The explorers made little progress the following day. Bunches of thick saw-grass turned them back. They found shallow water where for long distances they had to paddle slowly to avoid little pillars of coral rock that came close to the surface and endangered their fragile canoe. Most of the afternoon was vainly spent in searching for a camping site. They found a key where the water was shoal and made a bed of poles and branches. Both of them chose to sleep on the bed they had made. Whether this was simply politeness or because both were afraid of rolling out of the canoe nobody else knows. The poles and branches sagged under their weight until both were wet. Then such a deluge of rain as is seldom seen outside of the tropics fell on them. They got out in the dark and tied their canvas sheet over the canoe. They didn't need it for themselves. They were already as wet as they could be.
In the morning they dried themselves—so Dick said—by rolling into the water and sloshing around. They made a cold lunch of smoked bear, cold hominy, or grits as it is called in Florida, and water, choosing to wait for breakfast until they should find land enough for a fire. During the day they saw high trees to the eastward and made for them. Here they found a Seminole camp of several families.
As they landed from their canoe they saw several pickaninnies, for Seminole children are notcalled papooses like children in other tribes of Indians, watching them from behind trees and boats. The squaws whom they met were equally shy and kept their faces hidden. Ned spoke to several of them, but they gave no sign that they even heard him.
"They don't like your looks," said Dick. "Let me speak to the next one."
The next one was a young girl and Dick was very confident, as he addressed her, with his very best smile. But he was turned down as badly as his chum, for the girl didn't see him at all. At the camp they found one old Indian and several squaws. The Indian welcomed them with a grunt and the question,
"Whyome(whiskey), you got um?"
"Whyome holowaugus(bad), no got um," replied Ned. The Indian grunted again and conversation ceased. Dick was sitting on the edge of the table which serves also as floor in a Seminole camp, when he heard a low growl just over his head. He looked up and saw, crouched on a shelf within four feet of him, a full-grown wild-cat, or bay lynx, which seemed disposed to spring at him. Dick tried to keep from showing how much he was scared, but he asked Ned to find out if the wild-cat would bite. To Ned's question, the Indian nodded emphatically and replied,
"Um, um,unca, ojus(yes, heap)." Dick moved away, but the creature fascinated him and he cameback. Dick never could resist the temptation to play with wild animals and he put out his hand to the wild-cat, saying:
"If that Injun can tame that beast, I can."
"That Injun understands you, just as well as I do. He only pretends he doesn't so as to make us try to talk his confounded lingo."
A half smile stole over the stolid face of the Indian, either on account of what Ned was saying or because Dick's hand was slowly approaching the wild-cat. The paw of the lynx flashed out and back so quickly that it could scarcely be seen, but the blood began to flow from several deep, parallel cuts on the back of the boy's hand. Dick still held out his hand, scarcely moving a muscle, while Ned called out:
"Come away, Dick, that beast'll scratch out your eyes."
"Wonder what it would do if I cuffed it?"
The Indian appeared to understand this, for he spoke sharply to the lynx, and going up to it patted its head and stroked its body lightly. He then motioned to Dick to do the same. To Dick's great delight the wild-cat not only allowed him to stroke it, but even purred as well as a wild-cat can.
"Ned, I've got to have that cat. I've given up all my other pets because you didn't want them in the canoe, or there wasn't room. Now Tom will take care of himself and won't need any toting. Shouldn't wonder if he'd feed himself, too."
"That's what I'm most afraid of.
"Don't worry. I won't let him eat you. Ask old Stick-in-the-mud there what he wants for his beastie."
Ned talked with the Indian and reported to Dick.
"He says he will sell for one otter skin like that one in the canoe."
"How could he see that skin from here? Tell him it's a whack. Only he must make Tom go with me if there is any trouble about it."
"He says wild-cat go with you, you brave boy, not afraid of him. Says somebody get scared, he eat 'em up."
"Ned, you old hypocrite, you made that up."
"Honest Injun, I didn't. I told it straight, just as I got it. That Indian likes you."
