a
furious glance at the woods. "By God," he said, "I was such a fool I
didn't take no rifle. All I had was an axe and a few traps. ... I
wasn't going to let the mink get our trout whatever you fellows say," he
added defiantly, "-- and law or no law----"

"Get along with your story, young man," interrupted Lannis; "-- you can
spill the rest out to the Commissioner."

"All right, then. This is the way it happened down to the Scaur. I was
eating lunch by the fish-stairs, looking up at 'em and kind of planning
how to save cement, and not thinking about anybody being near me, when
_something_ made me turn my head. ... You know how it is in the woods.
... I kinda _felt_ somebody near. And, by cracky! -- there stood a man
with a big, black automatic pistol, and he had a bead on my belly.

"`Well,' said I, `what's troubling _you_ and your gun, my friend?' -- I
was that astonished.

"He was a slim-built, powerful guy with a foreign face and voice and
way. He wanted to know if he had the honour -- as he put it -- to
introduce himself to a detective or game constable, or a friend of Mike
Clinch.

"I told him I wasn't any of these, and that I worked in a private
hatchery; and he called me a liar."

Young Fry's face flushed and his voice began to quiver:

"That's the way he misused me; and he backed me into the shanty and I
had to sit down with both hands up. Then he filled my pack-basket with
grub, and took my axe, and strapped my kit onto his back. ... And
talking all the time in his mean, sneery, foreign way -- and I guess he
thought he was funny, for he laughed at his own jokes.

"He told me his name was Quintana, and that he ought to shoot me for a
rat, but he wouldn't because of the stink. Then he said he was going to
do a quick job that the police were too cowardly to do; -- that he was
a-going to find Mike Clinch down to Drowned Valley and kill him; and if
he could catch Mike's daughter, too, he'd spoil her face for life----"

The boy was breathing so hard and his rage made him so incoherent that
Lannis took him by the shoulder and shook him:

"What next?" demanded the Trooper impatiently. "Tell your story and
quit thinking how you were misused!"

"He told me to stay in the shanty for an hour or he'd do for me good,"
cried Fry. ... "Once I got up and went to the door; and there he stood
by the brook, wolfing my lunch with both hands. I tell you he cursed
and drove me, like a dog, inside with his big