Chums in Dixie Part 9

Owing to the amount of time that had been consumed in following Larry, and getting him back to camp after his rescue, they could only expect to keep moving for a couple of hours more; when the coming of evening would necessitate their stopping for the next night.

Phil felt a strange little thrill as he reflected that possibly when yet another day had closed in they would have advanced far enough on their journey to admit of a possibility that they might run across some of the shingle-makers of the big swamps.

"Keep on the lookout for a tying-up place, Tony," he said, as he saw that the sun was sinking low.

"Not much good place along here," remarked the swamp boy, shrugging his shoulders in disgust. "Thought we get below this to-day; but stayed too long above."

"Which of course was my fault," spoke up Larry, immediately; "but even if it does look spooky around here, with all that Spanish moss hanging from the trees, we can stand it for one night."

"Sure," said Phil; "especially since we don't have to go ash.o.r.e, to cook supper. We'll give our little gas stove a try-out this time, and show Tony how well it can fill the bill."

So finally Tony picked out as decent a place as he could find; Phil worked the Aurora close in; the swamp boy sprang ash.o.r.e in Larry's place holding the rope; and presently the motor boat was snugly moored against the bank.

Larry thought there might be fish around, but lacked the ambition to even make a trial. All his muscles seemed sore by now; and Phil knew that it would be some days ere his chum felt as chipper as was his wont.

"Besides, what's the use?" Larry remarked, even as he mentioned the fact as to the fishy appearance of the water. "We've still got a lot of that bully venison aboard; and that fine turkey Tony is going to bake in his home-made oven ash.o.r.e. Why, we'll be just filled up with grub, hang the fish! I don't care enough about them just now to bother."

Tony was already ash.o.r.e, at work on his oven. Just as Phil had described to his tenderfoot chum, he first of all dug out a big hole, and started a hot fire going in it, using the dead leaf stalks of the palmetto as a beginning. Then he fed other wood, which he seemed to select carefully, until he finally had a furious red hot ma.s.s of embers there.

Meanwhile he had plucked the turkey, and made it ready for cooking.

"Time we're done eatin' oven be ready," he announced, as Larry called him aboard to supper; he having prepared the meal over the little Jewel stove, finding a way to keep things warm as fast as he cooked them.

Later on Tony drew out all the red ashes. The oven was very hot at that time. He wrapped the turkey in some green leaves, and thrust it into the hole; after which he took pains to cover the opening up, and heap earth over it all.

Of course Phil knew the principle of the thing, though up to now he had never been a witness to the actual demonstration. It acted on the same principle used with the new-fangled bottles that keep fluid hot for several days, or cold, just as it happens to be put into the receptacle. And the fireless cookers are also arranged on the same old time natural laws of retaining heat.

"Listen to the racket coming out over yonder!" remarked Larry, as they lay around at their ease later on, each having a blanket under him.

"Tony says that there's a big swamp lying over there," observed Phil.

"And I warrant you he can tell what makes every sound you hear. One comes from some kind of bird squawking; another I happen to know is a night heron looking for a supper along the water's edge; then I suppose c.o.o.ns squabble when they meet, trailing over half sunken logs; a bobcat calls to its mate; the owls tune up; chuckwillswidows, the same birds that we call whippoorwills up North, you know, keep a whooping all the time; and there are all sorts of other noises that might stand for anything. But Tony, tell me, what is that far-away booming we hear?"

"Bull!" remarked the other, with a chuckle.

"You don't mean it?" exclaimed Larry, sitting up to listen. "Well, now, it does sound like it, too. But see here, Tony, didn't you say only a little while ago, that there wasn't a single man within twenty miles of us; unless it might be some runaway darky hiding out in the swamp to escape the chain gang?"

"That is so, Larry," replied the swamp boy, who was by now growing familiar enough with his comrades to call them by their first names.

"This no reg'lar bull. It never saw farmyard. It live in water, come up on sh.o.r.e sometime, and holler to make 'nother bull come fight."