"Why don't he talk white man lingo to me, then, instead of his old gibberish that he can't possibly understand himself? Ask the old snoozer what's cooking in that pot. It smells bully and I'm hungry."
Ned turned to the Indian and pointing to the steaming pot, said:
"Nar-kee?(What is it?)"
"Lock-a-wa.(Turtle.)"
"Esoka bonus che.(I want some.)"
"Humbuggus cha.(Come eat.)"
The boys took turns with the big, wooden, family spoon and found the mess very good. There was another kettle of which the Indians ate freely intowhich Dick dipped his spoon. He made a wry face as he swallowed the portion he had scooped up and said to Ned:
"Tell your copper-faced friend that he had better give that swill back to the pigs he stole it from."
"Be careful, Dick, he understands."
"Then let him say so in a decent language and I'll apologize for hurting his feelings, but I won't say that stuff is fit to eat, not if I am tied to the stake."
Dick spent one afternoon getting acquainted with the Indian children, in which he succeeded so well that when he came back to the camp streaming with water, the whole bunch, although they were quite as well soaked as he, followed him screaming with laughter, quite like white children.
"What is the trouble?" inquired Ned as soon as the youngsters gave him a chance to be heard.
"Only the usual thing. These Indians don't know how to manage their roly-poly canoes and I'm afraid I'll be drowned before I get 'em taught."
Dick had found a big family canoe that looked as if it couldn't capsize and had made signs to an Indian boy to go out in it with him. Before they were fairly afloat all the pickaninnies belonging to the camp had piled into the craft. From the smallest squab to the biggest boy, the Indian children danced about in the canoe without disturbing its equilibrium. The boy in the stern, standing on the extreme point of the craft, set his pole on the coralbottom and threw his weight back upon it until his whole body stood out almost parallel with the water behind the canoe. Dick stood on the tiny deck on the bow of the boat, but with every thrust of his pole the canoe wabbled till the pickaninnies balanced it. But Dick improved with practice and as he grew confident, threw his weight on the pole in true Seminole fashion. He would have pulled through with credit, but for the slipping of his pole on a point of coral rock, when he fell heavily in the water, capsizing the craft as he went overboard. At first the boy was alarmed for the safety of his cargo of children, but soon saw that they were as much at home in the water as on land and were quite capable of caring for themselves. After Ned had heard what had happened he called the attention of the squaws to the ducking of their babies without causing the faintest gleam of interest to cross their stolid faces.
After another day of eating with the Seminoles and sleeping on their tables, Dick announced that Tom and he were tired of Injuns and wanted to light out. The whole Indian family saw them off, even the squaws coming half way to the canoe from their camp. Dick carried Tom on his shoulder and the lynx stepped into the canoe as if it had always owned it and curled up on the canvas of the tent.
"Where do you want to go, Dick?"
"What's the use of asking me? You have been talking Everglades and Big Cypress in a steadystreak, for two days to that old Injun. You must have a map of his brain by this time."
"We can go through the Everglades to Lake Okeechobee, out through the canal and down the Caloosahatchee, but the Everglades will be much the same as we have seen, only more and worse saw-grass and so harder work. If we go to the east we will pretty soon come out at the coast which we want to avoid. I think we had better strike across to the prairies and the border land between the Everglades and the Big Cypress Swamp. Bear, deer, panther and wild turkey are to be found in that country, and we won't have to hurry so much to get through in the time we talked of for the trip. What do you say?"
"The woods for me, every time. Then I think it would be better for Tom's health. I am afraid he would get melancholy if we kept him on the water too much. Let's put in a big day's work and get somewhere. I can stand sleeping in the water once in a while, but don't like it as a regular thing."
