The Young Wild-Fowlers

We have told in the first chapter that Egan’s guests were most cordially received by his father and mother; that during the very first night they spent at his home they heard the report of one of the big guns which used to make such havoc among the water-fowl; that the next morning they found the owner of it in a sink-boat on the bay, and that he threatened to do something to Egan if the boy frightened away any more ducks for him. We have also described how Egan and his visitors, after trying in vain to “toll” a flock of canvas-backs within range of their double-barrels by the aid of old Eph’s yellow dog Bogus, accidentally stumbled upon one of the big guns which was hidden in the grass on the shore of Powell’s Island. Enoch, Lester and Jones, who were sailing about in the Firefly, and who had set themselves the task of watching the movements of Egan and his party, saw them when they raised the gun from its place of concealment, and they were present, too, when the police-boat came up and took possession of it. They went back and told the man in the sink-boat what had happened, and after hearing him swear, and extorting from him a sort of half promise that they should be permitted to accompany him the next time he made a night raid upon a flock of ducks, they kept on to Enoch’s home. They roamed about the fields with their guns in their hands until a furious storm arose and drove them into the house; and when darkness came to conceal their movements, they were ready to carry into effect the resolution they had long ago formed—that Egan and his guests should not see any sport on the bay if they could help it. They decided that the first thing on the programme should be to deprive him of his yacht, a beautiful little craft which held a high place in Egan’s estimation, and this they hoped to accomplish with the aid of the elements. They would turn her adrift, and let the wind and the waves make a wreck of her. They succeeded in boarding the yacht, but the negro guard who slept on Mr. Egan’s oyster-boat, which was anchored close by, was on the alert, and the roar of his old musket, the savage yelps and growls of his canine companions, and the whistle of the bullet which he sent altogether too close to Enoch’s head for comfort, were enough to frighten them out of a year’s growth. Enoch, who was in the act of slipping the chain when this unexpected interruption occurred, tumbled into the boat that lay alongside the cutter, caught up an oar, and he and his two friends pulled away for dear life. When the little vessel had been left out of sight in the darkness, he drew in his oar, took off his hat and wiped the big drops of perspiration from his forehead.

“By gracious!” panted Enoch. “That was a narrow escape, I tell you. I never dreamed that Egan kept a guard on his boats. He doesn’t mean to let the big-gunners steal a march on him, does he? I must post Barr so that he will look out for himself.”

“Who was the guard?” asked Lester, who was almost as frightened now as he was on the night the bugle sounded the false alarm.

“Oh, he was one of Egan’s niggers,” replied Enoch.

“Do you think he recognized us?”

“Of course not. It is too dark to recognize anybody at that distance. If he knew who it was that tried to slip that chain, the country about here would be made too hot to hold us. Hark! Didn’t you hear something?”

The boys listened intently, and a few seconds later the stentorian tones of Gus Egan’s voice were plainly audible above the roaring of the wind and the swashing of the white-caps. He was calling out the name of his father’s oyster-boat.

“On board the Rob Roy!” he shouted.

“Yi, yi, sah!” replied the ebony guard.

“What were you shooting at?” demanded Egan.

“Dunno who his name was, but spect he was one of dem big-gunners who cussed so to-day kase you-uns skeered away his ducks,” answered the negro. “Didn’t hit him, kase I heared him when he jump into his boat. You go to bed, Marse Gus, an’ ole Sam look out for the boats; yes, sah, he will so.”

A few more words passed between the guard and the owner of the yacht, but the shrieking of the wind prevented Enoch and his companions from hearing what they were. When they saw the lantern which Egan carried in his hand moving along the shore toward the house, they gave way on their oars again, and half an hour later found them snug in bed. They were much disappointed by their failure to set the yacht adrift, and Enoch loudly condemned the ill luck which seemed to follow him wherever he went, and the good luck that always attended Gus Egan’s footsteps.

“Yes, they wall have a good time in spite of us, and we shall be obliged to stand by and see them enjoy it,” chimed in Jones, who would have given almost anything he possessed if he had been invited to make one of Egan’s party.

