was a fine chance of our getting good and hungry before our checks
got to us."

"Then he was thinking, all right!" a boy laughed.

"Frank explained," George continued, "that the Cumberland river
had been placed in the scenery for the sole purpose of providing
transportation for us to the Mississippi. Then he went on and
told how we could build a flat-boat with a cabin on it and beat
the railroads out of our fare to Cairo. So we counted our money,
right there, on the bridge, and started for a lumber yard."

"It was a sporty notion, all right! Just you wait until we get
a houseboat into the dirty waters of the Rio Grande!"

"When we got the lumber, we all turned to and built the boat.
We didn't know much about boat-building, but we used what few
brains we had and got the boards together in pretty good shape,
considering. Boy Scouts can do almost anything now, since
they're learning how to help themselves. There isn't a boy in
the room who can't build a fire with sticks and cook a good meal
on it. Also, we'll show, directly, that we can build a houseboat
on the Rio Grande."

"If we are as slow at building the boat as we are in getting this
story out of you, we won't get started toward the Gulf of Mexico
until cold weather next fall."

"We bought two pine planks sixteen feet long," Fremont went on,
with a smile at the impatience of the boys, "a foot wide, and two