They put in their big day's work without getting very far. They struck shoal water in the morning where little pillars of coral, rising almost to the surface, threatened to tear a hole in their canoe. When they got overboard and waded, the same sharp points of coral hurt their feet and bruised their shins. During the afternoon they held their course, as best they could, for a tall palmetto, which, lifting its head above a waste of water and grass, gave promiseof land enough for a camp beneath it. They dragged the canoe through a narrow strand of saw-grass, but were turned westward by a heavier band of the same obstacle, and finally made their camp for the night on a bushy little submerged key, where Ned lay on top of the canoe and was kept from sleeping by the fear of rolling over into the water, and Dick lay on a bed of brush that soon settled into the water with him. At first Tom climbed a little tree, but didn't seem pleased with his quarters. He looked at Dick's bed for a moment and turned in for the night with Ned in the canoe. Good progress was made on the following day, for the boys were tired of trying to sleep on the water and meant to find land enough for a camp before another night. They found much open water, most of the grass was light and the few strands of saw-grass they encountered were easily avoided. They saw few keys and all of those were submerged. So again when night came there was no dry land for a camp and the bed of branches was built up in the shallow water. About midnight Ned, noticing that his companion was restless, said to him:
"Dick, can you sleep any more?"
"Sleep any more?" said the indignant Dick. "I haven't slept any, yet."
"Then let's get out of this and paddle the rest of the night. It's full moon, paddling isn't half as hard as trying to sleep on that bed and we may get somewhere."
"Good thing, and I move that we keep paddling till we get to those woods you talked about, if it takes a week. Tom votes with me. Motion carried."
About the middle of the forenoon they saw a clump of palmettos on a key, for which they headed at once, where they found ground which had been often camped upon. Dick climbed a tree and could make out a forest near the horizon, in the west. A few more hours' work would see them out of the Glades, but they chose to rest for the remainder of the day.
"There goes your pet. That's the last of him," said Ned, pointing to the lynx in the top of the tree, which Dick had climbed.
"He'll come back all right. If he doesn't I'll go up and fetch him by the scruff of his neck."
"THERE GOES YOUR PET.""THERE GOES YOUR PET. THAT'S THE LAST OF HIM"
Dick was right, for when the wild-cat saw the stores broken into for dinner he came down for his portion of meat and then curled up for a nap on his canvas in the canoe. Tom tolerated Ned, but never permitted any familiarities from him, while Dick could handle him as he chose and the lynx only smiled, in his own fashion.
To reach the woods they were aiming for the boys left the Indian trail they were on and, after forcing their way through a strand of saw-grass, found themselves on a prairie, bounded on the westby a heavy growth of cypress, oak and other heavy timber, while the prairie itself was made beautiful by picturesque little groups of palmettos which were scattered through it.
The Everglades had been crossed and that great region of romance was no longer a mystery to our explorers, who found a dry, shaded site for their camp on the border of the swamp which they planned to explore and there fitted up for a long stay. They stretched their canvas, tent fashion, and gathered grass and moss for their beds. A round, deep pool of clear fresh water was just beside the camp, and after one rattlesnake and a few moccasins that claimed squatter's title had been killed they felt that nothing was lacking. In the evening the distant gobbling of a turkey told the hunters what would be the first duty of the next day. When they started out on the hunt prepared to be gone for one or more days Dick was troubled for fear Tom might not understand his long absence and skip out. He had a long talk with the lynx and told Ned that he thought Tom would be good. Then he got out two days' rations for the animal, which it ate up at once. There was more dry land in this swamp than in those farther south to which they had become accustomed, andtraveling was better, or rather, less bad. Yet to persons with less experience than the young explorers it would have seemed to be as bad as it was possible for it to be. For half a day the boys tramped and waded in the swamp without finding the game they were looking for. They had found other birds, some of which they would have shot for their dinner had they not been afraid of frightening the wary turkeys, which they believed were not far from them. Alligators were plentiful, large and small, but the boys were not hunting for hides and Dick said that Tom was all the pet he cared to have charge of for the present. Early in the afternoon they sat down to rest under a big tree and were eating their lunch of smoked meat and cold hoe-cake when a turkey gobbler lit on a branch of the tree under which they were sitting. The turkey was in plain sight and less than twenty feet from them, but Dick's shot-gun was resting against a tree fifteen feet from its owner, while Ned's rifle lay on the ground five feet from his hand. Both kept as quiet as graven images, for they knew that at the motion of a hand the big bird would take flight. If Dick's gun had been within five feet he would have jumped for it, trusting to be ready with it to cut down the turkey before it could get out of sight among the trees. But a run of fifteen feet made his chances too small and he waited to see what Ned would do. Ned's rifle lay just out of his reach, and before he could lay his hand on it thebird would be on the wing and quite safe from anything he could do with a rifle. At last Ned began to push himself inch by inch toward the rifle, while Dick sat silent and breathless with excitement. Very slowly Ned progressed until his hand touched the rifle. Before he could move it the fraction of an inch, the turkey saw the trouble in store for him and was off. Ned grabbed the rifle and took a harmless snapshot at the bird, while Dick rushed for his gun and sent after the turkey, which was then a hundred yards distant, a shower of shot which could never have overtaken it.
