"Efaw Kotee there! Lady, too! Me see!" CHAPTER XV EFAW KOTEE'S DEN Sylvia there! I bounded up as though some one had sent a galvanic current through my body, exclaiming: "Good Lord! How far, Smilax? Come quick, let's go!" He answered each of my exclamations in sequence, a peculiarity he had: "Yes, Lord good. Two mile, maybe some more. Plenty time, we go back soon." "But we couldn't have heard that axe two miles," I said incredulously. "Still night, when wind on prairie right; yes, sometime." "How are they camped? How many are there? Come, man, don't keep me waiting!" He drew himself up to full height and, with one arm pointing toward the southwest, spoke deliberately as if realizing his importance, seeming to choose his words--seeming, rather, to grope for them. "Over there forest is little strip thick, maybe half mile; then come water--Gulf. Me know um is Gulf; taste and find um salt. Close by shore big island, close by um little island. More island all 'round. Too dark to see much, but Efaw Kotee live on big island. Many cabin. On little island Lady live. One cabin. She come to door and me get good look, for light in cabin. Old woman live with her; Injun squaw; me know by way she walk. Before day we go hide in good place on shore. Watch all day and see. Must watch all day, or they see us if we leave 'fore dark. Now you smoke; then we go 'sleep l'il while." Sleep! How could I sleep while she was within three miles of me, surrounded by ten or a dozen devils the combined virtues of whom would not fill a gnat's eye! Of course, she had lived in this situation for years, but I had not heard of it until very recently, and that makes a world of difference. But after we got back to camp and I had stretched out on my blanket to let the telescope of my fancies pierce the realm of hopes, sleep did come. I would not have believed it, but it did; for soon I realized that some one was shaking my arm, while a voice said over and over: "Time we go; time we go!" It was yet night when I opened my eyes, but Smilax had lit a small buttonwood fire and breakfast was waiting. While I stumbled to the pool to drive the cobwebs from my brain he took the canteens and filled them at the spring; for, in the all-day strain ahead of us--and few things are more trying than to lie concealed and watch from the gray of dawn till the black of night--we should need a liberal supply of water. "Shall we take rifles?" I asked, when everything was ready and each of us had our snack of food. "No," he answered. "Too hard to crawl like snake. They no see us to-day. We take l'il crack-crack."