 EPISODE IV A PRIVATE WAR 1. When State Trooper Stormont rode up to clenches with Eve Strayer lying in his arms, light-clenched strode out of the motley crowd around the tavern, laid his rifle against the tree and stretched forth his powerful hands to receive his step-child. He held her, cradled, looking down at her in silence as the men clustered around. Eve, he said, hoarsely, Be you hurt? The girl opened her sky-blue eyes. I'm all right, Dad. Just tired. I got your parcel. Safe. To hell with that gall-dang parcel he almost sobbed. Did Quintana harm you? No, Dad. As he carried her to the veranda, the packet fell from her cramped fingers. Clenched, kitted under a chair, and continued on into the house and upstairs to Eve's bedroom. Flat on the bed, the girl opened her drowsy eyes again, unsmiling. Did that dirty louse misuse you, demanded Clench unsteadily? Go on, tell me, girly. He knocked me down. He went away to get a fire to make me talk. I cut up the blanket he gave me and made a rope. Then I went over the cliff into the big pine below. That was all, Dad. Clenched filled the tin basin and washed the girl's torn feet. When he had dried them, he kissed them. She felt his unshaven lips trembling, heard him whisper for the first time in his life. Why the hell didn't you give Quintana the packet, he demanded? What does that count for? What does any damn thing count for against you, girly? He looked up at him out of heavy littered eyes. You told me to take good care of it. It's only a little truck I'd laid by for you, he retorted unsteadily. A few trifles for to make a grandlady of you when the time's ripe. Taint worth a thorn in your little foot to me. The whole goldang world full of money ain't worth that there stone bruise onto them little white feet of your neave. Look at you now, my God. Look at you there. All peeked and scared and bleeding. Some tuckered out and all ragged and dirty. A blaze of fury flared in his small pale eyes, and he hit you, too, didn't he? That's skunk. Quintana done that to my little girly, did he? I don't know if it was Quintana. I don't know who he was, Dad, she murmured drowsily. Masked, wasn't he? Yes. Clenched's iron visage twisted and quivered. He nodded his thin lips into control. Girlie, I gotta go out of spell. But I ain't leaving you alone here. I'll get somebody to set up with you. You just lie snug and don't think about nothing till I come back. Yes, Dad, she sighed, closing her eyes. Clenched stood, looking at her for a moment. Then he went downstairs heavily and out to the veranda, where state trooper Stormont still sat in his saddle, talking to Hal Smith. On the porch, a sullen crowd of backwoods riffraff lounged in silence, awaiting events. Clenched called across to Smith. Hey, Hal, go on up and set with Eva's spell while she's napping. Take a gun, Smith said to Stormont on a little voice. Give me a favor, Jack. You bet. That girl of clenches is in real danger of left here alone, but I've got another job on my hands. Can you keep a watch on her till I return? Can't you tell me a little more, Jim? I will later. Do you mind helping me out now? All right. Trooper Stormont swung out of his saddle and led his horse away toward the stable. Hal Smith went into the bar, where clenched stood, oiling a rifle. Go on upstairs, he muttered. I've got a private war on. It's me or Quintana now. You're going after Quintana, inquired Smith carelessly. I be, and I want you to get your gun and sit up by Evie. I want you to kill any living human son of a slut that come bothering around this here hotel. I'm going after Quintana with you, Mike. But gosh, you ain't. You're going to keep watch here. No, Trooper Stormont has promised to stay with Evie. You'll need every man today, Mike. This isn't a deer drive. Clenched led his rifle sag across the hollow of his left arm. Did you beef to that Trooper? He demanded in his pleasant and misleading way. You think I'm crazy, retorted Smith? Well, what the hell? They all know that some man used your girl roughly. That's all I said to him. Keep an eye on Evie till we get back. And I tell you, Mike, if we drive Star Peak, we won't be back till long after sundown. Clenched growled. I ain't never asked no favors and no state trooper. He did you a favor, didn't he? He brought your daughter in. Yes, and he'd jail us all if he got anything on us. Yes, and he'll shoot to kill if any of Quintana's people come here and try to break in. Clenched grunted, peeled off his coat, and got into a leather vest bristling with cartridge loops. Trooper Stormont came in the back door carrying his rifle. Some rough fellow been bothering your little girl, Clenched, he inquired. The child was nearly all in when she met me, out by Al Marsh. Clothes half torn off her back, barefoot, and bleeding. She's a plucky youngster. I'll say so, Clenched. If you think the fellow may come here to annoy her, I'll keep an eye on her till you return. Clenched went up to Stormont, put his powerful hands in the young fellow's shoulder. After a moment's glaring silence, you look clean. I guess you be, too. I want to tell you I will cut the guts at any man that lays the heft of a single finger onto Eve. I'd do so, too, if I were you, said Stormont. Would ye? Well, I guess ye're a real man, too, even if ye're a state trooper, growled Clenched. Go on, she's a nappin. If she wakes up, ye kinda talk pleasant to her. Ye can act kind, pleasant, and cozy. She ain't had no ma. Ye tell her to set snug and calm. Then ye cook her a egg, if she wants. There's pie, too. I call eight to be back by sundown. Near morning, remarked Smith. Stormont shrugged. I'll stay until ye show up, Clenched. The latter took another rifle from the corner and handed it to Smith with a loop of ammunition. Come on, he grunted. On the veranda, he strode up to the group of sollen, armed men who regarded his advent in expressionless silence. Sid Hone was there, and Harvey Chase, and the Hastings boys, and Cornelius Blummers. You fellas come and inquire, Clenched. Where, drawled Sid Hone? Ian Howe Smith is calcultating to drive to Star Peak. It ain't a deer, neither. There ensued a grim interval. Clenched's wintery smile began to glimmer. Booze agents are game protectors, which, asked Byron Hastings. They both look like deer if a man gets mad enough. Clenched's smile became terrifying. I shell out five hundred dollars for every deer that's dropped on Star Peak today, he said, and I hope there won't be no accidents, and no mystique and no stranger for a deer, he added, wagging his great square head. Them accidents is liable to happen, remarked Hone, reflectively. After another pause. Where's Jake Klune, inquired Smith? Nobody seemed to know. He was here when Mike called me into the bar, insisted Smith. Where'd he go? Then, of a sudden, Clenched recollected the package he had kicked under the veranda chair. It was no longer there. Many of you fell asleep in a package here on the Piazza, demanded Clenched harshly. Clen— Jake Klune had something, drawled Chase. I suppose it was his lunch. Maybe twas, too. In the intense stillness, Clenched cleared into one face after another. Boys, he said, in his softly modulated voice. I kinda guessed there was a rat among us. I wouldn't like for it to be that their rat. No, not for a billion hundred dollars. No, I wouldn't. Because that their rat has bit my little girly eve. Like that their deer bit her up on Star Peak. No, I wouldn't like for it to be that their rat. For he's a gonna die like a rat. Same that their deer is gonna die like a deer. Anyone seen which way Jake Klune went? Now you speak of it, said Byron Hastings. Seems like I noticed Jake and Earl lever it down by the woods near the pond. I kinda disremembered when you asked, but guess I seen them? Sure, said Sid Hone. Now you mention it, I seen him, too. Think side to myself? They is picking them blackberries down to the Crick. Yes, I seen them. Clenched tossed his rifle across his left shoulder. Rats and deer, he said pleasantly. Them's the articles we are looking for. Only for God's sake, be careful you don't mistake a man for him in the woods. One or two men laughed. On the edge of Al Marsh, Clinch halted in the trail, and his men came up. He counted them with a cold eye. Here's the runaway, and this here Heaselbush is my station. He said, you fellas do the barking. You Sid Hone and you corny start driving from the west. Harve, you yelp from the north by Lynxbrook. Jim and Byron, you get twenty minutes to go round to the eastward and drive by the slide. And you, Hal Smith, he looked around. Where in hell be you, Hal? Smith came up from the bog's edge. Send him out, he said in a low voice. I've got Jake's tracks in the bog. Clinch motioned his beaters to their duty. Twenty minutes, you reminded Hone, chase some blommers. Before you start driving and to the hastings, boys, you shoot, aim low for their bellies. Don't leave no blood around. Scrape it up. We bury what we get. He and Smith stood looking after the five slouching figures moving away toward their blind trails. When all had disappeared, show me Jake's mark, he said calmly. Smith led him to the edge of the bog, knelt down, drew aside a branch of witch-hopple. A man's footprint was plainly visible in the mud. That's Jake, said Clinch slowly. I know them half-soul boots of hisden. He lifted another branch. There's another man's track. The other is probably Leveritz. Likely, he's got thin feet. I think I'd better go after them, said Smith reflectively. They'll plug you, you poor jackass. Two of them like that, and one is setting up to watch out. Hell, be you tired of bed and bored? Smith smiled. Don't you worry, Mike. Why? You think you're that smart? Just because you stuck up a tourist, you think you're cock of the Northwoods, with them two foxes lying out to snap you up. Hey, why you poor dumb thing? Jake runs Canadian Hooch for a living and Leveritz a trap thief. What could you do with a pair of foxes like that? Catch him, he said, Smith, coolly. You mind your business, Mike. As he shouldered his rifle and started into the marsh, Clinch dropped a heavy hand on his shoulder. But the young man shook it off. Shut up, he said sharply. You've a private war on your hands. So bye. I'll take care of my town. What's your grievous demanded, Clinch surprised. Jake Klune played a dirty trick on me. When was that? Not very long ago. I hadn't heard, said Clinch. Well, you hear it now, don't you? All right, all right, I'm going after him. As he started again across the marsh, Clinch called out in a guarded voice. Take good care of that packet if you catch them rats. It belongs to Eve. I'll take such good care of it, replied Smith, that its proper owner need not worry. Two, the proper owner of the packet was at that moment on the Atlantic Ocean traveling toward the United States. Four other pretended owners of the Grand Duchess Theodoricus jewel, totally unconscious of anything impending which might impair their several titles to the gems were now gathered together in a wilderness within a few miles of one another. Jose Quintana lay somewhere in the forest with his gang, fiercely planning the recovery of the treasure of which Clinch had once robbed him. Clinch squatted on his runway watching the mountain flank with murderous eyes. It was no longer the flaming jewel which mattered. His master passion ruled him now. Those who had offered violence to Eve must be reckoned with first of all, the hand that struck Eve Strayer had offered mortal insult to Mike Clinch. As the third pretender to the flaming jewel, Jake Clune, he was now traveling a fox's circle toward Drown Valley at shaggy wilderness of slime and tamarack and depthless bog, which touches the northwest base of Star Peak. He was not hurrying, having no thought of pursuit. Behind him plotted Leveret, the trap thief, very, very busy with his own ideas. The Leverets repeated requests that Clune halt and open the packet to see what it contained. Clune gruffly refused. What do we care what's in it, he said. We get ten thousand a piece over our rifles for it, from them guys. Ain't it a good enough job for you? Maybe we make more if we take what's inside for ourselves, argued Leveret. Let's take a peak anyway. No, I don't want no peak or nothing. The ten thousand comes too easy. More might scare us. Let that guy Quintana have what's his'n. All I ask is my rake off. You all is was a dirty thieve and mink, Earl. Let's give him his'n take ours and get. I'm going to Albany to live. You bet I don't stay in no woods where my clinch dens. They plotted on, arguing, toward their rendezvous with Quintana's post on the edge of Drowned Valley. The fourth pretender to the pearls, rubies, and great gem, called the flaming jewel, stolen from the grand duchess, Theodorica of Estonia by Jose Quintana, was an unconscious pretender, entirely innocent of the role assigned her by clinch. Her eavesdraer had never heard where the packet came from or what it contained. All she knew was that her stepfather had hold her that it belonged to her, and that knowledge left her in curious. 