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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.
"Plenty," stated Wagg. "And the three of you better hunt them holes, no matter who is coming." The short man, the tall man, and Vaniman needed no urging on that point. They ran, crouching low, and scrambled out of sight among the ledges of the craggy peak of Devilbrow.
A native told him about an abandoned log house on the top of a mountain called "Devilbrow." "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.
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.
Not exactly Sunday-school language, but it hit the case." He turned away from Vaniman's frenzy of gasping interrogation. He confined his attention to Wagg. "A prison guard, say you? You're a hell of a guard!" "Opinion indorsed!" said the other convict. For a few moments there was complete silence on the summit of Devilbrow. Somewhere, on an upland farm in the distance, a cow mooed.
The blankets of Wagg's camp equipment made the bunks comfortable. Wagg had been the cook as well as the captain of the expedition. He did better that evening with the wood-burning stove than he had done with the oil stove of his kit. After supper, before he turned in, Vaniman went out on a spur of Devilbrow and gazed down on the scattered lights of the village of Egypt.
Bangs was the deputy warden who had gone up to the summit of Devilbrow in order to view the landscape o'er and pass the word to Mr. Wagg. Mr. Bangs rode along every highway and byway, day after day, not missing a trick.
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.
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