BROTHERLY LOVE.
"I don't wonder that you look like you was half tickled to death," was
the way in which Dan began the conversation with his brother. "Did you
ever dream that me and you would have such amazing good luck as has
come to us this day? Now, let me tell you, it bangs me completely.
Don't it you?"
Joe did not know how to reply to this. He had seldom seen Dan in so
high spirits, and he could not imagine what he was referring to when he
spoke of the good luck that had fallen to both of them.
"Say--don't it bang you?" repeated Dan. "Ain't me and you going to live
like the richest of them this winter?"
"You and I?" said Joe, with no suspicion of the truth in his mind.
"That's what I remarked," exclaimed Dan, who could hardly keep from
dancing in the excess of his joy. "I tell you, Joe," he added,
confidentially, "if there's anything in life I take pleasure in, it's
living in the woods during the winter, when you've got a tight roof to
shelter you and plenty of firewood to burn, so't you don't have to go
through the deep snow to cut it. That's what I call living, that is."
"I don't see how you happen to know so much about it. You never tried
it."
"I know I never did; but didn't I tell you almost the very first word I
said, that I'm going to try it this winter?"
"Oh!" said Joe, who now thought he began to understand the matter. "Are
you going to be Mr. Hallet's game-warden?"
"Perzackly. You've hit centre the first time trying."
"Then I wonder why Mr. Warren did not say something to me about it."
And there was still another thing that caused Joe to wonder, although
he made no reference to it. How did it come that Mr. Hallet, who knew
how persistently Dan broke the law in regard to snaring birds and
hares, and shooting out of season--how did it come that he had selected
this poacher to act as his game-warden? He might as well have hired a
wolf to watch his sheep.
"Now wait till I tell you," said Dan hastily. "The thing ain't quite
settled yet, 'cause I ain't had no time to run down and see old man
Hallet; but--"
"Aha!" exclaimed Joe.
"There ain't no 'aha' about it," cried Dan, who was angry in an
instant. "Wait till I tell you. I ain't been down to see old man Hallet
yet, but I'm going directly, and I'm going to say to him that if he
wants somebody to keep an eye on them birds of his'n, I'm the man he's
looking for. He'll be glad to take me, of course, 'cause if there's any
one in the whole country who knows all about a game-warden's business,
its me. But if he can't take me--if he has picked out another man
before I get a chance to speak to him--me and you will go halvers on
them hundred and twenty, won't we?"
"No, we won't," replied Joe, promptly.
"What for, won't we?" demanded Dan.
"For a good many reasons. In the first place, Mr. Warren seems to think
that he needs but one warden, and that I can do all the work myself."
"Well, you can't, and you shan't, neither," Dan almost shouted.
And in order to show his brother how very much in earnest he was about
it, he struck up a war-dance, and called loudly for somebody to hold
him on the ground.
"And in the next place," continued Joe, who had witnessed these
ebullitions of rage often enough to know that they never ended in
anything more serious than an unnecessary expenditure of breath and
strength on Dan's part--"in the next place, every cent I make this
winter will go to mother, with the exception of the little I shall need
to clothe myself."
"I'll bet you a good hoss that it don't," roared Dan, who was so angry
that it was all he could do to keep from laying violent hands upon his
brother. "Now let me tell you what's the gospel truth, Joe Morgan: If
you don't go pardners with me in this business, I'll bust up the whole
thing. If I don't get half them hundred and twenty dollars, you shan't
have a cent to bless yourself with. I've been kicked and slammed around
till I am tired of it, and I ain't going to ask my consent to stand it
no longer."
"If you want money, go to work and earn it for yourself," said Joe.
"You can't have any of mine."
"I'll show you whether I will or not. Now, let me tell you: I'll make
more out of them birds this winter than you will. You're awful smart,
but you'll find that there are them in the world that are just as smart
as you be."
"I know what you mean by that," answered Joe, who had fully made up
his mind to see trouble with Dan. "Now let me tell _you_ something: If
I catch you on Mr. Warren's grounds after I take charge of them, you
will wish you had stayed away, mind that. I took this position because
mother needs money, and having accepted it, I shall look out for my
employer's interests the best I know how. But why do you go against me
in this way? You ought to help me all you can."
"Then why don't you help me?" retorted Dan.
"You don't need it. You are able to help yourself, because you have no
one else to look out for."
"Then I won't help you, neither. You want to keep a close watch over
that shanty of your'n, or the first thing you know, you will come back
to it some dark, cold night, almost froze to death, and it won't be
there."
Joe walked off without making any reply, and Dan stood shaking his
fists at him until he disappeared. Then he turned about to find himself
face to face with his father, to whom he told his story, not forgetting
to make a few artful additions, which he hoped would have the effect of
making the ferryman as angry at Joe as he was himself.
A disinterested listener would have thought that Joe was the meanest
brother any fellow ever had, and that Dan was deserving of better
treatment at his hands.
