“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?”