The fog was thick, but it did not cause him great inconvenience. He took to the woods for his course, and, keeping close to the edge which encircled the camp clearing, he had little difficulty in striking the path to the dugout. This achieved he had but to follow it carefully. The one possibility that caused him any anxiety was lest he should overshoot the hut in the fog.
But he need have had no fear of this. Dense as the fog was, the lights of the dugout were plainly visible when he came to it. Betty, with careful forethought, had set the oil lamps in the two windows. She quite understood the difficulties of that forest land, and she had no desire for the men-folk to spend the night roaming the wilderness.
The parson found her calmly alert. She did not fly at him with a rush of questions. She was far more composed than he, yet there was a sparkling brilliancy in her brown eyes which told of feelings strongly controlled; her eyelids were well parted, and there was a shade of quickening in the dilation of her nostrils as she breathed. She looked up into his face as he turned after closing the door, and his tongue answered the mute challenge.
"There's to be a great game to-night," he said, rubbing the palms of his hands together. The tone, the action, both served to point the state of his mind.
Knowing him as she did Betty needed no words to tell her that the "game" was to be no sort of play.
"It's a 'strike,'" he went on. "A strike, and a bad one. They intend to make a prisoner of Mason, and, maybe, of us. We've got to outwit them. Now, help me get some things together, and I'll tell you while we get ready. We've got to quit to-night."
He picked up a gunny sack while he was speaking and gave it to Betty to hold open. Then he immediately began to deplete the lumberman's larder of any eatables that could be easily carried.
Ever since the men had left her this strike had been in Betty's mind, so his announcement in no way startled her.
"What of Dave?" she asked composedly. "Has he any—idea of it?"
"That's just it. We've got to let him know. He's quite in the dark. Communications cut. Mason must get away at once to let him know. He intends to 'jump' their buckboard and team—I mean these strikers' buckboard." He laughed. He felt ready to laugh at most things. It was not that he did not care. His desire was inspired by the thought that he was to play a part in the "game."