Brother Against Brother Part 6

He was too far off to talk to the boys; but he waved his hat to them, and the boatmen returned the salute, as he continued on his way.

"I wonder where Levi stands in the row that is brewing all over the country," said Deck. "I don't hear him say anything of any consequence, though he may have talked to father. He did not come from New England, and I don't know whether he is a Secesher or not; and it looks as though he did not mean anybody should know."

"He don't belong to the Home Guards any way," added Artie. "He is a Tennesseean, and it would not be strange if he had some Secesh notions."

"I don't believe he is going back on father," replied Deck, when the manager had disappeared and the boat had reached the bend. "Here we are; we can't see the bridge now, and the bridge can't see us."

"We will stop if you say so; but we may not get back to the house before to-morrow morning if we spend much time here," said Artie, as he rested on his oar, and seemed to be very unwilling to use any of the time in mere talk.

"If the time is so short, why didn't you start out this morning? and why didn't you let me know sooner that you were going to set the creek on fire? We might have brought our dinners with us, as we did when we went to school in Derry, and made a day of it," argued Deck.

"Things were not ready this morning, and I started just as soon as I saw the star in the east," replied Artie.

"You don't generally wait for the gra.s.s to grow under your feet when the lightning strikes near you."

"The lightning struck while we were at dinner," added Artie quietly.

"But I think we can fix things so that we can talk and keep moving at the same time," suggested Deck, as he rose from his seat with his oar in his hand, and stepped over his thwart to the aftermost one.

He seated himself on this thwart, facing the bow. The boys were not skilled boatmen, though they had practised rowing a good deal on the river and creek, and they had not trimmed the light craft to the best advantage for ease and speed, for it was down too much by the head. Deck asked his cousin to move one seat farther aft, and he complied readily, in spite of the fact that he was the more skilled of the two in rowing.

In the smallest of the three boats at the lower pier he had often made long trips alone up the creek, besides those when his cousin was his companion.

"That lifts the bow higher out of the water," said Artie as he took his place.

"So much the better," replied Deck, proceeding to give philosophical and scientific reasons to explain what experienced boatmen know by instinct, as it were. "Now take the stroke from me, and don't pull any faster than I do."

Placing himself in an angular position on the thwart, with his right hand hold of the seat, he began to row with his left. While pulling alone in the canoe, as the negro rowers called the smallest craft, he had been inclined to protest against the accepted custom of going backwards in rowing; and he would gladly have adopted the mechanical contrivance in use on some of the Northern waters which enabled the boatmen to pull while facing the bow. He wanted to see where he was going without turning around, and he had practised rowing in this position.

Deck was heavier and stronger than his cousin, though hardly as agile.

Artie took the stroke from him, and it was quite as quick as he cared to row on a long pull. They kept good time, and the boat went along as rapidly as before.

"Now light your match, and start the fire, Artie. We shall lose no time by this arrangement, and we shall get back to the house before morning."

"Perhaps, after you understand the nature of the enterprise, you will not be willing to go with me," added Artie, looking earnestly into the face of his cousin.

"I can tell better about that after I know what it is," returned Deck, reciprocating the earnest gaze of the other. "But it is you who are wasting the time now. Why don't you come to the point without going around all the buildings on the plantation?"

"You heard the story mother told about the arms and ammunition Uncle t.i.tus had bought for the Home Guards in order to make himself the captain of the company?"

"Of course I heard it," and Deck was unwilling to say another word to increase the preliminaries to the revelation.

"Did you believe it?"

"I did."

"Then you are satisfied that Uncle t.i.tus has a lot of arms hid away somewhere in this region?" persisted Artie.

"I had my doubts, and I spoke to father about it on the bridge just before you came along in the boat. He thought that his brother was just crazy enough to do such a thing; but he thought whiskey had a good deal to do with the matter, especially in permitting him to tell his wife about it. Of course Sandy and Orly are mixed up in this business. But this is an old story by this time, Artie, and you have not told me yet what you are driving at," said Deck impatiently.

"We are going to look for the arms and ammunition, Deck!" exclaimed the originator of the enterprise. "Is that talking plainly enough?"

"To look for the arms and ammunition!" almost shouted the after oarsman, ceasing to use his oar in the astonishment of the moment.

"You insisted on my telling you all at once, and I have done so; you have stopped rowing."

"What you said was enough to throw a fellow off his base. Do you mean that you are going on a wild-goose chase all over the State of Kentucky to look for what may be a mere notion, conjured up by an overdose of whiskey?" demanded Deck, still resting on his oar.

"Don't get excited, Coeur de Lyon; cold steel cuts best," said Artie.

"And that's the reason father puts his razor into hot water when he is shaving."

"I don't think anybody is right down sure of anything in this world,"

continued the leader of the enterprise. "I think I am as sure as any fellow can be in this State of Kentucky, where no man or boy can tell which end he stands on, that I know where Uncle t.i.tus's arms and ammunition are hidden."

"You know!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Deck.

"I think I know."

"What are you doing up the creek, then? Didn't Aunt Amelia say that the arms were concealed near the river?" asked Deck, hardly able to breathe in his excitement.

"I think I know where they are hidden better than she did. If Uncle t.i.tus told his wife that they were hidden on the river,--and that is just what aunt said,--her husband intended to cheat her," said Artie very confidently. "I should say that a dozen gla.s.ses of whiskey would not have made Uncle t.i.tus fool enough to tell anybody where the arms were concealed, not even his wife; and they don't seem to be a very loving couple since they came to Kentucky."

"That's so," added Deck.

"Do you remember that time about a fortnight ago when father spoke to me about being out so late one night, Deck?"

"I remember it; it was on the bridge."

"That night I found out something I could not explain, but I can now, after what I heard at dinner to-day. But we have eight or ten miles to pull if we are going to find the arms to-day, and we must be moving,"

added Artie.

Deck rowed again, and they proceeded up the creek, Artie telling his night adventure by the way.

CHAPTER VII

A STORMY INTERVIEW ON THE BRIDGE

Probably Noah Lyon had never felt anything like the emotion of anger in his being against his brother until they met that day on the bridge. As one and another had said several times, no two men of the same blood and lineage could have been more differently const.i.tuted. Noah had been a diligent student as a boy, and a constant reader in his maturity; while t.i.tus had been the black sheep of the family, had neglected his studies in his youth, and did not even read a newspaper in his manhood, unless for a special purpose.

t.i.tus could read and write, and knew enough of arithmetic to enable him to keep the accounts of his business. Whatever he learned after he left school he gathered from the speech of people; and as his a.s.sociates were not of the intelligent cla.s.s in his native town any more than they were in his new home, his education was very limited and his moral aims, if he could be said to have any, were not elevated enough to keep him very far within the limits of the law, which were his princ.i.p.al tests between right and wrong.

Before he was twenty-one he obtained a position to drive a stage on a twenty-mile route, so that he spent every other night at a tavern; and this did not improve his manners or his morals. As a boy he had become disgusted with farming, and had learned the trade of a mason, working at it three years. Like his elder brother, he was a horse fancier, and was a skilful driver. An accident to the old stage-driver placed him on the box, and when the place became permanent he was only twenty years old.

With so little intellectual and moral foundation as he had laid for his future character, it was a misfortune for him that he was then a "good-looking fellow." He boarded at the tavern, and paid only two dollars a week in consideration of his position, for it was believed that he had some influence with his pa.s.sengers. He was well supplied with money for one of his age in the country, and he spent all he had.