Turge Calhoun, a dwarfed, fleshless little man who looked as though he had been long hung upon a nail to dry, looked up with interest. Then he broke out into uncanny laughter--a piercing falsetto. “Turge--he knows Bud,” nodded Ingram phlegmatically. Howe attended to his business inside and went back home frankly disturbed. It was clear enough that this group, while not actually hostile to Allston, looked forward with considerable pleasant anticipation to a second run-in between him and Bud. They intended to go even further--as far as it was possible by innuendo and goading they would spur Bud on. There was both amusement and excitement in the situation--just as in a cock or a dog fight. They were no more apt to consider consequences than Bud was--less, in view of the fact that they themselves were not in danger. Anxious as Howe was, he felt quite helpless. He knew there was no authority of the law he could invoke. Officers are powerless until after a crime is committed. Moreover, it is doubtful if he would find local officials sympathetic, anyway. It was even more doubtful if he himself was in sympathy with any such method of procedure. Difficulties of this nature could not be settled by law. Allston would be the last man in the world to listen to such a proposal. Obviously the simplest way out, if it could be managed, would be to place the two men beyond reach of one another. But it was as much out of the question to think of shifting Bud Childers as it was Green Mountain or Big Laurel Cove or Caterpillar Ridge. As for moving Allston out of danger, it seemed equally impossible except by resorting to some ruse. This course was as distinctly against Howe’s own nature as he knew it would be against that of his guest. Howe did not repeat his conversation with Daddie Ingram either to his daughter or to Allston. To do so would be only to frighten the former and rouse, possibly to aggressive action, the latter. But he did persuade Allston to keep his automatic always in his pocket and to make sure it was loaded. “Don’t pop away at any more squirrels,” he warned. “If you do, reload. You’ll need a full hand the next time you call that man.” Allston heeded the advice, although even now he was by no means convinced that any such precaution was necessary. However, he had toted a gun so much during the past two years that he found it no great burden and this was an easy way to please his host. And Allston was anxious, in every way, to please him. He felt, each day, under a greater obligation. He had prolonged his visit with these amiable people far beyond the limits the happy chance of his accidental introduction to them warranted. And yet he stayed on, for every time he suggested that he was straining his welcome he was met by such a genuine protest from both father and daughter that he found it easy to drift back into inaction.