing long before the sun arose, and while one cooked the breakfast and performed the necessary camp-duties, the other drove the cattle out to pasture and watched them to see that they didn’t stray away.

Ned, being inexperienced, and an invited guest beside, was not expected to do anything except to eat his share of the rations, and enjoy himself as well as he could. Sometimes he went out with the cattle-herder, and then he stayed with the camp-keeper; but he soon grew tired of both of them and of their way of life, too. George knew but little about the city and cared less. He took no interest whatever in his cousin’s glowing descriptions of the numerous “scrapes” he had been in, and neither did Zeke, who bluntly told him that he might have been in better business. Ned, on the other hand, cared nothing for the things in which George and Zeke were interested, so there was little they could talk about.

But there was plenty of hunting, and in this way Ned passed a portion of each day. He had no luck, however, for he never saw anything in the shape of game larger than Jack rabbits, and he never bagged one of them. The only thing he brought back to camp with him from these hunting excursions was a ravenous appetite, and he had to satisfy it with fried bacon, hard corn-cakes and coffee without any milk. The juicy venison steaks and other luxuries he had expected to fatten on were never served up to him. It rained, too, sometimes, and Ned could find no shelter under the dripping trees. There was no fun at all in going to bed in wet clothes, and Ned always shuddered and wished himself safe at the rancho when his cousin said to him, as he did almost every night—

“Don’t forget your lasso. The rattlers are tolerable plenty about here.”

Ned knew that, for he had seen two or three of them killed in the camp. George had told him that the neighborhood of a fire was a bad place for rattlesnakes, and Ned could hardly bring himself to believe that his hair lasso, laid down in a coil about the place where he made his bed, was a sure protection against these dangerous visitors.

A few days before he went home, Ned had an experience such as he had never had before, and which he fervently hoped would never be repeated. On this particular day he went out with George, whose turn it was to watch the cattle. He soon grew tired of talking to him, so he mounted his horse and set out in search of antelopes, which, so his cousin told him, were often seen in that neighborhood. He rode slowly in a circle around the place where the cattle were feeding, at distances varying from a half to three-quarters of a mile from them (there was small chance of finding an antelope so close to the herd, but Ned dared not go any farther away for fear of the Apaches, concerning whom he had heard some dreadful stories told by Zeke the night before), and he had been gone about an hour when he was suddenly startled by hearing the faint report of a rifle. Turning his eyes quickly in the direction from which the report sounded, he saw his cousin sitting in his saddle, and waving his hat frantically in the air. When he found that the sound of his rifle had attracted Ned’s attention, he beckoned him to approach.

“What’s up, I wonder?” thought Ned, not a little alarmed. “George must have shot at something, for I saw the smoke curling above his head. Are the Mexicans or Apaches about to make a raid on us?”

Ned, who had drawn rein on the summit of a high swell, looked all around but could see no signs of any horsemen. He did see something to increase his alarm, however. He saw that the cattle, which were quietly grazing the last time he looked toward them, were now all in motion, and that they were hurrying toward the belt of post-oaks in which the camp was located. That was enough for Ned. He put his horse into a gallop and hastened to join his cousin, who now and then beckoned to him with both hands as if urging him to ride faster.

“What’s the matter?” shouted Ned, as soon as he arrived within speaking distance of George. “Raiders?”

“O no! We’re going to have a norther, and if there should happen to be rain with it we don’t want it to catch us out here on the prairie.”

“Is that all?” exclaimed Ned, somewhat impatiently. “That’s a pretty excuse for frightening a fellow half to death, isn’t it? I thought something was going to happen.”

“Something is going to happen!” replied George.

“You seem to have grown very much afraid of the rain lately,” continued Ned. “It was only a day or two ago that you stood out in a hard shower, and never seemed to care for it.”

“Yes; but if we have rain now, it will be a different sort, as you will find.”

“I don’t see any signs of it yet,” said Ned, looking up at the sky. “I hope it will cool the air a little,” he added, a moment later, pulling off his hat and drawing his handkerchief across his face, which was very much flushed, “for I am almost roasted. I declare, I must have ridden fast. Just see how my horse sweats!”

“Mine sweats just as badly,” replied George, “and he has been staked out ever since you have been gone.”

Ned looked at his cousin’s horse, then glanced at his own, and was very much surprised at what he saw. Both animals were wet with perspiration, and stood with their heads down and their sides heaving, as if they had been ridden long and rapidly. There was not a breath of air stirring, as Ned found, when he came to look about him. The atmosphere was close and oppressive, and filled with a thick haze, which seemed to magnify every object within the range of his vision, and overhead, the sun rode in a cloudless sky, sending down his beams with fearful intensity.

“Whew!” panted Ned. He dropped his reins, hung his rifle upon the horn of his saddle, peeled off his coat, vest and neck-tie, and threw open the collar of his shirt. “Whew!” he gasped. “We shall be overcome with the heat before we can reach the timber. I had no idea it was so hot! I don’t see how you can stand it, with those thick clothes on.”

“I am pretty warm now, that’s a fact; but I shall be cool enough by and by, and so will you!”

