Jacques laughed loudly and, handing the other his rifle, picked up his own.
"We must be goin'," he observed, and rose to his feet.
"Better have 'nother drink 'fore y' go," said Creed, tendering the bottle. They drank around and Creed returned the bottle to its cache, while the others took their places in the canoe.
"Make it five, then," Creed extended the rifle as though giving it away.
Jacques shook his head, and pushed the canoe out into the stream.
The man on shore eyed the widening strip of water between the bank and the canoe.
"I'll make it three, seein' ye're so hell-bent on a trade," he called. But his only answer was a loud laugh as the canoe disappeared around a sharp bend of the river.
Creed resumed his position with his back against the ends of the logs.
At a point some fifty feet up-stream from the diminutive rollway, and about the same distance from the shore, a blackened snag thrust its ugly head above the surface of the water, and against this snag brushwood and drift had collected and was held by the push of the stream which gurgled merrily among its interstices.
Creed's gaze, resting momentarily upon this miniature island, failed entirely to note that it concealed a man who stood immersed in the river from his neck down, and eyed him keenly through narrowed gray eyes; and that also this man was doing a most peculiar thing.