“As far as I am individually concerned, it makes no sort of difference to me whether Egan enjoys himself or not,” observed Lester. “He never did anything to me, and I should have nothing against him if he were not so stuck up; but I am now and forever opposed to that Don Gordon, who ought to be abolished. I’d give a thousand dollars if somebody would carry him off and never bring him back again.”

The way Lester said this made Enoch and Jones laugh until their sides ached; but they had occasion to recall his words before many hours more had passed away, and then they did not see anything so very amusing in them. Lester afterward uttered these sentiments in the hearing of one who took him at his word, and acted accordingly.

Enoch and his guests slept as soundly as though they had never in all their lives been guilty of any thing mean, and when the sun got up he found them sailing down the bay in the Firefly. After an hour’s run they dropped anchor in the mouth of a little creek, alongside a sloop which had a small, lead-colored skiff on her deck, and a box-boat moored to the stern. On the shore stood a very dilapidated cabin built of unpainted boards, and in front of the open door sat Barr, the big-gunner, who was engaged in cleaning his double-barrel. The tone of voice in which he responded to Enoch’s hearty “good morning” was no doubt intended to be polite, but his “how dy!” sounded more like a growl than like words of greeting; but when he saw the schooner drop her anchor overboard he got into his canoe and came off to take the boys ashore. He did not seem disposed to turn the cold shoulder to his visitors, as men who make their living in unlawful ways are generally supposed to do, but that he was angry over the loss he had sustained the day before was plain to be seen. He and Enoch were old acquaintances and friends, and he was indebted to the boy for the warning that had enabled him to hold fast to his big gun as long as he did.

“Well, Mr. Barr, what sort of luck did you have yesterday with the canvas-backs and red-heads?” asked Enoch, as he sprang down into the canoe.

“None at all, dog-gone it,” growled the man in reply. “After Egan scared away them ducks, there wasn’t nary other flock come nigh me; and after you-uns told me that the police had gobbled my gun, I jest picked up my decoys and come home. But I will make up for it to-night, I bet you.”

“Are you going out?” exclaimed Enoch, eagerly.

“I am. There’s a big bed of ducks up at Bush River, and the wind is from the right quarter to keep them there till to-morrow, any way. If some fool or ’nother don’t come along and bang into ’em, I’ll have a few dozen of ’em in Baltimore by morning. I’ve been powerful oneasy for fear that Egan and them restless fellers that’s stopping with him would stumble onto them ducks and skeer them away. What brung them here, I’d like to know! They don’t stay nowhere. They’re all over the bay in a minute, and I can’t go any place without meeting ’em. I’ve kinder suspicioned that they’re watching me.”

“And so they are,” explained Lester, who was always glad of an opportunity to say something spiteful about the boy he did not like. “That Don Gordon would blow on you in a minute if he could. He lives near me in Mississippi, and I dread the idea of going home, just because he will be there. I’d give something handsome if he could be sent so far out of the country that he would never find his way back again.”

“That’s easy done,” said Barr, as he ran the bow of his canoe upon the beach and held it there with his paddle, so that the boys could get out. “How much would you be willing to give?”

“He said last night that he would give a thousand dollars,” observed Jones.

“Would you, now?” said Barr, looking earnestly at Lester.

“Yes, I would,” replied the latter, little dreaming what desperate thoughts his idle words had aroused in the mind of the man before him. “He and his brother have snubbed me until I am tired of it. Although I am one of his nearest neighbors, and have been to school with him for two years, Don has never given me a helping hand.”

“Well, Egan has served me the same way,” chimed in Enoch. “Instead of helping me, he picked up that Don Gordon, who was one of the biggest rascals in the school, and he and Curtis and Hopkins have boosted him along until they have made him lieutenant-colonel of the academy battalion. Where is the big gun, Mr. Barr? I should like to have my friends see it, if you don’t object.”

“All right,” replied Barr. “I’ll take my double-barrel along, so that we can see them together.”

