“They used it for a fire-warden station in the days when Egypt had enough timber to make it an object to protect it,” said the man.  “You’ll be plenty lonesome up there.  You can get your wagon within half a mile.  Pack your truck on your hoss’s back and lead him the rest of the way.  That’s what I used to do.  I was warden till I found myself trying to carry on conversations with tumblebugs and whippoorwills.”

When Wagg had driven along far enough so that the native could not overhear, he hailed Vaniman through the trap in the top of the van.

“Did you hear that?”

“Yes.”

“Is that Devilbrow within grabbing distance of what we’re after?”

Vaniman returned a hearty affirmative.  He had been able to see those craggy heights from his window in Britt Block.  The thought that what he wanted to grab and what Mr. Wagg wanted to grab were not exactly mated as desired objects did not shade his candor when he asserted that Devilbrow was just the place from which to operate.

“All right!” chirruped Wagg.  “Us for it!” He displayed the first cheeriness he had shown on the trip.  He whistled for a time.  Then he sang, over and over, to a tune of his own, “Up above the world so high, like a di’mond in the sky.”  This display of Wagg’s hopeful belief that the fifty-fifty settlement was near at hand served to increase Vaniman’s despondency.

Obeying the native’s instructions as to the route, Wagg soon turned off the highway and drove along a rutted lane which whiplashed a slope that continually became steeper.  Soon he pulled up and told Vaniman to get out and walk and ease the load on the horse.  Wagg got down and walked, too.

The trail up Devilbrow was on the side away from the village of Egypt.  The way was through hard growth.  There were no houses—­no sign of a human being.  Wagg’s cheerfulness increased.  And he said something which put a glimmer of cheer into Vaniman’s dark ponderings.

“There’s no call to hurry the thing overmuch.  If I recuperate too sudden and show up back home it might look funny, after the way I bellowed about my condition.  There’s plenty of flour, bacon, and canned stuff in that van.  I reckon we’d better get our feet well settled here and make sure that nobody is watching us; the money is safer in the hole than with us, for the time being.  My pay is going on and the future looks rosy.”

A cock partridge rose from the side of the lane and whirred away through the beech leaves that the first frost of early autumn had yellowed.

“And I’ve got a shotgun and plenty of shells!  Son, let’s forget that we have ever been in state prison.  In the course of time that place is about as wearing on a guard as it is on a convict.”

The log camp was behind a spur of the rocky summit and was hidden from the village below.  Wagg commented with satisfaction on the location when they had reached the place.  The van had been concealed in a ravine which led from the lane.  The work of loading the horse with the sacked supplies, and the ascent of the mountain, had consumed hours.  Twilight was sifting into the valleys by the time they had unloaded the stuff and stabled the horse in a lean-to.