I knowed he was white inside, and I reckoned he’d
say what he did say—so it was all right
now, and I told Tom I was a-going for a doctor.
He raised considerable row about it, but me and Jim
stuck to it and wouldn’t budge; so he was for
crawling out and setting the raft loose himself; but
we wouldn’t let him. Then he give us a
piece of his mind, but it didn’t do no good.
So when he sees me getting the canoe ready, he says:
“Well, then, if you re bound to go, I’ll
tell you the way to do when you get to the village.
Shut the door and blindfold the doctor tight and
fast, and make him swear to be silent as the grave,
and put a purse full of gold in his hand, and then
take and lead him all around the back alleys and everywheres
in the dark, and then fetch him here in the canoe,
in a roundabout way amongst the islands, and search
him and take his chalk away from him, and don’t
give it back to him till you get him back to the village,
or else he will chalk this raft so he can find it again.
It’s the way they all do.”
So I said I would, and left, and Jim was to hide in
the woods when he see the doctor coming till he was
gone again.
The doctor was an old man; a very nice, kind-looking
old man when I got him up. I told him me and
my brother was over on Spanish Island hunting yesterday
afternoon, and camped on a piece of a raft we found,
and about midnight he must a kicked his gun in his
dreams, for it went off and shot him in the leg, and
we wanted him to go over there and fix it and not say
nothing about it, nor let anybody know, because we
wanted to come home this evening and surprise the
folks.
“Who is your folks?” he says.
“The Phelpses, down yonder.”
“Oh,” he says. And after a minute,
he says:
“How’d you say he got shot?”
“He had a dream,” I says, “and it
shot him.”
“Singular dream,” he says.
So he lit up his lantern, and got his saddle-bags,
and we started. But when he sees the canoe he
didn’t like the look of her—said she
was big enough for one, but didn’t look pretty
safe for two. I says:
“Oh, you needn’t be afeard, sir, she carried
the three of us easy enough.”
“What three?”
“Why, me and Sid, and—and—and
the guns; that’s what I mean.”
“Oh,” he says.
But he put his foot on the gunnel and rocked her,
and shook his head, and said he reckoned he’d
look around for a bigger one. But they was all
locked and chained; so he took my canoe, and said for
me to wait till he come back, or I could hunt around
further, or maybe I better go down home and get them
ready for the surprise if I wanted to. But I
said I didn’t; so I told him just how to find
the raft, and then he started.