"Oh! you mean an alligator bull, don't you?" cried Larry, "how silly of me not to understand at first. And is that one bellowing now? He must be a giant to make such a row."

"Not so big, like ten feet p'raps," replied Tony, carelessly.

"How big do they run--about fifty feet?" asked the ignorant one; at which Tony actually laughed, the first time they had ever really heard him give way.

"Never hear of such big one, Larry. Twelve feet, some say fifteen most. And that professor he tell me 'gator that big more'n two hundred years old, much more!"

"Whew; what a whopper!" exclaimed Larry, though whether he meant the age of the saurian, or the story told to the swamp boy, he did not explain.

"One thing sure," remarked Phil, as the time drew near for them to retire, "with that blessed old swamp, and its many nasty inhabitants so close by, I'm going to keep an eye out again tonight. Perhaps we won't be disturbed by another bobcat; but I wouldn't feel quite easy unless I kept my good Marlin handy. So, boys, if you hear me making a noise again during the night, don't get alarmed. I won't be talking in my sleep, be sure of that. But listen, Tony, what animal do you suppose makes that far-away sound? If I didn't know we were cut off from civilization I'd say it was the baying of a dog at the moon."

CHAPTER X

WHEN THE SLEEPER AWOKE

"That's what it is, sah; a dawg!" said Tony, after listening for a minute.

"Then we must be closer to your people than you thought," remarked Phil.

"That cain't be so. My folks never comes up this far. Yuh see, it sorter lies atween the town up yander, an' our diggin's," the swamp boy explained.

"But how about the dog, then?" Phil went on, becoming curious.

"Perhaps it might be a party from the up-river settlements, hunting down here?"

Tony nodded, and something like the ghost of a smile crept athwart his sallow face.

"Huntin'? Yes, sah, that's what it mought be," he said, quickly. "But it's game yuh wouldn't want tuh bag, Phil. Sure enough, they's c.o.o.n huntin'; but not the kind that has the bushy striped tail."

Phil was quick to grasp his meaning.

"Do you think they're after some fugitive negro? Is that what you mean, Tony?" he demanded; while Larry's innocent blue eyes began to distend, as they always did when their owner felt surprise or alarm.

"Sure," Tony a.s.serted, confidently. "I orter know the bay o' a hound.

That dawg is on the trail o' a runaway convict; an' yuh see nigh all the chain gang is black."

They all listened again. Somehow, since learning Tony's opinion, the sound, as it came welling out of the swamp far away, seemed more gruesome than ever. Phil could easily in imagination picture the scene, with a posse of determined keepers from the convict camp following the lead of dogs held in leash, and chasing after a wretched fugitive, who had somehow managed to get away from bondage in the turpentine pine woods.

"Poor critter!" muttered sympathetic Larry. "He's only a c.o.o.n, and perhaps he deserves all he got; but it makes me shiver to think of his being hunted like a wild beast, all the same."

"Will they get him, do you think, Tony?" asked Phil.

"Don't know. Most always do, some time. Yuh see a feller as runs away like that ain't got no gun nor nothin'. How c'n he git anythin' tuh eat in the swamps? Now, if 'twas one o' us, as has always lived thar, we'd be able to set snares an' ketch game; but a pore ignorant c.o.o.n don't know nothin'. Sometimes they jest starves tuh death, rather'n give up."

"Then they must be treated worse than dogs," declared Larry; "because no man, white or black, would prefer to lay down and die, to being caught, if he didn't expect to be terribly punished."

Tony shrugged his shoulders at that.

"Don't jest know," he said; "but I heard folks say as how 'twas a bad place, that turpentine camp, whar the convicts they works out their time. Reckon I done heard the dawgs afore, too."

"Something familiar about their baying, is there?" queried Phil.

"They sure belongs tuh the sheriff," Tony declared; "an' he must a be'n called in by them keepers tuh help hunt this runaway convict."

"The sheriff, Tony--do you mean the same fellow you were telling us about, who dared come to the shingle-makers' settlement downriver, and was tarred and feathered, or rather ridden on a rail, with a warning that he'd get the other if he ever showed his face there again?"