“Well, I take it that’s sensible of you, after all, Dolph. Some boys, and men too, are so cracked over fishing that they get on your nerves. And as you say, paddling a canoe against this fierce current is about all any decent fellow ought to think of doing at a time. Look out for that snag; it’s got an ugly point, too. Thought at first it was the head of a water snake sticking up; or a snapping turtle, mebbe. Did you ever see any one handle a paddle like Amos? I never could learn like that. He doesn’t seem to make half the effort that we do, and yet see his boat, how it eats up against the stream.”
“I suppose it’s just because he knows how to do it, and where to place every ounce of force expended. Some fellows are born paddlers; and others seem to keep on bunglers all their lives. I guess I belong to that class,” and Dolph Bradley laughed in his jolly fashion, as though he did not mean to let such a little thing bother him, at any rate.
“Oh! rats! when you know you’re better than I am by several degrees. But then we’ve got little to be ashamed of as things go. Only Amos is away up in a class all by himself. Look at the way he dips in, will you, not a sound, not a drop spilled. That’s the way to handle a paddle, when out at night after deer, with a jack; which way of hunting is knocked on the head these days in most States though, because too many deer were wounded, and ran away, only to die. I never had a chance to try it, I must say, did you, Dolph?”
“Once, down in Florida, and when I wasn’t hunting deer at all, but shining ’gators along the border of a swamp. I had a darky paddling me, and he pointed to a pair of eyes that he said must be a ’gator; so I banged away, having a scatter gun, and using buckshot shells. We heard something kick, and going ashore found a young deer lying there. I was put out, because I wouldn’t have shot the little thing for any amount of money. And from that day to this I’ve kept the promise I made to myself right then and there.”
“What was that?” asked Teddy, although he thought he could guess.
“Never on any account to shoot at something that I didn’t have a pretty good idea as to what it was. Why, it gave me the creeps to think that it might just as well have been a little black pickaninny, staring out at our light; for there was a cabinful not far away.”
Talking in this fashion, the boys beguiled the time away. Often Amos would hold up, it might be to join in the conversation; or possibly to draw their attention to some interesting object that had caught his eye. For although Amos had lived his entire life in the woods, save the short time he chanced to attend school, he had an artistic temperament, and his eye unerringly picked out beautiful vistas through the woods, which seemed to fairly ravish his soul. Indeed, more than once Teddy had openly declared that if Amos failed to become a doctor, one of these days, as his ambition led him to hope he would, he would surely turn out to be a painter; for he discovered beauties in Nature that neither of the others noticed until the woods boy called attention to them.
They kept this constant motion up hour after hour. It was tiresome, of course, but then these boys had persistence well developed, and knew that if they hoped to camp that night on the lake, they must keep everlastingly at it.
And just before the sun had climbed to the zenith, or as near as he meant to ascend, Teddy gave a squawk of delight.
“There’s the place we’re going to spend an hour or two at, fellows, just ahead, yonder, where that tree bends down over the water.”