“And can you get a note into that private post office without too much trouble?” Thad asked, quite interested, and ready to carry out the little scheme with all the speed possible.
“Why,” resumed the swamp hunter, “hit happens thisaway, yuh see; we’s bound tuh pass right neah thet holler tree, whar Ricky allers looks fo’ letters; an’ if so be yuh guv me a note tuh stick in the hole, chances are he’d see me do hit, an’ be ahookin’ theh same out arter I quits.”
“Then Ricky can read?” queried Allan, as though surprised.
“Him?” ejaculated Tom Smith, as though surprised at the question; “sure he kin, an’ write too. Why, I ’members him atellin’ as how he went tuh school an’ got book larnin’ a whole winter, long time ago.”
“What d’ye think of that?” ejaculated Step Hen. “Suppose, now, Ricky had had half the chances of us fellows, wouldn’t he set the world on fire, though? Only went to school one winter when he was a boy, and learned to read and write at that. I’m ashamed to say it, but there are some chaps I know that have been agoing to school all their lives, and don’t know much more’n how to read and write.”
“Speak for yourself, Step Hen,” said Bumpus, who seemed unusually touchy these days, and resented the significant way in which the other looked in his direction.
“I’ll write a few lines then,” said Thad, “and make it as plain as I can that we don’t mean Ricky any harm, and would rather than not he helped us find that strange man with the little girl; for I suppose he must have noticed him around in the swamp, and has wondered what they were doing here.”
“Oh! as fo’ thet,” chuckled the guide, “nobody ever questions what a feller is after when he hides in ole Alligator Swamp; ’case, yuh see, it’s allers been a safe retreat fo’ every escaped convict, and sech others as want tuh keep outen sight. I hev heard as how in theh ole days o’ slavery many a black took tuh this place arter runnin’ away from the sugar plantations; and they used tuh hunt ’em with bloodhounds. Fack is, right in these hyah days I’ve heard the bayin’ o’ hounds more’n a few times; and I done larn on’y yesterday as how the sheriff, he went an’ fotched a brace o’ dorgs down from another parish, tuh use the same hyah’bouts.”
Thad was already busily engaged, having secured a page from a pocket notebook, and with the stub of a pencil he was writing a few lines as plainly as he could accomplish it.
Giraffe and Davy were whispering together as their boats happened to drift close together, and from the fact that they allowed their eyes to turn toward Bumpus from time to time, it seemed probable that some new scheme was being hatched looking to the further annoyance of the fat scout.