3. Eaves slept the sleep of mental and physical exhaustion. Reaction from fear brings fatigue more profound than that which follows physical overstrain. But the healthy mind, like the healthy body, disposes very thoroughly of toxins which arise from terror and exhaustion. The girl slept profoundly calmly. Her bruised young mind and body left her undisturbed. There was neither restlessness nor fever. Sleep swept her with its clean, sweet tide, cleansing the superb youth and health of her and the most wonderful balm in the divine pharmacy. She awoke late in the afternoon, opened her flower blue eyes, and saw a state trooper stormont sitting by the window and gazing out. Eaves' confused senses mistook the young man for a vision, for she lay very still, nor stirred even her little finger, and after a while stormont glanced around at her. A warm, delicate color stained her skin slowly, evenly from throat to hair. He got up and came over to her bed. How do you feel, he asked awkwardly. Where's Dad? She managed to inquire in a steady voice. He won't be back till late. He asked me to stick around in case you needed anything. The girl's clear eyes searched his. Trooper Stormont? Yes, Eve. Dad's gone after Quintana. Is he the fellow who misused you? I think so. Who is he? I don't know. Is he your enemy or your stepfather's? But the girl shook her head. I can't discuss Dad's affairs with, with a state trooper smiled stormont. That's alright, Eve, you don't have to. There was a pause. Stormont stood beside the bed, looked down at her with his definite boyish smile. The girl gazed back, straight into his eyes, eyes she had so often looked into in her dreams. I'm to cook you an egg and bring you some pie, he remarked, still smiling. Did Dad say that I'm to stay in bed? That was my inference. Do you feel very lame and sore? My feet burn. You poor kid. Would you let me look at them? I have a first day packet with me. After a moment she nodded and turned her face to the pillow, he drew aside the cover a little, knelt down beside the bed. Then he rose and went downstairs to the kitchen. There was hot water in the kettle. He fetched it back, bathed her feet, drew out from cut and scratched, the flakes of granite grit and briar points that still remained. From his first day packet he took a capsule, dissolved it, sterilized the torrent skin, then bandaged both feet with a deliciously cool salve, and drew the sheets into place. Eve had not stirred nor spoken. He washed and dried his hands and came back, drawing his chair nearer to the bedside. Sleep if you feel like it, he said pleasantly. As she made no sound or movement, he bent over to see if she had already fallen asleep, and noticed that her flushed cheeks were wet with tears. Are you suffering? he asked gently. No, you're so wonderfully kind. Why shouldn't I be kind, he said, amused and touched by the girls' emotions? I tried to shoot you once. That is why you ought to hate me. He began to laugh. Is that what you're thinking about? I never can forget. Nonsense. We're quits anyway. Do you remember what I did to you? He was thinking of the hand-cast. Then, in her vivid blush, he read what she was thinking, and he remembered his lips on her palms. He too, now, was blushing brilliantly at memory of that swift, sudden rush of romantic tenderness which this girl had witnessed that memorable day on Al-Marsh. In the hot, uncomfortable silence, neither spoke, he seated himself after a while, and after a while she turned on her pillow partway toward him. Somehow they both understood that it was friendship which had subtly filled the interval that separated them since that amazing day. I've often thought of you, he said, as though they had been discussing his absence. No hour of the waking day had she not thought of him, but she did not say so now, after a little while. Is yours a lonely life? she asked in a low voice. Sometimes, but I love the forest. Sometimes, she said, the forest seems like a trap that I can't escape. Sometimes I hate it. Are you lonely, Eve? As you are, you see, I know what the outside world is. I miss it. You were in boarding school and college. Yes. It must be hard for you here at Starpond. The girl sighed unconsciously. There are days when I can scarcely stand it. The wilderness would be more endurable if Dad and I were alone, but even then. You need young people of your own age, educated companions. I need the city, Mr. Stormont. I need all it can give. I'm starving for it. That's all. She turned on her pillow, and he saw that she was smiling faintly. Her face bore no trace of the tragic truth she had uttered. But the tragedy was planned enough to him, even without her passionless words of revolt. The situation of this young, educated girl, aglow with youth, fettered, body and mind to the squalor of clinch's dump was perfectly plain to anybody. She said, seeing his troubled expression, I'm sorry I spoke that way. I knew how you must feel, anyway. It must seem ungrateful, she murmured. I love my stepfather. You've proven that, he remarked, with a dry humor that brought the hot flush to her face again. I must have been crazy that day, she said. It scares me to remember what I tried to do. What a frightful thing. If I had killed you, how can you forgive me? How can you forgive me, Eve? She turned her head. I do. Entirely? Yes. He said, a slight emotion noticeable in his voice. Well, I forgave you before the darn gun exploded in our hands. How could you, she protested? I was thinking all that while that you were acting as I had acted if anything threatened my father. Were you thinking of that? Yes, and also how to get hold of you before you shut me, he began to laugh. After a moment she turned her head to look at him, and her smile glimmered, responsive to his amusement. But she shivered slightly, too. How about that egg, he inquired. I can get up. Better keep off your feet. What is there in the pantry? You must be starved. I could eat a little before supper time, she admitted. I forgot to take my lunch with me this morning. It is still there in the pantry on the bread box, wrapped up in brown paper just as I left it. She half-brows in bed, supported on one arm, her curly brown-gold hair framing her face. Two cakes of sugar-milk chocolate, and a flat brown package tied with a string, she explained, smiling at his amusement. So he went down to the pantry and discovered the parcel on the bread box where she had left it that morning before starting for the cash on Al-Marsh. He brought it to her, placed both pillows up right behind her, stepped back gaily to admire the effect. Eve, with her parcel in her hands, laughed shyly at his comedy. Begin on your chocolate, he said. I'm going back to fix you some bread and butter and a cup of tea. When again he had disappeared, the girl, still smiling, began to unhire packet, unheardly, slowly loosening the strings and wrapping. Her attention was not fixed on what her sledding fingers were about. She drew from the parcel a flat Morocco case with a coat of arms and crest stamped on it in gold, black, and scarlet. For a few moments she stared at the object stupidly. The next moment she heard Stormont's spurred tread on the stairs, and she thrust the Morocco case and wrapping it under the pillows behind her. She looked up at him in a dazed way when he came in with the tea and bread. He set the tin tray on her bureau and came over to the bedside. Eve, he said, you look very white and ill. Have you been hurt somewhere? And haven't you admitted it? She seemed unable to speak, and he took both her hands and looked anxiously into the lovely pallid features. After a moment she turned her head and buried her face in the pillow, trembling now in an overwhelming realization of what she had endured for the sake of two cakes of sugar milk chocolate hidden under a bush in the forest. For a long while the girl lay there the feverish flush of tears on her partly hidden face, her nervous hands tremulous, restless, now seeking his, convulsively, now striving to escape his clasp, eloquent, uncertain little hands that seem to tell so much, and yet we're telling him nothing he could understand. Eve, dear, he said, are you in pain? What is it that has happened to you? I thought you were all right. You seemed all right. I am, she said, in a smothered voice. You'll stay here with me, won't you? Of course I will. It's just the reaction. It's all over. You're relaxing. That's all, dear. You're safe. Nothing can harm you now. Please don't leave me. After a moment I won't leave you. I wish I might never leave you. In the tense silence that followed, her trembling ceased. Then his heart, heavy, irregular, began beating so that the startled pulses of her body awoke wildly responsive. Deep emotions, new, unfamiliar, were stirring, awaken, confusing them both. In a sudden instinct to escape, she turned and partly rose on one elbow, gazing blindly about her out of tear-marred eyes. I want my room to myself, she murmured in a breathless sort of way. I want you to go out, please. A boyish flush burned his face. He got up slowly, took his rifle from the corner, went out, closing the door, and seated himself on the stairs. And there, on guard, sat Trooper's dormant, rigid, stirring hour after hour, facing the great passion of his life, and stunned by the impact of its swift and unexpected blow. In her chamber, on the bed's edge, sat Eve Strayer, her deep eyes fixed on space, vague emotions exquisitely recurrent, newborn possessed her. The whole world, too, all around her, seemed to have become misty and golden in an all-pulsating with a faint still rhythm that indefinably thrilled her pulses to response. One full arm springs, flaming from the heart of man. Woman is slow to burn, and it was the delicate phantom of passion that Eve gazed upon. There in her unpainted chamber, her suntan fingers linked listlessly in her laps, her little feet like bruised white flowers drooping above the floor. Hour after hour she sat there dreaming, staring at the tinted ghost of Eros, rose-hued, near-smiling, unreal, impalpable as the dusty sunbeam that slanted from her window gilded the boarded floor. Three specters, gliding near, paused to gaze at state trooper Stormont on guard by the stairs. Then they looked at the closed door of Eve's chamber. Then the three specters, fate, chance, and destiny, whispered together, passed on towards the depths of the sunset forest. CHAPTER V DROWN VALLEY I The soft bluish forest shadows had lengthened, and the barred sun rays filtered through were tinged with a rosy hue before Jake Klune, the Hootrunner, and Earl Leverett, Trapthief, came to Drown Valley. They were still a mile distant from the most southern edge of the vast desolation, but already tamaracks appeared in the beauty of their burnt gold. Little pools glimmered here and there, patches of embers sphagnum, and crimson pitcher plants became frequent, and once or twice Klune's big boots broke through the crust of fallen leaves, soaking him to the ankles with black silt. Leverett, always a coward, had pursued his devious and larsenest ways through the world, always in deadly fear of sinkholes. His movements and paths were those of a weasel, preferring always solid ground, but he lacked the courage of that sinuous little beast, though he possessed all of its ferocity and far more cunning. Now, trotting lightly and tirelessly in the broad and careless spore of Jake Klune, his narrow pointed head alerted, and every fear-sharpened instinct tensely observant the trap-thief continued to meditate murder. Like all cowards, he had always been inclined to bold and ruthless action, but inclination was all that ever had happened. Yet, even in his piteous misdemeanors, he slunk through life and terror of that strength which never hesitates at violence. In his petty pilfering, he died a hundred deaths for every trapped mink or otter he filched. He heard the game protectors' head as he slunked from the bag-troutbrook or crawled away, belly dragging in pockets full of snared grouse. Always he drained of the day when, through some sudden bowl and savage stroke, he could deliver himself from a life of fear and live in a city, grossly replete with the pleasures of satiation, never again to see a tree or a lonely lake or blue peak, which always he had hated because they seemed to spy on him from their sky-blue heights. They were spying on him now as he moved lightly, overtively at Jake Klune's heels, meditating once more that swift, bold stroke which forever would free him from all care and fear. He looked at the back of Klune's massive head, one shot would blow that skull into fragments, he thought, shivering, one shot from behind in twenty thousand dollars, or, if it proved a better deal, the contents of the packet, for if Quintana's bribery had dazzled them, what effect might the contents of that secret packet have revealed? Because in his mean and busy brain he was trying to figure to himself what that packet must contain, and to make the bribe worthwhile, Leverett had concluded that only a solid packet of thousand dollar bills could account for the twenty