“Gone where?” asked Joe coldly.
“MacNutt knows where!” asserted Rough Shan with an oath. “This is the second time. I’m goin’ to find them, an’ when I do——”
“What’ll ye do?” demanded Haggarty truculently. “It is the likes of you can come over here an’ say——”
“Dry up, Haggarty!” Joe commanded shortly. “Now, look here, Mr. McCane, we haven’t got your logs.”
“But ye have,” Rough Shan proclaimed loudly. “I know the dirty tricks of ye. That’s stealin’—stealin’, d’ye mind, young felly? I want them logs an’ I want ’em quick, drawed over an’ decked on our skidways an’ no words about it. As it is, I’m a good mind to run ye out o’ the woods.”
Joe’s temper began to boil. Here was an elemental condition confronting him. Rough Shan was big and hard and tough, but he was not much awed. To him the big lumber jack was not more formidable than any one of a score of husky young giants who had done their several and collective bests to break his neck on the football field, and he was not inclined to take any further gratuitous abuse.
“What makes you think we took your logs?” he asked.
“Who else could ’a’ done it?” demanded Rough Shan with elemental logic.
“You might have done it yourself,” Joe told him. “Now, you listen to me for a minute and keep a civil tongue in your head. You’re trying to make trouble for us, and I know it, and I know who is behind you. If you want a row you can have it, now or any old time. You won’t run anybody out of the woods. As for the logs, you know what MacNutt told you. Still, if you can prove ownership of any, satisfactorily to me, you may haul them back with the team you hauled them in with. But, mind you, this is the last time. The trick is stale, and you mustn’t play it again.”
“I’ll find them an’ then I’ll talk to you,” said Rough Shan with contempt. “Come on, Mike.” He made for the nearest skidway.