Wallace rose with the dawn and wasted no time getting set for his hike down the mountain. When he arrived at the farm house, Tom Woods played the same trick on him as he did on Jack. Side by side, the two lay in hiding and waited. “What did the boys do yesterday?” asked the agent.
“They kept watch all day long but nothing happened.”
“It will today,” asserted Woods.
All day long they lay in hiding and waited. It appeared as though Tom Woods was wrong again. But that did not despair him. He continued telling his humorous anecdotes and kept himself and his companion cheerful. The sun swung across the horizon. Noon came and passed. The hours dragged along. Towards five o’clock, the government agent suddenly broke off in the middle of a sentence; he became very alert. Wallace felt a cold chill run down his spine. Woods hurriedly whispered, “Don’t get excited. Stay under cover until I tell you otherwise.”
A car swung slowly in from the road into the yard. Behind the farm house, it stopped. Wallace whispered to his companion, “The one at the wheel—Bud, the stranger.”
Woods nodded. He held the automatic ready. As the car stopped, Bud jumped out and called back over his shoulder, “Just want to take a look around. It’ll take me only a minute.”
The agent crept away. Silently he tiptoed from behind the car. Coming close, he hissed. “One move or sound and you’re dead. Put up your hands.”
The gangster raised his hands above his head and moved to step out of the car. As he did so, he made a quick, wild move for his pocket. Woods swung, hitting the gangster an awful wallop on the chin with the butt end of his gun. The gangster let out a yell as he went down in a heap. The agent quickly crawled behind the car. Bud came running from around the corner of the house and hid himself behind a tree. He waited. Woods also crouched and waited, but became impatient and fired across the top of the car. No answer.
Wallace was still lying in the same position and eagerly watched the proceedings. He was anxious and excited. He wondered what he could do to help but he realized that for the present the best he could do was to keep out of the way and let the two fight it out. One of them, he thought, would surely never leave that yard alive. He only hoped that everything would come out for the best.
Bud stretched himself out on the ground and began to shoot wildly, combing the ground. A pause came as the gangster took time out to reload his gun. Tom Woods took the opportunity to make a dash of several yards and throw himself behind a pile of logs which he had set up for the occasion. He shifted his position for two reasons: one was that the car did not offer a good enough barricade and secondly to draw the firing away from the direction where Wallace was hiding.