"No."
"Nor will anything else. He's mean as a mink and crafty as a shot-stung mallard. He'll find a way to get into your back sloughs and eddys; a shallow-draft boat light enough to carry will take him there. He won't be stopped as long as he scents money in the offing."
Andy said grimly, "I could meet him, explain that he was to stay out of the swamp and back it up with fists."
"Do that and you're in trouble," Joe Wilson pointed out. "Luke wouldn't fight back. But he would gallop that horse of his all the way into town and swear out an assault warrant. It'd be you, not Luke, whom the State Police would bring in."
"If he was caught with muskrat pelts, wouldn't it be proof that he stole them from me?"
Joe Wilson shrugged. "There's two hundred miles of streams and fifty different ponds back in those hills, and the trapping season is open to anyone with a license. Luke could, and would, say he took his pelts elsewhere."
"There are no muskrats anywhere except in my swamp."
"Do you know every pond and every foot of stream?"
"Of course not."
"Then how would you expect to convince a judge or justice? One muskrat pelt looks exactly like another; there's nothing special to mark yours."