Library Collections: Document: Full Text

"Yes, I'll kick your life out of you in five minutes, if you don't go about your bisness."

"Kick me again, old villain, and I'll get you horsewhipped. I've a right to sleep on the blanket if I get it first. You know it's none of yourn; nor's any thing in this d---- rotten old house yourn, if it's ever so poor."

"Well, you're under my orders, you young lout, and I tell you to be moving. Move! or I'll tallow you with a raw-hide."

"Move! I won't move a peg for you, old c----."

"You shall, you bastard; be off!"

"I won't!" And Jims doubled up his fists, and braced back against him. As for Dan, who liked this fun, he violently thrust forward both his brawny arms to seize and crush the youngster, when a blow from another arm behind him felled him to his knees. Just in time, Boyce had sprung up to rescue the lad; and now, as Pan slowly recovered himself, and with a look of savage ferocity, seemed meditating a thorough revenge on him for interfering, Boyce calmly informed him that if he advanced a step towards him he would annihilate him. The old rascal, however, seemed bent on making an assault, when aunt Dorothy planted herself between the combatants, and told them, with arms stretched out towards each one, that she would "have no fighting there!"

What power to restrain from it she would have had, we know not; but, perhaps fortunately for all parties, at this moment the form of Captain Bunce darkened the door, and Dick followed him with his cart-whip in his hand. The Captain, perceiving at a glance the true state of the case, snatched the whip from the hand of his son, and pushing Boyce aside, put the lash across the shoulders of Dan, and tingled Jims' sides with it, till they both begged for quarters, and promised to have no further dispute.

"Well, now, be off," said the Captain, "both of you; and if they make you any trouble, Dick, put on the lash. They know what their duty is; if not, I'll teach them. As for the rest on you," said he, "keep out of brawls. Better find steady employment, than spend the time in idle talk and wrangling. You'll get a short allowance for this, I'll promise you."

It was night before the men got back.

The team drove slowly into the yard. It consisted of two yoke of oxen, and old Roan the mare on the lead. Jims was on her back sitting sideways, his feet carelessly dangling by her side, his back curving like the new moon, and his chin resting on his hands. Dan plodded along behind. Bill was riding stowed in among the barrels.

"Well, Dick," said his father, "good luck, hey?"

"Have had a hard pull of it anyhow," said that worthy.

"What, with three or four barrels, and a little cider? Whew, Dick!"

"Three or four barrels! Thunder!"

"Yes, perhaps so, that's enough."

"We'll count them off, if you will."

The Captain grew black with anger, when he counted six barrels of poor beef on the load, a quantity sufficient for him two years.

"What's all this, Dick? What have you here, hey? Six barrels! By George, I'll not stand that any how. Savage knows I never bought six barrels of him."

"So I told him," said Dick. "He had seven barrels, but I refused to take any more than six, and told him we couldn't eat it in two years. But Savage swore you bought the lot."

"So I did the lot of three or four barrels, not all the beef in creation by any means. Six barrels!" and the Captain swore hard. "Well, well, roll it in. Only consider, Dick," said he in a whisper, "the more they eat of it the faster they'll die off."

"That's a true bill and no mistake," replied his hopeful one. "But it's plaguy disagreeable work to handle coffins. If it wan't for that, I'd just as lief they'd drop off one a week as any way."

"Never mind about the coffins, Dick; we get used to them, and the most I care about the beef, is the likelihood of having a lot on hand two or three years hence. The chances are that beef'll fall off ten per cent, before the year's up. I want enough of this feed only, to keep the folks along when other things' scarce you know -- not enough to pay interest on for all future time. Savage's a hard one any how, and to get a trade out of him, a man must look two or three ways for Sunday."

"What have you got there, Cap'n Bunce?" shouted a female from the open door of the large mansion. This individual was none other than Mrs. Bunce herself, stout, red-faced, loud talking, coarse and vulgar-looking Mrs. Bunce. The Captain to her inquiry said he'd got home a lot of beef from Savage's.

"Lot of beef from Savage's!" said she, "and is that all beef?"

"To be sure it is -- why not?"

"What you going to do with it, Cap'n?" said she approaching him.

"Why, you see, Mrs. Bunce," and the Captain spoke m a low confidential way, and nudged her a little delicate sort of a you-know-a-thing-or-two nudge in her fat arm, "this is cheap beef; it's just the sort of feed for the people over yonder, with now and then a good cut for the rest of us."

"Well, if this don't beat all my 'wife's relations,' Captain Bunce -- six barrels of poor beef!"