"Might be, but probably ain't."
Possibly Gus was right. Stud had an uneasy feeling that a man by the name of Joe Valentine was living in the lodge, trapping perhaps, catching fish, stealing a few chickens.
Stud had heard of Joe Valentine from Timothy Halleck who in tracing Early Ann's claim to the Horicon farm had run across Joe's trail. Later Early Ann herself had admitted the existence of this stepfather, and had confessed to Stud that it was Joe who had been annoying her. She told Stud something of her early life, her days with Joe and her mother in the shack near Rockford, Illinois, her mother's death, and her flight from her stepfather.
She said she had been ashamed of Joe, of his treatment of her mother, and of his attitude toward her. She had wanted to forget the past, to live where no one would know that she was the illegitimate child of Bung Sherman, or the stepdaughter of Joe Valentine.
Stud thought of Joe as more of a nuisance than a menace. Nevertheless he was determined to investigate his new neighbor on Lake House Point.
Other matters intervened. Ulysses S. Grant had acquired a taste for chicken, and almost every unlucky fowl who got into his pen was caught by the wily boar and eaten alive. Stud had to put chicken wire outside the planks of the boar's pen to save Sarah's flock from destruction.
Then there was the problem of Peter and Maxine Larabee. Stud was of the opinion that the boy would never be a man until he learned the facts of life first-hand, but Sarah was worrying herself into another nervous breakdown. Stud made a futile trip to town. Peter was belligerent and uncommunicative. Stud was outwardly bellicose but secretly sympathetic. The net result was a widened breach between father and son, although Stanley led Sarah to believe that he had put some sense into the boy's head.
Brailsford had momentarily forgotten his plan to investigate the old hunting lodge when one morning—the day before Thanksgiving—he found a man setting a trap at the end of a hollow log just out of sight of the house over the crest of Cottonwood Hill.
"Trying to catch one of my 'coons?" Stud asked amiably.
The man whirled to face him, his hand on his sheath knife.