“You come over and stay with me to-night, and we’ll put our heads together and see what we can make of this.  I must go down to the store now, and I’ll meet you here in half an hour.  That will give you time enough to go home and speak to your folks.”

Bob spent the night at Lester’s house, and it was during the long conversation they had before they went to sleep, that they made up their minds that it was a mean piece of business to trap quails, and that nobody but a miserable pot-hunter would do it.  They adopted the dog-in-the-manger policy at once.  If they could not trap the birds, nobody should; and that was about all they could decide on just then.

The next morning after breakfast they mounted their horses and rode in company, until they came to the lane that led to Bob’s home and there they parted, Lester directing his course down the main road toward the cabin in which David Evans lived.  He met David in the road, as we know, and laid down the law to him in pretty strong language; but strange enough the latter could not be coaxed or frightened into promising that he would give up his chance of earning a hundred and fifty dollars.

Lester was in a towering passion when he rode away after his conversation with David.  Lashing his horse into a run, he turned into the first road he came to, and after a two-mile gallop, drew rein in front of the double log-house in which Bob Owens lived.  There was an empty wagon-shed on the opposite side of the road, and there he found Bob, standing with his hands in his pockets, and gazing ruefully at the pile of traps upon which he and Lester had worked so industriously, and which he had hoped would bring them in a nice little sum of spending money.

“Well, did you see him?” asked Bob, as his friend rode up to the shed and swung himself out of the saddle.

“I did,” was the reply, “and he was as defiant as you please.  He was downright insolent.”

“These white trash are as impudent as the niggers,” said Bob, “and no one who has the least respect for himself will have anything to do with them.  I used to think that Don Gordon was something of an aristocrat, but now I know better.”

“I wish I had given him a good cowhiding,” continued Lester, who did not think it worth while to state that he had been on the point of attempting that very thing, but had thought better of it when he saw how resolutely David stood his ground.  “But never mind.  We’ll get even with him.  We’ll touch his pocket, and that will hurt him worse than a whipping.  It will hurt the Gordons, too.”

“Then he wouldn’t promise to give up the idea of catching them quails?  I am sorry, for if we could only frighten him off the track, we would write to that man up North telling him that the party with whom he made his contract wasn’t able to fill it, but we could catch all the birds he wants in two weeks.”

“That’s a good idea—­a splendid idea!” exclaimed Lester; “and perhaps we’ll do it any how, if the plan I have thought of doesn’t prove successful.”