They had advanced several steps before the campers heard them coming. They had left the trees and were crossing the clearing. The woman was the first to hear them, and she lifted her head with a swift motion, and her black eyes seemed to glitter like those of an animal who was trapped. She spoke sharply in French to her companion, who dropped a plate and rose to his feet, his hand running backward toward his hunting knife. The woman looked around at the rifle.
“Hi!” greeted Mac, not very well impressed with the manner of the two campers. “May we come into your camp?”
“Look like you in ze camp now,” said the man, without a smile. “What you want?”
“We’re camping just over the hill,” Mac explained, his eyes on the woman, who had picked up the rifle. She was holding it muzzle down in the crook of her arm, but her eyes stared at them in a way that neither of the boys relished. “We found that we had forgotten to bring any coffee with us, so we saw your fire and came to ask if you could sell us any.”
“Sorry if we startled you,” Tim added.
“What you want?” the man asked again. The boys looked at him with some astonishment.
“I just told you,” Mac answered. “We came to buy some coffee.”
“You not come to buy coffee,” the man said, his chin coming forward in a way that was far from comforting. “You want somet’ing else, eh? You follow us, eh?”
“We did not,” Tim denied, indignantly. “We’re camping up here and we saw your fire, that is all.”
The woman spoke to her companion. “Pierre, listen!” She launched into rapid French, and when she had finished he shrugged his shoulders. She turned to the boys suddenly. “We not got coffee. We not got anyt’ing. You go back to your camp. Go back!”