The Flaming Jewel, Robert W. Chambers [summer beach reads .txt] 📗

face, his ratty wits working like lightning and every atom of cunning and ferocity alert for attack or escape, so the little, mean eyes of Earl Leverett became fixed on Clinch like two immobile and glassy beads of jet.

"G'wan," said Clinch softly, "spit it out."

"Jake done it," muttered Leverett, thickly.

"Done what?"

"Stole that there packet o' yourn--whatever there was into it."

"Who put him up to it?"

"A fella called Quintana."

"What was there in it for Jake?" inquired Clinch pleasantly.

"Ten thousand."

"How about you?"

"I told 'em I wouldn't touch it. Then they pulled their guns on me, and I was scared to squeal."

"So that was the way?" asked Clinch in his even, reassuring voice.

Leverett's eyes travelled stealthily around the circle of men, then reverted to Clinch.

"I dassn't touch it," he said, "but I dassn't squeal.... I was huntin' onto Drowned Valley when Jake meets up with me."

"'I got the packet,' he sez, 'and I'm a-going to double criss-cross Quintana, I am, and beat it. Don't you wish you was whacks with me?'

"'No,' sez I, 'honesty is my policy, no matter what they tell about me. S'help me God, I ain't never robbed no trap and I ain't no skin thief, whatever lies folks tell. All I ever done was run a little hootch, same's everybody.'"

He licked his lips furtively, his cold, bright eyes fastened on Clinch.

"G'wan, Earl," nodded the latter, "heave her up."

"That's all. I sez, 'Good-bye, Jake. An' if you heed my warnin', ill-gotten gains ain't a-going to prosper nobody.' That's what I said to Jake Kloon, the last solemn words I spoke to that there man now in his bloody grave----"

"Hey?" demanded Clinch.

"That's where Jake is," repeated Leverett. "Why, so help me, I wa'nt gone ten yards when, bang! goes a gun, and I see this here Quintana come outen the bush, I do, and walk up to Jake and frisk him, and Jake still a-kickin' the moss to slivers. Yessir, that's what I seen."

"G'wan."

"Yessir.... 'N'then Quintana he shoved Jake into a sink-hole. Thaswot I seen with my two eyes. Yessir. 'N'then Quintana he run off, 'n'I jest set down in the trail, I did; 'n'then Hal come up and acted like I had stole your packet, he did; 'n'then I told him what Quintana done. 'N'Hal, he takes after Quintana, but I don't guess he meets up with him, for he come back and ketched holt o' me, 'n'he druv me in like I was a caaf, he did. 'N'here I be."

The dusk in the forest had deepened so that the men's faces had become mere blotches of grey.

Smith said to Clinch: "That's his story, Mike. But I preferred he should tell it to you himself, so I brought him along.... Did you drive Star Peak?"

"There wa'nt nothin' onto it," said Clinch very softly. Then, of a sudden, his shadowy visage became contorted and he jerked up his rifle and threw a cartridge into the magazine.

"You dirty louse!" he roared at Leverett, "you was into this, too, a-robbin' my little Eve----"

"Run!" yelled somebody, giving Leverett a violent shove into the woods.

In the darkness and confusion, Clinch shouldered his way out of the circle and fired at the crackling noise that marked Leverett's course,--fired again, lower, and again as a distant crash revealed the frenzied flight of the trap-robber. After he had fired a fourth shot, somebody struck up his rifle.

"Aw," said Jim Hastings, "that ain't no good. You act up like a kid, Mike. 'Tain't so far to Ghost Lake, n'them Troopers might hear you."

After a silence, Clinch spoke, his voice heavy with reaction:

"Into that there packet is my little girl's dower. It's all I got to give her. It's all she's got to make her a lady. I'll kill any man that robs her or that helps rob her. 'N'that's that."

"Are you going on after Quintana?" asked Smith.

"I am. 'N'these fellas are a-going with me. N' I want you should go back to my Dump and look after my girlie while I'm gone."

"How long are you going to be away?"

"I dunno."

There was a silence. Then,

"All right," said Smith, briefly. He added: "Look out for sink-holes, Mike."

Clinch tossed his heavy rifle to his shoulder: "Let's go," he said in his pleasant, misleading way, "--and I'll shoot the guts outa any fella that don't show up at roll call."


III

For its size there is no fiercer animal than a rat.

Rat-like rage possessed Leverett. In his headlong flight through the dusk, fear, instead of quenching, added to his rage; and he ran on and on, crashing through the undergrowth, made wilder by the pain of vicious blows from branches which flew back and struck him in the dark.

Thorns bled him; unseen logs tripped him; he heard Clinch's bullets whining around him; and he ran on, beginning to sob and curse in a frenzy of fury, fear, and shame.

Shots from Clinch's rifle ceased; the fugitive dropped into a heavy, shuffling walk, slavering, gasping, gesticulating with his weaponless fists in the darkness.

"Gol ram ye, I'll fix ye!" he kept stammering in his snarling, jangling voice, broken by sobs. "I'll learn ye, yeh poor danged thing, gol ram ye----"

An unseen limb struck him cruelly across the face, and a moose-bush tripped him flat. Almost crazed, he got up, yelling in his pain, one hand wet and sticky from blood welling up from his cheek-bone.

