"
"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 as
expeditiously as might be, and Blount saw that he had only himself to
blame for his present predicament, since he had allowed the man to
believe that he was a Government emissary.
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