The Boy Trapper | Page 2

the people stood as much in fear of
them as they did of the Federals. These valuables, consisting for the
most part of money, jewelry and silverware, were sometimes hidden in
cellars, in hollow logs in the woods and in barns; but more frequently
they were buried in the ground. The work of hiding them was
sometimes performed by the planters themselves, if they happened to
be at home, but it was generally intrusted to old and faithful servants in
whom their owners had every confidence. It not unfrequently happened
that these old and faithful servants proved themselves utterly unworthy

of the trust reposed in them. Sometimes they told the raiding soldiers
where the property was concealed, and at others they ran away without
telling even their masters where the valuables were hidden. General
Gordon's old servant, Jordan, was one of this stamp. He went off with
the Union forces, who raided that part of Mississippi, and before he
went he told a rebel soldier, Godfrey Evans, who happened to be at
home on a furlough, and who was skulking in the woods to avoid
capture, that he had just buried a barrel containing eighty thousand
dollars in gold and silver in his master's potato-patch, and that none of
the family knew where it was.
This Godfrey Evans had been well off in the world at one time. He had
property to the amount of fifteen thousand dollars; but, like many
others, he lost it all during the war, and returned home after the
surrender of General Lee to find himself a poor man. His comfortable
house had been burned over the heads of his wife and children, who
were now living in a rude hut which some kind-hearted neighbors had
hastily erected; his negroes, who had made his money for him, were all
gone; his cattle had been slaughtered by both rebel and Union troops,
and his mules and horses carried off; his fine drove of hogs, which ran
loose in the woods, and upon which he relied to furnish his year's
supply of bacon, had wandered away and become wild; and Godfrey
had nothing but his rifle and his two hands with which to begin the
world anew. But it was hard to go back and begin again where he had
begun forty years ago. The bare thought of it was enough to discourage
Godfrey, who declared that he wouldn't do it, and made his words good
by becoming a roving vagabond. He spent the most of his time at the
landing, watching the steamers as they came in, and the rest in
wandering listlessly about the woods, shooting just game enough to
keep him in powder, lead and tobacco. His sole companion and friend
was his son Daniel, who, being a chip of the old block, faithfully
imitated his father's lazy, useless mode of life. Mrs. Evans and the
younger son, David, were the only members of the family who worked.
They never lost an opportunity to turn an honest penny, and there were
times when Godfrey and Dan would have gone supperless to bed if it
had not been for these two faithful toilers.

Godfrey disliked this aimless, joyless existence as much as he disliked
work, and even Dan at times longed for something better. They both
wanted to be rich. Godfrey wanted to see his fine plantation, which was
now abandoned to briers and cane, cultivated as it used to be; while it
was Dan's ambition to have two or three painted boats in the lake, to
have a pointer following at his heels, and to do his shooting with a
double-barrel gun that "broke in two in the middle." He wanted to take
his morning's exercise on a spotted pony--a circus horse, he called it;
and to wear a broadcloth suit, a Panama hat and patent leather boots,
when he went to church on Sundays. Don and Bert Gordon had all
these aids to happiness, and they were the jolliest fellows he had ever
seen--always laughing, singing or whistling. Dan thought he would be
happy too, if he could only have so many fine things to call his own,
but he could see no way to get them, and that made him angry. He
hated Don and Bert so heartily that he could never look at them without
wishing that some evil might befall them. He threatened to steal their
horses, shoot their dogs, sink their boats, and do a host of other
desperate things, believing that in this way he could render the two
happy brothers as miserable as he was himself.
Godfrey and Dan lived in a most unenviable frame of mind for a year
or more, and then the former one day happened to think of the barrel
which old Jordan had told