"Call me Bill," muttered the man, after a brief hesitation; and Frank somehow concluded that this could hardly be his real name.
"No doubt he's ashamed of his own, or else don't want his folks to know he ever sank so low as this," was what Frank said to his chum, after they had once more started along the up-river course.
"Oh! shucks! what ails me? One second I think I've got it, and when I start to say it, blessed if the pesky thing don't seem to just slip away from me. I never had anything happen to me so dopey," muttered Lanky, fiercely.
"What's that?" demanded Frank, his curiosity excited, of course.
"Why, that fellow, you know—seems like I've seen him somewhere or other, at some time, and yet for the life of me I can't just clinch it. Every time I think I've got hold of it the thing slips away like an eel. I tell you I'll never be happy till I've remembered where I saw him," went on Lanky, who was a most determined fellow, obstinate he had often been called.
"Oh! I wouldn't bother my head about that. What does it matter, when the chances are you'll never set eyes on him again? These hoboes are here to-day and gone to-morrow. And I guess he is a tramp, all right, eh, Lanky?" went on Frank, as he turned one last look at the group alongside the island.
"Sure," replied the other, cheerfully. "But somehow I seemed to get a notion he was a little above the general run of hoboes. Mebbe it was his voice when he said he was waiting for something to turn up. What d'ye suppose he's expecting to come along? Do hoboes dream of millionaires dying and leaving them cash?"
"Perhaps they do. I hope Lef and Bill don't make up their minds to jump on him and try to get rid of some of their bile that way," ventured Frank, as a spur of land, jutting out from the shore, shut off a view of the channel that ran to the westward of Rattail Island.
At that Lanky laughed mockingly.
"Let 'em try it, that's all! Why, that hobo could just wipe up the ice with the pair of them, and then not half try. Oh! no, don't you forget it, Frank, Lef Seller's too cunning a fellow to take chances. He can talk pretty loud, but when it comes to fight, he generally squirms out of the rumpus."