“But what would happen if I saw his horses and made him an offer for one of them?”
“I reckon you’d get the horse—if you offered twenty thousand for it, or maybe if you offered ten.”
“No chance! But what if I made a reasonable offer?”
“He’d be sore as a boil; an’ he’d cal-late you’d come all the way from New York jist to spy on him—an’ you’d be lucky if you got out alive.”
“But that’s absurd! Isn’t there any law in this country?”
“Plenty of it. Game laws an’ all sorts. There’s the law old Dave Hinch uses when he gets hold of a bit of paper with your name on it, even if you never saw the danged thing before, or have maybe paid it twice already. But there ain’t no law ag’in a man losin’ himself in the woods. That’s the Dangler way, but don’t tell them I said so.”
“Do you really know something, or are you only talking?”
“I know what I’m talkin’ about, an’ I’m talkin’ for your good, Mr. Vane. I got a pretty clear memory more’n forty years long; an’ I can remember quite a slew of folks who’ve fell out with the Danglers one way an’ another; an’ some of them cleared out, an’ four was lost in the woods—five, countin’ poor Pete Sledge. Pete’s the only man I know of who ever defied the Danglers and refused to run away, an’ is still alive right here in Forkville. But you’d ought to see Pete. He’d be a lesson to you.”
Jard tapped his brow significantly with a finger-tip.
“Lost an’ found ag’in,” he said. “But he was half-witted when they found him, an’ he’s been that way ever since—an’ that was nigh onto twenty years ago.”
“He tells a queer story—but you can’t pin it on any Dangler, even if you believe it. Pete an’ one of the Dangler men fell out about a girl. Pete wiped up Gus Johnson’s chipyard with that Dangler. There was good trappin’ country way up Squaw Brook in them days, an’ Pete used to work it. He had a little shack up there, an’ that’s where he’d spend most of the winter, tendin’ his traps. It was along in the fall of the year he knocked Dangler down an’ drug him around; an’ it was along in the first week of January he woke up in his bunk on Squaw Brook one night jist in the nick of time to bust his way out an’ take a roll in the snow. He had most of his clothes on, for he’d been sleepin’ in them; an’ he had his top blanket, an’ his mackinaw with mitts in the pockets, which he had grabbed up an’ brought out with him.