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A Struggle for a Fortune
A Struggle for a Fortune
CHAPTER I.
About Money
It was in a little log cabin with a dirt floor and a stick chimney which occupied almost the whole of one side of it, situated a few miles from Pond Post Office, a small hamlet located somewhere in the wilds of Missouri, that the opening scene of this story took place. There were four occupants of the cabin, sitting around in various attitudes, and they all seemed to be looking at a fifth person, Jonas Keeler by name, who was standing in the middle of the floor with a whip in his hand and a fierce frown on his face. Something was evidently troubling this man Jonas, and, if we listen to a few scraps of the conversation that passed between him and his wife, perhaps we can ascertain what it was.
“And is there any thing else that you want?” inquired Jonas, in a tone that was fully as fierce as his frown. “It beats the world how many things I have to get when I go to town. It is coffee here, and flour there, until I have to have a memory as long as this whip-stock for fear that I will forget some of them.”
“But, father, we have got to live somehow,” said his wife, who was seated on a rickety chair. “We can’t grow fat on air.”
“To be sure you can’t, but it seems to me that you might make things last longer. We wasn’t in this fix before the war. Then we had a house and something that was fit to eat; but ever since the rebs and the Yanks have got in here and burned us out, things is all mussed up and I don’t know which way to turn.”
“Why, father, you have money now,” said his wife.
“Where did I get money? Not much I ain’t. It has been this way ever since that old man Nickerson came here to board. I didn’t agree to take him for nothing, and I would not have done it if you hadn’t showed signs of getting up on your ear.”
“I know you didn’t. He gave you one thousand dollars when he first came here, and you said it would be more than enough to keep him as long as he lived.”
“But I did not suppose he was going to last forever, did I? He has chawed that up in tobacco long ago; and every time I go to town I am getting him a plug out of my own pocket.”
“Do you mean to say that he has used up a thousand dollars in three years?” asked Mrs. Keeler, in a tone of astonishment.
“Now look at you. You seem to think that amount of money will last forever. He has chawed that up and more, too. He must have had more than a thousand dollars when he came here. The folks down to Manchester used to say he was worth ten thousand dollars. What did you do with all that money, old man?”