Wagg lighted his pipe and went out and sat on the bench beside the camp's door, and when the two early visitors came puffing up the hill and confronted him he was to all appearances enjoying the delights of a bland fall morning and the comfort of an unruffled conscience. He jumped to his feet and hailed one of the men with a great show of cordiality; the man was one of the deputy wardens of the state prison.
Mr. Wagg hopefully and guilelessly expressed the conviction that the officer had followed along into the wilderness in order to join in the process of recuperation.
The deputy asserted that Mr. Wagg was wrong to the extent of a damsite, or something of the sort, and reported some recent happenings at the state prison, Mr. Wagg listening with appropriate, shocked, official concern. He opined that it was a long shot, figuring that the convicts had fled back to the region of Levant. The warden agreed. “But the Old Man is bound to have us tip over every flat rock, Bart. He got a call-down for that accident—and this matter on top of it has made him sore. I'm up here this far because I got a line on you at Levant.”
“You did, hey?” Mr. Wagg gazed off across the landscape, as if wondering how much of a trail he had left.
“You dropped 'recuperates' like a molting rooster drops feathers, Bart,” averred the warden, jocosely. “That was my trail. Reckoned I'd come and tip you off so that you can do a little scouting for the good cause.”
Mr. Wagg threw out his chest. “You can leave this hill section to me. Always on the job! That's my motto.”
The deputy said he knew that, stated that he would probably spend a week along the highways and in the villages of the section, got a drink of water from a spring near at hand, and departed with his aide.
And after the two were far down the slope, Mr. Wagg called in his campmates with the caution of a hen partridge assembling the brood after the hunter has passed. “It means that we've got to stick close by this camp and mind our business for a week, at any rate,” he said, after he had reported the conversation.
Vaniman could not keep the complacency out of his countenance. He caught the short man squinting at him with a peculiar expression. “It would be mighty dangerous for any one of us to go far from this camp,” said the young man.
“It sure would!” agreed the convict, sententiously.