THE BROTHERS.
"Toot! toot! t-o-ot!"
This was the third time the horn had been blown--first warningly, then
persuasively, and at last angrily.
The hunters on the other side of the river, who had been trying for
more than twenty minutes to bring the ferryman over to them, were
beginning to get impatient. So was Joe Morgan, the ferryman's youngest
son--a sturdy, sun-browned boy of fifteen, who stood in the flat,
holding one of the heavy sweeps in his hand, all ready to shove off.
He looked toward the men on the opposite shore, and then he looked at
his brother, who sat on the bank, with his elbows on his knees and his
chin resting on his hands.
"There's eighty cents in that load," said Joe, who was in a great hurry
to respond to the angry blasts of the horn. "If they get tired of
waiting, and go down to the bridge, we shall be just that much out of
pocket."
"Let 'em go, if they want to," replied the boy on the bank, in a lazy,
indifferent tone. "There's no law to hinder 'em that I know of. Pap
don't seem to be in no great hurry, and neither be I. I'm sick and
tired of pulling that heavy flat over the river every time anybody
takes a fool notion into his head to toot that horn. Some day I'll get
mad and sink it so deep that it can't never be found again--I will so!"
"Now, Dan, what's the use of talking that way?" exclaimed Joe,
impatiently. "You know well enough that as long as we run the ferry,
we must hold ourselves in readiness to serve any one who may call upon
us; and if you should destroy the flat, we would have to get another or
give up the business."
"And that's just what I want to do," answered Dan.
"Then how would we make a living?"
"Easy enough. Can't we all shoot birds and rabbits when the season's
open, and snare 'em when it's shut? And can't mother earn a dollar
every day by washing for them rich--"
"Dan, I'm ashamed of you," interrupted Joe. "What mother wants is rest,
and not more work. Come on; what's the use of being so lazy? You've got
to make a start some time or other."
But Dan made no move, and Joe, who was very much disgusted with his
brother's obstinacy, threw down the sweep, sprang ashore and ran up the
bank toward the little board cabin that stood at the top.
Finding that the door would not open for him, Joe ran around the corner
of the building, and looked in at a convenient window, just in time
to catch his father in the act of thrusting a letter into his pocket.
The ferryman's face was flushed, and his movements were nervous and
hurried. The boy saw at a glance that he was greatly excited about
something.
"As long as I have been acquainted with him, I never knew him to get
a letter before," said Joe to himself. "He has heard some very good
or some very bad news, for he is so upset that he doesn't seem to know
what he is about."
"I heard 'em blowing, Joey," said Silas, without waiting for the boy to
speak, "and now we'll go and bring 'em over. Thank goodness, I won't
have to follow this mean business much longer. I don't like it, Joey. I
wasn't born to wait on other folks, and I'm going to quit it."
"Then you will have to quit ferrying," said Joe, as he followed his
father down the bank.
"That's just what I intend to do," answered Silas, and then the boy
noticed that there was a triumphant smile on his face, and that he
rubbed his hands together as if he were thinking about something that
afforded him the greatest satisfaction. "I've got an idee into my head,
and if I don't make the folks around here look wild some of these days,
I'm a goat," added the ferryman.
And then he raised a yell to let the men on the other side of the
river know that he had at last made up his mind to respond to their
signals. But before he did so, he shaded his eyes with his hand, and
took a good look at the group on the opposite bank, after which he
walked around the cabin, snapping his fingers as he went. This was a
signal to the dogs that it was time for them to retire from public gaze
for a short season; in other words, to go into a miserable lean-to
behind the cabin, which Silas called a wood-shed, and stay there until
the hunters, who were now on the other side of the river, should have
passed out of sight. They went in in obedience to a sign from the
ferryman, and the latter closed the door and put a stick of cord-wood
against it to hold it in place.
"If them setter brutes was a present to pap, like he says they was,
it's mighty comical to me why he takes so much trouble to hide 'em
every time some of them city shooters comes along and toot that horn,"
soliloquized Dan, as he slowly, almost painfully, arose from the
ground, and, after much stretching and yawning, followed his father
and brother down the bank toward the flat. "He says he's scared that
somebody will take a notion to 'em and steal 'em; but that's all in my
one eye, 'cording to my way of thinking. Now, I'll just tell him this
for a fact. If he don't quit being so stingy with the money I help him
earn with this ferry, I'll bust up the plans he's got into his head
about them dogs--I will so. I wonder what's come over him all of a
sudden? Here he's been clear up the mounting and come back with only an
armful of wood on his wagon, and he don't generally whoop in that there
good-natured way, less'n he's got something on his mind."
That was true enough. The ferryman's replies to the hails that came to
him from over the river, usually sounded more like the complaints of a
surly bear than anything else to which we can compare them. The tone
in which they were uttered seemed to say, "I'll come because I can't
help myself," and he was so long about it, and made himself so very
disagreeable in the presence of his passengers, that those who knew him
would often go ten miles out of their way to reach a bridge rather than
put a dime into his pocket. But on this particular morning, his voice
rang out so cheerily that it attracted Joe's attention as well as
Dan's.
Silas was always good-natured when he had something besides his poverty
to think about, and Joe would have known that his father had some new
idea in his head, even if he had not said a word about it.
"Lively, Dannie!" exclaimed Silas, seizing the steering-oar and pushing
the flat away from the bank. "Put in your very best licks, 'cause there
won't none of us have to follow this miserable business much longer.
There'll be a day when we won't have to go and come at everybody's beck
and call, and that day ain't so very far away neither."
