All through the supper the men discussed plans for the finding of the boy, but when Roger heard Field tell two of the men to start out and not return until midnight if they hadn't found the lad before then, he thought it was time to bring the jest to an end. He parted the branches over the chief's head and looked down.
Then, suddenly, the men gathered around the fire heard Roger's voice, saying in a smooth and sarcastic manner:
"I was never called an angel before, not even a swamp angel, though I'm pretty well up toward heaven in this tree. But this hambone is very dry eating, and I guess I'll come down for the butter and the mustard."
"You blithering idiot!" said Field, looking up angrily, though there was evidently a great relief in his voice, "get down out of that."
"Oh, very well!" said Roger with a grin, as he descended the branches of the tree. Then, coming into the circle, he added, "I thought I'd come down and help you eat that snipe that Mr. Field has just brought in!"
CHAPTER IV
IN THE GIANT TULE SWAMPS
From the time that Roger fooled the members of the party just as they were organizing a rescue search for him, his path became much easier. Though still he occasionally made mistakes, as was unavoidable, he found they were condoned rather than exaggerated. Indeed, the boy realized that he was no longer treated as a tenderfoot, as he had been but a few weeks before, but, none the less, he was not sorry when Field told him one evening that he thought Roberts would be along shortly.
Roger was growing weary of the Minnesota work because it was evident that it consisted of the same routine day after day, that it was unremittingly hard work, and that the sense of progress was slow in proportion to the labor involved. Then the mosquitoes were beginning to get troublesome, and worst of all, the "bulldog flies" began to make their presence felt. These large horse-flies, which madden cattle and drive horses to distraction, in certain parts of the marsh were ferocious and hungry enough to attack men. Roger found that he was popular with them and got many sharp nips, which, though in no sense dangerous, were irritating and painful.
"I don't want to seem ungrateful, Mr. Field," he said, when his chief broached the return of his former co-laborer to him, "and I'm not, but Mr. Mitchon seemed to think that I would only stay a few weeks here, for the sake of the experience and to get the hang of this kind of work. I think I have gained some knowledge of it, and," he laughed, "I can shoot snipe and teach swamp angels to steal ham sandwiches."