“Not for me, non.” growled Picquet, and jerked a dirty thumb in the direction of the lean-to.
And there Quintana saw a pair of muddy boots protruding from a blanket.
“It is Harry Beck, yes?” he inquired. Then something about the boots and blanket silenced him. He kept his eyes on them for a full minute, then walked into the lean-to. The blanket also covered Harry Beck’s features and there was a stain on it where it outlined the prostrate man’s features, making a ridge over the bony nose.
After a moment Quintana looked around at Picquet:
“So. He is dead. Yes?”
Picquet shrugged: “Since noon, mon capitaine.”
“Comment?”
“How shall I know. It was the fire, perhaps, — green wood or wet — it is no matter now. … I said to him, `Pay attention, Henri; your wood makes too much smoke.’ To me he reply I shall go to hell. … Well, there was too much smoke for me. I arise to search for wood more dry, when, crack! — they begin to shoot out there — —” He waved a dirty hand toward the forest.
“`Bon,’ said I, `Clinch, he have seen your damn smoke!’
“`What shall I care?’ he make reply, Henri Beck, to me. `Clinch he shall shoot and be damn to him. I cook me my dejeuner all the same.’
“I make representations to that Johnbull; he say to me that I am a frog, and other injuries, while he lay yet more wood on his sacre fire.
“Then crack! crack! crack! and zing-gg! — whee-ee! come the big bullets of Clinch and his voyous yonder.
“`Bon,’ I say, `me, I make my excuse to retire.’
“Then Henri Beck he laugh and he say, `Hop it, frog!’ And that is all he has find time to say, when crack! spat! Bien droit he has it — tenez, mon capitaine — here, over the left eye! … Like a beef surprise he go over, crash! thump! And like a beef that dies, the air bellows out from his big lungs — —”
Picquet looked down at the dead comrade in sort of weary compassion for such stupidity.
“ — So he pass, this ros-biff goddam Johnbull. … me, I roll him in there. … Je ne sais pas pourquoi. … Then I put out the fire and leave.”
Quintana let his sneering glance rest on the head a moment, and his thin lip curled immemorial contempt for the Anglo-Saxon.
Then he divested himself of the basket-pack which he had stolen from the
Fry boy.
“Alors,” he said calmly, “it has been Mike Clinch who shoot my frien’
Beck. Bien.”
He threw a cartridge into the breech of his rifle, adjusted his ammunition belt en bandouliere, carelessly.
Then, in a quiet voice: “My frien’ Picquet, the time has now arrive when it become ver’ necessary that we go from here away. Done — I shall no go kill me my frien’ Mike Clinch.”
Picquet, unastonished, gave him a heavy, bovine look of inquiry.
Quintana said softly: “Me, I have enough already of this damn woods. Why shall we starve here when there lies our path?” He pointed north; his arm remained outstretched for a while.
“Clinch, he is there,” growled Picquet.
“Also our path, l’ami Henri. … And, behind us, they hunt us now with dogs.”
Picquet bared his big white teeth in fierce surprise. “Dogs?” he repeated with a sort of snarl.
“That is how they now hunt us, my frien’ — like they hunt the hare in the Cote d’Or. … Me, I shall now reconnoitre — that way!” And he looked where he was pointing, into the north — with smouldering eyes. Then he turned calmly to Picquet: “An’ you, l’ami?”
“At orders, mon capitaine.”
“C’est bien. Venez.”
They walked leisurely forward with rifles shouldered, following the hard ridge out across a vast and flooded land where the bark of trees glimmered with wet mosses.
After a quarter of a mile the ridge broadened and split into two, one hog-back branching northeast! They, however, continued north.
About twenty minutes later Picquet, creeping along on Quintana’s left, and some sixty yards distant, discovered something moving in the woods beyond, and fired at it. Instantly two unseen rifles spoke from the woods ahead. Picquet was jerked clear around, lost his balance and nearly fell. Blood was spurting from his right arm, between elbow and shoulder.
He tried to lift and level his rifle; his arm collapsed and dangled broken and powerless; his rifle clattered to the forest floor.
