They went carefully around the thicket, guided by the pungent odor of burning pine wood, and halted so abruptly that Swan and Lone bumped into them from behind.

A man had risen up from the campfire and faced them, his hands rising slowly, palms outward.
"Warfield, by----!" Al blurted in his outraged astonishment.

"Trailing me with a bunch, are yuh?
I knew you'd double-cross your own father--but I never thought you had it in you to do it in the open.

Damn yuh, what d'yuh want that you expect to get ?" Warfield stared at him, slack-jawed.

He glanced furtively behind him at Swan, and found that guileless youth ready to poke him in the back with the muzzle of a gun.