Behind them the firelight flung their shadows, huge and wavering, against the camp wall, and, looking round once by chance, Sage was startled to observe those shadows hovering there like something silent and sinister and menacing. Although he did not refer again to the strange man Roy had encountered, he was wondering who that man could have been.
“Whoo!” cried an owl from the blackness of the woods.
Their chatter grew less; at last it ceased. They sat silently gazing at the fire, with its bed of glowing coals. Hooker moved, stretched and yawned.
“It’s me for the sleeps,” he announced drowsily, producing a dollar watch and beginning to wind it. “We’ve got to be up and in that blind ready for business before peep o’ day, you know.”
“I’m ready to turn in,” said Fred.
“Fellow who sleeps on the front side of the bunk will have to replenish the fire once in a while. We can change round in the night and take turns at it. How are you about waking up?”
“Pretty good. I’ll take my turn first.”
Some heavy logs were placed on the fire, and Roy rolled himself into his blanket, an example which Sage soon followed. In a few moments Hooker was sound asleep, as his breathing indicated, but for a long time Fred lay thinking and wondering. He could not rid himself of the conviction that the discovery in that old camp of the newspaper containing the account of Gentleman Jim’s jail-break bore a significance unexplained and uncomprehended. If that paper had not been left there by Piper, who had left it?
“Whoo!” again cried the owl.