She went to him. He put his left arm around her.

"You like me some, don't you, girlie?"

"You know it, dad."

"All right. You're all that matters to me. ... since your mother went
and died. ... after a year. ... That was crool, girlie. Only a year.
Well, I ain't cared none for nobody since -- only you, girlie."

He touched the packet with his forefinger:

"If I step out, that's yours. But I ain't a-going to step out. Put it
with the hootch. You know how to move that keystone?"

"Yes, dad."

"And watch out that no game protector and none of that damn
millionaire's wardens see you in the woods. No, nor none o' these here
fancy State Troopers. You gotta watch out _this_ time, Eve. It means
everything to us -- to you, girlie -- and to me. Go tip-toe. Lay low,
coming and going. Take a rifle."

Eve ran to her bed-room and returned with her Winchester and belt.

"You shoot to kill," said Clinch grimly, "if anyone wants to stop you.
But lay low and you won't need to shoot nobody, girlie. G'wan out the
back way; Hal's in the ice house."

* * * * *

II

Slim and straight as a young boy in her grey shirt and breeches, Eve
continued on lightly through the woods, her rifle over her shoulder, her
eyes of gentian-blue always alert.

The morning turned warm; she pulled off her soft felt hat, shook out her
clipped curls, stripped open the shirt at where her snowy throat where
sweat glimmered like melted frost.

The forest was lovely in the morning sunlight -- lovely and still --
save for the blue-jays -- for the summer birds had gone and only birds
destined to a long Northern winter remained.

Now and then, ahead of her, she saw a ruffed grouse wandering in the
trail. These, and a single tiny grey bird with a dreary note
interminably repeated, were the only living things she saw except here
and there a summer-battered butterfly of the Vanessa tribe flitting in
some stray sunbeam.

The haunting odour of the late autumn was in the air -- delicately acrid
-- the scent of frost-killed brake and ripening wild grasses, of
brilliant dead leaves and black forest loam pungent with mast from beech
and oak.

Eve's treat was light on the moist trail; her quick eyes missed nothing
-- not the dainty imprint of deer, fresh made, nor the sprawling
insignia of rambling raccoons -- nor the big barred owl huddled on a
pine limb overhead, nor, where the swift gravelly reaches of the brook
caught sunlight, did she miss