"I wonder what he wants," said Clay. "Perhaps it's something about the boys. Let's talk to him, Nugget."
They ran the canoes into a shallow inlet where dry land had been but a few hours before, and the stranger came quickly toward them. His appearance was not calculated to cause the boys any alarm.
He looked to be about six and twenty. He was poorly dressed, and his rather boyish face was covered with a stubbly growth of light hair. Something in his features seemed to wake a chord of recognition in Clay's heart, and he struggled with his memory to account for it.
The man came close to the canoes, and after casting a furtive glance up and down the shore, said in a low voice:
"You needn't get out. I won't keep you long. Where are the other two chaps that belong to your party?"
This unexpected question amazed the boys, and they regarded the stranger with sudden suspicion.
"I don't mean any harm to you, indeed I don't," he added. "It's just the other way."
There was unmistakable sincerity in his words and manner, and after a brief deliberation Clay told him how the other boys had started after the tent, and had not come back.
"I thought you wanted to tell us something about them," he concluded. "Did you just come up the creek?"
"Yes," replied the man. "I was as far down as the next dam, but I didn't see a sign of your friends. I reckon they're below that somewheres, so you'd better push on and find them. I want to give you chaps a warning. Keep your eyes open for a big man with a purple face. If you run across him get out of the way as quick as you kin. He's somewhere about this neighborhood, too, for I seen his—"