Jack thought of no reason for watching Garrod now, and his back was turned to him as he worked. He therefore did not notice that the leaves of the willows above Garrod's head were occasionally twitched on their stems in a different way from the fluttering produced by a current of air. Only a sharp and attentive eye could have spotted it, for the movement was very slight, and there were long pauses between. After a while the leaves low down were parted, and for an instant a dark face showed, bright and eager with evil. It was Jean Paul. Marking Jack's position and Garrod's, he drew back. Garrod was immediately below him.
More minutes passed. The patience of a redskin is infinite.
Finally Garrod began to twitch and mutter in his sleep, and presently he rolled over on his back, wide awake. Jack threw him a careless glance, and went on working. As Garrod lay staring at the leaves over his head, a change passed subtly over his face; the lines of his flesh relaxed a little, a slight glaze seemed to be drawn over his eyes. In the end he slowly raised himself on one elbow, and looked at Jack with an exact reproduction of the cunning, hateful expression Jean Paul had shown. He quickly dropped back, and lay, waiting.
Presently, Jack having finished the shaping of his braces, picked up hammer and nails, and with another off-hand glance at the apparently sleeping Garrod, climbed into the dugout. He put in the stern thwart first, sitting on his heels in the bottom of the dugout, with his back toward the shore.
Garrod raised his head again, and seeing Jack's attitude, drew himself slowly up, and came crawling with infinite caution down over the stones. Back among the leaves a fiery pair of eyes was directing him. This was where Jack's faculty of concentration proved his undoing. Driving the nails as if his soul's fate rested on the accuracy of his strokes, he never looked around. Garrod covered the last five yards at a crouching run. Seizing the bow of the dugout, and exerting all his strength, he heaved the craft out into the stream.
The force and the suddenness of the shove threw Jack flat on his back. By the time he recovered himself, the dugout fairly caught in the current and, gradually gaining way, was headed straight for Hell's Opening.
If Jack allowed the moment to take him unawares, it must be said he wasted no time when it came. His faculties leaped in the presence of danger. His bright, wary, calculating eyes first sought for the paddle, but it lay back on the stones where Garrod had used it. He looked at Garrod. The man had picked up his gun, and was running toward him. He kept pace with the moving dugout along the edge of the stones. Not more than fifty feet separated the two men. Jack measured the distance to the backwater. Ten swimming strokes would have carried him to safety.
"If you jump overboard I'll shoot," Garrod murmured huskily. "I'll get you easy in the water!"
Jack saw that it was madness he had to deal with, and he wasted no words with him. Garrod, crouching, stumbling over the stones, with his strained, inhuman eyes fixed on Jack, was an ugly sight. He muttered as he went:
"I've got to kill you. I can't help it. I've got to!"