Don Gordon's Shooting-Box

Contrary to Dick Henderson’s prediction, the school had not been disgraced by the presence of the New York boot-black. Its popularity seemed to be increasing, for the number of those who applied for admission was greater than it had ever been before; and when the examination was over, Bert found that he had a hundred and ten names on his company roster. Dick would not have made such a prediction now, for he was different in every way from the boy we introduced to the reader at the beginning of this story. Having got out from under Clarence Duncan’s baneful influence, and having Don Gordon’s example and Tom Fisher’s to encourage him, he was in a fair way to make a man of himself.

At length the exercises were all ended, and one bright morning Hopkins, Egan and Curtis took leave of their friends, and in company with Don and Bert Gordon and their parents, set out for Rochdale. They went fully prepared to enjoy themselves. As soon as it was settled that they were to go home with the Gordons, they had written for their hunting rigs, which were duly forwarded to them. Walter Curtis’s favorite, in fact his only, weapon, was a light Stevens rifle, with which he had broken twenty-three out of twenty-five feather-filled glass balls thrown from a revolving trap. Hopkins took pride in a short double-barrel shotgun, of large calibre, that he had often used on horseback while following deer and foxes to the music of the hounds; while Egan, who lived on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, where canvas-backs and red-heads abound, put all his faith in a ponderous ten-gauge Parker, which was so heavy that Don Gordon, strong and enduring as he was, declared that he wouldn’t carry it all day through the woods if his friend Egan would make him a present of it.

“Neither would I,” chimed in Hopkins.

“You!” exclaimed Egan, standing off and looking at the speaker’s rotund figure. “You’d look nice starting out for an all-day tramp, you would. Your legs are too short, and you carry too much weight around with you. You would get out of breath before you had gone half a mile. But as I am not going to Mississippi after squirrels, I don’t intend to tramp about the woods. Gordon promised me some duck-shooting.”

“As for myself,” Curtis remarked, “I always did despise a scatter-gun. A blind man ought to be able to hit a duck by sending a pound or two of shot at him – ”

“Well, it’s not so easy, either,” interrupted Egan. “A duck, when flying down wind, moves at the rate of ninety miles an hour, old fellow, and it takes the best kind of a marksman to make a good bag.”

“A true sportsman never prides himself upon the number of birds he kills, but upon the superiority of his shots,” said Curtis. “When you can strike a rapidly moving object with a single ball from a rifle, then you can boast of your skill.”

During the journey down the Mississippi the boys were on deck almost all the time, listening to Don, who pointed out the various places of interest along the route, adding some entertaining scraps of the history of each. Over there, on the right bank, he said, was the battle-field of Belmont; and on the opposite shore was Columbus, from which came the Confederate reinforcements that had turned the Union victory into defeat. This was Island No. 10, where the gunboat Cincinnati distinguished herself by running the batteries, and a young master’s mate, afterward the brave commander of the Champion, won his shoulder-straps by going ashore with a boat’s crew, spiking some of the guns, and bringing off the wipers and spongers that belonged to them. Over there on the bluff was Fort Pillow, where that terrible massacre took place under Forrest; and this was Memphis, the scene of the fight between the Union and Confederate fleets, which resulted in the utter defeat of the latter, and in the capture of the Bragg, Price, and Little Rebel. This was Yazoo river. It was here that the Confederate ram Arkansas, after eluding the Cincinnati and whipping the Tyler, ran the fire of the whole Union fleet and took refuge under the guns of Vicksburg. Having been repaired she started down the river to raise the siege of Port Hudson, but was met and destroyed by a single Union gunboat, the Essex, under command of Captain Porter. And here was Rochdale at last. It had a history too, Don said, and he promised that he would relate it when they reached the shooting-box.

Egan and Hopkins were Southern boys, and consequently life on a plantation was not new to them; but Curtis, who was from New England, found much to interest him, and showed himself to be a true Yankee by asking a thousand and one questions about everything he saw. Hopkins’s first exploit was riding a kicking mule that Fred and Joe Packard brought out for him to try his skill upon. To the surprise of everybody Hopkins mounted in regular Texas style, placing his left hand on the mule’s shoulder and throwing his right leg over his back. The moment he was firmly settled, his appearance changed as if by magic. His seat was easy and graceful, and he kept his place on that mule’s back with as little trouble as he would have kept his place in a rocking chair. The animal could not move him an inch with all his kicking and plunging. The performance effectually silenced Egan, who was himself a fine horseman, and he never had anything to say about Hopkins’s riding after that.

