VI
There grew in Andrest's mind a vision which, through all its changes, urged him to think of money and what to do with it. He had nearly two thousand dollars, his savings from years of fishing and trapping. What to do with the money had never troubled him till he learned that "money buried in the ground does not work or increase, but money put into stocks, bonds, mortgages, or notes does work, and increases night and day."
His own money was buried in the ground, but it should remain so no longer. He went up the river in his skiff, dug out the hidden demijohns, and brought them down to his shanty-boat. The following morning he paddled down the river to Deerport in his canoe with the money in stout bags, and packed them up to the bank.
Urgone, the cashier, welcomed the deposit with a broad smile of satisfaction. He took Andrest into the cage, and they counted the silver dollar by dollar. Some of it was black, some tarnished with dirt, and some bright and new. The total was eighteen hundred and seventeen dollars and fifty cents. That amount was written into the new bank-book under the original entry of five hundred dollars.
"You've made a fine start for a young man," the cashier told Lunmer. "Now what you will want to do is to invest it—not all of it, but a good part of it, say two thousand dollars. That will leave you more than three hundred in the bank."
Urgone gave Andrest a handful of circulars and documents relating to money, investments, and markets where stocks and bonds are sold. It was interesting to the cashier to see the sudden enlightenment of the money-hoarder. He wondered how many thousand dollars were buried back in the swamps. He knew that there were cotton-plantations whose profits were changed into gold and then buried, sunk in the bottoms, no one knew where—and some of it never would be recovered.
"If you put out two thousand dollars at six per cent," the cashier explained, "you'll have a return of one hundred and twenty dollars a year, just as I told you—more than two dollars a week. You read those papers, and when you come back I'll talk it over with you."
"Yes, sir, I'll do it," the river youth assented. "I'll come back. You see, I knew there was something like this; but I never had any education, excepting what I've read and listened around. A man has to have education to know about money working—"
"There are men who have never learned to read or write who know how to make money work," the cashier interrupted. "There are all kinds of education, and money education is one of them. There's not much to it if you just get down to the principles; but some don't seem ever to learn. There are rich men that don't know anything but trading mules. You never know when you are going to find some little thing that 'll make you rich."
"I'm obliged to you, sir," Andrest exclaimed earnestly. "I sure want to know about money. Course, a hundred dollars can work same as a thousand dollars or a million—just as a little man can work same as a big one, only not so much."
"But some little men work ten times as much as some big ones," the cashier reminded him.
"Yes, sir! I'll think about that, too."
On his way up to the shanty-boat Andrest stopped at intervals to read the papers and pamphlets that Urgone had given him. He could understand some of the things they said, but others he could not make out at all. He read them over and over again, and after he arrived at his shanty-boat he studied them, pencil and paper in hand, trying to grasp the science of the figures.
He had been groping for years, trying to "well-fix" himself. He had long had a vague ambition to rise above poverty, but he was surprised to find that a real, live, genuine banker took an interest in him and was willing to show him how to make his fish and fur money work like a rich cotton-planter's or a millionaire lumberman's.
He forgot his dinner till late. After dinner he took his meat rifle and started off through the woods, thinking to kill something for supper. He crossed to the St. Francis Trace, seeing little game and shooting none.
When he looked at the tracks in the trace, he saw where a mule had trotted down. He knew that mule by a nub on one of the shoes. Forthwith he followed the tracks, and, sure enough, he met Sue Belle Clinchell returning up the trail.
She jumped down from the mule, and they walked along together.
"Daddy's awful mad at you," she told him; "but you don't care, do you? You won't be mean about it? You don't know how good old daddy is when he is good!"
"I never harmed him, or 'lowed to," Andrest told her. "I'm just a shanty-boater, and I know it. First he tries to layway me, and then he hires a man to tear up my boat. Now I don't know what he'll do!"
"He won't do anything," Sue Belle declared confidently. "I won't let him! You see, he's 'fraid of you—"
"Afraid of me?" Andrest gasped.
She looked at him from immeasurable heights of feminine wisdom.
"Didn't you know it?"
"He 'lowed I'd shoot him? He thought—"
"Worse'n that!"
She taunted his ignorance, but she would not tell him what worse could happen to Daddy Clinchell than being shot from the brush. A slow flush mounted to his cheeks when he realized what she meant; and then she blushed and laughed uneasily.
"I never 'lowed to harm anybody, and I aim always to mind my own business," he declared slowly. "Course I'm ignorant, and I'm—I'm kind of poor, but I'm not shiftless, if I do live in a shanty-boat. I got my way to make in this mean old world, and I'm doing it best way I know how. No man has a right to say I harmed him. No man has a right to set along the river, laywaying me. No man has a right to hire somebody for fifty dollars to tear my boat up. I could 'a' killed Rip Morlung for what he done, but I didn't. I could have took his money to pay for the damage he done, but I didn't. I know right where he buried his money, but I'll never touch it!"
