Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  Now, the gathering dusk was making them bolder and swifter; and twice, already, Clinch caught the shadow of a fading edge of something that vanished against the shadows too swiftly for a shot.

  Now Quintana, keeping a tree in line, brushed with his little back a leafy moose-bush that stood swaying as he avoided it.

  Instantly a stealthy hope seized him: he slipped out of his coat, spread it on the bush, set the naked branches swaying, and darted to his tree.

  Waiting, he saw that grey blot his coat made in the dusk was still moving a little — just vibrating a little bit in the twilight. He touched the bush with his rifle barrel, then crouched almost flat.

  Suddenly the red crash of a rifle lit up Clinch’s visage for a fraction of a second. And Quintana’s bullet smashed Clinch between the eyes.

  * * * * *

  After a long while Quintana ventured to rise and creep forward.

  Night, too, came creeping like an assassin amid the ghostly trees.

  So twilight died in the stillness of Drowned Valley and the pall of night lay over all things, — living and dead alike.

  * * * * *

  Episode Eleven

  The Place Of Pines

  * * * * *

  I

  The last sound that Mike Clinch heard on earth was the detonation of his own rifle. Probably it was an agreeable sound to him. He lay there with a pleasant expression on his massive features. His watch had fallen out of his pocket.

  Quintana shined him with an electric torch; picked up the watch. Then, holding the torch in one hand, he went through the dead man’s pockets very thoroughly.

  When Quintana had finished, both trays of the flat morocco case were full of jewels. And Quintana was full of wonder and suspicion.

  Unquietly he looked upon the dead — upon the glittering contents of the jewel-box, — but always his gaze reverted to the dead. The faintest shadow of a smile edged Clinch’s lips. Quintana’s lips grew graver. He said slowly, like one who does his thinking aloud:

  “What is it you have done to me, l’ami Clinch? … Are there truly two sets of precious stones? — two Flaming Jewels? — two gems of Erosite like there never has been in all thees worl’ excep’ only two more? … Or is one set false? … Have I here one set of paste facsimiles? … My frien’ Clinch, why do you lie there an’ smile at me so ver’ funny … like you are amuse? … I am wondering what you may have done to me, my frien’ Clinch. …”

  For a while he remained kneeling beside the dead. Then: “Ah, bah,” he said, pocketing the morocco case and getting to his feet.

  He moved a little way toward the open trail, stopped, came back, stood his rifle against a tree.

  For a while he was busy with his sharp Spanish clasp knife, whittling and fitting together two peeled twigs. A cross was the ultimate result. Then he placed Clinch’s hands palm to palm upon his chest, lay the cross on his breast, and shined the result with complacency.

  Then Quintana took off his hat.

  “L’ami Mike,” he said, “you were a man! … Adios!”

  * * * * *

  Quintana put on his hat. The path was free. The world lay open before

  Jose Quintana once more; — the world, his hunting ground.

  “But,” he thought uneasily, “what is it that I bring home this time? How much is paste? My God, how droll that smile of Clinch. … Which is the false — his jewels or mine? Dieu que j’etais bete! —— Me who have not suspec’ that there are two trays within my jewel-box! … I unnerstan’. It is ver’ simple. In the top tray the false gems. Ah! Paste on top to deceive a thief! … Alors. … Then what I have recover of Clinch is the real! … Nom de Dieu! … I think thees dead man make mock of me — all inside himse’f — —”

  So, in darkness, prowling south by west, shining the trail furtively, and loaded rifle ready, Quintana moved with stealthy, unhurried tread out of the wilderness that had trapped him and toward the tangled border of that outer world which led to safe, obscure, uncharted labyrinths — old-world mazes, immemorial hunting grounds — haunted by men who prey.

  * * * * *

  The night had turned frosty. Quintana, wet to the knees and very tired, moved slowly, not daring to leave the trail because of sink-holes.

  However, the trail led to Clinch’s Dump, and sooner or later he must leave it.

  What he had to have was a fire; he realised that. Somewhere off the trail, in big timber if possible, he must built a fire and master this deadly chill that was slowly paralysing all power of movement.

