Scott Burton and the Timber Thieves

by Edward G. Cheyney

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.”