The horse that had galloped from Three Points to Pieter's farm in order to bring news of Marta's misfortune was too spent to gallop back. Nor could he carry more than one man, even if he had not been spent. Ramsay, Pieter and Hans left horse and rider at the farm, while they started up the beach. For a short distance they stayed together. Then Ramsay, the youngest and best winded of the three, drew ahead.

A cold dread and a great fear gnawed at him as he alternately walked and trotted. Marta had become like a beloved sister to him, and the messenger carried no news except that she was injured. How or why, he had not said. Ramsay glanced back over his shoulder to see if his companions were keeping up with him, and discovered that they were lost in the mist. In any event the day would have been unpleasant. There was just the right weather combination to make it so—a hint of rain combined with warm air to drape the fog over everything. And there was no indication that anything would change. Somehow it seemed just the day to get bad news.

Ramsay lengthened out to trot again, and then increased his trot to a run. He was breathing hard, but far from exhausted, and with a little surprise he realized that he would not have been able to travel so far without halting, or so fast, when he first came to Wisconsin. A fisherman's life had toughened him immeasurably. Once more he slowed down and looked around to see if Pieter and Hans were in sight. They were not. He walked until he was rested, then trotted into Three Points.

As though there was something in the village that drove it back, the mist had not invaded there. It was on all sides so thick that the lake could not be seen and the trees were ghost shapes, half-concealed and half-disclosed. Most of Three Points was at work, but the few passers-by on the street glanced curiously at Ramsay as he swung past them. He saw the little black horse, tied to a hitching post in front of the general store.

He bounded up the wooden steps, pushed the door open and entered. Marta, the lower part of her left leg encased in a clean white bandage, was sitting on a chair. She turned astonished eyes on him. "Ramsay!"

"Are you all right?" he gasped.

"Why ... Of course, I'm all right!"

"You're not hurt?"

"A scratch!" She sniffed disdainfully. "Just a scratch! I stumbled when I stepped out of the cart. Ach! Such a clumsy one I was!"

The storekeeper's wife, obviously the one who had bandaged Marta's leg, smiled her reassurance. "It is not bad," she said.

"Oh!" Ramsay felt a moment's clumsiness because he could think of nothing to say, and again he exclaimed, "Oh!"

Panting hard, deep concern written on their faces, Hans and Pieter came into the store. Marta's surprised eyes opened still wider. "I thought you boys were fishing!"

"We—we had to come in for some more twine," Ramsay said somewhat lamely.

"Three of you?"

"Yaah," Hans, never slow to understand, smiled with affected laziness. "You know us men, Marta. There wouldn't one of us stay there and work while another was loafing in Three Points."

"That's right." Slow Pieter finally understood that there was more here than met the eye. "How'd you hurt yourself, Marta?"

The wondering gaze of the storekeeper and his wife were upon them now. Still puzzled, Marta glanced covertly at the three men. Ramsay looked at the storekeeper's wife.

"You should have sent somebody to tell us she was hurt."

"But," the storekeeper's wife was completely bewildered, "she is not hurt."

"What's the matter?" Marta seemed worried now.

"Nothing," Hans answered blandly. "Nothing at all. We just decided to have a holiday in Three Points."

"Go long!" Marta scoffed. "Men! They're bigger babies than babies are!"

"Be sure to bring us some twine," Hans said.

"Oh, sure. That I will do."

"Good."

All three men were smiling easily. But as soon as they left the store and were out of Marta's sight, the smiles faded and their faces became grim and intent.

"Who was the man who told us she was hurt?" Ramsay asked.

Pieter shook his head, and Hans said, "I never saw him before and I don't expect to see him again. Probably he was riding into Milwaukee anyway, and somebody gave him a dollar to report an accident."

Ramsay nodded. Hans, as usual, was logical and there could be only one answer. Somebody was indeed out to capture the fishing on Lake Michigan. They had started by destroying Baptiste's nets and now they were moving against Ramsay and his friends. But they knew well the prowess of the three and had no wish to strike while they were present. Marta's reported accident had been only a ruse to draw them away.

Ramsay started toward the sand beach, but Hans laid a restraining hand on his shoulder. "Wait!"

