When she brought Stormont his dinner he caught her eyes a moment--experienced a slight shock of pleasure at their intense blue--the gentian-blue of the summer zenith at midday.
Lannis remained affable, even became jocose at moments:
"No hootch for dinner, Mike? How's that, now?"
"The Boot-leg Express is a day late," replied Clinch, with cold humour.
Around the table ran an odd sound--a company of catamounts feeding might have made such a noise--if catamounts ever laugh.
"How's the fur market, Jake?" inquired Lannis, pouring gravy over his mashed potato.
A mean-visaged young man named Leverett complained of the price of traps.
"What do you care?" inquired Lannis genially. "The other man pays. What are you kicking about, anyway? It wasn't so long ago that muskrats were ten cents."
The trooper's good-humoured intimation that Earl Leverett took fur in other men's traps was not lost on the company. Leverett's fox visage reddened; Jake Kloon, who had only one eye, glared at the State Trooper but said nothing.
Clinch's pale gaze met the trooper's smiling one: "The jays and squirrels talk too," he said slowly. "It don't mean anything. Only the show-down counts."
"You're quite right, Clinch. The show-down is what we pay to see. But talk is the tune the orchestra plays before the curtain rises."
Stormont had finished dinner. He heard a low, charming voice from behind his chair:
"Apple pie, lemon pie, maple cake, berry roll."
When dinner was over and the bare little dining room empty except for Clinch and the two State Troopers, the former folded his heavy, powerful hands on the table's edge and turned his square face and pale-eyed gaze on Lannis.
"Spit it out," he said in a passionless voice.
Lannis crossed one knee over the other, lighted a cigarette:
"Is there a young fellow working for you named Hal Smith?"
"Clinch," continued Lannis, "have you heard about a stick-up on the wood-road out of Ghost Lake?"
"Well, a wealthy tourist from New York--a Mr. Sard, stopping at Ghost Lake Inn--was held up and robbed last Saturday toward sundown."
"Never heard of him," said Clinch, calmly.
"The robber took four thousand dollars in bills and some private papers from him."
"It's no skin off my shins," remarked Clinch.