"Aw, g'wan, what's eatin' youse?" asked the man. But, despite his bluster, he was obviously frightened.
"I ain't here to hoit youse," he said, sullenly, after a minute's silence. "Just youse come along wid me, and I'll take youse to Broom. That's all the job I got, see?"
He led them some distance into the woods. Once or twice they thought they heard sounds as if others were near them, but they made up their minds that this idea was due to their imaginations. And finally, when they were nearly two miles from the nearest troops, as far as they could tell, their guide stopped in a little clearing in the woods.
"Wait here," he said. "I'll go tell Broom you're ready."
He crashed off through the undergrowth, and, with what patience they could, they waited in the darkness.
They realized afterward that the waiting was a blind. No one had crept up on them, but they were suddenly seized, each one from behind, so that there was no chance at all for Durland and Crawford to use the pistols that they held in their hands. Their assailants, as they guessed later, had been waiting all the time for them, ready to spring, upon them as soon as they were thoroughly off their guard. And in a moment they saw Broom, an electric torch in his hand, which he directed at the faces of the three prisoners in turn.
"You walked into the trap all right, didn't you?" he said to Jack, with an ugly sneer on his face. "You was mighty smart this morning! Glad you brought your friends along. They've bothered us, too. And now we've caught you all together. That's much better, you see! You won't get in my way again, any one of you!"
Suddenly he gave a curse.
"Where's the others?" he snarled. "The red-headed one and the little shaver? I want them, too!"
"There weren't but the three of them," said the man who had served as their guide. "I don't know where the others are."