“I never did sot any store by this hyah bushwhackin’ bizness,” declared their guide, frowning. “And Ricky, he’s bound tuh git hisself intuh a heap o’ trouble if so be he tries thet same on, many more times.”
“I was thinking,” resumed Thad, “that perhaps, now, there might be some way for you to get in touch with Ricky, or leave a communication for him somewhere. In that way you could tell him who we were, and that we haven’t any notion of doing him any harm. In fact, so far as we’re concerned, it doesn’t matter if he keeps on with his little still in the swamp till doomsday, does it, boys?”
“No, if only he keeps his hands off, and don’t bother the Silver Fox Patrol in the line of their duty,” asserted Giraffe. “Some other people, just about like this same old Ricky, learned that it was as safe to monkey with a buzz-saw as to fool with scouts when they’re bent on minding their own affairs. I could mention more’n a few who got their fingers pinched, and pinched bad too.”
“Well, don’t bother going into details now, Giraffe,” remarked Allan; “all that will keep for some time when we’re sitting around the fire, and you happen to feel like telling our guide a few things about what we’ve done in the past. Just now we’ve got to settle on our plans for work. How about what Thad asked you, Tom Smith; can you manage to get word to this Ricky, do you think?”
The swamp hunter had been thinking while the boys exchanged these few remarks; and now he nodded his head in the affirmative.
“I kinder reckons as how I mout do thet same, son,” he went on to say, as though his mind were made up. “In the fust place, I knows jest whar Ricky he holds out, an’ hes his ole still; an’ I wants tuh say thet I don’t reckon tuh find them parties yuh be alookin’ fo’ in thet ere quarter. So, yuh see, we’s soon gwine tuh head in a diff’rent way, so Ricky, if so be he’s a watchin’ on us frum the bushes’ll make out thet we don’t mean tuh disturb him yet awhile.”
“Still, he might think we were only going around to come up on him from another quarter?” ventured Allan.
“Yes,” added the scout-master, “and if you can let him know what I said about our being only Boy Scouts; and that we’ve hired you, not to find him, but another party altogether, it might be best.”
“They’s a chanct tuh do thet same,” returned Tom Smith; “an’ this is theh way o’ hit. Yuh see, Ricky he don’t never show hisself outen the swamp, leastways not in daytime, ’cause he reckons as how thar be a marshal behind every tree, jest awaitin’ tuh nab him fo’ moonshinin’. But he sells his mountain dew, as they calls it up in Georgia an’ Tennessee tuh sum o’ theh natives, an’ when they wants a supply they leaves word at his post office like.”
“Oh! I see, Ricky isn’t only trying to beat the United States Government out of its revenue on the stuff he distills, but he’s set up a rival establishment for sending letters through the mails without paying a cent of postage?” and Giraffe chuckled at his own wit, which Bumpus thought very bad taste; but then Bumpus was provoked at the lanky scout just then, and could not see anything good in whatever Giraffe said or did.