It was an hour after he had taken up his watch in a little patch of woods across the road from the house before he noticed any signs of life. A thin wisp of smoke curled up from the kitchen chimney. Every now and then he caught a roar from the rear of the house but no other sound of voices, a pretty good indication that Foster was in no better mood than he had been the night before.
A half hour later Bill came running around the house with head ducked low. Once safe around the corner he dropped down to a slow shuffle. He had been crying, and he looked longingly up at the mountain before he turned reluctantly down toward the village.
“He either suspects where Scott has gone or he is planning some new devilment as soon as he gets back,” Hopwood mused, as he watched Bill crawling slowly on his snail-like way. “Well, Foster is not likely to go out till Bill gets back and that can’t be for two hours at the rate he is moving.”
He had almost decided to go on another errand while he was waiting for Bill to come back when a movement caught his eye and he saw a barefoot boy turn in at Foster’s gate. Hopwood groaned with disappointment and apprehension, for he knew that boy was bearing one of two messages: either that Scott had passed the logging camp on the way down, or that the marshal had left town on the way up. Probably it was the former, because the marshal would know enough to avoid that camp. Hopwood blamed himself for not having warned Scott to keep away from it. Well, it could not be helped now.
“There will be something doing pretty soon now,” he thought.
He was not mistaken. The arrival of the boy at the Wait cabin was like the spark on a fuse running into a powder magazine. Foster roared like a wounded lion, and everything seemed to be in great commotion. A little girl darted out of the house and tore down the road toward the village.
“After Bill,” Hopwood mused. “I wonder what the game is?”
The commotion in the back of the house continued.
In a few minutes the girl and Bill came trotting back together. His reluctance to go had made his recall easy. Hopwood kept a close lookout now. He did not want anything to escape him, for much might depend on what he saw now. He saw Bill slip out of the side gate and take a short cut up the mountain carrying a long rifle.
Hopwood knew what that meant. The boy was to keep watch and fire his rifle as a signal if he saw the marshal coming that way. That was an old trick that he had seen worked many times before, but he had never had the interest in it that he had now. The boy from the logging camp followed close behind Bill.