"You believe they're in league with the smugglers?" Frank inquired.
Mr. Oliver smiled. "It seems very likely. Here's a man who keeps a boat, and, as you have heard, folks wonder how he makes a living by his fishing. If the boat's moderately fast you can imagine how useful he would be to the smugglers by taking messages from place to place and communicating with the schooner. Then we have another man who seems able to read the telegraph turning up and trying to hear Barclay's message."
"But how could they have learned that you expected it?" Frank asked.
"I'm not sure. Porteous may have suspected something and sent a mounted man off to wire one of the gang. Besides, the fellow who has the boat may have been across with her. It wouldn't be hard to surmise that I would wire from here, though they may have had a man watching the nearest office I could have reached by land on horseback." He paused a moment and looked at the boys gravely. "All this points to the fact that we're up against a big and remarkably well-organized gang."
Frank had no doubt that Mr. Oliver was right, but he asked a question:
"Why did Barclay choose Everett when it's so far from the field of their operations?"
"That's exactly why he fixed on it. There would be less probability of somebody connected with the gang recognizing us, and I've met him there already. The fact that he doesn't mention any particular hotel should have told you that; but what we have to consider is how I'm to get there without these fellows following me. It's important that I should be back at the ranch as soon as possible, and you and Harry must manage to arrive there the first thing to-morrow."
Frank understood the necessity for this. The nights were long, the bush was lonely, and Mr. Oliver's wooden house and barns, which had cost him a good deal of money, would readily burn, while now, when there was only Jake to take care of them, they would be more or less at the smugglers' mercy. Then Harry, who in the meanwhile, had been examining the schedule, looked up.
"I've an idea," he said. "There's a train goes south in the afternoon, and a steamboat which calls at Everett goes up the Sound this evening. Well, suppose we order dinner here and start for Bannington's a little before the cars come in. The steamboat would stop to pick up there if she's signaled, and with this breeze we should get down shortly before she passes."
Mr. Oliver turned to Frank.