While the boys were talking in this way, they were riding toward the post-oaks, which were now about a mile and a half distant. The sun’s rays seemed to grow hotter with every step of the way, and the atmosphere to become more stifling, until at last Ned would gladly have welcomed a hurricane or an earthquake, if it would have brought him any relief from his sufferings. Finally, a small, dark-colored cloud appeared in the horizon, rising into view with wonderful rapidity, spreading itself over the sky and shooting out great, black arms before it, until it looked like a gigantic spider. Then the first breath of the on-coming norther began to ruffle the grass, whereupon George faced about in his saddle, and began unfastening a bundle, in which he carried his rubber poncho and heavy overcoat, while Ned pulled off his hat again and turned his shirt-collar farther back.

“Aha!” exclaimed the latter, with a great sigh of relief. “Isn’t that a delightful breeze? What are you going to do?”

“I am going to bundle up,” was George’s reply, “and if you will take my advice, you will do the same. You see——”

“O, let it rain!” exclaimed Ned, without waiting to hear what else his cousin had to say. “It will be most refreshing, after such a roasting as we have had!”

George said no more, for he had been snubbed every time he tried to give his city relative any advice, and he had long ago resolved that he would not willingly give him a chance to snub him again. We ought also to say that there was another reason why George kept silent. A Texan takes unbounded delight in seeing a greenhorn caught out in a norther. It is so very different from any storm he ever saw before, and his astonishment is so overwhelming! George opened his bundle, put on his overcoat, threw his poncho over that and drew on a pair of heavy gloves. He looked as if he were preparing to face a snow-storm.

All this while the norther had been steadily, but almost imperceptibly, increasing in force, and now, without any further warning, it burst forth in all its fury, and the roar of the wind sounded like the rumble of an approaching express train.

“Whew!” exclaimed Ned, suddenly; “how it blows and how fearfully cold it is!”

As he said this he drew his collar together and hastily put on his vest and coat; but when he tried to button the coat his fingers were so benumbed that he was almost helpless.

“Why, I’m freezing,” gasped Ned, as his cousin rode up beside him and offered his assistance.

“O, no!” answered George, cheerfully. “No one was ever known to freeze to death or even to take cold from exposure to a norther. You’ll be all right as soon as you get to a fire.”

“I never saw such a country,” said Ned, as plainly as his chattering teeth would permit. “Summer and winter all in one day.”

“Yes, in less than a quarter of an hour,” said George, who was busy untying the bundle Ned carried behind his saddle. “The thermometer has been known to fall sixty degrees almost instantly.”

George took his cousin’s overcoat and gloves out of the bundle, but after they were put on they did not seem to afford the wearer the least protection from the bitter blast which came stronger and stronger every moment, and chilled him to the very marrow. It could not have been colder if it had come off the icebergs within the Arctic circle. It seemed to blister the skin wherever it touched, and was so cutting and keen that the boys could not keep their faces toward it. Even the horses began to grow restive under it, and it was all their riders could do to control them.

“O, I shall never see home again!” cried Ned, who was terribly alarmed. “I shall freeze to death right here. I can’t stand it!”

“You can and you must,” shouted George, as he seized his cousin’s horse by the bridle. “Now, pull your hat down over your face, throw yourself forward in the saddle, and hang on for life. I’ll take care of you.”

An instant afterward Ned was being carried over the prairie with all the speed his horse could be induced to put forth. He did not know which way he was going, for he dared not look up to see. He sat with his hat over his face, his head bowed over to his horse’s neck, and his hands twisted in the animal’s mane, while George sat up, braving it all and leading him to a place of refuge.

It seemed to Ned that they were a very long time in reaching the timber, and that he should certainly freeze to death before that mile and a half of prairie could be crossed; but he didn’t, and neither did he afterward feel any bad effects from what he suffered during his cold ride. He found that Zeke, having been warned by signs he could easily read that the norther was coming, had moved the camp to a more sheltered locality, and that he had a roaring fire going and a pot of hot coffee on the coals. Ned drank a good share of that hot coffee, and forgot to grumble over it, as he usually did. George showed him the way home as soon as the storm abated, and there Ned resolved to stay, having fully made up his mind that there was no fun to be seen in camp-life.

Ned was more lonely and discontented than ever after that. It was harder work to pass the days in doing nothing than it was to stand behind a counter, selling dry-goods; and that was what he had done before he came to Texas. There was literally no way in which he could enjoy himself. Books, which were his cousin’s delight, Ned did not care for; there was not game enough in the country to pay for the trouble of hunting for it; the boys in the settlement were a lot of boors, who would not notice him, because he was so far above them; and all Ned could do was to spend the day in loitering about the house, with his hands in his pockets.

“If I only had some of the jolly fellows here that I used to run with in Foxboro’!” said Ned to himself, one day, after he had spent an hour or two in wandering from room to room, in the vain hope of finding something to interest him. “Wouldn’t we turn this old house upside down! They all promised to come and see me, but I know they won’t do it, for they’ll never be able to save money enough to pay their fare. If I ever see them, I shall have to send them the money to bring them here, and I——Well, now, why couldn’t I do that? It’s a splendid idea!”

Ned, all life and animation now, hurried to his room to act upon his splendid idea, while it was yet fresh in his mind. He wrote a long letter to one of the cronies, Gus Robbins by name, whom he had left behind in Foxboro’, giving a glowing description of his new home, recounting, at great length, a thrilling hunting adventure he had heard from the lips of George’s herdsman, and of which he made himself the hero, instead of Zeke, and wound up by urging Gus and his brother to come on and pay him a long visit.

