“Naw!” he drawled at last, without much amiability. “Ain’t no deer nor turkey here.”
“We heard it was a good place for game,” said Carl. “Do you live around here?”
“Naw!” repeated the woodsman. “Don’t nobody live here, I don’t reckon. I lives ’way ’cross the river. Where do you-all come from?”
“Oh, from away up North,” Bob told him.
“I shore thought you was some kind of Yankees. Now what you fixin’ to do round here? You ain’t huntin’?”
“Hunting a little—fishing—looking around,” Carl explained. “We want to see the country. We’re from Canada, and we never saw anything like this before.”
“I wouldn’t think you’d ever want to see it again,” said the man. He took a corn-cob pipe from his pocket and lighted it, and looked at the boys with a little less suspicion. “This here’s the wustest place in the hull state of Alabamy. Ain’t no deer here, no birds, nothin’ but snakes an’ mosquitoes an’ chills-an’-fever, an’ alligators.”
“Lots of snakes and mosquitoes, I guess,” Carl laughed, “but we haven’t seen any alligators.”
“Heaps of ’em, when it gits a little warmer. I shoots ’em in the summer for their hides. But them ain’t the wust. There’s wildcats an’ bears. But them ain’t the wust neither. Back yander a mile or so the woods is full of the raginest, pizenest wild bees that anybody ever seed. Don’t you-all go near ’em.”
“Oh, we’ve seen them,” said Bob, smiling. “They won’t bother us. We’re used to bees.”