  He knew that a fire in the forest, particularly in big timber, could be seen only a little way. He must take his chances with sink-holes and find some spot in the forest to build that fire.

  Who could discover him except by accident?

  Who would prowl the midnight wilderness? At thirty yards the fire would not be visible. And, as for the odour — well, he’d be gone before dawn. … Meanwhile, he must have that fire. He could wait no longer.

  He cut a pole first. Then he left the trail where a little spring flowed west, and turned to the right, shining the forest floor as he moved and sounding with his pole every wet stretch of moss, every strip of mud, every tiniest glimmer of water.

  At last he came to a place of pines, first growth giants towering into night, and, looking up, saw stars, infinitely distant. … where perhaps those things called souls drifted like wisps of vapour.

  When the fire took, Quintana’s thin dark hands had become nearly useless from cold. He could not have crooked finger to trigger.

  For a long time he sat close to the blaze, slowly massaging his torpid limbs, but did not dare strip off his foot-gear.

  Steam rose from puttee and heavy shoe and from sodden woollen breeches. Warmth slowly penetrated. There was little smoke: the big dry branches were dead and bleached and he let the fire eat into them without using his axe.

  Once or twice he signed, “Oh, my God,” in a weary demi-voice, as though the contentment of well-being were permeating him.

  Later he ate and drank languidly, looking up at the stars, speculating as to the possible presence of Mike Clinch up there.

  “Ah, the dirty thief,” he murmured: “ — nevertheless a man. Quel homme!

  Mais bete a faire pleurer! Je l’ai bien triche, moi! Ha!”

  Quintana smiled palely as he thought of the coat and the gently-swaying bush — of the red glare of Clinch’s shot, of the death-echo of his own shot.

  Then, uneasy, he drew out the morocco case and gazed at the two trays full of gems.

  The jewels blazed in the firelight. He touched them, moved them about, picked up several and examined them, testing the unset edges against his upper lip as an expert tests jade.

  But he couldn’t tell; there was no knowing. He replaced them, closed the case, pocketed it. When he had a chance he could try boiling water for one sort of trick. He could scratch one or two. … Sard would know. He wondered whether Sard got away, not concerned except selfishly. However, there were others in Paris whom he could trust — at a price. …

  Quintana rested both elbows on his knees and framed his dark face between both bony hands.

  What a chase Clinch had led him after the Flaming Jewel. And now Clinch lay dead in the forest — faintly smiling. At what?

  In a very low, passionless voice, Quintana cursed monotonously as he gazed into the fire. In Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian, he cursed Clinch. After a little while he remembered Clinch’s daughter, and he cursed her, elaborately, thoroughly, wishing her black mischance awake and asleep, living or dead.

  Darragh, too, he remembered in his curses, and did not slight him. And the trooper, Stormont — ah, he should have killed all of them when he had the chance. … And those two Baltic Russians, also the girl duchess and her friend. Why on earth hadn’t he made a clean job of it? Overcaution. A wary disinclination to stir up civilization by needless murder. But after all, old maxims, old beliefs, old truths are the best, God knows. The dead don’t talk! And t
hat’s the wisest wisdom of all.

  “If,” murmured Quintana fervently, “God gives me further opportunity to acquire a little property to comfort me in my old age, I shall leave no gossiping fool to do me harm with his tongue. No! I kill.

  “And though they raise a hue and cry, dead tongues can not wag and I save myse’f much annoyance in the end.”

  He leaned his back against the trunk of a massive pine.

  Presently Quintana slept after his own fashion — that is to say, looking closely at him one could discover a glimmer under his lowered eyelids. And he listened always in that kind of sleep. As though a shadowy part of him were detached from his body, and mounted to guard over it.

  The inaudible movement of a wood-mouse venturing into the firelit circle awoke Quintana. Again a dropping leaf amid distant birches awoke him. Such things. And so he slept with wet feet to the fire and his rifle across his knees; and dreamed of Eve and of murder, and that the Flaming Jewel was but a mass of glass.