“You must not refuse,” Ned wrote. “If money is what you need, let me know, and I will send you enough to foot all your bills. I am rich now, and can afford to do it. Your father ought to be willing to give you a short vacation, after you have worked so hard in the store.”

The letter was mailed in due time, and Ned impatiently counted the days that must elapse before an answer could arrive. It came at last, and Ned almost danced with delight when he read it. We copy one paragraph in it, just to show what kind of a boy he was whom Ned had invited to his house. We shall meet him very shortly, and be in his company a good deal, and one always likes to know something about a fellow before he is introduced to him. The paragraph referred to ran as follows:—

“You must be having jolly times down there, and since I read your letter I have been more than ever dissatisfied with the store. I should be only too glad to visit you, and the want of money is the only thing that stands in my way. It is all that has kept me in Foxboro’ so long. In regard to the governor’s giving me a holiday—I shall not ask him for it, for he would be sure to say ‘No;’ and neither can I write you anything definite about my brother. He is getting to be a regular old sober-sides, and if I am going down there, I would rather he would stay at home.”

The rest of the letter was taken up by the writer in trying to make Ned understand that Gus had fully resolved to visit Texas, and that he should be very much disappointed, if anything happened to keep him at home. He did not say this in so many words, but Ned was smart enough to see that he meant it all the same.

“He shall come,” said Ned, as he folded up the letter and hurried off to find his father. “And I hope he will come alone, for if his brother is getting to be a milk-sop, we don’t want him down here. Now, the next thing is to make father hand over the money.”

This was a task Ned had been dreading ever since he wrote the invitation; but he went about it with an air which said plainly enough that he knew he should succeed. Uncle John objected rather feebly, at first, and said he wasn’t sure that he had any right to spend George’s money in that way; but Ned had an answer to every objection, and stuck to his point until he gained it.

“You mustn’t forget that I may own this property myself some day,” said he. “If George does not live until he is of age, everything falls to me. If that should ever happen, you would think me awful stingy if I should refuse you a paltry hundred dollars.”

Ned certainly talked very glibly about spending his cousin’s money. He had seen the time when, if he chanced to have a hundred cents in his pocket, over and above what his debts amounted to, he considered himself lucky. It was not a paltry sum in his eyes, by any means.

After a little more argument, Ned got a check for the money he wanted, made payable to the order of Gus Robbins. After that he wrote a letter to his friend urging him to come on immediately, put the check into it and mailed it at the first opportunity. Then he was in a fever of excitement and suspense, and wondered if it would be possible for him to live until his friend arrived. He judged that Gus intended to leave home without his father’s knowledge or consent, but Ned did not care for that. Perhaps he would do the same thing himself under like circumstances. True, he often asked himself how Gus could ever muster up courage enough to go home again after doing a thing of that kind, but he always let the question pass with the reflection that it was none of his business. It was a matter that Gus must settle for himself. He waited impatiently for his friend’s coming, little dreaming that his appearance at the rancho would be the signal for the beginning of a series of scrapes and adventures that would put the whole settlement into a turmoil.

CHAPTER IV.
A DISCONTENTED BOY.

“I do think that if there is a mean business in the world, I am engaged in it.”

Gus Robbins suspended for a moment the work of folding up the numerous bolts of calico he had taken down from the shelves for the inspection of a customer who had just departed without purchasing anything, and leaning on the counter, gazed longingly through the glass door into the street. It was a bright winter day. The sleighing was excellent, and the principal thoroughfare of the thriving little city of Foxboro’ was filled with sleighs which dashed by in both directions, carrying loads of gay pleasure-seekers, all of whom, Gus noticed with no little bitterness of heart, seemed to be enjoying themselves to the fullest extent. It was just before the holidays, and everybody seemed to be making unusual preparations for them. The store was filled with customers almost all the time, and Gus had stood in his place behind the counter, and taken down and put up bales of goods until he was almost tired out, and completely disgusted with the store and everything belonging to it. Just now there was a little lull in business, and Gus had a few minutes to himself. He improved them, as he generally improved his moments of leisure, by growling over his hard lot in life, and drawing a contrast between his own situation and that of some of the other boys of his acquaintance in the city.

“There are no such things as peace and pleasure for the unfortunate fellow who makes his bread and butter by clerking in a dry-goods store,” continued Gus, spitefully banging a bolt of calico down upon the counter. “Everybody is happy except me. Other boys are out behind their fast horses having a good time, and here I am shut up in this miserable old store, and have been ever since seven o’clock this morning. This thing is getting to be a little too monotonous, the first thing you know, and I am not going to put up with it much longer. If I had money, I wouldn’t stay in this city twenty-four hours longer. Great Cæsar!”

Gus brought his soliloquy to a sudden close, and the bolt of calico he had picked up to place upon the shelf dropped from his hands. While he was talking to himself he kept his gaze directed toward the street, and saw a red-faced man pass one of the windows and turn toward the door. As he laid his hand upon the knob, somebody in the street accosted him, and the red-faced man turned about and entered into conversation with him. Gus looked at him for a moment, and then ran his eyes hastily around the store as if he were looking for some way of escape.