For a moment he stood there in plain view, dumb, deathly white; then he began screaming with fury while the big, soft-nosed bullets came streaming in all around him. His broken arm was hit again. His scream ceased; he dragged out his big clasp-knife with his left hand and started running toward the shooting.
As he ran, his mangled arm flopping like a broken wing, Byron Hastings stepped out from behind a tree and coolly shot him down at close quarters.
Then Quintana’s rifle exploded twice very quickly, and the Hastings boy stumbled sideways and fell sprawling. He managed to rise to his knees again; he even was trying to stand up when Quintana, taking his time, deliberately began to empty his magazine into the boy, riddling him limb and body and head.
Down once more, he still moved his arms. Sid Hone reached out from behind a fallen log to grasp the dying lad’s ankle and draw him into shelter, but Quintana reloaded swiftly and smashed Hone’s left hand with the first shot.
Them Jim Hastings, kneeling behind a bunch of juniper, fired a high-velocity bullet into the tree behind which Quintana stood; but before he could fire again Quintana’s shot in reply came ripping through the juniper and tore a ghastly hole in the calf of his left leg, striking a blow that knocked young Hastings flat and paralysed as a dead flounder.
A mile to the north, blocking the other exit from Drowned Valley, Mike Clinch, Harve Chase, Cornelius Blommers, and Dick Berry stood listening to the shooting.
“B’gosh,” blurted out Chase, “it sounds like they was goin’ through,
Mike. B’gosh, it does!”
Clinch’s little pale eyes blazed, but he said in his soft, agreeable voice:
“Stay right here, boys. Like as not some of ’em will come this way.”
The shooting below ceased. Clinch’s nostrils expanded and flattened with every breath, as he stood glaring into the woods.
“Have,” he said presently, “you an’ Corny go down there an’ kinda look around. And you signal if I’m wanted. G’wan, both o’ you. Git!”
They started, running heavily, but their feet made little noise on the moss.
Berry came over and stood near Clinch. For ten minutes neither man moved. Clinch stared at the woods in front of him. The younger man’s nervous glance flickered like a snake’s tongue in every direction, and he kept moistening his lips with his tongue.
Presently two shots came from the south. A pause; a rattle of shots from hastily emptied magazines.
“G’wan down there, Dick!” said Clinch.
“You’ll be alone, Mike — —”
“Au right. You do like I say; git along quick!”
Berry walked southward a little way. He had turned very white under his tan.
“Gol ding ye!” shouted Clinch, “take it on a lope or I’ll kick the pants off’n ye!”
Berry began to run, carrying his rifle at a trail.
For half an hour there was not a sound in the forests of Drowned Valley except in the dead timber where unseen woodpeckers hammered fitfully at the ghosts of ancient trees.
Always Clinch’s little pale eyes searched the forest twilight in front of him; not a falling leaf escaped him; not a chipmunk.
And all the while Clinch talked to himself; his lips moved a little now and then, but uttered no sound:
“All I want God should do,” he repeated again and again, “is to just let Quintana come my way. ‘Tain’t for because he robbed my girlie. ‘Tain’t for the stuff he carries onto him. … No, God, ‘tain’t them things. But it’s what that there skunk done to my Evie. … O God, be you listenin’? H
e hurt her, Quintana did. That’s it. He misused her. … God, if you had seen my girlie’s little bleeding feet! —— That’s the reason. … ‘Tain’t the stuff. I can work. I can save for to make my Evie a lady same’s them high-steppers on Fifth Avenoo. I can moil and toil and slave an’ run hootch — hootch —— They wuz wine ‘n’ fixin’s into the Bible. It ain’t you, God, it’s them fanatics. … Nobody in my Dump wanted I should sell ’em more’n a bottle o’ beer before this here prohybishun set us all crazy. ‘Tain’t right. … O God, don’t hold a little hootch agin me when all I want of you is to let Quintana — —”
The slightest noise behind him. He waited, turned slowly. Eve stood there.
Hell died in his pale eyes as she came to him, rested silently in his gentle embrace, returned his kiss, laid her flushed, sweet cheek against his unshaven face.
“Dad, darling?”
“Yes, my baby—”
“You’re watching to kill Quintana. But there’s no use watching any longer.”
“Have the boys below got him?” he demanded.