  * * * * *

  At that moment the girl whose white throat Quintana was dreaming, and whining faintly in his dreams, stood alone outside Clinch’s Dump, rifle in hand, listening, fighting the creeping dread that touched her slender body at times — seemed to touch her very heart with frost.

  Clinch’s men had gone on to Ghost Lake with their wounded and dead, where there was fitter shelter for both. All had gone on; nobody remained to await Clinch’s homecoming except Eve Strayer.

  Black Care, that tireless squire of dames, had followed her from the time she had left Clinch, facing the spectral forests of Drowned Valley.

  An odd, unusual dread weighted her heart — something in emotions that she never before had experienced in time of danger. In it there was the deathly unease of premonition. But of what it was born she did not understand, — perhaps of the strain of dangers passed — of the shock of discovery concerning Smith’s identity with Darragh — Darragh! — the hated kinsman of Harrod the abhorred.

  Fiercely she wondered how much her lover knew about this miserable masquerade. Was Stormont involved in this deception — Stormont, the object of her first girl’s passion — Stormont, for whom she would have died?

  Wretched, perplexed, fiercely enraged at Darragh, deadly anxious concerning Clinch, she had gone about cooking supper.

  The supper, kept warm on the range, still awaited the man who had no more need of meat and drink.

  * * * * *

  Of the tragedy of Sard Eve knew nothing. There was no traces save the disorder in the pantry and the bottles and chair on the veranda.

  Who had visited the place excepting those from whom she and Stormont had fled, did not appear. She had no idea why her step-father’s mattress and bed-quilt lay in the pantry.

  Her heart heavy with ceaseless anxiety, Eve carried mattress and bed-clothes to Clinch’s chamber, re-made his bed, wandered through the house setting it in order; then, in the kitchen, seated herself and waited until the strange dread that possessed her drove her out into the starlight to stand and listen and stare at the dark forest where all her dread seemed concentrated.

  * * * * *

  It was not yet dawn, but the girl could not endure the strain no longer.

  With electric torch and rifle she started for the forest, almost running at first; then, among the first trees, moving with caution and in silence along the trail over which Clinch should long since have journeyed homeward.

  In soft places, when she ventured to flash her torch, footprints cast curious shadows, and it was hard to make out tracks so oddly distorted by the light. Prints mingled and partly obliterated other prints. She identified her own tracks leading south, and guessed at the others, pointing north and south, where they had carried in the wounded and had gone back to bring in the dead.

  But nowhere could she discover any impression resembling her step-father’s, — that great, firm stride and solid imprint which so often she had tracked through moss and swale and which she knew so well.

  Once when she got up from her knees after close examination of the muddy trail, she became aware of the slightest taint in the night air — stood with delicate nostrils quivering — advanced, still conscious of the taint, listening, wary, every stealthy instinct alert.

  She had not been mistaken: somewhere in the forest there was smoke. Somewhere a fire was burning. It might not be very far away; it might be distant. Whose fire? Her father’s? Would a hunter of men build a fire?

  The girl stood shivering in the darkness. There was not a sound.

  Now, keeping her cautious feet in the trail by sense of touch alone, she moved on. Gradually, as she advanced, the odour of smoke became more distinct. She heard nothing, saw nothing; but there was a near reek of smoke in her nostrils and she stopped short.

  After a little while in the intense silence of the forest she ventured to touch the switch of her torch, very cautiously.

  In the faint, pale lustre she saw a tiny rivulet flowing westward from a spring, and, beside it, in the mud, imprints of a man’s feet.

  The tracks were small, narrow, slimmer than imprints made by any man she could think of. Under the glimmer of her torch they seemed quite fresh; contours were still sharp, some ready to crumble, and water stood in the heels.

  A little way she traced them, saw where their maker had cut a pole, peeled it; saw, further on, where this unknown man had probed in moss and mud — peppered some particularly suspicious swale with a series of holes as though a giant woodcock had been “boring” there.

  Who was this man wandering all alone at night off the Drowned Valley trail probing the darkness with a pole?

