“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 finally get Ned to help before he could tie it.  Tom didn’t approve of the new member of the family, but he made no trouble while the camp was awake.  The alligator became very restless at night and got in the habit of thrashing around almost constantly.  In the morning his tail was seen to be raw and bleeding and day by day it grew worse.  Tom was suspected, but always denied having had anything to do with it, with an expression of such injured innocence when accused that Dick had to believe him.  One night, however, a heavy blow was heard, accompanied by a yowl from Tom and followed by some sort of scrimmage.  In the morning Tom had a mussed-up look and the reptile had a number of fresh wounds.  As the camp was moved that day and Ned continued to object to taking an alligator in the canoe the reptile was turned loose.  He walked with dignity out on the prairie until he was near the slough, when he scuttled hastily to the water and plunged in.

[Illustration:  “THE BARB CAUGHT IN THE REPTILE’S LOWER JAW”]