“Pete has given me an awful beating,” answered Clarence, mastering his voice, though the tears were still rolling down his cheeks.
“Why? What did you do?”
“He said I was trying to get away, and I wasn’t. I just came along here looking for flowers for Dora’s shrine. And the worst of it is,” continued the boy with a rueful smile contending with his falling tears, “I didn’t get a single flower.”
“Perhaps that holy woman who is the mother of God will pay you back for every lick you receive. Dora said she is good pay.”
Clarence arose, felt himself gingerly, and breaking into a smile remarked, “If it’s all the same to the Blessed Virgin, I’d prefer to do my trading with her in flowers instead of lashes. Never mind, Mr. Pete, the first chance I get, I’ll fix you all right.”
The chance, it so came to pass, presented itself that very afternoon. They were now some six miles north of the Wisconsin, which they had crossed the preceding day, and had reached a spot on the Mississippi about three miles beyond Prairie du Chien, which is just across the river from McGregor. Clarence, of course, had no idea he was so near the place where his adventures had begun. The boy, still very sore and bruised, again started off along the river’s bank in quest of flowers. Mindful of the beating, he made his way cautiously, warily, determined not to be taken unawares again. Suddenly his alert and attentive ear caught a slight sound. Someone in a grove of trees a few yards above the bank was whittling. Screening himself behind the willows about him, Clarence drew closer, and after a few paces thus taken, discovered Pete, a pipe in his mouth, seated on a log beneath a hollow tree. Pete, as he smoked vigorously, was whittling with a certain air of enjoyment a rather stout branch.
“By Jove,” cried Clarence to himself, “if he’s not getting a rod in pickle for me!” And Clarence felt his legs once more with a tender hand. “He has no right to whack me the way he did. I’m not his son; I’m not in his charge. And I don’t like the look of that rod at all. I wish I could stop him.”
Clarence, securely screened by the bushes, continued to stare and meditate. A bee buzzed by his ear, and then another. Following their flight, he noticed that they disappeared in a hollow of the tree under which the industrious Pete was seated.
Five minutes passed. Pete still smoked and whittled. Then the old leader arose, and with a smile on his countenance, which would in all likelihood throw any child who saw it into convulsions, proceeded to lash the air, holding in his free hand an imaginary victim.
“I guess he thinks it’s myself he’s holding,” murmured the astonished witness of these strange proceedings. “Also, I think I’ll try to find out if there isn’t a bee-hive in that tree.”