Book: The Rod and Gun Club, pdf download
Author: Harry Castlemon
Release Date: December 3, 2019
(✍️ This article is collected from this book 📚 (All Credit To Go Real Hero The Author of this book 📖) 🙏 Please buy this book hardcopy from anyway.)
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🧾 Front Page Of This Book____________________
SOME DISGUSTED BOYS_________
“Well, young man, I will tell you, for your satisfaction, that I have got you
provided, for, for four long years to come.”
The speaker was Mr. Brigham. As he uttered these words he placed his hat
and gloves on the table, and looked down at his son Lester, who had just entered
the library in obedience to the summons he had received, and who sat on the
edge of the sofa, twirling his cap in his hands. The boy looked frightened, while
the expression on his father’s face told very plainly that he was angry about
something.
“I have had quite enough of your nonsense,” continued Mr. Brigham, in very
decided tones. “Since we came to Mississippi you have done nothing but roam
about the woods and fields with your gun on your shoulder, and get yourself into
trouble. You made yourself so very disagreeable that none of the decent boys in
the settlement would have anything to do with you, and consequently you had to
take up with such fellows as Bob Owens and Dan Evans. After setting fire to
Don Gordon’s shooting-box, and being caught in the act of stealing David
Evans’s quails, you had to go and mix yourself up in that mail robbery. Why,
Lester, have you any idea where you will bring up if you do not at once begin to
mend your ways?”
“Why, father, I had nothing to do with that,” exclaimed Lester, trying to look
surprised and innocent; “nothing whatever. You know, as well as I do, that I was
at home when those men who lived in that house-boat waylaid and robbed the
mail-carrier.”
“I am aware that you took no active part in the work,” said his father. “If you
had, you would now be confined in the calaboose. But you told Dan Evans about
those checks for five thousand dollars that my agent sends me every month.”
“I didn’t,” interrupted Lester.
“Everything goes to prove that you did,” answered Mr. Brigham. “If you
didn’t, how does it come that Dan knew all about those checks? He made a full
confession to Don Gordon. The story is all over the country, and the people
about here are very angry at you. Suppose that Dan had shot Don Gordon, as he
tried to do? What do you suppose would become of you? I really believe you
would have been mobbed before this time. I wonder if you have any idea of the
excitement you have raised in the settlement?”
No; Lester had not the faintest conception of it, for the simple reason that he
had held no conversation with anybody, save the members of his own family,
since the afternoon on which Dan Evans was overpowered and robbed of his
mail-bag. When the full particulars of the affair came to his ears, he was as
frightened as a boy could be, and live. He knew that he was in a measure
responsible for the robbery, that it would never have been committed if he had
held his tongue regarding his father’s money, and the fear that he had rendered
himself liable to punishment at the hands of the law, nearly drove him frantic.
His terror was greatly increased by his father’s last words. There had not been so
much excitement in the settlement since the war—not even when it became
known that Clarence Gordon and Godfrey Evans had dug up a portion of the
general’s potato patch, in the hope of unearthing eighty thousand dollars in gold
and silver that were supposed to be buried there. Don Gordon had more friends
than any other boy in the settlement, unless it was Bert, and the planters were
enraged at the attempt that had been made upon his life. If Dan Evans’s bullet
had found a lodgment in his body instead of going harmlessly through the roof,
Dan and Lester Brigham, as well as the three flatboatmen who stole the mail,
might have had a hard time of it.
Lester’s first care was to hide himself in the house, as he had done after he and
Bob Owens burned Don’s old shooting-box. He earnestly hoped that the men
would escape with their plunder; but when he learned that a strong party, led by
General Gordon, had pursued them in Davis’s sailboat and captured them, he
was ready to give up in despair. Judge Packard would have to look into the
matter now through his judicial spectacles, and Lester did not want to be
summoned to appear as a witness. Neither did Dan, who, disregarding the advice
Don Gordon had given him, took to the woods and hid there, just as he did after
he picked his father’s pocket of the hundred and sixty dollars that David had
made by trapping quails.
When Mr. Brigham saw that Lester took to staying in the house, and that he
had suddenly lost all interest in hunting and shooting, his suspicions were
aroused. He always kept his ears open when he went to the landing, and by
putting together the disjointed scraps of conversation he overheard while he was
waiting for his mail, he finally accumulated a mass of evidence against his son
Lester that fairly staggered him.“I couldn’t believe this of you until I went to Gordon and asked him what he
knew about it,” continued Mr. Brigham. “Then the whole story came out. Lester,
you will have to go away from here.”
“That’s just what I want to do,” exclaimed the boy, in joyous tones. “I never
did like this place. It is awful lonely and dull, and there is no one for me to
associate with. If I could only go off somewhere on a visit——”
“As I told you, at the start, I have got things fixed for you for four years to
come,” said Mr. Brigham. “You ought to have something to do—something that
will occupy your mind so completely that you will have no time to be
discontented or to think of anything wrong. I have decided to send you to school;
and I am sorry I didn’t do it long ago.”
When Lester heard this he threw his cap spitefully down upon the floor,
planted his elbow viciously upon the arm of the lounge, and looked very sullen
indeed. School-rooms and school-books were his pet aversions.
