Scott could hardly wait to see the cause of the excitement, but even when he did see it he did not grasp the full significance of it at once. Instead of the sleepy, vine-covered bayou which they had so nearly passed by unnoticed—a place so wild that Scott’s imagination had once more jumped back to the old explorers pushing their way into unknown channels which no white man had ever seen before—the bayou stretched out before them like a modern canal. All the bordering brush and overhanging vines had been cleared away. A deep-worn tow path followed close along the northern bank. The shores were deeply gouged and torn as if by the passage of many rafts of logs. Moreover, many of the signs were very fresh.
Scott gazed at it in wide-eyed amazement.
“Maybe you were right about that raft having eight sections,” Murphy mumbled. “Looks as though it might have had eight hundred of them.”
CHAPTER IX
For a few minutes the men sat in wondering silence. The very boldness of the scheme was astounding. Here was a canal carefully and thoroughly prepared for the sole purpose of transporting stolen logs and not more than a hundred feet from the river where steamboats plied up and down and the rightful owner of the logs passed frequently.
“Some nerve!” Murphy finally exclaimed, expressing the thought which was uppermost in both their minds.
“Well, we’ve found where they go,” Scott remarked with a sigh of satisfaction, “but what do you suppose they do with them? Is there any railroad over that way or any other stream to the coast?”
Murphy shook his head. “Not a trace of one unless they have a secret one like this canal.”
“I suppose there is no telling how far this goes,” Scott mused, “but I have a hunch that we better tackle it a little carefully. Any man with the nerve to steal logs the way this fellow is stealing them probably would not hesitate at anything. I doubt if he would welcome a visit from a couple of forest service uniforms.”
Murphy felt for his holster and seemed comforted at finding it where it belonged. His Irish was rising fast at the prospect of a possible fight.