Harry Castlemon - A Struggle for a Fortune

Mrs. Keeler made no remark when she heard this. The idea that a man ninety years old could cease a habit that he had been accustomed to all his life, was absurd. Jonas himself really delighted in a good smoke. How would he feel if he were deprived of that privilege? Furthermore, his wife did not believe that all Mr. Nickerson’s money was gone. She was certain that Jonas could find a good deal of it if he looked around and tried.

This conversation took place some time previous to the beginning of our story. Mr. Nickerson’s thousand dollars were nearly gone, at least Jonas said so, and at the time we introduce them to the reader it was all gone, and the old man did not know what he would do next. He had not a bit of that staff of life, as he regarded it, remaining, and now Jonas wanted to know where he had hidden the rest of his money. He had held a long talk with the old man down to the stable but could not get any thing out of him. That was one thing that put him in such bad humor.

“What did you do with all that money, old man?” repeated Jonas, when Mr. Nickerson looked up at him with a sickly smile on his face.

“What money?” inquired the old gentleman, as if he had never heard of the subject before.

“Aw! what money!” said Jonas; and when he got into conversation on this matter he nearly always forgot himself and shouted out the words as if the man he was addressing were a mile away. “I mean the money you had stowed away in your pocket-book where the soldiers could not find it; the money we were talking about down to the barn. Where did you put it?”

“I gave you every cent I had left,” was the reply. “If there was any more the rebels have got it. Say, Jonas, are you going to get me a plug of tobacco when you go down town?”

“There it is again. No, I ain’t. Your money is all gone, and you will have to do without it from this time on.”

Jonas started toward the door as if he were in a hurry to get out, but before he had made many steps he suddenly paused in his walk, gazed steadily at the dirt floor and then turned to Mr. Nickerson again.

“Don’t you remember where a dollar or two of that money went?” said he; and he tried to make his voice as pleading as he knew how. “If you could remember that, I might find you a plug or two of tobacco while I am down town.”

“There was no more of it in the purse other than the money I gave you,” said the old man, once more resting his forehead on his hands and his elbows on his knees. “That was all I had left to give you. You saw the inside of the purse as plainly as I did.”

“But you must have some other that was not in the purse,” said Jonas. “Where did you put that?”

“All I had was there in my pocket and you have got that. I want a plug of tobacco, too.”

“Well, you don’t get it out of me this trip,” shouted Jonas. “If you won’t tell where your money is you can go without tobacco.”

Jonas went out, climbed into his wagon and drove off while the old man raised his head from his hands, tottered to the door and watched him as he was whirled away down the road. Then he came back and seated himself on the chair again.

“Jonas still sticks to it that I had more money in that purse than I gave him,” whined Mr. Nickerson. “I hid it under the doorstep before Price took me away to the army. He knew that I was not able to do anything toward driving the mules, I was too old; but he took me along just to let me see that the Confederates ruled this State instead of the Union people. He set me to getting the mules out of the mud holes they got into, but in a few days he saw that I was not of any use at that, so he discharged me where I was all of one hundred miles from home, and left me to get there the best I could. I made it after awhile, although I suffered severely while I was doing it, found my thousand dollars right where I had left it and came up here and gave it to Jonas, consarn my picture. He said it would be enough to get me all the tobacco and clothes I needed, and now it is all gone. What I am going to do beats me.”

“I have not got a cent, Mr. Nickerson,” said Mrs. Keeler. “If I had I would give it to you in a minute. I have not seen the color of any body’s money since the war.”

“I know you haven’t, Mandy,” said Mr. Nickerson. “I have not any kith nor kin of my own, but you have always been good to me, and some day – ”

The old man started as if he had been shot, looked all around him, his gaze resting on the faces of the two boys who stood near the door listening to what he had to say, and then hid his face in his hands and burst into a loud cough, doubling himself up as if he were almost strangled. Perhaps the boys were taken by surprise – and perhaps they were not; but Jonas’s wife was really alarmed.

“Why, Mr. Nickerson, what is the matter?” she inquired.

“Oh, it is nothing. It will pass off in a few minutes. I get to coughing that way once in a while.”

“Especially when you are going to say something you don’t want to,” murmured one of the boys under his breath. “And some day you are going to pay mother for her goodness to you. I wish I knew what you meant by that.”

The boys turned and left the cabin, but they did not go in company with each other. In fact, they tried to get as far apart as possible. There was something wrong with them – a person could see that at a glance. What these young fellows had to make them enemies, living there in the wilderness with not another house in sight, shall be told further on.

“Nat, what do you reckon he meant by that?”

“Meant by what?”

“Why he said that mother had always been good to him, and that some day – then he went off coughing and didn’t say the rest.”

“I don’t know, I am sure.”

“I reckon he has got some money stowed away somewhere, as pap always said he had, and that when he is gone mother will come into it. By gracious! I wish I could find it.”

“Would you take it away from your mother?”

“Yes, sir, I would. I would take it away from any body. I need some clothes, don’t I?”

“You would have to go down to Manchester if you got any money, and that is a long ways from here.”

“I don’t care; I would find it if I was there. Are you going to get him any tobacco?”

“Me? What have I got to buy him tobacco with? You talk as if I had lots of money hidden away somewhere.”

“‘Cause if I see you slipping away any where and I can’t find you, I will tell pap of it when he comes home. You know what you will get if I do that?”

“Well, you keep your eyes on me and see if I slip away any where except down to the potato patch,” said Nat, indignantly. “That is where I am going now.”

The two boys separated and went off in different directions, Nat wending his way to the potato patch and the other going toward the miserable hovel they called a barn to finish his task of shelling corn.

“What a mean fellow that Nat Wood is,” said Caleb Keeler, as he turned and gave his departing companion a farewell look. “That boy has got as much as four or five dollars hidden away about this place somewhere, and I tell you I am going to find it some day. Then won’t I have some clothes to wear? I’ve got a pair of nice shoes which pap made him give me, but I will have more if I find that money. Dog-gone him, he has no business to keep things hidden away from us.”

These two boys, Caleb Keeler and Nat Wood, cherished the most undying hatred to one another, and as far as Nat was concerned, there was reason for it. It was all on account of his lost shoes, and they had been taken away from him a year ago. The weather was getting cold, every morning the grass and leaves were wet and it was as much as a bare-footed boy wanted to do to run around in them, and Nat had prepared for it by going down to the store one evening and purchasing a pair of brogans and two pairs of stockings. He fully expected to get into trouble on account of them, and sure enough he did. The next morning he came out with them on, and his appearance was enough to create astonishment on Caleb’s part who stood and looked at him with mouth and eyes wide open.