Don and Bert Gordon and the “Circus-Hosses.”

BOY TRAPPER SERIES.

THE BURIED TREASURE; OR, OLD JORDAN’S “HAUNT.”

By HARRY CASTLEMON,

AUTHOR OF “THE FRANK NELSON SERIES,” “THE SPORTSMAN’S CLUB SERIES,” “GUNBOAT SERIES,” &C.

PHILADELPHIA HENRY T. COATES & CO.

FAMOUS CASTLEMON BOOKS.

Other Volumes in Preparation.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1877, by PORTER & COATES, In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

CONTENTS.

THE BURIED TREASURE.

CHAPTER I. GODFREY EVANS.

“WAL, of all the dinners that ever a white man sot down to, this yere is the beat!”

The speaker was Godfrey Evans—a tall, raw-boned man, dressed in a tattered, brown jean suit. He was barefooted, his toil-hardened hands and weather-beaten face were sadly soiled and begrimed, and his hair and whiskers looked as though they had never been made acquainted with a comb. As he spoke he drew an empty nail-keg from its corner, placed a board over the top of it, and seating himself, ran his eye over the slender stock of viands his wife had just placed on the table.

The man’s appearance was in strict keeping with his surroundings. The cabin in which he lived and everything it contained told of the most abject poverty. The building, which was made of rough, unhewn logs, could boast of but one room and a loft, to which access was gained by a ladder fastened against the wall. It had no floor and no windows, all the light being admitted through a dilapidated door, which every gust of wind threatened to shake from its hinges, and the warmth being supplied by an immense fire-place with a stick chimney, which occupied nearly the whole of one end of the cabin. There were no chairs to be seen—the places of these useful articles being supplied by empty nail-kegs and blocks of wood; and neither were there any beds—a miserable “shake-down” in one corner being the best in this line that the cabin could afford. Everything looked as if it were about to fall to pieces. Even the rough board table on which the dinner was placed would have tumbled over, had it not been propped up against the wall.

Godfrey Evans had seen better days. He had once been comparatively well off in the world; but he had lost all his property through no fault of his own, and the loss so disheartened him that he would make no effort to accumulate more. At his time of life it was too late to begin again with empty hands, he said; so he accepted the situation, but with a very bad grace, and spent the most of his time in roaming about the woods with his gun on his shoulder, and the rest in bemoaning his altered circumstances, and denouncing those of his neighbors who were more fortunate than himself.

Godfrey’s family consisted of a wife and two sons—the latter aged respectively seventeen and fifteen years. His wife was a meek-faced woman who had seen a world of care and trouble, and who, while submitting patiently to her hard lot, hoped for better things, and placed unbounded confidence in her youngest son, David, who was animated by an energetic, manly spirit, which contrasted strangely with his father’s indolence and indifference. Godfrey seemed content to pass the remainder of his days in that hovel, destitute of all the comforts, and even suffering for many of the necessaries of life; but David was not. He had high aspirations, had formed plans, and, better than that, he had perseverance and pluck enough to carry them out. Of him and his brother, Daniel, we shall have more to say as our story progresses. It will be enough, now, to tell the reader that if they had been utter strangers, they could not have been more unlike each other. David was of a lively, cheerful disposition, and his entry into the comfortless hovel he called home, was like a ray of sunshine bursting through a storm cloud. Daniel, on the other hand, was like his father, morose and sullen, and when he came home from the woods or the steamboat landing, where he spent the most of his time, it seemed as if a thunder cloud had suddenly settled down over the cabin.

Having drawn his nail-keg up to the table, Godfrey thrust his hand into his pocket, pulled out his jack-knife, and picking up the fork that lay beside his broken plate, held the two close together and looked at them intently for several minutes. The fork was not such a fork as the most of us use at our meals. It was simply a piece of cane sharpened at one end; and perhaps this story will fall into the hands of some who can remember, or who have heard it said, that there was a time, not so very long ago, when a good many families in the South, who had all their lives been accustomed to something better, had their choice between employing their fingers at table, or using such an implement as this we have just described.

