Ghost Lake road.
"Now," said Lannis to Stormont, "if you really believe you saw the girl beat it out of the back door and take to the woods, she's probably somewhere in there – " he pointed into the western forest. "But," he added, "what's your idea in following her?"
"She wore men's clothes; she was in a hurry and trying to keep out of sight. I wondered whether Clinch might have sent her to warn this hold-up fellow."
"That's rather a long shot, isn't it?"
"Very long. I could go in and look about a bit, if you'll lead my horse."
"All right. Take your bearings. This road runs west to Ghost Lake. We sleep at the Inn there – if you mean to cross the woods on foot."
Stormont nodded, consulted his map and compass, pocketed both, unbuckled his spurs.
When he was ready he gave his bridle to Lannis.
"I'd just like to see what she's up to," he remarked.
"All right. If you miss me come to the Inn," said Lannis, starting on with the led horse.
The forest was open amid a big stand of white pine and hemlock, and Stormont travelled easily and swiftly. He had struck a line by compass that must cross the direction taken by Eve Strayer when she left Clinch's. But it was a wild chance that he would ever run across her.
And probably he never would have if the man that she was looking for had not fired a shot on the edge of that vast maze of stream, morass and dead timber called Owl Marsh.
Far away in the open forest Stormont heard the shot and turned in that direction.
But Eve already was very near when the young man who called himself Hal Smith fired at one of Harrod's deer – a three-prong buck on the edge of the dead water.
Smith had drawn and dressed the buck by the time the girl found him.
He was cleaning up when she arrived, squatting by the water's edge when he heard her voice across the swale:
"Smith! The State Troopers are looking for you!"
He stood up, dried his hands on his breeches. The girl picked her way across the bog, jumping from one tussock to the next.
When she told him what had happened he began to laugh.
"Did you really stick up this man?" she asked incredulously.
"I'm afraid I did, Eve," he replied, still laughing.
The girl's entire expression altered.
"So that's the sort you are," she said. "I thought you different. But you're all a rotten lot – "
"Hold on," he interrupted, "what do you mean by that?"
"I mean that the only men who ever come to Star Pond are crooks," she retorted bitterly. "I didn't believe you were. You look decent. But you're as crooked as the rest of them – and it seems as if I – I couldn't stand it – any longer – "
"If you think me so rotten, why did you run all the way from Clinch's to warn me?" he asked curiously.
"I didn't do it for you; I did it for my father. They'll jail him if they catch him hiding you. They've got it in for him. If they put him in prison he'll die. He couldn't stand it. I know. And that's why I came to find you and tell you to clear out – "
The distant crack of a dry stick checked her. The next instant she picked up his rifle, seized his arm, and fairly dragged him into a spruce thicket.
"Do you want to get my father into trouble!" she said fiercely.
The rocky flank of Star Peak bordered the marsh here.
"Come on," she whispered, jerking him along through the thicket and up the rocks to a cleft – a hole in the sheer rock overhung by shaggy hemlock.
"Get in there," she said breathlessly.
"Whoever comes," he protested, "will see the buck yonder, and will certainly look in here – "
"Not if I go down there and take your medicine. Creep into that cave and lie down."
"What do you intend to do?" he demanded, interested and amused.
"If it's one of Harrod's game-keepers," said the girl drily, "it only means a summons and a fine for me. And if it's a State Trooper, who is prowling in the woods yonder hunting crooks, he'll find nobody here but a trespasser. Keep quiet. I'll stand him off."
When State Trooper Stormont came out on the edge of Owl Marsh, the girl was kneeling by the water, washing deer blood from her slender, sun-tanned fingers.
"What are you doing here?" she enquired, looking up over her shoulder with a slight smile.
"Just having a look around," he said pleasantly. "That's a nice fat buck you have there."
"Yes, he's nice."
"You shot him?" asked Stormont.
"Who else do you suppose shot him?" she enquired, smilingly. She rinsed her fingers again and stood up, swinging her arms to dry her hands, – a lithe, grey-shirted figure in her boyish garments, straight, supple, and strong.
"I saw you hurrying into the woods," said Stormont.
"Yes, I was in a hurry. We need meat."
"I didn't notice that you carried a rifle when I saw you leave the house – by the back door."
"No; it was in the woods," she said indifferently.
"You have a hiding place for your rifle?"
"For other things, also," she said, letting her eyes of gentian-blue rest on the young man.
"You seem to be very secretive."
"Is a girl more so than a man?" she asked smilingly.
Stormont smiled too, then became grave.
"Who else was here with you?" he asked quietly.
She seemed surprised. "Did you see anybody else?"
He hesitated, flushed, pointed down at the wet sphagnum. Smith's foot-prints were there in damning contrast to her own. Worse than that, Smith's pipe lay on an embedded log, and a rubber tobacco pouch beside it.
She said with a slight catch in her breath: "It seems that somebody has been here… Some hunter, perhaps, – or a game warden…"
"Or Hal Smith," said Stormont.
A painful colour swept the girl's face and throat. The man, sorry for her, looked away.
After a silence: "I know something about you," he said gently. "And now that I've seen you – heard you speak – met your eyes – I know enough about you to form an opinion… So I don't ask you to turn informer. But the law won't stand for what Clinch is doing – whatever provocation he has had. And he must not aid or abet any criminal, or harbour any malefactor."
The girl's features were expressionless. The passive, sullen beauty of her troubled the trooper.
"Trouble for Clinch means sorrow for you," he said. "I don't want you to be unhappy. I bear Clinch no ill will. For this reason I ask him, and I ask you too, to stand clear of this affair.
"Hal Smith is wanted. I'm here to take him."
As she said nothing, he looked down at the foot-print in the sphagnum. Then his eyes moved to the next imprint; to the next. Then he moved slowly along the water's edge, tracking the course of the man he was following.
The girl watched him in silence until the plain trail led him to the spruce thicket.
"Don't go in there!" she said sharply, with an odd tremor in her voice.
He turned and looked at her, then stepped calmly into the thicket. And the next instant she was among the spruces, too, confronting him with her rifle.
"Get out of these woods!" she said.
He looked into the girl's deathly white face.
"Eve," he said, "it will go hard with you if you kill me. I don't want you to live out your life in prison."
"I