"We'd better get back and look to our nets."

"There is time, and we'd better not go blindly."

"What are we going to do?"

Hans said grimly, "Find the constable and ask him to accompany us. Then, if there is trouble, and I expect it, we will have the law with us rather than against us."

"Suppose the constable doesn't care to come along?"

"He'll come," Hans promised.

They strolled down the street, stopping in various places, until they found Jake Hillis, the constable Devil Chad had put in office, in the Lake House. The woman who had given Ramsay the steak and then made him wash dishes to pay for it, looked up and smiled. "Hello."

"Hi!" Ramsay grinned.

"You didn't run, after all."

"Nope. I didn't."

The constable, standing at the bar, turned around to face the three. He hooked both thumbs in his belt, letting his fingers dangle. His right hand, Ramsay could not help seeing, was not too far from the pistol that swung from his belt. There was no readable expression on his face, but the woman, who knew him well, went hastily into another room.

Flanked by Ramsay and Pieter, Hans walked directly up to the constable.

"We have something," he said softly, "that demands your attention."

"What is it?"

"It has to do with nets and a raid upon them."

"I got no authority over what happens on Lake Michigan."

"Nevertheless, we need a good, honest man of the law with us. And we will pay you well enough."

Jake Hillis shook his head. "I can't go off on any wild goose chases. My duty is to protect this town."

Hans' voice softened even more. "I am asking you again to come with us."

The constable's right thumb slipped from his belt and his hand dropped to the butt of the revolver. His fingers curled around it. As though by accident, Pieter stumbled forward. Strong enough to stop a bull in its tracks, Pieter wrapped his own steel fingers around the constable's right wrist, and when they disengaged the pistol was in Pieter's hand.

"Excuse me!" he said contritely. "I am so clumsy!"

"Well?" Hans inquired.

Jake Hillis looked from one to the other. He was like a drum which almost always must sound the cadence someone else beats. Strength was the only force he recognized, and now he saw himself surrounded by strong, determined men. For a moment he struggled with himself. Then "I'll go," he said.

Hans responded graciously, "Thank you. We knew that you would come as soon as you understood the reason in it."

"Here's your pistol." Pieter extended the weapon.

"I got to warn you," the constable pronounced, "that I am going to hold you responsible for anything that happens here while I am away. And I better tell you that I won't put up with any law-breaking."

"Good!" Hans said. "You are a conscientious man!"

The mist dipped and twisted about them as they started down the sand beach toward Pieter's farm. Ramsay tried to find answers to the many questions in his mind. Certainly somebody had lured them away from their fishing gear. Who had done so? Was Devil Chad involved? If so, why did Jake Hillis accompany them at all? Certainly the servant would not willingly provoke a fight with the master. If Devil Chad was the leader of the pirates, did he trust his minion so little that he had told him nothing?

Ramsay shrugged: they would have to wait and find out.

Reaching the farm, Pieter entered the house to get the shotgun and a pair of exquisitely carved pistols which Ramsay had never seen before. Dueling pistols, they looked like, and Ramsay glanced curiously at Pieter. The man was anything except stolid, yet he never spoke of his past and of what had really brought him across the Atlantic Ocean to this wild inland sea. Ramsay dismissed the thought. In this country it was often just as well to forget a man's past or that he had ever had a past.

Jake Hillis looked narrowly as Pieter handed Hans a pistol, kept one for himself and gave the shotgun to Ramsay. "I don't hold with shooting scrapes!" he said. "And I don't want any part of 'em!"

"There'll be none," Hans assured him, "unless we are shot at first."

They launched a pound boat, and Hans took the rower's seat. Jake Hillis sat beside Pieter and Ramsay crouched to one side. A shiver ran through him. The mist seemed to be settling in even more thickly; they had scarcely left the shore when they were unable to see it. From the top of the house, the bedraggled Captain Klaus squawked his protest at such weather.

Hans rowed swiftly but there was no trace of hesitation in his manner, and Ramsay marveled. The mist was heavy enough to cut visibility to almost nothing, but Hans steered as certainly as he would have on the sunniest of days. He seemed to know the lake so intimately that, no matter what happened, he could still find his way. They reached the first pound net, rowed around it. Ramsay sighed with relief.