So saying, the duck-shooter led the way down a well-beaten path, which ran from his door, through the clearing into the woods behind the cabin. He followed a zig-zag course through the thick bushes for the distance of a quarter of a mile or more, and finally stopped beside a fallen log, which lay about a stone’s throw from the path. The log was hollow, and the big gun was snugly hidden on the inside. With much tugging and panting Barr pulled it out, and raised it to a perpendicular, so that his visitors could have a fair view of it. After that, to show them how big it was, he stood his heavy duck-gun up beside it. The contrast made Jones and Lester open their eyes.

“I couldn’t be hired to fire off that thing,” said the latter. “I should think the recoil would break one’s shoulder all to pieces.”

Enoch and Barr laughed loudly.

“You surely don’t imagine that this cannon is fired like an ordinary gun, do you?” exclaimed the former. “Why, man alive, it takes a quarter of a pound of powder and a pound and a half of shot to load it. More than that, it weighs seventy-five pounds.”

“It’s the biggest thing in the shape of a gun I ever saw,” said Jones.

“And yet it is a toy when compared with one the detectives, who were sent down from Baltimore, seized last year,” answered Enoch. “That one was ten feet long, weighed a hundred and sixty pounds, and cost a small fortune to men who have to make their living the way Barr does. These big guns bring them in their bread and butter, and you can imagine how friendly they feel toward such fellows as Gus Egan, who interfere with their business. These wild fowl belong to nobody, and I say that a man has the right to get as many of them as he can, and in any way he can.”

If Enoch had taken the trouble to interview Gus Egan on this subject, he would have found, to his great surprise, no doubt, that he did not know what he was talking about. The ex-sergeant could have told him that all wild game is the property of the State, and that the people at large, and not single individuals, are the ones who have the right to say when and how it shall be killed or captured.

“Them’s my sentiments,” said Barr, “and I ain’t going to let no sportsmen’s clubs who live up north come down here and tell me what I shall and what I shan’t do. They want fun, but I want grub.”

“And you ought to have it,” said Lester. “What would Gus Egan’s father say if you should go over to his house and tell him that he must stop raising cattle and horses for the Philadelphia markets?”

“I reckon he’d kick me off’n the place, if he was big enough,” answered Barr, “and the law wouldn’t tech him for it; but if he should come over to my shanty and tell me that I must quit shooting ducks, and I should take him by the collar and show him the way down the beach to his boat, he’d have me arrested for ’sault and battery. I don’t see no sense in such laws.”

“There’s no justice in them, certainly,” Jones remarked. “Now how do you shoot this thing?”

“You saw that little lead-colored skiff on board Barr’s sloop, didn’t you?” asked Enoch, in reply. “Well, that skiff can be navigated in the water, or put on runners and shoved over the ice. The stock of this gun is braced against a block in the bow, so that the recoil sends the boat back through the water. If the skiff should happen to get foul of a log or a cake of ice, so that it could not move, it would be kicked all to pieces. One fair shot at a flock is all a man can reasonably expect to get in one night; if he gets two, he’s rich.”

When Lester and Jones had examined the big gun to their satisfaction, Barr put it back in its hiding-place, and scattered a few chunks of wood carelessly around the base of the log so that the hollow was partly concealed. Then they went slowly back to the cabin, arriving there just in time to see the Magpie (that was the name of the police-boat which carried off one of Barr’s big guns the day before) turn her bow toward the creek, as if she intended to make a landing there. Barr gave utterance to some heavy adjectives and then went into his cabin, from which he presently emerged with a bag over his shoulder and a forked stick in his hand. Lester and Jones, who began to feel the weight of the secret with which they had been intrusted, looked frightened, but Enoch was as cool as a cucumber.

“You fellows keep quiet and let Barr and me do the talking,” said he, as he seated himself on the bench beside the door. “We have come here after terrapins, and Barr is just going out to catch some for us. That’s what he’s got his bag and stick for.”

But Barr did not go out after terrapins. He only made preparations to go, so that he could readily account for the presence of his visitors in case the officers demanded to know why they were there.