“He’ll be in here in a second more,” said he, to himself, “and how shall I put him off? I’ve told him so many lies that I shall have to get a fresh stock on hand before I can tell him any more.”

The expression that rested on the boy’s face during the next half-minute, seemed to indicate that he was revolving a very perplexing problem in his mind. Suddenly he brightened up and with another glance at the door, passed rapidly around the counter, and crossed over to the other side of the store, where another clerk was at work folding up some goods.

“I say, Sam,” exclaimed Gus, in a hurried whisper; “will you add another to the long list of favors you have done me?”

“Well, I don’t know,” replied Sam, hesitatingly. “Depends upon what it is. If you want to borrow any more——”

“I don’t,” interrupted Gus. “But Meyers is coming after what I owe him, and there he is now. Tell him that I have gone out and shan’t be back for a week. If you will do that much for me I will repay you——”

Gus did not have time to say how or when he would repay Sam, for at this moment the red-faced man turned half around and placed his hand on the door-knob. Gus quickly ducked his head and stole along behind the counter toward the back part of the store, until he came to a door opening into the warehouse.

He straightened up when he reached this place of refuge, and just as he did so the opening and closing of the front door told him that Mr. Meyers, the Jew who kept the little cigar and tobacco stand around the corner, had entered on one of his regular weekly dunning visits.

“Much good may it do him,” thought Gus, keeping the door open about half an inch so that he could see all that passed in the store. “He is a regular leech, and if I could only settle up with him I’d pay him for his persistency by buying my cigars and fine cut somewhere else.”

The visitor held a long interview with Sam—so long that Gus began to be very impatient, and at last to tremble for fear that his father, who was busy with the books in the office, might come out and find him there. Gus could not hear what they said, but he could see, by Mr. Meyers’s emphatic gestures, that he was very much in earnest about something. As soon as the man left the store, Gus drew a long breath of relief and came out of his hiding-place. The smile on his face showed that he was very much pleased with the success of his little stratagem.

“O, there’s nothing to grin over, old fellow,” said Sam. “If you know when you are well off you will rake fifteen dollars together pretty lively, I tell you.”

“Fifteen dollars!” replied Gus. “I don’t owe him any such sum as that.”

“He’s got a bill made out for it, anyhow.”

“What did you say to him?”

“I told him that you had gone out somewhere on business, and that you would call and pay him to-morrow afternoon.”

“To-morrow afternoon!” echoed Gus. “Great Cæsar! How am I going to raise fifteen dollars between this time and that?”

“I give it up,” replied Sam.

“To-morrow afternoon!” gasped Gus, as visions of a stormy interview with the impatient and angry cigar vendor flitted through his mind.

“Yes; I tried to put him off, but he wouldn’t be put off, so I had to tell him something definite.”

“You had no business to tell him that, at any rate,” snapped Gus. “You know I couldn’t keep that promise.”

“Well, the next time you want any lies told you can just stay in the store and tell them yourself,” retorted Sam. “I shall not do it any more, and you needn’t waste your time and breath in asking me. I have stood between you and your creditors just as long as I am going to; but I’ll tell you one thing: You had better settle with that Jew, or he will go to your father with his bill. Then won’t you be in a fix?”

“Whew!” exclaimed Gus, who was not a little alarmed.

“But remember that my claim is to be settled first,” continued Sam. “You have owed me money longer than you have owed him, and I want you to begin to pony up. I am tired of waiting.”

“You will have plenty of time to get rested again before you get the money, and so will that Jew,” thought Gus, as he turned and walked back to his own counter. “Is it any wonder that I want to get away from here?”

No, it was no wonder that Gus was always in trouble, but he had no one to thank for it but himself. He had a comfortable home, a kind father and mother, and there was more than one boy in the city who would have been glad to change places with him. The great trouble with Gus was, that he would not work if he could help it, and he had no idea of the value of money.

Mr. Robbins, who had once been a poor boy, and who had earned every dollar he possessed by his own unaided efforts, thought that every youth ought to learn how to take care of himself; so as soon as Gus and Bob (that was the name of Gus’s younger brother) had completed the course at the High School, they were placed in the store, given the free use of the money they earned and assured that they would be promoted and their wages increased as fast as their services would warrant. They each received two hundred and fifty dollars a year, and that was fifty dollars more than inexperienced clerks had ever before been paid in that store; but Gus declared that it was but little better than nothing at all. He had some very grand ideas, and was frequently heard to say that he did not intend to be a dry goods’ clerk all his life.

“I don’t want you to be,” said his father, who one day happened to be standing near when Gus made this declaration. “Clerks are necessary, but if you have brains and energy enough to work your way up higher, I shall be only be too glad to see you do it. I hope you will some day be a prosperous merchant; but you never can be unless you know all about business. In order to learn it you must begin at the beginning.”

“And work for two hundred and fifty dollars,” said Gus. “How is a fellow to get rich on that, I’d like to know?”

“By saving; that is the only way.”

“But I have nothing to save. After I drew my wages last month I bought a suit of clothes, and a dollar—just one little dollar—was all I had to show for twenty-six days’ work.”

“And what did you do with that one little dollar?”

“I—I believe I spent it.”

“Of course you did. If you had saved it you would have been just a dollar ahead.”

“And if I saved a dollar every month, I should have just twelve dollars at the end of the year,” said Gus. “That’s a magnificent sum.”

