"When will the boats come?" asked Ned.
"Late in the fall or in the winter, whenever the river gets high enough. It isn't navigable now, but when it rises, the steamboats come up to get loads of cotton."
With brave hearts the boys set to work chopping and hauling cord-wood. They made very little progress the first day, but after they had practiced for a few days they became more expert, and at the end of a week they found by measurement that they could together cut and haul about a cord each day. One grown man would have accomplished more than this; but the boys were satisfied. They had brought a grindstone and some iron wedges with them, and there was no reason to doubt that they could maintain their average of a cord a day. The mule kept in good condition on swamp grass and young cane.
Bob laid out, next the river, the little field which he hoped to get ready for cultivation, and before attacking the timber land he took care to cut into cord-wood all the trees in that little patch which were big enough for the purpose. Then the young pioneers went into the woodlands a little further up stream, and there made rather better progress. The fall was unusually dry. No rain fell, and the river got steadily lower. Meantime the wood-pile had grown by the last of November to more than sixty cords—enough to pay the boys well for their work whenever the steamboats should come. But when could they come? This question was giving Bob a good deal of uneasiness, because his bacon and meal were running low, and he had spent all the money he had for the axes and other implements. If the river should not rise before the meat gave out, what should he do? Bob did not know, and the fact troubled him.
In one way the dry season served him well. It parched the swamp, and one morning, Ned, who had shrewdly observed this, went out and applied a torch to the dried-up grass and leaves. The fire swept fiercely over the projected field, and when it had burned out, a good deal more than half the work of clearing that field for cultivation was done. But this did not help the boys to live through the winter, and that was a perplexity. If they could not manage it, all their work would be thrown away; and Bob passed many anxious hours thinking and planning, but with no other result than to make him sleepless.
Still it did not rain, but one morning Ned came in from observing his water-marks, and reported that the river had risen about three inches during the night. This puzzled Bob, and he carefully watched the water. At noon it had risen two inches more. During the night it rose fully a foot. Then Bob began to suspect the truth.
"I have it, Ned," he said.
"Well, how is it? Where does the water come from?"
"From the Mississippi River. That river is high from rains in the north, and it has broken through one of the passes into the Tallahatchee. We'll have steamboats here yet."
"Well, I hope they'll come soon," said Ned. "I've fried our last slice of bacon, and we have only a few pounds of meal left."