The latter took another rifle from the corner and handed it to Smith
with a loop of ammunition.
"Come on," he grunted.
On the veranda he strode up to the group of sullen, armed men who
regarded his advent in expressionless silence.
Sid Hone was there, and Harvey Chase, and the Hastings boys, and
Cornelius Blommers.
"You fellas comin'?" inquired Clinch.
"Where?" drawled Sid Hone.
"Me an' Hal Smith is cal'kalatin' to drive Star Peak. It ain't a deer,
neither."
There ensued a grim interval. Clinch's wintry smile began to glimmer.
"Booze agents or game protectors? Which?" asked Byron Hastings. "They
both look like deer--if a man gits mad enough."
Clinch's smile became terrifying. "I shell out five hundred dollars for
every _deer_ that's dropped on Star Peak to-day," he said. "And I hope
there won't be no accidents and no mistakin' no _stranger_ for a deer,"
he added, wagging his great, square head.
"Them accidents is liable to happen," remarked Hone, reflectively.
After another pause: "Where's Jake Kloon?" inquired Smith.
Nobody seemed to know.
"He was here when Mike called me into the bar," insisted Smith. "Where'd
he go?"
Then, of a sudden, Clinch recollected the packet which he had kicked
under a veranda chair. It was no longer there.
"Any o' you fellas seen a package here on the pyazza?" demanded Clinch
harshly.
"Jake Kloon, he had somethin'," drawled Chase. "I supposed it was his
lunch. Mebbe 'twas, too."
In the intense stillness Clinch glared into one face after another.
"Boys," he said in his softly modulated voice, "I kinda guess there's a
rat amongst us. I wouldn't like for to be that there rat--no, not for a
billion hundred dollars. No, I wouldn't. Becuz that there rat has bit my
little girlie, Eve,--like that there deer bit her up onto Star Peak....
No, I wouldn't like for to be that there rat. Fer he's a-goin' to die
like a rat, same's that there deer is a-goin' to die like a deer....
Anyone seen which way Jake Kloon went?"
"Now you speak of it," said Byron Hastings, "seems like I noticed Jake
and Earl Leverett down by the woods near the pond. I kinda disremembered
when you asked, but I guess I seen them."
"Sure," said Sid Hone. "Now you mention it, I seen 'em, too. Thinks I to
m'self, they is pickin' them blackberries down to the crick. Yas, I seen
'em."
Clinch tossed his rifle across his left shoulder.
"Rats an' deer," he said pleasantly. "Them's the articles we're lookin'
for. Only for God's sake be careful you don't mistake a _man_ for 'em in
the woods."
One or two men laughed.
* * * * *
On the edge of Owl Marsh Clinch halted in the trail, and, as his men
came up, he counted them with a cold eye.
"Here's the runway and this here hazel bush is my station," he said.
"You fellas do the barkin'. You, Sid Hone, and you, Corny, start drivin'
from the west. Harve, you yelp 'em from the north by Lynx Brook. Jim and
Byron, you get twenty minutes to go 'round to the eastward and drive by
the Slide. And you, Hal Smith,"--he looked around--"where 'n hell be
you, Hal?----"
Smith came up from the bog's edge.
"Send 'em out," he said in a low voice. "I've got Jake's tracks in the
bog."
Clinch motioned his beaters to their duty. "Twenty minutes," he reminded
Hone, Chase, and Blommers, "before you start drivin'." And, to the
Hastings boys: "If you shoot, aim low for their bellies. Don't leave no
blood around. Scrape it up. We bury what we get."
He and Smith stood looking after the five slouching figures moving away
toward their blind trails. When all had disappeared:
"Show me Jake's mark," he said calmly.
Smith led him to the edge of the bog, knelt down, drew aside a branch of
witch-hopple. A man's footprint was plainly visible on the mud.
"That's Jake," said Clinch slowly. "I know them half-soled boots o'
hisn." He lifted another branch. "There's another man's track!"
"The other is probably Leverett's."
"Likely. He's got thin feet."
"I think I'd better go after them," said Smith, reflectively.
"They'll plug you, you poor jackass--two o' them like that, and one
a-settin' up to watch out. Hell! Be you tired o' bed an' board?"