“But you don’t need a suit of new clothes every thirty days, and most of the time you could save more than a dollar a month. The amount of your savings is not so important as it is that you should get in the way of saving something—no matter how small the amount may be. If you begin by saving four dollars every month, you will find it just as easy after a while to save eight; for good habits, like bad ones, grow stronger every day.”

“But I can’t be satisfied to plod along in that way,” said Gus, to himself. “If I could have two or three hundred dollars all in a lump, so that I could buy some things I need, pay all my debts and have a good-sized nest-egg left, I might get up ambition enough to go to saving; but this thing of laying by pennies—Pshaw!”

Mr. Robbins often talked to his boys in this way, and he had finally succeeded in convincing Bob that it was not best to despise the day of small things, and that the surest road to prosperity was the one his father had pointed out. Like his brother, Bob had been in the habit of spending every cent he made, and more, too, if he could get it; but of late he had taken to saving, and now he had grown to be, to quote from Gus, “the very quintessence of meanness.” But he had money in the bank, and being safely out of debt, he was not continually harassed by duns as his brother was. More than that, he got into the way of being very attentive to his work (one good habit leads to another, you know), and before he had been in the store a year he was given entire charge of one branch of his father’s business, and his wages were increased.

This left Gus at the very lowest round of the ladder. He was obliged to open the store in the morning, build the fires and sweep out, and he looked upon this as very degrading work. He grew more negligent and discontented every day, and always made it a point, after the store was closed for the night, to make up for the tiresome hours he had spent behind the counter. He often wished for Ned Ackerman. When the latter was in his father’s employ he had a companion who was always ready to join him in any thing; but Ned was in Texas, Bob had gone back on him, and Gus was very lonely.

Our discontented dry-goods clerk received a very severe blow, and the little ambition he had was all crushed out of him when his younger brother was placed over him. It was a disgrace that he could not put up with, and so he tried to run away from it. There was a news-depôt for sale in the city, and Gus could have purchased it on very advantageous terms, if he had only had the money; but he didn’t have it. Mr. Robbins, who knew more about his son’s habits than Gus thought he did, would not advance it, and so Gus was obliged to stay in the store. Everything seemed to be working against him, and Gus grew desperate. He spent his money as fast as it was paid to him, and when it gave out, he went as deeply in debt as he could go. He had always been able to satisfy his creditors by paying them a little every month; but now they were getting impatient, and were all presenting their bills at once.

“Fifteen dollars!” repeated Gus, as he walked toward his own counter. “To-morrow afternoon!” he murmured, as he chucked one of the bolts of calico spitefully upon the shelf. “Moses! won’t there be a row, unless I can think up some plausible story between this time and that! I must owe at least fifty dollars—almost three months’ wages. I wish I could leave here this very night, and never set eyes on this town again! But how can I get away without money? That’s the question.”

Just then Gus heard something fall on the counter, and looked up to see his brother Bob walking through the store, with a bundle of letters and papers in his hand. He had just returned from the post-office, and had thrown a letter for his brother on the counter, as he passed by.

“Just look at young Dignity!” said Gus, as his brother disappeared through the door that led into the office. “One would think, by the airs he throws on, that he owned the store! Who has been writing to me, I wonder!”

Gus allowed the letter to lie where it had fallen, until he had cleared the counter, folded all the goods and placed them on the shelves, where they belonged. Then he picked it up and glanced at the envelope, fully expecting to recognise the handwriting of some of his creditors, who not unfrequently wrote notes to him, to remind him that there was a little balance due them, which they would be happy to receive at the earliest possible moment that he could make it convenient to hand it to them. But this letter was not from a creditor. It was from Ned Ackerman, the very boy who had been in his thoughts a score of times that day. Gus ran his eyes hastily over the last few lines above the signature, and saw something in them that excited and delighted him.

“Hurrah!” said he to himself. “Plague take it!”

These two exclamations, so different in meaning, were called forth by very different emotions. He had read enough of the letter to learn that his old friend Ned was having a fine time down there in Texas; that he was lonely in spite of it, and wanted Gus and his brother to come on and pay him a long visit; and that the want of money need not prevent them from doing so, for Ned would send them enough to pay their fare and all other expenses. But before Gus could read any farther, he was interrupted by the entrance of two or three ladies, who came up to his counter. They proved to be very exacting, too, and Gus handed down a good many different kinds of cloth for their inspection. He fumed inwardly and used some hard words to himself, while he was doing it, and as soon as the ladies had departed, he caught up his letter and read it through.

“Of course I’ll go,” said he, so delighted with the idea that he hardly knew what he was about; “but Bob shan’t! We don’t want him, and so I’ll say nothing to him about this letter. I shan’t say anything to father either, for he would be sure to tell me to stay at home.”

Gus had found a way out of his troubles at last. He wrote a reply to Ned’s letter that very night, and was as impatient to hear from him again as Ned was to hear from Gus. He made no effort to raise money to pay his debts, and indeed he did not intend to pay them at all. He went to see all his creditors, as soon as he could find time, just to keep them from calling upon him at the store, and by making them some very fair promises, he succeeded in quieting them for a while. When that was done, he breathed easier, and the only thing he had to worry over and feel anxious about was the expected letter from Ned, which he hoped would bring a check for the money he needed, and contain instructions as to the route he was to travel, in order to reach Palos.

