"Wait till I show him to you, and you'll see."
"Who is he?" asked Hubert, drying his eyes.
"Never you mind," answered Billy, his sudden look of cunning losing itself in an explosion of mirth. "You'll find out when I take you to him. You'll know him when you see him."
After this cryptic announcement Billy would say no more about his "son" and sought to entertain Hubert with recitations of nursery rhymes.
The boys lounged about the camp for an hour, discussing their situation in low asides while intermittently conversing with July and Billy. Then Buck Hardy reappeared and began to talk amicably with Ted and Hubert about hunting, evidently trying to interest them in sport. He told them that he and his associates depended more on their traps than on their guns in their business of securing salable pelts, stating that many traps had been set here and there on the island and in the surrounding swamp. It was while this conversation was in progress that Sweet Jackson entered the clearing and called out:
"You goin' to use July this mornin', Buck?"
"Not partic'lar," was the indifferent response.
"Well, I can use him and I'd like to borry him. I'm goin' to build me a permeter shelter for my own hides, so I kin spread 'em out more."
Buck having consented and turned again to the boys, the "borrowed" July, much disgusted, was led away in company with Billy. The business required of them was the cutting down of one six-inch sapling for posts and several two-inch saplings wherewith to frame the slanting roof which these posts would support. This done, they must gather hundreds of palmetto fans and thatch the roof, all under the direction of an ill-tempered boss.
The three had been thus engaged scarcely half an hour when Buck, Ted and Hubert, at the camp, heard screams and the sound of blows. A few steps toward the spot selected for the palmetto shelter revealed the cause of the uproar. Sweet Jackson was whipping Billy with a long supple stick, and, as he laid on more heavily, in spite of his victim's piteous cries, the boys drew near in horror, followed more slowly by Buck.