thousand offered. There might easily be half a million in bills pressed together in that heavy, flat packet. Bills were absolutely safe plunder, but Klune had turned a deft ear to his suggestion. Klune, who never entertained ambition beyond his hooch rake-off, whose miserable imagination stopped at a wretched percentage satisfied, one shot there was the back of Klune's bushy head, one shot, and fear which had shattered him from birth was at an end for ever. Ended to, privation, the bitter rigor of black winters, scorching days, bodily squalor, ills that such as he endured in a wilderness where, like other creatures of the wild, men stricken dead or reconvened by chance alone. A single shot would settle all problems for him. But if he missed, at the mere idea he trembled as he trotted on, trying to tell himself that he couldn't miss. No use. Always the cowards if blocked him, and the cowards rage, fiercest of all fury ravaged him, almost crazing him with his own impotence. Tamraks, smagnum, crimson pitcher-plants grew thicker, wet woods set with little black pools stretched away on every side. It was still nearly a mile from Drowned Valley when Jake Klune halted in his tracks and seated himself on a narrow ridge of hard ground, and Leverett came lightly up, and after nosing the whole vicinity sat down, cautiously where Klune would have turned partly around to look at him, where the hell do we meet up with Quintana, growled Klune, tearing a mouthful from a nod tobacco plug, and shoving the remainder deep into his trouser pocket. We got to travel apiece yet, say Jake. Be you a man, or be you a poor dumb critter, what ain't got no spunk. Klune shoot his cut, turning and glancing at him. Then he spat as answer. If you got the spunk of a chipmunk, you and me take a peek at that there packet. I bet you a thousand dollar bills, more than a billion million dollars likely. Klune's dogged silence continued. Leverett licked his dry lips, his rifle lay on his knees. Almost imperceptibly he moved it. Moved it again, froze stiff as Klune spat. Then, by infinitesimal degrees, continued to edge the muzzle towards Klune. Jake? Ah, shut your head, grumbled Klune disdainfully. You allus was a dirty rat. He's sneakin' trap robber. Enough's enough. I ain't got no use for no billion million dollar bills. 10,000 by me all I calculate I need till I'm planted. But you're like a hog. You ain't never had enough, nothin'. You won't never get enough either. Not if you was God almighty you wouldn't. 10,000 dollars ain't nothin' to a billion million, Jake. Klune squirted a stream of tobacco at a pitcher plant filled the cup, diverted and gratified by the accuracy of his aim. He took other shots at intervals. Leverett moved the muzzle of his rifle, a hair's whip to the left, shivered, moved it again. Under his soggy, suntan skin, a pallor made his visage sickly gray. Jake? No answer. Say, Jake? No notice. Jake, I want to take a peek at them bills. Merely another stream of tobacco soiling the crimson pitcher. I'm, I'm disparate. I gotta take a peek. I gotta, I gotta. Something in Leverett's unsteady voice made Klune turn his head. You gall ram fool, he said. What you doin' with your loud detonation of the rifle punctuated Klune's inquiry with a final period. The big soft-nosed bullet struck him full in the face, spilling his brains and part of his skull then his back and knocking him flat as though he had been clubbed. Leverett stunned, sat staring motionless, clutching the rifle from the muzzle, of which the delicate stain of vapor floated and disappeared through a rosy bar of sunshine. In the intense stillness of the place, suddenly the dead man made a sound and the trap robber nearly fainted. But it was only air escaping from the slowly collapsing lungs and Leverett, ashy pale, shaking, got to his feet, leaned heavily against an oak tree, his eyes never stirring from the sprawling thing on the ground. If it were a minute or a year he stood there, he could never have reckoned the space of time. The sun's level rays glimmered ready through the woods, a green fly appeared, buzzing about the dead man, another zigzag through the sunshine lacing it with a streak of greenish fire. Others appeared whirling, gyrating, filling the silence with their humming and still Leverett dared not budge, dared not search the dead and take from it that for which the dead had died. A little breeze came by and stirred the bushy hair on Clune's head and fluttered the ferns around him where he lay. Two delicate pure white butterflies, rare survivors of a native species driven from civilization into the wilderness by the advent of the foreign white, fluttered in airy play over the dead man, drifting away into the woodland at times, yet always returning to wage a fairy combat above the heap of swelled clothing which had once been a man. Then near in the ferns the withering fronds twitched and a red squirrel sprung his startling alarm, squeaking, squealing, chattering his opinion of murder and Leverett shaking with the shock, wiped icy sweat from his face, laid aside his rifle and took his first step toward the dead man. But as he bent over he changed his mind, turned, reeling around then crept slowly out among the picture plants, searching about him as though sniffing. In a few minutes he discovered what he was looking for, took his bearings, carefully picked his way back over a leafy crust that trembled under his cautious tread. He bent over Clune and from the left inside coat pocket he drew the packet and placed inside his own flannel shirt. Then turning his back to the dead he squatted down and clutched Clune's burly ankles as a man grasped the handles of a wheelbarrow to draw it after him. Dragging, rolling, bumping over roots, Jake Clune took his last trail through the wilderness leaving a redder path than was left by a setting sun through fern and moss and waste of picture plants. Always as Leverett crept on pulling the dead behind him the floor of the woods trembled slightly and a black ooze wet the crust of withered leaves. At the quaking edge of a little pool of water Leverett halted. The water was dark but scarcely an inch deep over its black bed of silt. Beside this sinkhole the trap thief dropped Clune. He drew his hunting knife and cut a tall slim swamp maple. The sapling was about 20 feet in height. Leverett thrust the butt of it into the pool. Without any effort he pushed the entire sapling out of sight into the depthless silt. He had to maneuver very gingerly to drop Clune into the pool and keep out of it himself. Finally he managed it. To his alarm Clune did not sink far. He cut another sapling and pushed the body until only the shoes were visible above the silt. These however were very slowly sinking now. Bubbles rose, dully iridescent floated, broke. Strings of blood hung spended in the clouding water. Leverett went back to the little ridge and covered, Leverett went back to the little ridge and covered with dead leaves. The spot where Clune had lain. There were broken ferns but he could not straighten them and there lay Clune's rifle. For a while he hesitated. His habits of economy being ingrained but he remembered the packet in his shirt and he carried the rifle to the little pool and shoved it muzzle first, driving it down where out of sight. As he rose from the pool's edge somebody laid a hand on his shoulder. That was the most real death that Leverett ever had died. Two, a coward dies many times before old man death really gets him. The swimming minutes passed, his mind ceased to live for a space. Then as through the swirling waters of the last dark whirlpool, a dull roar of returning consciousness filled his being. Somebody was shaking him, shouting at him. Suddenly instinct resumed its function. He struggled madly to get away from the edge of the sinkhole, fought his way blindly through the tangled undergrowth toward the hard ridge. No human power could have blocked the frantic creature thrashing toward solid ground. But there Quintana held him in his wiry grip. Fool, mule, crazy fellow, what do you, eh? For why you make jump-like rabbits, eh? You expect Quintana, yes, alors? Leverett, in a state of collapse, sagged back against an oak tree. Quintana's nervous grasp fell from his arms and they swung dangling. What you do by that pond hole, eh? I come and touch you, and my God, one would think I have stabbed you. Such an ass. The sickly greenish hue changed in Leverett's face as the warmest hide stirred from its stagnation. He lifted his head and tried to look at Quintana. Where Jake Klune demanded the latter. At that, the weasel wits from the trap hopper awoke to the instant crisis. Blood and pulse began to jump. He passed one dirty hand over his mouth to mask any twitching. Where's my packet, eh? inquired Quintana. Jake's got it, Leverett's voice was growing stronger. His small eyes switched for an instant towards his rifle, where it stood against the tree. His small eyes switched for an instant toward his rifle, where it stood against the tree behind Quintana. Where is he, then, this Jake, repeated Quintana impatiently? He got bogged. Bogged? What is that, then? He got into a sinkhole. What? That's all I know, said Leverett's only. He and me was traveling, hell-bent on meeting up with you. Jake, he was for a shortcut to Drowned Valley. But no, says I. Give me a good hard ridge and a long detour when there sinkholes in the woods. What is that you talked to me, asked Quintana, whose perplexed features began to darken? Where is it, my packet? I'm telling you, ain't I, retorted the other, raising a voice now shrill with a strain of this new crisis rushing so unexpectedly upon him. I heard Jake give a holler. What the hell's the trouble, I yells? He lets out a bell. Save me, he screeches. I'm into a sinkhole. The quicksands got me, says he. So I dropped my rifle, I did. And there she stands against that birch sapling, and I run down into them pitcher plants. Warby, I yells. Then I listen, don't hear nothing, only a kind of waller in noise and a slobber like he was gulping mud. Then I follow them sounds and I come up out by that sinkhole. The water was a-shakin' all over it, but Jake, he had went down plumb out of sight. To his no use, I cut a sapling and poked down. I was sick and scared like, so when you come up over the moss, not makin' no noise and grab me, God, I guess you'd jump too. Quintana's dark, tense face was expressionless when levered venture to look at him. Like most liars, he realized the advisability of looking his victim straight in the eyes. This he managed to accomplish, sustaining the cold intensity of Quintana's gaze as long as he deemed it necessary. Then he started towards his rifle. Quintana blocked his way. Where my packet? Gal Ramad, I told you, Jake had it in his pocket. My packet. Yes, yarn. My packet, it's down in the sinkhole. You think I'm lime-blustered levered, trying to move around Quintana's extended arm? The arm swerved and clutched him by the collar of his flannel shirt. Wait, my friend, said Quintana in a soft voice. You shall explain to me some things before you go. Explain what, you gall-dinged? Quintana shook him into speechlessness. Listen, my friend, he continued with a terrifying smile. I must ask you what it was, that gunshot, which I hear while I was waitin' down valley, eh? Who fired a gun? I ain't heard no gun, replied levered in a strangled voice. You did not shoot? No? No, damn it all. And Jake, he did not fire? No, I tell ya. Ah, someone lies. It's not me, my friend. No, let us examine your rifle. Levered made a rush for the gun. Quintana slung him back against the oak tree and thrust an automatic pistol against his chin. Huns up, my friend, he said gently. Up high, or someone will fire another shot you shall never hear. So. Now, I searched the other pocket. So, no packet. Bah, not in the pants either. Ah, bah, but wait. Jens, what is this you hide inside your shirt? I was joking, gasped levered. I was a jest that going to give it to you. Is that my packet? Yes, it was all in fun. I was gonna steal it. Quintana unbuttoned the gray wool shirt, thrust in his hand and drew forth the packet for which Jake Klune had died within an hour. Suddenly, Levered's knees gave way and he dropped to the ground, groveling at Quintana's feet in an agony of fright. Don't hurt me, he screamed. I didn't mean no harm. Jake, he wanted me to steal it. I told him I was honest. I fired a shot to scare him and he took it and I run off. I wanted to go and steal it from you. So, help me, God. I was looking for you. God is my witness. He got Quintana by one fit. Quintana kicked him aside and backed away. Swine, he said, calmly inspecting the whimpering creature who had started to crawl toward him. He hesitated, lifting his automatic. Then, as though annoyed by Levered's deafening shriek, shrugged, hesitated, pocketed both pistol and packet and turned on his heel. By the birch sapling, he paused and picked up Levered's rifle. Something left a red smear on his palm as he worked the ejector. It was blood. Quintana gazed curiously at his soiled hand. Then he stooped, picked