"Donno."
"And there you are," laughed Higgins. "Willy looks different from a regular Indian; but they're all alike. He loosened up to get this piece of plug; now he 'dunno' anything."
"Donno," repeated Willy monotonously.
As the dugout scraped and stuck on the bottom the Indian doffed his overalls and displayed the full gorgeousness of the Seminole dress shirt. Payne wondered how in the souls of these swamp dwellers there had developed a taste for a hue as delicate as the pink of the flamingo. Bands of red, yellow, scarlet, mauve and black were embroidered upon the cloth, and upon the shoulders were scarlet tufts resembling epaulets. Willy stepped overboard, barefooted and nude save for his rolled up shirt, and began to shove. A three-foot water moccasin lay coiled on a mud bank in his path and the Indian's bare foot flung it aside as one might kick away a stick. Presently he paused, deep in liquid mud to his thighs, his feet working on something below.
"Alpate," he said. "'Gator."
A commotion followed in the mud; a dark knob appeared above water. There was a thrashing and upheaval and the Indian threw a half-grown alligator upon the bank and dispatched it with a blow from his camp ax.
A few rods farther on the canoe was over the shallows and floating easily in a flooded jungle of saw grass which stretched away as far as the eye could reach.
"What's this?" demanded Payne.
"Oko make river end."
"What?"