Читать книгу Bobby Blake on a Plantation: or, Lost in the Great Swamp - Warner Frank A. - Страница 6

The other schoolboys found Lee in the private room that had been set apart for him, propped up with pillows in a big easy chair and wrapped snugly in a bathrobe. His face was pale from his illness, but it lighted up when he saw his visitors.

“I was just wishing you fellows would drop in,” he said, as they shook hands with him and pulled their chairs up close.

“It must get awful poky cooped up in the room so long,” said Bobby sympathetically.

“It sure does,” rejoined the boy from the South. “Of course I have books to read that help to pass away the time, but that isn’t like being with the fellows. Not that I’ve read very much this afternoon,” he went on, “because I’ve been too busy looking at the snow. Do you know that this is the first real snow storm I have ever seen?”

“Is that so?” queried Fred in astonishment. “We see so much of it every year that it gets to be an old story with us.”

“You’ve got an awful lot of fun coming to you,” put in Sparrow. “There’s skating and ice sailing and coasting and snowballing and lots of things.”

“Not forgetting muskratting and fishing through the ice,” added Fred. “Maybe we didn’t have a lot of fun the winter we spent up in Snowtop Camp, eh, fellows?”

“You bet we did,” agreed Sparrow, and launched into a long description of that memorable winter holiday in the Big Woods, not forgetting the bear and the wildcat and the snowslide that buried the house, and other adventures, to all of which Lee Cartier listened with the most rapt attention and interest.

“It must have been great,” he murmured with a sigh of envy. “I can see that I’ve got a lot of fun waiting for me as soon as I can get outdoors again. And I hope it won’t be long till then. The doctor said to-day that I could probably be outdoors in a week.”

“That’s bully,” said Bobby. “But do you really mean, Lee, that you’ve never seen snow before?”

“Oh, I’ve seen little flurries of it once or twice,” replied Lee, “but it’s never amounted to anything, and it’s melted just as soon as it struck the ground. Down in Louisiana, where I come from, it’s practically summer all the year round. While it’s been snowing here to-day, people have been going in swimming down there. The darkeys are going round barefooted, women are fanning themselves, and men are going round on the shady side of the street.”

“Nobody getting sunstruck, is there?” queried Fred with a grin.

“Well, perhaps not as bad as that,” smiled Lee, “but take it altogether it’s almost as different there from what it is here as day is from night.”

“I saw a picture the other day of some boys shinning up cocoanut trees somewhere in the middle of January,” remarked Sparrow. “It seems funny to think there should be such differences in the same country.”

“I’d like to spend some time down South,” said Bobby. “I’ve been out West and almost everywhere else in the country except the South. Of course we had a taste of what it was like when we went to Porto Rico. But I’d like to be somewhere in the South for weeks at a time, and learn just how different things are from what they are here up North.”

“You’d enjoy it all right,” affirmed Lee. “You can fairly live outdoors all the year round, and you’d find lots of things that would be strange and interesting. I’d like to have you on my place where I could go round with you and show you the sights.”

“That would be fine,” agreed Bobby. “What town in Louisiana do you live in, Lee?”

“I don’t live in any town,” replied Lee. “The nearest town is Raneleigh, and that isn’t much more than a store and a railroad station. Mother and I live on a plantation. My folks have lived there for generations. My great-grandfather had the property in the old days when Louisiana belonged to France.”

“I guessed you were French or of French descent because of the name,” said Bobby. “Let’s see, wasn’t there a Cartier who had something to do with the discovery of America?”

“There was a Cartier who discovered parts of America in 1534,” replied Lee, “and he, I believe, was an ancestor of mine. That’s one bit of history that’s been pretty well dinned into me,” he added with a smile. “Our people, you know, put a lot of value on their ancestry, though I never cared much for it. My mother too was of French descent, as one can tell from her first name, Celeste.”

“Is the plantation a big one?” asked Bobby.

“Pretty big,” replied Lee, “though not as big as it was before the Civil War. That was in the days when people kept slaves, and our folk had a lot of them and thousands of acres of land. But after the war was over, a lot of the land was sold, and now we have only a few hundred acres. And I don’t know how long we’ll have that,” he added, a shadow coming over his brow.

“What do you mean?” asked Fred with ready sympathy.