up the empty cartridge casing which had been ejected. And as he stooped, he noticed more blood on a fallen leaf. With one foot daintily, as a game cock scratches, he brushed away fallen leaves, revealing the mess underneath. After he had contemplated the crimson traces of the murder for a few moments, he turned and looked at Levered with faint curiosity. So, he said in his leisurely emotionless way, you have fight with my friend Jake for the packet, yes? Very amusing. He shrugged his indifference, tossed the rifle to his shoulder and without another glance at the cringing creature on the ground, walked away toward Drowned Alley unhurriedly. Three, when Quintana disappeared among the tamaracks, Levered ventured to rise to his knees. As he crouched there, peering after Quintana, a man came swiftly out of the forest behind him and nearly stumbled over him. Recognition was instant and mutual as the man jerked the trapped robber to his feet, stifling the muffled gale in his throat. I want that packet you picked up on clinches, Veranda said how, Smith. My God, stammered Levered, Quintana just took it off me, he ain't been gone a minute. You lie. I ain't lying, look at his foot marks, they're in the mud. Quintana? Yes, Quintana, he took my gun too. Which way, whispered Smith fiercely, shaking Levered till his jaws wagged. Drowned valley, let me loose, I'm choking. Smith pushed him aside. You rat, he said, if you're lying to me, I'll come back and settle your affair and clunes too. Quintana shot Jay and stuck him in a sinkhole, snibbled Levered, breaking down and sobbing. Oh God, God, he's down under all that black mud with his brain spilled out. But Smith was already gone, running lightly along the string of footprints that led straight away across slime and sphagnum toward the head of Drowned Valley. In the first clump of hardwood trees, Smith saw Quintana. He had halted and he was fumbling at the twine which bound the flat paper-wrapped packet. He did not start when Smith's sharp warning struck his ear, don't move, I've got you over my rifle, Quintana. Quintana's fingers had instantly ceased operation. Then, warily, he lifted his head and looked into the muzzle of Smith's rifle. Ah, bah, he said, frankly. There were three of you then. Lay that packet on the ground. My friend, drop it or I'll drop you. Quintana carefully placed the packet on a bed of vivid moss. Now your gun, continued Smith. Quintana shrugged and laid Levered's rifle beside the packet. Kneel down with your hands up and your back toward me, said Smith. My friend, down with you. Quintana dropped gracefully into the humiliating attitude popularly indicative of prayerful supplication. Smith walked slowly up behind him, relieved him of two automatics and a dirk. Stay put, he said sharply as Quintana started to turn his head. Then he picked up the packet with its loose and strings, slipped it into his side pocket, gathered together the arsenal which had decorated Quintana and so loaded with weapons, walked away a few paces and seated himself on a fallen log. Here, he pocketed both automatics, shoved the sheet, dirk into his belt, placed the captured rifle handy after examining magazine and laid his own weapon across his knees. You may turn around now, Quintana, he said amiably. Quintana lowered his arms and started to rise. Sit down, said Smith. Quintana seated himself on the moss-facing Smith. Now my gay and nimble thimble rigger, said Smith genially. While I take 10 minutes rest, we'll have a little polite conversation or rather a monologue because I don't want to hear anything from you. He settled himself comfortably on the log. Let me assemble for you, Senor Quintana, the interesting history of the jewels which so sparklingly repose in the packet in my pocket. In the first place, as you know, Monsignor Quintana, the famous flaming jewel and the other gems contained in this packet of mine belong to Her Highness, the Grand Duchess Theodorica of Estonia. Very interesting. More interesting still, along comes Don Jose Quintana and his celebrated gang of international thieves and steals from the Grand Duchess of Estonia the flaming jewel and all her rubies, emeralds and diamonds. Yes? Certainly, said Quintana with a polite inclination of acknowledgement. Bonn, well then, still more interesting to relate. A gentleman named Clinch helps himself to these famous jewels. How very careless of you, Mr. Quintana. Careless certainly, assented Quintana politely. Well, said Smith, laughing. Clinch was more careless still. The robber barons, Sir Jacob Clune, swiped. As Froy Sartes has said, the Estonian gems and under agreement to deliver them to you, I suppose, thought better of it and attempted to abscond. Do you get me, Herr Quintana? Yes. Yes, and you got Jake Clune, I hear, Laugh Smith. No. Didn't you kill Clune? No. Oh, pardon, the mistake was natural. You merely robbed Clune and Leverett. You should have killed them. Yes, said Quintana slowly. I should have, it was my mistake. Senor Quintana, it is human for the human crook to err. Sooner or later he always does, and then the piper comes around, holding out two itching palms. Mr. Smith, said Quintana pleasantly. You are an unusually agreeable gentleman for a thief. I regret that you do not see your way as an amalgamation of interests with myself. As you say, Quintana, mais, I am somewhat unusual. For example, what do you suppose I am going to do with this packet in my pocket? Live, replied Quintana tersely. Live certainly, Laugh Smith, but not on the proceeds of this coup de main, non paix. I am going to return this packet to its rightful owner, the grand Duchess Theodorica of Estonia. And what do you think of that, Quintana? Quintana smiled. You do not believe me, inquired Smith. Quintana smiled again. Allons-bon, exclaimed Smith, rising. It's the unusual that happens in life, my dear Quintana. Now we'll take a little inventory of these marvelous gems before we part. Sit very, very still, Quintana, unless you want to lie still or still. I'll let you take a modest peep at the flaming jewel, busily unwrapping the packet, just one little peep, Quintana. He unwrapped the paper, two cakes of sugar-milk chocolate lay within. Quintana turned white, then deeply, heavily red. Then he smiled in a ghastly fashion. Yes, he said hoarsely. As you have just said, sir, it is usually the unusual which happens in the world. End of episode five. Episode six of The Flaming Jewel. This is a little summary of the world. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, visit LibriVox.org. The Flaming Jewel by Robert W. Chambers. Episode six, The Jewel of Flame. One, Mike Clinch and his men drove Star Peak and drew a blanket covert. There was a new shanty atop, camp debris, plenty of signs of recent occupation everywhere, hot embers in which awful still moldered, bottles odorous of claret dregs and an aluminum culinary outfit unwashed as though Quintana and his men had departed in haste. Far 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's 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 the rotten bog 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 to incessant muttering, a sort of soundless invocation, part chronicle, part prayer. Oh, God Almighty, in your big swell mansion up there, all has went contrary with me since you let that, their damn millionaire haired, come into this here forest. He went and built unto himself a habitation. He put up a wall of law all around me where I was earning a lawful living in thy nice, clean wilderness. And now comes this here Quintana and robs my girly. I promised her mother I'd make a lady of her little eve. I love my wife, O Lord. Once she showed me a peace in the Bible, I had never found it since, 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 in your Bible. Oh, God, you can't go back on it, I seen it. And now I want to ask, what place did you prepare for my eve? What spot have you referenced 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 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 going to get Quintana. Then I'm a going to get them two minks that rob my girly. I am, Jake Klune. He done it in cahoots with Earl Leverett and Quintana set him on. They gotta die, O Lord of Israel. Them there Egyptians is about to hop the twig. I ain't aiming to be mean to nobody. I buy hooch with them that runs it. I eat mountain mutton and season it out. I trade with lawbreakers, I do. But, Lord, I gotta get my girly outta here. And, Herod, he walled me in with the chariots and spears of Egypt till I and I went wild. And now comes Quintana. And here I be, a lion out to get him so my girly can become a lady. Same's them fine folks with all their butlers and automobiles and whatnot. 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 rose slowly, grasping his rifle, his small gray eyes ablaze. Where's Quintana, he demanded. Ain't you seen nobody? No, in the intense silence, other sounds broke sharply in the sunset forest. Harvey Chase's Halu rang out from the rocks above. Bloomers and Hastings boys came slouching through the ferns. Byron Hastings greeted Clinch with upflung gun. Me and Jim heard a shot way out on Drowned Valley. He announced, was you out that way, Mike? Nope, one by one, the man who had driven Star Peak lounged up in the red sunset light, gathering around Clinch and wiping the sweat from their sun-reddened faces. Someone's in Drowned Valley, repeated Byron. Them minks slid off and star in a hurry. I reckon judging how they left their shanny, phew, it's stunk. They had French hooch, too. Maybe Leverett and Clune told them we was fixing to visit them, suggested Bloomers. They didn't know, said Clinch. Where's Hal Smith, inquired Hone? Clinch made no reply. Bloomers 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 Bloomers dryly. Not amongst them sinkholes 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 got to get Quintana. I can't never sleep another wink until 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. And as they looked at him, they saw his teeth. All right, all right, growled Hone, shouldering his rifle with a jerk. The hasting boys, young and rash, shuffled into the trail. Bloomers hesitated, glanced to scant at Clinch, and instantly made up his mind to take a chance with the sinkholes rather than with Clinch. God Almighty, Mike, what be you aiming to do? faltered Harvey. I'm aiming to stop the inlet and outlet in Drowned Valley, Harve, replied Clinch in his pleasant voice. God is a going to deliver Quintana into my hands. All right, what next? Then, continued Clinch, I cowled it to set down and wait. How long? Ask God, boys, I don't know. All I know is whatever is living in Drowned Valley at this hour has got to live and die there, for it can't never live to come out in that there morass walking on two legs like a real man. He moved slowly along the file of soul and men, his rifle a trail in one huge fist. Boys, he said, I got first. There ain't no sinkhole deep enough to drown me while Eve needs me. And my little girlie needs me bad. After she gets what's herring, then I don't care no more. He looked up into the sky with the last ashes of the sunset faded from the zenith. Then I don't care, he murmured. Likes not all creep away like some shot up critter and kind of find some lone safe spot and kind of fix me for a long nap. I guess that'll be the way when Eve's a lady down to New York, roarsomers, he added vaguely. Then still looking up at the fading heavens, he moved forward, head lifted, silent, unhurried with a soundless stealthy and certain tread of those who walk unseeing in the sleep. Two, clinch had not taken a dozen strides before Hal Smith loomed up ahead in the rosy dusk, driving in levered 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 gall-danged catamount that suspicioned Hal? I wasn't worried none, neither. Hal's a gent. Maybe 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 gate, hustling levered along with prods from gun butter muzzle as came handiest. The prisoner turned a ghastly visage on clinch who ignored him. Got my packet, Hal, he demanded. Smith poked levered with his gun. Tune up, he said, tell clinch your story. As a caged rat looks death in the face, his ratty wits, working like lightning in every atom of cunning and ferocity alert for attack or escape, saw the little mean eyes of Earl Leverett became fixed on clinch like two immobile and glassy beads of jet. Go on, said clinch, spit it out. Jake done it, muttered Leverett thickly. Done what? Stole that their packety yarn, 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? 10,000. How about you? I told him I wouldn't touch it. Then they put their guns on me and I was scared to squeal. So that was the way, asked clinch in his even reassuring voice. Leverett's eyes traveled stealthily around the circle of men, then reverted to clinch. I doesn't touch it, he said. But I doesn't squeal. I was hunting on to Drowned Valley when Jake meets up with me. I got the packet, he says, and I'm a going double crisscross Quintana I am and beat it. Don't you wish you was waxed with me? No, says I. Honesty is my policy, no matter what they tell about me. To 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 hooch, same as everybody. He licked his lips furtively, his cold bright eyes fastened on clinch. Go on Earl, nodded the ladder. Heaver up. That's all I says, goodbye Jake. And if you heed my warning, ill-gotten gains ain't it going to prosper nobody. That's what I said to Jake Cloon. 