“Have you posted signs, warning trespassers to keep off?” questioned Rodney. “We didn’t see any.”
“Nun-nary one,” put in Phil.
“If you had,” flung back the angry fellow, “I don’t s’pose you’d paid no ’tention to them, or else you’d ripped ’em down.”
“But you haven’t put up any such signs?” persisted Grant.
“That don’t make no difference at all,” declared the stranger, coming out from behind the alders and revealing a lean, muscular figure, with slightly stooped shoulders. “You hadn’t no right to fish here till you found out.”
“We were told we could fish anywhere on the lake or around it.”
“Who told ye that?”
“Herman Duckelstein.”
“That thick-headed old Dutchman? He don’t know nothin’. I’ve had to near punch the head off his pie-faced boy to keep him in his place.”
With calm, keen eyes the Texan took the measure of the arrogant stranger, betraying no symptom of alarm, a fact which seemed to increase the fellow’s irritation.