n fifty yards of them and gazed
at them without a sign of fear.

"They know we wouldn't shoot a doe or a fawn," said Ned. "That's
what makes them feel so safe."

"Wonder if they would have felt as safe last night, before we got
those turkeys?"

On their return Tom, met the turkey hunters a quarter of a mile from
their camp and they wondered whether he had heard them coming, or
happened to be strolling that way. He looked so earnestly at the
turkey which Dick was carrying that the boy said to him:

"See here, Tom, that's my turkey and I won't stand for your laying a
paw on him. So you had better be good unless you are looking for a
mix-up with me." Tom looked cowed, but showed his friendly feelings
by walking beside Dick, rubbing against his legs and purring in his
half-growling fashion.

CHAPTER XIX

A PRAIRIE ON FIRE

"Dick," said Ned as they rested against a log, having their regular
after-dinner, heart-to heart talk, "we had better _hiepus_ (light
out), if we mean to get to the coast and bring up at Myers on time,
besides taking in all we want to on the way. We know the Harney's
River route like a book and we've been over the Indian trail to
Lawson's River, so we've got to find some new way out. There is a
chain of salt-water lakes between the Everglades and the rivers of
the west coast and we must get into them. I have made a pretty fair
chart of the country and can tell how far across the swamps and
prairies it is to almost any point, but how much of that distance is
easy water and how much tough swamp or boggy prairie is what I don't
know, but what we have got to find out. We have explored the country
right around here pretty well and now let's put in a day working the
canoe through the grass to the south, then leg it westward till we
strike salt water."

"That sounds well," replied Dick, "and then, you know, if your
charts don't pan out straight, you can always ask Tom or me. Wonder
if you half appreciate your privileges, having us along to take care
of you."

The young explorers "lit out" as proposed and, after a day of hard
work and easy work, of open water and thick saw-grass and of clear
channels and half dry meadows, camped beside a little slough on the
border of a swamp, in the jungle of which it soon lost itself.

The first excitement of the new camp came in the night when Tom, who
was sleeping, as usual, beside Dick, sprang up with a fierce cry,
which they had never before heard fro