"But I don't," insisted Blount good-naturedly. "So far as I know, there is only one of me--on Lost River or anywhere else." "That'll do for you; it ain't your put-in, nohow," was the gruff decision of the court; but Blount was too good a lawyer to be silenced thus easily. "Perhaps you might not especially regret killing the wrong man, but in the present case I am very sure I should," he went on. And then: "Are you quite sure you've got the right man?" "The boss knows who you are--that's enough for us." "The boss?" questioned Blount. "Yas, I said the boss; now hold your jaw!" Blount caught at the word. In a flash the talk with Gantry on the veranda of the Winnebasset Club flicked into his mind. "There is only one boss in this State," he countered coolly. "And I am very sure he hasn't given you orders to kill me." "What's that?" demanded the spokesman. Blount repeated his assertion, adding jocularly: "Perhaps you'd better call up headquarters and ask your boss if he wants you to kill the son of his boss." At this the gun-holder came around the fire to stand before his prisoner. "Say, pal--this ain't my night for kiddin', and it hadn't ort to be your'n," he remarked grimly. "The boss didn't say you was to be rubbed out--they never do. But I reckon it would save a heap o' trouble if you _was_ rubbed out." "On the contrary, I'm inclined to think it would make a heap of trouble--for you and your friends, and quite probably for the man or men who sent you to waylay me. But, apart from all that, you've got hold of the wrong man, as I told you a moment ago." "No, by grapples! I hain't. I saw you in daylight. If there's been any fumblin' done, I hain't done it. So you see it ain't any o' my funeral." "Think not?" said Blount. "I know it ain't. Orders is orders, and you don't git over into them woods on Upper Lost Creek with no papers to serve on nobody: see?" It was just here that the light of complete understanding dawned upon Blount; and with it came the disconcerting chill of a conviction overthrown. As a theorist he had always scoffed at the idea that a corporation, which is a creature of the law, could afford to be an open law-breaker. But here was a very striking refutation of the charitable assumption. His smoking-room companion of the Pullman car was doubtless one of the timber-pillagers who had been cutting on the public domain. To such a man an agent of the National Forest Service was an enemy to be hoodwinked, if possible, or, in the last resort, to be disposed of as expeditiously as might be, and Blount saw that he had only himself to blame for his present predicament, since he had allowed the man to believe that he was a Government emissary. Having this clew to the mystery, his course was a little easier to steer.