But a fierce look from the man made even the garrulous negro subside. As for Rob, he disdained to talk to the fellow, or bandy words with him. Instead, he gazed around while the other canoes, filched from the Boy Scout camp, were coming up. He noted that one was paddled by Peter Bumpus, while the third one contained Stonington Hunt and his son Freeman, the lad who had already given the Boy Scouts so much trouble.
It was a curious place in which the boy found himself. But Rob, with his scout instinct, could not but admire the skill with which it had been chosen as a retreat.
The spot was like a large basin with steep rock walls on all sides but one. On the open side a narrow neck of the lake led into this natural fortress. Great trees and luxurious water growth masked the entrance and anybody, not knowing of it, might have passed by it on the lake side a hundred times without noting its presence. The canoes had been paddled through this natural screen of water maples and rank growth of all kinds, which had closed like a curtain behind them.
A beach, narrow except at the far end of the cove, ran round the water’s edge at the foot of the rocky walls. A small tent was pitched there, and a fire was smoldering. Evidently the place had been occupied for some little time as a camp. Rob found himself wondering how the men, in whose power he now was, had ever found the place. He did not know then that Jim Dale and Pete Bumpus had once been associated with a gang of moonshiners, whose retreat this had been before the officers of the revenue service broke the gang up and scattered them far and wide.
Hunt had gleaned enough knowledge from the plan, during his brief possession of it, to divine which route the party would take to the hidden treasure trove. He had, therefore, sought out this place when Dale and Bumpus told him of it. The boys’ enemies had made straight for it, and had been encamped there some days awaiting the arrival of the party. The notes of Andy Bowles’ bugle floating out across the lake the night before had apprised them of the arrival of the party, and plans had immediately been made for a hasty descent on the Boy Scouts’ mountain camp. How successful it had proved we already know. But of course, to Rob, all this was a mystery.
The canoes were grounded at the end of the cove on the broad strip of beach. Rob and Jumbo were at once ordered to get out, and Rob’s leg-bonds being loosened and gag removed, he followed Jumbo on to the white sand. Hardly had their feet touched it before Stonington Hunt and his rascally young son, the latter with a sneer on his face, also landed.
“Fell neatly into our little trap, didn’t you?” jeered Stonington Hunt, staring straight at Rob with an insolent look.
“Yo’ alls kin hev yo’ trap fo’ all I wants uv it”; snorted Jumbo indignantly, as Rob disdained to answer.
“Be quiet, you black idiot!” snapped Hunt, “we didn’t want you, anyhow. I’ve a good mind,” he went on with a brutal sort of humor, “to have you thrown into the lake.”
“By golly yo’ jes bring on de man to do it,” exclaimed the negro with great bravado, “ah reckon ah kin tackle him. Ah’m frum Vahgeenyah, ah is, an——”