If pirates had come to raid, they had not yet touched this net. Ramsay shifted his position, and Jake Hillis stirred uneasily. Then, almost beside the boat, the water rippled and the White Sturgeon surfaced for a moment. Nearly the color of the mist, he lay quietly on top of the water, then dived.

Hans' low laughter rippled. "We have a friend!" he said.

They were near the second pound net now, and Ramsay gripped his shotgun fiercely. He could see nothing, but something seemed to be present. It was a half-sensed threat, like an unseen tiger crouching in the darkness beside a campfire. They saw the spiles of the second pound net rising like a ghost's fingers. Slowly Hans started rowing around it.

Then Ramsay glanced behind him and snapped the shotgun to his shoulder. From shorewards another mist-wreathed craft appeared. It was a Mackinaw boat, like the Spray, and the men on her were only half seen in the heavy overcast. Ramsay breathed a warning, "Watch it!"

Hans let the boat drift and took the pistol in his hand. Almost carelessly, as though there was no hurry about anything at all, Pieter did likewise. Jake Hillis drew his breath sharply. The two boats came closer together, and Ramsay recognized Joe Mannis. There were also three nondescript loafers of the riff-raff type who are always found on any frontier and who will do anything for money. But Ramsay centered his gaze on the fifth man in the Mackinaw boat.

There could be no mistaking him, even in the mist. It was Devil Chad.

The other boat came nearer and was much easier to see. Ramsay felt a cold chill seize him. All the men in the boat were armed with shotguns, and they could sweep the pound boat from one end to the other if there was to be a fight. Ramsay glanced at Jake Hillis. The constable was sitting quietly, tense and strained, but he did not seem to be afraid.

Devil Chad's bellow blasted, "What are you doin' here?"

Ramsay heard Hans' low laugh and his quiet, "The man is most uncivil."

"Don't get smart with me!" Devil Chad threatened. "You come to rob our net, didn't you?"

Hans, surprised, made a momentary slip. "Your net?"

"Yes, our net! You come to rob it like you robbed all the rest!" Chad's expressionless eyes pierced Jake Hillis like daggers. "What are you doin' here?"

Hans answered calmly. "He is here as our guest, and at our invitation. Now let us hear some more about 'your' net."

"You know what I mean! Touch it an' we start shootin'!"

"But we haven't touched anything," Hans said smilingly. He turned to Jake Hillis. "Have we?"

Jake Hillis, too dull-witted for quick evasion, said, "No, you haven't."

Cold rage mounted within Ramsay. He swung his shotgun so that the muzzle centered squarely on Devil Chad. If it came to a gun battle, he decided grimly, his arch-enemy would at least be shot at.

Hans, unruffled, took command. "Where is your net? Show us."

"Right here."

Ramsay heard the mockery in Hans' voice. "And I suppose that it is a gill net?"

"How'd you know that?" Devil Chad challenged.

"I gazed into my crystal ball," Hans said smoothly, "and I discovered that, when one fisherman wishes to eliminate a competitor, he can always stretch a gill net across the tunnel of a pound net. There is certain to be a battle, and whoever survives controls the fishing."

Ramsay began to understand. Fishing on Lake Michigan was governed by no enforceable law but only by the ethics of the fishermen themselves. Most of them were ethical; when one found a good fishing ground, others usually respected his rights. But there was no law that said they had to respect them. Should one fisherman care to trespass on the rights of another, he could always find some way to provoke a quarrel. Then, regardless of anything else that happened, he could say that he was only trying to protect his property or claim in some other way that his was a just quarrel. Few people would be able to prove to the contrary.

Then a blue-and-white buoy, a marker used on a gill net, floated into sight. Hans saw it, too, and again his voice was mocking. "Is that the net you mean?"

There were subdued voices on the Mackinaw boat. Joe Mannis put his shotgun down and stepped to the bow of the boat with a gaff hook in his hand. He lay prone, stabbed with the gaff, and hooked the buoy. Foot by foot he reeled in thirty yards of tattered gill net. Hans' scornful laughter rolled like a barrel through the mist and bounded back in echoes. Ramsay, highly amused, echoed Hans.

