Stud had heard of Joe Valentine from Timothy Halleck who in tracing Early Ann's claim to the Horicon farm had run across Joe's trail. Later Early Ann herself had admitted the existence of this stepfather, and had confessed to Stud that it was Joe who had been annoying her. She told Stud something of her early life, her days with Joe and her mother in the shack near Rockford, Illinois, her mother's death, and her flight from her stepfather. She said she had been ashamed of Joe, of his treatment of her mother, and of his attitude toward _her_. She had wanted to forget the past, to live where no one would know that she was the illegitimate child of Bung Sherman, or the stepdaughter of Joe Valentine. Stud thought of Joe as more of a nuisance than a menace. Nevertheless he was determined to investigate his new neighbor on Lake House Point. Other matters intervened. Ulysses S. Grant had acquired a taste for chicken, and almost every unlucky fowl who got into his pen was caught by the wily boar and eaten alive. Stud had to put chicken wire outside the planks of the boar's pen to save Sarah's flock from destruction. Then there was the problem of Peter and Maxine Larabee. Stud was of the opinion that the boy would never be a man until he learned the facts of life first-hand, but Sarah was worrying herself into another nervous breakdown. Stud made a futile trip to town. Peter was belligerent and uncommunicative. Stud was outwardly bellicose but secretly sympathetic. The net result was a widened breach between father and son, although Stanley led Sarah to believe that he had put some sense into the boy's head. Brailsford had momentarily forgotten his plan to investigate the old hunting lodge when one morning--the day before Thanksgiving--he found a man setting a trap at the end of a hollow log just out of sight of the house over the crest of Cottonwood Hill. "Trying to catch one of my 'coons?" Stud asked amiably. The man whirled to face him, his hand on his sheath knife. "Nothing to fight about," said Stud. "What's your name?" "Joe Valentine." "You ain't the fellow who's moved in over on the Point?" "That's my business," said Joe. "I'll make it my business. You been prowling around here quite a bit lately." "I got a right to catch my living," said Joe. Every night he looked across the bay at the glowing windows of the Brailsford farm, thought of his stepdaughter over there, all the good things to eat. "I got a right," he said. "I got a right to run you off my land." "You ain't got a right to Early Ann." "Get off my place before I get mad," Stud said. He had his womenfolks and cattle to think about. Joe whipped out his knife and prepared to spring. Like sticking a pig, he thought. Like the time his father killed his kitten with a butcher knife. He had buried the cat and put flowers on its grave. After a few days he dug it up to see if it had gone to heaven.