* * * * *
III
Eve slept the sleep of mental and physical exhaustion. Reaction from fear brings a fatigue more profound than that which follows physical overstrain. But the healthy mind, like the healthy body, disposes very thoroughly of toxics which arise from terror and exhaustion.
The girl slept profoundly, calmly. Her bruised young mind and body left her undisturbed. There was neither restlessness nor fever. Sleep swept her with its clean, sweet tide, cleansing the superb youth and health of her with the most wonderful balm in the Divine pharmacy.
She awoke late in the afternoon, opened her flower-blue eyes, and saw
State Trooper Stormont sitting by the window, and gazing out.
Perhaps Eve’s confused senses mistook the young man for a vision; for she lay very still, nor stirred even her little finger.
After a while Stormont glanced around at her. A warm, delicate colour stained her skin slowly, evenly, from the throat to hair.
He got up and came over to the bed.
“How do you feel?” he asked, awkwardly.
“Where is dad?” she managed to inquire in a steady voice.
“He won’t be back till late. He asked me to stick around — in case you needed anything — —”
The girl’s clear eyes searched his.
“Trooper Stormont?”
“Yes, Eve.”
“Dad’s gone after Quintana.”
“Is he the fellow who misused you?”
“I think so.”
“Who is he?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is he your enemy or your stepfather’s?”
But the girl shook her head: “I can’t discuss dad’s affairs with — with — —”
“With a State Trooper,” smiled Stormont. “That’s all right, Eve. You don’t have to.”
There was a pause; Stormont stood beside the bed, looking down at her with his diffident, boyish smile. And the girl gazed back straight into his eyes — eyes she had so often looked into in her dreams.
“I’m going to cook you an egg and bring you some pie,” he remarked, still smiling.
“Did dad say I am to stay in bed?”
“That was my inference. Do you feel very lame and sore?”
“My feet burn.”
“You poor kid! … Would you let me look at them? I have a first-aid packet with me.”
After a moment she nodded and turned her face on the pillow. He drew aside the cover a little, knelt down beside the bed.
Then he rose and went downstairs to the kitchen. There was hot water in the kettle. He fetched it back, bathed her feet, drew out from the cut and scratch the flakes of granite-grit and brier-points that still remained there.
From his first-aid packet he took a capsule, dissolved it, sterilized the torn skin, then bandaged both feet with a deliciously cool salve, and drew the sheets into place.
Eve had not stirred nor spoken. He washed and dried his hands and came back, drawing his chair nearer to the bedside.
“Sleep, if you feel like it,” he said pleasantly.
As she made no sound or movement he bent over to see if she had already fallen asleep. And noticed that her flushed cheeks were wet with tears.
“Are you suffering?” he asked gently.
“No. … You are so wonderfully kind. …”
“Why shouldn’t I be kind?” he said, amused and touched by the girl’s emotion.
“I tried to shoot you once. That is why you ought to hate me.”
He began to laugh: “Is that what you’re thinking about?”
“I — never can — forget — —”
“Nonsense. We’re quits anyway. Do you remember what I did to you?”
He was thinking of the handcuffs. Then, in her vivid blush he read what she was thinking. And he remembered his lips on her palms.
He, too, now was blushing brilliantly at the memory of that swift, sudden rush of romantic tenderness which this girl had witnessed that memorable day on Owl Marsh.
In the hot, uncomfortable silence, neither spoke. He seated himself after a while. And, after a while, she turned on her pillow part way toward him.
Somehow they both understood that it was friendship which had subtly filled the interval that separated them since that amazing day.
“I’ve often thought of you,” he said, — as though they had been discussing his absence.
No hour of the waking day that she had not thought of him. But she did not say so now. After a little while:
“Is yours a lonely life?” she asked in a low voice.
“Sometimes. But I love the forest.”
“Sometimes,” she said, “the forest seems like a trap that I can’t escape. Sometimes I hate it.”
“Are you lonely, Eve?”
“As you are. You see I know what the outside world is. I miss it.”
