Part 28 (1/2)

”He's telling us to get wise to the alfalfa!” Jule cut in. ”Alex.

don't know how to translate so white men can understand.”

”You'll both wash dishes for a month!” roared Clay, doubled over with laughter. ”We make that a penalty for talking slang,” he explained, turning to Gregg.

”But I don't understand yet,” the other went on. ”What is the matter with the boy? Has he turned himself into a billy goat?”

”He's suggesting that you mow the lawn!” Case explained. ”He doesn't like the fire-escapes!”

Clay roared and pointed to the beards worn by the three, and then they understood and joined in the laugh until the swamp echoed back the sounds.

”You'll all have to wash dishes, I take it!” Gregg declared.

”That's about the way it usually turns out, when one starts talking slang,” Clay explained. ”We're all so full of it that it just bubbles out.”

”It is fine that we have something to be jolly over,” Gregg hastened to say, ”for the prospects of getting out of here are not alluring.”

”Wouldn't be no fun if everything went right!” Alex. insisted. ”We have the most sport when we're lost, or stolen, or strayed away. Now, you watch me cook these ducks.”

The boy got out a baking pan standing on three short legs. The bottom was double so as to prevent burning. Then he put two fat ducks inside, secured the cover, and removed what seemed to Gregg to be the whole top of the stove.

The short legs of the pan rested on the red-hot coals in the firebox, while the cover was always within reach. As soon as the ducks, which had previously been hastily parboiled, began to simmer and send forth appetizing odors, the boy watched them every minute, turning and basting until they were a beautiful golden brown.

In the meantime coffee had been made and the fish fried on the electric coil.

”I presume you'll want hot biscuits for supper, too?” asked Clay.

The visitors were too busy with the game to do more than shake their heads.

”We usually have three kinds of meat, fish, baked potatoes, pancakes, light bread, pie, honey, and three or four vegetables on the side,”

Alex. explained, with a wink at Mose, who sat in a corner next to the deck with Joe and Teddy watching the meat disappearing from a ”drumstick” he was busily engaged on.

”An' possum pie!” the little negro boy added, licking his chops.

”Sure! I forgot the possum pie!” Alex. declared. ”Excuse me!”

”Certainly!” laughed Gregg, ”and we'll excuse you, too, for all future products of the imagination! The twenty course dinners at the La Salle haven't got anything on this little banquet! For my part, I don't care whether we ever get out of here, now, or not.”

”Some day,” Alex. observed, ”I'll show you how to cook a steak a la brigand! After you eat one of them you'll go hungry for a week before you'll touch anything else!”

”You may lead me to one of them any time you see fit!” Eddie laughed.

The river was still roaring and foaming about the _Rambler_, caught in the narrow s.p.a.ce between the two cypress trees. Just where the boat lay the current turned away to the east, that is the current of the lagoon. The Mississippi was, of course, across the inundated spit of land which lay on the west sh.o.r.e of the river and on the east side of the bayou or lagoon.

Just as the boys finished their somewhat delayed supper the lights of a steamer showed up the stream. It pa.s.sed the mouth of the bayou and hugged the opposite sh.o.r.e of the Mississippi for a time, then headed for the west sh.o.r.e.

”That's strange!” Case exclaimed. ”She sees our lights, but what is she coming over to this side for?”

The mystery became more of a mystery still when, reaching the west side, the steamer turned prow up stream and started to breast the flood, still carrying great ma.s.ses of wreckage down stream. She made her way up to the mouth of the bayou and stopped, her propellers going just fast enough to keep from dropping back.