“Three against two,” blurted Sandy. “They can’t stop us.”
Dick mopped his moist forehead and dug the tip of one moccasin into the loose sand.
“That may be true. We have the advantage in numbers. But I’d also like to point out to you that even though that is so the odds are in their favor, nevertheless. We never know when to look for them. They’ll strike when we least expect it and always from under cover. They’ve already won the first round. Poling up the river in a raft is a tedious and disheartening undertaking. It will take us three times as long to reach our destination. I don’t know as I’m in favor of going on in that way.”
“Why not?”
“Too much danger.”
“Not any more danger than there was in the canoe,” objected Sandy.
“Probably not. But until this moment we haven’t been sure in our own minds that Wolf Brennan and Toby McCallum have taken the offensive. Now we know. There’s absolutely no question about it. They’ve struck once and they’ll strike again too. The next time it may be a stray shot that will get one of us.”
“What do you mean by a stray shot?” demanded Sandy.
“If one of us gets killed it might as well be a stray shot, mightn’t it? I mean, it will be a difficult thing to prove that we were deliberately fired on and that those two miscreants did the firing.”
“You propose then to walk back?”