“Oh, we’re having trouble about the boundary lines of the property,” explained Lee. “Some of the stones that mark the lines are missing, and there’s a neighbor of ours named Boolus who’s claiming part of the property. We’re sure he is wrong, but we’re not able to prove it, and he’s making us lots of trouble. He’s one of the meanest men in the parish and everybody hates and despises him. But he’s got lots of money and tricky lawyers, and it looks as though he were going to get the best of us. But I don’t want to bother you about my troubles,” Lee added, brightening up. “I only wish I had you fellows down with me on the plantation while we still own it. I think I might be able to show you lots of things that would make you open your eyes, such as alligators and – ”

“Alligators!” exclaimed Fred. “Do you have them down there?”

“You see you’ve made Fred open his eyes already,” said Bobby with a laugh.

“There are lots of them,” said Lee, “and big ones too. There’s a big swamp on the edge of our property that they say is full of them. It’s lots of fun hunting them.”

“Have you ever hunted them?” asked Sparrow with intense interest.

“I’ve never gone after them alone,” replied Lee, “but I’ve gone along with hunting parties and seen them caught.”

“How do they do it?” asked Fred.

“They dig them out of their holes,” explained Lee, pleased that he could tell the boys something outside the range of their experience. “You see the alligators have holes or burrows in the neighborhood of the water, where they crawl in at times. The hunters go along until they spy one of these burrows, which are not very deep below the surface of the ground. Then one of them takes a stout rope, makes a noose in it and hangs this over the entrance to the hole. Others take a sharp spear or stake, and prod into the ground above where they know the alligator is lying. That stirs him up and he crawls out of his hole to see what’s the matter. As he comes out he sticks his head into the noose, and the man above tightens it before he can back out. The brute tries to pull back into his burrow, but all hands get hold of the rope and yank him out. As his body appears, other ropes are passed around him, and by the time he’s all out he’s pretty well trussed up. Sometimes though, he puts up an awful fight and breaks the ropes, and then you have to look out. If you ever come within reach of his jaws or the swish of his tail, it’s all up with you.”

“It must be awfully exciting,” exclaimed Fred.

“It is that all right,” agreed Lee. “Then we have lots of other sports in which there’s plenty of fun. There’s badger hunting, and coon hunting with the dogs at night, and once in a while a panther comes round, and take it altogether there isn’t much dullness on the plantation. I only wish you fellows could share the fun with me.”

“There’s nothing I’d like better,” said Bobby, and his companions nodded assent. “But Louisiana’s a long way off, and I guess we’ll have to take it out in wishing. I suppose we’ll have to go now,” he added, reaching for his cap, “though I’d like to stay for hours and hear you tell us things about the South.”

“It’s done me a lot of good to have you fellows drop in,” said Lee. “The days seem mighty long here with no one but the doctor and the nurse to see and talk to. Come in again just as often as you can.”

“We sure will,” replied Bobby, “and you must hurry and get well so as to be around with us again.”

That night Bobby found it hard to get to sleep. The talk with Lee had brought novel ideas into his mind, and he lay awake for a long time, conjuring up visions of what life must be on a plantation.

When at last he did fall asleep, he dreamed that he was pushing a flatboat along a Louisiana lagoon. On the shores about him were a number of what seemed to be logs of wood. Suddenly one of them moved and slipped into the water, and he saw that it was an alligator. One after the other, things that looked like logs did the same. The presence of so many of the ugly brutes made him uneasy, and he made his craft move faster to get out of the vicinity as soon as possible. Just as he was congratulating himself that he had gotten out of the danger zone, the water broke at the side of the boat, and a pair of great jaws appeared, above which were the menacing eyes of a big alligator. The brute made a lunge at the boat and nearly overturned it. Bobby tried to beat him off with the pole, and while he was doing so, another alligator appeared on the other side of the boat. A moment more and the water was fairly alive with the fearsome creatures, and Bobby was surrounded by a circle of open jaws and frightful teeth and flaming eyes. He struck out desperately, but to no avail. The circle closed around him, and one of the brutes with a blow of his tail stove in the side of the boat. He felt himself sinking, saw a terrible pair of jaws reach out to seize him and – woke up to find himself sitting bolt upright in bed while a cold sweat bedewed his forehead.