meadow to the swamp which they first entered when they left their
camp the previous morning. As Ned's Spanish bayonet wounds kept him
from sleeping, the boys sat up and talked till daylight.

In the morning the wind had gone down and a few burning trees and
little columns of smoke were all that was left of the great fire of
the night.

"If you will go on to camp, Ned, I'll go back and get that venison.
It must be well smoked. Hope it didn't burn up. Give my regards to
Tom. If he isn't good tie him up."

"Guess I'll go with you, Dick. These stickers hurt worse when I keep
still. Then you will need help to carry the venison. I hope the
buzzards haven't got at it. We can leave our guns here."

"No, thank you. My gun goes with me. I have had trouble enough from
not having it handy."

They found the hide of their buck had been destroyed by the fire,
but the venison had only been roasted and partly smoked and they
made their breakfast on it. The outsides of the palmettos, on the
prairie where Ned shot the buck, were still burning and the trees
looked like big sticks of charcoal, but palmetto trees get used to
that and are seldom harmed by it, though it does spoil their beauty.
The boys walked out in the ashes of the grass of the meadow and were
sorry they did, for it made them look like the burnt ends of
matches. When they got back to camp Tom came out and sniffed at Dick
and then, instead of rubbing against his legs, went back and lay
down. Dick spent the rest of the day working over Ned's face and
body with tweezers, pulling out bits of thorns. When he got through
the boys were about equally tired.

Ned's wounds were so painful that for several days the explorers
stayed around the camp and Dick amused himself and his chum by
worrying a family of young alligators that lived in a pond near the
camp. He grunted the little ones to the surface until they were
tired of being fooled and refused to respond and he drove the
largest one out of its cave in the bank until the reptile refused to
play any more and would not come beyond the mouth of his cave. Then
Dick cut a pole leaving a bit of a branch sticking out like a barb
at the end and poked that in the hole till the alligator grabbed the
end of it. Dick now pulled good and hard, the barb caught in the
reptile's lower jaw and the boy soon had him out of his cave and up
on the prairie. The 'gator was lively and Dick had to chase around
the prairie a lot after him and final