The Boy Chums in the Florida Jungle: or, Charlie West and Walter Hazard with the Seminole IndiansEly, Wilmer M. (Wilmer Mateo)
General
The Boy Chums in the Florida Jungle: or, Charlie West and Walter Hazard with the Seminole Indians
Ely, Wilmer M. (Wilmer Mateo)
Seminole Indians -- Juvenile fiction
"I didn't go to town," Charley said dejectedly. "Two miles from here
is as far as I could get with the truck."
"Why?" demanded his chum.
"Bridges blown up by dynamite from there on," said the other briefly.
"I walked ahead two miles from where I left the truck and there was not
a bridge but what was wholly or partly wrecked."
"Whew!" whistled Walter, "that will shut us off from getting more
supplies."
"That's what it was intended to do," said his chum wearily, "but, I
think, we can fool them on that point if we act quickly. Has Willie
John come in for his dinner yet?"
"I think he is over at his camp now."
"Come on over with me," Charley said. "We have got to act quickly or we
will find ourselves penned up out here without food."
They found Willie John and his family squatted around a big iron pot
full of bear meat into which they kept dipping their hands and fishing
after choice tid-bits.
"This afternoon you and boy go to Indiantown for us," Charley said.
"You tell all of tribe we want to buy plenty yams, corn, pumpkins,
pigs, and two cattle, then go out to trading-post and buy all the
flour, sugar and coffee Mr. Bowers will sell. Have Indians bring all
here to camp quick. Pretty soon bad pale-faces tear up bridge so we can
no get grub. You understand?"
"Yes, me understand," said the Seminole. "Me go on foot. Indians got
plenty of wagons to bring grub. Go much faster walk. Boy and squaw
drive oxen and haul wood while I am gone."
"Good," Charley approved. "You come over to camp before you go and I
give you plenty of money to buy grub with."
"That will settle the food question for quite a while," the lad
observed, as the two boys sauntered back to the tent.
"We don't really need anything from town for quite a while, except a
doctor. I am going to see if I cannot do something for the sick man,
but if he gets worse, we will have to get a couple of Indian ponies and
go in for a doctor. By leaving the road and taking to the woods one can
pick their way into town, but it would make a long, tiresome, dangerous
journey, and we don't want to attempt it unless we absolutely have to."
Charley found the sick man about as he had left him, hot with fever and
tossing restlessly. After viewing his condition carefully, the lad went
back to his tent and got out the little medicine chest they usually
carried with them.
"What are you going to give him?" Walter inquired.
"A big dose of calomel now, and as soon as the fever passes off I will
give him two grain doses of quinine every two hours," said Charley
promptly. "That's what the doctors always give for these swamp fevers.
I am not much afraid of this kind of fever. It seldom kills and when
properly treated it is easily cured. Of course it leaves one weak for a
while, and not able to do much work. I wish, though, that I knew what
to do to keep the mud from making sores on the men. I am more afraid of
the sores than I am of the fever."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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