CHAPTER XI.

ALLIGATOR SMITH, THE GUIDE.

“What’s the matter, Thad?” asked Allan, some time later, while they were lounging around the jolly camp-fire, and taking things easy.

“Why, I thought I heard the splash of a paddle just then, when it was all still!” and the scout-master continued to cock his head on one side, in the act of straining his hearing, as though half expecting to catch a repetition of the sound.

Every scout remained mute, and an anxious look seemed to creep over not a few boyish faces; for they had been told such strange stories about the “hideout” people of Alligator Swamp that all sorts of fancies had taken possession of their young minds.

“You’re right, I do believe, Thad,” muttered Giraffe, who had splendid hearing, as well as wonderful eyesight.

“Then you caught the splash that time, too?” questioned the scout-master.

“Sure pop, and it wasn’t the flap of a ’gator dropping in from a bank, or the sportive play of a muskrat, either. Nothing but a paddle would make that noise; and as sure as you live I can see the canoe acoming this way right now!”

This announcement created no end of excitement. Every fellow thought it was up to him to get in readiness to resist boarders, and when he could not have a gun because there were not enough to go around, at least a club, the camp hatchet, or in an emergency the long bread-knife seemed to offer some degree of comfort.

“I see him too!” remarked Step Hen; and others echoed the words; indeed it would have to be a very dull fellow who could fail to distinguish the moving object that was approaching so boldly.

“He ain’t afraid, anyway!” ventured Davy Jones.

“No more he ain’t,” added Giraffe; “which would seem to give the idea that he didn’t mean us any harm; or else felt that one man was equal to a whole patrol of Boy Scouts, which don’t seem possible.”

“Well, he’s got another guess coming if that’s so,” muttered Bumpus, who, with his gun in hand was not showing much alarm; for since he had seven chums to back him up, the fat scout could not see why he should tremble, save with excitement.

“There is only one man in the boat,” remarked Thad, a little anxiously; “and as he’s coming about over the course we did, I wonder now if it could be any messenger sent after us by that telegraph agent at the town?”

“Oh!” gasped Smithy.

Instantly every fellow felt a queer sensation pass over him. The words uttered by Thad had conjured up all sorts of grave possibilities as connected with their various happy homes away up North; and doubtless they suffered tortures from that moment on.

Straight for the camp came the solitary paddler. He was seated in a roomy boat built after the prevailing type used around the neighborhood of the swamp, and from the dexterity with which he handled the paddle it was plain that he must be quite at home on the water.

“Hello! boys, I’m comin’ ashore tuh jine yuh!” he called out; perhaps being a little dubious as to what sort of reception they were calculating on giving him; for the display of guns and hatchets and knives must have looked ominous indeed.

“All right, come along then!” Thad sang out in reply.

Two minutes later and the stranger’s boat was drawn up on the sloping bank, and he strode toward the fire. Then the eager boys saw that he had a genial if wrinkled, sun-burned face, and a scraggy gray beard.

“I’m Alligator Smith,” he announced, just as though that name might be known in all that section well enough to explain everything; and it was, too, for the reader may remember that it was this very man whom Thad had once wished he could come upon to try and engage him as a guide.

Here was luck with a capital L. Thad immediately offered the other his hand.

“Glad to meet up with you, Mr. Smith,” he said; “here’s a namesake of yours with us, though we call him plain Smithy; and this next Boy Scout is Allan Hollister; the stout chap Bumpus Hawtree,” and so he went on, introducing each chum, while the angular native proceeded to shake hands with them in rotation.

“We wanted to run across you, the worst kind, sir, and so we call this a happy meeting,” Smithy remarked.

“What’s thet yuh say?” asked the other, apparently puzzled.

“Why, we had need of a good guide for poking around in this swamp, and everybody seemed to fight shy of the job; but they all said that if we could only come on Alligator Smith, and he’d engage with us, we’d be all lovely,” Giraffe observed.

“Oh! that’s it, hey?” the alligator hunter went on to say, smiling broadly; “why if so be yuh wants me still, I ain’t no ’jections tuh makin’ arrangements lookin’ thataways, ’cause the ’gator hide bizness ain’t what it used tuh be; an’ money’s tight nowadays. But what under the sun be yuh awantin’ tuh hunt around in this ole swamp fo’, boys? They ain’t near so much game in hyah as yuh cud find in the canebrake, or up on the high ground. Ducks don’t come in much, an’ yuh seldom stir up a deer or a bar nowadays.”

Plainly Alligator Smith had already had his curiosity aroused. And so Thad believed that it would be as well to tell him everything right in the start, since he must know the facts so that he could serve them to the best of his ability.

“We didn’t come down here just to hunt,” he started in to say, “though we thought it best to fetch a few guns along for an emergency. To tell the main thing right in the start, we’re looking for a man.”

“Yes, I reckons as how I ketch on tuh that same,” observed the hunter, as he crossed his legs close to the fire, and made himself quite at home, with the scouts hovering around him.

