“Just the same,” Scott insisted, “we’re not going to fight that gang. We might do them up all right, but there would not be much logging done around here for the next month or two, and I’m here to get those logs out.”
Mac sat for a while in sullen silence. “Well, what are you going to do then, let them burn you up?”
“No,” Scott cried impatiently. “I have no more notion of burning up than you have, and if you cannot find a man here to keep watch at night I’ll do it myself.”
Again Mac sat for a while in silence. His stubborn Scotch blood was slow to give in. The last voices had died away in the bunk house and Ben had finished his work in the cook shack. There was not a sound save an occasional snore and the scream of an owl far up on the mountain.
Mac finally surrendered as he had known he would from the first, and was about to speak when a crackling of twigs in the forest behind them brought them both bolt upright with nerves a-tingle and eyes and ears straining. They could see nothing, but it was evident that some one was making his way slowly through the woods towards the bunk house and was making a great deal of noise doing it.
“If that fellow is sneaking up on us, he must think we’re dead,” Mac whispered.
There was a loud crash as though some one had fallen over a log. They heard some mumbling but could not distinguish the words. After a few seconds of silence the advance on the bunk house began again. A man passed slowly within ten feet of them and made his slow way to the side of the bunk house. They could hear him scraping together dead leaves and brush.
Scott and Mac crept silently up to where they could see what he was doing, and Scott was not at all surprised to recognize Dick. He had scraped together a big pile of leaves and heaped them against the side of the bunk house. Scott gathered himself for a spring as he saw him fumbling in his pocket for a match to set fire to the leaves.
But instead of taking out a match Dick stuck both hands in his pockets and swayed back and forth staring curiously at the bunk house.
“Can’t burn that,” he mumbled. “Wouldn’t be gentlemanly to burn the bunk house with all those men in it. Can’t get ’em out without wakin’ ’em up.”