"I'd like something to eat before I go on to Three Points."

"That we can give you," the farmer said. "Come."

When the horse would have followed them to the house, the Dutch farmer looked quizzically at Ramsay. The boy grinned.

"He's not mine. He was on the _Holter_ and we swam ashore together.

Without him I might not have made it."

"Then he is yours," the farmer said. "By right of salvage he is yours.

But Marta, she wouldn't like a horse in the house."

"It's hardly the place for a horse," Ramsay agreed. "Can we leave him here?"

"Yaah."

The farmer opened the barnyard gate and Ramsay walked in. The horse followed willingly. Ramsay stepped out and shut the gate. He saw the little horse, its head over the bars, watching him as he walked toward the house.

It was a clean house, and a scrubbed and shiny one. Even the big flat stone that served as a back doorstep had almost an antiseptic cleanliness. The house was filled with the odors of freshly baked bread and spice and canned jam and curing hams. Ramsay smiled at the slim, pleasant girl who met them at the door.

"Marta," the farmer said, "this man was ship-wrecked and is to be our guest for as long as he wants to stay. He is...?"

"Ramsay Cartou," Ramsay supplied.

"Yaah! Ramsay Cartou. I am Pieter Van Hooven and this is my wife, Marta."

Ramsay made himself comfortable in the neat kitchen while Marta Van Hooven hurried efficiently about, preparing a meal. There was baked whitefish, venison, roasted goose, fluffy mashed potatoes, crisp salad, billowy fresh rolls, delicious cheese and milk.

Ramsay ate until he could eat no more, then pushed himself away from the table and smiled graciously at Marta Van Hooven. "That was good!" he said feelingly.

"You ate so little."

Ramsay grinned, "Not more than enough to feed three good-sized horses.

You can really cook."

Pieter Van Hooven glowed at this compliment extended to his wife. He filled and lighted a clay pipe, and puffed contentedly. "What are you going to do now?" he asked Ramsay.

"I," Ramsay hesitated, "I'd like to pay for the meal."

Pieter Van Hooven smiled. "Forget that. You were our guest."

"How far is Three Points?"

"Six miles. Just stay on the beach."

"Reckon I'll go up there then. I've got a job waiting for me at the tannery. By the way, do you have any use for that horse?"

"A good horse can always be used on a farm. But I won't take him. I'll keep him, and you can have him any time you want." Pieter Van Hooven looked queerly at Ramsay. "You sure you want to go to Three Points?"

"I've got a job there, and I need it."

"Then go, but remember that nobody starves in Wisconsin. Marta and me, we got no money but we got everything else. You don't like it in Three Points, you might come back here?"

"I'll be glad to," Ramsay said, a little puzzled.

"Then do that, my friend."

Well-fed and rested, Ramsay walked alone up the sandy beach. Stay on the sand, Pieter Van Hooven had advised him, and he couldn't go wrong. Three Points, the tannery town, was right on the lake. Two hours after he left the Van Hoovens, Ramsay reached the village.

Three Points nestled snugly in a gap which, only recently, had been hacked out of the hemlock forest. Many big trees still stood on the edge of town, and some right in the center; and most of the houses were built of hemlock logs. There were a few, evidently belonging to Three Points'

wealthier residents, that were massively built and patterned after the New England style of architecture.

There was no mistaking the tannery; the smell would have guided one there, even if the mountains of hemlock bark piled all about had not.

Ramsay entered the long, low, shed-like building, and a man working at a steaming vat looked up curiously. Ramsay approached him with "Who's the boss man around here?"

"I am," an unseen man said.

Ramsay whirled to look at the man who had spoken, and he came face to face with Devil Chad.

CHAPTER THREE

_ON THE BEACH_

Ramsay felt an instant tension and a bristling anger, and he knew now that he should have connected two incidents. The man who had written to him and offered him a job in the Three Points tannery had signed his name 'Devlin Chadbourne.' Devlin Chadbourne--Devil Chad--and Ramsay took a backward step. Never before had he met a man so capable of arousing in him a cordial dislike that was almost an urge to start fighting immediately.

"Where's the _Holter_?" Devil Chad demanded.

"I sent her back to Milwaukee after Captain Schultz let me off here,"

Ramsay said sarcastically.

"Don't get smart with me, boy." Devil Chad glowered. "You was on the _Holter_ when she sailed."

"Where were you?" Ramsay demanded.

"I'll ask the questions here!" Devil Chad's thick lips curled in an ugly oblong. "Where's the _Holter_?"

"At the bottom of Lake Michigan!" Ramsay flared. "Captain Schultz and one of your deck hands are lying drowned on the beach! I don't know where the others are."

Devil Chad's glass balls of eyes glinted. His face twisted into a horrible glare, and every inch of his big frame seemed to shrink and swell with the rage that consumed him. "You mean to tell me," he demanded furiously, "that all them hides was lost?"

"Men were lost," Ramsay pointed out.

"You mean to tell me," Devil Chad repeated, as though he had not heard Ramsay, "that all them hides was lost?"

"Swim out and get 'em," Ramsay invited. "I'll show you the place where I landed, and the _Holter_ can't be more than a couple of miles out in the lake."