“Well, we want her, and we’re bound to have her.”
“If you get her before I am done with her, just let me know it, will you?”
Tom dropped his paddle into the water and pulled leisurely toward the shore, while we ran back to the head of the island, intending to jump into his boat and pursue him. But he knew better than to try a fair race with us down the bayou.
Knowing that he could not escape with the canoe while we possessed the means to follow him, he held straight for the nearest shore, and when he reached it, jumped out and took to the woods.
We found our canoe where he had left it, and when we took it in tow and paddled back to the head of the island, we told one another that Tom Mason should never get his hands upon it again. We would put it into the wagon and take it home with us.
“This fellow has done a big business in stealing this morning,” exclaimed Mark, who had been counting the turkeys we found in Tom’s canoe. “How many do you suppose there are? Twenty-three; enough to furnish a Christmas dinner for half the planters in the settlement. We’ve done enough for one day, and I move that we break up camp and spend the rest of the afternoon in distributing some of these turkeys among our friends. We can’t use them all.”
We landed opposite the island, and knowing that we had a cunning enemy to deal with, left Duke and Herbert to watch our game, while the rest of us went to the camp to harness the mules.
I don’t know why it was, but the moment we arrived within sight of the shanty, a suspicion flashed through my mind that something had been going on there during our absence. My first thought was of my mare. She was gone. There was the sapling to which she had been tied, with a piece of the halter still fastened to it, but the mare was nowhere to be seen.
“Where is she, Joe?” asked Mark.
“That is just what I should like to find out,” I replied. “I never knew Bess to break loose before.”