“So that’s what we think of you and your blasted Sheriff!” he declared. “We’ll let him float to Mackinac, if he aint dead. By the time he gits back here, we’ll sure be on our way. Got a good camp here, aint you? Guess we’ll git us a bite to eat ’fore we bring up our boat and beat it.” For a little, however, the man had his hands full. The groaning Greek, revived by his compatriot, retrieved his knife and flung himself on the bound captive; the leader interfered, and the trees resounded to bellowed oaths and orders and imprecations. Hardrock, helpless to move, watched and listened grimly. At length the arguments of the leader took effect. “And ye don’t want to be the same damned fools ye were before, do ye?” concluded the wrathful leader. “We don’t want to be trailed for murder! Leave him be. We’ll fix him so’s he can’t hurt us none--and we wont murder him neither. Ye may think ye can pull a stunt like that more’n once, and get away with it; but ye can’t. How d’ye know that there Sheriff didn’t want ye for the other shootin’, hey?” The sullen Greek acquiesced, put away his knife, and all three men stamped away up to the camp. Darkness was gathering upon the waters, but Hardrock no longer stared after the rapidly vanishing boat that was drifted off along the shore and toward the open lake. Those words of the leader were dinning in his brain. He knew now who had shot down those two boys from St. James. CHAPTER IX It was perhaps five minutes afterward, while some tins of food were being opened, that the three whisky-runners realized they had committed an error. Their leader, whose name appeared to be Marks, was the one who realized it most keenly. He came down to the shore, stared off in the gathering darkness at the boat, now a mere speck in the dusk, and cursed fervently. The shotgun had gone into the lake, and their pistols had all floated away with poor Fulsom. Hardrock chuckled. “You fellows turn me loose,” he offered, “and I’ll tell you where there’s a boat laid up down the shore.” Marks turned away. “You’ll tell more’n that ’fore we’re through with you. Shut up!” The three gathered again about their food, getting a fire lighted and in their clumsy ignorance of the woods heaping on fuel until the yellow flames were leaping high and far. Over such a fire, any cookery was impossible, and Hardrock chuckled at their profane efforts to make coffee without getting the pot too hot to be handled. He, meantime, while apparently motionless and helpless, was in reality hard at work. He lay, half sitting, against a log between fire and shore, at the clearing’s edge, arms bound behind him. He had been tied up with the first thing to hand--bandanna handkerchiefs produced by the Greeks, and had made the gratifying discovery that the material was old and would tear easily. Therefore he was tearing it, against the log at his back, and by the increasing looseness knew that his wrists were nearly free.