For in the still valley below, Mike Clinch squatted beside the runway he had chosen, a cocked rifle across his knees.
The glare in his small, pale eyes waned and flared as distant sounds broke the forest silence, grew vague, died out, — the fairy clatter of a falling leaf, the sudden scurry of a squirrel, a feathery rustle of swift wings in play or combat, the soft crash of a rotten bough sagging earthward to enrich the soil that grew it.
And, as Clinch squatted there, murderously intent, ever the fixed obsession burned in his fever brain, stirring his thin lips incessant muttering, — a sort of soundless invocation, part chronicle, part prayer:
“O God A’mighty, in your big, swell mansion up there, all has went contrary with me sence you let that there damn millionaire, Harrod, come into this here forest. … He went and built unto himself an habitation, and he put up a wall of law all around me where I was earnin’ a lawful livin’ in Thy nice, clean wilderness. … And now comes this here Quintana and robs my girlie. … I promised her mother I’d make a lady of her little Eve. … I loved my wife, O Lord. … 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, Harvey,” 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’ on 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 o 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. Has 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 beats 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.
<
br /> 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 as 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 me warning’, 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 busy, 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 own 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-goin 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 snarlin, 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 deep, superstitious horror of Jake Kloon’s empty bunk — the repugnant sight of Kloon’s spare clothing hanging from its peg — the dead man’s shoes ——
No, he could not go to Stinking Lake and sleep. … And wake with the faint stench of sulphur in his throat. … And see the worm-like leeches unfolding in the shallows, and the big, reddish water-lizards, livid as skinned eels, wriggling convulsively toward their sunless lairs. …
At the mere thought of his dead bunk-mate he sought relief in vindictive rage — stirred up the smouldering embers again, cursed Clinch and Hal Smith, violently searching in his inflamed brain some instant vengeance upon these men who had driven him out from the only place on earth where he knew how to exist — the wilderness.
All at once he thought of Clinch’s step-daughter. The thought instantly scared him. Yet — what a revenge! — to strike Clinch through the only creature he cared for in all the world! … What a revenge! … Clinch was headed for Drowned Valley. Eve Strayer was alone at the Dump. … Another thought flashed like lightning across his turbid mind; — the packet!
Bribed by Quintana, Jake Kloon, lurking at Clinch’s door, had heard him direct Eve to take a packet to Owl Marsh, and had notified Quintana.
Wittingly or unwittingly, the girl had taken a packet of sugar-milk chocolate instead of the priceless parcel expected.
Again, carried in, exhausted, by a State Trooper, Jake Kloon had been fooled; and it was the packet of sugar-milk chocolate that Jake had purloined from the veranda where Clinch kicked it. For two cakes of chocolate Kloon had died. For two cakes of chocolate he, Earl Leverett, had become a man-slayer, a homeless fugitive in peril of his life.
He stood licking his blood-dried lips there in the darkness, striving to hatch courage out of the dull fury eating at a coward’s heart.
Somewhere in Clinch’s Dump was the packet that would make him rich. … Here was his opportunity. He had only to dare; and pain and poverty and fear — above all else fear — would end forever! …
* * * * *
When, at last, he came out to the edge of Clinch’s clearing, the dark
October heavens were but a vast wilderness of stars.
Star Pond, set to its limpid depths with the heavenly gems, glittered and darkled with its million diamond incrustations. The humped-up lump of Clinch’s Dump crouched like some huge and feeding night-beast on the bank, ringed by the sol
emn forest.
There was a kerosene lamp burning in Eve Strayer’s rooms. Another light — a candle — flickered in the kitchen.
Leverett, crouching, ran rat-like down to the barn, slid in between the ice house and the corn-crib, crawled out among the wilderness of weeds and lay flat.
The light burned steadily from Eve’s window.
* * * * *
IV
From his form among the frost-blackened rag-weeds, the trap-robber could see only the plastered ceiling of the bed chamber.
But the kerosene lamp cast two shadows on that — tall shadows of human shapes that stirred at times.
The trap-robber, scared, stiffened to immobility, but his little eyes remained fastened on the camera obscura above. All the cunning, patience, and murderous immobility of the rat were his.
Not a weed stirred under the stars where he lay with tiny, unwinking eyes intent upon the shadows on the ceiling.
* * * * *
The shadows on the ceiling were cast by Eve Strayer and her State
Trooper.
Eve sat on her bed’s edge, swathed in a lilac silk kimona — delicate relic of school days. Her bandaged feet, crossed, dangled above the rag-rug on the floor; her slim, tanned fingers were interlaced over the book on her lap.
Near the door stood State Trooper Stormont, spurred, booted, trig and trim, an undecided and flushed young man, fumbling irresolutely with the purple cord on his campaign-hat.
The book on Eve’s knees — another relic of the past — was Sigurd the Volsung. Stormont had been reading to her — they having found, after the half shy tentatives of new friends, a point d’appui in literature. And the girl, admitting a passion for the poets, invited him to inspect the bookcase of unpainted pine which Clinch had built into her bedroom wall.
Here it was he discovered mutual friends among the nobler Victorians — surprised to discover Sigurd there — and, carrying it to her bedside, looked leisurely through the half forgotten pages.
“Would you read a little?” she ventured.
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 1018