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 feed, 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 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 of 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 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, cradle, 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. When he had dried them he kissed them. She felt his unshaven lips trembling, heard him whimper for the first time in his life.
“Why the hell didn’t you give Quintana the packet?” he demanded. “What does that count for — what does any damn thing count for against you, girlie?”
She looked up at him out of heavy-lidded eyes: “You told me to take good care of it.”
“It’s only a little truck I’d laid by for you,” he retorted unsteadily, “ — a few trifles for to make a grand lady of you when the time’s ripe. ‘Tain’t worth a thorn in your little foot to me. … The hull gol-dinged world full o’ money ain’t worth that there stone-bruise onto them little white feet o’ yourn, Eve.
“Look at you now — my God, look at you there, all peaked an’ scairt an’ bleedin’ — plum tuckered out, ‘n’ all ragged ‘n’ dirty — —”
A blaze of fury flared in his small pale eyes: “ — And he hit you, too, did he? — that skunk! Quintana done that to my little girlie, did he?”
“I don’t know if it was Quintana. I don’t know who he was, dad,” she murmured drowsily.
“Masked, wa’n’t he?”
“Yes.”
Clinch’s iron visage twitched and quivered. He gnawed his thin lips into control.
“Girlie, I gotta go out a spell. But I ain’t a-leavin’ you alone here. I’ll git somebody to set up with you. You jest lie snug and don’t think about nothin’ till I come back.”
“Yes, dad,” she sighed, closing her eyes.
Clinch stood looking at her for a moment, then he went downstairs heavily, and out to the veranda where State Trooper Stormont still sat his saddle, talking to Hal Smith. On the porch a sullen crowd of the backwoods riff-raff lounged in the silence, awaiting events.
Clinch called across to Smith: “Hey, Hal, g’wan up and set with Eve a spell while she’s nappin’. Take a gun.”
Smith said to Stormont in a low voice: “Do me a favour, Jack?”
“You bet.”
“That girl of Clinch’s is in real danger if left here alone. But I’ve got another job on my hands. Can you keep a watch on her till I return?”
“Can’t you tell me a little more, Jim?”
“I will, later. Do you mind helping me out now?”
“All right.”
Trooper Stormont swung out of his saddle and led his horse away toward the stable.
Hal Smith went into the bar where Clinch stood, oiling a rifle.
“G’wan upstairs,” he muttered. “I got a private way on. It’s me or
Quintana, now.”
“You’re going after Quintana?” inquired Smith, carelessly.
“I be. And I want you should git your gun and set up by Evie. And I want you to kill any living human son of a slut that comes botherin’ around this here hotel.”
“I’m going after Quintana with you, Mike.”
“B’gosh you ain’t. You’re a-goin’ to keep watch here.”
“No. Trooper Stormont has promised to stay with Eve. You’ll need every man to-day, Mike. This isn’t a deer drive.”
Clinch let his rifle sag across the hollow of his left arm.
“Did you beef to that trooper?” he demanded in his pleasant, misleading way.
“Do you think I’m crazy?” retorted Smith.
“Well, what the hell — —”
“They all know that some man used your girl roughly. That’s all I said to him— ‘keep an eye on Eve until we can get back.’ And I tell you, Mike, if we drive Star Peak we won’t be back till long after sundown.”
Clinch growled: “I ain’t never asked no favours of no State Trooper — —”
“He did you a favour, didn’t he? He brought your daughter in.”
“Yes, ‘n’ he’d jail us all if he got anything on us.”
“Yes; and he’ll shoot to kill if any of Quintana’s people come here and try to break in.”
Clinch grunted, peeled off his coat and got into a leather vest bristling with cartridge loops.
Trooper Stormont came into the back door, carrying his rifle.
“Some rough fellow been bothering your little daughter, Clinch?” he inquired. “The child was nearly all in when she met me out by Owl Marsh — clothes half torn off her back, bare-foot and bleeding. She’s a plucky youngster. I’ll say so, Clinch. If you think the fellow may come here to annoy her I’ll keep an eye on her till you return.”
Clinch went up to Stormont, put his powerful hands on the young fellow’s shoulders.
