Lou looked after them helplessly. “I wish I’d brought my gun, anyway, Alexandra,” he said fretfully. “I could have hidden it under the straw in the bottom of the wagon.”
“Then we’d have had to lie to Ivar. Besides, they say he can smell dead birds. And if he knew, we wouldn’t get anything out of him, not even a hammock. I want to talk to him, and he won’t talk sense if he’s angry. It makes him foolish.”
Lou sniffed. “Whoever heard of him talking sense, anyhow! I’d rather have ducks for supper than Crazy Ivar’s tongue.”
Emil was alarmed. “Oh, but, Lou, you don’t want to make him mad! He might howl!”
They all laughed again, and Oscar urged the horses up the crumbling side of a clay bank. They had left the lagoons and the red grass behind them. In Crazy Ivar’s country the grass was short
