Part 13 (1/2)
”None of us have ever been as far down the river as this,” he remarked; ”I know I haven't, anyway.”
”I was down once years ago, and saw the big falls where we might have taken a header if we'd kept drifting,” Bandy-legs explained; ”but say, I don't seem to remember the first thing about the country. You could lose me down here without any trouble, I guess. Plenty of forest all right, eh, Max; and we won't have any great time makin' a fire, if only we get matches? Mine are all wet.”
”I carry a few in a waterproof case,” Max told him; ”so don't let that worry you any, Bandy-legs. The question is with us, after the fire, what? We'll all be hungry and the girls haven't had a bite to eat since early morning.”
”Well, there's a house, surrounded by water,” suggested Steve; ”guess we'll have to cabbage anything we can find around loose. In times like this you can't wait to ask permission. Eat first, and pay for it afterwards, that's the motto we'll have to go by. If we're on the right side of the luck fence we might even run across a smoked ham hangin' from the rafters. They keep all kinds of good things sometimes in these cabins along the sh.o.r.e.”
”Seems to be something like a hencoop back of the house,” added Bandy-legs.
”Oh! s-s-say, don't go to g-g-getting a feller's m-m-mouth all made up for nice r-r-roast chicken, and then never find any,” objected Toby.
”Course we'll find all sorts of good things,” declared Bandy-legs, stoutly; ”why, look what's happened to us already; and tell me that this ain't our lucky day. We went down with the old bridge, but not one of us got thrown into the water. Then we sailed twenty miles, and dropped in on the roof of the French house just like we'd been drawn by a magnet, which p'raps some of us must a been, hey, Steve? And then, by George! just when we wanted a boat the worst ever, along came this tub, and heading straight in for our shaky roost like it was being piloted by hands none of us could see. Luck? Why, we've got it plastered all over us, from head to foot. Chickens, ham, anything you want, just ask for it, and then wait and have faith!”
”We're glad that you feel so certain,” Mazie told him, ”because I'm ready to own up that I'm awfully hungry, and could eat almost anything just now.”
”And I'm beginning to feel a little weak myself,” admitted Bessie; ”which, I suppose, is caused from going without any regular meal. None of us dared go back down through that trap once we got on the roof, because we were afraid the house might float off while we were below.
Yes, we hope there will be something you can get in that house.”
”Seems to be abandoned, all right,” Steve remarked, shading his eyes with his hands in order to see better.
”There's somebody over on the bank beyond, and as near as I can make out it's an old woman,” Max told them just at that point; ”perhaps she's guarding some of the stuff that was saved from the cabin when the water came up around it; while her man has gone to get a horse and wagon, or a boat.”
”Well, we're going to land here,” Bandy-legs ventured; ”and it won't be hard to go up and interview the old lady. P'raps we can make a bargain with her for some of her grub. I've got a dollar along with me, and I reckon some of the rest ought to make as good a showing.”
”There'll be no trouble about that part of it, if only the food is around,” Max a.s.sured them. ”If the worst comes we'll have to commandeer the food market, and settle afterwards. Can you make it all right, Shack?”
”Easy as fallin' off a log,” replied the stout boy, who was still wielding the sculling oar back and forth with that peculiar turning motion that presented the broad surface of the blade to the water all the time, and induced the boat to move forward with a steady action.
He made his words good a few minutes later, for the stem of the boat ran gently up against the bank, where a log offered a good chance for disembarking.
No one would want a better landing stage; and so the three girls managed to go ash.o.r.e without wetting their feet any more than they had been before.
Every one seemed glad to get on solid ground again. Even Max secretly admitted that it did feel very good to know he had no longer to depend on the whims of the current, but could go wherever he willed.
”Let's hunt out a decent place to make a camp,” he remarked, ”and then after we get the shelter started, and the cheery fire warming things up, two of us ought to wander off up the bank and see what's doing around that house.”
”I'll go with yon, Max,” said Bandy-legs hastily, as though more or less afraid that he might come in a poor second, as it was a case of ”first come, first served.”
They drew the boat well up, and fastened it with the length of rope that served as a painter; the clothes-line Max thought to take along with him, as there was a possibility they might need it before through with this adventure.
Then they started through the woods, which just at this point happened to be unusually dense, with great trees rearing their crests a hundred feet or so above the heads of the s.h.i.+pwrecked Crusoes.
It was not long before Max called attention to a certain spot which he claimed would answer all their present needs.
”There's plenty of stuff to make a shelter of brush and branches with,”
he observed, ”though it would be easier all around if we had a hatchet along.”
”That's right,” added Steve; ”and if I'd only had any idea that old bridge was going to dump us all into the drink the way it did I'd have had lots of things fixed different, give you my affidavy I would. But we ought to be able to work a fairly decent brush shanty without. It won't be the first we've put up, and I certainly hope it isn't goin' to be the last, either.”
Filled with this winning spirit the boys quickly busied themselves.