“Oh, I don’t guess he did that,” Morse, Senior, said lightly.  “We got to remember that times are changin’, West.  Law’s comin’ into the country an’ we old-timers oughta meet it halfway with the glad hand.  You can’t buck the Union Jack any more than you could Uncle Sam.  I figure I’ve sent my last shipment of liquor across the line.”

“Scared, are you?” sneered the trail boss.

“Maybe I am.  Reckon I’m too old to play the smuggler’s game.  And I’ve got a hankerin’ for respectability—­want the firm to stand well with the new settlers.  Legitimate business from now on.  That’s our motto, boys.”

“What church you been j’inin’, C.N.?”

“Well, maybe it’ll come to that too.  Think I’d make a good deacon?” the merchant asked amiably, untwining his legs and rising to stretch.

West slammed a big fist on the table so that the inkwell and the pens jumped.  “All I got to say is that this new Sunday-school outfit you aim to run won’t have no use for a he-man.  I’m quittin’ you right now.”

The foreman made the threat as a bluff.  He was the most surprised man in Montana when his employer called it quietly, speaking still in the slow, nasal voice of perfect good-nature.

“Maybe you’re right, West.  That’s for you to say, of course.  You know your own business best.  Figure out your time an’ I’ll have Benson write you a check.  Hope you find a good job.”

The sense of baffled anger in West foamed up.  His head dropped down and forward threateningly.

“You do, eh?  Lemme tell you this, C.N.  I don’t ask no odds of you or any other guy.  Jes’ because you’re the head of a big outfit you can’t run on me.  I won’t stand for it a minute.”

“Of course not.  I’d know better’n to try that with you.  No hard feelings even if you quit us.”  It was a characteristic of the New Englander that while he was a forceful figure in this man’s country, he rarely quarreled with any one.

“That so?  Well, you listen here.  I been layin’ off that new pardner of yours because he’s yore kin.  Not anymore.  Different now.  He’s liable to have a heluva time an’ don’t you forget it for a minute.”

The fur-trader chewed his cud imperturbably.  When he spoke it Was still without a trace of acrimony.

“Guess you’ll think better of that maybe, West.  Guess you’re a little hot under the collar, ain’t you?  Don’t hardly pay to hold grudges, does it?  There was Rhinegoldt now.  Kept nursin’ his wrongs an’ finally landed in the pen.  Bad medicine, looks like to me.”

West was no imbecile.  He understood the threat underneath the suave words of the storekeeper.  Rhinegoldt had gone to the penitentiary because C.N.  Morse had willed it so.  The inference was that another lawbreaker might go for the same reason.  The trail boss knew that this was no idle threat.  Morse could put him behind the bars any time he chose.  The evidence was in his hands.