“Got boat?” he asked.
We pointed down to the river, and he nodded. “Sammy git ready. Fetch pan to cook, and fish-lines. Maybe stay long, eh? Maybe git hungry. Good boys feed Sammy—now Sammy feed good boys—maybe, eh?”
He put a couple of pans and a bundle of other stuff into the boat, and then without our hinting at it at all he took the oars; and the way he sent that boat skimming up-stream made me ashamed of the way Mark and I had gone the day before. He seemed to take it easy, too, like it wasn’t work at all, but play.
We got to the little island—maybe there was a couple of acres in it, all told—and Sammy stopped rowing a minute. “Bad,” he said, pointing to it and scowling. “Very bad little island. Boys keep off—always. Don’t never go on island.”
“What’s the matter with it?” I wanted to know.
“Snakes, big snakes! Lay in deep grass and go k-r-r-r-r-r with tails.” He imitated a rattler so I ’most jumped out of the boat. It sounded as if one was right there under my legs all ready to strike.
“Oh, rattlesnakes.”
He nodded two or three times. “Heaps, many. Bad place. And snakes not all—poison ivy. Boys, stay away.”
“You bet we will,” says Mark.
The island didn’t look like much of a place to land, anyhow, snakes or no snakes. It was low, with more bushes than trees on it, though there were quite a few butternuts and some whopping willows. It looked marshy and soggy, and I calculated we could get our feet wet most anywhere except, perhaps, right in the middle, where the butternuts were thickest.