"Next time I eat I'm going to feed myself with one hand and hold my gun in the other," said Dick. "I think I'll stay home to-morrow and keep camp. Tom will go hunting with you. He's got sense and he always keeps his weapons handy."
"Keeps 'em too handy for me. I don't like the way he looks at me sometimes. He acts as if he wanted to feel of my ribs to see if I am fat enough for his purposes. I reckon I'm the one to keep camp. My rifle was right at my elbow, but I didn't seem to know enough to use it. Dick! Look at that hole in that tree and all those insects around it. It's a bee-tree. There's a barrel of honey there that belongs to us!"
"Do you s'pose the bees know that it belongs to us, or will they make trouble for us?"
"Of course they'll make trouble. You can't rob a hive without being stung."
"I'm going to keep camp to-morrow, just as I told you, and let Tom go with you. Wonder how he'd like to climb that tree."
"We will chop down that tree to-morrow and likely get stung a lot, but you know, Dick, you wouldn't stay away for a farm."
"Better not try me. I wish I had a sheet-iron jacket and stove-pipe pants. Let's go home. I want to see Tom and tell him about it. I'm afraid he's lonesome."
But Dick didn't tell Tom anything, for when they got back to camp Tom had gone. Dick scarcely tasted his supper and his sleep was restless and troubled. He woke with a scream, from a terrible nightmare in which a wild beast had him by the throat and was crushing him to death under his tremendous weight. He was happy when he woke to find that his dream was true. For Tom had come home and showed his joy at the sight of Dick by leaping on the boy's chest and licking his face and neck. Even Ned rejoiced that Tom had returned and stroked his back, which for once the lynx graciously permitted.
"You are glad that Tom has come back, aren't you, Ned?" said Dick as he laid his face against the soft fur of the wild-cat whose purring sounded so like a low growl.
"Oh, yes. I'm glad. 'Course I am. Only wish all of 'em would come back, the two alligators, the crocodile and the dead otter. Then we'd start amenagerie and I'd tell fearful stories of man-eaters while you went into their cages with a big whip in one hand and a small cannon in the other."
When the boys started for the bee-tree they carried a bundle of dry palmetto fans, an axe, and a bucket for the honey.
"Shall we tote the guns?" asked Ned.
"What's the use? Don't either of us know how to use 'em. Better leave 'em with Tom."
But the guns did not stay with Tom, or rather Tom did not stay with the guns, but quietly followed the boys as a pet dog might have done. He stepped daintily from root to root and walked along fallen logs and the branches of trees which he climbed, easily keeping up with the bee hunters, without muddying his paws, while they wallowed in mud which was usually knee-deep and occasionally a foot more. Before tackling the tree they built a fire some fifty yards away, which they made smoke by putting on rotten wood and wet moss. They intended to hide in this smoke if the bees attacked them while they were chopping down the tree. The palmetto leaves were to be kept until the tree had fallen and were then to be made into smoky torches, under cover of which the boys hoped to secure the honey. They took turns in slinging the axe and resting, yet the exercise and the bees together kept them pretty well warmed up. For, after a while the bees began to take notice of the knocking at their door and occasionally a few of them dropped downand stung the chopper and the looker on, quite impartially. The art of wood-chopping has to be learned before one is born. The children of back-woodsmen can sling an axe as soon as they can stand. Boys born as near New York City as Dick and Ned were, never can learn. They think when they go up in the Adirondacks and chew down some trees with an axe, that they are chopping wood, but their guides who lie around smoking their pipes while the sportsmen sweat over the task, know better and slyly wink at each other while they praise aloud the skill of their employers.
