However, to reassure himself, Lannis rode as far as Harrod Place, and found game wardens on duty along the line.
Then he turned west and trotted his mount down to the hatchery, where he saw Ralph Wier, the Superintendent, standing outside the lodge talking to his assistant, George Fry.
When Lannis rode up on the opposite side of the brook, he called across to Wier: "You haven't seen anything of any crooked outfit around here, have you, Ralph? I'm looking for that kind."
"See here," said the Superintendent, "I don't know but George Fry may have seen one of your guys. Come over and he'll tell you what happened an hour ago."
Trooper Lannis pivotted his horse and put him to the brook with scarcely any take-off; and the splendid animal cleared the water like a deer and came cantering up to the door of the lodge.
Fry's boyish face seemed agitated; he looked up at the State Trooper with the flush of tears in his gaze and pointed at the rifle Lannis carried: "If I'd had that," he said excitedly, "I'd have brought in a crook, you bet!"
"Where did you see him?" inquired Lannis.
"Jest west of the Scaur, about an hour and a half ago. Wier and me was stockin' the head of Scaur Brook with fingerlings. There's more good water -- two miles of it -- to the east, and all it needed was a fish-ladder around Scaur Falls.
"So I toted in cement and sand and grub last week, and I built me a shanty on the Scaur, and I been laying up a fish-way around the falls. So that's how I come there----" He clicked his teeth and darted a furious glance at the woods. "By God," he said, "I was such a fool I didn't take no rifle. All I had was an axe and a few traps. ... I wasn't going to let the mink get our trout whatever you fellows say," he added defiantly, "-- and law or no law----"
"Get along with your story, young man," interrupted Lannis; "-- you can spill the rest out to the Commissioner."
"All right, then. This is the way it happened down to the Scaur. I was eating lunch by the fish-stairs, looking up at 'em and kind of planning how to save cement, and not thinking about anybody being near me, when something made me turn my head. ... You know how it is in the woods. ... I kinda felt somebody near. And, by cracky! -- there stood a man with a big, black automatic pistol, and he had a bead on my belly.