“So you near punched the head off Carl Duckelstein, did you?” said Grant, with a touch of scorn. “And I opine you’re two or three years older than he, while it’s right plain you’re much taller and stronger. You ought to be mighty proud of that performance. What’s your name?”
The eyes of the chap on the opposite bank glared still more fiercely, and his lips, drawn back a little, revealed some uneven snags in crying need of a toothbrush.
“That ain’t none of your business,” he retorted; “but I don’t mind tellin’ ye it’s Simpson—Jim Simpson. My father, Hank Simpson, owns this strip of land, sixty-three acres, running from the lake back to the main road, and we don’t propose to have no trespassers on it. Understand that. What fish there is in this brook we want for ourselves.”
“Where does your land begin? Where is the boundary on this side toward Pleasant Point?”
“That ain’t none of your business, either. Think I’m going to bother to tell you where the bound’ries are? You’re on our property, and you want to get off and stay off, I tell ye that. If ye don’t——” He lifted his clenched fist in a threatening gesture.
“Regular sus-scrapper, isn’t he?” chuckled Springer, who, stimulated by his companion’s example, had become outwardly cool and undisturbed.
As far as Rod was concerned, this calmness was all outward seeming, for beneath the surface his naturally belligerent disposition had been aroused by the threatening truculence and insolence of young Simpson.
“If you don’t tell us where your boundary line is,” said Rod, in that quiet way which Simpson mistook for timidity, “how are we going to know when we’re trespassing? We’re camping on Pleasant Point, and——”
“If you don’t come over this way you won’t do no trespassin’, and you’ll be likely to save yourselves a lot of trouble.”
“But what if we do come this way? What sort of trouble will we get into?”