Chapter 8

OLD DREAMS REALIZED

There was a long council around the camp-fire that night, and it was settled that Ned and Dick were to take the light canoe with their own stores and start off by themselves on the hunting and exploring tour of which they had dreamed for years. Johnny was to go on an alligator hunt with Charley Tommy. Johnny thought the Indian could stand the work about two months, after which they would go to Chokoloskee and sell the hides. Ned paid the Indian for his time and made him a present, in addition, of an outfit of clothing from hat to shoes, without any objection from Charley. But when Dick came to settle with Johnny there was trouble. For Johnny refused to take any pay and said that if Dick paid him for coming to where Ned was he would have to pay Dick for carrying him to where Charley was. Ned had to chip in before Johnny could be persuaded to take the pay he had earned. Ned had a better equipment than Dick and a much larger lot of stores. These he shared with Johnny, so that the boy was provided with more luxuries than are often carried on an alligator hunt.

When the boys were about to start away in the morning, Johnny told them that Tommy wanted to go to Osceola's camp for a day or two, and he proposed that the boys come with them. Johnny said that if they went to the Indian camp with Tommy the Indians would talk and the boys could learn a lot of Seminole in two or three days, enough to pull them through in their visits to other camps. The chance was too good to be lost, and the long, heavy Indian canoe was followed down the Glades by the light Canadian canoe of the boys.

Ned and Dick were pretty husky youths, and as their canoe didn't weigh more than one-fourth that of the one just ahead of them, they thought they were in for a picnic. Very soon they changed their minds. Sometimes they could paddle, but generally they used their paddles as poles. They had one oar for pushing, which helped them a little. A light push sent the canoe forward, but when the push ended so did the motion. It took a stronger push to start the Seminole canoe, but the stroke was much longer, and when the stroke ended the motion continued. The boys were game and wouldn't admit that it tired them to keep up. But when a strand of heavy saw-grass had to be crossed they found trouble to burn. The round, heavy wooden cylinder of Seminole make slid slowly through the tall, stiff, saw-edged mass. But the light canoe was thrown back from each stroke by the elastic grass. Dick never liked to be beaten, so he went overboard and floundered along the trail ahead of the canoe, dragging it by the painter, while Ned got out and pushed from behind the stern. The sharp, serrated edges of the grass cut their faces and lacerated their hands. No air was stirring at the foot of those tall spears, and Dick thought of his hours in the fire room of the Southern steamer. Sometimes a big, deadly cotton-mouth, the ugliest snake in the world, swam in front of Dick as he struggled forward, but though his flesh quivered he said nothing lest he make Ned nervous. Then occasionally a poisonous brown moccasin rose out of the mud which the canoe stirred up, and, with uplifted head and open mouth, threatened Ned as he stumbled behind the craft, but he was silent about it lest he worry the chum who was new to the country. The saw-grass strand was only two hundred yards across, although it seemed a mile to the boys, who made light of it when they reached the other canoe, but their bleeding hands, torn by the terrible grass, told another story.

The canoes and cargoes arrived at Osceola's late in the afternoon, and Ned and Dick saw their second Seminole camp. It was the best camp in the Everglades, as Osceola himself was perhaps the best specimen of the Florida Seminole.

The three buildings which constituted the camp consisted merely of high roofs, beautifully constructed of palmetto, which came within four feet of the ground at their outer edges. Below this they were entirely open. These buildings were nearly filled with tables, about four feet high, on which the Indians slept at night and occupied as a floor during the day. The buildings were placed about a round shed, under which the cooking for the whole camp was done. The fire was built in the usual Seminole fashion. Logs of wood were arranged like the spokes of a wheel, and the fire built at the hub. When the cooking was finished the logs were drawn back a few inches and the fire went down to coals, but continued to smolder. When the logs were brought together again the fire blazed up.

