Toward sundown the mosquitoes which had been pestering them all day, seemed to take on a new lease of life. Clouds of the vicious, blood-thirsty insects swarmed about the toilers, at last making further work impossible. By a vote of mutual consent they left the half-completed dugout to the tender mercies of the stinging pests, and hastened back to the camp fire.
While Sam removed the second heron from the hanging bucket and commenced its preparation over the fire for the evening meal, Bill trudged over to the spring. Upon his return with a brimming bucket, he found that Osceola had built a line of smudge-fires in a circle around the fire, and that once within the ring, there were no mosquitoes.
When Bill suggested that a series of small fires would have been easier to build than a solid circle of flame, the Indian had smiled good-humoredly.
“Maybe so. But then, you know, snakes like warmth and seek it. We’ve got to sleep on the ground tonight, and there are several species in this neck of the woods, that I’m not keen to have for bedfellows. They won’t cross fire or hot embers, though—‘Quod erat demonstrandum,’ as the geometry books have it.”
“My error,” laughed Bill. “After this, I shall refrain from criticizing my elders and betters.”
When the moon rose, Sam left them, while the lads lay back on their beds of evergreens and conversed. Several times they heard the report of his gun, but when the hunter returned, carrying three heron and a brace of duck he found them deep in the slumber of exhaustion.
[CHAPTER XIV—IN THE DUGOUT]
Old Sam was up with the sun, but it was not until the big gourd he had found the night before was steaming with a luxurious duck stew that he awoke the tired lads.
“How in the world did you concoct this stew, Sam?” Bill waved his wooden spoon—handmade by the old darkey—toward the savory-smelling gourd, which was their common pot.
“But how come, Marse Bill?”