“You were in boarding school and college.”
“Yes.”
“It must be hard for you here at Star Pond.”
The girl sighed, unconsciously:
“There are days when I — can scarcely — stand it. … The wilderness would be more endurable if dad and I were all alone. … Bu even then — —”
“You need young people of your own age, — educated companions — —”
“I need the city, Mr. Stormont. I need all it can give: I’m starving for it. That’s all.”
She turned on her pillow, and he saw that she was smiling faintly. Her face bore no trace of the tragic truth she had uttered. But the tragedy was plain enough to him, even without her passionless words of revolt. The situation of this young, educated girl, aglow with youth, bettered, body and mind, to the squalor of Clinch’s dump, was perfectly plain to anybody.
She said, seeing his troubled expression: “I’m sorry I spoke that way.”
“I knew how you must feel, anyway.”
“It seems ungrateful,” she murmured. “I love my step-father.”
“You’ve proven that,” he remarked with a dry humour that brought the hot flush to her face again.
“I must have been crazy that day,” she said. “It scares me to remember what I tried to do. … What a frightful thing — if I had killed you — How can you forgive me?”
“How can you forgive me, Eve?”
She turned her head: “I do.”
“Entirely?”
“Yes.”
He said, — a slight emotion noticeable in his voice: “Well, I forgave you before the darned gun exploded in our hands.”
“How could you?” she protested.
“I was thinking all the while that you were acting as I’d have acted if anything threatened my father.”
“Were you thinking of that?”
“Yes, — and also how to get hold of you before you shot me.” He began to laugh.
After a moment she turned her head to look at him, and her smile glimmered, responsive to his amusement. But she shivered slightly, too.
“How about that egg?” he inquired.
“I can get up — —”
“Better keep off your feet. What is there in the pantry? You must be starved.”
“I could eat a little before supper time,” she admitted. “I forgot to take my lunch with me this morning. It is still there in the pantry on the bread box, wrapped up in brown paper, just as I left it — —”
She half rose in bed, supported on one arm, her curly brown-gold hair framing her face:
“ — Two cakes of sugar-milk chocolate in a flat brown packet tied with a string,” she explained, smiling at his amusement.
So he went down to the pantry and discovered the parcel on the bread box where she had left it that morning before starting for the cache on Owl Marsh.
He brought it to her, placed both pillows upright behind her, stepped back gaily to admire the effect. Eve, with her parcel in her hands, laughed shyly at his comedy.
“Begin on your chocolate,” he said. “I’m going back to fix you s
ome bread and butter and a cup of tea.”
When again he had disappeared, the girl, still smiling, began to untie her packet, unhurriedly, slowly loosening string and wrapping.
Her attention was not fixed on what her slender fingers were about.
She drew from the parcel a flat morocco case with a coat of arms and crest stamped on it in gold, black, and scarlet.
For a few moments she stared at the object stupidly. The next moment she heard Stormont’s spurred tread on the stairs; and she thrust the morocco case and the wrapping under the pillows behind her.
She looked up at him in a dazed way when he came in with the tea and bread. He set the tin tray on her bureau an came over to the bedside.
“Eve,” he said, “you look very white and ill. Have you been hurt somewhere, and haven’t you admitted it?”
She seemed unable to speak, and he took both her hands and looked anxiously into her lovely, pallid features.
After a moment she turned her head and buried her face in the pillow, trembling now in overwhelming realization of what she had endured for the sake of two cakes of sugar-milk chocolate hidden under a bush in the forest.
* * * * *
For a long while the girl lay there, the feverish flush of tears on her partly hidden face, her nervous hands tremulous, restless, now seeking his, convulsively, now striving to escape his clasp — eloquent, uncertain little hands that seemed to tell so much and yet were telling him nothing he could understand.
“Eve, dear,” he said, “are you in pain? What is it that has happened to you? I thought you were all right. You seemed all right — —”
“I am,” she said in a smothered voice. “You’ll stay here with me, won’t you?”
