“Poor little gaffer! Some one ought to have taken her away from ’em. But it’s hard to get folks interested in even a pretty posy when it grows in a skunk-cabbage patch.”
He looked away, embarrassed that any man should see emotion on his face, and uttered a prompt exclamation.
Threading their way in single file among the blackened stumps that bordered the Tomah trail to the north came a half-dozen men.
“That’s Bennett Rodliff ahead, and he’s the high sheriff of this county,” growled the old man. “There’s two deputies and two game-wardens with him—and old Pulaski Britt bringin’ up in the rear. Knowin’ them pretty well, I should say that it spells t-r-u-b-l-e, in jest six letters. I ain’t a great hand to guess, Mr. Wade, but if some one was to ask me quick, I should say it was the same old checker-game that the Skeets and Bushees have been playin’ for all these years, and that it’s their turn to move.”
CHAPTER VIII
THE TORCH, AND THE LIGHTING OF IT
“We know how to riffle a log jam apart,
Though it’s tangled and twisted and turned;
But the love of a woman and ways of the heart
Are things that we never learned.”
—Leeboomook Song.