* * * * *
I
Mike Clinch regarded the jewels taken from Jose Quintana as legitimate loot acquired in war. He was prepared to kill anybody who attempted to take the gems from him.
At the very possibility his ruling passion blazed — his mania to make of Eve Strayer a grand lady.
But now, what he had feared for years had happened. Quintana had found him, — Quintana, after all these years, had discovered the identity and dwelling place of the obscure American soldier who had robbed him in the wash-room of a Paris cafe. And Quintana was now in America, here in this very wilderness, tracking the man who had despoiled him.
* * * * *
Clinch, in his shirt-sleeves, carrying a rifle, came out on the log veranda and sat down to think it over.
He began to realise that he was likely to have trouble with a man as cold-blooded and as dogged as himself.
Nor did he doubt that those with Quintana were desperate men.
On whom could he count? On nobody unless he paid their hire. None among the lawless men who haunted his backwoods "hotel" at Star Pond would lift a finger to help him. Almost any among them would have robbed him, — murdered him, probably, — if it were known that the jewels were hidden in the house.