"Don't you be too loose with your threats, Rufe," sang out Preston, the foreman. "If anything happens over here on the island—any of Mr. Tingley's property is destroyed—we'll know who to look to for damages."
"Yah!" snarled Blent, and drove away.
The fact remained, however, that, for the time being at least, Rufus Blent was master of the situation.
CHAPTER XX
THE FISHING PARTY
Ruth felt so unhappy she wept openly. It seemed too bad that Jerry Sheming should be taken away to the mainland a prisoner.
"They'll find some way of driving him out of this country again," remarked Preston, the foreman. "You don't know Blent, Mr. Tingley, as well as the rest of us do. Other city men have come up here and bucked against him in times past—and they were sorry before they got through."
"What do you mean?" demanded the angry owner of Cliff Island.
"Blent can hire those fellows from the lumber camps, and some of the guides, to do his dirty work. That's all I've got to say. Hunting camps have burned down in these woods before now," observed the foreman, significantly.