“Me?  Sure!  I don’t want any better fun than t’ keep on t’ the Atlantic Ocean, only ’fraid it’d be too hard fer you.”

Night found the toys in a narrow stream, scarcely more than the width of the canoe, with bushes around them so thick that they found it hard to clear a place big enough to sleep on.  They were tired enough to sleep soundly, in spite of the occasional cries of the birds and beasts of the forest.

They made an early start in the morning, and, although the creek was crooked and they had to cut away many small trees, they were encouraged to find the bushes becoming less abundant as the water grew more shallow, and by dark they were on the border of an open prairie, where they made camp for the night.

CHAPTER VII

THE MEETING IN THE GLADES

“The Everglades at last!” said Dick the next morning as the rays of the rising sun fell on the waters of the Everglades in the distance and lit up the clumps of cypress and groups of palmettos that dotted the prairie before him.  A little to the north and extending into the Glades was a row of willows which Johnny visited and found that it marked the course of a slough that crossed the prairie and extended far out into the Glades.

[Illustration:  “THE EVERGLADES AT LAST”]

They were soon afloat in this slough, paddling toward the Everglades, but the channel which they followed was crooked and it was an hour before they reached them.  The boys made their camp beside a little group of palmettos on a bit of dry ground which had often been used for that purpose.  Johnny pointed to a faint line in the grass of the Glades and told Dick that it was an Indian trail.  Dick was excited at the thought that the chum he had come so far to meet might even now be in sight.  When, far to the north, he saw what Johnny said was an Indian canoe with two people poling it, he could scarcely restrain himself from paddling out to meet it.  The canoe came on rapidly, and Dick’s excitement increased until he began to fancy that in one of the faces that showed above the grass he could make out the features of his chum, when Johnny dashed his hopes to the ground by saying: 

“Them’s Injuns.  Squaws, too.  B’lieve I know ’em.”

Then as the approaching faces showed more clearly through the tall grass: 

“Sure thing.  It’s Miami Billy’s girls.  They’ll savvy where Charley Tommy is.”

The Indian girls were poling past the canoe without appearing to see it, when Johnny spoke to them.  Then the girls, who were clothed in the brightest of prints, with masses of beads on their necks, sat down in their canoe and had a pow-wow with Johnny that was altogether unintelligible to Dick.  When the girls had gone, Johnny explained: 

“Squaws say:  ’Think so Charley Tommy not been Osceola Camp, two moons.  Been Big Cypress; hunt ’gator.  Maybe so hunt with white man.  Not been Charley Tiger camp this moon.’  The girls left that camp day ‘fore yesterday.  Only other trail from Tiger’s camp goes t’ Miami.  We c’n camp right here ’nd ketch ’em sure.”