“Of course I will. It’s just the reaction. It’s all over. You’re relaxing. That’s all, dear. You’re safe. Nothing can harm you now — —”
“Please don’ leave me.”
After a moment: “I won’t leave you. … I wish I might never leave you.”
In the tense silence that followed her trembling ceased. Then his heart, heavy, irregular, began beating so that the startled pulses in her body awoke, wildly responsive.
Deep emotions, new, unfamiliar, were stirring, awaking, confusing them both. In a sudden instinct to escape, she turned and partly rose on one elbow, gazing blindly about her out of tear-marred eyes.
“I want my room to myself,” she murmured in a breathless sort of way,
“ — I want you to go out, please — —”
A boyish flush burnt his face. He got up slowly, took his rifle from the corner, went out, closing the door, and seated himself on the stairs.
And there, on guard, sat Trooper Stormont, rigid, unstirring, hour after hour, facing the first great passion of his life, and stunned by the impact of its swift and unexpected blow.
* * * * *
In her chamber, on the bed’s edge, sat Eve Strayer, her deep eyes fixed on space. Vague emotions, exquisitely recurrent, new born, possessed her. The whole world, too, all around her seemed to have become misty and golden and all pulsating with a faint, still rhythm that indefinably thrilled her pulses to response.
Passion, full-armed, springs flaming from the heart of man. Woman is slow to burn. And it was the delicate phantom of passion that Eve gazed upon, there in her unpainted chamber, her sun-tanned fingers linking listlessly in her lap, her little feet like bruised white flowers drooping above the floor.
Hour after hour she sat there dreaming, staring at the tinted ghost of Eros, rose-hued, near-smiling, unreal, impalpable as the dusty sunbeam that slanted from her window, gilding the boarded floor.
* * * * *
Three spectres, gilding near, paused to gaze at State Trooper Stormont, on guard by the stairs. Then they looked at the closed door of Eve’s chamber.
Then the three spectres, Fate, Chance, and Destiny, whispering together, passed on toward the depths of the sunset forest.
* * * * *
Episode Five
Drowned Valley
* * * * *
I
The soft, bluish forest shadows had lengthened, and the barred sun-rays, filtering through, were tinged with a rosy hue before Jake Kloon, the hootch runner, and Earl Leverett, trap thief, came to Drowned Valley.
They were still a mile distant from the most southern edge of that vast desolation, but already tamaracks appeared in the beauty of their burnt gold; the little pools glimmered here and there; patches of amber sphagnum and crimson pitcher-plants became frequent; and once or twice Kloon’s big boots broke through the crust of fallen leaves, soaking him to the ankles with black silt.
Leverett, always a coward, had pursued his devious and larcenous way through the world, always in deadly fear of sink holes.
His movements and paths were those of a weasel, preferring always solid ground; but he lacked the courage of that sinuous little beast, though he possessed all of its ferocity and far more cunning.
Now trotting lightly and tirelessly in the broad and careless spoor of Jake Kloon, his narrow, pointed head alert, and every fear-sharpened instinct tensely observant, the trap-thief continued to meditate murder.
Like all cowards, he had always been inclined to bold and ruthless action; but inclination was all that ever had happened.
Yet, even in his pitiable misdemeanours he slunk through life in terror of that strength which never hesitates at violence. In his petty pilfering he died a hundred deaths for every trapped mink or otter he filched; he heard the game protector’s tread as he slunk from the bagged trout brook or crawled away, belly dragging, and pockets full of snared grouse.
Always he had dreamed of the day when, through some sudden bold and savage stroke, he could deliver himself from a life of fear and live in a city, grossly, replete with the pleasures of satiation, never again to see a tree or a lonely lake or the blue peaks which, always, he had hated because they seemed to spy on him from their sky-blue heights.
They were spying on him now as he moved lightly, furtively at Jake Kloon’s heels, meditating once more that swift, bold stroke which forever would free him from all care and fear.
