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

"L'ami Mike," he said, "you were a man !... Adios!"

Quintana put on his hat. The path was free. The world lay open before José Quintana once more;—the world, his hunting ground.

"But," he thought uneasily, "what is it that I bring home this time? How much is paste? My God, how droll that smile of Clinch.... Which is the false—his jewels or mine? Dieu que j'étais bête!—— Me who have not suspec' that there are two trays within my jewel-box!... I unnerstan'. It is ver' simple. In the top tray the false gems. Ah! Paste on top to deceive a thief!... Alors.... Then what I have recover of Clinch is the real !... Nom de Dieu!... How should I know? His smile is so ver' funny.... I think thees dead man make mock of me—all inside himse'f——"

So, in darkness, prowling south by west, shining the trail furtively, and loaded rifle ready, Quintana moved with stealthy, unhurried tread out of the wilderness that had trapped him and toward the tangled border of that outer world which led to safe, obscure, uncharted labyrinths—old-world mazes, immemorial hunting grounds—haunted by men who prey.

The night had turned frosty. Quintana, wet to the knees and very tired, moved slowly, not daring to leave the trail because of sink-holes.

However, the trail led to Clinch's Dump, and sooner or later he must leave it.

What he had to have was a fire; he realised that. Somewhere off the trail, in big timber if possible, he must build a fire and master this deadly chill that was slowly paralysing all power of movement.

He knew that a fire in the forest, particularly in big timber, could be seen only a little way. He must take his chances with sink-holes and find some spot in the forest to build that fire.

Who could discover him except by accident?

Who would prowl the midnight wilderness? At thirty yards the fire would not be visible. And, as for the odour—well, he'd be gone before dawn.... Meanwhile, he must have that fire. He could wait no longer.

He cut a pole first. Then he left the trail where a little spring flowed west, and turned to the right, shining the forest floor as he moved and sounding with his pole every wet stretch of moss, every strip of mud, every tiniest glimmer of water.

At last he came to a place of pines, first growth giants towering into night, and, looking up, saw stars, infinitely distant, ... where perhaps those things called souls drifted like wisps of vapour.

When the fire took, Quintana's thin dark hands had become nearly useless from cold. He could not have crooked finger to trigger.

For a long time he sat close to the blaze, slowly massaging his torpid limbs, but did not dare strip off his foot-gear.

Steam rose from puttee and heavy shoe and from the sodden woollen breeches. Warmth slowly penetrated. There was little smoke; the big dry branches were dead and bleached and he let the fire eat into them without using his axe.

Once or twice he sighed, "Oh, my God," in a weary demi-voice, as though the content of well-being were permeating him.

Later he ate and drank languidly, looking up at the stars, speculating as to the possible presence of Mike Clinch up there.

"Ah, the dirty thief," he murmured; "—nevertheless a man. Quel homme! Mais bête à faire pleurer! Je l'ai bien triché, moi! Ha!"

Quintana smiled palely as he thought of the coat and the gently-swaying bush—of the red glare of Clinch's shot, of the death-echo of his own shot.

Then, uneasy, he drew out the morocco case and gazed at the two trays full of gems.

The jewels blazed in the firelight. He touched them, moved them about, picked up several and examined them, testing the unset edges against his under lip as an expert tests jade.

But he couldn't tell; there was no knowing. He replaced them, closed the case, pocketed it. When he had a chance he could try boiling water for one sort of trick. He could scratch one or two.... Sard would know. He wondered whether Sard had got away, not concerned except selfishly. However, there were others in Paris whom he could trust—at a price....

Quintana rested both elbows on his knees and framed his dark face between both bony hands.

What a chase Clinch had led him after the Flaming Jewel. And now Clinch lay dead in the forest—faintly smiling. At what ?

In a very low, passionless voice, Quintana cursed monotonously as he gazed into the fire. In Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian, he cursed Clinch. After a little while he remembered Clinch's daughter, and he cursed her, elaborately, thoroughly, wishing her black mischance awake and asleep, living or dead.

Darragh, too, he remembered in his curses, and did not slight him. And the trooper, Stormont—ah, he should have killed all of them when he had the chance.... And those two Baltic Russians, also, the girl duchess and her friend. Why on earth hadn't he made a clean job of it? Over-caution. A wary disinclination to stir up civilization by needless murder. But after all, old maxims, old beliefs, old truths are the best, God knows. The dead don't talk! And that's the wisest wisdom of all.

"If," murmured Quintana fervently, "God gives me further opportunity to acquire a little property to comfort me in my old age, I shall leave no gossiping fool to do me harm with his tongue. No! I kill.

"And though they raise a hue and cry, dead tongues can not wag and I save myse'f much annoyance in the end."

He leaned his back against the trunk of a massive pine.

Presently Quintana slept after his own fashion—that is to say, looking closely at him one could discover a glimmer under his lowered eyelids. And he listened always in that kind of sleep. As though a shadowy part of him were detached from his body, and mounted guard over it.

