The Flaming Jewel
Page 17
noise that marked Leverett's course,-- fired again, lower, and again as a distant crash revealed thefrenzied 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 togive her. It's all she's got to make her a lady. I'll kill any manthat 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 goback 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 inhis pleasant, misleading way, "-- and I'll shoot the guts outa any fellathat 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 thedusk, fear, instead of quenching, added to his rage; and he ran on andon, crashing through the undergrowth, made wilder by the pain of viciousblows from branches which flew back and struck him in the dark.
Thorns bled him; unseen logs tripped him; he heard Clinch's bulletswhining around him; and he ran on, beginning to sob and curse in afrenzy of fury, fear, and shame.
Shots from Clinch's rifle ceased; the fugitive dropped into a heavy,shuffling walk, slavering, gasping, gesticulating with his weaponlessfists in the darkness.
"Gol ram ye, I'll fix ye!" he kept stammering in his snarlin, janglingvoice, broken by sobs. "I'll learn ye, yeh poor danged thing, gol ramye----"
An unseen limb struck him cruelly across the face, and a moose-bushtripped him flat. Almost crazed, he got up, yelling in his pain, onehand wet and sticky from blood welling up from his cheek-bone.
He stood listening, infuriated, vindictive, but heard nothing save thepanting, animal sounds in his own throat.
He strove to see in the ghostly obscurity around him, but could make outlittle except the trees close by.
But wood-rats are never completely lost in their native darkness; andLeverett presently discovered the far stars shining faintly throughrifts in the phantom foliage above.
These heavenly signals were sufficient to give him his directions. Thenthe question suddenly came, _which_ direction?
To his own shack on Stinking Lake he dared not go. He tried to believethat it was fear of Clinch that made him shy of the home shanty; but, inhis cowering soul, he knew it was fear of another kind -- the deep,superstitious horror of Jake Kloon's empty bunk -- the repugnant sightof Kloon's spare clothing hanging from its peg -- the dead man'sshoes----
No, he could not go to Stinking Lake and sleep. ... And wake with thefaint stench of sulphur in his throat. ... And see the worm-like leechesunfolding in the shallows, and the big, reddish water-lizards, livid asskinned eels, wriggling convulsively toward their sunless lairs. ...
At the mere thought of his dead bunk-mate he sought relief in vindictiverage -- stirred up the smouldering embers again, cursed Clinch and HalSmith, violently searching in his inflamed brain some instant vengeanceupon these men who had driven him out from the only place on earth wherehe knew how to exist -- the wilderness.
All at once he thought of Clinch's step-daughter. The thought instantlyscared him. Yet -- what a revenge! -- to strike Clinch through the onlycreature he cared for in all the world! ... What a revenge! ... Clinchwas headed for Drowned Valley. Eve Strayer was alone at the Dump. ...Another thought flashed like lightning across his turbid mind; -- _thepacket!_
Bribed by Quintana, Jake Kloon, lurking at Clinch's door, had heard himdirect Eve to take a packet to Owl Marsh, and had notified Quintana.
Wittingly or unwittingly, the girl had taken a packet of sugar-milkchocolate instead of the priceless parcel expected.
Again, carried in, exhausted, by a State Trooper, Jake Kloon had beenfooled; and it was the packet of sugar-milk chocolate that Jake hadpurloined from the veranda where Clinch kicked it. For two cakes ofchocolate 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 tohatch 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 andfear -- above all else _fear_ -- would end forever! ...
* * * * *
When, at last, he came out to the edge of Clinch's clearing, the darkOctober heavens were but a vast wilderness of stars.
Star Pond, set to its limpid depths with the heavenly gems, glitteredand darkled with its million diamond incrustations. The humped-up lumpof Clinch's Dump crouched like some huge and feeding night-beast on thebank, ringed by the solemn 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 theice house and the corn-crib, crawled out among the wilderness of weedsand lay flat.
The light burned steadily from Eve's window.
* * * * *
IV
From his form among the frost-blackened rag-weeds, the trap-robber couldsee only the plastered ceiling of the bed chamber.
But the kerosene lamp cast two shadows on that -- tall shadows of humanshapes that stirred at times.
The trap-robber, scared, stiffened to immobility, but his little eyesremained 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, unwinkingeyes intent upon the shadows on the ceiling.
* * * * *
The shadows on the ceiling were cast by Eve Strayer and her StateTrooper.
Eve sat on her bed's edge, swathed in a lilac silk kimona -- delicaterelic of school days. Her bandaged feet, crossed, dangled above therag-rug on the floor; her slim, tanned fingers were interlaced over thebook on her lap.
Near the door stood State Trooper Stormont, spurred, booted, trig andtrim, an undecided and flushed young man, fumbling irresolutely with thepurple cord on his campaign-hat.
The book on Eve's knees -- another relic of the past -- was _Sigurd theVolsung._ Stormont had been reading to her -- they having found, afterthe half shy tentatives of new friends, a point d'appui in literature.And the girl, admitting a passion for the poets, invited him to inspectthe bookcase of unpainted pine which Clinch had built into her bedroomwall.
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.
He blushed but did his best. His was an agreeable, boyish voice,betraying taste and understanding. Time passed quickly -- not so muchin the reading but in the conversations intervening.
And now, made uneasy by chance consultation with his wrist-watch, andbeing rather a conscientious young man, he had risen and had informedEve that she ought to go to sleep.
And she had denounced the idea, almost fretfully.
"Even if you go I shan't sleep till daddy comes," she said. "Ofcourse," she added, smiling at him out of gentian-blue eyes, "if _you_are sleepy I shouldn't dream of asking you to stay."
"I'm not intending to sleep."
"What are you going to do?"
"Take a chair on the landing outside your door."
"What!"
"Certainly. What did you expect me to do, Eve?"
"Go to bed, of course. The beds in the guest rooms are all made up."
"Your father didn't expect me to do that," he said, smiling.
"I'm not afraid, as long as you're in the house," she said.
She looked up at him again, wistfully. Perhaps he was restless, bored,sitting there beside her half the day, and, already, half the night.Men of that kind -- active, nervous young men accustomed to the open,can't stand caging.
"I want you to go out and get some fresh air," she said. "It's awonderful night. Go and walk a while. And -- if you feel like --coming back to me----"
"Will you sleep?"
"No, I'll wait for you."
Her words were natural and direct, but in