When the boys stopped work and went back to their smudge to give the bees a chance to rest, and to find out if mud really drew the poison out of the little lumps that covered them, the tree had been cut nearly half through. Any Nature-lover would have known that a beaver had been at work, while everyday folks would have suspected a saw-mill.
Dick missed Tom and at first was troubled, but finally discovered him sitting on a branch behind a tree around which he could look without making himself conspicuous.
"Shall we wait till to-morrow to finish the job?" asked Ned.
"Not much. By to-morrow my face will be so swollen that I can't see and the rest of me so sore that I can't move. Let's make a big smudge at the foot of the tree. I'd rather be smothered bysmoke than stung and poisoned to death by those little beasts."
"A FEW OF THE HOMELESS BEES LIT ON THE COMB""A FEW OF THE HOMELESS BEES LIT ON THE COMB"
The smudge worked and the bee hunters had no more trouble until the tree fell, when they got into the thickest of the smoke they had made. This did not save them altogether, for the bees were very numerous and very mad and a few dozen of them got far enough in the smoke to leave their marks on their enemies. When the insects had quieted down and were gathered in bunches on logs and stumps, looking stupidly at the wreck of their home, the boys made another smudge near the hole in the fallen tree which led to the home of the bees. They sounded the hollow tree and found it only a shell where the honey was stored and a little work with the hatchet laid open the storehouse of the insects. A few of the homeless bees lit on the comb they had made, other bees gathered on the cypress knees which abounded in the swamp and through which the great cypress trees breathed, but their spirit was gone and they made no attack on the destroyers of their home. Of the comb and honey which the boys found in the tree they were able to carry away less than half and they wondered if the bees would have the sense to save what was left or if some wandering bear would scoop it in for his supper.
As the young bee hunters started for camp laden with their spoils, Tom stepped softly out of a nearby thicket, licking his chops and apparently thinkingof the delicate lunch of fat tree-rat he had just eaten.
"Dick," said Ned, as they were lazily resting against a log, after a supper that was mostly dessert, having consisted of a little smoked bear and a lot of honey, "something has got to be done for the larder. We go for honey when we need meat. We let Indian hens which we can get, escape on the chance of turkeys which we can never bag. We are looking for deer that are miles away and overlooking ducks that are trying to fly into the pot."
"I'm not overlooking much, Neddy, since that turkey biz. I've got my gun in my hand this minute and here's a chance to use it."
As Dick spoke he raised the gun to his shoulder and fired. A little black creature, thirty yards away in the grass, sprang into the air and fell to the ground. Both of the boys started for it, but Tom was ahead and looked back upon them, growling fiercely, with his fangs fixed in the throat of the dying creature. Dick tried to coax the lynx to give up the creature he had seized, but the animal was filled with the fierceness of his race and even Dick dared not touch him. The creature which the cat held in its claws was clearly a rabbit, little and jet black, unlike anything which either of the boys had ever seen before.
"I've heard of these little Everglade rabbits," said Ned. "Tommy told me of a key in the Evergladeswhere there were plenty of them. If we had time we might look it up."
"How much time have you got, Neddy?"
"Another month will use up the time I said I would be gone. I left that word for Dad in Myers. Guess he's there now and maybe my sister with him. He won't worry a minute till the time I set is up, after that there'll be trouble."
"What kind of trouble?"
"'Most anything," laughed Ned. "Might be a lot of nurses out looking for a lost baby."
"He won't be frightened about you if you're not quite up to time, will he?"
"Not exactly frightened, but he will want to see me, and I'll be glad enough to see him, and sis, too."
"I knew you had a sister, but you never talked about her much."
"She's a nice child, alle samee. I think you're going to like her. She's a little your style of foolishness."
"What's that?"
