spruce thicket just as the sun was making ready to push up over the
skyline.

Jack stopped and looked up at his master inquiringly, lifting his lip
at the sides and showing his teeth. But he made no sound; nor did
Swan, when he dropped his fingers to the dog's head and patted him
approvingly.

They heard a horse sneeze, beyond the spruce grove, and Warfield
stepped forward authoritatively, waving Swan back. This, his manner
said plainly, was first and foremost his affair, and from now on he
would take charge of the situation. At his heels went Hawkins, and
Swan sent an oblique glance of satisfaction toward Lone, who answered
it with his half-smile. Swan himself could not have planned the
approach more to his liking.

The smell of bacon cooking watered their mouths and made Warfield and
Hawkins look at one another inquiringly. Crazy young women would
hardly be expected to carry a camping outfit. But Swan and Lone were
treading close on their heels, and their own curiosity pulled them
forward. They went carefully around the thicket, guided by the pungent
odour of burning pine wood, and halted so abruptly that Swan and Lone
bumped into them from behind. A man had risen up from the campfire and
faced them, his hands rising slowly, palms outward.

"Warfield, by----!" Al blurted in his outraged astonishment. "Trailing
me with a bunch, are yuh? I knew you'd double-cross your own
father--but I never thought you had it in you to do it in the open.
Damn yuh, what d'yuh want that you expect to get?"

Warfield stared at him, slack-jawed. He glanced furtively behind him
at Swan, and found that guileless youth ready to poke him in the back
with the muzzle of a gun. Lone, he observed, had another. He looked
back at Al, whose eyes were ablaze with resentment. With an effort he
smiled his disarming, senatorial smile, but Al's next words froze it on
his face.

"I think I know the play you're making, but it won't get you anything,
Bill Warfield. You think I slipped up--and you told me not to let my
foot slip; said you'd hate to lose me. Well, you're the one that
slipped, you damned, rotten coward. I was watching out for leaks. I
stopped two, and this one----"

He glanced down at Lorraine, who sat beside the fire, a blanket tied
tightly around her waist and her ankles, so that, while comfortably
free, she could make no move to escape.

"I was fixing to stop _her_ from telling all she knew," he added
harshly.