"We can eat the mule," said Bob, "rather than starve; but we'll wait on short rations and hope."
There had been a great crop of cotton grown on the Tallahatchee that year, and the dry fall had enabled the planters to pick it more thoroughly than usual. Knowing this, the owners of steamboats at Vicksburg were watching the reports of the water in the Yazoo and Tallahatchee as eagerly as Ned and Bob were watching the water itself, each anxious that his boat should be the first to go up the river.
On the 12th of December Ned cooked the last of the meal. The boys went to bed that night out of food. The next morning they had no breakfast, and had begun to think of killing the mule, or making a journey to the nearest plantation, when about noon a boat appeared. She blew her whistle, and stopped her engines.
"What do you ask for your wood?" shouted the Captain.
"Three and a half," answered Bob.
"Give you three and a quarter, and take all you've got," said the Captain.
"Will you throw in a decent dinner?" asked Bob.
"Yes."
And with that the boat made her landing, and the wood, sixty-three cords, was measured. Then the boys went on board to dinner. There they learned that in consequence of the prolonged dry season all the people along the river had been too busy picking cotton to cut any wood, and hence the boat had been obliged to send her own men ashore twice to chop wood for her engines. Knowing that other boats were coming, the Captain of this one had made haste to buy all of Bob's wood, meaning to take a part of it at once, and the rest on his way down the river. He had driven a sharp bargain, under the circumstances, but Bob was well satisfied when he received $204.75 for the pile. His first care was to buy of the Captain a good supply of provisions; his next to write a letter to his mother, inclosing a fifty-dollar bill, and, without telling her where he was, giving her news of his own and Ned's health, and promising to write again at the next opportunity. This letter the Captain took to post at Vicksburg.
The mule was saved, and the problem which Bob and Ned had set out to solve was in a fair way to be worked out. They had money enough now to buy necessary ploughs, etc., which they ordered from Vicksburg by the next trip of the boat, and some cash to spare for emergencies. They went to work with a will at their clearing, and before spring opened they had a field prepared which was two hundred yards long and one hundred and fifty yards wide. Its area was therefore somewhat greater than six acres, and it was land of the very richest sort. Bob made a journey to the nearest plantation, and brought back a cart-load of cotton seed, together with the seeds of a variety of vegetables, for which beds were made around the hut.