“Watch out there in the lake,” he commanded them. “Pretty soon you see something. Keep very quiet. No talk now.”
Both waited expectantly. Out ahead of them the lake rippled and sparkled. Suddenly a canoe glided within their range of vision—a canoe containing two occupants. Their paddles dipping in unison, the two men sat very straight, one in, the center and one in the stern, two mackinaw coated figures, two bearded white men whom the boys recognized instantly. In the excitement of the moment, Sandy jabbed his elbow in Dick’s ribs.
“Cracky!” he blurted out. “What’s up now? Wolf Brennan and Toby McCallum! They’re coming here.”
But in this Sandy was mistaken. The canoe did not pause, did not waver. It swept in fairly close to the island then, as if it had suddenly changed its mind, it swerved sharply and continued on its course. The two men sat like statues until they were thirty or forty yards away. Then Wolf Brennan craned his thick, bull-like neck and looked back.
Even at that distance the boys caught the expression that distorted the man’s coarse features. A leer, a mocking, unfriendly grin, a diabolical, fiendish sneer!
Abruptly he turned and the paddle, gripped in his huge ape-like hands, glinted in the sunlight as it smote the gleaming water.
CHAPTER III.
SUSPICION GROWS.
“Now what are they up to?”
Dick’s hands clenched as he spoke. He half rose from his kneeling position behind the willow copse and glared at Sandy as if he expected that that young man could answer the question.
“Yes, what are they up to?” he repeated in a low tense voice. “Messrs. Brennan and McCallum must be on our trail. And from the look that Wolf just now directed toward this island, they know we’re here. The whole thing is a puzzle to me. I don’t know what to think of it.”