“What’s a passport in a wilderness? Why, if it wasn’t for this gloomy old river they wouldn’t know where the boundary runs. There are hundreds of miles of unsurveyed and unexplored boundary lines down here.”
“You’d better take a bodyguard.”
“I’ll take a dugout and a paddle. What do you think this is? Cannibal land?”
“Well,” said Pant, a trifle grimly, “good luck, and may you come back!”
“I’ll come back, right enough,” said Johnny.
Had he known what was to come from this turkey dinner, would he have gone? He might, and then again he might have stayed on his own side of Rio Hondo. Who knows?
“Since you’re going out to dinner,” said Pant, as Johnny prepared to take the trail to the river, “I think I’ll go on a hunt for a bread-nut tree that grows grass for leaves. That old burro, Rip, is showing signs of being hungry. I caught him trying to chew the picture from the side of an empty corn can this morning.”
True to his word, just as dusk was falling, Pant found himself paddling slowly down the river. Suddenly, as his keen eyes followed the outline of the forest that crowded the river bank, he caught sight of a tree that towered above its fellows. From the tip of its branches hung great masses of green hay. Reaching down a yard, two yards, even three, it looked like long green streamers hung out for a St. Patrick’s Day celebration.
“Bread-nut tree,” he said to himself.
On reaching the tree he found himself presented with a serious problem. The trunk of the tree was immense; the first limb twenty feet up. At first sight he felt himself defeated. But on circling the tree he discovered a stout vine which reached far above the first branch.