A moment's silence. Then, from a black corner on the ditcher came the negro's voice, moaning in cutting minor notes a primitive jungle croon of fear and terror. White laughed grimly, making no effort to quiet him. Roger stared up the river and made out a flicker of purple light shooting up from the eastern horizon into the misty heavens. "Thank God!" he said in relief. "Daylight is coming." He leaped ashore as the tug ran close to an out-jutting point of high land below Garman's, and cut straight across the prairie toward his camp. The sunburst of dawn was at its gaudiest when he came within sight of the tents and he caught the glint of sun on the bare matchets of the clearing gang as the men prepared for the day's work. Higgins was standing before his tent, smoking and chafing the men. "Everything all right, Hig?" asked Roger with false calm. "All right? Sure. Why wouldn't it be?" Higgins took the pipe from his lips and looked closer. "Hi! What's up? What's happened to you?" "What do you mean?" "Well, you don't have to tell me, of course; but--but what in the name of smoked fish makes you look as if you'd been through the Devil's Playground again?" Higgins breathed hard after Roger had completed the tale of Garman's man hunt. "That's a damn lie about Ramos!" he said. "If he's dead Garman's gang killed him---Garman himself probably--afterwards." "How do you know?" "Willy High Pockets has been here." "What!" "Yep. I had him hid down in Blease's shack, but he beat it away." "Then it was that poor Indian Garman was after!" "Not quite. There was a white man, too. A guy that Willy met out in the swamp some place when he beat it that day after Garman had handled him. It was this white man that Garman was after. Willy was with him. Garman's bunch had 'em trapped on an island down in the swamp, but Willy happened to know an Injun way out and they slipped the noose. Willy came crawling in here last night. He's got a tear from a forty-four along his hip and the white man sent him to us to get it doctored up and keep him hidden. I slipped down to Blease's and fixed it up with them to hide him, but he slipped away to join that white man as soon as we had him sewed up. "Where is the white man?" "Still out in the swamp. He steered Willy till they saw the tents and then he beat it back." "Who is he?" "Don't know; Willy wasn't telling." "What does Garman want to get him for?" "Willy 'donno' that either. He 'donno' anything at all about this guy in the swamp. But he did tell a straight story about the sneak they made; and there wasn't a shot fired on either side, so Ramos wasn't shot then. I'll bank on Willy's word for that." XXVII