“They got one of his gang. Byron Hastings is dead. Jim is badly hurt:
Sid Hone, too, — not so badly — —”
“Where’s Quintana?”
“Dad, he’s gone. … But it don’t matter. See here! — —” She dug her slender hand into her breeches pocket and pulled out a little fistful of gems.
Clinch, his powerful arm closing her shoulders, looked dully at the jewels.
“You see, dad, there’s no use killing Quintana. These are the things he robbed you of.”
“‘Tain’t them that matter. … I’m glad you got ‘em. I allus wanted you should be a great lady, girlie. Them’s the ticket of admission. You put them in your pants. I gotta stay here a spell—”
“Dad! Take them!”
He took them, smiled, shoved them into his pocket.
“What is it, girlie?” he asked absently, his pale eyes searching the woods ahead.
“I’ve just told you,” she said, “that the boys went in as far as Quintana’s shanty. There was a dead man there, too; but Quintana has gone.”
Clinch said, — not removing his eyes from the forest: “If any o’ them boys has let Quintana crawl through I’ll kill him, too. … G’wan home, girlie. I gotta mosey — I gotta kinda loaf around f’r a spell — —”
“Dad, I want you to come back with me—”
“You go home; you hear me, Eve? Tell Corny and Dick Berry to hook it for Owl Marsh and stop the Star Peak trails — both on ‘em. … Can Sid and Jimmy walk?”
“Jim can’t—”
“Well, let Harve take him on his back. You go too. You help fix Jimmy up at the house. He’s a little fella, Jimmy Hastings is. Harve can tote him. And you go along — —”
“Dad, Quintana says he means to kill you! What is the use of hurting him? You have what he took — —”
“I gotta have more’n he took. But even that ain’t enough. He couldn’t pay for all he ever done to me, girlie. … I’m aimin’ to draw him on sight—”
Clinch’s set visage relaxed into an alarming smile which flickered, faded, died in the wintry ferocity of his eyes.
“Dad — —”
“G’wan home!” he interrupted harshly. “You want that Hastings boy to bleed to death?”
She came up to him, not uttering a word, yet asking him with all the tenderness and eloquence of her eyes to leave this blood-trail where it lay and hunt no more.
He kissed her mouth, infinitely tender, smiled; then, again prim and scowling:
“G’wan home, you little scut, an’ do what I told ye, or, by God, I’ll cut a switch that’ll learn ye good! Never a word, now! On yer way! G’wan!”
* * * * *
Twice she turned to look back. The second time, Clinch was slowly walking into the woods straight ahead of him. She waited; saw him go in; waited. After a while she continued on her way.
When she sighted the men below she called to Blommers and Dick Berry:
“Dad says you’re to stop Star Peak trail by Owl Marsh.”
Jimmy Hastings sat on a log, crying and looking down at his dead brother, over whose head somebody had spread a coat.
Blommers had made a tourniquet for Jimmy out of a bandanna and a peeled stick.
The girl examined it, loosened it for a moment, twisted it again, and bade Harvey Chase take him on his back and start for Clinch’s.
The boy began to sob that he didn’t want his brother to be left out there all alone; but Chase promised to come back and bring him in before night.
Sid Hone came up, haggard from pain and loss of blood, resting his mangled hand in the sling of his cartridge-belt.
Berry and Blommers were already starting across toward Owl Marsh; and the latter, passing by, asked Eve where Mike was.
“He went into Drowned Valley by the upper outlet,” she said.
“He’ll never find no one in them logans an’ sinks,” muttered Chase, squatting to hoist Jimmy Hastings to his broad back.
“I guess he’ll be over Star Peak side by sundown,” nodded Blommers.
Eve watched him slouching off into the woods, followed sullenly by
Berry. Then she looked down at the dead man in silence.
“Be you ready, Eve?” grunted Chase.
She turned with a heavy heart to the home trail; but her mind was passionately with Clinch in the spectral forests of Drowned Valley.
* * * * *
II
And Clinch’s mind was on her. All else — his watchfulness, his stealthy advance — all the alertness of eye and ear, all the subtlety, the cunning, the infinite caution — were purely instinctive mechanics.