  She knew it was not her father. She knew that no native — none of her father’s men — would behave in such a manner. Nor could any of these have left such narrow, almost delicate tracks.

  As she stole along, dimly shining the tracks, lifting her head incessantly to listen an peer into the darkness, her quick eye caught something ahead — something very slightly different from the wall of black obscurity — a vague hint of colour — the very vaguest tint scarcely perceptible at all.

  But she knew it was firelight touching the trunk of an unseen tree.

  Now, soundlessly over damp pine needles she crept. The scent of smoke grew strong in nostril and throat; the pale tint became palely reddish. All about her the blackness seemed palpable — seemed to touch her body with its weight; but, ahead, a ruddy glow stained two huge pines. And presently she saw the fire, burning low, but redly alive. And, after a long, long while, she saw a man.

  He had left the fire circle. His pack and belted mackinaw still lay there at the foot of a great tree. But when, finally, she discovered him, he was scarcely visible where he crouched in the shadow of a tree-trunk, with his rifle half lowered at a ready.

  Had he heard her? It did not seem possible. Had he been crouching there since he made his fire? Why had he made it then — for its warmth could not reach him there. And why was he so stealthily watching — silent, unstirring, crouched in the shadows?

  She strained her eyes; but distance and obscurity made recognition impossible. And yet, somehow, every quivering instinct within her was telling her that the crouched and shadowy watcher beyond the fire was Quintana.

  And every concentrated instinct was telling her that he’d kill her if he caught sight of her; her heart clamoured it; her pulses thumped it in her ears.

  Had the girl been capable of it she could have killed him where he crouched. She thought of it, but knew it was not in her to do it. And yet Quintana had boasted that he meant to kill her father. That was what terribly concerned her. And there must be a way to stop that danger — some way to stop it short of murder, — a way to render this man harmless to her and hers.

  No, she could not kill him this way. Except in extremes she could not bring herself to fire upon any human creature. And yet this man must be rendered harmless — somehow — somehow — ah! ——

  As the problem presented itself its solution flashed in
to her mind. Men of the wilderness knew how to take dangerous creatures alive. To take a dangerous and reasoning human was even less difficult, because reason makes more mistakes than does instinct.

  Stealthily, without a sound, the girl crept back through the shadows over the damp pine needles, until, peering fearfully over her shoulder, she saw the last ghost-tint of Quintana’s fire die out in the terrific dark behind.

  Slowly, still, she moved until her sensitive feet felt the trodden path from Drowned Valley.

  Now, with torch flaring, she ran, carrying her rifle at a trail. Before her, here and there, little night creatures fled — a humped-up raccoon, dazzled by the glare, a barred owl still struggling with its wood-rat kill.

  She ran easily, — an agile, tireless young thing, part of the swiftness and silence of the woods — part of the darkness, the sinuous celerity, the ominous hush of wide, still places — part of its very blood and pulse and hot, sweet breath.

  Even when she came out among the birches by Clinch’s Dump she was breathing evenly and without distress. She ran to the kitchen door but did not enter. On pegs under the porch a score or more of rusty traps hung. She unhooked the largest, would the chain around it, tucked it under her left arm and started back.

  * * * * *

  When at last she arrived at the place of pines again, and saw the far, spectral glimmer of Quintana’s fire, the girl was almost breathless. But dawn was not very far away and there remained little time for the taking alive of a dangerous man.

  Where two enormous pines grew close together near a sapling, she knelt down, and, with both hands, scooped out a big hollow in the immemorial layers of pine needles. Here she placed her trap. It took all her strength and skill to set it; to fasten the chain around the base of the sapling pine.

  And now, working with only the faintest glimmer of her torch, she covered everything with pine needles.

  It was not possible to restore the forest floor; the place remained visible — a darker, rougher patch on the bronzed carpet of needles beaten smooth by decades of rain and snow. No animal would have trodden that suspicious space. But it was with man she had to deal — a dangerous but reasoning man with few and atrophied instincts — and with no experience in traps; and, therefore, in no dread of them.