"We'll give Davis to-night and to-morrow night," said Roger, after pondering the matter a moment. "After that——"
"Hell's delight! And I almost hope that Davis falls down on whatever he's doing."
On the narrow there was no sign to indicate that Davis or any one else was concerned in the affairs of the district. The grim guards on the muck lands held their stations. It was apparent that they had orders not to leave the tract or to seek trouble, but to be ready to shoot and shoot accurately at any one venturing to trespass. Blease scouted northward on the ox-team trail and reported that Coon Hammock was still occupied. Payne himself went through the elderberry and saw grass jungle and through his glasses saw men guarding the approach to the Devil's Playground.
The strain was beginning to tell on all three men in the clearing.
Each hour now seemed a day, each sight of a Garman man was a torture.
"It ain't human," muttered Blease. "I can't stand it."
Higgins lay flat on his back in his tent, staring up at the canvas.
"It had better be a dark night to-night," he said, with a grim smile. Roger silently agreed. And he realized that this was what Garman had foreseen and planned for when he digged the pit—the sense of imprisonment and the desperate attempt to break out, regardless of consequences.
"He's too smart to be just a man, Garman is," droned Blease; but Roger stopped him.
"He's nothing but a man; nothing but a man who likes to hurt. Don't let me hear you say he's anything but that."
To Roger and Higgins the sudden, fierce sunset came as a benison, presaging the coming of the night. There was no thought of food or sleep. Narrowly they watched the sun go angrily down in the west and the night come rolling over the heavens from the east. Clouds appeared, first a few scatterings of fleecy stuff, next solid cloud banks through which the waning moon strove in vain to send its rays.