"Find your other buoy!" Hans called. "Pull it in, take it home, and repair your gill net! But do not again set it on our fishing grounds!"

The Mackinaw boat floated into the mist. Ramsay saw the baffled rage on Devil Chad's face. But mostly he was aware of the contempt of Hans for Devil Chad.

"Here!" Hans called. "You're missing a man!" He turned to Jake Hillis. The constable glowered back, like a stupid horse.

"Want to swim over and join your little friends?" Hans invited.

"No."

"Well, we brought you out from the sand. We'll take you back to the sand."

Hans' shoulders were shaking with silent mirth as he bent his back to the pound boat's oars. He steered in to the pier they had built, and expertly nosed the boat in to its landing. A mist-draped wraith, Marta, awaited them. "What happened?" she queried anxiously.

"Nothing," Pieter assured her.

"A great deal," Hans corrected. "They caught the White Sturgeon, for no other fish in the lake could have wrecked a net so completely. I told you we have a friend."

He took a pouch from his pocket, counted five silver dollars from it, and dropped them into Jake Hillis' hand. Captain Klaus flew down from the house top to alight on Hans' shoulder. "Quark!" he squawked.

As though he understood perfectly, Hans said, "That is right, my little one." And to Jake Hillis he said, "If you see them, tell them not to come again."

Deliberately turning his back on the constable, Hans stared out over the lake. Then Jake Hillis was gone, and somehow it was as though he had never even been with them. Ramsay waited expectantly. Hans turned away from his intent study of the lake, and he was frowning as though there was some complicated problem which he must solve. Yet when he spoke, his voice betrayed nothing abnormal and there was no sign that he might have been under the least strain. "Perhaps it would be well not to fish again today. That is a shame, for the season draws to a close and we cannot fish much longer, anyway. Still, we have done all that it is necessary to do, and next year we will be well-situated. We will have gear and tackle. I go to work on the boat."

Ramsay asked, "Do you think they will come again?"

Hans answered deliberately, "I do not think so, but no man may say for certain. They are not without determined and intelligent leadership. If he does come again, he will come hard and directly at us. He will not bother with the nets. There is no need to keep a patrol on the lake tonight."

Without another word Hans turned on his heel and strode off to where the Spray II was supported on its blocks. Ramsay went into the barn, shouldered a hundred-pound sack of cornmeal, and carried it to the pond in which he had imprisoned almost countless sturgeon. With both hands he cast the ground corn into the pool, and returned for another sack, and another. Then he stood with the last empty sack limp in his hands, idly watching the pond.

It had been an exciting summer, the most adventurous and most satisfying he could remember, but it must soon end.

Already there was a hint of frost in the air, and frost meant that the whitefish would soon spawn. Nothing could persuade Hans to fish in the spawning season, when every fish caught meant the loss of perhaps ten that might be. Even if Hans would have fished, autumn meant storms when none but a fool would venture onto the lake in a small boat.

Ramsay turned slowly away from the pond. He wandered over to where Hans was working on the Spray II. It was to be a Mackinaw boat, somewhat like a canoe, and it was to be used for setting gill nets. These, Ramsay understood, could be set almost as soon as the ice went out.

Handy with almost any sort of tool, Hans himself had fashioned a wood vise that turned on a wooden gear. He had a section of cedar stump clamped in the vise, and with a rasp and a fine-toothed saw he was painstakingly fashioning a rib for the Spray II. Unhurried, a true artist, he shaped one side of the rib to the other. When he had finished, it was a perfect thing, so evenly balanced that a feather's weight on either side might have unbalanced it. Ramsay wandered away, satisfied. The Spray II was to be no ordinary vessel. There would not be another Mackinaw boat on Lake Michigan to match it.

Restlessly Ramsay worked on the seine until Marta called them. He ate, went to bed, and dropped into his usual instant deep slumber.

At first he was vaguely irritated because noises in the night disturbed him. Then he identified those sounds as the crying of an alarmed sea gull. Captain Klaus, on top of the roof, was vehemently protesting something. Ramsay became aware of a strange, unreal sunrise reflecting through his bedroom window.

Fully awake, he rushed to the window, and saw that, down on the beach, all their boats were burning fiercely.