“You see I’m not going to lose anything by your going up the creek,” he said. “I’ll keep your rooms for you, and furnish your meals. It’ll cost you just as much, whether you sleep among the ’gators or among Christians.”
The boys assured him that they had not the slightest idea of his making any reduction on account of the trip.
“I expect you fellows laugh,” he said, “at my keeping you straight up to terms when I’m going to let you go away without paying me a red, but I do my business on a business basis. I don’t give you anything, and I expect to get back all that’s owing to me. Do you understand that?”
The boys understood it perfectly.
In the matter of hiring rifles, there was some little trouble. The colonel had but one, and there was no other rifle in the town at that time to be had excepting the weapon which, with a small shot-gun, had been captured from the men on board of the Maggie, and given to the colonel.
The latter had heard the story of the theft of The Rolling Stone, and had made no remark whatever on the subject, except that he would take charge of the guns, and keep them till they were called for.
Chap proposed that they should take this rifle, and pay the young men for the use of it, but this the colonel positively refused to allow. The gun had been hired in the town, and he would keep it until the persons who had taken it should appear.
So they were obliged to be content with but one rifle, although Brewer said that his brother’s shot-gun, loaded with buckshot, would do as well for a ’gator as a bear, if they could only get near enough.
“What are you going to do with the ’gators you kill?” asked the colonel, when the boys were about to start.
“Oh, Mr. Brewer is going to prepare the skins and teeth of some of them, and send them on to us,” said Phil.