"Are you blind, that
you run right under a fellow's horse that way?"
David sprang quickly to one side, and the horseman drew up his nag
with a jerk and looked down at him. It was Lester Brigham, one of the
neighborhood boys of whom we have never before had occasion to speak.
He was comparatively a new resident in that country. He had been
there only about a year, but during that time he had made himself
heartily detested by almost all the boys about Rochdale. Of course he
had his cronies--every fellow has; but all the best youngsters, like
Don and Bert Gordon and Fred and Joe Packard, would have little to do
with him. He had lived in the North until the close of the war, and
then his father removed to Mississippi, purchased the plantation
adjoining General Gordon's, and began the cultivation of cotton.
Mr. Brigham was said to be the richest man in that county, and Lester
had more fine things than all the rest of the boys about there put
together. He took particular pride in his splendid hunting and
fishing outfit, and it was coveted by almost every boy who had seen
it. He had four guns--all breech-loaders; a beautiful little
fowling-piece for such small game as quails and snipes; a larger one
for ducks and geese; a light squirrel rifle, something like the one
Clarence Gordon owned; and a heavier weapon, which he called his deer
gun, and which carried a ball as large as the end of one's thumb.
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