"Could be a heap given a man ketches enough of 'em. How many you got all told?"
"Not enough to start trapping."
"The hills is full of talk 'bout how you've turned your no-count swamp into a mushrat farm. They's talk 'bout how you aim to get rich off mushrat pelts."
"Nobody's going to get rich. And anybody who traps any muskrats before I give the word, or without my permission, will be in trouble."
"Oh, sure. Sure 'nough. But I've already said I don't aim to bother 'em none."
Andy said shortly, "That's a good idea. I'll be seeing you, Luke."
"Yep. I'll be 'round."
The lean hillman drifted away as silently as he had come and Andy cast his baited hook. But his thoughts were troubled ones.
He had hoped to keep his muskrat ranch a secret, but he should have known the impossibility of that. Only he knew all the safe paths through the swamp, but Luke Trull, the Haroldsons and the Casmans knew some of them. Frequently they came to fish in some favored slough or other. Somebody must have seen a colony of muskrats—perhaps they'd stumbled across Four-Leaf and Clover and their family—and it hadn't been hard to piece the rest of the story together. Probably Johnny Linger, the express agent, hadn't talked to any hillman. But Johnny had friends in town to whom he might have talked, his friends had friends, and by the time enough people knew the story, it could easily get back to the hill dwellers.
Andy was so absorbed with this new problem that he was entirely unaware of the fact that his cork bobber had disappeared. He yanked the pole, missed his strike and strung another worm on the stripped hook. He might post his swamp against trespassers. Not that trespass signs had ever kept a single Casman, Haroldson—or especially a Trull—from going where he wished to go but at the very least they'd be evidence that he had acted in his own behalf. But trespass signs or not, there was going to be trouble in plenty if human predators started raiding his muskrats and trouble was always better avoided.