Paddles were dipped in the water, and before half a minute passed both canoe-loads of scouts had come alongside the pilot boat in which Tom Smith sat, rubbing his bearded chin thoughtfully with one hand, while he continued to hold his head, as though still listening to the rapidly growing baying of that hound.
“What’s the answer, Tom?” demanded Giraffe, bluntly. “We’ve been hearing that dog give tongue, and wondered what there was about it to make you look so sober. Is it a coon dog, and has he got a bushy-tail up a tree? I’ve heard ’em break loose like that more’n once.”
“Wall, younker,” said the other, gravely, “yuh hain’t never heard a coon dorg yap like that, let me tell yuh. Ther dorg as gives them clar notes ain’t agwine tuh tuhn his head tuh look at a coon, ’cept it be a two-legged un. I reckons I knows the breed right well; an’ I wants tuh state thet yuh listenin’ tuh a hound now as hes ben trained never to run on any trail, deer, bar or coon, but a human un. Thet’s a bloodhound acomin’ thisaways; and like as not thet sheriff hes picked out Alligator Swamp tuh try out his new dorgs. An’ let me tell yuh, thar must be sumthin’ in theh wind tuh make him fotch his posse along whar no sheriff ever did cotch his game up tuh this day. Times is achangin’ down in old Louisiana, they be.”
CHAPTER XVII.
THE SHERIFF’S ROUND-UP POSSE.
“How will that affect your game, Thad, do you think?” asked Allan, anxiously, after the alligator hunter had spoken so seriously about the possible scouring of the big swamp by this energetic sheriff, bound to clean it up at last, after it had borne such a bad name for years and years as a harboring place for desperate characters, voodoo worshippers and all such.
“I don’t know,” replied the scout-master, with a line across his forehead, showing that the master was already beginning to loom up in his mind as something that must yet be experienced. “Perhaps we’ll profit by his coming; and then again it may be just the other way. But one thing sure, no matter what we wish, it isn’t going to change things any. So we’ll have to move along, and take them as they come.”
“But they’re heading this way, all right,” said Giraffe, “because the yelps are getting louder all the while.”
“Tell me, please,” broke in Bumpus at this interesting juncture, “however can a dog follow a trail through the water? I don’t know a great deal of woodcraft, and tracking, and all that stuff, but I reckon I’ve read about fellows that were being chased by dogs, throwing ’em off the scent by wading down a stream half a mile.”
“And you’re right there, Bumpus,” replied Allan, immediately; “that’s a trick as old as the hills, and one that’s been practiced from the days of the Pilgrim Fathers. Nothing like water to upset the keenest-nosed dog that ever lived.”
“Yes,” added Smithy, also anxious to air his scanty knowledge along this line; “and you can read about just such a happening in one of Cooper’s old Leatherstocking tales. I remember distinctly that such a thing occurred.”