“And when I get there I’ll stay,” Gus often told himself. “I shall never come back. I’ve had enough of this miserable life. What will I do and where shall I go after I have finished my visit? I am sure I don’t know. That is a matter I will decide when the time comes. I do hope Ned will have no trouble in raising the money.”

Gus was not disappointed in his hopes. Ned was so anxious to have him there that he did not delay writing, and in due time the looked-for letter arrived. Gus could hardly control his exultation from those around him. He wrote to his friend at once, saying that he would start in a week, and that Ned must make his own calculations as to the time his visitor would reach Palos, as he (Gus) had not she slightest idea how long it would take him to make the journey, and Ned had forgotten to enlighten him on this point.

Gus wanted to wait a week longer in order that he might draw the twenty dollars and more that would then be due him from the store. It was the longest week he had ever lived through, and the hardest too; but it came to an end at last, and pay-day arrived. Gus drew his money when Bob did, and as soon as he had put it into his pocket, he slipped out the back door into an alley that ran behind the store, and started for home. He made his way to the room in which he and Bob slept, opened his trunk with a key he took from his pocket, deposited his money therein and took out the check which he had kept locked up in the trunk ever since it arrived.

“It is time to get this cashed now,” said he. “I put it off until the last moment because I didn’t want to give anybody a chance to talk about it. I don’t know what the cashier will think when I present it at the bank, and I don’t care either, if he will only give me the money. I hope Sam will have a good time getting what I owe him. He was waiting at the office door to catch me when I came out, and that was the reason I slipped into the alley.”

Gus locked his trunk, put the key and check carefully away in his pocket and hurriedly left the house. Time was precious (he had less than half an hour left in which to eat his dinner and return to the store) and he made all the haste he could. He was particularly anxious to get through with his business at the bank, for he had been dreading it all the week. What would the folks in there think when he approached the cashier’s desk and presented a check for a hundred dollars? He ran up the steps while he was thinking about it, and almost into the arms of the very person he most wished to avoid just then—the one who had waited to dun him when he came out of his father’s office. Sam had drawn his month’s wages and came to the bank to deposit them.

“Hallo!” exclaimed Sam. “Where did you go in such a hurry after you drew your money? I didn’t see you come out of the office.”

“But I did come out, you see; for if I had stayed in, I couldn’t be here, could I?”

“Hold on,” said Sam, as Gus tried to push him aside so that he could enter the door. “This is a good time to settle up.”

“I will settle with you this afternoon, sure pop,” returned Gus.

“Why can’t you do it now? You have got your money, for I saw you draw it.”

“I know it, but I haven’t got it now. I’ll be on hand this evening—sure.”

“You said this afternoon,” answered Sam, looking suspiciously at Gus.

“Well, this afternoon, then.”

So saying, Gus crowded past Sam and went into the bank. To his great relief there was no one in front of the cashier’s desk; no one present to see him receive his hundred dollars. With a beating heart and trembling hand he produced his check, and breathed a good deal easier when he saw that the cashier did not exhibit any surprise at its magnitude. He was in hopes that the man would be in a hurry about cashing it, but instead of that he was very deliberate in his movements. He looked at the check on all sides and then he looked at Gus.

“Who is this John Ackerman?” he asked.

“He used to be father’s book-keeper, you know,” said Gus.

“O, yes! Do you want us to collect this for you?”

“No, sir; I want the money on it now.”

“All right,” said the cashier, handing the check over the counter. “Write your name across the back of it, and then take it home and let your father sign it.”

“My father!” exclaimed Gus. “Not much. I mean—what do you want his signature for?” he added hastily, and in great confusion, for the cashier looked at him as if he were somewhat surprised at his earnestness.

“To make ourselves secure,” said the cashier, by way of explanation. “You see, Gus, this check is drawn by John Ackerman on the Planters’ Bank of Austin, Texas. He may have funds there, but he has none here, and neither have you; and it is our rule in such cases to require an endorsement other than that of the payee. You are the payee, you know—the one to whom the check is made payable. Your father will sign it.”

Gus felt like giving vent to his astonishment and rage in a series of the wildest kind of yells, and it was all he could do to choke back his tears. As soon as he had controlled himself so that he could speak, he said:

“I don’t want to ask my father to endorse it. This is my own private affair, and I don’t want you to say anything about it.”

“Of course not. We never talk about our business matters.”

“How long will it take to collect it?”

“Well, Austin is a long distance from here, and it will take two or three weeks at least.”

“Great Cæsar!” was Gus’s mental exclamation. “Can I stand it to stay in the store so much longer? Very well,” he said aloud, “I shall have to ask you to collect it for me, if that is the best I can do.”

Gus turned about and walked out of the bank like one in a dream. He had never in his life before been so badly disappointed. The reflection that if he remained in the store a month longer, and could save all the money he earned in that time, he would have twenty dollars more to be added to the sum he already possessed, did not encourage him in the least. He wanted his liberty more than he wanted a month’s wages, and besides he was by no means sure that he would be able to save what he earned. If his creditors became weary of having their debts paid by promises, and presented their bills to his father, Gus knew that they would be promptly settled, and that he could not draw a cent at the end of the month. He turned these matters over in his mind while he was eating his dinner, and the longer he pondered upon them the more he felt like yelling. There were no customers in the store when he returned, but Sam was leaning over the counter waiting for him.

