Who was this intruder upon his privacy; this would-be killer? What had been his motive? Was he connected with the firebug affair? It would seem so, for in this city Johnny had not gone against the wishes of anyone save that firebug.
“Well, old boy,” he whispered, setting his teeth tight, “you’ll not get me, and what’s more, give me time and I’ll bring your dishonorable occupation to a sudden halt. See if I don’t!”
For a time after that he lay there looking up at the slow moving clouds, but they brought him no peace. He was annoyed at the situation that had so suddenly presented itself. He had come here to think things through; yet how does one dare to engage in an all absorbing chain of thought when at any moment some form of craft may come gliding in upon him and—bam! his head is blown off!
Manifestly there was no thinking to be done. What then was to be his course?
“Shall I lie here baking in the sun till dark, then sneak away home? Hanged if I do!” he exploded almost out loud. “This channel has some sort of an end that brings a fellow to shore. I’ll poke along down it and when I’m there I’ll make a break for it.”
In this undertaking he was more fortunate than he had hoped. He had not poled himself a hundred rods when he came to the piers of a low railroad bridge that crossed the swamp.
“Huh, easy enough,” he breathed.
Sitting up, he drove his boat under the bridge and out on the other side. After that, knowing that the embankment must hide him from the enemy if he were still on the marsh, he stood boldly up, poled his boat to shore, drew her up beside the railway, then crept up the bank to peer over at the other half of the marsh. He was now well above the tops of the rushes and could plainly see every foot of the marsh.
“Huh, fellow’d say I dreamed all that,” he grunted. The place was completely deserted. Even the black birds were gone.
Off on the far side of the marsh he made out a shack he had never seen there before. A rude black frame set on posts, it seemed oddly like some dark ghost of a house that had walked to the edge of the swamp in the hope of seeing its reflection in the water.