The two boys took their places at the sweeps, and the flat moved out
into the river. Joe did his best to make a quick passage, as he always
did, while the lazy Dan, who had the current in his favor, merely put
his oar into the water and took it out again, without exerting himself
in the least. His father's hopeful and encouraging words did not infuse
a particle of energy into him. He had heard him talk that way too
often.
"It ain't right that we should be so poor, while other folks, who never
did a hand's turn in their lives, have got more than they know what
to do with," continued Silas, as he dropped the steering-oar into the
water. "I've got just as much right to have money, and the fine things
that money'll buy, as anybody has, and I'm going to have 'em, too. I
ain't going to live like the pigs in the gutter no longer. Just think
of the hundreds and thousands of dollars that's spent down to the Beach
every summer by the city chaps who come there to loaf! _I_ can't lay
around under the shade of the trees or swing in a hammock just 'cause
the weather's hot. I've got to work. I've got to cut cord-wood in
winter and run this ferry during the summer, in order to make a living;
but other fellows can stay around and do nothing, just 'cause they've
got money. I say again, that such things ain't right."
"It makes me savage every time I go down to the Beach," chimed in Dan,
"when I see them city folks, who ain't a cent's worth better than I be,
wearing their good clothes, and walking around with their fine guns
and fish-poles on their shoulders--"
"Like them over there," said his father, nodding his head toward the
bank, which was now but a short distance away.
Dan faced about on his seat, and took a good look at the party in
question.
There were ninety cents in the load instead of eighty. There were three
sportsmen in brown hunting-suits, who were walking restlessly about as
if they did not know what to do with themselves, and they had a double
team, with a negro to drive it.
With them were half a dozen setters and pointers, which were exercising
their muscles by racing up and down the bank.
The sight of the negro set the ferryman's tongue in motion again, while
the good clothes the strangers wore had about the same effect upon Dan
that a piece of red cloth is supposed to have upon a pugnacious turkey
gobbler.
"More 'ristocrats!" sneered Silas. "Why don't they drive their own
team?"
"Probably they don't want to," replied Joe. "Besides, they are able to
hire some one to drive it for them."
"Of course they are!" exclaimed Silas, who was angry in an instant.
"But I ain't able to hire a nigger to run this ferry for me. I say that
such a state of things ain't right."
"Well, it isn't their fault, is it?" said Joe.
"I didn't say it was," snapped his father. "It ain't my fault, neither,
that I haven't got as much money as the richest of them, but it will
be my fault if I don't have it before the season's over. They're going
after woodcock," added Silas, who was a market-shooter as well as a
ferryman and wood-cutter. "I would like to bet them something that they
won't get enough birds to pay them for crossing the river. I've got all
the covers pretty well cleaned out."
"Them's the sort of fellers I despise," said Dan, turning around on his
seat and resuming his work at the sweep--or, rather, his pretence of
it. "The money them dogs cost would keep me in the best kind of grub
and clothes for a whole year. Just look at the clothes they've got on,
and then cast your eye at these I've got on. Dog-gone such luck! I hope
they won't get nothing, and if they should hire me for a guide, I would
take good care to lead them where such a bird as a woodcock wasn't
never seen."
"Perhaps they don't need a guide," said Joe. "Because they wear good
clothes and own fine dogs, it is no sign that they don't know woodcock
ground or a snipe bog when they see it, as well as you do. Perhaps they
are all better hunters and wing-shots than you ever dare be."
"Not much they ain't," exclaimed Dan, who got fighting mad whenever his
brother threw out a hint of this kind. "I can beat any feller who wears
them kind of clothes; and as for them fine dogs of their'n, I'll take
Bony and get more partridges in a day than they can shoot in a week."
"Well, then, why ain't you satisfied? What are you growling about?"
"'Cause they're 'ristocrats--that's what I'm growling about," answered
Dan, looking savagely across the flat at his brother, while Silas
nodded a silent but hearty approval. "I am getting tired of seeing so
much style every day, while I am so poor that I can't hardly raise
money enough to buy powder and shot, and some fine day I'll bust up
some of these hunting parties. I've got just as much right to see fun
as they have."
"So you have, Dannie," said his father. "There ain't no sense in the
way things go in this world anyway, and I am glad to see you kick agin
it. I have always told you, that I would be better off some day, and I
have hit upon the very idee at last. Me and you will stick together,
and I'll warrant that we will make more money than Joe does by toadying
to these 'ristocrats who come here to take the bread out of our mouths,
by shooting the game that rightfully belongs to us."
"I don't toady to anybody," replied Joe, with some spirit. "I am glad
of the chances they give me to earn something now and then, and I am
sure we need it bad enough."
"I have thought up a way to get more out of them than you do, and the
first good chance I get I am going to try it on," observed Dan. "I
won't go halvers with you, neither, and you needn't expect me to. You
never give me a cent."
"Of course I don't. You are as able to make something for yourself as I
am to make it for you. Mother gets all I earn."
By this time the flat was within a few lengths of the shore, and the
crew were obliged to give their entire attention to the sweeps, in
order to make a landing. The ferryman, who up to this time had been
in a state of nervousness and expectancy, now began to act more like
himself--that is to say, he greeted his passengers with an angry scowl,
and gave them about as much polite attention as he would have bestowed
upon so many bags of corn.
He had kept his gaze fastened upon them, and he was both relieved and
disappointed to discover that the owner of the dogs that were shut up
in his woodshed was not among them.
At the proper moment the "apron"--a movable gangway which could be
raised and lowered at pleasure--was dropped upon the bank, and in five
minutes more the team and the passengers were all aboard, and the flat
was moving back across the river.