CHAPTER XVI.

RICKY’S POST OFFICE.

Something like a snicker ran around the other scouts when Giraffe proposed to punish the obstinate Bumpus in this queer fashion. But there was one among them who did not see anything so comical in the idea, and this was the proposed victim himself.

Bumpus looked daggers at Giraffe. Why, he even picked up his gun, which chanced to be lying near his position in the bow of the other canoe; though of course he did not have the least idea of resisting to that extent, should the decision be averse to him.

“Guess I can see through a board that’s got a knot-hole in it, Giraffe Stedman!” he exclaimed, bitterly. “Fact of the matter is, you’re just jealous of my figger, that’s what, and all the while you lie awake nights atrying to think up schemes that’ll make me have trouble, and in the end reduce my flesh so fast that you won’t be the only living skeleton in the bunch. Right now you want to make me paddle all by myself; and there ain’t anything calculated to thin a fellow more’n that kind of business. Thad, don’t you see what he’s after? And I certainly do hope you won’t let him crow over me. I’m losing enough weight as it is, aworrying over that silly job of not remembering what I did with my mother’s medicine she sent me to fetch home; let alone having to paddle ever and ever so many weary miles. Tell him to get in Tom Smith’s canoe himself, and go on ahead, if so be he thinks he’s going to feel any better. You ain’t once complained about my dear old suit, Thad, neither has Step Hen here.”

“Well, go slow about me there, Bumpus,” spoke up the last mentioned party; “for you see my cold’s agetting just a _little_ bit better; and seems to me at times I do notice something queer about the air of this swamp. Tell you more later on, if I keep improving like I am.”

“That’ll be enough for you, Giraffe,” said Thad, with an assumption of authority that announced his belief that the time for levity was past; “we’ll not bother about such a little thing right now; but wait until we get in camp after we’ve settled the matter of the man and the girl. Let’s move along.”

“Little thing—huh!” grunted Davy, while Giraffe and Bumpus exchanged grins, the one being founded on triumph, in that Thad had decided in his favor, while the elongated scout showed that he had only been jesting after all, though pretending to be so serious.

The guide had listened to all this side talk, and seemed to be more or less amused, though like as not he failed to catch the true essence of the joke. But he had already grown to like these quick-witted lads more than a little, and was trying hard to enter into their way of looking at things.

He paddled on slowly, always keeping a bright lookout ahead and around. Giraffe took occasion to remark, after noticing how careful the swamp hunter seemed to be, that according to his notion Tom Smith was half expecting to hear that rifle of the moonshiner bark again.

“Whee!” Bumpus was heard to say, half to himself; and they noticed that after that the fat scout managed to squat a little lower in his place, doubtless thinking it the part of discretion to make himself less of a shining mark, calculated to draw the attention of any would-be marksman.

Not that Bumpus would have acknowledged feeling _afraid_; but he might have declared that he did not see why he should loom up there like a target, while lucky fellows like Giraffe, who were as thin as a knife blade, stood little chance of being hit.

All went smoothly for some little time, and as no ugly sound like the report of a gun annoyed them, the scouts began to get their full amount of courage back again. But Bumpus apparently found his new position of lolling in the bottom of the bow of the canoe comfortable enough to please him, for he made no attempt to sit up pompously again, as had been his habit before.

The guide had kept just a little in the van, and presently he turned to beckon, as though desirous of having them join him; which those in the other two boats immediately did.

“Heah’s theh post office, suh!” remarked Tom Smith, as he pointed toward a big half-rotten stump of a tree that must have been broken off short in some storm of years gone by.

“What, that poor old thing?” ejaculated Bumpus, just as though visions of a post office conjured up in his mind all sorts of elaborate buildings, with crowds of country people gathering around as the mail was being sorted.

“Thet heah is theh place, as sure as anything,” asserted the other; “an’ jest hole on long enuff tuh ’low me tuh slip yuh lettah in theh same, Thad.”

