“Put down your guns,” he said. “And look here, you boys, you take that girl away from here, you hear me? This ain’t no game for women. If you fellers want to stay and fight us—”
“We don’t want to fight anybody,” interrupted Joe. “You started this. Look here, we’re going away in a month or so, just as soon as the honey season is over.”
“I reckon you’ll have to git out quicker’n that,” said Blue Bob. “If it hadn’t been for that girl we’d have pitched you into the bayou to-day.”
“We’ll burn your cabin,” put in Candler. “We’ll smash your boat. We’ll turn you into the swamps to starve.”
“We sure will,” the leader agreed. “You-all think ’bout it. We’ll give you another chance, but if you ain’t gone when we come back by here next—”
With a last ferocious glare the river-man turned back to his boat, followed by the crew. They rowed down toward the river, and the boys watched them out of sight, and then returned triumphant to the cabin. Alice, pale but elated, still clutched her pistol.
“You certainly saved the day for us, Alice,” said Joe. “That fellow would have been inside in another minute and seen all this plunder, and then it would have been all up with us. But now I do believe we’ve got them bluffed out, in spite of their ferocious talk.”
“I saw them glance at one another when Joe said we were leaving in a month,” said Carl.
“That fetched them.”
“Well, I certainly won’t leave until the blackberry honey-flow is over—yes, and the tupelo, too,” said Alice. “It means hundreds of dollars worth of honey to extract.”