Ned and Johnny made their bed on one of the tables and slept well, but they kicked at dipping their hands in the family stew, and broiled their venison and made their coffee over the common fire. It was a good-natured camp, but the boys made life a burden to the Indians for two days by their incessant attempts at conversation in the Indian tongue. Some of the old Indians were sociable, and the boys got along very well with them, but the younger ones were shy and refused to talk until, having put on the white man's clothes that Ned had given him, Tommy took several of the young squaws and pickaninnies out in an Indian canoe. The young Indians laughed so much at Tommy that they began to forget their shyness, and when Tommy bought for Ned a bright-colored Indian shirt that a squaw had just made and the boy put it on, the Indians gathered around him and made fun, very much as white children would have done. One of the squaws brought him a red handkerchief, such as many of the Indians wore, and when Ned nodded and tied it around his neck they all laughed. Another squaw motioned at Ned's hat, and then at several Indians who were bareheaded. Ned nodded again and tossed his hat aside. Then as a squaw pointed at his trousers and afterwards at the bare-legged Indians about him, Ned shook his head vigorously, and even the older Indians joined in the laughter.

The children of the camp were shy things, and peeped out at the strangers from behind trees and out of hiding-places, but Dick was fond of all wild creatures and few of them could resist his friendly advances. Soon every pickaninny in the place was tagging after him. The older ones took him out in canoes, which soon were capsized, and all hands swam back, each accusing the other of having upset the craft.

When the boys went to the Osceola camp of Seminoles with Tommy they found a people as stolid and taciturn as those of any Indian tribe of which they had read. After four days, during which all hospitality was extended to them, they left behind them a kindly group of untaught native Americans, who went out of their way to show friendliness to their guests. Johnny nearly cried over the parting, and would have bartered his hopes of the hereafter to have been allowed to accompany the boys, while Tommy, clothed again in his native costume and in his right mind, preceded them for two miles in his canoe to show them a blind, side trail which they were to take. When they turned to take their last look at him, the Seminole was standing in his canoe, leaning on his long pole and looking fixedly at them.

For a few miles the trail was easy, but then became too dry for paddles, and Dick pushed with an oar, while Ned used a pole which he had brought along for use with a harpoon. As the trail grew dryer, it became impossible to pole the canoe, and Ned took the painter and, stepping into the nearly dry ditch in front of the canoe, dragged the craft, while Billy got overboard and pushed from behind. Sometimes Ned stopped to kick something out of his path, and at last Dick called to him:

"What are you kicking, Ned?"

"Nothing but yellow-bellies and once in a while a brown moccasin. I used to worry myself half sick over them, but after seeing Chris Meyer wade through bunches of them in the Big Cypress without paying any attention to them, I got ashamed of being afraid, and now I don't mind moccasins much unless they are cotton-mouths."

"But they have all got fangs, are all poisonous, and all seem anxious to bite," said Dick.

"But their bite isn't fatal. Tommy told me that he had been bitten six times, and when I asked if the bites made him sick, he said: 'Lilly bit, one moon.' I asked him about rattlesnake bites, and he said: 'Make sick _ojus_ (heap), think so big sleep come pretty quick.' He told me that the moccasins bit him while he was pushing his canoe and stepped on them."

"Neddy, Johnny used to talk just as you do, and Mr. Streeter said a lot more, but it makes me sick to hear it. I can feel the little squirmy beasts under my feet every step I take."

About noon the boys struck a creek, where their paddles came into play, and very glad they both were. For a time grass troubled them, and their progress was slow, but the stream gradually broadened and deepened, while its banks became covered with trees and vines, and the very sound of their paddles dipping into the clear water was a joy to them. Again the brook widened, this time into a shallow bay, but a narrow, deep channel remained, which soon led the boys into a tidal river.

They were about to follow the current of the river when the head of some strange animal was lifted above the surface of the water near them, followed by a mass of water thrown high in the air by a big tail, which flashed in sight for a moment. A line of great swirls, like those made by the propeller of a steamboat, led out in the bay and marked the course of the fleeing creature. Ned and Dick forgot that they were tired, and paddled furiously on the trail until they reached the end of it. Another line of swirls showed where the creature had gone, and once more they followed him. Again and again they were led on until they had traveled a couple of miles, when they lost the trail completely. While they were trying to find it Dick saw the head of the thing lifted for an instant, some two hundred yards away, at the mouth of a little cove. When they reached the cove they found the water clear and deep, and while drifting quietly on its surface they saw resting on the bottom near them a curious creature about ten feet long, with flippers like a seal and a big, powerful tail set crosswise like that of a dolphin.

