"Wait," said the other, nodding. "You may change your mind before a great while. For instance, venison ought to hang quite a time before being eaten. I'm afraid you're going to be disappointed, Larry, and that if we're lucky enough to get a deer you'll find it as tough and dry as all get-out."
"Then things ain't all they're cracked up to be," declared the other. "I always read that things tasted just dandy in camp; and here you spoil all my illusions right off the reel."
"They taste good because the appetite is there," remarked Phil. "A fellow gets as hungry as a bear in the spring after he comes out from his hibernating. But already you ought to know that, because you're eating half again as much as you do up home. And of your own cooking too."
"That stamps it gilt-edged, A Number One," laughed Larry. "But here's Tony beginning to wake up. Come and join us, Tony. We want to ask you heaps of things about the animals of the timber and the swamps; also something about your people. You see, we ain't down here just for our health or the fun of ft. Phil here has got a mission to perform, that concerns the terrible McGee they told us about up in the river town."
Again did Tony send that questioning look at Phil Lancing; and there was something besides inquiry in his manner. Doubtless the words so carelessly uttered by good-natured Larry had stirred up mingled emotions in the breast of the swamp boy, and he was wondering what sort of a message the son of the man who now owned all that wild country below, could be carrying to the giant shingle-maker, leader of the whole McGee clan.
"If I c'n tell you anything jest ask me, sah!" he remarked, in his singularly smooth and even voice. "I sure ought tuh be ready tuh 'blige after all yuh done foh me. But I wisht you'd done never come down thisaways, case they's hard men, the McGees, an' I reckons as how they ain't got any reason tuh think kindly o' your governor."
As he said this bluntly, Tony looked squarely into the face of Phil; who however only smiled as he made reply.
"I see you have heard my name before, Tony? Well, you never heard anything bad in connection with it, I'll be bound. It's true that my father did come into possession of ten thousand acres or more of land and swamp, lying along this same little river a year or two ago. And he's taken a notion that something ought to be done to make it more profitable than it seems to be now. That's one of the reasons I'm down here. My father don't like the idea of having squatters on his lands. He wants to make a change."
Tony squirmed uneasily, and the look on his face was really painful to see. At one instant it seemed as though defiance ruled; only to give way to distress; as in imagination he saw these new-found friends, who had been so very kind to him, in the hands of his infuriated clansmen, and being roughly treated.
"Better not keep on down-river, sah!" he muttered. "They all knows that name o' Lancing. Sure I've heard many a shingle-maker curse it, an' say what he'd do tuh the new owner, if ever he dared show his face on the river. An' what they'd do tuh your dad they'd like enough do tuh you. That's why I asks yuh to turn aroun' an' go back, while yuh has the chanct."