She said carelessly, “I might take a notion to go some’eres or do somethin’. When you comin’ back this time?”

He laughed insolently. “Steppin’ out, Matt?” He was sure of himself. He was too quick for her. Whatever futilities she was planning, it would surprise her most to return on the day he named.

“Be back Sat’day.”

He drove off smiling.

Matt was nervous all week. On Saturday morning she surprised the Lantry boys by appearing at the still. They had come and gone without contact with her for some weeks.

She said, “Boys, I jest got word the Pro-hi’s is comin’ lookin’ for Trax’ outfit. Now I ain’t quick as you-all, an’ I want each one o’ you should go down the road a good piece an’ stay there all day, watchin’, one to the north an’ t’other to the south. I’ll tend the outfit, an’ if I hears a whistle I’ll know what it means an’ it’ll give me time to smash the jugs an’ git to the house.”

The boys were in instant alarm.

“Must be somebody’s turned Trax up,” they said.

Matt said, “Mighty likely. Somebody’s likely got it in for him. Trax hisself done tol’ me a long ways back, if anybody had it in for a man, that was the way they’d git at him.”

They nodded in agreement.

“That’s about it, Mis’ Matt. Git him tore up an’ git at him that-a-way.”

They hid several demijohns in near-by cover and hurried anxiously the two ways of the road. They reported later in the village that they heard no sound for an hour or so. Toward noon their straining ears caught the crash of an axe on metal. There was the high thin splintering of glass. The isolated crashes settled into a steady shattering of wood and iron and copper. A column of smoke began to rise from the vicinity of the still. The Lantry to the south skirted the road through the pines and joined his brother. They cut through the woods to the village and announced that the Pro-hi’s had come in from the west and were tearing up Colton’s outfit. The word went out to avoid the flat-woods road.

The Lantrys were waiting for Trax when he came through in late afternoon. They flagged him down. They drove with him as far as their own place, telling him what they knew.

“When we lit out we could hear ’em maulin’ on the barrels an’ purely see the smoke. Things is tore up an’ burnt up all right.”

They conjectured who, of his numerous enemies, might have betrayed him. He drove at a spring-breaking clip over the root-filled ruts of the sand road. His face was black and frightened. When he let the boys out of the car he had said nothing about the week’s wages. They looked at each other.

One said, “How ’bout us gittin’ ten dollars, anyway, Trax?”

“That’s it. I ain’t got it. I on’y got five myself. I was fixin’ to turn over this lot quick.”