Page:Raymond Spears--Diamond Tolls.djvu/223

 As if to answer his wish, the following morning Urleigh and Delia did pass down in their motorboat, not three hundred yards out. They were searching both banks with a pair of binoculars—his own glasses, as he surmised with an oath. They swept both shores, and soon went down and out of sight around the next bend.

No cabin-boat could float in that kind of a wind, and Gost figured that now he was below Murdong, and the woman and Urleigh were far down the river, having passed their partner without knowing it. That was easy to figure out.

Gost turned up stream that morning. Hugging the shore, he watched the banks, landing at intervals and going out on points to look for the shantyboat.

Sure enough! There was Murdong's boat in a bayou, which had once been a part of the river channel, or at least an island chute. Woods overhung the bayou on both sides, and it was not less than five miles through that timber into the clearings behind the levee.

"Now we'll see," Gost whispered to himself.

"He's hid so clost his own pals can't find 'im, but little old me did it. I've trailed too many men down Old Mississip', and I've played the game from little old N'York to Chi' an' the coast. Hue-e! That