After a moment’s glaring silence: “You look clean. I guess you be, too. I wanta tell you I’ll cut the guts outa any guy that lays the heft of a single finger onto Eve.”
“I’d do so, too, if I were you,” said Stormont.
“Would ye? Well, I guess you’re a real man, too, even if you’re a State Trooper,” growled Clinch. “G’wan up. She’s a-nappin’. If she wakes up you kinda talk pleasant to her. You act pleasant and cozy. She ain’t had no ma. You tell her to set snug and ca’m. Then you cook her an egg if she wants it. There’s pie, too. I cal’late to be back by sundown.”
“Nearer morning,” remarked Smith.
Stormont shrugged. “I’ll stay until you show up, Clinch.”
The latter took another rifle from the corner and handed it to Smith with a loop of ammunition.
“Come on,” he grunted.
On the veranda he strode up to the group of sullen, armed men who regarded his advent in expressionless silence.
Sid Hone was there, and Harvey Chase, and the Hastings boys, and
Cornelius Blommers.
“You fellas comin’?” inquired Clinch.
“Where?” drawled Sid Hone.
“Me an’ Hal Smith is cal’kalatin’ to drive Star Peak. It ain’t a deer, neither.”
There ensued a grim interval. Clinch’s wintry smile began to glimmer.
“Booze agents or game protectors? Which?” asked Byron Hastings. “They both look like deer — if a man gits mad enough.”
Clinch’s smile became terrifying. “I shell out five hundred dollars for every deer that’s dropped on Star Peak to-day,” he said. “And I hope there won’t be no accidents and no mistakin’ no stranger for a deer,” he added, wagging his great, square head.
“Them accidents is liable to happen,” remarked hone, reflectively.
After another pause: “Where’s Jake Kloon?” inquired Smith.
Nobody seemed to know.
“He was here when Mike called me into the bar,” insisted Smith. Where’d he go?”
Then, of a sudden, Clinch recollected the packet which he had kicked under a veranda chair. It was no longer there.
“Any o’ you fellas seen a package here on the pyazza?” demanded Clinch harshly.
“Jake Kloon, he had somethin’,” drawled Chase. “I supposed it was his lunch. Mebbe ’twas, too.”
In the intense stillness Clinch glared into one face after another.
“Boys,” he said in his softly modulated voice, “I kinda guess there’s a rat amongst us. I wouldn’t like for to be that there rat — no, not for a billion hundred dollars. No, I wouldn’t. Becuz that there rat has bit my little girlie, Eve, — like that there deer bit her up on Star Peak. … No, I wouldn’t like for to be that there rat. Fer he’s a-going’ to die like a rat, same’s that there deer is a-goin’ to die like a deer. … Anyone seen which way Jake Kloon went?”
“Now you speak of it,” said Byron Hastings, “seems like I noticed Jake and Earl Leverett down by the woods near the pond. I kinda disremembered when you asked, but I guess I seen them.”
“Sure,” said Sid Hone. “Now you mention it, I seen ‘em, too. Thinks I to m’self, they is pickin’ them blackberries down to the crick. Yes, I seen ‘em.”
Clinch tossed his rifle across his left shoulder.
“Rats an’ deer,” he said pleasantly. “Them’s the articles we’re lookin’ for. Only for God’s sake be careful you don’t mistake a man for ’em in the woods.”
One or two men laughed.
* * * * *
On the edge of Owl Marsh Clinch halted in the trail, and, as his men came up, he counted them with a cold eye.
“Here’s the runway and this here hazel bush is my station,” he said. “You fellas do the barkin’. You, Sid Hone, and you, Corny, start drivin’ from the west. Harvey, you yelp ’em from the north by Lynx Brook. Jim and Byron, you get twenty minutes to go ‘round to the eastward and drive by the Slide. And you, Hal Smith,” — he looked around— “where ‘n hell be you, Hal? — —”
Smith came up from the bog’s edge.
“Send ’em out,” he said in a low voice. “I’ve got Jake’s tracks in the bog.”
Clinch motioned his beaters to their duty. “Twenty minutes,” he reminded Hone, Chase, and Blommers, “before you start drivin’.” And, o the Hastings boys: “If you shoot, aim low for their bellies. Don’t leave on blood around. Scrape it up. We bury what we get.”
