“When he answers you,” Thad continued, deliberately, “tell him to order his men not to shoot; that you are with a party of boys exploring the swamp, and would like him to come and join us. Until we know more about what brings the sheriff in here, perhaps we’d be wise not to tell him too much of our private business.”
“I ketches on tuh what yuh mean, suh; an’ I shore thinks hit a smart dodge. Arter we-uns finds out what fetches this heah posse ’round these diggin’s, we kin open up an’ tell what we thinks best.”
“How long will it be before they reach us, Tom?” asked Giraffe, always impatient.
“Yuh see the dorgs, they jest hes got tuh foller ther ridges tuh we-uns, an’ I reckon as how it mout be ten minits er so,” the guide informed him, after what seemed to be a rapid mental calculation.
“And say, perhaps now, when this old moonshiner hears the hounds, maybe he won’t sit up and take notice!” exclaimed Davy, chuckling, as though he had a personal grievance against Ricky, because at the time the other fired that warning shot Davy had been so quick to draw in his head, like a tortoise, that he felt a stinging pain in the muscles of his neck, which spot he had been rubbing ever since.
“He’ll think the world is going to come to an end, with seeing uniformed scouts in two boats, and then the sheriff’s posse coming. Listen, and you can hear the men calling out to each other right now, fellows!” Step Hen observed.
Somehow the sounds seemed unusually strange; for conditions go to make things loom up; and with those weird surroundings on every hand the boys could certainly find enough to imagine a mighty thrilling spectacle.
Yes, the members of the big posse which the energetic sheriff had summoned to make a clean sweep of this pestiferous swamp hole, the hiding place of every rascal for generations, were exchanging calls, possibly between the boats and those who followed the hounds on shore.
“Sounds like there might be a lot of the same?” remarked Bumpus, after they had been listening for several minutes; and without doubt the noisy parties were coming nearer all the while.
“I shore reckons as how the sheriff he wants tuh make a clean sweep o’ hit this time,” the guide commented.