At last he reached his little clump of bushes and peeped cautiously through them at the council of war which was sitting so close before him. They had piled the fire high with driftwood and Scott could make out the faces quite distinctly. He had no trouble in recognizing the five with whom they had fought a few minutes before, but there were four others there now. Evidently they were the men who had brought down the lumber cars. Two of them were sitting with their backs to him. Roberts seemed to be the leader of the gang. He was standing on the opposite side of the fire facing Scott and the others were apparently looking to him for orders. He was staring silently at the fire now with an expression of bitter hatred and Scott noticed with satisfaction that his lower lip was cut and bleeding.
Suddenly he raised his head and glared fiercely around the circle. “We’ve got to get ’em, I tell you. If they ever get back to town or headquarters with that story our business will be cooked and we’ll be more than likely to go to the pen. What good will all the money we’ve made do us then? They can’t get away from us if we keep our eyes open. They don’t know the country well enough to travel it very fast and Mike would get back to the canal long before they could. They would probably try to go that way because they have their boat right there somewhere—the boy saw them this afternoon. If they try to go the other way they don’t know the road. They would follow the beach and would have to cut away inland to get around the swamp. We can hide up there at the head of the swamp and pot them dead easy. There is not one chance in a hundred of their getting by us because we know every foot of the country and they don’t. They are in a regular bottle here and there are enough of us here to cover the neck so that a squirrel could not get through.”
“You can count us out on that stuff,” said the man who had been the spokesman there that evening before Roberts arrived and was evidently the skipper of the schooner.
“What’s the matter with you?” Roberts sneered. “You’re about as much interested in this thing as we are. You’ll lose a pretty business if they blow on our game.”
The man shrugged his shoulders. “I came over here to get a load of lumber, not to help murder anybody. If I can’t get a load here I can get one somewhere else. It may not pay quite so big but it will be a lot safer.”
Roberts glared at him angrily for a moment. He had no scruples himself and the probable loss of the tremendous booty he was getting in those stolen logs made him almost beyond himself with rage. He did not dare speak at first because he knew if he did he would surely say something which would very likely turn these men against him and if they wanted to they could do him quite as much harm as the forest officers. He swallowed hard and finally succeeded in getting sufficient control of himself to speak with apparent calmness, but inside he was almost burning up with rage.
“If that is the way you feel about it,” he managed to say quietly, “you better leave now before you know any more about it.”
“Guess you’re about right,” the skipper said, rising slowly and speaking to his men. “Come on, boys, there is not likely to be much more lumber going out of this port.”
“Might as well load on what is already at the dock,” said one of the men who was sitting with his back to Scott.
“No, thank you,” the skipper replied. “I have a hunch that by the time I got to market with that lumber there might be some inquiries about it that would make it hard to sell.”