That seemed the logical reason for the move. What would Garman's next move be?
"Looks like a trick, doesn't it?" said Higgins.
"Yes."
Roger strode down to the head of the main drainage ditch where two of the guards had held watch. The forms where the men had lain in the soft black muck behind the spoil bank were still sharply defined. Their departure must have occurred during the darkest hours of early morning. They had left behind them a flask full of colorless liquid, one whiff of which proved its contents to be moonshine whisky.
"Queer thing," said Blease. "Reckon they must have left in a hurry or they'd never have forgot their licker."
Higgins and Roger preceded cautiously over the tract, making sure that no guards lay hidden in the ditches. The trails left by the departing men were easily followed. They led, not to the river or toward Garman's as might have been expected, but scattered and lost themselves to the southward in the tangle morass of the cypress swamp. Here and there articles had been left behind in what savored of a flight; unopened canned goods, a deer carcass, a frying pan, a rifle and a pair of shoes. Roger studied the tracks leading into the swamp and saw that several of them had been made on the run. It was apparent from all signs that the guards had fled, driven by fear of something.
"Blease," said Roger suddenly, "you scout up the ox trail and see if they're gone from Coon Hammock, too; and, Higgins, you slip up towards the Devil's Playground and see what you can see."
He went on down the main ditch toward its junction with the headwaters of the Chokohatchee River, keeping a close watch for possible lurking danger beyond his line. Near the mouth of the ditch he found a dugout evidently left behind in the flight of the guards. In the dugout he paddled the rest of the distance down the ditch, hidden from sight by the spoil banks on the canal's sides.
It was broad daylight when suddenly he checked the canoe at the entrance to the river. The plop of a pair of paddles propelling a canoe upstream came from round a bend and Roger lay down flat on the bottom of the dugout, his rifle resting upon the prow. The rifle covered the spot where the canoe must come round the bend. He was on his own land, and he would not allow the guards to regain possession without a fight. He saw the white prow of the canoe shoot out past a tuft of saw-grass on the bend, and laid his eye to the sights. Another stroke of the paddles and the canoe was in full view, and Roger found his front sight bearing upon a button on the silken shirt which stretched taut across Garman's great chest.
A roar like the bellow of an angered bull welled from Garman's throat as he recognized Payne, an inarticulate cry of rage, then a silence. The current carried the canoe back a trifle and with an oath Garman drove it forward with his paddle. In the stern was Senator Fairclothe, dumb and helpless from fear.