"Now, I just want you to tell me what you think of that," said Dan,
as he brought his highly-seasoned narrative to a close. "He's a most
scandalous stingy chap, that Joe of our'n is. He wants to keep his good
things all to himself. And--would you believe it, pap, if I didn't tell
you?--he said he would as soon shoot your dog or mine as look at 'em,
and that if we come fooling around where he was, he'd have us tooken
up, sure pop."
Silas Morgan's eyes flashed, and an angry scowl settled on his swarthy
face.
Dan was succeeding famously in his efforts to arouse his father's ire
against the unoffending Joe--at least he thought so--and he hoped to
increase it until it broke out into some violent demonstration.
"Them's his very words, pap," continued Dan, with unblushing mendacity.
"Since he took up with that rich man awhile ago, he has outgrowed his
clothes, and me and you ain't good enough for him. Me and Joe could
have had just the nicest kind of times up there in the woods, and by
doing a little extry work on the sly, we could have snared enough of
old man Warren's birds, and Hal--um!"
Dan caught his breath just in time. He was about to say that he and
Joe could have snared enough of Mr. Warren's birds and Hallet's to run
the amount of their joint earnings up to two hundred dollars; but he
suddenly remembered that his father was not yet aware that Mr. Hallet's
covers had been freshly stocked, and that _that_ was a matter that was
to be kept from his knowledge, so that Dan could have the field to
himself.
But the ferryman was quick to catch some things, if he was dull in
comprehending others, and Dan had inadvertently given him an idea to
ponder over at his leisure.
"But then I don't care for such trifling things as birds any more,"
said Silas to himself. "If Hallet has been fooling away his money for
more pa'tridges, Dan can have the fun of shooting 'em, if he wants it;
and while he is tramping around through the cold looking for 'em, I'll
be snug and warm at home, living like a lord on the money I took out of
that cave up there in the mountings. What was you saying, Dannie?"
"I said that me and Joe could have made right smart by doing a little
trapping on the quiet," answered Dan. "But he wouldn't hear to my going
up there to live with him. What's grub enough for one is grub enough
for two, and I could have had piles of things that come from old man
Warren's table, and never cost you a red cent the whole winter. More
than that, being on the ground all the while, it wouldn't be no trouble
at all for me to knock over one of them deer now and then, and that
would save you from buying so much bacon; but that mean Joe of our'n
he wouldn't hear to it, and now I'm going to knock all his 'rangements
higher'n the moon."
"What be you going to do, Dannie?" Silas asked, in a voice so calm
and steady that the boy backed off a step or two and looked at him
suspiciously.
Was his father about to side with Joe? Dan was really afraid of it,
and his voice did not have that resolute ring in it when he answered:
"I'm going to set some snares up there where Joe won't never think of
looking for them, and by the time Christmas gets here I'll have every
one of them English birds in the market and sold for cash."
The ferryman thrust one hand deep into his pocket, and shook the other
menacingly at Dan.
"Look a-here, son," said he, in a tone which he never assumed unless he
meant that his words should carry weight with them, "you just keep away
from old man Warren's woods, and let them English birds be. Are you
listening to your pap?"
"What for?" Dan almost gasped.
"'Cause why; that's what for," was the not very satisfactory answer.
"You want to pay right smart heed to what I'm saying to you, 'cause if
you don't, I'll wear a hickory out over your back, big as you think you
be."
"Well, if this ain't a trifle the beatenest thing I ever heard of, I
don't want a cent," began Dan, who was utterly amazed. "Do you want
them--that rich feller to have all the fine shooting to himself?"
"That ain't what I'm thinking about just now," replied the ferryman. "I
want Joe to earn them hundred and twenty dollars; see the p'int?"
"Not all of it?" exclaimed Dan.
"Yes, every cent."
"Can't I make him go pardners with me?"
"No, you can't. I want Joe to have the handling of it all."
"Then you won't never see none of it; you can bet high on that."
"Yes, I reckon I'll see the whole of it. You and Joe ain't twenty-one
year old yet, and the law gives me the right to take every cent you
make."
For a moment Dan stood speechless with rage and astonishment; but
quickly recovering the use of his tongue, he squared himself for a
fight, and demanded furiously:
"And is that the reason you never give me a red for breaking my back
with that ferry? Whoop! hold me on the ground, somebody!"
"If I had a good hickory in my hands, I reckon I could very soon make
you willing to hold yourself on the ground," said his father, calmly.
"Whoop!" yelled Dan, jumping into the air, and knocking his heels
together. "This bangs me; don't it you? The men who was here just now
said you was one nuisance, and Hobson was another; and I am so glad
that the business is clean busted up, that--"
Silas suddenly thrust out one of his long arms, but his fingers closed
upon the empty air instead of upon Dan's collar. The boy escaped his
grasp by ducking his head like a flash, and then he straightened up and
took to his heels.