Scott was thinking fast. He had to decide on a course of action and that
quickly. Should they try to hide or should they meet this man and trust
to his being a stranger? The voice was too close to give them much
chance to hide and the owner of it was probably a good woodsman,
thoroughly familiar with the country. On the other hand, this man could
not have received any notice from the mill and would have no reason to
suspect them. He decided to go ahead; he might learn something from this
stranger.
He stepped out into the track and walked slowly forward with Murphy at
his elbow. They had not gone a dozen paces when they saw two men coming
out of the woods on to the track only a short distance ahead of them.
“Thought I heard you over there in the brush,” one of the men explained.
“You were so late comin’ that we started out to meet you.”
By this time the man was close enough to recognize his mistake even in
that uncertain light. He stopped short and eyed them suspiciously.
“Thought you was some one else,” he growled. “Where might you be from,
stranger?”
Scott evaded the question. “We did not know where we were when we ran on
to this track. Where does it go?”
“Where you all trying to get to?” the man countered.
“Old St. Joseph town,” Scott said, remembering what Murphy had told him
about the terminus of the railroad.
The man still eyed him curiously. “Ain’t no town there now,” he said.
“I know there isn’t,” Scott replied. “We just wanted to size up the
harbor. Do you live here?”
“Campin’ here,” the man said, “huntin’.”
“This old railroad go there?” Scott asked.
The man hesitated a moment. “Goes to where the town used to be,” he said
reluctantly. “Reckon we’ll walk back with you. Man we were lookin’ fer
don’t seem to be comin’.”
“Where was he coming from? I didn’t know anybody ever came out this
way.” The other fellow was asking so many questions that Scott felt
justified in asking a good many himself.
“Been out huntin’,” the man replied. “Good many deer out this way.”
They moved forward and the two men moved with them. “What’s the railroad
for in this wilderness?” Scott asked.
Again the man hesitated so long that Scott thought he was not going to
answer at all. He could hardly have helped hearing him.
“Mill cuttin’ up the line haulin’ lumber down to the harbor,” he finally
answered, as though he had weighed all the possibilities and decided to
try the truth.
“Must be a pretty big outfit to afford a railroad like this,” Scott
continued.
“Reckon it is,” the man replied after another pause. He was evidently
giving careful thought to his answers.
“Are they located on the river?” Scott asked.
“No,” the man answered promptly, “they are nowhere near the river.” He
did not seem to notice that he had practically denied any knowledge of
the mill in his previous answer. Scott smiled to himself.
They walked in silence for a few minutes. Scott knew they must recognize
their Forest Service uniforms when they came to the camp fire, even if
they had not already done so, and he was trying to think of some way of
accounting for them without arousing suspicion. He finally hit upon a
plan which he thought might work.
“We tried to get a boat over from Pensacola,” he said, “but could not
find any. So we came over on the train and tried to make it cross
country. There did not seem to be any direct way of getting here.” He
thought that he could see the man relax a little as though relieved by
the information.
“Yonder is our camp fire,” the man said, with a shade of cordiality
creeping into his voice. “Better come over and have a cup of coffee.”
Scott knew that they were playing with fire, but he did not see any way
out of it. They had neither tents nor provisions with them and were
counting on getting back to the bateau and out of the country before
morning. He decided to accept the invitation in the hope that he could
think up later an excuse for getting away.
“Thanks,” he said, “we’ll sit down for a minute anyway. Walking through
this sand is pretty tiresome business.”
The camp fire had burned pretty low but the man tossed on a few pieces
of light wood and it immediately flared like a torch. Scott looked
curiously around for the tent but there did not seem to be any. It did
not seem reasonable that they should be camped there without some means
of shelter in a country where rain might be expected any time. The
gentle plashing of small waves told him that they were close to the
beach of the harbor. Murphy and his companion had observed a complete
silence. Each was afraid to talk for fear he would spoil the fairy tale
which he knew his friend was building up. But Murphy had been using his
eyes and he asked a question now to call Scott’s attention to something
which he might not have seen.
“What’s the light out there on the water?”
Scott looked toward the sound of the lapping water and saw a light—the
dim light of a lantern—bobbing gently up and down some distance away. He
looked inquiringly at the stranger.
“Schooner waiting for lumber, I reckon. She dropped in there this
afternoon,” he answered carelessly.
