“Dick, you mustn’t talk that way about me.  You make me ashamed.  I wouldn’t have stuck it out in that fireroom for one day.  Now how about your time for the trip?  Will a month suit you?”

“Yes, that’s all right.  I wrote mother from Key West and told her the hunt would be a long one without any chance to mail a letter and that she was not to worry because there wasn’t a show of danger in the whole business.  Of course mothers do worry a little when there isn’t any reason.”

“Yes, mothers do worry, foolishly.  Pity yours couldn’t know how faithfully Tom looks after you.  She’d be so relieved.”

On the day after cutting down the bee tree the boys were glad to stay quietly in camp.  Ned’s neck and arms were badly swollen and Dick’s eyes could scarcely be seen.  Both of them lay awake nearly all night, but it was uncertain whether this was due to the pain of the stings or the quantity of honey they had eaten.

Tom shed his fierceness soon after he had disposed of the rabbit and again became friendly to Dick, who, even while he petted him, explained that he could never quite trust him again.

Every evening turkeys could be heard in the swamp near the camp.  Every morning they had departed.  One morning Ned said to Dick: 

“I’m turkey hungry and I’m tired of shilly-shallying.  The way to get anything is to get it.  Let us get a turkey.  We’ll start out for it now and come back after we have got it, and not before.”

“All right, Neddy, we goes for it, we gits it and we comes back when we gits it and not afore.”

The boys started out with their usual equipment of weapons, salt, matches and axe.  They crossed the swamp without finding the bird they sought and then, as they were hungry and tired, Dick shot a fat young ibis and broiled it for their dinner.  After dinner they crossed the meadow to a narrow strip of woods, beyond which, on a wide stretch of prairie, they saw three bunches of turkeys.  The bunch nearest them appeared to be a hen turkey with her family, each member of which was about as large as its mother.  They were a long rifle-shot away, and a shot, if it missed, would send every turkey to cover for the day.  The same thing would happen if either of them set foot on the prairie.

“Our best chance,” said Ned, “is to wait for them at the edge of the prairie.  It’s getting late and pretty soon they’ll be looking for places to roost among these trees.  They may come right here.  Anyhow, by spreading out we will cover quite a stretch of woods.  It may be too late for the rifle but the shotgun ought to do something.”

“That means that you’re tired of my society, Neddy.  So I’ll go and hide myself on the edge of the prairie, a little further off than you can hit anything, in case of you mistaking me for a turkey.”