"Why, there are certain legal forms to go through with, which father explained, but which I don't pretend to understand," said Bert. "You must promise to attend to your business----"

"O, I'll do that," exclaimed David.

"Of course you will," said Don, "but that will not satisfy the authorities in Washington. They don't know you, and even if they did it would make no difference. The law must be complied with, and you must give bonds for the faithful performance of your duty. But that needn't trouble you; father will attend to it. He says your chances are good, for you are the only one on the track so far."

This was the first time David knew that there was anybody on the track. He was greatly astonished and delighted, and his attempts to express his grat.i.tude for the General's kindness and thoughtfulness were awkward enough. Thirty dollars was a large sum of money in his eyes. His earnings would amount to three hundred and sixty dollars a year, and couldn't he and his mother live nicely on that and save something for a rainy day besides? If he could get the contract, and his father and Dan would only abandon their lazy, worthless mode of life and go to work, how happy they would all be!

"What's the matter?" asked Don, for David's face became clouded again when he thought of his father and Dan.

"There's a good deal the matter," replied David, "but it is nothing I can help."

"You don't act like yourself at all to-day," continued Don. "Suppose you go home and take a rest. Don't brood over your troubles, whatever they are. Let them go, if you can't help them. Think about pleasant things, and to-morrow you will come up here, feeling like a new boy.

Bert and I will set the traps we have made this morning, and then we'll go up and take a look at our bear trap."

David thought it would be a good plan to follow this advice, so he closed the door of the shop to keep the pointer from following him, and started for home.

"Well," said Bert, as he picked up his knife and resumed work upon the figure four he was making, "Dave has seen his father!"

"And had trouble with him, too," added Don.

"It was about the pointer," said Bert.

"My idea exactly. G.o.dfrey is hiding somewhere in the cane; Dan wanted to make a little more money without work, so he stole the pointer and gave him to his father to keep until I offered a reward for him.

David found it out, and to save me from being swindled, he recovered the pointer and got himself into difficulty by it."

The boys, who were merely guessing at all this, would have been surprised to know that their surmises were all correct. David and his troubles, and his manful efforts to better his condition in spite of his adverse circ.u.mstances, afforded them topics of conversation while they were at work; and when the figure four, on which Bert was employed, was completed, the mule was harnessed to the wagon, and the boys drove off to set the half a dozen new traps they had built that morning. It was twelve o'clock when they returned, and they found lunch waiting for them. When they had done ample justice to it, they began making hasty preparations for their visit to the island, and a quarter of an hour more saw them well on their way up the bayou.

They found to their great delight that the ducks were beginning to come in now, and Don was kept busy rowing from one side of the bayou to the other to pick up the dead and wounded birds that Bert brought out of the numerous flocks which took wing as they approached. After a dozen fine fat mallards had been brought to bag, Bert declared that it was a sin to shoot any more, and took his place at the oars, while Don sat in the stern and steered.

"These ducks tell us that it is time to go to our shooting-box," said the latter. "We always wait until they begin to come in before we make up our party, you know."

"We ought to go over there and fix up a bit first," said Bert. "If we don't find anything in our trap, let's go over there and see how things look. We have had some splendid times in that little shooting-box, haven't we?"

They certainly had, and they found much pleasure in living them over again in imagination. While they were talking about the many happy hours they had spent there, they reached Bruin's Island, and Don brought the canoe around and ran the bow upon the beach. The hounds jumped out, and running about with their noses close to the ground, began to show the same signs of excitement that they had exhibited on the day of their first visit to the island. The boys knew more now than they did then, and consequently were not in such haste to declare that it was a bear the dogs scented. It might be G.o.dfrey Evans; and that he or somebody else had been there since they left was very evident. Their trap had been sprung by the aid of a long pole, which was still fast under the heavy roof; the lever and rope had been carried away; and the bag of corn which Don had hung upon the sapling had also disappeared. Don was provoked, and laid up in his mind a few sharp words, to be addressed to G.o.dfrey on the subject, should they ever happen to meet again; but he had very little to say. The boys had been thoughtful enough to bring an axe, a piece of rope and another small bag of corn with them, and, although they had no a.s.surance that their labor would not be wasted, they set the trap again and started for home.