This gave Scott a new idea. He thought that it probably accounted for
the men not having any tent. They had come in on the schooner and were
expecting some one from the sawmill to meet them. It was not a pleasant
discovery to make. He had thought that they had been lucky in meeting
these men and getting so much information from them. Now he knew that it
was little short of a calamity. Some one might drop in from the mill at
any minute now with the story of the scare they had had up there that
afternoon and it would not take them long to add two and two together.
Their story about coming from Pensacola would be immediately discredited
and they would be definitely identified as officers from the National
Forest. Not only that, but these fellows would know that they had seen
the mill, had come up the canal from the river, and had learned of the
source of the logs. It was only a question now of how far these men
would go in their own defense and to protect their future business. From
the looks of the men Scott thought they would stop at nothing.
“Ought to make a pretty cheap operation for them,” he remarked. He spoke
as carelessly as he could, but he kept one ear turned toward the
railroad track and listened with all his might. He accepted a cup of
coffee and racked his brain while he drank for some excuse to get away
from them, and yet he did not want to go till he had found out who the
men were who were running that mill. He wanted a chance to talk to
Murphy to see if he had recognized any one connected with it. He glanced
out toward the light in the harbor and was surprised to find that it had
disappeared. Then he noticed that a fog had come in off the water while
they had been sitting there and had shut from view everything more than
twenty feet away. Scott was rather pleased to see this, as it might give
them a better chance to get away in case there was any necessity for it.
The two men seemed to be content to leave things as they were. They
seemed to want their guests to think that they were no longer suspicious
of them, but Scott noticed that they watched them very closely and
seemed to be listening as intently as he for the approach of some one
from the direction of the sawmill. Slowly another and unexpected sound
worked its way into his consciousness. It came from the direction of the
light he had seen in the harbor and was undoubtedly the squeak of some
rusty oarlocks. It had never occurred to him that there might be other
men on board the schooner and that they might come ashore. The odds were
piling up against them. He glanced at Murphy and saw that he, too, had
heard it.
If he could have caught Murphy’s eye just then he would have made a dash
for it and trusted to the fog to get away. Even while he thought of it
the boat grated on the beach. Possibly these men would go down to meet
their friends.
“Ready to go out, Jack?” a voice called from the water’s edge.
Neither of the men answered at once. Then the one who had been talking
to Scott spoke up quietly: “Not yet, come on over to the fire.”
Scott knew now that they were virtually prisoners. These men intended to
keep them right where they were till the messenger or whoever it was
came from the mill and helped them to decide whether it was safe to turn
them loose after what they had found out. He knew very well what the
decision would be, but there was no way out of it now. They could fight
about as well one time as another and he decided to stay and see what
would happen. It would at least give them a chance to identify some one
from the mill and possibly learn something more about this mysterious
crew.
Murphy evidently thought that the time for action had arrived or was
rapidly approaching. He kept Scott in the corner of his eye all the time
now to catch any possible signal and toyed absent-mindedly with the flap
of his holster. The man beside him was watching his every motion with
his own rifle resting conveniently across his knees and his fingers
toying with the trigger guard. It was evidently a case of armed truce
all around.
They could hear the other men approaching through the wire grass and
they soon stepped out into the firelight. There they stopped and gazed
curiously at the unexpected guests. Then they looked inquiringly at the
man called Jack.
“Couple of fellows from Pensacola,” he explained, “who have come over
here to inspect the harbor. They was lost up here on the right-of-way
when we found ’em.”
Scott nodded as pleasantly as he could in acknowledgment of the
introduction, but Murphy only stared at them sullenly. The two newcomers
took their places around the fire and they all sat in silence—waiting.
The fog had thickened about them till they could see nothing outside the
immediate circle of the firelight; the call of the cat owls still came
to them faintly from the distant swamp and the waves lapped on the beach
with a melancholy monotony which was getting on Scott’s nerves. He was
beginning to wish that something would happen just to break the tension.
Then it came. There was a crunching of heavy boots in the sand and a
figure loomed suddenly up out of the fog close on them. He was evidently
somewhat dazzled by the firelight and did not notice that there were
strangers present.
“Couldn’t make it any sooner, boys,” he apologized. “One of the cars got
off the track and we had to unload the lumber to get back on, but they
are started now and will be here before long.”
Scott had recognized him the instant he spoke as the superintendent of
the turpentine camp.