CHAPTER V.
THE CLERK’S RUSE.

“I was in hopes we should be kept so busy this afternoon that Sam wouldn’t have a chance to speak to me,” thought Gus, as he made his way to the office and hung up his hat and overcoat, “but it is just my luck. If I wanted a few minutes rest the store would be so full of customers that you couldn’t crowd a ramrod in among them.”

“Well?” said Sam, when the boy came out of the office and took his place behind the counter.

“Well,” answered Gus, “I can’t pay you this month. I have had so many calls that my money is all used up. Twenty dollars don’t go far, you know.”

Sam’s face grew black at once. “Didn’t I tell you that my claim was to be settled first?” he demanded, angrily.

“Yes; but what am I to do when a man stops me in the street and tells me that if I don’t pay up then and there, he will see my father about it before I am an hour older?” asked Gus.

“Put him off with promises, as you do me. Who stopped you on the street?”

“That Jew.”

“Did you pay him?”

“I did—not.” The last word Gus said to himself.

“Well, you still have five dollars left. Hand that over and I will give you credit for it.”

“But I haven’t got it. I paid that out, too.”

Sam whistled softly to himself and drummed with his fingers on the counter for a moment; then he drew a sheet of white wrapping-paper toward him and pulled a pencil from his pocket. The pencil moved rapidly over the paper for a few seconds, and after Sam had read what he had written, he crossed over to Gus’s side of the store and laid before him the following:—

Please pay Samuel Holmes Twelve Dollars out of my next month’s wages, and charge the same to my account.”

“There, Gus,” said he, “sign that, and I shall begin to believe that I stand a chance of getting the money I lent you to help you out of a tight place.”

“Twelve dollars!” exclaimed Gus. “I borrowed only ten.”

“But I don’t lend money for nothing,” replied Sam, “and besides I must have something to pay me for waiting so long, and for the trouble I have had in collecting it.”

Gus took a minute to think about it, then seized the pencil and wrote his name at the bottom of the order. Sam thrust it into his pocket and putting on his hat left the store.

“I don’t run any risk by that,” said Gus to himself. “Sam will not present the order before the 1st of March, and by that time, if things work as I hope they will, I shall be a good many miles from here. What miserable luck some fellows do have in this world, anyhow. I thought I should have no trouble in getting the money on that check to-day. Where has Sam gone, I wonder?”

As Gus asked himself this question an expression of alarm settled on his face. He ran quickly to the door, and looking down the street saw that Sam was just disappearing in the cigar store on the corner. The boy’s heart began to beat a little faster, for he knew now, as well as he did five minutes later, what it was that took Sam to Mr. Meyers’s place of business. He stood in the door until Sam came out, and then he retreated behind his counter and employed himself in straightening up the goods on the shelves.

“Gus,” said Sam, when he had hung his hat in its accustomed place, “lie, number one thousand and one, is nailed. Meyers says he hasn’t seen you to-day.”

“Suppose he hasn’t!” snapped Gus, who had been caught in so many falsehoods that he had become used to it.

“Why don’t you tell the truth once in a while?” continued Sam; “say once a week, or even once a month, if you can’t stand it any oftener. You will get so, pretty soon, that nobody will believe a word you say.”

“Why don’t you keep from sticking your nose into matters that don’t concern you?” exclaimed Gus, angrily.

“This matter does concern me. Now, I want to know what has become of that money you drew to-day.”

“It is none of your business. Do you understand that?”

“Yes, I understand it,” said Sam, so quietly that Gus looked at him in surprise.

“Then you may as well understand another thing, while you are about it,” continued the latter, “and that is, that from this time out you are to attend to your own affairs and let me entirely alone. What I do with my money is none of your business.”

“I generally do attend to my own affairs,” replied Sam, “and I shall attend to yours in a way you don’t think of. You haven’t started for Texas, yet!”

Gus jumped as if he had been shot. He could hardly bring himself to believe that he had heard aright. He had guarded his secret as closely as a boy could. Having no intimate friend to assist him in keeping it, he had not lisped a word of it to anybody; but it had leaked out after all, and Sam seemed to know all about it.

“Tex——” said Gus, drawing a long breath and leaning heavily on the counter, “as!”

“Yes! You have laid your plans to skip out and leave us all in the lurch, but you shan’t do it! I must have what you owe me first; and when you get the money on that check, I will tell you how much I want of it to pay me for the trouble of keeping your secret. I know you didn’t get the money to-day.”

“How do you know that?” stammered Gus, growing more and more astonished and bewildered.

“That’s my business!” was the satisfactory reply.

Just then a customer came in and moved up to Sam’s side of the store, and this gave Gus an opportunity to collect his scattered wits, and think over what Sam had just told him. How in the world had the latter learned his secret? was a question that Gus asked himself over and over again, but without finding any satisfactory answer. It was too deep a mystery for him to solve just then, for he was so utterly confounded that he could not think at all.

“You haven’t started for Texas yet,” and “when you get the money on that check, I will tell you how much I want of it to pay me for the trouble of keeping your secret,” were the words that were constantly passing through the boy’s mind, and he could not drive them out long enough to decide what he ought to do. If he had any means of finding out just how much Sam knew, he might be able to make up his mind to something.