The Magpie ran into the creek and stopped alongside the sloop to which the sink-boat was made fast; but they couldn’t touch that, Enoch said, because Barr was a licensed gunner as well as an illegal one. Barr himself knew better, but still he pretended to be very much surprised and angry when he saw an officer board the sloop, cast off the painter with which the sink-boat was made fast, and toss it to a man who was standing on the steamer’s forecastle.

“What are you about there?” he demanded, in savage tones. “You don’t want to handle things with so much looseness, or you may run against a snag, the first thing you know.”

“If you will send off that canoe so that I can get ashore, I will tell you what I am doing, and why I am doing it,” answered the officer, with the most provoking coolness.

“Well, I won’t do it,” was Barr’s reply. “Nobody wants you ashore, but if you are bound to come, you can call away one of your own boats.”

“All right. It will not be much trouble to do that. Put the dingy into the water, Bob,” said the officer, addressing some one on board the steamer. “Then make the falls fast to this sink-box, haul her up to the davits and take her aboard.”

“Barr, that’s the last of your boat,” whispered Enoch. “Your license has been revoked.”

“And it’s all Egan’s fault—and Don Gordon’s,” said Lester. “If they hadn’t stumbled upon that big gun yesterday——”

“They’re all to blame for it,” hissed Barr, through his clenched teeth, “and if I don’t make the last one of them wish that they had kept their fingers out of my dish, I’m a Dutchman.”

Having seen the sink-boat disposed of, the officer turned his attention to the skiff which was lying bottom up on the sloop’s deck. He pulled it over so that he could see the inside of it, and the first thing his eyes rested upon was the padded block which served as a brace for the stock of the big gun.

“Here’s another craft we want, boys,” said he. “Take it aboard.”

By the time this order had been obeyed the dingy came around the steamer’s stern, and drew up alongside the sloop so that the officer could get in. She brought with her, besides the sailor who was sculling her, a big-whiskered man dressed in citizen’s clothes, who had not before showed himself.

“I never set eyes on that man until this moment,” whispered Enoch, “but I’ll bet anything I’ve got that he is a Baltimore detective.”

“I know he is,” answered Barr, giving emphasis to his assertion with one of his heaviest oaths. “But he can’t hurt me this trip. I stood my trial and paid my fine last season, and nobody can’t prove that I’ve been big-gunning since. Remember, boys, that it wasn’t my gun they gobbled yesterday.”

“Of course it wasn’t,” said Enoch. “You don’t know who owned it, and neither do we.”

At this moment the dingy’s bow ran high upon the beach, and the officer sprang out, followed by the detective.

“Mr. Barr,” said the former, “your license to shoot for market in these waters has been revoked.”

“What for?” demanded Barr, doubling his huge fists and scowling at the officer as if he wanted to knock him down.

“You have been slaughtering wild fowl contrary to law,” was the answer.

“I hain’t, nuther, and you can’t prove it,” Barr almost shouted. “Show me the man that says so, and I’ll show you a man that will be whopped before he can get the words out of his mouth.”

“That’s just the point,” replied the officer, calmly. “If I could prove it on you, it would be my duty to arrest you at once. That skiff is pretty good evidence——”

“It’s one I had left from last year—one that you and your big Baltimore detectives were not smart enough to find,” interrupted Barr.

“Well, we’ve found it now, and you are not likely to use it again very soon. Why didn’t you take the block out of it?”

“Kase I didn’t want to—that’s why. I’ll see whether or not I won’t use it again to pick up the ducks I shoot over my decoys. I’ll have that sink-boat and my license back, too. I’ll go up to Havre de Grace to-morrow, and if you can’t make out a case against me, I’ll have you took up for a thief.”

“It may be possible that I shall want you to go back with me to-day,” said the officer, drawing a legal document from his breast-pocket.

“That there is a search warrant, I ’spose,” growled Barr.

“That is just what it is. I want to see if you haven’t got another big gun stowed away somewhere about your premises.”

