DAN IS SCARED.
When Mr. Warren's newly-appointed game-warden turned away from Dan and
went on down the road to meet his mother, he left behind him one of the
maddest boys that had ever been seen in that part of the country.
In spite of all he had said to the contrary, Dan had no intention of
asking Mr. Hallet to employ him to watch his birds and keep trespassers
out of his wood-lot, for he knew very well that if he proffered such a
request he would be met by a prompt and emphatic refusal.
Mr. Hallet was too well acquainted with his poaching propensities to
give his imported game into his keeping, and Dan was painfully aware of
the fact.
What he wanted more than anything else was that his brother should
accept him as a partner, so that he could handle half the earnings,
while Joe did all the work and shouldered all the responsibility; that
was the plain English of it. But Joe was resolved to paddle his own
canoe, and more than that, he had threatened to call upon a powerful
friend to make Dan behave himself, if he didn't see fit to do it of his
own free will.
"I've got be mighty sly about what I do," thought Dan, resting his
elbows on his knees and looking down at the ground, after kicking Bony
out of his way. "Don't it beat you when you think of the luck that
comes to some fellers, while others, who are just as good as they be,
and who work just as hard, can't make things go right no way they can
fix it? I tell you it bangs me. I ought to have help to drive that Joe
of our'n out of them woods, for, to tell you what's the gospel truth, I
don't quite like the idee of facing him alone. I can't fight agin him
and pap, with old man Warren throwed in."
While Dan was talking to himself in this way, he stretched his leg out
before him and drew from his pocket the letter he had found in front
of the door of the wood-shed. He little dreamed what an astounding
revelation it contained. He had not the slightest idea where it came
from, and neither could he have told why he picked it up.
He proceeded to examine it now, simply because he had nothing else to
occupy his mind, except his many and bitter disappointments, and he had
already expressed himself very feelingly in regard to them.
With great deliberation Dan spread the letter upon his knee, and, with
a caution which had become habitual to him, looked up and down the road
to make sure that there was no one in sight. Then he addressed himself
to the task of reading the "notis" that was scrawled upon the envelope;
but no sooner had he, with infinite difficulty, spelled out all the
words in it, than the letter fell from his nerveless fingers, and Dan
jumped to his feet and whooped and yelled like a wild Indian.
"Now don't it bang you what mean luck some fellers do have? Here's a--"
Dan checked himself very suddenly when he became aware that he was
shouting out these words with all the power of his lungs. Filled with
apprehension he looked up and down the road again, but as there was no
one in sight, he resumed his seat and went on with his soliloquy; but
this time he spoke in a much lower tone of voice.
"There's a fortune up there in the mounting, as much as two or three
hundred dollars mebbe, but I dassent go after it on account of the hant
that's up there," said Dan, to himself. "I've heared 'em say that them
hants cuts up powerful bad when anybody comes fooling around where they
be, and it ain't no use to think of driving them away, 'cause bullets
will go through 'em as slick as you please and never hurt 'em at all.
How come this dockyment in front of the wood-shed, do you reckon?"
Dan was greatly confused and excited, and it was a long time before he
could control himself sufficiently to pick up the envelope, take out
the inclosure and read it through to the end--or, to be more exact,
nearly to the end; for, as we shall presently see, Dan never had a
chance to read the whole of it. He kept up a running fire of comments
as he went along, and to have heard him, one would suppose that he had
long been looking for something of this sort.
That was hardly to be wondered at, for he had often heard his father
indulge in the most extravagant speculations concerning the future,
and Dan certainly had as good a right to waste his time in that way as
Silas had.
But when he came to read about the "hant" which bothered the writer so
persistently that he was obliged to jump into the lake in order to get
rid of him, Dan could stand it no longer. He got upon his feet, at the
same time returning the letter to the envelope and making a blind shove
with it at his pocket, and drew a bee-line for home.
He was so badly frightened that he could not run, and he was afraid
to look behind him. He glided over the ground with long, noiseless
footsteps, his lank body bent nearly half double, and his wild-looking
eyes roving from thicket to thicket on each side of the road in front
of him.
Presently the climax came. A squirrel, detecting his approach, sought
to escape observation by jumping from one tree to another, and he made
a great commotion among the light branches as he did so. The noise was
too much for Dan's overtaxed nerves.
"It's the hant, as sure as I'm a foot high," said he, in a frightened
whisper. "He can't pester t'other feller any more, 'cause he's gone and
drownded himself in the lake; but he's going to foller whoever has got
the letter telling where the fortune is, and that's me. I wonder could
I out-run him?"