“But I don’t see how I am to find that out,” thought Gus, walking nervously up and down the store, “for of course he won’t tell me, if I ask him. The whole thing bangs me completely. I know I haven’t said a word that would lead him or anybody else to suspect anything; but he has got hold of it somehow, and wants a part of my hundred dollars to pay him for keeping his mouth shut. He shan’t have it! No matter what happens, he shan’t have it, for I don’t know how much I shall need to pay my expenses.”

Both the clerks were kept busy that afternoon, Gus at his counter and Sam in unpacking and arranging a new supply of goods that arrived about one o’clock. Gus could not keep his mind on his work, for he was continually thinking about this last piece of bad luck, and wondering how he should go to work to “pump” Sam, in order to find out just how much the latter knew about his contemplated movements. Once during the afternoon, when the store was clear of customers, he had occasion to pass through the warehouse, where Sam was at work, breaking open the boxes in which the new goods were packed. The latter was at work in his shirt-sleeves, and his coat lay wrong side out upon one of the boxes. As Gus passed by it, something caught his eye. He noticed that there were several letters sticking out of the inside pocket of the coat, and that they were all enclosed in brown envelopes, except one. That envelope was white, and there was something about it that looked familiar. Gus drew nearer to it, and was astonished almost beyond measure to see that it bore his own name in Ned Ackerman’s handwriting!

The whole mystery was made perfectly plain to Gus at once. The letter in question was the last he had received from his friend in Texas—the one in which the check was sent. On the day it arrived, Gus had kept it by him all the afternoon, devoting every leisure moment to reading it, and, instead of taking it home with him at night, as he meant to have done, and as he thought he had done, he left it on the long shelf behind his counter, and Sam had found it there. He had been mean enough to read it, too; and then, instead of putting it back where he found it, he kept it, intending to use it to extort money from Gus.

And right here, we may add something that the reader ought to know, and that Gus never found out. When Sam met Gus going into the bank, his suspicions were aroused, and he stood in front of the window and watched his movements. He thought that Gus was going to deposit the wages he had just received, instead of paying up his debts, as he ought to have done; but when he saw him present the check, mentioned in the letter he had stolen, Sam knew that Gus was making arrangements to leave the city very shortly. He saw that Gus did not receive the money, and that he did not bring the check out with him; so it must have been left in the bank for collection.

The rest of the boy’s plans Sam guessed at. He knew that Gus was very discontented; that he thought he would rather follow any business in the world than his own; that he imagined he would be happier anywhere on earth than he was in Foxboro’; that Mr. Robbins would never permit his son to go to Texas on a visit, especially to meet such a fellow as Ned Ackerman, whose influence over his associates was always a bad one. Sam knew all these things, and by putting them together, he arrived at a conclusion which we know to be the correct one.

“That’s Sam’s game,” thought Gus, swelling with indignation. “He intends to hold that letter over me as a sort of whip to make me do just as he says; but it’ll not succeed. He knows everything, and I must mind what I am about. The first thing I do will be to take what belongs to me.”

Gus came a step nearer to the box, intending to snatch the letter and walk off with it, leaving Sam to help himself if he could; but after an instant’s reflection he decided to adopt a different course. It would not be wise, he thought, to bring on an open rupture with Sam, for the latter might pay him back by telling his employer about his son’s Texas scheme, and that was something that must be kept from his father’s ears at all hazards.

“That would never do,” said Gus, as these thoughts passed through his mind. “I must wait until he turns his back.”

This Sam was accommodating enough to do in a very few minutes. As soon as he had taken an armful of bales out of the box he had just opened, he picked them up, carried them into the store and laid them on the counter. He was gone scarcely more than half a minute, but that was all the time Gus needed to accomplish his object. He seized the letter, thrust it into his own pocket and walked out into the store, feeling as though a heavy load had been removed from his shoulders. He fully expected that Sam would make trouble for him very shortly, and he prepared himself for it; but Sam did nothing of the kind. When he discovered his loss he probably thought that he had mislaid the letter or that it had dropped out of his pocket. At any rate he said nothing to Gus about it.

Gus wrote a long letter to Ned that night, telling him of all the bad luck that had befallen him of late, and describing his plans for the future, and then he settled back into his old monotonous life again. The store had never looked so dreary and uninviting as it did now, and neither had his work ever been so distasteful to him. Gus never could have endured it, so he told himself more than once, if he had not been sustained and encouraged by the belief that it would end in a very few days, and that when once he was away from home and could do as he pleased, he would have fun enough to make up for all the gloomy hours he had spent behind the counter.

After the second week had passed Gus made it a point to call at the bank every few days to see if his check had been heard from, and when he came out he always found that Sam, who went to his meals at the same time Gus did, was loitering on the sidewalk in front of the window.

“Let him watch,” thought Gus, who grew angry whenever he caught even the smallest glimpse of Sam. “If I am not smart enough to outwit him I ought to lose every cent of that money.”

“I wonder what’s the matter?” thought Sam, when he saw Gus go into the bank and come out again with the very long face he always wore when he was disappointed. “They ought certainly to have heard from that check by this time. Well, there’s one thing about it: Gus can’t get the money without my knowing it, because the only time he can get into the bank is when he goes to his dinner, and I shall always be on hand to watch him.”