The ducks, geese, swans, and brant were already beginning to come into the lake, and on the morning of the third day following their arrival at the plantation, the young hunters, Fred and Joe Packard being included among the number, made ready to take up their abode at the shooting-box. The canoe and sail-boat, both of which had been securely housed during the absence of their owners, were put into the water and loaded to their utmost capacity with bedding, provisions, and camp furniture. There was just room enough left in the canoe to accommodate old Cuff, the negro who was to act as cook and camp-keeper during their sojourn at the shooting-box; and when all the boys and Don’s two pointers had crowded into the sail-boat, the little craft seemed on the point of sinking. As an Irishman would have remarked, if the water in the lake had been two inches higher, she would have gone to the bottom beyond a doubt.

“We’ve got about three hundred pounds too much cargo aboard,” said Curtis, in his quiet way. “Hop, suppose you get out and go afoot; there’s a good fellow.”

“Make Egan throw his artillery overboard and we shall get on well enough,” retorted Hopkins. “That’s what makes the boat sink so deep in the water.”

With much fun and chaffing the boys pulled toward the point on which the shooting-box was located, and by handling their heavily loaded craft in the most careful manner, they succeeded in beaching her in safety. As her bow touched the shore, old Cuff, who landed at the same moment, uttered an exclamation indicative of the greatest astonishment. Don looked up and saw that the shooting-box was already occupied. A smoke was curling out of the stove-pipe that served for a chimney, and a rough-looking man, dressed in a tattered suit of brown jeans, stood in front of the open door, leaning on his axe. From the cabin there came the sound of voices mingled with another sound that made old Cuff almost ready to boil over with indignation.

“’Fore Moses, Mr. Don,” he exclaimed. “Somebody in dar crackin’ all de nuts dat I done pick up for you an’ your frien’s.”

“We’ll soon put a stop to that,” answered Don. “Those people, whoever they are, have no business in there, and they must get out at once.”

“Did you ever hear of such impudence?” exclaimed Bert, angrily. “Where did they come from, anyhow? They don’t belong in this part of the country.”

The man with the axe seemed as much surprised to see Don and his party as the latter were to see him. He too uttered an exclamation which brought to the door the other occupants of the cabin, seven of them in all, including two more men and three women; and very disreputable looking persons the most of them were. The other two, one of whom seemed to be entirely out of place there, did not show themselves at the door as openly as their companions did, and consequently Don and Bert did not see them. They thrust their heads out very cautiously, and as soon as they saw who the new-comers were, they drew back and made all haste to effect their escape through the window on the other side of the cabin. By keeping the building between themselves and the beach they managed to reach the cover of the woods without being observed, Don and Bert would have been very much surprised if they had seen them, for they were our old acquaintances Lester Brigham and Dan Evans. They were now almost constant companions; and how they came to be so shall be told further on.

“What do you want here?” demanded the man with the axe, as Don walked up the bank followed by his companions.

“I think that is a proper question for me to ask you,” replied Don, who did not at all like the surly tone in which he had been addressed. “This house belongs to my brother and myself, and we would thank you to vacate it without the loss of a moment.”

“Wal, I reckon we shall do as we please about that,” drawled one of the men who stood in the door.

“Well, I reckon you won’t. You’ll do as I please about it. I want possession here, and I want it now. I see you broke the lock in order to gain admittance, and you had no business to do that.”

“Do you live here?” asked the man with the axe.

“I’m going to live here.”

“Wal, thar’s two rooms in the shantee, an’ why can’t you-uns take one of ’em an’ let we-uns – ”

“We don’t want company,” exclaimed Don, who was fairly staggered by the proposition. “We want you to clear out bag and baggage, and to be quick about it, too. My father is a magistrate, and this shooting-box is on his land.”

The word “magistrate” had a magical effect upon the members of the dirty group in the door-way. It put life into them, and at the same time set the women’s tongues in motion. They began packing up their scanty belongings, declaring, with much vociferation, that it was a sin and a shame that they should be turned out of such snug quarters just to accommodate the whims of a party of young aristocrats who wanted to come there and shoot a few ducks. Why couldn’t they go elsewhere for their ducks and leave honest people alone? That was always the way with rich folks. They didn’t care how others suffered so long as they had their own pleasure. But it was a great comfort to know that it wouldn’t always be so. There was a time coming, and it wasn’t so very far distant either, when rich folks would be required to give up some of their ill-gotten gains.

