Chapter 18

DICK'S WILDCAT AND OTHER WILD THINGS

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, and traveling 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 the bird 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 a menagerie 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 down and 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 by smoke than stung and poisoned to death by those little beasts."

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 thinking of 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 Everglades where 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 and she 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 Key West 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 crossed the 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 her quick-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 they wondered 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.