The waiter continued, "I've heard that it's as much as a man's life is worth to go into those hills alone at night."
"Oh, don't talk like a fool!" Andy snapped.
"I was just being civil," the waiter retorted sulkily.
The man left and Andy was alone with his dinner and his thoughts. He nibbled listlessly at the food. The waiter exemplified the town's attitude; hillmen would fight over anything, even worthless muskrats in a worthless swamp. In their opinion, it was a small thing, and not a project upon which a man hoped to build a career and a life.
Out of the dim past, ghosts came to haunt Andy. He saw again the men of the Gates clan, the older men who had asked neither favors nor assistance from anyone. They had settled their own problems in their own way or died trying, and if they died, no survivor had ever looked to the law for redress.
Andy forced the ghosts from his mind. Their ways had suited their times, but there were different times. Nobody could be his own law, and taking the law into one's own hands could lead only to disaster. Besides, the boy thought, he must not borrow trouble. Luke Trull had not yet raided his muskrats, and at least as much as anything else, his own hot-headedness was responsible for his present predicament. Andy went to sleep.
The next morning, two hours after breakfast, a State Policeman came to unlock the cell. It was not the young trooper but an older, hardened man who looked at Andy with no more personal interest than a scientist wastes on a specimen.
"Okeh." The trooper nodded toward the door. "You can go."
Andy walked through the open door, and from the cafe across the street two men stared curiously at him. He turned away, his face burning, and walked swiftly out of town. He had a sudden, vast need for the swamp and the things that were of the swamp. Somehow he felt that, when he was once again where he belonged, this would seem just another bad dream. He hurried along into the hills and when he came to the path leading to his place, half ran down it.