“One of the men heard them talking,” Sturgis said, “and saw them hanging around the ravine one evening when he was going home.”
“How many are there?” Greenleaf asked.
“Two men and a boy up there, but probably we cannot get more than one of them. They will not all come to see the traps.”
“Do you think they’ll fight?” Scott asked eagerly.
“No,” Sturgis said, “I doubt if they will fight much, but they’ll probably put up an awful run for it. There’s a hundred dollars’ fine.”
They walked on for a while in silence, each one figuring out his tactics for the coming battle. It was a very dark night. Only the blacker outline of the trees against the dark sky indicated the opening of the road ahead of them. Now and then they heard some night prowler rustling through the brush, or the swift short rush of a frightened rabbit. Once they came dangerously near stumbling over an indifferent porcupine who refused to give them the road. It made them a little more careful how they picked their steps.
“We’ll have to leave the road here,” Sturgis said, stopping at a trail which would have been entirely invisible to anyone not thoroughly familiar with the woods at night. “They may be looking for tracks in the road in the morning and we don’t want to scare them off.”
It was slow work picking their way along that crooked trail. It wound through a dense stand of young jack pine, and the darkness was absolute. Again and again Sturgis had to wait for them, for it was necessary that they be in touch with each other if they were to stay together. It seemed to Scott as though they must have gone miles and miles, but he knew that it could not be far. The steep side slope on which they were traveling told him that they were on the edge of the ravine. The whir of frogs in the hollow told of a shallow lake. They left the side hill trail to avoid the gullies and then wound here and there to keep out of the denser brush. Scott no longer had the slightest idea where he was or which way he was going, but Sturgis evidently had his bearings, for he turned abruptly down the hill across a narrow neck between two swamps. On the opposite edge he stopped to listen.
“Those fellows are camped right up there a quarter of a mile,” he said. “Don’t make any noise, because they may have a dog in camp.”
Scott was astonished to find that they were on a road, but it was grass-grown and would tell no tales. Once more they turned from the road, this time into an open stand of Norway pine free from undergrowth. They had gone just far enough to be out of the way of any stragglers from the road when Sturgis stopped. “We’ll wait here,” he said. “It’s a pity we cannot light a fire, for it will be cold.”