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 want gone ten yards when bang goes a gun and I see this here Quintana come out in the bushes. I do walk up to Jake and frisk him. And Jake's still a kick in the moss to slivers. Yes sir, that's what I seen. Go on. Yes sir, and then Quintana he shoved Jake into a sinkhole. That's what I seen with my two eyes. Yes sir, and then Quintana he run off and I just sat down on the hill. I did and then Hal come up and acted like I had stole your packet he did. Then I told him what Quintana done and how he takes after Quintana. But I don't guess he meets up with him for he come back and catched hold of me and drove me up like I was a calf he did. And here I be. The dusk in the forest had deepened so that the men's faces had become mere blotches of gray. 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 was nothing 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, you roared at Leveret. You was into this, too, a robin, my little Eve. Run, yelled somebody given Leveret a violent shove into the woods. In the darkness and confusion, clinch shouldered his way out of a circle and fired at the crackling noise that marked Leveret's course. Fired again, lowered, and again in a distant crash revealed the frenzy flight of the trap robber. After he had fired a four-shot, somebody struck up his rifle. Ah, said Jim Hastings, that ain't no good. You act up like a kid, Mike. Taint so far to Ghost Lake and 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've got to give her. It's all she's got to make her a lady. I'll kill any man that robs her or helps to rob her, and that's that. Are you going after Quintana, asked Smith? I am, and these fellas are going with me, and I want you should go back to my dump and look after my girly while I'm gone. How long are you going to be away? I don't know. There was a silence, then. All right, said Smith briefly. He added, look out for sinkholes, 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 at any fella that don't show up at roll call. Three. For its size, there is no fiercer animal than a rat. Rat-like rage possessed leverage. 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 clinches bullets whining around him, and he ran on, beginning to sob and curse in a frenzy of fury, fear, and shame. Shots from clinches' rifle ceased. The fugitive dropped into a heavy, shuffling walk, slavering, gasping, gesticulating with his weaponless fists in the darkness. Go, Rammy, I'll fix ye. He kept stammering in his snarling, jangling voice, broken by sobs. I'll learn ye, ye poor dang thing, go, Rammy. 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 in his cheekbone. 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 star shining faintly through the 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 jack 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, a deep superstitious horror of Jake Klune's empty bunk, the repugnant sight of Klune's spare clothing hanging from its peg, the dead man's shoes. No, he couldn't go to stinking lake and sleep and wake with the faint stench of sulfur in his throat and see the worm-like leeches unfolding in the shadows and the big reddish water lizards livid at his skinned eels, wriggling convulsively toward their sunless lairs. At the mere thought of his dead bunkmate, he sought relief and vindictive rage, stirred up the smoldering embers again, cursed clinch and Hal Smith, violently searched 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 stepdaughter. 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 a lightning across his turbid mind, the packet. Bribed by Quintana, Jake Klune, lurking at clinch's door, had heard him direct Eve to take the packet to Owl Marsh and notify Quintana. Whittingly or unwittingly, the girl had taken a packet of sugar milk chocolate instead of the priceless parcel expected. Again, carried in exhausted by a staped trooper, Jake Klune had been fooled. It was the packet of sugar milk chocolate that Jake had purloined from the veranda where clinch kicked it. For two cakes of chocolate, Klune had died. For two cakes of chocolate, he, Earl Leverett, had become a manslayer, 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 his 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, the edge of clinch's clearing, the dark October heavens were but a vast wilderness of stars. Starpawn set to his limben depths with the heavenly gems glittered and darkled with its million diamonds in crustaceans. The humped-up lump of clinch's dump crouched like some huge and night-feeding beast on the bank, ringed by the solemn forest. There was a kerosene lamp burning in Eve Strayer's room, another light, a candle flickered in the kitchen. Leverick 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. Four. From his form among first blackened regweeds, the trap robber could see only the plastered ceiling of the bedchamber, 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 staid trooper. Eve sat on her bed's edge, swathe in a lilac-silk kimono, delicate relic of school days, her bandaged feet crossed dangling above the reg rug on the floor, her slim tan fingers were interlaced over the book on her lap. Near the door stood staid trooper Stormont, spurred, booted, triggin' 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 Vulsong. Stormont had been reading to her, they having found after the half-shy tenetives of their new friends, a point d'apuis 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 the mutual friends among the noble 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 much in the reading but in the conversations intervening. And now, made uneasy by Chance's consultation with his wristwatch, and being rather a conscientious young man, he had risen in an informed Eve that she ought to go to sleep. And she had denounced the idea, most fretfully. Even if you go, I shan't sleep till daddy comes, she said, of course. 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 intending 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 room 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 men, accustomed to the open can't stand caging. I want you to go out and get some fresh air, she said. It's a wonderful night. Go and walk awhile. 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 their simplicity there seemed a delicate sweetness that stirred him. I'll come back to you, he said. Then, in his response, the girl and her turn became aware of something beside the simple words, a vague charm about them that faintly haunted her after he had gone away down the stairs. That was the man she had once tried to kill. At the sudden, terrible recollection, she shivered from curly head to bandaged feet. Then she trembled a little with the memory of his lips against her bruised hands, bruised by handcuffs which he had fastened upon her. She sat very, very still now, huddled at the bed's edge, scarcely breathing. For the girl was beginning to dare formulate the deepest of any thoughts that had ever stirred her virgin mind and body. If it was love, then it had come suddenly and strangely. It had come on that day at the very moment that he had flung her against the tree and handcuffed her, that terrible instant, if it were love. Or what was it that so delicately overwhelmed her with pleasure in his presence, in his voice, in the light, firm sound of his spurred tread on the veranda below? Friendship? A lonely passion for young and decent companionship? The clean youth of him in contrast to the mangy, surly louts who haunted clinches dump? Was that the appeal? Listening there, where she sat clasping the book, she heard his steady tread patrolling the veranda, caught the faint fragrance of his briar pipe in the still night air. I think? I think it's love, she said under her breath, but he couldn't ever think of me. Always listening to his spurred tread below. After a while, she placed both bandaged feet on the rug. It hurt her, but she stood up, walked to the open window. She wanted to look at him, just a moment. By chance, he looked up at that instance and saw her pale face, like flour in the starlight. Why, Eve, he said, you ought not be on your feet. Once, she said, you weren't so particular about my bruises. Her breathless little voice coming down through the starlight thrilled him. Do you remember what I did, he asked? Yes, you bruised my hands and made my mouth bleed. I did penance for your hands. Yes, you kissed them. What possessed her? What irresponsible exhilaration was inciting her to a daring, utterly foreign to her nature? She heard herself laugh, knew that she was young, pretty, capable of provocation, and in a sudden breathless sort of way, an overwhelming desire seized her to please, to charm, to be noticed by such a man, whatever, on afterthought he might think of a step-child of my clinch. Stormont had come directly under her window and stood looking up. I dared not offer any further penance, he said. The emotion in his voice stirred her, but she was still laughing down at him. She said, you did offer further penance. You offered your handkerchief, so that was all you offered as reparation for my lips. Eve, I could have taken you into my arms. You did, and threw me down among the spruces. You really did everything that a contrite heart could suggest. Good heavens, said the rather matter-of-fact young man. I don't believe you've forgiven me at all. I have, everything except the handkerchief. Then I'm coming up to complete my penance. I locked my door. Would you? I ought to, but if you are in great spiritual distress, and if you really and truly repent, and if you humbly desire to expiate or sin by doing penance, and hesitated, do you so desire? Yes, I do. Humbly, contritely? Yes. Very well, say, may a copa, may a maxima copa. May a maxima copa, he said so earnestly, looking up into her face that she bent lower over the sill to see him. Let me come up, Eve, he said. She strove to laugh, gazing down into his shadowy face. But suddenly the desire had left her, and all her gait he left her to, suddenly, leaving only still excitement in her breath. You knew I was just laughing, she said unsteadily. You understood, didn't you? I don't know. After a silence, I didn't mean you to take me seriously, she said. She tried to laugh. It was no use. And she leaned there on the sill, her heart frightened her with its loud beating. Will you let me come up, Eve? No answer. Would you lock your door? What do you think I'd do, she asked tremulously. You know I don't. Are you so sure I know what I'd do? I don't think either of us know our minds. I seem to have lost some of my wits, somehow. If you are not going to sleep, let me come up. I want you to take a walk down by the pond. And while you're walking there all by yourself, I want you to think very clearly, very calmly, and make up your mind whether I should remain awake tonight, or whether when you return I ought to be asleep and my door bolted. After a long pause, all right, he said in a low voice. Five. She saw him walk away, saw his shadowy, well-built form fade into the starlit mist. An almost uncontrollable impulse set her throat and lips quivering with desire to call him through the night. I do love you, I do love you. Come back quickly, quickly. Fog hung over starpond, edging the veranda, rising in frail shreds to her window. The lapping of water scented very near, and owl was very mournful in the hemlocks. The girl turned from the window, looked at the door for a moment, then her face flushed, and she walked toward a chair and seated herself, leaving the door unbolted. For a little while, she sat upright, alert as though a little frightened. After a few moments, she folded her hands and sat unsteering, with lowered head, awaiting destiny. It came, noiselessly, and so swiftly that the rush of air from her violently open door was what first startled her. For in the same second, Earl Leveret was upon her in his stocking feet, one bony hand gripping her mouth, the other flung around her, pinning both arms to her side. The packet he handed quick, yet dirty little cat, or I'll break your head off and damn neck. She bit at the hand that he held, crushed against her mouth. He lifted her bodily, flung her onto the bed, and twisting sheet or quilt around her, swabbed her to the throat, still controlling her violently distorted lips with his left hand and holding her so, one knee upon her, he reached back and unsheathed his hunting night, and pricked her throat till the blood spurred. Now, gall ram ya, he whispered fiercely, where's Mike's packet? Yell and I'll hogstick ya for fair. Where is it, you dumb thing? He took his left hand from her