“Well, lots of people you’d think ought to know better, allow themselves to get so flustered when deer hunting, that they’re ready to bang away if they see anything brown moving among the bushes. And every year dozens of hunters are killed up in the Adirondacks, in Maine, and Wisconsin, by just such fool actions; so that they’re even talking of making every hunter wear either a white or a red suit, so he can’t be mistaken for a deer.”
“That’s a fact, this dun-colored khaki cloth is mighty near like a deer, and the dead leaves too!” declared Bumpus.
“It may have been when it was new and clean,” interjected Davy, bitterly; “but it’s anything but brown now. I’d call it a pretty fair shade of dirt color approaching black.”
“P’raps, now, that’s why the sportsmen in Old England wear red coats when they go into the brush?” suggested Smithy.
“Oh! that’s only the fox hunters, and they carry no firearms, so they’re in no danger,” Thad informed him; “their grouse shooters wear just the same kind of togs our hunters do over here; but they shoot in the open, and so you seldom hear of an accident over across the ocean.”
All this conversation was carried on in low tones, and while the boys were constantly peeping out from their leafy covert, as though expecting to catch a glimpse of either the mysterious marksman, or else Tom Smith searching for him beyond.
But there was not a single sign of either. The trailing Spanish moss continued to wave majestically to and fro in the light air; a gray squirrel ran down the trunk of an oak tree close by, to bark saucily, as though questioning their right in his quiet domain; a bittern flew past with winnowing wing, and quickened its flight when discovering the presence of human beings in that retreat; but there did not seem to be the first indication that either enemy or friend could be hidden beyond that other tongue of land.
Thad had figured it all out in his mind, and fancied that he knew about what the quickly-formed plan of the alligator hunter might be.
Of course Tom Smith knew every rod of this place, and he realized that by taking a certain channel leading back of the point that now screened the boys, he could manage to come up behind the place where that rifle had sounded.
If the marksman had remained in his bushy retreat there was a chance of his being surprised; but Thad hardly hoped for any such result; because it stood to reason that the hidden man must be keen-witted, and he would naturally suspect some such move on the part of the swamp hunter, whom he undoubtedly knew.