“That sounds like communism, doesn’t it?” said Curtis.

“Yes; and that sounds very much like incendiarism,” answered Hopkins; and so it did, for just then one of the men in the cabin was heard to say: —

“Never mind, Luke. The old shantee is dry an’ fire’ll burn it.”

“Let them burn it if they dare,” said Bert, his slight form swelling with indignation. “I wouldn’t give a picayune for the life of the person who attempts it. Cuff,” he added, turning to the negro, “as soon as we get things straightened up here, I want you to go back to the plantation after Don’s hounds. It looks now as though we should need them.”

The tramps, if such they were, seemed to be in no hurry to leave the shooting-box. They bundled up their goods with great deliberation, abusing the boys roundly all the while, and finally came out and turned their faces toward the river. As soon as they were out of sight Don and Bert began an investigation of the premises. The cabin looked as though it had been occupied for a long time. The wood which they had provided for their own use was all gone, the stove had been copiously bedewed with tobacco juice, the floor was littered with nut-shells, and everything was dingy and smoky.

“We can’t live in any such looking hole as this,” said Don, in deep disgust. “Cuff, build up a good fire, put on the kettle and scrub out. Let’s have things neat and clean, as they used to be. Bert, suppose you take somebody with you and watch those people and see where they go”

Bert at once started off with Hopkins for a companion, and while they were gone the others employed themselves in setting things to rights. The bones, squirrel skins and turkey feathers that were scattered about in front of the door were raked into a pile and set on fire; a fresh supply of stove-wood was cut; and the boats were unloaded and their cargoes piled up outside of the cabin in readiness to be transferred to the interior as soon as the purifying process had been completed. By the time this work was done Bert and Hopkins came back.

“They’re n. g. on the books – no good,” said the former. “They have a little house-boat in the river – ”

“That’s all we want to know,” interrupted Don. “They are thieves and vagabonds of the first water.”

“What makes you say that?” asked Curtis.

“What’s a house-boat?” inquired Egan.

“I will answer the last question first,” said Don. “A house-boat is simply a scow twenty-five or thirty feet long and six or eight feet wide with a cabin amidships. This cabin takes up the whole of the boat with the exception of two or three feet at each end, where the crew stand when they are handling the lines and the steering oar. These boats are generally the property of fishermen and hunters, who float about looking for a suitable place to ply their occupation. For example, there is a house-boat in the bayou above Mound City – that’s in Illinois, you know – which has been there four or five years, its solitary occupant making a good living by trapping minks and raccoons in the winter, and catching buffalo and catfish the rest of the year.”

“Buffalo!” repeated Egan.

“Yes. I didn’t say bison.”

“What’s the difference?” asked Hopkins, who, although he was a splendid fox-hunter, was not very well posted in natural history.

“There’s a good deal of difference, the first thing you know. A buffalo is a fish, somewhat resembling a black-bass in shape, but possessing none of his game qualities, while a bison is an animal.”

“But there are such animals as buffaloes,” said Egan.

“Yes, in Africa and Asia, but not in this country. There are no partridges, pheasants, or wild rabbits here, either. As I was going on to say, this man will probably stay at Mound City until the fish and game begin to grow scarce, and then he will paddle his boat out into the current and float down the river until he finds another place that suits him. If he gets hard up for grub, he will not hesitate to visit anybody’s corn-field, potato-patch, or hen-roost.”

“No honest, industrious man ever lives in that way,” said Bert. “The planters along the river are suspicious of these house-boats, and when they find one tied up on their premises, they always order it off.”

“If these people had a shelter of their own, why did they take possession of your shooting-box?” asked Egan.

“O, for the sake of variety, probably,” answered Don. “Perhaps their house was too small for them; or it may be that the roof leaked, or that the scow was full of water. They always like to live ashore when they have the chance.”

