Chapter 19

A PRAIRIE ON FIRE

"Dick," said Ned as they rested against a log, having their regular after-dinner, heart-to heart talk, "we had better _hiepus_ (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 can always 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. At the 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.

"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 get mistaken. 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 mass of 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.

Ned's wounds were so painful that for several days the explorers stayed around the camp and Dick amused himself and his chum by worrying a family of young alligators that lived in a pond near the camp. He grunted the little ones to the surface until they were tired of being fooled and refused to respond and he drove the largest one out of its cave in the bank until the reptile refused to play any more and would not come beyond the mouth of his cave. Then Dick cut a pole leaving a bit of a branch sticking out like a barb at the end and poked that in the hole till the alligator grabbed the end of it. Dick now pulled good and hard, the barb caught in the reptile's lower jaw and the boy soon had him out of his cave and up on the prairie. The 'gator was lively and Dick had to chase around the prairie a lot after him and finally get Ned to help before he could tie it. Tom didn't approve of the new member of the family, but he made no trouble while the camp was awake. The alligator became very restless at night and got in the habit of thrashing around almost constantly. In the morning his tail was seen to be raw and bleeding and day by day it grew worse. Tom was suspected, but always denied having had anything to do with it, with an expression of such injured innocence when accused that Dick had to believe him. One night, however, a heavy blow was heard, accompanied by a yowl from Tom and followed by some sort of scrimmage. In the morning Tom had a mussed-up look and the reptile had a number of fresh wounds. As the camp was moved that day and Ned continued to object to taking an alligator in the canoe the reptile was turned loose. He walked with dignity out on the prairie until he was near the slough, when he scuttled hastily to the water and plunged in.

The new camp was in a little glade on a creek which the explorers had followed for about three miles west from the Everglades. They paddled through the creek till it melted in the meadows; they poled their canoe along the channel which the grass concealed; they dragged it by hand under bushes which covered it, until the little glade opened to them and showed enough dry ground for a camp and several shallow streams winding around clumps of bushes, but always stretching out toward the west. At daylight the young explorers were again on the move, dragging the canoe along twisting streams not deep enough to float it, until they struck a larger stream in a heavier growth. The little streams disappeared, the water grew deeper, but the jungle became worse, and every yard of their path had to be carved out with their knives.

"This doesn't look very hopeful," said Dick as they stopped the heavy work for a few minutes' rest. "Hadn't we better go back a ways and hunt up a more open trail?"

"Not on your life," replied Ned. "We are on the right track and we've got to fight it through. The only thing I'll stop for is a mangrove swamp, and I'll try mighty hard to get around that. But we won't find any mangrove swamp to trouble us."

"You seem to know just what we're going to find on this trail, if you call it a trail."

"I know what we ought to find, and that's better."

"Why is it better?"

"Because then we'll know if we're on the right track."

"All right, Neddy, I quite agree with you. I only wanted to know that you were sure of your ground."

The trees became heavier in a narrow belt along the stream, but open sky could be seen beyond them.

"Don't you want to walk across to that open place, Ned, to find out what kind of country it is?"

"I know now. It's open prairie or swamp and the next big water we strike will be the salt-water lakes. We will probably come to a fresh-water river first and that pretty soon."

"Conceit's good for the consumption, Neddy. What do you want to bet on finding that river in an hour?"

"I'll eat my hat if we don't find it in a quarter of a mile. I won't bet on the time, because at the rate you're working it may take three weeks to get there."

"Ned, you're a wizard, for there is the river."

The river flowed gently between high banks, densely wooded. The waters were alive with fish, and long-legged wading birds of the heron family stalked over the shallows in the stream. An hour's paddling brought the canoe to the mouth of the river, where camp was made. The water beside the camp was fresh, but the salt-water bays spread out for miles before them.

"Everything is easy now," said Ned. "These bays are in the Ten Thousand Islands and lead to the head waters of the rivers of the coast. We may get tangled up in these keys, aground on the flats or cornered up in some of the bays and perhaps lose a few days, but we're safe to get out without hard work or trouble of any kind."