“When we get ashore,” Jack explained, “we can start a fire, and that will give you a chance to get dry. But I’m sorry about that arm, Buster. It may give you some trouble, because the jerk must have been fierce.”
“Well, I should say it was,” admitted the other, with a sigh. “I thought my arm would come off sure. But then the excitement kept me up, you see. And I knew right well you’d stop the boat and come back after me. But Jack, later on I want you to rub my arm with that liniment you carry with you. Chances are it’ll be black and blue along the muscles. It hurts like fun even now.”
Jack considered that the sooner this was done the better, so he turned the wheel over to George, and bidding Buster bare his arm, proceeded to give it a good rubbing with the liniment he knew to be fine for this purpose.
Buster was glad to find that as yet there were no signs of discoloration, as he had feared.
“It may last a few days,” he cheerfully declared, “but that’s the extent of the damage. I consider that I came off better than I deserved. But then, who’d think a bare hook would catch anything?”
“Well, Buster,” warned George, “be sure you don’t fasten your fishline to your leg, or around your neck. You never can tell what’s going to happen; and after you’re drowned it’s no time to be sorry.”
“I think we’d better go ashore below, where the trees come down to the edge of the bank,” suggested Jack just then, showing that all this while he had been keeping a sharp lookout ahead.
“It makes me think of places where we’ve pulled up over along the old Mississippi,” said Josh; “I wonder now do they have tramps over here, who prowl around looking for a chance to steal what they can lay hands on.”
“I don’t believe they do,” George told him; “for they regulate such things a lot better than we do over the big water. Tramps are a luxury here, while with us they flourish like the green bay tree; the woods are full of them.”