e of me--on Lost River or anywhere else."

"That'll do for you; it ain't your put-in, nohow," was the gruff
decision of the court; but Blount was too good a lawyer to be silenced
thus easily.

"Perhaps you might not especially regret killing the wrong man, but in
the present case I am very sure I should," he went on. And then: "Are
you quite sure you've got the right man?"

"The boss knows who you are--that's enough for us."

"The boss?" questioned Blount.

"Yas, I said the boss; now hold your jaw!"

Blount caught at the word. In a flash the talk with Gantry on the
veranda of the Winnebasset Club flicked into his mind.

"There is only one boss in this State," he countered coolly. "And I am
very sure he hasn't given you orders to kill me."

"What's that?" demanded the spokesman.

Blount repeated his assertion, adding jocularly: "Perhaps you'd better
call up headquarters and ask your boss if he wants you to kill the son
of his boss."

At this the gun-holder came around the fire to stand before his
prisoner.

"Say, pal--this ain't my night for kiddin', and it hadn't ort to be
your'n," he remarked grimly. "The boss didn't say you was to be rubbed
out--they never do. But I reckon it would save a heap o' trouble if you
_was_ rubbed out."

"On the contrary, I'm inclined to think it would make a heap of
trouble--for you and your friends, and quite probably for the man or
men who sent you to waylay me. But, apart from all that, you've got hold
of the wrong man, as I told you a moment ago."

"No, by grapples! I hain't. I saw you in daylight. If there's been any
fumblin' done, I hain't done it. So you see it ain't any o' my funeral."

"Think not?" said Blount.

"I know it ain't. Orders is orders, and you don't git over into them
woods on Upper Lost Creek with no papers to serve on nobody: see?"

It was just here that the light of complete understanding dawned upon
Blount; and with it came the disconcerting chill of a conviction
overthrown. As a theorist he had always scoffed at the idea that a
corporation, which is a creature of the law, could afford to be an open
law-breaker. But here was a very striking refutation of the charitable
assumption. His smoking-room companion of the Pullman car was doubtless
one of the timber-pillagers who had been cutting on the public domain.
To such a man an agent of the National Forest Service was an enemy to be
hoodwinked, if possible, or, in the last resort, to be disposed of