“Exactly,” smiled the storekeeper.
“And you’ll be on the lookout for smoke?”
“I’ll not be surprised to see smoke,” returned Smythe.
Broadcrook passed outside, and when his uncertain steps had died in the night Smythe leaned against a pile of furs and laughed voicelessly.
A little later his pricked-up ears caught the sound he was expecting. He tongued his lips and rubbed his hands delightedly. The door opened and Watson pounded in. A light cloak of snow covered him from head to foot.
“Who was that man I just met?” were his first words.
“That, my dear Watson, is the very man we’ve been looking for,” smiled Smythe.
“For heaven’s sake, drop that hypocritical manner of yours and be yourself,” growled Watson, throwing off his wraps and sinking into a chair. “You sicken me, Smythe; absolutely sicken me.”
Watson readjusted the bandage across his eye and stirred in his seat with a groan. Smythe came forward with a bottle and a glass.
“Take that stuff away,” cried Watson. “Look here, Smythe, we’re up against a piece of work that requires cool heads. No more whiskey for me. If I hadn’t been half drunk the other day, you can gamble we wouldn’t have made a mess of things and got half killed by that big Bushwhacker the way we did. And to think,” he groaned, “that all the while you were sitting by the fire with widow Ross eating nuts, roasting your shins, and talking religion. You’ve a good deal to answer for. Between the din of Hallibut’s mill and the widow’s psalm-singing, the noise down there is awful. Well, I’ve found out this much from the people on Totherside. Jake, the engineer, tells me that the Bushwhackers are getting bitter towards Hallibut. The fools think he wants to drive them off their property. He tells me, also, that the Colonel intends sending his schooner around in the Eau for his lumber. I guess we’re left all way round.”