“I don’t want you to do that,” said he, angrily. “I would much rather stay
here.”
“Do you want to grow up in ignorance?” demanded his father.
If Lester had given an honest response to this question it would have been:
“No, I don’t want to grow up in ignorance, but I do want to live at my ease. I
desire to go to some place where I can find plenty to amuse me, and where I
shall have no labor to perform, either mental or manual.” But he did not quite
like to say that, and so he said nothing.
“You don’t know a single thing that a boy of your age ought to know,”
continued Mr. Brigham. “I have just had a long conversation with Gordon and
his two boys.”
Lester looked up with a startled expression on his face. “You haven’t
determined to send me to Bridgeport, have you?” he exclaimed.
“I have,” was the decided answer.
“To the military academy?” asked Lester, in louder and more incredulous
tones.
“That’s the very place. The systematic drill and training you will there receive,
will be of the greatest benefit to you, if you are only willing to profit by them.
That school has made men of Don and Bert Gordon already.”“I should say so,” sneered Lester, suddenly recalling some items of
information that had come to him in a round-about way. “Don has been in a
constant row with the teachers ever since he has been there.”
“That is not true. He got himself into trouble when he first entered the school,
and lost his shoulder-straps by it; but he has toned down wonderfully under the
influence of those three boys he brought home with him, and he is bound to
make his mark before his four years’ course is completed.”
“But, father, do you know that the teachers are awful hard on the boys—that if
a student looks out of the wrong corner of his eye, or breaks the smallest one of
the thousand and more rules that he is expected to keep constantly in mind, he is
punished for it?” asked Lester, who was almost ready to cry with vexation.
It
was bad enough, he told himself, to be sent away to any school against his will;
but it was worse for his father to select a military academy, and then to hold that
embodiment of mischief and rebellion, Don Gordon, up to him as an object
worthy of emulation. Lester had no desire to learn the tactics, and he dreaded the
discipline to which he knew he would be subjected.
“I heard all about it during my talk with Don and Bert,” replied his father. “A
strong hand and plenty of work are just what you need.”
“But do you know that Bert is first sergeant of the company to which I shall
probably be assigned, and that one of its corporals is a New York boot-black? Do
you want me to obey the orders of a street Arab?”
“He could not have attained to the position he holds unless he had proved
himself worthy of it. The majority of the students, however, are the sons of
wealthy men, and they are the ones I want you to choose for your associates.
Make friends with them and bring some of them home with you, as Don and
Bert did, or go home with them, if they ask you. My word for it, you will see
plenty of sport there, if you will only do your duty faithfully. Gordon’s boys are
impatient to go back; and yet there was a time when Don disliked school as
heartily as you do.”
“When shall we start for Bridgeport?”
“A week from next Wednesday. New students are received up to the 13th of
the month; so we must make our application two days before the school begins.”
“Of course we’ll not go up on the same boat with the Gordons?”
“Why not? Having been there before, they can save us a great deal of trouble
by telling us just where to go and what to do.”
“But I don’t like the idea of traveling in their company. They will snub me
every chance they get.”
“You need not borrow any trouble on that score. They have good reasons for
disliking you, but if you conduct yourself properly, you will have nothing to fear
from them. Now, Lester, promise me that, if you are admitted to that school, you
will wake up and try to accomplish something. I will do everything I can to aid
and encourage you, and I will begin by putting it in your power to hold your own
with the richest student there.”
Lester perfectly understood his father’s last words, and he was considerably
mollified by them. If there were anything that could reconcile him to becoming a
member of the military academy, it was the knowledge of the fact that a liberal
supply of spending money was to be placed at his disposal. Lester’s highest
ambition was to be looked up to as a leader among his companions. He had
failed to accomplish his object so far as the boys about Rochdale were
concerned,
but he was pretty sure that he would not fail at Bridgeport. He didn’t,
either. His money, which Mr. Brigham might better have kept in his own pocket,
brought him to the notice of some uneasy fellows at the academy, who joined
him in a daring enterprise, the like of which had never been heard of before. It
gave the village people something to talk about, and furnished the law-abiding
students with any amount of fun and excitement. In fact the whole school term
was crowded so full of thrilling incidents, so many things happened to take their
minds off their books, that when the examination was held, some of the best
scholars narrowly escaped being dropped from their classes.
“I will do anything I can for you,” repeated Mr. Brigham, seating himself in
the nearest chair and taking a newspaper from the table. “If you will go through
the four years’ course with flying colors, and come out at the head of your class,
I shall be highly gratified, and I assure you that you will lose nothing by it.”
Mr. Brigham fastened his eyes upon his paper, and Lester, taking this as a hint
that he had nothing more to say just then, picked up his cap and went out. He
made his way directly to his own room, and taking his squirrel rifle down from
the antlers that supported it—purchased antlers they were, and not trophies of
the boy’s own skill—he buckled a cartridge belt about his waist and left the
house. He wanted to go off in the woods by himself and think the matter over;
but it is hard to tell why he took his rifle with him, for he had no intention of
hunting, and he could not have killed anything if he had. Perhaps it was because
he had fallen into the habit of carrying a weapon on his shoulder wherever he
went, just as Godfrey and Dan did.
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