Dan thought this a good idea, and he lost not a moment in acting upon
it. He was noted far and near for his lightness of foot, but no one
in the Summerdale hills had ever seen him run as he ran that day.
He hardly seemed to touch the ground; and the farther he went the
faster he went, because his increasing fear lent him wings. He was so
hopelessly stampeded that if the road had been crowded with teams or
people he would not have seen one of them. He did not slacken his pace
until he reached the wood-shed, and then he came to an abrupt halt
and looked behind him. There was no one in the road over which he had
passed in his headlong flight, and the woods were silent.
"Well, I done it, didn't I?" exclaimed Dan, drawing a long breath of
relief, and thrusting his hand into the pocket in which he thought he
had put the letter. "It ain't no use for anything that gets around on
two legs to think of follering me when I turn on the steam. Now, then,
where's that there--"
"That there what? And who's been a-follering of you?" demanded a
familiar voice, almost at his elbow.
Dan was frightened again. He looked up, and there stood his father, who
had been keeping up a persistent but of course fruitless search for the
letter ever since Dan went away.
One glance at his angry face was a revelation to the boy. He knew now
that Silas had lost the letter where he found it. Dan would have been
glad to take it out and hand it over to him--he didn't want anything
more to do with it after the experience he had already had with the
"hant"--but he found, to his unbounded amazement and alarm, that he
could not do it. He had dropped the letter somewhere along the road.
"Who's been a-follering of you? and what have you lost?" repeated
Silas, who began to have a faint idea that he understood the situation.
"There was a hant follering of me," replied Dan, as soon as he could
speak. "He was coming for me, 'cause I could hear him slamming through
the bushes; but I can run faster'n him, else I wouldn't be here now."
"You can't bamboozle your pap with no tale about a hant, for I don't
believe in such things," declared Silas, but his face told a different
story. He looked fully as wild as Dan did, and he was almost as badly
frightened. "Why don't you come to the p'int, and tell me that you have
lost the letter that was left in my wood-pile last winter, and which I
never seen till this morning? If you will tell me the truth about it,
I will tell you something that will make your eyes stick out as big as
your fist."
"And won't you larrup me for losing of it?" asked Dan, who saw very
plainly that it was useless for him to deny that he had once had the
letter in his possession.
"No, I won't do nothing to you; honor bright. Did you read what was
into it?"
"Not all of it. I didn't have time, on account of that hant, who
rattled the bushes behind me. When I heared that, I just shoved the
letter into my pocket and skipped out," replied Dan, who could not for
the life of him tell a thing just as it happened. "But it bangs me
where that letter is now, 'cause I ain't got it."
Dan expected that his father would go into an awful rage when he heard
this, and held himself in readiness to take to his heels at the very
first sign of a hostile demonstration; consequently he was very much
surprised to hear Silas say, without the least show of anger:
"It don't much matter, 'cause I had a chance to read all that was
into the letter, and take a good look at the map that come with it. I
know right where to look for that robbers' cave, but I shan't go down
that there rope, I bet you, for I don't want to dump myself into the
presence of that hant before I have a look at him. We'll go in at the
mouth of the gulf, and work our way up till we come to the hiding-place
of the money."
"We?" echoed Dan.
"Yes, me and you."
"Not much we won't," declared Dan, throwing all the emphasis he could
into his words.
"What for?" demanded Silas.
"'Cause why. It's enough for me, to hear hants a chasing of me. I ain't
got no call to go where they be, so't I can see 'em. I wouldn't go up
to that there cave if I knowed there was a thousand dollars into it."
"A thousand dollars!" repeated Silas. "Didn't you read in the letter
about the grip-sack with a false bottom to it?"
"I don't reckon I did," answered Dan, after thinking a moment. "The
hant scared me away before I got that far."
"Well, there's a grip-sack there," continued Silas, "and there's twelve
thousand dollars in bills and three hundred dollars in gold into it. I
was calkerlating all along that me and you would go snucks on it. Now,
will you hand over that letter, so't I can take another look at the map
and make sure that I know where the cave is?"
"Twelve thousand dollars in bills and three hundred more dollars in
gold!" gasped Dan, who could hardly believe his ears. "Pap, I would
give you the letter in a minute, but it's the gospel truth that I ain't
got it."
And to prove his words, Dan turned all his pockets inside out, to show
that they were empty.
"Then I reckon we'll have to go back along the road and look for it,"
said Silas, desperately. "That's a power of money, more'n I ever
thought to have in my family, and sposen somebody should come along and
find that there letter, and go up to the cave and steal it away from
us? Just think of that, Dannie!"
Dan did think of it, and it was the only thing that kept him from
beating a hasty retreat when his father spoke of going back to look for
the letter.