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do.”
    He stirred some cream and sugar into his coffee. I sipped mine black.
    Smith settled back in his chair. “Portland’s a good city for lawyering lately. Getting all citified, in its own small way. Yuppieized. We got the most architects and orthodontists per capita in the state. That kind of city.”
    I lit a cigarette. Behind Seelye Smith’s gap-toothed grin and country-boy chatter, I detected a shrewdness that made me cautious. Charlie McDevitt had reported that Smith was honest and able. I felt confident about the able part.
    He had the habit of touching his hearing aid with his left forefinger and cocking his head sideways at me when he expected me to speak. I found myself raising my voice a notch when I talked to him.
    “So what can you tell me about the offer for Raven Lake?” I said.
    He scratched his scarred hand absentmindedly. “Right now, probably not any more than you already know. The offer came from an Indian law firm, acting for a partnership in Bangor. What they’re saying is they want to make some kind of retreat out of Raven Lake, a kind of memorial. Place where Indians can go to find their roots. Some damn thing like that.”
    “They’re claiming it’s sacred old Indian ground, I understand.”
    He nodded. “Well, there is a certifiable burial ground on the property. They’re right about that. But it’s way the hell across the lake and into the woods from where the lodge sits.”
    “So the question is, how can they claim the whole place?” I asked.
    Smith touched his hearing aid and nodded. “What they’re saying is that to the Indians the whole place was sacred. It was like a great big Mecca. They made pilgrimages there. To the lake. One of their gods resided there. They never hunted or fished there. The burial ground is all that’s physically left of it. If we go to discovery, we’ll see what sort of evidence they’ve got. In the meantime, they’re only hinting at a lawsuit. No lawsuit, of course, no discovery—and no access to their evidence. They’d rather make a straight purchase, avoid litigation.”
    “Meaning they haven’t got the evidence to back up their claim,” I said.
    “Maybe. Or maybe it just means they’d rather avoid the hassle.” Smith shrugged. “We call them on it, we gamble they haven’t got it. Meantime, they’ve tendered an offer. One million, seven hundred thousand for the whole operation. Shorefront, buildings, docks, the works.”
    “Is that a good offer?”
    He shrugged. “It’s on the low side of fair. As you’d expect. They’d assume we’d dicker around some. One point seven million is in the ballpark. It’s a serious offer.”
    “My clients, the Wheeler brothers, don’t want to sell, as you know. At any price. They’re worried what happens next.”
    “And they’re wondering how Seelye Smith is going to handle it,” Smith added. “Fair enough. If the Wheeler boys don’t want to sell, the Indians are saying they’ll take it to court. My job is to figure out if they can win. I understand that.”
    “And that means deciding if they’ve got a case.”
    “Tell you one thing,” he said, downing the last of his coffee. “Potentially, at least, they’ve got a case. The government has been very receptive to claims based on religious factors. It’s case by case, of course, but there is this burial ground up there on Raven Lake. Whether that entitles them to a claim of the entire lake is another question.”
    “I thought,” I said slowly, “that they forfeited all future claims in 1980.”
    Smith cocked his head at me. “What do you know about the Maine Indian land grab, Mr. Coyne?” He fingered his hearing aid.
    I lifted my hands, palms up, and let them fall back onto the table. “Just the outline of it, I guess. The Indians claimed the entire state of Maine originally belonged to them and that the white man took it illegally. They filed suit, and their claim was upheld in federal court. Congress settled by buying big