"Did they give any names?" asked Smith.
"You bet. The stout, dark man calls himself Hongri Picket. French, I guess. The fat beak is a fella names Sard. Sanchez is the guy with a face like a Canada priest — Jose Sanchez — or something on that style. And then the yellow skinned young man is Nichole Salzar; the Britisher, Harry Beck; and that good lookin' dark gent with a little black Charlie Chaplin, he's Victor Georgiades."
"What are those foreigners doing in the North Woods, Clinch?" enquired
Smith.
"Oh, they all give the same spiel — hire out in a lumber camp. But they ain't no lumberjacks," added Clinch contemptuously. I don't know what they be — hootch runners maybe — or booze bandits — or they done something crooked som'ers r'other. It's safe to serve 'em drinks."
Clinch himself had been drinking. He always drank when preparing to cook.
He turned and went into the kitchen now, rolling up his shirt sleeves and relighting his clay pipe.
* * * * *
IV
By nine o'clock the noisy chicken supper had ended; the table had been cleared; Jim Hastings was tuning his fiddle in the big room; Eve had seated herself before the battered melodeon.
"Ladies and gents," said Clinch in his clear, pleasant voice, which carried through the hubbub, "we're going to have dance — thanks and beholden to Jim Hastings and my daughter Eve. Eve, she don't drink and she don't dance, so no use askin' and no hard feelin' toward nobody.