Now Larry Donovan’s methodical manner of thinking applied only to crises where there was plenty of time. But at this curt demand thought and action were simultaneous. With a quick jerk he flipped the incriminating note-book over the demander’s head. Naturally, the man dodged; and Larry saw the note-book alight and hide itself—as he had hoped it might—on top of a high pile of the stacked cross-ties.
“So that’s the way you’re built, is it?” rasped the big man, angered, doubtless, by the fact that he had dodged something that hadn’t been thrown at him. “We’ll take care of you two cubs, all right! Get a move on—up to the shacks!”
Actuated by a common impulse, they both stole a quick glance down the valley, measuring the chances for a mad dash for freedom. The man saw the glance and stepped aside to bar the way.
“None of that!” he growled. “Get on up to the shacks!”
There seemed to be nothing for it but an ignominious surrender, so they tramped away, with their captor keeping even pace with them a step behind. They were halted before one of the shacks, a long, one-storied building which they took to be the camp commissary or store-house. It was; but one end of it was partitioned off for another purpose; and after the padlocked door at this end had been opened and they were shoved into the semi-darkness of the interior, they found themselves stumbling over tools of all descriptions—picks, shovels, crowbars, screw-jacks, blocks and tackle, coils of rope.
“Huh!” said Dick, “their tool-house.” And then they sat down on a pair of the rope coils to consider the state of the nation.
“My fault,” was Larry’s first word. “If we had turned back when you wanted to——”
“Cut it,” Dick broke in. “We needed the stuff we were after—if we could only have gotten away with it. What do you reckon they’ll do with us?”
“Your guess is as good as anybody’s,” Larry said, with a wry smile. “The one thing they’re not going to do, if they can help it, is to let us carry the news of this thing back to our camp. And that’s just the one thing we must do, if it takes a leg.”