“Go ahead and sarch till you are blind, if you want to,” said Barr, angrily. “If you find anything around here that the law don’t allow me to have, I’ll eat it. I don’t know who it is that’s making all this furse for me, but if I can find out, I’ll have him brought before the justice to-morrow. I got into a muss last year trying to make grub for my family, and I’ve been doing as near right as I knowed how ever since.”

“No doubt of it,” answered the officer, in a tone which implied that there was considerable doubt about it. “By the way, Barr, how much did that big gun we found on Powell’s Island yesterday cost you?”

“’Twan’t mine. I never knew you had found one till these young chaps told me,” said Barr, and these were the only truthful words he uttered during the interview.

“Yes, I saw these boys there, and I noticed that they seemed to take a good deal of interest in the proceeding.”

“Was there anything so very strange in that?” asked Enoch, boldly. “We wanted to see what a big gun looked like.”

The boys did not at all like the look the officer gave them as he put his warrant back into his pocket and went into the cabin. It seemed to say that he knew they could tell all about that big gun and its owner if they were disposed to do so.

Barr’s house received a thorough overhauling. The police-officer and the detective were experts, and there was not a nook or crevice that they did not look into. They even examined the boards in the floor to see if any of them had been recently nailed down; but their search was in vain. Then they came out and searched the clearing, looking under every stump and log in it, and pulling down the brush-heaps, which they left for Barr to pile up again, and finally they found the path that led to the big gun’s place of concealment. Lester and Jones looked frightened when they saw them disappear in the bushes, but Enoch and Barr were perfectly unconcerned.

“There’s no cause for alarm yet,” said the former. “The path leads to a spring, and ends in a pasture where Barr keeps his cow. The gun is so securely hidden that they will never find it. They stand as much chance of being struck by lightning.”

“Did that officer mean to say that Mr. Barr will not be permitted to shoot ducks any more?” inquired Lester.

“He might as well have said so,” answered Enoch, “for if his license is taken away from him, there will be nothing left for him except point shooting.”

“What’s that?”

“Why, standing on a point that juts into the bay, and shooting ducks as they fly over. But Barr couldn’t do that, because the most of the points are leased to clubs, and those that are reserved, are protected by their owners, who will prosecute anybody who sets foot on them. The law regarding trespass is very strict in this State.”

Enoch’s prediction was verified about a quarter of an hour later, for the officers came out of the woods empty-handed. They had not found the big gun, and Enoch assured his companions that they would hear it speak to the ducks that night.

“But suppose these officers should take it into their heads to watch us,” said Jones. “What then?”

“Let ’em watch,” replied Enoch. “Who cares? You don’t for a moment imagine that they would find the big gun, do you? Not by a long shot. The instant they showed themselves the gun would be dropped overboard.”

“And lost?” exclaimed Lester.

“By no means. As soon as the coast was clear, Barr would go back and drag for it. It’s very often done.”

The near approach of the officers put a stop to the conversation. Lester expected them to look crest-fallen over their failure, but they didn’t. They were talking and laughing with each other, and were apparently in the best of spirits.

“Well, Barr,” said the one who had the warrant, “you’ve made a good job of hiding that unlawful weapon, but I give you fair warning that we are bound to have it, sooner or later.”

“Then you’ll get it of somebody besides me,” growled the duck-shooter. “I tell you that I ain’t got no big gun, and I don’t know nobody who has.”

“I do,” answered the officer, “and when I get my hands on it, I will show it to you. This big-gunning is against the law, and it’s got to be broken up. If you knew which side your bread was buttered on, you would never fire that big gun again. Can’t you see that you are killing the goose that lays the golden egg? The first thing you know there will be no ducks for you to shoot, and you will have to look up some other way of making a living.”

“I know as well as you do that there won’t be no birds here after a while,” answered Barr, bitterly, “and it will be all along of them city sportsmen who come down here and shoot for fun.”

The big-gunner began swearing lustily, and the officers, seeing that it would be of no use to argue the point with him, got into the dingy and pushed off to the sloop, which they searched as thoroughly as they had searched the house, but, of course, without finding anything. Then they went on board the Magpie, which backed out of the creek and turned her prow toward Havre de Grace.