"Oh, it isn't very bad. But you haven't had much to say about your own self, lately. You never told me exactly what took you around by Key West. Why didn't you come straight to Fort Myers instead of taking the tiny little chance of finding me in the big Everglades?"
"Well, I'll tell you. You see, mother knew how much I wanted to go with you on this hunt andshe begged me to let her foot the bills. Of course I couldn't stand for that, you know, and—"
"Oh, Of course not, you stuck-up little donkey," interrupted Ned.
"So I started as a stowaway on the Key West steamer—"
"You cheeky little imp! Did they put you in command of the ship when they found you?"
"No, only put me in the fireroom, shoveling coal in the furnace."
"But that's not boy's work. What business—"
"Hold on, Ned, wait till I get through. The captain was bully. So was everybody else. I went to him soon as we were outside Sandy Hook and asked for a job. I was independent about it. I believe I offered to swim ashore if he didn't happen to have a job for me. He gave me an easy one, for a boy, but I struck and asked for a man's work, and got it—in the fireroom. But I pulled through, Neddy, and made good, though once or twice I did have to call myself hard names and think how you'd have hung on, if you'd been in my place. Yes, everybody was good to me. One passenger wanted to pay for a first-class passage for me and I had hard work to beg off, and—but that's all."
"Dick, you mustn't talk that way about me. You make me ashamed. I wouldn't have stuck it out in that fireroom for one day. Now how about your time for the trip? Will a month suit you?"
"Yes, that's all right. I wrote mother from KeyWest and told her the hunt would be a long one without any chance to mail a letter and that she was not to worry because there wasn't a show of danger in the whole business. Of course mothers do worry a little when there isn't any reason."
"Yes, mothers do worry, foolishly. Pity yours couldn't know how faithfully Tom looks after you. She'd be so relieved."
On the day after cutting down the bee tree the boys were glad to stay quietly in camp. Ned's neck and arms were badly swollen and Dick's eyes could scarcely be seen. Both of them lay awake nearly all night, but it was uncertain whether this was due to the pain of the stings or the quantity of honey they had eaten.
Tom shed his fierceness soon after he had disposed of the rabbit and again became friendly to Dick, who, even while he petted him, explained that he could never quite trust him again.
Every evening turkeys could be heard in the swamp near the camp. Every morning they had departed. One morning Ned said to Dick:
"I'm turkey hungry and I'm tired of shilly-shallying. The way to get anything is to get it. Let us get a turkey. We'll start out for it now and come back after we have got it, and not before."
"All right, Neddy, we goes for it, we gits it and we comes back when we gits it and not afore."
The boys started out with their usual equipment of weapons, salt, matches and axe. They crossedthe swamp without finding the bird they sought and then, as they were hungry and tired, Dick shot a fat young ibis and broiled it for their dinner. After dinner they crossed the meadow to a narrow strip of woods, beyond which, on a wide stretch of prairie, they saw three bunches of turkeys. The bunch nearest them appeared to be a hen turkey with her family, each member of which was about as large as its mother. They were a long rifle-shot away, and a shot, if it missed, would send every turkey to cover for the day. The same thing would happen if either of them set foot on the prairie.
"Our best chance," said Ned, "is to wait for them at the edge of the prairie. It's getting late and pretty soon they'll be looking for places to roost among these trees. They may come right here. Anyhow, by spreading out we will cover quite a stretch of woods. It may be too late for the rifle but the shotgun ought to do something."
"That means that you're tired of my society, Neddy. So I'll go and hide myself on the edge of the prairie, a little further off than you can hit anything, in case of you mistaking me for a turkey."
Soon after Dick had reached his station, the turkeys began to feed toward the woods. Two of the bunches went to the opposite side of the prairie. The hen turkey with her grown-up family fed slowly toward Dick's hiding place, but, when just out of range, appeared to become suspicious and turned toward Ned. Slowly she walked, darting herquick-moving head in every direction as she searched trees and bushes for hidden enemies. The younger turkeys put much faith in the wariness of the old lady and stalked fearlessly behind her. Ned waited for a chance which he thought couldn't be missed and, avoiding the mother turkey, shot down one of her brood. Instantly the flock was in the air, following its leader down along the edge of the forest. This brought them directly over Dick, who neatly cut down another member of the family. While Ned was dressing the turkeys and building the fire for the broiling of one of them, Dick was climbing a young cabbage palm and cutting the bud from its top.