“Look at this yere, now,” said Godfrey, “jest look at it, I say, the hul on yer, an’ then ax yerselves if it aint a purty pass fur a man to come to, who had a nice house, a fine plantation and four niggers of his own, only twelve short years ago! Eh?”

“We can’t help it, father,” said Mrs. Evans, who knew that her angry husband expected her to say something. “We had comforts once, and we might have them now if—if——”

“Yes, in course we might, if them Yanks had stayed to hum, whar they belonged,” Godfrey almost shouted. “We didn’t do nothin’ to them that they should come down here an’ burn our houses an’ cotton gins, an’ steal our things, did we?”

“The Federals didn’t do it all, father,” said David. “They burned our buildings, just as they burned the buildings of almost every man who was in the rebel army; but we should have had enough left to get along with, if Redburn’s guerillas had left us alone. They didn’t leave us a bed to sleep on!”

“That’s what makes me so pizen savage agin everybody,” exclaimed Godfrey, pounding with the handle of his knife on the table. “The men what wore the same colored jacket as I did, came here and tuk what the Yanks left us. Why didn’t they go up to Gordon’s an’ clean them out too? Kase Gordon was a gen’ral, that’s why. That fuss was a rich man’s war, an’ a poor man’s fight, that’s jest what that fuss was; an’ everybody can see it now that it is done past. Men like me had to stay in the ranks an’ carry a musket, an’ starve an’ freeze in the trenches—that’s what we had to do; while rich planters, like Gordon, lived high in their tents, rode their fine hosses, stole the sanitary goods the Yanks sent to their fellers in Richmond, an’ thought they was a fightin’ for the ’federacy.”

“Why, father, General Gordon was wounded no less than three times,” said David.

“S’pose he was,” replied Godfrey.

“An’ while he was fighting the Feds in front of Richmond, some more of them came here and burned down his splendid house, that ours wouldn’t have made a woodshed to, and stole everything his family had.”

“No, they didn’t do nothing of the kind,” answered his father, almost savagely. “They burned his house, I know, an’ sarved him right, too. I’m glad of it; but as fur stealin’ everything the Gordons had, that ain’t so. No ’taint. The gen’ral’s got heaps an’ stacks of money now.”

“I don’t believe it,” said David, bluntly.

“If you want me to lay that cowhide over yer shoulders right peart, you jest conspute me that ar way onct more,” said Godfrey, setting down his cup of buttermilk. “Whar did them speckled ponies come from that Don and Bert ride around the country, I’d like to know, if the Gordons hain’t got no money? I was up thar the other day when it rained so hard, an’ the gen’ral, bein’ mighty perlite, axed me would I come in an set till the storm was over. Wal, I went, an’ what did I see? The fust thing I laid my eyes onto was a pianner that them gals thumps on when they had oughter be workin’ in the kitchen. They was a settin’ the table fur dinner, too; an’ didn’t I see silver forks thar, an’ white-handled knives, an’ chiny, an’ all them things that would jest set me onto my feet agin if I had the money they cost? I did, I bet ye. Hain’t got no money, hey, the Gordons hain’t? I know better. They have, an’ that’s what makes me so pizen savage. How have they got any more right to have to nor I have? We both fit the Yanks, an’ I made a poor man of myself by it, while the gen’ral is jest as well off as he ever was. Things ain’t fixed right in this yere ’arth, no how!”

“Thar they come now,” said Dan, who sat where he could look out of the door and up the road that led toward General Gordon’s plantation. “Thar they come, ridin’ them circus-hosses, and talkin’ an’ laughin’ as though they was the happiest fellers in the world. Everybody is happy ’ceptin’ us. If I had what one of them ponies is wuth, I wouldn’t have to wear no sich clothes as these yere,” added Dan, raising his arm and pulling his sleeve around so that he could see the gaping rent in the elbow. “If I could run one of them hosses off an’ sell it without being ketched, I’d do it to-night!”