Leary, restless because he couldn't smoke, spoke only once, to inquire
Archie's judgment as to the passage of time. The old fellow, long
accustomed to lonely flights after his plunderings, possessed the
acutely developed faculties of a predatory animal; and the point at
which they were to debark having been fixed in his mind in a daylight
survey he paddled toward it with certainty. He managed his paddle so
deftly that there was hardly a drip that could announce their proximity
to any one lying in wait on the bay. Several minutes before Archie
caught the listless wash of calm water on a beach, Leary heard it and
paused, peering at the opaque curtain of the woodland beyond the lighter
shadow of the shore.

"We struck it right," he announced, returning from an examination of the
shore markings.

They carried the canoe into the wood and lay down beside it,
communicating in whispers.

"That girls' camp's on th' right; Carey's place to the left. Hear that!"
His quick ear caught the faint moan of a locomotive whistle far to the
south. It was a freight crossing a trestle, he said, though Archie had
no idea of how he reached this conclusion.

"Th' rest o' th' boys are away off yonder," and he lifted Archie's hand
to point.

"How many?" asked Archie, who had never known the number of men dropped
from the tug to make the swing round Carey's fortress.

"Ten; and a purty sharp bunch! You be dead sure they're right er ole
Governor wouldn't have 'em!"

Leary's confidence in the Governor as a judge of character reenforced
Archie's own opinion of the leader's fitness to command. That he should
have been received into the strange brotherhood of the road, which the
Governor controlled with so little friction, never ceased to puzzle him.
He was amused to find himself feeling very humble beside Leary, a poor,
ignorant, unmoral creature, whose loyalty as manifested in his devotion
to the Governor was probably the one admirable thing in his nature.

"Somebody may get hurt if we come to a scrimmage," he suggested. "What
do you think of the chances?"

"When ole Governor's bossin' things I don't do no thinkin'," the old man
answered. He raised his head, catching a sound in the gloom, and tapped
Archie's shoulder. "It's him, I reckon."

An instant later the Governor threw himself on the ground beside them.
He was breathing hard and lay on his back, his arms flung out,
completely relaxed, for several minutes. Archie had often wonde