The inaudible movement of a wood-mouse venturing into the firelit circle awoke Quintana. Again a dropping leaf amid distant birches awoke him. Such things. And so he slept with wet feet to the fire and his rifle across his knees; and dreamed of Eve and of murder, and that the Flaming Jewel was but a mass of glass.

At that moment the girl of whose white throat Quintana was dreaming, and whining faintly in his dreams, stood alone outside Clinch's Dump, rifle in hand, listening, fighting the creeping dread that touched her slender body at times—seemed to touch her very heart with frost.

Clinch's men had gone on to Ghost Lake with their wounded and dead, where there was fitter shelter for both. All had gone on; nobody remained to await Clinch's home-coming except Eve Strayer.

Black Care, that tireless squire of dames, had followed her from the time she had left Clinch, facing the spectral forests of Drowned Valley.

An odd, unusual dread weighted her heart—something in emotions that she never before had experienced in time of danger. In it there was the deathly unease of premonition. But of what it was born she did not understand,—perhaps of the strain of dangers passed—of the shock of discovery concerning Smith's identity with Darragh—Darragh!—the hated kinsman of Harrod the abhorred.

Fiercely she wondered how much her lover knew about this miserable masquerade. Was Stormont involved in this deception—Stormont, the object of her first girl's passion—Stormont, for whom she would have died?

Wretched, perplexed, fiercely enraged at Darragh, deadly anxious concerning Clinch, she had gone about cooking supper.

The supper, kept warm on the range, still awaited the man who had no more need of meat and drink.

Of the tragedy of Sard Eve knew nothing. There were no traces save in the disorder in the pantry and the bottles and chair on the veranda.

Who had visited the place excepting those from whom she and Stormont had fled, did not appear. She had no idea why her step-father's mattress and bed-quilt lay in the pantry.

Her heart heavy with ceaseless anxiety, Eve carried mattress and bed-clothes to Clinch's chamber, re-made his bed, wandered through the house setting it in order; then, in the kitchen, seated herself and waited until the strange dread that possessed her drove her out into the starlight to stand and listen and stare at the dark forest where all her dread seemed concentrated.

It was not yet dawn, but the girl could endure the strain no longer.

With electric torch and rifle she started for the forest, almost running at first; then, among the first trees, moving with caution and in silence along the trail over which Clinch should long since have journeyed homeward.

In soft places, when she ventured to flash her torch, foot-prints cast curious shadows, and it was hard to make out tracks so oddly distorted by the light. Prints mingled and partly obliterated other prints. She identified her own tracks leading south, and guessed at the others, pointing north and south, where they had carried in the wounded and had gone back to bring in the dead.

But nowhere could she discover any impression resembling her step-father's,—that great, firm stride and solid imprint which so often she had tracked through moss and swale and which she knew so well.

Once when she got up from her knees after close examination of the muddy trail, she became aware of the slightest taint in the night air—stood with delicate nostrils quivering—advanced, still conscious of the taint, listening, wary, every stealthy instinct alert.

She had not been mistaken: somewhere in the forest there was smoke. Somewhere a fire was burning. It might not be very far away; it might be distant. Whose fire? Her father's? Would a hunter of men build a fire?

The girl stood shivering in the darkness. There was not a sound.

Now, keeping her cautious feet in the trail by sense of touch alone, she moved on. Gradually, as she advanced, the odour of smoke became more distinct. She heard nothing, saw nothing; but there was a near reek of smoke in her nostrils and she stopped short.

After a little while in the intense silence of the forest she ventured to touch the switch of her torch, very cautiously.

In the faint, pale lustre she saw a tiny rivulet flowing westward from a spring, and, beside it, in the mud, imprints of a man's feet.

The tracks were small, narrow, slimmer than imprints made by any man she could think of. Under the glimmer of her torch they seemed quite fresh; contours were still sharp, some ready to crumble, and water stood in the heels.

A little way she traced them, saw where their maker had cut a pole, peeled it; saw, farther on, where this unknown man had probed in moss and mud—peppered some particularly suspicious swale with a series of holes as though a giant woodcock had been "boring" there.

Who was this man wandering all alone at night off the Drowned Valley trail and probing the darkness with a pole?

She knew it was not her father. She knew that no native—none of her father's men—would behave in such a manner. Nor could any of these have left such narrow, almost delicate tracks.

As she stole along, dimly shining the tracks, lifting her head incessantly to listen and peer into the darkness, her quick eye caught something ahead—something very slightly different from the wall of black obscurity—a vague hint of colour—the very vaguest tint scarcely perceptible at all.

But she knew it was firelight touching the trunk of an unseen tree.

Now, soundlessly over damp pine needles she crept. The scent of smoke grew strong in nostril and throat; the pale tint became palely reddish. All about her the blackness seemed palpable—seemed to touch her body with its weight; but, ahead, a ruddy glow stained two huge pines. And presently she saw the fire, burning low, but redly alive. And, after a long, long while, she saw a man.

He had left the fire circle.