“We might not gain very much time in going across there,” Scott admitted, “but to tell the truth I do not like the prospect of going up around the head of this swamp and across that narrow neck of land even after to-morrow night. Those fellows may change their minds and decide to stay there a little longer. They would hate to lose us and they might decide to stay a little longer or leave Qualley there to watch another day or so. I don’t so much mind a danger I can see, but I hate to have somebody hanging around in the bushes watching me. At any rate, I don’t suppose that a day or so would make much difference to us. We know where they are going to hide and we could find them there next week just as well as now.”
“Guess that’s right,” Murphy replied slowly, “but if there is any chance of our staying here for two or three days I am going back there now and take a shot at that deer no matter who may hear it. They say the buds of these palmettoes are good to eat but I never thought much of them.”
Scott had a sudden inspiration. “I have it!” he exclaimed. “There must be a hard strip of beach along the edge of that swamp. The tide would build it up there in spite of the swamp. I’ll bet they never thought of that.”
They both ran eagerly forward and waded the creek. It was not more than knee-deep. They were about in the middle of the stream when Murphy looked nervously over his shoulder toward the dark woods behind them. “I wonder if this is the narrow neck they were going to wait for us to cross?” he questioned.
It was an unpleasant thought and they both ran a little faster. Scott was involuntarily writhing his body back and forth as though he could already feel the bullet in his back. Murphy evidently felt the same way about it and his Irish philosophy expressed Scott’s thoughts exactly.
“I wonder why it is,” he soliloquized as he ducked back and forth, “that a fellow would always so much rather be shot some place else than the place where he thinks he is going to be?”
Scott was too busy to answer him. They would not have had nearly so far to wade if they had gone down on to the beach before they took to the water, but they had been so eager to test out their new idea that they had jumped right in up there in the woods. The swamp was opposite them there and they had to wade down till they came to the beach. Murphy’s suggestion that this might be the spot where their enemy was waiting for them had disturbed them so that they were both running through the water now and wondering how they ever got so far away from the beach.
They almost shouted when they rounded the farthest projection of the swamp brush and saw a broad, smooth beach stretching out before them. It seemed too good to be true. They made a mad dash toward it to put that point of brush between them and the imaginary rifles they had conjured up behind them.
Scott reached it first and fell sprawling on his face. He thought for an instant that he had been shot, but he had not heard anything and it felt more as though some one had caught his foot. He had not yet realized what had happened when Murphy landed beside him with a grunt. He put out his hands to lift himself up and gasped with astonishment when he saw them disappear in the smooth sand. His feet seemed to be caught under something and he pushed up his body with his arms to investigate. He was yanked unceremoniously back on to his face. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Murphy go through almost the same contortions.
Thoroughly frightened now he pulled viciously at one hand. It came slowly and heavily from the reluctant sand. Then something seemed to give way in his head. “Quicksand!” he shrieked, and began to struggle with the frenzy of madness.