“I left under the excitement of the fire,” Ned said. “It was easy enough.”
“Do you know where the Chinks have gone?” asked Green.
“I think I do,” was the reply.
“To San Francisco?”
“Yes, some of them. Others to Portland, I think.”
“Smuggled in?”
“Of course, though it seems odd that they should want to cross the border so far away from civilization. It must be expensive getting them in over such a route.”
“The men at the bottom of the game are watched,” Green said. “Watched so closely that they are obliged to keep out of the actual work and do their business through unsuspected channels. After this place has been raided they will try some other point.”
“You know what has been going on then?” asked Ned, surprised that the matter, as understood by the forester, had not been reported to him by the Secret Service man in San Francisco.
“Yes,” was the reply.