"I know what that is," said Ned excitedly. "I've been reading about the fauna of Florida lately, and this isn't a fish. It's a very rare mammal, a manatee, or sea-cow. It's perfectly harmless. I wonder if we could catch it. Let's try it. I'll fix a lasso and throw it over the manatee's head when it comes up to breathe."

"S'pose you get your rope over its head, what will happen next to the canoe--and to us?"

"That's what I want to find out. Please paddle a little nearer very quietly. He is beginning to rise," said Ned, who had made a noose in the end of a harpoon line and was standing in the bow of the canoe, ready to throw it the instant the creature's nose reached the surface.

"I see our finish," said Dick as he held his paddle ready to steady the canoe, which was already endangered by Ned's standing up in it. The next instant the manatee came to the surface, and as the creature lifted its head Ned threw his lasso over it. An upward stroke of the big tail of the manatee sent a column of water in the air which half filled the canoe and nearly capsized it, in spite of Dick's best efforts. When the commotion subsided Ned had disappeared. Dick looked wildly over the surface and then into the water, and was just going overboard to search the bottom when Ned's head appeared on the surface. At first the boy seemed confused and swam away from the canoe, but turned when Dick called to him. The canoe was half full of water, and as it would have been difficult for Ned to get aboard without capsizing it, he swam to the nearest key, while Dick paddled the canoe to the shoal water beside it. As the boys stood in the water bailing out the canoe and examining its cargo, Dick said to Ned:

"What did your book say about the manatee being a perfectly harmless animal? I'd sure hate to be spanked by that harmless tail."

"So it is harmless, and if we can tire one out I'm not afraid to go overboard and tackle him in the water."

"Neither am I afraid, and I'll go overboard with you, only I'm afraid that by the time we've tired one of those things I won't be able to swim at all."

Late that afternoon, as the boys were paddling through a long narrow bay of many keys, they became anxious, because for hours they had not seen a bit of ground on which they could camp.

"Looks as if we've got to sleep in the water," said Dick. "If Johnny were here he would fix up a camp anywhere, and I'll do the best I can. Let's keep on to that point where the palmettos are. If we don't find land there we'll camp on mangrove roots."

The boys were in luck, for under the palmettos on the point was a regular Indian camping-ground, with logs for the camp-fire in place and poles ready for stretching a canvas covering, or rigging up mosquito bars.

It was the boys' first real camp together, the very camp of which they had talked and dreamed for years in that far-off Belleville, now more than a thousand miles away. Never before was there so wonderful a supper as the boys enjoyed that night. There was venison, superbly broiled by Ned; a perfect ash-cake, built and baked by Dick, and a pot of gorgeous coffee, for which both claimed credit. They lingered long over their supper, and then talked for half the night as they lay on their bed of palmetto leaves and watched the stars that looked down upon them through the tops of the trees. From the deep water that flowed past the point on which they were encamped came the occasional snort of a dolphin, the crash of a whip-ray as he struck the water after a leap high in the air, and the splashing of fish as they pursued others or were pursued by them. From the thicket behind their camp came the snarling of wildcats, while in the more distant woods the curdling cry of the panther, or mountain lion, could be heard from time to time. A long roar that rose and fell and seemed to come from all sides at once was recognized by Ned as the bellowing of an alligator. Sometimes they heard the beating of invisible wings as flocks of birds flew over them, while the "Hoo! hoo hoo! hoo hoo!" of talkative owls as they conversed lasted throughout the night.

Ned was so anxious for another chance at a manatee that the boys decided to camp where they were and hunt the creature regularly.

"We'll leave all our stores in camp," said Ned, "because we might get capsized."

"Oh, yes! We _might_ get capsized! Is there a chance on earth that we might _not_ get capsized? We'll leave everything in camp excepting the paddles and that lasso of yours which did you so much good yesterday."

"You like to talk, Dick, but you know you wouldn't miss that manatee hunt for a farm. We will have to put it off a day or two, though, until we kill a deer and jerk the venison. We've just eaten the last scrap of meat in camp. There's a trail running back into the bushes that must lead to a meadow where we can walk and probably find deer."

