"Trouble for Clinch means sorrow for you," he said. "I don't want you to be unhappy. I bear Clinch no ill will. For this reason I ask him, and I ask you too, to stand clear of this affair.
"Hal Smith is wanted. I'm here to take him."
As she said nothing, he looked down at the foot-print in the sphagnum. Then his eyes moved to the next imprint; to the next. Then he moved slowly along the water's edge, tracking the course of the man he was following.
The girl watched him in silence until the plain trail led him to the spruce thicket.
"Don't go in there!" she said sharply, with an odd tremor in her voice.
He turned and looked at her, then stepped calmly into the thicket. And the next instant she was among the spruces, too, confronting him with her rifle.
"Get out of these woods!" she said.
He looked into the girl's deathly white face.
"Eve," he said, "it will go hard with you if you kill me, I don't want you to live out your life in prison."
"I can't help it. If you send my father to prison he'll die. I'd rather die myself. Let us alone, I tell you! The man you're after is nothing to us. We didn't know he had stuck up anybody!"