Collins stood up and looked over at us. “Quite considerable of a race for a few minnits,” he says. “For boys that don’t know much about paddling you’re pretty good paddlers.”
I will say they were good-natured men and pleasant company. If they hadn’t been the enemy we’d have liked them fine. I’m not sure we didn’t like them pretty average well as it was. It never occurred to us to be afraid of them; we knew they wouldn’t hurt us, whatever happened. All they would do was try to get to Uncle Hieronymous before we could and to keep us from giving them away. Somehow it seemed more like a game where you had to use your brains than an adventure out in the woods.
“Come on out,” says Jiggins. “Be sociable.”
There wasn’t anything else to do but come, so we pushed the canoe over to the flatboat.
“Now,” says Jiggins, “I think I’ll be easier in my mind if we divide up a bit, eh? Fat man and fat boy in this boat; thin man and thin boy in that boat. More appropriate.” While we were making the change he leaned back and sang, “Tee-deedle-dee-deedle-dum-deedle-dee,” over and over again.
Mark and Jiggins started out first, and Collins and I followed. When we got out on the river we kept as clost together as we could so we could talk. But mostly we couldn’t keep side by side, for the channel was too narrow and winding. Even when the river was wide enough for two boats abreast, which it usually was, there were sand-bars and shallows and snags and dead-heads. Why, we almost needed a pilot to get along at all!
Collins and I had a pretty good time. He knew lots of interesting things about the woods and animals and camping and hunting. Mark and Jiggins seemed to be enjoying themselves, too, for they kept talking to each other as solemn as owls. Usually when Mark has that awful solemn look he’s making some sort of a joke, and I persume Jiggins is the same way. Neither of them laughed out loud or let on there was anything funny, but I bet anybody else would have laughed till he split at what they were saying to each other.
After a while we drew up alongside for a little while.
Jiggins turned to me and says, “Uncle Hieronymous down this way?”
Maybe he was expecting to take me by surprise and get something out of me, but he didn’t. I just grinned at him and Mark and told him uncle was one of the hardest men to locate exactly I ever saw.