"Lots and lots of people buries their money," she mused. "Daddy told me he used to, but now he buys land, or puts it out to interest on mortgages, or thataway."
"He used to bury his money?" Andrest exclaimed.
"He sure did! He told me once that he had 'most ten thousand dollars in gold and silver buried around before he got to putting it to work for him."
"A rich old planter buried his money?" Andrest repeated wonderingly.
"It was when he was a young man," she explained. "He'd cleared off a quarter-section right here and sold the logs—he sold a lot of them, and he buried the money. Then he learned about interest money, and he began to make money work for him."
"He wasn't always rich—wasn't always a rich old planter?" Andrest asked incredulously.
"Why, no! The idea! He just came back in here poor as anybody."
Andrest grasped the amazing information in silence. It had never occurred to him that people could change their status. He had never observed that people grew older and wealthier or poorer, or fared better or worse. He was a young man!
"Then what does he treat me thataway for?" he demanded with sudden anger. "If he was poor once, what makes him call me shiftless, and what makes him hound me around?"
They had arrived at the edge of the plantation clearing. She impulsively put her arm around his neck. This anger between her father and the young man hurt her feelings. She was afraid, too, of the consequences to which it might lead, having gone so far.
"Don't you be angry with him!" she cried. "It 'll all be all right some day, you'll see, and we'll all be good friends. It's just he don't know you. Daddy's a good old man, and don't you go being mean! Promise me you won't be mean, Lun!"
"Course I won't," he promised.
Sue Belle mounted the mule, to ride across the open to the plantation. Andrest returned into the big timber and headed for home again. On the way he stumbled upon a flock of wild turkeys, from which he shot down a young gobbler.
It was early when he arrived at the boat, and after dressing out the bird, ready to fry for supper, he paddled up the river in his canoe, trying to think his way through the maze that confronted him.
A mile up-stream he turned into Deer Hoof River, a shallow little spring creek which boiled up out of the white sands of a lake six or eight miles back in the Dark Bend swamps. Few people ventured up into this creek. Its course was tortuous, and the surrounding brakes were thick and dark and threatening. No one knew how many fugitives from justice lived there. Some of them were outlaws who had fled from charges of murder.
Nevertheless, the little creek was a favorite with Andrest. He paddled up-stream and then drifted in the shallow current. As he drifted, he picked up strange and misshapen shells from the sandy bottom. The clams were cripples, some of them white and some tinted with dark browns and greens. Here Andrest gathered the pretty little tricks which he liked so well—pieces of shell shaped like bullets and teeth and flower-buds and apples, and countless other known and unknown things.
He found a shell that would weigh nearly two pounds, all crumpled up around the lips, and with hummocks and pits and holes in the body. He opened it with difficulty, using the blade of his knife, and slicing the stout pillars of muscle that bound the lobes of the shell together. He knew from experience that a shell so badly shaped as that was likely to have pretty tricks in it.
He was not surprised to find two of them, one at each pillar of muscle. They were the color of bright new gold, and they were shaped like pears.
"Sho, they're pretty tricks!" Andrest exclaimed. "Glad I come up here to-night!"
They were larger than the ends of his little fingers—larger than musket-balls—and they shone in the light of the westering sun. He laughed with glee as he looked at them. Never had he seen anything more beautiful.
"I've seen 'em all colors, 'most, but never bright gold!" He shook his head. "Seems funny they grow all slicked up thataway, without any polishing or scraping!"
For fear something would scratch them, he wrapped them up in his handkerchief and put them away in his pocket. He examined the strange shell, but there were no other loose shapes in it. Its whole inside was the color of gold, and he decided to take it home to the boat with him. He thought it would make a pretty salt-and-pepper dish.
The sun going down warned him that night would soon be at hand, so he paddled out of the little creek and down to his shanty-boat. As he cooked and ate his supper, his mind reverted to the money he had put into the bank. Old Clinchell had buried money when he was a young man, and he wasn't any better in those days than Andrest himself!
He had not ventured to think very much about Sue Belle. She was quality people; her father was a rich old planter; a great gulf existed between her kind and a shanty-boater. Yet Andrest had stubbornly refused to give up his acquaintance with her, no matter how angry her father might be. Danger and attacks did not alter his mind.
He knew now that old Clinchell not only hated him, but feared him. The planter was afraid that his daughter might run away with a shanty-boater, just as lots of girls ran away with men in the stories and the newspapers. She might be stolen away from her rich old father by a trifling river man!
"Sho, I'd like to steal that girl!" Andrest exclaimed to himself. "I sure would—I bet I'll see about that—but shucks, she wouldn't go with me. She's a fine, pretty girl, though!"
He stopped eating, to consider the amazing possibilities that were occurring to him. Poor shanty-boater, fisherman, trapper, no- 'count river-rat—and yet, perhaps, he might "dast to think seriously" about the daughter of a rich old planter who once was poor himself and used to bury his money!
