I'll make a lady of her."
"She is one, Clinch."
At that Clinch reddened heavily—the first finer emotion ever betrayed before Smith. He did not say anything for a few moments, but his grim mouth worked. Finally:
"I guess you was a gentleman once before you went crooked, Hal," he said. "You act up like you once was. … Say; there's only one thing on God's earth I care about. You've guessed it, too." He was off again on his ruling passion.
"Eve," nodded Smith.
"Sure. She isn't my flesh and blood. But it seems like she's more, even. I want she should be a lady. It's all I want. That damned millionaire Harrod bust me. But he couldn't stop me giving Eve her schooling. And now all I'm livin' for is to be fixed so's to give her money to go to the city like a lady. I don't care how I make money; all I want is to make it. And I'm a-going to."
Smith nodded again.
Clinch, now obsessed by his monomania, went on with an oath:
"I can't make no money on the level after what Harrod done to me. And I gotta fix up Eve. What the hell do you mean by asking me would it pay me to travel straight. I dunno."
"I was only thinking of Eve. A lady isn't supposed to have a crook for a father."
Clinch's grey eyes blazed for a moment, then their menacing glare dulled, died out into wintry fixity.
"I warn't bon a crook," he said. "I ain't got no choice. And don't worry, young fella; they ain't a-going to get me."
"You can't go on beating the game forever, Clinch."
"I'm beating it——" he hesitated—"and it won't be so long, neither, before I turn over enough to let Eve live in the city like any lady, with her autymobile and her own butler and her swell friends, in a big house like she is educated for——"
H broke off abruptly as a procession approached from the lake, escorting the battered gentry who now were able to wabble about a little.
One of them, a fox-faced trap thief named Earl Leverett, slunk hastily by as though expecting another kick from Clinch.
"G'wan inside, Earl, and act up right," said Clinch pleasantly. "You oughter have more sense than to start a fight in my place—you and Sid Hone and Harvey Chase. G'wan in and behave."
He and Smith followed the procession of damaged ones into the house.
The big unpainted room where a bar had once been was blue with cheap cigar smoke; the air reeked with the stench of beer and spirits. A score or more shambling forest louts in their dingy Saturday finery were gathered here playing cards, shooting craps, lolling around tables and tilting sloping glasses at one another.
Heavy pleasantries were exchanged with the victims of Clinch's ponderous fists as they re-entered the room from which they had been borne so recently, feet first.
"Now, boys," said Clinch kindly, "act up like swell gents and behave friendly. And if any ladies come in for the chicken supper, why, gol dang it, we'll have a dance!"
* * * * *
III
Toward sundown the first woodland nymph appeared—a half-shy, half-bold, willowy thing in the rosy light of the clearing.
Hal Smith, washing glasses and dishes on the back porch for Eve Strayer to dry, asked who the rustic beauty might be.
"Harvey Chase's sister," said Eve. "She shouldn't come here, but I can't keep her away and her brother doesn't care. She's only a child, too."
"Is there any harm in a chicken supper and a dance?"
Eve looked gravely at young Smith without replying.
Other girlish shapes loomed in the evening light. Some were met by gallants, some arrived at the veranda unescorted.
"Where do they all come from? Do they live in trees like dryads?" asked
Smith.
"There are always squatters in the woods," she replied indifferently.
"Some of these girls come from Ghost Lake, I suppose."
"Yes; waitresses at the Inn."
"What music is there?"
"Jim Hastings plays a fiddle. I play the melodeon if they need me."
"What do you do when there's a fight?" he asked, with a side glance at her pure profile.
"What do you suppose I do? Fight, too?"
He laughed—mirthlessly—conscious always of his secret pity for this girl.
"Well," he said, "when your father makes enough to quit, he'll take you out of this. It's a vile hole for a young girl——"
"See here," she said, flushing; "you're rather particular for a young man who stuck up a tourist and robbed him of four thousand dollars."
"I'm not complaining on my own account," returned Smith, laughing;
"Clinch's suits me."
"Well, don't concern yourself on my account, Hal Smith. And you'd better keep out of the dance, too, if there are any strangers there."
"You think a State Trooper may happen in?"
"It's likely. A lot of people come and go. We don't always know them." She opened a sliding wooden shutter and looked into the bar room. After a moment she beckoned him to her side.
"There are strangers there now," she said, "—that thin, dark man who looks like a Kanuk. And those two men shaking dice. I don't know who they are. I never before saw them."
But Smith had seen them at Ghost Lake Inn. One of them was Sard.
Quintana's gang had arrived at Clinch's dump.
A moment later Clinch came through the pantry and kitchen and out onto the rear porch where Smith was washing glasses in a tub filled from an ever-flowing spring.
"I'm a-going to get supper," he said to Eve. "There'll be twenty-three plates." And to Smith: "Hal—you help Eve wait on the table. And if anybody acts up rough you slam him on the jaw—don' argue, don't wait—just slam him good, and I'll come on the hop."
"Who are the strangers, dad?" asked Eve.
"Don't nobody know 'em, girlie. But they ain't State Troopers. They talk like they was foreign. One of 'em's English—the big, bony one with yellow hair and mustache."
"Did they give any names?" asked Smith.
"You bet. The stout, dark man calls himself Hongri Picket. French, I guess. The fat beak is a fella names Sard. Sanchez is the guy with a face like a Canada priest—Jose Sanchez—or something on that style. And then the yellow skinned young man is Nichole Salzar; the Britisher, Harry Beck; and that good lookin' dark gent with a little black Charlie Chaplin, he's Victor Georgiades."
"What are those foreigners doing in the North Woods, Clinch?" enquired
Smith.
"Oh, they all give the same spiel—hire out in a lumber camp. But they ain't no lumberjacks," added Clinch contemptuously. I don't know what they be—hootch runners maybe—or booze bandits—or they done something crooked som'ers r'other. It's safe to serve 'em drinks."
Clinch himself had been drinking. He always drank when preparing to cook.
He turned and went into the kitchen now, rolling up his shirt sleeves and relighting his clay pipe.
* * * * *
IV
By nine o'clock the noisy chicken supper had ended; the table had been cleared; Jim Hastings was tuning his fiddle in the big room; Eve had seated herself