"Couldn't tell this palmetto cabbage from big fresh chestnuts, by the taste," said Dick. "I'm going to roast that other turkey at the camp to-morrow with his whole inside crammed full of chestnut stuffing."
While the turkey hunters were eating their breakfast of cold turkey a doe, followed by a fawn which was still in the spotted coat, walked out on the open prairie within fifty yards of them and gazed at them without a sign of fear.
"They know we wouldn't shoot a doe or a fawn," said Ned. "That's what makes them feel so safe."
"Wonder if they would have felt as safe last night, before we got those turkeys?"
On their return Tom, met the turkey hunters a quarter of a mile from their camp and theywondered whether he had heard them coming, or happened to be strolling that way. He looked so earnestly at the turkey which Dick was carrying that the boy said to him:
"See here, Tom, that's my turkey and I won't stand for your laying a paw on him. So you had better be good unless you are looking for a mix-up with me." Tom looked cowed, but showed his friendly feelings by walking beside Dick, rubbing against his legs and purring in his half-growling fashion.
"Dick," said Ned as they rested against a log, having their regular after-dinner, heart-to heart talk, "we had betterhiepus(light out), if we mean to get to the coast and bring up at Myers on time, besides taking in all we want to on the way. We know the Harney's River route like a book and we've been over the Indian trail to Lawson's River, so we've got to find some new way out. There is a chain of salt-water lakes between the Everglades and the rivers of the west coast and we must get into them. I have made a pretty fair chart of the country and can tell how far across the swamps and prairies it is to almost any point, but how much of that distance is easy water and how much tough swamp or boggy prairie is what I don't know, but what we have got to find out. We have explored the country right around here pretty well and now let's put in a day working the canoe through the grass to the south, then leg it westward till we strike salt water."
"That sounds well," replied Dick, "and then, you know, if your charts don't pan out straight, you canalways ask Tom or me. Wonder if you half appreciate your privileges, having us along to take care of you."
The young explorers "lit out" as proposed and, after a day of hard work and easy work, of open water and thick saw-grass and of clear channels and half dry meadows, camped beside a little slough on the border of a swamp, in the jungle of which it soon lost itself.
The first excitement of the new camp came in the night when Tom, who was sleeping, as usual, beside Dick, sprang up with a fierce cry, which they had never before heard from him, and dashed into the woods near the camp. There came from the woods the battle cries of warring animals, but soon all became quiet and the cat came back, but he growled at intervals throughout the night.
"What got into you, Tom?" said Dick to the lynx the next morning, after he had looked him over in vain for marks of a fight. "Was it jimjams, or only a bad nightmare?"
Tom listened gravely and looked as if he could have explained a good deal if only Dick had understood his language.
Tom followed the boys through the swamp on the morning of their first tramp, but when they struck a marshy meadow where the water was knee deep and the mud as much more, with no trees to make it pleasant for a poor cat, he looked reproachfully at Dick and turned back toward the camp. Atthe end of the meadow was a dense thicket which Ned entered first. He had only advanced a few steps when he turned back and held up his hand in warning to Dick. The thicket in which they stood was on the border of a big prairie of rich grass in which more than a dozen deer, nearly all bucks, could be seen feeding, with only their backs and antlers showing above the tall grass, excepting when some buck of a suspicious mind lifted his head high and gazed warily about him.
"ALL BEYOND THE DARK MEADOW WAS A LIVING MASS""ALL BEYOND THE DARK MEADOW WAS A LIVING MASS"
"Isn't it us for the big luck, Neddy?" whispered Dick. "When I ate that very last bit of turk this morning I wondered when I'd get another meal and Tom asked me in confidence if we meant to let him starve. And now, just look. There's venison enough for the rest of the trip."
