I was pretty sure in my mind there were no more hostile Indians in Michigan, but, after all, you can never tell. It was wild enough along there to suit anybody, and there might have been a tribe of red men that somehow had got themselves overlooked. So I made no bones about hiding. Mark hadn’t meant real Indians, though. He was still being Father Marquette on the Mississippi.
By the time we were well hid the last crane up and flapped into the air, and then around the bend above us poked the blunt end of a boat—a sort of flatboat—and in the front of it was nobody in the world but Jiggins. Mark pinched my leg. Of course Collins was there, too, and they were paddling for all that was in them. Afterward we found out that was a flatboat built special by Larsen, where Collins and Jiggins were staying, for the very purpose of going down the river.
You can bet we laid pretty still. It seemed like it took that boat an hour to get abreast of the point. Both Jiggins and Collins were keeping their eyes straight ahead of them, though, and there wasn’t a bit of danger to us. They simply went sweeping by as fast as they could force their boat, thinking they were chasing us. It almost made me laugh. In another few minutes they went out of sight around the next bend, and I was for jumping out of concealment, but Mark held me down.
“Wait,” says he, “till we’re s-s-sure.”
So we waited maybe five minutes. Then Mark decided it would be all right, so we got up and hauled our canoe out.
“Now what?” says I.
“I dun’no’,” says he, shaking his head. “G-guess I better think it over some.”
So he sat down in the sand, with his fat legs sticking out ahead of him, and tugged away at his round cheek till it looked like he would pinch a hole in it. First he’d shut his little twinkling eyes, and then he’d open them again.
“Well,” says I, after my patience was about worn out, “what about it?”
“They won’t n-never suspect we’re behind ’em,” says he.