All this Jim White knew, and it was the propelling factor that had sent him to the deep woods.  His sentiments conflicted with duty.  Guilty as Lawson was, the sheriff liked him better than he did Martin and he meant, should he come across Burke in “the sticks,” to take him off for a bear hunt and some good advice.  Thus he would justify his conscience and legal duties.  But White, strange to say, was as ignorant as Truedale was of an element that had entered into conditions.  It had never occurred to Jim to announce or explain his visitor’s arrival.  To Pine Cone a “furriner” aroused at best but a superficial interest and, since Truedale had arrived, unseen, at night, why mention him to a community that could not possibly have anything in common with him?  So it was that Greyson and a few others, noting Truedale at a distance and losing sight of him at once, concluded that he was Burke, back and in hiding; and a growing but stealthy excitement was in the air.  He was supposed by both factions to be with the sheriff, and feeling ran high.  In the final estimate, could White have known it, he himself held no small part!

Beloved and hated, Lawson divided the community for and against himself about equally.  There were those who defended and swore they would kill any who harmed the young outlaw—­he was of the jovial, dare-devil type and as loyal to his friends as he was unyielding to his foes.  Others declared that the desperado must be “finished”; the trap disagreement was but the last of a long list of crimes; it was time to put a quietus on one who refused to fall into line—­who called the sheriff his friend and had been known to hobnob with revenue men!  That, perhaps, was the blackest deed to be attributed to any native.

So all Pine Cone was on the war path and Truedale, heedless and unaware, took his air and exercise at his peril.

The men of the hills had a clear case now, since Peter Greyson had given his evidence, which, by the way, became more conclusive hour by hour as imagination, intoxication, and the delight of finding himself important, grew upon Greyson.

“Jim told me,” Peter had confided to Jed Martin, “that he was going to get a posse from way-back and round Lawson up.”

This was wholly false.  White never took any one into his business secrets, least of all Greyson for whom he had deep contempt.  “But I don’t call that clean to us-all, Jed.  We don’t want strangers to catch Burke; we don’t want them to—­to string him up or shoot him full of holes; what we-all want is to force White to hand him over to justice, give him a fair trial, and then send him to one of them prison traps to eat his soul out behind bars.  Jed—­just you shut your eyes and see Burke Lawson behind bars—­eating sop from a pan, drinking prison water—­just you call that picture up.”

Jed endeavoured to do so and it grew upon his imagination.

“We-all wants to trail him,” Greyson continued, “we don’t want to give him a free passage to Kingdom-Come by rope or shot—­we-all want prison for Lawson, prison!”