“Won’t he shoot at us?” returned Ray, more impressed by this possible danger than was Old Cy.
“Wal, mebbe and mebbe not,” answered the old man. “Shootin’s a game two kin play at, an’ we’ve jist ez good a right to foller the stream ez he has.”
But when their canoe had been carried over and launched in this lagoon, Ray’s spirits rose. It was an expedition into new waters, somewhat venturesome, and for that reason it appealed to him.
Then they had two rifles, Old Cy had taught him to shoot, he had already killed one deer and some smaller game, and the go-west-and-kill-Indian impulse latent in all boys was a part of Ray’s nature. Besides, he had an unbounded faith in Old Cy’s skill with the rifle.
And now began a canoe journey into and through a vast swamp, the upland border of which could scarce be seen. The stream they followed was black, and so absolutely motionless that it was a guess which way they were going. The mingled hack-matack and alder growth along each bank was so dense that no view ahead could be seen, and they must merely follow the winding pathway of dark waters and hope to come out somewhere.
For two hours they paddled along this serpentine highway, and then the vastness of this morass began to impress them. No sign of current had been met. All view of the spruce-grown upland they had left was obscured by distance. Now and then a dead tree, bleached and spectral, marked a turn in the stream, and hundreds of them, rising all about above the low green tangle, added a ghostly haze. It was as if they were venturing into a new world–a boundless morass, covered by an impenetrable tangle, and made grewsome by the bleaching trunks of dead trees.
“I’m goin’ to find which way we’re goin’,” Old Cy exclaimed at last, as they neared a small dead cedar that pointed out over the stream, and seizing a projecting limb of this, he broke off bits of dry twigs, and tossed them into the stream. For a long moment not one stirred, and then at last a movement backward could be discovered.
“We’re goin’ up-stream, anyhow,” he added, glancing at the sun, now marking mid-afternoon; “but we’ve got to git out o’ this ’fore dark, or we’ll be in a bad fix, an’ hev to sleep in the canoe.”
No halt for dinner had yet been made. They were both faint from need of food, and so Old Cy reached for a small wooden pail containing their sole supply of provisions. Neither was it a luxurious repast which was now eaten. A couple of hard-tacks munched by each and moistened with a cup of this swamp water and a bit of dried deer meat was all, and then Old Cy lit his pipe, dipped his paddle handle in the stream, and once more they pushed on. Soon a low mound of hard soil rose out of the tangle just ahead, an oasis in this unvarying mud swamp, and gaping at them from amid its cover of scrub birch and cedar stood a deadfall. It faced them as they neared this small island, and with log upraised between a pen of stakes it much resembled the open mouth of a huge alligator.
“Hain’t been built long,” Old Cy exclaimed, after they had landed to examine it. “I’ve a notion it’s the doin’s of our pirate friend, an’ he’s trappin’ round about this swamp. He’s had good luck lately, anyhow, for he’s got six o’ our pelts to add to his string.”