It seemed as though every boy ceased to breathe while waiting for the answer to come to this important question which Thad had asked. The swamp hunter nodded his tousled head slowly up and down. He appeared to be thinking intensely.
“Why, yas, ’twar about thet time I seen ’em,” he finally remarked. “I ’member as how I’d jest got outen terbaccy, and nawthin’d do but I must make fo’ the village store tuh lay in a new s’ply. Yas, an’ I jest glimpsed thet boat as I kim outen a side bayou. Reckoned as how’t must be a stranger, ’case I never seen the man afore as I knowed on. I waved a hand at him, but he never made out tuh notice. So I jest reckoned as how they must be some new settlers as’d took up a cabin I knowed ’bout jest beyond the start o’ the swamp. Never guv it another think, ’case I happened tuh hev troubles o’ my own aplenty jest then, with my jaws rusty from not havin’ any terbaccy fo’ nigh on two days. So them be the pussons yuh want tuh find?”
“I think there’s no doubt about it, Mr. Smith,” replied Thad, his eyes shining brightly with renewed hope; “but do you really think they could be so near the edge of the swamp? We came on an old tumbled-down shack, with a mud and board chimney, and a door hanging by one hinge; but there wasn’t a sign of life around it.”
“Then I war mistaken when I reckoned thet way, son,” admitted the hunter; “’case that’s the on’y cabin around in the swamp wuth mentionin’ anyway. They must agone deeper in. P’raps the man air like some others as I knows ’bout, an’ don’t want tuh meet up with a livin’ soul, so he’s buried hisself in thar sumwhar.”
“If he’s the man we think, his name is Felix Jasper!” Thad went on to say.
“Hey, Jasper, d’ye say? Well, now, thet’s makin’ me go away back sum. Yuh see, thar used tuh be a fambly by thet name alivin’ ’round hyah yeahs an’ yeahs ago; but the ole man he died and the rest cleared out.”
“Then this might be one of the sons, mightn’t it?” the boy asked.
“Tuh be sure it mout, and which wud account fo’ his knowin’ so much ’bout this hyah swamp; ’case yuh see, it’d be all a man’s life was wuth tuh come in and git lost among all these bewilderin’ waterways. More’n a few never kim out in yeahs gone by; an’ them as hide hyah now knows every crook and bayou like yuh do the fingers of yuh hands.”
“Then you would be willing to stay by us, and see us through, if we paid you the right sort of price?” Thad asked, determined to clinch the bargain at once.
“Glad tuh do thet same, son,” replied Alligator Smith.