“And a small girl!” continued Thad, watching the face of the other closely, so as to judge whether any flash of intelligence would pass over it that would serve as good news to the anxious lad.

“Oh! a gal too, yuh say? An’ d’ye reckons as how they be somewhar near Alligator Swamp?” asked the man, quickly.

“A gentleman wrote my uncle that he had seen this man and girl go into this swamp,” Thad continued. “It may have been ten days ago. They seemed to have a lot of provisions in the boat, as though they were laying in a month’s supply. He had a gun, and looked ready to hold his own against any runaway black convict he might happen to meet. Do you know of any man and girl like that, Mr. Smith?”

It seemed as though every boy ceased to breathe while waiting for the answer to come to this important question which Thad had asked. The swamp hunter nodded his tousled head slowly up and down. He appeared to be thinking intensely.

“Why, yas, ’twar about thet time I seen ’em,” he finally remarked. “I ’member as how I’d jest got outen terbaccy, and nawthin’d do but I must make fo’ the village store tuh lay in a new s’ply. Yas, an’ I jest glimpsed thet boat as I kim outen a side bayou. Reckoned as how’t must be a stranger, ’case I never seen the man afore as I knowed on. I waved a hand at him, but he never made out tuh notice. So I jest reckoned as how they must be some new settlers as’d took up a cabin I knowed ’bout jest beyond the start o’ the swamp. Never guv it another think, ’case I happened tuh hev troubles o’ my own aplenty jest then, with my jaws rusty from not havin’ any terbaccy fo’ nigh on two days. So them be the pussons yuh want tuh find?”

“I think there’s no doubt about it, Mr. Smith,” replied Thad, his eyes shining brightly with renewed hope; “but do you really think they could be so near the edge of the swamp? We came on an old tumbled-down shack, with a mud and board chimney, and a door hanging by one hinge; but there wasn’t a sign of life around it.”

“Then I war mistaken when I reckoned thet way, son,” admitted the hunter; “’case that’s the on’y cabin around in the swamp wuth mentionin’ anyway. They must agone deeper in. P’raps the man air like some others as I knows ’bout, an’ don’t want tuh meet up with a livin’ soul, so he’s buried hisself in thar sumwhar.”

“If he’s the man we think, his name is Felix Jasper!” Thad went on to say.

“Hey, Jasper, d’ye say? Well, now, thet’s makin’ me go away back sum. Yuh see, thar used tuh be a fambly by thet name alivin’ ’round hyah yeahs an’ yeahs ago; but the ole man he died and the rest cleared out.”

“Then this might be one of the sons, mightn’t it?” the boy asked.

“Tuh be sure it mout, and which wud account fo’ his knowin’ so much ’bout this hyah swamp; ’case yuh see, it’d be all a man’s life was wuth tuh come in and git lost among all these bewilderin’ waterways. More’n a few never kim out in yeahs gone by; an’ them as hide hyah now knows every crook and bayou like yuh do the fingers of yuh hands.”

“Then you would be willing to stay by us, and see us through, if we paid you the right sort of price?” Thad asked, determined to clinch the bargain at once.

“Glad tuh do thet same, son,” replied Alligator Smith.

“How would three dollars a day and find suit you?” the scout-master went on.

“Fine,” answered the other, readily.

“All right then,” Thad continued, “let’s call it five dollars a day. And I hope there’s nothing in the way to prevent you sticking with us from now on?”

“Well, thet’s what I calls handsome, an’ yuh kin depend on Tom Smith astickin’ tuh yuh like a plaster. We’ll sure find the man, an’ theh gal, too, if so be we hev tuh run through theh ole swamp like a fine tooth comb. An’ I hopes as how they turn out tuh be the same as yuh want.”

“You can understand how much I’m hoping that way, when I tell you that we think the girl may be my little sister, who was stolen when she was a baby,” Thad went on to say; and upon the other evincing great interest in the matter, he thought it best to relate the whole story concerning the dismissal of the estate manager on account of his evil practices, and his subsequent hatred for the Brewsters, which gradually led up to the mysterious disappearance of little Pauline ten years ago, and the inability of the best detectives in the country to find her.

Tom Smith was evidently a rough fellow, but he had a heart, and the way in which he pressed the hand of the young scout-master, after the whole story had been told, indicated very plainly that he sympathized greatly with him in his mission, and would do everything in his power to bring about a meeting with the strange man who had entered the swamp ten days before, with that pretty child.

And Thad looked fully a hundred per cent brighter, now that the chances for accomplishing the end he had in view when he came South, seemed to have gained a new impetus. With such a man as Alligator Smith to lead them, knowing every part of the mysterious depths of the swamp as he did, from long years of hunting in its depths, it really looked as though they were now on the road to success; and that before long the truth would be made known. So that everybody, even Bumpus, seemed to be in a more jolly mood than had happened in some time.