"All right. You'll take your rifle and I'll tag on with the shotgun, just to see that you keep out of mischief."

The trail which the boys followed did lead to a meadow where there were plenty of deer tracks, but no deer. They waded and tramped through the meadow to its farther side, where they entered a wooded swamp. Here they started up a deer, at which Ned took two snap-shots as the creature ran away. They traveled in the swamp for an hour, when they came to another meadow, on the farther side of which two deer were feeding. The wind must have carried a hostile scent to the quarry, for they slipped quietly into the swamp, and when the boys entered it were not to be seen. Again the young hunters sought their game through the swamp. They worked their way through thickets, among tangles of roots and vines, and wallowed through moccasin-infested pools of water and mud. In the excitement of the chase the boys took no note of time or of the direction in which they were traveling. It was late in the day when, with clothing muddied and torn, the boys, exhausted and discouraged, sat on a log in a swamp and decided to give up the hunt and go back to camp. They turned back and Ned led the way while Dick followed until they brought up against an impassable mangrove swamp. Ned looked to the right and the left, and then turning to Billy asked if he knew where camp was.

"No," said Dick.

"Then we're lost."

"Of course. You're always lost in a swamp. Mr. Streeter says so. He says you may lose your boat or your camp, but with a rifle, matches and a little salt you can travel over all South Florida.".

Ned looked so unhappy over their prospects that Dick took the lead, saying:

"If we don't get out of this swamp pretty soon we'll have to camp in it, and we'll need some daylight to fix up in."

At this moment a night heron lit on a branch near Dick, who raised his gun and shot it.

"That's our supper, Ned. I wouldn't shoot a bird sitting unless I was starving. Don't the woods look lighter over there?" In a few minutes the boys were in an open prairie, where Dick produced a waterproof match-box, which was well filled, and a small bag of salt. A fire was soon built, the heron dressed, broiled and eaten with only fingers for forks. The boys washed down their dinners with water from a pool, which they first examined for moccasins by the light of a burning palmetto fan.

Ned slept with his rifle by his side, and Dick was awakened in the morning by its discharge. He saw Ned sitting beside him with the rifle in his hand, while a hundred yards away, on the edge of the clearing, a buck lay on his back kicking. While the boys were hoisting the carcass to the branch of a tree, Ned said to Dick:

"I was in a blue funk yesterday afternoon. I want you to promise to kick me if I get scared that way again."

Dick laughed and replied:

"That would be all right, Ned, if I felt sure what you would be doing while I was kicking you."

After breakfast, which consisted of venison, Dick suggested that they go to work systematically to find their lost camp, and proceeded to climb a tall palmetto that stood in the clearing to take an observation. When half way up the tree he slid back to the ground looking like a chimney-sweep. For the outside of the palmetto, like most of those that grow on prairies, had been turned into charcoal by the burning of the prairie grass.

"Ned," said Dick, when the former had stopped laughing at the blackamoor before him because he was out of breath, "I guess it's your turn to kick me. Do you see that trail where I stopped last night to build our camp-fire because I didn't know the way to camp?"

"See it now. Didn't know it was there before, though."

"No more did I; but I saw it yesterday morning, and I took special notice of this palmetto and made sure that I'd never forget this prairie. Why, Ned, this is our own camping-ground, and I could throw a biscuit from this prairie to our canoe. Now you can kick."

After the boys had carried their venison to their camp, Ned said:

"Dick, do you know how to jerk venison?"

"I've seen Johnny smoke it. Is that the same thing?"

"Sure! So while you're skinning the buck I'll lam into that black mangrove log and build a fire under the little scaffold of small poles there, which you hadn't seen, but which was built to cure venison. Say, Dick, don't you want to hire out as a scout?"

Dick grinned, but made no other reply, and they began the work of jerking the venison. They cut it in thin strips and hung it over the fire of the black mangrove, which is one of the smokiest woods on earth. All day long they fed the fire and watched the venison, while scores of buzzards sat around on the trees and overlooked the work. Far into the night the boys lay beside the fire, watched its curling smoke, and talked of that camp in the snow in the North of the long ago.