“Yep;” said Garvin, “leave ’em no getaway.”
“Madigan,” said Brack, “You take your men and circle around on this side of the ridge and go north until you strike their trail running out of the valley.”
“That’ll take a couple of hours.”
“A little longer, probably. When you’re set, fire three shots and we’ll start to rush ’em from this side. The rest’ll be easy. Boys, by ten o’clock we’ll all be rich.”
We fell back from the top of the ridge, and in a ravine well out of sight Madigan led his four men into the forest. Brack waited until they were out of sight and then hurried us back to the boats. Pulling Madigan’s boat behind us we were swiftly rowed down the river into the bay. Here the empty boat was tied up in a well-hidden nook, and we went on toward the yacht.
I now had an opportunity to note the distance which we had traveled. The fiord curved raggedly from the river’s mouth toward the sea. In spite of the foothills which shut us in I saw that our course at first took us away from the river and the lake. Then, where the bay began to widen, we began to curve backward until when, at last the Wanderer, riding serene and white on her cradle of blue water, appeared before us, I knew that our course had been such that the distance overland to the miner’s lake could not be much more than half of what it was by water. I judged the distance down the bay from the river-mouth to the Wanderer to be about three miles.
As we made out the yacht in the distance, the Captain looked at his watch.
“Back in nice time for breakfast,” he said. “Well, Pitt, how does it feel to belong to a gang of robbers? Please don’t say you don’t belong. You do, you know; we’ve elected you. Yes; you’re one of us now, and we’re going to keep close watch on you until this little job is over.”
“What is your object?” I asked. “Why did you drag me up there with you?”
“Because I suspect that you like to talk, Pitt,” said he, as he suddenly changed the course of the boat. “You were unfortunate enough to see us leaving ship. Had I permitted you to stay on board you would have talked. You might have talked in alarming fashion, and I do not wish Miss Baldwin to be alarmed—until our work here is done, at least.”