As he said this Tom Smith paddled his canoe alongside the bank, jumped out, and strode over to the remnant of a once proud sentinel oak.

He seemed to know what he was about; perhaps in times gone by he may himself have communicated with old Ricky through means of this letter box. At any rate the boys saw him reach up to a break in the surface of the stump, and put his hand inside. When he drew it out he no longer held the little note that the scout-master had written, and given into his charge.

Then Tom Smith once more embarked, and joined them in his canoe.

“That’s what I call a slick way to send letters,” Davy remarked.

“Saves a heap of postage, for a fact,” Bob White chuckled; “but then I’ve seen the same done more than a few times befo’, suh, so it’s nothing new to me.”

“Say, do you really and truly think old Ricky might be awatching us right now, and see you put something in his post office?” Bumpus questioned.

“Course I don’t jest know fo’ sure,” replied the swamp hunter; “but I’m summat ’quainted with his ways, an’ I reckons as how it’s likely he be.”

Bumpus looked all around, and then went on to remark again:

“But he wouldn’t feel just like letting loose on us because you went and stuffed his ballot-box, would he? If he’s as smart a man as you said, after having been to school, he’d guess that we had some good reason for wanting to communicate with him in this way; ain’t that so, Thad?”

“Just as you say, Bumpus; and make your mind easy, we’ll not be bothered again by Ricky,” the scout-master assured him. “He’ll get my letter, and understand that we are not here to do him any injury.”

“And Bumpus,” remarked Smithy, “I just want to say that I couldn’t have put that remark in better English than you did, even if I tried my best. They say that associations will tell in the long run.”

“Don’t plume yourself so much, Smithy,” jeered Davy; “don’t we also learn at school how ‘evil communications corrupt good manners?’ First thing you know we’ll be finding that you use slang; and maybe won’t change _your_ old suit when it’s just so rank of onions and fishy odors from cooking, that all your mates are groaning to beat the band. Some things are as ketching as the measles, they say.”

“Then when the fever strikes you, Giraffe,” ventured Bumpus quickly, seeing his chance, “maybe you’ll give me a rest, and turn on Davy here.”

“Huh!” was all Giraffe returned to this sly dig; but he grinned as though satisfied to have made the fat scout speak out.

“It’s on again now, I suppose, Tom Smith?” remarked Allan.

“Yep, an’ right heah we makes summat o’ a turn, so that from now on we don’t reckon tuh keep headin’ in ther direction o’ Ricky’s still. He’ll foller us arter he gits yuh letter, suh; till he sees as how we ain’t calc’latin’ tuh close in on his leetle island still in the heart o’ theh swamp. Then like as not he’ll make up his mind they beant anythin’ tuh skeer ’bout long o’ we-uns, an’ quit botherin’.”

“And I say a good riddance of bad rubbish when he takes that same notion,” declared Bob White.

“Same here!” echoed Smithy; while the others contented themselves with giving sundry nods, as though their minds ran along the same channels.

So the swamp guide again started ahead, picking his way through intricate channels that none of the scouts believed they could ever recognize again; though it was plain to be seen from the manner in which Thad and Allan kept keenly observing all their surroundings that they were trying to impress the general run of things upon their minds, so that in case it became necessary for them to take the lead, through losing their guide in some fashion, they might not be wholly unprepared.

And it was in this manner that the scout-master constantly showed those who were under his charge the necessity for constant watchfulness at all times, when in the open. The boy who is “prepared” has a great advantage over the one who never takes note of what is transpiring around him. Not only that, but he discovers a thousand splendid things in the woods and waters about him that remain unknown forever to the lad who will not arouse himself, and do his own thinking.

They had been going for some little time in this fashion, and already there were heard slight murmurs from the place where Giraffe was seated concerning what a light breakfast they had taken, and that it must surely be getting on toward noon, when Thad began to notice that the guide was acting queerly.

“Watch Tom Smith, Allan!” he remarked to the other, as the canoes were close together; and of course every one of the other six scouts immediately sat up and began to take notice.

