The Flaming Jewel

by Robert W. Chambers

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 bigbullets 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 allhe has find time to say, when crack! spat! Bien droit he has it --tenez, mon capitaine -- here, over the left eye! ... Like a beefsurprise he go over, crash! thump! And like a beef that dies, the airbellows out from his big lungs----"

  Picquet looked down at the dead comrade in sort of weary compassion forsuch stupidity.

  "-- So he pass, this ros-biff goddam Johnbull. ... me, I roll him inthere. ... Je ne sais pas pourquoi. ... Then I put out the fire andleave."

  Quintana let his sneering glance rest on the head a moment, and his thinlip curled immemorial contempt for the Anglo-Saxon.

  Then he divested himself of the basket-pack which he had stolen from theFry 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 hisammunition belt _en bandouliere,_ carelessly.

  Then, in a quiet voice: "My frien' Picquet, the time has now arrive whenit become ver' necessary that we go from here away. Done -- I shall nogo 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?" herepeated with a sort of snarl.

  "That is how they now hunt us, my frien' -- like they hunt the hare inthe Cote d'Or. ... Me, I shall now reconnoitre -- _that_ way!" And helooked 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 hardridge out across a vast and flooded land where the bark of treesglimmered with wet mosses.

  After a quarter of a mile the ridge broadened and split into two, onehog-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 woodsbeyond, and fired at it. Instantly two unseen rifles spoke from thewoods ahead. Picquet was jerked clear around, lost his balance andnearly fell. Blood was spurting from his right arm, between elbow andshoulder.

  He tried to lift and level his rifle; his arm collapsed and dangledbroken and powerless; his rifle clattered to the forest floor.

  For a moment he stood there in plain view, dumb, deathly white; then hebegan screaming with fury while the big, soft-nosed bullets camestreaming in all around him. His broken arm was hit again. His screamceased; he dragged out his big clasp-knife with his left hand andstarted running toward the shooting.

  As he ran, his mangled arm flopping like a broken wing, Byron Hastingsstepped out from behind a tree and coolly shot him down at closequarters.

  Then Quintana's rifle exploded twice very quickly, and the Hastings boystumbled sideways and fell sprawling. He managed to rise to his kneesagain; he even was trying to stand up when Quintana, taking his time,deliberately began to empty his magazine into the boy, riddling him limband body and head.

  Down once more, he still moved his arms. Sid Hone reached out frombehind a fallen log to grasp the dying lad's ankle and draw him intoshelter, but Quintana reloaded swiftly and smashed Hone's left hand withthe first shot.

  Them Jim Hastings, kneeling behind a bunch of juniper, fired ahigh-velocity bullet into the tree behind which Quintana stood; butbefore he could fire again Quintana's shot in reply came ripping throughthe 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 deadflounder.

  A mile to the north, blocking the other exit from Drowned Valley, MikeClinch, Harve Chase, Cornelius Blommers, and Dick Berry stood listeningto 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, agreeablevoice:

  "Stay right here, boys. Like as not some of 'em will come this way."

  The shooting below ceased. Clinch's nostrils expanded and flattenedwith every breath, as he stood glaring into the woods.

  "Have," he said presently, "you an' Corny go down there an' kinda lookaround. And you signal if I'm wanted. G'wan, both o' you. Git!"

  They started, running heavily, but their feet made little noise on themoss.

  Berry came over and stood near Clinch. For ten minutes neither manmoved. Clinch stared at the woods in front of him. The younger man'snervous glance flickered like a snake's tongue in every direction, andhe kept moistening his lips with his tongue.

  Presently two shots came from the south. A pause; a rattle of shotsfrom 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 histan.

  "Gol ding ye!" shouted Clinch, "take it on a lope or I'll kick the pantsoff'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 Valleyexcept in the dead timber where unseen woodpeckers hammered fitfully atthe ghosts of ancient trees.

  Always Clinch's little pale eyes searched the forest twilight in frontof him; not a falling leaf escaped him; not a chipmunk.

  And all the while Clinch talked to himself; his lips moved a little nowand then, but uttered no sound:

  "All I want God should do," he repeated again and again, "is to just letQuintana come _my_ way. 'Tain't for because he robbed my girlie.'Tain't for the stuff he carries onto him. ... No, God, 'tain't themthings. But it's what that there skunk done to my Evie. ... O God, beyou listenin'? He _hurt_ her, Quintana did. That's it. He misusedher. ... 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 forto make my Evie a lady same's them high-steppers on Fifth Avenoo. I canmoil 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' beerbefore this here prohybishun set us all crazy. 'Tain't right. ... OGod, don't hold a little hootch agin me when all I want of you is to letQuintana----"

  The slightest noise behind him. He waited, turned slowly. Eve stoodthere.

  Hell died in his pale eyes as she came to him, rested silently in hisgentle embrace, returned his kiss, laid her flushed, sweet cheek againsthis unshaven face.

  "Dad, darling?"

  "Yes, my baby---"

  "You're watching to kill Quintana. But there's no use watching anylonger."

  "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 herslender hand into her breeches pocket and pulled out a little fistful ofgems.

  Clinch, his powerful arm closing her shoulders, looked dully at thejewels.

  "You see, dad, there's no use killing Quintana. These are the things herobbed you of."

  "'Tain't them that matter. ... I'm glad you got 'em. I allus wanted
youshould be a great lady, girlie. Them's the ticket of admission. Youput 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 thewoods ahead.

  "I've just told you," she said, "that the boys went in as far asQuintana's shanty. There was a dead man there, too; but Quintana hasgone."

  Clinch said, -- not removing his eyes from the forest: "If any o' themboys has let