mouth, the distorted scarlet lips ride back, displaying her white teeth clenched. Where's Mike's bundle? He repeated, hoarsely with rage and fear. You rat, she gasped. At that he closed her mouth again, and again pricked her with his knife cruelly, the blood welled up onto the sheets. Now, by God, he said in a ghastly voice, answer, I'll hogstick ya next time. Where is it, where, where? She only showed her teeth and answer, her eyes flamed. Where, quick, gall ding ya, I'll shove this knife in behind your ear if you don't tell. Go on, where is it? It's in this dump summers, I know it is, don't lie. You want I should stick you good? That what you want, you dirty little dump slut? Well then, gall ram ya, I'll fix ya like Quintana was aiming at. He slipped the sheet downward from her in prison knees, seized one wounded foot and tried to slash the bandages. I'll cut a couple of toes off ya, he snarled. I'll hamstring ya for keeps, struggling to mutilate her while she flung her helpless and entangled body from side to side and bit it in the hand that was almost suffocating her. Unable to hold her any longer, he seized a pillow to bury the venomous little head that writhed biting under his clutch. As he lifted, he saw a packet lying underneath. By God, he panted. As he seized it, she screamed for the first time, Jack, Jack Stormont! And fairly hurled her helpless body at leverick, striking him full in the face with her head, half stunned, still clutching the packet, he tried to stab her in the stomach, but the armor of bedclothes turned the knife, although his violence dashed all the breath out of her. Sick with the agony of it, speechless, she still made the effort and as he stumbled to his feet and turned to escape, she struggled upright, choking, blood running from the knife pricks in her neck. With the remnant of her strength and still writhing and grasping for breath, she tore herself from sheets and blanket, reeled across the room to where Stormont's rifle stood, threw in a cartridge, dragged herself to the window. Dimly, she saw a figure running in the night mist, flung the rifle across the window sill and fired, then fired again, or thought she did. There were two shots. Eve came Stormont's sharp cry, what the devil are you trying to do to me? His cry terrified her, the rifle clattered to the floor. The next instant, he came running up the stairs, bare-headed, heavy pistol-swinging and halted, horrified, outside of her. Eve, my God, he whispered, taking her blood-wet body into his arms. Go after Leveret, she gasped. He's Rob Daddy, he's running away, out there, somewhere. Where did he hurt you, Eve, my little Eve? Oh, go, go, she willed, I'm not hurt. He only pricked me with his knife, I'm not hurt, I tell you, go after him, take your pistol and follow him and kill him. Oh, she cried hysterically, swinging and sobbing into his arms. Don't lose time here with me, don't stand here while he's running away with Daddy's money. And oh, oh, oh, she sobbed, collapsing in his arms and clinging to him convulsively as he carried her to her tumbled bed and lay her there. He said, I couldn't risk following anybody now. After what has happened to you, I can't leave you here alone. Don't cry, Eve, I'll get your man for you, I promise. Don't cry, dear, it was all my fault for leaving this room, even for a minute. No, no, it's my fault, I sent you away. Oh, I wish I hadn't, I wish I let you come back when you wanted to. I was waiting for you, I left the door unbolted for you. When it opened, I thought it was you and it was Leverett. It was Leverett. Stormont's face grew very white. What did he do to you, Eve? Tell me, darling, what did he do to you? Dad's money, it was under the pillow, she wailed. Leverett tried to make me tell him where it was. I wouldn't and he hurt me. How? He pricked me with his knife. When I screamed for you, he tried to choke me with the pillow. Didn't you hear me scream? Yes, I came on the jump. It was too late, she sobbed. Too late, he saw the money packet under my pillow, he snatched it and ran. Somehow I found your rifle and fired, I fired twice. Her only bullet had torn his campaign hat from his head, but he did not tell her. Let me see your neck, he said, bending closer. She bared her throat, making a soft, vague complaint like a hurt bird. Lay there whimpering under her breath while he bathed the blood away with a lint, sterilized the two cuts from his emergency packet and then bound them. He was still bending over her when her blue eyes unclosed on his. That is the second time I've tried to kill you, she whispered. I thought it was Leverett. I'd have died if I had killed you. There was a silence. Live very still, he said huskily. I'll be back in a moment to re-bandage your feet and make you comfortable for the night. I can't sleep, she repeated desolately. Dad trusted his money to me and I've let Leverett robbing. How can I sleep? I'll bring you something to make you sleep. I can't. I promise you you will sleep. Live still. He rose, went away downstairs, out to the barn where his campaign hat, laying the weed, drilled through by a bullet. There was something else lying there in the weeds, a flat, muddy, shoeless shape, sprawling grotesquely in the foggy starlight, one hand clutching a hunting knife, the other a packet. Stormont drew the packet from the stiff fingers, then turned the body over and flashing his electric torch, examined the ratty visage, what remained of it. For his pistol bolt had crashed through from ear to cheekbone, almost obliterating the trap robber's features. Stormont came slowly into Eve's room and laid the packet on the sheet beside her. Now, he said, there is no reason for you to lie awake any longer. I'll fix you up for the night. Deathly, he unbandaged, bathed, dressed and re-bandaged her slim white feet, little wounded feet, so lovely, so exquisite, that his hands trembled as he touched them. They're doing fine, he said cheerfully. You've half a degree of fever. I'm going to give you something to drink before you go to sleep. He poured out a glass of water, dissolved two tablets, supporting her shoulders while she drank in a dazed way, looking always at him over the glass. Now, he said, go to sleep. I'll be on the job outside your door until your daddy arrives. How did you get dad's money? She asked in an odd, emotionless way, as though too weary for further surprises. I'll tell you in the morning. Did you kill him? I didn't hear your pistol. I'll tell you about it in the morning. Good night, Eve. As he bent over her, she looked up into his eyes and put both arms around his neck. This was her first kiss given to any man, except Mike Clinch. After Stormont had gone out and closed the door, she lay very still for a long while. Then, instinctively, she touched her lips with her fingers, and at the contact, a blush cloaked her from brow to ankle. The flaming jeweled Morocco casket under her pillow, burned with no pure fire than the enchanted flame glowing in the virgin heart of Eve's strayer of Clinch's dump. Thus they lay together, two lovely flaming jewels burning softly, steadily through the misty splendor of the night. Under a million stars, death sprawled and squalor among the trampled weeds. Under the same high stars, dark mountains waited, and there was a silvery sound of water stirring somewhere in the mist. End of episode six. Episode seven of The Flaming Jewel. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Flaming Jewel by Robert W. Chambers. Episode seven, Clinch's Dump. One. When Mike Clinch bade Howe Smith return to the dump and take care of Eve, Smith already had decided to go there. Somewhere in Clinch's dump was hidden the Flaming Jewel. Now was his time to search for it. There were two other reasons why he should go back. One of them was that Leveret was loose. If anything had called Trooper Storm onto way, Eve would be alone in the house and nobody on earth could forecast what a coward like Leveret might attempt. But there was another and more serious reason for returning to Clinch's. Clinch, blood mad, was headed for drowned valley with his men to stop both ends of that vast morass before Quintana and his gang could get out. It was evident that neither Clinch nor any of his men, although their very lives depended upon familiarity with the wilderness, knew that a third exit from drowned valley existed. But the nephew of the late Henry Herrod knew. When Jake Clune was a young man and Dara was a boy, Clune had shown him the rocky, submerged game trail into drowned valley. Doubtless, Clune had used it in hooch running since. If ever he had told anybody else about it, probably he had revealed the trail to Quintana. And that was why Dara, or Hal Smith, finally decided to return to Starpond. Because if Quintana had been told or had discovered that circuitous way out of drowned valley, he might go straight to Clinch's dump. And supposing Stormont was there, how could one state trooper stand off Quintana's gang? No sooner had Clinch and his motley followers disappeared into the dusk than Smith, unslung his basket pack, fished out a big electric torch, flashed it tentatively, and then, re-slinging the pack and taking his rifle in his left hand, he set off at an easy swinging stride. His course was not towards Starpond. It was at right angles with that trail, for he was taking no chances. Quintana might already have left drowned valley by the third exit unknown to Clinch. Smith's course would now cut this unmarked trail, trodden only by game that left no sign in the shallow mountain rivulet, which was the path. The trail lay a long way off through the night, but if Quintana had discovered and taken that trail, it would be longer still for him, twice as long as the regular trail out. For a mile or two, the forest was first growth pine and sufficiently open so that Smith might economize on his torch. He knew every foot of it. As a boy, he had carried a Jacob staff in the geological survey. Who better than the forest roaming nephew of Henry Harrod should know this blind wilderness? The great pines tower on every side, lofty and smooth to the feathery canopy that crowned them under the high stars. There was no game here, no water, nothing to attract anybody except the devastating lumberman. But this was a 5,000 acre patch of state land. The ugly wine of the steamsaw would never be heard here. On he walked at an easy swinging stride, flashing his torch rarely feeling no concern about discovery by Quintana's people. It was only when he came into the hardwoods that the combined necessity for caution and the torch perplexed and worried him. Somewhere in here began an outcrop of rock running east for miles. Only stunted cedar and berry bushes found shallow nourishment on this ridge. When at last he found it, he traveled upon it more slowly, constantly obliged to employ the torch. After an hour perhaps, his feet splashed in shallow water. That was what he was expecting. The water was only an inch or two deep. It was ice cold and running north. Now he must advance with every caution, for here trickled the thin flow of the rocky rivulet that was the other entrance and exit, penetrating the immersed horror of marsh and bog and depless sinkholes known as Drown Valley. For a long while he did not dare use his torch, but now he was obliged to. She shined the ground at his feet, elevated the torch with infinite precaution, throwing a fan-shaped light over the stretch of sink he had suspected and feared. It flanked the flat, wet path of rock on either side. Here death spread its slimy trap at his very feet. Then as he stood taking his bearings with burning torch, far ahead in the darkness a light flashed, went out, flashed twice more and was extinguished. Quintana, smith's wits were working like lightning, but instinct guided him before his brain took command. He leveled his torch and repeated the three signal flashes. Then in darkness he came to swift conclusion. There were no other signals from the unknown. The stony bottom of the rivulet was his only aid. In his right hand the torch hung almost touching the water. At times he ventured sufficient pressure for a feeble glimmer, then again trusted to his sense of contact. For 300 yards counting his strides he continued on. Then in total darkness he pocketed the torch, slid a cartridge into the breach of his rifle, slung the weapon, pulled out a handkerchief and tied it across his face under the eyes. Now he drew the torch from his pocket, leveled it, sent three quick flashes out into the darkness. Instantly close ahead three blinding flashes broke out. For how smith it had become a question of seconds. Death lay deptless on either hand. Ahead death blocked the trail in silence. Out of the dark some unseen rifle might vomit death in his very face at any moment. He continued to move forward. After a while his ear caught a slight splash ahead. Suddenly a glare of light enveloped him. Is it you, Harry Beck? Instinct led again while wits worked madly. Harry Beck is two miles back on guard. Where's Sarge? The silence became terrible. Once the glaring light in front