He looked at the back of Kloon’s massive head. One shot would blow that skull into fragments, he thought, shivering.
One shot from behind, — and twenty thousand dollars, — or, if it proved a better deal, the contents of the packet. For, if Quintana’s bribery had dazzled them, what effect might the contents of that secret packet have if revealed?
Always in his mean and busy brain he was trying to figure to himself what that packet must contain. And, to make the bribe worth while, Leverett had concluded that only a solid packet of thousand-dollar bills could account for the twenty thousand offered.
There might easily be half a million in bills pressed together in that heavy, flat packet. Bills were absolutely safe plunder. But Kloon had turned a deaf ear to his suggestions, — Kloon, who never entertained ambitions beyond his hootch rake-off, — whose miserable imagination stopped at a wretched percentage, satisfied.
One shot! There was the back of Kloon’s bushy head. One shot! — and fear, which had shadowed him from birth, was at an end forever. Ended, too, privation, — the bitter rigour of black winters; scorching days; bodily squalor; ills that such as he endured in a wilderness where, like other creatures of the wild, men stricken died or recovered by chance alone.
A single shot would settle all problems for him. … But if he missed? At the mere idea he trembled as he trotted on, trying to tell himself that he couldn’t miss. No use; always the coward’s “if” blocked him; and the coward’s rage, — fiercest of all fury, — ravaged him, almost crazing him with his own impotence.
* * * * *
Tamaracks, sphagnum, crimson pitcher-plants grew thicker; wet woods set with little black pools stretched away on every side.
It was still nearly a mile from Drowned Valley when Jake Kloon halted in his tracks and seated himself on a narrow ridge of hard ground. And Leverett came l
ightly up and, after nosing the whole vicinity, sat down cautiously where Kloon would have to turn partly around to look at him.
“Where the hell do we meet up with Quintana?” growled Kloon, tearing a mouthful from a gnawed tobacco plug and shoving the remainder deep into his trousers pocket.
“We gotta travel a piece, yet. … Say, Jake, be you a man or be you a poor dumb critter what ain’t got no spunk?”
Kloon, chewing on his cud, turned and glanced at him. Then he spat, as answer.
“If you got the spunk of a chipmunk you and me’ll take a peek at that there packet. I bet you it’s thousand-dollar bills — more’n a billion million dollars, likely.”
Kloon’s dogged silence continued. Leverett licked his dry lips. His rifle lay on his knees. Almost imperceptibly he moved it, moved it again, froze stiff as Kloon spat, then, by infinitesimal degrees, continued to edge the muzzle toward Kloon.
“Jake?”
“Aw, shut your head,” grumbled Kloon disdainfully. “You allus was a dirty rat — you sneakin’ trap robber. Enough’s enough. I ain’t no use for no billion million dollar bills. Ten thousand’ll buy me all I cal’late to need till I’m planted. But you’re like a hawg; you ain’t never had enough o’ nothin’ and you won’t never git enough, neither, — not if you wuz God a’mighty you wouldn’t.”
“Ten thousand dollars hain’t nothin’ to a billion million, Jake.”
Kloon squirted a stream of tobacco at a pitcher plant and filled the cup. Diverted and gratified by the accuracy of his aim, he took other shots at intervals.
Leverett moved the muzzle of his rifle a hair’s width to the left, shivered, moved it again. Under his soggy, sun-tanned skin a pallour made his visage sickly grey.
“Jake?”
No answer.
“Say, Jake?”
No notice.
“Jake, I wanta take a peek at them bills.”
Merely another stream of tobacco soiling the crimson pitcher.
“I’m — I’m desprit. I gotta take a peek. I gotta — gotta — —”
Something in Leverett’s unsteady voice made Kloon turn his head.
“You gol rammed fool,” he said, “what you doin’ with your — —”
The loud detonation of the rifle punctuated Kloon’s inquiry with a final period. The big, soft-nosed bullet struck him full in the face, spilling his brains and part of his skull down his back, and knocking him flat as though he had been clubbed.
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 1016