Part 9 (1/2)

”How am I to get the gun across?” asked w.i.l.l.y, dolefully.

”That's a fact! It's too far to throw it, even with the caps off.”

At length they concluded to go back for a piece of log they had seen, and to throw this down so as to lessen the distance.

They pulled the log out of the sand, carried it to the muddy spot, and threw it into the mud where they wanted it.

Frank stuck his pole down and felt until he had what he thought a secure hold on it, fixed his eye on the tuft of gra.s.s beyond, and sprang into air.

As he jumped the pole slipped from its insecure support into the miry mud, and Frank, instead of landing on the hummock for which he had aimed, lost his direction, and soused flat on his side with a loud ”spa-lash,” in the water and mud three feet to the left.

He was a queer object as he staggered to his feet in the quagmire; but at the instant a loud ”oof, oof,” came from, the thicket, not a dozen yards away, and the whole herd of hogs, roused, by his fall, from slumber in their muddy lair, dashed away through the swamp with ”oofs”

of fear.

”There they go, there they go!” shouted both boys, eagerly,--w.i.l.l.y, in his excitement, splas.h.i.+ng across the perilous-looking quagmire, and finding it not so deep as it had looked.

”There's where they go in and out,” exclaimed Frank, pointing to a low round opening, not more than eighteen inches high, a little further beyond them, which formed an arch in the almost solid wall of brambles surrounding the place.

As it was now late they returned home, resolving to wait until the next afternoon before taking any further steps. There was not a pound of bacon to be obtained anywhere in the country for love or money, and the flock of sheep was almost gone.

Their mother's anxiety as to means for keeping her dependents from starving was so great that the boys were on the point of telling her what they knew; and when they heard her wis.h.i.+ng she had a few hogs to fatten, they could scarcely keep from letting her know their plans. At last they had to jump up, and run out of the room.

Next day the boys each hunted up a pair of old boots which they had used the winter before. The leather was so dry and worn that the boots hurt their growing feet cruelly, but they brought the boots along to put on when they reached the swamp. This time, each took a gun, and they also carried an axe, for now they had determined on a plan for capturing the hogs.

”I wish we had let Peter and Cole come,” said w.i.l.l.y, dolefully, sitting on the b.u.t.t end of a log they had cut, and wiping his face on his sleeve.

”Or had asked Uncle Balla to help us,” added Frank.

”They'd be certain to tell all about it.”

”Yes; so they would.”

They settled down in silence, and panted.

”I tell you what we ought to do! Bait the hog-path, as you would for fish.” This was the suggestion of the angler, Frank.

”With what?”

”Acorns.”

The acorns were tolerably plentiful around the roots of the big oaks, so the boys set to work to pick them up. It was an easier job than cutting the log, and it was not long before each had his hat full.

As they started down to the swamp, Frank exclaimed, suddenly, ”Look there, w.i.l.l.y!”

w.i.l.l.y looked, and not fifty yards away, with their ends resting on old stumps, were three or four ”hacks,” or piles of rails, which had been mauled the season before and left there, probably having been forgotten or overlooked.

w.i.l.l.y gave a hurrah, while bending under the weight of a large rail.

At the spot where the hog-path came out of the thicket they commenced to build their trap.

First they laid a floor of rails; then they built a pen, five or six rails high, which they strengthened with ”outriders.” When the pen was finished, they pried up the side nearest the thicket, from the bottom rail, about a foot; that is, high enough for the animals to enter.