“I h-h-hear him,” Mark said, kind of strangled-like. I could see him squirming around trying to get more of him up higher on the stump.
We kept hearing rattlers, or thinking we heard them, which was just as bad; and every time one whirred we wished our stumps were full-grown trees and we were sitting on the top branches. The fire was close, but not close enough, and we kept getting hungrier and hungrier. It was good and dark by that time, and the woods looked plenty spooky. Take it altogether, and we weren’t having a very good time of it. Even if we did have the engine we weren’t what you could call happy about it, and you can’t blame us.
Sammy was gone maybe an hour, but when he came back it was worth the waiting, for he had a good bass and six or seven bullheads. The bass was just luck, but the bullheads were easy to get. You can catch them by the dozen all along the river when it gets dark.
Sammy got out his knife, and so did Mark and I. Between us we cleaned those fish in no time and had them sizzling and smelling over the fire. There wasn’t a thing to eat with them, only a little salt and pepper; but when we were through there wasn’t anything left but bones, and some of them were gnawed pretty bad. When a fellow gets so hungry he’ll gnaw fishbones he must be pretty close to starvation.
I was beginning to get considerably sleepy, and Mark’s head nodded once or twice, but with the snakes around I couldn’t quite see my way clear to lying down on the ground. I tried to imagine I could go to sleep sitting on the stump, but I couldn’t make myself believe I could do it.
“I’m sleepy,” I said to Mark.
“Me, too,” says he.
“Goin’ to lay down on the ground?”
“Well, I g-g-guess not. I’m goin’ to make a snake-proof bed.”
“G’wan,” says I, for I didn’t see how he was going to manage it.