"If G.o.dfrey did that," said Don, "he must have swam the bayou, unless he has a boat hidden away in the bushes somewhere, which is not likely. If it was summer now, he would probably spring that trap every day, just to keep us from catching that bear; but the weather is getting frosty, and he'll not relish many more cold baths. I don't think he will trouble us that way any more."

When they reached the mouth of the bayou, Bert, who was steering, directed the canoe across the lake, toward the point on which the shooting-box was located. During a pause in the conversation, he looked toward the place where it ought to be, but could see nothing of it. "What's the matter?" asked his brother, who saw that there was something wrong.

"That's Long Point, isn't it?" asked Bert, in reply. "It certainly is, but where's the house?"

"You haven't been there in almost six months, and perhaps you have forgotten where it is," said Don, with a laugh.

"No, I haven't. It stood close beside a big sh.e.l.l-bark, didn't it?

Well, there's the tree; now show me the shooting-box?"

Don faced about on his seat, expecting to point the building out to his brother at once, and was a good deal surprised when he found that he could not see it himself. There was the tree, sure enough, but the spot which the shooting-box ought to have occupied, was vacant. After running his eyes all along the sh.o.r.e, to satisfy himself that he had made no mistake as to the locality, Don picked up the oars again, and with a few more strokes brought the canoe to the bank. All there was left of the shooting-box they could have carried away in their arms.

Even the stove had not escaped destruction. The chimney had fallen upon it and it was completely ruined.

"G.o.dfrey means to put a stop to all our fun if he can, doesn't he?"

said Bert, who thought that a man who would steal a canoe and spring a trap, would be guilty of any meanness.

"Let's go home," was Don's reply. "We'll have another shooting-box here some day, Bert, and it will beat the old one all to pieces."

The boys thought they had had hard luck that day, and so did their father, when he had heard their story; but they came very near having worse luck that night, and they never knew anything about it until several days afterward. The General found it out the next morning.

He went to the fields at an early hour, as he always did, to set his negroes at work, and was met by the hostler, who had an exciting piece of news to communicate. "Misser Gordon," said he, "Misser Don's hound dogs done treed two fellers down dar in de quarter. Dey's been dar all de blessed night top o' dat ar house; yes, sar, dat's what dey says, sar!"

The General replied that if the two fellows had come there for the purpose of stealing, he was glad of it, and said he would go and take a look at them. When he saw them, perhaps he would know where the contents of his smoke-house had been going lately. He rode down to the quarters as soon as his horse was brought out, and when he came within sight of the cabin in which the boys kept their captured quails, he saw two persons sitting astride of the ridge-pole and Don's hounds gathered about the building, keeping guard over them.

The General could scarcely believe his eyes, although when he came to recall several little things which Don and Bert had told him, he was not so very much surprised after all. The persons whom the hounds had forced to take refuge on the roof of the cabin were boys; and as soon as the General was near enough to them to distinguish their features, he saw that they were Lester Brigham and Bob Owens.

CHAPTER XV.

BOB'S ASPIRATIONS.

"I think it my duty to inform you that the parties to whom you have given your order for fifty dozen live quails will certainly disappoint you. They did not seek the contract for themselves, but for another person, who knows nothing whatever about trapping, and who is much too indolent to put forth the necessary exertion if he did. You will get no birds from him. If, after waiting a reasonable time--I should think two weeks would be long enough--you become satisfied of this fact, I shall be happy to receive your order, and will guarantee you satisfaction."

This was a rough copy of the letter Lester drew up to send to the advertiser in the "_Rod and Gun_," on the evening of the day on which he held that interview with Don and Bert, when the former refused to join his sportsman's club. He read it to Bob in his best style and was astonished when his friend declared that it wouldn't do at all.

"You seem to forget that I am working for a new shot-gun," said Bob.