There was much to be done about the shooting-box, and the boys were kept busy all the forenoon. Old Cuff grumbled lustily while he scrubbed, declaring over and over again that Don ought to set fire to the cabin and destroy it, for it never could be made fit for white folks to live in again. After eating a substantial lunch, which was served under the trees, Egan, Hopkins, and Curtis took their guns, and, accompanied by Bert and Fred Packard, strolled along the shore of the lake to see if they could find anything for supper, while Don and Joe remained behind to assist Cuff at his work. When Egan and Curtis returned at dark, they declared that they were more than satisfied with their prospects for sport. The lower end of the lake was full of ducks, they said, and Egan had astonished his companions by bringing fourteen of them down with a single discharge of his heavy double-barrel, while Curtis had showed his skill with the rifle by shooting four ducks on the wing, and killing a swan at the distance of more than two hundred yards. They were tired as well as hungry, and glad to see the inside of the shooting-box, which did not look now as it did when they first came there in the morning. A cheerful fire was burning in the stove, which had been blacked and polished until one could almost see his face in it; the room was brilliantly lighted by two lamps that were suspended from the ceiling; the floor was covered with rugs; pictures of hunting and fishing scenes adorned the walls, and camp chairs and stools were scattered about.

In the next apartment, which was used principally as a sleeping and sitting-room, the same scene of neatness and order was presented. The wide fire-place, which occupied nearly the whole of one end of it, was piled high with blazing logs, and comfortable beds were made up in the bunks. There were pictures on the walls of this room also, rugs on the floor (some of these rugs at once attracted the attention of Egan and his friends, for they were made of the skins of bears and deer that had fallen to Don’s rifle), and there were camp-chairs enough to accommodate all the boys that could crowd about the fire-place. The room looked cosey and comfortable, and the visitors no longer wondered why it was that Don thought so much of his shooting-box.

“I am going to have one of my own,” said Curtis, “and it shall be modeled after this one. I shall build it this fall, so as to have it in readiness to receive you fellows when you go home with me next vacation. Now, then, where are those quails that Hop brought in? Can your darkey serve them up on toast in good shape?”

“Of course he can,” answered Don. “No one can do it better; but Hop hasn’t brought in any quails yet. Where did you leave him? I wondered why he didn’t come home with you.”

“Hasn’t he returned?” exclaimed Egan. “Then he’s lost. We haven’t seen him since two o’clock, when he coaxed your pointers away from us – we owe him a grudge for that, for we wanted the dogs to stay by us and retrieve the ducks we shot – and went over into a field after a flock of quails he had marked down there. We heard him shoot several times after that, and as he is a good marksman, we made up our minds that we were to have quails for supper. There he is now,” added Egan, as an impatient yelp sounded at the door.

“I am afraid you are mistaken,” replied Don, and the sequel proved that he was; for just then the door was thrown open, and Don’s hounds, which Cuff, in obedience to Bert’s orders, had brought up to guard the shooting-box, came bounding in. There were six of them, and the one which held the foremost place in Don’s estimation was Carlo, the dog that had been the first to respond to his whistle when he was tied up in Godfrey Evans’s potato-hole. He was an immense brute, as well as a savage one, and when he raised himself on his hind feet and placed his paws on Don’s shoulders, his head was higher than his master’s.

“We will keep them in here with us until Hop comes; for as they are not very well acquainted with him, they might object to his coming to the house,” said Bert. “Now, Cuff, dish up a couple of those ducks in your very best style. Be in a hurry, for we are hungry.”

Curtis and Egan, having exchanged their high-top boots for easy-fitting shoes, and their heavy shooting-coats for others of lighter material, set to work to clean their guns, while the rest of the boys drew their chairs up in front of the fire, and asked one another what it was that was detaining Hopkins. He couldn’t get lost; they were sure of that, for all he had to do when he wanted to come home, was to follow the shore of the lake, and he would find the shooting-box without the least trouble.

“Do you suppose he would be in any danger from those vagabond friends of ours, if he should chance to stumble upon them in the woods?” said Curtis, as he pointed his breech-loader toward the lamp and looked through the barrel to make sure that it was perfectly clean. “I must confess that I didn’t quite like the looks of them.”

“I never thought of them,” said Don, jumping up and taking his double-barrel down from the antlers on which it rested. “I believe he would be in danger if he should meet one of those fellows in the woods, for he wears a splendid gold watch and chain, and I noticed that the man who was chopping wood when we came here this morning, looked at the chain very frequently. I think it would be a good plan to signal to him.”

“Better let me do it,” said Egan. “He can hear my gun farther than he can yours.”

Accompanied by all the boys Egan went out on the shore of the lake and fired both barrels of his heavy piece in quick succession; but there was no response. Again and again the duck-gun roared, awaking a thousand echoes along the shore, but still the missing boy did not reply. When Egan had fired away all the cartridges he had brought out with him, the boys went back into the cabin and sat down and looked at one another. They began to fear that their friend’s ill-luck had followed him from Bridgeport to Rochdale, and that he had got himself into some kind of a scrape.