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

white mask over a delicate, smoothly shaven face.

His soft hat and sporting clothes were dark grey, evidently new. And she noticed his hands--long, elegantly made, smooth, restless, playing with a pencil and some sheets of paper on his knees.

As she met his brilliant eyes behind the mask, his delicate, thin lips grew tense in what seemed to be a smile--or a soundless sort of laugh.

"Veree happee," he said, "to make the acquaintance. Pardon my unceremony, miss, but onlee necissitee compels. Are you, perhaps, a little rested?"

"Yes."

"Ah! Then, if you permit, we proceed with affairs of moment. You will be sufficiently kind to write down what I say. Yes?"

He placed paper and pencil in Eve's hand. Without demurring or hesitation she made ready to write, her mind groping wildly for the reason of it all.

"Write," he said, with his silent laugh which was more like the soundless snarl of a lynx unafraid:

"To Mike Clinch, my fathaire, from his child, Eve.... I am hostage, held by Jose Quintana. Pay what you owe him and I go free.

"For each day delay he sends to you one finger which will be severed from my right hand----"

Eve's slender fingers trembled; she looked up at the masked man, stared steadily into his brilliant eyes.

"Proceed miss, if you are so amiable," he said softly.

She wrote on: "--One finger for every day's delay. The whole hand at the week's end. The other hand then, finger by finger. Then, alas! the right foot----"

Eve trembled.

"Proceed," he said softly.

She wrote: "If you agree you shall pay what you owe to Jose Quintana in this manner: you shall place a stick at the edge of the Star Pond where the Star rivulet flows out. Upon this stick you shall tie a white rag. At the foot of the stick you shall lay the parcel which contains your indebt to Jose Quintana.

"Failing this, by to-night _one finger_ at sunset."

The man paused: Eve waited, dumb under the surging confusion in her brain. A sort of incredulous horror benumbed her, through which she still heard and perceived.

"Be kind enough to sign it with your name," said the man pleasantly.

Eve signed.

Then the masked man took the letter, got up, removed his hat.

"I am Quintana," he said. "I keep my word. A thousand thanks and apologies, miss. I trust that your detention may be brief and not too disagreeable. I place at your feet my humble respects."

He bowed, put on his hat, and walked quickly away. And she saw him descend the rocks to the eastward, where the peak slopes.

When Quintana had disappeared behind the summit scrub and rocks, Eve slowly stood up and looked about her at the rocky pulpit so familiar.

There was only one way out. Quintana had gone that way. His men no doubt guarded it. Otherwise, sheer precipices confronted her.

She walked to the western edge where a sheet of slippery reindeer moss clothed the rock. Below the mountain fell away to the valley where she had been made prisoner.

She looked out over the vast panorama of wilderness and mountain, range on range stretching blue to the horizon. She looked down into the depths of the valley where deep under the flaming foliage of October, somewhere, a State Trooper was sitting, cheek on hand, beside a waterfall--or, perhaps, riding slowly through a forest which she might never gaze upon again.

There was a noise on the rocks behind her. A masked man came out of the spruce scrub, laid a blanket on the rocks, placed a loaf of bread, some cheese, and a tin pail full of water upon it, motioned her, and went away through the dwarf spruces.

Eve walked slowly to the blanket. She drank out of the tin pail. Then she set aside the food, lay down, and buried her quivering face in her arms.

* * * * *


The sun was half way between zenith and horizon when she heard somebody coming, and rose to a sitting posture. Her visitor was Quintana.

He came up to her quite close, stood with glittering eyes intent upon her.

After a moment he handed her a letter.

She could scarcely unfold it, she trembled so:

"Girlie, for God's sake give that packet to Quintana and come on home. I'm near crazy with it all. What the hell's anything worth beside you girlie. I don't give a damn for nothing only you, so come on quick. Dad."

* * * * *


After a little while she lifted her eyes to Quintana.

"So," he said quietly, "you are the little she-fox that has learned tricks already."

"What do you mean?"

"Where is that packet?"

"I haven't it."

"Where is it?"

She shook her head slightly.

"You had a packet," he insisted fiercely. "Look here! Regard!" and he spread out a penciled sheet in Clinch's hand:

"Jose Quintana:

"You win. She's got that stuff with her. Take your damn junk and
let my girl go.

"MIKE CLINCH."

"Well," said Quintana, a thin, strident edge to his tone.

"My father is mistaken. I haven't any packet."