He stood listening, infuriated, vindictive, but heard nothing save the panting, animal sounds in his own throat.

He strove to see in the ghostly obscurity around him, but could make out little except the trees close by.

But wood-rats are never completely lost in their native darkness; and Leverett presently discovered the far stars shining faintly through rifts in the phantom foliage above.

These heavenly signals were sufficient to give him his directions. Then the question suddenly came, _which_ direction?

To his own shack on Stinking Lake he dared not go. He tried to believe that it was fear of Clinch that made him shy of the home shanty; but, in his cowering soul, he knew it was fear of another kind--the deep, superstitious horror of Jake Kloon's empty bunk--the repugnant sight of Kloon's spare clothing hanging from its peg--the dead man's shoes----

No, he could not go to Stinking Lake and sleep.... And wake with the faint stench of sulphur in his throat.... And see the worm-like leeches unfolding in the shallows, and the big, reddish water-lizards, livid as skinned eels, wriggling convulsively toward their sunless lairs....

At the mere thought of his dead bunk-mate he sought relief in vindictive rage--stirred up the smouldering embers again, cursed Clinch and Hal Smith, violently searching in his inflamed brain some instant vengeance upon these men who had driven him out from the only place on earth where he knew how to exist--the wilderness.

All at once he thought of Clinch's step-daughter. The thought instantly scared him. Yet--what a revenge!--to strike Clinch through the only creature he cared for in all the world!... What a revenge!... Clinch was headed for Drowned Valley. Eve Strayer was alone at the Dump.... Another thought flashed like lightning across his turbid mind;--_the packet_!

Bribed by Quintana, Jake Kloon, lurking at Clinch's door, had heard him direct Eve to take a packet to Owl Marsh, and had notified Quintana.

Wittingly or unwittingly, the girl had taken a packet of sugar-milk chocolate instead of the priceless parcel expected.

Again, carried in, exhausted, by a State Trooper, Jake Kloon had been fooled; and it was the packet of sugar-milk chocolate that Jake had purloined from the veranda where Clinch kicked it. For two cakes of chocolate Kloon had died. For two cakes of chocolate he, Earl Leverett, had become a man-slayer, a homeless fugitive in peril of his life.

He stood licking his blood-dried lips there in the darkness, striving to hatch courage out of the dull fury eating at a coward's heart.

Somewhere in Clinch's Dump was the packet that would make him rich.... Here was his opportunity. He had only to dare; and pain and poverty and fear--above all else _fear_--would end forever!...

* * * * *


When, at last, he came out to the edge of Clinch's clearing, the dark October heavens were but a vast wilderness of stars.

Star Pond, set to its limpid depths with the heavenly gems, glittered and darkled with its million diamond incrustations. The humped-up lump of Clinch's Dump crouched like some huge and feeding night-beast on the bank, ringed by the solemn forest.

There was a kerosene lamp burning in Eve Strayer's rooms. Another light--a candle--flickered in the kitchen.

Leverett, crouching, ran rat-like down to the barn, slid in between the ice house and corn-crib, crawled out among the wilderness of weeds and lay flat.

The light burned steadily from Eve's window.


IV

From his form among frost-blackened rag-weeds, the trap-robber could see only the plastered ceiling of the bed chamber.

But the kerosene lamp cast two shadows on that--tall shadows of human shapes that stirred at times.

The trap-robber, scared, stiffened to immobility, but his little eyes remained fastened on the camera obscura above. All the cunning, patience, and murderous immobility of the rat were his.

Not a weed stirred under the stars where he lay with tiny, unwinking eyes intent upon the shadows on the ceiling.

* * * * *


The shadows on the ceiling were cast by Eve Strayer and her State Trooper.

Eve sat on her bed's edge, swathed in a lilac silk kimona--delicate relic of school days. Her bandaged feet, crossed, dangled above the rag-rug on the floor; her slim, tanned fingers were interlaced over the book on her lap.

Near the door stood State Trooper Stormont, spurred, booted, trig and trim, an undecided and flushed young man, fumbling irresolutely with the purple cord on his campaign-hat.

The book on Eve's knees--another relic of the past--was _Sigurd the Volsung_. Stormont had been reading to her--they having found, after the half shy tentatives of new friends, a point d'appui in literature. And the girl, admitting a passion for the poets, invited him to inspect the bookcase of unpainted pine which Clinch had built into her bedroom wall.

Here it was he discovered mutual friends among the nobler Victorians--surprised to discover _Sigurd_ there--and, carrying it to her bedside, looked leisurely through the half forgotten pages.

"Would you read a little?" she ventured.

He blushed but did his best. His was an agreeable, boyish voice, betraying taste and understanding. Time passed quickly--not so much in the reading but in the conversations intervening.

And now, made uneasy by chance consultation with his wrist-watch, and being rather a conscientious young man, he had risen and had informed Eve that she ought to go to sleep.

And she had denounced the idea, almost fretfully.

"Even if you go I shan't sleep till daddy comes," she said. "Of course," she added, smiling