Somewhere in this flooded twilight of gigantic trees was Jose Quintana. Knowing that, he dismissed that fact from his mind and turned his thoughts to Eve.
Sometimes his lips moved. They usually did when he was arguing with God or calling his Creator’s attention to the justice of his case. His two cases — each, to him, a cause celebre; the matter of Harrod; the affair of Quintana.
Many a time he had pleaded these two causes before the Most High.
But now his thoughts were chiefly concerned with Eve — with the problem of her future — his master passion — this daughter of the dead wife he had loved.
He sighed unconsciously; halted.
“Well, Lord,” he concluded, in his wordless way, “my girlie has gotta have a chance if I gotta go to hell for it. That’s sure as shootin’. … Amen.”
At that instant he saw Quintana.
Recognition was instant and mutual. Neither man stirred. Quintana was standing beside a giant hemlock. His pack lay at his feet.
Clinch had halted — always the mechanics! — close to a great ironwood tree.
Probably both men knew that they could cover themselves before the other moved a muscle. Clinch’s small, light eyes were blazing; Quintana’s black eyes had become two slits.
Finally: “You — dirty — skunk,” drawled Clinch in his agreeably misleading voice, “by Jesus Christ I got you now.”
“Ah — h,” said Quintana, “thees has happen ver’ nice like I expec’. … Always I say myse’f, yet a little patience, Jose, an’ one day you shall meet thees fellow Clinch, who has rob you. … I am ver’ thankful to the good God — —”
He had made the slightest of movements: instantly both men were behind their trees. Clinch, in the ferocious pride of woodcraft, laughed exultingly — filled the dim and spectral forest with his roar of laughter.
“Quintana,” he called out, “you’re a-going to cash in. Savvy? You’re a-going to hop off. An’ first you gotta hear why. ‘Tain’t for the stuff. Naw! I hooked it off’n you; you hooked it off’n me; now I got it again. That’s all square. … No, ‘tain’t that grudge, you green-livered whelp of a cross-bred, still-born slut! No! It’s becuz you laid the heft o’ your dirty little finger onto my girlie. ‘N’ now you gotta hop!”
Quintana’s sinister laughter w
as his retort. Then: “You damfool Clinch,” he said. “I got in my pocket what you rob of me. Now I kill you, and then I feel ver’ well. I go home, live like some kings; yes. But you,” he sneered, “you shall not go home never no more. No. You shall remain in thees damn wood like ver’ dead old rat that is all wormy. … He! I got a million dollaire — five million franc in my pocket. You shall learn what it cost to rob Jose Quintana! Understan’?”
“You liar,” said Clinch contemptuously, “I got them jools in my pants pocket. — —”
Quintana’s derisive laugh cu him short: “I give you thee Flaming Jewel if you show me you got my gems in you pants pocket!”
“I’ll show you. Lay down your rifle so’s I see the stock.”
“First you, my frien’ Mike,” said Quintana cautiously.
Clinch took his rifle by the muzzle and shoved the stock into view so that Quintana could see it without moving.
To his surprise, Quintana did the same, then coolly stepped a pace outside the shelter of his hemlock stump.
“You show me now!” he called across the swamp.
Clinch stepped into view, dug into his pocket, and, cupping both hands, displayed a glittering heap of gems.
“I wanted you should know who’s gottem” he said, “before you hop. It’ll give you something to think over in hell.”
Quintana’s eyes had become slits again. Neither man stirred. Then:
“So you are a buzzard, eh, Clinch? You feed on dead man’s pockets, eh? You find Sard somewhere an’ you feed.” He held up the morocco case, emblazoned with the arms of the Grand Duchess of Esthonia, and shook it at Clinch.
“In there is my share. … Not all. Ver’ quick, now, I take yours, too — —”
Clinch vanished and so did his rifle; and Quintana’s first bullet struck the moss where the stock had rested.
“You black crow!” jeered Clinch, laughing, “ — I need that empty case of yours. And I’m going after it. … But it’s because your filthy claw touched my girlie that you gotta hop!”
Twilight lay over the phantom wood, touching with pallid tints the flooded forest.
So far only that one shot had been fired. Both men were still manoeuvering, always creeping in circles and always lining some great tree for shelter.
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 1027