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

been agree that I accep' for myse'f one part in five of the remainder."

A fierce silence reigned. Every wolfish eye was on the leader. He smiled, rested his pair of pistols on either knee.

"Is there," he asked softly, "any gentleman who shall objec'?"

"Who," demanded Georgiades hoarsely, "is to divide for us?"

"It is for such purpose," explained Quintana suavely, "that my frien', Emanuel Sard, has arrive. Monsieur Sard is a brokaire of diamon's, as all know ver' well. Therefore, it shall be our frien' Sard who will divide for us what we have gain to-day by our—industry."

The savage tension broke with a laugh at the word chosen by Quintana to express their efforts of the morning.

Sard had been standing with one fat hand flat against the trunk of a tree. Now, at a nod from Quintana, he squatted down, and, with the same hand that had been resting against the tree, he spread out the pile of jewels into a flat layer.

As he began to divide this into five parts, still using the flat of his pudgy hand, something poked him lightly in the ribs. It was the muzzle of one of Quintana's pistols.

Sard, ghastly pale, looked up. His palm, sticky with balsam gum, quivered in Quintana's grasp.

"I was going to scrape it off," he gasped. "The tree was sticky——"

Quintana, with the muzzle of his pistol, detached half a dozen diamonds and rubies that clung to the gum on Mr. Sard's palm.

"Wash!" he said drily.

Sard, sweating with fear, washed his right hand with whiskey from his pocket-flask, and dried it for general inspection.

"My God," he protested tremulously, "it was accidental, gentlemen. Do you think I'd try to get away with anything like that——"

Quintana coolly shoved him aside and with the barrel of his pistol he pushed the flat pile of gems into five separate heaps. Only he and Georgiades knew that a magnificent diamond had been lodged in the muzzle of his pistol. The eyes of the Greek flamed with rage at the trick, but he awaited the division before he should come to any conclusion.

Quintana coolly picked out The Flaming Jewel and pocketed it. Then, to each man he indicated the heap which was to be his portion.

A snarling wrangle instantly began, Sanchez objecting to rubies and demanding more emeralds, and Picquet complaining violently concerning the smallness of the diamonds allotted him.

Sard's trained eyes appraised every allotment. Without weighing, and, lacking time and paraphernalia for expert examination, he was inclined to think the division fair enough.

Quintana got to his feet lithely.

"For me," he said, "it is finish. With my frien' Sard I shall now depart. Messieurs, I embrace and salute you. A bientôt in Paris—if it be God's will! Donc—au revoir, les amis, et à la bonheur! Allons! Each for himself and gar' aux flics!"

Sard, seized with a sort of still terror, regarded Quintana with enormous eyes. Torn between dismay of being left alone in the wilderness, and a very natural fear of any single companion, he did not know what to say or do.

En masse, the gang were too distrustful of one another to unite on robbing any individual. But any individual might easily rob a companion when alone with him.

"Why—why can't we all go together," he stammered. "It is safer, surer——"

"I go with Quintana and you," interrupted Georgiades, smilingly; his mind on the diamond in the muzzle of Quintana's pistol.

"I do not invite you," said Quintana. "But come if it pleases you."

"I also prefer to come with you others," growled Sanchez. "To roam alone in this filthy forest does not suit me."

Picquet shrugged his shoulders, turned on his heel in silence. They watched him moving away all alone, eastward. When he had disappeared among the trees, Quintana looked inquiringly at the others.

"Eh, bien, non alors!" snarled Georgiades suddenly. "There are too many in your trupeau, mon capitaine. Bonne chance!"

He turned and started noisily in the direction taken by Picquet.

They watched him out of sight; listened to his careless trample after he was lost to view. When at length the last distant sound of his retreat had died away in the stillness, Quintana touched Sard with the point of his pistol.

"Go first," he said suavely.

"For God's sake, be a little careful of your gun——"

"I am, my dear frien'. It is of you I may become careless. You will mos' kin'ly face south, and you will be kin' sufficient to start immediate. Tha's what I mean.... I thank you.... Now, my frien', Sanchez! Tha's correc'! You shall follow my frien' Sard ver' close. Me, I march in the rear. So we shall pass to the eas' of thees Star Pon', then between the cross-road an' Ghos' Lake; an' then we shall repose; an' one of us, en vidette, shall discover if the Constabulary have patrol beyon'.... Allons! March!"

II

Guided by Quintana's directions, the three had made a wide detour to the east, steering by compass for the cross-roads beyond Star Pond.

In a dense growth of cedars, on a little ridge traversing wet land, Quintana halted to listen.

Sard and Sanchez, supposing him to be at their heels, continued on, pushing their way blindly through the cedars, clinging to the hard ridge in terror of sink-holes. But their progress was very slow; and they were still in sight, fighting a painful path amid the evergreens, when Quintana suddenly squatted close to the moist earth behind a juniper bush.

At first, except for the threshing of Sard and Sanchez through the massed obstructions ahead, there was not a sound in the woods.

After a little while there was a sound—very, very slight. No dry stick cracked; no dry leaves rustled; no swish of foliage; no whipping sound of branches disturbed the intense silence.

But, presently, came a soft, swift rhythm like the pace of a forest creature in haste—a discreetly hurrying tread which was more a series of light earth-shocks than sound.