moved, then became fixed. There was a light splashing. Instantly smith realized that the man in front had set his torch in a tree-crotch and was now cowering somewhere behind a leveled weapon. His voice came presently. Hey, drop of that gun a dam a quick. Smith bent leisurely and laid his rifle on a mossy rock. Now, you there. Why you want Sard, eh? I'll tell Sard not you, retorted Smith Cooley. You listen to me, whoever you are. I'm from Sard's office in New York. I'm Abrams. The police are on their way to find Quintana. How I know, eh? Why shall I believe that? You tell me quick, or I blow your damn head off. Quintana will blow your head off unless you take me to Sard, drawled Smith. A movement might have meant death. He calmly rummaged for a cigarette, lighted it, blew a cloud insolently toward the white glare ahead, then he took another chance. I guess you're Nick Salazar, aren't you? See, I am Salazar. Who the dev are you? I'm Eddie Abrams, Sard's lawyer. My business is to find my client. If you stop me, you'll go to prison. The whole gang of you, Sard, Quintana, Pequette, Sanchez, Giorgiatis, and Harry Beck, and you. After a silence, maybe you'll go to the chair, too. It was the third chance he took. There was a dreadful stillness in the woods. Finally came a slight series of splashes, the crunch of heavy boots on rock. For while you come here, eh? demanded Salazar, a less aggressive manner. What a demata, eh? Well, said Smith, if you've got to know, there are people from Estonia and New York, if you understand that. Christi, when did they arrive? A week ago, Sard's place is in the hands of the police. I couldn't stop them. They've got his safe and all of his papers. City, state, and federal officers are looking for him. The constable I rode into Ghost Lake yesterday. Now don't you think you'd better lead me to Sard? Christi, exclaimed Salazar. Sard, he is a mile ahead with the others. Damn, damn. Me, how should I know what is to be done? Me, I have my orders from Quintana. What I do, eh? Christi, what to do? What you say I should do, Abrams? A new fear had succeeded the old one. This was evident, and Salazar came forward into the light of his own fixed torch, a well-knit figure in slouch hat, gray shirt, and gray breeches, wearing a red bandana over the lower part of his face. He carried a heavy rifle. He came on, sturdily, splashing through the water and walked up to Smith, his rifle resting on his right shoulder. For me, he said excitedly, long time I have worry in this a damn wood. See, where you say those carabineria? At Ghost Lake, your signature is in a hotel ledger. Christi, you know where clinch is. You know, too, he's on his way to Drowne Valley. Damn, I knew it. Quintana also. You know where is Quintana and Sard? I tell you. They marked very fast over the dump of clinch, see? And there they would discover it's a big diamond, this flaming jewel, see? Now you tell me what I do. Smith said slowly, if Quintana is marching on clinches, he's marching into a trap. Salazar blanched above his bandana. The state troopers are there, said Smith. They'll get him for sure. Christi, faltered Salazar. Then they are gobbled, Quintana, Sard, everybody, see? Smith considered the man. You can save your skin anyway. You can go back and tell Harry Beck. Then both of you can beat it for Drowne Valley. He picked up his rifle, stood a moment, and rubbled reflection. If I could overtake Quintana, I'd do it, he said. I think I'll try. If I can't, he's done for. You tell Harry Beck that Eddie Abrams advises him to beat it for Drowne Valley. Suddenly Salazar tore the bandana from his ace, flung it down, and stamped on it. What I tell Quintana, he yelled, his features distorted with rage. I don't like it. No, not me. No, I tell him, stay out of Ghostalaca and watch these aphela clinch. See, not for me these would. No, I spit upon it. I curse it like hell. I tell Quintana, I don't like it. Now it is trouble that comes and we look out. Damn, damn. Me, I find me Beck. You shall say to Jose Quintana how he is a damn fool. Me, I am finished. Me, next Salazar, you hear me Abrams. I am through, I go. He glared at Smith, started to move, came back and took his torch, made a violent gesture with it which drenched the woods with goblin light. You stop a Quintana maybe. You tell him he is a big a fool. You tell him Nick Salazar is no damn fool. No, adios my friend Abrams. I beat it. I saved my skin. Once more Salazar turned and headed for Drowne Valley where clinch would not fail to kill him. The man was going to his death and it was Smith who sent him. Suddenly it came to Smith that he could not do this thing that this man had no chance, that he was slaying a human being with perfect safety to himself and without giving him a chance. Salazar he called sharply. The man halted and looked around. Come back. Salazar hesitated, turned finally and slouched toward him. Smith laid his pack and rifle and as Salazar came up he quietly took his weapon from him and laid it beside his own. What a demander demanded Salazar astonished. Why you take my gun? Smith measured him. They were well matched. Set your torch in a crotch, he said. Salazar puzzled and impatient demanded to know why. Smith took both torches, set them opposite each other and drew Salazar into the white glare. Now, he said, you dirty desperado, I'm going to try to kill you clean. Look out for yourself. For a second Salazar stood rooted in blank astonishment. I'm one of clinches men said Smith but I can't stick a knife in your back at that. Now take care of yourself if you can. His voice died in his throat. Salazar was on him, clawing, biting, kicking, striving to strangle him. To wrestle him off his feet, Smith reeled, staggered under the sheer rush of the man, almost blinded by blows, clutched, bewildered in Salazar's panther grip. For a moment he ride there, searching blindly for his enemy's wrist, struggling to avoid the teeth that snapped at his throat, stifled by the hot stench of the man's breath in his face. I kill you, I kill you, damn, damn! Panted Salazar in convulsive fury as Smith freed his left arm and struck him in the face. Now in the narrow, wet, slippery, stripped rock they swayed to and fro, murderously interlocked, their heavy boots splashing, battling with limb and body. Twice Salazar forced Smith outward over the sink, trying to end it but could not free himself. Once too he managed to get it a hidden knife, drag it out and stab it head and throat but Smith caught the fit that wielded it and forced back the arm, held it while Salazar screamed at him, lunging at his face with bared teeth. Suddenly the end came, Salazar's body was heaved upward, sprawling for an instant in the dazzling glare hurtled over Smith's head and fell into the sink with a crashing splash. Franticly he thrashed there, spattering and floundering in darkness. He made no outcry, probably he had landed head first. In a moment only a vague heaving came from the unseen ooze. Smith, exhausted, drenched with sweat, leaned against the tamarack, sickened. After all sounded ceased, he straightened up with an effort. Presently he bent and recovered Salazar's red bandana and his hat, lifted his own rifle and pack and struggled into the harness. Then kicking Salazar's rifle overboard he unfastened both torches, pocketed one and started on in a flood of ghostly light. He was shaking all over and the torch quivered in his hand. He had seen men die in the great war. He had been near death himself but never before had he been near death in so horrible a form. The sodden noise in the mud, the dead and flopping of the sinking body, mud plastered hands beating frantically on mud, splattering, agonizing in darkness. My God, he breathed anything but that. Anything but that. Two. Before midnight he struck the hard forest. Here there was no trail all only spreading outcrop of rock under dying leaves. He could see a few stars, cautiously he ventured to shine his compass close to the ground. He was still headed right, the ghastly, sink country lay behind him. Ahead of him, somewhere in darkness but how far he did not know, Quintana and his people were moving swiftly on clinches dump. It may have been an hour later, two hours perhaps, when from far ahead in the forest came a sound. The faint clink of a shod heel on rock. Now Smith, unslung his pack, placed it between two rocks where Laurel grew. Salzar's red bandana was still wet but he pided across his face leaving his eyes exposed. The dead man's hat fitted him. His own hat and the extra torch he dropped into his basket pack. Ready now, he moved swiftly forward trailing his rifle and very soon it became plain to him that people ahead were moving without much caution, evidently fearing no unfriendly ear or eye in the section of that wilderness. Smith could hear their tread on the rock and root and rotten branch or swishing through frosted front and break or louder on newly fallen leaves. At times he could even see the round white glare of a torch on the ground. See it shift ahead, lighting up tree-tunks, spreading out fan-like into a wide misty glory then vanish as darkness rushed in from the vast ocean of the night. Once they halted at a brook, their torches flashed it. He heard them sounding its depths with their gun-butts. Smith knew that brook. It was the east branch of star brook, the inlet to star pond. Far ahead above the trees the sky seemed luminous. It was star-luster over the pond turning the mist into silvery splendor. Now the people ahead of him moved with more caution, crossing the brook without splashing and their boots made less noise in the woods. To keep in touch with them, Smith hastened his pace until he drew near enough to hear the low murmur of their voices. They were traveling in single file. He had a glimpse of them against the ghostly radiance ahead. Indeed, so near he had approached that he could hear the heavy labored breathing of the last man in the file. Some laggard who dragged his feet, plodding on doggedly, panting, muttering, probably the man was sard. Already the forest in front was invaded by the misty radiance of the clearing. Through the trees starlight glimmered on the water. The perfume of the open land grew in the night air. A scent of dew wet grass, the smell of still water and of sedgy shores. Lying flat behind a rotting log, Smith could see them all, spectral shapes against the light. There were five of them at the forest edge. They seemed to know what was to be done and how to do it. Two went down among the ferns and stunted willows toward the west shore of the pond. Two sheared off to the southwest, shoulder deep in Blackberry and Sumac. The fifth man waited for a while then ran down across the open pasture. Scarcely had he started when Smith glided to the woods edge, crouched and looked down. Below stood clenches dump, plain in the starlight, every window dark. To the west, the barn loomed, huge with its ramshackle outbuildings straggling toward the lake. Straight down the slope toward the barn ran the fifth man of Quintana's gang and disappeared among the outbuildings. Smith crapped after him through the Sumacs and at the foot of the slope squatted low in a clump of ragweed. So close to the house was he now that he could hear the dew rattling on the verandah roof. He saw shadowy figures appear one after another and take stations at the four corners of the house. The fifth man was somewhere near the outbuildings, very silent about whatever he had on hand. Stillness was absolute save for the drumming dew and faint ripple from the water's edge. Smith crouch listened, searched for the starlight with intense eyes and waited until something happened he could not solve the problem before him. He could be of no use to Eve's Strayer and to Stormont until he found out what Quintana was doing. He could be of little use anyway unless he got into the house where two rifles might have allowed against five. There was no use in trying to get to Ghost Lake for assistance. He felt that whatever was about to happen would come with a rush. It would be all over before he had gone five minutes. No, the only thing to do was to stay where he was. As for his pledge to his little grand duchess, that was always in his mind. Sooner or later somehow he was going to make good his pledge. He knew that Quintana and his gang were here to find the flaming jewel. Had he not encountered Quintana, his own errand had been the same. For Smith had started for clinches to prepare to reveal himself to Stormont and then mask to the eyes and save Eve from a broken heart and clinch from state prison. He had meant to rob the girl at pistol point. It was the only way to save clinch. The only way to save the pride of this blindly loyal girl for the arrest of clinch meant ruin to both and Smith realized it thoroughly. A slight sound from one of the outhouses, a sort of wagon shed attracted his attention. Through the frost blighted wreckweed he peered intently listening. After a few moments, a faint glow appeared in the shed. There was a crackling noise. The glow grew pinker. Three, inside clinch's house, Eve