Lefty Howe’s wife was at the camp now, on one of her occasional visits.  Howe was going across the lake one afternoon to see a Siwash whom he had engaged to catch and smoke a winter’s supply of salmon for the camps.  Mrs. Howe told Stella, and on impulse Stella bundled Jack Junior into warm clothing and went with them for the ride.

Halfway across the six-mile span she happened to look back, and a new mark upon the western shore caught her eye.  She found a glass and leveled it on the spot.  Two or three buildings, typical logging-camp shacks of split cedar, rose back from the beach.  Behind these again the beginnings of a cut had eaten a hole in the forest,—­a slashing different from the ordinary logging slash, for it ran narrowly, straight back through the timber; whereas the first thing a logger does is to cut all the merchantable timber he can reach on his limit without moving his donkey from the water.  It was not more than two miles from their house.

“What new camp is that?” she asked Howe.

“Monohan’s,” he answered casually.

“I thought Jack owned all the shore timber to Medicine Point?” she said.

Howe shook his head.

“Uh-uh.  Well, he does too, all but where that camp is.  Monohan’s got a freak limit in there.  It’s half a mile wide and two miles straight back from the beach.  Lays between our holdin’s like the ham in a sandwich.  Only,” he added thoughtfully, “it’s a blame thin piece uh ham.  About the poorest timber in a long stretch.  I dunno why the Sam Hill he’s cuttin’ it.  But then he’s doin’ a lot uh things no practical logger would do.”

Stella laid down the glasses.  It was nothing to her, she told herself.  She had seen Monohan only once since the day Fyfe choked him, and then only to exchange the barest civilities—­and to feel her heart flutter at the message his eyes telegraphed.

When she returned from the launch trip, Fyfe was home, and Charlie Benton with him.  She crossed the heavy rugs on the living room floor noiselessly in her overshoes, carrying Jack Junior asleep in her arms.  And so in passing the door of Fyfe’s den, she heard her brother say: 

“But, good Lord, you don’t suppose he’ll be sap-head enough to try such fool stunts as that?  He couldn’t make it stick, and he brings himself within the law first crack; and the most he could do would be to annoy you.”

“You underestimate Monohan,” Fyfe returned.  “He’ll play safe, personally, so far as the law goes.  He’s foxy.  I advise you to sell if the offer comes again.  If you make any more breaks at him, he’ll figure some way to get you.  It isn’t your fight, you know.  You unfortunately happen to be in the road.”