“Damned if I do,” Benton swore.  “I’m all in the clear.  There’s no way he can get me, and I’ll tell him what I think of him again if he gives me half a chance.  I never liked him, anyhow.  Why should I sell when I’m just getting in real good shape to take that timber out myself?  Why, I can make a hundred thousand dollars in the next five years on that block of timber.  Besides, without being a sentimental sort of beggar, I don’t lose sight of the fact that you helped pull me out of a hole when I sure needed a pull.  And I don’t like his high-handed style.  No, if it comes to a showdown, I’m with you, Jack, as far as I can go.  What the hell can he do?”

“Nothing—­that I can see.”  Fyfe laughed unpleasantly.  “But he’ll try.  He has dollars to our cents.  He could throw everything he’s got on Roaring Lake into the discard and still have forty thousand a year fixed income.  Sabe?  Money does more than talk in this country.  I think I’ll pull that camp off the Tyee.”

“Well, maybe,” Benton said.  “I’m not sure—­”

Stella passed on.  She wanted to hear, but it went against her grain to eavesdrop.  Her pause had been purely involuntary.  When she became conscious that she was eagerly drinking in each word, she hurried by.

Her mind was one urgent question mark while she laid the sleeping youngster in his bed and removed her heavy clothes.  What sort of hostilities did Monohan threaten?  Had he let a hopeless love turn to the acid of hate for the man who nominally possessed her?  Stella could scarcely credit that.  It was too much at variance with her idealistic conception of the man.  He would never have recourse to such littleness.  Still, the biting contempt in Fyfe’s voice when he said to Benton:  “You underestimate Monohan.  He’ll play safe ... he’s foxy.”  That stung her to the quick.  That was not said for her benefit; it was Fyfe’s profound conviction.  Based on what?  He did not form judgments on momentary impulse.  She recalled that only in the most indirect way had he ever passed criticism on Monohan, and then it lay mostly in a tone, suggested more than spoken.  Yet he knew Monohan, had known him for years.  They had clashed long before she was a factor in their lives.

When she went into the big room, Benton and Fyfe were gone outdoors.  She glanced into Fyfe’s den.  It was empty, but a big blue-print unrolled on the table where the two had been seated caught her eye.  She bent over it, drawn by the lettered squares along the wavy shore line and the marked waters of creeks she knew.

She had never before possessed a comprehensive idea of the various timber holdings along the west shore of Roaring Lake, since it had not been a matter of particular interest to her.  She was not sure why it now became a matter of interest to her, unless it was an impression that over these squares and oblongs which stood for thousands upon thousands of merchantable logs there was already shaping a struggle, a clash of iron wills and determined purposes directly involving, perhaps arising because of her.