Читать книгу The Young Game-Warden онлайн

15 страница из 41

"If them setter brutes was a present to pap, like he says they was, it's mighty comical to me why he takes so much trouble to hide 'em every time some of them city shooters comes along and toot that horn," soliloquized Dan, as he slowly, almost painfully, arose from the ground, and, after much stretching and yawning, followed his father and brother down the bank toward the flat. "He says he's scared that somebody will take a notion to 'em and steal 'em; but that's all in my one eye, 'cording to my way of thinking. Now, I'll just tell him this for a fact. If he don't quit being so stingy with the money I help him earn with this ferry, I'll bust up the plans he's got into his head about them dogs—I will so. I wonder what's come over him all of a sudden? Here he's been clear up the mounting and come back with only an armful of wood on his wagon, and he don't generally whoop in that there good-natured way, less'n he's got something on his mind."

That was true enough. The ferryman's replies to the hails that came to him from over the river, usually sounded more like the complaints of a surly bear than anything else to which we can compare them. The tone in which they were uttered seemed to say, "I'll come because I can't help myself," and he was so long about it, and made himself so very disagreeable in the presence of his passengers, that those who knew him would often go ten miles out of their way to reach a bridge rather than put a dime into his pocket. But on this particular morning, his voice rang out so cheerily that it attracted Joe's attention as well as Dan's.