Doctor Morse nodded understandingly.
“I shall not fail you, Bert,” he said.
Early dusk found the two men in the sheriff’s car slowly picking their way over the stony trail which led to the Black Pool. In the bottom of the tonneau was a ten-gallon keg, three or four short boards, and something wrapped in burlap, while the back seat held a pair of repeating shot guns and a box of cartridges. A hundred yards from the pool, at the foot of a little hill, Sheriff Parker killed his engine and stepped out onto the ground.
“We’d better leave the car here,” he remarked. “It is best not to make any more disturbance in the immediate vicinity of the pool than we can help, and we can easily carry what we need from here. But let’s look around a bit first.”
Together, carrying their loaded guns in the manner of men who wish to be prepared against any sudden emergency, they made their way through a fringe of trees to the edge of the black, still water, which gave the pool its name. Even by daylight the place was far from cheerful. The pool, about seventy feet in diameter, was entirely surrounded by trees which grew to within a few feet of its oily surface.
There was no sign of life about the place, not even a frog croaked, and the muddy banks bore mute testimony that none of the many cattle which roamed that region had been there to drink for many days. In one place only was the mud broken by fresh tracks; and when his eyes fell on this spot, the sheriff smiled grimly.
“You see them, Horace,” he said, pointing. “The thing has been here recently—its trail is as plain as day; this must be its drinking place. Now for our little trap.”
Returning to the car, the two men first carried the keg to the foot of a large tree which stood only a few yards from where the “plague” had approached the pool; then they got the boards and the other articles, which, on being unwrapped, proved to be a brass hand pump, with a long spray nozzle, and about a dozen feet of hose.
Doctor Morse regarded this contrivance with considerable perplexity. He could not see of what use it could be in the task that lay ahead of them; but when he expressed his puzzlement, his companion laughed softly.