“Nothing doing, so forget that, partner. On the way back, if he’s still holding the fort, we might get a couple of long, stout poles, and try to knock him on the head if it can be done with little confusion–he won’t make any noise outside of whirling his rattlebox and we could keep our lips buttoned tight. Yes, that would be the best way to fix things, I reckon.”
Really Jack was saying this so as to comfort his mate; he realized that Perk had received a severe shock at sight of the diamondback crawler and it might affect his desire to do any prowling around after nightfall which would throw the entire burden of so doing on his, Jack’s shoulders. Besides, there was a fair chance that the snake would have withdrawn from his self-imposed task of guardian of the swamp trail and taken himself off to other pastures.
They resumed their forward progress, with Perk keeping a watchful eye out for other lurking perils–how were they to know but that an angry bobcat, bent on disputing this invasion of his tangled realm, might make a sudden spring from some limb of a live oak and land upon their backs to commence using his keen claws, tearing and stripping and snarling like a devil, such as these beasts always were reckoned in such sections of the country as he, Perk, had hunted.
Ten minutes, fifteen, passed then Jack again caught his chum’s arm and with a finger pressed on his own lips to betoken the necessity for silence, pointed to something ahead that must have just caught his attention. And Perk, looking, saw a sight that afforded him a sense of satisfaction both deep and profound.
CHAPTER XXI
THE MYSTERIOUS COQUINA SHACK
“Hot Ziggetty! so this is where he dropped down, is it?” Perk was muttering in subdued excitement as his astonished eyes fell upon a plane bobbing on its pontoons in a sheltered little cove, “meet that spruce Lockheed-Vega bus, partner, that clipped past away over our heads, an’ the woozy pilot never dreamin’ our crate was within a hundred miles o’ him. Kinder guess the pirate roost must lie around here somewhere.”
“That’s a dead sure thing, Perk,” whispered Jack, “and chances are it’s hid in the midst of that live-oak clump yonder, where I take it the land lies high and dry.”
“I swan but this is gettin’ real excitin’ an’ suits me okay,” breathed the duly thrilled Perk, who felt there was no longer any reason for calling things tame.
“By changing our base a bit,” suggested Jack almost as equally pleased over their success as his nervous chum, “we might even be able to get a squint at the shack, let’s try, buddy.”