Two Little Confederates

by Thomas Nelson Page

  CHAPTER XI.

  After circling the edge of the swamp for some time the boys, as it wasnow growing late, turned toward home. They were full of their valuablediscovery, and laid all sorts of plans for the capture of the hogs.They would not tell even their mother, as they wished to surprise her.They were, of course, familiar with all the modes of trapping game, asdescribed in the story books, and they discussed them all. The easiestway to get the hogs was to shoot them, and this would be the most"fun"; but it would never do, for the meat would spoil. When theyreached home they hunted up Uncle Balla and told him about theirdiscovery. He was very much inclined to laugh at them. The hogs theyhad seen were nothing, he told them, but some of the neighbors' hogswhich had wandered into the woods.

  When the boys went to bed they talked it over once more, anddetermined that next day they would thoroughly explore the woods andthe swamp also, as far as they could.

  The following afternoon, therefore, they set out, and made immediatelyfor that part of the woods where they had seen and heard the hogs theday before. One of them carried a gun and the other a longjumping-pole. After finding the trail they followed it straight downto the swamp.

  Rolling their trousers up above their knees, they waded boldly in,selecting an opening between the bushes which looked like a hog-path.They proceeded slowly, for the briers were so thick in many placesthat they could hardly make any progress at all when they neared thebranch. So they turned and worked their way painfully down the stream.At last, however, they reached a place where the brambles and bushesseemed to form a perfect wall before them. It was impossible to getthrough.

  "Let's go home," said Willy. "'Tain't any use to try to get throughthere. My legs are scratched all to pieces now."

  "Let's try and get out here," said Frank, and he turned from the wallof brambles. They crept along, springing from hummock to hummock.Presently they came to a spot where the oozy mud extended at leasteight or ten feet before the next tuft of grass.

  "How am I to get the gun across?" asked Willy, dolefully.

  "That's a fact! It's too far to throw it, even with the caps off."

  At length they concluded to go back for a piece of log they had seen,and to throw this down so as to lessen the distance.

  They pulled the log out of the sand, carried it to the muddy spot, andthrew it into the mud where they wanted it.

  Frank stuck his pole down and felt until he had what he thought asecure hold on it, fixed his eye on the tuft of grass beyond, andsprang into air.

  As he jumped the pole slipped from its insecure support into the mirymud, and Frank, instead of landing on the hummock for which he hadaimed, lost his direction, and soused flat on his side with a loud"spa-lash," in the water and mud three feet to the left.

  He was a queer object as he staggered to his feet in the quagmire; butat the instant a loud "oof, oof," came from, the thicket, not a dozenyards away, and the whole herd of hogs, roused, by his fall, fromslumber in their muddy lair, dashed away through the swamp with "oofs"of fear.

  "There they go, there they go!" shouted both boys, eagerly,--Willy, inhis excitement, splashing across the perilous-looking quagmire, andfinding it not so deep as it had looked.

  "There's where they go in and out," exclaimed Frank, pointing to a lowround opening, not more than eighteen inches high, a little furtherbeyond them, which formed an arch in the almost solid wall ofbrambles surrounding the place.

  As it was now late they returned home, resolving to wait until thenext afternoon before taking any further steps. There was not a poundof bacon to be obtained anywhere in the country for love or money, andthe flock of sheep was almost gone.

  Their mother's anxiety as to means for keeping her dependents fromstarving was so great that the boys were on the point of telling herwhat they knew; and when they heard her wishing she had a few hogs tofatten, they could scarcely keep from letting her know their plans. Atlast they had to jump up, and run out of the room.

  Next day the boys each hunted up a pair of old boots which they hadused the winter before. The leather was so dry and worn that the bootshurt their growing feet cruelly, but they brought the boots along toput on when they reached the swamp. This time, each took a gun, andthey also carried an axe, for now they had determined on a plan forcapturing the hogs.

  "I wish we had let Peter and Cole come," said Willy, dolefully,sitting on the butt end of a log they had cut, and wiping his face onhis sleeve.

  "Or had asked Uncle Balla to help us," added Frank.

  "They'd be certain to tell all about it."

  "Yes; so they would."

  They settled down in silence, and panted.

  "I tell you what we ought to do! Bait the hog-path, as you would forfish." This was the suggestion of the angler, Frank.

  "With what?"

  "Acorns."

  The acorns were tolerably plentiful around the roots of the big oaks,so the boys set to work to pick them up. It was an easier job thancutting the log, and it was not long before each had his hat full.

  As they started down to the swamp, Frank exclaimed, suddenly, "Lookthere, Willy!"

  Willy looked, and not fifty yards away, with their ends resting on oldstumps, were three or four "hacks," or piles of rails, which had beenmauled the season before and left there, probably having beenforgotten or overlooked.

  Willy gave a hurrah, while bending under the weight of a large rail.

  At the spot where the hog-path came out of the thicket they commencedto build their trap.

  First they laid a floor of rails; then they built a pen, five or sixrails high, which they strengthened with "outriders." When the pen wasfinished, they pried up the side nearest the thicket, from the bottomrail, about a foot; that is, high enough for the animals to enter.This they did by means of two rails, using one as a fulcrum and oneas a lever, having shortened them enough to enable the work to be donefrom inside the pen.