Quintana, kneeling on one knee, lifted his pistol. He already felt the slight vibration of the ground on the hard ridge. The cedars were moving just beyond him now. He waited until, through the parted foliage, a face appeared.

The loud report of his pistol struck Sard with the horror of paralysis. Sanchez faced about with one spring, snarling, a weapon in either hand.

In the terrible silence they could hear something heavy floundering in the bushes, choking, moaning, thudding on the ground.

Sanchez began to creep back; Sard, more dead than alive, crawled at his heels. Presently they saw Quintana, waist deep in juniper, looking down at something.

And when they drew closer they saw Georgiades lying on his back under a cedar, the whole front of his shirt from chest to belly a sopping mess of blood.

There seemed no need of explanation. The dead Greek lay there where he had not been expected, and his two pistols lay beside him where they had fallen.

Sanchez looked stealthily at Quintana, who said softly:

"Bien sure.... In his left side pocket, I believe."

Sanchez laid a cool hand on the dead man's heart; then, satisfied, rummaged until he found Georgiades' share of the loot.

Sard, hurriedly displaying a pair of clean but shaky hands, made the division.

When the three men had silently pocketed what was allotted to each, Quintana pushed curiously at the dead man with the toe of his shoe.

"Peste!" he remarked. "I had place, for security, a ver' large diamon' in my pistol barrel. Now it is within the interior of this gentleman...." He turned to Sanchez: "I sell him to you. One sapphire. Yes?"

Sanchez shook his head with a slight sneer: "We wait—if you want your diamond, mon capitaine."

Quintana hesitated, then made a grimace and shook his head.

"No," he said, "he has swallow. Let him digest. Allons! March!"

But after they had gone on—two hundred yards, perhaps—Sanchez stopped.

"Well?" inquired Quintana. Then, with a sneer: "I now recollec' that once you have been a butcher in Madrid.... Suit your tas'e, l'ami Sanchez."

Sard gazed at Sanchez out of sickened eyes.

"You keep away from me until you've washed yourself," he burst out, revolted. "Don't you come near me till you're clean!"

Quintana laughed and seated himself. Sanchez, with a hang-dog glance at him, turned and sneaked back on the trail they had traversed. Before he was out of sight Sard saw him fish out a Spanish knife from his hip pocket and unclasp it.

Almost nauseated, he turned on Quintana in a sort of frightened fury:

"Come on!" he said hoarsely. "I don't want to travel with that man! I won't associate with a ghoul! My God, I'm a respectable business man——"

"Yaas," drawled Quintana, "tha's what I saw always myse'f; my frien' Sard he is ver' respec'able, an' I trus' him like I trus' myse'f."

However, after a moment, Quintana got up from the fallen tree where he had been seated.

As he passed Sard he looked curiously into the man's frightened eyes. There was not the slightest doubt that Sard was a coward.

"You shall walk behin' me," remarked Quintana carelessly. "If Sanchez fin' us, it is well; if he shall not, that also is ver' well.... We go, now."

Sanchez made no effort to find them. They had been gone half an hour before he had finished the business that had turned him back.

After that he wandered about hunting for water—a rivulet, a puddle, anything. But the wet ground proved wet only on the surface moss. Sanchez needed more than damp moss for his toilet. Casting about him, hither and thither, for some depression that might indicate a stream, he came to a heavily wooded slope, and descended it.

There was a bog at the foot. With his fouled hands he dug out a basin which filled up full of reddish water, discoloured by alders.

But the water was redder still when his toilet ended.

As he stood there, examining his clothing, and washing what he could of the ominous stains from sleeve and shoe, very far away to the north he heard a curious noise—a far, faint sound such as he never before had heard.

If it were a voice of any sort there was nothing human about it.... Probably some sort of unknown bird.... Perhaps a bird of prey.... That was natural, considering the attraction that Georgiades would have for such creatures.... If it were a bird it must be a large one, he thought.... Because there was a certain volume to the cry.... Perhaps it was a beast, after all.... Some unknown beast of the forest....

Sanchez was suddenly afraid. Scarcely knowing what he was doing he began to run along the edge of the bog.

First growth timber skirted it; running was unobstructed by underbrush.

With his startled ears full of the alarming and unknown sound, he ran through the woods under gigantic pines which spread a soft green twilight around him.

He was tired, or thought he was, but the alarming sounds were filling his ears now; the entire forest seemed full of them, echoing in all directions, coming in upon him from everywhere, so that he knew not in which direction to run.

But he could not stop. Demoralised, he darted this way and that; terror winged his feet; the air vibrated above and around him with the dreadful, unearthly sounds.

The next instant he fell headlong over a ledge, struck water, felt himself whirled around in the icy, rushing current, rolled over, tumbled through rapids, blinded, deafened, choked, swept helplessly in a vast green wall of water toward something that thundered in his brain an instant, then dashed it into roaring chaos.

Half a mile down the turbulent outlet of Star Pond,—where a great sheet of green water pours thirty feet into the tossing foam below,—and spinning, dipping, diving, bobbing up like a lost log after the drive, the body of Señor Sanchez danced all alone in the wilderness, spilling from soggy pockets diamonds, sapphires, rubies, emeralds, into crystal caves where only the shadows of slim trout stirred.

Very far away to