“Possibly so, Wally, but from what I’ve picked up from many sources, I’m already half convinced we’ll be apt to rim across the whole works within fifty miles or so of the city, it may be where that swift and crooked Yamasaw River skirts the coastways, dodging this way and that, even running backwards sometimes, so when you’ve been going with the current two hours you find yourself within a biscuit toss of a tree you passed long ago.”
So in due time they dropped down again on the landing-field close to Charleston.
One thing Perk felt absolutely certain about, which was that his chief was not going to start real operations until he had accomplished the most exacting examination of the entire ground; and felt able to picture in his mind just how the Government baiters carried out their extensive smuggling game by sea and air; but when he did strike it would be in a way to start strangling the hitherto successful campaign of the giant Combine.
They both carried on in a perfectly natural fashion, much of their talk when in the company of any third party being along the line of their intended sport—how they had been able to discover a number of promising secluded ponds and bayous where already thus early in the ducking season a considerable gathering of the feathered game had been noted.
Perk fell into the humor of the trick, and even boasted of what a vacancy he meant to create in the flocks of ducks and geese before the termination of Mr. Warrington’s vacation caused him to start north once more to his regular “business” of attending Board meetings in a bunch of companies where he chanced to be a heavy stockholder, and a director as well.
Really to Perk, who liked a joke as well as the next one, this thing promised no end of fun; every hour of the day found him more deeply interested than before, and eager to push ahead.
That night in the sanctity of their room, (speaking even there in low voices as if they more than half believed the very walls might have ears) Perk took occasion to mention the remarkable gift his companion had with regard to a retentive memory.
“I jest doant see haow yeou kin ’member things like yeou do, ole hoss,” he was saying, evidently fishing for light on a subject that had often confounded his intellect. “Onct yeou hears a long-winded talk, an’ I’ll be hanged if yeou can’t spin her off word fur word, an’ never a single slip-up. Haow kin yeou do it, suh, I’d shore like to know?”
“It just can’t be explained, brother, and that’s a fact,” Jack told him in his smiling way. “All you know is that Nature’s been kind in giving you such a faculty, and let it go at that. I may seem remarkable to you, in that I’ve got such a good memory; but there have been others beside whom I’m a regular piker. Did you ever hear of Blind Tom, brother?”
“Huh! ’pears to me I did—he was some sorter black man, wa’nt he, suh, what could play extra good on the pianner?”