The Strange Cabin on Catamount Island | Page 8

reptile, "this one
didn't, so I reckon they must have skedaddled off in the bushes. Perhaps
they're old enough to take care of themselves, though I hope they don't
live to grow up. If there's one thing I detest on earth it's a poisonous
snake."
"Me, too!" piped up Bandy-legs; "but then, you see, I never thought
this one was loaded. Yes, I just reckoned she'd come to see what I was
doin' with her bunch of youngsters, and I kept on jollyin' her. Thought I
was havin' fun, boys, but never again, you hear me!"
"Want to take these rattles along, Bandy-legs?" asked Owen, who had
severed the horny looking appendage at the end of the tail; "it'll serve to
remind you of what a silly job it is to play with a snake that you've
never been properly introduced to."
"Not for me," replied the other, with a little shudder. "I'd just hate to
have my folks know how foolish I was. Keep 'em, and hang the thing
up in the clubhouse, boys."
"Sure," interrupted Steve; "do for a dinner horn some time; better than
Japanese wind bells to make music."
"Ugh! I'll never hear it without thinkin' of the grand scare I got when
Max here shouted out the way he did," admitted the one who had been
the cause for all this commotion.
"The canoe's ready for business at the old stand," announced Max, "and
don't be afraid that there's going to be any trouble again with that same
leak. I've fixed that plug in good and strong, Bandy-legs. Now let's be
off!"
Accordingly the voyage was resumed. And just as some of the boys
had said, they speedily turned from the main river into the branch
called the Big Sunflower, which, as the scene of their late successful
search for pearls, was invested with memories of a rather pleasant

character for the five chums.
As they paddled along against the rather brisk current, first one, and
then another had something to call out regarding this place or that.
"It's just great to be coming up here again, after buying these boats with
some of the hard cash we earned that time," declared Steve, who was
keeping closer to the others now.
"How many fellers d'ye reckon started grubbin' up here, after we quit?"
demanded Bandy-legs, who was working the paddle fairly well, though
at times he made a bad stroke, and seemed to learn slowly that it could
all be done without the splash and noise he insisted on making.
"Dozens of 'em," replied Owen; "but they didn't find much, and it soon
petered out. Why, one boy told me he'd hunted two whole days, and
found just three mussels, which didn't turn up a single pearl. He said
we'd cleaned the whole river out, and sometimes I think that way
myself."
"But that bunch back of Ted were as smart as anything, too," observed
Max. "Think of them finding that there was a whole lot of ginseng
growing wild in the woods around Carson, and gathering it in on the
sly."
"They sold it for a snug little sum, too," Owen admitted; "and then
started to plague the life out of us. But we came out of the large end of
the hole, didn't we, fellows!"
Chatting in this strain they tugged away, and continued to mount higher
up toward the headwaters of the sinuous river. But the Big Sunflower
was an odd sort of a tributary; in fact, like the Missouri, it should really
have been called the main stream, or as Steve expressed it, the "whole
push."
"I've been told that it runs right along into the next county, and
sometimes spreads itself into a bouncing lake. Why, right where
Catamount Island lies, the river is three times as broad as the Evergreen

at Carson."
It was Max himself who volunteered this bit of information. They had
been keeping at this steady paddling for some hours now, and
Bandy-legs was not the only one who grunted from time to time, as he
looked at blistered hands, and felt of his sore arm muscles.
"Well, we don't mean to keep on that far, I hope, fellers," remarked
Bandy-legs, pathetically, at which Steve laughed in derision.
"You'd sure be a dead duck long before we crossed the border, my
boy!" he cried.
"Keep a good lookout ahead," advised Max, some time later.
"He means that the island can't be far away, and by the jumping
Jehoshaphat, boy, I think I can see something that looks just like an
island around that bend yonder," and Steve pointed with his extended
paddle, as he spoke so enthusiastically.
A cheer broke forth, even if it did sound rather weak, for the paddlers
were a little short of wind right