“You’re right, Thad, there is something bothering him,” admitted Allan, after he had used his eyes for a brief time to observe what the guide was doing.

The alligator-hide hunter had stopped paddling, although his canoe still continued to glide along under the impetus it had received from his last few vigorous strokes. He had raised his head, and cocked it on side, as though listening to some sound that caught his ear.

“Maybe after all the old moonshiner didn’t get your message, Thad,” suggested Step Hen; and immediately Bumpus ceased trying to stretch his thick neck in the endeavor to see over the heads of those nearest him, and who were more or less interfering with his view; “p’raps right now he’s atrailing after us, and meaning to give us heaps and heaps of trouble?”

Step Hen often made remarks like this that proved how he failed to use a due regard for reason. And the scout-master immediately showed him how unlikely his suggestion was.

“In the first place, Step Hen,” Thad remarked, “if you look closer you’ll see how he keeps looking away ahead of us, and not behind. If old Ricky had followed us, the chances are we’d hear of him back there somewhere, and not in advance.”

“Guess you’re right, Thad,” muttered Step Hen, who at least was never so hard to convince as Bumpus; and quick to see the point at the same time.

“Then again,” resumed the other, pushing his advantage vigorously, as every wide-awake scout should always do; “from the fact that none of us seem to have sensed what Tom Smith has plainly heard; it shows, not only that his hearing is better than ours, but that the sounds, whatever they may be, come from a distance.”

Hardly had Thad said this than some of the boys, upon straining their hearing to the utmost, believed they caught certain sounds; or else the wind happened to pick up a little just then, bringing them closer.

“Oh! Thad, was that a wolf; and do they have such things down here in Louisiana?” burst out Bumpus, before any one else could speak.

Giraffe laughed harshly.

“Tell the poor little innocent, Thad, the difference between a baying hound and his first cousin _lupus_, the wolf,” he observed, with a lofty air that was calculated to quite crush the fat scout, but did nothing of the kind.

“That’s what it is, boys, a baying hound!” Thad told them; “and there, you can hear it louder than before, which would seem to indicate either that the breeze is getting stronger right along, or else the dog is heading this way.”

“What was that the guide was saying a while ago about the sheriff borrowing a couple of hounds from some other parish to use down here?” Davy wanted to know.

“Bloodhounds, more’n likely,” added Step Hen, with his eyes widening, as though the possibilities conjured up by this suggestion thrilled him to the core.

“Well, here’s our good guide waiting for us to join him,” said Thad; “and just as like as not he may have something to tell us, for there seems to be a puzzled look on his face.”

Paddles were dipped in the water, and before half a minute passed both canoe-loads of scouts had come alongside the pilot boat in which Tom Smith sat, rubbing his bearded chin thoughtfully with one hand, while he continued to hold his head, as though still listening to the rapidly growing baying of that hound.

“What’s the answer, Tom?” demanded Giraffe, bluntly. “We’ve been hearing that dog give tongue, and wondered what there was about it to make you look so sober. Is it a coon dog, and has he got a bushy-tail up a tree? I’ve heard ’em break loose like that more’n once.”

“Wall, younker,” said the other, gravely, “yuh hain’t never heard a coon dorg yap like that, let me tell yuh. Ther dorg as gives them clar notes ain’t agwine tuh tuhn his head tuh look at a coon, ’cept it be a two-legged un. I reckons I knows the breed right well; an’ I wants tuh state thet yuh listenin’ tuh a hound now as hes ben trained never to run on any trail, deer, bar or coon, but a human un. Thet’s a bloodhound acomin’ thisaways; and like as not thet sheriff hes picked out Alligator Swamp tuh try out his new dorgs. An’ let me tell yuh, thar must be sumthin’ in theh wind tuh make him fotch his posse along whar no sheriff ever did cotch his game up tuh this day. Times is achangin’ down in old Louisiana, they be.”