Mike Clinch regarded the jewels taken from Jose Quintana as legitimate loot acquired in war. He was prepared to kill anybody who attempted to take the gems from him.
At the very possibility his ruling passion blazed -- his mania to make of Eve Strayer a grand lady.
But now, what he had feared for years had happened. Quintana had found him, -- Quintana, after all these years, had discovered the identity and dwelling place of the obscure American soldier who had robbed him in the wash-room of a Paris cafe. And Quintana was now in America, here in this very wilderness, tracking the man who had despoiled him.
* * * * *
Clinch, in his shirt-sleeves, carrying a rifle, came out on the log veranda and sat down to think it over.
He began to realise that he was likely to have trouble with a man as cold-blooded and as dogged as himself.
Nor did he doubt that those with Quintana were desperate men.
On whom could he count? On nobody unless he paid their hire. None among the lawless men who haunted his backwoods "hotel" at Star Pond would lift a finger to help him. Almost any among them would have robbed him, -- murdered him, probably, -- if it were known that the jewels were hidden in the house.
He could not trust Jake Kloon; Leverett was as treacherous as only a born coward can be; Sid Hone, Harvey Chase, Blommers, Byron Hastings, -- he knew them all too well to trust them, -- a sullen, unscrupulous pack, partly cowardly, always fierce, -- as are any creatures that live furtively, feed only by their wits, and slink through life just outside the frontiers of law.
And yet, one of this gang had stood by him -- Hal Smith -- the man he himself had been about to slay.
Clinch got up from the bench where he had been sitting and walked down to the pond where Hal Smith sat cleaning trout.
"Hal," he said, "I been figuring some. Quintana don't dare call in the constables. I can't afford to. Quintana and I've got to settle this on our own."
Smith slit open a ten-inch trout, stripped it, flung the entrails out into the pond, soused the fish in water, and threw it into a milk pan.
"Whose jewels were they in the beginning?" he enquired carelessly.
"How do I know?"
"If you ever found out----"
"I don't want to. I got them in the way, anyway. And it don't make no difference how I got 'em; Eve's going to be a lady if I go to the chair for it. So that's that."