"Old Clinchell seems to think so, anyhow," Andrest grinned. "He sure is worried about something, and I bet that's it! She's real friendly acting—she put her arm around my neck, begging me not to harm her poor old daddy! Lawzee!"
Andrest blinked as he recalled that pleading caress. He could feel it yet. He forgot his supper thinking about it.
He had been trained by years of habit to see only the vast difference between a river-rat living in a shanty-boat and the quality folks living on great plantations. The plantation folks could do almost anything, but a shanty-boater should never presume on that account.
Now the shanty-boater began to presume. He had money ready to go to work for him; he knew a plantation girl who went out of her way to be friendly—and her old daddy had been common folks years ago, burying money in the ground, just like other ignorant people!
The fried turkey was cold when Andrest ate the last of his supper. When he had finished, he cleared up the dishes and put everything away. He took out the papers the banker had given him to read and pored over them again. When his eyes began to hurt with the unwonted effort, he turned to the two pretty gold tricks which he had found up Deer Hoof River.
Resting on the table, they were beautiful. They reflected the lamplight, and seemed to shine with a glow of their own. He studied them and admired them with all his heart. He hardly dared touch them with his fingers, because his fingers were rough and might mar their polished beauty.
"They're plumb lovely!" he said. "I 'low they're pretty enough to give to Sue Belle; and I will, the next time I get to see her!"
He had carried her messes of squirrels and turkeys and other game. He had showed her wild birds, and they had picked posies out in the swamps—that was just natural. She had brought him cakes and candy which she had made, or which the old kitchen mammy had made; but he had never thought to give her anything like these little golden pears.
They would at least serve as a beginning. He would watch her expression, and see whether she liked them because he had given them to her. If she did, his instinct told him, then she would like other things more worthy, but perhaps no more beautiful in his estimation.
But could a plantation girl like her really be interested in a shanty-boater? It was impossible, he feared; and yet her father had been like Andrest in his younger days!
So he argued with himself, now hopeful, now doubting, until he fell asleep.
He was awakened by a hail from the stream-side. When he peered out he saw that it was morning, and that old Durm Chnchell was sitting on a saddle-mule at the top of the bank. The old man had no firearm in his hands, and he did not seem to have his belt on, either.
Andrest strapped on his own belt and went outside to greet his early visitor.
"Good morning, Mr. Clinchell!" he greeted. "Won't you come down and set up by the stove?"
"Yes, sir, Andrest, I sure will," the planter accepted. "I come down here to talk over a little matter of business. I'm friendly; I just want to see'f we can't come to some agreement."
"All right, sir!" Andrest assented. "I'm sure I have no hard feelings, and I don't want trouble with any man in the world."
The old man tied the mule to a branch and climbed down the clay bank to the sand-bar level. He stepped aboard the shanty-boat and walked in to sit by the stove, in which Andrest had cedar kindlings burning hot under hardwood in a minute. He put on the coffee-pot and sat down opposite the visitor.
"Yes, sir?" he said interrogatively.
"I understand you have a lot of ambition," Clinchell began. "You've saved up a little money, and you put it into the bank, 'long of that reward money. I know, because I'm into banks myself, and we exchange information about clients. Now, I'm a man of few words. I don't beat around the bush none. I'll give you five thousand dollars if you'll take your shanty-boat and all your traps and things and drop out of St. Francis River, and agree never to come back into the Dark Bend swamps again. What do you say to that?"
Andrest looked up from the floor in astonishment. The old man was glaring at him grimly, but he returned the glare with unflinching eyes.
For a full minute the two stared at each other, the old man's glance turning from Andrest's lips to his nose, from eye to temple, and from ears to hair. Something in the steady, unwavering gaze of the young man did not permit Clinchell to meet it squarely.
"Well?" the old planter asked impatiently.
"I think it's too much," Andrest said.
"Eh? Too much? You'll go for less?"
"Oh, I didn't say that—no, sir!" Andrest shook his head. "That's more than it's worth to have me go away. I'll go when I get ready, Mr. Clinchell, but I'll stay till I get ready to go. I wouldn't go for twice what you say; you haven't money enough to buy me thataway. I'm a shanty-boater, but I have some self-respect, and it isn't for sale. No, sir!"
Clinchell sat dazed for a minute. He glanced back and forth in the little shanty-boat cabin. It was a poor, poverty-stricken little den. Any man who lived in such a place ought to be willing to sell his soul for a hundred dollars or so.
"Then you got to take the consequences!" he roared angrily. "You impident young whelp! You got to take the consequences!"
He turned and strode heavily out of the cabin and across the deck to the sand-bar.
"Say, you forgot something!" Andrest called after him.
"What? What did I forget?"
"The cup of coffee—you'd better come back and take a—"
"You—you—" Clinchell choked, and then ran up the bank to mount the mule as lightly as a boy of twelve years.