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.
* * * * *