CHAPTER VII. BROTHERLY LOVE.

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"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.


                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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