The man's visage behind his mask flushed darkly. Without warning or ceremony he caught Eve by the throat and tore open her shirt. Then, hissing and cursing and panting with his own violence, he searched her brutally and without mercy--flung her down and tore off her spiral puttees and even her shoes and stockings, now apparently beside himself with fury, puffing, gasping, always with a fierce, nasal sort of whining undertone like an animal worrying its kill.

"Cowardly beast!" she panted, fighting him with all her strength--"filthy, cowardly beast!----" striking at him, wrenching his grasp away, snatching at the disordered clothing half stripped from her.

His hunting knife fell clattering and she fought to get it, but he struck her with his open hand, knocking her down at his feet, and stood glaring at her with every tooth bared.

"So," he cried, "I give you ten minutes, make up your mind, tell me what you do with that packet."

He wiped the blood from his face where she had struck him.

"You don't know Jose Quintana. No! You shall make his acquaintance. Yes!"

Eve got up on naked feet, quivering from head to foot, striving to button the grey shirt at her throat.

"Where?" he demanded, beside himself.

Her mute lips only tightened.

"Ver' well, by God!" he cried. "I go make me some fire. You like it, eh? We shall put one toe in the fire until it burn off. Yes? Eh? How you like it? Eh?"

The girl's trembling hands continued busy with her clothing.

"So!" he said, hoarsely, "you remain dumb! Well, then, in ten minutes you shall talk!"

He walked toward her, pushed her savagely aside, and strode on into the spruce thicket.

The instant he disappeared Eve caught up the knife he had dropped, knelt down on the blanket and fell to cutting it into strips.

The hunting knife was like a razor; the feverish business was accomplished in a few moments, the pieces knotted, the cord strained in a desperate test over her knee.

And now she ran to the precipice where, ten feet below, the top of a great pine protruded from the gulf.

On the edge of the abyss was a spruce root. It looked dead, wedged deep between two rocks; but with all her strength she could not pull it out.

Sobbing, breathless, she tied her blanket rope to this, threw the other end over the cliff's edge, and, not giving herself time to think, lay flat, grasped the knotted line, swung off.

Knot by knot she went down. Half-way her naked feet brushed the needles. She looked over her shoulder, behind and down. Then, teeth clenched, she lowered herself steadily as she had learned to do in the school gymnasium, down, down, until her legs came astride of a pine limb.

It bent, swayed, gave with her, letting her sag to a larger limb below. This she clasped, letting go her rope.

Already, from the mountain's rocky crest above, she heard excited cries. Once, on her breakneck descent, she looked up through the foliage of the pine; and she saw, far up against the sky, a white-masked face looking over the edge of the precipice.

But if it were Quintana or another of his people she could not tell. And, again looking down, she began again the terrible descent.

* * * * *


An hour later, Trooper Stormont of the State Constabulary, sat his horse in amazement to see a ragged, breathless, boyish figure speeding toward him among the tamaracks, her naked feet splashing through pool and mire and sphagnum.

"Good heavens!" he exclaimed as she flung herself against his stirrup, sobbing, hysterical, and clinging to his knee.

"Take me back," she stammered, "--take me back to daddy! I can't--go on--another step----"

He leaned down, swung her up to his saddle in front, holding her cradled in his arms.

"Lie still," he said coolly; "you're all right now."

For another second he sat looking down at her, at the dishevelled hair, the gasping mouth,--at the rags clothing her, and at the flat packet clasped convulsively to her breast.

Then he spoke in a low voice to his horse, guiding left with one knee.


EPISODE FOUR

A PRIVATE WAR

I

When State Trooper Stormont rode up to Clinch's with Eve Strayer lying in his arms, Mike Clinch strode out of the motley crowd around the tavern, laid his rifle against a tree, and stretched forth his powerful hands to receive his stepchild.

He held her, cradled, looking down at her in silence as the men clustered around.

"Eve," he said hoarsely, "be you hurted?"

The girl opened her sky-blue eyes.

"I'm all right, dad, ... just tired.... I've got your parcel ... safe...."

"To hell with the gol-dinged parcel," he almost sobbed; "--did Quintana harm you?"

"No, dad."

As he carried her to the veranda the packet fell from her cramped fingers. Clinch kicked it under a chair and continued on into the house and up the stairs to Eve's bedroom.

Flat on the bed, the girl opened her drowsy eyes again, unsmiling.

"Did that dirty louse misuse you?" demanded Clinch unsteadily. "G'wan tell me, girlie."

"He knocked me down.... He went away to get fire to make me talk. I cut up the blanket they gave me and made a rope. Then I went over the cliff into the big pine below. That was all, dad."

Clinch filled a tin basin and washed the girl's torn feet.