"The language isn't half strong enough."

"You can't improve it anywhere," replied Lester, who was rather proud of the production. "Do you want me to abuse Don and the rest? That would be poor policy, for the man would say right away that we were jealous of them and trying to injure them. I have told him that he will get no birds from David, and if he does, it will be our fault."

Bob could not see the force of this reasoning. There was so much at stake that it was necessary they should do everything in their power to secure the contract, and he was sure it would help matters if a few hard words were added respecting Don and David. So they were put in, and the letter was copied and dropped into the post-office.

After that Lester took up his abode with Bob Owens. According to an agreement made between them, Bob went through the ceremony of sending a note to Lester by a negro boy, inviting him to come over and spend a week with him, bringing his horse and gun, and they would have a fine time shooting turkeys and driving the ridges for deer. This arrangement enabled the two conspirators to be together day and night. They intended to pa.s.s the most of their time in riding about through the woods, and if a deer or turkey happened to come in their way and they should be fortunate enough to shoot it, so much the better; but if the game kept out of their sight they would not spend any precious moments in looking for it. Their object was to devote themselves exclusively to destroying all David's chances for earning the hundred and fifty dollars. They would watch him closely, and when they found out where his traps were set, they would visit them daily, and steal every quail they found in them.

During the first few days the boys spent together they found out two things: one was that there was a pile of traps in the yard behind G.o.dfrey Evans's cabin, and that they were never touched except when the family happened to be in want of kindling wood. The other was, that David left home bright and early every morning and went straight to General Gordon's. What he did after he got there they could not find out. They would always wait an hour or two to see if he came out again, and then they would grow tired of doing nothing, and spend the rest of the day searching the woods and brier-patches in the neighborhood of the cabin, in the hope of finding some of David's traps. But they never found a single one, for the reason that they were all set on the General's plantation, and the boys never thought of looking there for them.

"It's my opinion," said Lester, one day, when the two were seated at a camp-fire in the woods, broiling a brace of squirrels which Bob had shot, "that David has given it up as a bad job and left the way clear for us."

"Hurrah!" shouted Bob.

"Well--yes; but I'd hurrah louder if he had only set a dozen or two traps and given us a chance to rob them. If he'd done that, we might have had a hundred birds on hand now. The best thing we can do is to set our own traps and catch the quails as fast as we can. We'll keep an eye on David all the same, however."

This programme was duly carried out--that is, they spent the rest of the day in setting their traps, but they did not devote any more time to watching David's movements. Two incidents happened within a few hours that suggested new ideas to them, and made them sure that at last they had the game in their own hands. They had built a good many traps, and having no mule and wagon at their command, as Don Gordon had, it took them all the rest of the day to set them, so that it was dark by the time they reached home. They found the family at supper and listening with great interest and attention to something Mr.

Owens was saying.

Mr. Owens was like G.o.dfrey Evans in two respects. His ideas ran just as far ahead of his income as G.o.dfrey's did, and he hated those who were better off in the world than himself. Especially did he dislike General Gordon. The latter was looked up to by all the best people as the leading man in the community, and that was something Mr. Owens could not endure. He wanted that honor himself; and because he could not have it, he made it a point to oppose and injure the General in every possible way.

"What do you think Gordon is trying to do now?" Mr. Owens asked, just as the boys came in and took their seats at the table. "Gardner's mail contract has run out, and as he doesn't intend to put in another bid, that meddlesome Silas Jones asked the General who would be a good man to take his place; and Gordon hadn't any more sense than to recommend Dave Evans."

"Well, of all the things I ever heard of!" exclaimed Bob.

"That's what I thought," continued Mr. Owens. "I heard them talking about it at the post-office. Gordon was as busy as a candidate on election day. He was going around speaking to all the men about it, and asking them if they would lend their influence to secure the contract for David, and, although I put myself in his way two or three times, he never said a word to _me_. I suppose he thought my influence didn't amount to anything one way or the other, but perhaps he'll see his mistake some day."