  The lever they pulled down at the farther end until it touched thebottom of the trap, and fastened it by another rail, a thin one, runat right-angles to the lever, and across the pen. This would slipeasily when pushed away from the gap, and needed to be moved onlyabout an inch to slip from the end of the lever and release it; theweight of the pen would then close the gap. Behind this rail theacorns were to be thrown; and the hogs, in trying to get the bait,would push the rail, free the lever or trigger, and the gap would beclosed by the fall of the pen when the lever was released.

  It was nearly night when the boys finished.

  They scattered a portion of the acorns for bait along the path and upinto the pen, to toll the hogs in. The rest they strewed inside thepen, beyond their sliding rail.

  They could scarcely tear themselves away from the pen; but it was solate they had to hurry home.

  Next day was Sunday. But Monday morning, by daylight, they were up andwent out with their guns, apparently to hunt squirrels. They went,however, straight to their trap. As they approached they thought theyheard the hogs grunting in the pen. Willy was sure of it; and they ranas hard as they could. But there were no hogs there. After going everymorning and evening for two weeks, there never had been even an acornmissed, so they stopped their visits.

  Peter and Cole found out about the pen, and then the servants learnedof it, and the boys were joked and laughed at unmercifully.

  "I believe them boys is distracted," said old Balla, in the kitchen;"settin' a pen in them woods for to ketch hogs,--with the gap open!Think hogs goin' stay in pen with gap open--ef any wuz dyah to wentin!"

  "Well, you come out and help us hunt for them," said the boys to theold driver.

  "Go 'way, boy, I ain' got time foolin' wid you chillern, buildin' penin swamp. There ain't no hogs in them woods, onless they got in dyahsence las' fall."

  "You saw 'em, didn't you, Willy?" declared Frank.

  "Yes, I did."

  "Go 'way. Don't you know, ef that old sow had been in them woods, theboys would have got her up las' fall--an' ef they hadn't, she'd comeup long be
fo' this?"

  "Mister Hall ketch you boys puttin' his hogs up in pen, he'll teck youup," said Lucy Ann, in her usual teasing way.

  This was too much for the boys to stand after all they had done. UncleBalla must be right. They would have to admit it. The hogs must havebelonged to some one else. And their mother was in such desperatestraits about meat!

  Lucy Ann's last shot, about catching Mr. Hall's hogs, took effect; andthe boys agreed that they would go out some afternoon and pull the pendown.

  The next afternoon they took their guns, and started out on asquirrel-hunt.

  They did not have much luck, however.

  "Let's go by there, and pull the old pen down," said Frank, as theystarted homeward from the far side of the woods.

  "It's out of the way,--let the old thing rip."

  "We'd better pull it down. If a hog were to be caught there, itwouldn't do."

  "I wish he would!--but there ain't any hogs going to get caught,"growled Willy.

  "He might starve to death."

  This suggestion persuaded Willy, who could not bear to have anythingsuffer.

  So they sauntered down toward the swamp.

  As they approached it, a squirrel ran up a tree, and both boys wereafter it in a second. They were standing, one on each side of thetree, gazing up, trying to get a sight of the little animal among thegray branches, when a sound came to the ears of both of them at thesame moment.

  "What's that?" both asked together.

  "It's hogs, grunting."

  "No, they are fighting. They are in the swamp. Let's run," said Willy.

  "No; we'll scare them away. They may be near the trap," was Frank'sprudent suggestion. "Let's creep up."

  "I hear young pigs squealing. Do you think they are ours?"

  The squirrel was left, flattened out and trembling on top of a largelimb, and the boys stole down the hill toward the pen. The hogs werenot in sight, though they could be heard grunting and scuffling. Theycrept closer. Willy crawled through a thick clump of bushes, andsprang to his feet with a shout. "We've got 'em! We've got 'em!" hecried, running toward the pen, followed by Frank.

  Sure enough! There they were, fast in the pen, fighting and snortingto get out, and tearing around with the bristles high on their roundbacks, the old sow and seven large young hogs; while a litter of eightlittle pigs, as the boys ran up, squeezed through the rails, and,squealing, dashed away into the grass.

  The hogs were almost frantic at the sight of the boys, and rushedmadly at the sides of the pen; but the boys had made it too strong tobe broken.

  After gazing at their capture awhile, and piling a few more outriderson the corners of the pen to make it more secure, the two trappersrushed home. They dashed breathless and panting into their mother'sroom, shouting, "We've got 'em!--we've got 'em!" and, seizing her,began to dance up and down with her.

  In a little while the whole plantation was aware of the capture, andold Balla was sent out with them to look at the hogs to make sure theydid not belong to some one else,--as he insisted they did. The boyswent with him. It was quite dark when he returned, but as he came inthe proof of the boys' success was written on his face. He was in abroad grin. To his mistress's inquiry he replied, "Yes'm, they's got'em, sho' 'nough. They's the beatenes' boys!"

  For some time afterward he would every now and then break into achuckle of amused content and exclaim, "Them's right smart chillern."And at Christmas, when the hogs were killed, this was the opinion ofthe whole plantation.