awoke with a start. Her ears were filled with a strange rushing crackling noise. A rosy glare danced and shook outside her windows. As she sprang to the floor on bandaged feet, a shrill scream burst out in the ruddy darkness. Unearthly, horrible, and there came a thunderous battering from the barn. The girl tore open her bedroom door. Jack, she cried in a terrified voice. The barn's on fire. Good God, he said. My horse. He had already sprung from his chair outside her door. Now he ran downstairs and she heard bolt and chain clash in the kitchen and his spur boot land on the porch. Oh, she whimpered, snatching a blanket wrapper from a peg and struggling into it. Oh, the poor horse. Jack, Jack, I'm coming to help. Don't risk your life. I'm coming, I'm coming. Terror clutched her as she stumbled downstairs on bandaged feet. As she reached the door, a great flare of light almost blinded her. Jack! And at the same instant, she saw him struggling with three masked men in the glare of the wagon shed of fire. His rifle stood in the corridor outside her door. With one bound, she was on the stairs again. There came the crash and splinter of wood and glass from the kitchen. A man with a handkerchief over his face caught her on the landing. Twice she wrenched herself loose and her fingers almost touched Stormont's rifle. She fought like a cornered lynx, tore the handkerchief from her assailant's face, recognized Quintana, hurled her very body at him, eyes flaming, small teeth bared. Two other men laid hold. In another moment, she had tripped Quintana and all four fell rolling over and over down the short flight of stairs, landing in the kitchen, still fighting. Here in the darkness, she wriggled out, somehow leaving her blanket wrapping in their clutches. In another instant, she was up the stairs again, only to discover the rifle was gone. The red glare from the wagon house lighted her bedroom and she sprang inside and bolted the door. Her chamois jacket with its loops full of cartridge hung on a peg, she got it, seized her rifle, ran to the window, just as two masked men pushing Stormont before them entered the house by the kitchen way. Her own door was resounding with kicks and blows, shaking, shivering under the furious impact of boot and rifle butt. She ran to the bed, thrust her hand under the pillow, pulled out the case containing the flaming jewel and placed it in the breast pocket of her shooting jacket. Again, she crept to the window, only the wagon house was burning. Somebody, however, had led Stormont's horse from the barn and had tied it to a tree at a safe distance. It stood there, trembling, its beautiful, nervous head turned toward the burning building. Who blows upon her bedroom door had ceased, there came a loud trampling and a sound of excited voices, Quintana's sarcastic tone's clear dominant. Dios, the police, why you bring me this ganderame? What am I to do with a gentleman of the constable letter, eh? Do you think I am fool enough to cut his throat? Well, señor ganderame, what are you doing here in the dump of clinch? Then Stormont's voice clear and quiet. What are you doing here? If you've a quarrel with clinch, he's not here. There's only a young girl in the house. So, said Quintana. Well, that's what I expect, my friend. It's these lady upon whom I do myself the honor to call. Heave listened, heard Stormont's rejoinder, still calm and very grave. The man who lays a finger on that young girl had better be dead. He's as good as dead the moment he touches her. There won't be a chance for him, not for any of you, if you harm her. Calm yourself, my friend, said Quintana. I demand of these lady only she return to me, the property of which have been robbed by Monsieur clinch. I knew nothing of any theft, nor does she. Pardon, senor. Clench knows, and I know, his tone changed offensively. Senor Gendarame, am I permitted to understand that you are a friend of this young lady? A hard friend, perhaps? I am her friend, said Stormont bluntly. Ah, said Quintana. Then you shall persuade her to return to me these packet of which Monsieur clinch robbed me. There was a short silence, then Quintana's voice again. I know these packet is still concealed in this house. Peaceably, if possible, I would recover my property. Is she refuse? Another pause. Well, inquired Stormont Cooley. Ah, it is a very painful to say. Alas, senor Gendarame, I must have my property. Is she refuse? Then I must sever one of her pretty fingers. And if she still refuse, I must sever her pretty fingers one by one until. You know what happened to you, interrupted Stormont in a voice that quivered in spite of himself. I take my chance. Senor Gendarame, she is within that room. If you are her friend, you shall advise her to return to me my property. After another silence. Eve, he called Shirley. She placed two lips to the door. Yes, Jack? He said, there are five masked men out here who say they clinch robbed them and they are here to recover their property. Do you know anything about this? I know they lie, my father is not a thief. I have my rifle in plenty of their nation. I shall kill every man who enters this room. For a moment nobody stirred or spoke. Then Quintana strode to the bolted door and struck it with the butt of his rifle. You in there, he said in a menacing voice. You listen once to me. You open your door and come out. I give you one minute. He struck the door again. One minute, senorita. Or I cut from your friend here, the hand from his right arm. There was a deathly silence. Then the sound of bolts. The door opened. Slowly the girl limped forward, still wearing the hunting jacket over her nightdress. Quintana made her an elaborate and ironical bow, slouch hat in hand, and another masked man took rifle. Senorita, said Quintana with another sweep of his hat. I ask pardon that I trouble you for my packet of which your father has robbed me for a very long time. Slowly the girl lifted her blue eyes to Stormont. He was standing between two masked men, their pistols pressed slightly against his stomach. Stormont reddened painfully. It was not for myself that I let you open the door, he said. They would not have ventured to lay hands on me. Ah, said Quintana with a terrifying smile. You would not have been the first ganderame who had accorded me his hand. Two of the masked men laughed loudly. Outside in the ragweed patch, Smith Rose stole across the grass to the kitchen door and slipped inside. Now, senorita, said Quintana gaily, my packet if you please. And we leave you to the caress of your faithful ganderame, who should thank God that he still possesses two good hands to fondle you. Allons, come on, come then, my packet. One of the masked men said, take her downstairs and lock her up somewhere else. She'll shoot us from her window. Lead out that ganderame to, said Quintana, grasping Eve by the arm. Down the stairs, tramp the men, forcing their prisoners with them. In the big kitchen, the glare from the burning outhouse fell dimly. The place was full of shadows. Now, said Quintana, I take my property and my leave. Where is the packet hidden? She stood for a moment with drooping head. Amid the somber shadows, then suddenly, she drew the emblazoned Morocco case from her breast pocket. What followed occurred in the twinkling of an eye, for as Quintana extended his arm to grasp the case, a hand snatched it. A masked figure sprang away through the door and ran toward the barn. Somebody recognized the hat and red bandana. Salsar, he yelled, Nick Salsar! A traitor by God, shouted Quintana, even before he had reached the door, his pistol flashed twice, deafening all the semi-darkness, choking them with stifling fumes. A masked man turned on Stormont, forcing him back into the pantry at pistol point. Another man pushed Eve after him, slamming the pantry door and bolting it. Through the iron bars of the pantry window, Stormont saw a man, wearing a red bandana tied under his eyes, run up, untie his horse, and fling himself astride under a shower of bullets. As he wheeled the horse and swung him into the clearing toward the foot of Starpond, his seat and horsemanship were not to be mistaken. He was gone now, the gallop stretching into a dead run, and Quintana's men still following, shooting and hallowing in the starlight like a pack of leaping shapes from hell. But Quintana had not followed far. When he had emptied his automatic, he halted. Something about the transaction suddenly checked his fury, stilled it, summoned his brain into action. For a full minute, he stood unsteering, every atom of intelligence and terrible concentration. Presently, he put his left hand into his pocket, fitted another clip to his pistol, turned on his heel and walked straight back to the house. Between the two locked in the pantry, not a word had passed. Stormont still peered out between the iron bar, striving to catch a glimpse of what was going on. Eve crouched at the pantry doors, her face and her hands listening. Suddenly, she heard Quintana step in the kitchen. Cautiously, she turned the pantry key from inside. Stormont heard her and instantly came to her. At the same moment, Quintana unbolted the door from the outside, tried to open it. Come out, he said coldly, or it will not go well with you and my men return. You've got what you say was your property, replied Stormont, what do you want now? I tell you what, I want very damn quick. Who was he, this man who ride off of my property on your horse, eh? Because it was not Nick Salazar. No, Salazar cannot ride this way. No, alors, I can't tell you who he was, replied Stormont, that's your affair, not ours. No, ah, very well then, I shall tell you, Senor Flick, he was one of yours. I understand, it's a trap, a cheat, what you call a plan. This man who rode your horse, he is disguised. Yes, he also a gendarame. Yes, you think I let a gendarame rob me? I got you where I want you now. You shall write your gendarame friend that he returned my property. One day's time, or I send him by parcel two nice fresh out right hands, your sweethearts and your own. Stormont drew his head close to his. This man is blood matter out of his mind. I'd better go out and take a chance at him before the others come back. But the girl shook her head violently, caught him by the arm and drew him toward the mouth of the tile down which clinch always emptied his hooch when the dump was raided. But now it appeared that the tile which protruded from the cement floor was removable. In silence she began to unscrew it and he seeing what she was trying to do helped her. Together they lifted the heavy tile and laid it on the floor. Open the door, shouted Quintana, in a paroxysm of fury. I give you one minute, then by God I kill you both. Eve lifted a screen of wood through which the tile had been set, under it a black hole yawned. It was a tunnel made of three foot aqueduct tiles and it led straight into star pond 200 feet away. Now as she straightened up and looked silently at Stormont, they heard the trample of boots in the kitchen, voices in the bang of gun stocks. Does that drain lead into the lake, whispered Stormont. She nodded. Will you follow me, Eve? She pushed him aside, indicating that he was to follow her. As she stripped the hunting jacket from her, a hot color swept her face. As she dropped on both knees, crept straight into the tile and slipped out of sight. As she disappeared, Quintana shouted something in Portuguese and fired at the lock. With the smash of splintering wood in his ear, Stormont slid into the smooth tunnel. In an instant he was shooting down a polished toboggan slide. In another moment he was under the icy water of star pond. Shocked, blinded, fighting his way to the surface, he felt his spurred boots dragging him like a ton of iron. Then to him came her helping hand. I can make it, he gasped. But his clothing and his boots and the icy water began to tell on him in mid-lake. Swimming without effort beside him, watching as every stroke. Presently she sank a little and glided under him and a little ahead so that his hands fell upon her shoulders. He let them rest so aware now that it was no burden to such a swimmer. Supple and silent as a swimming otter, the girl slipped lightly through the chilled water which washed his body to the nostrils and numbed his legs till he could scarcely move them. Now of a sudden his feet touched gravel. He stumbled forward in the shadow of overhanging trees and saw her wading shoreward, a dripping silvery shape on the shoal. Then as he staggered to her breathless, where she was standing on the pebbled shore, he saw her join both hands, cup shape, and lift them to her lips. And out of her mouth poured diamond, sapphire and emerald in a dazzling stream, among them one great flashing gem blazing in the starlight, the flaming jewel. Like a niad of the lake she stood, white, slim, silent, the heap gem glittering in her snowy hands, her face framed by the curling masses of her wet hair. Then slowly she turned her head to Stormont. These are what Quintana came for, she said. Could you put them in your pocket? End of episode seven.