Trooper Stormont came in the back door, carrying his rifle.
"Some rough fellow been bothering your little daughter, Clinch?" he inquired. "The child was nearly all in when she met me out by Owl Marsh--clothes half torn off her back, bare-foot and bleeding. She's a plucky youngster. I'll say so, Clinch. If you think the fellow may come here to annoy her I'll keep an eye on her till you return."
Clinch went up to Stormont, put his powerful hands on the young fellow's shoulders.
After a moment's glaring silence: "You _look_ clean. I guess you be, too. I wanta tell you I'll cut the guts outa any guy that lays the heft of a single finger onto Eve."
"I'd do so, too, if I were you," said Stormont.
"Would ye? Well, I guess you're a real man, too, even if you're a State Trooper," growled Clinch. "G'wan up. She's a-nappin'. If she wakes up you kinda talk pleasant to her. You act kind pleasant and cosy. She ain't had no ma. You tell her to set snug and ca'm. Then you cook her a egg if she wants it. There's pie, too. I cal'late to be back by sundown."
Stormont shrugged. "I'll stay until you show up, Clinch."
The latter took another rifle from the corner and handed it to Smith with a loop of ammunition.
On the veranda he strode up to the group of sullen, armed men who regarded his advent in expressionless silence.
Sid Hone was there, and Harvey Chase, and the Hastings boys, and Cornelius Blommers.
"Me an' Hal Smith is cal'kalatin' to drive Star Peak. It ain't a deer, neither."
There ensued a grim interval. Clinch's wintry smile began to glimmer.
"Booze agents or game protectors? Which?" asked Byron Hastings. "They both look like deer--if a man gits mad enough."
Clinch's smile became terrifying. "I shell out five hundred dollars for every _deer_ that's dropped on Star Peak to-day," he said. "And I hope there won't be no accidents and no mistakin' no _stranger_ for a deer," he added, wagging his great, square head.
"Them accidents is liable to happen," remarked Hone, reflectively.
After another pause: "Where's Jake Kloon?" inquired Smith.
"He was here when Mike called me into the bar," insisted Smith. "Where'd he go?"
Then, of a sudden, Clinch recollected the packet which he had kicked under a veranda chair. It was no longer there.