“Well, you must be on hand and ready for work by three o’clock.”
“All right. We’ll be here.”
Then the two men started out, quickly disappearing in the shadows.
It was past midnight, and there was very little light, save when the moon peered duskily through a rift in the clouds, when two dark forms skulked back into the camp.
The men were sleeping in their blankets about the smoldering fire, but they were tired, and none of them awoke.
The two forms slipped down the bank and boarded the raft. They seemed to know just what to do, for they began working without a whisper passing between them.
The wangan boat had been partly drawn up on the rear end of the raft, where it lay with its stern in the water.
With keen knives the two men cut the ropes that held the raft to the shore. Then they pushed it off gently and worked it out into the current.
Not a sound came from the little huts. Evidently the sleepers were undisturbed. Now and then the moon would shoot a white bar of light down upon the surface of the river, and that light was enough to show the current was running strongly.
But the two villains kept at work till the raft was moving swiftly, and they could hear the roar of the falls in the distance. They were endeavoring to make sure that not one on the raft should escape alive.