The Flaming Jewel, Robert W. Chambers [reading tree txt] 📗

Once she showed me a piece in the Bible,—I ain't never found it sence,—but it said: 'And the woman she fled into the wilderness where there was a place prepared for her of God.' ... That's what you wrote into your own Bible, O God! You can't go back on it. I seen it.

"And now I wanta to ask, What place did you prepare for my Eve? What spot have you reference to? You didn't mean my 'Dump,' did you? Why, Lord, that ain't no place for no lady.... And now Quintana has went and robbed me of what I'd saved up for Eve.... Does that go with Thee, O Lord? No, it don't. And it don't go with me, neither. I'm a-goin' to git Quintana. Then I'm a-goin' to git them two minks that robbed my girlie,—I am!... Jake Kloon, he done it in cahoots with Earl Leverett; and Quintana set 'em on. And they gotta die, O Lord of Israel, them there Egyptians is about to hop the twig.... I ain't aimin' to be mean to nobody. I buy hootch of them that runs it. I eat mountain mutton in season and out. I trade with law-breakers, I do. But, Lord, I gotta get my girlie outa here; and Harrod he walled me in with the chariots and spears of Egypt, till I nigh went wild.... And now comes Quintana, and here I be a-lyin' out to get him so's my girlie can become a lady, same's them fine folks with all their butlers and automobiles and what-not——"

A far crash in the forest stilled his twitching lips and stiffened every iron muscle.

As he lifted his rifle, Sid Hone came into the glade.

"Yahoo! Yahoo!" he called. "Where be you, Mike?"

Clinch slowly rose, grasping his rifle, his small, grey eyes ablaze.

"Where's Quintana?" he demanded.

"H'ain't you seen nobody?"

"No."

In the intense silence other sounds broke sharply in the sunset forest; Harvey Chase's halloo rang out from the rocks above; Blommers and the Hastings boys came slouching through the ferns.

Byron Hastings greeted Clinch with upflung gun: "Me and Jim heard a shot away out on Drowned Valley," he announced. "Was you out that way, Mike?"

"No."

One by one the men who had driven Star Peak lounged up in the red sunset light, gathering around Clinch and wiping the sweat from sun-reddened faces.

"Someone's in Drowned Valley," repeated Byron. "Them minks slid off'n Star in a hurry, I reckon, judgin' how they left their shanty. Phew! It stunk! They had French hootch, too."

"Mebby Leverett and Kloon told 'em we was fixin' to visit them," suggested Blommers.

"They didn't know," said Clinch.

"Where's Hal Smith?" inquired Hone.

Clinch made no reply. Blommers silently gnawed a new quid from the remains of a sticky plug.

"Well," inquired Jim Hastings finally, "do we quit, Mike, or do we still-hunt in Drowned Valley?"

"Not me, at night," remarked Blommers drily.

"Not amongst them sink-holes," added Hone.

Suddenly Clinch turned and stared at him. Then the deadly light from his little eyes shone on the others one by one.

"Boys," he said, "I gotta get Quintana. I can't never sleep another wink till I get that man. Come on. Act up like gents all. Let's go."

Nobody stirred.

"Come on," repeated Clinch softly. But his lips shrank back, twitching.

As they looked at him they saw his teeth.

"All right, all right," growled Hone, shouldering his rifle with a jerk.

The Hastings boys, young and rash, shuffled into the trail. Blommers hesitated, glanced askance at Clinch, and instantly made up his mind to take a chance with the sink-holes rather than with Clinch.

"God A'mighty, Mike, what be you aimin' to do?" faltered Harvey.

"I'm aimin' to stop the inlet and outlet to Drowned Valley, Harve," replied Clinch in his pleasant voice. "God is a-goin' to deliver Quintana into my hands."

"All right. What next?"

"Then," continued Clinch, "I cal'late to set down and wait."

"How long?"

"Ask God, boys. I don't know. All I know is that whatever is livin' in Drowned Valley at this hour has gotta live and die there. For it can't never live to come outen that there morass walkin' onto two legs like a real man."

He moved slowly along the file of sullen men, his rifle a-trail in one huge fist.

"Boys," he said, "I got first. There ain't no sink-hole deep enough to drowned me while Eve needs me.... And my little girlie needs me bad.... After she gits what's her'n, then I don't care no more...." He looked up into the sky, where the last ashes of sunset faded from the zenith.... "Then I don't care," he murmured. "Like's not I'll creep away like some shot-up critter, n'kinda find some lone, safe spot, n'kinda fix me f'r a long nap.... I guess that'll be the way ... when Eve's a lady down to Noo York 'r'som'ers——" he added vaguely.

Then, still looking up at the fading heavens, he moved forward, head lifted, silent, unhurried, with the soundless, stealthy, and certain tread of those who walk unseeing and asleep.

II

Clinch had not taken a dozen strides before Hal Smith loomed up ahead in the rosy dusk, driving in Leverett before him.

An exclamation of fierce exultation burst from Clinch's thin lips as he flung out one arm, indicating Smith and his clinking prisoner:

"Who was that gol-dinged catamount that suspicioned Hal? I wa'nt worried none, neither. Hal's a gent. Mebbe he sticks up folks, too, but he's a gent. And gents is honest or they ain't gents."

Smith came up at his easy, tireless gait, hustling Leverett along with prods from gun-butt or muzzle, as came handiest.

The prisoner turned a ghastly visage on Clinch, who ignored him.

"Got my packet, Hal?" he demanded.

Smith poked Leverett with his rifle: "Tune up," he said; "tell Clinch your story."

As a caged rat looks death in the 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