Stonor saw that the natural tracking-path was across the stream; on the other side also was the best camping-spot, a shelving ledge of rock with a low earth bank above. In order to be ready for them, therefore, he stripped and swam across below the rapid, towing his clothes and his pack on an improvised raft, that he broke up immediately on landing. Dressing, he took up his station behind a clump of berry-bushes that skirted the bank. Here he lay at full length with his gun in his hands. He made a little gap in the bushes through which he could command the river for a furlong or so.
He lay there with his eyes fixed on the point around which the dug-out must appear. The sun was sinking low; they must soon come or they would not come. On this day he was sure Imbrie would work to the limit. He smiled grimly to think how the man would be paddling with his head over his shoulder, never guessing how danger lay ahead. Oh, but it was hard to wait, though! His muscles twitched, the blood hammered in his temples.
By and by, from too intense a concentration on a single point, the whole scene became slightly unreal. Stonor found himself thinking: “This is all a dream. Presently I will wake up.”
In the end, when the dug-out did come snaking around the bend, he rubbed his eyes to make sure they did not deceive him. Though he had been waiting for it all that time, it had the effect of a stunning surprise. His heart set up a tremendous beating, and his breath failed him a little. Then suddenly, as they came closer, a great calm descended on him. He realized that this was the moment he had planned for, and that his calculations were now proved correct. For the last time he threw over the mechanism of his gun and reloaded it.
Imbrie was paddling in the stern, of course. The man looked pretty nearly spent, and there was little of his cynical impudence to be seen now. Clare lay on her stomach on the baggage amidships, staring ahead with her chin propped in her palms, a characteristic boy’s attitude that touched Stonor’s heart. Her face was as white as paper, and bore a look of desperate composure. Stonor had never seen that look; seeing it now he shuddered, thinking, what if he had not found them before nightfall!
Imbrie grounded the canoe on the shelf of rock immediately below Stonor, and no more than five paces from the muzzle of his gun. Clare climbed out over the baggage without waiting to be spoken to, and walked away up-stream a few steps, keeping her back turned to the man. Her head was sunk between her shoulders; she stared out over the rapids, seeing nothing. At the sight of the little figure’s piteous dejection rage surged up in Stonor; he saw red.
Imbrie got out and went to pick his course up the rapids. He cast a sidelong look at Clare’s back as he passed her. The man was too weary to have much devilry in him at the moment. But in his dark eyes there was a promise of devilry.
Having laid out his course he returned to the bow of the dug-out for his tracking-line. This was the moment Stonor had been waiting for. He rose up and stepped forward through the low bushes. Clare saw him first. A little gasping cry broke from her. Imbrie spun round, and found himself looking into the barrel of the policeman’s Enfield. No sound escaped from Imbrie. His lips turned back over his teeth like an animal’s.
Stonor said, in a voice of deceitful softness: “Take your knife and cut off a length of that line, say about ten feet.”
No one could have guessed from his look nor his tone that an insane rage possessed him; that he was fighting the impulse to reverse his gun and club the man’s brains out there on the rock.