“How do you know we are from Chicago?” asked Clay, stepping forward.
The other laughed lightly and pointed to the boat’s name on articles scattered about.
“But, aside from that,” he said, “we’d know you anywhere. The Chicago newspapers carried a lot of feature stuff about your boat and your trips.”
“All right, stranger,” one of the three answered, in rather a pleasant tone of voice. “Just as you say!”
“What do you want?” asked Alex., still shivering from his cold bath.
“We want a ride out of this consarned swamp,” was the reply.
“How did you get in here?” asked Clay. “Get out the way you got in!” he added.
“Our shanty boat is smashed to flinders and our grub is gone,” complained the other. “It don’t look as if we could walk out of here, does it?”
“Was that your fire we saw?” asked Case, drawing closer to the gunwale.
“We had a fire before the flood pounced down upon us,” was the reply.