"It don't belong to us yet. You want to be mighty cautious. You can sneak up to that tree with the rifle and wait till that nearest buck shows up in good shape and then drop a bullet somewhere around his fore-shoulder. Don't fire at his head unless you have to. The brain is a mighty small mark, and you're not playing to the gallery down here."
"Ned Barstow, what are you talking about? Take your own rifle and shoot your own buck. If you don't I'll let out a yell that will scare the whole bunch to Kingdom Come. I don't run to you with my gun, whenever I find game, and ask you to shoot it. You mean well, Neddy boy, but sometimes you getmistaken. I'm afraid I didn't begin this trip right. I ought to have given you a lickin' every day, just to keep you in your place."
Ned crawled out to the tree with his rifle and watched for his chance. The nearest buck was within easy range, but the grass hid his body and when the creature, scenting his enemy, threw his head high in the air Ned sent a bullet through his brain. As the boys were dragging the carcass to the woods where they proposed to skin and cut it in two for carrying to camp, Dick said to Ned:
"Do you know what hypocrite means?"
"I s'pose so, but what are you trying to get at?"
"Hypocrite means a fellow who tells his friend that the only way to shoot a buck is through the body, coz the head is too small to be hit, and then goes out himself and sends a bullet plumb through the center of the brain of the beast."
"But Dick, I couldn't see the shoulder."
"Neither could I. You can't sneak out that way."
A strong wind from the northwest sprang up while the boys were finishing their supper of broiled buck's liver and they built a wind-break to protect them while they slept. The wind became a gale, but they slept soundly, soothed by its roaring. They were rudely wakened by the crashing of some wild animal through the brush of their wind-break and, sitting up, saw that the whole western sky was lit up and all beyond the dark meadow was a lurid massof flame. The roar of the fire mingled with that of the gale, while, as the swirling columns of flame bent to the earth and swept the meadow, the crackling of the grass was like the rattling of musketry or the spitting fire of a hundred Catlings. Soon the air became filled with sparks and cinders, and thick with smoke.
"We've got to mosey, Ned. Reckon there isn't any time to waste, either. Shall we take the meat?"
"Got enough to do to take care of our own."
There was plenty of light, but the flickering shadows of the trees caused by the wavering flames made the steps of the boys uncertain as they fled from the flames that were following so fast. Ned fell headforemost into a thicket of the terrible Spanish bayonet and it was only the excitement of the hour that made the pain bearable. They floundered across the narrow swamp and into the marshy meadow often waist deep in the mud and more than once both of them fell flat in the water of the marsh. The narrow belt of timber which they first crossed checked the fire and although tongues of flame crossed it and a few trees took fire, while live coals were scattered broadcast over the marshy meadow, the fire died out without crossing the belt of woods that first stopped it. The boys crossed the marshy meadow to the swamp which they first entered when they left their camp the previous morning. As Ned's Spanish bayonet wounds kept him from sleeping, the boys sat up and talked till daylight.
In the morning the wind had gone down and a few burning trees and little columns of smoke were all that was left of the great fire of the night.
"If you will go on to camp, Ned, I'll go back and get that venison. It must be well smoked. Hope it didn't burn up. Give my regards to Tom. If he isn't good tie him up."
"Guess I'll go with you, Dick. These stickers hurt worse when I keep still. Then you will need help to carry the venison. I hope the buzzards haven't got at it. We can leave our guns here."
"No, thank you. My gun goes with me. I have had trouble enough from not having it handy."
They found the hide of their buck had been destroyed by the fire, but the venison had only been roasted and partly smoked and they made their breakfast on it. The outsides of the palmettos, on the prairie where Ned shot the buck, were still burning and the trees looked like big sticks of charcoal, but palmetto trees get used to that and are seldom harmed by it, though it does spoil their beauty. The boys walked out in the ashes of the grass of the meadow and were sorry they did, for it made them look like the burnt ends of matches. When they got back to camp Tom came out and sniffed at Dick and then, instead of rubbing against his legs, went back and lay down. Dick spent the rest of the day working over Ned's face and body with tweezers, pulling out bits of thorns. When he got through the boys were about equally tired.