He and Smith stood looking after the five slouching figures moving away toward their blind trails. When all had disappeared:
“Show me Jake’s mark,” he said calmly.
Smith led him to the edge of the bog, knelt down, drew aside a branch of witch-hopple. A man’s footprint was plainly visible in the mud.
“That’s Jake,” said Clinch slowly. “I know them half-soled boots o’ hisn.” He lifted another branch. “There’s another man’s track!”
“The other is probably Leverett’s.”
“Likely. He’s got thin feet.”
“I think I’d better go after them,” said Smith, reflectively.
“They’ll plug you, you poor jackass — two o’ them like that, and one a-settin’ up to watch out. Hell! Be you tired o’ bed an’ board?”
Smith smiled: “Don’t you worry, Mike.”
“Why? You think you’re that smart? Jest becuz you stuck up a tourist you think you’re cock o’ the North Woods — with them two foxes lyin’ out for to snap you up? Hey? Why, you poor dumb thing, Jake runs Canadian hootch for a livin’; and Leverett’s a trap thief! What could you do with a pair o’ foxes like that?”
“Catch ‘em,” said Smith, coolly. “You mind your business, Mike.”
As he shouldered his rifle and started into the marsh, Clinch dropped a heavy hand on his shoulder; but the young man shook it off.
“Shut up,” he said sharply. “You’ve a private war on your hands. So have I. I’ll take care of my own.”
“What’s your grievance?” demanded Clinch, surprised.
“Jake Kloon played a dirty trick on me.”
“When was that?”
“Not very long ago.”
“I hadn’t heard,” said Clinch.
“Well, you hear it now, don’t you? All right. All right; I’m going after him.”
As he started again across the marsh, Clinch called out in a guarded voice: “Take good care of that packet if you catch them rats. It belongs to Eve.”
“I’ll take such good care of it,” replied Smith, “that its proper owner need not worry.”
* * * * *
II
The “proper owner” of the packet was, at that moment, on the Atlantic
Ocean, travelling toward the United States.
Four other pretended owners of the Grand Duchess Theodorica’s jewels, totally
unconscious of anything impending which might impair their several titles to the gems, were now gathered together in a wilderness within a few miles of one another.
Jose Quintana lay somewhere in the forests with his gang, fiercely planning the recovery of the treasure of which Clinch had once robbed him. Clinch squatted on his runway, watching the mountain flank with murderous eyes. It was no longer the Flaming Jewel which mattered. His master passion ruled him now. Those who had offered violence to Eve must be reckoned with first of all. The hand that struck Eve Strayer had offered mortal insult to Mike Clinch.
As for the third pretender to the Flaming Jewel, Jake Kloon, he was now travelling in a fox’s circle toward Drowned Valley — that shaggy wilderness of slime and tamarack and depthless bog which touches the northwest base of Star Peak. He was not hurrying, having no thought of pursuit. Behind him plodded Leverett, the trap thief, very, very busy with his own ideas.
To Leverett’s repeated requests that Kloon halt and open the packet to see what it contained, Kloon gruffly refused.
“What do we care what’s in it?” he said. “We get ten thousand apiece over our rifles for it from them guys. Ain’t it a good enough job for you?”
“Maybe we make more if we take what’s inside it for ourselves,” argued
Leverett. “Let’s take a peek, anyway.”
“Naw. I don’t want no peek nor nothin’. The ten thousand comes too
easy. More might scare us. Let that guy, Quintana, have what’s his’n.
All I ask is my rake-off. You allus was a dirty, thieving mink, Earl.
Let’s give him his and take ours and git. I’m going to Albany to live.
You bet I don’t stay in no woods where Mike Clinch dens.”
They plodded on, arguing, toward their rendezvous with Quintana’s outpost on the edge of drowned valley.
* * * * *
The fourth pretender to the pearls, rubies, and great gem called the
Flaming Jewel, stolen from the young Grand Duchess Theodorica of
Esthonia by Jose Quintana, was an unconscious pretender, entirely
innocent of the role assigned her by Clinch.
For Eve Strayer had never heard where the packet came from or what it contained. All she knew was that her stepfather had told her that it belonged to her. And the knowledge left her incurious.
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 1015