“Oh, yes,” Case grinned, “I remember the Knights of the Golden Circle, and the Ku Klux Klan, and the Night-Riders, and the White Caps. When that bunch wanted to kill a man, all they did was to pass a law against him and then abide by it.”
“There are a whole lot of offenses,” the mountaineer went on, “that can’t be handled by the laws these here shysters put on the statute books. But,” he continued, “we won’t talk about that any more. We wouldn’t agree, anyhow. About how far are we from the point where you left your boat?”
“Two miles,” declared Alex.
“Three!” suggested Case.
“What time did you leave the boat?” asked Hank.
“Two o’clock,” was the reply.
Hank looked at a ponderous silver watch which he took from a back pocket of his trousers and shook his head.
“If you left the boat at two o’clock,” he said, “and you had just come to the settlement when that little ruction started, you were something like three hours on the way. That means more than three miles.”
“Oh yes,” Alex agreed, “but we wandered about this way and that, looking for squirrels, and coons, and rabbits, so I think that we ought to be somewhere near the boat by this time.”
“If we don’t come to it pretty soon,” the mountaineer suggested, “we’ll have to look for it in the dark. It is getting twilight in here right now. It will soon be almost impossible to make our way through the thickets. ’Tarnal bad woods in the night time, these are.”