"The Boot-leg Express is a day late," replied Clinch, with cold humour.
Around the table ran an odd sound — a company of catamounts feeding might have made such a noise — if catamounts ever laugh.
"How's the fur market, Jake?" inquired Lannis, pouring gravy over his mashed potato.
Kloon quoted prices with an oath.
A mean-visaged young man named Leverett complained of the price of traps.
"What do you care?" inquired Lannis genially. "The other man pays. What are you kicking about, anyway? It wasn't so long ago that muskrats were ten cents."
The trooper's good-humoured intimation that Earl Leverett took fur in other men's traps was not lost on the company. Leverett's fox visage reddened; Jake Kloon, who had only one eye, glared at the State Trooper but said nothing.
Clinch's pale gaze met the trooper's smiling one: "The jays and squirrels talk too," he said slowly. "It don't mean anything. Only the show-down counts."
"You're quite right, Clinch. The show-down is what we pay to see. But talk is the tune the orchestra plays before the curtain rises."
Stormont had finished dinner. He heard a low, charming voice from behind his chair: