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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Flaming Jewel, by Robert W. Chambers
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Flaming Jewel
+
+Author: Robert W. Chambers
+
+Release Date: September 18, 2008 [EBook #26651]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FLAMING JEWEL ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, Jacqueline Jeremy and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE FLAMING JEWEL
+
+ROBERT W. CHAMBERS
+
+
+
+
+    ROBERT W. CHAMBERS
+
+    _The Flaming Jewel_
+
+    TRIANGLE BOOKS NEW YORK
+
+
+    COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
+
+    TRIANGLE BOOKS EDITION PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER 1942
+
+    TRIANGLE BOOKS, 14 West Forty-ninth Street, New York, N. Y.
+
+    PRINTED AND BOUND IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA BY THE AMERICAN
+    BOOK--STRATFORD PRESS, INC., N. Y. C.
+
+
+
+
+    TO
+    MY FRIEND
+
+    R. T. HAINES-HALSEY
+
+    WHO
+    UNRESERVEDLY BELIEVES
+    EVERYTHING I WRITE
+
+
+
+
+To R. T.
+
+
+    I
+
+    Three Guests at dinner! That's the life!--
+    Wedgewood, Revere, and Duncan Phyfe!
+
+
+    II
+
+    You sit on Duncan--when you dare,--
+    And out of Wedgewood, using care,
+    With Paul Revere you eat your fare.
+
+
+    III
+
+    From Paul you borrow fork and knife
+    To wage a gastronomic strife
+    In porringers; and platters rare
+    Of blue Historic Willow-ware.
+
+
+    IV
+
+    Banquets with cymbal, drum and fife,
+    Or rose-wreathed feasts with riot rife
+    To your chaste suppers can't compare.
+
+
+    V
+
+    Let those deny the truth who dare!--
+    Paul, Duncan, Wedgewood! That's the life!
+    All else is bunk and empty air.
+
+
+    ENVOI
+
+    The Cordon-bleu has set the pace
+    With Goulash, Haggis, Bouillabaisse,
+    Curry, Chop-suey, Kous-Kous Stew--
+    I can not offer these to you,--
+    Being a plain, old-fashioned cook,--
+    So pray accept this scrambled book.
+
+            R. W. C.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+                                            PAGE
+
+    EPISODE ONE
+    EVE                                        9
+
+    EPISODE TWO
+    THE RULING PASSION                        33
+
+    EPISODE THREE
+    ON STAR PEAK                              56
+
+    EPISODE FOUR
+    A PRIVATE WAR                             75
+
+    EPISODE FIVE
+    DROWNED VALLEY                            93
+
+    EPISODE SIX
+    THE JEWEL AFLAME                         110
+
+    EPISODE SEVEN
+    CLINCH'S DUMP                            134
+
+    EPISODE EIGHT
+    CUP AND LIP                              157
+
+    EPISODE NINE
+    THE FOREST AND MR SARD                   180
+
+    EPISODE TEN
+    THE TWILIGHT OF MIKE                     209
+
+    EPISODE ELEVEN
+    THE PLACE OF PINES                       233
+
+    EPISODE TWELVE
+    HER HIGHNESS INTERVENES                  255
+
+
+
+
+THE FLAMING JEWEL
+
+EPISODE ONE
+
+EVE
+
+
+I
+
+During the last two years Fate, Chance, and Destiny had been too busy to
+attend to Mike Clinch.
+
+But now his turn was coming in the Eternal Sequence of things. The stars
+in their courses indicated the beginning of the undoing of Mike Clinch.
+
+From Esthonia a refugee Countess wrote to James Darragh in New York:
+
+    "--After two years we have discovered that it was José
+    Quintana's band of international thieves that robbed Ricca.
+    Quintana has disappeared.
+
+    "A Levantine diamond broker in New York, named Emanuel Sard, may
+    be in communication with him.
+
+    "Ricca and I are going to America as soon as possible.
+
+            "VALENTINE."
+
+The day Darragh received the letter he started to look up Sard.
+
+But that very morning Sard had received a curious letter from Rotterdam.
+This was the letter:
+
+    "Sardius--Tourmaline--Aragonite--Rhodonite *
+    Porphyry--Obsidian--Nugget Gold--Diaspore *
+    Novaculite * Yu * Nugget Silver--Amber--Matrix
+    Turquoise--Elaeolite * Ivory--Sardonyx * Moonstone--
+    Iceland Spar--Kalpa Zircon--Eye Agate * Celonite--
+    Lapis--Iolite--Nephrite--Chalcedony--Hydrolite *
+    Hegolite--Amethyst--Selenite * Fire Opal--Labradorite--
+    Aquamarine--Malachite--Iris Stone--Natrolite--
+    Garnet * Jade--Emerald--Wood Opal--Essonite--
+    Lazuli * Epidote--Ruby--Onyx--Sapphire
+    --Indicolite--Topaz--Euclase * Indian Diamond *
+    Star Sapphire--African Diamond--Iceland Spar--
+    Lapis Crucifer * Abalone--Turkish Turquoise * Old
+    Mine Stone--Natrolite--Cats Eye--Electrum * * *
+    1/5 [=a] [=a]."
+
+That afternoon young Darragh located Sard's office and presented himself
+as a customer. The weasel-faced clerk behind the wicket laid a pistol
+handy and informed Darragh that Sard was away on a business trip.
+
+Darragh looked cautiously around the small office:
+
+"Can anybody hear us?"
+
+"Nobody. Why?"
+
+"I have important news concerning José Quintana," whispered Darragh;
+"Where is Sard?"
+
+"Why, he had a letter from Quintana this very morning," replied the
+clerk in a low, uneasy voice. "Mr. Sard left for Albany on the one
+o'clock train. Is there any trouble?"
+
+"Plenty," replied Darragh coolly; "do you know Quintana?"
+
+"No. But Mr. Sard expects him here any day now."
+
+Darragh leaned closer against the grille: "Listen very carefully; if a
+man comes here who calls himself José Quintana, turn him over to the
+police until Mr. Sard returns. No matter what he tells you, turn him
+over to the police. Do you understand?"
+
+"Who are you?" demanded the worried clerk. "Are you one of Quintana's
+people?"
+
+"Young man," said Darragh, "I'm close enough to Quintana to give _you_
+orders. And give Sard orders.... And Quintana, too!"
+
+A great light dawned on the scared clerk:
+
+"_You_ are José Quintana!" he said hoarsely.
+
+Darragh bored him through with his dark stare:
+
+"Mind your business," he said.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That night in Albany Darragh picked up Sard's trail. It led to a dealer
+in automobiles. Sard had bought a Comet Six, paying cash, and had
+started north.
+
+Through Schenectady, Fonda, and Mayfield, the following day, Darragh
+traced a brand new Comet Six containing one short, dark Levantine with a
+parrot nose. In Northville Darragh hired a Ford.
+
+At Lake Pleasant Sard's car went wrong. Darragh missed him by ten
+minutes; but he learned that Sard had inquired the way to Ghost Lake
+Inn.
+
+That was sufficient. Darragh bought an axe, drove as far as Harrod's
+Corners, dismissed the Ford, and walked into a forest entirely familiar
+to him.
+
+He emerged in half an hour on a wood road two miles farther on. Here he
+felled a tree across the road and sat down in the bushes to await
+events.
+
+Toward sunset, hearing a car coming, he tied his handkerchief over his
+face below the eyes, and took an automatic from his pocket.
+
+Sard's car stopped and Sard got out to inspect the obstruction. Darragh
+sauntered out of the bushes, poked his pistol against Mr. Sard's fat
+abdomen, and leisurely and thoroughly robbed him.
+
+In an agreeable spot near a brook Darragh lighted his pipe and sat him
+down to examine the booty in detail. Two pistols, a stiletto, and a
+blackjack composed the arsenal of Mr. Sard. A large wallet disclosed
+more than four thousand dollars in Treasury notes--something to
+reimburse Ricca when she arrived, he thought.
+
+Among Sard's papers he discovered a cipher letter from
+Rotterdam--probably from Quintana. Cipher was rather in Darragh's line.
+All ciphers are solved by similar methods, unless the key is contained
+in a code book known only to sender and receiver.
+
+But Quintana's cipher proved to be only an easy acrostic--the very
+simplest of secret messages. Within an hour Darragh had it pencilled
+out:
+
+    _Cipher_
+
+    "Take notice:
+
+    "Star Pond, N. Y.... Name is Mike Clinch.... Has Flaming
+    Jewel.... Erosite.... I sail at once.
+
+            "QUINTANA."
+
+Having served in Russia as an officer in the Military Intelligence
+Department attached to the American Expeditionary Forces, Darragh had
+little trouble with Quintana's letter. Even the signature was not
+difficult, the fraction 1/5 was easily translated _Quint_; and the
+familiar prescription symbol [=a] [=a] spelled _ana_; which gave
+Quintana's name in full.
+
+He had heard of Erosite as the rarest and most magnificent of all gems.
+Only three were known. The young Duchess Theodorica of Esthonia had
+possessed one.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Darragh was immensely amused to find that the chase after Emanuel Sard
+should have led him to the very borders of the great Harrod estate in
+the Adirondacks.
+
+He gathered up his loot and walked on through the splendid forest which
+once had belonged to Henry Harrod of Boston, and which now was the
+property of Harrod's nephew, James Darragh.
+
+When he came to the first trespass notice he stood a moment to read it.
+Then, slowly, he turned and looked toward Clinch's. An autumn sunset
+flared like a conflagration through the pines. There was a glimmer of
+water, too, where Star Pond lay.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Fate, Chance, and Destiny were becoming very busy with Mike Clinch. They
+had started Quintana, Sard, and Darragh on his trail. Now they stirred
+up the sovereign State of New York.
+
+That lank wolf, Justice, was afoot and sniffing uncomfortably close to
+the heels of Mike Clinch.
+
+
+II
+
+Two State Troopers drew bridles in the yellowing October forest. Their
+smart drab uniforms touched with purple blended harmoniously with the
+autumn woods. They were as inconspicuous as two deer in the dappled
+shadow. There was a sunny clearing just ahead. The wood road they had
+been travelling entered it. Beyond lay Star Pond.
+
+Trooper Lannis said to Trooper Stormont: "That's Mike Clinch's clearing.
+Our man may be there. Now we'll see if anybody tips him off this time."
+
+Forest and clearing were very still in the sunshine. Nothing stirred
+save gold leaves drifting down, and a hawk high in the deep blue sky
+turning in narrow circles.
+
+Lannis was instructing Stormont, who had been transferred from the Long
+Island Troop, and who was unacquainted with local matters.
+
+Lannis said: "Clinch's dump stands on the other edge of the clearing.
+Clinch owns five hundred acres in here. He's a rat."
+
+"Bad?"
+
+"Well, he's mean. I don't know how bad he is. But he runs a rotten dump.
+The forest has its slums as well as the city. This is the Hell's Kitchen
+of the North Woods."
+
+Stormont nodded.
+
+"All the scum of the wilderness gathers here," went on Lannis. "Here's
+where half the trouble in the North Woods hatches. We'll eat dinner at
+Clinch's. His stepdaughter is a peach."
+
+The sturdy, sun-browned trooper glanced at his wrist watch, stretched
+his legs in his stirrups.
+
+"Jack," he said, "I want you to get Clinch right, and I'm going to tell
+you about his outfit while we watch this road. It's like a movie. Clinch
+plays the lead. I'll dope out the scenario for you----"
+
+He turned sideways in his saddle, freeing both spurred heels and lolled
+so, constructing a cigarette while he talked:
+
+"Way back around 1900 Mike Clinch was a guide--a decent young fellow
+they say. He guided fishing parties in summer, hunters in fall and
+winter. He made money and built the house. The people he guided were
+wealthy. He made a lot of money and bought land. I understand he was
+square and that everybody liked him.
+
+"About that time there came to Clinch's 'hotel' a Mr. and Mrs. Strayer.
+They were 'lungers.' Strayer seemed to be a gentleman; his wife was
+good looking and rather common. Both were very young. He had the consump
+bad--the galloping variety. He didn't last long. A month after he died
+his young wife had a baby. Clinch married her. She also died the same
+year. The baby's name was Eve. Clinch became quite crazy about her and
+started to make a lady of her. That was his mania."
+
+Lannis leaned from his saddle and carefully dropped his cigarette end
+into a puddle of rain water. Then he swung one leg over and sat side
+saddle.
+
+"Clinch had plenty of money in those days," he went on. "He could afford
+to educate the child. The kid had a governess. Then he sent her to a
+fancy boarding school. She had everything a young girl could want.
+
+"She developed into a pretty young thing at fifteen.... She's eighteen
+now--and I don't know what to call her. She pulled a gun on me in July."
+
+"What!"
+
+"Sure. There was a row at Clinch's dump. A rum-runner called Jake Kloon
+got shot up. I came up to get Clinch. He was sick-drunk in his bunk.
+When I broke in the door Eve Strayer pulled a gun on me."
+
+"What happened?" inquired Stormont.
+
+"Nothing. I took Clinch.... But he got off as usual."
+
+"Acquitted?"
+
+Lannis nodded, rolling another cigarette:
+
+"Now, I'll tell you how Clinch happened to go wrong," he said. "You see
+he'd always made his living by guiding. Well, some years ago Henry
+Harrod, of Boston, came here and bought thousands and thousands of acres
+of forest all around Clinch's----" Lannis half rose on one stirrup and,
+with a comprehensive sweep of his muscular arm, ending in a flourish:
+"--He bought everything for miles and miles. And that started Clinch
+down hill. Harrod tried to force Clinch to sell. The millionaire tactics
+you know. He was determined to oust him. Clinch got mad and wouldn't
+sell at any price. Harrod kept on buying all around Clinch and posted
+trespass notices. That meant ruin to Clinch. He was walled in. No
+hunters care to be restricted. Clinch's little property was no good.
+Business stopped. His stepdaughter's education became expensive. He was
+in a bad way. Harrod offered him a big price. But Clinch turned ugly and
+wouldn't budge. And that's how Clinch began to go wrong."
+
+"Poor devil," said Stormont.
+
+"Devil, all right. Poor, too. But he needed money. He was crazy to make
+a lady of Eve Strayer. And there are ways of finding money, you know."
+
+Stormont nodded.
+
+"Well, Clinch found money in those ways. The Conservation Commissioner
+in Albany began to hear about game law violations. The Revenue people
+heard of rum-running. Clinch lost his guide's license. But nobody could
+get the goods on him.
+
+"There was a rough backwoods bunch always drifting about Clinch's place
+in those days. There were fights. And not so many miles from Clinch's
+there was highway robbery and a murder or two.
+
+"Then the war came. The draft caught Clinch. Malone exempted him, he
+being the sole support of his stepchild.
+
+"But the girl volunteered. She got to France, somehow--scrubbed in a
+hospital, I believe--anyway, Clinch wanted to be on the same side of
+the world she was on, and he went with a Forestry Regiment and cut trees
+for railroad ties in southern France until the war ended and they sent
+him home.
+
+"Eve Strayer came back too. She's there now. You'll see her at dinner
+time. She sticks to Clinch. He's a rat. He's up against the dry laws and
+the game laws. Government enforcement agents, game protectors, State
+Constabulary, all keep an eye on Clinch. Harrod's trespass signs fence
+him in. He's like a rat in a trap. Yet Clinch makes money at law
+breaking and nobody can catch him red-handed.
+
+"He kills Harrod's deer. That's certain. I mean Harrod's nephew's deer.
+Harrod's dead. Darragh's the young nephew's name. He's never been
+here--he was in the army--in Russia--I don't know what became of
+him--but he keeps up the Harrod preserve--game-wardens, patrols,
+watchers, trespass signs and all."
+
+Lannis finished his second cigarette, got back into his stirrups and,
+gathering bridle, began leisurely to divide curb and snaffle.
+
+"That's the layout, Jack," he said. "Yonder lies the Red Light district
+of the North Woods. Mike Clinch is the brains of all the dirty work that
+goes on. A floating population of crooks and bums--game violators,
+boot-leggers, market hunters, pelt 'collectors,' rum-runners, hootch
+makers, do his dirty work--and I guess there are some who'll stick you
+up by starlight for a quarter and others who'll knock your block off for
+a dollar.... And there's the girl, Eve Strayer. I don't get her at all,
+except that she's loyal to Clinch.... And now you know what you ought
+to know about this movie called 'Hell in the Woods.' And it's up to us
+to keep a calm, impartial eye on the picture and try to follow the plot
+they're acting out--if there is any."
+
+Stormont said: "Thanks, Bill; I'm posted.... And I'm getting hungry,
+too."
+
+"I believe," said Lannis, "that you want to see that girl."
+
+"I do," returned the other, laughing.
+
+"Well, you'll see her. She's good to look at. But I don't get her at
+all."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because she _looks_ right and yet she lives at Clinch's with him and
+his bunch of bums. Would you think a straight girl could stand it?"
+
+"No man can tell what a straight girl can stand."
+
+"Straight or crooked she stands for Mike Clinch," said Lannis, "and he's
+a ratty customer."
+
+"Maybe the girl is fond of him. It's natural."
+
+"I guess it's that. But I don't see how any young girl can stomach the
+life at Clinch's."
+
+"It's a wonder what a decent woman will stand," observed Stormont.
+"Ninety-nine per cent. of all wives ought to receive the D. S. O."
+
+"Do you think we're so rotten?" inquired Lannis, smiling.
+
+"Not so rotten. No. But any man knows what men are. And it's a wonder
+women stick to us when they learn."
+
+They laughed. Lannis glanced at his watch again.
+
+"Well," he said, "I don't believe anybody has tipped off our man. It's
+noon. Come on to dinner, Jack."
+
+They cantered forward into the sunlit clearing. Star Pond lay ahead. On
+its edge stood Clinch's.
+
+
+III
+
+Clinch, in his shirt sleeves, came out on the veranda. He had little
+light grey eyes, close-clipped grey hair, and was clean shaven.
+
+"How are you, Clinch," inquired Lannis affably.
+
+"All right," replied Clinch; "you're the same, I hope."
+
+"Trooper Stormont, Mr. Clinch," said Lannis in his genial way.
+
+"Pleased to know you," said Clinch, level-eyed, unstirring.
+
+The troopers dismounted. Both shook hands with Clinch. Then Lannis led
+the way to the barn.
+
+"We'll eat well," he remarked to his comrade. "Clinch cooks."
+
+From the care of their horses they went to a pump to wash. One or two
+rough looking men slouched out of the house and glanced at them.
+
+"Hallo, Jake," said Lannis cheerily.
+
+Jake Kloon grunted acknowledgment.
+
+Lannis said in Stormont's ear: "Here she comes with towels. She's
+pretty, isn't she?"
+
+A young girl in pink gingham advanced toward them across the patch of
+grass.
+
+Lannis was very polite and presented Stormont. The girl handed them two
+rough towels, glanced at Stormont again after the introduction, smiled
+slightly.
+
+"Dinner is ready," she said.
+
+They dried their faces and followed her back to the house.
+
+It was an unpainted building, partly of log. In the dining room half a
+dozen men waited silently for food. Lannis saluted all, named his
+comrade, and seated himself.
+
+A delicious odour of johnny-cake pervaded the room. Presently Eve
+Strayer appeared with the dinner.
+
+There was dew on her pale forehead--the heat of the kitchen, no doubt.
+The girl's thick, lustrous hair was brownish gold, and so twisted up
+that it revealed her ears and a very white neck.
+
+When she brought Stormont his dinner he caught her eyes a
+moment--experienced a slight shock of pleasure at their intense
+blue--the gentian-blue of the summer zenith at midday.
+
+Lannis remained affable, even became jocose at moments:
+
+"No hootch for dinner, Mike? How's that, now?"
+
+"The Boot-leg Express is a day late," replied Clinch, with cold humour.
+
+Around the table ran an odd sound--a company of catamounts feeding might
+have made such a noise--if catamounts ever laugh.
+
+"How's the fur market, Jake?" inquired Lannis, pouring gravy over his
+mashed potato.
+
+Kloon quoted prices with an oath.
+
+A mean-visaged young man named Leverett complained of the price of
+traps.
+
+"What do you care?" inquired Lannis genially. "The other man pays. What
+are you kicking about, anyway? It wasn't so long ago that muskrats were
+ten cents."
+
+The trooper's good-humoured intimation that Earl Leverett took fur in
+other men's traps was not lost on the company. Leverett's fox visage
+reddened; Jake Kloon, who had only one eye, glared at the State Trooper
+but said nothing.
+
+Clinch's pale gaze met the trooper's smiling one: "The jays and
+squirrels talk too," he said slowly. "It don't mean anything. Only the
+show-down counts."
+
+"You're quite right, Clinch. The show-down is what we pay to see. But
+talk is the tune the orchestra plays before the curtain rises."
+
+Stormont had finished dinner. He heard a low, charming voice from behind
+his chair:
+
+"Apple pie, lemon pie, maple cake, berry roll."
+
+He looked up into two gentian-blue eyes.
+
+"Lemon pie, please," he said, blushing.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When dinner was over and the bare little dining room empty except for
+Clinch and the two State Troopers, the former folded his heavy, powerful
+hands on the table's edge and turned his square face and pale-eyed gaze
+on Lannis.
+
+"Spit it out," he said in a passionless voice.
+
+Lannis crossed one knee over the other, lighted a cigarette:
+
+"Is there a young fellow working for you named Hal Smith?"
+
+"No," said Clinch.
+
+"Sure?"
+
+"Sure."
+
+"Clinch," continued Lannis, "have you heard about a stick-up on the
+wood-road out of Ghost Lake?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Well, a wealthy tourist from New York--a Mr. Sard, stopping at Ghost
+Lake Inn--was held up and robbed last Saturday toward sundown."
+
+"Never heard of him," said Clinch, calmly.
+
+"The robber took four thousand dollars in bills and some private papers
+from him."
+
+"It's no skin off my shins," remarked Clinch.
+
+"He's laid a complaint."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Have any strangers been here since Saturday evening?"
+
+"No."
+
+There was a pause.
+
+"We heard you had a new man named Hal Smith working around your place."
+
+"No."
+
+"He came here Saturday night."
+
+"Who says so?"
+
+"A guide from Ghost Lake."
+
+"He's a liar."
+
+"You know," said Lannis, "it won't do you any good if hold-up men can
+hide here and make a getaway."
+
+"G'wan and search," said Clinch, calmly.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They searched the "hotel" from garret to cellar. They searched the barn,
+boat-shed, out-houses.
+
+While this was going on, Clinch went into the kitchen.
+
+"Eve," he said coolly, "the State Troopers are after that fellow, Hal
+Smith, who came here Saturday night. Where is he?"
+
+"He went into Harrod's to get us a deer," she replied in a low voice.
+"What has he done?"
+
+"Stuck up a man on the Ghost Lake road. He ought to have told me. Do you
+think you could meet up with him and tip him off?"
+
+"He's hunting on Owl Marsh. I'll try."
+
+"All right. Change your clothes and slip out the back door. And look out
+for Harrod's patrols, too."
+
+"All right, dad," she said. "If I have to be out to-night, don't worry.
+I'll get word to Smith somehow."
+
+Half an hour later Lannis and Stormont returned from a prowl around the
+clearing. Lannis paid the reckoning; his comrade led out the horses. He
+said again to Lannis:
+
+"I'm sure it was the girl. She wore men's clothes and she went into the
+woods on a run."
+
+As they started to ride away, Lannis said to Clinch, who stood on the
+veranda:
+
+"It's still blue-jay and squirrel talk between us, Mike, but the
+show-down is sure to come. Better go straight while the going's good."
+
+"I go straight enough to suit me," said Clinch.
+
+"But it's the Government that is to be suited, Mike. And if it gets you
+right you'll be in dutch."
+
+"Don't let that worry you," said Clinch.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+About three o'clock the two State Troopers, riding at a walk, came to
+the forks of the Ghost Lake road.
+
+"Now," said Lannis to Stormont, "if you really believe you saw the girl
+beat it out of the back door and take to the woods, she's probably
+somewhere in there----" he pointed into the western forest. "But," he
+added, "what's your idea in following her?"
+
+"She wore men's clothes; she was in a hurry and trying to keep out of
+sight. I wondered whether Clinch might have sent her to warn this
+hold-up fellow."
+
+"That's rather a long shot, isn't it?"
+
+"Very long. I could go in and look about a bit, if you'll lead my
+horse."
+
+"All right. Take your bearings. This road runs west to Ghost Lake. We
+sleep at the Inn there--if you mean to cross the woods on foot."
+
+Stormont nodded, consulted his map and compass, pocketed both, unbuckled
+his spurs.
+
+When he was ready he gave his bridle to Lannis.
+
+"I'd just like to see what she's up to," he remarked.
+
+"All right. If you miss me come to the Inn," said Lannis, starting on
+with the led horse.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The forest was open amid a big stand of white pine and hemlock, and
+Stormont travelled easily and swiftly. He had struck a line by compass
+that must cross the direction taken by Eve Strayer when she left
+Clinch's. But it was a wild chance that he would ever run across her.
+
+And probably he never would have if the man that she was looking for had
+not fired a shot on the edge of that vast maze of stream, morass and
+dead timber called Owl Marsh.
+
+Far away in the open forest Stormont heard the shot and turned in that
+direction.
+
+But Eve already was very near when the young man who called himself Hal
+Smith fired at one of Harrod's deer--a three-prong buck on the edge of
+the dead water.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Smith had drawn and dressed the buck by the time the girl found him.
+
+He was cleaning up when she arrived, squatting by the water's edge when
+he heard her voice across the swale:
+
+"Smith! The State Troopers are looking for you!"
+
+He stood up, dried his hands on his breeches. The girl picked her way
+across the bog, jumping from one tussock to the next.
+
+When she told him what had happened he began to laugh.
+
+"Did you really stick up this man?" she asked incredulously.
+
+"I'm afraid I did, Eve," he replied, still laughing.
+
+The girl's entire expression altered.
+
+"So that's the sort you are," she said. "I thought you different. But
+you're all a rotten lot----"
+
+"Hold on," he interrupted, "what do you mean by that?"
+
+"I mean that the only men who ever come to Star Pond are crooks," she
+retorted bitterly. "I didn't believe you were. You look decent. But
+you're as crooked as the rest of them--and it seems as if I--I couldn't
+stand it--any longer----"
+
+"If you think me so rotten, why did you run all the way from Clinch's to
+warn me?" he asked curiously.
+
+"I didn't do it for _you_; I did it for my father. They'll jail him if
+they catch him hiding you. They've got it in for him. If they put him in
+prison he'll die. He couldn't stand it. I _know_. And that's why I came
+to find you and tell you to clear out----"
+
+The distant crack of a dry stick checked her. The next instant she
+picked up his rifle, seized his arm, and fairly dragged him into a
+spruce thicket.
+
+"Do you want to get my father into trouble!" she said fiercely.
+
+The rocky flank of Star Peak bordered the marsh here.
+
+"Come on," she whispered, jerking him along through the thicket and up
+the rocks to a cleft--a hole in the sheer rock overhung by shaggy
+hemlock.
+
+"Get in there," she said breathlessly.
+
+"Whoever comes," he protested, "will see the buck yonder, and will
+certainly look in here----"
+
+"Not if I go down there and take your medicine. Creep into that cave and
+lie down."
+
+"What do you intend to do?" he demanded, interested and amused.
+
+"If it's one of Harrod's game-keepers," said the girl drily, "it only
+means a summons and a fine for me. And if it's a State Trooper, who is
+prowling in the woods yonder hunting crooks, he'll find nobody here but
+a trespasser. Keep quiet. I'll stand him off."
+
+
+IV
+
+When State Trooper Stormont came out on the edge of Owl Marsh, the girl
+was kneeling by the water, washing deer blood from her slender,
+sun-tanned fingers.
+
+"What are you doing here?" she enquired, looking up over her shoulder
+with a slight smile.
+
+"Just having a look around," he said pleasantly. "That's a nice fat buck
+you have there."
+
+"Yes, he's nice."
+
+"You shot him?" asked Stormont.
+
+"Who else do you suppose shot him?" she enquired, smilingly. She rinsed
+her fingers again and stood up, swinging her arms to dry her hands,--a
+lithe, grey-shirted figure in her boyish garments, straight, supple, and
+strong.
+
+"I saw you hurrying into the woods," said Stormont.
+
+"Yes, I was in a hurry. We need meat."
+
+"I didn't notice that you carried a rifle when I saw you leave the
+house--by the back door."
+
+"No; it was in the woods," she said indifferently.
+
+"You have a hiding place for your rifle?"
+
+"For other things, also," she said, letting her eyes of gentian-blue
+rest on the young man.
+
+"You seem to be very secretive."
+
+"Is a girl more so than a man?" she asked smilingly.
+
+Stormont smiled too, then became grave.
+
+"Who else was here with you?" he asked quietly.
+
+She seemed surprised. "Did you see anybody else?"
+
+He hesitated, flushed, pointed down at the wet sphagnum. Smith's
+foot-prints were there in damning contrast to her own. Worse than that,
+Smith's pipe lay on an embedded log, and a rubber tobacco pouch beside
+it.
+
+She said with a slight catch in her breath: "It seems that somebody has
+been here.... Some hunter, perhaps,--or a game warden...."
+
+"Or Hal Smith," said Stormont.
+
+A painful colour swept the girl's face and throat. The man, sorry for
+her, looked away.
+
+After a silence: "I know something about you," he said gently. "And now
+that I've seen you--heard you speak--met your eyes--I know enough about
+you to form an opinion.... So I don't ask you to turn informer. But the
+law won't stand for what Clinch is doing--whatever provocation he has
+had. And he must not aid or abet any criminal, or harbour any
+malefactor."
+
+The girl's features were expressionless. The passive, sullen beauty of
+her troubled the trooper.
+
+"Trouble for Clinch means sorrow for you," he said. "I don't want you
+to be unhappy. I bear Clinch no ill will. For this reason I ask him, and
+I ask you too, to stand clear of this affair.
+
+"Hal Smith is wanted. I'm here to take him."
+
+As she said nothing, he looked down at the foot-print in the sphagnum.
+Then his eyes moved to the next imprint; to the next. Then he moved
+slowly along the water's edge, tracking the course of the man he was
+following.
+
+The girl watched him in silence until the plain trail led him to the
+spruce thicket.
+
+"Don't go in there!" she said sharply, with an odd tremor in her voice.
+
+He turned and looked at her, then stepped calmly into the thicket. And
+the next instant she was among the spruces, too, confronting him with
+her rifle.
+
+"Get out of these woods!" she said.
+
+He looked into the girl's deathly white face.
+
+"Eve," he said, "it will go hard with you if you kill me. I don't want
+you to live out your life in prison."
+
+"I can't help it. If you send my father to prison he'll die. I'd rather
+die myself. Let us alone, I tell you! The man you're after is nothing to
+us. We didn't know he had stuck up anybody!"
+
+"If he's nothing to you, why do you point that rifle at me?"
+
+"I tell you he is nothing to us. But my father wouldn't betray a dog.
+And I won't. That's all. Now get out of these woods and come back
+to-morrow. Nobody'll interfere with you then."
+
+Stormont smiled: "Eve," he said, "do you really think me as yellow as
+that?"
+
+Her blue eyes flashed a terrible warning, but, in the same instant, he
+had caught her rifle, twisting it out of her grasp as it exploded.
+
+The detonation dazed her; then, as he flung the rifle into the water,
+she caught him by neck and belt and flung him bodily into the spruces.
+
+But she fell with him; he held her twisting and struggling with all her
+superb and supple strength; staggered to his feet, still mastering her;
+and, as she struggled, sobbing, locked hot and panting in his arms, he
+snapped a pair of handcuffs on her wrists and flung her aside.
+
+She fell on both knees, got up, shoulder deep in spruce, blood running
+from her lip over her chin.
+
+The trooper took her by the arm. She was trembling all over. He took a
+thin steel chain and padlock from his pocket, passed the links around
+her steel-bound wrists, and fastened her to a young birch tree.
+
+Then, drawing his pistol from its holster, he went swiftly forward
+through the spruces.
+
+When he saw the cleft in the rocky flank of Star Peak, he walked
+straight to the black hole which confronted him.
+
+"Come out of there," he said distinctly.
+
+After a few seconds Smith came out.
+
+"Good God!" said Stormont in a low voice. "What are you doing here,
+Darragh?"
+
+Darragh came close and rested one hand on Stormont's shoulder:
+
+"Don't crab my game, Stormont. I never dreamed you were in the
+Constabulary or I'd have let you know."
+
+"Are _you_ Hal Smith?"
+
+"I sure am. Where's that girl?"
+
+"Handcuffed out yonder."
+
+"Then for God's sake go back and act as if you hadn't found me. Tell
+Mayor Chandler that I'm after bigger game than he is."
+
+"Clinch?"
+
+"Stormont, I'm here to _protect_ Mike Clinch. Tell the Mayor not to
+touch him. The men I'm after are going to try to rob him. I don't want
+them to because--well, I'm going to rob him myself."
+
+Stormont stared.
+
+"You must stand by me," said Darragh. "So must the Mayor. He knows me
+through and through. Tell him to forget that hold-up. I stopped that man
+Sard. I frisked him. Tell the Mayor. I'll keep in touch with him."
+
+"Of course," said Stormont, "that settles it."
+
+"Thanks, old chap. Now go back to that girl and let her believe that you
+never found me."
+
+A slight smile touched their eyes. Both instinctively saluted. Then they
+shook hands; Darragh, alias Hal Smith, went back into the hemlock-shaded
+hole in the rocks; Trooper Stormont walked slowly down through the
+spruces.
+
+When Eve saw him returning empty handed, something flashed in her pallid
+face like sunlight across snow.
+
+Stormont passed her, went to the water's edge, soaked a spicy handful of
+sphagnum moss in the icy water, came back and wiped the blood from her
+face.
+
+The girl seemed astounded; her face surged in vivid colour as he
+unlocked the handcuffs and pocketed them and the little steel chain.
+
+Her lip was bleeding again. He washed it with wet moss, took a clean
+handkerchief from the breast of his tunic and laid it against her mouth.
+
+"Hold it there," he said.
+
+Mechanically she raised her hand to support the compress. Stormont went
+back to the shore, recovered her rifle from the shallow water, and
+returned with it.
+
+As she made no motion to take it, he stood it against the tree to which
+he had tied her.
+
+Then he came close to her where she stood holding his handkerchief
+against her mouth and looking at him out of steady eyes as deeply blue
+as gentian blossoms.
+
+"Eve," he said, "you win. But you won't forgive me.... I wish we could
+be friends, some day.... We never can, now.... Good-bye."
+
+Neither spoke again. Then, of a sudden, the girl's eyes filled; and
+Trooper Stormont caught her free hand and kissed it;--kissed it again
+and again,--dropped it and went striding away through the underbrush
+which was now all rosy with the rays of sunset.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+After he had disappeared, the girl, Eve, went to the cleft in the rocks
+above.
+
+"Come out," she said contemptuously. "It's a good thing you hid, because
+there was a real man after you; and God help you if he ever finds you!"
+
+Hal Smith came out.
+
+"Pack in your meat," said the girl curtly, and flung his rifle across
+her shoulder.
+
+Through the ruddy afterglow she led the way homeward, a man's
+handkerchief pressed to her wounded mouth, her eyes preoccupied with
+the strangest thoughts that ever had stirred her virgin mind.
+
+Behind her walked Darragh with his load of venison and his alias,--and
+his tongue in his cheek.
+
+Thus began the preliminaries toward the ultimate undoing of Mike Clinch.
+Fate, Chance, and Destiny had undertaken the job in earnest.
+
+
+
+
+EPISODE TWO
+
+THE RULING PASSION
+
+
+I
+
+Nobody understood how José Quintana had slipped through the Secret
+Service net spread for him at every port.
+
+The United States authorities did not know why Quintana had come to
+America. They realised merely that he arrived for no good purpose; and
+they had meant to arrest and hold him for extradition if requested; for
+deportation as an undesirable alien anyway.
+
+Only two men in America knew that Quintana had come to the United States
+for the purpose of recovering the famous "Flaming Jewel," stolen by him
+from the Grand Duchess Theodorica of Esthonia; and stolen from Quintana,
+in turn, by a private soldier in an American Forestry Regiment, on leave
+in Paris. This soldier's name, probably, was Michael Clinch.
+
+One of the men who knew why Quintana might come to America was James
+Darragh, recently of the Military Intelligence, but now passing as a
+hold-up man under the name of Hal Smith, and actually in the employment
+of Clinch at his disreputable "hotel" at Star Pond in the North Woods.
+
+The other man who knew why Quintana had come to America was Emanuel
+Sard, a Levantine diamond broker of New York, Quintana's agent in
+America.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Now, as the October days passed without any report of Quintana's
+detention, Darragh, known as Hal Smith at Clinch's dump, began to
+suspect that Quintana had already slid into America through the meshes
+of the police.
+
+If so, this desperate international criminal could be expected at
+Clinch's under some guise or other, piloted thither by Emanuel Sard.
+
+So Hal Smith, whose duty was to wash dishes, do chores, and also to
+supply Clinch's with "mountain beef"--or deer taken illegally--made it
+convenient to prowl every day in the vicinity of the Ghost Lake road.
+
+He was perfectly familiar with Emanuel Sard's squat features and parrot
+nose, having robbed Mr. Sard of Quintana's cipher and of $4,000 at
+pistol point. And one morning, while roving around the guide's quarters
+at Ghost Lake Inn, Smith beheld Sard himself on the hotel veranda, in
+company with five strangers of foreign aspect.
+
+During the midday dinner Smith, on pretense of enquiring for a guide's
+license, got a look at the Inn ledger. Sard's signature was on it,
+followed by the names of Henri Picquet, Nicolas Salzar, Victor
+Georgiades, Harry Beck, and José Sanchez. And Smith went back through
+the wilderness to Star Pond, convinced that one of these gentlemen was
+Quintana, and the remainder, Quintana's gang; and that they were here to
+do murder if necessary in their remorseless quest of "The Flaming
+Jewel." Two million dollars once had been offered for the Flaming Jewel;
+and had been refused.
+
+Clinch probably possessed it. Smith was now convinced of that. But he
+was there to rob Clinch of it himself. For he had promised the little
+Grand Duchess to help recover her Erosite jewel; and now that he had
+finally traced its probable possession to Clinch, he was wondering how
+this recovery was to be accomplished.
+
+To arrest Clinch meant ruin to Eve Strayer. Besides he knew now that
+Clinch would die in prison before revealing the hiding place of the
+Flaming Jewel.
+
+Also, how could it be proven that Clinch had the Erosite gem? The cipher
+from Quintana was not sufficient evidence.
+
+No; the only way was to watch Clinch, prevent any robbery by Quintana's
+gang, somehow discover where the Flaming Jewel had been concealed, take
+it, and restore it to the beggared young girl whose only financial
+resource now lay in the possible recovery of this almost priceless gem.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Toward evening Hal Smith shot two deer near Owl Marsh. To poach on his
+own property appealed to his sense of humour. And Clinch, never dreaming
+that Hal Smith was the James Darragh who had inherited Harrod's vast
+preserve, damned all millionaires for every buck brought in, and became
+friendlier to Smith.
+
+
+II
+
+Clinch's dump was the disposal plant in which collected the human sewage
+of the wilderness.
+
+It being Saturday, the scum of the North Woods was gathering at the Star
+Pond resort. A venison and chicken supper was promised--and a dance if
+any women appeared.
+
+Jake Kloon had run in some Canadian hooch; Darragh, alias Hal Smith,
+contributed two fat deer and Clinch cooked them. By ten o'clock that
+morning many of the men were growing noisy; some were already drunk by
+noon. Shortly after midday dinner the first fight started--extinguished
+only after Clinch had beaten several of the backwoods aristocracy
+insensible.
+
+Towering amid the wreck of battle, his light grey eyes a-glitter, Clinch
+dominated, swinging his iron fists.
+
+When the combat ended and the fallen lay starkly where they fell, Clinch
+said in his pleasant, level voice:
+
+"Take them out and stick their heads in the pond. And don't go for to
+get me mad, boys, or I'm liable to act up rough."
+
+They bore forth the sleepers for immersion in Star Pond. Clinch
+relighted his cigar and repeated the rulings which had caused the
+fracas:
+
+"You gotta play square cards here or you don't play none in my house. No
+living thumb-nail can nick no cards in my place and get away with it.
+Three kings and two trays is better than three chickens and two eggs. If
+you don't like it, g'wan home."
+
+He went out in his shirt sleeves to see how the knock-outs were
+reviving, and met Hal Smith returning from the pond, who reported
+progress toward consciousness. They walked back to the "hotel" together.
+
+"Say, young fella," said Clinch in his soft, agreeable way, "you want to
+keep your eye peeled to-night."
+
+"Why?" inquired Smith.
+
+"Well, there'll be a lot o' folks here. There'll be strangers, too....
+Don't forget the State Troopers are looking for you."
+
+"Do the State Troopers ever play detective?" asked Smith, smiling.
+
+"Sure. They've been in here rigged out like peddlers and lumber-jacks
+and timber lookers."
+
+"Did they ever get anything on you?"
+
+"Not a thing."
+
+"Can you always spot them, Mike?"
+
+"No. But when a stranger shows up here who don't know nobody, he never
+sees nothing and he don't never learn nothing. He gets no hootch outa
+me. No, nor no craps and no cards. He gets his supper; that's what he
+gets ... and a dance, if there's ladies--and if any girl favours him.
+That's all the change any stranger gets out of Mike Clinch."
+
+They had paused on the rough veranda in the hot October sunshine.
+
+"Mike," suggested Smith carelessly, "wouldn't it pay you better to go
+straight?"
+
+Clinch's small grey eyes, which had been roaming over the prospect of
+lake and forest, focussed on Smith's smiling features.
+
+"What's that to you?" he asked.
+
+"I'll be out of a job," remarked Smith, laughing, "if they ever land
+you."
+
+Clinch's level gaze measured him; his mind was busy measuring him, too.
+
+"Who the hell are you, anyway?" he asked. "_I_ don't know. You stick up
+a man on the Ghost Lake Road and hide out here when the State Troopers
+come after you. And now you ask me if it pays better to go straight. Why
+didn't _you_ go straight if you think it pays?"
+
+"I haven't got a daughter to worry about," explained Smith. "If they get
+me it won't hurt anybody else."
+
+A dull red tinge came out under Clinch's tan:
+
+"Who asked _you_ to worry about Eve?"
+
+"She's a fine girl: that's all."
+
+Clinch's steely glare measured the young man:
+
+"You trying to make up to her?" he enquired gently.
+
+"No. She has no use for me."
+
+Clinch reflected, his cold tiger-gaze still fastened on Smith.
+
+"You're right," he said after a moment. "Eve is a good girl. Some day
+I'll make a lady of her."
+
+"She _is_ one, Clinch."
+
+At that Clinch reddened heavily--the first finer emotion ever betrayed
+before Smith. He did not say anything for a few moments, but his grim
+mouth worked. Finally:
+
+"I guess you was a gentleman once before you went crooked, Hal," he
+said. "You act up like you once was.... Say; there's only one thing on
+God's earth I care about. You've guessed it, too." He was off again upon
+his ruling passion.
+
+"Eve," nodded Smith.
+
+"Sure. She isn't my flesh and blood. But it seems like she's more, even.
+I want she should be a lady. It's _all_ I want. That damned millionaire
+Harrod bust me. But he couldn't stop me giving Eve her schooling. And
+now all I'm livin' for is to be fixed so's to give her money to go to
+the city like a lady. I don't care how I make money; all I want is to
+make it. And I'm a-going to."
+
+Smith nodded again.
+
+Clinch, now obsessed by his monomania, went on with an oath:
+
+"I can't make no money on the level after what Harrod done to me. And I
+gotta fix up Eve. What the hell do you mean by asking me would it pay me
+to travel straight I dunno."
+
+"I was only thinking of Eve. A lady isn't supposed to have a crook for a
+father."
+
+Clinch's grey eyes blazed for a moment, then their menacing glare
+dulled, died out into wintry fixity.
+
+"I wan't born a crook," he said. "I ain't got no choice. And don't
+worry, young fella; they ain't a-going to get me."
+
+"You can't go on beating the game forever, Clinch."
+
+"I'm beating it----" he hesitated--"and it won't be so long, neither,
+before I turn over enough to let Eve live in the city like any lady,
+with her autymobile and her own butler and all her swell friends, in a
+big house like she is educated for----"
+
+He broke off abruptly as a procession approached from the lake,
+escorting the battered gentry who now were able to wabble about a
+little.
+
+One of them, a fox-faced trap thief named Earl Leverett, slunk hastily
+by as though expecting another kick from Clinch.
+
+"G'wan inside, Earl, and act up right," said Clinch pleasantly. "You
+oughter have more sense than to start a fight in my place--you and Sid
+Hone and Harvey Chase. G'wan in and behave."
+
+He and Smith followed the procession of damaged ones into the house.
+
+The big unpainted room where a bar had once been was blue with cheap
+cigar smoke; the air reeked with the stench of beer and spirits. A score
+or more shambling forest louts in their dingy Saturday finery were
+gathered there playing cards, shooting craps, lolling around tables and
+tilting slopping glasses at one another.
+
+Heavy pleasantries were exchanged with the victims of Clinch's ponderous
+fists as they re-entered the room from which they had been borne so
+recently, feet first.
+
+"Now, boys," said Clinch kindly, "act up like swell gents and behave
+friendly. And if any ladies come in for the chicken supper, why, gol
+dang it, we'll have a dance!"
+
+
+III
+
+Toward sundown the first woodland nymph appeared--a half-shy, half-bold,
+willowy thing in the rosy light of the clearing.
+
+Hal Smith, washing glasses and dishes on the back porch for Eve Strayer
+to dry, asked who the rustic beauty might be.
+
+"Harvey Chase's sister," said Eve. "She shouldn't come here, but I can't
+keep her away and her brother doesn't care. She's only a child, too."
+
+"Is there any harm in a chicken supper and a dance?"
+
+Eve looked gravely at young Smith without replying.
+
+Other girlish shapes loomed in the evening light. Some were met by
+gallants, some arrived at the veranda unescorted.
+
+"Where do they all come from? Do they live in trees like dryads?" asked
+Smith.
+
+"There are always squatters in the woods," she replied indifferently.
+
+"Some of these girls come from Ghost Lake, I suppose."
+
+"Yes; waitresses at the Inn."
+
+"What music is there?"
+
+"Jim Hastings plays a fiddle. I play the melodeon if they need me."
+
+"What do you do when there's a fight?" he asked, with a side glance at
+her pure profile.
+
+"What do you suppose I do? Fight, too?"
+
+He laughed--mirthlessly--conscious always of his secret pity for this
+girl.
+
+"Well," he said, "when your father makes enough to quit, he'll take you
+out of this. It's a vile hole for a young girl----"
+
+"See here," she said, flushing; "you're rather particular for a young
+man who stuck up a tourist and robbed him of four thousand dollars."
+
+"I'm not complaining on my own account," returned Smith, laughing;
+"Clinch's suits me."
+
+"Well, don't concern yourself on my account, Hal Smith. And you'd better
+keep out of the dance, too, if there are any strangers there."
+
+"You think a State Trooper may happen in?"
+
+"It's likely. A lot of people come and go. We don't always know them."
+She opened a sliding wooden shutter and looked into the bar room. After
+a moment she beckoned him to her side.
+
+"There are strangers there now," she said, "--that thin, dark man who
+looks like a Kanuk. And those two men shaking dice. I don't know who
+they are. I never before saw them."
+
+But Smith had seen them at Ghost Lake Inn. One of them was Sard.
+Quintana's gang had arrived at Clinch's dump.
+
+A moment later Clinch came through the pantry and kitchen and out onto
+the rear porch where Smith was washing glasses in a tub filled from an
+ever-flowing spring.
+
+"I'm a-going to get supper," he said to Eve. "There'll be twenty-three
+plates." And to Smith: "Hal--you help Eve wait on the table. And if
+anybody acts up rough you slam him on the jaw--don't argue, don't
+wait--just slam him good, and I'll come on the hop."
+
+"Who are the strangers, dad?" asked Eve.
+
+"Don't nobody know 'em none, girlie. But they ain't State Troopers. They
+talk like they was foreign. One of 'em's English--the big, bony one with
+yellow hair and mustache."
+
+"Did they give any names?" asked Smith.
+
+"You bet. The stout, dark man calls himself Hongri Picket. French, I
+guess. The fat beak is a fella named Sard. Sanchez is the guy with a
+face like a Canada priest--José Sanchez--or something on that style. And
+then the yellow skinned young man is Nicole Salzar; the Britisher, Harry
+Beck; and that good lookin' dark gent with a little black Charlie
+Chaplin, he's Victor Georgiades."
+
+"What are those foreigners doing in the North Woods, Clinch?" enquired
+Smith.
+
+"Oh, they all give the same spiel--hire out in a lumber camp. But _they_
+ain't no lumberjacks," added Clinch contemptuously. "I don't know what
+they be--hootch runners maybe--or booze bandits--or they done something
+crooked som'ers r'other. It's safe to serve 'em drinks."
+
+Clinch himself had been drinking. He always drank when preparing to
+cook.
+
+He turned and went into the kitchen now, rolling up his shirt sleeves
+and relighting his clay pipe.
+
+
+IV
+
+By nine o'clock the noisy chicken supper had ended; the table had been
+cleared; Jim Hastings was tuning his fiddle in the big room; Eve had
+seated herself before the battered melodeon.
+
+"Ladies and gents," said Clinch in his clear, pleasant voice, which
+carried through the hubbub, "we're a-going to have a dance--thanks and
+beholden to Jim Hastings and my daughter Eve. Eve, she don't drink and
+she don't dance, so no use askin' and no hard feelin' toward nobody.
+
+"So act up pleasant to one and all and have a good time and no rough
+stuff in no form, shape or manner, but behave like gents all and swell
+dames, like you was to a swarry on Fifth Avenue. Let's go!"
+
+He went back to the pantry, taking no notice of the cheering. The
+fiddler scraped a fox trot, and Eve's melodeon joined in. A vast
+scuffling of heavily shod feet filled the momentary silence, accented by
+the shrill giggle of young girls.
+
+"They're off," remarked Clinch to Smith, who stood at the pantry shelf
+prepared to serve whiskey or beer upon previous receipt of payment.
+
+In the event of a sudden raid, the arrangements at Clinch's were quite
+simple. Two large drain pipes emerged from the kitchen floor beside
+Smith, and ended in Star Pond. In case of alarm the tub of beer was
+poured down one pipe; the whiskey down the other.
+
+Only the trout in Star Pond would ever sample that hootch again.
+
+Clinch, now slightly intoxicated, leaned heavily on the pantry shelf
+beside Smith, adjusting his pistol under his suspenders.
+
+"Young fella," he said in his agreeable voice, "you're dead right. You
+sure said a face-full when you says to me, 'Eve's a lady, by God!' _You_
+oughta know. You was a gentleman yourself once. Even if you take to
+stickin' up tourists you know a lady when you see one. And you called
+the turn. She _is_ a lady. All I'm livin' for is to get her down to the
+city and give her money to live like a lady. I'll do it yet.... Soon!...
+I'd do it to-morrow--to-night--if I dared.... If I thought it sure
+fire.... If I was dead certain I could get away with it.... I've _got_
+the money. _Now!_ ... Only it ain't in _money_.... Smith?"
+
+"Yes, Mike."
+
+"You know me?"
+
+"Sure."
+
+"You size me up?"
+
+"I do."
+
+"All right. If you ever tell anyone I got money that ain't money I'll
+shoot you through the head."
+
+"Don't worry, Clinch."
+
+"I ain't. You're a crook; you won't talk. You're a gentleman, too.
+_They_ don't sell out a pal. Say, Hal, there's only one fella I don't
+want to meet."
+
+"Who's that, Mike?"
+
+"Lemme tell you," continued Clinch, resting more heavily on the shelf
+while Smith, looking out through the pantry shutter at the dancing,
+listened intently.
+
+"When I was in France in a Forestry Rig'ment," went on Clinch, lowering
+his always pleasant voice, "I was to Paris on leave a few days before
+they sent us home.
+
+"I was in the washroom of a caffy--a-cleanin' up for supper, when
+dod-bang! into the place comes a-tumblin' a man with two cops pushing
+and kickin' him.
+
+"They didn't see me in there for they locked the door on the man. He was
+a swell gent, too, in full dress and silk hat and all like that, and a
+opry cloak and white kid gloves, and mustache and French beard.
+
+"When they locked him up he stood stock still and lit a cigarette, as
+cool as ice. Then he begun walkin' around looking for a way to get out;
+but there wasn't no way.
+
+"Then he seen me and over he comes and talks English right away: 'Want
+to make a thousand francs, soldier?' sez he in a quick whisper. 'You're
+on,' sez I; 'show your dough.' 'Them Flics has went to get the
+Commissaire for to frisk me,' sez he. 'If they find this parcel on me I
+do twenty years in Noumea. Five years kills anybody out there.' 'What do
+you want I should do?' sez I, havin' no love for no cops, French or
+other. 'Take this packet and stick it in your overcoat,' sez he. 'Go to
+13 roo Quinze Octobre and give it to the concierge for José Quintana.'
+And he shoves the packet on me and a thousand-franc note.
+
+"Then he grabs me sudden and pulls open my collar. God, he was strong.
+
+"'What's the matter with you?' says I. 'Lemme go or I'll mash your mug
+flat.' 'Lemme see your identification disc,' he barks.
+
+"Bein' in Paris for a bat, I had exchanged with my bunkie, Bill Hanson.
+'Let him look,' thinks I; and he reads Bill's check.
+
+"'If you fool me,' says he, 'I'll folly ye and I'll do you in if it
+takes the rest of my life. You understand?' 'Sure,' says I, me tongue in
+me cheek. 'Bong! Allez vous en!' says he.
+
+"'How the hell,' sez I, 'do I get out of here?' 'You're a Yankee
+soldier. The Flics don't know you were in here. You go and kick on that
+door and make a holler.'
+
+"So I done it good; and a cop opens and swears at me, but when he sees a
+Yankee soldier was locked in the wash-room by mistake, he lets me out,
+you bet."
+
+Clinch smiled a thin smile, poured out three fingers of hooch.
+
+"What else?" asked Smith quietly.
+
+"Nothing much. I didn't go to no roo Quinze Octobre. But I don't never
+want to see that fella Quintana. I've been waiting till it's safe to
+sell--what was in that packet."
+
+"Sell what?"
+
+"What was in that packet," replied Clinch thickly.
+
+"What was in it?"
+
+"Sparklers--since you're so nosey."
+
+"Diamonds?"
+
+"And then some. I dunno what they're called. All I know is I'll croak
+Quintana if he even turns up askin' for 'em. He frisked somebody. I
+frisked him. I'll kill anybody who tries to frisk me."
+
+"Where do you keep them?" enquired Smith naïvely.
+
+Clinch looked at him, very drunk: "None o' your dinged business," he
+said very softly.
+
+The dancing had become boisterous but not unseemly, although all the men
+had been drinking too freely.
+
+Smith closed the pantry bar at midnight, by direction of Eve. Now he
+came out into the ballroom and mixed affably with the company, even
+dancing with Harvey Chase's sister once--a slender hoyden, all flushed
+and dishevelled, with a tireless mania for dancing which seemed to
+intoxicate her.
+
+She danced, danced, danced, accepting any partner offered. But Smith's
+skill enraptured her and she refused to let him go when her beau, a late
+arrival, one Charlie Berry, slouched up to claim her.
+
+Smith, always trying to keep Clinch and Quintana's men in view, took no
+part in the discussion; but Berry thought he was detaining Lily Chase
+and pushed him aside.
+
+"Hold on, young man!" exclaimed Smith sharply. "Keep your hands to
+yourself. If your girl don't want to dance with you she doesn't have
+to."
+
+Some of Quintana's gang came up to listen. Berry glared at Smith.
+
+"Say," he said, "I seen you before somewhere. Wasn't you in Russia?"
+
+"What are you talking about?"
+
+"Yes, you was. You was an officer! What you doing at Clinch's?"
+
+"What's that?" growled Clinch, shoving his way forward and shouldering
+the crowd aside.
+
+"Who's this man, Mike?" demanded Berry.
+
+"Well, who do you think he is?" asked Clinch thickly.
+
+"I think he's gettin' the goods on you, that's what I think," yelled
+Berry.
+
+"G'wan home, Charlie," returned Clinch. "G'wan, all o' you. The dance is
+over. Go peaceable, every one. Stop that fiddle!"
+
+The music ceased. The dance was ended; they all understood that; but
+there was grumbling and demands for drinks.
+
+Clinch, drunk but impassive, herded them through the door out into the
+starlight. There was scuffling, horse-play, but no fighting.
+
+The big Englishman, Harry Beck, asked for accommodations for his party
+over night.
+
+"Naw," said Clinch, "g'wan back to the Inn. I can't bother with you
+folks to-night." And as the others, Salzar, Georgiades, Picquet and
+Sanchez gathered about to insist, Clinch pushed them all out of doors in
+a mass.
+
+"Get the hell out o' here!" he growled; and slammed the door.
+
+He stood for a moment with head lowered, drunk, but apparently capable
+of reflection. Eve came from the melodeon and laid one slim hand on his
+arm.
+
+"Go to bed, girlie," he said, not looking at her.
+
+"You also, dad."
+
+"No.... I got business with Hal Smith."
+
+Passing Smith, the girl whispered: "You look out for him and undress
+him."
+
+Smith nodded, gravely preoccupied with coming events, and nerving
+himself to meet them.
+
+He had no gun. Clinch's big automatic bulged under his armpit.
+
+When the girl had ascended the creaking stairs and her door, above,
+closed, Clinch walked unsteadily to the door, opened it, fished out his
+pistol.
+
+"Come on out," he said without turning.
+
+"Where?" enquired Smith.
+
+Clinched turned, lifted his square head; and the deadly glare in his
+eyes left Smith silent.
+
+"You comin'?"
+
+"Sure," said Smith quietly.
+
+But Clinch gave him no chance to close in: it was death even to swerve.
+Smith walked slowly out into the starlight, ahead of Clinch--slowly
+forward in the luminous darkness.
+
+"Keep going," came Clinch's quiet voice behind him. And, after they had
+entered the woods,--"Bear to the right."
+
+Smith knew now. The low woods were full of sink-holes. They were headed
+for the nearest one.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the edge of the thing they halted. Smith turned and faced Clinch.
+
+"What's the idea?" he asked without a quaver.
+
+"Was you in Roosia?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Was you an officer?"
+
+"I was."
+
+"Then you're spyin'. You're a cop."
+
+"You're mistaken."
+
+"Ah, don't hand me none like that! You're a State Trooper or a Secret
+Service guy, or a plain, dirty cop. And I'm a-going to croak you."
+
+"I'm not in any service, now."
+
+"Wasn't you an army officer?"
+
+"Yes. Can't an officer go wrong?"
+
+"Soft stuff. Don't feed it to me. I told you too much anyway. I was
+babblin' drunk. I'm drunk now, but I got sense. D'you think I'll run
+chances of sittin' in State's Prison for the next ten years and leave
+Eve out here alone? No. I gotta shoot you, Smith. And I'm a-going to do
+it. G'wan and say what you want ... if you think there's some kind o'
+god you can square before you croak."
+
+"If you go to the chair for murder, what good will it do Eve?" asked
+Smith. His lips were crackling dry; he moistened them.
+
+"Sink holes don't talk," said Clinch. "G'wan and square yourself, if
+you're the church kind."
+
+"Clinch," said Smith unsteadily, "if you kill me now you're as good as
+dead yourself. Quintana is here."
+
+"Say, don't hand me that," retorted Clinch. "Do you square yourself or
+no?"
+
+"I tell you Quintana's gang were at the dance to-night--Picquet, Salzar,
+Georgiades, Sard, Beck, José Sanchez--the one who looks like a French
+priest. Maybe he had a beard when you saw him in that café
+wash-room----"
+
+"What!" shouted Clinch in sudden fury. "What yeh talkin' about, you poor
+dumb dingo! Yeh fixin' to scare me? What do _you_ know about Quintana?
+Are you one of Quintana's gang, too? Is that what you're up to, hidin'
+out at Star Pond. Come on, now, out with it! I'll have it all out of you
+now, Hal Smith, before I plug you----"
+
+He came lurching forward, swinging his heavy pistol as though he meant
+to brain his victim, but he halted after the first step or two and stood
+there, a shadowy bulk, growling, enraged, undecided.
+
+And, as Smith looked at him, two shadows detached themselves from the
+trees behind Clinch--silently--silently glided behind--struck in utter
+silence.
+
+Down crashed Clinch, black-jacked, his face in the ooze. His pistol flew
+from his hand, struck Smith's leg; and Smith had it at the same instant
+and turned it like lightning on the murderous shadows.
+
+"Hands up! Quick!" he cried, at bay now, and his back to the sink-hole.
+
+Pistol levelled, he bent one knee, pushed Clinch over on his back, lest
+the ooze suffocate him.
+
+"Now," he said coolly, "what do you bums want of Mike Clinch?"
+
+"Who are you?" came a sullen voice. "This is none o' your bloody
+business. We want Clinch, not you."
+
+"What do you want of Clinch?"
+
+"Take your gun off us!"
+
+"Answer, or I'll let go at you. What do you want of Clinch?"
+
+"Money. What do you think?"
+
+"You're here to stick up Clinch?" enquired Smith.
+
+"Yes. What's that to you?"
+
+"What has Clinch done to you?"
+
+"He stuck _us_ up, that's what! Now, are you going to keep out of this?"
+
+"No."
+
+"We ain't going to hurt Clinch."
+
+"You bet you're not. Where's the rest of your gang?"
+
+"What gang?"
+
+"Quintana's," said Smith, laughing. A wild exhilaration possessed him.
+His flanks and rear were protected by the sink-hole. He had Quintana's
+gang--two of them--over his pistol.
+
+"Turn your backs and sit down," he said. As the shadowy forms hesitated,
+he picked up a stick and hurled it at them. They sat down hastily, hands
+up, backs toward him.
+
+"You'll both die where you sit," remarked Smith, "if you yell for help."
+
+Clinch sighed heavily, stirred, groped on the damp leaves with his
+hands.
+
+"I say," began the voice which Smith identified as Harry Beck's, "if
+you'll come in with us on this it will pay you, young man."
+
+"No," drawled Smith, "I'll go it alone."
+
+"It can't be done, old dear. You'll see if you try it on."
+
+"Who'll stop me? Quintana?"
+
+"Come," urged Beck, "and be a good pal. You can't manage it alone. We've
+got all night to make Clinch talk. We know how, too. You'll get your
+share----"
+
+"Oh, stow it," said Smith, watching Clinch, who was reviving. He sat up
+presently, and put both hands over his head. Smith touched him silently
+on the shoulder and he turned his heavy, square head in a dazed way.
+Blood striped his visage. He gazed dully at Smith for a little while,
+then, seeming to recollect, the old glare began to light his pale eyes.
+
+The next instant, however, Beck spoke again, and Clinch turned in
+astonishment and saw the two figures sitting there with backs toward
+Smith and hands up.
+
+Clinch stared at the squatting forms, then slowly moved his head and
+looked at Smith and his levelled pistol.
+
+"We know how to make a man squeal," said Harry Beck suddenly. "He'll
+talk. We can make Clinch talk, no fear! Leave it to us, old pal. Are you
+with us?" He started to look around over his shoulder and Smith hurled
+another stick and hit him in the face.
+
+"Quiet there, Harry," he said. "What's my share if I go in with you?"
+
+"One sixth, same's we all get."
+
+"What's it worth?" asked Smith, with a motion of caution toward Clinch.
+
+"If I say a million you'll tell me I lie. But it's nearer three--or you
+can have my share. Is it a go?"
+
+"You'll not hurt Clinch when he comes to?"
+
+"We'll make him talk, that's all. It may hurt him some."
+
+"You won't kill him?"
+
+"I swear by God----"
+
+"Wait! Isn't it better to shoot him after he squeals? Here's a lovely
+sink-hole handy."
+
+"Right-o! We'll make him talk first and then shove him in. Are you with
+us?"
+
+"If you turn your head I'll blow the face off you, Harry," said Smith,
+cautioning Clinch to silence with a gesture.
+
+"All right. Only you better make up your mind. That cove is likely to
+wake up now at any time," grumbled Beck.
+
+Clinch looked at Smith. The latter smiled, leaned over, and whispered:
+
+"Can you walk all right?"
+
+Clinch nodded.
+
+"Well, we'd better beat it. Quintana's whole gang is in these woods,
+somewhere, hunting for you, and they might stumble on us here, at any
+moment." And, to the two men in front: "Lie down flat on your faces.
+Don't stir; don't speak; or it's you for the sink-hole.... Lie down, I
+tell you! That's it. Don't move till I tell you to."
+
+Clinch got up from where he was sitting, cast one murderous glance at
+the prostrate forms, then followed Smith, noiselessly, over the stretch
+of sphagnum moss.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When they reached the house they saw Eve standing on the steps in her
+night-dress and bare feet, holding a lantern.
+
+"Daddy," she whimpered, "I was frightened. I didn't know where you had
+gone----"
+
+Clinch put his arm around her, turned his bloody face and looked at
+Smith.
+
+"It's _this_," he said, "that I ain't forgetting, young fella. What you
+done for me you done for _her_.
+
+"I gotta live to make a lady of her. That's why," he added thickly, "I'm
+much obliged to you, Hal Smith.... Go to bed, girlie----"
+
+"You're bleeding, dad?"
+
+"Aw, a twig scratched me. I been in the woods with Hal. G'wan to bed."
+
+He went to the sink and washed his face, dried it, kissed the girl, and
+gave her a gentle shove toward the stairs.
+
+"Hal and I is sittin' up talkin' business," he remarked, bolting the
+door and all the shutters.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When the girl had gone, Clinch went to a closet and brought back two
+Winchester rifles, two shot guns, and a box of ammunition.
+
+"Goin' to see it out with me, Hal?"
+
+"Sure," smiled Smith.
+
+"Aw' right. Have a drink?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Aw' right. Where'll you set?"
+
+"Anywhere."
+
+"Aw' right. Set over there. They may try the back porch. I'll jest set
+here a spell, n'then I'll kind er mosey 'round.... Plug the first fella
+that tries a shutter, Hal."
+
+"You bet."
+
+Clinch came over and held out his hand.
+
+"You said a face-full that time when you says to me, 'Clinch,' you says,
+'Eve _is_ a lady.' ... I gotta fix her up. I gotta be alive to do it....
+That's why I'm greatly obliged to yeh, Hal."
+
+He took his rifle and walked slowly toward the pantry.
+
+"You bet," he muttered, "she _is_ a lady, so help me God."
+
+
+
+
+EPISODE THREE
+
+ON STAR PEAK
+
+
+I
+
+Mike Clinch regarded the jewels taken from José Quintana as legitimate
+loot acquired in war.
+
+He was prepared to kill anybody who attempted to take the gems from him.
+
+At the very possibility his ruling passion blazed--his mania to make of
+Eve Strayer a grand lady.
+
+But now, what he had feared for years had happened. Quintana had found
+him,--Quintana, after all these years, had discovered the identity and
+dwelling place of the obscure American soldier who had robbed him in the
+wash-room of a Paris café. And Quintana was now in America, here in this
+very wilderness, tracking the man who had despoiled him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Clinch, in his shirt-sleeves, carrying a rifle, came out on the log
+veranda and sat down to think it over.
+
+He began to realise that he was likely to have trouble with a man as
+cold-blooded and as dogged as himself.
+
+Nor did he doubt that those with Quintana were desperate men.
+
+On whom could he count? On nobody unless he paid their hire. None among
+the lawless men who haunted his backwoods "hotel" at Star Pond would
+lift a finger to help him. Almost any among them would have robbed
+him,--murdered him, probably,--if it were known that jewels were hidden
+in the house.
+
+He could not trust Jake Kloon; Leverett was as treacherous as only a
+born coward can be; Sid Hone, Harvey Chase, Blommers, Byron
+Hastings,--he knew them all too well to trust them,--a sullen,
+unscrupulous pack, partly cowardly, always fierce,--as are any creatures
+that live furtively, feed only by their wits, and slink through life
+just outside the frontiers of law.
+
+And yet, one of this gang had stood by him--Hal Smith--the man he
+himself had been about to slay.
+
+Clinch got up from the bench where he had been sitting and walked down
+to the pond where Hal Smith sat cleaning trout.
+
+"Hal," he said, "I been figuring some. Quintana don't dare call in the
+constables. I can't afford to. Quintana and I've got to settle this on
+our own."
+
+Smith slit open a ten-inch trout, stripped it, flung the entrails out
+into the pond, soused the fish in water, and threw it into a milk pan.
+
+"Whose jewels were they in the beginning?" he enquired carelessly.
+
+"How do I know?"
+
+"If you ever found out----"
+
+"I don't want to. I got them in the war, anyway. And it don't make no
+difference how I got 'em; Eve's going to be a lady if I go to the chair
+for it. So that's that."
+
+Smith slit another trout, gutted it, flung away the viscera but laid
+back the roe.
+
+"Shame to take them in October," he remarked, "but people must eat."
+
+"Same's me," nodded Clinch; "I don't want to kill no one, but Eve she's
+gotta be a lady and ride in her own automobile with the proudest."
+
+"Does Eve know about the jewels?"
+
+Clinch's pale eyes, which had been roving over the wooded shores of Star
+Pond, reverted to Smith.
+
+"I'd cut my throat before I'd tell her," he said softly.
+
+"She wouldn't stand for it?"
+
+"Hal, when you said to me, 'Eve's a lady, by God!' you swallered the
+hull pie. That's the answer. A lady don't stand for what you and I don't
+bother about."
+
+"Suppose she learns that you robbed the man who robbed somebody else of
+these jewels."
+
+Clinch's pale eyes were fixed on him: "Only you and me know," he said in
+his pleasant voice.
+
+"Quintana knows. His gang knows."
+
+Clinch's smile was terrifying. "I guess she ain't never likely to know
+nothing, Hal."
+
+"What do you purpose to do, Mike?"
+
+"Still hunt."
+
+"For Quintana?"
+
+"I might mistake him for a deer. Them accidents is likely, too."
+
+"If Quintana catches you it will go hard with you, Mike."
+
+"Sure. I know."
+
+"He'll torture you to make you talk."
+
+"You think I'd talk, Hal?"
+
+Smith looked up into the light-coloured eyes. The pupils were pin
+points. Then he went on cleaning fish.
+
+"Hal?"
+
+"What?"
+
+"If they get me,--but no matter; they ain't a-going to get me."
+
+"Were you going to tell me where those jewels are hidden, Mike?"
+enquired the young man, still busy with his fish. He did not look around
+when he spoke. Clinch's murderous gaze was fastened on the back of his
+head.
+
+"Don't go to gettin' too damn nosey, Hal," he said in his always
+agreeable voice.
+
+Smith soused all the fish in water again: "You'd better tell somebody if
+you go gunning for Quintana."
+
+"Did I ask your advice?"
+
+"You did not," said the young man, smiling.
+
+"All right. Mind your business."
+
+Smith got up from the water's edge with his pan of trout:
+
+"That's what I shall do, Mike," he said, laughing. "So go on with your
+private war; it's no button off _my_ pants if Quintana gets you."
+
+He went away toward the ice-house with the trout. Eve Strayer, doing
+chamber work, watched the young man from an upper room.
+
+The girl's instinct was to like Smith,--but that very instinct aroused
+her distrust. What was a man of his breeding and education doing at
+Clinch's dump? Why was he content to hang around and do chores? A man of
+his type who has gone crooked enough to stick up a tourist in an
+automobile nourishes higher--though probably perverted--ambitions than a
+dollar a day and board.
+
+She heard Clinch's light step on the uncarpeted stair; went on making
+up Smith's bed; and smiled as her step-father came into the room, still
+carrying his rifle.
+
+He had something else in his hand, too,--a flat, thin packet wrapped in
+heavy paper and sealed all over with black wax.
+
+"Girlie," he said, "I want you should do a little errand for me this
+morning. If you're spry it won't take long--time to go there and get
+back to help with noon dinner."
+
+"Very well, dad."
+
+"Go git your pants on, girlie."
+
+"You want me to go into the woods?"
+
+"I want you to go to the hole in the rocks under Star Peak and lay this
+packet in the hootch cache."
+
+She nodded, tucked in the sheets, smoothed blanket and pillow with deft
+hands, went out to her own room. Clinch seated himself and turned a
+blank face to the window.
+
+It was a sudden decision. He realised now that he couldn't keep the
+jewels in his house. War was on with Quintana. The "hotel" would be the
+goal for Quintana and his gang. And for Smith, too, if ever temptation
+overpowered him. The house was liable to an attempt at robbery any
+night, now;--any day, perhaps. It was no place for the packet he had
+taken from José Quintana.
+
+Eve came in wearing grey shirt, breeches, and puttees. Clinch gave her
+the packet.
+
+"What's in it, dad?" she asked smilingly.
+
+"Don't you get nosey, girlie. Come here."
+
+She went to him. He put his left arm around her.
+
+"You like me some, don't you, girlie?"
+
+"You know it, dad."
+
+"All right. You're all that matters to me ... since your mother went
+and died ... after a year.... That was crool, girlie. Only a year.
+Well, I ain't cared none for nobody since--only you, girlie."
+
+He touched the packet with his forefinger:
+
+"If I step out, that's yours. But I ain't a-going to step out. Put it
+with the hootch. You know how to move that keystone?"
+
+"Yes, dad."
+
+"And watch out that no game protector and none of that damn
+millionaire's wardens see you in the woods. No, nor none o' these here
+fancy State Troopers. You gotta watch out _this_ time, Eve. It means
+everything to us--to you, girlie--and to me. Go tip-toe. Lay low, coming
+and going. Take a rifle."
+
+Eve ran to her bed-room and returned with her Winchester and belt.
+
+"You shoot to kill," said Clinch grimly, "if anyone wants to stop you.
+But lay low and you won't need to shoot nobody, girlie. G'wan out the
+back way; Hal's in the ice house."
+
+
+II
+
+Slim and straight as a young boy in her grey shirt and breeches, Eve
+continued on lightly through the woods, her rifle over her shoulder, her
+eyes of gentian-blue always alert.
+
+The morning turned warm; she pulled off her soft felt hat, shook out her
+clipped curls, stripped open the shirt at her snowy throat where sweat
+glimmered like melted frost.
+
+The forest was lovely in the morning sunlight--lovely and still--save
+for the blue-jays--for the summer birds had gone and only birds
+destined to a long Northern winter remained.
+
+Now and then, ahead of her, she saw a ruffed grouse wandering in the
+trail. These, and a single tiny grey bird with a dreary note
+interminably repeated, were the only living things she saw except here
+and there a summer-battered butterfly of the Vanessa tribe flitting in
+some stray sunbeam.
+
+The haunting odour of late autumn was in the air--delicately acrid--the
+scent of frost-killed brake and ripening wild grasses, of brilliant dead
+leaves and black forest loam pungent with mast from beech and oak.
+
+Eve's tread was light on the moist trail; her quick eyes missed
+nothing--not the dainty imprint of deer, fresh made, nor the sprawling
+insignia of rambling raccoons--nor the big barred owl huddled on a pine
+limb overhead, nor, where the swift gravelly reaches of the brook caught
+sunlight, did she miss the swirl and furrowing and milling of painted
+trout on the spawning beds.
+
+Once she took cover, hearing something stirring; but it was only a
+yearling buck that came out of the witch-hazel to stare, stamp, then
+wheel and trot away, displaying the danger signal.
+
+In her cartridge-pouch she carried the flat, sealed packet which Clinch
+had trusted to her. The sack swayed gently as she strode on, slapping
+her left hip at every step; and always her subconscious mind remained on
+guard and aware of it; and now and then she dropped her hand to feel of
+the pouch and strap.
+
+The character of the forest was now changing as she advanced. The first
+tamaracks appeared, slim, silvery trunks, crowned with the gold of
+autumn foliage, outer sentinels of that vast maze of swamp and stream
+called Owl Marsh, the stronghold and refuge of forest wild
+things--sometimes the sanctuary of hunted men.
+
+From Star Peak's left flank an icy stream clatters down to the level
+floor of the woods, here; and it was here that Eve had meant to quench
+her thirst with a mouthful of sweet water.
+
+But as she approached the tiny ford, warily, she saw a saddled horse
+tied to a sapling and a man seated on a mossy log.
+
+The trappings of horse, the grey-green uniform of the man, left no room
+for speculation; a trooper of the State Constabulary was seated there.
+
+His cap was off; his head rested on his palm. Elbow on knee, he sat
+there gazing at the water--watching the slim fish, perhaps, darting up
+stream toward their bridal-beds hidden far away at the headwaters.
+
+A detour was imperative. The girl, from the shelter of a pine, looked
+out cautiously at the trooper. The sudden sight of him had merely
+checked her; now the recognition of his uniform startled her heart out
+of its tranquil rhythm and set the blood burning in her cheeks.
+
+There was a memory of such a man seared into the girl's very soul;--a
+man whose head and shoulders resembled this man's,--who had the same
+bright hair, the same slim and powerful body,--and who moved, too, as
+this young man moved.
+
+The trooper stirred, lifted his head to relight his pipe.
+
+The girl knew him. Her heart stood still; then heart and blood ran riot
+and she felt her knees tremble,--felt weak as she rested against the
+pine's huge trunk and covered her face with unsteady fingers.
+
+Until the moment, Eve had never dreamed what the memory of this man
+really meant to her,--never dreamed that she had capacity for emotion so
+utterly overwhelming.
+
+Even now confusion, shame, fear were paramount. All she wanted was to
+get away,--get away and still her heart's wild beating,--control the
+strange tremor that possessed her, recover mind and sense and breath.
+
+She drew her hand from her eyes and looked upon the man she had
+attempted to kill,--upon the young man who had wrestled her off her feet
+and handcuffed her,--and who had bathed her bleeding mouth with
+sphagnum,--and who had kissed her hands----
+
+She was trembling so that she became frightened. The racket of the brook
+in his ears safeguarded her in a measure. She bent over nearly double,
+her rifle at a trail, and cautiously began the detour.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When at length the wide circle through the woods had been safely
+accomplished and Eve was moving out through the thickening ranks of
+tamarack, her heart, which seemed to suffocate her, quieted; and she
+leaned against a shoulder of rock, strangely tired.
+
+After a while she drew from her pocket _his_ handkerchief, and looked at
+it. The square of cambric bore his initials, J. S. Blood from her lip
+remained on it. She had not washed out the spots.
+
+She put it to her lips again, mechanically. A faint odour of tobacco
+still clung to it.
+
+By every law of loyalty, pride, self-respect, she should have held this
+man her enemy. Instead, she held his handkerchief against her
+lips,--crushed it there suddenly, closing her eyes while the colour
+surged and surged through her skin from throat to hair.
+
+Then, wearily, she lifted her head and looked out into the grey and
+empty vista of her life, where the dreary years seemed to stretch like
+milestones away, away into an endless waste.
+
+She put the handkerchief into her pocket, shouldered her rifle, moved on
+without looking about her,--a mistake which only the emotion of the
+moment could account for in a girl so habituated to caution,--for she
+had gone only a few rods before a man's strident voice halted her:
+
+"_Halte là! Crosse en air!_"
+
+"Drop that rifle!" came another voice from behind her. "You're covered!
+Throw your gun on the ground!"
+
+She stood as though paralysed. To the right and left she heard people
+trampling through the thicket toward her.
+
+"Down with that gun, damn you!" repeated the voice, breathless from
+running. All around her men came floundering and crashing toward her
+through the undergrowth. She could see some of them.
+
+As she stooped to place her rifle on the dead leaves, she drew the flat
+packet from her cartridge sack at the same time and slid it deftly under
+a rotting log. Then, calm but very pale, she stood upright to face
+events.
+
+The first man wore a red and yellow bandanna handkerchief over the lower
+half of his face, pulled tightly across a bony nose. He held a long
+pistol nearly parallel to his own body; and when he came up to where she
+was standing he poked the muzzle into her stomach.
+
+She did not flinch; he said nothing; she looked intently into the two
+ratty eyes fastened on her over the edge of his bandanna.
+
+Five other men were surrounding her, but they all wore white masks of
+vizard shape, revealing chin and mouth.
+
+They were different otherwise, also, wearing various sorts and patterns
+of sport clothes, brand new, and giving them an odd, foreign appearance.
+
+What troubled her most was the silence they maintained. The man wearing
+the bandanna was the only one who seemed at all a familiar
+figure,--merely, perhaps, because he was American in build, clothing,
+and movement.
+
+He took her by the shoulder, turned her around and gave her a shove
+forward. She staggered a step or two; he gave her another shove and she
+comprehended that she was to keep on going.
+
+Presently she found herself in a steep, wet deer-trail rising upward
+through a gully. She knew that runway. It led up Star Peak.
+
+Behind her as she climbed she heard the slopping, panting tread of men;
+her wind was better than theirs; she climbed lithely upward, setting a
+pace which finally resulted in a violent jerk backward,--a savage,
+wordless admonition to go more slowly.
+
+As she climbed she wondered whether she should have fired an alarm shot
+on the chance of the State Trooper, Stormont, hearing it.
+
+But she had thought only of the packet at the moment of surprise. And
+now she wondered whether, when freed, she could ever again find that
+rotting log.
+
+Up, up, always up along the wet gully, deep with silt and
+frost-splintered rock, she toiled, the heavy gasping of men behind her.
+Twice she was jerked to a halt while her escort rested.
+
+Once, without turning, she said unsteadily: "Who are you? What have I
+done to you?"
+
+There was no reply.
+
+"What are you going to do to me----" she began again, and was shaken by
+the shoulder until silent.
+
+At last the vast arch of the eastern sky sprang out ahead, where stunted
+spruces stood out against the sunshine and the intense heat of midday
+fell upon a bare table-land of rock and moss and fern.
+
+As she came out upon the level, the man behind her took both her arms
+and pulled them back and somebody bandaged her eyes. Then a hand closed
+on her left arm and, so guided, she stumbled and crept forward across
+the rocks for a few moments until her guide halted her and forced her
+into a sitting position on a smooth, flat boulder.
+
+She heard the crunching of heavy feet all around her, whispering made
+hoarse by breath exhausted, movement across rock and scrub, retreating
+steps.
+
+For an interminable time she sat there alone in the hot sun, drenched to
+the skin in sweat, listening, thinking, striving to find a reason for
+this lawless outrage.
+
+After a long while she heard somebody coming across the rocks, stiffened
+as she listened with some vague presentiment of evil.
+
+Somebody had halted beside her. After a pause she was aware of nimble
+fingers busy with the bandage over her eyes.
+
+At first, when freed, the light blinded her. By degrees she was able to
+distinguish the rocky crest of Star Peak, with the tops of tall trees
+appearing level with the rocks from depths below.
+
+Then she turned, slowly, and looked at the man who had seated himself
+beside her.
+
+He wore a white mask over a delicate, smoothly shaven face.
+
+His soft hat and sporting clothes were dark grey, evidently new. And she
+noticed his hands--long, elegantly made, smooth, restless, playing with
+a pencil and some sheets of paper on his knees.
+
+As she met his brilliant eyes behind the mask, his delicate, thin lips
+grew tense in what seemed to be a smile--or a soundless sort of laugh.
+
+"Veree happee," he said, "to make the acquaintance. Pardon my
+unceremony, miss, but onlee necissitee compels. Are you, perhaps, a
+little rested?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Ah! Then, if you permit, we proceed with affairs of moment. You will be
+sufficiently kind to write down what I say. Yes?"
+
+He placed paper and pencil in Eve's hand. Without demurring or
+hesitation she made ready to write, her mind groping wildly for the
+reason of it all.
+
+"Write," he said, with his silent laugh which was more like the
+soundless snarl of a lynx unafraid:
+
+"To Mike Clinch, my fathaire, from his child, Eve.... I am hostage,
+held by José Quintana. Pay what you owe him and I go free.
+
+"For each day delay he sends to you one finger which will be severed
+from my right hand----"
+
+Eve's slender fingers trembled; she looked up at the masked man, stared
+steadily into his brilliant eyes.
+
+"Proceed miss, if you are so amiable," he said softly.
+
+She wrote on: "--One finger for every day's delay. The whole hand at the
+week's end. The other hand then, finger by finger. Then, alas! the right
+foot----"
+
+Eve trembled.
+
+"Proceed," he said softly.
+
+She wrote: "If you agree you shall pay what you owe to José Quintana in
+this manner: you shall place a stick at the edge of the Star Pond where
+the Star rivulet flows out. Upon this stick you shall tie a white rag.
+At the foot of the stick you shall lay the parcel which contains your
+indebt to José Quintana.
+
+"Failing this, by to-night _one finger_ at sunset."
+
+The man paused: Eve waited, dumb under the surging confusion in her
+brain. A sort of incredulous horror benumbed her, through which she
+still heard and perceived.
+
+"Be kind enough to sign it with your name," said the man pleasantly.
+
+Eve signed.
+
+Then the masked man took the letter, got up, removed his hat.
+
+"I am Quintana," he said. "I keep my word. A thousand thanks and
+apologies, miss. I trust that your detention may be brief and not too
+disagreeable. I place at your feet my humble respects."
+
+He bowed, put on his hat, and walked quickly away. And she saw him
+descend the rocks to the eastward, where the peak slopes.
+
+When Quintana had disappeared behind the summit scrub and rocks, Eve
+slowly stood up and looked about her at the rocky pulpit so familiar.
+
+There was only one way out. Quintana had gone that way. His men no doubt
+guarded it. Otherwise, sheer precipices confronted her.
+
+She walked to the western edge where a sheet of slippery reindeer moss
+clothed the rock. Below the mountain fell away to the valley where she
+had been made prisoner.
+
+She looked out over the vast panorama of wilderness and mountain, range
+on range stretching blue to the horizon. She looked down into the depths
+of the valley where deep under the flaming foliage of October,
+somewhere, a State Trooper was sitting, cheek on hand, beside a
+waterfall--or, perhaps, riding slowly through a forest which she might
+never gaze upon again.
+
+There was a noise on the rocks behind her. A masked man came out of the
+spruce scrub, laid a blanket on the rocks, placed a loaf of bread, some
+cheese, and a tin pail full of water upon it, motioned her, and went
+away through the dwarf spruces.
+
+Eve walked slowly to the blanket. She drank out of the tin pail. Then
+she set aside the food, lay down, and buried her quivering face in her
+arms.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The sun was half way between zenith and horizon when she heard somebody
+coming, and rose to a sitting posture. Her visitor was Quintana.
+
+He came up to her quite close, stood with glittering eyes intent upon
+her.
+
+After a moment he handed her a letter.
+
+She could scarcely unfold it, she trembled so:
+
+"Girlie, for God's sake give that packet to Quintana and come on home.
+I'm near crazy with it all. What the hell's anything worth beside you
+girlie. I don't give a damn for nothing only you, so come on quick.
+Dad."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+After a little while she lifted her eyes to Quintana.
+
+"So," he said quietly, "you are the little she-fox that has learned
+tricks already."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"Where is that packet?"
+
+"I haven't it."
+
+"Where is it?"
+
+She shook her head slightly.
+
+"You had a packet," he insisted fiercely. "Look here! Regard!" and he
+spread out a penciled sheet in Clinch's hand:
+
+    "José Quintana:
+
+    "You win. She's got that stuff with her. Take your damn junk and
+    let my girl go.
+
+            "MIKE CLINCH."
+
+"Well," said Quintana, a thin, strident edge to his tone.
+
+"My father is mistaken. I haven't any packet."
+
+The man's visage behind his mask flushed darkly. Without warning or
+ceremony he caught Eve by the throat and tore open her shirt. Then,
+hissing and cursing and panting with his own violence, he searched her
+brutally and without mercy--flung her down and tore off her spiral
+puttees and even her shoes and stockings, now apparently beside himself
+with fury, puffing, gasping, always with a fierce, nasal sort of whining
+undertone like an animal worrying its kill.
+
+"Cowardly beast!" she panted, fighting him with all her
+strength--"filthy, cowardly beast!----" striking at him, wrenching his
+grasp away, snatching at the disordered clothing half stripped from her.
+
+His hunting knife fell clattering and she fought to get it, but he
+struck her with his open hand, knocking her down at his feet, and stood
+glaring at her with every tooth bared.
+
+"So," he cried, "I give you ten minutes, make up your mind, tell me what
+you do with that packet."
+
+He wiped the blood from his face where she had struck him.
+
+"You don't know José Quintana. No! You shall make his acquaintance.
+Yes!"
+
+Eve got up on naked feet, quivering from head to foot, striving to
+button the grey shirt at her throat.
+
+"Where?" he demanded, beside himself.
+
+Her mute lips only tightened.
+
+"Ver' well, by God!" he cried. "I go make me some fire. You like it, eh?
+We shall put one toe in the fire until it burn off. Yes? Eh? How you
+like it? Eh?"
+
+The girl's trembling hands continued busy with her clothing.
+
+"So!" he said, hoarsely, "you remain dumb! Well, then, in ten minutes
+you shall talk!"
+
+He walked toward her, pushed her savagely aside, and strode on into the
+spruce thicket.
+
+The instant he disappeared Eve caught up the knife he had dropped, knelt
+down on the blanket and fell to cutting it into strips.
+
+The hunting knife was like a razor; the feverish business was
+accomplished in a few moments, the pieces knotted, the cord strained in
+a desperate test over her knee.
+
+And now she ran to the precipice where, ten feet below, the top of a
+great pine protruded from the gulf.
+
+On the edge of the abyss was a spruce root. It looked dead, wedged deep
+between two rocks; but with all her strength she could not pull it out.
+
+Sobbing, breathless, she tied her blanket rope to this, threw the other
+end over the cliff's edge, and, not giving herself time to think, lay
+flat, grasped the knotted line, swung off.
+
+Knot by knot she went down. Half-way her naked feet brushed the needles.
+She looked over her shoulder, behind and down. Then, teeth clenched, she
+lowered herself steadily as she had learned to do in the school
+gymnasium, down, down, until her legs came astride of a pine limb.
+
+It bent, swayed, gave with her, letting her sag to a larger limb below.
+This she clasped, letting go her rope.
+
+Already, from the mountain's rocky crest above, she heard excited cries.
+Once, on her breakneck descent, she looked up through the foliage of the
+pine; and she saw, far up against the sky, a white-masked face looking
+over the edge of the precipice.
+
+But if it were Quintana or another of his people she could not tell.
+And, again looking down, she began again the terrible descent.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+An hour later, Trooper Stormont of the State Constabulary, sat his horse
+in amazement to see a ragged, breathless, boyish figure speeding toward
+him among the tamaracks, her naked feet splashing through pool and mire
+and sphagnum.
+
+"Good heavens!" he exclaimed as she flung herself against his stirrup,
+sobbing, hysterical, and clinging to his knee.
+
+"Take me back," she stammered, "--take me back to daddy! I can't--go
+on--another step----"
+
+He leaned down, swung her up to his saddle in front, holding her cradled
+in his arms.
+
+"Lie still," he said coolly; "you're all right now."
+
+For another second he sat looking down at her, at the dishevelled hair,
+the gasping mouth,--at the rags clothing her, and at the flat packet
+clasped convulsively to her breast.
+
+Then he spoke in a low voice to his horse, guiding left with one knee.
+
+
+
+
+EPISODE FOUR
+
+A PRIVATE WAR
+
+
+I
+
+When State Trooper Stormont rode up to Clinch's with Eve Strayer lying
+in his arms, Mike Clinch strode out of the motley crowd around the
+tavern, laid his rifle against a tree, and stretched forth his powerful
+hands to receive his stepchild.
+
+He held her, cradled, looking down at her in silence as the men
+clustered around.
+
+"Eve," he said hoarsely, "be you hurted?"
+
+The girl opened her sky-blue eyes.
+
+"I'm all right, dad, ... just tired.... I've got your parcel ...
+safe...."
+
+"To hell with the gol-dinged parcel," he almost sobbed; "--did Quintana
+harm you?"
+
+"No, dad."
+
+As he carried her to the veranda the packet fell from her cramped
+fingers. Clinch kicked it under a chair and continued on into the house
+and up the stairs to Eve's bedroom.
+
+Flat on the bed, the girl opened her drowsy eyes again, unsmiling.
+
+"Did that dirty louse misuse you?" demanded Clinch unsteadily. "G'wan
+tell me, girlie."
+
+"He knocked me down.... He went away to get fire to make me talk. I cut
+up the blanket they gave me and made a rope. Then I went over the cliff
+into the big pine below. That was all, dad."
+
+Clinch filled a 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 whimper 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,
+girlie?"
+
+She looked up at him out of heavy-lidded 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 grand lady of you when the time's ripe.
+'Tain't worth a thorn in your little foot to me.... The hull gol-dinged
+world full o' money ain't worth that there stone-bruise onto them little
+white feet o' yourn, Eve.
+
+"Look at you now--my God, look at you there, all peaked an' scairt an'
+bleedin'--plum tuckered out, 'n' all ragged 'n' dirty----"
+
+A blaze of fury flared in his small pale eyes: "--And he hit you, too,
+did he?--that skunk! Quintana done that to my little girlie, did he?"
+
+"I don't know if it was Quintana. I don't know who he was, dad," she
+murmured drowsily.
+
+"Masked, wa'n't he?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Clinch's iron visage twitched and quivered. He gnawed his thin lips into
+control:
+
+"Girlie, I gotta go out a spell. But I ain't a-leavin' you alone here.
+I'll git somebody to set up with you. You jest lie snug and don't think
+about nothin' till I come back."
+
+"Yes, dad," she sighed, closing her eyes.
+
+Clinch stood looking at her for a moment, then he went downstairs
+heavily, and out to the veranda where State Trooper Stormont still sat
+his saddle, talking to Hal Smith. On the porch a sullen crowd of
+backwoods riff-raff lounged in silence, awaiting events.
+
+Clinch called across to Smith: "Hey, Hal, g'wan up and set with Eve a
+spell while she's nappin'. Take a gun."
+
+Smith said to Stormont in a low voice: "Do me a favour, Jack?"
+
+"You bet."
+
+"That girl of Clinch's is in real danger if 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 Clinch stood, oiling a rifle.
+
+"G'wan upstairs," he muttered. "I 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 should git your gun and set up by Evie. And I want
+you should kill any living human son of a slut that comes botherin'
+around this here hotel."
+
+"I'm going after Quintana with you, Mike."
+
+"B'gosh, you ain't. You're a-goin' to keep watch here."
+
+"No. Trooper Stormont has promised to stay with Eve. You'll need every
+man to-day, Mike. This isn't a deer drive."
+
+Clinch let his rifle sag across the hollow of his left arm.
+
+"Did you beef to that trooper?" he demanded in his pleasant, misleading
+way.
+
+"Do 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 Eve until we can get back.' And I tell you,
+Mike, if we drive Star Peak we won't be back till long after sundown."
+
+Clinch growled: "I ain't never asked no favours of no State Trooper----"
+
+"He did you a favour, didn't he? He brought your daughter in."
+
+"Yes, 'n' 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."
+
+Clinch 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 daughter, Clinch?" he
+inquired. "The child was nearly all in when she met me out by Owl
+Marsh--clothes half torn off her back, bare-foot and bleeding. She's a
+plucky youngster. I'll say so, Clinch. If you think the fellow may come
+here to annoy her I'll keep an eye on her till you return."
+
+Clinch went up to Stormont, put his powerful hands on the young fellow's
+shoulders.
+
+After a moment's glaring silence: "You _look_ clean. I guess you be,
+too. I wanta tell you I'll cut the guts outa any guy 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 you're a real man, too, even if you're a State
+Trooper," growled Clinch. "G'wan up. She's a-nappin'. If she wakes up
+you kinda talk pleasant to her. You act kind pleasant and cosy. She
+ain't had no ma. You tell her to set snug and ca'm. Then you cook her a
+egg if she wants it. There's pie, too. I cal'late to be back by
+sundown."
+
+"Nearer morning," remarked Smith.
+
+Stormont shrugged. "I'll stay until you show up, Clinch."
+
+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 sullen, armed men who
+regarded his advent in expressionless silence.
+
+Sid Hone was there, and Harvey Chase, and the Hastings boys, and
+Cornelius Blommers.
+
+"You fellas comin'?" inquired Clinch.
+
+"Where?" drawled Sid Hone.
+
+"Me an' Hal Smith is cal'kalatin' to drive Star Peak. It ain't a deer,
+neither."
+
+There ensued a grim interval. Clinch's wintry smile began to glimmer.
+
+"Booze agents or game protectors? Which?" asked Byron Hastings. "They
+both look like deer--if a man gits mad enough."
+
+Clinch's smile became terrifying. "I shell out five hundred dollars for
+every _deer_ that's dropped on Star Peak to-day," he said. "And I hope
+there won't be no accidents and no mistakin' 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 Kloon?" 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, Clinch recollected the packet which he had kicked
+under a veranda chair. It was no longer there.
+
+"Any o' you fellas seen a package here on the pyazza?" demanded Clinch
+harshly.
+
+"Jake Kloon, he had somethin'," drawled Chase. "I supposed it was his
+lunch. Mebbe 'twas, too."
+
+In the intense stillness Clinch glared into one face after another.
+
+"Boys," he said in his softly modulated voice, "I kinda guess there's a
+rat amongst us. I wouldn't like for to be that there rat--no, not for a
+billion hundred dollars. No, I wouldn't. Becuz that there rat has bit my
+little girlie, Eve,--like that there deer bit her up onto Star Peak....
+No, I wouldn't like for to be that there rat. Fer he's a-goin' to die
+like a rat, same's that there deer is a-goin' to die like a deer....
+Anyone seen which way Jake Kloon went?"
+
+"Now you speak of it," said Byron Hastings, "seems like I noticed Jake
+and Earl Leverett down by the woods near the pond. I kinda disremembered
+when you asked, but I guess I seen them."
+
+"Sure," said Sid Hone. "Now you mention it, I seen 'em, too. Thinks I to
+m'self, they is pickin' them blackberries down to the crick. Yas, I seen
+'em."
+
+Clinch tossed his rifle across his left shoulder.
+
+"Rats an' deer," he said pleasantly. "Them's the articles we're lookin'
+for. Only for God's sake be careful you don't mistake a _man_ for 'em in
+the woods."
+
+One or two men laughed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the edge of Owl Marsh Clinch halted in the trail, and, as his men
+came up, he counted them with a cold eye.
+
+"Here's the runway and this here hazel bush is my station," he said.
+"You fellas do the barkin'. You, Sid Hone, and you, Corny, start drivin'
+from the west. Harve, you yelp 'em from the north by Lynx Brook. 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 'n hell be
+you, Hal?----"
+
+Smith came up from the bog's edge.
+
+"Send 'em 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," he reminded
+Hone, Chase, and Blommers, "before you start drivin'." And, to the
+Hastings boys: "If 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 on the mud.
+
+"That's Jake," said Clinch slowly. "I know them half-soled boots o'
+hisn." He lifted another branch. "There's another man's track!"
+
+"The other is probably Leverett's."
+
+"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 o' them like that, and one
+a-settin' up to watch out. Hell! Be you tired o' bed an' board?"
+
+Smith smiled: "Don't you worry, Mike."
+
+"Why? You think you're that smart? Jest becuz you stuck up a tourist you
+think you're cock o' the North Woods--with them two foxes lyin' out for
+to snap you up? Hey? Why, you poor dumb thing, Jake runs Canadian hootch
+for a livin' and Leverett's a trap thief! What could _you_ do with a
+pair o' foxes like that?"
+
+"Catch 'em," 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 have
+I. I'll take care of my own."
+
+"What's _your_ grievance?" demanded Clinch, surprised.
+
+"Jake Kloon 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."
+
+
+II
+
+The "proper owner" of the packet was, at that moment, on the Atlantic
+Ocean, travelling toward the United States.
+
+Four other pretended owners of the Grand Duchess Theodorica's jewels,
+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.
+
+José Quintana lay somewhere in the forests 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 for the third pretender to the Flaming Jewel, Jake Kloon, he was now
+travelling in a fox's circle toward Drowned Valley--that 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 plodded Leverett, the trap thief, very, very busy
+with his own ideas.
+
+To Leverett's repeated requests that Kloon halt and open the packet to
+see what it contained, Kloon gruffly refused.
+
+"What do we care what's in it?" he said. "We get ten thousand apiece
+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 it for ourselves," argued
+Leverett. "Let's take a peek, anyway."
+
+"Naw. I don't want no peek nor nothin'. 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 allus was a dirty, thieving mink, Earl. Let's
+give him his and take ours and git. I'm going to Albany to live. You bet
+I don't stay in no woods where Mike Clinch dens."
+
+They plodded on, arguing, toward their rendezvous with Quintana's
+outpost on the edge of Drowned Valley.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The fourth pretender to the pearls, rubies, and great gem called the
+Flaming Jewel, stolen from the young Grand Duchess Theodorica of
+Esthonia by José Quintana, was an unconscious pretender, entirely
+innocent of the rôle assigned her by Clinch.
+
+For Eve Strayer had never heard where the packet came from or what it
+contained. All she knew was that her stepfather had told her that it
+belonged to her. And the knowledge left her incurious.
+
+
+III
+
+Eve slept the sleep of mental and physical exhaustion. Reaction from
+fear brings a fatigue more profound than that which follows physical
+overstrain. But the healthy mind, like the healthy body, disposes very
+thoroughly of toxics 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 with the most wonderful balm in the Divine pharmacy.
+
+She awoke late in the afternoon, opened her flower-blue eyes, and saw
+State Trooper Stormont sitting by the window, and gazing out.
+
+Perhaps Eve's confused senses mistook the young man for a vision; for
+she lay very still, nor stirred even her little finger.
+
+After a while Stormont glanced around at her. A warm, delicate colour
+stained her skin slowly, evenly, from throat to hair.
+
+He got up and came over to the bed.
+
+"How do you feel?" he asked, awkwardly.
+
+"Where is 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----"
+
+"With a State Trooper," smiled Stormont. "That's all right, Eve. You
+don't have to."
+
+There was a pause; Stormont stood beside the bed, looking down at her
+with his diffident, boyish smile. And 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 I am 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-aid
+packet with me."
+
+After a moment she nodded and turned her face on 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
+scratch the flakes of granite-grit and brier-points that still remained
+there.
+
+From his first-aid packet he took a capsule, dissolved it, sterilized
+the torn 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 are so wonderfully kind...."
+
+"Why shouldn't I be kind?" he said, amused and touched by the girl's
+emotion.
+
+"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 handcuffs. 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 Owl Marsh.
+
+In the hot, uncomfortable silence, neither spoke. He seated himself
+after a while. And, after a while, she turned on her pillow part way
+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 that she had 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 Star Pond."
+
+The girl sighed, unconsciously:
+
+"There are days when I--can scarcely--stand it.... The wilderness would
+be more endurable if dad and I were all 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 plain 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 seems ungrateful," she murmured. "I love my step-father."
+
+"You've proven that," he remarked with a dry humour 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 darned gun exploded in our hands."
+
+"How _could_ you?" she protested.
+
+"I was thinking all the while that you were acting as I'd have acted if
+anything threatened _my_ father."
+
+"Were you thinking of _that_?"
+
+"Yes,--and also how to get hold of you before you shot 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 rose in bed, supported on one arm, her curly brown-gold hair
+framing her face:
+
+"--Two cakes of sugar-milk chocolate in a flat brown packet 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 cache on Owl
+Marsh.
+
+He brought it to her, placed both pillows upright 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 untie
+her packet, unhurriedly, slowly loosening string and wrapping.
+
+Her attention was not fixed on what her slender 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 the wrapping 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 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 seemed to tell so much and yet were 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 in her body
+awoke, wildly responsive.
+
+Deep emotions, new, unfamiliar, were stirring, awaking, 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 burnt 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 Stormont, rigid, unstirring, hour after
+hour, facing the first 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, new born, possessed
+her. The whole world, too, all around her seemed to have become misty
+and golden and all pulsating with a faint, still rhythm that indefinably
+thrilled her pulses to response.
+
+Passion, full-armed, 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 sun-tanned fingers linked
+listlessly in her lap, 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, gilding the boarded floor.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Three spectres, 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 spectres, Fate, Chance and Destiny, whispering together,
+passed on toward the depths of the sunset forest.
+
+
+
+
+EPISODE FIVE
+
+DROWNED VALLEY
+
+
+I
+
+The soft, bluish forest shadows had lengthened, and the barred sun-rays,
+filtering through, were tinged with a rosy hue before Jake Kloon, the
+hootch runner, and Earl Leverett, trap thief, came to Drowned Valley.
+
+They were still a mile distant from the most southern edge of that vast
+desolation, but already tamaracks appeared in the beauty of their burnt
+gold; little pools glimmered here and there; patches of amber sphagnum
+and crimson pitcher-plants became frequent; and once or twice Kloon'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 larcenous way
+through the world, always in deadly fear of sink holes.
+
+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 spoor of
+Jake Kloon, his narrow, pointed head alert, 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 pitiable misdemeanours he slunk through life in 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 protector's tread as he slunk from the bagged
+trout brook or crawled away, belly dragging, and pockets full of snared
+grouse.
+
+Always he had dreamed of the day when, through some sudden bold 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 the blue peaks 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, furtively at Jake
+Kloon'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 Kloon's massive head. One shot would blow that
+skull into fragments, he thought, shivering.
+
+One shot from behind,--and 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
+if revealed?
+
+Always in his mean and busy brain he was trying to figure to himself
+what that packet must contain. And, to make the bribe worth while,
+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 Kloon had
+turned a deaf ear to his suggestions,--Kloon, who never entertained
+ambitions beyond his hootch rake-off,--whose miserable imagination
+stopped at a wretched percentage, satisfied.
+
+One shot! There was the back of Kloon's bushy head. One shot!--and fear,
+which had shadowed him from birth, was at an end forever. Ended, too,
+privation,--the bitter rigour 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 died or recovered 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 coward's "if" blocked him; and
+the coward's rage,--fiercest of all fury,--ravaged him, almost crazing
+him with his own impotence.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Tamaracks, sphagnum, 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 Kloon 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 Kloon would have to turn partly around to look at him.
+
+"Where the hell do we meet up with Quintana?" growled Kloon, tearing a
+mouthful from a gnawed tobacco plug and shoving the remainder deep into
+his trousers pocket.
+
+"We gotta travel a piece, yet.... Say, Jake, be you a man or be you a
+poor dumb critter what ain't got no spunk?"
+
+Kloon, chewing on his cud, turned and glanced at him. Then he spat, as
+answer.
+
+"If you got the spunk of a chipmunk you and me'll take a peek at that
+there packet. I bet you it's thousand-dollar bills--more'n a billion
+million dollars, likely."
+
+Kloon'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 Kloon spat, then, by infinitesimal degrees,
+continued to edge the muzzle toward Kloon.
+
+"Jake?"
+
+"Aw, shut your head," grumbled Kloon disdainfully. "You allus was a
+dirty rat--you sneakin' trap robber. Enough's enough. I ain't got no use
+for no billion million dollar bills. Ten thousand'll buy me all I
+cal'late to need till I'm planted. But you're like a hawg; you ain't
+never had enough o' nothin' and you won't never git enough,
+neither,--not if you wuz God a'mighty you wouldn't."
+
+"Ten thousand dollars hain't nothin' to a billion million, Jake."
+
+Kloon squirted a stream of tobacco at a pitcher plant and 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 width to the left,
+shivered, moved it again. Under his soggy, sun-tanned skin a
+pallor made his visage sickly grey.
+
+"Jake?"
+
+No answer.
+
+"Say, Jake?"
+
+No notice.
+
+"Jake, I wanta take a peek at them bills."
+
+Merely another stream of tobacco soiling the crimson pitcher.
+
+"I'm--I'm desprit. I gotta take a peek. I gotta--gotta----"
+
+Something in Leverett's unsteady voice made Kloon turn his head.
+
+"You gol rammed fool," he said, "what you doin' with your----"
+
+The loud detonation of the rifle punctuated Kloon'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 down 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 a delicate stain of vapour 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 and 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 ruddy through
+the woods. A green fly appeared, buzzing about the dead man. Another
+zig-zagged through the sunshine, lacing it with streaks 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 Kloon'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 soiled clothing which once had 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 stiff step
+toward the dead man.
+
+But as he bent over he changed his mind, turned, reeling a little, then
+crept slowly out among the pitcher-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 Kloon and, from the left inside coat pocket, he drew the
+packet and placed it inside his own flannel shirt.
+
+Then, turning his back to the dead, he squatted down and clutched
+Kloon's burly ankles, as a man grasps the handles of a wheelbarrow to
+draw it after him.
+
+Dragging, rolling, bumping over roots, Jake Kloon took his last trail
+through the wilderness, leaving a redder path than was left by the
+setting sun through fern and moss and wastes of pitcher-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 sink hole the trap-thief dropped Kloon. Then he drew his
+hunting knife and cut a tall, slim swamp maple. The sapling was about
+twenty feet in height. Leverett thrust the butt of it into the pool.
+Without any effort he pushed the entire sapling out of sight in the
+depthless silt.
+
+He had to manoeuvre very gingerly to dump Kloon into the pool and keep
+out of it himself. Finally he managed it.
+
+To his alarm, Kloon 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 suspended in the
+clouding water.
+
+Leverett went back to the little ridge and covered with dead leaves the
+spot where Kloon had lain. There were broken ferns, but he could not
+straighten them. And there lay Kloon'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 downward, 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.
+
+
+II
+
+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 dulled roar
+of returning consciousness filled his being.
+
+Somebody was shaking him, shouting at him. Suddenly instinct resumed its
+function, and he struggled madly to get away from the edge of the
+sink-hole--fought his way, blindly, through 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! Crazee fellow! What you do, eh? For why you make jumps like
+rabbits! Eh? You expec' 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 stab you. Such an ass!"
+
+The sickly greenish hue changed in Leverett's face as the warmer tide
+stirred from its stagnation. He lifted his head and tried to look at
+Quintana.
+
+"Where Jake Kloon?" demanded the latter.
+
+At that the weasel wits of the trap-robber awoke to the instant crisis.
+Blood and pulse began to jump. He passed one dirty hand over his mouth
+to mask any twitching.
+
+"Where my packet, eh?" inquired Quintana.
+
+"Jake's got it." Leverett's voice was growing stronger. His small eyes
+switched for an instant toward his rifle, where it stood against a tree
+behind Quintana.
+
+"Where is he, then, this Jake?" repeated Quintana impatiently.
+
+"He got bogged."
+
+"Bogged? What is that, then?"
+
+"He got into a sink-hole."
+
+"What!"
+
+"That's all I know," said Leverett, sullenly. "Him and me was travellin'
+hell-bent to meet up with you,--Jake, he was for a short cut to Drowned
+Valley,--but 'no,' sez I, 'gimme a good hard ridge an' a long deetoor
+when there's sink-holes into the woods----'"
+
+"What is it the talk you talk to me?" asked Quintana, whose perplexed
+features began to darken. "Where is it, my packet?"
+
+"I'm tellin' you, ain't I?" retorted the other, raising a voice now
+shrill with the strain of this new crisis rushing so unexpectedly upon
+him: "I heard Jake give a holler. 'What the hell's the trouble?' I
+yells. Then he lets out a beller, 'Save me!' he screeches, 'I'm into a
+sink-hole! The quicksand's got me,' sez he. So I drop my rifle, I
+did,--there she stands against that birch sapling!--and I run down into
+them there pitcher-plants.
+
+"'Whar be ye!' I yells. Then I listens, and don't hear nothin' only a
+kina wallerin' noise an' a slobber like he was gulpin' mud.
+
+"Then I foller them there sounds and I come out by that sink-hole. The
+water was a-shakin' all over it but Jake he had went down plum out o'
+sight. T'want no use. I cut a sapling an' I poked down. I was sick and
+scared like, so when you come up over the moss, not makin' no noise, an'
+grabbed me--God!--I guess you'd jump, too."
+
+Quintana's dark, tense face was expressionless when Leverett ventured to
+look at him. Like most liars he realised 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 toward his rifle. Quintana blocked his way.
+
+"Where my packet?"
+
+"Gol ram it! Ain't I told you? Jake had it in his pocket."
+
+"My packet?"
+
+"Yaas, yourn."
+
+"My packet, it is down in thee sink 'ole?"
+
+"You think I'm lyin'?" blustered Leverett, trying to move around
+Quintana's extended arm. The arm swerved and clutched him by the collar
+of his flannel shirt.
+
+"Wait, my frien'," said Quintana in a soft voice. "You shall explain to
+me some things before you go."
+
+"Explain what!--you gol dinged----"
+
+Quintana shook him into speechlessness.
+
+"Listen, my frien'," he continued with a terrifying smile, "I mus' ask
+you what it was, that gun-shot, which I hear while I await at Drown'
+Vallee. Eh? Who fire a gun?"
+
+"I ain't heard no gun," replied Leverett in a strangled voice.
+
+"You did not shoot? No?"
+
+"No!--damn it all----"
+
+"And Jake? He did not fire?"
+
+"No, I tell yeh----"
+
+"Ah! Someone lies. It is not me, my frien'. No. Let us examine your
+rifle----"
+
+Leverett made a rush for the gun; Quintana slung him back against the
+oak tree and thrust an automatic pistol against his chin.
+
+"Han's up, my frien'," he said gently, "--up! high up!--or someone will
+fire another shot you shall never hear.... So!... Now I search the
+other pocket.... So!... Still no packet. Bah! Not in the pants,
+either? Ah, bah! But wait! Tiens! What is this you hide inside your
+shirt----?"
+
+"I was jokin'," gasped Leverett; "--I was jest a-goin' to give it to
+you----"
+
+"Is that my packet?"
+
+"Yes. It was all in fun; I wan't a-going to steal it----"
+
+Quintana unbuttoned the grey wool shirt, thrust in his hand and drew
+forth the packet for which Jake Kloon had died within the hour.
+
+Suddenly Leverett's knees gave way and he dropped to the ground,
+grovelling at Quintana's feet in an agony of fright:
+
+"Don't hurt me," he screamed, "--I didn't meant no harm! Jake, he wanted
+me to steal it. I told him I was honest. I fired a shot to scare him,
+an' he tuk an' run off! I wan't a-goin' to steal it off you, so help me
+God! I was lookin' for you--as God is my witness----"
+
+He got Quintana by one foot. Quintana kicked him aside and backed away.
+
+"Swine," he said, calmly inspecting the whimpering creature who had
+started to crawl toward him.
+
+He hesitated, lifted his automatic, then, as though annoyed by
+Leverett's deafening shriek, shrugged, hesitated, pocketed both pistol
+and packet, and turned on his heel.
+
+By the birch sapling he paused and picked up Leverett'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 and picked
+up the empty cartridge case 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 the
+fallen leaves, revealing the mess underneath.
+
+After he had contemplated the crimson traces of murder for a few
+moments, he turned and looked at Leverett with faint curiosity.
+
+"So," he said in his leisurely, emotionless way, "you have fight with my
+frien' Jake for thee packet. Yes? Ver' 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 Valley, unhurriedly.
+
+
+III
+
+When Quintana disappeared among the tamaracks, Leverett 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 trap-robber to
+his feet, stifling the muffled yell in his throat.
+
+"I want that packet you picked up on Clinch's veranda," said Hal Smith.
+
+"M-my God," stammered Leverett, "Quintana just took it off me. He ain't
+been gone a minute----"
+
+"You lie!"
+
+"I ain't lyin'. Look at his foot-marks there in the mud!"
+
+"Quintana!"
+
+"Yaas, Quintana! He tuk my gun, too----"
+
+"Which way!" whispered Smith fiercely, shaking Leverett till his jaws
+wagged.
+
+"Drowned Valley.... Lemme loose!--I'm chokin'----"
+
+Smith pushed him aside.
+
+"You rat," he said, "if you're lying to me I'll come back and settle
+your affair. And Kloon's, too!"
+
+"Quintana shot Jake and stuck him into a sink-hole!" snivelled Leverett,
+breaking down and sobbing; "--oh, Gawd--Gawd--he's down under all that
+black mud with his brains spillin' out----"
+
+But Smith was already gone, running lightly along the string of
+footprints which led straight away across slime and sphagnum toward the
+head of Drowned Valley.
+
+In the first clump of hard-wood trees Smith saw Quintana. He had halted
+and he was fumbling at the twine which bound a 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 operations. Then, warily, he
+lifted his head and looked into the muzzle of Smith's rifle.
+
+"Ah, bah!" he said tranquilly. "There were three of you, then."
+
+"Lay that packet on the ground."
+
+"My frien'----"
+
+"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 Leverett's rifle beside the packet.
+
+"Kneel down with your hands up and your back toward me!" said Smith.
+
+"My frien'----"
+
+"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 loosened string, 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 sheathed dirk into his
+belt, placed the captured rifle handy, after examining the 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 ten 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, Señor Quintana, the interesting history of the
+jewels which so sparklingly repose in the packet in my pocket.
+
+"In the first place, as you know, Monsieur Quintana, the famous Flaming
+Jewel and the other gems contained in this packet of mine, belonged to
+Her Highness the Grand Duchess Theodorica of Esthonia.
+
+"Very interesting. More interesting still--along comes Don José Quintana
+and his celebrated gang of international thieves, and steals from the
+Grand Duchess of Esthonia the Flaming Jewel and all her rubies, emeralds
+and diamonds. Yes?"
+
+"Certainly," said Quintana, with a polite inclination of acknowledgment.
+
+"Bon! 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 baron, Sir Jacobus Kloon, swiped,--as Froissart has it,--the
+Esthonian 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?"
+
+"Gewiss."
+
+"Yes, and you got Jake Kloon, I hear," laughed Smith.
+
+"No."
+
+"Didn't you kill Kloon?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Oh, pardon. The mistake was natural. You merely robbed Kloon and
+Leverett. You should have killed them."
+
+"Yes," said Quintana slowly, "I should have. It was my mistake."
+
+"Signor Quintana, it is human for the human crook to err. Sooner or
+later he always does it. 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 to an
+amalgamation of interests with myself."
+
+"As you say, Quintana mea, 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," laughed Smith, "but not on the proceeds of this
+coup-de-main. Non pas! I am going to return this packet to its rightful
+owner, the Grand Duchess Theodorica of Esthonia. 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. And now we'll take a little inventory of
+these marvellous gems before we part.... Sit very, very still,
+Quintana,--unless you want to lie stiller 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
+ghastly fashion:
+
+"Yes," he said hoarsely, "as you have just said, sir, it is usually the
+unusual which happens in the world."
+
+
+
+
+EPISODE SIX
+
+THE JEWEL AFLAME
+
+
+I
+
+Mike Clinch and his men "drove" Star Peak, and drew a blanket covert.
+
+There was a new shanty atop, camp débris, plenty of signs of recent
+occupation everywhere,--hot embers in which offal still smouldered,
+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 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 a rotten bough 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:
+
+"O God A'mighty, in your big, swell mansion up there, all has went
+contrary with me sence you let that there damn millionaire, Harrod, come
+into this here forest.... He went and built unto hisself an
+habitation, and he put up a wall of law all around me where I was
+earnin' a lawful livin' in Thy nice, clean wilderness.... And now comes
+this here Quintana and robs my girlie.... I promised her mother I'd
+make a lady of her little Eve.... I loved my wife, O Lord.... Once she
+showed me a piece in the Bible,--I ain't never found it sence,--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 into your
+own Bible, O God! You can't go back on it. I seen it.
+
+"And now I wanta to ask, What place did you prepare for my Eve? What
+spot have you reference 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'd 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-goin' to git
+Quintana. Then I'm a-goin' to git them two minks that robbed my
+girlie,--I am!... Jake Kloon, he done it in cahoots with Earl Leverett;
+and Quintana set 'em on. And they gotta die, O Lord of Israel, them
+there Egyptians is about to hop the twig.... I ain't aimin' to be mean
+to nobody. I buy hootch of them that runs it. I eat mountain mutton in
+season and out. I trade with law-breakers, I do. But, Lord, I gotta get
+my girlie outa here; and Harrod he walled me in with the chariots and
+spears of Egypt, till I nigh went wild.... And now comes Quintana, and
+here I be a-lyin' out to get him so's my girlie can become a lady,
+same's them fine folks with all their butlers and automobiles and
+what-not----"
+
+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 slowly rose, grasping his rifle, his small, grey eyes ablaze.
+
+"Where's Quintana?" he demanded.
+
+"H'ain't you seen nobody?"
+
+"No."
+
+In the intense silence other sounds broke sharply in the sunset forest;
+Harvey Chase's halloo rang out from the rocks above; Blommers and the
+Hastings boys came slouching through the ferns.
+
+Byron Hastings greeted Clinch with upflung gun: "Me and Jim heard a shot
+away out on Drowned Valley," he announced. "Was you out that way,
+Mike?"
+
+"No."
+
+One by one the men who had driven Star Peak lounged up in the red sunset
+light, gathering around Clinch and wiping the sweat from sun-reddened
+faces.
+
+"Someone's in Drowned Valley," repeated Byron. "Them minks slid off'n
+Star in a hurry, I reckon, judgin' how they left their shanty. Phew! It
+stunk! They had French hootch, too."
+
+"Mebby Leverett and Kloon told 'em we was fixin' to visit them,"
+suggested Blommers.
+
+"They didn't know," said Clinch.
+
+"Where's Hal Smith?" inquired Hone.
+
+Clinch made no reply. Blommers 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 Blommers drily.
+
+"Not amongst them sink-holes," 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 gotta get Quintana. I can't never sleep another wink
+till 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.
+
+As they looked at him they saw his teeth.
+
+"All right, all right," growled Hone, shouldering his rifle with a jerk.
+
+The Hastings boys, young and rash, shuffled into the trail. Blommers
+hesitated, glanced askance at Clinch, and instantly made up his mind to
+take a chance with the sink-holes rather than with Clinch.
+
+"God A'mighty, Mike, what be you aimin' to do?" faltered Harvey.
+
+"I'm aimin' to stop the inlet and outlet to Drowned Valley, Harve,"
+replied Clinch in his pleasant voice. "God is a-goin' to deliver
+Quintana into my hands."
+
+"All right. What next?"
+
+"Then," continued Clinch, "I cal'late to set down and wait."
+
+"How long?"
+
+"Ask God, boys. I don't know. All I know is that whatever is livin' in
+Drowned Valley at this hour has gotta live and die there. For it can't
+never live to come outen that there morass walkin' onto two legs like a
+real man."
+
+He moved slowly along the file of sullen men, his rifle a-trail in one
+huge fist.
+
+"Boys," he said, "I got first. There ain't no sink-hole deep enough to
+drowned me while Eve needs me.... And my little girlie needs me bad....
+After she gits what's her'n, then I don't care no more...." He looked up
+into the sky, where the last ashes of sunset faded from the zenith....
+"Then I don't care," he murmured. "Like's not I'll creep away like some
+shot-up critter, n'kinda find some lone, safe spot, n'kinda fix me f'r
+a long nap.... I guess that'll be the way ... when Eve's a lady down to
+Noo York 'r'som'ers----" he added vaguely.
+
+Then, still looking up at the fading heavens, he moved forward, head
+lifted, silent, unhurried, with the soundless, stealthy, and certain
+tread of those who walk unseeing and asleep.
+
+
+II
+
+Clinch had not taken a dozen strides before Hal Smith loomed up ahead in
+the rosy dusk, driving in Leverett 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 gol-dinged catamount that suspicioned Hal? I wa'nt worried
+none, neither. Hal's a gent. Mebbe 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 gait, hustling Leverett along with
+prods from gun-butt or muzzle, as came handiest.
+
+The prisoner turned a ghastly visage on Clinch, who ignored him.
+
+"Got my packet, Hal?" he demanded.
+
+Smith poked Leverett with his rifle: "Tune up," he said; "tell Clinch
+your story."
+
+As a caged rat looks death in the face, his ratty wits working like
+lightning and every atom of cunning and ferocity alert for attack or
+escape, so the little, mean eyes of Earl Leverett became fixed on Clinch
+like two immobile and glassy beads of jet.
+
+"G'wan," said Clinch softly, "spit it out."
+
+"Jake done it," muttered Leverett, thickly.
+
+"Done what?"
+
+"Stole that there packet o' yourn--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.
+
+"Ten thousand."
+
+"How about you?"
+
+"I told 'em I wouldn't touch it. Then they pulled 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 travelled stealthily around the circle of men, then
+reverted to Clinch.
+
+"I dassn't touch it," he said, "but I dassn't squeal.... I was huntin'
+onto Drowned Valley when Jake meets up with me."
+
+"'I got the packet,' he sez, 'and I'm a-going to double criss-cross
+Quintana, I am, and beat it. Don't you wish you was whacks with me?'
+
+"'No,' sez I, 'honesty is my policy, no matter what they tell about me.
+S'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 hootch,
+same's everybody.'"
+
+He licked his lips furtively, his cold, bright eyes fastened on Clinch.
+
+"G'wan, Earl," nodded the latter, "heave her up."
+
+"That's all. I sez, 'Good-bye, Jake. An' if you heed my warnin',
+ill-gotten gains ain't a-going to prosper nobody.' That's what I said to
+Jake Kloon, 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 wa'nt
+gone ten yards when, bang! goes a gun, and I see this here Quintana come
+outen the bush, I do, and walk up to Jake and frisk him, and Jake still
+a-kickin' the moss to slivers. Yessir, that's what I seen."
+
+"G'wan."
+
+"Yessir.... 'N'then Quintana he shoved Jake into a sink-hole. Thaswot I
+seen with my two eyes. Yessir. 'N'then Quintana he run off, 'n'I jest
+set down in the trail, I did; 'n'then Hal come up and acted like I had
+stole your packet, he did; 'n'then I told him what Quintana done.
+'N'Hal, he takes after Quintana, but I don't guess he meets up with him,
+for he come back and ketched holt o' me, 'n'he druv me in like I was a
+caaf, he did. 'N'here I be."
+
+The dusk in the forest had deepened so that the men's faces had become
+mere blotches of grey.
+
+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 wa'nt nothin' 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!" he roared at Leverett, "you was into this, too,
+a-robbin' my little Eve----"
+
+"Run!" yelled somebody, giving Leverett a violent shove into the woods.
+
+In the darkness and confusion, Clinch shouldered his way out of the
+circle and fired at the crackling noise that marked Leverett's
+course,--fired again, lower, and again as a distant crash revealed the
+frenzied flight of the trap-robber. After he had fired a fourth shot,
+somebody struck up his rifle.
+
+"Aw," said Jim Hastings, "that ain't no good. You act up like a kid,
+Mike. 'Tain't so far to Ghost Lake, n'them Troopers might hear you."
+
+After a silence, Clinch spoke, his voice heavy with reaction:
+
+"Into that there packet is my little girl's dower. It's all I got to
+give her. It's all she's got to make her a lady. I'll kill any man that
+robs her or that helps rob her. 'N'that's that."
+
+"Are you going on after Quintana?" asked Smith.
+
+"I am. 'N'these fellas are a-going with me. N' I want you should go back
+to my Dump and look after my girlie while I'm gone."
+
+"How long are you going to be away?"
+
+"I dunno."
+
+There was a silence. Then,
+
+"All right," said Smith, briefly. He added: "Look out for sink-holes,
+Mike."
+
+Clinch tossed his heavy rifle to his shoulder: "Let's go," he said in
+his pleasant, misleading way, "--and I'll shoot the guts outa any fella
+that don't show up at roll call."
+
+
+III
+
+For its size there is no fiercer animal than a rat.
+
+Rat-like rage possessed Leverett. In his headlong flight through 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 Clinch's bullets
+whining around him; and he ran on, beginning to sob and curse in a
+frenzy of fury, fear, and shame.
+
+Shots from Clinch's rifle ceased; the fugitive dropped into a heavy,
+shuffling walk, slavering, gasping, gesticulating with his weaponless
+fists in the darkness.
+
+"Gol ram ye, I'll fix ye!" he kept stammering in his snarling, jangling
+voice, broken by sobs. "I'll learn ye, yeh poor danged thing, gol ram
+ye----"
+
+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 from his cheek-bone.
+
+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 stars shining faintly through
+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 shack 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--the deep,
+superstitious horror of Jake Kloon's empty bunk--the repugnant sight of
+Kloon's spare clothing hanging from its peg--the dead man's shoes----
+
+No, he could not go to Stinking Lake and sleep.... And wake with the
+faint stench of sulphur in his throat.... And see the worm-like leeches
+unfolding in the shallows, and the big, reddish water-lizards, livid as
+skinned eels, wriggling convulsively toward their sunless lairs....
+
+At the mere thought of his dead bunk-mate he sought relief in vindictive
+rage--stirred up the smouldering embers again, cursed Clinch and Hal
+Smith, violently searching 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 step-daughter. 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 lightning across his turbid mind;--_the
+packet_!
+
+Bribed by Quintana, Jake Kloon, lurking at Clinch's door, had heard him
+direct Eve to take a packet to Owl Marsh, and had notified Quintana.
+
+Wittingly or unwittingly, the girl had taken a packet of sugar-milk
+chocolate instead of the priceless parcel expected.
+
+Again, carried in, exhausted, by a State Trooper, Jake Kloon had been
+fooled; and it was the packet of sugar-milk chocolate that Jake had
+purloined from the veranda where Clinch kicked it. For two cakes of
+chocolate Kloon had died. For two cakes of chocolate he, Earl Leverett,
+had become a man-slayer, a homeless fugitive in peril of his life.
+
+He stood licking his blood-dried lips there in the darkness, striving to
+hatch courage out of the dull fury eating at a coward's heart.
+
+Somewhere in Clinch's Dump was the packet that would make him rich....
+Here was his opportunity. He had only to dare; and pain and poverty and
+fear--above all else _fear_--would end forever!...
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When, at last, he came out to the edge of Clinch's clearing, the dark
+October heavens were but a vast wilderness of stars.
+
+Star Pond, set to its limpid depths with the heavenly gems, glittered
+and darkled with its million diamond incrustations. The humped-up lump
+of Clinch's Dump crouched like some huge and feeding night-beast on the
+bank, ringed by the solemn forest.
+
+There was a kerosene lamp burning in Eve Strayer's rooms. Another
+light--a candle--flickered in the kitchen.
+
+Leverett, crouching, ran rat-like down to the barn, slid in between the
+ice house and corn-crib, crawled out among the wilderness of weeds and
+lay flat.
+
+The light burned steadily from Eve's window.
+
+
+IV
+
+From his form among frost-blackened rag-weeds, the trap-robber could see
+only the plastered ceiling of the bed chamber.
+
+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 State
+Trooper.
+
+Eve sat on her bed's edge, swathed in a lilac silk kimona--delicate
+relic of school days. Her bandaged feet, crossed, dangled above the
+rag-rug on the floor; her slim, tanned fingers were interlaced over the
+book on her lap.
+
+Near the door stood State Trooper Stormont, spurred, booted, trig and
+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
+Volsung_. Stormont had been reading to her--they having found, after the
+half shy tentatives of new friends, a point d'appui 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 mutual friends among the nobler
+Victorians--surprised to discover _Sigurd_ there--and, carrying it to
+her bedside, looked leisurely through the half forgotten pages.
+
+"Would you read a little?" she ventured.
+
+He blushed but did his best. His was an agreeable, boyish voice,
+betraying taste and understanding. Time passed quickly--not so much in
+the reading but in the conversations intervening.
+
+And now, made uneasy by chance consultation with his wrist-watch, and
+being rather a conscientious young man, he had risen and had informed
+Eve that she ought to go to sleep.
+
+And she had denounced the idea, almost fretfully.
+
+"Even if you go I shan't sleep till daddy comes," she said. "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 going to do?"
+
+"Take a chair on the landing outside your door."
+
+"What!"
+
+"Certainly. What did you expect me to do, Eve?"
+
+"Go to bed, of course. The beds in the guest rooms are all made up."
+
+"Your father didn't expect me to do that," he said, smiling.
+
+"I'm not afraid, as long as you're in the house," she said.
+
+She looked up at him again, wistfully. Perhaps he was restless, bored,
+sitting there beside her half the day, and, already, half the night. Men
+of that kind--active, nervous young men accustomed to the open, can't
+stand caging.
+
+"I want you to go out and get some fresh air," she said. "It's a
+wonderful night. Go and walk a while. And--if you feel like--coming back
+to me----"
+
+"Will you sleep?"
+
+"No, I'll wait for you."
+
+Her words were natural and direct, but in their simplicity there seemed
+a delicate sweetness that stirred him.
+
+"I'll come back to you," he said.
+
+Then, in his response, the girl in 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 and
+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 on the bed's edge, scarcely
+breathing.
+
+For the girl was beginning to dare formulate the deepest of any thoughts
+that ever had 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 when he 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
+Clinch's 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 brier
+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 instant, and saw her pale face, like a
+flower in the starlight.
+
+"Why, Eve," he said, "you ought not to 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 the step-child of Mike Clinch.
+
+Stormont had come directly under her window and stood looking up.
+
+"I dared not offer 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--as 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 that rather matter-of-fact young man, "I don't
+believe you have forgiven me after all."
+
+"I have--everything except the handkerchief----"
+
+"Then I'm coming up to complete my penance----"
+
+"I'll lock 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 your sin by
+doing--penance----" And hesitated: "Do you so desire?"
+
+"Yes, I do."
+
+"Humbly? Contritely?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Very well. Say 'Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.'"
+
+"Mea maxima culpa," 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 gaiety left her, too, suddenly,
+leaving only a still excitement in her breast.
+
+"You--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, as 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
+own 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 to-night, or
+whether, when you return, I ought to be asleep and--and my door bolted."
+
+After a long pause: "All right," he said in a low voice.
+
+
+V
+
+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 to him through the night, "I do love you! I do love you!
+Come back quickly, quickly!----"
+
+Fog hung over Star Pond, edging the veranda, rising in frail shreds to
+her window. The lapping of the water sounded very near. An 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 unstirring,
+with lowered head, awaiting Destiny.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It came, noiselessly. And so swiftly that the rush of air from her
+violently opened door was what first startled her.
+
+For in the same second Earl Leverett was upon her in his stockinged
+feet, one bony hand gripping her mouth, the other flung around her,
+pinning both arms to her sides.
+
+"The packet!" he panted, "--quick, yeh dirty little cat, 'r'I'll break
+yeh head off'n yeh 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 and quilt around
+her, swathed 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, unsheathed his
+hunting knife, and pricked her throat till the blood spurted.
+
+"Now, gol ram yeh!" he whispered fiercely, "where's Mike's packet?
+Yell, and I'll hog-stick yeh fur fair! Where is it, you dum thing!"
+
+He took his left hand from her mouth. The distorted, scarlet lips
+writhed back, displaying her white teeth clenched.
+
+"Where's Mike's bundle!" he repeated, hoarse with rage and fear.
+
+"You rat!" she gasped.
+
+At that he closed her mouth again, and again he pricked her with his
+knife, cruelly. The blood welled up onto the sheets.
+
+"Now, by God!" he said in a ghastly voice, "answer or I'll hog-stick yeh
+next time! Where is it? Where! where!"
+
+She only showed her teeth in answer. Her eyes flamed.
+
+"Where! Quick! Gol ding yeh, I'll shove this knife in behind your ear if
+you don't tell! Go on. Where is it? It's in this Dump som'ers. I know it
+is--don't lie! You want that I should stick you good? That what you
+want--you dirty little dump-slut? Well, then, gol ram yeh--I'll fix yeh
+like Quintana was aimin' at----"
+
+He slit the sheet downward from her imprisoned knees, seized one wounded
+foot and tried to slash the bandages.
+
+"I'll cut a coupla toes off'n yeh," he snarled, "--I'll hamstring yeh
+fur keeps!"--struggling to mutilate her while she flung her helpless and
+entangled body from side to side and bit at 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 it he saw a packet lying under it.
+
+"By God!" he panted.
+
+As he seized it she screamed for the first time: "Jack! Jack
+Stormont!"--and fairly hurled her helpless little body at Leverett,
+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 armour of bed-clothes turned the knife, although his
+violence dashed all 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 gasping for
+breath, she tore herself from the sheets and blankets, reeled across the
+room to where Stormont's rifle stood, threw in a cartridge, dragged
+herself to the window.
+
+Dimly she saw a running figure in the night mist, flung the rifle across
+the window sill and fired. Then she 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 at sight of her.
+
+"Eve! My God!" he whispered, taking her blood-wet body into his arms.
+
+"Go after Leverett," she gasped. "He's robbed daddy. He's running
+away--out there--somewhere----"
+
+"Where did he hurt you, Eve--my little Eve----"
+
+"Oh, go! go!" she wailed,--"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, twisting and sobbing in his arms, "don't
+lose time here with me! Don't stand here while he's running away with
+dad'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 laid her there.
+
+He said: "I couldn't risk following anybody now, after what has happened
+to you. I can't leave you alone here! 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, no! It's my fault. I sent you away. Oh, I wish I hadn't. I wish
+I had 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 was under my pillow," she wailed. "Leverett tried to make
+me tell 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 and 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 lint, sterilised the two cuts from his emergency packet, and
+bound them.
+
+He was still bending low 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.
+
+"Lie very still," he said huskily. "I'll be back in a moment to
+rebandage 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 rob me. How can I sleep?"
+
+"I'll bring you something to make you sleep."
+
+"I can't!"
+
+"I promise you you will sleep. Lie still."
+
+He rose, went away downstairs and out to the barn, where his campaign
+hat lay in 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 clutched 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 bullet had crashed through from ear to
+cheek-bone, 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."
+
+Deftly he unbandaged, bathed, dressed, and rebandaged her slim white
+feet--little wounded feet so lovely, so exquisite that his hand trembled
+as he touched them.
+
+"They're doing fine," he said cheerily. "You've half a degree of fever
+and I'm going to give you something to drink before you go to sleep----"
+
+He poured out a glass of water, dissolved two tablets, supported 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 back 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 all 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.
+
+It 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 clothed her from brow to ankle.
+
+The Flaming Jewel in its morocco casket under her pillow burned with no
+purer fire than the enchanted flame glowing in the virgin heart of Eve
+Strayer of Clinch's Dump.
+
+Thus they lay together, two lovely flaming jewels burning softly,
+steadily through the misty splendour of the night.
+
+Under a million stars, Death sprawled in squalor among the trampled
+weeds. Under the same high stars dark mountains waited; and there was a
+silvery sound of waters stirring somewhere in the mist.
+
+
+
+
+EPISODE SEVEN
+
+CLINCH'S DUMP
+
+
+I
+
+When Mike Clinch bade Hal 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
+Leverett was loose. If anything had called Trooper Stormont away, Eve
+would be alone in the house. And nobody on earth could forecast what a
+coward like Leverett 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 Harrod knew.
+
+When Jake Kloon was a young man and Darragh was a boy, Kloon had shown
+him the rocky, submerged game trail into Drowned Valley. Doubtless Kloon
+had used it in hootch running since. If ever he had told anybody else
+about it, probably he had revealed the trail to Quintana.
+
+And that was why Darragh, or Hal Smith, finally decided to return to
+Star Pond;--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 still there, how long could one
+State Trooper stand off Quintana's gang?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+No sooner had Clinch and his motley followers disappeared in the dusk
+than Smith unslung his basket-pack, fished out a big electric torch,
+flashed it tentatively, and then, reslinging the pack and taking his
+rifle in his left hand, he set off at an easy swinging stride.
+
+His course was not toward Star Pond; it was at right angles with that
+trail. For he was taking no chances. Quintana might already have left
+Drowned Valley by that 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 economise 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 towered 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 five thousand acre patch of State
+land. The ugly whine of the steam-saw 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 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 travelled 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 that rocky rivulet which was the other entrance and exit penetrating
+that immense horror of marsh and bog and depthless sink-hole known as
+Drowned Valley.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For a long while he did not dare to use his torch; but now he was
+obliged to.
+
+He 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 levelled 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 three hundred yards, counting his strides, he continued on. Then, in
+total darkness, he pocketed the torch, slid a cartridge into the breech
+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, levelled it, sent three quick
+flashes out into darkness.
+
+Instantly, close ahead, three blinding flashes broke out.
+
+For Hal Smith it all had become a question of seconds.
+
+Death lay depthless 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 little 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 is Sard?"
+
+The silence became terrible. Once the glaring light in front moved, then
+become fixed. There was a light splashing. Instantly Smith realised that
+the man in front had set his torch in a tree-crotch and was now cowering
+somewhere behind a levelled weapon. His voice came presently:
+
+"Hé! Drap-a that-a gun damn 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 coolly. "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 here to find Quintana."
+
+"How I know? Eh? Why shall I believe that? You tell-a me queeck or I
+blow-a your damn head off!"
+
+"Quintana will blow-a _your_ head off unless you take me to Sard,"
+drawled Smith.
+
+A movement might have meant death, but 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 Salzar, aren't you?"
+
+"Si! I am Salzar. 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,
+Picquet, Sanchez, Georgiades and Harry Beck,--and _you_!"
+
+After a dead 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 why you com-a here, eh?" demanded Salzar, in a less aggressive
+manner. "What-a da matt', eh?"
+
+"Well," said Smith, "if you've got to know, there are people from
+Esthonia in New York.... If you understand that."
+
+"Christi! When do 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 his papers. City, State, and Federal
+officers are looking for him. The Constabulary rode into Ghost Lake
+yesterday. Now, don't you think you'd better lead me to Sard?"
+
+"Cristi!" exclaimed Salzar. "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? Cristi! What to do? What you say I
+should do, eh, Abrams?"
+
+A new fear had succeeded the old one--that was evident--and Salzar came
+forward into the light of his own fixed torch--a well-knit figure in
+slouch hat, grey shirt, and grey breeches, and wearing a red bandanna
+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! Si! Where you say those carbinieri? Eh?"
+
+"At Ghost Lake. _Your_ signature is in the hotel ledger."
+
+"Cristi! You know where Clinch is?"
+
+"You know, too. He is on the way to Drowned Valley."
+
+"Damn! I knew it. Quintana also. You know where is Quintana? And Sard? I
+tell-a you. They march ver' fast to the Dump of Clinch. Si! And there
+they would discover these-a beeg-a dimon'--these-a Flame-Jewel. Si!
+_Now_, you tell-a me what I do?"
+
+Smith said slowly: "If Quintana is marching on Clinch's he's marching
+into a trap!"
+
+Salzar blanched above his bandanna.
+
+"The State Troopers are there," said Smith. "They'll get him sure."
+
+"Cristi," faltered Salzar, "--then they are gobble--Quintana, Sard,
+everybody! Si?"
+
+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 Drowned
+Valley."
+
+He picked up his rifle, stood a moment in troubled 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 Drowned Valley."
+
+Suddenly Salzar tore the bandanna from his face, flung it down and
+stamped on it.
+
+"What I tell Quintana!" he yelled, his features distorted with rage. "I
+don't-a like!--no, not me!--no, I tell-a heem, stay at those Ghost-a
+Lake and watch thees-a fellow Clinch. Si! Not for me thees-a wood. No! I
+spit upon it! I curse like hell! I tell Quintana I don't-a like. Now,
+eet is trouble that comes and we lose-a out! Damn! _Damn!_ Me, I find me
+Beck. You shall say to José Quintana how he is a damfool. Me, I am
+finish--me, Nick Salzar! 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-a heem he is the bigg-a fool! You
+tell-a heem Nick Salzar is no damn fool. No! Adios, my frien' Abrams. I
+beat it. I save my skin!"
+
+Once more Salzar turned and headed for Drowned 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.
+
+"Salzar!" he called sharply.
+
+The man halted and looked around.
+
+"Come back!"
+
+Salzar hesitated, turned finally, slouched toward him.
+
+Smith laid aside his pack and rifle, and, as Salzar came up, he quietly
+took his weapon from him and laid it beside his own.
+
+"What-a da matt'?" demanded Salzar, astonished. "Why you taka my gun?"
+
+Smith measured him. They were well matched.
+
+"Set your torch in that crotch," he said.
+
+Salzar, puzzled and impatient, demanded to know why. Smith took both
+torches, set them opposite each other and drew Salzar into the white
+glare.
+
+"Now," he said, "you dirty desperado, I am going to try to kill you
+clean. Look out for yourself!"
+
+For a second Salzar stood rooted in blank astonishment.
+
+"I'm one of Clinch's 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; Salzar was on him, clawing, biting,
+kicking, striving to strangle him, to wrestle him off his feet. Smith
+reeled, staggering under the sheer rush of the man, almost blinded by
+blows, clutched, bewildered in Salzar's panther grip.
+
+For a moment he writhed there, searching blindly for his enemy's wrist,
+striving to avoid the teeth that snapped at his throat, stifled by the
+hot stench of the man's breath in his face.
+
+"I keel you! I keel you! Damn! Damn!" panted Salzar, in convulsive fury
+as Smith freed his left arm and struck him in the face.
+
+Now, on the narrow, wet and slippery strip of rock they swayed to and
+fro, murderously interlocked, their heavy boots splashing, battling with
+limb and body.
+
+Twice Salzar forced Smith outward over the sink, trying to end it, but
+could not free himself.
+
+Once, too, he managed to get at a hidden knife, drag it out and stab at
+head and throat; but Smith caught the fist that wielded it, forced back
+the arm, held it while Salzar screamed at him, lunging at his face with
+bared teeth.
+
+Suddenly the end came: Salzar's body heaved upward, sprawled for an
+instant in the dazzling glare, hurtled over Smith's head and fell into
+the sink with a crashing splash.
+
+Frantically 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 a tamarack,
+sickened.
+
+After all sound had ceased he straightened up with an effort. Presently
+he bent and recovered Salzar's red bandanna and his hat, lifted his own
+rifle and pack and struggled into the harness. Then, kicking Salzar'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 noises
+in the mud, the deadened flopping of the sinking body--mud-plastered
+hands beating frantically on mud, spattering, agonising in darkness--"My
+God," he breathed, "anything but that--anything but that!----"
+
+
+II
+
+Before midnight he struck the hard forest. Here there was no trail at
+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 Clinch's 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 bandanna was still wet, but he tied it 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 the people ahead were moving without much
+caution, evidently fearing no unfriendly ear or eye in that section of
+the wilderness.
+
+Smith could hear their tread on rock and root and rotten branch, or
+swishing through frosted fern and brake, 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 trunks, spread out,
+fanlike, 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 lustre
+over the pond, turning the mist to a silvery splendour.
+
+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 travelling in single file; he had a glimpse of them against
+the ghostly radiance ahead. Indeed, so near had he approached that he
+could hear the heavy, laboured 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 from the
+clearing. Through the trees starlight glimmered on water. The perfume of
+the open land grew in the night air,--the 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 now,--spectral
+shapes against the light. There were five of them at the forest's 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 sheered 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 wood's edge, crouched,
+and looked down.
+
+Below stood Clinch's 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 out-buildings.
+
+Smith crept after him through the sumacs; and, at the foot of the slope,
+squatted low in a clump of rag-weed.
+
+So close to the house was he now that he could hear the dew rattling on
+the veranda 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 out-buildings, very silent about whatever he had on
+hand.
+
+The stillness was absolute save for the drumming dew and a faint ripple
+from the water's edge.
+
+Smith crouched, listened, searched the starlight with intent eyes, and
+waited.
+
+Until something happened he could not solve the problem before him. He
+could be of no use to Eve Strayer and to Stormont until he found out
+what Quintana was going to do.
+
+He could be of little use anyway unless he got into the house, where two
+rifles might hold out 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 the 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 Clinch's prepared to reveal himself to Stormont,
+and then, masked to the eyes--and to save Eve from a broken heart, and
+Clinch from States 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 realised it thoroughly.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A slight sound from one of the out-houses--a sort of
+wagon-shed--attracted his attention. Through the frost-blighted
+rag-weeds he peered intently, listening.
+
+After a few moments a faint glow appeared in the shed. There was a
+crackling noise. The glow grew pinker.
+
+
+III
+
+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 at the kitchen door and
+his spurred boots 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 afire.
+
+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, and 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, recognised 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 darkness, she wriggled out, somehow, leaving her blanket
+wrapped in their clutches. In another instant she was up the stairs
+again, only to discover that the rifle was gone.
+
+The red glare from the wagon-house lighted her bedroom; she sprang
+inside and bolted the door.
+
+Her chamois jacket with its loops full of cartridges hung on a peg. She
+got into it, seized her rifle and 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.
+
+The blows upon her bedroom door had ceased; there came a loud trampling,
+the sound of excited voices; Quintana's sarcastic tones, clear,
+dominant:
+
+"Dios! The police! Why you bring me this gendarme? What am I to do with
+a gentleman of the Constabulary, eh? Do you think I am fool enough to
+cut his throat? Well, Señor Gendarme, 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 this house."
+
+"So?" said Quintana. "Well, that is what I expec', my frien'. It is
+thees lady upon whom I do myse'f the honour to call!"
+
+Eve, listening, 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.... Nor for any of you, if you harm her."
+
+"Calm youse'f, my frien'," said Quintana. "I demand of thees young lady
+only that she return to me the property of which I have been rob by
+Monsieur Clinch."
+
+"I knew nothing of any theft. Nor does she----"
+
+"Pardon; Señor Clinch knows; and I know." His tone changed, offensively:
+"Señor Gendarme, am I permit to understan' that you are a frien' of
+thees young lady?--a heart-frien', per'aps----"
+
+"I am her friend," said Stormont bluntly.
+
+"Ah," said Quintana, "then you shall persuade her to return to me thees
+packet of which Monsieur Clinch has rob me."
+
+There was a short silence, then Quintana's voice again:
+
+"I know thees packet is concel in thees house. Peaceably, if possible, I
+would recover my property.... If she refuse----"
+
+Another pause.
+
+"Well?" inquired Stormont, coolly.
+
+"Ah! It is ver' painful to say. Alas, Señor Gendarme, I mus' have my
+property.... If she refuse, then I mus' sever one of her pretty
+fingers.... An' if she still refuse--I sever her pretty fingers, one by
+one, until----"
+
+"You know what would happen to _you_?" interrupted Stormont, in a voice
+that quivered in spite of himself.
+
+"I take my chance. Señor Gendarme, she is within that room. If you are
+her frien', you shall advise her to return to me my property."
+
+After another silence:
+
+"Eve!" he called sharply.
+
+She placed her lips to the door: "Yes, Jack."
+
+He said: "There are five masked men out here who say that 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 and
+plenty of ammunition. 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, señorita!--or I cut from your frien',
+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 night-dress.
+
+Quintana made her an elaborate and ironical bow, slouch hat in hand;
+another masked man took her rifle.
+
+"Señorita," said Quintana with another sweep of his hat, "I ask pardon
+that I trouble you for my packet of which your father has rob me for
+ver' long time."
+
+Slowly the girl lifted her blue eyes to Stormont. He was standing
+between two masked men. Their pistols were pressed slightly against his
+stomach.
+
+Stormont reddened painfully:
+
+"It was not for myself that I let you open your 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 gendarme who had--_accorded me his hand_!"
+
+Two of the masked men laughed loudly.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Outside in the rag-weed patch, Smith rose, stole across the grass to the
+kitchen door and slipped inside.
+
+"Now, señorita," said Quintana gaily, "my packet, if you please,--and we
+leave you to the caresses of your faithful gendarme,--who should thank
+God that he still possesses two good hands to fondle you! Alons! Come
+then! My packet!"
+
+One of the masked men said: "Take her downstairs and lock her up
+somewhere or she'll shoot us from her window."
+
+"Lead out that gendarme, too!" added Quintana, grasping Eve by the arm.
+
+Down the stairs tramped the men, forcing their prisoners with them.
+
+In the big kitchen the glare from the burning out-house 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 sombre shadows,
+then, slowly, 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 through the doorway, and ran toward the barn.
+
+Somebody recognised the hat and red bandanna:
+
+"Salzar!" he yelled. "Nick Salzar!"
+
+"A traitor, by God!" shouted Quintana. Even before he had reached the
+door, his pistol flashed twice, deafening all in 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, slammed the pantry door
+and bolted it.
+
+Through the iron bars of the pantry window, Stormont saw a man, wearing
+a red bandanna tied under his eyes, run up and 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 Star Pond, 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, hallooing 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 unstirring, every atom of intelligence in
+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 bars, striving to catch a glimpse of
+what was going on. Eve crouched at the pantry doors, her face in her
+hands, listening.
+
+Suddenly she heard Quintana's 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 and tried to open it.
+
+"Come out," he said coldly, "or it will not go well with you when my men
+return."
+
+"You've got what you say is your property," replied. Stormont. "What do
+you want now?"
+
+"I tell you what I want ver' damn quick. Who was he, thees man who rides
+with my property on your horse away? Eh? Because it was not Nick Salzar!
+No! Salzar can not ride thees way. No! Alors?"
+
+"I can't tell you who he was," replied Stormont. "That's your affair,
+not ours."
+
+"No? Ah! Ver' well, then. I shall tell you, Señor Flic! He was one of
+_yours_. I understan'. It is a trap, a cheat--what you call a _plant_!
+Thees man who rode your horse he is disguise! Yes! He also is a
+gendarme! Yes! You think I let a gendarme rob me? I got you where I want
+you now. You shall write your gendarme frien' that he return to me my
+property, _one day's time_, or I send him by parcel post two nice,
+fresh-out right-hands--your sweetheart's and your own!"
+
+Stormont drew Eve's head close to his:
+
+"This man is blood mad or 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
+hootch 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.
+
+"You open thees 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, two hundred feet away.
+
+Now, as she straightened up and looked silently at Stormont, they heard
+the trample of boots in the kitchen, voices, 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 colour swept her
+face. But 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 ears, Stormont slid into the
+smooth tunnel.
+
+In an instant he was shooting down a polished toboggan slide, and in
+another moment was under the icy water of Star Pond.
+
+Shocked, blinded, fighting his way to the surface, he felt his spurred
+boots dragging at 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 his 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 lithely
+through the chilled water, which washed his body to the nostrils and
+numbed his legs till he could scarcely move them.
+
+And 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 up 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,--and, among them, one great, flashing gem blazing in the
+starlight,--the Flaming Jewel!
+
+Like a naiad of the lake she stood, white, slim, silent, the heaped gems
+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 into
+your pocket?"
+
+
+
+
+EPISODE EIGHT
+
+CUP AND LIP
+
+
+I
+
+Two miles beyond Clinch's Dump, Hal Smith pulled Stormont's horse to a
+walk. He was tremendously excited.
+
+With naïve sincerity he believed that what he had done on the spur of
+the moment had been the only thing to do.
+
+By snatching the Flaming Jewel from Quintana's very fingers he had
+diverted that vindictive bandit's fury from Eve, from Clinch, from
+Stormont, and had centred it upon himself.
+
+More than that, he had sown the seeds of suspicion among Quintana's own
+people. They never could discover Salzar's body. Always they must
+believe that it was Nicolas Salzar and no other who so treacherously
+robbed them, and who rode away in a rain of bullets, shaking the
+emblazoned morocco case above his masked head in triumph, derision and
+defiance.
+
+At the recollection of what had happened, Hal Smith drew bridle, and,
+sitting his saddle there in the false dawn, threw back his handsome head
+and laughed until the fading stars overhead swam in his eyes through
+tears of sheerest mirth.
+
+For he was still young enough to have had the time of his life. Nothing
+in the Great War had so thrilled him. For, in what had just happened,
+there was humour. There had been none in the Great Grim Drama.
+
+Still, Smith began to realise that he had taken the long, long chance of
+the opportunist who rolls the bones with Death. He had kept his pledge
+to the little Grand Duchess. It was a clean job. It was even good
+drama----
+
+The picturesque angle of the affair shook Hal Smith with renewed
+laughter. As a moving picture hero he thought himself the funniest thing
+on earth.
+
+From the time he had poked a pistol against Sard's fat paunch, to this
+bullet-pelted ride for life, life had become one ridiculously exciting
+episode after another.
+
+He had come through like the hero in a best-seller.... Lacking only a
+heroine.... If there had been any heroine it was Eve Strayer. Drama had
+gone wrong in that detail.... So perhaps, after all, it was real life
+he had been living and not drama. Drama, for the masses, must have a
+definite beginning and ending. Real life lacks the latter. In life
+nothing is finished. It is always a premature curtain which is yanked by
+that doddering old stage-hand, Johnny Death.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Smith sat his saddle, thinking, beginning to be sobered now by the
+inevitable reaction which follows excitement and mirth as relentlessly
+as care dogs the horseman.
+
+He had had a fine time,--save for the horror of the Rocktrail.... He
+shuddered.... Anyway, at worst he had not shirked a clean deal in that
+ghastly game.... It was God's mercy that he was not lying where Salzar
+lay, ten feet--twenty--a hundred deep, perhaps--in immemorial slime----
+
+He shook himself in his saddle as though to be rid of the creeping
+horror, and wiped his clammy face.
+
+Now, in the false dawn, a blue-jay awoke somewhere among the oaks and
+filled the misty silence with harsh grace-notes.
+
+Then reaction, setting in like a tide, stirred more sombre depths in the
+heart of this young man.
+
+He thought of Riga; and of the Red Terror; of murder at noon-day, and
+outrage by night. He remembered his only encounter with a lovely
+child--once Grand Duchess of Esthonia--then a destitute refugee in
+silken rags.
+
+What a day that had been.... Only one day and one evening.... And
+never had he been so near in love in all his life....
+
+That one day and evening had been enough for her to confide to an
+American officer her entire life's history.... Enough for him to pledge
+himself to her service while life endured.... And if emotion had swept
+every atom of reason out of his youthful head, there in the turmoil and
+alarm--there in the terrified, riotous city jammed with refugees,
+reeking with disease, half frantic from famine and the filthy, rising
+flood of war--if really it all had been merely romantic impulse, ardour
+born of overwrought sentimentalism, nevertheless, what he had pledged
+that day to a little Grand Duchess in rags, he had fulfilled to the
+letter within the hour.
+
+As the false dawn began to fade, he loosened hunting coat and cartridge
+sling, drew from his shirt-bosom the morocco case.
+
+It bore the arms and crest of the Grand Duchess Theodorica of Esthonia.
+
+His fingers trembled slightly as he pressed the jewelled spring. It
+opened on an empty casket.
+
+In the sudden shock of horror and astonishment, his convulsive clutch on
+the spring started a tiny bell ringing. Then, under his very nose, the
+empty tray slid aside revealing another tray underneath, set solidly
+with brilliants. A rainbow glitter streamed from the unset gems in the
+silken tray. Like an incredulous child he touched them. They were
+magnificently real.
+
+In the centre lay blazing the great Erosite gem,--the Flaming Jewel
+itself. Priceless diamonds, sapphires, emeralds ringed it. In his hands
+he held nearly four millions of dollars.
+
+Gingerly he balanced the emblazoned case, fascinated. Then he replaced
+the empty tray, closed the box, thrust it into the bosom of his flannel
+shirt and buttoned it in.
+
+Now there was little more for this excited young man to do. He was
+through with Clinch. Hal Smith, hold-up man and dish-washer at Clinch's
+Dump, had ended his career. The time had now arrived for him to vanish
+and make room for James Darragh.
+
+Because there still remained a very agreeable rôle for Darragh to play.
+And he meant to eat it up--as Broadway has it.
+
+For by this time the Grand Duchess of Esthonia--Ricca, as she was called
+by her companion, Valentine, the pretty Countess Orloff-Strelwitz--must
+have arrived in New York.
+
+At the big hunting lodge of the late Henry Harrod--now inherited by
+Darragh--there might be a letter--perhaps a telegram--the cue for Hal
+Smith to vanish and for James Darragh to enter, play his brief but
+glittering part, and----
+
+Darragh's sequence of pleasing meditations halted abruptly.... To walk
+out of the life of the little Grand Duchess did not seem to suit his
+ideas--indefinite and hazy as they were, so far.
+
+He lifted the bridle from the horse's neck, divided curb and snaffle
+thoughtfully, touched the splendid animal with heel and knee.
+
+As he cantered on into the wide forest road that led to his late uncle's
+abode, curiosity led him to wheel into a narrower trail running east
+along Star Pond, and from whence he could take a farewell view of
+Clinch's Dump.
+
+He smiled to think of Eve and Stormont there together, and now in safety
+behind bolted doors and shutters.
+
+He grinned to think of Quintana and his precious crew, blood-crazy,
+baffled, probably already distrusting one another, yet running wild
+through the night like starving wolves galloping at hazard across a
+famine-stricken waste.
+
+"Only wait till Stormont makes his report," he thought, grinning more
+broadly still. "Every State Trooper north of Albany will be after Señor
+Quintana. Some hunting! And, if he could understand, Mike Clinch might
+thank his stars that what I've done this night has saved him his skin
+and Eve a broken heart!"
+
+He drew his horse to a walk, now, for the path began to run closer to
+Star Pond, skirting the pebbled shallows in the open just ahead.
+
+Alders still concealed the house across the lake, but the trail was
+already coming out into the starlight.
+
+Suddenly his horse stopped short, trembling, its ears pricked forward.
+
+Darragh sat listening intently for a moment. Then with infinite
+caution, he leaned over the cantle and gently parted the alders.
+
+On the pebbled beach, full in the starlight, stood two figures, one
+white and slim, the other dark.
+
+The arm of the dark figure clasped the waist of the white and slender
+one.
+
+Evidently they had heard his horse, for they stood motionless, looking
+directly at the alders behind which his horse had halted.
+
+To turn might mean a shot in the back as far as Darragh knew. He was
+still masked with Salzar's red bandanna. He raised his rifle, slid a
+cartridge into the breech, pressed his horse forward with a slight touch
+of heel and knee, and rode slowly out into the star-dusk.
+
+What Stormont saw was a masked man, riding his own horse, with menacing
+rifle half lifted for a shot! What Eve Strayer thought she saw was too
+terrible for words. And before Stormont could prevent her she sprang in
+front of him, covering his body with her own.
+
+At that the horseman tore off his red mask:
+
+"Eve! Jack Stormont! What the devil are you doing over _here_?"
+
+Stormont walked slowly up to his own horse, laid one unsteady hand on
+its silky nose, kept it there while dusty, velvet lips mumbled and
+caressed his fingers.
+
+"I knew it was a cavalryman," he said quietly. "I suspected you, Jim. It
+was the sort of crazy thing you were likely to do.... I don't ask you
+what you're up to, where you've been, what your plans may be. If you
+needed me you'd have told me.
+
+"But I've got to have my horse for Eve. Her feet are wounded. She's in
+her night-dress and wringing wet. I've got to set her on my horse and
+try to take her through to Ghost Lake."
+
+Darragh stared at Stormont, at the ghostly figure of the girl who had
+sunk down on the sand at the lake's edge. Then he scrambled out of the
+saddle and handed over the bridle.
+
+"Quintana came back," said Stormont. "I hope to reckon with him some
+day.... I believe he came back to harm Eve.... We got out of the
+house.... We swam the lake.... I'd have gone under except for her----"
+
+In his distress and overwhelming mortification, Darragh stood miserable,
+mute, irresolute.
+
+Stormont seemed to understand: "What you did, Jim, was well meant," he
+said. "I understand. Eve will understand when I tell her. But that
+fellow Quintana is a devil. You can't draw a herring across any trail he
+follows. I tell you, Jim, this fellow Quintana is either blood-mad or
+just plain crazy. Somebody will have to put him out of the way. I'll do
+it if I ever find him."
+
+"Yes.... Your people ought to do that.... Or, if you like, I'll
+volunteer.... I've a little business to transact in New York, first....
+Jack, your tunic and breeches are soaked; I'll be glad to chip in
+something for Eve.... Wait a moment----"
+
+He stepped into cover, drew the morocco box from his grey shirt, shoved
+it into his hip pocket.
+
+Then he threw off his cartridge belt and hunting coat, pulled the grey
+shirt over his head and came out in his undershirt and breeches, with
+the other garments hanging over his arm.
+
+"Give her these," he said. "She can button the coat around her waist
+for a skirt. She'd better go somewhere and get out of that soaking-wet
+night-dress----"
+
+Eve, crouched on the sand, trying to wring out and twist up her drenched
+hair, looked up at Stormont as he came toward her holding out Darragh's
+dry clothing.
+
+"You'd better do what you can with these," he said, trying to speak
+carelessly.... "_He_ says you'd better chuck--what you're wearing----"
+
+She nodded in flushed comprehension. Stormont walked back to his horse,
+his boots slopping water at every stride.
+
+"I don't know any place nearer than Ghost Lake Inn," he said ... "except
+Harrod's."
+
+"That's where we're going, Jack," said Darragh cheerfully.
+
+"That's _your_ place, isn't it?"
+
+"It is. But I don't want Eve to know it.... I think it better she
+should not know me except as Hal Smith--for the present, anyway. You'll
+see to that, won't you?"
+
+"As you wish, Jim.... Only, if we go to your own house----"
+
+"We're not going to the main house. She wouldn't, anyway. Clinch has
+taught that girl to hate the very name of Harrod--hate every foot of
+forest that the Harrod game keepers patrol. She wouldn't cross my
+threshold to save her life."
+
+"I don't understand, but--it's all right--whatever _you_ say, Jim."
+
+"I'll tell you the whole business some day. But where I'm going to take
+you now is into a brand new camp which I ordered built last spring. It's
+within a mile of the State Forest border. Eve won't know that it's
+Harrod property. I've a hatchery there and the State lets me have a man
+in exchange for free fry. When I get there I'll post my man.... It will
+be a roof for to-night, anyway, and breakfast in the morning, whenever
+you're ready."
+
+"How far is it?"
+
+"Only about three miles east of here."
+
+"That's the thing to do, then," said Stormont bluntly.
+
+He dropped one sopping-wet sleeve over his horse's neck, taking care not
+to touch the saddle. He was thinking of the handful of gems in his
+pocket; and he wondered why Darragh had said nothing about the empty
+case for which he had so recklessly risked his life.
+
+What this whole business was about Stormont had no notion. But he knew
+Darragh. That was sufficient to leave him tranquil, and perfectly
+certain that whatever Darragh was doing must be the right thing to do.
+
+Yet--Eve had swum Star Pond with her mouth filled with jewels.
+
+When she had handed the morocco box to Quintana, Stormont now realised
+that she must have played her last card on the utterly desperate chance
+that Quintana might go away without examining the case.
+
+Evidently she had emptied the case before she left her room. He
+recollected that, during all that followed, Eve had not uttered a single
+word. He knew why, now. How could she speak with her mouth full of
+diamonds?
+
+A slight sound from the shore caused him to turn. Eve was coming toward
+him in the dusk, moving painfully on her wounded feet. Darragh's flannel
+shirt and his hunting coat buttoned around her slender waist clothed
+her.
+
+The next instant he was beside her, lifting her in both arms.
+
+As he placed her in the saddle and adjusted one stirrup to her bandaged
+foot, she turned and quietly thanked Darragh for the clothing.
+
+"And that was a brave thing you did," she added, "--to risk your life
+for my father's property. Because the morocco case which you saved
+proved to be empty does not make what you did any the less loyal and
+gallant."
+
+Darragh gazed at her, astounded; took the hand she stretched out to him;
+held it with a silly expression on his features.
+
+"Hal Smith," she said with perceptible emotion, "I take back what I once
+said to you on Owl Marsh. No man is a real crook by nature who did what
+you have done. That is 'faithfulness unto death'--the supreme
+offer--loyalty----"
+
+Her voice broke; she pressed Darragh's hand convulsively and her lip
+quivered.
+
+Darragh, with the morocco case full of jewels buttoned into his hip
+pocket, stood motionless, mutely swallowing his amazement.
+
+What in the world did this girl mean, talking about an _empty_ case?
+
+But this was no time to unravel that sort of puzzle. He turned to
+Stormont who, as perplexed as he, had been listening in silence.
+
+"Lead your horse forward," he said. "I know the trail. All you need do
+is to follow me." And, shouldering his rifle, he walked leisurely into
+the woods, the cartridge belt sagging _en bandouliere_ across his
+woollen undershirt.
+
+
+II
+
+When Stormont gently halted his horse it was dawn, and Eve, sagging
+against him with one arm around his neck, sat huddled up on her saddle
+fast asleep.
+
+In a birch woods, on the eastern slope of the divide, stood the log
+camp, dimly visible in the silvery light of early morning.
+
+Darragh, cautioning Stormont with a slight gesture, went forward,
+mounted the rustic veranda, and knocked at a lighted window.
+
+A man, already dressed, came and peered out at him, then hurried to open
+the door.
+
+"I didn't know you, Captain Darragh----" he began, but fell silent under
+the warning gesture that checked him.
+
+"I've a guest outside. She's Clinch's step-daughter, Eve Strayer. She
+knows me by the name of Hal Smith. Do you understand?"
+
+"Yes, sir----"
+
+"Cut _that_ out, too. I'm Hal Smith to you, also. State Trooper Stormont
+is out there with Eve Strayer. He was a comrade of mine in Russia. I'm
+Hal Smith to him, by mutual agreement. _Now_ do you get me, Ralph?"
+
+"Sure, Hal. Go on; spit it out!"
+
+They both grinned.
+
+"You're a hootch runner," said Darragh. "This is your shack. The
+hatchery is only a blind. That's all you have to know, Ralph. So put
+that girl into my room and let her sleep till she wakes of her own
+accord.
+
+"Stormont and I will take two of the guest-bunks in the _L._ And for
+heaven's sake make us some coffee when you make your own. But first come
+out and take the horse."
+
+They went out together. Stormont lifted Eve out of the saddle. She did
+not wake. Darragh led the way into the log house and along a corridor to
+his own room.
+
+"Turn down the sheets," whispered Stormont. And, when the bed was ready:
+"Can you get a bath towel, Jim?"
+
+Darragh fetched one from the connecting bath-room.
+
+"Wrap it around her wet hair," whispered Stormont. "Good heavens, I wish
+there were a woman here."
+
+"I wish so too," said Darragh; "she's chilled to the bone. You'll have
+to wake her. She can't sleep in what she's wearing; it's almost as damp
+as her hair----"
+
+He went to the closet and returned with a man's morning robe, as soft as
+fleece.
+
+"Somehow or other she's got to get into that," he said.
+
+There was a silence.
+
+"Very well," said Stormont, reddening.... "If you'll step out
+I'll--manage...." He looked Darragh straight in the eyes: "I have asked
+her to marry me," he said.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Stormont came out a great fire of birch-logs was blazing in the
+living-room, and Darragh stood there, his elbow on the rough stone
+mantel-shelf.
+
+Stormont came straight to the fire and set one spurred boot on the
+fender.
+
+"She's warm and dry and sound asleep," he said. "I'll wake her again if
+you think she ought to swallow something hot."
+
+At that moment the fish-culturist came in with a pot of steaming coffee.
+
+"This is my friend, Ralph Wier," said Darragh. "I think you'd better
+give Eve a cup of coffee." And, to Wier, "Fill a couple of hot water
+bags, old chap. We don't want any pneumonia in this house."
+
+When breakfast was ready Eve once more lay asleep with a slight dew of
+perspiration on her brow.
+
+Darragh was half starved: Stormont ate little. Neither spoke at all
+until, satisfied, they rose, ready for sleep.
+
+At the door of his room Stormont took Darragh's offered hand,
+understanding what it implied:
+
+"Thanks, Jim.... Hers is the loveliest character I have ever known....
+If I weren't as poor as a homeless dog I'd marry her to-morrow.... I'll
+do it anyway, I think.... I _can't_ let her go back to Clinch's Dump!"
+
+"After all," said Darragh, smiling, "if it's only money that worries
+you, why not talk about a job to _me_!"
+
+Stormont flushed heavily: "That's rather wonderful of you, Jim----"
+
+"Why? You're the best officer I had. Why the devil did you go into the
+Constabulary without talking to me?"
+
+Stormont's upper lip seemed inclined to twitch but he controlled it and
+scowled at space.
+
+"Go to bed, you darned fool," said Darragh, carelessly. "You'll find dry
+things ready. Ralph will take care of your uniform and boots."
+
+Then he went into his own quarters to read two letters which, conforming
+to arrangements made with Mrs. Ray the day he had robbed Emanuel Sard,
+were to be sent to Trout Lodge to await his arrival.
+
+Both, written from the Ritz, bore the date of the day before: the first
+he opened was from the Countess Orloff-Strelwitz:
+
+    "Dear Captain Darragh,
+
+    "--You are so wonderful! Your messenger, with the _ten_ thousand
+    dollars which you say you already have recovered from those
+    miscreants who robbed Ricca, came aboard our ship before we
+    landed. It was a godsend; we were nearly penniless,--and oh,
+    _so_ shabby!
+
+    "Instantly, my friend, we shopped, Ricca and I. Fifth Avenue
+    enchanted us. All misery was forgotten in the magic of that
+    paradise for women.
+
+    "Yet, spendthrifts that we naturally are, we were not silly
+    enough to be extravagant. Ricca was wild for American
+    sport-clothes. I, also. Yet--only _two_ gowns apiece, excepting
+    our sport clothes. And other necessaries. Don't you think we
+    were economical?"
+
+    "Furthermore, dear Captain Darragh, we are hastening to follow
+    your instructions. We are leaving to-day for your château in the
+    wonderful forest, of which you told us that
+    never-to-be-forgotten day in Riga.
+
+    "Your agent is politeness, consideration and kindness itself. We
+    have our accommodations. We leave New York at midnight.
+
+    "Ricca is so excited that it is difficult for her to restrain
+    her happiness. God knows the child has seen enough unhappiness
+    to quench the gaiety of anybody!
+
+    "Well, all things end. Even tears. Even the Red Terror shall
+    pass from our beloved Russia. For, after all, Monsieur, God
+    still lives.
+
+            "VALENTINE."
+
+    "P. S. Ricca has written to you. I have read the letter. I have
+    let it go uncensored."
+
+Darragh went to the door of his room:
+
+"Ralph! Ralph!" he called. And, when Wier hurriedly appeared:
+
+"What time does the midnight train from New York get into Five Lakes?"
+
+"A little before nine----"
+
+"You can make it in the flivver, can't you?"
+
+"Yes, if I start _now_."
+
+"All right. Two ladies. You're to bring them to the _house_, not
+_here_. Mrs. Ray knows about them. And--get back here as soon as you
+can."
+
+He closed his door again, sat down on the bed and opened the other
+letter. His hand shook as he unfolded it. He was so scared and excited
+that he could scarcely decipher the angular, girlish penmanship:
+
+    "To dear Captain Darragh, our champion and friend--
+
+    "It is difficult for me, Monsieur, to express my happiness and
+    my deep gratitude in the so cold formality of the written page.
+
+    "Alas, sir, it will be still more difficult to find words for it
+    when again I have the happiness of greeting you in proper
+    person.
+
+    "Valentine has told you everything, she warns me, and I am,
+    therefore, somewhat at a loss to know what I should write to
+    you.
+
+    "Yet, I know very well what I would write if I dare. It is this:
+    that I wish you to know--although it may not pass the
+    censor--that I am most impatient to see you, Monsieur. _Not_
+    because of kindness past, nor with an unworthy expectation of
+    benefits to come. But because of friendship,--_the deepest,
+    sincerest of my_ WHOLE LIFE.
+
+    "Is it not modest of a young girl to say this? Yes, surely all
+    the world which was once _en régle_, formal, artificial, has
+    been burnt out of our hearts by this so frightful calamity which
+    has overwhelmed the world with fire and blood.
+
+    "If ever on earth there was a time when we might venture to
+    express with candour what is hidden within our minds and hearts,
+    it would seem, Monsieur, that the time is now.
+
+    "True, I have known you only for one day and one evening. Yet,
+    what happened to the world in that brief space of time--and to
+    us, Monsieur--brought _us_ together as though our meeting were
+    but a blessed reunion after the happy intimacy of many years....
+    I speak, Monsieur, for myself. May I hope that I speak, also,
+    for you?
+
+    "With a heart too full to thank you, and with expectations
+    indescribable--but with courage, always, for any event,--I take
+    my leave of you at the foot of this page. Like death--I
+    trust--my adieu is not the end, but the beginning. It is not
+    farewell; it is a greeting to him whom I most honour in all the
+    world.... And would willingly obey if he shall command. And
+    otherwise--_all_ else that in his mind--and heart--he might
+    desire.
+
+            "THEODORICA."
+
+It was the most beautiful love-letter any man ever received in all the
+history of love.
+
+And it had passed the censor.
+
+
+III
+
+It was afternoon when Darragh awoke in his bunk, stiff, sore, confused
+in mind and battered in body.
+
+However, when he recollected where he was he got out of bed in a hurry
+and jerked aside the window curtains.
+
+The day was magnificent; a sky of royal azure overhead, and everywhere
+the silver pillars of the birches supporting their splendid canopy of
+ochre, orange, and burnt-gold.
+
+Wier, hearing him astir, came in.
+
+"How long have you been back! Did you meet the ladies with your
+flivver?" demanded Darragh, impatiently.
+
+"I got to Five Lakes station just as the train came in. The young ladies
+were the only passengers who got out. I waited to get their two steamer
+trunks and then I drove them to Harrod Place----"
+
+"How did they seem, Ralph--worn-out--worried--ill?"
+
+Wier laughed: "No, sir, they looked very pretty and lively to me. They
+seemed delighted to get here. They talked to each other in some foreign
+tongue--Russian, I should say--at least, it sounded like what we heard
+over in Siberia, Captain----"
+
+"It _was_ Russian.... You go on and tell me while I take another hot
+bath!----"
+
+Wier followed him into the bath-room and vaulted to a seat on the deep
+set window-sill:
+
+"--When they weren't talking Russian and laughing they talked to me and
+admired the woods and mountains. I had to tell them everything--they
+wanted to see buffalo and Indians. And when I told them there weren't
+any, enquired for bears and panthers.
+
+"We saw two deer on the Scaur, and a woodchuck near the house; I thought
+they'd jump out of the flivver----"
+
+He began to laugh at the recollection: "No, sir, they didn't act tired
+and sad; they said they were crazy to get into their knickerbockers and
+go to look for you----"
+
+"Where did you say I was?" asked Darragh, drying himself vigorously.
+
+"Out in the woods, somewhere. The last I saw of them, Mrs. Ray had their
+hand-bags and Jerry and Tom were shouldering their trunks."
+
+"I'm going up there right away," interrupted Darragh excitedly. "--Good
+heavens, Ralph, I haven't any clothes here, have I?"
+
+"No, sir. But those you wore last night are dry----"
+
+"Confound it! I meant to send some decent clothes here---- All right;
+get me those duds I wore yesterday--and a bite to eat! I'm in a hurry,
+Ralph----"
+
+He ate while dressing, disgustedly arraying himself in the grey shirt,
+breeches, and laced boots which weather, water, rock, and brier had not
+improved.
+
+In a pathetic attempt to spruce up, he knotted the red bandanna around
+his neck and pinched Salzar's slouch hat into a peak.
+
+"I look like a hootch-running Wop," he said. "Maybe I can get into the
+house before I meet the ladies----"
+
+"You look like one of Clinch's bums," remarked Wier with native honesty.
+
+Darragh, chagrined, went to his bunk, pulled the morocco case from under
+the pillow, and shoved it into the bosom of his flannel shirt.
+
+"That's the main thing anyway," he thought. Then, turning to Wier, he
+asked whether Eve and Stormont had awakened.
+
+It appeared that Trooper Stormont had saddled up and cantered away
+shortly after sunrise, leaving word that he must hunt up his comrade,
+Trooper Lannis, at Ghost Lake.
+
+"They're coming back this evening," added Wier. "He asked you to look
+out for Clinch's step-daughter."
+
+"She's all right here. Can't you keep an eye on her, Ralph?"
+
+"I'm stripping trout, sir. I'll be around here to cook dinner for her
+when she wakes up."
+
+Darragh glanced across the brook at the hatchery. It was only a few
+yards away. He nodded and started for the veranda:
+
+"That'll be all right," he said. "Nobody is coming here to bother
+her.... And don't let her leave, Ralph, till I get back----"
+
+"Very well, sir. But suppose she takes it into her head to leave----"
+
+Darragh called back, gaily: "She can't: she hasn't any clothes!" And
+away he strode in the gorgeous sunshine of a magnificent autumn day, all
+the clean and vigorous youth of him afire in anticipation of a reunion
+which the letter from his lady-love had transfigured into a tryst.
+
+For, in that amazing courtship of a single day, he never dreamed that he
+had won the heart of that sad, white-faced, hungry child in rags--silken
+tatters still stained with the blood of massacre,--the very soles of her
+shoes still charred by the embers of her own home.
+
+Yet, that is what must have happened in a single day and evening. Life
+passes swiftly during such periods. Minutes lengthen into days; hours
+into years. The soul finds itself.
+
+Then mind and heart become twin prophets,--clairvoyant concerning what
+hides behind the veil; comprehending with divine clair-audience what the
+Three Sisters whisper there--hearing even the whirr of the spindle--the
+very snipping of the Eternal Shears!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The soul finds itself; the mind knows itself; the heart perfectly
+understands.
+
+He had not spoken to this young girl of love. The blood of friends and
+servants was still rusty on her skirt's ragged hem.
+
+Yet, that night, when at last in safety she had said good-bye to the man
+who had secured it for her, he knew that he was in love with her. And,
+at such crises, the veil that hides hearts becomes transparent.
+
+At that instant he had seen and known. Afterward he had dared not
+believe that he had known.
+
+But hers had been a purer courage.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As he strode on, the comprehension of her candour, her honesty, the
+sweet bravery that had conceived, created, and sent that letter,
+thrilled this young man until his heavy boots sprouted wings, and the
+trail he followed was but a path of rosy clouds over which he floated
+heavenward.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+About half an hour later he came to his senses with a distinct shock.
+
+Straight ahead of him on the trail, and coming directly toward him,
+moved a figure in knickers and belted tweed.
+
+Flecked sunlight slanted on the stranger's cheek and burnished hair,
+dappling face and figure with moving, golden spots.
+
+Instantly Darragh knew and trembled.
+
+But Theodorica of Esthonia had known him only in his uniform.
+
+As she came toward him, lovely in her lithe and rounded grace, only
+friendly curiosity gazed at him from her blue eyes.
+
+Suddenly she knew him, went scarlet to her yellow hair, then white: and
+tried to speak--but had no control of the short, rosy upper lip which
+only quivered as he took her hands.
+
+The forest was dead still around them save for the whisper of painted
+leaves sifting down from a sunlit vault above.
+
+Finally she said in a ghost of a voice: "My--friend...."
+
+"If you accept his friendship...."
+
+"Friendship is to be shared.... Ours mingled--on that day.... Your
+share is--as much as pleases you."
+
+"All you have to give me, then."
+
+"Take it ... all I have...." Her blue eyes met his with a little
+effort. All courage is an effort.
+
+Then that young man dropped on both knees at her feet and laid his lips
+to her soft hands.
+
+In trembling silence she stood for a moment, then slowly sank on both
+knees to face him across their clasped hands.
+
+So, in the gilded cathedral of the woods, pillared with silver, and
+azure-domed, the betrothal of these two was sealed with clasp and lip.
+
+Awed, a little fearful, she looked into her lover's eyes with a gaze so
+chaste, so oblivious to all things earthly, that the still purity of her
+face seemed a sacrament, and he scarcely dared touch the childish lips
+she offered.
+
+But when the sacrament of the kiss had been accomplished, she rested one
+hand on his shoulder and rose, and drew him with her.
+
+Then _his_ moment came: he drew the emblazoned case from his breast,
+opened it, and, in silence, laid it in her hands. The blaze of the
+jewels in the sunshine almost blinded them.
+
+That was _his_ moment.
+
+The next moment was Quintana's.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Darragh hadn't a chance. Out of the bushes two pistols were thrust hard
+against his stomach. Quintana's face was behind them. He wore no mask,
+but the three men with him watched him over the edges of
+handkerchiefs,--over the sights of levelled rifles, too.
+
+The youthful Grand Duchess had turned deadly white. One of Quintana's
+men took the morocco case from her hands and shoved her aside without
+ceremony.
+
+Quintana leered at Darragh over his levelled weapons:
+
+"My frien' Smith!" he exclaimed softly. "So it is you, then, who have
+twice try to rob me of my property!
+
+"Ah! You recollec'? Yes? How you have rob me of a pacquet which contain
+only some chocolate?"
+
+Darragh's face was burning with helpless rage.
+
+"My frien', Smith," repeated Quintana, "do you recollec' what it was you
+say to me? Yes?... How often it is the onexpected which so usually
+happen? You are quite correc', l'ami Smith. It has happen."
+
+He glanced at the open jewel box which one of the masked men held, then,
+like lightning, his sinister eyes focussed on Darragh.
+
+"So," he said, "it was also you who rob me las' night of my property....
+What you do to Nick Salzar, eh?"
+
+"Killed him," said Darragh, dry lipped, nerved for death. "I ought to
+have killed you, too, when I had the chance. But--_I'm_ white, you see."
+
+At the insult flung into his face over the muzzles of his own pistols,
+Quintana burst into laughter.
+
+"Ah! You _should_ have shot me! You are quite right, my frien'. I mus'
+say you have behave ver' foolish."
+
+He laughed again so hard that Darragh felt his pistols shaking against
+his body.
+
+"So you have kill Nick Salzar, eh?" continued Quintana with perfect good
+humour. "My frien', I am oblige to you for what you do. You are
+surprise? Eh? It is ver' simple, my frien' Smith. What I want of a man
+who can be kill? Eh? Of what use is he to me? Voilà!"
+
+He laughed, patted Darragh on the shoulder with one of his pistols.
+
+"You, now--_you_ could be of use. Why? Because you are a better man than
+was Nick Salzar. He who kills is better than the dead."
+
+Then, swiftly his dark features altered:
+
+"My frien' Smith," he said, "I have come here for my property, not to
+kill. I have recover my property. Why shall I kill you? To say that I am
+a better man? Yes, perhaps. But also I should be oblige to say that also
+I am a fool. Yaas! A poor damfool."
+
+Without shifting his eyes he made a motion with one pistol to his men.
+As they turned and entered the thicket, Quintana's intent gaze became
+murderous.
+
+"If I mus' kill you I shall do so. Otherwise I have sufficient trouble
+to keep me from ennui. My frien', I am going home to enjoy my property.
+If you live or die it signifies nothing to me. No! Why, for the pleasure
+of killing you, should I bring your dirty gendarmes on my heels?"
+
+He backed away to the edge of the thicket, venturing one swift and evil
+glance at the girl who stood as though dazed.
+
+"Listen attentively," he said to Darragh. "One of my men remains hidden
+very near. He is a dead shot. His aim is at your--sweetheart's--body.
+You understan'?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Ver' well. You shall not go away for one hour time. After that----" he
+took off his slouch hat with a sweeping bow--"you may go to hell!"
+
+Behind him the bushes parted, closed.
+
+José Quintana had made his adieux.
+
+
+
+
+EPISODE NINE
+
+THE FOREST AND MR. SARD
+
+
+I
+
+When at last José Quintana had secured what he had been after for years,
+his troubles really began.
+
+In his pocket he had two million dollars worth of gems, including the
+Flaming Jewel.
+
+But he was in the middle of a wilderness ringed in by hostile men, and
+obliged to rely for aid on a handful of the most desperate criminals in
+Europe.
+
+Those openly hostile to him had a wide net spread around him--wide of
+mesh too, perhaps; and it was through a mesh he meant to wriggle, but
+the net was intact from Canada to New York.
+
+Canadian police and secret agents held it on the north: this he had
+learned from Jake Kloon long since.
+
+East, west and south he knew he had the troopers of the New York State
+Constabulary to deal with, and in addition every game warden and fire
+warden in the State Forests, a swarm of plain clothes men from the
+Metropolis, and the rural constabulary of every town along the edges of
+the vast reservation.
+
+Just who was responsible for this enormous conspiracy to rob him of what
+he considered his own legitimate loot Quintana did not know.
+
+Sard's attorney, Eddie Abrams, believed that the French police
+instigated it through agents of the United States Secret Service.
+
+Of one thing Quintana was satisfied, Mike Clinch had nothing to do with
+stirring up the authorities. Law-breakers of his sort don't shout for
+the police or invoke State or Government aid.
+
+As for the status of Darragh--or Hal Smith, as he supposed him to
+be--Quintana took him for what he seemed to be, a well-born young man
+gone wrong. Europe was full of that kind. To Quintana there was nothing
+suspicious about Hal Smith. On the contrary, his clever recklessness
+confirmed that polished bandit's opinion that Smith was a gentleman
+degenerated into a crook. It takes an educated imagination for a man to
+do what Smith had done to him. If the common crook has any imagination
+at all it never is educated.
+
+Another matter worried José Quintana: he was not only short on
+provisions, but what remained was cached in Drowned Valley; and Mike
+Clinch and his men were guarding every outlet to that sinister region,
+excepting only the rocky and submerged trail by which he had made his
+exit.
+
+That was annoying; it cut off provisions and liquor from Canada, for
+which he had arranged with Jake Kloon. For Kloon's hootch-runners now
+would be stopped by Clinch; and not one among them knew about the rocky
+trail in.
+
+All these matters were disquieting enough: but what really and most
+deeply troubled Quintana was his knowledge of his own men.
+
+He did not trust one among them. Of international crookdom they were
+the cream. Not one of them but would have murdered his fellow if the
+loot were worth it and the chances of escape sufficient.
+
+There was no loyalty to him, none to one another, no "honour among
+thieves"--and it was José Quintana who knew that only in romance such a
+thing existed.
+
+No, he could not trust a single man. Only hope of plunder attached these
+marauders to him, and merely because he had education and imagination
+enough to provide what they wanted.
+
+Anyone among them would murder and rob him if opportunity presented.
+
+Now, how to keep his loot; how to get back to Europe with it, was the
+problem that confronted Quintana after robbing Darragh. And he
+determined to settle part of that question at once.
+
+About five miles from Harrod Place, within a hundred rods of which he
+had held up Hal Smith, Quintana halted, seated himself on a rotting log,
+and waited until his men came up and gathered around him.
+
+For a little while, in utter silence, his keen eyes travelled from one
+visage to the next, from Henri Picquet to Victor Georgiades, to Sanchez,
+to Sard. His intent scrutiny focussed on Sard; lingered.
+
+If there were anybody he might trust, a little way, it would be Sard.
+
+Then a polite, untroubled smile smoothed the pale, dark features of José
+Quintana:
+
+"Bien, messieurs, the coup has been success. Yes? Ver' well; in turn,
+then, en accord with our custom, I shall dispose myse'f to listen to
+your good advice."
+
+He looked at Henri Picquet, smiled and nodded invitation to speak.
+
+Picquet shrugged: "For me, mon capitaine, eet ees ver' simple. We are
+five. Therefore, divide into five ze gems. After zat, each one for
+himself to make his way out----"
+
+"Nick Salzar and Harry Beck are in the Drowned Valley," interrupted
+Quintana.
+
+Picquet shrugged again; Sanchez laughed, saying: "If they are there it
+is their misfortune. Also, we others are in a hurry."
+
+Picquet added: "Also five shares are sufficient division."
+
+"It is propose, then, that we abandon our comrades Beck and Salzar to
+the rifle of Mike Clinch?"
+
+"Why not?" demanded Georgiades sullenly;--"we shall have worse to face
+before we see the Place de l'Opéra."
+
+"There remains, also, Eddie Abrams," remarked Quintana.
+
+Crooks never betray their attorney. Everybody expressed a willingness to
+have the five shares of plunder properly assessed to satisfy the fee due
+to Mr. Abrams.
+
+"Ver' well," nodded Quintana, "are you satisfy, messieurs, to divide an'
+disperse?"
+
+Sard said, heavily, that they ought to stick together until they arrived
+in New York.
+
+Sanchez sneered, accusing Sard of wanting a bodyguard to escort him to
+his own home. "In this accursed forest," he insisted, "five of us would
+attract attention where one alone, with sufficient stealth, can slip
+through into the open country."
+
+"Two by two is better," said Picquet. "You, Sanchez, shall travel alone
+if you desire----"
+
+"Divide the gems first," growled Georgiades, "and then let each do what
+pleases him."
+
+"That," nodded Quintana, "is also my opinion. It is so settle.
+Attention!" Two pistols were in his hands as by magic. With a slight
+smile he laid them on the moss beside him.
+
+He then spread a large white handkerchief flat on the ground; and, from
+his pockets, he poured out the glittering cascade. Yet, like a feeding
+panther, every sense remained alert to the slightest sound or movement
+elsewhere; and when Georgiades grunted from excess emotion, Quintana's
+right hand held a pistol before the grunt had ceased.
+
+It was a serious business, this division of loot; every reckless visage
+reflected the strain of the situation.
+
+Quintana, both pistols in his hands, looked down at the scintillating
+heap of jewels.
+
+"I estimate two and one quartaire million of dollaires," he said simply.
+"It has been agree that I accep' for me the erosite gem known as The
+Flaming Jewel. In addition, messieurs, it has been agree that I accep'
+for myse'f one part in five of the remainder."
+
+A fierce silence reigned. Every wolfish eye was on the leader. He
+smiled, rested his pair of pistols on either knee.
+
+"Is there," he asked softly, "any gentleman who shall objec'?"
+
+"Who," demanded Georgiades hoarsely, "is to divide for us?"
+
+"It is for such purpose," explained Quintana suavely, "that my frien',
+Emanuel Sard, has arrive. Monsieur Sard is a brokaire of diamon's, as
+all know ver' well. Therefore, it shall be our frien' Sard who will
+divide for us what we have gain to-day by our--industry."
+
+The savage tension broke with a laugh at the word chosen by Quintana to
+express their efforts of the morning.
+
+Sard had been standing with one fat hand flat against the trunk of a
+tree. Now, at a nod from Quintana, he squatted down, and, with the same
+hand that had been resting against the tree, he spread out the pile of
+jewels into a flat layer.
+
+As he began to divide this into five parts, still using the flat of his
+pudgy hand, something poked him lightly in the ribs. It was the muzzle
+of one of Quintana's pistols.
+
+Sard, ghastly pale, looked up. His palm, sticky with balsam gum,
+quivered in Quintana's grasp.
+
+"I was going to scrape it off," he gasped. "The tree was sticky----"
+
+Quintana, with the muzzle of his pistol, detached half a dozen diamonds
+and rubies that clung to the gum on Mr. Sard's palm.
+
+"Wash!" he said drily.
+
+Sard, sweating with fear, washed his right hand with whiskey from his
+pocket-flask, and dried it for general inspection.
+
+"My God," he protested tremulously, "it was accidental, gentlemen. Do
+you think I'd try to get away with anything like that----"
+
+Quintana coolly shoved him aside and with the barrel of his pistol he
+pushed the flat pile of gems into five separate heaps. Only he and
+Georgiades knew that a magnificent diamond had been lodged in the muzzle
+of his pistol. The eyes of the Greek flamed with rage at the trick, but
+he awaited the division before he should come to any conclusion.
+
+Quintana coolly picked out The Flaming Jewel and pocketed it. Then, to
+each man he indicated the heap which was to be his portion.
+
+A snarling wrangle instantly began, Sanchez objecting to rubies and
+demanding more emeralds, and Picquet complaining violently concerning
+the smallness of the diamonds allotted him.
+
+Sard's trained eyes appraised every allotment. Without weighing, and,
+lacking time and paraphernalia for expert examination, he was inclined
+to think the division fair enough.
+
+Quintana got to his feet lithely.
+
+"For me," he said, "it is finish. With my frien' Sard I shall now
+depart. Messieurs, I embrace and salute you. A bientôt in Paris--if it
+be God's will! Donc--au revoir, les amis, et à la bonheur! Allons! Each
+for himself and gar' aux flics!"
+
+Sard, seized with a sort of still terror, regarded Quintana with
+enormous eyes. Torn between dismay of being left alone in the
+wilderness, and a very natural fear of any single companion, he did not
+know what to say or do.
+
+En masse, the gang were too distrustful of one another to unite on
+robbing any individual. But any individual might easily rob a companion
+when alone with him.
+
+"Why--why can't we all go together," he stammered. "It is safer,
+surer----"
+
+"I go with Quintana and you," interrupted Georgiades, smilingly; his
+mind on the diamond in the muzzle of Quintana's pistol.
+
+"I do not invite you," said Quintana. "But come if it pleases you."
+
+"I also prefer to come with you others," growled Sanchez. "To roam alone
+in this filthy forest does not suit me."
+
+Picquet shrugged his shoulders, turned on his heel in silence. They
+watched him moving away all alone, eastward. When he had disappeared
+among the trees, Quintana looked inquiringly at the others.
+
+"Eh, bien, non alors!" snarled Georgiades suddenly. "There are too many
+in your trupeau, mon capitaine. Bonne chance!"
+
+He turned and started noisily in the direction taken by Picquet.
+
+They watched him out of sight; listened to his careless trample after he
+was lost to view. When at length the last distant sound of his retreat
+had died away in the stillness, Quintana touched Sard with the point of
+his pistol.
+
+"Go first," he said suavely.
+
+"For God's sake, be a little careful of your gun----"
+
+"I am, my dear frien'. It is of _you_ I may become careless. You will
+mos' kin'ly face south, and you will be kin' sufficient to start
+immediate. Tha's what I mean.... I thank you.... Now, my frien',
+Sanchez! Tha's correc'! You shall follow my frien' Sard ver' close. Me,
+I march in the rear. So we shall pass to the eas' of thees Star Pon',
+then between the cross-road an' Ghos' Lake; an' then we shall repose;
+an' one of us, en vidette, shall discover if the Constabulary have
+patrol beyon'.... Allons! March!"
+
+
+II
+
+Guided by Quintana's directions, the three had made a wide detour to the
+east, steering by compass for the cross-roads beyond Star Pond.
+
+In a dense growth of cedars, on a little ridge traversing wet land,
+Quintana halted to listen.
+
+Sard and Sanchez, supposing him to be at their heels, continued on,
+pushing their way blindly through the cedars, clinging to the hard ridge
+in terror of sink-holes. But their progress was very slow; and they were
+still in sight, fighting a painful path amid the evergreens, when
+Quintana suddenly squatted close to the moist earth behind a juniper
+bush.
+
+At first, except for the threshing of Sard and Sanchez through the
+massed obstructions ahead, there was not a sound in the woods.
+
+After a little while there _was_ a sound--very, very slight. No dry
+stick cracked; no dry leaves rustled; no swish of foliage; no whipping
+sound of branches disturbed the intense silence.
+
+But, presently, came a soft, swift rhythm like the pace of a forest
+creature in haste--a discreetly hurrying tread which was more a series
+of light earth-shocks than sound.
+
+Quintana, kneeling on one knee, lifted his pistol. He already felt the
+slight vibration of the ground on the hard ridge. The cedars were moving
+just beyond him now. He waited until, through the parted foliage, a face
+appeared.
+
+The loud report of his pistol struck Sard with the horror of paralysis.
+Sanchez faced about with one spring, snarling, a weapon in either hand.
+
+In the terrible silence they could hear something heavy floundering in
+the bushes, choking, moaning, thudding on the ground.
+
+Sanchez began to creep back; Sard, more dead than alive, crawled at his
+heels. Presently they saw Quintana, waist deep in juniper, looking down
+at something.
+
+And when they drew closer they saw Georgiades lying on his back under a
+cedar, the whole front of his shirt from chest to belly a sopping mess
+of blood.
+
+There seemed no need of explanation. The dead Greek lay there where he
+had not been expected, and his two pistols lay beside him where they had
+fallen.
+
+Sanchez looked stealthily at Quintana, who said softly:
+
+"Bien sure.... In his left side pocket, I believe."
+
+Sanchez laid a cool hand on the dead man's heart; then, satisfied,
+rummaged until he found Georgiades' share of the loot.
+
+Sard, hurriedly displaying a pair of clean but shaky hands, made the
+division.
+
+When the three men had silently pocketed what was allotted to each,
+Quintana pushed curiously at the dead man with the toe of his shoe.
+
+"Peste!" he remarked. "I had place, for security, a ver' large
+diamon' in my pistol barrel. Now it is within the interior of this
+gentleman...." He turned to Sanchez: "I sell him to you. One sapphire.
+Yes?"
+
+Sanchez shook his head with a slight sneer: "We wait--if you want your
+diamond, mon capitaine."
+
+Quintana hesitated, then made a grimace and shook his head.
+
+"No," he said, "he has swallow. Let him digest. Allons! March!"
+
+But after they had gone on--two hundred yards, perhaps--Sanchez stopped.
+
+"Well?" inquired Quintana. Then, with a sneer: "I now recollec' that
+once you have been a butcher in Madrid.... Suit your tas'e, l'ami
+Sanchez."
+
+Sard gazed at Sanchez out of sickened eyes.
+
+"You keep away from me until you've washed yourself," he burst out,
+revolted. "Don't you come near me till you're clean!"
+
+Quintana laughed and seated himself. Sanchez, with a hang-dog glance at
+him, turned and sneaked back on the trail they had traversed. Before he
+was out of sight Sard saw him fish out a Spanish knife from his hip
+pocket and unclasp it.
+
+Almost nauseated, he turned on Quintana in a sort of frightened fury:
+
+"Come on!" he said hoarsely. "I don't want to travel with that man! I
+won't associate with a ghoul! My God, I'm a respectable business
+man----"
+
+"Yaas," drawled Quintana, "tha's what I saw always myse'f; my frien'
+Sard he is ver' respec'able, an' I trus' him like I trus' myse'f."
+
+However, after a moment, Quintana got up from the fallen tree where he
+had been seated.
+
+As he passed Sard he looked curiously into the man's frightened eyes.
+There was not the slightest doubt that Sard was a coward.
+
+"You shall walk behin' me," remarked Quintana carelessly. "If Sanchez
+fin' us, it is well; if he shall not, that also is ver' well.... We go,
+now."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Sanchez made no effort to find them. They had been gone half an hour
+before he had finished the business that had turned him back.
+
+After that he wandered about hunting for water--a rivulet, a puddle,
+anything. But the wet ground proved wet only on the surface moss.
+Sanchez needed more than damp moss for his toilet. Casting about him,
+hither and thither, for some depression that might indicate a stream, he
+came to a heavily wooded slope, and descended it.
+
+There was a bog at the foot. With his fouled hands he dug out a basin
+which filled up full of reddish water, discoloured by alders.
+
+But the water was redder still when his toilet ended.
+
+As he stood there, examining his clothing, and washing what he could of
+the ominous stains from sleeve and shoe, very far away to the north he
+heard a curious noise--a far, faint sound such as he never before had
+heard.
+
+If it were a voice of any sort there was nothing human about it....
+Probably some sort of unknown bird.... Perhaps a bird of prey.... That
+was natural, considering the attraction that Georgiades would have for
+such creatures.... If it were a bird it must be a large one, he
+thought.... Because there was a certain volume to the cry.... Perhaps
+it was a beast, after all.... Some unknown beast of the forest....
+
+Sanchez was suddenly afraid. Scarcely knowing what he was doing he began
+to run along the edge of the bog.
+
+First growth timber skirted it; running was unobstructed by underbrush.
+
+With his startled ears full of the alarming and unknown sound, he ran
+through the woods under gigantic pines which spread a soft green
+twilight around him.
+
+He was tired, or thought he was, but the alarming sounds were filling
+his ears now; the entire forest seemed full of them, echoing in all
+directions, coming in upon him from everywhere, so that he knew not in
+which direction to run.
+
+But he could not stop. Demoralised, he darted this way and that; terror
+winged his feet; the air vibrated above and around him with the
+dreadful, unearthly sounds.
+
+The next instant he fell headlong over a ledge, struck water, felt
+himself whirled around in the icy, rushing current, rolled over, tumbled
+through rapids, blinded, deafened, choked, swept helplessly in a vast
+green wall of water toward something that thundered in his brain an
+instant, then dashed it into roaring chaos.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Half a mile down the turbulent outlet of Star Pond,--where a great sheet
+of green water pours thirty feet into the tossing foam below,--and
+spinning, dipping, diving, bobbing up like a lost log after the drive,
+the body of Señor Sanchez danced all alone in the wilderness, spilling
+from soggy pockets diamonds, sapphires, rubies, emeralds, into crystal
+caves where only the shadows of slim trout stirred.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Very far away to the eastward Quintana stood listening, clutching Sard
+by one sleeve to silence him.
+
+Presently he said: "My frien', somebody is hunting with houn's in this
+fores'.
+
+"Maybe they are not hunting _us_.... _Maybe._... But, for me, I shall
+seek running water. Go you your own way! Houp! Vamose!"
+
+He turned westward; but he had taken scarcely a dozen strides when Sard
+came panting after him:
+
+"Don't leave me!" gasped the terrified diamond broker. "I don't know
+where to go----"
+
+Quintana faced him abruptly--with a terrifying smile and glimmer of
+white teeth--and shoved a pistol into the fold of fat beneath Sard's
+double chin.
+
+"You hear those dogs? Yes? Ver' well; I also. Run, now. I say to you run
+ver' damn quick. Hé! Houp! Allez vous en! Beat eet!"
+
+He struck Sard a stinging blow on his fleshy ear with the pistol barrel,
+and Sard gave a muffled shriek which was more like the squeak of a
+frightened animal.
+
+"My God, Quintana----" he sobbed. Then Quintana's eyes blazed murder:
+and Sard turned and ran lumbering through the thicket like a stampeded
+ox, crashing on amid withered brake, white birch scrub and brier, not
+knowing whither he was headed, crazed with terror.
+
+Quintana watched his flight for a moment, then, pistol swinging, he ran
+in the opposite direction, eastward, speeding lithely as a cat down a
+long, wooded slope which promised running water at the foot.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Sard could not run very far. He could scarcely stand when he pulled up
+and clung to the trunk of a tree.
+
+More dead than alive he embraced the tree, gulping horribly for air,
+every fat-incrusted organ labouring, his senses swimming.
+
+As he sagged there, gripping his support on shaking knees, by degrees
+his senses began to return.
+
+He could hear the dogs, now, vaguely as in a nightmare. But after a
+little while he began to believe that their hysterical yelping was
+really growing more distant.
+
+Then this man whose every breath was an outrage on God, prayed.
+
+He prayed that the hounds would follow Quintana, come up with him, drag
+him down, worry him, tear him to shreds of flesh and clothing.
+
+He listened and prayed alternately. After a while he no longer prayed
+but concentrated on his ears.
+
+Surely, surely, the diabolical sound was growing less distinct.... It
+was changing direction too. But whether in Quintana's direction or not
+Sard could not tell. He was no woodsman. He was completely turned
+around.
+
+He looked upward through a dense yellow foliage, but all was grey in the
+sky--very grey and still;--and there seemed to be no traces of the sun
+that had been shining.
+
+He looked fearfully around: trees, trees, and more trees. No break, no
+glimmer, nothing to guide him, teach him. He could see, perhaps, fifty
+feet; no further.
+
+In panic he started to move on. That is what fright invariably does to
+those ignorant of the forest. Terror starts them moving.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Sobbing, frightened almost witless, he had been floundering forward for
+over an hour, and had made circle after circle without knowing, when, by
+chance, he set foot in a perfectly plain trail.
+
+Emotion overpowered him. He was too overcome to stir for a while. At
+length, however, he tottered off down the trail, oblivious as to what
+direction he was taking, animated only by a sort of madness--horror of
+trees--an insane necessity to see open ground, get into it, and lie down
+on it.
+
+And now, directly ahead, he saw clear grey sky low through the trees.
+The wood's edge!
+
+He began to run.
+
+As he emerged from the edge of the woods, waist-deep in brush and weeds,
+wide before his blood-shot eyes spread Star Pond.
+
+Even in his half-stupefied brain there was memory enough left for
+recognition.
+
+He remembered the lake. His gaze travelled to the westward; and he saw
+Clinch's Dump standing below, stark, silent, the doors swinging open in
+the wind.
+
+When terror had subsided in a measure and some of his trembling strength
+returned, he got up out of the clump of rag-weeds where he had lain
+down, and earnestly nosed the unpainted house, listening with all his
+ears.
+
+There was not a sound save the soughing of autumn winds and the delicate
+rattle of falling leaves in the woods behind him.
+
+He needed food and rest. He gazed earnestly at the house. Nothing
+stirred there save the open doors swinging idly in every vagrant wind.
+
+He ventured down a little way--near enough to see the black cinders of
+the burned barn, and close enough to hear the lake waters slapping the
+sandy shore.
+
+If he dared----
+
+And after a long while he ventured to waddle nearer, slinking through
+brush and frosted weed, creeping behind boulders, edging always closer
+and closer to that silent house where nothing moved except the
+wind-blown door.
+
+And now, at last, he set a furtive foot upon the threshold, stood
+listening, tip-toed in, peered here and there, sidled to the
+dining-room, peered in.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When, at length, Emanuel Sard discovered that Clinch's Dump was
+tenantless, he made straight for the pantry. Here was cheese, crackers,
+an apple pie, half a dozen bottles of home-brewed beer.
+
+He loaded his arms with all they could carry, stole through the
+dance-hall out to the veranda, which overlooked the lake.
+
+Here, hidden in the doorway, he could watch the road from Ghost Lake and
+survey the hillside down which an intruder must come from the forest.
+
+And here Sard slaked his raging thirst and satiated the gnawing appetite
+of the obese, than which there is no crueller torment to an inert liver
+and distended paunch.
+
+Munching, guzzling, watching, Sard squatted just within the veranda
+doorway, anxiously considering his chances.
+
+He knew where he was. At the foot of the lake, and eastward, he had been
+robbed by a highwayman on the forest road branching from the main
+highway. Southwest lay Ghost Lake and the Inn.
+
+Somewhere between these two points he must try to cross the State
+Road.... After that, comparative safety. For the miles that still
+would lie between him and distant civilisation seemed as nothing to
+the horror of that hell of trees.
+
+He looked up now at the shaggy fringing woods, shuddered, opened another
+bottle of beer.
+
+In all that panorama of forest, swale, and water the only thing that had
+alarmed him at all by moving was something in the water. When first he
+noticed it he almost swooned, for he took it to be a swimming dog.
+
+In his agitation he had risen to his feet; and then the swimming
+creature almost frightened Sard out of his senses, for it tilted
+suddenly and went down with a report like the crack of a pistol.
+
+However, when Sard regained control of his wits he realised that a
+swimming dog doesn't dive and doesn't whack the water with its tail.
+
+He dimly remembered hearing that beavers behaved that way.
+
+Watching the water he saw the thing out there in the lake again,
+swimming in erratic circles, its big, dog-like head well out of the
+water.
+
+It certainly was no dog. A beaver, maybe. Whatever it was, Sard didn't
+care any longer.
+
+Idly he watched it. Sometimes, when it swam very near, he made a sudden
+motion with his fat arm; and crack!--with a pistol-shot report down it
+dived. But always it reappeared.
+
+What had a creature like that to do with him? Sard watched it with
+failing interest, thinking of other things--of Quintana and the chances
+that the dogs had caught him,--of Sanchez, the Ghoul, hoping that dire
+misfortune might overtake him, too;--of the dead man sprawling under the
+cedar-tree, all sopping crimson---- Faugh!
+
+Shivering, Sard filled his mouth with apple-pie and cheese and pulled
+the cork from another bottle of home-brewed beer.
+
+
+III
+
+About that time, a mile and a half to the southward, James Darragh came
+out on the rocky and rushing outlet to Star Pond.
+
+Over his shoulder was a rifle, and all around him ran dogs,--big,
+powerful dogs, built like foxhounds but with the rough, wiry coats of
+Airedales, even rougher of ear and features.
+
+The dogs,--half a dozen or so in number,--seemed very tired. All ran
+down eagerly to the water and drank and slobbered and panted, lolling
+their tongues, and slaking their thirst again and again along the
+swirling edge of a deep trout pool.
+
+Darragh's rifle lay in the hollow of his left arm; his khaki waistcoat
+was set with loops full of cartridges. From his left wrist hung a
+raw-hide whip.
+
+Now he laid aside his rifle and whip, took from the pocket of his
+shooting coat three or four leather dog-leashes, went down among the
+dogs and coupled them up.
+
+They followed him back to the bank above. Here he sat down on a rock and
+inspected his watch.
+
+He had been seated there for ten minutes, possibly, with his tired dogs
+lying around him, when just above him he saw a State Trooper emerge from
+the woods on foot, carrying a rifle over one shoulder.
+
+"Jack!" he called in a guarded voice.
+
+Trooper Stormont turned, caught sight of Darragh, made a signal of
+recognition, and came toward him.
+
+Darragh said: "Your mate, Trooper Lannis, is down stream. I've two of my
+own game wardens at the cross-roads, two more on the Ghost Lake Road,
+and two foresters and an inspector out toward Owl Marsh."
+
+Stormont nodded, looked down at the dogs.
+
+"This isn't the State Forest," said Darragh, smiling. Then his face grew
+grave: "How is Eve?" he asked.
+
+"She's feeling better," replied Stormont. "I telephoned to Ghost Lake
+Inn for the hotel physician.... I was afraid of pneumonia, Jim. Eve had
+chills last night.... But Dr. Claybourn thinks she's all right.... So
+I left her in care of your housekeeper."
+
+"Mrs. Ray will look out for her.... You haven't told Eve who I am, have
+you?"
+
+"No."
+
+"I'll tell her myself to-night. I don't know how she'll take it when she
+learns I'm the heir to the mortal enemy of Mike Clinch."
+
+"I don't know either," said Stormont.
+
+There was a silence; the State Trooper looked down at the dogs:
+
+"What are they, Jim?"
+
+"Otter-hounds," said Darragh, "--a breed of my own.... But that's _all_
+they are capable of hunting, I guess," he added grimly.
+
+Stormont's gaze questioned him.
+
+Darragh said: "After I telephoned you this morning that a guest of mine
+at Harrod Place, and I, had been stuck up and robbed by Quintana's
+outfit, what did you do, Jack?"
+
+"I called up Bill Lannis first," said Stormont, "--then the doctor.
+After he came, Mrs. Ray arrived with a maid. Then I went in and spoke to
+Eve. Then I did what you suggested--I crossed the forest diagonally
+toward The Scaur, zig-zagged north, turned by the rock hog-back south of
+Drowned Valley, came southeast, circled west, and came out here as you
+asked me to."
+
+"Almost on the minute," nodded Darragh.... "You saw no signs of
+Quintana's gang?"
+
+"None."
+
+"Well," said Darragh, "I left my two guests at Harrod Place to amuse
+each other, got out three couple of my otter-hounds and started
+them,--as I hoped and supposed,--on Quintana's trail."
+
+"What happened?" inquired Stormont curiously.
+
+"Well--I don't know. I think they were following some of Quintana's
+gang--for a while, anyway. After that, God knows,--deer, hare,
+cotton-tail,--_I_ don't know. They yelled their bally heads off--I on
+the run--they're slow dogs, you know--and whatever they were after
+either fooled them or there were too many trails.... I made a mistake,
+that's all. These poor beasts don't know anything except an otter. I
+just _hoped_ they might take Quintana's trail if I put them on it."
+
+"Well," said Stormont, "it can't be helped now.... I told Bill Lannis
+that we'd rendezvous at Clinch's Dump."
+
+"All right," nodded Darragh. "Let's keep to the open; my dogs are
+leashed couples."
+
+They had been walking for twenty minutes, possibly, exchanging scarcely
+a word, and they were now nearing the hilly basin where Star Pond lay,
+when Darragh said abruptly:
+
+"I'm going to tell you about things, Jack. You've taken my word so far
+that it's all right----"
+
+"Naturally," said Stormont simply.
+
+The two men, who had been brother officers in the Great War, glanced at
+each other, slightly smiling.
+
+"Here it is then," said Darragh. "When I was on duty in Riga for the
+Intelligence Department, I met two ladies in dire distress, whose
+mansion had been burned and looted, supposedly by the Bolsheviki.
+
+"They were actually hungry and penniless; the only clothing they
+possessed they were wearing. These ladies were the Countess
+Orloff-Strelwitz, and a young girl, Theodorica, Grand Duchess of
+Esthonia.... I did what I could for them. After a while, in the course
+of other duty, I found out that the Bolsheviki had had nothing to do
+with the arson and robbery, but that the crime had been perpetrated by
+José Quintana's gang of international crooks masquerading as
+Bolsheviki."
+
+Stormont nodded: "I also came across similar cases," he remarked.
+
+"Well, this was a flagrant example. Quintana had burnt the château and
+had made off with over two million dollars worth of the little Grand
+Duchess's jewels--among them the famous Erosite gem known as The Flaming
+Jewel."
+
+"I've heard of it."
+
+"There are only two others known.... Well, I did what I could with the
+Esthonian police, who didn't believe me.
+
+"But a short time ago the Countess Orloff sent me word that Quintana
+really was the guilty one, and that he had started for America.
+
+"I've been after him ever since.... But, Jack, until this morning
+Quintana did not possess these stolen jewels. _Clinch did!_"
+
+"What!"
+
+"Clinch served over-seas in a Forestry Regiment. In Paris he robbed
+Quintana of these jewels. That's why I've been hanging around Clinch."
+
+Stormont's face was flushed and incredulous. Then it lost colour as he
+thought of the jewels that Eve had concealed--the gems for which she had
+risked her life.
+
+He said: "But you tell me Quintana robbed you this morning."
+
+"He did. The little Grand Duchess and the Countess Orloff-Strelwitz are
+my guests at Harrod Place.
+
+"Last night I snatched the case containing these gems from Quintana's
+fingers. This morning, as I offered them to the Grand Duchess, Quintana
+coolly stepped between us----"
+
+His voice became bitter and his features reddened with rage poorly
+controlled:
+
+"By God, Jack, I should have shot Quintana when the opportunity offered.
+Twice I've had the chance. The next time I shall kill him any way I
+can.... Legitimately."
+
+"Of course," said Stormont gravely. But his mind was full of the jewels
+which Eve had. What and whose were they,--if Quintana again had the
+Esthonian gems in his possession?
+
+"Had you recovered all the jewels for the Grand Duchess?" he asked
+Darragh.
+
+"Every one, Jack.... Quintana has done me a terrible injury. I shan't
+let it go. I mean to hunt that man to the end."
+
+Stormont, terribly perplexed, nodded.
+
+A few minutes later, as they came out among the willows and alders on
+the northeast side of Star Pond, Stormont touched his comrade's arm.
+
+"Look at that enormous dog-otter out there in the lake!"
+
+"Grab those dogs! They'll strangle each other," cried Darragh quickly.
+"That's it--unleash them, Jack, and let them go!"--he was struggling
+with the other two couples while speaking.
+
+And now the hounds, unleashed, lifted frantic voices. The very sky
+seemed full of the discordant tumult; wood and shore reverberated with
+the volume of convulsive and dissonant baying.
+
+"Damn it," said Darragh, disgusted, "--that's what they've been trailing
+all the while across-woods,--that devilish dog-otter yonder.... And I
+had hoped they were on Quintana's trail----"
+
+A mass rush and scurry of crazed dogs nearly swept him off his feet, and
+both men caught a glimpse of a large bitch-otter taking to the lake from
+a ledge of rock just beyond.
+
+Now the sky vibrated with the deafening outcry of the dogs, some taking
+to water, others racing madly along shore.
+
+Crack! The echo of the dog-otter's blow on the water came across to them
+as the beast dived.
+
+"Well, I'm in for it now," muttered Darragh, starting along the bank
+toward Clinch's Dump, to keep an eye on his dogs.
+
+Stormont followed more leisurely.
+
+
+IV
+
+A few minutes before Darragh and Stormont had come out on the farther
+edge of Star Pond, Sard, who had heard from Quintana about the big drain
+pipe which led from Clinch's pantry into the lake, decided to go in and
+take a look at it.
+
+He had been told all about its uses,--how Clinch,--in the event of a
+raid by State Troopers or Government enforcement agents,--could empty
+his contraband hootch into the lake if necessary,--and even could slide
+a barrel of ale or a keg of rum, intact, into the great tile tunnel and
+recover the liquor at his leisure.
+
+Also, and grimly, Quintana had admitted that through this drain Eve
+Strayer and the State Trooper, Stormont, had escaped from Clinch's Dump.
+
+So now Sard, full of curiosity, went back into the pantry to look at it
+for himself.
+
+Almost instantly the idea occurred to him to make use of the drain for
+his own safety and comfort.
+
+Why shouldn't he sleep in the pantry, lock the door, and, in case of
+intrusion,--other exits being unavailable,--why shouldn't he feel
+entirely safe with such an avenue of escape open?
+
+For swimming was Sard's single accomplishment. He wasn't afraid of the
+water; he simply couldn't sink. Swimming was the only sport he ever had
+indulged in. He adored it.
+
+Also, the mere idea of sleeping alone amid that hell of trees terrified
+Sard. Never had he known such horror as when Quintana abandoned him in
+the woods. Never again could he gaze upon a tree without malignant
+hatred. Never again did he desire to lay eyes upon even a bush. The very
+sight, now, of the dusky forest filled him with loathing. Why should he
+not risk one night in this deserted house,--sleep well and warmly, feed
+well, drink his bellyfull of Clinch's beer, before attempting the
+dead-line southward, where he was only too sure that patrols were riding
+and hiding on the lookout for the fancy gentlemen of José Quintana's
+selected company of malefactors?
+
+Well, here in the snug pantry were pies, crullers, bread, cheeses,
+various dried meats, tinned vegetables, ham, bacon, fuel and range to
+prepare what he desired.
+
+Here was beer, too; and doubtless ardent spirits if he could nose out
+the hidden demijohns and bottles.
+
+He peered out of the pantry window at the forest, shuddered, cursed
+it and every separate tree in it; cursed Quintana, too, wishing him
+black mischance. No; it was settled. He'd take his chance here in the
+pantry.... And there must be a mattress somewhere upstairs.
+
+He climbed the staircase, cautiously, discovered Clinch's bedroom, took
+the mattress and blankets from the bed, dragged them to the pantry.
+
+Could any honest man be more tight and snug in this perilous world of
+the desperate and undeserving? Sard thought not. But one matter troubled
+him: the lock of the pantry door had been shattered. To remedy this he
+moused around until he discovered some long nails and a claw-hammer.
+When he was ready to go to sleep he'd nail himself in. And in the
+morning he'd pry the door loose. That was simple. Sard chuckled for the
+first time since he had set eyes upon the accursed region.
+
+And now the sun came out from behind a low bank of solid grey cloud, and
+fell upon the countenance of Emanuel Sard. It warmed his parrot-nose
+agreeably; it cheered and enlivened him.
+
+Not for him a night of terrors in that horrible forest which he could
+see through the pantry window.
+
+A sense of security and of well-being pervaded Sard to his muddy shoes.
+He even curled his fat toes in them with animal contentment.
+
+A little snack before cooking a heavily satisfactory dinner? Certainly.
+
+So he tucked a couple of bottles of beer under one arm, a loaf of bread
+and a chunk of cheese under the other, and waddled out to the veranda
+door.
+
+And at that instant the very heavens echoed with that awful tumult which
+had first paralysed, then crazed him in the woods.
+
+Bottles, bread, cheese fell from his grasp and his knees nearly
+collapsed under him. In the bushes on the lake shore he saw animals
+leaping and racing, but, in his terror, he did not recognise them for
+dogs.
+
+Then, suddenly, he saw a man, close to the house, running: and another
+man not far behind. _That_ he understood, and it electrified him into
+action.
+
+It was too late to escape from the house now. He understood that
+instantly.
+
+He ran back through the dance-hall and dining-room to the pantry; but he
+dared not let these intruders hear the noise of hammering.
+
+In an agony of indecision he stood trembling, listening to the infernal
+racket of the dogs, and waiting for the first footstep within the house.
+
+No step came. But, chancing to look over his shoulder, he saw a man
+peering through the pantry window at him.
+
+Ungovernable terror seized Sard. Scarcely aware what he was about, he
+seized the edges of the big drain-pipe and crowded his obese body into
+it head first. He was so fat and heavy that he filled the tile. To start
+himself down he pulled with both hands and kicked himself forward,
+tortoise-like, down the slanting tunnel, sticking now and then, dragging
+himself on and downward.
+
+Now he began to gain momentum; he felt himself sliding, not fast but
+steadily.
+
+There came a hitch somewhere; his heavy body stuck on the steep incline.
+
+Then, as he lifted his bewildered head and strove to peer into the
+blackness in front, he saw four balls of green fire close to him in
+darkness.
+
+He began to slide at the same instant, and flung out both hands to check
+himself. But his palms slid in the slime and his body slid after.
+
+He shrieked once as his face struck a furry obstruction where four balls
+of green fire flamed horribly and a fury of murderous teeth tore his
+face and throat to bloody tatters as he slid lower, lower, settling
+through crimson-dyed waters into the icy depths of Star Pond.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Stormont, down by the lake, called to Darragh, who appeared on the
+veranda:
+
+"Oh, Jim! Both otters crawled into the drain! I think your dogs must
+have killed one of them under water. There's a big patch of blood
+spreading off shore."
+
+"Yes," said Darragh, "something has just been killed, somewhere ...
+Jack!"
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Pull both your guns and come up here, quick!"
+
+
+
+
+EPISODE TEN
+
+THE TWILIGHT OF MIKE
+
+
+I
+
+When Quintana turned like an enraged snake on Sard and drove him to his
+destruction, he would have killed and robbed the frightened diamond
+broker had he dared risk the shot. He had intended to do this anyway,
+sooner or later. But with the noise of the hunting dogs filling the
+forest, Quintana was afraid to fire. Yet, even then he followed Sard
+stealthily for a few minutes, afraid yet murderously desirous of the
+gems, confused by the tumult of the hounds, timid and ferocious at the
+same time, and loath to leave his fat, perspiring, and demoralised
+victim.
+
+But the racket of the dogs proved too much for Quintana. He sheered away
+toward the South, leaving Sard floundering on ahead, unconscious of the
+treachery that had followed furtively in his panic-stricken tracks.
+
+About an hour later Quintana was seen, challenged, chased and shot at by
+State Trooper Lannis.
+
+Quintana ran. And what with the dense growth of seedling beech and oak
+and the heavily falling birch and poplar leaves, Lannis first lost
+Quintana and then his trail.
+
+The State Trooper had left his horse at the cross-roads near the scene
+of Darragh's masked exploit, where he had stopped and robbed Sard--and
+now Lannis hastened back to find and mount his horse, and gallop
+straight into the first growth timber.
+
+Through dim aisles of giant pine he spurred to a dead run on the chance
+of cutting Quintana from the eastward edge of the forest and forcing him
+back toward the north or west, where patrols were more than likely to
+hold him.
+
+The State Trooper rode with all the reckless indifference and grace of
+the Western cavalryman, and he seemed to be part of the superb animal he
+rode--part of its bone and muscle, its litheness, its supple power--part
+of its vertebræ and ribs and limbs, so perfect was their bodily
+co-ordination.
+
+Rifle and eyes intently alert, the rider scarce noticed his rushing
+mount; and if he guided with wrist and knee it was instinctive and as
+though the horse were guiding them both.
+
+And now, far ahead through this primeval stand of pine, sunshine
+glimmered, warning of a clearing. And here Trooper Lannis pulled in his
+horse at the edge of what seemed to be a broad, flat meadow, vividly
+green.
+
+But it was the intense, arsenical green of hair-fine grass that covers
+with its false velvet those quaking bogs where only a thin, crust-like
+skin of root-fibre and vegetation cover infinite depths of silt.
+
+The silt had no more substance than a drop of ink colouring the water in
+a tumbler.
+
+Sitting his fast-breathing mount, Lannis searched this wide, flat
+expanse of brilliant green. Nothing moved on it save a great heron
+picking its deliberate way on stilt-like legs. It was well for Quintana
+that he had not attempted it.
+
+Very cautiously Lannis walked his horse along the hard ground which
+edged this marsh on the west. Nowhere was there any sign that Quintana
+had come down to the edge among the shrubs and swale grasses.
+
+Beyond the marsh another trooper patrolled; and when at length he and
+Lannis perceived each other and exchanged signals, the latter wheeled
+his horse and retraced his route at an easy canter, satisfied that
+Quintana had not yet broken cover.
+
+Back through the first growth he cantered, his rifle at a ready,
+carefully scanning the more open woodlands, and so came again to the
+cross-roads.
+
+And here stood a State Game Inspector, with a report that some sort of
+beagle-pack was hunting in the forest to the northwest; and very curious
+to investigate.
+
+So it was arranged that the Inspector should turn road-patrol and the
+Trooper become the rover.
+
+There was no sound of dogs when Lannis rode in on the narrow, spotted
+trail whence he had flushed Quintana into the dense growth of saplings
+that bordered it.
+
+His horse made little noise on the moist layer of leaves and forest
+mould; he listened hard for the sound of hounds as he rode; heard
+nothing save the chirr of red squirrels, the shriek of a watching jay,
+or the startling noise of falling acorns rapping and knocking on great
+limbs in their descent to the forest floor.
+
+Once, very, very far away westward in the direction of Star Pond he
+fancied he heard a faint vibration in the air that might have been
+hounds baying.
+
+He was right. And at that very moment Sard was dying, horribly, among
+two trapped otters as big and fierce as the dogs that had driven them
+into the drain.
+
+But Lannis knew nothing of that as he moved on, mounted, along the
+spotted trail, now all a yellow glory of birch and poplar which made the
+woodland brilliant as though lighted by yellow lanterns.
+
+Somewhere among the birches, between him and Star Pond, was Harrod
+Place. And the idea occurred to him that Quintana might have ventured to
+ask food and shelter there. Yet, that was not likely because Trooper
+Stormont had called him that morning on the telephone from the Hatchery
+Lodge.
+
+No; the only logical retreat for Quintana was northward to the
+mountains, where patrols were plenty and fire-wardens on duty in every
+watch-tower. Or, the fugitive could make for Drowned Valley by a blind
+trail which, Stormont informed him, existed but which Lannis never had
+heard of.
+
+However, to reassure himself, Lannis rode as far as Harrod Place, and
+found game wardens on duty along the line.
+
+Then he turned west and trotted his mount down to the hatchery, where he
+saw Ralph Wier, the Superintendent, standing outside the lodge talking
+to his assistant, George Fry.
+
+When Lannis rode up on the opposite side of the brook, he called across
+to Wier:
+
+"You haven't seen anything of any crooked outfit around here, have you,
+Ralph? I'm looking for that kind."
+
+"See here," said the Superintendent, "I don't know but George Fry may
+have seen one of your guys. Come over and he'll tell you what happened
+an hour ago."
+
+Trooper Lannis pivotted his horse and put him to the brook with scarcely
+any take-off; and the splendid animal cleared the water like a deer and
+came cantering up to the door of the lodge.
+
+Fry's boyish face seemed agitated; he looked up at the State Trooper
+with the flush of tears in his gaze and pointed at the rifle Lannis
+carried:
+
+"If I'd had _that_," he said excitedly, "I'd have brought in a crook,
+you bet!"
+
+"Where did you see him?" inquired Lannis.
+
+"Jest west of the Scaur, about an hour and a half ago. Wier and me was
+stockin' the head of Scaur Brook with fingerlings. There's more good
+water--two miles of it--to the east, and all it needed was a fish-ladder
+around Scaur Falls.
+
+"So I toted in cement and sand and grub last week, and I built me a
+shanty on the Scaur, and I been laying up a fish-way around the falls.
+So that's how I come there----" He clicked his teeth and darted a
+furious glance at the woods. "By God," he said, "I was such a fool I
+didn't take no rifle. All I had was an axe and a few traps.... I wasn't
+going to let the mink get our trout whatever you fellows say," he added
+defiantly, "--and law or no law----"
+
+"Get along with your story, young man," interrupted Lannis; "--you can
+spill the rest out to the Commissioner."
+
+"All right, then. This is the way it happened down to the Scaur. I was
+eating lunch by the fish-stairs, looking up at 'em and kind of planning
+how to save cement, and not thinking about anybody being near me, when
+_something_ made me turn my head.... You know how it is in the woods....
+I kinda _felt_ somebody near. And, by cracky!--there stood a man with a
+big, black automatic pistol, and he had a bead on my belly.
+
+"'Well,' said I, 'what's troubling _you_ and your gun, my friend?'--I
+was that astonished.
+
+"He was a slim-built, powerful guy with a foreign face and voice and
+way. He wanted to know if he had the honour--as he put it--to introduce
+himself to a detective or game constable, or a friend of Mike Clinch.
+
+"I told him I wasn't any of these, and that I worked in a private
+hatchery; and he called me a liar."
+
+Young Fry's face flushed and his voice began to quiver:
+
+"That's the way he misused me: and he backed me into the shanty and I
+had to sit down with both hands up. Then he filled my pack-basket with
+grub, and took my axe, and strapped my kit onto his back.... And
+talking all the time in his mean, sneery, foreign way--and I guess he
+thought he was funny, for he laughed at his own jokes.
+
+"He told me his name was Quintana, and that he ought to shoot me for a
+rat, but wouldn't because of the stink. Then he said he was going to do
+a quick job that the police were too cowardly to do;--that he was
+a-going to find Mike Clinch down to Drowned Valley and kill him; and if
+he could catch Mike's daughter, too, he'd spoil her face for life----"
+
+The boy was breathing so hard and his rage made him so incoherent that
+Lannis took him by the shoulder and shook him:
+
+"What next?" demanded the Trooper impatiently. "Tell your story and quit
+thinking how you were misused!"
+
+"He told me to stay in the shanty for an hour or he'd do for me good,"
+cried Fry.... "Once I got up and went to the door; and there he stood
+by the brook, wolfing my lunch with both hands. I tell you he cursed and
+drove me, like a dog, inside with his big pistol--my God--like a dog....
+
+"Then, the next time I took a chance he was gone.... And I beat it here
+to get me a rifle----" The boy broke down and sobbed: "He drove me
+around--like a dog--he did----"
+
+"You leave that to me," interrupted Lannis sharply. And, to Wier: "You
+and George had better get a gun apiece. That fellow _might_ come back
+here or go to Harrod Place if we starve him out."
+
+Wier said to Fry: "Go up to Harrod Place and tell Jansen your story and
+bring back two 45-70's.... And quit snivelling.... You may get a shot
+at him yet."
+
+Lannis had already ridden down to the brook. Now he jumped his horse
+across, pulled up, called back to Wier:
+
+"I think our man is making for Drowned Valley, all right. My mate,
+Stormont, telephoned me that some of his gang are there, and that Mike
+Clinch and his gang have them stopped on the other side! Keep your eye
+on Harrod Place!"
+
+And away he cantered into the North.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Behind the curtains of her open window Eve Strayer, lying on her bed,
+had heard every word.
+
+Crouched there beside her pillow she peered out and saw Trooper Lannis
+ride away; saw the Fry boy start toward Harrod Place on a run; saw Ralph
+Wier watch them out of sight and then turn and re-enter the lodge.
+
+Wrapped in Darragh's big blanket robe she got off the bed and opened her
+chamber door as Wier was passing through the living-room.
+
+"Please--I'd like to speak to you a moment," she called.
+
+Wier turned instantly and came to the partly open door.
+
+"I want to know," she said, "where I am."
+
+"Ma'am?"
+
+"What is this place?"
+
+"It's a hatchery----"
+
+"Whose?"
+
+"Ma'am?"
+
+"Whose lodge is this? Does it belong to Harrod Place?"
+
+"We're h-hootch runners, Miss----" stammered Wier, mindful of
+instructions, but making a poor business of deception; "--I and Hal
+Smith, we run a 'Easy One,' and we strip trout for a blind and sell to
+Harrod Place--Hal and I----"
+
+"_Who_ is Hal Smith?" she asked.
+
+"Ma'am?"
+
+The girl's flower-blue eyes turned icy: "Who is the man who calls
+himself Hal Smith?" she repeated.
+
+Wier looked at her, red and dumb.
+
+"Is he a Trooper in plain clothes?" she demanded in a bitter voice. "Is
+he one of the Commissioner's spies? Are _you_ one, too?"
+
+Wier gazed miserably at her, unable to formulate a convincing lie.
+
+She flushed swiftly as a terrible suspicion seized her:
+
+"Is this Harrod property? Is Hal Smith old Harrod's heir? _Is_ he?"
+
+"My God, Miss----"
+
+"He _is_!"
+
+"Listen, Miss----"
+
+She flung open the door and came out into the living-room.
+
+"Hal Smith is that nephew of old Harrod," she said calmly. "His name is
+Darragh. And you are one of his wardens.... And I can't stay here. Do
+you understand?"
+
+Wier wiped his hot face and waited. The cat was out; there was a hole in
+the bag; and he knew there was no use in such lies as he could tell.
+
+He said: "All I know, Miss, is that I was to look after you and get you
+whatever you want----"
+
+"I want my clothes!"
+
+"Ma'am?"
+
+"My _clothes_!" she repeated impatiently. "I've _got_ to have them!"
+
+"Where are they, ma'am?" asked the bewildered man.
+
+At the same moment the girl's eyes fell on a pile of men's sporting
+clothing--garments sent down from Harrod Place to the Lodge--lying on a
+leather lounge near a gun-rack.
+
+Without a glance at Wier, Eve went to the heap of clothing, tossed it
+about, selected cords, two pairs of woollen socks, grey shirt, puttees,
+shoes, flung the garments through the door into her own room, followed
+them, and locked herself in.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When she was dressed--the two heavy pairs of socks helping to fit her
+feet to the shoes--she emptied her handful of diamonds, sapphires and
+emeralds, including the Flaming Jewel, into the pockets of her breeches.
+
+Now she was ready. She unlocked her door and went out, scarcely limping
+at all, now.
+
+Wier gazed at her helplessly as she coolly chose a rifle and
+cartridge-belt at the gun-rack.
+
+Then she turned on him as still and dangerous as a young puma:
+
+"Tell Darragh he'd better keep clear of Clinch's," she said. "Tell him I
+always thought he was a rat. Now I know he's one."
+
+She plunged one slim hand into her pocket and drew out a diamond.
+
+"Here," she said insolently. "This will pay your _gentleman_ for his gun
+and clothing."
+
+She tossed the gem onto a table, where it rolled, glittering.
+
+"For heaven's sake, Miss----" burst out Wier, horrified, but she cut him
+short:
+
+"--He may keep the change," she said. "We're no swindlers at Clinch's
+Dump!"
+
+Wier started forward as though to intercept her. Eve's eyes flamed. And
+he stood still. She wrenched open the door and walked out among the
+silver birches.
+
+At the edge of the brook she stood a moment, coolly loading the magazine
+of her rifle. Then, with one swift glance of hatred, flung at the place
+that Harrod's money had built, she sprang across the brook, tossed her
+rifle to her shoulder, and passed lithely into the golden wilderness of
+poplar and silver birch.
+
+
+II
+
+Quintana, on a fox-trot along the rock-trail into Drowned Valley, now
+thoroughly understood that it was the only sanctuary left him for the
+moment. Egress to the southward was closed; to the eastward, also; and
+he was too wary to venture westward toward Ghost Lake.
+
+No, the only temporary safety lay in the swamps of Drowned Valley.
+
+And there, he decided as he jogged along, if worse came to worst and
+starvation drove him out, he'd settle matters with Mike Clinch and break
+through to the north.
+
+He meant to settle matters with Mike Clinch anyway. He was not afraid of
+Clinch; not really afraid of anybody. It had been the dogs that
+demoralised Quintana. He'd had no experience with hunting hounds,--did
+not know what to expect,--how to manoeuvre. If only he could have
+_seen_ these beasts that filled the forest with their hob-goblin
+outcries--if he could have had a good look at the creatures who gave
+forth that weird, crazed, melancholy volume of sound!----
+
+"Bon!" he said coolly to himself. "It was a crisis of nerves which I
+experience. Yes.... I should have shot him, that fat Sard. Yes....
+Only those damn dog---- And now he shall die an' rot--that fat Sard--all
+by himse'f, parbleu!--like one big dead thing all alone in the wood....
+A puddle of guts full of diamonds! Ah!--mon dieu!--a million francs in
+gems that shine like festering stars in this damn wood till the world
+end. Ah, bah--nome de dieu de----"
+
+"Halte là!" came a sharp voice from the cedar fringe in front. A pause,
+then recognition; and Henri Picquet walked out on the hard ridge beyond
+and stood leaning on his rifle and looking sullenly at his leader.
+
+Quintana came forward, carelessly, a disagreeable expression in his
+eyes and on his narrow lips, and continued on past Picquet.
+
+The latter slouched after his leader, who had walked over to the lean-to
+before which a pile of charred logs lay in cold ashes.
+
+As Picquet came up, Quintana turned on him, with a gesture toward the
+extinguished fire: "It is cold like hell," he said. "Why do you not have
+some fire?"
+
+"Not for me, non," growled Picquet, and jerked a dirty thumb in the
+direction of the lean-to.
+
+And there Quintana saw a pair of muddy boots protruding from a blanket.
+
+"It is Harry Beck, yes?" he inquired. Then _something_ about the boots
+and the blanket silenced him. He kept his eyes on them for a full
+minute, then walked into the lean-to. The blanket also covered Harry
+Beck's features and there was a stain on it where it outlined the
+prostrate man's features, making a ridge over the bony nose.
+
+After a moment Quintana looked around at Picquet:
+
+"So. He is dead. Yes?"
+
+Picquet shrugged: "Since noon, mon capitaine."
+
+"Comment?"
+
+"How shall I know? It was the fire, perhaps,--green wood or wet--it is
+no matter now.... I said to him, 'Pay attention, Henri; your wood makes
+too much smoke.' To me he reply I shall go to hell.... Well, there was
+too much smoke for me. I arise to search for wood more dry, when,
+crack!--they begin to shoot out there----" He waved a dirty hand toward
+the forest.
+
+"'Bon,' said I, 'Clinch, he have seen your damn smoke!'
+
+"'What shall I care?' he make reply, Henri Beck, to me. 'Clinch he
+shall shoot and be damn to him. I cook me my déjeûner all the same.'
+
+"I make representations to that Johnbull; he say to me that I am a frog,
+and other injuries, while he lay yet more wood on his sacré fire.
+
+"Then crack! crack! crack! and zing-gg!--whee-ee! come the big bullets
+of Clinch and his voyous yonder.
+
+"'Bon,' I say, 'me, I make my excuse to retire.'
+
+"Then Henri Beck he laugh and say, 'Hop it, frog!' And that is all he
+has find time to say, when crack! spat! Bien droit he has it--tenez, mon
+capitaine--here, over the left eye!... Like a beef surprise he go over,
+crash! thump! And like a beef that dies, the air bellows out from his
+big lungs----"
+
+Picquet looked down at the dead comrade in a sort of weary compassion
+for such stupidity.
+
+"--So he pass, this ros-biff goddam Johnbull.... Me, I roll him in
+there.... Je ne sais pas pourquoi.... Then I put out the fire and
+leave."
+
+Quintana let his sneering glance rest on the dead a moment, and his thin
+lip curled immemorial contempt for the Anglo-Saxon.
+
+Then he divested himself of the basket-pack which he had stolen from the
+Fry boy.
+
+"Alors," he said calmly, "it has been Mike Clinch who shoot my frien'
+Beck. Bien."
+
+He threw a cartridge into the breech of his rifle, adjusted his
+ammunition belt _en bandoulière_, carelessly.
+
+Then, in a quiet voice: "My frien' Picquet, the time has now arrive when
+it become ver' necessary that we go from here away. Donc--I shall now
+go kill me my frien' Mike Clinch."
+
+Picquet, unastonished, gave him a heavy, bovine look of inquiry.
+
+Quintana said softly: "Me, I have enough already of this damn woods. Why
+shall we starve here when there lies our path?" He pointed north; his
+arm remained outstretched for a while.
+
+"Clinch, he is there," growled Picquet.
+
+"Also our path, l'ami Henri.... And, behind us, they hunt us now with
+_dogs_."
+
+Picquet bared his big white teeth in fierce surprise. "Dogs?" he
+repeated with a sort of snarl.
+
+"That is how they now hunt us, my frien'--like they hunt the hare in the
+Côte d'Or.... Me, I shall now reconnoitre--_that_ way!" And he looked
+where he was pointing, into the north--with smouldering eyes. Then he
+turned calmly to Picquet: "An' you, l'ami?"
+
+"At orders, mon capitaine."
+
+"C'est bien. Venez."
+
+They walked leisurely forward with rifles shouldered, following the hard
+ridge out across a vast and flooded land where the bark of trees
+glimmered with wet mosses.
+
+After a quarter of a mile the ridge broadened and split into two, one
+hog-back branching northeast! They, however, continued north.
+
+About twenty minutes later Picquet, creeping along on Quintana's left,
+and some sixty yards distant, discovered something moving in the woods
+beyond, and fired at it. Instantly two unseen rifles spoke from the
+woods ahead. Picquet was jerked clear around, lost his balance and
+nearly fell. Blood was spurting from his right arm, between elbow and
+shoulder.
+
+He tried to lift and level his rifle; his arm collapsed and dangled
+broken and powerless; his rifle clattered to the forest floor.
+
+For a moment he stood there in plain view, dumb, deathly white; then he
+began screaming with fury while the big, soft-nosed bullets came
+streaming in all around him. His broken arm was hit again. His screaming
+ceased; he dragged out his big clasp-knife with his left hand and
+started running toward the shooting.
+
+As he ran, his mangled arm flopping like a broken wing, Byron Hastings
+stepped out from behind a tree and coolly shot him down at close
+quarters.
+
+Then Quintana's rifle exploded twice very quickly, and the Hastings boy
+stumbled sideways and fell sprawling. He managed to rise to his knees
+again; he even was trying to stand up when Quintana, taking his time,
+deliberately began to empty his magazine into the boy, riddling him limb
+and body and head.
+
+Down once more, he still moved his arms. Sid Hone reached out from
+behind a fallen log to grasp the dying lad's ankle and draw him into
+shelter, but Quintana reloaded swiftly and smashed Hone's left hand with
+the first shot.
+
+Then Jim Hastings, kneeling behind a bunch of juniper, fired a
+high-velocity bullet into the tree behind which Quintana stood; but
+before he could fire again Quintana's shot in reply came ripping through
+the juniper and tore a ghastly hole in the calf of his left leg,
+striking a blow that knocked young Hastings flat and paralysed as a dead
+flounder.
+
+A mile to the north, blocking the other exit from Drowned Valley, Mike
+Clinch, Harvey Chase, Cornelius Blommers, and Dick Berry stood listening
+to the shooting.
+
+"B'gosh," blurted out Chase, "it sounds like they was goin' through,
+Mike. B'gosh, it does!"
+
+Clinch's little pale eyes blazed, but he said in his soft, agreeable
+voice:
+
+"Stay right here, boys. Like as not some of 'em will come this way."
+
+The shooting below ceased. Clinch's nostrils expanded and flattened with
+every breath, as he stood glaring into the woods.
+
+"Harve," he said presently, "you an' Corny go down there an' kinda look
+around. And you signal if I'm wanted. G'wan, both o' you. Git!"
+
+They started, running heavily, but their feet made little noise on the
+moss.
+
+Berry came over and stood near Clinch. For ten minutes neither man
+moved. Clinch stared at the woods in front of him. The younger man's
+nervous glance flickered like a snake's tongue in every direction, and
+he kept moistening his lips with his tongue.
+
+Presently two shots came from the south. A pause; a rattle of shots from
+hastily emptied magazines.
+
+"G'wan down there, Dick!" said Clinch.
+
+"You'll be alone, Mike----"
+
+"Au' right. You do like I say; git along quick!"
+
+Berry walked southward a little way. He had turned very white under his
+tan.
+
+"Gol ding ye!" shouted Clinch, "take it on a lope or I'll kick the pants
+off'n ye!"
+
+Berry began to run, carrying his rifle at a trail.
+
+For half an hour there was not a sound in the forests of Drowned Valley
+except in the dead timber where unseen woodpeckers hammered fitfully at
+the ghosts of ancient trees.
+
+Always Clinch's little pale eyes searched the forest twilight in front
+of him; not a falling leaf escaped him; not a chipmunk.
+
+And all the while Clinch talked to himself; his lips moved a little now
+and then, but uttered no sound:
+
+"All I want God should do," he repeated again and again, "is to just let
+Quintana come _my_ way. 'Tain't for because he robbed my girlie. 'Tain't
+for the stuff he carries onto him.... No, God, 'tain't them things. But
+it's what that there skunk done to my Evie.... O God, be you listenin'?
+He _hurt_ her, Quintana did. That's it. He misused her.... God, if you
+had seen my girlie's little bleeding feet!---- _That's_ the reason....
+'Tain't the stuff. I can work. I can save for to make my Evie a lady
+same's them high-steppers on Fifth Avenoo. I can moil and toil and slave
+an' run hootch--hootch---- They wuz wine 'n' fixin's into the Bible. It
+ain't you, God, it's them fanatics.... Nobody in my Dump wanted I
+should sell 'em more'n a bottle o' beer before this here prohybishun set
+us all crazy. 'Tain't right.... O God, don't hold a little hootch agin
+me when all I want of you is to let Quintana----"
+
+The slightest noise behind him. He waited, turned slowly. Eve stood
+there.
+
+Hell died in his pale eyes as she came to him, rested silently in his
+gentle embrace, returned his kiss, laid her flushed, sweet cheek against
+his unshaven face.
+
+"Dad, darling?"
+
+"Yes, my baby----"
+
+"You're watching to kill Quintana. But there's no use watching any
+longer."
+
+"Have the boys below got him?" he demanded.
+
+"They got one of his gang. Byron Hastings is dead. Jim is badly hurt;
+Sid Hone, too,--not so badly----"
+
+"Where's Quintana?"
+
+"Dad, he's gone.... But it don't matter. See here!----" She dug her
+slender hand into her breeches' pocket and pulled out a little
+fistful of gems.
+
+Clinch, his powerful arm closing her shoulders, looked dully at the
+jewels.
+
+"You see, dad, there's no use killing Quintana. These are the things he
+robbed you of."
+
+"'Tain't them that matter.... I'm glad you got 'em. I allus wanted you
+should be a great lady, girlie. Them's the tickets of admission. You put
+'em in your pants. I gotta stay here a spell----"
+
+"Dad! Take them!"
+
+He took them, smiled, shoved them into his pocket.
+
+"What is it, girlie?" he asked absently, his pale eyes searching the
+woods ahead.
+
+"I've just told you," she said, "that the boys went in as far as
+Quintana's shanty. There was a dead man there, too; but Quintana has
+gone."
+
+Clinch said,--not removing his eyes from the forest: "If any o' them
+boys has let Quintana crawl through I'll kill _him_, too.... G'wan
+home, girlie. I gotta mosey--I gotta kinda loaf around f'r a spell----"
+
+"Dad, I want you to come back with me----"
+
+"You go home; you hear me, Eve? Tell Corny and Dick Berry to hook it for
+Owl Marsh and stop the Star Peak trails--both on 'em.... Can Sid and
+Jimmy walk?"
+
+"Jim can't----"
+
+"Well, let Harve take him on his back. You go too. You help fix Jimmy up
+at the house. He's a little fella, Jimmy Hastings is. Harve can tote
+him. And you go along----"
+
+"Dad, Quintana says he means to kill you! What is the use of hurting
+him? You have what he took----"
+
+"I gotta have more'n he took. But even that ain't enough. He couldn't
+pay for all he ever done to me, girlie.... I'm aimin' to draw on him on
+sight----"
+
+Clinch's set visage relaxed into an alarming smile which flickered,
+faded, died in the wintry ferocity of his eyes.
+
+"Dad----"
+
+"G'wan home!" he interrupted harshly. "You want that Hastings boy to
+bleed to death?"
+
+She came up to him, not uttering a word, yet asking him with all the
+tenderness and eloquence of her eyes to leave this blood-trail where it
+lay and hunt no more.
+
+He kissed her mouth, infinitely tender, smiled; then, again prim and
+scowling:
+
+"G'wan home, you little scut, an' do what I told ye, or, by God, I'll
+cut a switch that'll learn ye good! Never a word, now! On yer way!
+G'wan!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Twice she turned to look back. The second time, Clinch was slowly
+walking into the woods straight ahead of him. She waited; saw him go in;
+waited. After a while she continued on her way.
+
+When she sighted the men below she called to Blommers and Dick Berry:
+
+"Dad says you're to stop Star Peak trail by Owl Marsh."
+
+Jimmy Hastings sat on a log, crying and looking down at his dead
+brother, over whose head somebody had spread a coat.
+
+Blommers had made a tourniquet for Jimmy out of a bandanna and a peeled
+stick.
+
+The girl examined it, loosened it for a moment, twisted it again, and
+bade Harvey Chase take him on his back and start for Clinch's.
+
+The boy began to sob that he didn't want his brother to be left out
+there all alone; but Chase promised to come back and bring him in before
+night.
+
+Sid Hone came up, haggard from pain and loss of blood, resting his
+mangled hand in the sling of his cartridge-belt.
+
+Berry and Blommers were already starting across toward Owl Marsh; and
+the latter, passing by, asked Eve where Mike was.
+
+"He went into Drowned Valley by the upper outlet," she said.
+
+"He'll never find no one in them logans an' sinks," muttered Chase,
+squatting to hoist Jimmy Hastings to his broad back.
+
+"I guess he'll be over Star Peak side by sundown," nodded Blommers.
+
+Eve watched him slouching off into the woods, followed sullenly by
+Berry. Then she looked down at the dead man in silence.
+
+"Be you ready, Eve?" grunted Chase.
+
+She turned with a heavy heart to the home trail; but her mind was
+passionately with Clinch in the spectral forests of Drowned Valley.
+
+
+III
+
+And Clinch's mind was on her. All else--his watchfulness, his stealthy
+advance--all the alertness of eye and ear, all the subtlety, the
+cunning, the infinite caution--were purely instinctive mechanics.
+
+Somewhere in this flooded twilight of gigantic trees was José Quintana.
+Knowing that, he dismissed that fact from his mind and turned his
+thoughts to Eve.
+
+Sometimes his lips moved. They usually did when he was arguing with God
+or calling his Creator's attention to the justice of his case. His _two_
+cases--each, to him, a cause célèbre; the matter of Harrod; the affair
+of Quintana.
+
+Many a time he had pleaded these two causes before the Most High.
+
+But now his thoughts were chiefly concerned with Eve--with the problem
+of her future--his master passion--this daughter of the dead wife he had
+loved.
+
+He sighed unconsciously; halted.
+
+"Well, Lord," he concluded, in his wordless way, "my girlie has gotta
+have a chance if I gotta go to hell for it. That's sure as shootin'....
+Amen."
+
+At that instant he saw Quintana.
+
+Recognition was instant and mutual. Neither man stirred. Quintana was
+standing beside a giant hemlock. His pack lay at his feet.
+
+Clinch had halted--always the mechanics!--close to a great ironwood
+tree.
+
+Probably both men knew that they could cover themselves before the other
+moved a muscle. Clinch's small, light eyes were blazing; Quintana's
+black eyes had become two slits.
+
+Finally: "You--dirty--skunk," drawled Clinch in his agreeably misleading
+voice, "by Jesus Christ I got you now."
+
+"Ah--h," said Quintana, "thees has happen ver' nice like I expec'....
+Always I say myse'f, yet a little patience, José, an' one day you shall
+meet thees fellow Clinch, who has rob you.... I am ver' thankful to the
+good God----"
+
+He had made the slightest of movements: instantly both men were behind
+their trees. Clinch, in the ferocious pride of woodcraft, laughed
+exultingly--filled the dim and spectral forest with his roar of
+laughter.
+
+"Quintana," he called out, "you're a-going to cash in. Savvy? You're
+a-going to hop off. An' first you gotta hear why. 'Tain't for the stuff.
+Naw! I hooked it off'n you; you hooked it off'n me; now I got it again.
+_That's_ all square.... No, 'tain't _that_ grudge, you green-livered
+whelp of a cross-bred, still-born slut! No! It's becuz you laid the heft
+o' your dirty little finger onto my girlie. 'N' now you gotta hop!"
+
+Quintana's sinister laughter was his retort. Then: "You damfool Clinch,"
+he said, "I got in my pocket what you rob of me. Now I kill you, and
+then I feel ver' well. I go home, live like some kings; yes. But you,"
+he sneered, "you shall not go home never no more. No. You shall remain
+in thees damn wood like ver' dead old rat that is all wormy.... Hé! I
+got a million dollaire--five million franc in my pocket. You shall learn
+what it cost to rob José Quintana! Unnerstan'?"
+
+"You liar," said Clinch contemptuously, "I got them jools in my pants
+pocket----"
+
+Quintana's derisive laugh cut him short: "I give you thee Flaming Jewel
+if you show me you got my gems in you pants pocket!"
+
+"I'll show you. Lay down your rifle so's I see the stock."
+
+"First you, my frien' Mike," said Quintana cautiously.
+
+Clinch took his rifle by the muzzle and shoved the stock into view so
+that Quintana could see it without moving.
+
+To his surprise, Quintana did the same, then coolly stepped a pace
+outside the shelter of his hemlock stump.
+
+"You show me now!" he called across the swamp.
+
+Clinch stepped into view, dug into his pocket, and, cupping both hands,
+displayed a glittering heap of gems.
+
+"I wanted you should know who's gottem," he said, "before you hop. It'll
+give you something to think over in hell."
+
+Quintana's eyes had become slits again. Neither man stirred. Then:
+
+"So you are buzzard, eh, Clinch? You feed on dead man's pockets, eh? You
+find Sard somewhere an' you feed." He held up the morocco case,
+emblazoned with the arms of the Grand Duchess of Esthonia, and shook it
+at Clinch.
+
+"In there is my share.... Not all. Ver' quick, now, I take yours,
+too----"
+
+Clinch vanished and so did his rifle; and Quintana's first bullet struck
+the moss where the stock had rested.
+
+"You black crow!" jeered Clinch, laughing, "--I need that empty case of
+yours. And I'm going after it.... But it's because your filthy claw
+touched my girlie that you gotta hop!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Twilight lay over the phantom wood, touching with pallid tints the
+flooded forest.
+
+So far only that one shot had been fired. Both men were still
+manoeuvring, always creeping in circles and always lining some great
+tree for shelter.
+
+Now, the gathering dusk was making them bolder and swifter; and twice,
+already, Clinch caught the shadow of a fading edge of something that
+vanished against the shadows too swiftly for a shot.
+
+Now Quintana, keeping a tree in line, brushed with his lithe back a
+leafless moose-bush that stood swaying as he avoided it.
+
+Instantly a stealthy hope seized him: he slipped out of his coat, spread
+it on the bush, set the naked branches swaying, and darted to his tree.
+
+Waiting, he saw that the grey blot his coat made in the dusk was still
+moving a little--just vibrating a little bit in the twilight. He touched
+the bush with his rifle barrel, then crouched almost flat.
+
+Suddenly the red crash of a rifle lit up Clinch's visage for a fraction
+of a second. And Quintana's bullet smashed Clinch between the eyes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+After a long while Quintana ventured to rise and creep forward.
+
+Night, too, came creeping like an assassin amid the ghostly trees.
+
+So twilight died in the stillness of Drowned Valley and the pall of
+night lay over all things,--living and dead alike.
+
+
+
+
+EPISODE ELEVEN
+
+THE PLACE OF PINES
+
+
+I
+
+The last sound that Mike Clinch heard on earth was the detonation of his
+own rifle. Probably it was an agreeable sound to him. He lay there with
+a pleasant expression on his massive features. His watch had fallen out
+of his pocket.
+
+Quintana shined him with an electric torch; picked up the watch. Then,
+holding the torch in one hand, he went through the dead man's pockets
+very thoroughly.
+
+When Quintana had finished, both trays of the flat morocco case were
+full of jewels. And Quintana was full of wonder and suspicion.
+
+Unquietly he looked upon the dead--upon the glittering contents of the
+jewel-box,--but always his gaze reverted to the dead. The faintest
+shadow of a smile edged Clinch's lips. Quintana's lips grew graver. He
+said slowly, like one who does his thinking aloud:
+
+"What is it you have done to me, l'ami Clinch?... Are there truly then
+two sets of precious stones?--_two_ Flaming Jewels?--two gems of Erosite
+like there never has been in all thees worl' excep' only two more?...
+Or is one set false?... Have I here one set of paste facsimiles?... My
+frien' Clinch, why do you lie there an' smile at me so ver' funny ...
+like you are amuse?... I am wondering what you may have done to me, my
+frien' Clinch...."
+
+For a while he remained kneeling beside the dead. Then: "Ah, bah," he
+said, pocketing the morocco case and getting to his feet.
+
+He moved a little way toward the open trail, stopped, came back, stood
+his rifle against a tree.
+
+For a while he was busy with his sharp Spanish clasp knife, whittling
+and fitting together two peeled twigs. A cross was the ultimate result.
+Then he placed Clinch's hands palm to palm upon his chest, laid the
+cross on his breast, and shined the result with complacency.
+
+Then Quintana took off his hat.
+
+"L'ami Mike," he said, "you were a _man_!... Adios!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Quintana put on his hat. The path was free. The world lay open before
+José Quintana once more;--the world, his hunting ground.
+
+"But," he thought uneasily, "what is it that I bring home this time? How
+much is paste? My God, how droll that smile of Clinch.... Which is the
+false--his jewels or mine? Dieu que j'étais bête!---- Me who have not
+suspec' that there are _two_ trays within my jewel-box!... I
+unnerstan'. It is ver' simple. In the top tray the false gems. Ah! Paste
+on top to deceive a thief!... Alors.... Then what I have recover of
+Clinch is the _real_!... Nom de Dieu!... How should I know? His smile
+is so ver' funny.... I think thees dead man make mock of me--all inside
+himse'f----"
+
+So, in darkness, prowling south by west, shining the trail furtively,
+and loaded rifle ready, Quintana moved with stealthy, unhurried tread
+out of the wilderness that had trapped him and toward the tangled
+border of that outer world which led to safe, obscure, uncharted
+labyrinths--old-world mazes, immemorial hunting grounds--haunted by
+men who prey.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The night had turned frosty. Quintana, wet to the knees and very tired,
+moved slowly, not daring to leave the trail because of sink-holes.
+
+However, the trail led to Clinch's Dump, and sooner or later he must
+leave it.
+
+What he had to have was a fire; he realised that. Somewhere off the
+trail, in big timber if possible, he must build a fire and master this
+deadly chill that was slowly paralysing all power of movement.
+
+He knew that a fire in the forest, particularly in big timber, could be
+seen only a little way. He must take his chances with sink-holes and
+find some spot in the forest to build that fire.
+
+Who could discover him except by accident?
+
+Who would prowl the midnight wilderness? At thirty yards the fire
+would not be visible. And, as for the odour--well, he'd be gone
+before dawn.... Meanwhile, he must have that fire. He could wait no
+longer.
+
+He cut a pole first. Then he left the trail where a little spring flowed
+west, and turned to the right, shining the forest floor as he moved and
+sounding with his pole every wet stretch of moss, every strip of mud,
+every tiniest glimmer of water.
+
+At last he came to a place of pines, first growth giants towering into
+night, and, looking up, saw stars, infinitely distant, ... where
+perhaps those things called souls drifted like wisps of vapour.
+
+When the fire took, Quintana's thin dark hands had become nearly useless
+from cold. He could not have crooked finger to trigger.
+
+For a long time he sat close to the blaze, slowly massaging his torpid
+limbs, but did not dare strip off his foot-gear.
+
+Steam rose from puttee and heavy shoe and from the sodden woollen
+breeches. Warmth slowly penetrated. There was little smoke; the big dry
+branches were dead and bleached and he let the fire eat into them
+without using his axe.
+
+Once or twice he sighed, "Oh, my God," in a weary demi-voice, as though
+the content of well-being were permeating him.
+
+Later he ate and drank languidly, looking up at the stars, speculating
+as to the possible presence of Mike Clinch up there.
+
+"Ah, the dirty thief," he murmured; "--nevertheless a man. Quel homme!
+Mais bête à faire pleurer! Je l'ai bien triché, moi! Ha!"
+
+Quintana smiled palely as he thought of the coat and the gently-swaying
+bush--of the red glare of Clinch's shot, of the death-echo of his own
+shot.
+
+Then, uneasy, he drew out the morocco case and gazed at the two trays
+full of gems.
+
+The jewels blazed in the firelight. He touched them, moved them about,
+picked up several and examined them, testing the unset edges against his
+under lip as an expert tests jade.
+
+But he couldn't tell; there was no knowing. He replaced them, closed
+the case, pocketed it. When he had a chance he could try boiling water
+for one sort of trick. He could scratch one or two.... Sard would know.
+He wondered whether Sard had got away, not concerned except selfishly.
+However, there were others in Paris whom he could trust--at a price....
+
+Quintana rested both elbows on his knees and framed his dark face
+between both bony hands.
+
+What a chase Clinch had led him after the Flaming Jewel. And now Clinch
+lay dead in the forest--faintly smiling. At _what_?
+
+In a very low, passionless voice, Quintana cursed monotonously as he
+gazed into the fire. In Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian, he cursed
+Clinch. After a little while he remembered Clinch's daughter, and he
+cursed her, elaborately, thoroughly, wishing her black mischance awake
+and asleep, living or dead.
+
+Darragh, too, he remembered in his curses, and did not slight him. And
+the trooper, Stormont--ah, he should have killed all of them when he had
+the chance.... And those two Baltic Russians, also, the girl duchess
+and her friend. Why on earth hadn't he made a clean job of it?
+Over-caution. A wary disinclination to stir up civilization by needless
+murder. But after all, old maxims, old beliefs, old truths are the best,
+God knows. The dead don't talk! And that's the wisest wisdom of all.
+
+"If," murmured Quintana fervently, "God gives me further opportunity to
+acquire a little property to comfort me in my old age, I shall leave no
+gossiping fool to do me harm with his tongue. No! I kill.
+
+"And though they raise a hue and cry, dead tongues can not wag and I
+save myse'f much annoyance in the end."
+
+He leaned his back against the trunk of a massive pine.
+
+Presently Quintana slept after his own fashion--that is to say, looking
+closely at him one could discover a glimmer under his lowered eyelids.
+And he listened always in that kind of sleep. As though a shadowy part
+of him were detached from his body, and mounted guard over it.
+
+The inaudible movement of a wood-mouse venturing into the firelit circle
+awoke Quintana. Again a dropping leaf amid distant birches awoke him.
+Such things. And so he slept with wet feet to the fire and his rifle
+across his knees; and dreamed of Eve and of murder, and that the Flaming
+Jewel was but a mass of glass.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At that moment the girl of whose white throat Quintana was dreaming, and
+whining faintly in his dreams, stood alone outside Clinch's Dump, rifle
+in hand, listening, fighting the creeping dread that touched her slender
+body at times--seemed to touch her very heart with frost.
+
+Clinch's men had gone on to Ghost Lake with their wounded and dead,
+where there was fitter shelter for both. All had gone on; nobody
+remained to await Clinch's home-coming except Eve Strayer.
+
+Black Care, that tireless squire of dames, had followed her from the
+time she had left Clinch, facing the spectral forests of Drowned Valley.
+
+An odd, unusual dread weighted her heart--something in emotions that she
+never before had experienced in time of danger. In it there was the
+deathly unease of premonition. But of what it was born she did not
+understand,--perhaps of the strain of dangers passed--of the shock of
+discovery concerning Smith's identity with Darragh--Darragh!--the hated
+kinsman of Harrod the abhorred.
+
+Fiercely she wondered how much her lover knew about this miserable
+masquerade. Was Stormont involved in this deception--Stormont, the
+object of her first girl's passion--Stormont, for whom she would have
+died?
+
+Wretched, perplexed, fiercely enraged at Darragh, deadly anxious
+concerning Clinch, she had gone about cooking supper.
+
+The supper, kept warm on the range, still awaited the man who had no
+more need of meat and drink.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Of the tragedy of Sard Eve knew nothing. There were no traces save in
+the disorder in the pantry and the bottles and chair on the veranda.
+
+Who had visited the place excepting those from whom she and Stormont had
+fled, did not appear. She had no idea why her step-father's mattress and
+bed-quilt lay in the pantry.
+
+Her heart heavy with ceaseless anxiety, Eve carried mattress and
+bed-clothes to Clinch's chamber, re-made his bed, wandered through the
+house setting it in order; then, in the kitchen, seated herself and
+waited until the strange dread that possessed her drove her out into the
+starlight to stand and listen and stare at the dark forest where all her
+dread seemed concentrated.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was not yet dawn, but the girl could endure the strain no longer.
+
+With electric torch and rifle she started for the forest, almost running
+at first; then, among the first trees, moving with caution and in
+silence along the trail over which Clinch should long since have
+journeyed homeward.
+
+In soft places, when she ventured to flash her torch, foot-prints cast
+curious shadows, and it was hard to make out tracks so oddly distorted
+by the light. Prints mingled and partly obliterated other prints. She
+identified her own tracks leading south, and guessed at the others,
+pointing north and south, where they had carried in the wounded and had
+gone back to bring in the dead.
+
+But nowhere could she discover any impression resembling her
+step-father's,--that great, firm stride and solid imprint which so often
+she had tracked through moss and swale and which she knew so well.
+
+Once when she got up from her knees after close examination of the muddy
+trail, she became aware of the slightest taint in the night air--stood
+with delicate nostrils quivering--advanced, still conscious of the
+taint, listening, wary, every stealthy instinct alert.
+
+She had not been mistaken: somewhere in the forest there was smoke.
+Somewhere a fire was burning. It might not be very far away; it might be
+distant. _Whose fire?_ Her father's? Would a hunter of men build a fire?
+
+The girl stood shivering in the darkness. There was not a sound.
+
+Now, keeping her cautious feet in the trail by sense of touch alone, she
+moved on. Gradually, as she advanced, the odour of smoke became more
+distinct. She heard nothing, saw nothing; but there was a near reek of
+smoke in her nostrils and she stopped short.
+
+After a little while in the intense silence of the forest she ventured
+to touch the switch of her torch, very cautiously.
+
+In the faint, pale lustre she saw a tiny rivulet flowing westward from a
+spring, and, beside it, in the mud, imprints of a man's feet.
+
+The tracks were small, narrow, slimmer than imprints made by any man she
+could think of. Under the glimmer of her torch they seemed quite fresh;
+contours were still sharp, some ready to crumble, and water stood in the
+heels.
+
+A little way she traced them, saw where their maker had cut a pole,
+peeled it; saw, farther on, where this unknown man had probed in moss
+and mud--peppered some particularly suspicious swale with a series of
+holes as though a giant woodcock had been "boring" there.
+
+Who was this man wandering all alone at night off the Drowned Valley
+trail and probing the darkness with a pole?
+
+She knew it was not her father. She knew that no native--none of her
+father's men--would behave in such a manner. Nor could any of these have
+left such narrow, almost delicate tracks.
+
+As she stole along, dimly shining the tracks, lifting her head
+incessantly to listen and peer into the darkness, her quick eye caught
+something ahead--something very slightly different from the wall of
+black obscurity--a vague hint of colour--the very vaguest tint scarcely
+perceptible at all.
+
+But she knew it was firelight touching the trunk of an unseen tree.
+
+Now, soundlessly over damp pine needles she crept. The scent of smoke
+grew strong in nostril and throat; the pale tint became palely reddish.
+All about her the blackness seemed palpable--seemed to touch her body
+with its weight; but, ahead, a ruddy glow stained two huge pines. And
+presently she saw the fire, burning low, but redly alive. And, after a
+long, long while, she saw a man.
+
+He had left the fire circle. His pack and belted mackinaw still lay
+there at the foot of a great tree. But when, finally, she discovered
+him, he was scarcely visible where he crouched in the shadow of a
+tree-trunk, with his rifle half lowered at a ready.
+
+Had he heard her? It did not seem possible. Had he been crouching there
+since he made his fire? Why had he made it then--for its warmth could
+not reach him there. And why was he so stealthily watching--silent,
+unstirring, crouched in the shadows?
+
+She strained her eyes; but distance and obscurity made recognition
+impossible. And yet, somehow, every quivering instinct within her was
+telling her that the crouched and shadowy watcher beyond the fire was
+Quintana.
+
+And every concentrated instinct was telling her that he'd kill her if he
+caught sight of her; her heart clamoured it; her pulses thumped it in
+her ears.
+
+Had the girl been capable of it she could have killed him where he
+crouched. She thought of it, but knew it was not in her to do it. And
+yet Quintana had boasted that he meant to kill her father. That was what
+terribly concerned her. And there must be a way to stop that
+danger--some way to stop it short of murder,--a way to render this man
+harmless to her and hers.
+
+No, she could not kill him this way. Except in extremes she could not
+bring herself to fire upon any human creature. And yet this man must be
+rendered harmless--somehow--somehow--ah!----
+
+As the problem presented itself its solution flashed into her mind. Men
+of the wilderness knew how to take dangerous creatures alive. To take a
+dangerous and reasoning human was even less difficult, because reason
+makes more mistakes than does instinct.
+
+Stealthily, without a sound, the girl crept back through the shadows
+over the damp pine needles, until, peering fearfully over her shoulder,
+she saw the last ghost-tint of Quintana's fire die out in the terrific
+dark behind.
+
+Slowly, still, she moved until her sensitive feet felt the trodden path
+from Drowned Valley.
+
+Now, with torch flaring, she ran, carrying her rifle at a trail. Before
+her, here and there, little night creatures fled--a humped-up raccoon,
+dazzled by the glare, a barred owl still struggling with its wood-rat
+kill.
+
+She ran easily,--an agile, tireless young thing, part of the swiftness
+and silence of the woods--part of the darkness, the sinuous celerity,
+the ominous hush of wide, still places--part of its very blood and pulse
+and hot, sweet breath.
+
+Even when she came out among the birches by Clinch's Dump she was
+breathing evenly and without distress. She ran to the kitchen door but
+did not enter. On pegs under the porch a score or more of rusty traps
+hung. She unhooked the largest, wound the chain around it, tucked it
+under her left arm and started back.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When at last she arrived at the place of pines again, and saw the far,
+spectral glimmer of Quintana's fire, the girl was almost breathless. But
+dawn was not very far away and there remained little time for the
+taking alive of a dangerous man.
+
+Where two enormous pines grew close together near a sapling, she knelt
+down, and, with both hands, scooped out a big hollow in the immemorial
+layers of pine needles. Here she placed her trap. It took all her
+strength and skill to set it; to fasten the chain around the base of the
+sapling pine.
+
+And now, working with only the faintest glimmer of her torch, she
+covered everything with pine needles.
+
+It was not possible to restore the forest floor; the place remained
+visible--a darker, rougher patch on the bronzed carpet of needles beaten
+smooth by decades of rain and snow. No animal would have trodden that
+suspicious space. But it was with man she had to deal--a dangerous but
+reasoning man with few and atrophied instincts--and with no experience
+in traps; and, therefore, in no dread of them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Before she started she had thrown a cartridge into the breech of her
+rifle.
+
+Now she pocketed her torch and seated herself between the two big pines
+and about three feet behind the hidden trap.
+
+Dawn was not far away. She looked upward through high pine-tops where
+stars shone; and saw no sign of dawn. But the watcher by the fire beyond
+was astir, now, in the imminence of dawn, and evidently meant to warm
+himself before leaving.
+
+Eve could hear him piling dry wood on the fire; the light on the tree
+trunks grew redder; a pungent reek of smoke was drawn through the
+forest aisles. She sniffed it, listened, and watched, her rifle across
+her knees.
+
+Eve never had been afraid of anything. She was not afraid of this man.
+If it came to combat she would have to kill. It never entered her mind
+to fear Quintana's rifle. Even Clinch was not as swift with a rifle as
+she.... Only Stormont had been swifter--thank God!----
+
+She thought of Stormont--sat there in the terrific darkness loving him,
+her heart of a child tremulous with adoration.
+
+Then the memory of Darragh pushed in and hot hatred possessed her.
+Always, in her heart, she had distrusted the man.
+
+Instinct had warned her. A spy! What evil had he worked already?
+Where was her father? Evidently Quintana had escaped him at Drowned
+Valley.... Quintana was yonder by his fire, preparing to flee the
+wilderness where men hunted him.... But where was Clinch? Had this
+sneak, Darragh, betrayed him? Was Clinch already in the clutch of
+the State Troopers? Was he in _jail_?
+
+At the thought the girl felt slightly faint, then a rush of angry blood
+stung her face in the darkness. Except for game and excise violations
+the stories they told about Clinch were lies.
+
+He had nothing to fear, nothing to be ashamed of. Harrod had driven him
+to lawlessness; the Government took away what was left him to make a
+living. He had to live. What if he did break laws made by millionaire
+and fanatic! What of it? He had her love and her respect--and her deep,
+deep pity. And these were enough for any girl to fight for.
+
+Dawn spread a silvery light above the pines, but Quintana's fire still
+reddened the tree trunks; and she could hear him feeding it at
+intervals.
+
+Finally she saw him. He came out on the edge of the ruddy ring of light
+and stood peering around at the woods where already a vague greyness was
+revealing nearer trees.
+
+When, finally, he turned his back and looked at his fire, Eve rose and
+stood between the two big pines. Behind one of them she placed her
+rifle.
+
+It was growing lighter in the woods. She could see Quintana in the fire
+ring and outside,--saw him go to the spring rivulet, lie flat, drink,
+then, on his knees, wash face and hands in the icy water.
+
+It became plain to her that he was nearly ready to depart. She watched
+him preparing. And now she could see him plainly, and knew him to be
+Quintana and no other.
+
+He had a light basket pack. He put some articles into it, stretched
+himself and yawned, pulled on his hat, hoisted the pack and fastened it
+to his back, stood staring at the fire for a long time; then, with a
+sudden upward look at the zenith where a slight flush stained a cloud,
+he picked up his rifle.
+
+At that moment Eve called to him in a clear and steady voice.
+
+The effect on Quintana was instant; he was behind a tree before her
+voice ceased.
+
+"Hallo! Hi! You over there!" she called again. "This is Eve Strayer. I'm
+looking for Clinch! He hasn't been home all night. Have you seen him?"
+
+After a moment she saw Quintana's head watching her,--not at the
+shoulder-height of a man but close to the ground and just above the tree
+roots.
+
+"Hey!" she cried. "What's the matter with you over there? I'm asking you
+who you are and if you've seen my father?"
+
+After a while she saw Quintana coming toward her, circling, creeping
+swiftly from tree to tree.
+
+As he flitted through the shadows the trees between which she was
+standing hid her from him a moment. Instantly she placed her rifle on
+the ground and kicked the pine needles over it.
+
+As Quintana continued his encircling manoeuvres Eve, apparently
+perplexed, walked out into the clear space, putting the concealed trap
+between her and Quintana, who now came stealthily toward her from the
+rear.
+
+It was evident that he had reconnoitred sufficiently to satisfy himself
+that the girl was alone and that no trick, no ambuscade, threatened him.
+
+And now, from behind a pine, and startlingly near her, came Quintana,
+moving with confident grace yet holding his rifle ready for any
+emergency.
+
+Eve's horrified stare was natural; she had not realised that any man
+could wear so evil a smile.
+
+Quintana stopped short a dozen paces away. The dramatic in him demanded
+of the moment its full value. He swept off his hat with a flourish,
+bowed deeply where he stood.
+
+"Ah!" he cried gaily, "the happy encounter, Señorita. God is too good to
+us. And it was but a moment since my thoughts were of you! I swear
+it!----"
+
+It was not fear; it was a sort of slow horror of this man that began to
+creep over the girl. She stared at his brilliant eyes, at his thick
+mouth, too red--shuddered slightly. But the toe of her right foot
+touched the stock of her rifle under the pine needles.
+
+She held herself under control.
+
+"So it's you," she said unsteadily. "I thought our people had caught
+you."
+
+Quintana laughed: "Charming child," he said, "it is _I_ who have caught
+your people. And now, my God!--I catch _you_!... It is ver' funny. Is
+it not?"
+
+She looked straight into Quintana's black eyes, but the look he returned
+sent the shamed blood surging into her face.
+
+"By God," he said between his white, even teeth,--"by God!"
+
+Staring at her he slowly disengaged his pack, let it fall behind him on
+the pine needles; rested his rifle on it; slipped out of his mackinaw
+and laid that across his rifle--always keeping his brilliant eyes on
+her.
+
+His lips tightened, the muscles in his dark face grew tense; his eyes
+became a blazing insult.
+
+For an instant he stood there, unencumbered, a wiry, graceful shape in
+his woollen breeches, leggings, and grey shirt open at the throat. Then
+he took a step toward her. And the girl watched him, fascinated.
+
+One pace, two, a third, a fourth--the girl's involuntary cry echoed the
+stumbling crash of the man thrashing, clawing, scrambling in the
+clenched jaws of the bear-trap amid a whirl of flying pine needles.
+
+He screamed once, tried to rise, turned blindly to seize the jaws that
+clutched him; and suddenly crouched, loose-jointed, cringing like a
+trapped wolf--the true fatalist among our lesser brothers.
+
+Eve picked up her rifle. She was trembling violently. Then, mastering
+her emotion, she walked over to the pack, placed Quintana's rifle and
+mackinaw in it, coolly hoisted it to her shoulders and buckled it there.
+
+Over her shoulder she kept an eye on Quintana who crouched where he had
+fallen, unstirring, his deadly eyes watching her.
+
+She placed the muzzle of her rifle against his stomach, rested it so,
+holding it with one hand, and her finger at the trigger.
+
+At her brief order he turned out both breeches pockets. She herself
+stooped and drew the Spanish clasp-knife from its sheath at his belt,
+took a pistol from the holster, another out of his hip pocket. Reaching
+up and behind her, she dropped these into the pack.
+
+"Maybe," she said slowly, "your ankle is broken. I'll send somebody from
+Ghost Lake to find you. But whether you've a broken bone or not you'll
+not go very far, Quintana.... After I'm gone you'll be able to free
+yourself. But you can't get away. You'll be followed and caught.... So
+if you can walk at all you'd better go in to Ghost Lake and give
+yourself up.... It's that or starvation.... You've got a watch....
+Don't stir or touch that trap for half an hour.... And that's all."
+
+As she moved away toward the Drowned Valley trail she looked back at
+him. His face was bloodless but his black eyes blazed.
+
+"If ever you come into this forest again," she said, "my father will
+surely kill you."
+
+To her horror Quintana slowly grinned at her. Then, still grinning, he
+placed the forefinger of his left hand between his teeth and bit it.
+
+Whatever he meant by the gesture it seemed unclean, horrible; and the
+girl hurried on, seized with an overwhelming loathing through which a
+sort of terror pulsated like evil premonition in a heavy and tortured
+heart.
+
+Straight into the fire of dawn she sped. A pale primrose light glimmered
+through the woods; trees, bushes, undergrowth turned a dusky purple.
+Already the few small clouds overhead were edged with fiery rose.
+
+Then, of a sudden, a shaft of flame played over the forest. The sun had
+risen.
+
+Hastening, she searched the soft path for any imprint of her father's
+foot. And even in the vain search she hoped to find him at home--hurried
+on burdened with two rifles and a pack, still all nervous and aquiver
+from her encounter with Quintana.
+
+Surely, surely, she thought, if he had missed Quintana in Drowned Valley
+he would not linger in that ghastly place; he'd come home, call in his
+men, take counsel perhaps----
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mist over Star Pond was dissolving to a golden powder in the blinding
+glory of the sun. The eastern window-panes in Clinch's Dump glittered as
+though the rooms inside were all on fire.
+
+Down through withered weeds and scrub she hurried, ran across the grass
+to the kitchen door which swung ajar under its porch.
+
+"Dad!" she called, "Dad!"
+
+Only her own frightened voice echoed in the empty house. She climbed
+the stairs to his room. The bed lay undisturbed as she had made it. He
+was not in any of the rooms; there were no signs of him.
+
+Slowly she descended to the kitchen. He was not there. The food she had
+prepared for him had become cold on a chilled range.
+
+For a long while she stood staring through the window at the sunlight
+outside. Probably, since Quintana had eluded him, he'd come home for
+something to eat.... Surely, now that Quintana had escaped, Clinch
+would come back for some breakfast.
+
+Eve slipped the pack from her back and laid it on the kitchen table.
+There was kindling in the wood-box. She shook down the cinders, laid a
+fire, soaked it with kerosene, lighted it, filled the kettle with fresh
+water.
+
+In the pantry she cut some ham, and found eggs, condensed milk, butter,
+bread, and an apple pie. After she had ground the coffee she placed all
+these on a tray and carried them into the kitchen.
+
+Now there was nothing more to do until her father came, and she sat down
+by the kitchen table to wait.
+
+Outside the sunlight was becoming warm and vivid. There had been no
+frost after all--or, at most, merely a white trace in the shadow--on a
+fallen plank here and there--but not enough to freeze the ground. And,
+in the sunshine, it all quickly turned to dew, and glittered and
+sparkled in a million hues and tints like gems--like that handful of
+jewels she had poured into her father's joined palms--yesterday--there
+at the ghostly edge of Drowned Valley.
+
+At the memory, and quite mechanically, she turned in her chair and drew
+Quintana's basket pack toward her.
+
+First she lifted out his rifle, examined it, set it against the window
+sill. Then, one by one, she drew out two pistols, loaded; the murderous
+Spanish clasp-knife; an axe; a fry-pan and a tin pail, and the rolled-up
+mackinaw.
+
+Under these the pack seemed to contain nothing except food and
+ammunition; staples in sacks and a few cans--lard, salt, tea--such
+things.
+
+The cartridge boxes she piled up on the table; the food she tossed into
+a tin swill bucket.
+
+About the effects of this man it seemed to her as though something
+unclean lingered. She could scarcely bear to handle them,--threw them
+from her with disgust.
+
+The garment, also--the heavy brown and green mackinaw--she disliked to
+touch. To throw it out doors was her intention; but, as she lifted the
+coat, it unrolled and some things fell from the pockets to the kitchen
+table,--money, keys, a watch, a flat leather case----
+
+She looked stupidly at the case. It had a coat of arms emblazoned on it.
+
+Still, stupidly and as though dazed, she laid one hand on it, drew it to
+her, opened it.
+
+The Flaming Jewel blazed in her face amid a heap of glittering gems.
+
+Still she seemed slow to comprehend--as though understanding were
+paralysed.
+
+It was when her eyes fell upon the watch that her heart seemed to stop.
+Suddenly her stunned senses were lighted as by an infernal flare....
+Under the awful blow she swayed upright to her feet, sick with fright,
+her eyes fixed on her father's watch.
+
+It was still ticking.
+
+She did not know whether she cried out in anguish or was dumb under it.
+The house seemed to reel around her; under foot too.
+
+When she came to her senses she found herself outside the house, running
+with her rifle, already entering the woods. But, inside the barrier of
+trees, something blocked her way, stopped her,--a man--_her_ man!
+
+"Eve! In God's name!----" he said as she struggled in his arms; but she
+fought him and strove to tear her body from his embrace:
+
+"They've killed Dad!" she panted,--"Quintana killed him. I didn't
+know--oh, I didn't know!--and I let Quintana go! Oh, Jack, Jack, he's at
+the Place of Pines! I'm going there to shoot him! Let me go!--he's
+killed Dad, I tell you! He had Dad's watch--and the case of jewels--they
+were in his pack on the kitchen table----"
+
+"Eve!"
+
+"Let me go!----"
+
+"_Eve!_" He held her rigid a moment in his powerful grip, compelled her
+dazed, half-crazed eyes to meet his own:
+
+"You must come to your senses," he said. "Listen to what I say: they are
+_bringing in your father_."
+
+Her dilated blue eyes never moved from his.
+
+"We found him in Drowned Valley at sunrise," said Stormont quietly. "The
+men are only a few rods behind me. They are carrying him out."
+
+Her lips made a word without sound.
+
+"Yes," said Stormont in a low voice.
+
+There was a sound in the woods behind them. Stormont turned. Far away
+down the trail the men came into sight.
+
+Then the State Trooper turned the girl very gently and placed one arm
+around her shoulders.
+
+Very slowly they descended the hill together. His equipment was shining
+in the morning sun: and the sun fell on Eve's drooping head, turning her
+chestnut hair to fiery gold.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+An hour later Trooper Stormont was at the Place of Pines.
+
+There was nothing there except an empty trap and the ashes of the dying
+fire beyond.
+
+
+
+
+EPISODE TWELVE
+
+HER HIGHNESS INTERVENES
+
+
+I
+
+Toward noon the wind changed, and about one o'clock it began to snow.
+
+Eve, exhausted, lay on the sofa in her bedroom. Her step-father lay on a
+table in the dance hall below, covered by a sheet from his own bed. And
+beside him sat Trooper Stormont, waiting.
+
+It was snowing heavily when Mr. Lyken, the little undertaker from Ghost
+Lake, arrived with several assistants, a casket, and what he called
+"swell trimmings."
+
+Long ago Mike Clinch had selected his own mortuary site and had driven a
+section of iron pipe into the ground on a ferny knoll overlooking Star
+Pond. In explanation he grimly remarked to Eve that after death he
+preferred to be planted where he could see that Old Harrod's ghost
+didn't trespass.
+
+Here two of Mr. Lyken's able assistants dug a grave while the digging
+was still good; for if Mike Clinch was to lie underground that season
+there might be need of haste--no weather prophet ever having
+successfully forecast Adirondack weather.
+
+Eve, exhausted by shock and a sleepless night, was spared the more
+harrowing details of the coroner's visit and the subsequent jaunty
+activities of Mr. Lyken and his efficient assistants.
+
+She had managed to dress herself in a black wool gown, intending to
+watch by Mike, but Stormont's blunt authority prevailed and she lay down
+for an hour's rest.
+
+The hour lengthened into many hours; the girl slept heavily on her sofa
+under blankets laid over her by Stormont.
+
+All that dark, snowy day she slept, mercifully unconscious of the
+proceedings below.
+
+In its own mysterious way the news penetrated the wilderness; and out of
+the desolation of forest and swamp and mountain drifted the people who
+somehow existed there--a few shy, half wild young girls, a dozen silent,
+lank men, two or three of Clinch's own people, who stood silently about
+in the falling snow and lent a hand whenever requested.
+
+One long shanked youth cut hemlock to line the grave; others erected a
+little fence of silver birch around it, making of the enclosure a
+"plot."
+
+A gaunt old woman from God knows where aided Mr. Lyken at intervals: a
+pretty, sulky-eyed girl with her slovenly, red-headed sister cooked for
+anybody who desired nourishment.
+
+When Mike was ready to hold the inevitable reception everybody filed
+into the dance hall. Mr. Lyken was master of ceremonies; Trooper
+Stormont stood very tall and straight by the head of the casket.
+
+Clinch wore a vague, indefinable smile and his best clothes,--that same
+smile which had so troubled José Quintana.
+
+Light was fading fast in the room when the last visitor took silent
+leave of Clinch and rejoined the groups in the kitchen, where were the
+funeral baked meats.
+
+Eve still slept. Descending again from his reconnaissance, Trooper
+Stormont encountered Trooper Lannis below.
+
+"Has anybody picked up Quintana's tracks?" inquired the former.
+
+"Not so far. An Inspector and two State Game Protectors are out beyond
+Owl Marsh. The Troopers from Five Lakes are on the job, and we have
+enforcement men along Drowned Valley from The Scaur to Harrod Place."
+
+"Does Darragh know?"
+
+"Yes. He's in there with Mike. He brought a lot of flowers from Harrod
+Place."
+
+The two troopers went into the dance hall where Darragh was arranging
+the flowers from his greenhouses.
+
+Stormont said quietly: "All right, Jim, but Eve must not know that they
+came from Harrod's."
+
+Darragh nodded: "How is she, Jack?"
+
+"All in."
+
+"Do you know the story?"
+
+"Yes. Mike went into Drowned Valley early last evening after Quintana.
+He didn't come back. Before dawn this morning Eve located Quintana, set
+a bear-trap for him, and caught him with the goods----"
+
+"What goods?" demanded Darragh sharply.
+
+"Well, she got his pack and found Mike's watch and jewelry in it----"
+
+"What jewelry?"
+
+"The jewels Quintana was after. But that was after she'd arrived at the
+Dump, here, leaving Quintana to get free of the trap and beat it.
+
+"That's how I met her--half crazed, going to find Quintana again. We'd
+found Mike in Drowned Valley and were bringing him out when I ran into
+Eve.... I brought her back here and called Ghost Lake.... They haven't
+picked up Quintana's tracks so far."
+
+After a silence: "Too bad this snow came so late," remarked Trooper
+Lannis. "But we ought to get Quintana anyway."
+
+Darragh went over and looked silently at Mike Clinch.
+
+"I liked you," he said under his breath. "It wasn't your fault. And it
+wasn't mine, Mike.... I'll try to square things. Don't worry."
+
+He came back slowly to where Stormont was standing near the door:
+
+"Jack," he said, "you can't marry Eve on a Trooper's pay. Why not quit
+and take over the Harrod estate?... You and I can go into business
+together later if you like."
+
+After a pause: "That's rather wonderful of you, Jim," said Stormont,
+"but you don't know what sort of business man I'd make----"
+
+"I know what sort of officer you made.... I'm taking no chance.... And
+I'll make my peace with Eve--or somebody will do it for me.... Is it
+settled then?"
+
+"Thanks," said Trooper Stormont, reddening. They clasped hands. Then
+Stormont went about and lighted the candles in the room. Clinch's face,
+again revealed, was still faintly amused at something or other. The dead
+have much to be amused at.
+
+As Darragh was about to go, Stormont said: "We're burying Clinch at
+eleven to-morrow morning. The Ghost Lake Pilot officiates."
+
+"I'll come if it won't upset Eve," said Darragh.
+
+"She won't notice anybody, I fancy," remarked Stormont.
+
+He stood by the veranda and watched Darragh take the Lake Trail through
+the snow. Finally the glimmer of his swinging lantern was lost in the
+woods and Stormont mounted the stairs once more, stood silently by Eve's
+open door, realised she was still heavily asleep, and seated himself on
+a chair outside her door to watch and wait.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+All night long it snowed hard over the Star Pond country, and the late
+grey light of morning revealed a blinding storm pelting a white robed
+world.
+
+Toward ten o'clock, Stormont, on guard, noticed that Eve was growing
+restless.
+
+Downstairs the flotsam of the forest had gathered again: Mr. Lyken was
+there in black gloves; the Reverend Laomi Smatter had arrived in a
+sleigh from Ghost Lake. Both were breakfasting heavily.
+
+The pretty, sulky-faced girl fetched a tray and placed Eve's breakfast
+on it; and Trooper Stormont carried it to her room.
+
+She was awake when he entered. He set the tray on the table. She put
+both arms around his neck.
+
+"Jack," she murmured, her eyes tremulous with tears.
+
+"Everything has been done," he said. "Will you be ready by eleven? I'll
+come for you."
+
+She clung to him in silence for a while.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At eleven he knocked on her door. She opened it. She wore her black wool
+gown and a black fur turban. Some of her pallor remained,--traces of
+tears and bluish smears under both eyes. But her voice was steady.
+
+"Could I see Dad a moment alone?"
+
+"Of course."
+
+She took his arm: they descended the stairs. There seemed to be many
+people about but she did not lift her eyes until her lover led her into
+the dance hall where Clinch lay smiling his mysterious smile.
+
+Then Stormont left her alone there and closed the door.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In a terrific snow-storm they buried Mike Clinch on the spot he had
+selected, in order that he might keep a watchful eye upon the
+trespassing ghost of old man Harrod.
+
+It blew and stormed and stormed, and the thin, nasal voice of "Rev.
+Smatter" was utterly lost in the wind. The slanting lances of snow drove
+down on the casket, building a white mound over the flowers, blotting
+the hemlock boughs from sight.
+
+There was no time to be lost now; the ground was freezing under a
+veering and bitter wind out of the west. Mr. Lyken's talented assistants
+had some difficulty in shaping the mound which snow began to make into a
+white and flawless monument.
+
+The last slap of the spade rang with a metallic jar across the lake,
+where snow already blotted the newly forming film of ice; the human
+denizens of the wilderness filtered back into it one by one; "Rev.
+Smatter" got into his sleigh, plainly concerned about the road; Mr.
+Lyken betrayed unprofessional haste in loading his wagon with his
+talented assistants and starting for Ghost Lake.
+
+A Game Protector or two put on snow-shoes when they departed. Trooper
+Lannis led out his horse and Stormont's, and got into the saddle.
+
+"I'd better get these beasts into Ghost Lake while I can," he said.
+"You'll follow on snow-shoes, won't you, Jack?"
+
+"I don't know. I may need a sleigh for Eve. She can't remain here all
+alone. I'll telephone the Inn."
+
+Darragh, in blanket outfit, a pair of snow-shoes on his back, a rifle in
+his mittened hand, came trudging up from the lake. He and Stormont
+watched Lannis riding away with the two horses.
+
+"He'll make it all right, but it's time he started," said the latter.
+
+Darragh nodded: "Some storm. Where is Eve?"
+
+"In her room."
+
+"What is she going to do, Jack?"
+
+"Marry me as soon as possible. She wants to stay here for a few days but
+I can't leave her here alone. I think I'll telephone to Ghost Lake for a
+sleigh."
+
+"Let me talk to her," said Darragh in a low voice.
+
+"Do you think you'd better--at such a time?"
+
+"I think it's a good time. It will divert her mind, anyway. I want her
+to come to Harrod Place."
+
+"She won't," said Stormont grimly.
+
+"She might. Let me talk to her."
+
+"Do you realise how she feels toward you, Jim?"
+
+"I do, indeed. And I don't blame her. But let me tell you; Eve Strayer
+is the most honest and fair-minded girl I ever knew.... Except one....
+I'll take a chance that she'll listen to me.... Sooner or later she
+will be obliged to hear what I have to tell her.... But it will be
+easier for her--for everybody--if I speak to her now. Let me try,
+Jack."
+
+Stormont hesitated, looked at him, nodded. Darragh stood his rifle
+against the bench on the kitchen porch. They entered the house slowly.
+And met Eve descending the stairs.
+
+The girl looked at Darragh, astonished, then her pale face flushed with
+anger.
+
+"What are you doing in this house?" she demanded unsteadily. "Have you
+no decency, no shame?"
+
+"Yes," he said, "I am ashamed of what my kinsman has done to you and
+yours. That is partly why I am here."
+
+"You came here as a spy," she said with hot contempt. "You lied about
+your name; you lied about your purpose. You came here to betray Dad! If
+he'd known it he would have killed you!"
+
+"Yes, he would have. But--do you know why I came here, Eve?"
+
+"I've told you!"
+
+"And you are wrong. I didn't come here to betray Mike Clinch: I came to
+save him."
+
+"Do you suppose I believe a man who has lied to Dad?" she cried.
+
+"I don't ask you to, Eve. I shall let somebody else prove what I say. I
+don't blame you for your attitude. God knows I don't blame Mike Clinch.
+He stood up like a man to Henry Harrod.... All I ask is to undo some of
+the rotten things that my uncle did to you and yours. And that is partly
+why I came here."
+
+The girl said passionately: "Neither Dad nor I want anything from Harrod
+Place or from you! Do you suppose you can come here after Dad is dead
+and pretend you want to make amends for what your uncle did to us?"
+
+"Eve," said Darragh gravely, "I've made some amends already. You don't
+know it, but I have.... You may not believe it, but I liked your
+father. He was a real man. Had anybody done to me what Henry Harrod did
+to your father I'd have behaved as your father behaved; I'd never have
+budged from this spot; I'd have hunted where I chose; I'd have borne an
+implacable hatred against Henry Harrod and Harrod Place, and every soul
+in it!"
+
+The girl, silenced, looked at him without belief.
+
+He said: "I am not surprised that you distrust what I say. But the man
+you are going to marry was a junior officer in my command. I have no
+closer friend than Jack Stormont. Ask him whether I am to be believed."
+
+Astounded, the girl turned a flushed, incredulous face to Stormont.
+
+He said: "You may trust Darragh as you trust me. I don't know what he
+has to say to you, dear. But whatever he says will be the truth."
+
+Darragh said, gravely: "Through a misunderstanding your father came into
+possession of stolen property, Eve. He did not know it had been stolen.
+I did. But Mike Clinch would not have believed me if I had told him that
+the case of jewels in his possession had been stolen from a woman....
+Quintana stole them. By accident they came into your father's
+possession. I learned of this. I had promised this woman to recover her
+jewels.
+
+"I came here for that purpose, Eve. And for two reasons: first, because
+I learned that Quintana also was coming here to rob your father of these
+gems; second, because, when I knew your father, and knew _you_, I
+concluded that it would be an outrage to call on the police. It would
+mean prison for Clinch, misery and ruin for you, Eve. So--I tried to
+steal the jewels ... to save you both."
+
+He looked at Stormont, who seemed astonished.
+
+"To whom do these jewels belong, Jim?" demanded the trooper.
+
+"To the young Grand Duchess of Esthonia.... Do you remember that I
+befriended her over there?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Do you remember that the Reds were accused of burning her château and
+looting it?"
+
+"Yes, I remember."
+
+"Well, it was Quintana and his gang of international criminals who did
+that," said Darragh drily.
+
+And, to Eve: "By accident this case of jewels, emblazoned with the coat
+of arms of the Grand Duchess of Esthonia, came into your father's
+possession. That is the story, Eve."
+
+There was a silence. The girl looked at Stormont, flushed painfully,
+looked at Darragh.
+
+Then, without a word, she turned, ascended the stairs, and reappeared
+immediately carrying the leather case.
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Darragh," she said simply; and laid the case in his
+hand.
+
+"But," said Darragh, "I want you to do a little more, Eve. The owner of
+these gems is my guest at Harrod Place. I want you to give them to her
+yourself."
+
+"I--I can't go to Harrod Place," stammered the girl.
+
+"Please don't visit the sins of Henry Harrod on me, Eve."
+
+"I--don't. But--but that place----"
+
+After a silence: "If Eve feels that way," began Stormont awkwardly, "I
+couldn't become associated with you in business, Jim----"
+
+"I'd rather sell Harrod Place than lose you!" retorted Darragh almost
+sharply. "I want to go into business with you, Jack--if Eve will permit
+me----"
+
+She stood looking at Stormont, the heightened colour playing in her
+cheeks as she began to comprehend the comradeship between these two men.
+
+Slowly she turned to Darragh, offered her hand:
+
+"I'll go to Harrod Place," she said in a low voice.
+
+Darragh's quick smile brightened the sombre gravity of his face.
+
+"Eve," he said, "when I came over here this morning from Harrod Place I
+was afraid you would refuse to listen to me; I was afraid you would not
+even see me. And so I brought with me--somebody--to whom I felt certain
+you would listen.... I brought with me a young girl--a poor refugee
+from Russia, once wealthy, to-day almost penniless.... Her name is
+Theodorica.... Once she was Grand Duchess of Esthonia.... But this
+morning a clergyman from Five Lakes changed her name.... To such
+friends as you and Jack she is Ricca Darragh now ... and she's having a
+wonderful time on her new snow-shoes----"
+
+He took Eve by one hand and Stormont by the other, and drew them to the
+kitchen door and kicked it open.
+
+Through the swirling snow, over on the lake-slope at the timber edge, a
+graceful, boyish figure in scarlet and white wool moved swiftly over the
+drifts with all the naïve delight of a child with a brand new toy.
+
+As Darragh strode out into the open the distant figure flung up one arm
+in salutation and came racing over the drifts, her brilliant scarf
+flying.
+
+All aglow and a trifle breathless, she met Darragh just beyond the
+veranda, rested one mittened hand on his shoulder while he knelt and
+unbuckled her snow-shoes, stepped lightly from them and came forward to
+Eve with out-stretched hand and a sudden winning gravity in her lovely
+face.
+
+"We shall be friends, surely," she said in her quick, winning
+voice;--"because my husband has told me--and I am so grieved for
+you--and I need a girl friend----"
+
+Holding both Eve's hands, her mittens dangling from her wrist, she
+looked into her eyes very steadily.
+
+Slowly Eve's eyes filled; more slowly still Ricca kissed her on both
+cheeks, framed her face in both hands, kissed her lightly on the lips.
+
+Then, still holding Eve's hands, she turned and looked at Stormont.
+
+"I remember you now," she said. "You were with my husband in Riga."
+
+She freed her right hand and held it out to Stormont. He had the grace
+to kiss it and did it very well for a Yankee.
+
+Together they entered the kitchen door and turned into the dining room
+on the left, where were chairs around the plain pine table.
+
+Darragh said: "The new mistress of Harrod Place has selected your
+quarters, Eve. They adjoin the quarters of her friend, the Countess
+Orloff-Strelwitz."
+
+"Valentine begged me," said Ricca, smiling. "She is going to be lonely
+without me. All hours of day and night we were trotting into one
+another's rooms----" She looked gravely at Eve: "You will like
+Valentine; and she will like you very much.... As for me--I already
+love you."
+
+She put one arm around Eve's shoulders: "How could you even think of
+remaining here all alone? Why, I should never close my eyes for thinking
+of you, dear."
+
+Eve's head drooped; she said in a stifled voice: "I'll go with you....
+I want to.... I'm very--tired."
+
+"We had better go now," said Darragh. "Your things can be brought over
+later. If you'll dress for snow-shoeing, Jack can pack what clothes you
+need.... Are there snow-shoes for him, too?"
+
+Eve turned tragically to her lover: "In Dad's closet----" she said,
+choking; then turned and went up the stairs, still clinging to Ricca's
+hand and drawing her with her.
+
+Stormont followed, entered Clinch's quarters, and presently came
+downstairs again, carrying Clinch's snow-shoes and a basket pack.
+
+He seated himself near Darragh. After a silence: "Your wife is
+beautiful, Jim.... Her character seems to be even more beautiful....
+She's like God's own messenger to Eve.... And--you're rather wonderful
+yourself----"
+
+"Nonsense," said Darragh, "I've given my wife her first American friend
+and I've done a shrewd stroke of business in nabbing the best business
+associate I ever heard of----"
+
+"You're crazy but kind.... I hope I'll be some good.... One thing;
+I'll never get over what you've done for Eve in this crisis----"
+
+"There'll be no crisis, Jack. Marry, and hook up with me in business.
+That solves everything.... Lord!--what a life Eve has had! But you'll
+make it all up to her ... all this loneliness and shame and misery of
+Clinch's Dump----"
+
+Stormont touched his arm in caution: Eve and Ricca came down the
+stairs--the former now in the grey wool snow-shoe dress, and carrying
+her snow-shoes, black gown, and toilet articles.
+
+Stormont began to stow away her effects in the basket pack; Darragh went
+over to her and took her hand.
+
+"I'm so glad we are to be friends," he said. "It hurt a lot to know you
+held me in contempt. But I had to go about it that way."
+
+Eve nodded. Then, suddenly recollecting: "Oh," she exclaimed, reddening,
+"I forgot the jewel case! It's under my pillow----"
+
+She turned and sped upstairs and reappeared almost instantly, carrying
+the jewel-case.
+
+Breathless, flushed, thankful and happy in the excitement of
+restitution, she placed the leather case in Ricca's hands.
+
+"My jewels!" cried the girl, astounded. Then, with a little cry of
+delight, she placed the case upon the table, stripped open the
+emblazoned cover, and emptied the two trays. All over the table rolled
+the jewels, flashing, scintillating, ablaze with blinding light.
+
+And at the same instant the outer door crashed open and Quintana covered
+them with Darragh's rifle.
+
+"Now, by Christ!" he shouted, "who stirs a finger shall go to God in one
+jump! You, my gendarme frien'--_you_, my frien' Smith--turn your damn
+backs--han's up high!--tha's the way!--now, ladies!--back away
+there--get back or I kill!--sure, by Jesus, I kill you like I would some
+white little mice!----"
+
+With incredible quickness he stepped forward and swept the jewels into
+one hand--filled the pocket of his trousers, caught up every stray stone
+and pocketed them.
+
+"You gendarme," he cried in a menacing voice, "you think you shall
+follow in my track. Yes? I blow your damn head off if you stir before
+the hour.... After that--well, follow and be damn!"
+
+Even as he spoke he stepped outside and slammed the door; and Darragh
+and Stormont leaped for it. Then the loud detonation of Quintana's rifle
+was echoed by the splintering rip of bullets tearing through the closed
+door; and both men halted in the face of the leaden hail.
+
+Eve ran to the pantry window and saw Quintana in somebody's stolen
+lumber-sledge, lash a big pair of horses to a gallop and go floundering
+past into the Ghost Lake road.
+
+As he sped by in a whirl of snow he fired five times at the house, then,
+rising and swinging his whip, he flogged the frantic horses into the
+woods.
+
+In the dining room, Stormont, red with rage and shame, and having found
+his rifle in the corridor outside Eve's bedroom, was trying to open the
+shutters for a shot; and Darragh, empty-handed, searched the house
+frantically for a weapon.
+
+Eve, terribly excited, came from the pantry:
+
+"He's gone!" she cried furiously. "He's in somebody's lumber-sledge with
+a pair of horses and he's driving west like the devil!"
+
+Stormont ran to the tap-room telephone, cranked it, and warned the
+constabulary at Five Lakes.
+
+"Good God!" he exclaimed, turning to Darragh, scarlet with
+mortification, "what a ghastly business! I never dreamed he was within
+miles of Clinch's! It's the most shameful thing that ever happened to
+me----"
+
+"What could anybody do under that rifle?" said Eve hotly. "That beast
+would have murdered the first person who stirred!"
+
+Darragh, exasperated and dreadfully humiliated, looked miserably at his
+brand-new wife.
+
+Eve and Stormont also looked at her. She had come forward from the rear
+of the stairway where Quintana had brutally driven her. Now she stood
+with one hand on the empty leather jewel case, looking at everybody out
+of pretty, bewildered eyes.
+
+To Darragh, in a perplexed, unsteady voice: "Is it the same bandit who
+robbed us before?"
+
+"Yes; Quintana," he said wretchedly. Rage began to redden his features.
+"Ricca," he said, "I promised I'd find your jewels.... I promise you
+again that I'll never drop this business until your gems--and the
+Flaming Jewel--are in your possession----"
+
+"But, Jim----"
+
+"I swear it!" he exclaimed violently. "I'm not such a stupid fool as I
+seem----"
+
+"Dear!" she protested excitedly, "you _have_ done what you promised. My
+gems _are_ in my possession--I believe----"
+
+She caught up the emblazoned case, stripped out the first tray, then the
+second, and flung them aside. Then, searching with the delicate tip of
+her forefinger in the empty case, she suddenly pressed the bottom
+hard,--thumb, middle finger and little finger forming the three apexes
+of an equilateral triangle.
+
+There came a clear, tiny sound like the ringing of the alarm in a
+repeating watch. Very gently the false bottom of the case detached
+itself and came away in the palm of her hand.
+
+And there, each embedded in its own shaped compartment of chamois, lay
+the Esthonian jewels--the true ones--deep hidden, always doubly guarded
+by two sets of perfect imitations lining the two visible trays above.
+
+And, in the centre, blazed the Erosite gem--the magnificent Flaming
+Jewel, a glory of living, blinding fire.
+
+Nobody stirred or spoke. Darragh blinked at the crystalline blaze as
+though stunned.
+
+Then the young girl who had once been Her Serene Highness Theodorica,
+Grand Duchess of Esthonia, looked up at her brand-new husband and
+laughed.
+
+"Did you really suppose it was these that brought me across the ocean?
+Did you suppose it was a passion for these that filled my heart? Did you
+think it was for these that I followed you?"
+
+She laughed again, turned to Eve:
+
+"_You_ understand. Tell him that if he had been in rags I would have
+followed him like a gypsy.... They say there is gypsy blood in us....
+God knows.... I think perhaps there is a little of it in all real
+women----" Still laughing she placed her hand lightly upon her
+heart--"In all women--perhaps--a Flaming Jewel imbedded here----"
+
+Her eyes, tender, and mocking, met his; she lifted the jewel-case,
+closed it, and placed it in his hands.
+
+"Now," she said, "you have everything in your possession; and we are
+safe--we are quite safe, now, my jewels and I."
+
+Then she went to Eve and rested both hands on her shoulders.
+
+"Shall we put on our snow-shoes and go--home?"
+
+Stormont flung open the bullet-splintered door. Outside in the snow he
+dropped on both knees to buckle on Eve's snow-shoes.
+
+Darragh was performing a like office for his wife, and the State
+Trooper, being unobserved, took Eve's slim hands and kissed them,
+looking up at her where he was kneeling.
+
+Her pale face blushed as it had that day in the woods on Owl Marsh, so
+long, so long ago, when this man's lips first touched her hands.
+
+As their eyes met both remembered. Then she smiled at her lover with the
+shy girl's soul of her gazing out at him through eyes as blue as the
+wild blind-gentians that grow among the ferns and mosses of Star Pond.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Far away in the northwestern forests Quintana still lashed his horses
+through the primeval pines.
+
+Triumphant, reckless, resourceful, dangerous, he felt that now nothing
+could stop him, nothing bar his way to freedom.
+
+Out of the wilderness lay his road and his destiny; out of it he must
+win his way, by strategy, by cunning, by violence--creep out, lie his
+way out, shoot his way out--it scarcely mattered. He was going out! He
+was going back to life once more. Who could forbid him? Who stop him?
+Who deny him, now, when, in his pockets, he held all that was worth
+living for--the keys to power, to pleasure,--the key to everything on
+earth!
+
+In fierce exultation he slapped the glass jewels in his pocket and
+laughed aloud.
+
+"The keys to the world!" he cried. "Let him stop me and take them who is
+a better man than I!" Then his long whip whistled and he cursed his
+horses.
+
+Then, of a sudden, close by in the snowy road ahead, he saw a State
+Trooper on snow-shoes,--saw the upflung arm warning him--screamed curses
+at his horses, flogged them forward to crush this thing to death that
+dared menace him--this object that suddenly rose up out of nowhere to
+snatch from him the keys of the world----
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For a moment the State Trooper looked after the runaway horses. There
+was no use following; they'd have to run till they dropped.
+
+Then he lowered the levelled rifle from his shoulder, looked grimly at
+the limp thing which had tumbled from the sledge into the snowy road and
+which sprawled there crimsoning the spotless flakes that fell upon it.
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+_Novels by_ ROBERT W. CHAMBERS
+
+
+    THE FLAMING JEWEL                   THE TREE OF HEAVEN
+    THE LITTLE RED FOOT                 THE MOONLIT WAY
+    THE SLAYER OF SOULS                 IN SECRET
+    THE CRIMSON TIDE                    CARDIGAN
+    THE LAUGHING GIRL                   THE RECKONING
+    THE RESTLESS SEX                    THE MAID-AT-ARMS
+    BARBARIANS                          AILSA PAIGE
+    THE DARK STAR                       SPECIAL MESSENGER
+    THE GIRL PHILIPPA                   THE HAUNTS OF MEN
+    WHO GOES THERE!                     LORRAINE
+    ATHALIE                             MAIDS OF PARADISE
+    THE BUSINESS OF LIFE                ASHES OF EMPIRE
+    THE GAY REBELLION                   THE RED REPUBLIC
+    THE STREETS OF ASCALON              BLUE-BIRD WEATHER
+    THE COMMON LAW                      A YOUNG MAN IN A HURRY
+    THE FIGHTING CHANCE                 THE GREEN MOUSE
+    THE YOUNGER SET                     IOLE
+    THE DANGER MARK                     THE MYSTERY OF CHOICE
+    THE FIRING LINE                     THE CAMBRIC MASK
+    JAPONETTE                           THE MAKER OF MOONS
+    QUICK ACTION                        THE KING IN YELLOW
+    THE ADVENTURES OF A MODEST MAN      IN SEARCH OF THE UNKNOWN
+    ANNE'S BRIDGE                       THE TRACER OF LOST PERSONS
+    BETWEEN FRIENDS                     THE CONSPIRATORS
+    THE BETTER MAN                      A KING AND A FEW DUKES
+    POLICE!!!                           THE HIDDEN CHILDREN
+    SOME LADIES IN HASTE                IN THE QUARTER
+    OUTSIDERS
+
+
+
+
+    +------------------------------------------------------------------+
+    |Transcriber's Note:                                               |
+    |                                                                  |
+    |[=a] is a macron                                                  |
+    |                                                                  |
+    |Page  14 "Stormond nodded" changed to "Stormont nodded"           |
+    |      40 Double close quotation mark added after "have a dance!"  |
+    |      95 "seated hmiself" changed to "seated himself"             |
+    |      96 "pallour" changed to "pallor"                            |
+    |     103 Open bracket removed from "Ah, bah! (But wait!"          |
+    |     112 Double close quotation mark added after "that way, Mike."|
+    |     118 Double close quotation mark added after "at roll call."  |
+    |     197 "swiming" changed to "swimming"                          |
+    |     226 "her breeches pocket" changed to "her breeches' pocket   |
+    |     258 Double open quotation mark added to "But we ought to"    |
+    |                                                                  |
+    |All other inconsistencies in spelling, hyphenation and dialect    |
+    |have been retained as they appear in the original book.           |
+    +------------------------------------------------------------------+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Flaming Jewel, by Robert W. Chambers
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Flaming Jewel, by Robert W. Chambers
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Flaming Jewel
+
+Author: Robert W. Chambers
+
+Release Date: September 18, 2008 [EBook #26651]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FLAMING JEWEL ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, Jacqueline Jeremy and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<div class="head">
+<h1 class="right"><span class="u">THE FLAMING JEWEL</span><br />
+<small>ROBERT W. CHAMBERS</small></h1>
+</div>
+
+<div class="titleb">
+<p class="title"><span class="author">ROBERT W. CHAMBERS</span><br />
+<br />
+<span class="title2"><em>The Flaming Jewel</em></span></p>
+
+<div class="left">
+<img src="images/logo.jpg" width="150" height="141" alt="Publisher's Logo" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p class="title"><span class="pub">TRIANGLE &#183; BOOKS NEW YORK</span></p>
+</div>
+
+
+<h5>COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY<br />
+<br />
+<span class="smcap">Triangle Books Edition Published September 1942</span><br />
+<br /><br /><br />
+<span class="smcap">Triangle Books</span>, 14 West Forty-ninth Street,<br />
+New York, N. Y.<br />
+<br /><br /><br />
+PRINTED AND BOUND IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA BY THE AMERICAN
+BOOK&#8212;STRATFORD PRESS, INC., N. Y. C.
+</h5>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+<p class="ack"><small>TO</small><br />
+<br />
+MY FRIEND<br />
+R. T. HAINES-HALSEY
+<br /><br />
+<small>WHO<br />
+UNRESERVEDLY BELIEVES<br />
+EVERYTHING I WRITE</small></p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="ack2">
+<h3>To R. T.</h3>
+
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Three Guests at dinner! That's the life!&#8212;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wedgewood, Revere, and Duncan Phyfe!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">You sit on Duncan&#8212;when you dare,&#8212;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And out of Wedgewood, using care,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With Paul Revere you eat your fare.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<h3>III</h3>
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">From Paul you borrow fork and knife<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To wage a gastronomic strife<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In porringers; and platters rare<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of blue Historic Willow-ware.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<h3>IV</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Banquets with cymbal, drum and fife,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or rose-wreathed feasts with riot rife<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To your chaste suppers can't compare.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<h3>V</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Let those deny the truth who dare!&#8212;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Paul, Duncan, Wedgewood! That's the life!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All else is bunk and empty air.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<h3>ENVOI</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The Cordon-bleu has set the pace<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With Goulash, Haggis, Bouillabaisse,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Curry, Chop-suey, Kous-Kous Stew&#8212;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I can not offer these to you,&#8212;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Being a plain, old-fashioned cook,&#8212;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So pray accept this scrambled book.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class="right"><big><strong>R. W. C.</strong></big></p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS"></a>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+<table summary="Table of Contents">
+
+<tr>
+<th class="th" colspan="2"><small>PAGE</small></th>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc" colspan="2"><small>EPISODE ONE</small></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Eve</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#i">9</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc" colspan="2"><small>EPISODE TWO</small></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Ruling Passion</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#ii">33</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc" colspan="2"><small>EPISODE THREE</small></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">On Star Peak</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#iii">56</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc" colspan="2"><small>EPISODE FOUR</small></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">A Private War</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#iv">75</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc" colspan="2"><small>EPISODE FIVE</small></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Drowned Valley</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#v">93</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc" colspan="2"><small>EPISODE SIX</small></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Jewel Aflame</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#vi">110</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc" colspan="2"><small>EPISODE SEVEN</small></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Clinch's Dump</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#vii">134</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc" colspan="2"><small>EPISODE EIGHT</small></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Cup and Lip</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#viii">157</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc" colspan="2"><small>EPISODE NINE</small></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Forest and Mr Sard</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#ix">180</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc" colspan="2"><small>EPISODE TEN</small></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Twilight of Mike</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#x">209</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc" colspan="2"><small>EPISODE ELEVEN</small></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Place of Pines</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#xi">233</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc" colspan="2"><small>EPISODE TWELVE</small></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Her Highness Intervenes</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#xii">255</a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<hr />
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="i" id="i"></a>THE FLAMING JEWEL</h2>
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span>
+<small><span class="smcap">Episode One</span></small></h2>
+
+<h2>EVE</h2>
+
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+<p class="cap">DURING the last two years Fate, Chance, and Destiny had been too busy to
+attend to Mike Clinch.</p>
+
+<p>But now his turn was coming in the Eternal Sequence of things. The stars
+in their courses indicated the beginning of the undoing of Mike Clinch.</p>
+
+<p>From Esthonia a refugee Countess wrote to James Darragh in New York:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>"&#8212;After two years we have discovered that it was Jos&#233; Quintana's band
+of international thieves that robbed Ricca. Quintana has disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>"A Levantine diamond broker in New York, named Emanuel Sard, may be in
+communication with him.</p>
+
+<p>"Ricca and I are going to America as soon as possible.</p>
+
+<p class="close">"<span class="smcap">Valentine.</span>"</p></div>
+
+<p>The day Darragh received the letter he started to look up Sard.</p>
+
+<p>But that very morning Sard had received a curious letter from Rotterdam.
+This was the letter:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>"Sardius&#8212;Tourmaline&#8212;Aragonite&#8212;Rhodonite *
+Porphyry&#8212;Obsidian&#8212;Nugget Gold&#8212;Diaspore<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span> *
+Novaculite * Yu * Nugget Silver&#8212;Amber&#8212;Matrix
+Turquoise&#8212;Elaeolite * Ivory&#8212;Sardonyx * Moonstone&#8212;Iceland Spar&#8212;Kalpa Zircon&#8212;Eye Agate * Celonite&#8212;
+Lapis&#8212;Iolite&#8212;Nephrite&#8212;Chalcedony&#8212;Hydrolite *
+Hegolite&#8212;Amethyst&#8212;Selenite * Fire Opal&#8212;Labradorite&#8212;Aquamarine&#8212;Malachite&#8212;Iris Stone&#8212;Natrolite&#8212;Garnet * Jade&#8212;Emerald&#8212;Wood Opal&#8212;Essonite&#8212;Lazuli * Epidote&#8212;Ruby&#8212;Onyx&#8212;Sapphire&#8212;Indicolite&#8212;Topaz&#8212;Euclase * Indian Diamond *
+Star Sapphire&#8212;African Diamond&#8212;Iceland Spar&#8212;Lapis Crucifer * Abalone&#8212;Turkish Turquoise * Old
+Mine Stone&#8212;Natrolite&#8212;Cats Eye&#8212;Electrum * * *
+<span class="frac"><sup>1</sup>&#8260;<sub>5</sub></span>&#160;&#160;<ins title="a macron, a macron">&#257;&#160;&#160;&#257;</ins>."</p></div>
+
+<p>That afternoon young Darragh located Sard's office and presented himself
+as a customer. The weasel-faced clerk behind the wicket laid a pistol
+handy and informed Darragh that Sard was away on a business trip.</p>
+
+<p>Darragh looked cautiously around the small office:</p>
+
+<p>"Can anybody hear us?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nobody. Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have important news concerning Jos&#233; Quintana," whispered Darragh;
+"Where is Sard?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, he had a letter from Quintana this very morning," replied the
+clerk in a low, uneasy voice. "Mr. Sard left for Albany on the one
+o'clock train. Is there any trouble?"</p>
+
+<p>"Plenty," replied Darragh coolly; "do you know Quintana?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. But Mr. Sard expects him here any day now."</p>
+
+<p>Darragh leaned closer against the grille: "Listen very carefully; if a
+man comes here who calls himself Jos&#233; Quintana, turn him over to the
+police until Mr. Sard returns. No matter what he tells you, turn him
+over to the police. Do you understand?"</p>
+
+<p>"Who are you?" demanded the worried clerk. "Are you one of Quintana's
+people?"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span>"Young man," said Darragh, "I'm close enough to Quintana to give <em>you</em>
+orders. And give Sard orders.... And Quintana, too!"</p>
+
+<p>A great light dawned on the scared clerk:</p>
+
+<p>"<em>You</em>  are Jos&#233; Quintana!" he said hoarsely.</p>
+
+<p>Darragh bored him through with his dark stare:</p>
+
+<p>"Mind your business," he said.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>That night in Albany Darragh picked up Sard's trail. It led to a dealer
+in automobiles. Sard had bought a Comet Six, paying cash, and had
+started north.</p>
+
+<p>Through Schenectady, Fonda, and Mayfield, the following day, Darragh
+traced a brand new Comet Six containing one short, dark Levantine with a
+parrot nose. In Northville Darragh hired a Ford.</p>
+
+<p>At Lake Pleasant Sard's car went wrong. Darragh missed him by ten
+minutes; but he learned that Sard had inquired the way to Ghost Lake
+Inn.</p>
+
+<p>That was sufficient. Darragh bought an axe, drove as far as Harrod's
+Corners, dismissed the Ford, and walked into a forest entirely familiar
+to him.</p>
+
+<p>He emerged in half an hour on a wood road two miles farther on. Here he
+felled a tree across the road and sat down in the bushes to await
+events.</p>
+
+<p>Toward sunset, hearing a car coming, he tied his handkerchief over his
+face below the eyes, and took an automatic from his pocket.</p>
+
+<p>Sard's car stopped and Sard got out to inspect the obstruction. Darragh
+sauntered out of the bushes, poked his pistol against Mr. Sard's fat
+abdomen, and leisurely and thoroughly robbed him.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span>In an agreeable spot near a brook Darragh lighted his pipe and sat him
+down to examine the booty in detail. Two pistols, a stiletto, and a
+blackjack composed the arsenal of Mr. Sard. A large wallet disclosed
+more than four thousand dollars in Treasury notes&#8212;something to
+reimburse Ricca when she arrived, he thought.</p>
+
+<p>Among Sard's papers he discovered a cipher letter from
+Rotterdam&#8212;probably from Quintana. Cipher was rather in Darragh's line.
+All ciphers are solved by similar methods, unless the key is contained
+in a code book known only to sender and receiver.</p>
+
+<p>But Quintana's cipher proved to be only an easy acrostic&#8212;the very
+simplest of secret messages. Within an hour Darragh had it pencilled
+out:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p class="center"><em>Cipher</em></p>
+
+<p class="noi">"Take notice:</p>
+
+<p>"Star Pond, N. Y.... Name is Mike Clinch.... Has Flaming
+Jewel.... Erosite.... I sail at once.</p>
+
+<p class="close">"<span class="smcap">Quintana.</span>"</p></div>
+
+<p>Having served in Russia as an officer in the Military Intelligence
+Department attached to the American Expeditionary Forces, Darragh had
+little trouble with Quintana's letter. Even the signature was not
+difficult, the fraction <span class="frac"><sup>1</sup>&#8260;<sub>5</sub></span> was
+easily translated <em>Quint</em> ; and the
+familiar prescription symbol <ins title="a macron, a macron">&#257;&#160;&#257;</ins> spelled <em>ana</em> ; which gave
+Quintana's name in full.</p>
+
+<p>He had heard of Erosite as the rarest and most magnificent of all gems.
+Only three were known. The young Duchess Theodorica of Esthonia had
+possessed one.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>Darragh was immensely amused to find that the chase after Emanuel Sard
+should have led him to the very borders of the great Harrod estate in
+the Adirondacks.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span>He gathered up his loot and walked on through the splendid forest which
+once had belonged to Henry Harrod of Boston, and which now was the
+property of Harrod's nephew, James Darragh.</p>
+
+<p>When he came to the first trespass notice he stood a moment to read it.
+Then, slowly, he turned and looked toward Clinch's. An autumn sunset
+flared like a conflagration through the pines. There was a glimmer of
+water, too, where Star Pond lay.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>Fate, Chance, and Destiny were becoming very busy with Mike Clinch. They
+had started Quintana, Sard, and Darragh on his trail. Now they stirred
+up the sovereign State of New York.</p>
+
+<p>That lank wolf, Justice, was afoot and sniffing uncomfortably close to
+the heels of Mike Clinch.</p>
+
+
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<p>Two State Troopers drew bridles in the yellowing October forest. Their
+smart drab uniforms touched with purple blended harmoniously with the
+autumn woods. They were as inconspicuous as two deer in the dappled
+shadow. There was a sunny clearing just ahead. The wood road they had
+been travelling entered it. Beyond lay Star Pond.</p>
+
+<p>Trooper Lannis said to Trooper Stormont: "That's Mike Clinch's clearing.
+Our man may be there. Now we'll see if anybody tips him off this time."</p>
+
+<p>Forest and clearing were very still in the sunshine. Nothing stirred
+save gold leaves drifting down, and a hawk high in the deep blue sky
+turning in narrow circles.</p>
+
+<p>Lannis was instructing Stormont, who had been transferred<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span> from the Long
+Island Troop, and who was unacquainted with local matters.</p>
+
+<p>Lannis said: "Clinch's dump stands on the other edge of the clearing.
+Clinch owns five hundred acres in here. He's a rat."</p>
+
+<p>"Bad?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, he's mean. I don't know how bad he is. But he runs a rotten dump.
+The forest has its slums as well as the city. This is the Hell's Kitchen
+of the North Woods."</p>
+
+<p><a name="stormont" id="stormont"></a><ins title="original had Stormond">Stormont</ins> nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"All the scum of the wilderness gathers here," went on Lannis. "Here's
+where half the trouble in the North Woods hatches. We'll eat dinner at
+Clinch's. His stepdaughter is a peach."</p>
+
+<p>The sturdy, sun-browned trooper glanced at his wrist watch, stretched
+his legs in his stirrups.</p>
+
+<p>"Jack," he said, "I want you to get Clinch right, and I'm going to tell
+you about his outfit while we watch this road. It's like a movie. Clinch
+plays the lead. I'll dope out the scenario for you<span class="nowrap"><span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;</span></span>"</p>
+
+<p>He turned sideways in his saddle, freeing both spurred heels and lolled
+so, constructing a cigarette while he talked:</p>
+
+<p>"Way back around 1900 Mike Clinch was a guide&#8212;a decent young fellow
+they say. He guided fishing parties in summer, hunters in fall and
+winter. He made money and built the house. The people he guided were
+wealthy. He made a lot of money and bought land. I understand he was
+square and that everybody liked him.</p>
+
+<p>"About that time there came to Clinch's 'hotel' a Mr. and Mrs. Strayer.
+They were 'lungers.' Strayer seemed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span> to be a gentleman; his wife was
+good looking and rather common. Both were very young. He had the consump
+bad&#8212;the galloping variety. He didn't last long. A month after he died
+his young wife had a baby. Clinch married her. She also died the same
+year. The baby's name was Eve. Clinch became quite crazy about her and
+started to make a lady of her. That was his mania."</p>
+
+<p>Lannis leaned from his saddle and carefully dropped his cigarette end
+into a puddle of rain water. Then he swung one leg over and sat side
+saddle.</p>
+
+<p>"Clinch had plenty of money in those days," he went on. "He could afford
+to educate the child. The kid had a governess. Then he sent her to a
+fancy boarding school. She had everything a young girl could want.</p>
+
+<p>"She developed into a pretty young thing at fifteen.... She's eighteen
+now&#8212;and I don't know what to call her. She pulled a gun on me in July."</p>
+
+<p>"What!"</p>
+
+<p>"Sure. There was a row at Clinch's dump. A rum-runner called Jake Kloon
+got shot up. I came up to get Clinch. He was sick-drunk in his bunk.
+When I broke in the door Eve Strayer pulled a gun on me."</p>
+
+<p>"What happened?" inquired Stormont.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing. I took Clinch.... But he got off as usual."</p>
+
+<p>"Acquitted?"</p>
+
+<p>Lannis nodded, rolling another cigarette:</p>
+
+<p>"Now, I'll tell you how Clinch happened to go wrong," he said. "You see
+he'd always made his living by guiding. Well, some years ago Henry
+Harrod, of Boston, came here and bought thousands and thousands of acres
+of forest all around Clinch's<span class="nowrap"><span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;</span></span>" Lannis half rose on one stirrup and,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span>
+with a comprehensive sweep of his muscular arm, ending in a flourish:
+"&#8212;He bought everything for miles and miles. And that started Clinch
+down hill. Harrod tried to force Clinch to sell. The millionaire tactics
+you know. He was determined to oust him. Clinch got mad and wouldn't
+sell at any price. Harrod kept on buying all around Clinch and posted
+trespass notices. That meant ruin to Clinch. He was walled in. No
+hunters care to be restricted. Clinch's little property was no good.
+Business stopped. His stepdaughter's education became expensive. He was
+in a bad way. Harrod offered him a big price. But Clinch turned ugly and
+wouldn't budge. And that's how Clinch began to go wrong."</p>
+
+<p>"Poor devil," said Stormont.</p>
+
+<p>"Devil, all right. Poor, too. But he needed money. He was crazy to make
+a lady of Eve Strayer. And there are ways of finding money, you know."</p>
+
+<p>Stormont nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Clinch found money in those ways. The Conservation Commissioner
+in Albany began to hear about game law violations. The Revenue people
+heard of rum-running. Clinch lost his guide's license. But nobody could
+get the goods on him.</p>
+
+<p>"There was a rough backwoods bunch always drifting about Clinch's place
+in those days. There were fights. And not so many miles from Clinch's
+there was highway robbery and a murder or two.</p>
+
+<p>"Then the war came. The draft caught Clinch. Malone exempted him, he
+being the sole support of his stepchild.</p>
+
+<p>"But the girl volunteered. She got to France, somehow&#8212;scrubbed in a
+hospital, I believe&#8212;anyway, Clinch wanted<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span> to be on the same side of
+the world she was on, and he went with a Forestry Regiment and cut trees
+for railroad ties in southern France until the war ended and they sent
+him home.</p>
+
+<p>"Eve Strayer came back too. She's there now. You'll see her at dinner
+time. She sticks to Clinch. He's a rat. He's up against the dry laws and
+the game laws. Government enforcement agents, game protectors, State
+Constabulary, all keep an eye on Clinch. Harrod's trespass signs fence
+him in. He's like a rat in a trap. Yet Clinch makes money at law
+breaking and nobody can catch him red-handed.</p>
+
+<p>"He kills Harrod's deer. That's certain. I mean Harrod's nephew's deer.
+Harrod's dead. Darragh's the young nephew's name. He's never been
+here&#8212;he was in the army&#8212;in Russia&#8212;I don't know what became of
+him&#8212;but he keeps up the Harrod preserve&#8212;game-wardens, patrols,
+watchers, trespass signs and all."</p>
+
+<p>Lannis finished his second cigarette, got back into his stirrups and,
+gathering bridle, began leisurely to divide curb and snaffle.</p>
+
+<p>"That's the layout, Jack," he said. "Yonder lies the Red Light district
+of the North Woods. Mike Clinch is the brains of all the dirty work that
+goes on. A floating population of crooks and bums&#8212;game violators,
+boot-leggers, market hunters, pelt 'collectors,' rum-runners, hootch
+makers, do his dirty work&#8212;and I guess there are some who'll stick you
+up by starlight for a quarter and others who'll knock your block off for
+a dollar.... And there's the girl, Eve Strayer. I don't get her at all,
+except that she's loyal to Clinch.... And now you know what you<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span> ought
+to know about this movie called 'Hell in the Woods.' And it's up to us
+to keep a calm, impartial eye on the picture and try to follow the plot
+they're acting out&#8212;if there is any."</p>
+
+<p>Stormont said: "Thanks, Bill; I'm posted.... And I'm getting hungry,
+too."</p>
+
+<p>"I believe," said Lannis, "that you want to see that girl."</p>
+
+<p>"I do," returned the other, laughing.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you'll see her. She's good to look at. But I don't get her at
+all."</p>
+
+<p>"Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because she <em>looks</em>  right and yet she lives at Clinch's with him and
+his bunch of bums. Would you think a straight girl could stand it?"</p>
+
+<p>"No man can tell what a straight girl can stand."</p>
+
+<p>"Straight or crooked she stands for Mike Clinch," said Lannis, "and he's
+a ratty customer."</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe the girl is fond of him. It's natural."</p>
+
+<p>"I guess it's that. But I don't see how any young girl can stomach the
+life at Clinch's."</p>
+
+<p>"It's a wonder what a decent woman will stand," observed Stormont.
+"Ninety-nine per cent. of all wives ought to receive the D. S. O."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think we're so rotten?" inquired Lannis, smiling.</p>
+
+<p>"Not so rotten. No. But any man knows what men are. And it's a wonder
+women stick to us when they learn."</p>
+
+<p>They laughed. Lannis glanced at his watch again.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," he said, "I don't believe anybody has tipped off our man. It's
+noon. Come on to dinner, Jack."</p>
+
+<p>They cantered forward into the sunlit clearing. Star Pond lay ahead. On
+its edge stood Clinch's.</p>
+
+
+<h3><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span>III</h3>
+
+<p>Clinch, in his shirt sleeves, came out on the veranda. He had little
+light grey eyes, close-clipped grey hair, and was clean shaven.</p>
+
+<p>"How are you, Clinch," inquired Lannis affably.</p>
+
+<p>"All right," replied Clinch; "you're the same, I hope."</p>
+
+<p>"Trooper Stormont, Mr. Clinch," said Lannis in his genial way.</p>
+
+<p>"Pleased to know you," said Clinch, level-eyed, unstirring.</p>
+
+<p>The troopers dismounted. Both shook hands with Clinch. Then Lannis led
+the way to the barn.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll eat well," he remarked to his comrade. "Clinch cooks."</p>
+
+<p>From the care of their horses they went to a pump to wash. One or two
+rough looking men slouched out of the house and glanced at them.</p>
+
+<p>"Hallo, Jake," said Lannis cheerily.</p>
+
+<p>Jake Kloon grunted acknowledgment.</p>
+
+<p>Lannis said in Stormont's ear: "Here she comes with towels. She's
+pretty, isn't she?"</p>
+
+<p>A young girl in pink gingham advanced toward them across the patch of
+grass.</p>
+
+<p>Lannis was very polite and presented Stormont. The girl handed them two
+rough towels, glanced at Stormont again after the introduction, smiled
+slightly.</p>
+
+<p>"Dinner is ready," she said.</p>
+
+<p>They dried their faces and followed her back to the house.</p>
+
+<p>It was an unpainted building, partly of log. In the dining room half a
+dozen men waited silently for food. Lannis saluted all, named his
+comrade, and seated himself.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span>A delicious odour of johnny-cake pervaded the room. Presently Eve
+Strayer appeared with the dinner.</p>
+
+<p>There was dew on her pale forehead&#8212;the heat of the kitchen, no doubt.
+The girl's thick, lustrous hair was brownish gold, and so twisted up
+that it revealed her ears and a very white neck.</p>
+
+<p>When she brought Stormont his dinner he caught her eyes a
+moment&#8212;experienced a slight shock of pleasure at their intense
+blue&#8212;the gentian-blue of the summer zenith at midday.</p>
+
+<p>Lannis remained affable, even became jocose at moments:</p>
+
+<p>"No hootch for dinner, Mike? How's that, now?"</p>
+
+<p>"The Boot-leg Express is a day late," replied Clinch, with cold humour.</p>
+
+<p>Around the table ran an odd sound&#8212;a company of catamounts feeding might
+have made such a noise&#8212;if catamounts ever laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"How's the fur market, Jake?" inquired Lannis, pouring gravy over his
+mashed potato.</p>
+
+<p>Kloon quoted prices with an oath.</p>
+
+<p>A mean-visaged young man named Leverett complained of the price of
+traps.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you care?" inquired Lannis genially. "The other man pays. What
+are you kicking about, anyway? It wasn't so long ago that muskrats were
+ten cents."</p>
+
+<p>The trooper's good-humoured intimation that Earl Leverett took fur in
+other men's traps was not lost on the company. Leverett's fox visage
+reddened; Jake Kloon, who had only one eye, glared at the State Trooper
+but said nothing.</p>
+
+<p>Clinch's pale gaze met the trooper's smiling one: "The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span> jays and
+squirrels talk too," he said slowly. "It don't mean anything. Only the
+show-down counts."</p>
+
+<p>"You're quite right, Clinch. The show-down is what we pay to see. But
+talk is the tune the orchestra plays before the curtain rises."</p>
+
+<p>Stormont had finished dinner. He heard a low, charming voice from behind
+his chair:</p>
+
+<p>"Apple pie, lemon pie, maple cake, berry roll."</p>
+
+<p>He looked up into two gentian-blue eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Lemon pie, please," he said, blushing.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>When dinner was over and the bare little dining room empty except for
+Clinch and the two State Troopers, the former folded his heavy, powerful
+hands on the table's edge and turned his square face and pale-eyed gaze
+on Lannis.</p>
+
+<p>"Spit it out," he said in a passionless voice.</p>
+
+<p>Lannis crossed one knee over the other, lighted a cigarette:</p>
+
+<p>"Is there a young fellow working for you named Hal Smith?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," said Clinch.</p>
+
+<p>"Sure?"</p>
+
+<p>"Sure."</p>
+
+<p>"Clinch," continued Lannis, "have you heard about a stick-up on the
+wood-road out of Ghost Lake?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, a wealthy tourist from New York&#8212;a Mr. Sard, stopping at Ghost
+Lake Inn&#8212;was held up and robbed last Saturday toward sundown."</p>
+
+<p>"Never heard of him," said Clinch, calmly.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span>"The robber took four thousand dollars in bills and some private papers
+from him."</p>
+
+<p>"It's no skin off my shins," remarked Clinch.</p>
+
+<p>"He's laid a complaint."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes?"</p>
+
+<p>"Have any strangers been here since Saturday evening?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>There was a pause.</p>
+
+<p>"We heard you had a new man named Hal Smith working around your place."</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"He came here Saturday night."</p>
+
+<p>"Who says so?"</p>
+
+<p>"A guide from Ghost Lake."</p>
+
+<p>"He's a liar."</p>
+
+<p>"You know," said Lannis, "it won't do you any good if hold-up men can
+hide here and make a getaway."</p>
+
+<p>"G'wan and search," said Clinch, calmly.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>They searched the "hotel" from garret to cellar. They searched the barn,
+boat-shed, out-houses.</p>
+
+<p>While this was going on, Clinch went into the kitchen.</p>
+
+<p>"Eve," he said coolly, "the State Troopers are after that fellow, Hal
+Smith, who came here Saturday night. Where is he?"</p>
+
+<p>"He went into Harrod's to get us a deer," she replied in a low voice.
+"What has he done?"</p>
+
+<p>"Stuck up a man on the Ghost Lake road. He ought to have told me. Do you
+think you could meet up with him and tip him off?"</p>
+
+<p>"He's hunting on Owl Marsh. I'll try."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span>"All right. Change your clothes and slip out the back door. And look out
+for Harrod's patrols, too."</p>
+
+<p>"All right, dad," she said. "If I have to be out to-night, don't worry.
+I'll get word to Smith somehow."</p>
+
+<p>Half an hour later Lannis and Stormont returned from a prowl around the
+clearing. Lannis paid the reckoning; his comrade led out the horses. He
+said again to Lannis:</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sure it was the girl. She wore men's clothes and she went into the
+woods on a run."</p>
+
+<p>As they started to ride away, Lannis said to Clinch, who stood on the
+veranda:</p>
+
+<p>"It's still blue-jay and squirrel talk between us, Mike, but the
+show-down is sure to come. Better go straight while the going's good."</p>
+
+<p>"I go straight enough to suit me," said Clinch.</p>
+
+<p>"But it's the Government that is to be suited, Mike. And if it gets you
+right you'll be in dutch."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't let that worry you," said Clinch.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>About three o'clock the two State Troopers, riding at a walk, came to
+the forks of the Ghost Lake road.</p>
+
+<p>"Now," said Lannis to Stormont, "if you really believe you saw the girl
+beat it out of the back door and take to the woods, she's probably
+somewhere in there<span class="nowrap"><span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;</span></span>" he pointed into the western forest. "But," he
+added, "what's your idea in following her?"</p>
+
+<p>"She wore men's clothes; she was in a hurry and trying to keep out of
+sight. I wondered whether Clinch might have sent her to warn this
+hold-up fellow."</p>
+
+<p>"That's rather a long shot, isn't it?"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span>"Very long. I could go in and look about a bit, if you'll lead my
+horse."</p>
+
+<p>"All right. Take your bearings. This road runs west to Ghost Lake. We
+sleep at the Inn there&#8212;if you mean to cross the woods on foot."</p>
+
+<p>Stormont nodded, consulted his map and compass, pocketed both, unbuckled
+his spurs.</p>
+
+<p>When he was ready he gave his bridle to Lannis.</p>
+
+<p>"I'd just like to see what she's up to," he remarked.</p>
+
+<p>"All right. If you miss me come to the Inn," said Lannis, starting on
+with the led horse.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>The forest was open amid a big stand of white pine and hemlock, and
+Stormont travelled easily and swiftly. He had struck a line by compass
+that must cross the direction taken by Eve Strayer when she left
+Clinch's. But it was a wild chance that he would ever run across her.</p>
+
+<p>And probably he never would have if the man that she was looking for had
+not fired a shot on the edge of that vast maze of stream, morass and
+dead timber called Owl Marsh.</p>
+
+<p>Far away in the open forest Stormont heard the shot and turned in that
+direction.</p>
+
+<p>But Eve already was very near when the young man who called himself Hal
+Smith fired at one of Harrod's deer&#8212;a three-prong buck on the edge of
+the dead water.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>Smith had drawn and dressed the buck by the time the girl found him.</p>
+
+<p>He was cleaning up when she arrived, squatting by the water's edge when
+he heard her voice across the swale:</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span>"Smith! The State Troopers are looking for you!"</p>
+
+<p>He stood up, dried his hands on his breeches. The girl picked her way
+across the bog, jumping from one tussock to the next.</p>
+
+<p>When she told him what had happened he began to laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you really stick up this man?" she asked incredulously.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid I did, Eve," he replied, still laughing.</p>
+
+<p>The girl's entire expression altered.</p>
+
+<p>"So that's the sort you are," she said. "I thought you different. But
+you're all a rotten lot<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"Hold on," he interrupted, "what do you mean by that?"</p>
+
+<p>"I mean that the only men who ever come to Star Pond are crooks," she
+retorted bitterly. "I didn't believe you were. You look decent. But
+you're as crooked as the rest of them&#8212;and it seems as if I&#8212;I couldn't
+stand it&#8212;any longer<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"If you think me so rotten, why did you run all the way from Clinch's to
+warn me?" he asked curiously.</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't do it for <em>you</em> ; I did it for my father. They'll jail him if
+they catch him hiding you. They've got it in for him. If they put him in
+prison he'll die. He couldn't stand it. I <em>know</em> . And that's why I came
+to find you and tell you to clear out<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>The distant crack of a dry stick checked her. The next instant she
+picked up his rifle, seized his arm, and fairly dragged him into a
+spruce thicket.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you want to get my father into trouble!" she said fiercely.</p>
+
+<p>The rocky flank of Star Peak bordered the marsh here.</p>
+
+<p>"Come on," she whispered, jerking him along through the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span> thicket and up
+the rocks to a cleft&#8212;a hole in the sheer rock overhung by shaggy
+hemlock.</p>
+
+<p>"Get in there," she said breathlessly.</p>
+
+<p>"Whoever comes," he protested, "will see the buck yonder, and will
+certainly look in here<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"Not if I go down there and take your medicine. Creep into that cave and
+lie down."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you intend to do?" he demanded, interested and amused.</p>
+
+<p>"If it's one of Harrod's game-keepers," said the girl drily, "it only
+means a summons and a fine for me. And if it's a State Trooper, who is
+prowling in the woods yonder hunting crooks, he'll find nobody here but
+a trespasser. Keep quiet. I'll stand him off."</p>
+
+
+<h3>IV</h3>
+
+<p>When State Trooper Stormont came out on the edge of Owl Marsh, the girl
+was kneeling by the water, washing deer blood from her slender,
+sun-tanned fingers.</p>
+
+<p>"What are you doing here?" she enquired, looking up over her shoulder
+with a slight smile.</p>
+
+<p>"Just having a look around," he said pleasantly. "That's a nice fat buck
+you have there."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, he's nice."</p>
+
+<p>"You shot him?" asked Stormont.</p>
+
+<p>"Who else do you suppose shot him?" she enquired, smilingly. She rinsed
+her fingers again and stood up, swinging her arms to dry her hands,&#8212;a
+lithe, grey-shirted figure in her boyish garments, straight, supple, and
+strong.</p>
+
+<p>"I saw you hurrying into the woods," said Stormont.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I was in a hurry. We need meat."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span>"I didn't notice that you carried a rifle when I saw you leave the
+house&#8212;by the back door."</p>
+
+<p>"No; it was in the woods," she said indifferently.</p>
+
+<p>"You have a hiding place for your rifle?"</p>
+
+<p>"For other things, also," she said, letting her eyes of gentian-blue
+rest on the young man.</p>
+
+<p>"You seem to be very secretive."</p>
+
+<p>"Is a girl more so than a man?" she asked smilingly.</p>
+
+<p>Stormont smiled too, then became grave.</p>
+
+<p>"Who else was here with you?" he asked quietly.</p>
+
+<p>She seemed surprised. "Did you see anybody else?"</p>
+
+<p>He hesitated, flushed, pointed down at the wet sphagnum. Smith's
+foot-prints were there in damning contrast to her own. Worse than that,
+Smith's pipe lay on an embedded log, and a rubber tobacco pouch beside
+it.</p>
+
+<p>She said with a slight catch in her breath: "It seems that somebody has
+been here.... Some hunter, perhaps,&#8212;or a game warden...."</p>
+
+<p>"Or Hal Smith," said Stormont.</p>
+
+<p>A painful colour swept the girl's face and throat. The man, sorry for
+her, looked away.</p>
+
+<p>After a silence: "I know something about you," he said gently. "And now
+that I've seen you&#8212;heard you speak&#8212;met your eyes&#8212;I know enough about
+you to form an opinion.... So I don't ask you to turn informer. But the
+law won't stand for what Clinch is doing&#8212;whatever provocation he has
+had. And he must not aid or abet any criminal, or harbour any
+malefactor."</p>
+
+<p>The girl's features were expressionless. The passive, sullen beauty of
+her troubled the trooper.</p>
+
+<p>"Trouble for Clinch means sorrow for you," he said. "I<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span> don't want you
+to be unhappy. I bear Clinch no ill will. For this reason I ask him, and
+I ask you too, to stand clear of this affair.</p>
+
+<p>"Hal Smith is wanted. I'm here to take him."</p>
+
+<p>As she said nothing, he looked down at the foot-print in the sphagnum.
+Then his eyes moved to the next imprint; to the next. Then he moved
+slowly along the water's edge, tracking the course of the man he was
+following.</p>
+
+<p>The girl watched him in silence until the plain trail led him to the
+spruce thicket.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't go in there!" she said sharply, with an odd tremor in her voice.</p>
+
+<p>He turned and looked at her, then stepped calmly into the thicket. And
+the next instant she was among the spruces, too, confronting him with
+her rifle.</p>
+
+<p>"Get out of these woods!" she said.</p>
+
+<p>He looked into the girl's deathly white face.</p>
+
+<p>"Eve," he said, "it will go hard with you if you kill me. I don't want
+you to live out your life in prison."</p>
+
+<p>"I can't help it. If you send my father to prison he'll die. I'd rather
+die myself. Let us alone, I tell you! The man you're after is nothing to
+us. We didn't know he had stuck up anybody!"</p>
+
+<p>"If he's nothing to you, why do you point that rifle at me?"</p>
+
+<p>"I tell you he is nothing to us. But my father wouldn't betray a dog.
+And I won't. That's all. Now get out of these woods and come back
+to-morrow. Nobody'll interfere with you then."</p>
+
+<p>Stormont smiled: "Eve," he said, "do you really think me as yellow as
+that?"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span>Her blue eyes flashed a terrible warning, but, in the same instant, he
+had caught her rifle, twisting it out of her grasp as it exploded.</p>
+
+<p>The detonation dazed her; then, as he flung the rifle into the water,
+she caught him by neck and belt and flung him bodily into the spruces.</p>
+
+<p>But she fell with him; he held her twisting and struggling with all her
+superb and supple strength; staggered to his feet, still mastering her;
+and, as she struggled, sobbing, locked hot and panting in his arms, he
+snapped a pair of handcuffs on her wrists and flung her aside.</p>
+
+<p>She fell on both knees, got up, shoulder deep in spruce, blood running
+from her lip over her chin.</p>
+
+<p>The trooper took her by the arm. She was trembling all over. He took a
+thin steel chain and padlock from his pocket, passed the links around
+her steel-bound wrists, and fastened her to a young birch tree.</p>
+
+<p>Then, drawing his pistol from its holster, he went swiftly forward
+through the spruces.</p>
+
+<p>When he saw the cleft in the rocky flank of Star Peak, he walked
+straight to the black hole which confronted him.</p>
+
+<p>"Come out of there," he said distinctly.</p>
+
+<p>After a few seconds Smith came out.</p>
+
+<p>"Good God!" said Stormont in a low voice. "What are you doing here,
+Darragh?"</p>
+
+<p>Darragh came close and rested one hand on Stormont's shoulder:</p>
+
+<p>"Don't crab my game, Stormont. I never dreamed you were in the
+Constabulary or I'd have let you know."</p>
+
+<p>"Are <em>you</em>  Hal Smith?"</p>
+
+<p>"I sure am. Where's that girl?"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span>"Handcuffed out yonder."</p>
+
+<p>"Then for God's sake go back and act as if you hadn't found me. Tell
+Mayor Chandler that I'm after bigger game than he is."</p>
+
+<p>"Clinch?"</p>
+
+<p>"Stormont, I'm here to <em>protect</em>  Mike Clinch. Tell the Mayor not to
+touch him. The men I'm after are going to try to rob him. I don't want
+them to because&#8212;well, I'm going to rob him myself."</p>
+
+<p>Stormont stared.</p>
+
+<p>"You must stand by me," said Darragh. "So must the Mayor. He knows me
+through and through. Tell him to forget that hold-up. I stopped that man
+Sard. I frisked him. Tell the Mayor. I'll keep in touch with him."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course," said Stormont, "that settles it."</p>
+
+<p>"Thanks, old chap. Now go back to that girl and let her believe that you
+never found me."</p>
+
+<p>A slight smile touched their eyes. Both instinctively saluted. Then they
+shook hands; Darragh, alias Hal Smith, went back into the hemlock-shaded
+hole in the rocks; Trooper Stormont walked slowly down through the
+spruces.</p>
+
+<p>When Eve saw him returning empty handed, something flashed in her pallid
+face like sunlight across snow.</p>
+
+<p>Stormont passed her, went to the water's edge, soaked a spicy handful of
+sphagnum moss in the icy water, came back and wiped the blood from her
+face.</p>
+
+<p>The girl seemed astounded; her face surged in vivid colour as he
+unlocked the handcuffs and pocketed them and the little steel chain.</p>
+
+<p>Her lip was bleeding again. He washed it with wet moss,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span> took a clean
+handkerchief from the breast of his tunic and laid it against her mouth.</p>
+
+<p>"Hold it there," he said.</p>
+
+<p>Mechanically she raised her hand to support the compress. Stormont went
+back to the shore, recovered her rifle from the shallow water, and
+returned with it.</p>
+
+<p>As she made no motion to take it, he stood it against the tree to which
+he had tied her.</p>
+
+<p>Then he came close to her where she stood holding his handkerchief
+against her mouth and looking at him out of steady eyes as deeply blue
+as gentian blossoms.</p>
+
+<p>"Eve," he said, "you win. But you won't forgive me.... I wish we could
+be friends, some day.... We never can, now.... Good-bye."</p>
+
+<p>Neither spoke again. Then, of a sudden, the girl's eyes filled; and
+Trooper Stormont caught her free hand and kissed it;&#8212;kissed it again
+and again,&#8212;dropped it and went striding away through the underbrush
+which was now all rosy with the rays of sunset.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>After he had disappeared, the girl, Eve, went to the cleft in the rocks
+above.</p>
+
+<p>"Come out," she said contemptuously. "It's a good thing you hid, because
+there was a real man after you; and God help you if he ever finds you!"</p>
+
+<p>Hal Smith came out.</p>
+
+<p>"Pack in your meat," said the girl curtly, and flung his rifle across
+her shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>Through the ruddy afterglow she led the way homeward, a man's
+handkerchief pressed to her wounded mouth, her<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span> eyes preoccupied with
+the strangest thoughts that ever had stirred her virgin mind.</p>
+
+<p>Behind her walked Darragh with his load of venison and his alias,&#8212;and
+his tongue in his cheek.</p>
+
+<p>Thus began the preliminaries toward the ultimate undoing of Mike Clinch.
+Fate, Chance, and Destiny had undertaken the job in earnest.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span><a name="ii" id="ii"></a>
+<small><span class="smcap">Episode Two</span></small></h2>
+
+<h2>THE RULING PASSION</h2>
+
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+<p class="cap">NOBODY understood how Jos&#233; Quintana had slipped through the Secret
+Service net spread for him at every port.</p>
+
+<p>The United States authorities did not know why Quintana had come to
+America. They realised merely that he arrived for no good purpose; and
+they had meant to arrest and hold him for extradition if requested; for
+deportation as an undesirable alien anyway.</p>
+
+<p>Only two men in America knew that Quintana had come to the United States
+for the purpose of recovering the famous "Flaming Jewel," stolen by him
+from the Grand Duchess Theodorica of Esthonia; and stolen from Quintana,
+in turn, by a private soldier in an American Forestry Regiment, on leave
+in Paris. This soldier's name, probably, was Michael Clinch.</p>
+
+<p>One of the men who knew why Quintana might come to America was James
+Darragh, recently of the Military Intelligence, but now passing as a
+hold-up man under the name of Hal Smith, and actually in the employment
+of Clinch at his disreputable "hotel" at Star Pond in the North Woods.</p>
+
+<p>The other man who knew why Quintana had come to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span> America was Emanuel
+Sard, a Levantine diamond broker of New York, Quintana's agent in
+America.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>Now, as the October days passed without any report of Quintana's
+detention, Darragh, known as Hal Smith at Clinch's dump, began to
+suspect that Quintana had already slid into America through the meshes
+of the police.</p>
+
+<p>If so, this desperate international criminal could be expected at
+Clinch's under some guise or other, piloted thither by Emanuel Sard.</p>
+
+<p>So Hal Smith, whose duty was to wash dishes, do chores, and also to
+supply Clinch's with "mountain beef"&#8212;or deer taken illegally&#8212;made it
+convenient to prowl every day in the vicinity of the Ghost Lake road.</p>
+
+<p>He was perfectly familiar with Emanuel Sard's squat features and parrot
+nose, having robbed Mr. Sard of Quintana's cipher and of $4,000 at
+pistol point. And one morning, while roving around the guide's quarters
+at Ghost Lake Inn, Smith beheld Sard himself on the hotel veranda, in
+company with five strangers of foreign aspect.</p>
+
+<p>During the midday dinner Smith, on pretense of enquiring for a guide's
+license, got a look at the Inn ledger. Sard's signature was on it,
+followed by the names of Henri Picquet, Nicolas Salzar, Victor
+Georgiades, Harry Beck, and Jos&#233; Sanchez. And Smith went back through
+the wilderness to Star Pond, convinced that one of these gentlemen was
+Quintana, and the remainder, Quintana's gang; and that they were here to
+do murder if necessary in their remorseless quest of "The Flaming
+Jewel." Two million dollars once had been offered for the Flaming Jewel;
+and had been refused.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span>Clinch probably possessed it. Smith was now convinced of that. But he
+was there to rob Clinch of it himself. For he had promised the little
+Grand Duchess to help recover her Erosite jewel; and now that he had
+finally traced its probable possession to Clinch, he was wondering how
+this recovery was to be accomplished.</p>
+
+<p>To arrest Clinch meant ruin to Eve Strayer. Besides he knew now that
+Clinch would die in prison before revealing the hiding place of the
+Flaming Jewel.</p>
+
+<p>Also, how could it be proven that Clinch had the Erosite gem? The cipher
+from Quintana was not sufficient evidence.</p>
+
+<p>No; the only way was to watch Clinch, prevent any robbery by Quintana's
+gang, somehow discover where the Flaming Jewel had been concealed, take
+it, and restore it to the beggared young girl whose only financial
+resource now lay in the possible recovery of this almost priceless gem.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>Toward evening Hal Smith shot two deer near Owl Marsh. To poach on his
+own property appealed to his sense of humour. And Clinch, never dreaming
+that Hal Smith was the James Darragh who had inherited Harrod's vast
+preserve, damned all millionaires for every buck brought in, and became
+friendlier to Smith.</p>
+
+
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<p>Clinch's dump was the disposal plant in which collected the human sewage
+of the wilderness.</p>
+
+<p>It being Saturday, the scum of the North Woods was gathering at the Star
+Pond resort. A venison and chicken supper was promised&#8212;and a dance if
+any women appeared.</p>
+
+<p>Jake Kloon had run in some Canadian hooch; Darragh,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span> alias Hal Smith,
+contributed two fat deer and Clinch cooked them. By ten o'clock that
+morning many of the men were growing noisy; some were already drunk by
+noon. Shortly after midday dinner the first fight started&#8212;extinguished
+only after Clinch had beaten several of the backwoods aristocracy
+insensible.</p>
+
+<p>Towering amid the wreck of battle, his light grey eyes a-glitter, Clinch
+dominated, swinging his iron fists.</p>
+
+<p>When the combat ended and the fallen lay starkly where they fell, Clinch
+said in his pleasant, level voice:</p>
+
+<p>"Take them out and stick their heads in the pond. And don't go for to
+get me mad, boys, or I'm liable to act up rough."</p>
+
+<p>They bore forth the sleepers for immersion in Star Pond. Clinch
+relighted his cigar and repeated the rulings which had caused the
+fracas:</p>
+
+<p>"You gotta play square cards here or you don't play none in my house. No
+living thumb-nail can nick no cards in my place and get away with it.
+Three kings and two trays is better than three chickens and two eggs. If
+you don't like it, g'wan home."</p>
+
+<p>He went out in his shirt sleeves to see how the knock-outs were
+reviving, and met Hal Smith returning from the pond, who reported
+progress toward consciousness. They walked back to the "hotel" together.</p>
+
+<p>"Say, young fella," said Clinch in his soft, agreeable way, "you want to
+keep your eye peeled to-night."</p>
+
+<p>"Why?" inquired Smith.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, there'll be a lot o' folks here. There'll be strangers, too....
+Don't forget the State Troopers are looking for you."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span>"Do the State Troopers ever play detective?" asked Smith, smiling.</p>
+
+<p>"Sure. They've been in here rigged out like peddlers and lumber-jacks
+and timber lookers."</p>
+
+<p>"Did they ever get anything on you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not a thing."</p>
+
+<p>"Can you always spot them, Mike?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. But when a stranger shows up here who don't know nobody, he never
+sees nothing and he don't never learn nothing. He gets no hootch outa
+me. No, nor no craps and no cards. He gets his supper; that's what he
+gets ... and a dance, if there's ladies&#8212;and if any girl favours him.
+That's all the change any stranger gets out of Mike Clinch."</p>
+
+<p>They had paused on the rough veranda in the hot October sunshine.</p>
+
+<p>"Mike," suggested Smith carelessly, "wouldn't it pay you better to go
+straight?"</p>
+
+<p>Clinch's small grey eyes, which had been roaming over the prospect of
+lake and forest, focussed on Smith's smiling features.</p>
+
+<p>"What's that to you?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll be out of a job," remarked Smith, laughing, "if they ever land
+you."</p>
+
+<p>Clinch's level gaze measured him; his mind was busy measuring him, too.</p>
+
+<p>"Who the hell are you, anyway?" he asked. "<em>I</em>  don't know. You stick up
+a man on the Ghost Lake Road and hide out here when the State Troopers
+come after you. And now you ask me if it pays better to go straight. Why
+didn't <em>you</em>  go straight if you think it pays?"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span>"I haven't got a daughter to worry about," explained Smith. "If they get
+me it won't hurt anybody else."</p>
+
+<p>A dull red tinge came out under Clinch's tan:</p>
+
+<p>"Who asked <em>you</em>  to worry about Eve?"</p>
+
+<p>"She's a fine girl: that's all."</p>
+
+<p>Clinch's steely glare measured the young man:</p>
+
+<p>"You trying to make up to her?" he enquired gently.</p>
+
+<p>"No. She has no use for me."</p>
+
+<p>Clinch reflected, his cold tiger-gaze still fastened on Smith.</p>
+
+<p>"You're right," he said after a moment. "Eve is a good girl. Some day
+I'll make a lady of her."</p>
+
+<p>"She <em>is</em>  one, Clinch."</p>
+
+<p>At that Clinch reddened heavily&#8212;the first finer emotion ever betrayed
+before Smith. He did not say anything for a few moments, but his grim
+mouth worked. Finally:</p>
+
+<p>"I guess you was a gentleman once before you went crooked, Hal," he
+said. "You act up like you once was.... Say; there's only one thing on
+God's earth I care about. You've guessed it, too." He was off again upon
+his ruling passion.</p>
+
+<p>"Eve," nodded Smith.</p>
+
+<p>"Sure. She isn't my flesh and blood. But it seems like she's more, even.
+I want she should be a lady. It's <em>all</em>  I want. That damned millionaire
+Harrod bust me. But he couldn't stop me giving Eve her schooling. And
+now all I'm livin' for is to be fixed so's to give her money to go to
+the city like a lady. I don't care how I make money; all I want is to
+make it. And I'm a-going to."</p>
+
+<p>Smith nodded again.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span>Clinch, now obsessed by his monomania, went on with an oath:</p>
+
+<p>"I can't make no money on the level after what Harrod done to me. And I
+gotta fix up Eve. What the hell do you mean by asking me would it pay me
+to travel straight I dunno."</p>
+
+<p>"I was only thinking of Eve. A lady isn't supposed to have a crook for a
+father."</p>
+
+<p>Clinch's grey eyes blazed for a moment, then their menacing glare
+dulled, died out into wintry fixity.</p>
+
+<p>"I wan't born a crook," he said. "I ain't got no choice. And don't
+worry, young fella; they ain't a-going to get me."</p>
+
+<p>"You can't go on beating the game forever, Clinch."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm beating it<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span> he hesitated&#8212;"and it won't be so long, neither,
+before I turn over enough to let Eve live in the city like any lady,
+with her autymobile and her own butler and all her swell friends, in a
+big house like she is educated for<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>He broke off abruptly as a procession approached from the lake,
+escorting the battered gentry who now were able to wabble about a
+little.</p>
+
+<p>One of them, a fox-faced trap thief named Earl Leverett, slunk hastily
+by as though expecting another kick from Clinch.</p>
+
+<p>"G'wan inside, Earl, and act up right," said Clinch pleasantly. "You
+oughter have more sense than to start a fight in my place&#8212;you and Sid
+Hone and Harvey Chase. G'wan in and behave."</p>
+
+<p>He and Smith followed the procession of damaged ones into the house.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span>The big unpainted room where a bar had once been was blue with cheap
+cigar smoke; the air reeked with the stench of beer and spirits. A score
+or more shambling forest louts in their dingy Saturday finery were
+gathered there playing cards, shooting craps, lolling around tables and
+tilting slopping glasses at one another.</p>
+
+<p>Heavy pleasantries were exchanged with the victims of Clinch's ponderous
+fists as they re-entered the room from which they had been borne so
+recently, feet first.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, boys," said Clinch kindly, "act up like swell gents and behave
+friendly. And if any ladies come in for the chicken supper, why, gol
+dang it, we'll <a name="dance" id="dance"></a>have a <ins title="missing closing quotation mark">dance!"</ins></p>
+
+
+<h3>III</h3>
+
+<p>Toward sundown the first woodland nymph appeared&#8212;a half-shy, half-bold,
+willowy thing in the rosy light of the clearing.</p>
+
+<p>Hal Smith, washing glasses and dishes on the back porch for Eve Strayer
+to dry, asked who the rustic beauty might be.</p>
+
+<p>"Harvey Chase's sister," said Eve. "She shouldn't come here, but I can't
+keep her away and her brother doesn't care. She's only a child, too."</p>
+
+<p>"Is there any harm in a chicken supper and a dance?"</p>
+
+<p>Eve looked gravely at young Smith without replying.</p>
+
+<p>Other girlish shapes loomed in the evening light. Some were met by
+gallants, some arrived at the veranda unescorted.</p>
+
+<p>"Where do they all come from? Do they live in trees like dryads?" asked
+Smith.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span>"There are always squatters in the woods," she replied indifferently.</p>
+
+<p>"Some of these girls come from Ghost Lake, I suppose."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; waitresses at the Inn."</p>
+
+<p>"What music is there?"</p>
+
+<p>"Jim Hastings plays a fiddle. I play the melodeon if they need me."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you do when there's a fight?" he asked, with a side glance at
+her pure profile.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you suppose I do? Fight, too?"</p>
+
+<p>He laughed&#8212;mirthlessly&#8212;conscious always of his secret pity for this
+girl.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," he said, "when your father makes enough to quit, he'll take you
+out of this. It's a vile hole for a young girl<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"See here," she said, flushing; "you're rather particular for a young
+man who stuck up a tourist and robbed him of four thousand dollars."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not complaining on my own account," returned Smith, laughing;
+"Clinch's suits me."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, don't concern yourself on my account, Hal Smith. And you'd better
+keep out of the dance, too, if there are any strangers there."</p>
+
+<p>"You think a State Trooper may happen in?"</p>
+
+<p>"It's likely. A lot of people come and go. We don't always know them."
+She opened a sliding wooden shutter and looked into the bar room. After
+a moment she beckoned him to her side.</p>
+
+<p>"There are strangers there now," she said, "&#8212;that thin, dark man who
+looks like a Kanuk. And those two men<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span> shaking dice. I don't know who
+they are. I never before saw them."</p>
+
+<p>But Smith had seen them at Ghost Lake Inn. One of them was Sard.
+Quintana's gang had arrived at Clinch's dump.</p>
+
+<p>A moment later Clinch came through the pantry and kitchen and out onto
+the rear porch where Smith was washing glasses in a tub filled from an
+ever-flowing spring.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm a-going to get supper," he said to Eve. "There'll be twenty-three
+plates." And to Smith: "Hal&#8212;you help Eve wait on the table. And if
+anybody acts up rough you slam him on the jaw&#8212;don't argue, don't
+wait&#8212;just slam him good, and I'll come on the hop."</p>
+
+<p>"Who are the strangers, dad?" asked Eve.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't nobody know 'em none, girlie. But they ain't State Troopers. They
+talk like they was foreign. One of 'em's English&#8212;the big, bony one with
+yellow hair and mustache."</p>
+
+<p>"Did they give any names?" asked Smith.</p>
+
+<p>"You bet. The stout, dark man calls himself Hongri Picket. French, I
+guess. The fat beak is a fella named Sard. Sanchez is the guy with a
+face like a Canada priest&#8212;Jos&#233; Sanchez&#8212;or something on that style. And
+then the yellow skinned young man is Nicole Salzar; the Britisher, Harry
+Beck; and that good lookin' dark gent with a little black Charlie
+Chaplin, he's Victor Georgiades."</p>
+
+<p>"What are those foreigners doing in the North Woods, Clinch?" enquired
+Smith.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, they all give the same spiel&#8212;hire out in a lumber camp. But <em>they</em>
+ain't no lumberjacks," added Clinch contemptuously. "I don't know what
+they be&#8212;hootch runners<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span> maybe&#8212;or booze bandits&#8212;or they done something
+crooked som'ers r'other. It's safe to serve 'em drinks."</p>
+
+<p>Clinch himself had been drinking. He always drank when preparing to
+cook.</p>
+
+<p>He turned and went into the kitchen now, rolling up his shirt sleeves
+and relighting his clay pipe.</p>
+
+
+<h3>IV</h3>
+
+<p>By nine o'clock the noisy chicken supper had ended; the table had been
+cleared; Jim Hastings was tuning his fiddle in the big room; Eve had
+seated herself before the battered melodeon.</p>
+
+<p>"Ladies and gents," said Clinch in his clear, pleasant voice, which
+carried through the hubbub, "we're a-going to have a dance&#8212;thanks and
+beholden to Jim Hastings and my daughter Eve. Eve, she don't drink and
+she don't dance, so no use askin' and no hard feelin' toward nobody.</p>
+
+<p>"So act up pleasant to one and all and have a good time and no rough
+stuff in no form, shape or manner, but behave like gents all and swell
+dames, like you was to a swarry on Fifth Avenue. Let's go!"</p>
+
+<p>He went back to the pantry, taking no notice of the cheering. The
+fiddler scraped a fox trot, and Eve's melodeon joined in. A vast
+scuffling of heavily shod feet filled the momentary silence, accented by
+the shrill giggle of young girls.</p>
+
+<p>"They're off," remarked Clinch to Smith, who stood at the pantry shelf
+prepared to serve whiskey or beer upon previous receipt of payment.</p>
+
+<p>In the event of a sudden raid, the arrangements at Clinch's were quite
+simple. Two large drain pipes emerged from<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span> the kitchen floor beside
+Smith, and ended in Star Pond. In case of alarm the tub of beer was
+poured down one pipe; the whiskey down the other.</p>
+
+<p>Only the trout in Star Pond would ever sample that hootch again.</p>
+
+<p>Clinch, now slightly intoxicated, leaned heavily on the pantry shelf
+beside Smith, adjusting his pistol under his suspenders.</p>
+
+<p>"Young fella," he said in his agreeable voice, "you're dead right. You
+sure said a face-full when you says to me, 'Eve's a lady, by God!' <em>You</em>
+oughta know. You was a gentleman yourself once. Even if you take to
+stickin' up tourists you know a lady when you see one. And you called
+the turn. She <em>is</em>  a lady. All I'm livin' for is to get her down to the
+city and give her money to live like a lady. I'll do it yet.... Soon!...
+I'd do it to-morrow&#8212;to-night&#8212;if I dared.... If I thought it sure
+fire.... If I was dead certain I could get away with it.... I've <em>got</em>
+the money. <em>Now!</em>  ... Only it ain't in <em>money</em>.... Smith?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Mike."</p>
+
+<p>"You know me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Sure."</p>
+
+<p>"You size me up?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do."</p>
+
+<p>"All right. If you ever tell anyone I got money that ain't money I'll
+shoot you through the head."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't worry, Clinch."</p>
+
+<p>"I ain't. You're a crook; you won't talk. You're a gentleman, too.
+<em>They</em>  don't sell out a pal. Say, Hal, there's only one fella I don't
+want to meet."</p>
+
+<p>"Who's that, Mike?"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span>"Lemme tell you," continued Clinch, resting more heavily on the shelf
+while Smith, looking out through the pantry shutter at the dancing,
+listened intently.</p>
+
+<p>"When I was in France in a Forestry Rig'ment," went on Clinch, lowering
+his always pleasant voice, "I was to Paris on leave a few days before
+they sent us home.</p>
+
+<p>"I was in the washroom of a caffy&#8212;a-cleanin' up for supper, when
+dod-bang! into the place comes a-tumblin' a man with two cops pushing
+and kickin' him.</p>
+
+<p>"They didn't see me in there for they locked the door on the man. He was
+a swell gent, too, in full dress and silk hat and all like that, and a
+opry cloak and white kid gloves, and mustache and French beard.</p>
+
+<p>"When they locked him up he stood stock still and lit a cigarette, as
+cool as ice. Then he begun walkin' around looking for a way to get out;
+but there wasn't no way.</p>
+
+<p>"Then he seen me and over he comes and talks English right away: 'Want
+to make a thousand francs, soldier?' sez he in a quick whisper. 'You're
+on,' sez I; 'show your dough.' 'Them Flics has went to get the
+Commissaire for to frisk me,' sez he. 'If they find this parcel on me I
+do twenty years in Noumea. Five years kills anybody out there.' 'What do
+you want I should do?' sez I, havin' no love for no cops, French or
+other. 'Take this packet and stick it in your overcoat,' sez he. 'Go to
+13 roo Quinze Octobre and give it to the concierge for Jos&#233; Quintana.'
+And he shoves the packet on me and a thousand-franc note.</p>
+
+<p>"Then he grabs me sudden and pulls open my collar. God, he was strong.</p>
+
+<p>"'What's the matter with you?' says I. 'Lemme go or<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span> I'll mash your mug
+flat.' 'Lemme see your identification disc,' he barks.</p>
+
+<p>"Bein' in Paris for a bat, I had exchanged with my bunkie, Bill Hanson.
+'Let him look,' thinks I; and he reads Bill's check.</p>
+
+<p>"'If you fool me,' says he, 'I'll folly ye and I'll do you in if it
+takes the rest of my life. You understand?' 'Sure,' says I, me tongue in
+me cheek. 'Bong! Allez vous en!' says he.</p>
+
+<p>"'How the hell,' sez I, 'do I get out of here?' 'You're a Yankee
+soldier. The Flics don't know you were in here. You go and kick on that
+door and make a holler.'</p>
+
+<p>"So I done it good; and a cop opens and swears at me, but when he sees a
+Yankee soldier was locked in the wash-room by mistake, he lets me out,
+you bet."</p>
+
+<p>Clinch smiled a thin smile, poured out three fingers of hooch.</p>
+
+<p>"What else?" asked Smith quietly.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing much. I didn't go to no roo Quinze Octobre. But I don't never
+want to see that fella Quintana. I've been waiting till it's safe to
+sell&#8212;what was in that packet."</p>
+
+<p>"Sell what?"</p>
+
+<p>"What was in that packet," replied Clinch thickly.</p>
+
+<p>"What was in it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Sparklers&#8212;since you're so nosey."</p>
+
+<p>"Diamonds?"</p>
+
+<p>"And then some. I dunno what they're called. All I know is I'll croak
+Quintana if he even turns up askin' for 'em. He frisked somebody. I
+frisked him. I'll kill anybody who tries to frisk me."</p>
+
+<p>"Where do you keep them?" enquired Smith na&#239;vely.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span>Clinch looked at him, very drunk: "None o' your dinged business," he
+said very softly.</p>
+
+<p>The dancing had become boisterous but not unseemly, although all the men
+had been drinking too freely.</p>
+
+<p>Smith closed the pantry bar at midnight, by direction of Eve. Now he
+came out into the ballroom and mixed affably with the company, even
+dancing with Harvey Chase's sister once&#8212;a slender hoyden, all flushed
+and dishevelled, with a tireless mania for dancing which seemed to
+intoxicate her.</p>
+
+<p>She danced, danced, danced, accepting any partner offered. But Smith's
+skill enraptured her and she refused to let him go when her beau, a late
+arrival, one Charlie Berry, slouched up to claim her.</p>
+
+<p>Smith, always trying to keep Clinch and Quintana's men in view, took no
+part in the discussion; but Berry thought he was detaining Lily Chase
+and pushed him aside.</p>
+
+<p>"Hold on, young man!" exclaimed Smith sharply. "Keep your hands to
+yourself. If your girl don't want to dance with you she doesn't have
+to."</p>
+
+<p>Some of Quintana's gang came up to listen. Berry glared at Smith.</p>
+
+<p>"Say," he said, "I seen you before somewhere. Wasn't you in Russia?"</p>
+
+<p>"What are you talking about?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, you was. You was an officer! What you doing at Clinch's?"</p>
+
+<p>"What's that?" growled Clinch, shoving his way forward and shouldering
+the crowd aside.</p>
+
+<p>"Who's this man, Mike?" demanded Berry.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, who do you think he is?" asked Clinch thickly.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span>"I think he's gettin' the goods on you, that's what I think," yelled
+Berry.</p>
+
+<p>"G'wan home, Charlie," returned Clinch. "G'wan, all o' you. The dance is
+over. Go peaceable, every one. Stop that fiddle!"</p>
+
+<p>The music ceased. The dance was ended; they all understood that; but
+there was grumbling and demands for drinks.</p>
+
+<p>Clinch, drunk but impassive, herded them through the door out into the
+starlight. There was scuffling, horse-play, but no fighting.</p>
+
+<p>The big Englishman, Harry Beck, asked for accommodations for his party
+over night.</p>
+
+<p>"Naw," said Clinch, "g'wan back to the Inn. I can't bother with you
+folks to-night." And as the others, Salzar, Georgiades, Picquet and
+Sanchez gathered about to insist, Clinch pushed them all out of doors in
+a mass.</p>
+
+<p>"Get the hell out o' here!" he growled; and slammed the door.</p>
+
+<p>He stood for a moment with head lowered, drunk, but apparently capable
+of reflection. Eve came from the melodeon and laid one slim hand on his
+arm.</p>
+
+<p>"Go to bed, girlie," he said, not looking at her.</p>
+
+<p>"You also, dad."</p>
+
+<p>"No.... I got business with Hal Smith."</p>
+
+<p>Passing Smith, the girl whispered: "You look out for him and undress
+him."</p>
+
+<p>Smith nodded, gravely preoccupied with coming events, and nerving
+himself to meet them.</p>
+
+<p>He had no gun. Clinch's big automatic bulged under his armpit.</p>
+
+<p>When the girl had ascended the creaking stairs and her<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span> door, above,
+closed, Clinch walked unsteadily to the door, opened it, fished out his
+pistol.</p>
+
+<p>"Come on out," he said without turning.</p>
+
+<p>"Where?" enquired Smith.</p>
+
+<p>Clinched turned, lifted his square head; and the deadly glare in his
+eyes left Smith silent.</p>
+
+<p>"You comin'?"</p>
+
+<p>"Sure," said Smith quietly.</p>
+
+<p>But Clinch gave him no chance to close in: it was death even to swerve.
+Smith walked slowly out into the starlight, ahead of Clinch&#8212;slowly
+forward in the luminous darkness.</p>
+
+<p>"Keep going," came Clinch's quiet voice behind him. And, after they had
+entered the woods,&#8212;"Bear to the right."</p>
+
+<p>Smith knew now. The low woods were full of sink-holes. They were headed
+for the nearest one.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>On the edge of the thing they halted. Smith turned and faced Clinch.</p>
+
+<p>"What's the idea?" he asked without a quaver.</p>
+
+<p>"Was you in Roosia?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Was you an officer?"</p>
+
+<p>"I was."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you're spyin'. You're a cop."</p>
+
+<p>"You're mistaken."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, don't hand me none like that! You're a State Trooper or a Secret
+Service guy, or a plain, dirty cop. And I'm a-going to croak you."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not in any service, now."</p>
+
+<p>"Wasn't you an army officer?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Can't an officer go wrong?"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span>"Soft stuff. Don't feed it to me. I told you too much anyway. I was
+babblin' drunk. I'm drunk now, but I got sense. D'you think I'll run
+chances of sittin' in State's Prison for the next ten years and leave
+Eve out here alone? No. I gotta shoot you, Smith. And I'm a-going to do
+it. G'wan and say what you want ... if you think there's some kind o'
+god you can square before you croak."</p>
+
+<p>"If you go to the chair for murder, what good will it do Eve?" asked
+Smith. His lips were crackling dry; he moistened them.</p>
+
+<p>"Sink holes don't talk," said Clinch. "G'wan and square yourself, if
+you're the church kind."</p>
+
+<p>"Clinch," said Smith unsteadily, "if you kill me now you're as good as
+dead yourself. Quintana is here."</p>
+
+<p>"Say, don't hand me that," retorted Clinch. "Do you square yourself or
+no?"</p>
+
+<p>"I tell you Quintana's gang were at the dance to-night&#8212;Picquet, Salzar,
+Georgiades, Sard, Beck, Jos&#233; Sanchez&#8212;the one who looks like a French
+priest. Maybe he had a beard when you saw him in that caf&#233;
+wash-room<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"What!" shouted Clinch in sudden fury. "What yeh talkin' about, you poor
+dumb dingo! Yeh fixin' to scare me? What do <em>you</em>  know about Quintana?
+Are you one of Quintana's gang, too? Is that what you're up to, hidin'
+out at Star Pond. Come on, now, out with it! I'll have it all out of you
+now, Hal Smith, before I plug you<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>He came lurching forward, swinging his heavy pistol as though he meant
+to brain his victim, but he halted after the first step or two and stood
+there, a shadowy bulk, growling, enraged, undecided.</p>
+
+<p>And, as Smith looked at him, two shadows detached themselves<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span> from the
+trees behind Clinch&#8212;silently&#8212;silently glided behind&#8212;struck in utter
+silence.</p>
+
+<p>Down crashed Clinch, black-jacked, his face in the ooze. His pistol flew
+from his hand, struck Smith's leg; and Smith had it at the same instant
+and turned it like lightning on the murderous shadows.</p>
+
+<p>"Hands up! Quick!" he cried, at bay now, and his back to the sink-hole.</p>
+
+<p>Pistol levelled, he bent one knee, pushed Clinch over on his back, lest
+the ooze suffocate him.</p>
+
+<p>"Now," he said coolly, "what do you bums want of Mike Clinch?"</p>
+
+<p>"Who are you?" came a sullen voice. "This is none o' your bloody
+business. We want Clinch, not you."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you want of Clinch?"</p>
+
+<p>"Take your gun off us!"</p>
+
+<p>"Answer, or I'll let go at you. What do you want of Clinch?"</p>
+
+<p>"Money. What do you think?"</p>
+
+<p>"You're here to stick up Clinch?" enquired Smith.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. What's that to you?"</p>
+
+<p>"What has Clinch done to you?"</p>
+
+<p>"He stuck <em>us</em>  up, that's what! Now, are you going to keep out of this?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"We ain't going to hurt Clinch."</p>
+
+<p>"You bet you're not. Where's the rest of your gang?"</p>
+
+<p>"What gang?"</p>
+
+<p>"Quintana's," said Smith, laughing. A wild exhilaration possessed him.
+His flanks and rear were protected by the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span> sink-hole. He had Quintana's
+gang&#8212;two of them&#8212;over his pistol.</p>
+
+<p>"Turn your backs and sit down," he said. As the shadowy forms hesitated,
+he picked up a stick and hurled it at them. They sat down hastily, hands
+up, backs toward him.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll both die where you sit," remarked Smith, "if you yell for help."</p>
+
+<p>Clinch sighed heavily, stirred, groped on the damp leaves with his
+hands.</p>
+
+<p>"I say," began the voice which Smith identified as Harry Beck's, "if
+you'll come in with us on this it will pay you, young man."</p>
+
+<p>"No," drawled Smith, "I'll go it alone."</p>
+
+<p>"It can't be done, old dear. You'll see if you try it on."</p>
+
+<p>"Who'll stop me? Quintana?"</p>
+
+<p>"Come," urged Beck, "and be a good pal. You can't manage it alone. We've
+got all night to make Clinch talk. We know how, too. You'll get your
+share<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"Oh, stow it," said Smith, watching Clinch, who was reviving. He sat up
+presently, and put both hands over his head. Smith touched him silently
+on the shoulder and he turned his heavy, square head in a dazed way.
+Blood striped his visage. He gazed dully at Smith for a little while,
+then, seeming to recollect, the old glare began to light his pale eyes.</p>
+
+<p>The next instant, however, Beck spoke again, and Clinch turned in
+astonishment and saw the two figures sitting there with backs toward
+Smith and hands up.</p>
+
+<p>Clinch stared at the squatting forms, then slowly moved his head and
+looked at Smith and his levelled pistol.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span>"We know how to make a man squeal," said Harry Beck suddenly. "He'll
+talk. We can make Clinch talk, no fear! Leave it to us, old pal. Are you
+with us?" He started to look around over his shoulder and Smith hurled
+another stick and hit him in the face.</p>
+
+<p>"Quiet there, Harry," he said. "What's my share if I go in with you?"</p>
+
+<p>"One sixth, same's we all get."</p>
+
+<p>"What's it worth?" asked Smith, with a motion of caution toward Clinch.</p>
+
+<p>"If I say a million you'll tell me I lie. But it's nearer three&#8212;or you
+can have my share. Is it a go?"</p>
+
+<p>"You'll not hurt Clinch when he comes to?"</p>
+
+<p>"We'll make him talk, that's all. It may hurt him some."</p>
+
+<p>"You won't kill him?"</p>
+
+<p>"I swear by God<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"Wait! Isn't it better to shoot him after he squeals? Here's a lovely
+sink-hole handy."</p>
+
+<p>"Right-o! We'll make him talk first and then shove him in. Are you with
+us?"</p>
+
+<p>"If you turn your head I'll blow the face off you, Harry," said Smith,
+cautioning Clinch to silence with a gesture.</p>
+
+<p>"All right. Only you better make up your mind. That cove is likely to
+wake up now at any time," grumbled Beck.</p>
+
+<p>Clinch looked at Smith. The latter smiled, leaned over, and whispered:</p>
+
+<p>"Can you walk all right?"</p>
+
+<p>Clinch nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, we'd better beat it. Quintana's whole gang is in these woods,
+somewhere, hunting for you, and they might stumble on us here, at any
+moment." And, to the two men<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span> in front: "Lie down flat on your faces.
+Don't stir; don't speak; or it's you for the sink-hole.... Lie down, I
+tell you! That's it. Don't move till I tell you to."</p>
+
+<p>Clinch got up from where he was sitting, cast one murderous glance at
+the prostrate forms, then followed Smith, noiselessly, over the stretch
+of sphagnum moss.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>When they reached the house they saw Eve standing on the steps in her
+night-dress and bare feet, holding a lantern.</p>
+
+<p>"Daddy," she whimpered, "I was frightened. I didn't know where you had
+gone<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>Clinch put his arm around her, turned his bloody face and looked at
+Smith.</p>
+
+<p>"It's <em>this</em> ," he said, "that I ain't forgetting, young fella. What you
+done for me you done for <em>her</em> .</p>
+
+<p>"I gotta live to make a lady of her. That's why," he added thickly, "I'm
+much obliged to you, Hal Smith.... Go to bed, girlie<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"You're bleeding, dad?"</p>
+
+<p>"Aw, a twig scratched me. I been in the woods with Hal. G'wan to bed."</p>
+
+<p>He went to the sink and washed his face, dried it, kissed the girl, and
+gave her a gentle shove toward the stairs.</p>
+
+<p>"Hal and I is sittin' up talkin' business," he remarked, bolting the
+door and all the shutters.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>When the girl had gone, Clinch went to a closet and brought back two
+Winchester rifles, two shot guns, and a box of ammunition.</p>
+
+<p>"Goin' to see it out with me, Hal?"</p>
+
+<p>"Sure," smiled Smith.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span>"Aw' right. Have a drink?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"Aw' right. Where'll you set?"</p>
+
+<p>"Anywhere."</p>
+
+<p>"Aw' right. Set over there. They may try the back porch. I'll jest set
+here a spell, n'then I'll kind er mosey 'round.... Plug the first fella
+that tries a shutter, Hal."</p>
+
+<p>"You bet."</p>
+
+<p>Clinch came over and held out his hand.</p>
+
+<p>"You said a face-full that time when you says to me, 'Clinch,' you says,
+'Eve <em>is</em>  a lady.' ... I gotta fix her up. I gotta be alive to do it....
+That's why I'm greatly obliged to yeh, Hal."</p>
+
+<p>He took his rifle and walked slowly toward the pantry.</p>
+
+<p>"You bet," he muttered, "she <em>is</em>  a lady, so help me God."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span><a name="iii" id="iii"></a>
+<small><span class="smcap">Episode Three</span></small></h2>
+
+<h2>ON STAR PEAK</h2>
+
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+<p class="cap">MIKE CLINCH regarded the jewels taken from Jos&#233; Quintana as legitimate
+loot acquired in war.</p>
+
+<p>He was prepared to kill anybody who attempted to take the gems from him.</p>
+
+<p>At the very possibility his ruling passion blazed&#8212;his mania to make of
+Eve Strayer a grand lady.</p>
+
+<p>But now, what he had feared for years had happened. Quintana had found
+him,&#8212;Quintana, after all these years, had discovered the identity and
+dwelling place of the obscure American soldier who had robbed him in the
+wash-room of a Paris caf&#233;. And Quintana was now in America, here in this
+very wilderness, tracking the man who had despoiled him.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>Clinch, in his shirt-sleeves, carrying a rifle, came out on the log
+veranda and sat down to think it over.</p>
+
+<p>He began to realise that he was likely to have trouble with a man as
+cold-blooded and as dogged as himself.</p>
+
+<p>Nor did he doubt that those with Quintana were desperate men.</p>
+
+<p>On whom could he count? On nobody unless he paid their hire. None among
+the lawless men who haunted his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span> backwoods "hotel" at Star Pond would
+lift a finger to help him. Almost any among them would have robbed
+him,&#8212;murdered him, probably,&#8212;if it were known that jewels were hidden
+in the house.</p>
+
+<p>He could not trust Jake Kloon; Leverett was as treacherous as only a
+born coward can be; Sid Hone, Harvey Chase, Blommers, Byron
+Hastings,&#8212;he knew them all too well to trust them,&#8212;a sullen,
+unscrupulous pack, partly cowardly, always fierce,&#8212;as are any creatures
+that live furtively, feed only by their wits, and slink through life
+just outside the frontiers of law.</p>
+
+<p>And yet, one of this gang had stood by him&#8212;Hal Smith&#8212;the man he
+himself had been about to slay.</p>
+
+<p>Clinch got up from the bench where he had been sitting and walked down
+to the pond where Hal Smith sat cleaning trout.</p>
+
+<p>"Hal," he said, "I been figuring some. Quintana don't dare call in the
+constables. I can't afford to. Quintana and I've got to settle this on
+our own."</p>
+
+<p>Smith slit open a ten-inch trout, stripped it, flung the entrails out
+into the pond, soused the fish in water, and threw it into a milk pan.</p>
+
+<p>"Whose jewels were they in the beginning?" he enquired carelessly.</p>
+
+<p>"How do I know?"</p>
+
+<p>"If you ever found out<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"I don't want to. I got them in the war, anyway. And it don't make no
+difference how I got 'em; Eve's going to be a lady if I go to the chair
+for it. So that's that."</p>
+
+<p>Smith slit another trout, gutted it, flung away the viscera but laid
+back the roe.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span>"Shame to take them in October," he remarked, "but people must eat."</p>
+
+<p>"Same's me," nodded Clinch; "I don't want to kill no one, but Eve she's
+gotta be a lady and ride in her own automobile with the proudest."</p>
+
+<p>"Does Eve know about the jewels?"</p>
+
+<p>Clinch's pale eyes, which had been roving over the wooded shores of Star
+Pond, reverted to Smith.</p>
+
+<p>"I'd cut my throat before I'd tell her," he said softly.</p>
+
+<p>"She wouldn't stand for it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Hal, when you said to me, 'Eve's a lady, by God!' you swallered the
+hull pie. That's the answer. A lady don't stand for what you and I don't
+bother about."</p>
+
+<p>"Suppose she learns that you robbed the man who robbed somebody else of
+these jewels."</p>
+
+<p>Clinch's pale eyes were fixed on him: "Only you and me know," he said in
+his pleasant voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Quintana knows. His gang knows."</p>
+
+<p>Clinch's smile was terrifying. "I guess she ain't never likely to know
+nothing, Hal."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you purpose to do, Mike?"</p>
+
+<p>"Still hunt."</p>
+
+<p>"For Quintana?"</p>
+
+<p>"I might mistake him for a deer. Them accidents is likely, too."</p>
+
+<p>"If Quintana catches you it will go hard with you, Mike."</p>
+
+<p>"Sure. I know."</p>
+
+<p>"He'll torture you to make you talk."</p>
+
+<p>"You think I'd talk, Hal?"</p>
+
+<p>Smith looked up into the light-coloured eyes. The pupils were pin
+points. Then he went on cleaning fish.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span>"Hal?"</p>
+
+<p>"What?"</p>
+
+<p>"If they get me,&#8212;but no matter; they ain't a-going to get me."</p>
+
+<p>"Were you going to tell me where those jewels are hidden, Mike?"
+enquired the young man, still busy with his fish. He did not look around
+when he spoke. Clinch's murderous gaze was fastened on the back of his
+head.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't go to gettin' too damn nosey, Hal," he said in his always
+agreeable voice.</p>
+
+<p>Smith soused all the fish in water again: "You'd better tell somebody if
+you go gunning for Quintana."</p>
+
+<p>"Did I ask your advice?"</p>
+
+<p>"You did not," said the young man, smiling.</p>
+
+<p>"All right. Mind your business."</p>
+
+<p>Smith got up from the water's edge with his pan of trout:</p>
+
+<p>"That's what I shall do, Mike," he said, laughing. "So go on with your
+private war; it's no button off <em>my</em>  pants if Quintana gets you."</p>
+
+<p>He went away toward the ice-house with the trout. Eve Strayer, doing
+chamber work, watched the young man from an upper room.</p>
+
+<p>The girl's instinct was to like Smith,&#8212;but that very instinct aroused
+her distrust. What was a man of his breeding and education doing at
+Clinch's dump? Why was he content to hang around and do chores? A man of
+his type who has gone crooked enough to stick up a tourist in an
+automobile nourishes higher&#8212;though probably perverted&#8212;ambitions than a
+dollar a day and board.</p>
+
+<p>She heard Clinch's light step on the uncarpeted stair;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span> went on making
+up Smith's bed; and smiled as her step-father came into the room, still
+carrying his rifle.</p>
+
+<p>He had something else in his hand, too,&#8212;a flat, thin packet wrapped in
+heavy paper and sealed all over with black wax.</p>
+
+<p>"Girlie," he said, "I want you should do a little errand for me this
+morning. If you're spry it won't take long&#8212;time to go there and get
+back to help with noon dinner."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well, dad."</p>
+
+<p>"Go git your pants on, girlie."</p>
+
+<p>"You want me to go into the woods?"</p>
+
+<p>"I want you to go to the hole in the rocks under Star Peak and lay this
+packet in the hootch cache."</p>
+
+<p>She nodded, tucked in the sheets, smoothed blanket and pillow with deft
+hands, went out to her own room. Clinch seated himself and turned a
+blank face to the window.</p>
+
+<p>It was a sudden decision. He realised now that he couldn't keep the
+jewels in his house. War was on with Quintana. The "hotel" would be the
+goal for Quintana and his gang. And for Smith, too, if ever temptation
+overpowered him. The house was liable to an attempt at robbery any
+night, now;&#8212;any day, perhaps. It was no place for the packet he had
+taken from Jos&#233; Quintana.</p>
+
+<p>Eve came in wearing grey shirt, breeches, and puttees. Clinch gave her
+the packet.</p>
+
+<p>"What's in it, dad?" she asked smilingly.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you get nosey, girlie. Come here."</p>
+
+<p>She went to him. He put his left arm around her.</p>
+
+<p>"You like me some, don't you, girlie?"</p>
+
+<p>"You know it, dad."</p>
+
+<p>"All right. You're all that matters to me ... since your<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span> mother went
+and died ... after a year.... That was crool, girlie. Only a year.
+Well, I ain't cared none for nobody since&#8212;only you, girlie."</p>
+
+<p>He touched the packet with his forefinger:</p>
+
+<p>"If I step out, that's yours. But I ain't a-going to step out. Put it
+with the hootch. You know how to move that keystone?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, dad."</p>
+
+<p>"And watch out that no game protector and none of that damn
+millionaire's wardens see you in the woods. No, nor none o' these here
+fancy State Troopers. You gotta watch out <em>this</em>  time, Eve. It means
+everything to us&#8212;to you, girlie&#8212;and to me. Go tip-toe. Lay low, coming
+and going. Take a rifle."</p>
+
+<p>Eve ran to her bed-room and returned with her Winchester and belt.</p>
+
+<p>"You shoot to kill," said Clinch grimly, "if anyone wants to stop you.
+But lay low and you won't need to shoot nobody, girlie. G'wan out the
+back way; Hal's in the ice house."</p>
+
+
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<p>Slim and straight as a young boy in her grey shirt and breeches, Eve
+continued on lightly through the woods, her rifle over her shoulder, her
+eyes of gentian-blue always alert.</p>
+
+<p>The morning turned warm; she pulled off her soft felt hat, shook out her
+clipped curls, stripped open the shirt at her snowy throat where sweat
+glimmered like melted frost.</p>
+
+<p>The forest was lovely in the morning sunlight&#8212;lovely and still&#8212;save
+for the blue-jays&#8212;for the summer birds<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span> had gone and only birds
+destined to a long Northern winter remained.</p>
+
+<p>Now and then, ahead of her, she saw a ruffed grouse wandering in the
+trail. These, and a single tiny grey bird with a dreary note
+interminably repeated, were the only living things she saw except here
+and there a summer-battered butterfly of the Vanessa tribe flitting in
+some stray sunbeam.</p>
+
+<p>The haunting odour of late autumn was in the air&#8212;delicately acrid&#8212;the
+scent of frost-killed brake and ripening wild grasses, of brilliant dead
+leaves and black forest loam pungent with mast from beech and oak.</p>
+
+<p>Eve's tread was light on the moist trail; her quick eyes missed
+nothing&#8212;not the dainty imprint of deer, fresh made, nor the sprawling
+insignia of rambling raccoons&#8212;nor the big barred owl huddled on a pine
+limb overhead, nor, where the swift gravelly reaches of the brook caught
+sunlight, did she miss the swirl and furrowing and milling of painted
+trout on the spawning beds.</p>
+
+<p>Once she took cover, hearing something stirring; but it was only a
+yearling buck that came out of the witch-hazel to stare, stamp, then
+wheel and trot away, displaying the danger signal.</p>
+
+<p>In her cartridge-pouch she carried the flat, sealed packet which Clinch
+had trusted to her. The sack swayed gently as she strode on, slapping
+her left hip at every step; and always her subconscious mind remained on
+guard and aware of it; and now and then she dropped her hand to feel of
+the pouch and strap.</p>
+
+<p>The character of the forest was now changing as she advanced. The first
+tamaracks appeared, slim, silvery<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span> trunks, crowned with the gold of
+autumn foliage, outer sentinels of that vast maze of swamp and stream
+called Owl Marsh, the stronghold and refuge of forest wild
+things&#8212;sometimes the sanctuary of hunted men.</p>
+
+<p>From Star Peak's left flank an icy stream clatters down to the level
+floor of the woods, here; and it was here that Eve had meant to quench
+her thirst with a mouthful of sweet water.</p>
+
+<p>But as she approached the tiny ford, warily, she saw a saddled horse
+tied to a sapling and a man seated on a mossy log.</p>
+
+<p>The trappings of horse, the grey-green uniform of the man, left no room
+for speculation; a trooper of the State Constabulary was seated there.</p>
+
+<p>His cap was off; his head rested on his palm. Elbow on knee, he sat
+there gazing at the water&#8212;watching the slim fish, perhaps, darting up
+stream toward their bridal-beds hidden far away at the headwaters.</p>
+
+<p>A detour was imperative. The girl, from the shelter of a pine, looked
+out cautiously at the trooper. The sudden sight of him had merely
+checked her; now the recognition of his uniform startled her heart out
+of its tranquil rhythm and set the blood burning in her cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>There was a memory of such a man seared into the girl's very soul;&#8212;a
+man whose head and shoulders resembled this man's,&#8212;who had the same
+bright hair, the same slim and powerful body,&#8212;and who moved, too, as
+this young man moved.</p>
+
+<p>The trooper stirred, lifted his head to relight his pipe.</p>
+
+<p>The girl knew him. Her heart stood still; then heart and blood ran riot
+and she felt her knees tremble,&#8212;felt weak as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span> she rested against the
+pine's huge trunk and covered her face with unsteady fingers.</p>
+
+<p>Until the moment, Eve had never dreamed what the memory of this man
+really meant to her,&#8212;never dreamed that she had capacity for emotion so
+utterly overwhelming.</p>
+
+<p>Even now confusion, shame, fear were paramount. All she wanted was to
+get away,&#8212;get away and still her heart's wild beating,&#8212;control the
+strange tremor that possessed her, recover mind and sense and breath.</p>
+
+<p>She drew her hand from her eyes and looked upon the man she had
+attempted to kill,&#8212;upon the young man who had wrestled her off her feet
+and handcuffed her,&#8212;and who had bathed her bleeding mouth with
+sphagnum,&#8212;and who had kissed her hands<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;</span></p>
+
+<p>She was trembling so that she became frightened. The racket of the brook
+in his ears safeguarded her in a measure. She bent over nearly double,
+her rifle at a trail, and cautiously began the detour.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>When at length the wide circle through the woods had been safely
+accomplished and Eve was moving out through the thickening ranks of
+tamarack, her heart, which seemed to suffocate her, quieted; and she
+leaned against a shoulder of rock, strangely tired.</p>
+
+<p>After a while she drew from her pocket <em>his</em>  handkerchief, and looked at
+it. The square of cambric bore his initials, J. S. Blood from her lip
+remained on it. She had not washed out the spots.</p>
+
+<p>She put it to her lips again, mechanically. A faint odour of tobacco
+still clung to it.</p>
+
+<p>By every law of loyalty, pride, self-respect, she should<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span> have held this
+man her enemy. Instead, she held his handkerchief against her
+lips,&#8212;crushed it there suddenly, closing her eyes while the colour
+surged and surged through her skin from throat to hair.</p>
+
+<p>Then, wearily, she lifted her head and looked out into the grey and
+empty vista of her life, where the dreary years seemed to stretch like
+milestones away, away into an endless waste.</p>
+
+<p>She put the handkerchief into her pocket, shouldered her rifle, moved on
+without looking about her,&#8212;a mistake which only the emotion of the
+moment could account for in a girl so habituated to caution,&#8212;for she
+had gone only a few rods before a man's strident voice halted her:</p>
+
+<p>"<em>Halte l&#224;! Crosse en air!</em> "</p>
+
+<p>"Drop that rifle!" came another voice from behind her. "You're covered!
+Throw your gun on the ground!"</p>
+
+<p>She stood as though paralysed. To the right and left she heard people
+trampling through the thicket toward her.</p>
+
+<p>"Down with that gun, damn you!" repeated the voice, breathless from
+running. All around her men came floundering and crashing toward her
+through the undergrowth. She could see some of them.</p>
+
+<p>As she stooped to place her rifle on the dead leaves, she drew the flat
+packet from her cartridge sack at the same time and slid it deftly under
+a rotting log. Then, calm but very pale, she stood upright to face
+events.</p>
+
+<p>The first man wore a red and yellow bandanna handkerchief over the lower
+half of his face, pulled tightly across a bony nose. He held a long
+pistol nearly parallel to his own body; and when he came up to where she
+was standing he poked the muzzle into her stomach.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span>She did not flinch; he said nothing; she looked intently into the two
+ratty eyes fastened on her over the edge of his bandanna.</p>
+
+<p>Five other men were surrounding her, but they all wore white masks of
+vizard shape, revealing chin and mouth.</p>
+
+<p>They were different otherwise, also, wearing various sorts and patterns
+of sport clothes, brand new, and giving them an odd, foreign appearance.</p>
+
+<p>What troubled her most was the silence they maintained. The man wearing
+the bandanna was the only one who seemed at all a familiar
+figure,&#8212;merely, perhaps, because he was American in build, clothing,
+and movement.</p>
+
+<p>He took her by the shoulder, turned her around and gave her a shove
+forward. She staggered a step or two; he gave her another shove and she
+comprehended that she was to keep on going.</p>
+
+<p>Presently she found herself in a steep, wet deer-trail rising upward
+through a gully. She knew that runway. It led up Star Peak.</p>
+
+<p>Behind her as she climbed she heard the slopping, panting tread of men;
+her wind was better than theirs; she climbed lithely upward, setting a
+pace which finally resulted in a violent jerk backward,&#8212;a savage,
+wordless admonition to go more slowly.</p>
+
+<p>As she climbed she wondered whether she should have fired an alarm shot
+on the chance of the State Trooper, Stormont, hearing it.</p>
+
+<p>But she had thought only of the packet at the moment of surprise. And
+now she wondered whether, when freed, she could ever again find that
+rotting log.</p>
+
+<p>Up, up, always up along the wet gully, deep with silt and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span>
+frost-splintered rock, she toiled, the heavy gasping of men behind her.
+Twice she was jerked to a halt while her escort rested.</p>
+
+<p>Once, without turning, she said unsteadily: "Who are you? What have I
+done to you?"</p>
+
+<p>There was no reply.</p>
+
+<p>"What are you going to do to me<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span> she began again, and was shaken by
+the shoulder until silent.</p>
+
+<p>At last the vast arch of the eastern sky sprang out ahead, where stunted
+spruces stood out against the sunshine and the intense heat of midday
+fell upon a bare table-land of rock and moss and fern.</p>
+
+<p>As she came out upon the level, the man behind her took both her arms
+and pulled them back and somebody bandaged her eyes. Then a hand closed
+on her left arm and, so guided, she stumbled and crept forward across
+the rocks for a few moments until her guide halted her and forced her
+into a sitting position on a smooth, flat boulder.</p>
+
+<p>She heard the crunching of heavy feet all around her, whispering made
+hoarse by breath exhausted, movement across rock and scrub, retreating
+steps.</p>
+
+<p>For an interminable time she sat there alone in the hot sun, drenched to
+the skin in sweat, listening, thinking, striving to find a reason for
+this lawless outrage.</p>
+
+<p>After a long while she heard somebody coming across the rocks, stiffened
+as she listened with some vague presentiment of evil.</p>
+
+<p>Somebody had halted beside her. After a pause she was aware of nimble
+fingers busy with the bandage over her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>At first, when freed, the light blinded her. By degrees she was able to
+distinguish the rocky crest of Star Peak,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span> with the tops of tall trees
+appearing level with the rocks from depths below.</p>
+
+<p>Then she turned, slowly, and looked at the man who had seated himself
+beside her.</p>
+
+<p>He wore a white mask over a delicate, smoothly shaven face.</p>
+
+<p>His soft hat and sporting clothes were dark grey, evidently new. And she
+noticed his hands&#8212;long, elegantly made, smooth, restless, playing with
+a pencil and some sheets of paper on his knees.</p>
+
+<p>As she met his brilliant eyes behind the mask, his delicate, thin lips
+grew tense in what seemed to be a smile&#8212;or a soundless sort of laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"Veree happee," he said, "to make the acquaintance. Pardon my
+unceremony, miss, but onlee necissitee compels. Are you, perhaps, a
+little rested?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! Then, if you permit, we proceed with affairs of moment. You will be
+sufficiently kind to write down what I say. Yes?"</p>
+
+<p>He placed paper and pencil in Eve's hand. Without demurring or
+hesitation she made ready to write, her mind groping wildly for the
+reason of it all.</p>
+
+<p>"Write," he said, with his silent laugh which was more like the
+soundless snarl of a lynx unafraid:</p>
+
+<p>"To Mike Clinch, my fathaire, from his child, Eve.... I am hostage,
+held by Jos&#233; Quintana. Pay what you owe him and I go free.</p>
+
+<p>"For each day delay he sends to you one finger which will be severed
+from my right hand<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span>Eve's slender fingers trembled; she looked up at the masked man, stared
+steadily into his brilliant eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Proceed miss, if you are so amiable," he said softly.</p>
+
+<p>She wrote on: "&#8212;One finger for every day's delay. The whole hand at the
+week's end. The other hand then, finger by finger. Then, alas! the right
+foot<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>Eve trembled.</p>
+
+<p>"Proceed," he said softly.</p>
+
+<p>She wrote: "If you agree you shall pay what you owe to Jos&#233; Quintana in
+this manner: you shall place a stick at the edge of the Star Pond where
+the Star rivulet flows out. Upon this stick you shall tie a white rag.
+At the foot of the stick you shall lay the parcel which contains your
+indebt to Jos&#233; Quintana.</p>
+
+<p>"Failing this, by to-night <em>one finger</em>  at sunset."</p>
+
+<p>The man paused: Eve waited, dumb under the surging confusion in her
+brain. A sort of incredulous horror benumbed her, through which she
+still heard and perceived.</p>
+
+<p>"Be kind enough to sign it with your name," said the man pleasantly.</p>
+
+<p>Eve signed.</p>
+
+<p>Then the masked man took the letter, got up, removed his hat.</p>
+
+<p>"I am Quintana," he said. "I keep my word. A thousand thanks and
+apologies, miss. I trust that your detention may be brief and not too
+disagreeable. I place at your feet my humble respects."</p>
+
+<p>He bowed, put on his hat, and walked quickly away. And she saw him
+descend the rocks to the eastward, where the peak slopes.</p>
+
+<p>When Quintana had disappeared behind the summit scrub<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span> and rocks, Eve
+slowly stood up and looked about her at the rocky pulpit so familiar.</p>
+
+<p>There was only one way out. Quintana had gone that way. His men no doubt
+guarded it. Otherwise, sheer precipices confronted her.</p>
+
+<p>She walked to the western edge where a sheet of slippery reindeer moss
+clothed the rock. Below the mountain fell away to the valley where she
+had been made prisoner.</p>
+
+<p>She looked out over the vast panorama of wilderness and mountain, range
+on range stretching blue to the horizon. She looked down into the depths
+of the valley where deep under the flaming foliage of October,
+somewhere, a State Trooper was sitting, cheek on hand, beside a
+waterfall&#8212;or, perhaps, riding slowly through a forest which she might
+never gaze upon again.</p>
+
+<p>There was a noise on the rocks behind her. A masked man came out of the
+spruce scrub, laid a blanket on the rocks, placed a loaf of bread, some
+cheese, and a tin pail full of water upon it, motioned her, and went
+away through the dwarf spruces.</p>
+
+<p>Eve walked slowly to the blanket. She drank out of the tin pail. Then
+she set aside the food, lay down, and buried her quivering face in her
+arms.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>The sun was half way between zenith and horizon when she heard somebody
+coming, and rose to a sitting posture. Her visitor was Quintana.</p>
+
+<p>He came up to her quite close, stood with glittering eyes intent upon
+her.</p>
+
+<p>After a moment he handed her a letter.</p>
+
+<p>She could scarcely unfold it, she trembled so:</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span>"Girlie, for God's sake give that packet to Quintana and come on home.
+I'm near crazy with it all. What the hell's anything worth beside you
+girlie. I don't give a damn for nothing only you, so come on quick.
+Dad."</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>After a little while she lifted her eyes to Quintana.</p>
+
+<p>"So," he said quietly, "you are the little she-fox that has learned
+tricks already."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"Where is that packet?"</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't it."</p>
+
+<p>"Where is it?"</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head slightly.</p>
+
+<p>"You had a packet," he insisted fiercely. "Look here! Regard!" and he
+spread out a penciled sheet in Clinch's hand:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p class="noi">"Jos&#233; Quintana:</p>
+
+<p>"You win. She's got that stuff with her. Take your damn junk and
+let my girl go.</p>
+
+<p class="close">"<span class="smcap">Mike Clinch</span>."</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>"Well," said Quintana, a thin, strident edge to his tone.</p>
+
+<p>"My father is mistaken. I haven't any packet."</p>
+
+<p>The man's visage behind his mask flushed darkly. Without warning or
+ceremony he caught Eve by the throat and tore open her shirt. Then,
+hissing and cursing and panting with his own violence, he searched her
+brutally and without mercy&#8212;flung her down and tore off her spiral
+puttees and even her shoes and stockings, now apparently beside himself
+with fury, puffing, gasping, always with a fierce, nasal sort of whining
+undertone like an animal worrying its kill.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span>"Cowardly beast!" she panted, fighting him with all her
+strength&#8212;"filthy, cowardly beast!<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span> striking at him, wrenching his
+grasp away, snatching at the disordered clothing half stripped from her.</p>
+
+<p>His hunting knife fell clattering and she fought to get it, but he
+struck her with his open hand, knocking her down at his feet, and stood
+glaring at her with every tooth bared.</p>
+
+<p>"So," he cried, "I give you ten minutes, make up your mind, tell me what
+you do with that packet."</p>
+
+<p>He wiped the blood from his face where she had struck him.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't know Jos&#233; Quintana. No! You shall make his acquaintance.
+Yes!"</p>
+
+<p>Eve got up on naked feet, quivering from head to foot, striving to
+button the grey shirt at her throat.</p>
+
+<p>"Where?" he demanded, beside himself.</p>
+
+<p>Her mute lips only tightened.</p>
+
+<p>"Ver' well, by God!" he cried. "I go make me some fire. You like it, eh?
+We shall put one toe in the fire until it burn off. Yes? Eh? How you
+like it? Eh?"</p>
+
+<p>The girl's trembling hands continued busy with her clothing.</p>
+
+<p>"So!" he said, hoarsely, "you remain dumb! Well, then, in ten minutes
+you shall talk!"</p>
+
+<p>He walked toward her, pushed her savagely aside, and strode on into the
+spruce thicket.</p>
+
+<p>The instant he disappeared Eve caught up the knife he had dropped, knelt
+down on the blanket and fell to cutting it into strips.</p>
+
+<p>The hunting knife was like a razor; the feverish business<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span> was
+accomplished in a few moments, the pieces knotted, the cord strained in
+a desperate test over her knee.</p>
+
+<p>And now she ran to the precipice where, ten feet below, the top of a
+great pine protruded from the gulf.</p>
+
+<p>On the edge of the abyss was a spruce root. It looked dead, wedged deep
+between two rocks; but with all her strength she could not pull it out.</p>
+
+<p>Sobbing, breathless, she tied her blanket rope to this, threw the other
+end over the cliff's edge, and, not giving herself time to think, lay
+flat, grasped the knotted line, swung off.</p>
+
+<p>Knot by knot she went down. Half-way her naked feet brushed the needles.
+She looked over her shoulder, behind and down. Then, teeth clenched, she
+lowered herself steadily as she had learned to do in the school
+gymnasium, down, down, until her legs came astride of a pine limb.</p>
+
+<p>It bent, swayed, gave with her, letting her sag to a larger limb below.
+This she clasped, letting go her rope.</p>
+
+<p>Already, from the mountain's rocky crest above, she heard excited cries.
+Once, on her breakneck descent, she looked up through the foliage of the
+pine; and she saw, far up against the sky, a white-masked face looking
+over the edge of the precipice.</p>
+
+<p>But if it were Quintana or another of his people she could not tell.
+And, again looking down, she began again the terrible descent.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>An hour later, Trooper Stormont of the State Constabulary, sat his horse
+in amazement to see a ragged, breathless, boyish figure speeding toward
+him among the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span> tamaracks, her naked feet splashing through pool and mire
+and sphagnum.</p>
+
+<p>"Good heavens!" he exclaimed as she flung herself against his stirrup,
+sobbing, hysterical, and clinging to his knee.</p>
+
+<p>"Take me back," she stammered, "&#8212;take me back to daddy! I can't&#8212;go
+on&#8212;another step<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>He leaned down, swung her up to his saddle in front, holding her cradled
+in his arms.</p>
+
+<p>"Lie still," he said coolly; "you're all right now."</p>
+
+<p>For another second he sat looking down at her, at the dishevelled hair,
+the gasping mouth,&#8212;at the rags clothing her, and at the flat packet
+clasped convulsively to her breast.</p>
+
+<p>Then he spoke in a low voice to his horse, guiding left with one knee.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span><a name="iv" id="iv"></a>
+<small><span class="smcap">Episode Four</span></small></h2>
+
+<h2>A PRIVATE WAR</h2>
+
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+<p class="cap">WHEN State Trooper Stormont rode up to Clinch's with Eve Strayer lying
+in his arms, Mike Clinch strode out of the motley crowd around the
+tavern, laid his rifle against a tree, and stretched forth his powerful
+hands to receive his stepchild.</p>
+
+<p>He held her, cradled, looking down at her in silence as the men
+clustered around.</p>
+
+<p>"Eve," he said hoarsely, "be you hurted?"</p>
+
+<p>The girl opened her sky-blue eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm all right, dad, ... just tired.... I've got your parcel ...
+safe...."</p>
+
+<p>"To hell with the gol-dinged parcel," he almost sobbed; "&#8212;did Quintana
+harm you?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, dad."</p>
+
+<p>As he carried her to the veranda the packet fell from her cramped
+fingers. Clinch kicked it under a chair and continued on into the house
+and up the stairs to Eve's bedroom.</p>
+
+<p>Flat on the bed, the girl opened her drowsy eyes again, unsmiling.</p>
+
+<p>"Did that dirty louse misuse you?" demanded Clinch unsteadily. "G'wan
+tell me, girlie."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span>"He knocked me down.... He went away to get fire to make me talk. I cut
+up the blanket they gave me and made a rope. Then I went over the cliff
+into the big pine below. That was all, dad."</p>
+
+<p>Clinch filled a 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 whimper for the first time in his life.</p>
+
+<p>"Why the hell didn't you give Quintana the packet?" he demanded. "What
+does that count for&#8212;what does any damn thing count for against you,
+girlie?"</p>
+
+<p>She looked up at him out of heavy-lidded eyes: "You told me to take good
+care of it."</p>
+
+<p>"It's only a little truck I'd laid by for you," he retorted unsteadily,
+"&#8212;a few trifles for to make a grand lady of you when the time's ripe.
+'Tain't worth a thorn in your little foot to me.... The hull gol-dinged
+world full o' money ain't worth that there stone-bruise onto them little
+white feet o' yourn, Eve.</p>
+
+<p>"Look at you now&#8212;my God, look at you there, all peaked an' scairt an'
+bleedin'&#8212;plum tuckered out, 'n' all ragged 'n' dirty<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>A blaze of fury flared in his small pale eyes: "&#8212;And he hit you, too,
+did he?&#8212;that skunk! Quintana done that to my little girlie, did he?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know if it was Quintana. I don't know who he was, dad," she
+murmured drowsily.</p>
+
+<p>"Masked, wa'n't he?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>Clinch's iron visage twitched and quivered. He gnawed his thin lips into
+control:</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span>"Girlie, I gotta go out a spell. But I ain't a-leavin' you alone here.
+I'll git somebody to set up with you. You jest lie snug and don't think
+about nothin' till I come back."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, dad," she sighed, closing her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Clinch stood looking at her for a moment, then he went downstairs
+heavily, and out to the veranda where State Trooper Stormont still sat
+his saddle, talking to Hal Smith. On the porch a sullen crowd of
+backwoods riff-raff lounged in silence, awaiting events.</p>
+
+<p>Clinch called across to Smith: "Hey, Hal, g'wan up and set with Eve a
+spell while she's nappin'. Take a gun."</p>
+
+<p>Smith said to Stormont in a low voice: "Do me a favour, Jack?"</p>
+
+<p>"You bet."</p>
+
+<p>"That girl of Clinch's is in real danger if left here alone. But I've
+got another job on my hands. Can you keep a watch on her till I return?"</p>
+
+<p>"Can't you tell me a little more, Jim?"</p>
+
+<p>"I will, later. Do you mind helping me out now?"</p>
+
+<p>"All right."</p>
+
+<p>Trooper Stormont swung out of his saddle and led his horse away toward
+the stable.</p>
+
+<p>Hal Smith went into the bar where Clinch stood, oiling a rifle.</p>
+
+<p>"G'wan upstairs," he muttered. "I got a private war on. It's me or
+Quintana, now."</p>
+
+<p>"You're going after Quintana?" inquired Smith, carelessly.</p>
+
+<p>"I be. And I want you should git your gun and set up by Evie. And I want
+you should kill any living human son of a slut that comes botherin'
+around this here hotel."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span>"I'm going after Quintana with you, Mike."</p>
+
+<p>"B'gosh, you ain't. You're a-goin' to keep watch here."</p>
+
+<p>"No. Trooper Stormont has promised to stay with Eve. You'll need every
+man to-day, Mike. This isn't a deer drive."</p>
+
+<p>Clinch let his rifle sag across the hollow of his left arm.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you beef to that trooper?" he demanded in his pleasant, misleading
+way.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think I'm crazy?" retorted Smith.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, what the hell<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"They all know that some man used your girl roughly. That's all I said
+to him&#8212;'keep an eye on Eve until we can get back.' And I tell you,
+Mike, if we drive Star Peak we won't be back till long after sundown."</p>
+
+<p>Clinch growled: "I ain't never asked no favours of no State Trooper<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"He did you a favour, didn't he? He brought your daughter in."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, 'n' he'd jail us all if he got anything on us."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; and he'll shoot to kill if any of Quintana's people come here and
+try to break in."</p>
+
+<p>Clinch grunted, peeled off his coat and got into a leather vest
+bristling with cartridge loops.</p>
+
+<p>Trooper Stormont came in the back door, carrying his rifle.</p>
+
+<p>"Some rough fellow been bothering your little daughter, Clinch?" he
+inquired. "The child was nearly all in when she met me out by Owl
+Marsh&#8212;clothes half torn off her back, bare-foot and bleeding. She's a
+plucky youngster. I'll say so, Clinch. If you think the fellow may come
+here to annoy her I'll keep an eye on her till you return."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span>Clinch went up to Stormont, put his powerful hands on the young fellow's
+shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>After a moment's glaring silence: "You <em>look</em>  clean. I guess you be,
+too. I wanta tell you I'll cut the guts outa any guy that lays the heft
+of a single finger onto Eve."</p>
+
+<p>"I'd do so, too, if I were you," said Stormont.</p>
+
+<p>"Would ye? Well, I guess you're a real man, too, even if you're a State
+Trooper," growled Clinch. "G'wan up. She's a-nappin'. If she wakes up
+you kinda talk pleasant to her. You act kind pleasant and cosy. She
+ain't had no ma. You tell her to set snug and ca'm. Then you cook her a
+egg if she wants it. There's pie, too. I cal'late to be back by
+sundown."</p>
+
+<p>"Nearer morning," remarked Smith.</p>
+
+<p>Stormont shrugged. "I'll stay until you show up, Clinch."</p>
+
+<p>The latter took another rifle from the corner and handed it to Smith
+with a loop of ammunition.</p>
+
+<p>"Come on," he grunted.</p>
+
+<p>On the veranda he strode up to the group of sullen, armed men who
+regarded his advent in expressionless silence.</p>
+
+<p>Sid Hone was there, and Harvey Chase, and the Hastings boys, and
+Cornelius Blommers.</p>
+
+<p>"You fellas comin'?" inquired Clinch.</p>
+
+<p>"Where?" drawled Sid Hone.</p>
+
+<p>"Me an' Hal Smith is cal'kalatin' to drive Star Peak. It ain't a deer,
+neither."</p>
+
+<p>There ensued a grim interval. Clinch's wintry smile began to glimmer.</p>
+
+<p>"Booze agents or game protectors? Which?" asked<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span> Byron Hastings. "They
+both look like deer&#8212;if a man gits mad enough."</p>
+
+<p>Clinch's smile became terrifying. "I shell out five hundred dollars for
+every <em>deer</em>  that's dropped on Star Peak to-day," he said. "And I hope
+there won't be no accidents and no mistakin' no <em>stranger</em>  for a deer,"
+he added, wagging his great, square head.</p>
+
+<p>"Them accidents is liable to happen," remarked Hone, reflectively.</p>
+
+<p>After another pause: "Where's Jake Kloon?" inquired Smith.</p>
+
+<p>Nobody seemed to know.</p>
+
+<p>"He was here when Mike called me into the bar," insisted Smith. "Where'd
+he go?"</p>
+
+<p>Then, of a sudden, Clinch recollected the packet which he had kicked
+under a veranda chair. It was no longer there.</p>
+
+<p>"Any o' you fellas seen a package here on the pyazza?" demanded Clinch
+harshly.</p>
+
+<p>"Jake Kloon, he had somethin'," drawled Chase. "I supposed it was his
+lunch. Mebbe 'twas, too."</p>
+
+<p>In the intense stillness Clinch glared into one face after another.</p>
+
+<p>"Boys," he said in his softly modulated voice, "I kinda guess there's a
+rat amongst us. I wouldn't like for to be that there rat&#8212;no, not for a
+billion hundred dollars. No, I wouldn't. Becuz that there rat has bit my
+little girlie, Eve,&#8212;like that there deer bit her up onto Star Peak....
+No, I wouldn't like for to be that there rat. Fer he's a-goin' to die
+like a rat, same's that there deer is a-goin' to die like a deer....
+Anyone seen which way Jake Kloon went?"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span>"Now you speak of it," said Byron Hastings, "seems like I noticed Jake
+and Earl Leverett down by the woods near the pond. I kinda disremembered
+when you asked, but I guess I seen them."</p>
+
+<p>"Sure," said Sid Hone. "Now you mention it, I seen 'em, too. Thinks I to
+m'self, they is pickin' them blackberries down to the crick. Yas, I seen
+'em."</p>
+
+<p>Clinch tossed his rifle across his left shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"Rats an' deer," he said pleasantly. "Them's the articles we're lookin'
+for. Only for God's sake be careful you don't mistake a <em>man</em>  for 'em in
+the woods."</p>
+
+<p>One or two men laughed.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>On the edge of Owl Marsh Clinch halted in the trail, and, as his men
+came up, he counted them with a cold eye.</p>
+
+<p>"Here's the runway and this here hazel bush is my station," he said.
+"You fellas do the barkin'. You, Sid Hone, and you, Corny, start drivin'
+from the west. Harve, you yelp 'em from the north by Lynx Brook. Jim and
+Byron, you get twenty minutes to go 'round to the eastward and drive by
+the Slide. And you, Hal Smith,"&#8212;he looked around&#8212;"where 'n hell be
+you, Hal?<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>Smith came up from the bog's edge.</p>
+
+<p>"Send 'em out," he said in a low voice. "I've got Jake's tracks in the
+bog."</p>
+
+<p>Clinch motioned his beaters to their duty. "Twenty minutes," he reminded
+Hone, Chase, and Blommers, "before you start drivin'." And, to the
+Hastings boys: "If you shoot, aim low for their bellies. Don't leave no
+blood around. Scrape it up. We bury what we get."</p>
+
+<p>He and Smith stood looking after the five slouching<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span> figures moving away
+toward their blind trails. When all had disappeared:</p>
+
+<p>"Show me Jake's mark," he said calmly.</p>
+
+<p>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 on the mud.</p>
+
+<p>"That's Jake," said Clinch slowly. "I know them half-soled boots o'
+hisn." He lifted another branch. "There's another man's track!"</p>
+
+<p>"The other is probably Leverett's."</p>
+
+<p>"Likely. He's got thin feet."</p>
+
+<p>"I think I'd better go after them," said Smith, reflectively.</p>
+
+<p>"They'll plug you, you poor jackass&#8212;two o' them like that, and one
+a-settin' up to watch out. Hell! Be you tired o' bed an' board?"</p>
+
+<p>Smith smiled: "Don't you worry, Mike."</p>
+
+<p>"Why? You think you're that smart? Jest becuz you stuck up a tourist you
+think you're cock o' the North Woods&#8212;with them two foxes lyin' out for
+to snap you up? Hey? Why, you poor dumb thing, Jake runs Canadian hootch
+for a livin' and Leverett's a trap thief! What could <em>you</em>  do with a
+pair o' foxes like that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Catch 'em," said Smith, coolly. "You mind your business, Mike."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Shut up," he said sharply. "You've a private war on your hands. So have
+I. I'll take care of my own."</p>
+
+<p>"What's <em>your</em>  grievance?" demanded Clinch, surprised.</p>
+
+<p>"Jake Kloon played a dirty trick on me."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span>"When was that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not very long ago."</p>
+
+<p>"I hadn't heard," said Clinch.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you hear it now, don't you? All right. All right; I'm going after
+him."</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll take such good care of it," replied Smith, "that its proper owner
+need not worry."</p>
+
+
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<p>The "proper owner" of the packet was, at that moment, on the Atlantic
+Ocean, travelling toward the United States.</p>
+
+<p>Four other pretended owners of the Grand Duchess Theodorica's jewels,
+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.</p>
+
+<p>Jos&#233; Quintana lay somewhere in the forests 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.</p>
+
+<p>As for the third pretender to the Flaming Jewel, Jake Kloon, he was now
+travelling in a fox's circle toward Drowned Valley&#8212;that shaggy
+wilderness of slime and tamarack<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span> and depthless bog which touches the
+northwest base of Star Peak. He was not hurrying, having no thought of
+pursuit. Behind him plodded Leverett, the trap thief, very, very busy
+with his own ideas.</p>
+
+<p>To Leverett's repeated requests that Kloon halt and open the packet to
+see what it contained, Kloon gruffly refused.</p>
+
+<p>"What do we care what's in it?" he said. "We get ten thousand apiece
+over our rifles for it from them guys. Ain't it a good enough job for
+you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe we make more if we take what's inside it for ourselves," argued
+Leverett. "Let's take a peek, anyway."</p>
+
+<p>"Naw. I don't want no peek nor nothin'. 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 allus was a dirty, thieving mink, Earl. Let's
+give him his and take ours and git. I'm going to Albany to live. You bet
+I don't stay in no woods where Mike Clinch dens."</p>
+
+<p>They plodded on, arguing, toward their rendezvous with Quintana's
+outpost on the edge of Drowned Valley.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>The fourth pretender to the pearls, rubies, and great gem called the
+Flaming Jewel, stolen from the young Grand Duchess Theodorica of
+Esthonia by Jos&#233; Quintana, was an unconscious pretender, entirely
+innocent of the r&#244;le assigned her by Clinch.</p>
+
+<p>For Eve Strayer had never heard where the packet came from or what it
+contained. All she knew was that her stepfather had told her that it
+belonged to her. And the knowledge left her incurious.</p>
+
+
+
+<h3><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span>III</h3>
+
+<p>Eve slept the sleep of mental and physical exhaustion. Reaction from
+fear brings a fatigue more profound than that which follows physical
+overstrain. But the healthy mind, like the healthy body, disposes very
+thoroughly of toxics which arise from terror and exhaustion.</p>
+
+<p>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 with the most wonderful balm in the Divine pharmacy.</p>
+
+<p>She awoke late in the afternoon, opened her flower-blue eyes, and saw
+State Trooper Stormont sitting by the window, and gazing out.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps Eve's confused senses mistook the young man for a vision; for
+she lay very still, nor stirred even her little finger.</p>
+
+<p>After a while Stormont glanced around at her. A warm, delicate colour
+stained her skin slowly, evenly, from throat to hair.</p>
+
+<p>He got up and came over to the bed.</p>
+
+<p>"How do you feel?" he asked, awkwardly.</p>
+
+<p>"Where is dad?" she managed to inquire in a steady voice.</p>
+
+<p>"He won't be back till late. He asked me to stick around&#8212;in case you
+needed anything<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>The girl's clear eyes searched his.</p>
+
+<p>"Trooper Stormont?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Eve."</p>
+
+<p>"Dad's gone after Quintana."</p>
+
+<p>"Is he the fellow who misused you?"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span>"I think so."</p>
+
+<p>"Who is he?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know."</p>
+
+<p>"Is he your enemy or your stepfather's?"</p>
+
+<p>But the girl shook her head: "I can't discuss dad's affairs
+with&#8212;with<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"With a State Trooper," smiled Stormont. "That's all right, Eve. You
+don't have to."</p>
+
+<p>There was a pause; Stormont stood beside the bed, looking down at her
+with his diffident, boyish smile. And the girl gazed back straight into
+his eyes&#8212;eyes she had so often looked into in her dreams.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm to cook you an egg and bring you some pie," he remarked, still
+smiling.</p>
+
+<p>"Did dad say I am to stay in bed?"</p>
+
+<p>"That was my inference. Do you feel very lame and sore?"</p>
+
+<p>"My feet burn."</p>
+
+<p>"You poor kid!... Would you let me look at them? I have a first-aid
+packet with me."</p>
+
+<p>After a moment she nodded and turned her face on the pillow. He drew
+aside the cover a little, knelt down beside the bed.</p>
+
+<p>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
+scratch the flakes of granite-grit and brier-points that still remained
+there.</p>
+
+<p>From his first-aid packet he took a capsule, dissolved it, sterilized
+the torn skin, then bandaged both feet with a deliciously cool salve,
+and drew the sheets into place.</p>
+
+<p>Eve had not stirred nor spoken. He washed and dried<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span> his hands and came
+back, drawing his chair nearer to the bedside.</p>
+
+<p>"Sleep, if you feel like it," he said pleasantly.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you suffering?" he asked gently.</p>
+
+<p>"No.... You are so wonderfully kind...."</p>
+
+<p>"Why shouldn't I be kind?" he said, amused and touched by the girl's
+emotion.</p>
+
+<p>"I tried to shoot you once. That is why you ought to hate me."</p>
+
+<p>He began to laugh: "Is <em>that</em>  what you're thinking about?"</p>
+
+<p>"I&#8212;never can&#8212;forget<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"Nonsense. We're quits anyway. Do you remember what I did to <em>you</em> ?"</p>
+
+<p>He was thinking of the handcuffs. Then, in her vivid blush he read what
+she was thinking. And he remembered his lips on her palms.</p>
+
+<p>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 Owl Marsh.</p>
+
+<p>In the hot, uncomfortable silence, neither spoke. He seated himself
+after a while. And, after a while, she turned on her pillow part way
+toward him.</p>
+
+<p>Somehow they both understood that it was friendship which had subtly
+filled the interval that separated them since that amazing day.</p>
+
+<p>"I've often thought of you," he said,&#8212;as though they had been
+discussing his absence.</p>
+
+<p>No hour of the waking day that she had not thought of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span> him. But she did
+not say so now. After a little while:</p>
+
+<p>"Is yours a lonely life?" she asked in a low voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Sometimes. But I love the forest."</p>
+
+<p>"Sometimes," she said, "the forest seems like a trap that I can't
+escape. Sometimes I hate it."</p>
+
+<p>"Are you lonely, Eve?"</p>
+
+<p>"As you are. You see I know what the outside world is. I miss it."</p>
+
+<p>"You were in boarding school and college."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"It must be hard for you here at Star Pond."</p>
+
+<p>The girl sighed, unconsciously:</p>
+
+<p>"There are days when I&#8212;can scarcely&#8212;stand it.... The wilderness would
+be more endurable if dad and I were all alone.... But even then<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"You need young people of your own age,&#8212;educated companions<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"I need the city, Mr. Stormont. I need all it can give: I'm starving for
+it. That's all."</p>
+
+<p>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 plain 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.</p>
+
+<p>She said, seeing his troubled expression: "I'm sorry I spoke that way."</p>
+
+<p>"I knew how you must feel, anyway."</p>
+
+<p>"It seems ungrateful," she murmured. "I love my step-father."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span>"You've proven that," he remarked with a dry humour that brought the hot
+flush to her face again.</p>
+
+<p>"I must have been crazy that day," she said. "It scares me to remember
+what I tried to do.... What a frightful thing&#8212;if I had killed
+you<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;</span>How <em>can</em>  you forgive me?"</p>
+
+<p>"How can you forgive <em>me</em> , Eve?"</p>
+
+<p>She turned her head: "I do."</p>
+
+<p>"Entirely?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>He said,&#8212;a slight emotion noticeable in his voice: "Well, I forgave you
+before the darned gun exploded in our hands."</p>
+
+<p>"How <em>could</em>  you?" she protested.</p>
+
+<p>"I was thinking all the while that you were acting as I'd have acted if
+anything threatened <em>my</em>  father."</p>
+
+<p>"Were you thinking of <em>that</em> ?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes,&#8212;and also how to get hold of you before you shot me." He began to
+laugh.</p>
+
+<p>After a moment she turned her head to look at him, and her smile
+glimmered, responsive to his amusement. But she shivered slightly, too.</p>
+
+<p>"How about that egg?" he inquired.</p>
+
+<p>"I can get up<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"Better keep off your feet. What is there in the pantry? You must be
+starved."</p>
+
+<p>"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<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>She half rose in bed, supported on one arm, her curly brown-gold hair
+framing her face:</p>
+
+<p>"&#8212;Two cakes of sugar-milk chocolate in a flat brown<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span> packet tied with a
+string," she explained, smiling at his amusement.</p>
+
+<p>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 cache on Owl
+Marsh.</p>
+
+<p>He brought it to her, placed both pillows upright behind her, stepped
+back gaily to admire the effect. Eve, with her parcel in her hands,
+laughed shyly at his comedy.</p>
+
+<p>"Begin on your chocolate," he said. "I'm going back to fix you some
+bread and butter and a cup of tea."</p>
+
+<p>When again he had disappeared, the girl, still smiling, began to untie
+her packet, unhurriedly, slowly loosening string and wrapping.</p>
+
+<p>Her attention was not fixed on what her slender fingers were about.</p>
+
+<p>She drew from the parcel a flat morocco case with a coat of arms and
+crest stamped on it in gold, black, and scarlet.</p>
+
+<p>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 the wrapping under the pillows behind her.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Eve," he said, "you look very white and ill. Have you been hurt
+somewhere, and haven't you admitted it?"</p>
+
+<p>She seemed unable to speak, and he took both her hands and looked
+anxiously into the lovely, pallid features.</p>
+
+<p>After a moment she turned her head and buried her face in the pillow,
+trembling now in overwhelming realization of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span> what she had endured for
+the sake of two cakes of sugar-milk chocolate hidden under a bush in the
+forest.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>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&#8212;eloquent, uncertain
+little hands that seemed to tell so much and yet were telling him
+nothing he could understand.</p>
+
+<p>"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<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"I am," she said in a smothered voice. "You'll stay here with me, won't
+you?"</p>
+
+<p>"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<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"Please don't leave me."</p>
+
+<p>After a moment: "I won't leave you.... I wish I might never leave you."</p>
+
+<p>In the tense silence that followed her trembling ceased. Then his heart,
+heavy, irregular, began beating so that the startled pulses in her body
+awoke, wildly responsive.</p>
+
+<p>Deep emotions, new, unfamiliar, were stirring, awaking, 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.</p>
+
+<p>"I want my room to myself," she murmured in a breathless sort of way,
+"&#8212;I want you to go out, please<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>A boyish flush burnt his face. He got up slowly, took<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span> his rifle from
+the corner, went out, closing the door, and seated himself on the
+stairs.</p>
+
+<p>And there, on guard, sat Trooper Stormont, rigid, unstirring, hour after
+hour, facing the first great passion of his life, and stunned by the
+impact of its swift and unexpected blow.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>In her chamber, on the bed's edge, sat Eve Strayer, her deep eyes fixed
+on space. Vague emotions, exquisitely recurrent, new born, possessed
+her. The whole world, too, all around her seemed to have become misty
+and golden and all pulsating with a faint, still rhythm that indefinably
+thrilled her pulses to response.</p>
+
+<p>Passion, full-armed, 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 sun-tanned fingers linked
+listlessly in her lap, her little feet like bruised white flowers
+drooping above the floor.</p>
+
+<p>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, gilding the boarded floor.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>Three spectres, 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.</p>
+
+<p>Then the three spectres, Fate, Chance and Destiny, whispering together,
+passed on toward the depths of the sunset forest.</p>
+
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span><a name="v" id="v"></a>
+<small><span class="smcap">Episode Five</span></small></h2>
+
+<h2>DROWNED VALLEY</h2>
+
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+<p class="cap">THE soft, bluish forest shadows had lengthened, and the barred sun-rays,
+filtering through, were tinged with a rosy hue before Jake Kloon, the
+hootch runner, and Earl Leverett, trap thief, came to Drowned Valley.</p>
+
+<p>They were still a mile distant from the most southern edge of that vast
+desolation, but already tamaracks appeared in the beauty of their burnt
+gold; little pools glimmered here and there; patches of amber sphagnum
+and crimson pitcher-plants became frequent; and once or twice Kloon's
+big boots broke through the crust of fallen leaves, soaking him to the
+ankles with black silt.</p>
+
+<p>Leverett, always a coward, had pursued his devious and larcenous way
+through the world, always in deadly fear of sink holes.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Now trotting lightly and tirelessly in the broad and careless spoor of
+Jake Kloon, his narrow, pointed head alert, and every fear-sharpened
+instinct tensely observant, the trap-thief continued to meditate murder.</p>
+
+<p>Like all cowards, he had always been inclined to bold and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span> ruthless
+action; but inclination was all that ever had happened.</p>
+
+<p>Yet, even in his pitiable misdemeanours he slunk through life in 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 protector's tread as he slunk from the bagged
+trout brook or crawled away, belly dragging, and pockets full of snared
+grouse.</p>
+
+<p>Always he had dreamed of the day when, through some sudden bold 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 the blue peaks which, always, he had
+hated because they seemed to spy on him from their sky-blue heights.</p>
+
+<p>They were spying on him now as he moved lightly, furtively at Jake
+Kloon's heels, meditating once more that swift, bold stroke which
+forever would free him from all care and fear.</p>
+
+<p>He looked at the back of Kloon's massive head. One shot would blow that
+skull into fragments, he thought, shivering.</p>
+
+<p>One shot from behind,&#8212;and twenty thousand dollars,&#8212;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
+if revealed?</p>
+
+<p>Always in his mean and busy brain he was trying to figure to himself
+what that packet must contain. And, to make the bribe worth while,
+Leverett had concluded that only a solid packet of thousand-dollar bills
+could account for the twenty thousand offered.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span>There might easily be half a million in bills pressed together in that
+heavy, flat packet. Bills were absolutely safe plunder. But Kloon had
+turned a deaf ear to his suggestions,&#8212;Kloon, who never entertained
+ambitions beyond his hootch rake-off,&#8212;whose miserable imagination
+stopped at a wretched percentage, satisfied.</p>
+
+<p>One shot! There was the back of Kloon's bushy head. One shot!&#8212;and fear,
+which had shadowed him from birth, was at an end forever. Ended, too,
+privation,&#8212;the bitter rigour 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 died or recovered by chance alone.</p>
+
+<p>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 coward's "if" blocked him; and
+the coward's rage,&#8212;fiercest of all fury,&#8212;ravaged him, almost crazing
+him with his own impotence.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>Tamaracks, sphagnum, crimson pitcher-plants grew thicker; wet woods set
+with little black pools stretched away on every side.</p>
+
+<p>It was still nearly a mile from Drowned Valley when Jake Kloon halted in
+his tracks and seated <a name="himself" id="himself"></a><ins title="original had hmiself">himself</ins> on a narrow ridge of hard ground. And
+Leverett came lightly up and, after nosing the whole vicinity, sat down
+cautiously where Kloon would have to turn partly around to look at him.</p>
+
+<p>"Where the hell do we meet up with Quintana?" growled<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span> Kloon, tearing a
+mouthful from a gnawed tobacco plug and shoving the remainder deep into
+his trousers pocket.</p>
+
+<p>"We gotta travel a piece, yet.... Say, Jake, be you a man or be you a
+poor dumb critter what ain't got no spunk?"</p>
+
+<p>Kloon, chewing on his cud, turned and glanced at him. Then he spat, as
+answer.</p>
+
+<p>"If you got the spunk of a chipmunk you and me'll take a peek at that
+there packet. I bet you it's thousand-dollar bills&#8212;more'n a billion
+million dollars, likely."</p>
+
+<p>Kloon'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 Kloon spat, then, by infinitesimal degrees,
+continued to edge the muzzle toward Kloon.</p>
+
+<p>"Jake?"</p>
+
+<p>"Aw, shut your head," grumbled Kloon disdainfully. "You allus was a
+dirty rat&#8212;you sneakin' trap robber. Enough's enough. I ain't got no use
+for no billion million dollar bills. Ten thousand'll buy me all I
+cal'late to need till I'm planted. But you're like a hawg; you ain't
+never had enough o' nothin' and you won't never git enough,
+neither,&#8212;not if you wuz God a'mighty you wouldn't."</p>
+
+<p>"Ten thousand dollars hain't nothin' to a billion million, Jake."</p>
+
+<p>Kloon squirted a stream of tobacco at a pitcher plant and filled the
+cup. Diverted and gratified by the accuracy of his aim, he took other
+shots at intervals.</p>
+
+<p>Leverett moved the muzzle of his rifle a hair's width to the left,
+shivered, moved it again. Under his soggy, sun-tanned skin a
+<a name="pallor" id="pallor"></a><ins title="original had pallour">pallor</ins> made his visage sickly grey.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span>"Jake?"</p>
+
+<p>No answer.</p>
+
+<p>"Say, Jake?"</p>
+
+<p>No notice.</p>
+
+<p>"Jake, I wanta take a peek at them bills."</p>
+
+<p>Merely another stream of tobacco soiling the crimson pitcher.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm&#8212;I'm desprit. I gotta take a peek. I gotta&#8212;gotta<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>Something in Leverett's unsteady voice made Kloon turn his head.</p>
+
+<p>"You gol rammed fool," he said, "what you doin' with your<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>The loud detonation of the rifle punctuated Kloon'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 down his back, and knocking him flat as
+though he had been clubbed.</p>
+
+<p>Leverett, stunned, sat staring, motionless, clutching the rifle from the
+muzzle of which a delicate stain of vapour floated and disappeared
+through a rosy bar of sunshine.</p>
+
+<p>In the intense stillness of the place, suddenly the dead man made a
+sound; and the trap-robber nearly fainted.</p>
+
+<p>But it was only air escaping from the slowly collapsing lungs; and
+Leverett, ashy pale, shaking, got to his feet and leaned heavily against
+an oak tree, his eyes never stirring from the sprawling thing on the
+ground.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>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 ruddy through
+the woods. A green fly appeared,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span> buzzing about the dead man. Another
+zig-zagged through the sunshine, lacing it with streaks 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.</p>
+
+<p>A little breeze came by and stirred the bushy hair on Kloon's head and
+fluttered the ferns around him where he lay.</p>
+
+<p>Two delicate, pure-white butterflies&#8212;rare survivors of a native species
+driven from civilization into the wilderness by the advent of the
+foreign white&#8212;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 soiled clothing which once had been a man.</p>
+
+<p>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 stiff step
+toward the dead man.</p>
+
+<p>But as he bent over he changed his mind, turned, reeling a little, then
+crept slowly out among the pitcher-plants, searching about him as though
+sniffing.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>He bent over Kloon and, from the left inside coat pocket, he drew the
+packet and placed it inside his own flannel shirt.</p>
+
+<p>Then, turning his back to the dead, he squatted down and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span> clutched
+Kloon's burly ankles, as a man grasps the handles of a wheelbarrow to
+draw it after him.</p>
+
+<p>Dragging, rolling, bumping over roots, Jake Kloon took his last trail
+through the wilderness, leaving a redder path than was left by the
+setting sun through fern and moss and wastes of pitcher-plants.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Beside this sink hole the trap-thief dropped Kloon. Then he drew his
+hunting knife and cut a tall, slim swamp maple. The sapling was about
+twenty feet in height. Leverett thrust the butt of it into the pool.
+Without any effort he pushed the entire sapling out of sight in the
+depthless silt.</p>
+
+<p>He had to man&#339;uvre very gingerly to dump Kloon into the pool and keep
+out of it himself. Finally he managed it.</p>
+
+<p>To his alarm, Kloon did not sink far. He cut another sapling and pushed
+the body until only the shoes were visible above the silt.</p>
+
+<p>These, however, were very slowly sinking, now. Bubbles rose, dully
+iridescent, floated, broke. Strings of blood hung suspended in the
+clouding water.</p>
+
+<p>Leverett went back to the little ridge and covered with dead leaves the
+spot where Kloon had lain. There were broken ferns, but he could not
+straighten them. And there lay Kloon's rifle.</p>
+
+<p>For a while he hesitated, his habits of economy being ingrained; but he
+remembered the packet in his shirt, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span> he carried the rifle to the
+little pool and shoved it, muzzle first, driving it downward, out of
+sight.</p>
+
+<p>As he rose from the pool's edge, somebody laid a hand on his shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>That was the most real death that Leverett ever had died.</p>
+
+
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<p>A coward dies many times before Old Man Death really gets him.</p>
+
+<p>The swimming minutes passed; his mind ceased to live for a space. Then,
+as through the swirling waters of the last dark whirlpool, a dulled roar
+of returning consciousness filled his being.</p>
+
+<p>Somebody was shaking him, shouting at him. Suddenly instinct resumed its
+function, and he struggled madly to get away from the edge of the
+sink-hole&#8212;fought his way, blindly, through tangled undergrowth toward
+the hard ridge. No human power could have blocked the frantic creature
+thrashing toward solid ground.</p>
+
+<p>But there Quintana held him in his wiry grip.</p>
+
+<p>"Fool! Mule! Crazee fellow! What you do, eh? For why you make jumps like
+rabbits! Eh? You expec' Quintana? Yes? Alors!"</p>
+
+<p>Leverett, in a state of collapse, sagged back against an oak tree.
+Quintana's nervous grasp fell from his arms and they swung, dangling.</p>
+
+<p>"What you do by that pond-hole? Eh? I come and touch you, and, my
+God!&#8212;one would think I have stab you. Such an ass!"</p>
+
+<p>The sickly greenish hue changed in Leverett's face as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span> the warmer tide
+stirred from its stagnation. He lifted his head and tried to look at
+Quintana.</p>
+
+<p>"Where Jake Kloon?" demanded the latter.</p>
+
+<p>At that the weasel wits of the trap-robber awoke to the instant crisis.
+Blood and pulse began to jump. He passed one dirty hand over his mouth
+to mask any twitching.</p>
+
+<p>"Where my packet, eh?" inquired Quintana.</p>
+
+<p>"Jake's got it." Leverett's voice was growing stronger. His small eyes
+switched for an instant toward his rifle, where it stood against a tree
+behind Quintana.</p>
+
+<p>"Where is he, then, this Jake?" repeated Quintana impatiently.</p>
+
+<p>"He got bogged."</p>
+
+<p>"Bogged? What is that, then?"</p>
+
+<p>"He got into a sink-hole."</p>
+
+<p>"What!"</p>
+
+<p>"That's all I know," said Leverett, sullenly. "Him and me was travellin'
+hell-bent to meet up with you,&#8212;Jake, he was for a short cut to Drowned
+Valley,&#8212;but 'no,' sez I, 'gimme a good hard ridge an' a long deetoor
+when there's sink-holes into the woods<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;</span>'"</p>
+
+<p>"What is it the talk you talk to me?" asked Quintana, whose perplexed
+features began to darken. "Where is it, my packet?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm tellin' you, ain't I?" retorted the other, raising a voice now
+shrill with the strain of this new crisis rushing so unexpectedly upon
+him: "I heard Jake give a holler. 'What the hell's the trouble?' I
+yells. Then he lets out a beller, 'Save me!' he screeches, 'I'm into a
+sink-hole! The quicksand's got me,' sez he. So I drop my rifle, I
+did,&#8212;there<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span> she stands against that birch sapling!&#8212;and I run down into
+them there pitcher-plants.</p>
+
+<p>"'Whar be ye!' I yells. Then I listens, and don't hear nothin' only a
+kina wallerin' noise an' a slobber like he was gulpin' mud.</p>
+
+<p>"Then I foller them there sounds and I come out by that sink-hole. The
+water was a-shakin' all over it but Jake he had went down plum out o'
+sight. T'want no use. I cut a sapling an' I poked down. I was sick and
+scared like, so when you come up over the moss, not makin' no noise, an'
+grabbed me&#8212;God!&#8212;I guess you'd jump, too."</p>
+
+<p>Quintana's dark, tense face was expressionless when Leverett ventured to
+look at him. Like most liars he realised 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 toward his rifle. Quintana blocked his way.</p>
+
+<p>"Where my packet?"</p>
+
+<p>"Gol ram it! Ain't I told you? Jake had it in his pocket."</p>
+
+<p>"My packet?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yaas, yourn."</p>
+
+<p>"My packet, it is down in thee sink 'ole?"</p>
+
+<p>"You think I'm lyin'?" blustered Leverett, trying to move around
+Quintana's extended arm. The arm swerved and clutched him by the collar
+of his flannel shirt.</p>
+
+<p>"Wait, my frien'," said Quintana in a soft voice. "You shall explain to
+me some things before you go."</p>
+
+<p>"Explain what!&#8212;you gol dinged<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>Quintana shook him into speechlessness.</p>
+
+<p>"Listen, my frien'," he continued with a terrifying smile,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span> "I mus' ask
+you what it was, that gun-shot, which I hear while I await at Drown'
+Vallee. Eh? Who fire a gun?"</p>
+
+<p>"I ain't heard no gun," replied Leverett in a strangled voice.</p>
+
+<p>"You did not shoot? No?"</p>
+
+<p>"No!&#8212;damn it all<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"And Jake? He did not fire?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, I tell yeh<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"Ah! Someone lies. It is not me, my frien'. No. Let us examine your
+rifle<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>Leverett made a rush for the gun; Quintana slung him back against the
+oak tree and thrust an automatic pistol against his chin.</p>
+
+<p>"Han's up, my frien'," he said gently, "&#8212;up! high up!&#8212;or someone will
+fire another shot you shall never hear.... So!... Now I search the
+other pocket.... So!... Still no packet. Bah! Not in the pants,
+either? Ah, bah! <a name="but" id="but"></a><ins title="original had open bracket">But</ins> wait! Tiens! What is this you hide inside your
+shirt<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;</span>?"</p>
+
+<p>"I was jokin'," gasped Leverett; "&#8212;I was jest a-goin' to give it to
+you<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"Is that my packet?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. It was all in fun; I wan't a-going to steal it<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>Quintana unbuttoned the grey wool shirt, thrust in his hand and drew
+forth the packet for which Jake Kloon had died within the hour.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly Leverett's knees gave way and he dropped to the ground,
+grovelling at Quintana's feet in an agony of fright:</p>
+
+<p>"Don't hurt me," he screamed, "&#8212;I didn't meant no harm! Jake, he wanted
+me to steal it. I told him I was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span> honest. I fired a shot to scare him,
+an' he tuk an' run off! I wan't a-goin' to steal it off you, so help me
+God! I was lookin' for you&#8212;as God is my witness<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>He got Quintana by one foot. Quintana kicked him aside and backed away.</p>
+
+<p>"Swine," he said, calmly inspecting the whimpering creature who had
+started to crawl toward him.</p>
+
+<p>He hesitated, lifted his automatic, then, as though annoyed by
+Leverett's deafening shriek, shrugged, hesitated, pocketed both pistol
+and packet, and turned on his heel.</p>
+
+<p>By the birch sapling he paused and picked up Leverett's rifle. Something
+left a red smear on his palm as he worked the ejector. It was blood.</p>
+
+<p>Quintana gazed curiously at his soiled hand. Then he stooped and picked
+up the empty cartridge case which had been ejected. And, as he stooped,
+he noticed more blood on a fallen leaf.</p>
+
+<p>With one foot, daintily as a game-cock scratches, he brushed away the
+fallen leaves, revealing the mess underneath.</p>
+
+<p>After he had contemplated the crimson traces of murder for a few
+moments, he turned and looked at Leverett with faint curiosity.</p>
+
+<p>"So," he said in his leisurely, emotionless way, "you have fight with my
+frien' Jake for thee packet. Yes? Ver' 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 Valley, unhurriedly.</p>
+
+
+<h3><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span>III</h3>
+
+<p>When Quintana disappeared among the tamaracks, Leverett 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.</p>
+
+<p>Recognition was instant and mutual as the man jerked the trap-robber to
+his feet, stifling the muffled yell in his throat.</p>
+
+<p>"I want that packet you picked up on Clinch's veranda," said Hal Smith.</p>
+
+<p>"M-my God," stammered Leverett, "Quintana just took it off me. He ain't
+been gone a minute<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"You lie!"</p>
+
+<p>"I ain't lyin'. Look at his foot-marks there in the mud!"</p>
+
+<p>"Quintana!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yaas, Quintana! He tuk my gun, too<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"Which way!" whispered Smith fiercely, shaking Leverett till his jaws
+wagged.</p>
+
+<p>"Drowned Valley.... Lemme loose!&#8212;I'm chokin'<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>Smith pushed him aside.</p>
+
+<p>"You rat," he said, "if you're lying to me I'll come back and settle
+your affair. And Kloon's, too!"</p>
+
+<p>"Quintana shot Jake and stuck him into a sink-hole!" snivelled Leverett,
+breaking down and sobbing; "&#8212;oh, Gawd&#8212;Gawd&#8212;he's down under all that
+black mud with his brains spillin' out<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>But Smith was already gone, running lightly along the string of
+footprints which led straight away across slime and sphagnum toward the
+head of Drowned Valley.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span>In the first clump of hard-wood trees Smith saw Quintana. He had halted
+and he was fumbling at the twine which bound a flat, paper-wrapped
+packet.</p>
+
+<p>He did not start when Smith's sharp warning struck his ear: "Don't move!
+I've got you over my rifle, Quintana!"</p>
+
+<p>Quintana's fingers had instantly ceased operations. Then, warily, he
+lifted his head and looked into the muzzle of Smith's rifle.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, bah!" he said tranquilly. "There were three of you, then."</p>
+
+<p>"Lay that packet on the ground."</p>
+
+<p>"My frien'<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"Drop it or I'll drop <em>you</em> !"</p>
+
+<p>Quintana carefully placed the packet on a bed of vivid moss.</p>
+
+<p>"Now your gun!" continued Smith.</p>
+
+<p>Quintana shrugged and laid Leverett's rifle beside the packet.</p>
+
+<p>"Kneel down with your hands up and your back toward me!" said Smith.</p>
+
+<p>"My frien'<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"Down with you!"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Stay put," he said sharply, as Quintana started to turn his head. Then
+he picked up the packet with its loosened string, slipped it into his
+side pocket, gathered together the arsenal which had decorated Quintana,
+and so, loaded with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span> weapons, walked away a few paces and seated himself
+on a fallen log.</p>
+
+<p>Here he pocketed both automatics, shoved the sheathed dirk into his
+belt, placed the captured rifle handy, after examining the magazine, and
+laid his own weapon across his knees.</p>
+
+<p>"You may turn around now, Quintana," he said amiably.</p>
+
+<p>Quintana lowered his arms and started to rise.</p>
+
+<p>"Sit down!" said Smith.</p>
+
+<p>Quintana seated himself on the moss, facing Smith.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, my gay and nimble thimble-rigger," said Smith genially, "while I
+take ten minutes' rest we'll have a little polite conversation. Or,
+rather, a monologue. Because I don't want to hear anything from you."</p>
+
+<p>He settled himself comfortably on the log:</p>
+
+<p>"Let me assemble for you, Se&#241;or Quintana, the interesting history of the
+jewels which so sparklingly repose in the packet in my pocket.</p>
+
+<p>"In the first place, as you know, Monsieur Quintana, the famous Flaming
+Jewel and the other gems contained in this packet of mine, belonged to
+Her Highness the Grand Duchess Theodorica of Esthonia.</p>
+
+<p>"Very interesting. More interesting still&#8212;along comes Don Jos&#233; Quintana
+and his celebrated gang of international thieves, and steals from the
+Grand Duchess of Esthonia the Flaming Jewel and all her rubies, emeralds
+and diamonds. Yes?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly," said Quintana, with a polite inclination of acknowledgment.</p>
+
+<p>"Bon! Well, then, still more interesting to relate, a gentleman<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span> named
+Clinch helps himself to these famous jewels. How very careless of you,
+Mr. Quintana."</p>
+
+<p>"Careless, certainly," assented Quintana politely.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said Smith, laughing, "Clinch was more careless still. The
+robber baron, Sir Jacobus Kloon, swiped,&#8212;as Froissart has it,&#8212;the
+Esthonian 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?"</p>
+
+<p>"Gewiss."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, and you got Jake Kloon, I hear," laughed Smith.</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"Didn't you kill Kloon?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, pardon. The mistake was natural. You merely robbed Kloon and
+Leverett. You should have killed them."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Quintana slowly, "I should have. It was my mistake."</p>
+
+<p>"Signor Quintana, it is human for the human crook to err. Sooner or
+later he always does it. And then the Piper comes around holding out two
+itching palms."</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Smith," said Quintana pleasantly, "you are an unusually agreeable
+gentleman for a thief. I regret that you do not see your way to an
+amalgamation of interests with myself."</p>
+
+<p>"As you say, Quintana mea, I am somewhat unusual. For example, what do
+you suppose I am going to do with this packet in my pocket?"</p>
+
+<p>"Live," replied Quintana tersely.</p>
+
+<p>"Live, certainly," laughed Smith, "but not on the proceeds of this
+coup-de-main. Non pas! I am going to return<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span> this packet to its rightful
+owner, the Grand Duchess Theodorica of Esthonia. And what do you think
+of that, Quintana?"</p>
+
+<p>Quintana smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"You do not believe me?" inquired Smith.</p>
+
+<p>Quintana smiled again.</p>
+
+<p>"Allons, bon!" exclaimed Smith, rising. "It's the unusual that happens
+in life, my dear Quintana. And now we'll take a little inventory of
+these marvellous gems before we part.... Sit very, very still,
+Quintana,&#8212;unless you want to lie stiller still.... I'll let you take a
+modest peep at the Flaming Jewel<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span> busily unwrapping the
+packet&#8212;"just one little peep, Quintana<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>He unwrapped the paper. Two cakes of sugar-milk chocolate lay within.</p>
+
+<p>Quintana turned white, then deeply, heavily red. Then he smiled in
+ghastly fashion:</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," he said hoarsely, "as you have just said, sir, it is usually the
+unusual which happens in the world."</p>
+
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span><a name="vi" id="vi"></a>
+<small><span class="smcap">Episode Six</span></small></h2>
+
+<h2>THE JEWEL AFLAME</h2>
+
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+<p class="cap">MIKE CLINCH and his men "drove" Star Peak, and drew a blanket covert.</p>
+
+<p>There was a new shanty atop, camp d&#233;bris, plenty of signs of recent
+occupation everywhere,&#8212;hot embers in which offal still smouldered,
+bottles odorous of claret dregs, and an aluminum culinary outfit,
+unwashed, as though Quintana and his men had departed in haste.</p>
+
+<p>Far in the still valley below, Mike Clinch squatted beside the runway he
+had chosen, a cocked rifle across his knees.</p>
+
+<p>The glare in his small, pale eyes waned and flared as distant sounds
+broke the forest silence, grew vague, died out,&#8212;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 a rotten bough sagging
+earthward to enrich the soil that grew it.</p>
+
+<p>And, as Clinch squatted there, murderously intent, ever the fixed
+obsession burned in his fever brain, stirring his thin lips to incessant
+muttering,&#8212;a sort of soundless invocation, part chronicle, part prayer:</p>
+
+<p>"O God A'mighty, in your big, swell mansion up there, all has went
+contrary with me sence you let that there damn millionaire, Harrod, come
+into this here forest.... He<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span> went and built unto hisself an
+habitation, and he put up a wall of law all around me where I was
+earnin' a lawful livin' in Thy nice, clean wilderness.... And now comes
+this here Quintana and robs my girlie.... I promised her mother I'd
+make a lady of her little Eve.... I loved my wife, O Lord.... Once she
+showed me a piece in the Bible,&#8212;I ain't never found it sence,&#8212;but it
+said: 'And the woman she fled into the wilderness where there was a
+place prepared for her of God.' ... That's what <em>you</em>  wrote into your
+own Bible, O God! You can't go back on it. I seen it.</p>
+
+<p>"And now I wanta to ask, What place did you prepare for my Eve? What
+spot have you reference 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'd 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-goin' to git
+Quintana. Then I'm a-goin' to git them two minks that robbed my
+girlie,&#8212;I am!... Jake Kloon, he done it in cahoots with Earl Leverett;
+and Quintana set 'em on. And they gotta die, O Lord of Israel, them
+there Egyptians is about to hop the twig.... I ain't aimin' to be mean
+to nobody. I buy hootch of them that runs it. I eat mountain mutton in
+season and out. I trade with law-breakers, I do. But, Lord, I gotta get
+my girlie outa here; and Harrod he walled me in with the chariots and
+spears of Egypt, till I nigh went wild.... And now comes Quintana, and
+here I be a-lyin' out to get him so's my girlie can become a lady,
+same's them fine folks with all their butlers and automobiles and
+what-not<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>A far crash in the forest stilled his twitching lips and stiffened every
+iron muscle.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span>As he lifted his rifle, Sid Hone came into the glade.</p>
+
+<p>"Yahoo! Yahoo!" he called. "Where be you, Mike?"</p>
+
+<p>Clinch slowly rose, grasping his rifle, his small, grey eyes ablaze.</p>
+
+<p>"Where's Quintana?" he demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"H'ain't you seen nobody?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>In the intense silence other sounds broke sharply in the sunset forest;
+Harvey Chase's halloo rang out from the rocks above; Blommers and the
+Hastings boys came slouching through the ferns.</p>
+
+<p>Byron Hastings greeted Clinch with upflung gun: "Me and Jim heard a shot
+away out on Drowned Valley," he announced. "Was you out that way,
+<a name="mike" id="mike"></a><ins title="original omitted closing quotation mark">Mike?"</ins></p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>One by one the men who had driven Star Peak lounged up in the red sunset
+light, gathering around Clinch and wiping the sweat from sun-reddened
+faces.</p>
+
+<p>"Someone's in Drowned Valley," repeated Byron. "Them minks slid off'n
+Star in a hurry, I reckon, judgin' how they left their shanty. Phew! It
+stunk! They had French hootch, too."</p>
+
+<p>"Mebby Leverett and Kloon told 'em we was fixin' to visit them,"
+suggested Blommers.</p>
+
+<p>"They didn't know," said Clinch.</p>
+
+<p>"Where's Hal Smith?" inquired Hone.</p>
+
+<p>Clinch made no reply. Blommers silently gnawed a new quid from the
+remains of a sticky plug.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," inquired Jim Hastings finally, "do we quit, Mike, or do we
+still-hunt in Drowned Valley?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not me, at night," remarked Blommers drily.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span>"Not amongst them sink-holes," added Hone.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly Clinch turned and stared at him. Then the deadly light from his
+little eyes shone on the others one by one.</p>
+
+<p>"Boys," he said, "I gotta get Quintana. I can't never sleep another wink
+till I get that man. Come on. Act up like gents all. Let's go."</p>
+
+<p>Nobody stirred.</p>
+
+<p>"Come on," repeated Clinch softly. But his lips shrank back, twitching.</p>
+
+<p>As they looked at him they saw his teeth.</p>
+
+<p>"All right, all right," growled Hone, shouldering his rifle with a jerk.</p>
+
+<p>The Hastings boys, young and rash, shuffled into the trail. Blommers
+hesitated, glanced askance at Clinch, and instantly made up his mind to
+take a chance with the sink-holes rather than with Clinch.</p>
+
+<p>"God A'mighty, Mike, what be you aimin' to do?" faltered Harvey.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm aimin' to stop the inlet and outlet to Drowned Valley, Harve,"
+replied Clinch in his pleasant voice. "God is a-goin' to deliver
+Quintana into my hands."</p>
+
+<p>"All right. What next?"</p>
+
+<p>"Then," continued Clinch, "I cal'late to set down and wait."</p>
+
+<p>"How long?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ask God, boys. I don't know. All I know is that whatever is livin' in
+Drowned Valley at this hour has gotta live and die there. For it can't
+never live to come outen that there morass walkin' onto two legs like a
+real man."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span>He moved slowly along the file of sullen men, his rifle a-trail in one
+huge fist.</p>
+
+<p>"Boys," he said, "I got first. There ain't no sink-hole deep enough to
+drowned me while Eve needs me.... And my little girlie needs me bad....
+After she gits what's her'n, then I don't care no more...." He looked up
+into the sky, where the last ashes of sunset faded from the zenith....
+"Then I don't care," he murmured. "Like's not I'll creep away like some
+shot-up critter, n'kinda find some lone, safe spot, n'kinda fix me f'r
+a long nap.... I guess that'll be the way ... when Eve's a lady down to
+Noo York 'r'som'ers<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span> he added vaguely.</p>
+
+<p>Then, still looking up at the fading heavens, he moved forward, head
+lifted, silent, unhurried, with the soundless, stealthy, and certain
+tread of those who walk unseeing and asleep.</p>
+
+
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<p>Clinch had not taken a dozen strides before Hal Smith loomed up ahead in
+the rosy dusk, driving in Leverett before him.</p>
+
+<p>An exclamation of fierce exultation burst from Clinch's thin lips as he
+flung out one arm, indicating Smith and his clinking prisoner:</p>
+
+<p>"Who was that gol-dinged catamount that suspicioned Hal? I wa'nt worried
+none, neither. Hal's a gent. Mebbe he sticks up folks, too, but he's a
+gent. And gents is honest or they ain't gents."</p>
+
+<p>Smith came up at his easy, tireless gait, hustling Leverett along with
+prods from gun-butt or muzzle, as came handiest.</p>
+
+<p>The prisoner turned a ghastly visage on Clinch, who ignored him.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span>"Got my packet, Hal?" he demanded.</p>
+
+<p>Smith poked Leverett with his rifle: "Tune up," he said; "tell Clinch
+your story."</p>
+
+<p>As a caged rat looks death in the face, his ratty wits working like
+lightning and every atom of cunning and ferocity alert for attack or
+escape, so the little, mean eyes of Earl Leverett became fixed on Clinch
+like two immobile and glassy beads of jet.</p>
+
+<p>"G'wan," said Clinch softly, "spit it out."</p>
+
+<p>"Jake done it," muttered Leverett, thickly.</p>
+
+<p>"Done what?"</p>
+
+<p>"Stole that there packet o' yourn&#8212;whatever there was into it."</p>
+
+<p>"Who put him up to it?"</p>
+
+<p>"A fella called Quintana."</p>
+
+<p>"What was there in it for Jake?" inquired Clinch pleasantly.</p>
+
+<p>"Ten thousand."</p>
+
+<p>"How about you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I told 'em I wouldn't touch it. Then they pulled their guns on me, and
+I was scared to squeal."</p>
+
+<p>"So that was the way?" asked Clinch in his even, reassuring voice.</p>
+
+<p>Leverett's eyes travelled stealthily around the circle of men, then
+reverted to Clinch.</p>
+
+<p>"I dassn't touch it," he said, "but I dassn't squeal.... I was huntin'
+onto Drowned Valley when Jake meets up with me."</p>
+
+<p>"'I got the packet,' he sez, 'and I'm a-going to double criss-cross
+Quintana, I am, and beat it. Don't you wish you was whacks with me?'</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span>"'No,' sez I, 'honesty is my policy, no matter what they tell about me.
+S'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 hootch,
+same's everybody.'"</p>
+
+<p>He licked his lips furtively, his cold, bright eyes fastened on Clinch.</p>
+
+<p>"G'wan, Earl," nodded the latter, "heave her up."</p>
+
+<p>"That's all. I sez, 'Good-bye, Jake. An' if you heed my warnin',
+ill-gotten gains ain't a-going to prosper nobody.' That's what I said to
+Jake Kloon, the last solemn words I spoke to that there man now in his
+bloody grave<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"Hey?" demanded Clinch.</p>
+
+<p>"That's where Jake is," repeated Leverett. "Why, so help me, I wa'nt
+gone ten yards when, bang! goes a gun, and I see this here Quintana come
+outen the bush, I do, and walk up to Jake and frisk him, and Jake still
+a-kickin' the moss to slivers. Yessir, that's what I seen."</p>
+
+<p>"G'wan."</p>
+
+<p>"Yessir.... 'N'then Quintana he shoved Jake into a sink-hole. Thaswot I
+seen with my two eyes. Yessir. 'N'then Quintana he run off, 'n'I jest
+set down in the trail, I did; 'n'then Hal come up and acted like I had
+stole your packet, he did; 'n'then I told him what Quintana done.
+'N'Hal, he takes after Quintana, but I don't guess he meets up with him,
+for he come back and ketched holt o' me, 'n'he druv me in like I was a
+caaf, he did. 'N'here I be."</p>
+
+<p>The dusk in the forest had deepened so that the men's faces had become
+mere blotches of grey.</p>
+
+<p>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?"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span>"There wa'nt nothin' 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.</p>
+
+<p>"You dirty louse!" he roared at Leverett, "you was into this, too,
+a-robbin' my little Eve<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"Run!" yelled somebody, giving Leverett a violent shove into the woods.</p>
+
+<p>In the darkness and confusion, Clinch shouldered his way out of the
+circle and fired at the crackling noise that marked Leverett's
+course,&#8212;fired again, lower, and again as a distant crash revealed the
+frenzied flight of the trap-robber. After he had fired a fourth shot,
+somebody struck up his rifle.</p>
+
+<p>"Aw," said Jim Hastings, "that ain't no good. You act up like a kid,
+Mike. 'Tain't so far to Ghost Lake, n'them Troopers might hear you."</p>
+
+<p>After a silence, Clinch spoke, his voice heavy with reaction:</p>
+
+<p>"Into that there packet is my little girl's dower. It's all I got to
+give her. It's all she's got to make her a lady. I'll kill any man that
+robs her or that helps rob her. 'N'that's that."</p>
+
+<p>"Are you going on after Quintana?" asked Smith.</p>
+
+<p>"I am. 'N'these fellas are a-going with me. N' I want you should go back
+to my Dump and look after my girlie while I'm gone."</p>
+
+<p>"How long are you going to be away?"</p>
+
+<p>"I dunno."</p>
+
+<p>There was a silence. Then,</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span>"All right," said Smith, briefly. He added: "Look out for sink-holes,
+Mike."</p>
+
+<p>Clinch tossed his heavy rifle to his shoulder: "Let's go," he said in
+his pleasant, misleading way, "&#8212;and I'll shoot the guts outa any fella
+that don't show up at roll <a name="call" id="call"></a><ins title="original omitted closing quotation mark">call."</ins></p>
+
+
+<h3>III</h3>
+
+<p>For its size there is no fiercer animal than a rat.</p>
+
+<p>Rat-like rage possessed Leverett. 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.</p>
+
+<p>Thorns bled him; unseen logs tripped him; he heard Clinch's bullets
+whining around him; and he ran on, beginning to sob and curse in a
+frenzy of fury, fear, and shame.</p>
+
+<p>Shots from Clinch's rifle ceased; the fugitive dropped into a heavy,
+shuffling walk, slavering, gasping, gesticulating with his weaponless
+fists in the darkness.</p>
+
+<p>"Gol ram ye, I'll fix ye!" he kept stammering in his snarling, jangling
+voice, broken by sobs. "I'll learn ye, yeh poor danged thing, gol ram
+ye<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>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 from his cheek-bone.</p>
+
+<p>He stood listening, infuriated, vindictive, but heard nothing save the
+panting, animal sounds in his own throat.</p>
+
+<p>He strove to see in the ghostly obscurity around him, but could make out
+little except the trees close by.</p>
+
+<p>But wood-rats are never completely lost in their native<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span> darkness; and
+Leverett presently discovered the far stars shining faintly through
+rifts in the phantom foliage above.</p>
+
+<p>These heavenly signals were sufficient to give him his directions. Then
+the question suddenly came, <em>which</em>  direction?</p>
+
+<p>To his own shack 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&#8212;the deep,
+superstitious horror of Jake Kloon's empty bunk&#8212;the repugnant sight of
+Kloon's spare clothing hanging from its peg&#8212;the dead man's shoes<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;</span></p>
+
+<p>No, he could not go to Stinking Lake and sleep.... And wake with the
+faint stench of sulphur in his throat.... And see the worm-like leeches
+unfolding in the shallows, and the big, reddish water-lizards, livid as
+skinned eels, wriggling convulsively toward their sunless lairs....</p>
+
+<p>At the mere thought of his dead bunk-mate he sought relief in vindictive
+rage&#8212;stirred up the smouldering embers again, cursed Clinch and Hal
+Smith, violently searching 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&#8212;the wilderness.</p>
+
+<p>All at once he thought of Clinch's step-daughter. The thought instantly
+scared him. Yet&#8212;what a revenge!&#8212;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 lightning across his turbid mind;&#8212;<em>the
+packet</em> !</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span>Bribed by Quintana, Jake Kloon, lurking at Clinch's door, had heard him
+direct Eve to take a packet to Owl Marsh, and had notified Quintana.</p>
+
+<p>Wittingly or unwittingly, the girl had taken a packet of sugar-milk
+chocolate instead of the priceless parcel expected.</p>
+
+<p>Again, carried in, exhausted, by a State Trooper, Jake Kloon had been
+fooled; and it was the packet of sugar-milk chocolate that Jake had
+purloined from the veranda where Clinch kicked it. For two cakes of
+chocolate Kloon had died. For two cakes of chocolate he, Earl Leverett,
+had become a man-slayer, a homeless fugitive in peril of his life.</p>
+
+<p>He stood licking his blood-dried lips there in the darkness, striving to
+hatch courage out of the dull fury eating at a coward's heart.</p>
+
+<p>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&#8212;above all else <em>fear</em> &#8212;would end forever!...</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>When, at last, he came out to the edge of Clinch's clearing, the dark
+October heavens were but a vast wilderness of stars.</p>
+
+<p>Star Pond, set to its limpid depths with the heavenly gems, glittered
+and darkled with its million diamond incrustations. The humped-up lump
+of Clinch's Dump crouched like some huge and feeding night-beast on the
+bank, ringed by the solemn forest.</p>
+
+<p>There was a kerosene lamp burning in Eve Strayer's rooms. Another
+light&#8212;a candle&#8212;flickered in the kitchen.</p>
+
+<p>Leverett, crouching, ran rat-like down to the barn, slid in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span> between the
+ice house and corn-crib, crawled out among the wilderness of weeds and
+lay flat.</p>
+
+<p>The light burned steadily from Eve's window.</p>
+
+
+<h3>IV</h3>
+
+<p>From his form among frost-blackened rag-weeds, the trap-robber could see
+only the plastered ceiling of the bed chamber.</p>
+
+<p>But the kerosene lamp cast two shadows on that&#8212;tall shadows of human
+shapes that stirred at times.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Not a weed stirred under the stars where he lay with tiny, unwinking
+eyes intent upon the shadows on the ceiling.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>The shadows on the ceiling were cast by Eve Strayer and her State
+Trooper.</p>
+
+<p>Eve sat on her bed's edge, swathed in a lilac silk kimona&#8212;delicate
+relic of school days. Her bandaged feet, crossed, dangled above the
+rag-rug on the floor; her slim, tanned fingers were interlaced over the
+book on her lap.</p>
+
+<p>Near the door stood State Trooper Stormont, spurred, booted, trig and
+trim, an undecided and flushed young man, fumbling irresolutely with the
+purple cord on his campaign-hat.</p>
+
+<p>The book on Eve's knees&#8212;another relic of the past&#8212;was <em>Sigurd the
+Volsung</em> . Stormont had been reading to her&#8212;they having found, after the
+half shy tentatives of new friends, a point d'appui in literature. And
+the girl, admitting<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span> a passion for the poets, invited him to inspect the
+bookcase of unpainted pine which Clinch had built into her bedroom wall.</p>
+
+<p>Here it was he discovered mutual friends among the nobler
+Victorians&#8212;surprised to discover <em>Sigurd</em>  there&#8212;and, carrying it to
+her bedside, looked leisurely through the half forgotten pages.</p>
+
+<p>"Would you read a little?" she ventured.</p>
+
+<p>He blushed but did his best. His was an agreeable, boyish voice,
+betraying taste and understanding. Time passed quickly&#8212;not so much in
+the reading but in the conversations intervening.</p>
+
+<p>And now, made uneasy by chance consultation with his wrist-watch, and
+being rather a conscientious young man, he had risen and had informed
+Eve that she ought to go to sleep.</p>
+
+<p>And she had denounced the idea, almost fretfully.</p>
+
+<p>"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 <em>you</em>  are sleepy
+I shouldn't dream of asking you to stay."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not intending to sleep."</p>
+
+<p>"What are you going to do?"</p>
+
+<p>"Take a chair on the landing outside your door."</p>
+
+<p>"What!"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly. What did you expect me to do, Eve?"</p>
+
+<p>"Go to bed, of course. The beds in the guest rooms are all made up."</p>
+
+<p>"Your father didn't expect me to do that," he said, smiling.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not afraid, as long as you're in the house," she said.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span>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&#8212;active, nervous young men accustomed to the open, can't
+stand caging.</p>
+
+<p>"I want you to go out and get some fresh air," she said. "It's a
+wonderful night. Go and walk a while. And&#8212;if you feel like&#8212;coming back
+to me<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"Will you sleep?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, I'll wait for you."</p>
+
+<p>Her words were natural and direct, but in their simplicity there seemed
+a delicate sweetness that stirred him.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll come back to you," he said.</p>
+
+<p>Then, in his response, the girl in her turn became aware of something
+beside the simple words&#8212;a vague charm about them that faintly haunted
+her after he had gone away down the stairs.</p>
+
+<p><em>That</em>  was the man she had once tried to kill! At the sudden and
+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&#8212;bruised by handcuffs which he had fastened upon her.</p>
+
+<p>She sat very, very still now, huddled on the bed's edge, scarcely
+breathing.</p>
+
+<p>For the girl was beginning to dare formulate the deepest of any thoughts
+that ever had stirred her virgin mind and body.</p>
+
+<p>If it was love, then it had come suddenly, and strangely. It had come on
+that day&#8212;at the very moment when he flung her against the tree and
+handcuffed her&#8212;that terrible instant&#8212;if it were love.</p>
+
+<p>Or&#8212;what was it that so delicately overwhelmed her with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span> pleasure in his
+presence, in his voice, in the light, firm sound of his spurred tread on
+the veranda below?</p>
+
+<p>Friendship? A lonely passion for young and decent companionship? The
+clean youth of him in contrast to the mangy, surly louts who haunted
+Clinch's Dump,&#8212;was that the appeal?</p>
+
+<p>Listening there where she sat clasping the book, she heard his steady
+tread patrolling the veranda; caught the faint fragrance of his brier
+pipe in the still night air.</p>
+
+<p>"I think&#8212;I think it's&#8212;love," she said under her breath.... "But he
+couldn't ever think of me<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span> always listening to his spurred tread
+below.</p>
+
+<p>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&#8212;just
+a moment<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;</span></p>
+
+<p>By chance he looked up at that instant, and saw her pale face, like a
+flower in the starlight.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Eve," he said, "you ought not to be on your feet."</p>
+
+<p>"Once," she said, "you weren't so particular about my bruises."</p>
+
+<p>Her breathless little voice coming down through the starlight thrilled
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you remember what I did?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. You bruised my hands and made my mouth bleed."</p>
+
+<p>"I did penance&#8212;for your hands."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, you kissed <em>them</em> !"</p>
+
+<p>What possessed her&#8212;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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span> of way an overwhelming desire seized her to please, to
+charm, to be noticed by such a man&#8212;whatever, on afterthought, he might
+think of the step-child of Mike Clinch.</p>
+
+<p>Stormont had come directly under her window and stood looking up.</p>
+
+<p>"I dared not offer further penance," he said.</p>
+
+<p>The emotion in his voice stirred her&#8212;but she was still laughing down at
+him.</p>
+
+<p>She said: "You <em>did</em>  offer further penance&#8212;you offered your
+handkerchief. So&#8212;as that was <em>all</em>  you offered as reparation for&#8212;my
+lips<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"Eve! I could have taken you into my arms<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"You <em>did</em> ! And threw me down among the spruces. You really did
+everything that a contrite heart could suggest<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"Good heavens!" said that rather matter-of-fact young man, "I don't
+believe you have forgiven me after all."</p>
+
+<p>"I have&#8212;everything except the handkerchief<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"Then I'm coming up to complete my penance<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"I'll lock my door!"</p>
+
+<p>"Would you?"</p>
+
+<p>"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 your sin by
+doing&#8212;penance<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span> And hesitated: "Do you so desire?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I do."</p>
+
+<p>"Humbly? Contritely?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well. Say 'Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.'"</p>
+
+<p>"Mea maxima culpa," he said so earnestly, looking up into her face that
+she bent lower over the sill to see him.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me come up, Eve," he said.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span>She strove to laugh, gazing down into his shadowy face&#8212;but suddenly the
+desire had left her,&#8212;and all her gaiety left her, too, suddenly,
+leaving only a still excitement in her breast.</p>
+
+<p>"You&#8212;you knew I was just laughing," she said unsteadily. "You
+understood, didn't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know."</p>
+
+<p>After a silence: "I didn't mean you to take me seriously," she said. She
+tried to laugh. It was no use. And, as she leaned there on the sill, her
+heart frightened her with its loud beating.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you let me come up, Eve?"</p>
+
+<p>No answer.</p>
+
+<p>"Would you lock your door?"</p>
+
+<p>"What do you think I'd do?" she asked tremulously.</p>
+
+<p>"You know; I don't."</p>
+
+<p>"Are you so sure I know what I'd do? I don't think either of us know our
+own minds.... I seem to have lost some of my wits.... Somehow...."</p>
+
+<p>"If you are not going to sleep, let me come up."</p>
+
+<p>"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 to-night, or
+whether, when you return, I ought to be asleep and&#8212;and my door bolted."</p>
+
+<p>After a long pause: "All right," he said in a low voice.</p>
+
+
+<h3>V</h3>
+
+<p>She saw him walk away&#8212;saw his shadowy, well-built form fade into the
+starlit mist.</p>
+
+<p>An almost uncontrollable impulse set her throat and lips<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span> quivering with
+desire to call to him through the night, "I do love you! I do love you!
+Come back quickly, quickly!&#8212;&#8212;"</p>
+
+<p>Fog hung over Star Pond, edging the veranda, rising in frail shreds to
+her window. The lapping of the water sounded very near. An owl was very
+mournful in the hemlocks.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>For a little while she sat upright, alert, as though a little
+frightened. After a few moments she folded her hands and sat unstirring,
+with lowered head, awaiting Destiny.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>It came, noiselessly. And so swiftly that the rush of air from her
+violently opened door was what first startled her.</p>
+
+<p>For in the same second Earl Leverett was upon her in his stockinged
+feet, one bony hand gripping her mouth, the other flung around her,
+pinning both arms to her sides.</p>
+
+<p>"The packet!" he panted, "&#8212;quick, yeh dirty little cat, 'r'I'll break
+yeh head off'n yeh damn neck!"</p>
+
+<p>She bit at the hand that he held crushed against her mouth. He lifted
+her bodily, flung her onto the bed, and, twisting sheet and quilt around
+her, swathed her to the throat.</p>
+
+<p>Still controlling her violently distorted lips with his left hand and
+holding her so, one knee upon her, he reached back, unsheathed his
+hunting knife, and pricked her throat till the blood spurted.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, gol ram yeh!" he whispered fiercely, "where's<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span> Mike's packet?
+Yell, and I'll hog-stick yeh fur fair! Where is it, you dum thing!"</p>
+
+<p>He took his left hand from her mouth. The distorted, scarlet lips
+writhed back, displaying her white teeth clenched.</p>
+
+<p>"Where's Mike's bundle!" he repeated, hoarse with rage and fear.</p>
+
+<p>"You rat!" she gasped.</p>
+
+<p>At that he closed her mouth again, and again he pricked her with his
+knife, cruelly. The blood welled up onto the sheets.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, by God!" he said in a ghastly voice, "answer or I'll hog-stick yeh
+next time! Where is it? Where! where!"</p>
+
+<p>She only showed her teeth in answer. Her eyes flamed.</p>
+
+<p>"Where! Quick! Gol ding yeh, I'll shove this knife in behind your ear if
+you don't tell! Go on. Where is it? It's in this Dump som'ers. I know it
+is&#8212;don't lie! You want that I should stick you good? That what you
+want&#8212;you dirty little dump-slut? Well, then, gol ram yeh&#8212;I'll fix yeh
+like Quintana was aimin' at<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>He slit the sheet downward from her imprisoned knees, seized one wounded
+foot and tried to slash the bandages.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll cut a coupla toes off'n yeh," he snarled, "&#8212;I'll hamstring yeh
+fur keeps!"&#8212;struggling to mutilate her while she flung her helpless and
+entangled body from side to side and bit at the hand that was almost
+suffocating her.</p>
+
+<p>Unable to hold her any longer, he seized a pillow, to bury the venomous
+little head that writhed, biting, under his clutch.</p>
+
+<p>As he lifted it he saw a packet lying under it.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></span>"By God!" he panted.</p>
+
+<p>As he seized it she screamed for the first time: "Jack! Jack
+Stormont!"&#8212;and fairly hurled her helpless little body at Leverett,
+striking him full in the face with her head.</p>
+
+<p>Half stunned, still clutching the packet, he tried to stab her in the
+stomach; but the armour of bed-clothes turned the knife, although his
+violence dashed all breath out of her.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>With the remnant of her strength, and still writhing and gasping for
+breath, she tore herself from the sheets and blankets, reeled across the
+room to where Stormont's rifle stood, threw in a cartridge, dragged
+herself to the window.</p>
+
+<p>Dimly she saw a running figure in the night mist, flung the rifle across
+the window sill and fired. Then she fired again&#8212;or thought she did.
+There were two shots.</p>
+
+<p>"Eve!" came Stormont's sharp cry, "what the devil are you trying to do
+to me?"</p>
+
+<p>His cry terrified her; the rifle clattered to the floor.</p>
+
+<p>The next instant he came running up the stairs, bare headed, heavy
+pistol swinging, and halted, horrified at sight of her.</p>
+
+<p>"Eve! My God!" he whispered, taking her blood-wet body into his arms.</p>
+
+<p>"Go after Leverett," she gasped. "He's robbed daddy. He's running
+away&#8212;out there&#8212;somewhere<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"Where did he hurt you, Eve&#8212;my little Eve<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"Oh, go! go!" she wailed,&#8212;"I'm not hurt. He only pricked me with his
+knife. I'm not hurt, I tell you. Go<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</a></span> after him! Take your pistol and
+follow him and kill him!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," she cried hysterically, twisting and sobbing in his arms, "don't
+lose time here with me! Don't stand here while he's running away with
+dad's money!" And, "Oh&#8212;oh&#8212;<em>oh</em> !!" she sobbed, collapsing in his arms
+and clinging to him convulsively as he carried her to her tumbled bed
+and laid her there.</p>
+
+<p>He said: "I couldn't risk following anybody now, after what has happened
+to you. I can't leave you alone here! 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<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"No, no, no! It's my fault. I sent you away. Oh, I wish I hadn't. I wish
+I had 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!&#8212;it was Leverett!&#8212;&#8212;"</p>
+
+<p>Stormont's face grew very white: "What did he do to you, Eve? Tell me,
+darling. What did he do to you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Dad's money was under my pillow," she wailed. "Leverett tried to make
+me tell where it was. I wouldn't, and he hurt me<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"How?"</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. I came on the jump."</p>
+
+<p>"It was too late," she sobbed; "&#8212;too late! He saw the money packet
+under my pillow and he snatched it and ran. Somehow I found your rifle
+and fired. I fired twice."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[131]</a></span>Her only bullet had torn his campaign hat from his head. But he did not
+tell her.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me see your neck," he said, bending closer.</p>
+
+<p>She bared her throat, making a soft, vague complaint like a hurt
+bird,&#8212;lay there whimpering under her breath while he bathed the blood
+away with lint, sterilised the two cuts from his emergency packet, and
+bound them.</p>
+
+<p>He was still bending low over her when her blue eyes unclosed on his.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>There was a silence.</p>
+
+<p>"Lie very still," he said huskily. "I'll be back in a moment to
+rebandage your feet and make you comfortable for the night."</p>
+
+<p>"I can't sleep," she repeated desolately. "Dad trusted his money to me
+and I've let Leverett rob me. How can I sleep?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'll bring you something to make you sleep."</p>
+
+<p>"I can't!"</p>
+
+<p>"I promise you you will sleep. Lie still."</p>
+
+<p>He rose, went away downstairs and out to the barn, where his campaign
+hat lay in the weed, drilled through by a bullet.</p>
+
+<p>There was something else lying there in the weeds,&#8212;a flat, muddy,
+shoeless shape sprawling grotesquely in the foggy starlight.</p>
+
+<p>One hand clutched a hunting knife; the other a packet.</p>
+
+<p>Stormont drew the packet from the stiff fingers, then turned the body
+over, and, flashing his electric torch, examined the ratty visage&#8212;what
+remained of it&#8212;for his pistol<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</a></span> bullet had crashed through from ear to
+cheek-bone, almost obliterating the trap-robber's features.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>Stormont came slowly into Eve's room and laid the packet on the sheet
+beside her.</p>
+
+<p>"Now," he said, "there is no reason for you to lie awake any longer.
+I'll fix you up for the night."</p>
+
+<p>Deftly he unbandaged, bathed, dressed, and rebandaged her slim white
+feet&#8212;little wounded feet so lovely, so exquisite that his hand trembled
+as he touched them.</p>
+
+<p>"They're doing fine," he said cheerily. "You've half a degree of fever
+and I'm going to give you something to drink before you go to sleep<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>He poured out a glass of water, dissolved two tablets, supported her
+shoulders while she drank in a dazed way, looking always at him over the
+glass.</p>
+
+<p>"Now," he said, "go to sleep. I'll be on the job outside your door until
+your daddy arrives."</p>
+
+<p>"How did you get back dad's money?" she asked in an odd, emotionless way
+as though too weary for further surprises.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll tell you in the morning."</p>
+
+<p>"Did you kill him? I didn't hear your pistol."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll tell you all about it in the morning. Good night, Eve."</p>
+
+<p>As he bent over her, she looked up into his eyes and put both arms
+around his neck.</p>
+
+<p>It was her first kiss given to any man, except Mike Clinch.</p>
+
+<p>After Stormont had gone out and closed the door, she lay very still for
+a long while.</p>
+
+<p>Then, instinctively, she touched her lips with her fingers;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span> and, at the
+contact, a blush clothed her from brow to ankle.</p>
+
+<p>The Flaming Jewel in its morocco casket under her pillow burned with no
+purer fire than the enchanted flame glowing in the virgin heart of Eve
+Strayer of Clinch's Dump.</p>
+
+<p>Thus they lay together, two lovely flaming jewels burning softly,
+steadily through the misty splendour of the night.</p>
+
+<p>Under a million stars, Death sprawled in squalor among the trampled
+weeds. Under the same high stars dark mountains waited; and there was a
+silvery sound of waters stirring somewhere in the mist.</p>
+
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</a></span><a name="vii" id="vii"></a>
+<small><span class="smcap">Episode Seven</span></small></h2>
+
+<h2>CLINCH'S DUMP</h2>
+
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+<p class="cap">WHEN Mike Clinch bade Hal Smith return to the Dump and take care of Eve,
+Smith already had decided to go there.</p>
+
+<p>Somewhere in Clinch's Dump was hidden the Flaming Jewel. Now was his
+time to search for it.</p>
+
+<p>There were two other reasons why he should go back. One of them was that
+Leverett was loose. If anything had called Trooper Stormont away, Eve
+would be alone in the house. And nobody on earth could forecast what a
+coward like Leverett might attempt.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>It was evident that neither Clinch nor any of his men&#8212;although their
+very lives depended upon familiarity with the wilderness&#8212;knew that a
+third exit from Drowned Valley existed.</p>
+
+<p>But the nephew of the late Henry Harrod knew.</p>
+
+<p>When Jake Kloon was a young man and Darragh was a boy, Kloon had shown
+him the rocky, submerged game trail into Drowned Valley. Doubtless Kloon
+had used it in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[135]</a></span> hootch running since. If ever he had told anybody else
+about it, probably he had revealed the trail to Quintana.</p>
+
+<p>And that was why Darragh, or Hal Smith, finally decided to return to
+Star Pond;&#8212;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 still there, how long could one
+State Trooper stand off Quintana's gang?</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>No sooner had Clinch and his motley followers disappeared in the dusk
+than Smith unslung his basket-pack, fished out a big electric torch,
+flashed it tentatively, and then, reslinging the pack and taking his
+rifle in his left hand, he set off at an easy swinging stride.</p>
+
+<p>His course was not toward Star Pond; it was at right angles with that
+trail. For he was taking no chances. Quintana might already have left
+Drowned Valley by that third exit unknown to Clinch.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&#8212;twice
+as long as the regular trail out.</p>
+
+<p>For a mile or two the forest was first growth pine, and sufficiently
+open so that Smith might economise on his torch.</p>
+
+<p>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?</p>
+
+<p>The great pines towered on every side, lofty and smooth<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136]</a></span> to the feathery
+canopy that crowned them under the high stars.</p>
+
+<p>There was no game here, no water, nothing to attract anybody except the
+devastating lumberman. But this was a five thousand acre patch of State
+land. The ugly whine of the steam-saw would never be heard here.</p>
+
+<p>On he walked at an easy, swinging stride, flashing his torch rarely,
+feeling no concern about discovery by Quintana's people.</p>
+
+<p>It was only when he came into the hardwoods that the combined necessity
+for caution and torch perplexed and worried him.</p>
+
+<p>Somewhere in here began an outcrop of rock running east for miles. Only
+stunted cedar and berry bushes found shallow nourishment on this ridge.</p>
+
+<p>When at last he found it he travelled upon it, more slowly, constantly
+obliged to employ the torch.</p>
+
+<p>After an hour, perhaps, his feet splashed in shallow water. <em>That</em>  was
+what he was expecting. The water was only an inch or two deep; it was
+ice cold and running north.</p>
+
+<p>Now, he must advance with every caution. For here trickled the thin flow
+of that rocky rivulet which was the other entrance and exit penetrating
+that immense horror of marsh and bog and depthless sink-hole known as
+Drowned Valley.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>For a long while he did not dare to use his torch; but now he was
+obliged to.</p>
+
+<p>He 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[137]</a></span> flat, wet path of rock on either
+side. Here Death spread its slimy trap at his very feet.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Quintana!</p>
+
+<p>Smith's wits were working like lightning, but instinct guided him before
+his brain took command. He levelled his torch and repeated the three
+signal flashes. Then, in darkness, he came to swift conclusion.</p>
+
+<p>There were no other signals from the unknown. The stony bottom of the
+rivulet was his only aid.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>For three hundred yards, counting his strides, he continued on. Then, in
+total darkness, he pocketed the torch, slid a cartridge into the breech
+of his rifle, slung the weapon, pulled out a handkerchief, and tied it
+across his face under the eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Now, he drew the torch from his pocket, levelled it, sent three quick
+flashes out into darkness.</p>
+
+<p>Instantly, close ahead, three blinding flashes broke out.</p>
+
+<p>For Hal Smith it all had become a question of seconds.</p>
+
+<p>Death lay depthless on either hand; ahead Death blocked the trail in
+silence.</p>
+
+<p>Out of the dark some unseen rifle might vomit death in his very face at
+any moment.</p>
+
+<p>He continued to move forward. After a little while his ear caught a
+slight splash ahead. Suddenly a glare of light enveloped him.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[138]</a></span>"Is it you, Harry Beck?"</p>
+
+<p>Instinct led again while wits worked madly: "Harry Beck is two miles
+back on guard. Where is Sard?"</p>
+
+<p>The silence became terrible. Once the glaring light in front moved, then
+become fixed. There was a light splashing. Instantly Smith realised that
+the man in front had set his torch in a tree-crotch and was now cowering
+somewhere behind a levelled weapon. His voice came presently:</p>
+
+<p>"H&#233;! Drap-a that-a gun damn quick!"</p>
+
+<p>Smith bent, leisurely, and laid his rifle on a mossy rock.</p>
+
+<p>"Now! You there! Why you want Sard! Eh?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'll tell Sard, not you," retorted Smith coolly. "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 here to find Quintana."</p>
+
+<p>"How I know? Eh? Why shall I believe that? You tell-a me queeck or I
+blow-a your damn head off!"</p>
+
+<p>"Quintana will blow-a <em>your</em>  head off unless you take me to Sard,"
+drawled Smith.</p>
+
+<p>A movement might have meant death, but he calmly rummaged for a
+cigarette, lighted it, blew a cloud insolently toward the white glare
+ahead. Then he took another chance:</p>
+
+<p>"I guess you're Nick Salzar, aren't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Si! I am Salzar. Who the dev' are you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm Eddie Abrams, Sard's lawyer. My business is to find my client. If
+you stop me you'll go to prison&#8212;the whole gang of you&#8212;Sard, Quintana,
+Picquet, Sanchez, Georgiades and Harry Beck,&#8212;and <em>you</em> !"</p>
+
+<p>After a dead silence: "Maybe <em>you'll</em>  go to the chair, too!"</p>
+
+<p>It was the third chance he took.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[139]</a></span>There was a dreadful stillness in the woods. Finally came a slight
+series of splashes; the crunch of heavy boots on rock.</p>
+
+<p>"For why you com-a here, eh?" demanded Salzar, in a less aggressive
+manner. "What-a da matt', eh?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said Smith, "if you've got to know, there are people from
+Esthonia in New York.... If you understand that."</p>
+
+<p>"Christi! When do they arrive?"</p>
+
+<p>"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 his papers. City, State, and Federal
+officers are looking for him. The Constabulary rode into Ghost Lake
+yesterday. Now, don't you think you'd better lead me to Sard?"</p>
+
+<p>"Cristi!" exclaimed Salzar. "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? Cristi! What to do? What you say I
+should do, eh, Abrams?"</p>
+
+<p>A new fear had succeeded the old one&#8212;that was evident&#8212;and Salzar came
+forward into the light of his own fixed torch&#8212;a well-knit figure in
+slouch hat, grey shirt, and grey breeches, and wearing a red bandanna
+over the lower part of his face. He carried a heavy rifle.</p>
+
+<p>He came on, sturdily, splashing through the water, and walked up to
+Smith, his rifle resting on his right shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"For me," he said excitedly, "long time I have worry in this-a damn
+wood! Si! Where you say those carbinieri? Eh?"</p>
+
+<p>"At Ghost Lake. <em>Your</em>  signature is in the hotel ledger."</p>
+
+<p>"Cristi! You know where Clinch is?"</p>
+
+<p>"You know, too. He is on the way to Drowned Valley."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[140]</a></span>"Damn! I knew it. Quintana also. You know where is Quintana? And Sard? I
+tell-a you. They march ver' fast to the Dump of Clinch. Si! And there
+they would discover these-a beeg-a dimon'&#8212;these-a Flame-Jewel. Si!
+<em>Now</em> , you tell-a me what I do?"</p>
+
+<p>Smith said slowly: "If Quintana is marching on Clinch's he's marching
+into a trap!"</p>
+
+<p>Salzar blanched above his bandanna.</p>
+
+<p>"The State Troopers are there," said Smith. "They'll get him sure."</p>
+
+<p>"Cristi," faltered Salzar, "&#8212;then they are gobble&#8212;Quintana, Sard,
+everybody! Si?"</p>
+
+<p>Smith considered the man: "You can save <em>your</em>  skin anyway. You can go
+back and tell Harry Beck. Then both of you can beat it for Drowned
+Valley."</p>
+
+<p>He picked up his rifle, stood a moment in troubled reflection:</p>
+
+<p>"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 Drowned Valley."</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly Salzar tore the bandanna from his face, flung it down and
+stamped on it.</p>
+
+<p>"What I tell Quintana!" he yelled, his features distorted with rage. "I
+don't-a like!&#8212;no, not me!&#8212;no, I tell-a heem, stay at those Ghost-a
+Lake and watch thees-a fellow Clinch. Si! Not for me thees-a wood. No! I
+spit upon it! I curse like hell! I tell Quintana I don't-a like. Now,
+eet is trouble that comes and we lose-a out! Damn! <em>Damn!</em>  Me, I find me
+Beck. You shall say to Jos&#233; Quintana how he is a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[141]</a></span> damfool. Me, I am
+finish&#8212;me, Nick Salzar! You hear me, Abrams! I am through! I go!"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"You stop-a Quintana, maybe. You tell-a heem he is the bigg-a fool! You
+tell-a heem Nick Salzar is no damn fool. No! Adios, my frien' Abrams. I
+beat it. I save my skin!"</p>
+
+<p>Once more Salzar turned and headed for Drowned Valley.... Where Clinch
+would not fail to kill him.... The man was going to his death.... And
+it was Smith who sent him.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Salzar!" he called sharply.</p>
+
+<p>The man halted and looked around.</p>
+
+<p>"Come back!"</p>
+
+<p>Salzar hesitated, turned finally, slouched toward him.</p>
+
+<p>Smith laid aside his pack and rifle, and, as Salzar came up, he quietly
+took his weapon from him and laid it beside his own.</p>
+
+<p>"What-a da matt'?" demanded Salzar, astonished. "Why you taka my gun?"</p>
+
+<p>Smith measured him. They were well matched.</p>
+
+<p>"Set your torch in that crotch," he said.</p>
+
+<p>Salzar, puzzled and impatient, demanded to know why. Smith took both
+torches, set them opposite each other and drew Salzar into the white
+glare.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[142]</a></span>"Now," he said, "you dirty desperado, I am going to try to kill you
+clean. Look out for yourself!"</p>
+
+<p>For a second Salzar stood rooted in blank astonishment.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm one of Clinch's men," said Smith, "but I can't stick a knife in
+your back, at that! Now, take care of yourself if you can<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>His voice died in his throat; Salzar was on him, clawing, biting,
+kicking, striving to strangle him, to wrestle him off his feet. Smith
+reeled, staggering under the sheer rush of the man, almost blinded by
+blows, clutched, bewildered in Salzar's panther grip.</p>
+
+<p>For a moment he writhed there, searching blindly for his enemy's wrist,
+striving to avoid the teeth that snapped at his throat, stifled by the
+hot stench of the man's breath in his face.</p>
+
+<p>"I keel you! I keel you! Damn! Damn!" panted Salzar, in convulsive fury
+as Smith freed his left arm and struck him in the face.</p>
+
+<p>Now, on the narrow, wet and slippery strip of rock they swayed to and
+fro, murderously interlocked, their heavy boots splashing, battling with
+limb and body.</p>
+
+<p>Twice Salzar forced Smith outward over the sink, trying to end it, but
+could not free himself.</p>
+
+<p>Once, too, he managed to get at a hidden knife, drag it out and stab at
+head and throat; but Smith caught the fist that wielded it, forced back
+the arm, held it while Salzar screamed at him, lunging at his face with
+bared teeth.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly the end came: Salzar's body heaved upward, sprawled for an
+instant in the dazzling glare, hurtled over Smith's head and fell into
+the sink with a crashing splash.</p>
+
+<p>Frantically he thrashed there, spattering and floundering<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[143]</a></span> in darkness.
+He made no outcry. Probably he had landed head first.</p>
+
+<p>In a moment only a vague heaving came from the unseen ooze.</p>
+
+<p>Smith, exhausted, drenched with sweat, leaned against a tamarack,
+sickened.</p>
+
+<p>After all sound had ceased he straightened up with an effort. Presently
+he bent and recovered Salzar's red bandanna and his hat, lifted his own
+rifle and pack and struggled into the harness. Then, kicking Salzar's
+rifle overboard, he unfastened both torches, pocketed one, and started
+on in a flood of ghostly light.</p>
+
+<p>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 noises
+in the mud, the deadened flopping of the sinking body&#8212;mud-plastered
+hands beating frantically on mud, spattering, agonising in darkness&#8212;"My
+God," he breathed, "anything but that&#8212;anything but that!&#8212;&#8212;"</p>
+
+
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<p>Before midnight he struck the hard forest. Here there was no trail at
+all, only spreading outcrop of rock under dying leaves.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Ahead of him, somewhere in darkness&#8212;but how far he did not
+know&#8212;Quintana and his people were moving swiftly on Clinch's Dump.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[144]</a></span>It may have been an hour later&#8212;two hours, perhaps&#8212;when from far ahead
+in the forest came a sound&#8212;the faint clink of a shod heel on rock.</p>
+
+<p>Now, Smith unslung his pack, placed it between two rocks where laurel
+grew.</p>
+
+<p>Salzar's red bandanna was still wet, but he tied it 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.</p>
+
+<p>Ready, now, he moved swiftly forward, trailing his rifle. And very soon
+it became plain to him that the people ahead were moving without much
+caution, evidently fearing no unfriendly ear or eye in that section of
+the wilderness.</p>
+
+<p>Smith could hear their tread on rock and root and rotten branch, or
+swishing through frosted fern and brake, or louder on newly fallen
+leaves.</p>
+
+<p>At times he could even see the round white glare of a torch on the
+ground&#8212;see it shift ahead, lighting up tree trunks, spread out,
+fanlike, into a wide, misty glory, then vanish as darkness rushed in
+from the vast ocean of the night.</p>
+
+<p>Once they halted at a brook. Their torches flashed it; he heard them
+sounding its depths with their gun-butts.</p>
+
+<p>Smith knew that brook. It was the east branch of Star Brook, the inlet
+to Star Pond.</p>
+
+<p>Far ahead above the trees the sky seemed luminous. It was star lustre
+over the pond, turning the mist to a silvery splendour.</p>
+
+<p>Now the people ahead of him moved with more caution, crossing the brook
+without splashing, and their boots made less noise in the woods.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[145]</a></span>To keep in touch with them Smith hastened his pace until he drew near
+enough to hear the low murmur of their voices.</p>
+
+<p>They were travelling in single file; he had a glimpse of them against
+the ghostly radiance ahead. Indeed, so near had he approached that he
+could hear the heavy, laboured breathing of the last man in the
+file&#8212;some laggard who dragged his feet, plodding on doggedly, panting,
+muttering. Probably the man was Sard.</p>
+
+<p>Already the forest in front was invaded by the misty radiance from the
+clearing. Through the trees starlight glimmered on water. The perfume of
+the open land grew in the night air,&#8212;the scent of dew-wet grass, the
+smell of still water and of sedgy shores.</p>
+
+<p>Lying flat behind a rotting log, Smith could see them all now,&#8212;spectral
+shapes against the light. There were five of them at the forest's edge.</p>
+
+<p>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 sheered off to the southwest, shoulder deep in blackberry and sumac.
+The fifth man waited for a while, then ran down across the open pasture.</p>
+
+<p>Scarcely had he started when Smith glided to the wood's edge, crouched,
+and looked down.</p>
+
+<p>Below stood Clinch's Dump, plain in the starlight, every window dark. To
+the west the barn loomed, huge with its ramshackle outbuildings
+straggling toward the lake.</p>
+
+<p>Straight down the slope toward the barn ran the fifth man of Quintana's
+gang, and disappeared among the out-buildings.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[146]</a></span>Smith crept after him through the sumacs; and, at the foot of the slope,
+squatted low in a clump of rag-weed.</p>
+
+<p>So close to the house was he now that he could hear the dew rattling on
+the veranda 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 out-buildings, very silent about whatever he had on
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>The stillness was absolute save for the drumming dew and a faint ripple
+from the water's edge.</p>
+
+<p>Smith crouched, listened, searched the starlight with intent eyes, and
+waited.</p>
+
+<p>Until something happened he could not solve the problem before him. He
+could be of no use to Eve Strayer and to Stormont until he found out
+what Quintana was going to do.</p>
+
+<p>He could be of little use anyway unless he got into the house, where two
+rifles might hold out against five.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>As for his pledge to the little Grand Duchess, that was always in his
+mind. Sooner or later, somehow, he was going to make good his pledge.</p>
+
+<p>He knew that Quintana and his gang were here to find the Flaming Jewel.</p>
+
+<p>Had he not encountered Quintana, his own errand had been the same. For
+Smith had started for Clinch's prepared to reveal himself to Stormont,
+and then, masked to the eyes&#8212;and to save Eve from a broken heart, and
+Clinch from<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[147]</a></span> States Prison&#8212;he had meant to rob the girl at
+pistol-point.</p>
+
+<p>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 realised it thoroughly.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>A slight sound from one of the out-houses&#8212;a sort of
+wagon-shed&#8212;attracted his attention. Through the frost-blighted
+rag-weeds he peered intently, listening.</p>
+
+<p>After a few moments a faint glow appeared in the shed. There was a
+crackling noise. The glow grew pinker.</p>
+
+
+<h3>III</h3>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>As she sprang to the floor on bandaged feet, a shrill scream burst out
+in the ruddy darkness&#8212;unearthly, horrible; and there came a thunderous
+battering from the barn.</p>
+
+<p>The girl tore open her bedroom door. "Jack!" she cried in a terrified
+voice. "The barn's on fire!"</p>
+
+<p>"Good God!" he said, "&#8212;my horse!"</p>
+
+<p>He had already sprung from his chair outside her door. Now he ran
+downstairs, and she heard bolt and chain clash at the kitchen door and
+his spurred boots land on the porch.</p>
+
+<p>"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&#8212;I'm coming<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>Terror clutched her as she stumbled downstairs on bandaged feet.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[148]</a></span>As she reached the door a great flare of light almost blinded her.</p>
+
+<p>"Jack!"</p>
+
+<p>And at the same instant she saw him struggling with three masked men in
+the glare of the wagon-shed afire.</p>
+
+<p>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, and a man with a handkerchief over his face caught her
+on the landing.</p>
+
+<p>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, recognised Quintana, hurled her very body at
+him, eyes flaming, small teeth bared.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Here, in darkness, she wriggled out, somehow, leaving her blanket
+wrapped in their clutches. In another instant she was up the stairs
+again, only to discover that the rifle was gone.</p>
+
+<p>The red glare from the wagon-house lighted her bedroom; she sprang
+inside and bolted the door.</p>
+
+<p>Her chamois jacket with its loops full of cartridges hung on a peg. She
+got into it, seized her rifle and ran to the window just as two masked
+men, pushing Stormont before them, entered the house by the kitchen way.</p>
+
+<p>Her own door was resounding with kicks and blows, shaking, shivering
+under the furious impact of boot and rifle-butt.</p>
+
+<p>She ran to the bed, thrust her hand under the pillow,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[149]</a></span> pulled out the
+case containing the Flaming Jewel, and placed it in the breast pocket of
+her shooting jacket.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>The blows upon her bedroom door had ceased; there came a loud trampling,
+the sound of excited voices; Quintana's sarcastic tones, clear,
+dominant:</p>
+
+<p>"Dios! The police! Why you bring me this gendarme? What am I to do with
+a gentleman of the Constabulary, eh? Do you think I am fool enough to
+cut his throat? Well, Se&#241;or Gendarme, what are you doing here in the
+Dump of Clinch?"</p>
+
+<p>Then Stormont's voice, clear and quiet: "What are <em>you</em>  doing here? If
+you've a quarrel with Clinch, he's not here. There's only a young girl
+in this house."</p>
+
+<p>"So?" said Quintana. "Well, that is what I expec', my frien'. It is
+thees lady upon whom I do myse'f the honour to call!"</p>
+
+<p>Eve, listening, heard Stormont's rejoinder, still, calm, and very grave:</p>
+
+<p>"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.... Nor for any of you, if you harm her."</p>
+
+<p>"Calm youse'f, my frien'," said Quintana. "I demand of thees young lady
+only that she return to me the property of which I have been rob by
+Monsieur Clinch."</p>
+
+<p>"I knew nothing of any theft. Nor does she<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[150]</a></span>"Pardon; Se&#241;or Clinch knows; and I know." His tone changed, offensively:
+"Se&#241;or Gendarme, am I permit to understan' that you are a frien' of
+thees young lady?&#8212;a heart-frien', per'aps<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"I am her friend," said Stormont bluntly.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah," said Quintana, "then you shall persuade her to return to me thees
+packet of which Monsieur Clinch has rob me."</p>
+
+<p>There was a short silence, then Quintana's voice again:</p>
+
+<p>"I know thees packet is concel in thees house. Peaceably, if possible, I
+would recover my property.... If she refuse<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>Another pause.</p>
+
+<p>"Well?" inquired Stormont, coolly.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! It is ver' painful to say. Alas, Se&#241;or Gendarme, I mus' have my
+property.... If she refuse, then I mus' sever one of her pretty
+fingers.... An' if she still refuse&#8212;I sever her pretty fingers, one by
+one, until<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"You know what would happen to <em>you</em> ?" interrupted Stormont, in a voice
+that quivered in spite of himself.</p>
+
+<p>"I take my chance. Se&#241;or Gendarme, she is within that room. If you are
+her frien', you shall advise her to return to me my property."</p>
+
+<p>After another silence:</p>
+
+<p>"Eve!" he called sharply.</p>
+
+<p>She placed her lips to the door: "Yes, Jack."</p>
+
+<p>He said: "There are five masked men out here who say that Clinch robbed
+them and they are here to recover their property.... Do you know
+anything about this?"</p>
+
+<p>"I know they lie. My father is not a thief.... I have<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[151]</a></span> my rifle and
+plenty of ammunition. I shall kill every man who enters this room."</p>
+
+<p>For a moment nobody stirred or spoke. Then Quintana strode to the bolted
+door and struck it with the butt of his rifle.</p>
+
+<p>"You, in there," he said in a menacing voice, "&#8212;you listen once to
+<em>me</em> ! You open your door and come out. I give you one minute!" He struck
+the door again: "<em>One</em>  minute, se&#241;orita!&#8212;or I cut from your frien',
+here, the hand from his right arm!"</p>
+
+<p>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 night-dress.</p>
+
+<p>Quintana made her an elaborate and ironical bow, slouch hat in hand;
+another masked man took her rifle.</p>
+
+<p>"Se&#241;orita," said Quintana with another sweep of his hat, "I ask pardon
+that I trouble you for my packet of which your father has rob me for
+ver' long time."</p>
+
+<p>Slowly the girl lifted her blue eyes to Stormont. He was standing
+between two masked men. Their pistols were pressed slightly against his
+stomach.</p>
+
+<p>Stormont reddened painfully:</p>
+
+<p>"It was not for myself that I let you open your door," he said. "They
+would not have ventured to lay hands on <em>me</em> ."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah," said Quintana with a terrifying smile, "you would not have been
+the first gendarme who had&#8212;<em>accorded me his hand</em> !"</p>
+
+<p>Two of the masked men laughed loudly.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>Outside in the rag-weed patch, Smith rose, stole across the grass to the
+kitchen door and slipped inside.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[152]</a></span>"Now, se&#241;orita," said Quintana gaily, "my packet, if you please,&#8212;and we
+leave you to the caresses of your faithful gendarme,&#8212;who should thank
+God that he still possesses two good hands to fondle you! Alons! Come
+then! My packet!"</p>
+
+<p>One of the masked men said: "Take her downstairs and lock her up
+somewhere or she'll shoot us from her window."</p>
+
+<p>"Lead out that gendarme, too!" added Quintana, grasping Eve by the arm.</p>
+
+<p>Down the stairs tramped the men, forcing their prisoners with them.</p>
+
+<p>In the big kitchen the glare from the burning out-house fell dimly; the
+place was full of shadows.</p>
+
+<p>"Now," said Quintana, "I take my property and my leave. Where is the
+packet hidden?"</p>
+
+<p>She stood for a moment with drooping head, amid the sombre shadows,
+then, slowly, she drew the emblazoned morocco case from her breast
+pocket.</p>
+
+<p>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 through the doorway, and ran toward the barn.</p>
+
+<p>Somebody recognised the hat and red bandanna:</p>
+
+<p>"Salzar!" he yelled. "Nick Salzar!"</p>
+
+<p>"A traitor, by God!" shouted Quintana. Even before he had reached the
+door, his pistol flashed twice, deafening all in the semi-darkness,
+choking them with stifling fumes.</p>
+
+<p>A masked man turned on Stormont, forcing him back into the pantry at
+pistol-point. Another man pushed Eve after him, slammed the pantry door
+and bolted it.</p>
+
+<p>Through the iron bars of the pantry window, Stormont<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[153]</a></span> saw a man, wearing
+a red bandanna tied under his eyes, run up and untie his horse and fling
+himself astride under a shower of bullets.</p>
+
+<p>As he wheeled the horse and swung him into the clearing toward the foot
+of Star Pond, his seat and horsemanship were not to be mistaken.</p>
+
+<p>He was gone, now, the gallop stretching into a dead run; and Quintana's
+men still following, shooting, hallooing in the starlight like a pack of
+leaping shapes from hell.</p>
+
+<p>But Quintana had not followed far. When he had emptied his automatic he
+halted.</p>
+
+<p>Something about the transaction suddenly checked his fury, stilled it,
+summoned his brain into action.</p>
+
+<p>For a full minute he stood unstirring, every atom of intelligence in
+terrible concentration.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Between the two locked in the pantry not a word had passed. Stormont
+still peered out between the iron bars, striving to catch a glimpse of
+what was going on. Eve crouched at the pantry doors, her face in her
+hands, listening.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly she heard Quintana's step in the kitchen. Cautiously she turned
+the pantry key from inside.</p>
+
+<p>Stormont heard her, and instantly came to her. At the same moment
+Quintana unbolted the door from the outside and tried to open it.</p>
+
+<p>"Come out," he said coldly, "or it will not go well with you when my men
+return."</p>
+
+<p>"You've got what you say is your property," replied. Stormont. "What do
+you want now?"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[154]</a></span>"I tell you what I want ver' damn quick. Who was he, thees man who rides
+with my property on your horse away? Eh? Because it was not Nick Salzar!
+No! Salzar can not ride thees way. No! Alors?"</p>
+
+<p>"I can't tell you who he was," replied Stormont. "That's your affair,
+not ours."</p>
+
+<p>"No? Ah! Ver' well, then. I shall tell you, Se&#241;or Flic! He was one of
+<em>yours</em> . I understan'. It is a trap, a cheat&#8212;what you call a <em>plant</em> !
+Thees man who rode your horse he is disguise! Yes! He also is a
+gendarme! Yes! You think I let a gendarme rob me? I got you where I want
+you now. You shall write your gendarme frien' that he return to me my
+property, <em>one day's time</em> , or I send him by parcel post two nice,
+fresh-out right-hands&#8212;your sweetheart's and your own!"</p>
+
+<p>Stormont drew Eve's head close to his:</p>
+
+<p>"This man is blood mad or out of his mind! I'd better go out and take a
+chance at him before the others come back."</p>
+
+<p>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
+hootch when the Dump was raided.</p>
+
+<p>But now, it appeared that the tile which protruded from the cement floor
+was removable.</p>
+
+<p>In silence she began to unscrew it, and he, seeing what she was trying
+to do, helped her.</p>
+
+<p>Together they lifted the heavy tile and laid it on the floor.</p>
+
+<p>"You open thees door!" shouted Quintana in a paroxysm of fury. "I give
+you one minute! Then, by God, I kill you both!"</p>
+
+<p>Eve lifted a screen of wood through which the tile had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[155]</a></span> 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, two hundred feet away.</p>
+
+<p>Now, as she straightened up and looked silently at Stormont, they heard
+the trample of boots in the kitchen, voices, the bang of gun-stocks.</p>
+
+<p>"Does that drain lead into the lake?" whispered Stormont.</p>
+
+<p>She nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you follow me, Eve?"</p>
+
+<p>She pushed him aside, indicating that he was to follow her.</p>
+
+<p>As she stripped the hunting jacket from her, a hot colour swept her
+face. But she dropped on both knees, crept straight into the tile and
+slipped out of sight.</p>
+
+<p>As she disappeared, Quintana shouted something in Portuguese, and fired
+at the lock.</p>
+
+<p>With the smash of splintering wood in his ears, Stormont slid into the
+smooth tunnel.</p>
+
+<p>In an instant he was shooting down a polished toboggan slide, and in
+another moment was under the icy water of Star Pond.</p>
+
+<p>Shocked, blinded, fighting his way to the surface, he felt his spurred
+boots dragging at him like a ton of iron. Then to him came her helping
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>"I can make it," he gasped.</p>
+
+<p>But his clothing and his boots and the icy water began to tell on him in
+mid-lake.</p>
+
+<p>Swimming without effort beside him, watching his every stroke, presently
+she sank a little and glided under him and a little ahead, so that his
+hands fell upon her shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>He let them rest, so, aware now that it was no burden to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[156]</a></span> such a
+swimmer. Supple and silent as a swimming otter, the girl slipped lithely
+through the chilled water, which washed his body to the nostrils and
+numbed his legs till he could scarcely move them.</p>
+
+<p>And 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.</p>
+
+<p>Then, as he staggered up 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.</p>
+
+<p>And out of her mouth poured diamond, sapphire, and emerald in a dazzling
+stream,&#8212;and, among them, one great, flashing gem blazing in the
+starlight,&#8212;the Flaming Jewel!</p>
+
+<p>Like a naiad of the lake she stood, white, slim, silent, the heaped gems
+glittering in her snowy hands, her face framed by the curling masses of
+her wet hair.</p>
+
+<p>Then, slowly she turned her head to Stormont.</p>
+
+<p>"These are what Quintana came for," she said. "Could you put them into
+your pocket?"</p>
+
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[157]</a></span><a name="viii" id="viii"></a>
+<small><span class="smcap">Episode Eight</span></small></h2>
+
+<h2>CUP AND LIP</h2>
+
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+<p class="cap">TWO miles beyond Clinch's Dump, Hal Smith pulled Stormont's horse to a
+walk. He was tremendously excited.</p>
+
+<p>With na&#239;ve sincerity he believed that what he had done on the spur of
+the moment had been the only thing to do.</p>
+
+<p>By snatching the Flaming Jewel from Quintana's very fingers he had
+diverted that vindictive bandit's fury from Eve, from Clinch, from
+Stormont, and had centred it upon himself.</p>
+
+<p>More than that, he had sown the seeds of suspicion among Quintana's own
+people. They never could discover Salzar's body. Always they must
+believe that it was Nicolas Salzar and no other who so treacherously
+robbed them, and who rode away in a rain of bullets, shaking the
+emblazoned morocco case above his masked head in triumph, derision and
+defiance.</p>
+
+<p>At the recollection of what had happened, Hal Smith drew bridle, and,
+sitting his saddle there in the false dawn, threw back his handsome head
+and laughed until the fading stars overhead swam in his eyes through
+tears of sheerest mirth.</p>
+
+<p>For he was still young enough to have had the time of his life. Nothing
+in the Great War had so thrilled him. For, in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[158]</a></span> what had just happened,
+there was humour. There had been none in the Great Grim Drama.</p>
+
+<p>Still, Smith began to realise that he had taken the long, long chance of
+the opportunist who rolls the bones with Death. He had kept his pledge
+to the little Grand Duchess. It was a clean job. It was even good
+drama<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;</span></p>
+
+<p>The picturesque angle of the affair shook Hal Smith with renewed
+laughter. As a moving picture hero he thought himself the funniest thing
+on earth.</p>
+
+<p>From the time he had poked a pistol against Sard's fat paunch, to this
+bullet-pelted ride for life, life had become one ridiculously exciting
+episode after another.</p>
+
+<p>He had come through like the hero in a best-seller.... Lacking only a
+heroine.... If there had been any heroine it was Eve Strayer. Drama had
+gone wrong in that detail.... So perhaps, after all, it was real life
+he had been living and not drama. Drama, for the masses, must have a
+definite beginning and ending. Real life lacks the latter. In life
+nothing is finished. It is always a premature curtain which is yanked by
+that doddering old stage-hand, Johnny Death.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>Smith sat his saddle, thinking, beginning to be sobered now by the
+inevitable reaction which follows excitement and mirth as relentlessly
+as care dogs the horseman.</p>
+
+<p>He had had a fine time,&#8212;save for the horror of the Rocktrail.... He
+shuddered.... Anyway, at worst he had not shirked a clean deal in that
+ghastly game.... It was God's mercy that he was not lying where Salzar
+lay, ten feet&#8212;twenty&#8212;a hundred deep, perhaps&#8212;in immemorial slime&#8212;&#8212;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[159]</a></span>He shook himself in his saddle as though to be rid of the creeping
+horror, and wiped his clammy face.</p>
+
+<p>Now, in the false dawn, a blue-jay awoke somewhere among the oaks and
+filled the misty silence with harsh grace-notes.</p>
+
+<p>Then reaction, setting in like a tide, stirred more sombre depths in the
+heart of this young man.</p>
+
+<p>He thought of Riga; and of the Red Terror; of murder at noon-day, and
+outrage by night. He remembered his only encounter with a lovely
+child&#8212;once Grand Duchess of Esthonia&#8212;then a destitute refugee in
+silken rags.</p>
+
+<p>What a day that had been.... Only one day and one evening.... And
+never had he been so near in love in all his life....</p>
+
+<p>That one day and evening had been enough for her to confide to an
+American officer her entire life's history.... Enough for him to pledge
+himself to her service while life endured.... And if emotion had swept
+every atom of reason out of his youthful head, there in the turmoil and
+alarm&#8212;there in the terrified, riotous city jammed with refugees,
+reeking with disease, half frantic from famine and the filthy, rising
+flood of war&#8212;if really it all had been merely romantic impulse, ardour
+born of overwrought sentimentalism, nevertheless, what he had pledged
+that day to a little Grand Duchess in rags, he had fulfilled to the
+letter within the hour.</p>
+
+<p>As the false dawn began to fade, he loosened hunting coat and cartridge
+sling, drew from his shirt-bosom the morocco case.</p>
+
+<p>It bore the arms and crest of the Grand Duchess Theodorica of Esthonia.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[160]</a></span>His fingers trembled slightly as he pressed the jewelled spring. It
+opened on an empty casket.</p>
+
+<p>In the sudden shock of horror and astonishment, his convulsive clutch on
+the spring started a tiny bell ringing. Then, under his very nose, the
+empty tray slid aside revealing another tray underneath, set solidly
+with brilliants. A rainbow glitter streamed from the unset gems in the
+silken tray. Like an incredulous child he touched them. They were
+magnificently real.</p>
+
+<p>In the centre lay blazing the great Erosite gem,&#8212;the Flaming Jewel
+itself. Priceless diamonds, sapphires, emeralds ringed it. In his hands
+he held nearly four millions of dollars.</p>
+
+<p>Gingerly he balanced the emblazoned case, fascinated. Then he replaced
+the empty tray, closed the box, thrust it into the bosom of his flannel
+shirt and buttoned it in.</p>
+
+<p>Now there was little more for this excited young man to do. He was
+through with Clinch. Hal Smith, hold-up man and dish-washer at Clinch's
+Dump, had ended his career. The time had now arrived for him to vanish
+and make room for James Darragh.</p>
+
+<p>Because there still remained a very agreeable r&#244;le for Darragh to play.
+And he meant to eat it up&#8212;as Broadway has it.</p>
+
+<p>For by this time the Grand Duchess of Esthonia&#8212;Ricca, as she was called
+by her companion, Valentine, the pretty Countess Orloff-Strelwitz&#8212;must
+have arrived in New York.</p>
+
+<p>At the big hunting lodge of the late Henry Harrod&#8212;now inherited by
+Darragh&#8212;there might be a letter&#8212;perhaps a telegram&#8212;the cue for Hal
+Smith to vanish and for James Darragh to enter, play his brief but
+glittering part, and&#8212;&#8212;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[161]</a></span>Darragh's sequence of pleasing meditations halted abruptly.... To walk
+out of the life of the little Grand Duchess did not seem to suit his
+ideas&#8212;indefinite and hazy as they were, so far.</p>
+
+<p>He lifted the bridle from the horse's neck, divided curb and snaffle
+thoughtfully, touched the splendid animal with heel and knee.</p>
+
+<p>As he cantered on into the wide forest road that led to his late uncle's
+abode, curiosity led him to wheel into a narrower trail running east
+along Star Pond, and from whence he could take a farewell view of
+Clinch's Dump.</p>
+
+<p>He smiled to think of Eve and Stormont there together, and now in safety
+behind bolted doors and shutters.</p>
+
+<p>He grinned to think of Quintana and his precious crew, blood-crazy,
+baffled, probably already distrusting one another, yet running wild
+through the night like starving wolves galloping at hazard across a
+famine-stricken waste.</p>
+
+<p>"Only wait till Stormont makes his report," he thought, grinning more
+broadly still. "Every State Trooper north of Albany will be after Se&#241;or
+Quintana. Some hunting! And, if he could understand, Mike Clinch might
+thank his stars that what I've done this night has saved him his skin
+and Eve a broken heart!"</p>
+
+<p>He drew his horse to a walk, now, for the path began to run closer to
+Star Pond, skirting the pebbled shallows in the open just ahead.</p>
+
+<p>Alders still concealed the house across the lake, but the trail was
+already coming out into the starlight.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly his horse stopped short, trembling, its ears pricked forward.</p>
+
+<p>Darragh sat listening intently for a moment. Then<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[162]</a></span> with infinite
+caution, he leaned over the cantle and gently parted the alders.</p>
+
+<p>On the pebbled beach, full in the starlight, stood two figures, one
+white and slim, the other dark.</p>
+
+<p>The arm of the dark figure clasped the waist of the white and slender
+one.</p>
+
+<p>Evidently they had heard his horse, for they stood motionless, looking
+directly at the alders behind which his horse had halted.</p>
+
+<p>To turn might mean a shot in the back as far as Darragh knew. He was
+still masked with Salzar's red bandanna. He raised his rifle, slid a
+cartridge into the breech, pressed his horse forward with a slight touch
+of heel and knee, and rode slowly out into the star-dusk.</p>
+
+<p>What Stormont saw was a masked man, riding his own horse, with menacing
+rifle half lifted for a shot! What Eve Strayer thought she saw was too
+terrible for words. And before Stormont could prevent her she sprang in
+front of him, covering his body with her own.</p>
+
+<p>At that the horseman tore off his red mask:</p>
+
+<p>"Eve! Jack Stormont! What the devil are you doing over <em>here</em> ?"</p>
+
+<p>Stormont walked slowly up to his own horse, laid one unsteady hand on
+its silky nose, kept it there while dusty, velvet lips mumbled and
+caressed his fingers.</p>
+
+<p>"I knew it was a cavalryman," he said quietly. "I suspected you, Jim. It
+was the sort of crazy thing you were likely to do.... I don't ask you
+what you're up to, where you've been, what your plans may be. If you
+needed me you'd have told me.</p>
+
+<p>"But I've got to have my horse for Eve. Her feet are<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[163]</a></span> wounded. She's in
+her night-dress and wringing wet. I've got to set her on my horse and
+try to take her through to Ghost Lake."</p>
+
+<p>Darragh stared at Stormont, at the ghostly figure of the girl who had
+sunk down on the sand at the lake's edge. Then he scrambled out of the
+saddle and handed over the bridle.</p>
+
+<p>"Quintana came back," said Stormont. "I hope to reckon with him some
+day.... I believe he came back to harm Eve.... We got out of the
+house.... We swam the lake.... I'd have gone under except for her<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>In his distress and overwhelming mortification, Darragh stood miserable,
+mute, irresolute.</p>
+
+<p>Stormont seemed to understand: "What you did, Jim, was well meant," he
+said. "I understand. Eve will understand when I tell her. But that
+fellow Quintana is a devil. You can't draw a herring across any trail he
+follows. I tell you, Jim, this fellow Quintana is either blood-mad or
+just plain crazy. Somebody will have to put him out of the way. I'll do
+it if I ever find him."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes.... Your people ought to do that.... Or, if you like, I'll
+volunteer.... I've a little business to transact in New York, first....
+Jack, your tunic and breeches are soaked; I'll be glad to chip in
+something for Eve.... Wait a moment<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>He stepped into cover, drew the morocco box from his grey shirt, shoved
+it into his hip pocket.</p>
+
+<p>Then he threw off his cartridge belt and hunting coat, pulled the grey
+shirt over his head and came out in his undershirt and breeches, with
+the other garments hanging over his arm.</p>
+
+<p>"Give her these," he said. "She can button the coat<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[164]</a></span> around her waist
+for a skirt. She'd better go somewhere and get out of that soaking-wet
+night-dress<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>Eve, crouched on the sand, trying to wring out and twist up her drenched
+hair, looked up at Stormont as he came toward her holding out Darragh's
+dry clothing.</p>
+
+<p>"You'd better do what you can with these," he said, trying to speak
+carelessly.... "<em>He</em>  says you'd better chuck&#8212;what you're wearing<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>She nodded in flushed comprehension. Stormont walked back to his horse,
+his boots slopping water at every stride.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know any place nearer than Ghost Lake Inn," he said ... "except
+Harrod's."</p>
+
+<p>"That's where we're going, Jack," said Darragh cheerfully.</p>
+
+<p>"That's <em>your</em>  place, isn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is. But I don't want Eve to know it.... I think it better she
+should not know me except as Hal Smith&#8212;for the present, anyway. You'll
+see to that, won't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"As you wish, Jim.... Only, if we go to your own house<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"We're not going to the main house. She wouldn't, anyway. Clinch has
+taught that girl to hate the very name of Harrod&#8212;hate every foot of
+forest that the Harrod game keepers patrol. She wouldn't cross my
+threshold to save her life."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't understand, but&#8212;it's all right&#8212;whatever <em>you</em>  say, Jim."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll tell you the whole business some day. But where I'm going to take
+you now is into a brand new camp which I ordered built last spring. It's
+within a mile of the State Forest border. Eve won't know that it's
+Harrod property.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[165]</a></span> I've a hatchery there and the State lets me have a man
+in exchange for free fry. When I get there I'll post my man.... It will
+be a roof for to-night, anyway, and breakfast in the morning, whenever
+you're ready."</p>
+
+<p>"How far is it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Only about three miles east of here."</p>
+
+<p>"That's the thing to do, then," said Stormont bluntly.</p>
+
+<p>He dropped one sopping-wet sleeve over his horse's neck, taking care not
+to touch the saddle. He was thinking of the handful of gems in his
+pocket; and he wondered why Darragh had said nothing about the empty
+case for which he had so recklessly risked his life.</p>
+
+<p>What this whole business was about Stormont had no notion. But he knew
+Darragh. That was sufficient to leave him tranquil, and perfectly
+certain that whatever Darragh was doing must be the right thing to do.</p>
+
+<p>Yet&#8212;Eve had swum Star Pond with her mouth filled with jewels.</p>
+
+<p>When she had handed the morocco box to Quintana, Stormont now realised
+that she must have played her last card on the utterly desperate chance
+that Quintana might go away without examining the case.</p>
+
+<p>Evidently she had emptied the case before she left her room. He
+recollected that, during all that followed, Eve had not uttered a single
+word. He knew why, now. How could she speak with her mouth full of
+diamonds?</p>
+
+<p>A slight sound from the shore caused him to turn. Eve was coming toward
+him in the dusk, moving painfully on her wounded feet. Darragh's flannel
+shirt and his hunting coat buttoned around her slender waist clothed
+her.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[166]</a></span>The next instant he was beside her, lifting her in both arms.</p>
+
+<p>As he placed her in the saddle and adjusted one stirrup to her bandaged
+foot, she turned and quietly thanked Darragh for the clothing.</p>
+
+<p>"And that was a brave thing you did," she added, "&#8212;to risk your life
+for my father's property. Because the morocco case which you saved
+proved to be empty does not make what you did any the less loyal and
+gallant."</p>
+
+<p>Darragh gazed at her, astounded; took the hand she stretched out to him;
+held it with a silly expression on his features.</p>
+
+<p>"Hal Smith," she said with perceptible emotion, "I take back what I once
+said to you on Owl Marsh. No man is a real crook by nature who did what
+you have done. That is 'faithfulness unto death'&#8212;the supreme
+offer&#8212;loyalty<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>Her voice broke; she pressed Darragh's hand convulsively and her lip
+quivered.</p>
+
+<p>Darragh, with the morocco case full of jewels buttoned into his hip
+pocket, stood motionless, mutely swallowing his amazement.</p>
+
+<p>What in the world did this girl mean, talking about an <em>empty</em>  case?</p>
+
+<p>But this was no time to unravel that sort of puzzle. He turned to
+Stormont who, as perplexed as he, had been listening in silence.</p>
+
+<p>"Lead your horse forward," he said. "I know the trail. All you need do
+is to follow me." And, shouldering his rifle, he walked leisurely into
+the woods, the cartridge belt sagging <em>en bandouliere</em>  across his
+woollen undershirt.</p>
+
+
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[167]</a></span>When Stormont gently halted his horse it was dawn, and Eve, sagging
+against him with one arm around his neck, sat huddled up on her saddle
+fast asleep.</p>
+
+<p>In a birch woods, on the eastern slope of the divide, stood the log
+camp, dimly visible in the silvery light of early morning.</p>
+
+<p>Darragh, cautioning Stormont with a slight gesture, went forward,
+mounted the rustic veranda, and knocked at a lighted window.</p>
+
+<p>A man, already dressed, came and peered out at him, then hurried to open
+the door.</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't know you, Captain Darragh<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span> he began, but fell silent under
+the warning gesture that checked him.</p>
+
+<p>"I've a guest outside. She's Clinch's step-daughter, Eve Strayer. She
+knows me by the name of Hal Smith. Do you understand?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"Cut <em>that</em>  out, too. I'm Hal Smith to you, also. State Trooper Stormont
+is out there with Eve Strayer. He was a comrade of mine in Russia. I'm
+Hal Smith to him, by mutual agreement. <em>Now</em>  do you get me, Ralph?"</p>
+
+<p>"Sure, Hal. Go on; spit it out!"</p>
+
+<p>They both grinned.</p>
+
+<p>"You're a hootch runner," said Darragh. "This is your shack. The
+hatchery is only a blind. That's all you have to know, Ralph. So put
+that girl into my room and let her sleep till she wakes of her own
+accord.</p>
+
+<p>"Stormont and I will take two of the guest-bunks in the <em>L.</em>  And for
+heaven's sake make us some coffee when you make your own. But first come
+out and take the horse."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[168]</a></span>They went out together. Stormont lifted Eve out of the saddle. She did
+not wake. Darragh led the way into the log house and along a corridor to
+his own room.</p>
+
+<p>"Turn down the sheets," whispered Stormont. And, when the bed was ready:
+"Can you get a bath towel, Jim?"</p>
+
+<p>Darragh fetched one from the connecting bath-room.</p>
+
+<p>"Wrap it around her wet hair," whispered Stormont. "Good heavens, I wish
+there were a woman here."</p>
+
+<p>"I wish so too," said Darragh; "she's chilled to the bone. You'll have
+to wake her. She can't sleep in what she's wearing; it's almost as damp
+as her hair<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>He went to the closet and returned with a man's morning robe, as soft as
+fleece.</p>
+
+<p>"Somehow or other she's got to get into that," he said.</p>
+
+<p>There was a silence.</p>
+
+<p>"Very well," said Stormont, reddening.... "If you'll step out
+I'll&#8212;manage...." He looked Darragh straight in the eyes: "I have asked
+her to marry me," he said.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>When Stormont came out a great fire of birch-logs was blazing in the
+living-room, and Darragh stood there, his elbow on the rough stone
+mantel-shelf.</p>
+
+<p>Stormont came straight to the fire and set one spurred boot on the
+fender.</p>
+
+<p>"She's warm and dry and sound asleep," he said. "I'll wake her again if
+you think she ought to swallow something hot."</p>
+
+<p>At that moment the fish-culturist came in with a pot of steaming coffee.</p>
+
+<p>"This is my friend, Ralph Wier," said Darragh. "I think you'd better
+give Eve a cup of coffee." And, to Wier,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[169]</a></span> "Fill a couple of hot water
+bags, old chap. We don't want any pneumonia in this house."</p>
+
+<p>When breakfast was ready Eve once more lay asleep with a slight dew of
+perspiration on her brow.</p>
+
+<p>Darragh was half starved: Stormont ate little. Neither spoke at all
+until, satisfied, they rose, ready for sleep.</p>
+
+<p>At the door of his room Stormont took Darragh's offered hand,
+understanding what it implied:</p>
+
+<p>"Thanks, Jim.... Hers is the loveliest character I have ever known....
+If I weren't as poor as a homeless dog I'd marry her to-morrow.... I'll
+do it anyway, I think.... I <em>can't</em>  let her go back to Clinch's Dump!"</p>
+
+<p>"After all," said Darragh, smiling, "if it's only money that worries
+you, why not talk about a job to <em>me</em> !"</p>
+
+<p>Stormont flushed heavily: "That's rather wonderful of you, Jim<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"Why? You're the best officer I had. Why the devil did you go into the
+Constabulary without talking to me?"</p>
+
+<p>Stormont's upper lip seemed inclined to twitch but he controlled it and
+scowled at space.</p>
+
+<p>"Go to bed, you darned fool," said Darragh, carelessly. "You'll find dry
+things ready. Ralph will take care of your uniform and boots."</p>
+
+<p>Then he went into his own quarters to read two letters which, conforming
+to arrangements made with Mrs. Ray the day he had robbed Emanuel Sard,
+were to be sent to Trout Lodge to await his arrival.</p>
+
+<p>Both, written from the Ritz, bore the date of the day before: the first
+he opened was from the Countess Orloff-Strelwitz:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p class="noi">"Dear Captain Darragh,</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[170]</a></span>"&#8212;You are so wonderful! Your messenger, with the <em>ten</em>  thousand
+dollars which you say you already have recovered from those
+miscreants who robbed Ricca, came aboard our ship before we
+landed. It was a godsend; we were nearly penniless,&#8212;and oh,
+<em>so</em>  shabby!</p>
+
+<p>"Instantly, my friend, we shopped, Ricca and I. Fifth Avenue
+enchanted us. All misery was forgotten in the magic of that
+paradise for women.</p>
+
+<p>"Yet, spendthrifts that we naturally are, we were not silly
+enough to be extravagant. Ricca was wild for American
+sport-clothes. I, also. Yet&#8212;only <em>two</em>  gowns apiece, excepting
+our sport clothes. And other necessaries. Don't you think we
+were economical?"</p>
+
+<p>"Furthermore, dear Captain Darragh, we are hastening to follow
+your instructions. We are leaving to-day for your ch&#226;teau in the
+wonderful forest, of which you told us that
+never-to-be-forgotten day in Riga.</p>
+
+<p>"Your agent is politeness, consideration and kindness itself. We
+have our accommodations. We leave New York at midnight.</p>
+
+<p>"Ricca is so excited that it is difficult for her to restrain
+her happiness. God knows the child has seen enough unhappiness
+to quench the gaiety of anybody!</p>
+
+<p>"Well, all things end. Even tears. Even the Red Terror shall
+pass from our beloved Russia. For, after all, Monsieur, God
+still lives.</p>
+
+<p class="close">
+"<span class="smcap">Valentine.</span>"<br />
+</p>
+
+<p class="noi">"P. S. Ricca has written to you. I have read the letter. I have
+let it go uncensored."</p></div>
+
+<p>Darragh went to the door of his room:</p>
+
+<p>"Ralph! Ralph!" he called. And, when Wier hurriedly appeared:</p>
+
+<p>"What time does the midnight train from New York get into Five Lakes?"</p>
+
+<p>"A little before nine<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"You can make it in the flivver, can't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, if I start <em>now</em> ."</p>
+
+<p>"All right. Two ladies. You're to bring them to the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[171]</a></span> <em>house</em> , not
+<em>here</em> . Mrs. Ray knows about them. And&#8212;get back here as soon as you
+can."</p>
+
+<p>He closed his door again, sat down on the bed and opened the other
+letter. His hand shook as he unfolded it. He was so scared and excited
+that he could scarcely decipher the angular, girlish penmanship:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p class="noi">"To dear Captain Darragh, our champion and friend&#8212;</p>
+
+<p>"It is difficult for me, Monsieur, to express my happiness and
+my deep gratitude in the so cold formality of the written page.</p>
+
+<p>"Alas, sir, it will be still more difficult to find words for it
+when again I have the happiness of greeting you in proper
+person.</p>
+
+<p>"Valentine has told you everything, she warns me, and I am,
+therefore, somewhat at a loss to know what I should write to
+you.</p>
+
+<p>"Yet, I know very well what I would write if I dare. It is this:
+that I wish you to know&#8212;although it may not pass the
+censor&#8212;that I am most impatient to see you, Monsieur. <em>Not</em>
+because of kindness past, nor with an unworthy expectation of
+benefits to come. But because of friendship,&#8212;<em>the deepest,
+sincerest of my</em>  <span class="smcap">whole life</span>.</p>
+
+<p>"Is it not modest of a young girl to say this? Yes, surely all
+the world which was once <em>en r&#233;gle</em> , formal, artificial, has
+been burnt out of our hearts by this so frightful calamity which
+has overwhelmed the world with fire and blood.</p>
+
+<p>"If ever on earth there was a time when we might venture to
+express with candour what is hidden within our minds and hearts,
+it would seem, Monsieur, that the time is now.</p>
+
+<p>"True, I have known you only for one day and one evening. Yet,
+what happened to the world in that brief space of time&#8212;and to
+us, Monsieur&#8212;brought <em>us</em>  together as though our meeting were
+but a blessed reunion after the happy intimacy of many years....
+I speak, Monsieur, for myself. May I hope that I speak, also,
+for you?</p>
+
+<p>"With a heart too full to thank you, and with expectations
+indescribable&#8212;but with courage, always, for any event,&#8212;I take
+my leave of you at the foot of this page. Like death&#8212;I
+trust&#8212;my adieu is not the end, but the beginning. It is not
+farewell; it is a greeting to him<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[172]</a></span> whom I most honour in all the
+world.... And would willingly obey if he shall command. And
+otherwise&#8212;<em>all</em>  else that in his mind&#8212;and heart&#8212;he might
+desire.</p>
+
+<p class="close">
+"<span class="smcap">Theodorica</span>."<br />
+</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>It was the most beautiful love-letter any man ever received in all the
+history of love.</p>
+
+<p>And it had passed the censor.</p>
+
+
+<h3>III</h3>
+
+<p>It was afternoon when Darragh awoke in his bunk, stiff, sore, confused
+in mind and battered in body.</p>
+
+<p>However, when he recollected where he was he got out of bed in a hurry
+and jerked aside the window curtains.</p>
+
+<p>The day was magnificent; a sky of royal azure overhead, and everywhere
+the silver pillars of the birches supporting their splendid canopy of
+ochre, orange, and burnt-gold.</p>
+
+<p>Wier, hearing him astir, came in.</p>
+
+<p>"How long have you been back! Did you meet the ladies with your
+flivver?" demanded Darragh, impatiently.</p>
+
+<p>"I got to Five Lakes station just as the train came in. The young ladies
+were the only passengers who got out. I waited to get their two steamer
+trunks and then I drove them to Harrod Place<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"How did they seem, Ralph&#8212;worn-out&#8212;worried&#8212;ill?"</p>
+
+<p>Wier laughed: "No, sir, they looked very pretty and lively to me. They
+seemed delighted to get here. They talked to each other in some foreign
+tongue&#8212;Russian, I should say&#8212;at least, it sounded like what we heard
+over in Siberia, Captain<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"It <em>was</em>  Russian.... You go on and tell me while I take another hot
+bath!&#8212;&#8212;"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[173]</a></span>Wier followed him into the bath-room and vaulted to a seat on the deep
+set window-sill:</p>
+
+<p>"&#8212;When they weren't talking Russian and laughing they talked to me and
+admired the woods and mountains. I had to tell them everything&#8212;they
+wanted to see buffalo and Indians. And when I told them there weren't
+any, enquired for bears and panthers.</p>
+
+<p>"We saw two deer on the Scaur, and a woodchuck near the house; I thought
+they'd jump out of the flivver<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>He began to laugh at the recollection: "No, sir, they didn't act tired
+and sad; they said they were crazy to get into their knickerbockers and
+go to look for you<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"Where did you say I was?" asked Darragh, drying himself vigorously.</p>
+
+<p>"Out in the woods, somewhere. The last I saw of them, Mrs. Ray had their
+hand-bags and Jerry and Tom were shouldering their trunks."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm going up there right away," interrupted Darragh excitedly. "&#8212;Good
+heavens, Ralph, I haven't any clothes here, have I?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, sir. But those you wore last night are dry<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"Confound it! I meant to send some decent clothes here<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;</span> All right;
+get me those duds I wore yesterday&#8212;and a bite to eat! I'm in a hurry,
+Ralph<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>He ate while dressing, disgustedly arraying himself in the grey shirt,
+breeches, and laced boots which weather, water, rock, and brier had not
+improved.</p>
+
+<p>In a pathetic attempt to spruce up, he knotted the red bandanna around
+his neck and pinched Salzar's slouch hat into a peak.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[174]</a></span>"I look like a hootch-running Wop," he said. "Maybe I can get into the
+house before I meet the ladies<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"You look like one of Clinch's bums," remarked Wier with native honesty.</p>
+
+<p>Darragh, chagrined, went to his bunk, pulled the morocco case from under
+the pillow, and shoved it into the bosom of his flannel shirt.</p>
+
+<p>"That's the main thing anyway," he thought. Then, turning to Wier, he
+asked whether Eve and Stormont had awakened.</p>
+
+<p>It appeared that Trooper Stormont had saddled up and cantered away
+shortly after sunrise, leaving word that he must hunt up his comrade,
+Trooper Lannis, at Ghost Lake.</p>
+
+<p>"They're coming back this evening," added Wier. "He asked you to look
+out for Clinch's step-daughter."</p>
+
+<p>"She's all right here. Can't you keep an eye on her, Ralph?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm stripping trout, sir. I'll be around here to cook dinner for her
+when she wakes up."</p>
+
+<p>Darragh glanced across the brook at the hatchery. It was only a few
+yards away. He nodded and started for the veranda:</p>
+
+<p>"That'll be all right," he said. "Nobody is coming here to bother
+her.... And don't let her leave, Ralph, till I get back<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"Very well, sir. But suppose she takes it into her head to leave<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>Darragh called back, gaily: "She can't: she hasn't any clothes!" And
+away he strode in the gorgeous sunshine of a magnificent autumn day, all
+the clean and vigorous youth<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[175]</a></span> of him afire in anticipation of a reunion
+which the letter from his lady-love had transfigured into a tryst.</p>
+
+<p>For, in that amazing courtship of a single day, he never dreamed that he
+had won the heart of that sad, white-faced, hungry child in rags&#8212;silken
+tatters still stained with the blood of massacre,&#8212;the very soles of her
+shoes still charred by the embers of her own home.</p>
+
+<p>Yet, that is what must have happened in a single day and evening. Life
+passes swiftly during such periods. Minutes lengthen into days; hours
+into years. The soul finds itself.</p>
+
+<p>Then mind and heart become twin prophets,&#8212;clairvoyant concerning what
+hides behind the veil; comprehending with divine clair-audience what the
+Three Sisters whisper there&#8212;hearing even the whirr of the spindle&#8212;the
+very snipping of the Eternal Shears!</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>The soul finds itself; the mind knows itself; the heart perfectly
+understands.</p>
+
+<p>He had not spoken to this young girl of love. The blood of friends and
+servants was still rusty on her skirt's ragged hem.</p>
+
+<p>Yet, that night, when at last in safety she had said good-bye to the man
+who had secured it for her, he knew that he was in love with her. And,
+at such crises, the veil that hides hearts becomes transparent.</p>
+
+<p>At that instant he had seen and known. Afterward he had dared not
+believe that he had known.</p>
+
+<p>But hers had been a purer courage.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>As he strode on, the comprehension of her candour, her honesty, the
+sweet bravery that had conceived, created, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[176]</a></span> sent that letter,
+thrilled this young man until his heavy boots sprouted wings, and the
+trail he followed was but a path of rosy clouds over which he floated
+heavenward.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>About half an hour later he came to his senses with a distinct shock.</p>
+
+<p>Straight ahead of him on the trail, and coming directly toward him,
+moved a figure in knickers and belted tweed.</p>
+
+<p>Flecked sunlight slanted on the stranger's cheek and burnished hair,
+dappling face and figure with moving, golden spots.</p>
+
+<p>Instantly Darragh knew and trembled.</p>
+
+<p>But Theodorica of Esthonia had known him only in his uniform.</p>
+
+<p>As she came toward him, lovely in her lithe and rounded grace, only
+friendly curiosity gazed at him from her blue eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly she knew him, went scarlet to her yellow hair, then white: and
+tried to speak&#8212;but had no control of the short, rosy upper lip which
+only quivered as he took her hands.</p>
+
+<p>The forest was dead still around them save for the whisper of painted
+leaves sifting down from a sunlit vault above.</p>
+
+<p>Finally she said in a ghost of a voice: "My&#8212;friend...."</p>
+
+<p>"If you accept his friendship...."</p>
+
+<p>"Friendship is to be shared.... Ours mingled&#8212;on that day.... Your
+share is&#8212;as much as pleases you."</p>
+
+<p>"All you have to give me, then."</p>
+
+<p>"Take it ... all I have...." Her blue eyes met his with a little
+effort. All courage is an effort.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[177]</a></span>Then that young man dropped on both knees at her feet and laid his lips
+to her soft hands.</p>
+
+<p>In trembling silence she stood for a moment, then slowly sank on both
+knees to face him across their clasped hands.</p>
+
+<p>So, in the gilded cathedral of the woods, pillared with silver, and
+azure-domed, the betrothal of these two was sealed with clasp and lip.</p>
+
+<p>Awed, a little fearful, she looked into her lover's eyes with a gaze so
+chaste, so oblivious to all things earthly, that the still purity of her
+face seemed a sacrament, and he scarcely dared touch the childish lips
+she offered.</p>
+
+<p>But when the sacrament of the kiss had been accomplished, she rested one
+hand on his shoulder and rose, and drew him with her.</p>
+
+<p>Then <em>his</em>  moment came: he drew the emblazoned case from his breast,
+opened it, and, in silence, laid it in her hands. The blaze of the
+jewels in the sunshine almost blinded them.</p>
+
+<p>That was <em>his</em>  moment.</p>
+
+<p>The next moment was Quintana's.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>Darragh hadn't a chance. Out of the bushes two pistols were thrust hard
+against his stomach. Quintana's face was behind them. He wore no mask,
+but the three men with him watched him over the edges of
+handkerchiefs,&#8212;over the sights of levelled rifles, too.</p>
+
+<p>The youthful Grand Duchess had turned deadly white. One of Quintana's
+men took the morocco case from her hands and shoved her aside without
+ceremony.</p>
+
+<p>Quintana leered at Darragh over his levelled weapons:</p>
+
+<p>"My frien' Smith!" he exclaimed softly. "So it is you, then, who have
+twice try to rob me of my property!</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[178]</a></span>"Ah! You recollec'? Yes? How you have rob me of a pacquet which contain
+only some chocolate?"</p>
+
+<p>Darragh's face was burning with helpless rage.</p>
+
+<p>"My frien', Smith," repeated Quintana, "do you recollec' what it was you
+say to me? Yes?... How often it is the onexpected which so usually
+happen? You are quite correc', l'ami Smith. It has happen."</p>
+
+<p>He glanced at the open jewel box which one of the masked men held, then,
+like lightning, his sinister eyes focussed on Darragh.</p>
+
+<p>"So," he said, "it was also you who rob me las' night of my property....
+What you do to Nick Salzar, eh?"</p>
+
+<p>"Killed him," said Darragh, dry lipped, nerved for death. "I ought to
+have killed you, too, when I had the chance. But&#8212;<em>I'm</em>  white, you see."</p>
+
+<p>At the insult flung into his face over the muzzles of his own pistols,
+Quintana burst into laughter.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! You <em>should</em>  have shot me! You are quite right, my frien'. I mus'
+say you have behave ver' foolish."</p>
+
+<p>He laughed again so hard that Darragh felt his pistols shaking against
+his body.</p>
+
+<p>"So you have kill Nick Salzar, eh?" continued Quintana with perfect good
+humour. "My frien', I am oblige to you for what you do. You are
+surprise? Eh? It is ver' simple, my frien' Smith. What I want of a man
+who can be kill? Eh? Of what use is he to me? Voil&#224;!"</p>
+
+<p>He laughed, patted Darragh on the shoulder with one of his pistols.</p>
+
+<p>"You, now&#8212;<em>you</em>  could be of use. Why? Because you are a better man than
+was Nick Salzar. He who kills is better than the dead."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[179]</a></span>Then, swiftly his dark features altered:</p>
+
+<p>"My frien' Smith," he said, "I have come here for my property, not to
+kill. I have recover my property. Why shall I kill you? To say that I am
+a better man? Yes, perhaps. But also I should be oblige to say that also
+I am a fool. Yaas! A poor damfool."</p>
+
+<p>Without shifting his eyes he made a motion with one pistol to his men.
+As they turned and entered the thicket, Quintana's intent gaze became
+murderous.</p>
+
+<p>"If I mus' kill you I shall do so. Otherwise I have sufficient trouble
+to keep me from ennui. My frien', I am going home to enjoy my property.
+If you live or die it signifies nothing to me. No! Why, for the pleasure
+of killing you, should I bring your dirty gendarmes on my heels?"</p>
+
+<p>He backed away to the edge of the thicket, venturing one swift and evil
+glance at the girl who stood as though dazed.</p>
+
+<p>"Listen attentively," he said to Darragh. "One of my men remains hidden
+very near. He is a dead shot. His aim is at your&#8212;sweetheart's&#8212;body.
+You understan'?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Ver' well. You shall not go away for one hour time. After that<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span> he
+took off his slouch hat with a sweeping bow&#8212;"you may go to hell!"</p>
+
+<p>Behind him the bushes parted, closed.</p>
+
+<p>Jos&#233; Quintana had made his adieux.</p>
+
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[180]</a></span><a name="ix" id="ix"></a>
+<small><span class="smcap">Episode Nine</span></small></h2>
+
+<h2>THE FOREST AND MR. SARD</h2>
+
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+<p class="cap">WHEN at last Jos&#233; Quintana had secured what he had been after for years,
+his troubles really began.</p>
+
+<p>In his pocket he had two million dollars worth of gems, including the
+Flaming Jewel.</p>
+
+<p>But he was in the middle of a wilderness ringed in by hostile men, and
+obliged to rely for aid on a handful of the most desperate criminals in
+Europe.</p>
+
+<p>Those openly hostile to him had a wide net spread around him&#8212;wide of
+mesh too, perhaps; and it was through a mesh he meant to wriggle, but
+the net was intact from Canada to New York.</p>
+
+<p>Canadian police and secret agents held it on the north: this he had
+learned from Jake Kloon long since.</p>
+
+<p>East, west and south he knew he had the troopers of the New York State
+Constabulary to deal with, and in addition every game warden and fire
+warden in the State Forests, a swarm of plain clothes men from the
+Metropolis, and the rural constabulary of every town along the edges of
+the vast reservation.</p>
+
+<p>Just who was responsible for this enormous conspiracy to rob him of what
+he considered his own legitimate loot Quintana did not know.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[181]</a></span>Sard's attorney, Eddie Abrams, believed that the French police
+instigated it through agents of the United States Secret Service.</p>
+
+<p>Of one thing Quintana was satisfied, Mike Clinch had nothing to do with
+stirring up the authorities. Law-breakers of his sort don't shout for
+the police or invoke State or Government aid.</p>
+
+<p>As for the status of Darragh&#8212;or Hal Smith, as he supposed him to
+be&#8212;Quintana took him for what he seemed to be, a well-born young man
+gone wrong. Europe was full of that kind. To Quintana there was nothing
+suspicious about Hal Smith. On the contrary, his clever recklessness
+confirmed that polished bandit's opinion that Smith was a gentleman
+degenerated into a crook. It takes an educated imagination for a man to
+do what Smith had done to him. If the common crook has any imagination
+at all it never is educated.</p>
+
+<p>Another matter worried Jos&#233; Quintana: he was not only short on
+provisions, but what remained was cached in Drowned Valley; and Mike
+Clinch and his men were guarding every outlet to that sinister region,
+excepting only the rocky and submerged trail by which he had made his
+exit.</p>
+
+<p>That was annoying; it cut off provisions and liquor from Canada, for
+which he had arranged with Jake Kloon. For Kloon's hootch-runners now
+would be stopped by Clinch; and not one among them knew about the rocky
+trail in.</p>
+
+<p>All these matters were disquieting enough: but what really and most
+deeply troubled Quintana was his knowledge of his own men.</p>
+
+<p>He did not trust one among them. Of international<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[182]</a></span> crookdom they were
+the cream. Not one of them but would have murdered his fellow if the
+loot were worth it and the chances of escape sufficient.</p>
+
+<p>There was no loyalty to him, none to one another, no "honour among
+thieves"&#8212;and it was Jos&#233; Quintana who knew that only in romance such a
+thing existed.</p>
+
+<p>No, he could not trust a single man. Only hope of plunder attached these
+marauders to him, and merely because he had education and imagination
+enough to provide what they wanted.</p>
+
+<p>Anyone among them would murder and rob him if opportunity presented.</p>
+
+<p>Now, how to keep his loot; how to get back to Europe with it, was the
+problem that confronted Quintana after robbing Darragh. And he
+determined to settle part of that question at once.</p>
+
+<p>About five miles from Harrod Place, within a hundred rods of which he
+had held up Hal Smith, Quintana halted, seated himself on a rotting log,
+and waited until his men came up and gathered around him.</p>
+
+<p>For a little while, in utter silence, his keen eyes travelled from one
+visage to the next, from Henri Picquet to Victor Georgiades, to Sanchez,
+to Sard. His intent scrutiny focussed on Sard; lingered.</p>
+
+<p>If there were anybody he might trust, a little way, it would be Sard.</p>
+
+<p>Then a polite, untroubled smile smoothed the pale, dark features of Jos&#233;
+Quintana:</p>
+
+<p>"Bien, messieurs, the coup has been success. Yes? Ver' well; in turn,
+then, en accord with our custom, I shall dispose myse'f to listen to
+your good advice."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[183]</a></span>He looked at Henri Picquet, smiled and nodded invitation to speak.</p>
+
+<p>Picquet shrugged: "For me, mon capitaine, eet ees ver' simple. We are
+five. Therefore, divide into five ze gems. After zat, each one for
+himself to make his way out<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"Nick Salzar and Harry Beck are in the Drowned Valley," interrupted
+Quintana.</p>
+
+<p>Picquet shrugged again; Sanchez laughed, saying: "If they are there it
+is their misfortune. Also, we others are in a hurry."</p>
+
+<p>Picquet added: "Also five shares are sufficient division."</p>
+
+<p>"It is propose, then, that we abandon our comrades Beck and Salzar to
+the rifle of Mike Clinch?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?" demanded Georgiades sullenly;&#8212;"we shall have worse to face
+before we see the Place de l'Op&#233;ra."</p>
+
+<p>"There remains, also, Eddie Abrams," remarked Quintana.</p>
+
+<p>Crooks never betray their attorney. Everybody expressed a willingness to
+have the five shares of plunder properly assessed to satisfy the fee due
+to Mr. Abrams.</p>
+
+<p>"Ver' well," nodded Quintana, "are you satisfy, messieurs, to divide an'
+disperse?"</p>
+
+<p>Sard said, heavily, that they ought to stick together until they arrived
+in New York.</p>
+
+<p>Sanchez sneered, accusing Sard of wanting a bodyguard to escort him to
+his own home. "In this accursed forest," he insisted, "five of us would
+attract attention where one alone, with sufficient stealth, can slip
+through into the open country."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[184]</a></span>"Two by two is better," said Picquet. "You, Sanchez, shall travel alone
+if you desire<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"Divide the gems first," growled Georgiades, "and then let each do what
+pleases him."</p>
+
+<p>"That," nodded Quintana, "is also my opinion. It is so settle.
+Attention!" Two pistols were in his hands as by magic. With a slight
+smile he laid them on the moss beside him.</p>
+
+<p>He then spread a large white handkerchief flat on the ground; and, from
+his pockets, he poured out the glittering cascade. Yet, like a feeding
+panther, every sense remained alert to the slightest sound or movement
+elsewhere; and when Georgiades grunted from excess emotion, Quintana's
+right hand held a pistol before the grunt had ceased.</p>
+
+<p>It was a serious business, this division of loot; every reckless visage
+reflected the strain of the situation.</p>
+
+<p>Quintana, both pistols in his hands, looked down at the scintillating
+heap of jewels.</p>
+
+<p>"I estimate two and one quartaire million of dollaires," he said simply.
+"It has been agree that I accep' for me the erosite gem known as The
+Flaming Jewel. In addition, messieurs, it has been agree that I accep'
+for myse'f one part in five of the remainder."</p>
+
+<p>A fierce silence reigned. Every wolfish eye was on the leader. He
+smiled, rested his pair of pistols on either knee.</p>
+
+<p>"Is there," he asked softly, "any gentleman who shall objec'?"</p>
+
+<p>"Who," demanded Georgiades hoarsely, "is to divide for us?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is for such purpose," explained Quintana suavely, "that my frien',
+Emanuel Sard, has arrive. Monsieur Sard<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[185]</a></span> is a brokaire of diamon's, as
+all know ver' well. Therefore, it shall be our frien' Sard who will
+divide for us what we have gain to-day by our&#8212;industry."</p>
+
+<p>The savage tension broke with a laugh at the word chosen by Quintana to
+express their efforts of the morning.</p>
+
+<p>Sard had been standing with one fat hand flat against the trunk of a
+tree. Now, at a nod from Quintana, he squatted down, and, with the same
+hand that had been resting against the tree, he spread out the pile of
+jewels into a flat layer.</p>
+
+<p>As he began to divide this into five parts, still using the flat of his
+pudgy hand, something poked him lightly in the ribs. It was the muzzle
+of one of Quintana's pistols.</p>
+
+<p>Sard, ghastly pale, looked up. His palm, sticky with balsam gum,
+quivered in Quintana's grasp.</p>
+
+<p>"I was going to scrape it off," he gasped. "The tree was sticky<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>Quintana, with the muzzle of his pistol, detached half a dozen diamonds
+and rubies that clung to the gum on Mr. Sard's palm.</p>
+
+<p>"Wash!" he said drily.</p>
+
+<p>Sard, sweating with fear, washed his right hand with whiskey from his
+pocket-flask, and dried it for general inspection.</p>
+
+<p>"My God," he protested tremulously, "it was accidental, gentlemen. Do
+you think I'd try to get away with anything like that<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>Quintana coolly shoved him aside and with the barrel of his pistol he
+pushed the flat pile of gems into five separate heaps. Only he and
+Georgiades knew that a magnificent diamond had been lodged in the muzzle
+of his pistol. The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[186]</a></span> eyes of the Greek flamed with rage at the trick, but
+he awaited the division before he should come to any conclusion.</p>
+
+<p>Quintana coolly picked out The Flaming Jewel and pocketed it. Then, to
+each man he indicated the heap which was to be his portion.</p>
+
+<p>A snarling wrangle instantly began, Sanchez objecting to rubies and
+demanding more emeralds, and Picquet complaining violently concerning
+the smallness of the diamonds allotted him.</p>
+
+<p>Sard's trained eyes appraised every allotment. Without weighing, and,
+lacking time and paraphernalia for expert examination, he was inclined
+to think the division fair enough.</p>
+
+<p>Quintana got to his feet lithely.</p>
+
+<p>"For me," he said, "it is finish. With my frien' Sard I shall now
+depart. Messieurs, I embrace and salute you. A bient&#244;t in Paris&#8212;if it
+be God's will! Donc&#8212;au revoir, les amis, et &#224; la bonheur! Allons! Each
+for himself and gar' aux flics!"</p>
+
+<p>Sard, seized with a sort of still terror, regarded Quintana with
+enormous eyes. Torn between dismay of being left alone in the
+wilderness, and a very natural fear of any single companion, he did not
+know what to say or do.</p>
+
+<p>En masse, the gang were too distrustful of one another to unite on
+robbing any individual. But any individual might easily rob a companion
+when alone with him.</p>
+
+<p>"Why&#8212;why can't we all go together," he stammered. "It is safer,
+surer<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"I go with Quintana and you," interrupted Georgiades,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[187]</a></span> smilingly; his
+mind on the diamond in the muzzle of Quintana's pistol.</p>
+
+<p>"I do not invite you," said Quintana. "But come if it pleases you."</p>
+
+<p>"I also prefer to come with you others," growled Sanchez. "To roam alone
+in this filthy forest does not suit me."</p>
+
+<p>Picquet shrugged his shoulders, turned on his heel in silence. They
+watched him moving away all alone, eastward. When he had disappeared
+among the trees, Quintana looked inquiringly at the others.</p>
+
+<p>"Eh, bien, non alors!" snarled Georgiades suddenly. "There are too many
+in your trupeau, mon capitaine. Bonne chance!"</p>
+
+<p>He turned and started noisily in the direction taken by Picquet.</p>
+
+<p>They watched him out of sight; listened to his careless trample after he
+was lost to view. When at length the last distant sound of his retreat
+had died away in the stillness, Quintana touched Sard with the point of
+his pistol.</p>
+
+<p>"Go first," he said suavely.</p>
+
+<p>"For God's sake, be a little careful of your gun<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"I am, my dear frien'. It is of <em>you</em>  I may become careless. You will
+mos' kin'ly face south, and you will be kin' sufficient to start
+immediate. Tha's what I mean.... I thank you.... Now, my frien',
+Sanchez! Tha's correc'! You shall follow my frien' Sard ver' close. Me,
+I march in the rear. So we shall pass to the eas' of thees Star Pon',
+then between the cross-road an' Ghos' Lake; an' then we shall repose;
+an' one of us, en vidette, shall discover if the Constabulary have
+patrol beyon'.... Allons! March!"</p>
+
+
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[188]</a></span>Guided by Quintana's directions, the three had made a wide detour to the
+east, steering by compass for the cross-roads beyond Star Pond.</p>
+
+<p>In a dense growth of cedars, on a little ridge traversing wet land,
+Quintana halted to listen.</p>
+
+<p>Sard and Sanchez, supposing him to be at their heels, continued on,
+pushing their way blindly through the cedars, clinging to the hard ridge
+in terror of sink-holes. But their progress was very slow; and they were
+still in sight, fighting a painful path amid the evergreens, when
+Quintana suddenly squatted close to the moist earth behind a juniper
+bush.</p>
+
+<p>At first, except for the threshing of Sard and Sanchez through the
+massed obstructions ahead, there was not a sound in the woods.</p>
+
+<p>After a little while there <em>was</em>  a sound&#8212;very, very slight. No dry
+stick cracked; no dry leaves rustled; no swish of foliage; no whipping
+sound of branches disturbed the intense silence.</p>
+
+<p>But, presently, came a soft, swift rhythm like the pace of a forest
+creature in haste&#8212;a discreetly hurrying tread which was more a series
+of light earth-shocks than sound.</p>
+
+<p>Quintana, kneeling on one knee, lifted his pistol. He already felt the
+slight vibration of the ground on the hard ridge. The cedars were moving
+just beyond him now. He waited until, through the parted foliage, a face
+appeared.</p>
+
+<p>The loud report of his pistol struck Sard with the horror of paralysis.
+Sanchez faced about with one spring, snarling, a weapon in either hand.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[189]</a></span>In the terrible silence they could hear something heavy floundering in
+the bushes, choking, moaning, thudding on the ground.</p>
+
+<p>Sanchez began to creep back; Sard, more dead than alive, crawled at his
+heels. Presently they saw Quintana, waist deep in juniper, looking down
+at something.</p>
+
+<p>And when they drew closer they saw Georgiades lying on his back under a
+cedar, the whole front of his shirt from chest to belly a sopping mess
+of blood.</p>
+
+<p>There seemed no need of explanation. The dead Greek lay there where he
+had not been expected, and his two pistols lay beside him where they had
+fallen.</p>
+
+<p>Sanchez looked stealthily at Quintana, who said softly:</p>
+
+<p>"Bien sure.... In his left side pocket, I believe."</p>
+
+<p>Sanchez laid a cool hand on the dead man's heart; then, satisfied,
+rummaged until he found Georgiades' share of the loot.</p>
+
+<p>Sard, hurriedly displaying a pair of clean but shaky hands, made the
+division.</p>
+
+<p>When the three men had silently pocketed what was allotted to each,
+Quintana pushed curiously at the dead man with the toe of his shoe.</p>
+
+<p>"Peste!" he remarked. "I had place, for security, a ver' large
+diamon' in my pistol barrel. Now it is within the interior of this
+gentleman...." He turned to Sanchez: "I sell him to you. One sapphire.
+Yes?"</p>
+
+<p>Sanchez shook his head with a slight sneer: "We wait&#8212;if you want your
+diamond, mon capitaine."</p>
+
+<p>Quintana hesitated, then made a grimace and shook his head.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[190]</a></span>"No," he said, "he has swallow. Let him digest. Allons! March!"</p>
+
+<p>But after they had gone on&#8212;two hundred yards, perhaps&#8212;Sanchez stopped.</p>
+
+<p>"Well?" inquired Quintana. Then, with a sneer: "I now recollec' that
+once you have been a butcher in Madrid.... Suit your tas'e, l'ami
+Sanchez."</p>
+
+<p>Sard gazed at Sanchez out of sickened eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"You keep away from me until you've washed yourself," he burst out,
+revolted. "Don't you come near me till you're clean!"</p>
+
+<p>Quintana laughed and seated himself. Sanchez, with a hang-dog glance at
+him, turned and sneaked back on the trail they had traversed. Before he
+was out of sight Sard saw him fish out a Spanish knife from his hip
+pocket and unclasp it.</p>
+
+<p>Almost nauseated, he turned on Quintana in a sort of frightened fury:</p>
+
+<p>"Come on!" he said hoarsely. "I don't want to travel with that man! I
+won't associate with a ghoul! My God, I'm a respectable business
+man<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"Yaas," drawled Quintana, "tha's what I saw always myse'f; my frien'
+Sard he is ver' respec'able, an' I trus' him like I trus' myse'f."</p>
+
+<p>However, after a moment, Quintana got up from the fallen tree where he
+had been seated.</p>
+
+<p>As he passed Sard he looked curiously into the man's frightened eyes.
+There was not the slightest doubt that Sard was a coward.</p>
+
+<p>"You shall walk behin' me," remarked Quintana carelessly.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[191]</a></span> "If Sanchez
+fin' us, it is well; if he shall not, that also is ver' well.... We go,
+now."</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>Sanchez made no effort to find them. They had been gone half an hour
+before he had finished the business that had turned him back.</p>
+
+<p>After that he wandered about hunting for water&#8212;a rivulet, a puddle,
+anything. But the wet ground proved wet only on the surface moss.
+Sanchez needed more than damp moss for his toilet. Casting about him,
+hither and thither, for some depression that might indicate a stream, he
+came to a heavily wooded slope, and descended it.</p>
+
+<p>There was a bog at the foot. With his fouled hands he dug out a basin
+which filled up full of reddish water, discoloured by alders.</p>
+
+<p>But the water was redder still when his toilet ended.</p>
+
+<p>As he stood there, examining his clothing, and washing what he could of
+the ominous stains from sleeve and shoe, very far away to the north he
+heard a curious noise&#8212;a far, faint sound such as he never before had
+heard.</p>
+
+<p>If it were a voice of any sort there was nothing human about it....
+Probably some sort of unknown bird.... Perhaps a bird of prey.... That
+was natural, considering the attraction that Georgiades would have for
+such creatures.... If it were a bird it must be a large one, he
+thought.... Because there was a certain volume to the cry.... Perhaps
+it was a beast, after all.... Some unknown beast of the forest....</p>
+
+<p>Sanchez was suddenly afraid. Scarcely knowing what he was doing he began
+to run along the edge of the bog.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[192]</a></span>First growth timber skirted it; running was unobstructed by underbrush.</p>
+
+<p>With his startled ears full of the alarming and unknown sound, he ran
+through the woods under gigantic pines which spread a soft green
+twilight around him.</p>
+
+<p>He was tired, or thought he was, but the alarming sounds were filling
+his ears now; the entire forest seemed full of them, echoing in all
+directions, coming in upon him from everywhere, so that he knew not in
+which direction to run.</p>
+
+<p>But he could not stop. Demoralised, he darted this way and that; terror
+winged his feet; the air vibrated above and around him with the
+dreadful, unearthly sounds.</p>
+
+<p>The next instant he fell headlong over a ledge, struck water, felt
+himself whirled around in the icy, rushing current, rolled over, tumbled
+through rapids, blinded, deafened, choked, swept helplessly in a vast
+green wall of water toward something that thundered in his brain an
+instant, then dashed it into roaring chaos.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>Half a mile down the turbulent outlet of Star Pond,&#8212;where a great sheet
+of green water pours thirty feet into the tossing foam below,&#8212;and
+spinning, dipping, diving, bobbing up like a lost log after the drive,
+the body of Se&#241;or Sanchez danced all alone in the wilderness, spilling
+from soggy pockets diamonds, sapphires, rubies, emeralds, into crystal
+caves where only the shadows of slim trout stirred.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>Very far away to the eastward Quintana stood listening, clutching Sard
+by one sleeve to silence him.</p>
+
+<p>Presently he said: "My frien', somebody is hunting with houn's in this
+fores'.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[193]</a></span>"Maybe they are not hunting <em>us</em>.... <em>Maybe.</em>... But, for me, I shall
+seek running water. Go you your own way! Houp! Vamose!"</p>
+
+<p>He turned westward; but he had taken scarcely a dozen strides when Sard
+came panting after him:</p>
+
+<p>"Don't leave me!" gasped the terrified diamond broker. "I don't know
+where to go<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>Quintana faced him abruptly&#8212;with a terrifying smile and glimmer of
+white teeth&#8212;and shoved a pistol into the fold of fat beneath Sard's
+double chin.</p>
+
+<p>"You hear those dogs? Yes? Ver' well; I also. Run, now. I say to you run
+ver' damn quick. H&#233;! Houp! Allez vous en! Beat eet!"</p>
+
+<p>He struck Sard a stinging blow on his fleshy ear with the pistol barrel,
+and Sard gave a muffled shriek which was more like the squeak of a
+frightened animal.</p>
+
+<p>"My God, Quintana<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span> he sobbed. Then Quintana's eyes blazed murder:
+and Sard turned and ran lumbering through the thicket like a stampeded
+ox, crashing on amid withered brake, white birch scrub and brier, not
+knowing whither he was headed, crazed with terror.</p>
+
+<p>Quintana watched his flight for a moment, then, pistol swinging, he ran
+in the opposite direction, eastward, speeding lithely as a cat down a
+long, wooded slope which promised running water at the foot.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>Sard could not run very far. He could scarcely stand when he pulled up
+and clung to the trunk of a tree.</p>
+
+<p>More dead than alive he embraced the tree, gulping horribly for air,
+every fat-incrusted organ labouring, his senses swimming.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[194]</a></span>As he sagged there, gripping his support on shaking knees, by degrees
+his senses began to return.</p>
+
+<p>He could hear the dogs, now, vaguely as in a nightmare. But after a
+little while he began to believe that their hysterical yelping was
+really growing more distant.</p>
+
+<p>Then this man whose every breath was an outrage on God, prayed.</p>
+
+<p>He prayed that the hounds would follow Quintana, come up with him, drag
+him down, worry him, tear him to shreds of flesh and clothing.</p>
+
+<p>He listened and prayed alternately. After a while he no longer prayed
+but concentrated on his ears.</p>
+
+<p>Surely, surely, the diabolical sound was growing less distinct.... It
+was changing direction too. But whether in Quintana's direction or not
+Sard could not tell. He was no woodsman. He was completely turned
+around.</p>
+
+<p>He looked upward through a dense yellow foliage, but all was grey in the
+sky&#8212;very grey and still;&#8212;and there seemed to be no traces of the sun
+that had been shining.</p>
+
+<p>He looked fearfully around: trees, trees, and more trees. No break, no
+glimmer, nothing to guide him, teach him. He could see, perhaps, fifty
+feet; no further.</p>
+
+<p>In panic he started to move on. That is what fright invariably does to
+those ignorant of the forest. Terror starts them moving.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>Sobbing, frightened almost witless, he had been floundering forward for
+over an hour, and had made circle after circle without knowing, when, by
+chance, he set foot in a perfectly plain trail.</p>
+
+<p>Emotion overpowered him. He was too overcome to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[195]</a></span> stir for a while. At
+length, however, he tottered off down the trail, oblivious as to what
+direction he was taking, animated only by a sort of madness&#8212;horror of
+trees&#8212;an insane necessity to see open ground, get into it, and lie down
+on it.</p>
+
+<p>And now, directly ahead, he saw clear grey sky low through the trees.
+The wood's edge!</p>
+
+<p>He began to run.</p>
+
+<p>As he emerged from the edge of the woods, waist-deep in brush and weeds,
+wide before his blood-shot eyes spread Star Pond.</p>
+
+<p>Even in his half-stupefied brain there was memory enough left for
+recognition.</p>
+
+<p>He remembered the lake. His gaze travelled to the westward; and he saw
+Clinch's Dump standing below, stark, silent, the doors swinging open in
+the wind.</p>
+
+<p>When terror had subsided in a measure and some of his trembling strength
+returned, he got up out of the clump of rag-weeds where he had lain
+down, and earnestly nosed the unpainted house, listening with all his
+ears.</p>
+
+<p>There was not a sound save the soughing of autumn winds and the delicate
+rattle of falling leaves in the woods behind him.</p>
+
+<p>He needed food and rest. He gazed earnestly at the house. Nothing
+stirred there save the open doors swinging idly in every vagrant wind.</p>
+
+<p>He ventured down a little way&#8212;near enough to see the black cinders of
+the burned barn, and close enough to hear the lake waters slapping the
+sandy shore.</p>
+
+<p>If he dared<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;</span></p>
+
+<p>And after a long while he ventured to waddle nearer,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[196]</a></span> slinking through
+brush and frosted weed, creeping behind boulders, edging always closer
+and closer to that silent house where nothing moved except the
+wind-blown door.</p>
+
+<p>And now, at last, he set a furtive foot upon the threshold, stood
+listening, tip-toed in, peered here and there, sidled to the
+dining-room, peered in.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>When, at length, Emanuel Sard discovered that Clinch's Dump was
+tenantless, he made straight for the pantry. Here was cheese, crackers,
+an apple pie, half a dozen bottles of home-brewed beer.</p>
+
+<p>He loaded his arms with all they could carry, stole through the
+dance-hall out to the veranda, which overlooked the lake.</p>
+
+<p>Here, hidden in the doorway, he could watch the road from Ghost Lake and
+survey the hillside down which an intruder must come from the forest.</p>
+
+<p>And here Sard slaked his raging thirst and satiated the gnawing appetite
+of the obese, than which there is no crueller torment to an inert liver
+and distended paunch.</p>
+
+<p>Munching, guzzling, watching, Sard squatted just within the veranda
+doorway, anxiously considering his chances.</p>
+
+<p>He knew where he was. At the foot of the lake, and eastward, he had been
+robbed by a highwayman on the forest road branching from the main
+highway. Southwest lay Ghost Lake and the Inn.</p>
+
+<p>Somewhere between these two points he must try to cross the State
+Road.... After that, comparative safety. For the miles that still
+would lie between him and distant civilisation seemed as nothing to
+the horror of that hell of trees.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[197]</a></span>He looked up now at the shaggy fringing woods, shuddered, opened another
+bottle of beer.</p>
+
+<p>In all that panorama of forest, swale, and water the only thing that had
+alarmed him at all by moving was something in the water. When first he
+noticed it he almost swooned, for he took it to be a swimming dog.</p>
+
+<p>In his agitation he had risen to his feet; and then the swimming
+creature almost frightened Sard out of his senses, for it tilted
+suddenly and went down with a report like the crack of a pistol.</p>
+
+<p>However, when Sard regained control of his wits he realised that a
+swimming dog doesn't dive and doesn't whack the water with its tail.</p>
+
+<p>He dimly remembered hearing that beavers behaved that way.</p>
+
+<p>Watching the water he saw the thing out there in the lake again,
+<a name="swimming" id="swimming"></a><ins title="original had swiming">swimming</ins> in erratic circles, its big, dog-like head well out of the
+water.</p>
+
+<p>It certainly was no dog. A beaver, maybe. Whatever it was, Sard didn't
+care any longer.</p>
+
+<p>Idly he watched it. Sometimes, when it swam very near, he made a sudden
+motion with his fat arm; and crack!&#8212;with a pistol-shot report down it
+dived. But always it reappeared.</p>
+
+<p>What had a creature like that to do with him? Sard watched it with
+failing interest, thinking of other things&#8212;of Quintana and the chances
+that the dogs had caught him,&#8212;of Sanchez, the Ghoul, hoping that dire
+misfortune might overtake him, too;&#8212;of the dead man sprawling under the
+cedar-tree, all sopping crimson<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;</span> Faugh!</p>
+
+<p>Shivering, Sard filled his mouth with apple-pie and cheese<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[198]</a></span> and pulled
+the cork from another bottle of home-brewed beer.</p>
+
+
+<h3>III</h3>
+
+<p>About that time, a mile and a half to the southward, James Darragh came
+out on the rocky and rushing outlet to Star Pond.</p>
+
+<p>Over his shoulder was a rifle, and all around him ran dogs,&#8212;big,
+powerful dogs, built like foxhounds but with the rough, wiry coats of
+Airedales, even rougher of ear and features.</p>
+
+<p>The dogs,&#8212;half a dozen or so in number,&#8212;seemed very tired. All ran
+down eagerly to the water and drank and slobbered and panted, lolling
+their tongues, and slaking their thirst again and again along the
+swirling edge of a deep trout pool.</p>
+
+<p>Darragh's rifle lay in the hollow of his left arm; his khaki waistcoat
+was set with loops full of cartridges. From his left wrist hung a
+raw-hide whip.</p>
+
+<p>Now he laid aside his rifle and whip, took from the pocket of his
+shooting coat three or four leather dog-leashes, went down among the
+dogs and coupled them up.</p>
+
+<p>They followed him back to the bank above. Here he sat down on a rock and
+inspected his watch.</p>
+
+<p>He had been seated there for ten minutes, possibly, with his tired dogs
+lying around him, when just above him he saw a State Trooper emerge from
+the woods on foot, carrying a rifle over one shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"Jack!" he called in a guarded voice.</p>
+
+<p>Trooper Stormont turned, caught sight of Darragh, made a signal of
+recognition, and came toward him.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[199]</a></span>Darragh said: "Your mate, Trooper Lannis, is down stream. I've two of my
+own game wardens at the cross-roads, two more on the Ghost Lake Road,
+and two foresters and an inspector out toward Owl Marsh."</p>
+
+<p>Stormont nodded, looked down at the dogs.</p>
+
+<p>"This isn't the State Forest," said Darragh, smiling. Then his face grew
+grave: "How is Eve?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"She's feeling better," replied Stormont. "I telephoned to Ghost Lake
+Inn for the hotel physician.... I was afraid of pneumonia, Jim. Eve had
+chills last night.... But Dr. Claybourn thinks she's all right.... So
+I left her in care of your housekeeper."</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Ray will look out for her.... You haven't told Eve who I am, have
+you?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll tell her myself to-night. I don't know how she'll take it when she
+learns I'm the heir to the mortal enemy of Mike Clinch."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know either," said Stormont.</p>
+
+<p>There was a silence; the State Trooper looked down at the dogs:</p>
+
+<p>"What are they, Jim?"</p>
+
+<p>"Otter-hounds," said Darragh, "&#8212;a breed of my own.... But that's <em>all</em>
+they are capable of hunting, I guess," he added grimly.</p>
+
+<p>Stormont's gaze questioned him.</p>
+
+<p>Darragh said: "After I telephoned you this morning that a guest of mine
+at Harrod Place, and I, had been stuck up and robbed by Quintana's
+outfit, what did you do, Jack?"</p>
+
+<p>"I called up Bill Lannis first," said Stormont, "&#8212;then<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[200]</a></span> the doctor.
+After he came, Mrs. Ray arrived with a maid. Then I went in and spoke to
+Eve. Then I did what you suggested&#8212;I crossed the forest diagonally
+toward The Scaur, zig-zagged north, turned by the rock hog-back south of
+Drowned Valley, came southeast, circled west, and came out here as you
+asked me to."</p>
+
+<p>"Almost on the minute," nodded Darragh.... "You saw no signs of
+Quintana's gang?"</p>
+
+<p>"None."</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said Darragh, "I left my two guests at Harrod Place to amuse
+each other, got out three couple of my otter-hounds and started
+them,&#8212;as I hoped and supposed,&#8212;on Quintana's trail."</p>
+
+<p>"What happened?" inquired Stormont curiously.</p>
+
+<p>"Well&#8212;I don't know. I think they were following some of Quintana's
+gang&#8212;for a while, anyway. After that, God knows,&#8212;deer, hare,
+cotton-tail,&#8212;<em>I</em>  don't know. They yelled their bally heads off&#8212;I on
+the run&#8212;they're slow dogs, you know&#8212;and whatever they were after
+either fooled them or there were too many trails.... I made a mistake,
+that's all. These poor beasts don't know anything except an otter. I
+just <em>hoped</em>  they might take Quintana's trail if I put them on it."</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said Stormont, "it can't be helped now.... I told Bill Lannis
+that we'd rendezvous at Clinch's Dump."</p>
+
+<p>"All right," nodded Darragh. "Let's keep to the open; my dogs are
+leashed couples."</p>
+
+<p>They had been walking for twenty minutes, possibly, exchanging scarcely
+a word, and they were now nearing the hilly basin where Star Pond lay,
+when Darragh said abruptly:</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[201]</a></span>"I'm going to tell you about things, Jack. You've taken my word so far
+that it's all right<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"Naturally," said Stormont simply.</p>
+
+<p>The two men, who had been brother officers in the Great War, glanced at
+each other, slightly smiling.</p>
+
+<p>"Here it is then," said Darragh. "When I was on duty in Riga for the
+Intelligence Department, I met two ladies in dire distress, whose
+mansion had been burned and looted, supposedly by the Bolsheviki.</p>
+
+<p>"They were actually hungry and penniless; the only clothing they
+possessed they were wearing. These ladies were the Countess
+Orloff-Strelwitz, and a young girl, Theodorica, Grand Duchess of
+Esthonia.... I did what I could for them. After a while, in the course
+of other duty, I found out that the Bolsheviki had had nothing to do
+with the arson and robbery, but that the crime had been perpetrated by
+Jos&#233; Quintana's gang of international crooks masquerading as
+Bolsheviki."</p>
+
+<p>Stormont nodded: "I also came across similar cases," he remarked.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, this was a flagrant example. Quintana had burnt the ch&#226;teau and
+had made off with over two million dollars worth of the little Grand
+Duchess's jewels&#8212;among them the famous Erosite gem known as The Flaming
+Jewel."</p>
+
+<p>"I've heard of it."</p>
+
+<p>"There are only two others known.... Well, I did what I could with the
+Esthonian police, who didn't believe me.</p>
+
+<p>"But a short time ago the Countess Orloff sent me word that Quintana
+really was the guilty one, and that he had started for America.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[202]</a></span>"I've been after him ever since.... But, Jack, until this morning
+Quintana did not possess these stolen jewels. <em>Clinch did!</em> "</p>
+
+<p>"What!"</p>
+
+<p>"Clinch served over-seas in a Forestry Regiment. In Paris he robbed
+Quintana of these jewels. That's why I've been hanging around Clinch."</p>
+
+<p>Stormont's face was flushed and incredulous. Then it lost colour as he
+thought of the jewels that Eve had concealed&#8212;the gems for which she had
+risked her life.</p>
+
+<p>He said: "But you tell me Quintana robbed you this morning."</p>
+
+<p>"He did. The little Grand Duchess and the Countess Orloff-Strelwitz are
+my guests at Harrod Place.</p>
+
+<p>"Last night I snatched the case containing these gems from Quintana's
+fingers. This morning, as I offered them to the Grand Duchess, Quintana
+coolly stepped between us<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>His voice became bitter and his features reddened with rage poorly
+controlled:</p>
+
+<p>"By God, Jack, I should have shot Quintana when the opportunity offered.
+Twice I've had the chance. The next time I shall kill him any way I
+can.... Legitimately."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course," said Stormont gravely. But his mind was full of the jewels
+which Eve had. What and whose were they,&#8212;if Quintana again had the
+Esthonian gems in his possession?</p>
+
+<p>"Had you recovered all the jewels for the Grand Duchess?" he asked
+Darragh.</p>
+
+<p>"Every one, Jack.... Quintana has done me a terrible<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[203]</a></span> injury. I shan't
+let it go. I mean to hunt that man to the end."</p>
+
+<p>Stormont, terribly perplexed, nodded.</p>
+
+<p>A few minutes later, as they came out among the willows and alders on
+the northeast side of Star Pond, Stormont touched his comrade's arm.</p>
+
+<p>"Look at that enormous dog-otter out there in the lake!"</p>
+
+<p>"Grab those dogs! They'll strangle each other," cried Darragh quickly.
+"That's it&#8212;unleash them, Jack, and let them go!"&#8212;he was struggling
+with the other two couples while speaking.</p>
+
+<p>And now the hounds, unleashed, lifted frantic voices. The very sky
+seemed full of the discordant tumult; wood and shore reverberated with
+the volume of convulsive and dissonant baying.</p>
+
+<p>"Damn it," said Darragh, disgusted, "&#8212;that's what they've been trailing
+all the while across-woods,&#8212;that devilish dog-otter yonder.... And I
+had hoped they were on Quintana's trail<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>A mass rush and scurry of crazed dogs nearly swept him off his feet, and
+both men caught a glimpse of a large bitch-otter taking to the lake from
+a ledge of rock just beyond.</p>
+
+<p>Now the sky vibrated with the deafening outcry of the dogs, some taking
+to water, others racing madly along shore.</p>
+
+<p>Crack! The echo of the dog-otter's blow on the water came across to them
+as the beast dived.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'm in for it now," muttered Darragh, starting along the bank
+toward Clinch's Dump, to keep an eye on his dogs.</p>
+
+<p>Stormont followed more leisurely.</p>
+
+
+<h3>IV</h3>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[204]</a></span>A few minutes before Darragh and Stormont had come out on the farther
+edge of Star Pond, Sard, who had heard from Quintana about the big drain
+pipe which led from Clinch's pantry into the lake, decided to go in and
+take a look at it.</p>
+
+<p>He had been told all about its uses,&#8212;how Clinch,&#8212;in the event of a
+raid by State Troopers or Government enforcement agents,&#8212;could empty
+his contraband hootch into the lake if necessary,&#8212;and even could slide
+a barrel of ale or a keg of rum, intact, into the great tile tunnel and
+recover the liquor at his leisure.</p>
+
+<p>Also, and grimly, Quintana had admitted that through this drain Eve
+Strayer and the State Trooper, Stormont, had escaped from Clinch's Dump.</p>
+
+<p>So now Sard, full of curiosity, went back into the pantry to look at it
+for himself.</p>
+
+<p>Almost instantly the idea occurred to him to make use of the drain for
+his own safety and comfort.</p>
+
+<p>Why shouldn't he sleep in the pantry, lock the door, and, in case of
+intrusion,&#8212;other exits being unavailable,&#8212;why shouldn't he feel
+entirely safe with such an avenue of escape open?</p>
+
+<p>For swimming was Sard's single accomplishment. He wasn't afraid of the
+water; he simply couldn't sink. Swimming was the only sport he ever had
+indulged in. He adored it.</p>
+
+<p>Also, the mere idea of sleeping alone amid that hell of trees terrified
+Sard. Never had he known such horror as when Quintana abandoned him in
+the woods. Never again<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[205]</a></span> could he gaze upon a tree without malignant
+hatred. Never again did he desire to lay eyes upon even a bush. The very
+sight, now, of the dusky forest filled him with loathing. Why should he
+not risk one night in this deserted house,&#8212;sleep well and warmly, feed
+well, drink his bellyfull of Clinch's beer, before attempting the
+dead-line southward, where he was only too sure that patrols were riding
+and hiding on the lookout for the fancy gentlemen of Jos&#233; Quintana's
+selected company of malefactors?</p>
+
+<p>Well, here in the snug pantry were pies, crullers, bread, cheeses,
+various dried meats, tinned vegetables, ham, bacon, fuel and range to
+prepare what he desired.</p>
+
+<p>Here was beer, too; and doubtless ardent spirits if he could nose out
+the hidden demijohns and bottles.</p>
+
+<p>He peered out of the pantry window at the forest, shuddered, cursed
+it and every separate tree in it; cursed Quintana, too, wishing him
+black mischance. No; it was settled. He'd take his chance here in the
+pantry.... And there must be a mattress somewhere upstairs.</p>
+
+<p>He climbed the staircase, cautiously, discovered Clinch's bedroom, took
+the mattress and blankets from the bed, dragged them to the pantry.</p>
+
+<p>Could any honest man be more tight and snug in this perilous world of
+the desperate and undeserving? Sard thought not. But one matter troubled
+him: the lock of the pantry door had been shattered. To remedy this he
+moused around until he discovered some long nails and a claw-hammer.
+When he was ready to go to sleep he'd nail himself in. And in the
+morning he'd pry the door loose. That was simple. Sard chuckled for the
+first time since he had set eyes upon the accursed region.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[206]</a></span>And now the sun came out from behind a low bank of solid grey cloud, and
+fell upon the countenance of Emanuel Sard. It warmed his parrot-nose
+agreeably; it cheered and enlivened him.</p>
+
+<p>Not for him a night of terrors in that horrible forest which he could
+see through the pantry window.</p>
+
+<p>A sense of security and of well-being pervaded Sard to his muddy shoes.
+He even curled his fat toes in them with animal contentment.</p>
+
+<p>A little snack before cooking a heavily satisfactory dinner? Certainly.</p>
+
+<p>So he tucked a couple of bottles of beer under one arm, a loaf of bread
+and a chunk of cheese under the other, and waddled out to the veranda
+door.</p>
+
+<p>And at that instant the very heavens echoed with that awful tumult which
+had first paralysed, then crazed him in the woods.</p>
+
+<p>Bottles, bread, cheese fell from his grasp and his knees nearly
+collapsed under him. In the bushes on the lake shore he saw animals
+leaping and racing, but, in his terror, he did not recognise them for
+dogs.</p>
+
+<p>Then, suddenly, he saw a man, close to the house, running: and another
+man not far behind. <em>That</em>  he understood, and it electrified him into
+action.</p>
+
+<p>It was too late to escape from the house now. He understood that
+instantly.</p>
+
+<p>He ran back through the dance-hall and dining-room to the pantry; but he
+dared not let these intruders hear the noise of hammering.</p>
+
+<p>In an agony of indecision he stood trembling, listening<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[207]</a></span> to the infernal
+racket of the dogs, and waiting for the first footstep within the house.</p>
+
+<p>No step came. But, chancing to look over his shoulder, he saw a man
+peering through the pantry window at him.</p>
+
+<p>Ungovernable terror seized Sard. Scarcely aware what he was about, he
+seized the edges of the big drain-pipe and crowded his obese body into
+it head first. He was so fat and heavy that he filled the tile. To start
+himself down he pulled with both hands and kicked himself forward,
+tortoise-like, down the slanting tunnel, sticking now and then, dragging
+himself on and downward.</p>
+
+<p>Now he began to gain momentum; he felt himself sliding, not fast but
+steadily.</p>
+
+<p>There came a hitch somewhere; his heavy body stuck on the steep incline.</p>
+
+<p>Then, as he lifted his bewildered head and strove to peer into the
+blackness in front, he saw four balls of green fire close to him in
+darkness.</p>
+
+<p>He began to slide at the same instant, and flung out both hands to check
+himself. But his palms slid in the slime and his body slid after.</p>
+
+<p>He shrieked once as his face struck a furry obstruction where four balls
+of green fire flamed horribly and a fury of murderous teeth tore his
+face and throat to bloody tatters as he slid lower, lower, settling
+through crimson-dyed waters into the icy depths of Star Pond.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>Stormont, down by the lake, called to Darragh, who appeared on the
+veranda:</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Jim! Both otters crawled into the drain! I think<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[208]</a></span> your dogs must
+have killed one of them under water. There's a big patch of blood
+spreading off shore."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Darragh, "something has just been killed, somewhere ...
+Jack!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes?"</p>
+
+<p>"Pull both your guns and come up here, quick!"</p>
+
+
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[209]</a></span><a name="x" id="x"></a>
+<small><span class="smcap">Episode Ten</span></small></h2>
+
+<h2>THE TWILIGHT OF MIKE</h2>
+
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+<p class="cap">WHEN Quintana turned like an enraged snake on Sard and drove him to his
+destruction, he would have killed and robbed the frightened diamond
+broker had he dared risk the shot. He had intended to do this anyway,
+sooner or later. But with the noise of the hunting dogs filling the
+forest, Quintana was afraid to fire. Yet, even then he followed Sard
+stealthily for a few minutes, afraid yet murderously desirous of the
+gems, confused by the tumult of the hounds, timid and ferocious at the
+same time, and loath to leave his fat, perspiring, and demoralised
+victim.</p>
+
+<p>But the racket of the dogs proved too much for Quintana. He sheered away
+toward the South, leaving Sard floundering on ahead, unconscious of the
+treachery that had followed furtively in his panic-stricken tracks.</p>
+
+<p>About an hour later Quintana was seen, challenged, chased and shot at by
+State Trooper Lannis.</p>
+
+<p>Quintana ran. And what with the dense growth of seedling beech and oak
+and the heavily falling birch and poplar leaves, Lannis first lost
+Quintana and then his trail.</p>
+
+<p>The State Trooper had left his horse at the cross-roads near the scene
+of Darragh's masked exploit, where he had stopped and robbed Sard&#8212;and
+now Lannis hastened back<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[210]</a></span> to find and mount his horse, and gallop
+straight into the first growth timber.</p>
+
+<p>Through dim aisles of giant pine he spurred to a dead run on the chance
+of cutting Quintana from the eastward edge of the forest and forcing him
+back toward the north or west, where patrols were more than likely to
+hold him.</p>
+
+<p>The State Trooper rode with all the reckless indifference and grace of
+the Western cavalryman, and he seemed to be part of the superb animal he
+rode&#8212;part of its bone and muscle, its litheness, its supple power&#8212;part
+of its vertebr&#230; and ribs and limbs, so perfect was their bodily
+co-ordination.</p>
+
+<p>Rifle and eyes intently alert, the rider scarce noticed his rushing
+mount; and if he guided with wrist and knee it was instinctive and as
+though the horse were guiding them both.</p>
+
+<p>And now, far ahead through this primeval stand of pine, sunshine
+glimmered, warning of a clearing. And here Trooper Lannis pulled in his
+horse at the edge of what seemed to be a broad, flat meadow, vividly
+green.</p>
+
+<p>But it was the intense, arsenical green of hair-fine grass that covers
+with its false velvet those quaking bogs where only a thin, crust-like
+skin of root-fibre and vegetation cover infinite depths of silt.</p>
+
+<p>The silt had no more substance than a drop of ink colouring the water in
+a tumbler.</p>
+
+<p>Sitting his fast-breathing mount, Lannis searched this wide, flat
+expanse of brilliant green. Nothing moved on it save a great heron
+picking its deliberate way on stilt-like legs. It was well for Quintana
+that he had not attempted it.</p>
+
+<p>Very cautiously Lannis walked his horse along the hard<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[211]</a></span> ground which
+edged this marsh on the west. Nowhere was there any sign that Quintana
+had come down to the edge among the shrubs and swale grasses.</p>
+
+<p>Beyond the marsh another trooper patrolled; and when at length he and
+Lannis perceived each other and exchanged signals, the latter wheeled
+his horse and retraced his route at an easy canter, satisfied that
+Quintana had not yet broken cover.</p>
+
+<p>Back through the first growth he cantered, his rifle at a ready,
+carefully scanning the more open woodlands, and so came again to the
+cross-roads.</p>
+
+<p>And here stood a State Game Inspector, with a report that some sort of
+beagle-pack was hunting in the forest to the northwest; and very curious
+to investigate.</p>
+
+<p>So it was arranged that the Inspector should turn road-patrol and the
+Trooper become the rover.</p>
+
+<p>There was no sound of dogs when Lannis rode in on the narrow, spotted
+trail whence he had flushed Quintana into the dense growth of saplings
+that bordered it.</p>
+
+<p>His horse made little noise on the moist layer of leaves and forest
+mould; he listened hard for the sound of hounds as he rode; heard
+nothing save the chirr of red squirrels, the shriek of a watching jay,
+or the startling noise of falling acorns rapping and knocking on great
+limbs in their descent to the forest floor.</p>
+
+<p>Once, very, very far away westward in the direction of Star Pond he
+fancied he heard a faint vibration in the air that might have been
+hounds baying.</p>
+
+<p>He was right. And at that very moment Sard was dying, horribly, among
+two trapped otters as big and fierce as the dogs that had driven them
+into the drain.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[212]</a></span>But Lannis knew nothing of that as he moved on, mounted, along the
+spotted trail, now all a yellow glory of birch and poplar which made the
+woodland brilliant as though lighted by yellow lanterns.</p>
+
+<p>Somewhere among the birches, between him and Star Pond, was Harrod
+Place. And the idea occurred to him that Quintana might have ventured to
+ask food and shelter there. Yet, that was not likely because Trooper
+Stormont had called him that morning on the telephone from the Hatchery
+Lodge.</p>
+
+<p>No; the only logical retreat for Quintana was northward to the
+mountains, where patrols were plenty and fire-wardens on duty in every
+watch-tower. Or, the fugitive could make for Drowned Valley by a blind
+trail which, Stormont informed him, existed but which Lannis never had
+heard of.</p>
+
+<p>However, to reassure himself, Lannis rode as far as Harrod Place, and
+found game wardens on duty along the line.</p>
+
+<p>Then he turned west and trotted his mount down to the hatchery, where he
+saw Ralph Wier, the Superintendent, standing outside the lodge talking
+to his assistant, George Fry.</p>
+
+<p>When Lannis rode up on the opposite side of the brook, he called across
+to Wier:</p>
+
+<p>"You haven't seen anything of any crooked outfit around here, have you,
+Ralph? I'm looking for that kind."</p>
+
+<p>"See here," said the Superintendent, "I don't know but George Fry may
+have seen one of your guys. Come over and he'll tell you what happened
+an hour ago."</p>
+
+<p>Trooper Lannis pivotted his horse and put him to the brook with scarcely
+any take-off; and the splendid animal<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[213]</a></span> cleared the water like a deer and
+came cantering up to the door of the lodge.</p>
+
+<p>Fry's boyish face seemed agitated; he looked up at the State Trooper
+with the flush of tears in his gaze and pointed at the rifle Lannis
+carried:</p>
+
+<p>"If I'd had <em>that</em> ," he said excitedly, "I'd have brought in a crook,
+you bet!"</p>
+
+<p>"Where did you see him?" inquired Lannis.</p>
+
+<p>"Jest west of the Scaur, about an hour and a half ago. Wier and me was
+stockin' the head of Scaur Brook with fingerlings. There's more good
+water&#8212;two miles of it&#8212;to the east, and all it needed was a fish-ladder
+around Scaur Falls.</p>
+
+<p>"So I toted in cement and sand and grub last week, and I built me a
+shanty on the Scaur, and I been laying up a fish-way around the falls.
+So that's how I come there<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span> He clicked his teeth and darted a
+furious glance at the woods. "By God," he said, "I was such a fool I
+didn't take no rifle. All I had was an axe and a few traps.... I wasn't
+going to let the mink get our trout whatever you fellows say," he added
+defiantly, "&#8212;and law or no law<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"Get along with your story, young man," interrupted Lannis; "&#8212;you can
+spill the rest out to the Commissioner."</p>
+
+<p>"All right, then. This is the way it happened down to the Scaur. I was
+eating lunch by the fish-stairs, looking up at 'em and kind of planning
+how to save cement, and not thinking about anybody being near me, when
+<em>something</em>  made me turn my head.... You know how it is in the woods....
+I kinda <em>felt</em>  somebody near. And, by cracky!&#8212;there stood a man with a
+big, black automatic pistol, and he had a bead on my belly.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[214]</a></span>"'Well,' said I, 'what's troubling <em>you</em>  and your gun, my friend?'&#8212;I
+was that astonished.</p>
+
+<p>"He was a slim-built, powerful guy with a foreign face and voice and
+way. He wanted to know if he had the honour&#8212;as he put it&#8212;to introduce
+himself to a detective or game constable, or a friend of Mike Clinch.</p>
+
+<p>"I told him I wasn't any of these, and that I worked in a private
+hatchery; and he called me a liar."</p>
+
+<p>Young Fry's face flushed and his voice began to quiver:</p>
+
+<p>"That's the way he misused me: and he backed me into the shanty and I
+had to sit down with both hands up. Then he filled my pack-basket with
+grub, and took my axe, and strapped my kit onto his back.... And
+talking all the time in his mean, sneery, foreign way&#8212;and I guess he
+thought he was funny, for he laughed at his own jokes.</p>
+
+<p>"He told me his name was Quintana, and that he ought to shoot me for a
+rat, but wouldn't because of the stink. Then he said he was going to do
+a quick job that the police were too cowardly to do;&#8212;that he was
+a-going to find Mike Clinch down to Drowned Valley and kill him; and if
+he could catch Mike's daughter, too, he'd spoil her face for life<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>The boy was breathing so hard and his rage made him so incoherent that
+Lannis took him by the shoulder and shook him:</p>
+
+<p>"What next?" demanded the Trooper impatiently. "Tell your story and quit
+thinking how you were misused!"</p>
+
+<p>"He told me to stay in the shanty for an hour or he'd do for me good,"
+cried Fry.... "Once I got up and went to the door; and there he stood
+by the brook, wolfing my lunch with both hands. I tell you he cursed and
+drove me,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[215]</a></span> like a dog, inside with his big pistol&#8212;my God&#8212;like a dog....</p>
+
+<p>"Then, the next time I took a chance he was gone.... And I beat it here
+to get me a rifle<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span> The boy broke down and sobbed: "He drove me
+around&#8212;like a dog&#8212;he did<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"You leave that to me," interrupted Lannis sharply. And, to Wier: "You
+and George had better get a gun apiece. That fellow <em>might</em>  come back
+here or go to Harrod Place if we starve him out."</p>
+
+<p>Wier said to Fry: "Go up to Harrod Place and tell Jansen your story and
+bring back two 45-70's.... And quit snivelling.... You may get a shot
+at him yet."</p>
+
+<p>Lannis had already ridden down to the brook. Now he jumped his horse
+across, pulled up, called back to Wier:</p>
+
+<p>"I think our man is making for Drowned Valley, all right. My mate,
+Stormont, telephoned me that some of his gang are there, and that Mike
+Clinch and his gang have them stopped on the other side! Keep your eye
+on Harrod Place!"</p>
+
+<p>And away he cantered into the North.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>Behind the curtains of her open window Eve Strayer, lying on her bed,
+had heard every word.</p>
+
+<p>Crouched there beside her pillow she peered out and saw Trooper Lannis
+ride away; saw the Fry boy start toward Harrod Place on a run; saw Ralph
+Wier watch them out of sight and then turn and re-enter the lodge.</p>
+
+<p>Wrapped in Darragh's big blanket robe she got off the bed and opened her
+chamber door as Wier was passing through the living-room.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[216]</a></span>"Please&#8212;I'd like to speak to you a moment," she called.</p>
+
+<p>Wier turned instantly and came to the partly open door.</p>
+
+<p>"I want to know," she said, "where I am."</p>
+
+<p>"Ma'am?"</p>
+
+<p>"What is this place?"</p>
+
+<p>"It's a hatchery<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"Whose?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ma'am?"</p>
+
+<p>"Whose lodge is this? Does it belong to Harrod Place?"</p>
+
+<p>"We're h-hootch runners, Miss<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span> stammered Wier, mindful of
+instructions, but making a poor business of deception; "&#8212;I and Hal
+Smith, we run a 'Easy One,' and we strip trout for a blind and sell to
+Harrod Place&#8212;Hal and I<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"<em>Who</em>  is Hal Smith?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Ma'am?"</p>
+
+<p>The girl's flower-blue eyes turned icy: "Who is the man who calls
+himself Hal Smith?" she repeated.</p>
+
+<p>Wier looked at her, red and dumb.</p>
+
+<p>"Is he a Trooper in plain clothes?" she demanded in a bitter voice. "Is
+he one of the Commissioner's spies? Are <em>you</em>  one, too?"</p>
+
+<p>Wier gazed miserably at her, unable to formulate a convincing lie.</p>
+
+<p>She flushed swiftly as a terrible suspicion seized her:</p>
+
+<p>"Is this Harrod property? Is Hal Smith old Harrod's heir? <em>Is</em>  he?"</p>
+
+<p>"My God, Miss<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"He <em>is</em> !"</p>
+
+<p>"Listen, Miss<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[217]</a></span>She flung open the door and came out into the living-room.</p>
+
+<p>"Hal Smith is that nephew of old Harrod," she said calmly. "His name is
+Darragh. And you are one of his wardens.... And I can't stay here. Do
+you understand?"</p>
+
+<p>Wier wiped his hot face and waited. The cat was out; there was a hole in
+the bag; and he knew there was no use in such lies as he could tell.</p>
+
+<p>He said: "All I know, Miss, is that I was to look after you and get you
+whatever you want<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"I want my clothes!"</p>
+
+<p>"Ma'am?"</p>
+
+<p>"My <em>clothes</em> !" she repeated impatiently. "I've <em>got</em>  to have them!"</p>
+
+<p>"Where are they, ma'am?" asked the bewildered man.</p>
+
+<p>At the same moment the girl's eyes fell on a pile of men's sporting
+clothing&#8212;garments sent down from Harrod Place to the Lodge&#8212;lying on a
+leather lounge near a gun-rack.</p>
+
+<p>Without a glance at Wier, Eve went to the heap of clothing, tossed it
+about, selected cords, two pairs of woollen socks, grey shirt, puttees,
+shoes, flung the garments through the door into her own room, followed
+them, and locked herself in.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>When she was dressed&#8212;the two heavy pairs of socks helping to fit her
+feet to the shoes&#8212;she emptied her handful of diamonds, sapphires and
+emeralds, including the Flaming Jewel, into the pockets of her breeches.</p>
+
+<p>Now she was ready. She unlocked her door and went out, scarcely limping
+at all, now.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[218]</a></span>Wier gazed at her helplessly as she coolly chose a rifle and
+cartridge-belt at the gun-rack.</p>
+
+<p>Then she turned on him as still and dangerous as a young puma:</p>
+
+<p>"Tell Darragh he'd better keep clear of Clinch's," she said. "Tell him I
+always thought he was a rat. Now I know he's one."</p>
+
+<p>She plunged one slim hand into her pocket and drew out a diamond.</p>
+
+<p>"Here," she said insolently. "This will pay your <em>gentleman</em>  for his gun
+and clothing."</p>
+
+<p>She tossed the gem onto a table, where it rolled, glittering.</p>
+
+<p>"For heaven's sake, Miss<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span> burst out Wier, horrified, but she cut him
+short:</p>
+
+<p>"&#8212;He may keep the change," she said. "We're no swindlers at Clinch's
+Dump!"</p>
+
+<p>Wier started forward as though to intercept her. Eve's eyes flamed. And
+he stood still. She wrenched open the door and walked out among the
+silver birches.</p>
+
+<p>At the edge of the brook she stood a moment, coolly loading the magazine
+of her rifle. Then, with one swift glance of hatred, flung at the place
+that Harrod's money had built, she sprang across the brook, tossed her
+rifle to her shoulder, and passed lithely into the golden wilderness of
+poplar and silver birch.</p>
+
+
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<p>Quintana, on a fox-trot along the rock-trail into Drowned Valley, now
+thoroughly understood that it was the only<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[219]</a></span> sanctuary left him for the
+moment. Egress to the southward was closed; to the eastward, also; and
+he was too wary to venture westward toward Ghost Lake.</p>
+
+<p>No, the only temporary safety lay in the swamps of Drowned Valley.</p>
+
+<p>And there, he decided as he jogged along, if worse came to worst and
+starvation drove him out, he'd settle matters with Mike Clinch and break
+through to the north.</p>
+
+<p>He meant to settle matters with Mike Clinch anyway. He was not afraid of
+Clinch; not really afraid of anybody. It had been the dogs that
+demoralised Quintana. He'd had no experience with hunting hounds,&#8212;did
+not know what to expect,&#8212;how to man&#339;uvre. If only he could have
+<em>seen</em>  these beasts that filled the forest with their hob-goblin
+outcries&#8212;if he could have had a good look at the creatures who gave
+forth that weird, crazed, melancholy volume of sound!<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;</span></p>
+
+<p>"Bon!" he said coolly to himself. "It was a crisis of nerves which I
+experience. Yes.... I should have shot him, that fat Sard. Yes....
+Only those damn dog<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;</span> And now he shall die an' rot&#8212;that fat Sard&#8212;all
+by himse'f, parbleu!&#8212;like one big dead thing all alone in the wood....
+A puddle of guts full of diamonds! Ah!&#8212;mon dieu!&#8212;a million francs in
+gems that shine like festering stars in this damn wood till the world
+end. Ah, bah&#8212;nome de dieu de<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"Halte l&#224;!" came a sharp voice from the cedar fringe in front. A pause,
+then recognition; and Henri Picquet walked out on the hard ridge beyond
+and stood leaning on his rifle and looking sullenly at his leader.</p>
+
+<p>Quintana came forward, carelessly, a disagreeable expression<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[220]</a></span> in his
+eyes and on his narrow lips, and continued on past Picquet.</p>
+
+<p>The latter slouched after his leader, who had walked over to the lean-to
+before which a pile of charred logs lay in cold ashes.</p>
+
+<p>As Picquet came up, Quintana turned on him, with a gesture toward the
+extinguished fire: "It is cold like hell," he said. "Why do you not have
+some fire?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not for me, non," growled Picquet, and jerked a dirty thumb in the
+direction of the lean-to.</p>
+
+<p>And there Quintana saw a pair of muddy boots protruding from a blanket.</p>
+
+<p>"It is Harry Beck, yes?" he inquired. Then <em>something</em>  about the boots
+and the blanket silenced him. He kept his eyes on them for a full
+minute, then walked into the lean-to. The blanket also covered Harry
+Beck's features and there was a stain on it where it outlined the
+prostrate man's features, making a ridge over the bony nose.</p>
+
+<p>After a moment Quintana looked around at Picquet:</p>
+
+<p>"So. He is dead. Yes?"</p>
+
+<p>Picquet shrugged: "Since noon, mon capitaine."</p>
+
+<p>"Comment?"</p>
+
+<p>"How shall I know? It was the fire, perhaps,&#8212;green wood or wet&#8212;it is
+no matter now.... I said to him, 'Pay attention, Henri; your wood makes
+too much smoke.' To me he reply I shall go to hell.... Well, there was
+too much smoke for me. I arise to search for wood more dry, when,
+crack!&#8212;they begin to shoot out there<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span> He waved a dirty hand toward
+the forest.</p>
+
+<p>"'Bon,' said I, 'Clinch, he have seen your damn smoke!'</p>
+
+<p>"'What shall I care?' he make reply, Henri Beck, to me.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[221]</a></span> 'Clinch he
+shall shoot and be damn to him. I cook me my d&#233;je&#251;ner all the same.'</p>
+
+<p>"I make representations to that Johnbull; he say to me that I am a frog,
+and other injuries, while he lay yet more wood on his sacr&#233; fire.</p>
+
+<p>"Then crack! crack! crack! and zing-gg!&#8212;whee-ee! come the big bullets
+of Clinch and his voyous yonder.</p>
+
+<p>"'Bon,' I say, 'me, I make my excuse to retire.'</p>
+
+<p>"Then Henri Beck he laugh and say, 'Hop it, frog!' And that is all he
+has find time to say, when crack! spat! Bien droit he has it&#8212;tenez, mon
+capitaine&#8212;here, over the left eye!... Like a beef surprise he go over,
+crash! thump! And like a beef that dies, the air bellows out from his
+big lungs<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>Picquet looked down at the dead comrade in a sort of weary compassion
+for such stupidity.</p>
+
+<p>"&#8212;So he pass, this ros-biff goddam Johnbull.... Me, I roll him in
+there.... Je ne sais pas pourquoi.... Then I put out the fire and
+leave."</p>
+
+<p>Quintana let his sneering glance rest on the dead a moment, and his thin
+lip curled immemorial contempt for the Anglo-Saxon.</p>
+
+<p>Then he divested himself of the basket-pack which he had stolen from the
+Fry boy.</p>
+
+<p>"Alors," he said calmly, "it has been Mike Clinch who shoot my frien'
+Beck. Bien."</p>
+
+<p>He threw a cartridge into the breech of his rifle, adjusted his
+ammunition belt <em>en bandouli&#232;re</em> , carelessly.</p>
+
+<p>Then, in a quiet voice: "My frien' Picquet, the time has now arrive when
+it become ver' necessary that we go from<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[222]</a></span> here away. Donc&#8212;I shall now
+go kill me my frien' Mike Clinch."</p>
+
+<p>Picquet, unastonished, gave him a heavy, bovine look of inquiry.</p>
+
+<p>Quintana said softly: "Me, I have enough already of this damn woods. Why
+shall we starve here when there lies our path?" He pointed north; his
+arm remained outstretched for a while.</p>
+
+<p>"Clinch, he is there," growled Picquet.</p>
+
+<p>"Also our path, l'ami Henri.... And, behind us, they hunt us now with
+<em>dogs</em> ."</p>
+
+<p>Picquet bared his big white teeth in fierce surprise. "Dogs?" he
+repeated with a sort of snarl.</p>
+
+<p>"That is how they now hunt us, my frien'&#8212;like they hunt the hare in the
+C&#244;te d'Or.... Me, I shall now reconnoitre&#8212;<em>that</em>  way!" And he looked
+where he was pointing, into the north&#8212;with smouldering eyes. Then he
+turned calmly to Picquet: "An' you, l'ami?"</p>
+
+<p>"At orders, mon capitaine."</p>
+
+<p>"C'est bien. Venez."</p>
+
+<p>They walked leisurely forward with rifles shouldered, following the hard
+ridge out across a vast and flooded land where the bark of trees
+glimmered with wet mosses.</p>
+
+<p>After a quarter of a mile the ridge broadened and split into two, one
+hog-back branching northeast! They, however, continued north.</p>
+
+<p>About twenty minutes later Picquet, creeping along on Quintana's left,
+and some sixty yards distant, discovered something moving in the woods
+beyond, and fired at it. Instantly two unseen rifles spoke from the
+woods ahead. Picquet was jerked clear around, lost his balance and
+nearly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[223]</a></span> fell. Blood was spurting from his right arm, between elbow and
+shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>He tried to lift and level his rifle; his arm collapsed and dangled
+broken and powerless; his rifle clattered to the forest floor.</p>
+
+<p>For a moment he stood there in plain view, dumb, deathly white; then he
+began screaming with fury while the big, soft-nosed bullets came
+streaming in all around him. His broken arm was hit again. His screaming
+ceased; he dragged out his big clasp-knife with his left hand and
+started running toward the shooting.</p>
+
+<p>As he ran, his mangled arm flopping like a broken wing, Byron Hastings
+stepped out from behind a tree and coolly shot him down at close
+quarters.</p>
+
+<p>Then Quintana's rifle exploded twice very quickly, and the Hastings boy
+stumbled sideways and fell sprawling. He managed to rise to his knees
+again; he even was trying to stand up when Quintana, taking his time,
+deliberately began to empty his magazine into the boy, riddling him limb
+and body and head.</p>
+
+<p>Down once more, he still moved his arms. Sid Hone reached out from
+behind a fallen log to grasp the dying lad's ankle and draw him into
+shelter, but Quintana reloaded swiftly and smashed Hone's left hand with
+the first shot.</p>
+
+<p>Then Jim Hastings, kneeling behind a bunch of juniper, fired a
+high-velocity bullet into the tree behind which Quintana stood; but
+before he could fire again Quintana's shot in reply came ripping through
+the juniper and tore a ghastly hole in the calf of his left leg,
+striking a blow that knocked young Hastings flat and paralysed as a dead
+flounder.</p>
+
+<p>A mile to the north, blocking the other exit from<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[224]</a></span> Drowned Valley, Mike
+Clinch, Harvey Chase, Cornelius Blommers, and Dick Berry stood listening
+to the shooting.</p>
+
+<p>"B'gosh," blurted out Chase, "it sounds like they was goin' through,
+Mike. B'gosh, it does!"</p>
+
+<p>Clinch's little pale eyes blazed, but he said in his soft, agreeable
+voice:</p>
+
+<p>"Stay right here, boys. Like as not some of 'em will come this way."</p>
+
+<p>The shooting below ceased. Clinch's nostrils expanded and flattened with
+every breath, as he stood glaring into the woods.</p>
+
+<p>"Harve," he said presently, "you an' Corny go down there an' kinda look
+around. And you signal if I'm wanted. G'wan, both o' you. Git!"</p>
+
+<p>They started, running heavily, but their feet made little noise on the
+moss.</p>
+
+<p>Berry came over and stood near Clinch. For ten minutes neither man
+moved. Clinch stared at the woods in front of him. The younger man's
+nervous glance flickered like a snake's tongue in every direction, and
+he kept moistening his lips with his tongue.</p>
+
+<p>Presently two shots came from the south. A pause; a rattle of shots from
+hastily emptied magazines.</p>
+
+<p>"G'wan down there, Dick!" said Clinch.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll be alone, Mike<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"Au' right. You do like I say; git along quick!"</p>
+
+<p>Berry walked southward a little way. He had turned very white under his
+tan.</p>
+
+<p>"Gol ding ye!" shouted Clinch, "take it on a lope or I'll kick the pants
+off'n ye!"</p>
+
+<p>Berry began to run, carrying his rifle at a trail.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[225]</a></span>For half an hour there was not a sound in the forests of Drowned Valley
+except in the dead timber where unseen woodpeckers hammered fitfully at
+the ghosts of ancient trees.</p>
+
+<p>Always Clinch's little pale eyes searched the forest twilight in front
+of him; not a falling leaf escaped him; not a chipmunk.</p>
+
+<p>And all the while Clinch talked to himself; his lips moved a little now
+and then, but uttered no sound:</p>
+
+<p>"All I want God should do," he repeated again and again, "is to just let
+Quintana come <em>my</em>  way. 'Tain't for because he robbed my girlie. 'Tain't
+for the stuff he carries onto him.... No, God, 'tain't them things. But
+it's what that there skunk done to my Evie.... O God, be you listenin'?
+He <em>hurt</em>  her, Quintana did. That's it. He misused her.... God, if you
+had seen my girlie's little bleeding feet!<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;</span> <em>That's</em>  the reason....
+'Tain't the stuff. I can work. I can save for to make my Evie a lady
+same's them high-steppers on Fifth Avenoo. I can moil and toil and slave
+an' run hootch&#8212;hootch<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;</span> They wuz wine 'n' fixin's into the Bible. It
+ain't you, God, it's them fanatics.... Nobody in my Dump wanted I
+should sell 'em more'n a bottle o' beer before this here prohybishun set
+us all crazy. 'Tain't right.... O God, don't hold a little hootch agin
+me when all I want of you is to let Quintana<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>The slightest noise behind him. He waited, turned slowly. Eve stood
+there.</p>
+
+<p>Hell died in his pale eyes as she came to him, rested silently in his
+gentle embrace, returned his kiss, laid her flushed, sweet cheek against
+his unshaven face.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[226]</a></span>"Dad, darling?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, my baby<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"You're watching to kill Quintana. But there's no use watching any
+longer."</p>
+
+<p>"Have the boys below got him?" he demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"They got one of his gang. Byron Hastings is dead. Jim is badly hurt;
+Sid Hone, too,&#8212;not so badly<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"Where's Quintana?"</p>
+
+<p>"Dad, he's gone.... But it don't matter. See here!&#8212;&#8212;" She dug her
+slender hand into her <a name="breeches" id="breeches"></a><ins title="missing ownership apostrophe in original">breeches'</ins> pocket and pulled out a little
+fistful of gems.</p>
+
+<p>Clinch, his powerful arm closing her shoulders, looked dully at the
+jewels.</p>
+
+<p>"You see, dad, there's no use killing Quintana. These are the things he
+robbed you of."</p>
+
+<p>"'Tain't them that matter.... I'm glad you got 'em. I allus wanted you
+should be a great lady, girlie. Them's the tickets of admission. You put
+'em in your pants. I gotta stay here a spell<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"Dad! Take them!"</p>
+
+<p>He took them, smiled, shoved them into his pocket.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it, girlie?" he asked absently, his pale eyes searching the
+woods ahead.</p>
+
+<p>"I've just told you," she said, "that the boys went in as far as
+Quintana's shanty. There was a dead man there, too; but Quintana has
+gone."</p>
+
+<p>Clinch said,&#8212;not removing his eyes from the forest: "If any o' them
+boys has let Quintana crawl through I'll kill <em>him</em> , too.... G'wan
+home, girlie. I gotta mosey&#8212;I gotta kinda loaf around f'r a spell<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"Dad, I want you to come back with me<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[227]</a></span>"You go home; you hear me, Eve? Tell Corny and Dick Berry to hook it for
+Owl Marsh and stop the Star Peak trails&#8212;both on 'em.... Can Sid and
+Jimmy walk?"</p>
+
+<p>"Jim can't<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"Well, let Harve take him on his back. You go too. You help fix Jimmy up
+at the house. He's a little fella, Jimmy Hastings is. Harve can tote
+him. And you go along<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"Dad, Quintana says he means to kill you! What is the use of hurting
+him? You have what he took<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"I gotta have more'n he took. But even that ain't enough. He couldn't
+pay for all he ever done to me, girlie.... I'm aimin' to draw on him on
+sight<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>Clinch's set visage relaxed into an alarming smile which flickered,
+faded, died in the wintry ferocity of his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Dad<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"G'wan home!" he interrupted harshly. "You want that Hastings boy to
+bleed to death?"</p>
+
+<p>She came up to him, not uttering a word, yet asking him with all the
+tenderness and eloquence of her eyes to leave this blood-trail where it
+lay and hunt no more.</p>
+
+<p>He kissed her mouth, infinitely tender, smiled; then, again prim and
+scowling:</p>
+
+<p>"G'wan home, you little scut, an' do what I told ye, or, by God, I'll
+cut a switch that'll learn ye good! Never a word, now! On yer way!
+G'wan!"</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>Twice she turned to look back. The second time, Clinch was slowly
+walking into the woods straight ahead of him. She waited; saw him go in;
+waited. After a while she continued on her way.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[228]</a></span>When she sighted the men below she called to Blommers and Dick Berry:</p>
+
+<p>"Dad says you're to stop Star Peak trail by Owl Marsh."</p>
+
+<p>Jimmy Hastings sat on a log, crying and looking down at his dead
+brother, over whose head somebody had spread a coat.</p>
+
+<p>Blommers had made a tourniquet for Jimmy out of a bandanna and a peeled
+stick.</p>
+
+<p>The girl examined it, loosened it for a moment, twisted it again, and
+bade Harvey Chase take him on his back and start for Clinch's.</p>
+
+<p>The boy began to sob that he didn't want his brother to be left out
+there all alone; but Chase promised to come back and bring him in before
+night.</p>
+
+<p>Sid Hone came up, haggard from pain and loss of blood, resting his
+mangled hand in the sling of his cartridge-belt.</p>
+
+<p>Berry and Blommers were already starting across toward Owl Marsh; and
+the latter, passing by, asked Eve where Mike was.</p>
+
+<p>"He went into Drowned Valley by the upper outlet," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"He'll never find no one in them logans an' sinks," muttered Chase,
+squatting to hoist Jimmy Hastings to his broad back.</p>
+
+<p>"I guess he'll be over Star Peak side by sundown," nodded Blommers.</p>
+
+<p>Eve watched him slouching off into the woods, followed sullenly by
+Berry. Then she looked down at the dead man in silence.</p>
+
+<p>"Be you ready, Eve?" grunted Chase.</p>
+
+<p>She turned with a heavy heart to the home trail; but her<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[229]</a></span> mind was
+passionately with Clinch in the spectral forests of Drowned Valley.</p>
+
+
+<h3>III</h3>
+
+<p>And Clinch's mind was on her. All else&#8212;his watchfulness, his stealthy
+advance&#8212;all the alertness of eye and ear, all the subtlety, the
+cunning, the infinite caution&#8212;were purely instinctive mechanics.</p>
+
+<p>Somewhere in this flooded twilight of gigantic trees was Jos&#233; Quintana.
+Knowing that, he dismissed that fact from his mind and turned his
+thoughts to Eve.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes his lips moved. They usually did when he was arguing with God
+or calling his Creator's attention to the justice of his case. His <em>two</em>
+cases&#8212;each, to him, a cause c&#233;l&#232;bre; the matter of Harrod; the affair
+of Quintana.</p>
+
+<p>Many a time he had pleaded these two causes before the Most High.</p>
+
+<p>But now his thoughts were chiefly concerned with Eve&#8212;with the problem
+of her future&#8212;his master passion&#8212;this daughter of the dead wife he had
+loved.</p>
+
+<p>He sighed unconsciously; halted.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Lord," he concluded, in his wordless way, "my girlie has gotta
+have a chance if I gotta go to hell for it. That's sure as shootin'....
+Amen."</p>
+
+<p>At that instant he saw Quintana.</p>
+
+<p>Recognition was instant and mutual. Neither man stirred. Quintana was
+standing beside a giant hemlock. His pack lay at his feet.</p>
+
+<p>Clinch had halted&#8212;always the mechanics!&#8212;close to a great ironwood
+tree.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[230]</a></span>Probably both men knew that they could cover themselves before the other
+moved a muscle. Clinch's small, light eyes were blazing; Quintana's
+black eyes had become two slits.</p>
+
+<p>Finally: "You&#8212;dirty&#8212;skunk," drawled Clinch in his agreeably misleading
+voice, "by Jesus Christ I got you now."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah&#8212;h," said Quintana, "thees has happen ver' nice like I expec'....
+Always I say myse'f, yet a little patience, Jos&#233;, an' one day you shall
+meet thees fellow Clinch, who has rob you.... I am ver' thankful to the
+good God<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>He had made the slightest of movements: instantly both men were behind
+their trees. Clinch, in the ferocious pride of woodcraft, laughed
+exultingly&#8212;filled the dim and spectral forest with his roar of
+laughter.</p>
+
+<p>"Quintana," he called out, "you're a-going to cash in. Savvy? You're
+a-going to hop off. An' first you gotta hear why. 'Tain't for the stuff.
+Naw! I hooked it off'n you; you hooked it off'n me; now I got it again.
+<em>That's</em>  all square.... No, 'tain't <em>that</em>  grudge, you green-livered
+whelp of a cross-bred, still-born slut! No! It's becuz you laid the heft
+o' your dirty little finger onto my girlie. 'N' now you gotta hop!"</p>
+
+<p>Quintana's sinister laughter was his retort. Then: "You damfool Clinch,"
+he said, "I got in my pocket what you rob of me. Now I kill you, and
+then I feel ver' well. I go home, live like some kings; yes. But you,"
+he sneered, "you shall not go home never no more. No. You shall remain
+in thees damn wood like ver' dead old rat that is all wormy.... H&#233;! I
+got a million dollaire&#8212;five million franc in my pocket. You shall learn
+what it cost to rob Jos&#233; Quintana! Unnerstan'?"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[231]</a></span>"You liar," said Clinch contemptuously, "I got them jools in my pants
+pocket<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>Quintana's derisive laugh cut him short: "I give you thee Flaming Jewel
+if you show me you got my gems in you pants pocket!"</p>
+
+<p>"I'll show you. Lay down your rifle so's I see the stock."</p>
+
+<p>"First you, my frien' Mike," said Quintana cautiously.</p>
+
+<p>Clinch took his rifle by the muzzle and shoved the stock into view so
+that Quintana could see it without moving.</p>
+
+<p>To his surprise, Quintana did the same, then coolly stepped a pace
+outside the shelter of his hemlock stump.</p>
+
+<p>"You show me now!" he called across the swamp.</p>
+
+<p>Clinch stepped into view, dug into his pocket, and, cupping both hands,
+displayed a glittering heap of gems.</p>
+
+<p>"I wanted you should know who's gottem," he said, "before you hop. It'll
+give you something to think over in hell."</p>
+
+<p>Quintana's eyes had become slits again. Neither man stirred. Then:</p>
+
+<p>"So you are buzzard, eh, Clinch? You feed on dead man's pockets, eh? You
+find Sard somewhere an' you feed." He held up the morocco case,
+emblazoned with the arms of the Grand Duchess of Esthonia, and shook it
+at Clinch.</p>
+
+<p>"In there is my share.... Not all. Ver' quick, now, I take yours,
+too<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>Clinch vanished and so did his rifle; and Quintana's first bullet struck
+the moss where the stock had rested.</p>
+
+<p>"You black crow!" jeered Clinch, laughing, "&#8212;I need that empty case of
+yours. And I'm going after it<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[232]</a></span>.... But it's because your filthy claw
+touched my girlie that you gotta hop!"</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>Twilight lay over the phantom wood, touching with pallid tints the
+flooded forest.</p>
+
+<p>So far only that one shot had been fired. Both men were still
+man&#339;uvring, always creeping in circles and always lining some great
+tree for shelter.</p>
+
+<p>Now, the gathering dusk was making them bolder and swifter; and twice,
+already, Clinch caught the shadow of a fading edge of something that
+vanished against the shadows too swiftly for a shot.</p>
+
+<p>Now Quintana, keeping a tree in line, brushed with his lithe back a
+leafless moose-bush that stood swaying as he avoided it.</p>
+
+<p>Instantly a stealthy hope seized him: he slipped out of his coat, spread
+it on the bush, set the naked branches swaying, and darted to his tree.</p>
+
+<p>Waiting, he saw that the grey blot his coat made in the dusk was still
+moving a little&#8212;just vibrating a little bit in the twilight. He touched
+the bush with his rifle barrel, then crouched almost flat.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly the red crash of a rifle lit up Clinch's visage for a fraction
+of a second. And Quintana's bullet smashed Clinch between the eyes.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>After a long while Quintana ventured to rise and creep forward.</p>
+
+<p>Night, too, came creeping like an assassin amid the ghostly trees.</p>
+
+<p>So twilight died in the stillness of Drowned Valley and the pall of
+night lay over all things,&#8212;living and dead alike.</p>
+
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[233]</a></span><a name="xi" id="xi"></a>
+<small><span class="smcap">Episode Eleven</span></small></h2>
+
+<h2>THE PLACE OF PINES</h2>
+
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+<p class="cap">THE last sound that Mike Clinch heard on earth was the detonation of his
+own rifle. Probably it was an agreeable sound to him. He lay there with
+a pleasant expression on his massive features. His watch had fallen out
+of his pocket.</p>
+
+<p>Quintana shined him with an electric torch; picked up the watch. Then,
+holding the torch in one hand, he went through the dead man's pockets
+very thoroughly.</p>
+
+<p>When Quintana had finished, both trays of the flat morocco case were
+full of jewels. And Quintana was full of wonder and suspicion.</p>
+
+<p>Unquietly he looked upon the dead&#8212;upon the glittering contents of the
+jewel-box,&#8212;but always his gaze reverted to the dead. The faintest
+shadow of a smile edged Clinch's lips. Quintana's lips grew graver. He
+said slowly, like one who does his thinking aloud:</p>
+
+<p>"What is it you have done to me, l'ami Clinch?... Are there truly then
+two sets of precious stones?&#8212;<em>two</em>  Flaming Jewels?&#8212;two gems of Erosite
+like there never has been in all thees worl' excep' only two more?...
+Or is one set false?... Have I here one set of paste facsimiles?... My
+frien' Clinch, why do you lie there an' smile at me so<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[234]</a></span> ver' funny ...
+like you are amuse?... I am wondering what you may have done to me, my
+frien' Clinch...."</p>
+
+<p>For a while he remained kneeling beside the dead. Then: "Ah, bah," he
+said, pocketing the morocco case and getting to his feet.</p>
+
+<p>He moved a little way toward the open trail, stopped, came back, stood
+his rifle against a tree.</p>
+
+<p>For a while he was busy with his sharp Spanish clasp knife, whittling
+and fitting together two peeled twigs. A cross was the ultimate result.
+Then he placed Clinch's hands palm to palm upon his chest, laid the
+cross on his breast, and shined the result with complacency.</p>
+
+<p>Then Quintana took off his hat.</p>
+
+<p>"L'ami Mike," he said, "you were a <em>man</em> !... Adios!"</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>Quintana put on his hat. The path was free. The world lay open before
+Jos&#233; Quintana once more;&#8212;the world, his hunting ground.</p>
+
+<p>"But," he thought uneasily, "what is it that I bring home this time? How
+much is paste? My God, how droll that smile of Clinch.... Which is the
+false&#8212;his jewels or mine? Dieu que j'&#233;tais b&#234;te!<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;</span> Me who have not
+suspec' that there are <em>two</em>  trays within my jewel-box!... I
+unnerstan'. It is ver' simple. In the top tray the false gems. Ah! Paste
+on top to deceive a thief!... Alors.... Then what I have recover of
+Clinch is the <em>real</em> !... Nom de Dieu!... How should I know? His smile
+is so ver' funny.... I think thees dead man make mock of me&#8212;all inside
+himse'f<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>So, in darkness, prowling south by west, shining the trail furtively,
+and loaded rifle ready, Quintana moved with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[235]</a></span> stealthy, unhurried tread
+out of the wilderness that had trapped him and toward the tangled
+border of that outer world which led to safe, obscure, uncharted
+labyrinths&#8212;old-world mazes, immemorial hunting grounds&#8212;haunted by
+men who prey.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>The night had turned frosty. Quintana, wet to the knees and very tired,
+moved slowly, not daring to leave the trail because of sink-holes.</p>
+
+<p>However, the trail led to Clinch's Dump, and sooner or later he must
+leave it.</p>
+
+<p>What he had to have was a fire; he realised that. Somewhere off the
+trail, in big timber if possible, he must build a fire and master this
+deadly chill that was slowly paralysing all power of movement.</p>
+
+<p>He knew that a fire in the forest, particularly in big timber, could be
+seen only a little way. He must take his chances with sink-holes and
+find some spot in the forest to build that fire.</p>
+
+<p>Who could discover him except by accident?</p>
+
+<p>Who would prowl the midnight wilderness? At thirty yards the fire
+would not be visible. And, as for the odour&#8212;well, he'd be gone
+before dawn.... Meanwhile, he must have that fire. He could wait no
+longer.</p>
+
+<p>He cut a pole first. Then he left the trail where a little spring flowed
+west, and turned to the right, shining the forest floor as he moved and
+sounding with his pole every wet stretch of moss, every strip of mud,
+every tiniest glimmer of water.</p>
+
+<p>At last he came to a place of pines, first growth giants towering into
+night, and, looking up, saw stars, infinitely<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[236]</a></span> distant, ... where
+perhaps those things called souls drifted like wisps of vapour.</p>
+
+<p>When the fire took, Quintana's thin dark hands had become nearly useless
+from cold. He could not have crooked finger to trigger.</p>
+
+<p>For a long time he sat close to the blaze, slowly massaging his torpid
+limbs, but did not dare strip off his foot-gear.</p>
+
+<p>Steam rose from puttee and heavy shoe and from the sodden woollen
+breeches. Warmth slowly penetrated. There was little smoke; the big dry
+branches were dead and bleached and he let the fire eat into them
+without using his axe.</p>
+
+<p>Once or twice he sighed, "Oh, my God," in a weary demi-voice, as though
+the content of well-being were permeating him.</p>
+
+<p>Later he ate and drank languidly, looking up at the stars, speculating
+as to the possible presence of Mike Clinch up there.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, the dirty thief," he murmured; "&#8212;nevertheless a man. Quel homme!
+Mais b&#234;te &#224; faire pleurer! Je l'ai bien trich&#233;, moi! Ha!"</p>
+
+<p>Quintana smiled palely as he thought of the coat and the gently-swaying
+bush&#8212;of the red glare of Clinch's shot, of the death-echo of his own
+shot.</p>
+
+<p>Then, uneasy, he drew out the morocco case and gazed at the two trays
+full of gems.</p>
+
+<p>The jewels blazed in the firelight. He touched them, moved them about,
+picked up several and examined them, testing the unset edges against his
+under lip as an expert tests jade.</p>
+
+<p>But he couldn't tell; there was no knowing. He replaced<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[237]</a></span> them, closed
+the case, pocketed it. When he had a chance he could try boiling water
+for one sort of trick. He could scratch one or two.... Sard would know.
+He wondered whether Sard had got away, not concerned except selfishly.
+However, there were others in Paris whom he could trust&#8212;at a price....</p>
+
+<p>Quintana rested both elbows on his knees and framed his dark face
+between both bony hands.</p>
+
+<p>What a chase Clinch had led him after the Flaming Jewel. And now Clinch
+lay dead in the forest&#8212;faintly smiling. At <em>what</em> ?</p>
+
+<p>In a very low, passionless voice, Quintana cursed monotonously as he
+gazed into the fire. In Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian, he cursed
+Clinch. After a little while he remembered Clinch's daughter, and he
+cursed her, elaborately, thoroughly, wishing her black mischance awake
+and asleep, living or dead.</p>
+
+<p>Darragh, too, he remembered in his curses, and did not slight him. And
+the trooper, Stormont&#8212;ah, he should have killed all of them when he had
+the chance.... And those two Baltic Russians, also, the girl duchess
+and her friend. Why on earth hadn't he made a clean job of it?
+Over-caution. A wary disinclination to stir up civilization by needless
+murder. But after all, old maxims, old beliefs, old truths are the best,
+God knows. The dead don't talk! And that's the wisest wisdom of all.</p>
+
+<p>"If," murmured Quintana fervently, "God gives me further opportunity to
+acquire a little property to comfort me in my old age, I shall leave no
+gossiping fool to do me harm with his tongue. No! I kill.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[238]</a></span>"And though they raise a hue and cry, dead tongues can not wag and I
+save myse'f much annoyance in the end."</p>
+
+<p>He leaned his back against the trunk of a massive pine.</p>
+
+<p>Presently Quintana slept after his own fashion&#8212;that is to say, looking
+closely at him one could discover a glimmer under his lowered eyelids.
+And he listened always in that kind of sleep. As though a shadowy part
+of him were detached from his body, and mounted guard over it.</p>
+
+<p>The inaudible movement of a wood-mouse venturing into the firelit circle
+awoke Quintana. Again a dropping leaf amid distant birches awoke him.
+Such things. And so he slept with wet feet to the fire and his rifle
+across his knees; and dreamed of Eve and of murder, and that the Flaming
+Jewel was but a mass of glass.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>At that moment the girl of whose white throat Quintana was dreaming, and
+whining faintly in his dreams, stood alone outside Clinch's Dump, rifle
+in hand, listening, fighting the creeping dread that touched her slender
+body at times&#8212;seemed to touch her very heart with frost.</p>
+
+<p>Clinch's men had gone on to Ghost Lake with their wounded and dead,
+where there was fitter shelter for both. All had gone on; nobody
+remained to await Clinch's home-coming except Eve Strayer.</p>
+
+<p>Black Care, that tireless squire of dames, had followed her from the
+time she had left Clinch, facing the spectral forests of Drowned Valley.</p>
+
+<p>An odd, unusual dread weighted her heart&#8212;something in emotions that she
+never before had experienced in time of danger. In it there was the
+deathly unease of premonition. But of what it was born she did not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[239]</a></span>
+understand,&#8212;perhaps of the strain of dangers passed&#8212;of the shock of
+discovery concerning Smith's identity with Darragh&#8212;Darragh!&#8212;the hated
+kinsman of Harrod the abhorred.</p>
+
+<p>Fiercely she wondered how much her lover knew about this miserable
+masquerade. Was Stormont involved in this deception&#8212;Stormont, the
+object of her first girl's passion&#8212;Stormont, for whom she would have
+died?</p>
+
+<p>Wretched, perplexed, fiercely enraged at Darragh, deadly anxious
+concerning Clinch, she had gone about cooking supper.</p>
+
+<p>The supper, kept warm on the range, still awaited the man who had no
+more need of meat and drink.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>Of the tragedy of Sard Eve knew nothing. There were no traces save in
+the disorder in the pantry and the bottles and chair on the veranda.</p>
+
+<p>Who had visited the place excepting those from whom she and Stormont had
+fled, did not appear. She had no idea why her step-father's mattress and
+bed-quilt lay in the pantry.</p>
+
+<p>Her heart heavy with ceaseless anxiety, Eve carried mattress and
+bed-clothes to Clinch's chamber, re-made his bed, wandered through the
+house setting it in order; then, in the kitchen, seated herself and
+waited until the strange dread that possessed her drove her out into the
+starlight to stand and listen and stare at the dark forest where all her
+dread seemed concentrated.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>It was not yet dawn, but the girl could endure the strain no longer.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[240]</a></span>With electric torch and rifle she started for the forest, almost running
+at first; then, among the first trees, moving with caution and in
+silence along the trail over which Clinch should long since have
+journeyed homeward.</p>
+
+<p>In soft places, when she ventured to flash her torch, foot-prints cast
+curious shadows, and it was hard to make out tracks so oddly distorted
+by the light. Prints mingled and partly obliterated other prints. She
+identified her own tracks leading south, and guessed at the others,
+pointing north and south, where they had carried in the wounded and had
+gone back to bring in the dead.</p>
+
+<p>But nowhere could she discover any impression resembling her
+step-father's,&#8212;that great, firm stride and solid imprint which so often
+she had tracked through moss and swale and which she knew so well.</p>
+
+<p>Once when she got up from her knees after close examination of the muddy
+trail, she became aware of the slightest taint in the night air&#8212;stood
+with delicate nostrils quivering&#8212;advanced, still conscious of the
+taint, listening, wary, every stealthy instinct alert.</p>
+
+<p>She had not been mistaken: somewhere in the forest there was smoke.
+Somewhere a fire was burning. It might not be very far away; it might be
+distant. <em>Whose fire?</em>  Her father's? Would a hunter of men build a fire?</p>
+
+<p>The girl stood shivering in the darkness. There was not a sound.</p>
+
+<p>Now, keeping her cautious feet in the trail by sense of touch alone, she
+moved on. Gradually, as she advanced, the odour of smoke became more
+distinct. She heard nothing, saw nothing; but there was a near reek of
+smoke in her nostrils and she stopped short.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[241]</a></span>After a little while in the intense silence of the forest she ventured
+to touch the switch of her torch, very cautiously.</p>
+
+<p>In the faint, pale lustre she saw a tiny rivulet flowing westward from a
+spring, and, beside it, in the mud, imprints of a man's feet.</p>
+
+<p>The tracks were small, narrow, slimmer than imprints made by any man she
+could think of. Under the glimmer of her torch they seemed quite fresh;
+contours were still sharp, some ready to crumble, and water stood in the
+heels.</p>
+
+<p>A little way she traced them, saw where their maker had cut a pole,
+peeled it; saw, farther on, where this unknown man had probed in moss
+and mud&#8212;peppered some particularly suspicious swale with a series of
+holes as though a giant woodcock had been "boring" there.</p>
+
+<p>Who was this man wandering all alone at night off the Drowned Valley
+trail and probing the darkness with a pole?</p>
+
+<p>She knew it was not her father. She knew that no native&#8212;none of her
+father's men&#8212;would behave in such a manner. Nor could any of these have
+left such narrow, almost delicate tracks.</p>
+
+<p>As she stole along, dimly shining the tracks, lifting her head
+incessantly to listen and peer into the darkness, her quick eye caught
+something ahead&#8212;something very slightly different from the wall of
+black obscurity&#8212;a vague hint of colour&#8212;the very vaguest tint scarcely
+perceptible at all.</p>
+
+<p>But she knew it was firelight touching the trunk of an unseen tree.</p>
+
+<p>Now, soundlessly over damp pine needles she crept. The scent of smoke
+grew strong in nostril and throat; the pale tint became palely reddish.
+All about her the blackness seemed palpable&#8212;seemed to touch her body
+with its weight;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[242]</a></span> but, ahead, a ruddy glow stained two huge pines. And
+presently she saw the fire, burning low, but redly alive. And, after a
+long, long while, she saw a man.</p>
+
+<p>He had left the fire circle. His pack and belted mackinaw still lay
+there at the foot of a great tree. But when, finally, she discovered
+him, he was scarcely visible where he crouched in the shadow of a
+tree-trunk, with his rifle half lowered at a ready.</p>
+
+<p>Had he heard her? It did not seem possible. Had he been crouching there
+since he made his fire? Why had he made it then&#8212;for its warmth could
+not reach him there. And why was he so stealthily watching&#8212;silent,
+unstirring, crouched in the shadows?</p>
+
+<p>She strained her eyes; but distance and obscurity made recognition
+impossible. And yet, somehow, every quivering instinct within her was
+telling her that the crouched and shadowy watcher beyond the fire was
+Quintana.</p>
+
+<p>And every concentrated instinct was telling her that he'd kill her if he
+caught sight of her; her heart clamoured it; her pulses thumped it in
+her ears.</p>
+
+<p>Had the girl been capable of it she could have killed him where he
+crouched. She thought of it, but knew it was not in her to do it. And
+yet Quintana had boasted that he meant to kill her father. That was what
+terribly concerned her. And there must be a way to stop that
+danger&#8212;some way to stop it short of murder,&#8212;a way to render this man
+harmless to her and hers.</p>
+
+<p>No, she could not kill him this way. Except in extremes she could not
+bring herself to fire upon any human creature. And yet this man must be
+rendered harmless&#8212;somehow&#8212;somehow&#8212;ah!&#8212;&#8212;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[243]</a></span>As the problem presented itself its solution flashed into her mind. Men
+of the wilderness knew how to take dangerous creatures alive. To take a
+dangerous and reasoning human was even less difficult, because reason
+makes more mistakes than does instinct.</p>
+
+<p>Stealthily, without a sound, the girl crept back through the shadows
+over the damp pine needles, until, peering fearfully over her shoulder,
+she saw the last ghost-tint of Quintana's fire die out in the terrific
+dark behind.</p>
+
+<p>Slowly, still, she moved until her sensitive feet felt the trodden path
+from Drowned Valley.</p>
+
+<p>Now, with torch flaring, she ran, carrying her rifle at a trail. Before
+her, here and there, little night creatures fled&#8212;a humped-up raccoon,
+dazzled by the glare, a barred owl still struggling with its wood-rat
+kill.</p>
+
+<p>She ran easily,&#8212;an agile, tireless young thing, part of the swiftness
+and silence of the woods&#8212;part of the darkness, the sinuous celerity,
+the ominous hush of wide, still places&#8212;part of its very blood and pulse
+and hot, sweet breath.</p>
+
+<p>Even when she came out among the birches by Clinch's Dump she was
+breathing evenly and without distress. She ran to the kitchen door but
+did not enter. On pegs under the porch a score or more of rusty traps
+hung. She unhooked the largest, wound the chain around it, tucked it
+under her left arm and started back.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>When at last she arrived at the place of pines again, and saw the far,
+spectral glimmer of Quintana's fire, the girl was almost breathless. But
+dawn was not very far away<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[244]</a></span> and there remained little time for the
+taking alive of a dangerous man.</p>
+
+<p>Where two enormous pines grew close together near a sapling, she knelt
+down, and, with both hands, scooped out a big hollow in the immemorial
+layers of pine needles. Here she placed her trap. It took all her
+strength and skill to set it; to fasten the chain around the base of the
+sapling pine.</p>
+
+<p>And now, working with only the faintest glimmer of her torch, she
+covered everything with pine needles.</p>
+
+<p>It was not possible to restore the forest floor; the place remained
+visible&#8212;a darker, rougher patch on the bronzed carpet of needles beaten
+smooth by decades of rain and snow. No animal would have trodden that
+suspicious space. But it was with man she had to deal&#8212;a dangerous but
+reasoning man with few and atrophied instincts&#8212;and with no experience
+in traps; and, therefore, in no dread of them.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>Before she started she had thrown a cartridge into the breech of her
+rifle.</p>
+
+<p>Now she pocketed her torch and seated herself between the two big pines
+and about three feet behind the hidden trap.</p>
+
+<p>Dawn was not far away. She looked upward through high pine-tops where
+stars shone; and saw no sign of dawn. But the watcher by the fire beyond
+was astir, now, in the imminence of dawn, and evidently meant to warm
+himself before leaving.</p>
+
+<p>Eve could hear him piling dry wood on the fire; the light on the tree
+trunks grew redder; a pungent reek of smoke<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[245]</a></span> was drawn through the
+forest aisles. She sniffed it, listened, and watched, her rifle across
+her knees.</p>
+
+<p>Eve never had been afraid of anything. She was not afraid of this man.
+If it came to combat she would have to kill. It never entered her mind
+to fear Quintana's rifle. Even Clinch was not as swift with a rifle as
+she.... Only Stormont had been swifter&#8212;thank God!<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;</span></p>
+
+<p>She thought of Stormont&#8212;sat there in the terrific darkness loving him,
+her heart of a child tremulous with adoration.</p>
+
+<p>Then the memory of Darragh pushed in and hot hatred possessed her.
+Always, in her heart, she had distrusted the man.</p>
+
+<p>Instinct had warned her. A spy! What evil had he worked already?
+Where was her father? Evidently Quintana had escaped him at Drowned
+Valley.... Quintana was yonder by his fire, preparing to flee the
+wilderness where men hunted him.... But where was Clinch? Had this
+sneak, Darragh, betrayed him? Was Clinch already in the clutch of
+the State Troopers? Was he in <em>jail</em> ?</p>
+
+<p>At the thought the girl felt slightly faint, then a rush of angry blood
+stung her face in the darkness. Except for game and excise violations
+the stories they told about Clinch were lies.</p>
+
+<p>He had nothing to fear, nothing to be ashamed of. Harrod had driven him
+to lawlessness; the Government took away what was left him to make a
+living. He had to live. What if he did break laws made by millionaire
+and fanatic! What of it? He had her love and her respect&#8212;and her deep,
+deep pity. And these were enough for any girl to fight for.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[246]</a></span>Dawn spread a silvery light above the pines, but Quintana's fire still
+reddened the tree trunks; and she could hear him feeding it at
+intervals.</p>
+
+<p>Finally she saw him. He came out on the edge of the ruddy ring of light
+and stood peering around at the woods where already a vague greyness was
+revealing nearer trees.</p>
+
+<p>When, finally, he turned his back and looked at his fire, Eve rose and
+stood between the two big pines. Behind one of them she placed her
+rifle.</p>
+
+<p>It was growing lighter in the woods. She could see Quintana in the fire
+ring and outside,&#8212;saw him go to the spring rivulet, lie flat, drink,
+then, on his knees, wash face and hands in the icy water.</p>
+
+<p>It became plain to her that he was nearly ready to depart. She watched
+him preparing. And now she could see him plainly, and knew him to be
+Quintana and no other.</p>
+
+<p>He had a light basket pack. He put some articles into it, stretched
+himself and yawned, pulled on his hat, hoisted the pack and fastened it
+to his back, stood staring at the fire for a long time; then, with a
+sudden upward look at the zenith where a slight flush stained a cloud,
+he picked up his rifle.</p>
+
+<p>At that moment Eve called to him in a clear and steady voice.</p>
+
+<p>The effect on Quintana was instant; he was behind a tree before her
+voice ceased.</p>
+
+<p>"Hallo! Hi! You over there!" she called again. "This is Eve Strayer. I'm
+looking for Clinch! He hasn't been home all night. Have you seen him?"</p>
+
+<p>After a moment she saw Quintana's head watching her,&#8212;not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[247]</a></span> at the
+shoulder-height of a man but close to the ground and just above the tree
+roots.</p>
+
+<p>"Hey!" she cried. "What's the matter with you over there? I'm asking you
+who you are and if you've seen my father?"</p>
+
+<p>After a while she saw Quintana coming toward her, circling, creeping
+swiftly from tree to tree.</p>
+
+<p>As he flitted through the shadows the trees between which she was
+standing hid her from him a moment. Instantly she placed her rifle on
+the ground and kicked the pine needles over it.</p>
+
+<p>As Quintana continued his encircling man&#339;uvres Eve, apparently
+perplexed, walked out into the clear space, putting the concealed trap
+between her and Quintana, who now came stealthily toward her from the
+rear.</p>
+
+<p>It was evident that he had reconnoitred sufficiently to satisfy himself
+that the girl was alone and that no trick, no ambuscade, threatened him.</p>
+
+<p>And now, from behind a pine, and startlingly near her, came Quintana,
+moving with confident grace yet holding his rifle ready for any
+emergency.</p>
+
+<p>Eve's horrified stare was natural; she had not realised that any man
+could wear so evil a smile.</p>
+
+<p>Quintana stopped short a dozen paces away. The dramatic in him demanded
+of the moment its full value. He swept off his hat with a flourish,
+bowed deeply where he stood.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!" he cried gaily, "the happy encounter, Se&#241;orita. God is too good to
+us. And it was but a moment since my thoughts were of you! I swear
+it!&#8212;&#8212;"</p>
+
+<p>It was not fear; it was a sort of slow horror of this man<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[248]</a></span> that began to
+creep over the girl. She stared at his brilliant eyes, at his thick
+mouth, too red&#8212;shuddered slightly. But the toe of her right foot
+touched the stock of her rifle under the pine needles.</p>
+
+<p>She held herself under control.</p>
+
+<p>"So it's you," she said unsteadily. "I thought our people had caught
+you."</p>
+
+<p>Quintana laughed: "Charming child," he said, "it is <em>I</em>  who have caught
+your people. And now, my God!&#8212;I catch <em>you</em> !... It is ver' funny. Is
+it not?"</p>
+
+<p>She looked straight into Quintana's black eyes, but the look he returned
+sent the shamed blood surging into her face.</p>
+
+<p>"By God," he said between his white, even teeth,&#8212;"by God!"</p>
+
+<p>Staring at her he slowly disengaged his pack, let it fall behind him on
+the pine needles; rested his rifle on it; slipped out of his mackinaw
+and laid that across his rifle&#8212;always keeping his brilliant eyes on
+her.</p>
+
+<p>His lips tightened, the muscles in his dark face grew tense; his eyes
+became a blazing insult.</p>
+
+<p>For an instant he stood there, unencumbered, a wiry, graceful shape in
+his woollen breeches, leggings, and grey shirt open at the throat. Then
+he took a step toward her. And the girl watched him, fascinated.</p>
+
+<p>One pace, two, a third, a fourth&#8212;the girl's involuntary cry echoed the
+stumbling crash of the man thrashing, clawing, scrambling in the
+clenched jaws of the bear-trap amid a whirl of flying pine needles.</p>
+
+<p>He screamed once, tried to rise, turned blindly to seize the jaws that
+clutched him; and suddenly crouched, loose-jointed,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[249]</a></span> cringing like a
+trapped wolf&#8212;the true fatalist among our lesser brothers.</p>
+
+<p>Eve picked up her rifle. She was trembling violently. Then, mastering
+her emotion, she walked over to the pack, placed Quintana's rifle and
+mackinaw in it, coolly hoisted it to her shoulders and buckled it there.</p>
+
+<p>Over her shoulder she kept an eye on Quintana who crouched where he had
+fallen, unstirring, his deadly eyes watching her.</p>
+
+<p>She placed the muzzle of her rifle against his stomach, rested it so,
+holding it with one hand, and her finger at the trigger.</p>
+
+<p>At her brief order he turned out both breeches pockets. She herself
+stooped and drew the Spanish clasp-knife from its sheath at his belt,
+took a pistol from the holster, another out of his hip pocket. Reaching
+up and behind her, she dropped these into the pack.</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe," she said slowly, "your ankle is broken. I'll send somebody from
+Ghost Lake to find you. But whether you've a broken bone or not you'll
+not go very far, Quintana.... After I'm gone you'll be able to free
+yourself. But you can't get away. You'll be followed and caught.... So
+if you can walk at all you'd better go in to Ghost Lake and give
+yourself up.... It's that or starvation.... You've got a watch....
+Don't stir or touch that trap for half an hour.... And that's all."</p>
+
+<p>As she moved away toward the Drowned Valley trail she looked back at
+him. His face was bloodless but his black eyes blazed.</p>
+
+<p>"If ever you come into this forest again," she said, "my father will
+surely kill you."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[250]</a></span>To her horror Quintana slowly grinned at her. Then, still grinning, he
+placed the forefinger of his left hand between his teeth and bit it.</p>
+
+<p>Whatever he meant by the gesture it seemed unclean, horrible; and the
+girl hurried on, seized with an overwhelming loathing through which a
+sort of terror pulsated like evil premonition in a heavy and tortured
+heart.</p>
+
+<p>Straight into the fire of dawn she sped. A pale primrose light glimmered
+through the woods; trees, bushes, undergrowth turned a dusky purple.
+Already the few small clouds overhead were edged with fiery rose.</p>
+
+<p>Then, of a sudden, a shaft of flame played over the forest. The sun had
+risen.</p>
+
+<p>Hastening, she searched the soft path for any imprint of her father's
+foot. And even in the vain search she hoped to find him at home&#8212;hurried
+on burdened with two rifles and a pack, still all nervous and aquiver
+from her encounter with Quintana.</p>
+
+<p>Surely, surely, she thought, if he had missed Quintana in Drowned Valley
+he would not linger in that ghastly place; he'd come home, call in his
+men, take counsel perhaps<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;</span></p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>Mist over Star Pond was dissolving to a golden powder in the blinding
+glory of the sun. The eastern window-panes in Clinch's Dump glittered as
+though the rooms inside were all on fire.</p>
+
+<p>Down through withered weeds and scrub she hurried, ran across the grass
+to the kitchen door which swung ajar under its porch.</p>
+
+<p>"Dad!" she called, "Dad!"</p>
+
+<p>Only her own frightened voice echoed in the empty house.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[251]</a></span> She climbed
+the stairs to his room. The bed lay undisturbed as she had made it. He
+was not in any of the rooms; there were no signs of him.</p>
+
+<p>Slowly she descended to the kitchen. He was not there. The food she had
+prepared for him had become cold on a chilled range.</p>
+
+<p>For a long while she stood staring through the window at the sunlight
+outside. Probably, since Quintana had eluded him, he'd come home for
+something to eat.... Surely, now that Quintana had escaped, Clinch
+would come back for some breakfast.</p>
+
+<p>Eve slipped the pack from her back and laid it on the kitchen table.
+There was kindling in the wood-box. She shook down the cinders, laid a
+fire, soaked it with kerosene, lighted it, filled the kettle with fresh
+water.</p>
+
+<p>In the pantry she cut some ham, and found eggs, condensed milk, butter,
+bread, and an apple pie. After she had ground the coffee she placed all
+these on a tray and carried them into the kitchen.</p>
+
+<p>Now there was nothing more to do until her father came, and she sat down
+by the kitchen table to wait.</p>
+
+<p>Outside the sunlight was becoming warm and vivid. There had been no
+frost after all&#8212;or, at most, merely a white trace in the shadow&#8212;on a
+fallen plank here and there&#8212;but not enough to freeze the ground. And,
+in the sunshine, it all quickly turned to dew, and glittered and
+sparkled in a million hues and tints like gems&#8212;like that handful of
+jewels she had poured into her father's joined palms&#8212;yesterday&#8212;there
+at the ghostly edge of Drowned Valley.</p>
+
+<p>At the memory, and quite mechanically, she turned in her chair and drew
+Quintana's basket pack toward her.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[252]</a></span>First she lifted out his rifle, examined it, set it against the window
+sill. Then, one by one, she drew out two pistols, loaded; the murderous
+Spanish clasp-knife; an axe; a fry-pan and a tin pail, and the rolled-up
+mackinaw.</p>
+
+<p>Under these the pack seemed to contain nothing except food and
+ammunition; staples in sacks and a few cans&#8212;lard, salt, tea&#8212;such
+things.</p>
+
+<p>The cartridge boxes she piled up on the table; the food she tossed into
+a tin swill bucket.</p>
+
+<p>About the effects of this man it seemed to her as though something
+unclean lingered. She could scarcely bear to handle them,&#8212;threw them
+from her with disgust.</p>
+
+<p>The garment, also&#8212;the heavy brown and green mackinaw&#8212;she disliked to
+touch. To throw it out doors was her intention; but, as she lifted the
+coat, it unrolled and some things fell from the pockets to the kitchen
+table,&#8212;money, keys, a watch, a flat leather case<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;</span></p>
+
+<p>She looked stupidly at the case. It had a coat of arms emblazoned on it.</p>
+
+<p>Still, stupidly and as though dazed, she laid one hand on it, drew it to
+her, opened it.</p>
+
+<p>The Flaming Jewel blazed in her face amid a heap of glittering gems.</p>
+
+<p>Still she seemed slow to comprehend&#8212;as though understanding were
+paralysed.</p>
+
+<p>It was when her eyes fell upon the watch that her heart seemed to stop.
+Suddenly her stunned senses were lighted as by an infernal flare....
+Under the awful blow she swayed upright to her feet, sick with fright,
+her eyes fixed on her father's watch.</p>
+
+<p>It was still ticking.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[253]</a></span>She did not know whether she cried out in anguish or was dumb under it.
+The house seemed to reel around her; under foot too.</p>
+
+<p>When she came to her senses she found herself outside the house, running
+with her rifle, already entering the woods. But, inside the barrier of
+trees, something blocked her way, stopped her,&#8212;a man&#8212;<em>her</em>  man!</p>
+
+<p>"Eve! In God's name!&#8212;&#8212;" he said as she struggled in his arms; but she
+fought him and strove to tear her body from his embrace:</p>
+
+<p>"They've killed Dad!" she panted,&#8212;"Quintana killed him. I didn't
+know&#8212;oh, I didn't know!&#8212;and I let Quintana go! Oh, Jack, Jack, he's at
+the Place of Pines! I'm going there to shoot him! Let me go!&#8212;he's
+killed Dad, I tell you! He had Dad's watch&#8212;and the case of jewels&#8212;they
+were in his pack on the kitchen table<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"Eve!"</p>
+
+<p>"Let me go!&#8212;&#8212;"</p>
+
+<p>"<em>Eve!</em> " He held her rigid a moment in his powerful grip, compelled her
+dazed, half-crazed eyes to meet his own:</p>
+
+<p>"You must come to your senses," he said. "Listen to what I say: they are
+<em>bringing in your father</em> ."</p>
+
+<p>Her dilated blue eyes never moved from his.</p>
+
+<p>"We found him in Drowned Valley at sunrise," said Stormont quietly. "The
+men are only a few rods behind me. They are carrying him out."</p>
+
+<p>Her lips made a word without sound.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Stormont in a low voice.</p>
+
+<p>There was a sound in the woods behind them. Stormont turned. Far away
+down the trail the men came into sight.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[254]</a></span>Then the State Trooper turned the girl very gently and placed one arm
+around her shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>Very slowly they descended the hill together. His equipment was shining
+in the morning sun: and the sun fell on Eve's drooping head, turning her
+chestnut hair to fiery gold.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>An hour later Trooper Stormont was at the Place of Pines.</p>
+
+<p>There was nothing there except an empty trap and the ashes of the dying
+fire beyond.</p>
+
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[255]</a></span><a name="xii" id="xii"></a>
+<small><span class="smcap">Episode Twelve</span></small></h2>
+
+<h2>HER HIGHNESS INTERVENES</h2>
+
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+<p class="cap">Toward noon the wind changed, and about one o'clock it began to snow.</p>
+
+<p>Eve, exhausted, lay on the sofa in her bedroom. Her step-father lay on a
+table in the dance hall below, covered by a sheet from his own bed. And
+beside him sat Trooper Stormont, waiting.</p>
+
+<p>It was snowing heavily when Mr. Lyken, the little undertaker from Ghost
+Lake, arrived with several assistants, a casket, and what he called
+"swell trimmings."</p>
+
+<p>Long ago Mike Clinch had selected his own mortuary site and had driven a
+section of iron pipe into the ground on a ferny knoll overlooking Star
+Pond. In explanation he grimly remarked to Eve that after death he
+preferred to be planted where he could see that Old Harrod's ghost
+didn't trespass.</p>
+
+<p>Here two of Mr. Lyken's able assistants dug a grave while the digging
+was still good; for if Mike Clinch was to lie underground that season
+there might be need of haste&#8212;no weather prophet ever having
+successfully forecast Adirondack weather.</p>
+
+<p>Eve, exhausted by shock and a sleepless night, was spared the more
+harrowing details of the coroner's visit and the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[256]</a></span> subsequent jaunty
+activities of Mr. Lyken and his efficient assistants.</p>
+
+<p>She had managed to dress herself in a black wool gown, intending to
+watch by Mike, but Stormont's blunt authority prevailed and she lay down
+for an hour's rest.</p>
+
+<p>The hour lengthened into many hours; the girl slept heavily on her sofa
+under blankets laid over her by Stormont.</p>
+
+<p>All that dark, snowy day she slept, mercifully unconscious of the
+proceedings below.</p>
+
+<p>In its own mysterious way the news penetrated the wilderness; and out of
+the desolation of forest and swamp and mountain drifted the people who
+somehow existed there&#8212;a few shy, half wild young girls, a dozen silent,
+lank men, two or three of Clinch's own people, who stood silently about
+in the falling snow and lent a hand whenever requested.</p>
+
+<p>One long shanked youth cut hemlock to line the grave; others erected a
+little fence of silver birch around it, making of the enclosure a
+"plot."</p>
+
+<p>A gaunt old woman from God knows where aided Mr. Lyken at intervals: a
+pretty, sulky-eyed girl with her slovenly, red-headed sister cooked for
+anybody who desired nourishment.</p>
+
+<p>When Mike was ready to hold the inevitable reception everybody filed
+into the dance hall. Mr. Lyken was master of ceremonies; Trooper
+Stormont stood very tall and straight by the head of the casket.</p>
+
+<p>Clinch wore a vague, indefinable smile and his best clothes,&#8212;that same
+smile which had so troubled Jos&#233; Quintana.</p>
+
+<p>Light was fading fast in the room when the last visitor<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[257]</a></span> took silent
+leave of Clinch and rejoined the groups in the kitchen, where were the
+funeral baked meats.</p>
+
+<p>Eve still slept. Descending again from his reconnaissance, Trooper
+Stormont encountered Trooper Lannis below.</p>
+
+<p>"Has anybody picked up Quintana's tracks?" inquired the former.</p>
+
+<p>"Not so far. An Inspector and two State Game Protectors are out beyond
+Owl Marsh. The Troopers from Five Lakes are on the job, and we have
+enforcement men along Drowned Valley from The Scaur to Harrod Place."</p>
+
+<p>"Does Darragh know?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. He's in there with Mike. He brought a lot of flowers from Harrod
+Place."</p>
+
+<p>The two troopers went into the dance hall where Darragh was arranging
+the flowers from his greenhouses.</p>
+
+<p>Stormont said quietly: "All right, Jim, but Eve must not know that they
+came from Harrod's."</p>
+
+<p>Darragh nodded: "How is she, Jack?"</p>
+
+<p>"All in."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know the story?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Mike went into Drowned Valley early last evening after Quintana.
+He didn't come back. Before dawn this morning Eve located Quintana, set
+a bear-trap for him, and caught him with the goods<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"What goods?" demanded Darragh sharply.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, she got his pack and found Mike's watch and jewelry in it<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"What jewelry?"</p>
+
+<p>"The jewels Quintana was after. But that was after she'd arrived at the
+Dump, here, leaving Quintana to get free of the trap and beat it.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[258]</a></span>"That's how I met her&#8212;half crazed, going to find Quintana again. We'd
+found Mike in Drowned Valley and were bringing him out when I ran into
+Eve.... I brought her back here and called Ghost Lake.... They haven't
+picked up Quintana's tracks so far."</p>
+
+<p>After a silence: "Too bad this snow came so late," remarked Trooper
+Lannis. <a name="but2" id="but2"></a><ins title="original omitted opening quotation mark">"But</ins> we ought to get Quintana anyway."</p>
+
+<p>Darragh went over and looked silently at Mike Clinch.</p>
+
+<p>"I liked you," he said under his breath. "It wasn't your fault. And it
+wasn't mine, Mike.... I'll try to square things. Don't worry."</p>
+
+<p>He came back slowly to where Stormont was standing near the door:</p>
+
+<p>"Jack," he said, "you can't marry Eve on a Trooper's pay. Why not quit
+and take over the Harrod estate?... You and I can go into business
+together later if you like."</p>
+
+<p>After a pause: "That's rather wonderful of you, Jim," said Stormont,
+"but you don't know what sort of business man I'd make<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"I know what sort of officer you made.... I'm taking no chance.... And
+I'll make my peace with Eve&#8212;or somebody will do it for me.... Is it
+settled then?"</p>
+
+<p>"Thanks," said Trooper Stormont, reddening. They clasped hands. Then
+Stormont went about and lighted the candles in the room. Clinch's face,
+again revealed, was still faintly amused at something or other. The dead
+have much to be amused at.</p>
+
+<p>As Darragh was about to go, Stormont said: "We're burying Clinch at
+eleven to-morrow morning. The Ghost Lake Pilot officiates."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[259]</a></span>"I'll come if it won't upset Eve," said Darragh.</p>
+
+<p>"She won't notice anybody, I fancy," remarked Stormont.</p>
+
+<p>He stood by the veranda and watched Darragh take the Lake Trail through
+the snow. Finally the glimmer of his swinging lantern was lost in the
+woods and Stormont mounted the stairs once more, stood silently by Eve's
+open door, realised she was still heavily asleep, and seated himself on
+a chair outside her door to watch and wait.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>All night long it snowed hard over the Star Pond country, and the late
+grey light of morning revealed a blinding storm pelting a white robed
+world.</p>
+
+<p>Toward ten o'clock, Stormont, on guard, noticed that Eve was growing
+restless.</p>
+
+<p>Downstairs the flotsam of the forest had gathered again: Mr. Lyken was
+there in black gloves; the Reverend Laomi Smatter had arrived in a
+sleigh from Ghost Lake. Both were breakfasting heavily.</p>
+
+<p>The pretty, sulky-faced girl fetched a tray and placed Eve's breakfast
+on it; and Trooper Stormont carried it to her room.</p>
+
+<p>She was awake when he entered. He set the tray on the table. She put
+both arms around his neck.</p>
+
+<p>"Jack," she murmured, her eyes tremulous with tears.</p>
+
+<p>"Everything has been done," he said. "Will you be ready by eleven? I'll
+come for you."</p>
+
+<p>She clung to him in silence for a while.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>At eleven he knocked on her door. She opened it. She wore her black wool
+gown and a black fur turban. Some<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[260]</a></span> of her pallor remained,&#8212;traces of
+tears and bluish smears under both eyes. But her voice was steady.</p>
+
+<p>"Could I see Dad a moment alone?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course."</p>
+
+<p>She took his arm: they descended the stairs. There seemed to be many
+people about but she did not lift her eyes until her lover led her into
+the dance hall where Clinch lay smiling his mysterious smile.</p>
+
+<p>Then Stormont left her alone there and closed the door.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>In a terrific snow-storm they buried Mike Clinch on the spot he had
+selected, in order that he might keep a watchful eye upon the
+trespassing ghost of old man Harrod.</p>
+
+<p>It blew and stormed and stormed, and the thin, nasal voice of "Rev.
+Smatter" was utterly lost in the wind. The slanting lances of snow drove
+down on the casket, building a white mound over the flowers, blotting
+the hemlock boughs from sight.</p>
+
+<p>There was no time to be lost now; the ground was freezing under a
+veering and bitter wind out of the west. Mr. Lyken's talented assistants
+had some difficulty in shaping the mound which snow began to make into a
+white and flawless monument.</p>
+
+<p>The last slap of the spade rang with a metallic jar across the lake,
+where snow already blotted the newly forming film of ice; the human
+denizens of the wilderness filtered back into it one by one; "Rev.
+Smatter" got into his sleigh, plainly concerned about the road; Mr.
+Lyken betrayed unprofessional haste in loading his wagon with his
+talented assistants and starting for Ghost Lake.</p>
+
+<p>A Game Protector or two put on snow-shoes when they<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[261]</a></span> departed. Trooper
+Lannis led out his horse and Stormont's, and got into the saddle.</p>
+
+<p>"I'd better get these beasts into Ghost Lake while I can," he said.
+"You'll follow on snow-shoes, won't you, Jack?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know. I may need a sleigh for Eve. She can't remain here all
+alone. I'll telephone the Inn."</p>
+
+<p>Darragh, in blanket outfit, a pair of snow-shoes on his back, a rifle in
+his mittened hand, came trudging up from the lake. He and Stormont
+watched Lannis riding away with the two horses.</p>
+
+<p>"He'll make it all right, but it's time he started," said the latter.</p>
+
+<p>Darragh nodded: "Some storm. Where is Eve?"</p>
+
+<p>"In her room."</p>
+
+<p>"What is she going to do, Jack?"</p>
+
+<p>"Marry me as soon as possible. She wants to stay here for a few days but
+I can't leave her here alone. I think I'll telephone to Ghost Lake for a
+sleigh."</p>
+
+<p>"Let me talk to her," said Darragh in a low voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think you'd better&#8212;at such a time?"</p>
+
+<p>"I think it's a good time. It will divert her mind, anyway. I want her
+to come to Harrod Place."</p>
+
+<p>"She won't," said Stormont grimly.</p>
+
+<p>"She might. Let me talk to her."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you realise how she feels toward you, Jim?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do, indeed. And I don't blame her. But let me tell you; Eve Strayer
+is the most honest and fair-minded girl I ever knew.... Except one....
+I'll take a chance that she'll listen to me.... Sooner or later she
+will be obliged to hear what I have to tell her.... But it will be
+easier<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[262]</a></span> for her&#8212;for everybody&#8212;if I speak to her now. Let me try,
+Jack."</p>
+
+<p>Stormont hesitated, looked at him, nodded. Darragh stood his rifle
+against the bench on the kitchen porch. They entered the house slowly.
+And met Eve descending the stairs.</p>
+
+<p>The girl looked at Darragh, astonished, then her pale face flushed with
+anger.</p>
+
+<p>"What are you doing in this house?" she demanded unsteadily. "Have you
+no decency, no shame?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," he said, "I am ashamed of what my kinsman has done to you and
+yours. That is partly why I am here."</p>
+
+<p>"You came here as a spy," she said with hot contempt. "You lied about
+your name; you lied about your purpose. You came here to betray Dad! If
+he'd known it he would have killed you!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, he would have. But&#8212;do you know why I came here, Eve?"</p>
+
+<p>"I've told you!"</p>
+
+<p>"And you are wrong. I didn't come here to betray Mike Clinch: I came to
+save him."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you suppose I believe a man who has lied to Dad?" she cried.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't ask you to, Eve. I shall let somebody else prove what I say. I
+don't blame you for your attitude. God knows I don't blame Mike Clinch.
+He stood up like a man to Henry Harrod.... All I ask is to undo some of
+the rotten things that my uncle did to you and yours. And that is partly
+why I came here."</p>
+
+<p>The girl said passionately: "Neither Dad nor I want anything from Harrod
+Place or from you! Do you suppose<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[263]</a></span> you can come here after Dad is dead
+and pretend you want to make amends for what your uncle did to us?"</p>
+
+<p>"Eve," said Darragh gravely, "I've made some amends already. You don't
+know it, but I have.... You may not believe it, but I liked your
+father. He was a real man. Had anybody done to me what Henry Harrod did
+to your father I'd have behaved as your father behaved; I'd never have
+budged from this spot; I'd have hunted where I chose; I'd have borne an
+implacable hatred against Henry Harrod and Harrod Place, and every soul
+in it!"</p>
+
+<p>The girl, silenced, looked at him without belief.</p>
+
+<p>He said: "I am not surprised that you distrust what I say. But the man
+you are going to marry was a junior officer in my command. I have no
+closer friend than Jack Stormont. Ask him whether I am to be believed."</p>
+
+<p>Astounded, the girl turned a flushed, incredulous face to Stormont.</p>
+
+<p>He said: "You may trust Darragh as you trust me. I don't know what he
+has to say to you, dear. But whatever he says will be the truth."</p>
+
+<p>Darragh said, gravely: "Through a misunderstanding your father came into
+possession of stolen property, Eve. He did not know it had been stolen.
+I did. But Mike Clinch would not have believed me if I had told him that
+the case of jewels in his possession had been stolen from a woman....
+Quintana stole them. By accident they came into your father's
+possession. I learned of this. I had promised this woman to recover her
+jewels.</p>
+
+<p>"I came here for that purpose, Eve. And for two reasons: first, because
+I learned that Quintana also was coming here to rob your father of these
+gems; second, because, when I<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[264]</a></span> knew your father, and knew <em>you</em> , I
+concluded that it would be an outrage to call on the police. It would
+mean prison for Clinch, misery and ruin for you, Eve. So&#8212;I tried to
+steal the jewels ... to save you both."</p>
+
+<p>He looked at Stormont, who seemed astonished.</p>
+
+<p>"To whom do these jewels belong, Jim?" demanded the trooper.</p>
+
+<p>"To the young Grand Duchess of Esthonia.... Do you remember that I
+befriended her over there?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you remember that the Reds were accused of burning her ch&#226;teau and
+looting it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I remember."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, it was Quintana and his gang of international criminals who did
+that," said Darragh drily.</p>
+
+<p>And, to Eve: "By accident this case of jewels, emblazoned with the coat
+of arms of the Grand Duchess of Esthonia, came into your father's
+possession. That is the story, Eve."</p>
+
+<p>There was a silence. The girl looked at Stormont, flushed painfully,
+looked at Darragh.</p>
+
+<p>Then, without a word, she turned, ascended the stairs, and reappeared
+immediately carrying the leather case.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, Mr. Darragh," she said simply; and laid the case in his
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>"But," said Darragh, "I want you to do a little more, Eve. The owner of
+these gems is my guest at Harrod Place. I want you to give them to her
+yourself."</p>
+
+<p>"I&#8212;I can't go to Harrod Place," stammered the girl.</p>
+
+<p>"Please don't visit the sins of Henry Harrod on me, Eve."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[265]</a></span>"I&#8212;don't. But&#8212;but that place<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>After a silence: "If Eve feels that way," began Stormont awkwardly, "I
+couldn't become associated with you in business, Jim<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"I'd rather sell Harrod Place than lose you!" retorted Darragh almost
+sharply. "I want to go into business with you, Jack&#8212;if Eve will permit
+me<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>She stood looking at Stormont, the heightened colour playing in her
+cheeks as she began to comprehend the comradeship between these two men.</p>
+
+<p>Slowly she turned to Darragh, offered her hand:</p>
+
+<p>"I'll go to Harrod Place," she said in a low voice.</p>
+
+<p>Darragh's quick smile brightened the sombre gravity of his face.</p>
+
+<p>"Eve," he said, "when I came over here this morning from Harrod Place I
+was afraid you would refuse to listen to me; I was afraid you would not
+even see me. And so I brought with me&#8212;somebody&#8212;to whom I felt certain
+you would listen.... I brought with me a young girl&#8212;a poor refugee
+from Russia, once wealthy, to-day almost penniless.... Her name is
+Theodorica.... Once she was Grand Duchess of Esthonia.... But this
+morning a clergyman from Five Lakes changed her name.... To such
+friends as you and Jack she is Ricca Darragh now ... and she's having a
+wonderful time on her new snow-shoes<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>He took Eve by one hand and Stormont by the other, and drew them to the
+kitchen door and kicked it open.</p>
+
+<p>Through the swirling snow, over on the lake-slope at the timber edge, a
+graceful, boyish figure in scarlet and white wool moved swiftly over the
+drifts with all the na&#239;ve delight of a child with a brand new toy.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[266]</a></span>As Darragh strode out into the open the distant figure flung up one arm
+in salutation and came racing over the drifts, her brilliant scarf
+flying.</p>
+
+<p>All aglow and a trifle breathless, she met Darragh just beyond the
+veranda, rested one mittened hand on his shoulder while he knelt and
+unbuckled her snow-shoes, stepped lightly from them and came forward to
+Eve with out-stretched hand and a sudden winning gravity in her lovely
+face.</p>
+
+<p>"We shall be friends, surely," she said in her quick, winning
+voice;&#8212;"because my husband has told me&#8212;and I am so grieved for
+you&#8212;and I need a girl friend<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>Holding both Eve's hands, her mittens dangling from her wrist, she
+looked into her eyes very steadily.</p>
+
+<p>Slowly Eve's eyes filled; more slowly still Ricca kissed her on both
+cheeks, framed her face in both hands, kissed her lightly on the lips.</p>
+
+<p>Then, still holding Eve's hands, she turned and looked at Stormont.</p>
+
+<p>"I remember you now," she said. "You were with my husband in Riga."</p>
+
+<p>She freed her right hand and held it out to Stormont. He had the grace
+to kiss it and did it very well for a Yankee.</p>
+
+<p>Together they entered the kitchen door and turned into the dining room
+on the left, where were chairs around the plain pine table.</p>
+
+<p>Darragh said: "The new mistress of Harrod Place has selected your
+quarters, Eve. They adjoin the quarters of her friend, the Countess
+Orloff-Strelwitz."</p>
+
+<p>"Valentine begged me," said Ricca, smiling. "She is going to be lonely
+without me. All hours of day and night<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[267]</a></span> we were trotting into one
+another's rooms<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span> She looked gravely at Eve: "You will like
+Valentine; and she will like you very much.... As for me&#8212;I already
+love you."</p>
+
+<p>She put one arm around Eve's shoulders: "How could you even think of
+remaining here all alone? Why, I should never close my eyes for thinking
+of you, dear."</p>
+
+<p>Eve's head drooped; she said in a stifled voice: "I'll go with you....
+I want to.... I'm very&#8212;tired."</p>
+
+<p>"We had better go now," said Darragh. "Your things can be brought over
+later. If you'll dress for snow-shoeing, Jack can pack what clothes you
+need.... Are there snow-shoes for him, too?"</p>
+
+<p>Eve turned tragically to her lover: "In Dad's closet<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span> she said,
+choking; then turned and went up the stairs, still clinging to Ricca's
+hand and drawing her with her.</p>
+
+<p>Stormont followed, entered Clinch's quarters, and presently came
+downstairs again, carrying Clinch's snow-shoes and a basket pack.</p>
+
+<p>He seated himself near Darragh. After a silence: "Your wife is
+beautiful, Jim.... Her character seems to be even more beautiful....
+She's like God's own messenger to Eve.... And&#8212;you're rather wonderful
+yourself<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"Nonsense," said Darragh, "I've given my wife her first American friend
+and I've done a shrewd stroke of business in nabbing the best business
+associate I ever heard of<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"You're crazy but kind.... I hope I'll be some good.... One thing;
+I'll never get over what you've done for Eve in this crisis<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"There'll be no crisis, Jack. Marry, and hook up with me in business.
+That solves everything.... Lord!&#8212;what a life Eve has had! But you'll
+make it all up to her ... all<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[268]</a></span> this loneliness and shame and misery of
+Clinch's Dump<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>Stormont touched his arm in caution: Eve and Ricca came down the
+stairs&#8212;the former now in the grey wool snow-shoe dress, and carrying
+her snow-shoes, black gown, and toilet articles.</p>
+
+<p>Stormont began to stow away her effects in the basket pack; Darragh went
+over to her and took her hand.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm so glad we are to be friends," he said. "It hurt a lot to know you
+held me in contempt. But I had to go about it that way."</p>
+
+<p>Eve nodded. Then, suddenly recollecting: "Oh," she exclaimed, reddening,
+"I forgot the jewel case! It's under my pillow<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>She turned and sped upstairs and reappeared almost instantly, carrying
+the jewel-case.</p>
+
+<p>Breathless, flushed, thankful and happy in the excitement of
+restitution, she placed the leather case in Ricca's hands.</p>
+
+<p>"My jewels!" cried the girl, astounded. Then, with a little cry of
+delight, she placed the case upon the table, stripped open the
+emblazoned cover, and emptied the two trays. All over the table rolled
+the jewels, flashing, scintillating, ablaze with blinding light.</p>
+
+<p>And at the same instant the outer door crashed open and Quintana covered
+them with Darragh's rifle.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, by Christ!" he shouted, "who stirs a finger shall go to God in one
+jump! You, my gendarme frien'&#8212;<em>you</em> , my frien' Smith&#8212;turn your damn
+backs&#8212;han's up high!&#8212;tha's the way!&#8212;now, ladies!&#8212;back away
+there&#8212;get back or I kill!&#8212;sure, by Jesus, I kill you like I would some
+white little mice!&#8212;&#8212;"</p>
+
+<p>With incredible quickness he stepped forward and swept<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[269]</a></span> the jewels into
+one hand&#8212;filled the pocket of his trousers, caught up every stray stone
+and pocketed them.</p>
+
+<p>"You gendarme," he cried in a menacing voice, "you think you shall
+follow in my track. Yes? I blow your damn head off if you stir before
+the hour.... After that&#8212;well, follow and be damn!"</p>
+
+<p>Even as he spoke he stepped outside and slammed the door; and Darragh
+and Stormont leaped for it. Then the loud detonation of Quintana's rifle
+was echoed by the splintering rip of bullets tearing through the closed
+door; and both men halted in the face of the leaden hail.</p>
+
+<p>Eve ran to the pantry window and saw Quintana in somebody's stolen
+lumber-sledge, lash a big pair of horses to a gallop and go floundering
+past into the Ghost Lake road.</p>
+
+<p>As he sped by in a whirl of snow he fired five times at the house, then,
+rising and swinging his whip, he flogged the frantic horses into the
+woods.</p>
+
+<p>In the dining room, Stormont, red with rage and shame, and having found
+his rifle in the corridor outside Eve's bedroom, was trying to open the
+shutters for a shot; and Darragh, empty-handed, searched the house
+frantically for a weapon.</p>
+
+<p>Eve, terribly excited, came from the pantry:</p>
+
+<p>"He's gone!" she cried furiously. "He's in somebody's lumber-sledge with
+a pair of horses and he's driving west like the devil!"</p>
+
+<p>Stormont ran to the tap-room telephone, cranked it, and warned the
+constabulary at Five Lakes.</p>
+
+<p>"Good God!" he exclaimed, turning to Darragh, scarlet with
+mortification, "what a ghastly business! I never<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[270]</a></span> dreamed he was within
+miles of Clinch's! It's the most shameful thing that ever happened to
+me<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"What could anybody do under that rifle?" said Eve hotly. "That beast
+would have murdered the first person who stirred!"</p>
+
+<p>Darragh, exasperated and dreadfully humiliated, looked miserably at his
+brand-new wife.</p>
+
+<p>Eve and Stormont also looked at her. She had come forward from the rear
+of the stairway where Quintana had brutally driven her. Now she stood
+with one hand on the empty leather jewel case, looking at everybody out
+of pretty, bewildered eyes.</p>
+
+<p>To Darragh, in a perplexed, unsteady voice: "Is it the same bandit who
+robbed us before?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; Quintana," he said wretchedly. Rage began to redden his features.
+"Ricca," he said, "I promised I'd find your jewels.... I promise you
+again that I'll never drop this business until your gems&#8212;and the
+Flaming Jewel&#8212;are in your possession<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"But, Jim<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"I swear it!" he exclaimed violently. "I'm not such a stupid fool as I
+seem<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"Dear!" she protested excitedly, "you <em>have</em>  done what you promised. My
+gems <em>are</em>  in my possession&#8212;I believe<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>She caught up the emblazoned case, stripped out the first tray, then the
+second, and flung them aside. Then, searching with the delicate tip of
+her forefinger in the empty case, she suddenly pressed the bottom
+hard,&#8212;thumb, middle finger and little finger forming the three apexes
+of an equilateral triangle.</p>
+
+<p>There came a clear, tiny sound like the ringing of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[271]</a></span> alarm in a
+repeating watch. Very gently the false bottom of the case detached
+itself and came away in the palm of her hand.</p>
+
+<p>And there, each embedded in its own shaped compartment of chamois, lay
+the Esthonian jewels&#8212;the true ones&#8212;deep hidden, always doubly guarded
+by two sets of perfect imitations lining the two visible trays above.</p>
+
+<p>And, in the centre, blazed the Erosite gem&#8212;the magnificent Flaming
+Jewel, a glory of living, blinding fire.</p>
+
+<p>Nobody stirred or spoke. Darragh blinked at the crystalline blaze as
+though stunned.</p>
+
+<p>Then the young girl who had once been Her Serene Highness Theodorica,
+Grand Duchess of Esthonia, looked up at her brand-new husband and
+laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you really suppose it was these that brought me across the ocean?
+Did you suppose it was a passion for these that filled my heart? Did you
+think it was for these that I followed you?"</p>
+
+<p>She laughed again, turned to Eve:</p>
+
+<p>"<em>You</em>  understand. Tell him that if he had been in rags I would have
+followed him like a gypsy.... They say there is gypsy blood in us....
+God knows.... I think perhaps there is a little of it in all real
+women<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span> Still laughing she placed her hand lightly upon her
+heart&#8212;"In all women&#8212;perhaps&#8212;a Flaming Jewel imbedded here<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;"</span></p>
+
+<p>Her eyes, tender, and mocking, met his; she lifted the jewel-case,
+closed it, and placed it in his hands.</p>
+
+<p>"Now," she said, "you have everything in your possession; and we are
+safe&#8212;we are quite safe, now, my jewels and I."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[272]</a></span>Then she went to Eve and rested both hands on her shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"Shall we put on our snow-shoes and go&#8212;home?"</p>
+
+<p>Stormont flung open the bullet-splintered door. Outside in the snow he
+dropped on both knees to buckle on Eve's snow-shoes.</p>
+
+<p>Darragh was performing a like office for his wife, and the State
+Trooper, being unobserved, took Eve's slim hands and kissed them,
+looking up at her where he was kneeling.</p>
+
+<p>Her pale face blushed as it had that day in the woods on Owl Marsh, so
+long, so long ago, when this man's lips first touched her hands.</p>
+
+<p>As their eyes met both remembered. Then she smiled at her lover with the
+shy girl's soul of her gazing out at him through eyes as blue as the
+wild blind-gentians that grow among the ferns and mosses of Star Pond.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>Far away in the northwestern forests Quintana still lashed his horses
+through the primeval pines.</p>
+
+<p>Triumphant, reckless, resourceful, dangerous, he felt that now nothing
+could stop him, nothing bar his way to freedom.</p>
+
+<p>Out of the wilderness lay his road and his destiny; out of it he must
+win his way, by strategy, by cunning, by violence&#8212;creep out, lie his
+way out, shoot his way out&#8212;it scarcely mattered. He was going out! He
+was going back to life once more. Who could forbid him? Who stop him?
+Who deny him, now, when, in his pockets, he held all that was worth
+living for&#8212;the keys to power, to pleasure,&#8212;the key to everything on
+earth!</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[273]</a></span>In fierce exultation he slapped the glass jewels in his pocket and
+laughed aloud.</p>
+
+<p>"The keys to the world!" he cried. "Let him stop me and take them who is
+a better man than I!" Then his long whip whistled and he cursed his
+horses.</p>
+
+<p>Then, of a sudden, close by in the snowy road ahead, he saw a State
+Trooper on snow-shoes,&#8212;saw the upflung arm warning him&#8212;screamed curses
+at his horses, flogged them forward to crush this thing to death that
+dared menace him&#8212;this object that suddenly rose up out of nowhere to
+snatch from him the keys of the world<span class="nowrap">&#8212;&#8212;</span></p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>For a moment the State Trooper looked after the runaway horses. There
+was no use following; they'd have to run till they dropped.</p>
+
+<p>Then he lowered the levelled rifle from his shoulder, looked grimly at
+the limp thing which had tumbled from the sledge into the snowy road and
+which sprawled there crimsoning the spotless flakes that fell upon it.</p>
+
+<h3>THE END</h3>
+
+
+
+<hr />
+
+<h3><small><em>Novels by</em></small>  ROBERT W. CHAMBERS</h3>
+
+
+<table summary="Novels">
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl2 border pad">THE FLAMING JEWEL</td>
+<td class="tdl3 border pad">THE TREE OF HEAVEN</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl2">THE LITTLE RED FOOT</td>
+<td class="tdl3">THE MOONLIT WAY</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl2">THE SLAYER OF SOULS</td>
+<td class="tdl3">IN SECRET</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl2">THE CRIMSON TIDE</td>
+<td class="tdl3">CARDIGAN</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl2">THE LAUGHING GIRL</td>
+<td class="tdl3">THE RECKONING</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl2">THE RESTLESS SEX</td>
+<td class="tdl3">THE MAID-AT-ARMS</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl2">BARBARIANS</td>
+<td class="tdl3">AILSA PAIGE</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl2">THE DARK STAR</td>
+<td class="tdl3">SPECIAL MESSENGER</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl2">THE GIRL PHILIPPA</td>
+<td class="tdl3">THE HAUNTS OF MEN</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl2">WHO GOES THERE!</td>
+<td class="tdl3">LORRAINE</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl2">ATHALIE</td>
+<td class="tdl3">MAIDS OF PARADISE</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl2">THE BUSINESS OF LIFE</td>
+<td class="tdl3">ASHES OF EMPIRE</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl2">THE GAY REBELLION</td>
+<td class="tdl3">THE RED REPUBLIC</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl2">THE STREETS OF ASCALON</td>
+<td class="tdl3">BLUE-BIRD WEATHER</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl2">THE COMMON LAW</td>
+<td class="tdl3">A YOUNG MAN IN A HURRY</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl2">THE FIGHTING CHANCE</td>
+<td class="tdl3">THE GREEN MOUSE</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl2">THE YOUNGER SET</td>
+<td class="tdl3">IOLE</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl2">THE DANGER MARK</td>
+<td class="tdl3">THE MYSTERY OF CHOICE</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl2">THE FIRING LINE</td>
+<td class="tdl3">THE CAMBRIC MASK</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl2">JAPONETTE</td>
+<td class="tdl3">THE MAKER OF MOONS</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl2">QUICK ACTION</td>
+<td class="tdl3">THE KING IN YELLOW</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl2">THE ADVENTURES OF A MODEST MAN</td>
+<td class="tdl3">IN SEARCH OF THE UNKNOWN</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl2">ANNE'S BRIDGEL</td>
+<td class="tdl3">THE TRACER OF LOST PERSONS</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl2">BETWEEN FRIENDS</td>
+<td class="tdl3">THE CONSPIRATORS</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl2">THE BETTER MAN</td>
+<td class="tdl3">A KING AND A FEW DUKES</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl2">POLICE!!!L</td>
+<td class="tdl3">THE HIDDEN CHILDREN</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl2">SOME LADIES IN HASTEL</td>
+<td class="tdl3">IN THE QUARTER</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl2 border2 pad2" colspan="2">OUTSIDERS</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+
+<div class="tn">
+<p class="center"><strong>Transcriber's Note:</strong></p>
+
+<p class="noi">Page 14 <a href="#stormont">Stormond</a> changed to Stormont<br />
+
+Page 40 Double close quotation mark added after <a href="#dance">have a dance!</a><br />
+
+Page 95 <a href="#himself">hmiself</a> changed to himself<br />
+
+Page 96 <a href="#pallor">pallour</a> changed to pallor<br />
+
+Page 103 Open bracket removed from <a href="#but">(But wait!</a><br />
+
+Page 112 Double close quotation mark added after <a href="#mike">that way, Mike.</a><br />
+
+Page 118 Double close quotation mark added after <a href="#call">at roll call.</a><br />
+
+Page 197 <a href="#swimming">swiming</a> changed to swimming<br />
+
+Page 226 <a href="#breeches">breeches</a> changed to breeches'<br />
+
+Page 258 Double open quotation mark added before <a href="#but2">But</a></p>
+
+<p class="noi">All other inconsistencies in spelling, hyphenation and dialect
+have been retained as they appear in the original book.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Flaming Jewel, by Robert W. Chambers
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Flaming Jewel, by Robert W. Chambers
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Flaming Jewel
+
+Author: Robert W. Chambers
+
+Release Date: September 18, 2008 [EBook #26651]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FLAMING JEWEL ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, Jacqueline Jeremy and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE FLAMING JEWEL
+
+ROBERT W. CHAMBERS
+
+
+
+
+    ROBERT W. CHAMBERS
+
+    _The Flaming Jewel_
+
+    TRIANGLE BOOKS NEW YORK
+
+
+    COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
+
+    TRIANGLE BOOKS EDITION PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER 1942
+
+    TRIANGLE BOOKS, 14 West Forty-ninth Street, New York, N. Y.
+
+    PRINTED AND BOUND IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA BY THE AMERICAN
+    BOOK--STRATFORD PRESS, INC., N. Y. C.
+
+
+
+
+    TO
+    MY FRIEND
+
+    R. T. HAINES-HALSEY
+
+    WHO
+    UNRESERVEDLY BELIEVES
+    EVERYTHING I WRITE
+
+
+
+
+To R. T.
+
+
+    I
+
+    Three Guests at dinner! That's the life!--
+    Wedgewood, Revere, and Duncan Phyfe!
+
+
+    II
+
+    You sit on Duncan--when you dare,--
+    And out of Wedgewood, using care,
+    With Paul Revere you eat your fare.
+
+
+    III
+
+    From Paul you borrow fork and knife
+    To wage a gastronomic strife
+    In porringers; and platters rare
+    Of blue Historic Willow-ware.
+
+
+    IV
+
+    Banquets with cymbal, drum and fife,
+    Or rose-wreathed feasts with riot rife
+    To your chaste suppers can't compare.
+
+
+    V
+
+    Let those deny the truth who dare!--
+    Paul, Duncan, Wedgewood! That's the life!
+    All else is bunk and empty air.
+
+
+    ENVOI
+
+    The Cordon-bleu has set the pace
+    With Goulash, Haggis, Bouillabaisse,
+    Curry, Chop-suey, Kous-Kous Stew--
+    I can not offer these to you,--
+    Being a plain, old-fashioned cook,--
+    So pray accept this scrambled book.
+
+            R. W. C.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+                                            PAGE
+
+    EPISODE ONE
+    EVE                                        9
+
+    EPISODE TWO
+    THE RULING PASSION                        33
+
+    EPISODE THREE
+    ON STAR PEAK                              56
+
+    EPISODE FOUR
+    A PRIVATE WAR                             75
+
+    EPISODE FIVE
+    DROWNED VALLEY                            93
+
+    EPISODE SIX
+    THE JEWEL AFLAME                         110
+
+    EPISODE SEVEN
+    CLINCH'S DUMP                            134
+
+    EPISODE EIGHT
+    CUP AND LIP                              157
+
+    EPISODE NINE
+    THE FOREST AND MR SARD                   180
+
+    EPISODE TEN
+    THE TWILIGHT OF MIKE                     209
+
+    EPISODE ELEVEN
+    THE PLACE OF PINES                       233
+
+    EPISODE TWELVE
+    HER HIGHNESS INTERVENES                  255
+
+
+
+
+THE FLAMING JEWEL
+
+EPISODE ONE
+
+EVE
+
+
+I
+
+During the last two years Fate, Chance, and Destiny had been too busy to
+attend to Mike Clinch.
+
+But now his turn was coming in the Eternal Sequence of things. The stars
+in their courses indicated the beginning of the undoing of Mike Clinch.
+
+From Esthonia a refugee Countess wrote to James Darragh in New York:
+
+    "--After two years we have discovered that it was Jose
+    Quintana's band of international thieves that robbed Ricca.
+    Quintana has disappeared.
+
+    "A Levantine diamond broker in New York, named Emanuel Sard, may
+    be in communication with him.
+
+    "Ricca and I are going to America as soon as possible.
+
+            "VALENTINE."
+
+The day Darragh received the letter he started to look up Sard.
+
+But that very morning Sard had received a curious letter from Rotterdam.
+This was the letter:
+
+    "Sardius--Tourmaline--Aragonite--Rhodonite *
+    Porphyry--Obsidian--Nugget Gold--Diaspore *
+    Novaculite * Yu * Nugget Silver--Amber--Matrix
+    Turquoise--Elaeolite * Ivory--Sardonyx * Moonstone--
+    Iceland Spar--Kalpa Zircon--Eye Agate * Celonite--
+    Lapis--Iolite--Nephrite--Chalcedony--Hydrolite *
+    Hegolite--Amethyst--Selenite * Fire Opal--Labradorite--
+    Aquamarine--Malachite--Iris Stone--Natrolite--
+    Garnet * Jade--Emerald--Wood Opal--Essonite--
+    Lazuli * Epidote--Ruby--Onyx--Sapphire
+    --Indicolite--Topaz--Euclase * Indian Diamond *
+    Star Sapphire--African Diamond--Iceland Spar--
+    Lapis Crucifer * Abalone--Turkish Turquoise * Old
+    Mine Stone--Natrolite--Cats Eye--Electrum * * *
+    1/5 [=a] [=a]."
+
+That afternoon young Darragh located Sard's office and presented himself
+as a customer. The weasel-faced clerk behind the wicket laid a pistol
+handy and informed Darragh that Sard was away on a business trip.
+
+Darragh looked cautiously around the small office:
+
+"Can anybody hear us?"
+
+"Nobody. Why?"
+
+"I have important news concerning Jose Quintana," whispered Darragh;
+"Where is Sard?"
+
+"Why, he had a letter from Quintana this very morning," replied the
+clerk in a low, uneasy voice. "Mr. Sard left for Albany on the one
+o'clock train. Is there any trouble?"
+
+"Plenty," replied Darragh coolly; "do you know Quintana?"
+
+"No. But Mr. Sard expects him here any day now."
+
+Darragh leaned closer against the grille: "Listen very carefully; if a
+man comes here who calls himself Jose Quintana, turn him over to the
+police until Mr. Sard returns. No matter what he tells you, turn him
+over to the police. Do you understand?"
+
+"Who are you?" demanded the worried clerk. "Are you one of Quintana's
+people?"
+
+"Young man," said Darragh, "I'm close enough to Quintana to give _you_
+orders. And give Sard orders.... And Quintana, too!"
+
+A great light dawned on the scared clerk:
+
+"_You_ are Jose Quintana!" he said hoarsely.
+
+Darragh bored him through with his dark stare:
+
+"Mind your business," he said.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That night in Albany Darragh picked up Sard's trail. It led to a dealer
+in automobiles. Sard had bought a Comet Six, paying cash, and had
+started north.
+
+Through Schenectady, Fonda, and Mayfield, the following day, Darragh
+traced a brand new Comet Six containing one short, dark Levantine with a
+parrot nose. In Northville Darragh hired a Ford.
+
+At Lake Pleasant Sard's car went wrong. Darragh missed him by ten
+minutes; but he learned that Sard had inquired the way to Ghost Lake
+Inn.
+
+That was sufficient. Darragh bought an axe, drove as far as Harrod's
+Corners, dismissed the Ford, and walked into a forest entirely familiar
+to him.
+
+He emerged in half an hour on a wood road two miles farther on. Here he
+felled a tree across the road and sat down in the bushes to await
+events.
+
+Toward sunset, hearing a car coming, he tied his handkerchief over his
+face below the eyes, and took an automatic from his pocket.
+
+Sard's car stopped and Sard got out to inspect the obstruction. Darragh
+sauntered out of the bushes, poked his pistol against Mr. Sard's fat
+abdomen, and leisurely and thoroughly robbed him.
+
+In an agreeable spot near a brook Darragh lighted his pipe and sat him
+down to examine the booty in detail. Two pistols, a stiletto, and a
+blackjack composed the arsenal of Mr. Sard. A large wallet disclosed
+more than four thousand dollars in Treasury notes--something to
+reimburse Ricca when she arrived, he thought.
+
+Among Sard's papers he discovered a cipher letter from
+Rotterdam--probably from Quintana. Cipher was rather in Darragh's line.
+All ciphers are solved by similar methods, unless the key is contained
+in a code book known only to sender and receiver.
+
+But Quintana's cipher proved to be only an easy acrostic--the very
+simplest of secret messages. Within an hour Darragh had it pencilled
+out:
+
+    _Cipher_
+
+    "Take notice:
+
+    "Star Pond, N. Y.... Name is Mike Clinch.... Has Flaming
+    Jewel.... Erosite.... I sail at once.
+
+            "QUINTANA."
+
+Having served in Russia as an officer in the Military Intelligence
+Department attached to the American Expeditionary Forces, Darragh had
+little trouble with Quintana's letter. Even the signature was not
+difficult, the fraction 1/5 was easily translated _Quint_; and the
+familiar prescription symbol [=a] [=a] spelled _ana_; which gave
+Quintana's name in full.
+
+He had heard of Erosite as the rarest and most magnificent of all gems.
+Only three were known. The young Duchess Theodorica of Esthonia had
+possessed one.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Darragh was immensely amused to find that the chase after Emanuel Sard
+should have led him to the very borders of the great Harrod estate in
+the Adirondacks.
+
+He gathered up his loot and walked on through the splendid forest which
+once had belonged to Henry Harrod of Boston, and which now was the
+property of Harrod's nephew, James Darragh.
+
+When he came to the first trespass notice he stood a moment to read it.
+Then, slowly, he turned and looked toward Clinch's. An autumn sunset
+flared like a conflagration through the pines. There was a glimmer of
+water, too, where Star Pond lay.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Fate, Chance, and Destiny were becoming very busy with Mike Clinch. They
+had started Quintana, Sard, and Darragh on his trail. Now they stirred
+up the sovereign State of New York.
+
+That lank wolf, Justice, was afoot and sniffing uncomfortably close to
+the heels of Mike Clinch.
+
+
+II
+
+Two State Troopers drew bridles in the yellowing October forest. Their
+smart drab uniforms touched with purple blended harmoniously with the
+autumn woods. They were as inconspicuous as two deer in the dappled
+shadow. There was a sunny clearing just ahead. The wood road they had
+been travelling entered it. Beyond lay Star Pond.
+
+Trooper Lannis said to Trooper Stormont: "That's Mike Clinch's clearing.
+Our man may be there. Now we'll see if anybody tips him off this time."
+
+Forest and clearing were very still in the sunshine. Nothing stirred
+save gold leaves drifting down, and a hawk high in the deep blue sky
+turning in narrow circles.
+
+Lannis was instructing Stormont, who had been transferred from the Long
+Island Troop, and who was unacquainted with local matters.
+
+Lannis said: "Clinch's dump stands on the other edge of the clearing.
+Clinch owns five hundred acres in here. He's a rat."
+
+"Bad?"
+
+"Well, he's mean. I don't know how bad he is. But he runs a rotten dump.
+The forest has its slums as well as the city. This is the Hell's Kitchen
+of the North Woods."
+
+Stormont nodded.
+
+"All the scum of the wilderness gathers here," went on Lannis. "Here's
+where half the trouble in the North Woods hatches. We'll eat dinner at
+Clinch's. His stepdaughter is a peach."
+
+The sturdy, sun-browned trooper glanced at his wrist watch, stretched
+his legs in his stirrups.
+
+"Jack," he said, "I want you to get Clinch right, and I'm going to tell
+you about his outfit while we watch this road. It's like a movie. Clinch
+plays the lead. I'll dope out the scenario for you----"
+
+He turned sideways in his saddle, freeing both spurred heels and lolled
+so, constructing a cigarette while he talked:
+
+"Way back around 1900 Mike Clinch was a guide--a decent young fellow
+they say. He guided fishing parties in summer, hunters in fall and
+winter. He made money and built the house. The people he guided were
+wealthy. He made a lot of money and bought land. I understand he was
+square and that everybody liked him.
+
+"About that time there came to Clinch's 'hotel' a Mr. and Mrs. Strayer.
+They were 'lungers.' Strayer seemed to be a gentleman; his wife was
+good looking and rather common. Both were very young. He had the consump
+bad--the galloping variety. He didn't last long. A month after he died
+his young wife had a baby. Clinch married her. She also died the same
+year. The baby's name was Eve. Clinch became quite crazy about her and
+started to make a lady of her. That was his mania."
+
+Lannis leaned from his saddle and carefully dropped his cigarette end
+into a puddle of rain water. Then he swung one leg over and sat side
+saddle.
+
+"Clinch had plenty of money in those days," he went on. "He could afford
+to educate the child. The kid had a governess. Then he sent her to a
+fancy boarding school. She had everything a young girl could want.
+
+"She developed into a pretty young thing at fifteen.... She's eighteen
+now--and I don't know what to call her. She pulled a gun on me in July."
+
+"What!"
+
+"Sure. There was a row at Clinch's dump. A rum-runner called Jake Kloon
+got shot up. I came up to get Clinch. He was sick-drunk in his bunk.
+When I broke in the door Eve Strayer pulled a gun on me."
+
+"What happened?" inquired Stormont.
+
+"Nothing. I took Clinch.... But he got off as usual."
+
+"Acquitted?"
+
+Lannis nodded, rolling another cigarette:
+
+"Now, I'll tell you how Clinch happened to go wrong," he said. "You see
+he'd always made his living by guiding. Well, some years ago Henry
+Harrod, of Boston, came here and bought thousands and thousands of acres
+of forest all around Clinch's----" Lannis half rose on one stirrup and,
+with a comprehensive sweep of his muscular arm, ending in a flourish:
+"--He bought everything for miles and miles. And that started Clinch
+down hill. Harrod tried to force Clinch to sell. The millionaire tactics
+you know. He was determined to oust him. Clinch got mad and wouldn't
+sell at any price. Harrod kept on buying all around Clinch and posted
+trespass notices. That meant ruin to Clinch. He was walled in. No
+hunters care to be restricted. Clinch's little property was no good.
+Business stopped. His stepdaughter's education became expensive. He was
+in a bad way. Harrod offered him a big price. But Clinch turned ugly and
+wouldn't budge. And that's how Clinch began to go wrong."
+
+"Poor devil," said Stormont.
+
+"Devil, all right. Poor, too. But he needed money. He was crazy to make
+a lady of Eve Strayer. And there are ways of finding money, you know."
+
+Stormont nodded.
+
+"Well, Clinch found money in those ways. The Conservation Commissioner
+in Albany began to hear about game law violations. The Revenue people
+heard of rum-running. Clinch lost his guide's license. But nobody could
+get the goods on him.
+
+"There was a rough backwoods bunch always drifting about Clinch's place
+in those days. There were fights. And not so many miles from Clinch's
+there was highway robbery and a murder or two.
+
+"Then the war came. The draft caught Clinch. Malone exempted him, he
+being the sole support of his stepchild.
+
+"But the girl volunteered. She got to France, somehow--scrubbed in a
+hospital, I believe--anyway, Clinch wanted to be on the same side of
+the world she was on, and he went with a Forestry Regiment and cut trees
+for railroad ties in southern France until the war ended and they sent
+him home.
+
+"Eve Strayer came back too. She's there now. You'll see her at dinner
+time. She sticks to Clinch. He's a rat. He's up against the dry laws and
+the game laws. Government enforcement agents, game protectors, State
+Constabulary, all keep an eye on Clinch. Harrod's trespass signs fence
+him in. He's like a rat in a trap. Yet Clinch makes money at law
+breaking and nobody can catch him red-handed.
+
+"He kills Harrod's deer. That's certain. I mean Harrod's nephew's deer.
+Harrod's dead. Darragh's the young nephew's name. He's never been
+here--he was in the army--in Russia--I don't know what became of
+him--but he keeps up the Harrod preserve--game-wardens, patrols,
+watchers, trespass signs and all."
+
+Lannis finished his second cigarette, got back into his stirrups and,
+gathering bridle, began leisurely to divide curb and snaffle.
+
+"That's the layout, Jack," he said. "Yonder lies the Red Light district
+of the North Woods. Mike Clinch is the brains of all the dirty work that
+goes on. A floating population of crooks and bums--game violators,
+boot-leggers, market hunters, pelt 'collectors,' rum-runners, hootch
+makers, do his dirty work--and I guess there are some who'll stick you
+up by starlight for a quarter and others who'll knock your block off for
+a dollar.... And there's the girl, Eve Strayer. I don't get her at all,
+except that she's loyal to Clinch.... And now you know what you ought
+to know about this movie called 'Hell in the Woods.' And it's up to us
+to keep a calm, impartial eye on the picture and try to follow the plot
+they're acting out--if there is any."
+
+Stormont said: "Thanks, Bill; I'm posted.... And I'm getting hungry,
+too."
+
+"I believe," said Lannis, "that you want to see that girl."
+
+"I do," returned the other, laughing.
+
+"Well, you'll see her. She's good to look at. But I don't get her at
+all."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because she _looks_ right and yet she lives at Clinch's with him and
+his bunch of bums. Would you think a straight girl could stand it?"
+
+"No man can tell what a straight girl can stand."
+
+"Straight or crooked she stands for Mike Clinch," said Lannis, "and he's
+a ratty customer."
+
+"Maybe the girl is fond of him. It's natural."
+
+"I guess it's that. But I don't see how any young girl can stomach the
+life at Clinch's."
+
+"It's a wonder what a decent woman will stand," observed Stormont.
+"Ninety-nine per cent. of all wives ought to receive the D. S. O."
+
+"Do you think we're so rotten?" inquired Lannis, smiling.
+
+"Not so rotten. No. But any man knows what men are. And it's a wonder
+women stick to us when they learn."
+
+They laughed. Lannis glanced at his watch again.
+
+"Well," he said, "I don't believe anybody has tipped off our man. It's
+noon. Come on to dinner, Jack."
+
+They cantered forward into the sunlit clearing. Star Pond lay ahead. On
+its edge stood Clinch's.
+
+
+III
+
+Clinch, in his shirt sleeves, came out on the veranda. He had little
+light grey eyes, close-clipped grey hair, and was clean shaven.
+
+"How are you, Clinch," inquired Lannis affably.
+
+"All right," replied Clinch; "you're the same, I hope."
+
+"Trooper Stormont, Mr. Clinch," said Lannis in his genial way.
+
+"Pleased to know you," said Clinch, level-eyed, unstirring.
+
+The troopers dismounted. Both shook hands with Clinch. Then Lannis led
+the way to the barn.
+
+"We'll eat well," he remarked to his comrade. "Clinch cooks."
+
+From the care of their horses they went to a pump to wash. One or two
+rough looking men slouched out of the house and glanced at them.
+
+"Hallo, Jake," said Lannis cheerily.
+
+Jake Kloon grunted acknowledgment.
+
+Lannis said in Stormont's ear: "Here she comes with towels. She's
+pretty, isn't she?"
+
+A young girl in pink gingham advanced toward them across the patch of
+grass.
+
+Lannis was very polite and presented Stormont. The girl handed them two
+rough towels, glanced at Stormont again after the introduction, smiled
+slightly.
+
+"Dinner is ready," she said.
+
+They dried their faces and followed her back to the house.
+
+It was an unpainted building, partly of log. In the dining room half a
+dozen men waited silently for food. Lannis saluted all, named his
+comrade, and seated himself.
+
+A delicious odour of johnny-cake pervaded the room. Presently Eve
+Strayer appeared with the dinner.
+
+There was dew on her pale forehead--the heat of the kitchen, no doubt.
+The girl's thick, lustrous hair was brownish gold, and so twisted up
+that it revealed her ears and a very white neck.
+
+When she brought Stormont his dinner he caught her eyes a
+moment--experienced a slight shock of pleasure at their intense
+blue--the gentian-blue of the summer zenith at midday.
+
+Lannis remained affable, even became jocose at moments:
+
+"No hootch for dinner, Mike? How's that, now?"
+
+"The Boot-leg Express is a day late," replied Clinch, with cold humour.
+
+Around the table ran an odd sound--a company of catamounts feeding might
+have made such a noise--if catamounts ever laugh.
+
+"How's the fur market, Jake?" inquired Lannis, pouring gravy over his
+mashed potato.
+
+Kloon quoted prices with an oath.
+
+A mean-visaged young man named Leverett complained of the price of
+traps.
+
+"What do you care?" inquired Lannis genially. "The other man pays. What
+are you kicking about, anyway? It wasn't so long ago that muskrats were
+ten cents."
+
+The trooper's good-humoured intimation that Earl Leverett took fur in
+other men's traps was not lost on the company. Leverett's fox visage
+reddened; Jake Kloon, who had only one eye, glared at the State Trooper
+but said nothing.
+
+Clinch's pale gaze met the trooper's smiling one: "The jays and
+squirrels talk too," he said slowly. "It don't mean anything. Only the
+show-down counts."
+
+"You're quite right, Clinch. The show-down is what we pay to see. But
+talk is the tune the orchestra plays before the curtain rises."
+
+Stormont had finished dinner. He heard a low, charming voice from behind
+his chair:
+
+"Apple pie, lemon pie, maple cake, berry roll."
+
+He looked up into two gentian-blue eyes.
+
+"Lemon pie, please," he said, blushing.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When dinner was over and the bare little dining room empty except for
+Clinch and the two State Troopers, the former folded his heavy, powerful
+hands on the table's edge and turned his square face and pale-eyed gaze
+on Lannis.
+
+"Spit it out," he said in a passionless voice.
+
+Lannis crossed one knee over the other, lighted a cigarette:
+
+"Is there a young fellow working for you named Hal Smith?"
+
+"No," said Clinch.
+
+"Sure?"
+
+"Sure."
+
+"Clinch," continued Lannis, "have you heard about a stick-up on the
+wood-road out of Ghost Lake?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Well, a wealthy tourist from New York--a Mr. Sard, stopping at Ghost
+Lake Inn--was held up and robbed last Saturday toward sundown."
+
+"Never heard of him," said Clinch, calmly.
+
+"The robber took four thousand dollars in bills and some private papers
+from him."
+
+"It's no skin off my shins," remarked Clinch.
+
+"He's laid a complaint."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Have any strangers been here since Saturday evening?"
+
+"No."
+
+There was a pause.
+
+"We heard you had a new man named Hal Smith working around your place."
+
+"No."
+
+"He came here Saturday night."
+
+"Who says so?"
+
+"A guide from Ghost Lake."
+
+"He's a liar."
+
+"You know," said Lannis, "it won't do you any good if hold-up men can
+hide here and make a getaway."
+
+"G'wan and search," said Clinch, calmly.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They searched the "hotel" from garret to cellar. They searched the barn,
+boat-shed, out-houses.
+
+While this was going on, Clinch went into the kitchen.
+
+"Eve," he said coolly, "the State Troopers are after that fellow, Hal
+Smith, who came here Saturday night. Where is he?"
+
+"He went into Harrod's to get us a deer," she replied in a low voice.
+"What has he done?"
+
+"Stuck up a man on the Ghost Lake road. He ought to have told me. Do you
+think you could meet up with him and tip him off?"
+
+"He's hunting on Owl Marsh. I'll try."
+
+"All right. Change your clothes and slip out the back door. And look out
+for Harrod's patrols, too."
+
+"All right, dad," she said. "If I have to be out to-night, don't worry.
+I'll get word to Smith somehow."
+
+Half an hour later Lannis and Stormont returned from a prowl around the
+clearing. Lannis paid the reckoning; his comrade led out the horses. He
+said again to Lannis:
+
+"I'm sure it was the girl. She wore men's clothes and she went into the
+woods on a run."
+
+As they started to ride away, Lannis said to Clinch, who stood on the
+veranda:
+
+"It's still blue-jay and squirrel talk between us, Mike, but the
+show-down is sure to come. Better go straight while the going's good."
+
+"I go straight enough to suit me," said Clinch.
+
+"But it's the Government that is to be suited, Mike. And if it gets you
+right you'll be in dutch."
+
+"Don't let that worry you," said Clinch.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+About three o'clock the two State Troopers, riding at a walk, came to
+the forks of the Ghost Lake road.
+
+"Now," said Lannis to Stormont, "if you really believe you saw the girl
+beat it out of the back door and take to the woods, she's probably
+somewhere in there----" he pointed into the western forest. "But," he
+added, "what's your idea in following her?"
+
+"She wore men's clothes; she was in a hurry and trying to keep out of
+sight. I wondered whether Clinch might have sent her to warn this
+hold-up fellow."
+
+"That's rather a long shot, isn't it?"
+
+"Very long. I could go in and look about a bit, if you'll lead my
+horse."
+
+"All right. Take your bearings. This road runs west to Ghost Lake. We
+sleep at the Inn there--if you mean to cross the woods on foot."
+
+Stormont nodded, consulted his map and compass, pocketed both, unbuckled
+his spurs.
+
+When he was ready he gave his bridle to Lannis.
+
+"I'd just like to see what she's up to," he remarked.
+
+"All right. If you miss me come to the Inn," said Lannis, starting on
+with the led horse.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The forest was open amid a big stand of white pine and hemlock, and
+Stormont travelled easily and swiftly. He had struck a line by compass
+that must cross the direction taken by Eve Strayer when she left
+Clinch's. But it was a wild chance that he would ever run across her.
+
+And probably he never would have if the man that she was looking for had
+not fired a shot on the edge of that vast maze of stream, morass and
+dead timber called Owl Marsh.
+
+Far away in the open forest Stormont heard the shot and turned in that
+direction.
+
+But Eve already was very near when the young man who called himself Hal
+Smith fired at one of Harrod's deer--a three-prong buck on the edge of
+the dead water.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Smith had drawn and dressed the buck by the time the girl found him.
+
+He was cleaning up when she arrived, squatting by the water's edge when
+he heard her voice across the swale:
+
+"Smith! The State Troopers are looking for you!"
+
+He stood up, dried his hands on his breeches. The girl picked her way
+across the bog, jumping from one tussock to the next.
+
+When she told him what had happened he began to laugh.
+
+"Did you really stick up this man?" she asked incredulously.
+
+"I'm afraid I did, Eve," he replied, still laughing.
+
+The girl's entire expression altered.
+
+"So that's the sort you are," she said. "I thought you different. But
+you're all a rotten lot----"
+
+"Hold on," he interrupted, "what do you mean by that?"
+
+"I mean that the only men who ever come to Star Pond are crooks," she
+retorted bitterly. "I didn't believe you were. You look decent. But
+you're as crooked as the rest of them--and it seems as if I--I couldn't
+stand it--any longer----"
+
+"If you think me so rotten, why did you run all the way from Clinch's to
+warn me?" he asked curiously.
+
+"I didn't do it for _you_; I did it for my father. They'll jail him if
+they catch him hiding you. They've got it in for him. If they put him in
+prison he'll die. He couldn't stand it. I _know_. And that's why I came
+to find you and tell you to clear out----"
+
+The distant crack of a dry stick checked her. The next instant she
+picked up his rifle, seized his arm, and fairly dragged him into a
+spruce thicket.
+
+"Do you want to get my father into trouble!" she said fiercely.
+
+The rocky flank of Star Peak bordered the marsh here.
+
+"Come on," she whispered, jerking him along through the thicket and up
+the rocks to a cleft--a hole in the sheer rock overhung by shaggy
+hemlock.
+
+"Get in there," she said breathlessly.
+
+"Whoever comes," he protested, "will see the buck yonder, and will
+certainly look in here----"
+
+"Not if I go down there and take your medicine. Creep into that cave and
+lie down."
+
+"What do you intend to do?" he demanded, interested and amused.
+
+"If it's one of Harrod's game-keepers," said the girl drily, "it only
+means a summons and a fine for me. And if it's a State Trooper, who is
+prowling in the woods yonder hunting crooks, he'll find nobody here but
+a trespasser. Keep quiet. I'll stand him off."
+
+
+IV
+
+When State Trooper Stormont came out on the edge of Owl Marsh, the girl
+was kneeling by the water, washing deer blood from her slender,
+sun-tanned fingers.
+
+"What are you doing here?" she enquired, looking up over her shoulder
+with a slight smile.
+
+"Just having a look around," he said pleasantly. "That's a nice fat buck
+you have there."
+
+"Yes, he's nice."
+
+"You shot him?" asked Stormont.
+
+"Who else do you suppose shot him?" she enquired, smilingly. She rinsed
+her fingers again and stood up, swinging her arms to dry her hands,--a
+lithe, grey-shirted figure in her boyish garments, straight, supple, and
+strong.
+
+"I saw you hurrying into the woods," said Stormont.
+
+"Yes, I was in a hurry. We need meat."
+
+"I didn't notice that you carried a rifle when I saw you leave the
+house--by the back door."
+
+"No; it was in the woods," she said indifferently.
+
+"You have a hiding place for your rifle?"
+
+"For other things, also," she said, letting her eyes of gentian-blue
+rest on the young man.
+
+"You seem to be very secretive."
+
+"Is a girl more so than a man?" she asked smilingly.
+
+Stormont smiled too, then became grave.
+
+"Who else was here with you?" he asked quietly.
+
+She seemed surprised. "Did you see anybody else?"
+
+He hesitated, flushed, pointed down at the wet sphagnum. Smith's
+foot-prints were there in damning contrast to her own. Worse than that,
+Smith's pipe lay on an embedded log, and a rubber tobacco pouch beside
+it.
+
+She said with a slight catch in her breath: "It seems that somebody has
+been here.... Some hunter, perhaps,--or a game warden...."
+
+"Or Hal Smith," said Stormont.
+
+A painful colour swept the girl's face and throat. The man, sorry for
+her, looked away.
+
+After a silence: "I know something about you," he said gently. "And now
+that I've seen you--heard you speak--met your eyes--I know enough about
+you to form an opinion.... So I don't ask you to turn informer. But the
+law won't stand for what Clinch is doing--whatever provocation he has
+had. And he must not aid or abet any criminal, or harbour any
+malefactor."
+
+The girl's features were expressionless. The passive, sullen beauty of
+her troubled the trooper.
+
+"Trouble for Clinch means sorrow for you," he said. "I don't want you
+to be unhappy. I bear Clinch no ill will. For this reason I ask him, and
+I ask you too, to stand clear of this affair.
+
+"Hal Smith is wanted. I'm here to take him."
+
+As she said nothing, he looked down at the foot-print in the sphagnum.
+Then his eyes moved to the next imprint; to the next. Then he moved
+slowly along the water's edge, tracking the course of the man he was
+following.
+
+The girl watched him in silence until the plain trail led him to the
+spruce thicket.
+
+"Don't go in there!" she said sharply, with an odd tremor in her voice.
+
+He turned and looked at her, then stepped calmly into the thicket. And
+the next instant she was among the spruces, too, confronting him with
+her rifle.
+
+"Get out of these woods!" she said.
+
+He looked into the girl's deathly white face.
+
+"Eve," he said, "it will go hard with you if you kill me. I don't want
+you to live out your life in prison."
+
+"I can't help it. If you send my father to prison he'll die. I'd rather
+die myself. Let us alone, I tell you! The man you're after is nothing to
+us. We didn't know he had stuck up anybody!"
+
+"If he's nothing to you, why do you point that rifle at me?"
+
+"I tell you he is nothing to us. But my father wouldn't betray a dog.
+And I won't. That's all. Now get out of these woods and come back
+to-morrow. Nobody'll interfere with you then."
+
+Stormont smiled: "Eve," he said, "do you really think me as yellow as
+that?"
+
+Her blue eyes flashed a terrible warning, but, in the same instant, he
+had caught her rifle, twisting it out of her grasp as it exploded.
+
+The detonation dazed her; then, as he flung the rifle into the water,
+she caught him by neck and belt and flung him bodily into the spruces.
+
+But she fell with him; he held her twisting and struggling with all her
+superb and supple strength; staggered to his feet, still mastering her;
+and, as she struggled, sobbing, locked hot and panting in his arms, he
+snapped a pair of handcuffs on her wrists and flung her aside.
+
+She fell on both knees, got up, shoulder deep in spruce, blood running
+from her lip over her chin.
+
+The trooper took her by the arm. She was trembling all over. He took a
+thin steel chain and padlock from his pocket, passed the links around
+her steel-bound wrists, and fastened her to a young birch tree.
+
+Then, drawing his pistol from its holster, he went swiftly forward
+through the spruces.
+
+When he saw the cleft in the rocky flank of Star Peak, he walked
+straight to the black hole which confronted him.
+
+"Come out of there," he said distinctly.
+
+After a few seconds Smith came out.
+
+"Good God!" said Stormont in a low voice. "What are you doing here,
+Darragh?"
+
+Darragh came close and rested one hand on Stormont's shoulder:
+
+"Don't crab my game, Stormont. I never dreamed you were in the
+Constabulary or I'd have let you know."
+
+"Are _you_ Hal Smith?"
+
+"I sure am. Where's that girl?"
+
+"Handcuffed out yonder."
+
+"Then for God's sake go back and act as if you hadn't found me. Tell
+Mayor Chandler that I'm after bigger game than he is."
+
+"Clinch?"
+
+"Stormont, I'm here to _protect_ Mike Clinch. Tell the Mayor not to
+touch him. The men I'm after are going to try to rob him. I don't want
+them to because--well, I'm going to rob him myself."
+
+Stormont stared.
+
+"You must stand by me," said Darragh. "So must the Mayor. He knows me
+through and through. Tell him to forget that hold-up. I stopped that man
+Sard. I frisked him. Tell the Mayor. I'll keep in touch with him."
+
+"Of course," said Stormont, "that settles it."
+
+"Thanks, old chap. Now go back to that girl and let her believe that you
+never found me."
+
+A slight smile touched their eyes. Both instinctively saluted. Then they
+shook hands; Darragh, alias Hal Smith, went back into the hemlock-shaded
+hole in the rocks; Trooper Stormont walked slowly down through the
+spruces.
+
+When Eve saw him returning empty handed, something flashed in her pallid
+face like sunlight across snow.
+
+Stormont passed her, went to the water's edge, soaked a spicy handful of
+sphagnum moss in the icy water, came back and wiped the blood from her
+face.
+
+The girl seemed astounded; her face surged in vivid colour as he
+unlocked the handcuffs and pocketed them and the little steel chain.
+
+Her lip was bleeding again. He washed it with wet moss, took a clean
+handkerchief from the breast of his tunic and laid it against her mouth.
+
+"Hold it there," he said.
+
+Mechanically she raised her hand to support the compress. Stormont went
+back to the shore, recovered her rifle from the shallow water, and
+returned with it.
+
+As she made no motion to take it, he stood it against the tree to which
+he had tied her.
+
+Then he came close to her where she stood holding his handkerchief
+against her mouth and looking at him out of steady eyes as deeply blue
+as gentian blossoms.
+
+"Eve," he said, "you win. But you won't forgive me.... I wish we could
+be friends, some day.... We never can, now.... Good-bye."
+
+Neither spoke again. Then, of a sudden, the girl's eyes filled; and
+Trooper Stormont caught her free hand and kissed it;--kissed it again
+and again,--dropped it and went striding away through the underbrush
+which was now all rosy with the rays of sunset.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+After he had disappeared, the girl, Eve, went to the cleft in the rocks
+above.
+
+"Come out," she said contemptuously. "It's a good thing you hid, because
+there was a real man after you; and God help you if he ever finds you!"
+
+Hal Smith came out.
+
+"Pack in your meat," said the girl curtly, and flung his rifle across
+her shoulder.
+
+Through the ruddy afterglow she led the way homeward, a man's
+handkerchief pressed to her wounded mouth, her eyes preoccupied with
+the strangest thoughts that ever had stirred her virgin mind.
+
+Behind her walked Darragh with his load of venison and his alias,--and
+his tongue in his cheek.
+
+Thus began the preliminaries toward the ultimate undoing of Mike Clinch.
+Fate, Chance, and Destiny had undertaken the job in earnest.
+
+
+
+
+EPISODE TWO
+
+THE RULING PASSION
+
+
+I
+
+Nobody understood how Jose Quintana had slipped through the Secret
+Service net spread for him at every port.
+
+The United States authorities did not know why Quintana had come to
+America. They realised merely that he arrived for no good purpose; and
+they had meant to arrest and hold him for extradition if requested; for
+deportation as an undesirable alien anyway.
+
+Only two men in America knew that Quintana had come to the United States
+for the purpose of recovering the famous "Flaming Jewel," stolen by him
+from the Grand Duchess Theodorica of Esthonia; and stolen from Quintana,
+in turn, by a private soldier in an American Forestry Regiment, on leave
+in Paris. This soldier's name, probably, was Michael Clinch.
+
+One of the men who knew why Quintana might come to America was James
+Darragh, recently of the Military Intelligence, but now passing as a
+hold-up man under the name of Hal Smith, and actually in the employment
+of Clinch at his disreputable "hotel" at Star Pond in the North Woods.
+
+The other man who knew why Quintana had come to America was Emanuel
+Sard, a Levantine diamond broker of New York, Quintana's agent in
+America.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Now, as the October days passed without any report of Quintana's
+detention, Darragh, known as Hal Smith at Clinch's dump, began to
+suspect that Quintana had already slid into America through the meshes
+of the police.
+
+If so, this desperate international criminal could be expected at
+Clinch's under some guise or other, piloted thither by Emanuel Sard.
+
+So Hal Smith, whose duty was to wash dishes, do chores, and also to
+supply Clinch's with "mountain beef"--or deer taken illegally--made it
+convenient to prowl every day in the vicinity of the Ghost Lake road.
+
+He was perfectly familiar with Emanuel Sard's squat features and parrot
+nose, having robbed Mr. Sard of Quintana's cipher and of $4,000 at
+pistol point. And one morning, while roving around the guide's quarters
+at Ghost Lake Inn, Smith beheld Sard himself on the hotel veranda, in
+company with five strangers of foreign aspect.
+
+During the midday dinner Smith, on pretense of enquiring for a guide's
+license, got a look at the Inn ledger. Sard's signature was on it,
+followed by the names of Henri Picquet, Nicolas Salzar, Victor
+Georgiades, Harry Beck, and Jose Sanchez. And Smith went back through
+the wilderness to Star Pond, convinced that one of these gentlemen was
+Quintana, and the remainder, Quintana's gang; and that they were here to
+do murder if necessary in their remorseless quest of "The Flaming
+Jewel." Two million dollars once had been offered for the Flaming Jewel;
+and had been refused.
+
+Clinch probably possessed it. Smith was now convinced of that. But he
+was there to rob Clinch of it himself. For he had promised the little
+Grand Duchess to help recover her Erosite jewel; and now that he had
+finally traced its probable possession to Clinch, he was wondering how
+this recovery was to be accomplished.
+
+To arrest Clinch meant ruin to Eve Strayer. Besides he knew now that
+Clinch would die in prison before revealing the hiding place of the
+Flaming Jewel.
+
+Also, how could it be proven that Clinch had the Erosite gem? The cipher
+from Quintana was not sufficient evidence.
+
+No; the only way was to watch Clinch, prevent any robbery by Quintana's
+gang, somehow discover where the Flaming Jewel had been concealed, take
+it, and restore it to the beggared young girl whose only financial
+resource now lay in the possible recovery of this almost priceless gem.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Toward evening Hal Smith shot two deer near Owl Marsh. To poach on his
+own property appealed to his sense of humour. And Clinch, never dreaming
+that Hal Smith was the James Darragh who had inherited Harrod's vast
+preserve, damned all millionaires for every buck brought in, and became
+friendlier to Smith.
+
+
+II
+
+Clinch's dump was the disposal plant in which collected the human sewage
+of the wilderness.
+
+It being Saturday, the scum of the North Woods was gathering at the Star
+Pond resort. A venison and chicken supper was promised--and a dance if
+any women appeared.
+
+Jake Kloon had run in some Canadian hooch; Darragh, alias Hal Smith,
+contributed two fat deer and Clinch cooked them. By ten o'clock that
+morning many of the men were growing noisy; some were already drunk by
+noon. Shortly after midday dinner the first fight started--extinguished
+only after Clinch had beaten several of the backwoods aristocracy
+insensible.
+
+Towering amid the wreck of battle, his light grey eyes a-glitter, Clinch
+dominated, swinging his iron fists.
+
+When the combat ended and the fallen lay starkly where they fell, Clinch
+said in his pleasant, level voice:
+
+"Take them out and stick their heads in the pond. And don't go for to
+get me mad, boys, or I'm liable to act up rough."
+
+They bore forth the sleepers for immersion in Star Pond. Clinch
+relighted his cigar and repeated the rulings which had caused the
+fracas:
+
+"You gotta play square cards here or you don't play none in my house. No
+living thumb-nail can nick no cards in my place and get away with it.
+Three kings and two trays is better than three chickens and two eggs. If
+you don't like it, g'wan home."
+
+He went out in his shirt sleeves to see how the knock-outs were
+reviving, and met Hal Smith returning from the pond, who reported
+progress toward consciousness. They walked back to the "hotel" together.
+
+"Say, young fella," said Clinch in his soft, agreeable way, "you want to
+keep your eye peeled to-night."
+
+"Why?" inquired Smith.
+
+"Well, there'll be a lot o' folks here. There'll be strangers, too....
+Don't forget the State Troopers are looking for you."
+
+"Do the State Troopers ever play detective?" asked Smith, smiling.
+
+"Sure. They've been in here rigged out like peddlers and lumber-jacks
+and timber lookers."
+
+"Did they ever get anything on you?"
+
+"Not a thing."
+
+"Can you always spot them, Mike?"
+
+"No. But when a stranger shows up here who don't know nobody, he never
+sees nothing and he don't never learn nothing. He gets no hootch outa
+me. No, nor no craps and no cards. He gets his supper; that's what he
+gets ... and a dance, if there's ladies--and if any girl favours him.
+That's all the change any stranger gets out of Mike Clinch."
+
+They had paused on the rough veranda in the hot October sunshine.
+
+"Mike," suggested Smith carelessly, "wouldn't it pay you better to go
+straight?"
+
+Clinch's small grey eyes, which had been roaming over the prospect of
+lake and forest, focussed on Smith's smiling features.
+
+"What's that to you?" he asked.
+
+"I'll be out of a job," remarked Smith, laughing, "if they ever land
+you."
+
+Clinch's level gaze measured him; his mind was busy measuring him, too.
+
+"Who the hell are you, anyway?" he asked. "_I_ don't know. You stick up
+a man on the Ghost Lake Road and hide out here when the State Troopers
+come after you. And now you ask me if it pays better to go straight. Why
+didn't _you_ go straight if you think it pays?"
+
+"I haven't got a daughter to worry about," explained Smith. "If they get
+me it won't hurt anybody else."
+
+A dull red tinge came out under Clinch's tan:
+
+"Who asked _you_ to worry about Eve?"
+
+"She's a fine girl: that's all."
+
+Clinch's steely glare measured the young man:
+
+"You trying to make up to her?" he enquired gently.
+
+"No. She has no use for me."
+
+Clinch reflected, his cold tiger-gaze still fastened on Smith.
+
+"You're right," he said after a moment. "Eve is a good girl. Some day
+I'll make a lady of her."
+
+"She _is_ one, Clinch."
+
+At that Clinch reddened heavily--the first finer emotion ever betrayed
+before Smith. He did not say anything for a few moments, but his grim
+mouth worked. Finally:
+
+"I guess you was a gentleman once before you went crooked, Hal," he
+said. "You act up like you once was.... Say; there's only one thing on
+God's earth I care about. You've guessed it, too." He was off again upon
+his ruling passion.
+
+"Eve," nodded Smith.
+
+"Sure. She isn't my flesh and blood. But it seems like she's more, even.
+I want she should be a lady. It's _all_ I want. That damned millionaire
+Harrod bust me. But he couldn't stop me giving Eve her schooling. And
+now all I'm livin' for is to be fixed so's to give her money to go to
+the city like a lady. I don't care how I make money; all I want is to
+make it. And I'm a-going to."
+
+Smith nodded again.
+
+Clinch, now obsessed by his monomania, went on with an oath:
+
+"I can't make no money on the level after what Harrod done to me. And I
+gotta fix up Eve. What the hell do you mean by asking me would it pay me
+to travel straight I dunno."
+
+"I was only thinking of Eve. A lady isn't supposed to have a crook for a
+father."
+
+Clinch's grey eyes blazed for a moment, then their menacing glare
+dulled, died out into wintry fixity.
+
+"I wan't born a crook," he said. "I ain't got no choice. And don't
+worry, young fella; they ain't a-going to get me."
+
+"You can't go on beating the game forever, Clinch."
+
+"I'm beating it----" he hesitated--"and it won't be so long, neither,
+before I turn over enough to let Eve live in the city like any lady,
+with her autymobile and her own butler and all her swell friends, in a
+big house like she is educated for----"
+
+He broke off abruptly as a procession approached from the lake,
+escorting the battered gentry who now were able to wabble about a
+little.
+
+One of them, a fox-faced trap thief named Earl Leverett, slunk hastily
+by as though expecting another kick from Clinch.
+
+"G'wan inside, Earl, and act up right," said Clinch pleasantly. "You
+oughter have more sense than to start a fight in my place--you and Sid
+Hone and Harvey Chase. G'wan in and behave."
+
+He and Smith followed the procession of damaged ones into the house.
+
+The big unpainted room where a bar had once been was blue with cheap
+cigar smoke; the air reeked with the stench of beer and spirits. A score
+or more shambling forest louts in their dingy Saturday finery were
+gathered there playing cards, shooting craps, lolling around tables and
+tilting slopping glasses at one another.
+
+Heavy pleasantries were exchanged with the victims of Clinch's ponderous
+fists as they re-entered the room from which they had been borne so
+recently, feet first.
+
+"Now, boys," said Clinch kindly, "act up like swell gents and behave
+friendly. And if any ladies come in for the chicken supper, why, gol
+dang it, we'll have a dance!"
+
+
+III
+
+Toward sundown the first woodland nymph appeared--a half-shy, half-bold,
+willowy thing in the rosy light of the clearing.
+
+Hal Smith, washing glasses and dishes on the back porch for Eve Strayer
+to dry, asked who the rustic beauty might be.
+
+"Harvey Chase's sister," said Eve. "She shouldn't come here, but I can't
+keep her away and her brother doesn't care. She's only a child, too."
+
+"Is there any harm in a chicken supper and a dance?"
+
+Eve looked gravely at young Smith without replying.
+
+Other girlish shapes loomed in the evening light. Some were met by
+gallants, some arrived at the veranda unescorted.
+
+"Where do they all come from? Do they live in trees like dryads?" asked
+Smith.
+
+"There are always squatters in the woods," she replied indifferently.
+
+"Some of these girls come from Ghost Lake, I suppose."
+
+"Yes; waitresses at the Inn."
+
+"What music is there?"
+
+"Jim Hastings plays a fiddle. I play the melodeon if they need me."
+
+"What do you do when there's a fight?" he asked, with a side glance at
+her pure profile.
+
+"What do you suppose I do? Fight, too?"
+
+He laughed--mirthlessly--conscious always of his secret pity for this
+girl.
+
+"Well," he said, "when your father makes enough to quit, he'll take you
+out of this. It's a vile hole for a young girl----"
+
+"See here," she said, flushing; "you're rather particular for a young
+man who stuck up a tourist and robbed him of four thousand dollars."
+
+"I'm not complaining on my own account," returned Smith, laughing;
+"Clinch's suits me."
+
+"Well, don't concern yourself on my account, Hal Smith. And you'd better
+keep out of the dance, too, if there are any strangers there."
+
+"You think a State Trooper may happen in?"
+
+"It's likely. A lot of people come and go. We don't always know them."
+She opened a sliding wooden shutter and looked into the bar room. After
+a moment she beckoned him to her side.
+
+"There are strangers there now," she said, "--that thin, dark man who
+looks like a Kanuk. And those two men shaking dice. I don't know who
+they are. I never before saw them."
+
+But Smith had seen them at Ghost Lake Inn. One of them was Sard.
+Quintana's gang had arrived at Clinch's dump.
+
+A moment later Clinch came through the pantry and kitchen and out onto
+the rear porch where Smith was washing glasses in a tub filled from an
+ever-flowing spring.
+
+"I'm a-going to get supper," he said to Eve. "There'll be twenty-three
+plates." And to Smith: "Hal--you help Eve wait on the table. And if
+anybody acts up rough you slam him on the jaw--don't argue, don't
+wait--just slam him good, and I'll come on the hop."
+
+"Who are the strangers, dad?" asked Eve.
+
+"Don't nobody know 'em none, girlie. But they ain't State Troopers. They
+talk like they was foreign. One of 'em's English--the big, bony one with
+yellow hair and mustache."
+
+"Did they give any names?" asked Smith.
+
+"You bet. The stout, dark man calls himself Hongri Picket. French, I
+guess. The fat beak is a fella named Sard. Sanchez is the guy with a
+face like a Canada priest--Jose Sanchez--or something on that style. And
+then the yellow skinned young man is Nicole Salzar; the Britisher, Harry
+Beck; and that good lookin' dark gent with a little black Charlie
+Chaplin, he's Victor Georgiades."
+
+"What are those foreigners doing in the North Woods, Clinch?" enquired
+Smith.
+
+"Oh, they all give the same spiel--hire out in a lumber camp. But _they_
+ain't no lumberjacks," added Clinch contemptuously. "I don't know what
+they be--hootch runners maybe--or booze bandits--or they done something
+crooked som'ers r'other. It's safe to serve 'em drinks."
+
+Clinch himself had been drinking. He always drank when preparing to
+cook.
+
+He turned and went into the kitchen now, rolling up his shirt sleeves
+and relighting his clay pipe.
+
+
+IV
+
+By nine o'clock the noisy chicken supper had ended; the table had been
+cleared; Jim Hastings was tuning his fiddle in the big room; Eve had
+seated herself before the battered melodeon.
+
+"Ladies and gents," said Clinch in his clear, pleasant voice, which
+carried through the hubbub, "we're a-going to have a dance--thanks and
+beholden to Jim Hastings and my daughter Eve. Eve, she don't drink and
+she don't dance, so no use askin' and no hard feelin' toward nobody.
+
+"So act up pleasant to one and all and have a good time and no rough
+stuff in no form, shape or manner, but behave like gents all and swell
+dames, like you was to a swarry on Fifth Avenue. Let's go!"
+
+He went back to the pantry, taking no notice of the cheering. The
+fiddler scraped a fox trot, and Eve's melodeon joined in. A vast
+scuffling of heavily shod feet filled the momentary silence, accented by
+the shrill giggle of young girls.
+
+"They're off," remarked Clinch to Smith, who stood at the pantry shelf
+prepared to serve whiskey or beer upon previous receipt of payment.
+
+In the event of a sudden raid, the arrangements at Clinch's were quite
+simple. Two large drain pipes emerged from the kitchen floor beside
+Smith, and ended in Star Pond. In case of alarm the tub of beer was
+poured down one pipe; the whiskey down the other.
+
+Only the trout in Star Pond would ever sample that hootch again.
+
+Clinch, now slightly intoxicated, leaned heavily on the pantry shelf
+beside Smith, adjusting his pistol under his suspenders.
+
+"Young fella," he said in his agreeable voice, "you're dead right. You
+sure said a face-full when you says to me, 'Eve's a lady, by God!' _You_
+oughta know. You was a gentleman yourself once. Even if you take to
+stickin' up tourists you know a lady when you see one. And you called
+the turn. She _is_ a lady. All I'm livin' for is to get her down to the
+city and give her money to live like a lady. I'll do it yet.... Soon!...
+I'd do it to-morrow--to-night--if I dared.... If I thought it sure
+fire.... If I was dead certain I could get away with it.... I've _got_
+the money. _Now!_ ... Only it ain't in _money_.... Smith?"
+
+"Yes, Mike."
+
+"You know me?"
+
+"Sure."
+
+"You size me up?"
+
+"I do."
+
+"All right. If you ever tell anyone I got money that ain't money I'll
+shoot you through the head."
+
+"Don't worry, Clinch."
+
+"I ain't. You're a crook; you won't talk. You're a gentleman, too.
+_They_ don't sell out a pal. Say, Hal, there's only one fella I don't
+want to meet."
+
+"Who's that, Mike?"
+
+"Lemme tell you," continued Clinch, resting more heavily on the shelf
+while Smith, looking out through the pantry shutter at the dancing,
+listened intently.
+
+"When I was in France in a Forestry Rig'ment," went on Clinch, lowering
+his always pleasant voice, "I was to Paris on leave a few days before
+they sent us home.
+
+"I was in the washroom of a caffy--a-cleanin' up for supper, when
+dod-bang! into the place comes a-tumblin' a man with two cops pushing
+and kickin' him.
+
+"They didn't see me in there for they locked the door on the man. He was
+a swell gent, too, in full dress and silk hat and all like that, and a
+opry cloak and white kid gloves, and mustache and French beard.
+
+"When they locked him up he stood stock still and lit a cigarette, as
+cool as ice. Then he begun walkin' around looking for a way to get out;
+but there wasn't no way.
+
+"Then he seen me and over he comes and talks English right away: 'Want
+to make a thousand francs, soldier?' sez he in a quick whisper. 'You're
+on,' sez I; 'show your dough.' 'Them Flics has went to get the
+Commissaire for to frisk me,' sez he. 'If they find this parcel on me I
+do twenty years in Noumea. Five years kills anybody out there.' 'What do
+you want I should do?' sez I, havin' no love for no cops, French or
+other. 'Take this packet and stick it in your overcoat,' sez he. 'Go to
+13 roo Quinze Octobre and give it to the concierge for Jose Quintana.'
+And he shoves the packet on me and a thousand-franc note.
+
+"Then he grabs me sudden and pulls open my collar. God, he was strong.
+
+"'What's the matter with you?' says I. 'Lemme go or I'll mash your mug
+flat.' 'Lemme see your identification disc,' he barks.
+
+"Bein' in Paris for a bat, I had exchanged with my bunkie, Bill Hanson.
+'Let him look,' thinks I; and he reads Bill's check.
+
+"'If you fool me,' says he, 'I'll folly ye and I'll do you in if it
+takes the rest of my life. You understand?' 'Sure,' says I, me tongue in
+me cheek. 'Bong! Allez vous en!' says he.
+
+"'How the hell,' sez I, 'do I get out of here?' 'You're a Yankee
+soldier. The Flics don't know you were in here. You go and kick on that
+door and make a holler.'
+
+"So I done it good; and a cop opens and swears at me, but when he sees a
+Yankee soldier was locked in the wash-room by mistake, he lets me out,
+you bet."
+
+Clinch smiled a thin smile, poured out three fingers of hooch.
+
+"What else?" asked Smith quietly.
+
+"Nothing much. I didn't go to no roo Quinze Octobre. But I don't never
+want to see that fella Quintana. I've been waiting till it's safe to
+sell--what was in that packet."
+
+"Sell what?"
+
+"What was in that packet," replied Clinch thickly.
+
+"What was in it?"
+
+"Sparklers--since you're so nosey."
+
+"Diamonds?"
+
+"And then some. I dunno what they're called. All I know is I'll croak
+Quintana if he even turns up askin' for 'em. He frisked somebody. I
+frisked him. I'll kill anybody who tries to frisk me."
+
+"Where do you keep them?" enquired Smith naively.
+
+Clinch looked at him, very drunk: "None o' your dinged business," he
+said very softly.
+
+The dancing had become boisterous but not unseemly, although all the men
+had been drinking too freely.
+
+Smith closed the pantry bar at midnight, by direction of Eve. Now he
+came out into the ballroom and mixed affably with the company, even
+dancing with Harvey Chase's sister once--a slender hoyden, all flushed
+and dishevelled, with a tireless mania for dancing which seemed to
+intoxicate her.
+
+She danced, danced, danced, accepting any partner offered. But Smith's
+skill enraptured her and she refused to let him go when her beau, a late
+arrival, one Charlie Berry, slouched up to claim her.
+
+Smith, always trying to keep Clinch and Quintana's men in view, took no
+part in the discussion; but Berry thought he was detaining Lily Chase
+and pushed him aside.
+
+"Hold on, young man!" exclaimed Smith sharply. "Keep your hands to
+yourself. If your girl don't want to dance with you she doesn't have
+to."
+
+Some of Quintana's gang came up to listen. Berry glared at Smith.
+
+"Say," he said, "I seen you before somewhere. Wasn't you in Russia?"
+
+"What are you talking about?"
+
+"Yes, you was. You was an officer! What you doing at Clinch's?"
+
+"What's that?" growled Clinch, shoving his way forward and shouldering
+the crowd aside.
+
+"Who's this man, Mike?" demanded Berry.
+
+"Well, who do you think he is?" asked Clinch thickly.
+
+"I think he's gettin' the goods on you, that's what I think," yelled
+Berry.
+
+"G'wan home, Charlie," returned Clinch. "G'wan, all o' you. The dance is
+over. Go peaceable, every one. Stop that fiddle!"
+
+The music ceased. The dance was ended; they all understood that; but
+there was grumbling and demands for drinks.
+
+Clinch, drunk but impassive, herded them through the door out into the
+starlight. There was scuffling, horse-play, but no fighting.
+
+The big Englishman, Harry Beck, asked for accommodations for his party
+over night.
+
+"Naw," said Clinch, "g'wan back to the Inn. I can't bother with you
+folks to-night." And as the others, Salzar, Georgiades, Picquet and
+Sanchez gathered about to insist, Clinch pushed them all out of doors in
+a mass.
+
+"Get the hell out o' here!" he growled; and slammed the door.
+
+He stood for a moment with head lowered, drunk, but apparently capable
+of reflection. Eve came from the melodeon and laid one slim hand on his
+arm.
+
+"Go to bed, girlie," he said, not looking at her.
+
+"You also, dad."
+
+"No.... I got business with Hal Smith."
+
+Passing Smith, the girl whispered: "You look out for him and undress
+him."
+
+Smith nodded, gravely preoccupied with coming events, and nerving
+himself to meet them.
+
+He had no gun. Clinch's big automatic bulged under his armpit.
+
+When the girl had ascended the creaking stairs and her door, above,
+closed, Clinch walked unsteadily to the door, opened it, fished out his
+pistol.
+
+"Come on out," he said without turning.
+
+"Where?" enquired Smith.
+
+Clinched turned, lifted his square head; and the deadly glare in his
+eyes left Smith silent.
+
+"You comin'?"
+
+"Sure," said Smith quietly.
+
+But Clinch gave him no chance to close in: it was death even to swerve.
+Smith walked slowly out into the starlight, ahead of Clinch--slowly
+forward in the luminous darkness.
+
+"Keep going," came Clinch's quiet voice behind him. And, after they had
+entered the woods,--"Bear to the right."
+
+Smith knew now. The low woods were full of sink-holes. They were headed
+for the nearest one.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the edge of the thing they halted. Smith turned and faced Clinch.
+
+"What's the idea?" he asked without a quaver.
+
+"Was you in Roosia?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Was you an officer?"
+
+"I was."
+
+"Then you're spyin'. You're a cop."
+
+"You're mistaken."
+
+"Ah, don't hand me none like that! You're a State Trooper or a Secret
+Service guy, or a plain, dirty cop. And I'm a-going to croak you."
+
+"I'm not in any service, now."
+
+"Wasn't you an army officer?"
+
+"Yes. Can't an officer go wrong?"
+
+"Soft stuff. Don't feed it to me. I told you too much anyway. I was
+babblin' drunk. I'm drunk now, but I got sense. D'you think I'll run
+chances of sittin' in State's Prison for the next ten years and leave
+Eve out here alone? No. I gotta shoot you, Smith. And I'm a-going to do
+it. G'wan and say what you want ... if you think there's some kind o'
+god you can square before you croak."
+
+"If you go to the chair for murder, what good will it do Eve?" asked
+Smith. His lips were crackling dry; he moistened them.
+
+"Sink holes don't talk," said Clinch. "G'wan and square yourself, if
+you're the church kind."
+
+"Clinch," said Smith unsteadily, "if you kill me now you're as good as
+dead yourself. Quintana is here."
+
+"Say, don't hand me that," retorted Clinch. "Do you square yourself or
+no?"
+
+"I tell you Quintana's gang were at the dance to-night--Picquet, Salzar,
+Georgiades, Sard, Beck, Jose Sanchez--the one who looks like a French
+priest. Maybe he had a beard when you saw him in that cafe
+wash-room----"
+
+"What!" shouted Clinch in sudden fury. "What yeh talkin' about, you poor
+dumb dingo! Yeh fixin' to scare me? What do _you_ know about Quintana?
+Are you one of Quintana's gang, too? Is that what you're up to, hidin'
+out at Star Pond. Come on, now, out with it! I'll have it all out of you
+now, Hal Smith, before I plug you----"
+
+He came lurching forward, swinging his heavy pistol as though he meant
+to brain his victim, but he halted after the first step or two and stood
+there, a shadowy bulk, growling, enraged, undecided.
+
+And, as Smith looked at him, two shadows detached themselves from the
+trees behind Clinch--silently--silently glided behind--struck in utter
+silence.
+
+Down crashed Clinch, black-jacked, his face in the ooze. His pistol flew
+from his hand, struck Smith's leg; and Smith had it at the same instant
+and turned it like lightning on the murderous shadows.
+
+"Hands up! Quick!" he cried, at bay now, and his back to the sink-hole.
+
+Pistol levelled, he bent one knee, pushed Clinch over on his back, lest
+the ooze suffocate him.
+
+"Now," he said coolly, "what do you bums want of Mike Clinch?"
+
+"Who are you?" came a sullen voice. "This is none o' your bloody
+business. We want Clinch, not you."
+
+"What do you want of Clinch?"
+
+"Take your gun off us!"
+
+"Answer, or I'll let go at you. What do you want of Clinch?"
+
+"Money. What do you think?"
+
+"You're here to stick up Clinch?" enquired Smith.
+
+"Yes. What's that to you?"
+
+"What has Clinch done to you?"
+
+"He stuck _us_ up, that's what! Now, are you going to keep out of this?"
+
+"No."
+
+"We ain't going to hurt Clinch."
+
+"You bet you're not. Where's the rest of your gang?"
+
+"What gang?"
+
+"Quintana's," said Smith, laughing. A wild exhilaration possessed him.
+His flanks and rear were protected by the sink-hole. He had Quintana's
+gang--two of them--over his pistol.
+
+"Turn your backs and sit down," he said. As the shadowy forms hesitated,
+he picked up a stick and hurled it at them. They sat down hastily, hands
+up, backs toward him.
+
+"You'll both die where you sit," remarked Smith, "if you yell for help."
+
+Clinch sighed heavily, stirred, groped on the damp leaves with his
+hands.
+
+"I say," began the voice which Smith identified as Harry Beck's, "if
+you'll come in with us on this it will pay you, young man."
+
+"No," drawled Smith, "I'll go it alone."
+
+"It can't be done, old dear. You'll see if you try it on."
+
+"Who'll stop me? Quintana?"
+
+"Come," urged Beck, "and be a good pal. You can't manage it alone. We've
+got all night to make Clinch talk. We know how, too. You'll get your
+share----"
+
+"Oh, stow it," said Smith, watching Clinch, who was reviving. He sat up
+presently, and put both hands over his head. Smith touched him silently
+on the shoulder and he turned his heavy, square head in a dazed way.
+Blood striped his visage. He gazed dully at Smith for a little while,
+then, seeming to recollect, the old glare began to light his pale eyes.
+
+The next instant, however, Beck spoke again, and Clinch turned in
+astonishment and saw the two figures sitting there with backs toward
+Smith and hands up.
+
+Clinch stared at the squatting forms, then slowly moved his head and
+looked at Smith and his levelled pistol.
+
+"We know how to make a man squeal," said Harry Beck suddenly. "He'll
+talk. We can make Clinch talk, no fear! Leave it to us, old pal. Are you
+with us?" He started to look around over his shoulder and Smith hurled
+another stick and hit him in the face.
+
+"Quiet there, Harry," he said. "What's my share if I go in with you?"
+
+"One sixth, same's we all get."
+
+"What's it worth?" asked Smith, with a motion of caution toward Clinch.
+
+"If I say a million you'll tell me I lie. But it's nearer three--or you
+can have my share. Is it a go?"
+
+"You'll not hurt Clinch when he comes to?"
+
+"We'll make him talk, that's all. It may hurt him some."
+
+"You won't kill him?"
+
+"I swear by God----"
+
+"Wait! Isn't it better to shoot him after he squeals? Here's a lovely
+sink-hole handy."
+
+"Right-o! We'll make him talk first and then shove him in. Are you with
+us?"
+
+"If you turn your head I'll blow the face off you, Harry," said Smith,
+cautioning Clinch to silence with a gesture.
+
+"All right. Only you better make up your mind. That cove is likely to
+wake up now at any time," grumbled Beck.
+
+Clinch looked at Smith. The latter smiled, leaned over, and whispered:
+
+"Can you walk all right?"
+
+Clinch nodded.
+
+"Well, we'd better beat it. Quintana's whole gang is in these woods,
+somewhere, hunting for you, and they might stumble on us here, at any
+moment." And, to the two men in front: "Lie down flat on your faces.
+Don't stir; don't speak; or it's you for the sink-hole.... Lie down, I
+tell you! That's it. Don't move till I tell you to."
+
+Clinch got up from where he was sitting, cast one murderous glance at
+the prostrate forms, then followed Smith, noiselessly, over the stretch
+of sphagnum moss.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When they reached the house they saw Eve standing on the steps in her
+night-dress and bare feet, holding a lantern.
+
+"Daddy," she whimpered, "I was frightened. I didn't know where you had
+gone----"
+
+Clinch put his arm around her, turned his bloody face and looked at
+Smith.
+
+"It's _this_," he said, "that I ain't forgetting, young fella. What you
+done for me you done for _her_.
+
+"I gotta live to make a lady of her. That's why," he added thickly, "I'm
+much obliged to you, Hal Smith.... Go to bed, girlie----"
+
+"You're bleeding, dad?"
+
+"Aw, a twig scratched me. I been in the woods with Hal. G'wan to bed."
+
+He went to the sink and washed his face, dried it, kissed the girl, and
+gave her a gentle shove toward the stairs.
+
+"Hal and I is sittin' up talkin' business," he remarked, bolting the
+door and all the shutters.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When the girl had gone, Clinch went to a closet and brought back two
+Winchester rifles, two shot guns, and a box of ammunition.
+
+"Goin' to see it out with me, Hal?"
+
+"Sure," smiled Smith.
+
+"Aw' right. Have a drink?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Aw' right. Where'll you set?"
+
+"Anywhere."
+
+"Aw' right. Set over there. They may try the back porch. I'll jest set
+here a spell, n'then I'll kind er mosey 'round.... Plug the first fella
+that tries a shutter, Hal."
+
+"You bet."
+
+Clinch came over and held out his hand.
+
+"You said a face-full that time when you says to me, 'Clinch,' you says,
+'Eve _is_ a lady.' ... I gotta fix her up. I gotta be alive to do it....
+That's why I'm greatly obliged to yeh, Hal."
+
+He took his rifle and walked slowly toward the pantry.
+
+"You bet," he muttered, "she _is_ a lady, so help me God."
+
+
+
+
+EPISODE THREE
+
+ON STAR PEAK
+
+
+I
+
+Mike Clinch regarded the jewels taken from Jose Quintana as legitimate
+loot acquired in war.
+
+He was prepared to kill anybody who attempted to take the gems from him.
+
+At the very possibility his ruling passion blazed--his mania to make of
+Eve Strayer a grand lady.
+
+But now, what he had feared for years had happened. Quintana had found
+him,--Quintana, after all these years, had discovered the identity and
+dwelling place of the obscure American soldier who had robbed him in the
+wash-room of a Paris cafe. And Quintana was now in America, here in this
+very wilderness, tracking the man who had despoiled him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Clinch, in his shirt-sleeves, carrying a rifle, came out on the log
+veranda and sat down to think it over.
+
+He began to realise that he was likely to have trouble with a man as
+cold-blooded and as dogged as himself.
+
+Nor did he doubt that those with Quintana were desperate men.
+
+On whom could he count? On nobody unless he paid their hire. None among
+the lawless men who haunted his backwoods "hotel" at Star Pond would
+lift a finger to help him. Almost any among them would have robbed
+him,--murdered him, probably,--if it were known that jewels were hidden
+in the house.
+
+He could not trust Jake Kloon; Leverett was as treacherous as only a
+born coward can be; Sid Hone, Harvey Chase, Blommers, Byron
+Hastings,--he knew them all too well to trust them,--a sullen,
+unscrupulous pack, partly cowardly, always fierce,--as are any creatures
+that live furtively, feed only by their wits, and slink through life
+just outside the frontiers of law.
+
+And yet, one of this gang had stood by him--Hal Smith--the man he
+himself had been about to slay.
+
+Clinch got up from the bench where he had been sitting and walked down
+to the pond where Hal Smith sat cleaning trout.
+
+"Hal," he said, "I been figuring some. Quintana don't dare call in the
+constables. I can't afford to. Quintana and I've got to settle this on
+our own."
+
+Smith slit open a ten-inch trout, stripped it, flung the entrails out
+into the pond, soused the fish in water, and threw it into a milk pan.
+
+"Whose jewels were they in the beginning?" he enquired carelessly.
+
+"How do I know?"
+
+"If you ever found out----"
+
+"I don't want to. I got them in the war, anyway. And it don't make no
+difference how I got 'em; Eve's going to be a lady if I go to the chair
+for it. So that's that."
+
+Smith slit another trout, gutted it, flung away the viscera but laid
+back the roe.
+
+"Shame to take them in October," he remarked, "but people must eat."
+
+"Same's me," nodded Clinch; "I don't want to kill no one, but Eve she's
+gotta be a lady and ride in her own automobile with the proudest."
+
+"Does Eve know about the jewels?"
+
+Clinch's pale eyes, which had been roving over the wooded shores of Star
+Pond, reverted to Smith.
+
+"I'd cut my throat before I'd tell her," he said softly.
+
+"She wouldn't stand for it?"
+
+"Hal, when you said to me, 'Eve's a lady, by God!' you swallered the
+hull pie. That's the answer. A lady don't stand for what you and I don't
+bother about."
+
+"Suppose she learns that you robbed the man who robbed somebody else of
+these jewels."
+
+Clinch's pale eyes were fixed on him: "Only you and me know," he said in
+his pleasant voice.
+
+"Quintana knows. His gang knows."
+
+Clinch's smile was terrifying. "I guess she ain't never likely to know
+nothing, Hal."
+
+"What do you purpose to do, Mike?"
+
+"Still hunt."
+
+"For Quintana?"
+
+"I might mistake him for a deer. Them accidents is likely, too."
+
+"If Quintana catches you it will go hard with you, Mike."
+
+"Sure. I know."
+
+"He'll torture you to make you talk."
+
+"You think I'd talk, Hal?"
+
+Smith looked up into the light-coloured eyes. The pupils were pin
+points. Then he went on cleaning fish.
+
+"Hal?"
+
+"What?"
+
+"If they get me,--but no matter; they ain't a-going to get me."
+
+"Were you going to tell me where those jewels are hidden, Mike?"
+enquired the young man, still busy with his fish. He did not look around
+when he spoke. Clinch's murderous gaze was fastened on the back of his
+head.
+
+"Don't go to gettin' too damn nosey, Hal," he said in his always
+agreeable voice.
+
+Smith soused all the fish in water again: "You'd better tell somebody if
+you go gunning for Quintana."
+
+"Did I ask your advice?"
+
+"You did not," said the young man, smiling.
+
+"All right. Mind your business."
+
+Smith got up from the water's edge with his pan of trout:
+
+"That's what I shall do, Mike," he said, laughing. "So go on with your
+private war; it's no button off _my_ pants if Quintana gets you."
+
+He went away toward the ice-house with the trout. Eve Strayer, doing
+chamber work, watched the young man from an upper room.
+
+The girl's instinct was to like Smith,--but that very instinct aroused
+her distrust. What was a man of his breeding and education doing at
+Clinch's dump? Why was he content to hang around and do chores? A man of
+his type who has gone crooked enough to stick up a tourist in an
+automobile nourishes higher--though probably perverted--ambitions than a
+dollar a day and board.
+
+She heard Clinch's light step on the uncarpeted stair; went on making
+up Smith's bed; and smiled as her step-father came into the room, still
+carrying his rifle.
+
+He had something else in his hand, too,--a flat, thin packet wrapped in
+heavy paper and sealed all over with black wax.
+
+"Girlie," he said, "I want you should do a little errand for me this
+morning. If you're spry it won't take long--time to go there and get
+back to help with noon dinner."
+
+"Very well, dad."
+
+"Go git your pants on, girlie."
+
+"You want me to go into the woods?"
+
+"I want you to go to the hole in the rocks under Star Peak and lay this
+packet in the hootch cache."
+
+She nodded, tucked in the sheets, smoothed blanket and pillow with deft
+hands, went out to her own room. Clinch seated himself and turned a
+blank face to the window.
+
+It was a sudden decision. He realised now that he couldn't keep the
+jewels in his house. War was on with Quintana. The "hotel" would be the
+goal for Quintana and his gang. And for Smith, too, if ever temptation
+overpowered him. The house was liable to an attempt at robbery any
+night, now;--any day, perhaps. It was no place for the packet he had
+taken from Jose Quintana.
+
+Eve came in wearing grey shirt, breeches, and puttees. Clinch gave her
+the packet.
+
+"What's in it, dad?" she asked smilingly.
+
+"Don't you get nosey, girlie. Come here."
+
+She went to him. He put his left arm around her.
+
+"You like me some, don't you, girlie?"
+
+"You know it, dad."
+
+"All right. You're all that matters to me ... since your mother went
+and died ... after a year.... That was crool, girlie. Only a year.
+Well, I ain't cared none for nobody since--only you, girlie."
+
+He touched the packet with his forefinger:
+
+"If I step out, that's yours. But I ain't a-going to step out. Put it
+with the hootch. You know how to move that keystone?"
+
+"Yes, dad."
+
+"And watch out that no game protector and none of that damn
+millionaire's wardens see you in the woods. No, nor none o' these here
+fancy State Troopers. You gotta watch out _this_ time, Eve. It means
+everything to us--to you, girlie--and to me. Go tip-toe. Lay low, coming
+and going. Take a rifle."
+
+Eve ran to her bed-room and returned with her Winchester and belt.
+
+"You shoot to kill," said Clinch grimly, "if anyone wants to stop you.
+But lay low and you won't need to shoot nobody, girlie. G'wan out the
+back way; Hal's in the ice house."
+
+
+II
+
+Slim and straight as a young boy in her grey shirt and breeches, Eve
+continued on lightly through the woods, her rifle over her shoulder, her
+eyes of gentian-blue always alert.
+
+The morning turned warm; she pulled off her soft felt hat, shook out her
+clipped curls, stripped open the shirt at her snowy throat where sweat
+glimmered like melted frost.
+
+The forest was lovely in the morning sunlight--lovely and still--save
+for the blue-jays--for the summer birds had gone and only birds
+destined to a long Northern winter remained.
+
+Now and then, ahead of her, she saw a ruffed grouse wandering in the
+trail. These, and a single tiny grey bird with a dreary note
+interminably repeated, were the only living things she saw except here
+and there a summer-battered butterfly of the Vanessa tribe flitting in
+some stray sunbeam.
+
+The haunting odour of late autumn was in the air--delicately acrid--the
+scent of frost-killed brake and ripening wild grasses, of brilliant dead
+leaves and black forest loam pungent with mast from beech and oak.
+
+Eve's tread was light on the moist trail; her quick eyes missed
+nothing--not the dainty imprint of deer, fresh made, nor the sprawling
+insignia of rambling raccoons--nor the big barred owl huddled on a pine
+limb overhead, nor, where the swift gravelly reaches of the brook caught
+sunlight, did she miss the swirl and furrowing and milling of painted
+trout on the spawning beds.
+
+Once she took cover, hearing something stirring; but it was only a
+yearling buck that came out of the witch-hazel to stare, stamp, then
+wheel and trot away, displaying the danger signal.
+
+In her cartridge-pouch she carried the flat, sealed packet which Clinch
+had trusted to her. The sack swayed gently as she strode on, slapping
+her left hip at every step; and always her subconscious mind remained on
+guard and aware of it; and now and then she dropped her hand to feel of
+the pouch and strap.
+
+The character of the forest was now changing as she advanced. The first
+tamaracks appeared, slim, silvery trunks, crowned with the gold of
+autumn foliage, outer sentinels of that vast maze of swamp and stream
+called Owl Marsh, the stronghold and refuge of forest wild
+things--sometimes the sanctuary of hunted men.
+
+From Star Peak's left flank an icy stream clatters down to the level
+floor of the woods, here; and it was here that Eve had meant to quench
+her thirst with a mouthful of sweet water.
+
+But as she approached the tiny ford, warily, she saw a saddled horse
+tied to a sapling and a man seated on a mossy log.
+
+The trappings of horse, the grey-green uniform of the man, left no room
+for speculation; a trooper of the State Constabulary was seated there.
+
+His cap was off; his head rested on his palm. Elbow on knee, he sat
+there gazing at the water--watching the slim fish, perhaps, darting up
+stream toward their bridal-beds hidden far away at the headwaters.
+
+A detour was imperative. The girl, from the shelter of a pine, looked
+out cautiously at the trooper. The sudden sight of him had merely
+checked her; now the recognition of his uniform startled her heart out
+of its tranquil rhythm and set the blood burning in her cheeks.
+
+There was a memory of such a man seared into the girl's very soul;--a
+man whose head and shoulders resembled this man's,--who had the same
+bright hair, the same slim and powerful body,--and who moved, too, as
+this young man moved.
+
+The trooper stirred, lifted his head to relight his pipe.
+
+The girl knew him. Her heart stood still; then heart and blood ran riot
+and she felt her knees tremble,--felt weak as she rested against the
+pine's huge trunk and covered her face with unsteady fingers.
+
+Until the moment, Eve had never dreamed what the memory of this man
+really meant to her,--never dreamed that she had capacity for emotion so
+utterly overwhelming.
+
+Even now confusion, shame, fear were paramount. All she wanted was to
+get away,--get away and still her heart's wild beating,--control the
+strange tremor that possessed her, recover mind and sense and breath.
+
+She drew her hand from her eyes and looked upon the man she had
+attempted to kill,--upon the young man who had wrestled her off her feet
+and handcuffed her,--and who had bathed her bleeding mouth with
+sphagnum,--and who had kissed her hands----
+
+She was trembling so that she became frightened. The racket of the brook
+in his ears safeguarded her in a measure. She bent over nearly double,
+her rifle at a trail, and cautiously began the detour.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When at length the wide circle through the woods had been safely
+accomplished and Eve was moving out through the thickening ranks of
+tamarack, her heart, which seemed to suffocate her, quieted; and she
+leaned against a shoulder of rock, strangely tired.
+
+After a while she drew from her pocket _his_ handkerchief, and looked at
+it. The square of cambric bore his initials, J. S. Blood from her lip
+remained on it. She had not washed out the spots.
+
+She put it to her lips again, mechanically. A faint odour of tobacco
+still clung to it.
+
+By every law of loyalty, pride, self-respect, she should have held this
+man her enemy. Instead, she held his handkerchief against her
+lips,--crushed it there suddenly, closing her eyes while the colour
+surged and surged through her skin from throat to hair.
+
+Then, wearily, she lifted her head and looked out into the grey and
+empty vista of her life, where the dreary years seemed to stretch like
+milestones away, away into an endless waste.
+
+She put the handkerchief into her pocket, shouldered her rifle, moved on
+without looking about her,--a mistake which only the emotion of the
+moment could account for in a girl so habituated to caution,--for she
+had gone only a few rods before a man's strident voice halted her:
+
+"_Halte la! Crosse en air!_"
+
+"Drop that rifle!" came another voice from behind her. "You're covered!
+Throw your gun on the ground!"
+
+She stood as though paralysed. To the right and left she heard people
+trampling through the thicket toward her.
+
+"Down with that gun, damn you!" repeated the voice, breathless from
+running. All around her men came floundering and crashing toward her
+through the undergrowth. She could see some of them.
+
+As she stooped to place her rifle on the dead leaves, she drew the flat
+packet from her cartridge sack at the same time and slid it deftly under
+a rotting log. Then, calm but very pale, she stood upright to face
+events.
+
+The first man wore a red and yellow bandanna handkerchief over the lower
+half of his face, pulled tightly across a bony nose. He held a long
+pistol nearly parallel to his own body; and when he came up to where she
+was standing he poked the muzzle into her stomach.
+
+She did not flinch; he said nothing; she looked intently into the two
+ratty eyes fastened on her over the edge of his bandanna.
+
+Five other men were surrounding her, but they all wore white masks of
+vizard shape, revealing chin and mouth.
+
+They were different otherwise, also, wearing various sorts and patterns
+of sport clothes, brand new, and giving them an odd, foreign appearance.
+
+What troubled her most was the silence they maintained. The man wearing
+the bandanna was the only one who seemed at all a familiar
+figure,--merely, perhaps, because he was American in build, clothing,
+and movement.
+
+He took her by the shoulder, turned her around and gave her a shove
+forward. She staggered a step or two; he gave her another shove and she
+comprehended that she was to keep on going.
+
+Presently she found herself in a steep, wet deer-trail rising upward
+through a gully. She knew that runway. It led up Star Peak.
+
+Behind her as she climbed she heard the slopping, panting tread of men;
+her wind was better than theirs; she climbed lithely upward, setting a
+pace which finally resulted in a violent jerk backward,--a savage,
+wordless admonition to go more slowly.
+
+As she climbed she wondered whether she should have fired an alarm shot
+on the chance of the State Trooper, Stormont, hearing it.
+
+But she had thought only of the packet at the moment of surprise. And
+now she wondered whether, when freed, she could ever again find that
+rotting log.
+
+Up, up, always up along the wet gully, deep with silt and
+frost-splintered rock, she toiled, the heavy gasping of men behind her.
+Twice she was jerked to a halt while her escort rested.
+
+Once, without turning, she said unsteadily: "Who are you? What have I
+done to you?"
+
+There was no reply.
+
+"What are you going to do to me----" she began again, and was shaken by
+the shoulder until silent.
+
+At last the vast arch of the eastern sky sprang out ahead, where stunted
+spruces stood out against the sunshine and the intense heat of midday
+fell upon a bare table-land of rock and moss and fern.
+
+As she came out upon the level, the man behind her took both her arms
+and pulled them back and somebody bandaged her eyes. Then a hand closed
+on her left arm and, so guided, she stumbled and crept forward across
+the rocks for a few moments until her guide halted her and forced her
+into a sitting position on a smooth, flat boulder.
+
+She heard the crunching of heavy feet all around her, whispering made
+hoarse by breath exhausted, movement across rock and scrub, retreating
+steps.
+
+For an interminable time she sat there alone in the hot sun, drenched to
+the skin in sweat, listening, thinking, striving to find a reason for
+this lawless outrage.
+
+After a long while she heard somebody coming across the rocks, stiffened
+as she listened with some vague presentiment of evil.
+
+Somebody had halted beside her. After a pause she was aware of nimble
+fingers busy with the bandage over her eyes.
+
+At first, when freed, the light blinded her. By degrees she was able to
+distinguish the rocky crest of Star Peak, with the tops of tall trees
+appearing level with the rocks from depths below.
+
+Then she turned, slowly, and looked at the man who had seated himself
+beside her.
+
+He wore a white mask over a delicate, smoothly shaven face.
+
+His soft hat and sporting clothes were dark grey, evidently new. And she
+noticed his hands--long, elegantly made, smooth, restless, playing with
+a pencil and some sheets of paper on his knees.
+
+As she met his brilliant eyes behind the mask, his delicate, thin lips
+grew tense in what seemed to be a smile--or a soundless sort of laugh.
+
+"Veree happee," he said, "to make the acquaintance. Pardon my
+unceremony, miss, but onlee necissitee compels. Are you, perhaps, a
+little rested?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Ah! Then, if you permit, we proceed with affairs of moment. You will be
+sufficiently kind to write down what I say. Yes?"
+
+He placed paper and pencil in Eve's hand. Without demurring or
+hesitation she made ready to write, her mind groping wildly for the
+reason of it all.
+
+"Write," he said, with his silent laugh which was more like the
+soundless snarl of a lynx unafraid:
+
+"To Mike Clinch, my fathaire, from his child, Eve.... I am hostage,
+held by Jose Quintana. Pay what you owe him and I go free.
+
+"For each day delay he sends to you one finger which will be severed
+from my right hand----"
+
+Eve's slender fingers trembled; she looked up at the masked man, stared
+steadily into his brilliant eyes.
+
+"Proceed miss, if you are so amiable," he said softly.
+
+She wrote on: "--One finger for every day's delay. The whole hand at the
+week's end. The other hand then, finger by finger. Then, alas! the right
+foot----"
+
+Eve trembled.
+
+"Proceed," he said softly.
+
+She wrote: "If you agree you shall pay what you owe to Jose Quintana in
+this manner: you shall place a stick at the edge of the Star Pond where
+the Star rivulet flows out. Upon this stick you shall tie a white rag.
+At the foot of the stick you shall lay the parcel which contains your
+indebt to Jose Quintana.
+
+"Failing this, by to-night _one finger_ at sunset."
+
+The man paused: Eve waited, dumb under the surging confusion in her
+brain. A sort of incredulous horror benumbed her, through which she
+still heard and perceived.
+
+"Be kind enough to sign it with your name," said the man pleasantly.
+
+Eve signed.
+
+Then the masked man took the letter, got up, removed his hat.
+
+"I am Quintana," he said. "I keep my word. A thousand thanks and
+apologies, miss. I trust that your detention may be brief and not too
+disagreeable. I place at your feet my humble respects."
+
+He bowed, put on his hat, and walked quickly away. And she saw him
+descend the rocks to the eastward, where the peak slopes.
+
+When Quintana had disappeared behind the summit scrub and rocks, Eve
+slowly stood up and looked about her at the rocky pulpit so familiar.
+
+There was only one way out. Quintana had gone that way. His men no doubt
+guarded it. Otherwise, sheer precipices confronted her.
+
+She walked to the western edge where a sheet of slippery reindeer moss
+clothed the rock. Below the mountain fell away to the valley where she
+had been made prisoner.
+
+She looked out over the vast panorama of wilderness and mountain, range
+on range stretching blue to the horizon. She looked down into the depths
+of the valley where deep under the flaming foliage of October,
+somewhere, a State Trooper was sitting, cheek on hand, beside a
+waterfall--or, perhaps, riding slowly through a forest which she might
+never gaze upon again.
+
+There was a noise on the rocks behind her. A masked man came out of the
+spruce scrub, laid a blanket on the rocks, placed a loaf of bread, some
+cheese, and a tin pail full of water upon it, motioned her, and went
+away through the dwarf spruces.
+
+Eve walked slowly to the blanket. She drank out of the tin pail. Then
+she set aside the food, lay down, and buried her quivering face in her
+arms.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The sun was half way between zenith and horizon when she heard somebody
+coming, and rose to a sitting posture. Her visitor was Quintana.
+
+He came up to her quite close, stood with glittering eyes intent upon
+her.
+
+After a moment he handed her a letter.
+
+She could scarcely unfold it, she trembled so:
+
+"Girlie, for God's sake give that packet to Quintana and come on home.
+I'm near crazy with it all. What the hell's anything worth beside you
+girlie. I don't give a damn for nothing only you, so come on quick.
+Dad."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+After a little while she lifted her eyes to Quintana.
+
+"So," he said quietly, "you are the little she-fox that has learned
+tricks already."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"Where is that packet?"
+
+"I haven't it."
+
+"Where is it?"
+
+She shook her head slightly.
+
+"You had a packet," he insisted fiercely. "Look here! Regard!" and he
+spread out a penciled sheet in Clinch's hand:
+
+    "Jose Quintana:
+
+    "You win. She's got that stuff with her. Take your damn junk and
+    let my girl go.
+
+            "MIKE CLINCH."
+
+"Well," said Quintana, a thin, strident edge to his tone.
+
+"My father is mistaken. I haven't any packet."
+
+The man's visage behind his mask flushed darkly. Without warning or
+ceremony he caught Eve by the throat and tore open her shirt. Then,
+hissing and cursing and panting with his own violence, he searched her
+brutally and without mercy--flung her down and tore off her spiral
+puttees and even her shoes and stockings, now apparently beside himself
+with fury, puffing, gasping, always with a fierce, nasal sort of whining
+undertone like an animal worrying its kill.
+
+"Cowardly beast!" she panted, fighting him with all her
+strength--"filthy, cowardly beast!----" striking at him, wrenching his
+grasp away, snatching at the disordered clothing half stripped from her.
+
+His hunting knife fell clattering and she fought to get it, but he
+struck her with his open hand, knocking her down at his feet, and stood
+glaring at her with every tooth bared.
+
+"So," he cried, "I give you ten minutes, make up your mind, tell me what
+you do with that packet."
+
+He wiped the blood from his face where she had struck him.
+
+"You don't know Jose Quintana. No! You shall make his acquaintance.
+Yes!"
+
+Eve got up on naked feet, quivering from head to foot, striving to
+button the grey shirt at her throat.
+
+"Where?" he demanded, beside himself.
+
+Her mute lips only tightened.
+
+"Ver' well, by God!" he cried. "I go make me some fire. You like it, eh?
+We shall put one toe in the fire until it burn off. Yes? Eh? How you
+like it? Eh?"
+
+The girl's trembling hands continued busy with her clothing.
+
+"So!" he said, hoarsely, "you remain dumb! Well, then, in ten minutes
+you shall talk!"
+
+He walked toward her, pushed her savagely aside, and strode on into the
+spruce thicket.
+
+The instant he disappeared Eve caught up the knife he had dropped, knelt
+down on the blanket and fell to cutting it into strips.
+
+The hunting knife was like a razor; the feverish business was
+accomplished in a few moments, the pieces knotted, the cord strained in
+a desperate test over her knee.
+
+And now she ran to the precipice where, ten feet below, the top of a
+great pine protruded from the gulf.
+
+On the edge of the abyss was a spruce root. It looked dead, wedged deep
+between two rocks; but with all her strength she could not pull it out.
+
+Sobbing, breathless, she tied her blanket rope to this, threw the other
+end over the cliff's edge, and, not giving herself time to think, lay
+flat, grasped the knotted line, swung off.
+
+Knot by knot she went down. Half-way her naked feet brushed the needles.
+She looked over her shoulder, behind and down. Then, teeth clenched, she
+lowered herself steadily as she had learned to do in the school
+gymnasium, down, down, until her legs came astride of a pine limb.
+
+It bent, swayed, gave with her, letting her sag to a larger limb below.
+This she clasped, letting go her rope.
+
+Already, from the mountain's rocky crest above, she heard excited cries.
+Once, on her breakneck descent, she looked up through the foliage of the
+pine; and she saw, far up against the sky, a white-masked face looking
+over the edge of the precipice.
+
+But if it were Quintana or another of his people she could not tell.
+And, again looking down, she began again the terrible descent.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+An hour later, Trooper Stormont of the State Constabulary, sat his horse
+in amazement to see a ragged, breathless, boyish figure speeding toward
+him among the tamaracks, her naked feet splashing through pool and mire
+and sphagnum.
+
+"Good heavens!" he exclaimed as she flung herself against his stirrup,
+sobbing, hysterical, and clinging to his knee.
+
+"Take me back," she stammered, "--take me back to daddy! I can't--go
+on--another step----"
+
+He leaned down, swung her up to his saddle in front, holding her cradled
+in his arms.
+
+"Lie still," he said coolly; "you're all right now."
+
+For another second he sat looking down at her, at the dishevelled hair,
+the gasping mouth,--at the rags clothing her, and at the flat packet
+clasped convulsively to her breast.
+
+Then he spoke in a low voice to his horse, guiding left with one knee.
+
+
+
+
+EPISODE FOUR
+
+A PRIVATE WAR
+
+
+I
+
+When State Trooper Stormont rode up to Clinch's with Eve Strayer lying
+in his arms, Mike Clinch strode out of the motley crowd around the
+tavern, laid his rifle against a tree, and stretched forth his powerful
+hands to receive his stepchild.
+
+He held her, cradled, looking down at her in silence as the men
+clustered around.
+
+"Eve," he said hoarsely, "be you hurted?"
+
+The girl opened her sky-blue eyes.
+
+"I'm all right, dad, ... just tired.... I've got your parcel ...
+safe...."
+
+"To hell with the gol-dinged parcel," he almost sobbed; "--did Quintana
+harm you?"
+
+"No, dad."
+
+As he carried her to the veranda the packet fell from her cramped
+fingers. Clinch kicked it under a chair and continued on into the house
+and up the stairs to Eve's bedroom.
+
+Flat on the bed, the girl opened her drowsy eyes again, unsmiling.
+
+"Did that dirty louse misuse you?" demanded Clinch unsteadily. "G'wan
+tell me, girlie."
+
+"He knocked me down.... He went away to get fire to make me talk. I cut
+up the blanket they gave me and made a rope. Then I went over the cliff
+into the big pine below. That was all, dad."
+
+Clinch filled a 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 whimper 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,
+girlie?"
+
+She looked up at him out of heavy-lidded 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 grand lady of you when the time's ripe.
+'Tain't worth a thorn in your little foot to me.... The hull gol-dinged
+world full o' money ain't worth that there stone-bruise onto them little
+white feet o' yourn, Eve.
+
+"Look at you now--my God, look at you there, all peaked an' scairt an'
+bleedin'--plum tuckered out, 'n' all ragged 'n' dirty----"
+
+A blaze of fury flared in his small pale eyes: "--And he hit you, too,
+did he?--that skunk! Quintana done that to my little girlie, did he?"
+
+"I don't know if it was Quintana. I don't know who he was, dad," she
+murmured drowsily.
+
+"Masked, wa'n't he?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Clinch's iron visage twitched and quivered. He gnawed his thin lips into
+control:
+
+"Girlie, I gotta go out a spell. But I ain't a-leavin' you alone here.
+I'll git somebody to set up with you. You jest lie snug and don't think
+about nothin' till I come back."
+
+"Yes, dad," she sighed, closing her eyes.
+
+Clinch stood looking at her for a moment, then he went downstairs
+heavily, and out to the veranda where State Trooper Stormont still sat
+his saddle, talking to Hal Smith. On the porch a sullen crowd of
+backwoods riff-raff lounged in silence, awaiting events.
+
+Clinch called across to Smith: "Hey, Hal, g'wan up and set with Eve a
+spell while she's nappin'. Take a gun."
+
+Smith said to Stormont in a low voice: "Do me a favour, Jack?"
+
+"You bet."
+
+"That girl of Clinch's is in real danger if 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 Clinch stood, oiling a rifle.
+
+"G'wan upstairs," he muttered. "I 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 should git your gun and set up by Evie. And I want
+you should kill any living human son of a slut that comes botherin'
+around this here hotel."
+
+"I'm going after Quintana with you, Mike."
+
+"B'gosh, you ain't. You're a-goin' to keep watch here."
+
+"No. Trooper Stormont has promised to stay with Eve. You'll need every
+man to-day, Mike. This isn't a deer drive."
+
+Clinch let his rifle sag across the hollow of his left arm.
+
+"Did you beef to that trooper?" he demanded in his pleasant, misleading
+way.
+
+"Do 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 Eve until we can get back.' And I tell you,
+Mike, if we drive Star Peak we won't be back till long after sundown."
+
+Clinch growled: "I ain't never asked no favours of no State Trooper----"
+
+"He did you a favour, didn't he? He brought your daughter in."
+
+"Yes, 'n' 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."
+
+Clinch 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 daughter, Clinch?" he
+inquired. "The child was nearly all in when she met me out by Owl
+Marsh--clothes half torn off her back, bare-foot and bleeding. She's a
+plucky youngster. I'll say so, Clinch. If you think the fellow may come
+here to annoy her I'll keep an eye on her till you return."
+
+Clinch went up to Stormont, put his powerful hands on the young fellow's
+shoulders.
+
+After a moment's glaring silence: "You _look_ clean. I guess you be,
+too. I wanta tell you I'll cut the guts outa any guy 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 you're a real man, too, even if you're a State
+Trooper," growled Clinch. "G'wan up. She's a-nappin'. If she wakes up
+you kinda talk pleasant to her. You act kind pleasant and cosy. She
+ain't had no ma. You tell her to set snug and ca'm. Then you cook her a
+egg if she wants it. There's pie, too. I cal'late to be back by
+sundown."
+
+"Nearer morning," remarked Smith.
+
+Stormont shrugged. "I'll stay until you show up, Clinch."
+
+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 sullen, armed men who
+regarded his advent in expressionless silence.
+
+Sid Hone was there, and Harvey Chase, and the Hastings boys, and
+Cornelius Blommers.
+
+"You fellas comin'?" inquired Clinch.
+
+"Where?" drawled Sid Hone.
+
+"Me an' Hal Smith is cal'kalatin' to drive Star Peak. It ain't a deer,
+neither."
+
+There ensued a grim interval. Clinch's wintry smile began to glimmer.
+
+"Booze agents or game protectors? Which?" asked Byron Hastings. "They
+both look like deer--if a man gits mad enough."
+
+Clinch's smile became terrifying. "I shell out five hundred dollars for
+every _deer_ that's dropped on Star Peak to-day," he said. "And I hope
+there won't be no accidents and no mistakin' 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 Kloon?" 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, Clinch recollected the packet which he had kicked
+under a veranda chair. It was no longer there.
+
+"Any o' you fellas seen a package here on the pyazza?" demanded Clinch
+harshly.
+
+"Jake Kloon, he had somethin'," drawled Chase. "I supposed it was his
+lunch. Mebbe 'twas, too."
+
+In the intense stillness Clinch glared into one face after another.
+
+"Boys," he said in his softly modulated voice, "I kinda guess there's a
+rat amongst us. I wouldn't like for to be that there rat--no, not for a
+billion hundred dollars. No, I wouldn't. Becuz that there rat has bit my
+little girlie, Eve,--like that there deer bit her up onto Star Peak....
+No, I wouldn't like for to be that there rat. Fer he's a-goin' to die
+like a rat, same's that there deer is a-goin' to die like a deer....
+Anyone seen which way Jake Kloon went?"
+
+"Now you speak of it," said Byron Hastings, "seems like I noticed Jake
+and Earl Leverett down by the woods near the pond. I kinda disremembered
+when you asked, but I guess I seen them."
+
+"Sure," said Sid Hone. "Now you mention it, I seen 'em, too. Thinks I to
+m'self, they is pickin' them blackberries down to the crick. Yas, I seen
+'em."
+
+Clinch tossed his rifle across his left shoulder.
+
+"Rats an' deer," he said pleasantly. "Them's the articles we're lookin'
+for. Only for God's sake be careful you don't mistake a _man_ for 'em in
+the woods."
+
+One or two men laughed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the edge of Owl Marsh Clinch halted in the trail, and, as his men
+came up, he counted them with a cold eye.
+
+"Here's the runway and this here hazel bush is my station," he said.
+"You fellas do the barkin'. You, Sid Hone, and you, Corny, start drivin'
+from the west. Harve, you yelp 'em from the north by Lynx Brook. 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 'n hell be
+you, Hal?----"
+
+Smith came up from the bog's edge.
+
+"Send 'em 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," he reminded
+Hone, Chase, and Blommers, "before you start drivin'." And, to the
+Hastings boys: "If 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 on the mud.
+
+"That's Jake," said Clinch slowly. "I know them half-soled boots o'
+hisn." He lifted another branch. "There's another man's track!"
+
+"The other is probably Leverett's."
+
+"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 o' them like that, and one
+a-settin' up to watch out. Hell! Be you tired o' bed an' board?"
+
+Smith smiled: "Don't you worry, Mike."
+
+"Why? You think you're that smart? Jest becuz you stuck up a tourist you
+think you're cock o' the North Woods--with them two foxes lyin' out for
+to snap you up? Hey? Why, you poor dumb thing, Jake runs Canadian hootch
+for a livin' and Leverett's a trap thief! What could _you_ do with a
+pair o' foxes like that?"
+
+"Catch 'em," 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 have
+I. I'll take care of my own."
+
+"What's _your_ grievance?" demanded Clinch, surprised.
+
+"Jake Kloon 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."
+
+
+II
+
+The "proper owner" of the packet was, at that moment, on the Atlantic
+Ocean, travelling toward the United States.
+
+Four other pretended owners of the Grand Duchess Theodorica's jewels,
+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 forests 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 for the third pretender to the Flaming Jewel, Jake Kloon, he was now
+travelling in a fox's circle toward Drowned Valley--that 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 plodded Leverett, the trap thief, very, very busy
+with his own ideas.
+
+To Leverett's repeated requests that Kloon halt and open the packet to
+see what it contained, Kloon gruffly refused.
+
+"What do we care what's in it?" he said. "We get ten thousand apiece
+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 it for ourselves," argued
+Leverett. "Let's take a peek, anyway."
+
+"Naw. I don't want no peek nor nothin'. 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 allus was a dirty, thieving mink, Earl. Let's
+give him his and take ours and git. I'm going to Albany to live. You bet
+I don't stay in no woods where Mike Clinch dens."
+
+They plodded on, arguing, toward their rendezvous with Quintana's
+outpost on the edge of Drowned Valley.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The fourth pretender to the pearls, rubies, and great gem called the
+Flaming Jewel, stolen from the young Grand Duchess Theodorica of
+Esthonia by Jose Quintana, was an unconscious pretender, entirely
+innocent of the role assigned her by Clinch.
+
+For Eve Strayer had never heard where the packet came from or what it
+contained. All she knew was that her stepfather had told her that it
+belonged to her. And the knowledge left her incurious.
+
+
+III
+
+Eve slept the sleep of mental and physical exhaustion. Reaction from
+fear brings a fatigue more profound than that which follows physical
+overstrain. But the healthy mind, like the healthy body, disposes very
+thoroughly of toxics 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 with the most wonderful balm in the Divine pharmacy.
+
+She awoke late in the afternoon, opened her flower-blue eyes, and saw
+State Trooper Stormont sitting by the window, and gazing out.
+
+Perhaps Eve's confused senses mistook the young man for a vision; for
+she lay very still, nor stirred even her little finger.
+
+After a while Stormont glanced around at her. A warm, delicate colour
+stained her skin slowly, evenly, from throat to hair.
+
+He got up and came over to the bed.
+
+"How do you feel?" he asked, awkwardly.
+
+"Where is 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----"
+
+"With a State Trooper," smiled Stormont. "That's all right, Eve. You
+don't have to."
+
+There was a pause; Stormont stood beside the bed, looking down at her
+with his diffident, boyish smile. And 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 I am 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-aid
+packet with me."
+
+After a moment she nodded and turned her face on 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
+scratch the flakes of granite-grit and brier-points that still remained
+there.
+
+From his first-aid packet he took a capsule, dissolved it, sterilized
+the torn 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 are so wonderfully kind...."
+
+"Why shouldn't I be kind?" he said, amused and touched by the girl's
+emotion.
+
+"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 handcuffs. 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 Owl Marsh.
+
+In the hot, uncomfortable silence, neither spoke. He seated himself
+after a while. And, after a while, she turned on her pillow part way
+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 that she had 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 Star Pond."
+
+The girl sighed, unconsciously:
+
+"There are days when I--can scarcely--stand it.... The wilderness would
+be more endurable if dad and I were all 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 plain 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 seems ungrateful," she murmured. "I love my step-father."
+
+"You've proven that," he remarked with a dry humour 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 darned gun exploded in our hands."
+
+"How _could_ you?" she protested.
+
+"I was thinking all the while that you were acting as I'd have acted if
+anything threatened _my_ father."
+
+"Were you thinking of _that_?"
+
+"Yes,--and also how to get hold of you before you shot 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 rose in bed, supported on one arm, her curly brown-gold hair
+framing her face:
+
+"--Two cakes of sugar-milk chocolate in a flat brown packet 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 cache on Owl
+Marsh.
+
+He brought it to her, placed both pillows upright 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 untie
+her packet, unhurriedly, slowly loosening string and wrapping.
+
+Her attention was not fixed on what her slender 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 the wrapping 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 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 seemed to tell so much and yet were 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 in her body
+awoke, wildly responsive.
+
+Deep emotions, new, unfamiliar, were stirring, awaking, 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 burnt 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 Stormont, rigid, unstirring, hour after
+hour, facing the first 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, new born, possessed
+her. The whole world, too, all around her seemed to have become misty
+and golden and all pulsating with a faint, still rhythm that indefinably
+thrilled her pulses to response.
+
+Passion, full-armed, 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 sun-tanned fingers linked
+listlessly in her lap, 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, gilding the boarded floor.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Three spectres, 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 spectres, Fate, Chance and Destiny, whispering together,
+passed on toward the depths of the sunset forest.
+
+
+
+
+EPISODE FIVE
+
+DROWNED VALLEY
+
+
+I
+
+The soft, bluish forest shadows had lengthened, and the barred sun-rays,
+filtering through, were tinged with a rosy hue before Jake Kloon, the
+hootch runner, and Earl Leverett, trap thief, came to Drowned Valley.
+
+They were still a mile distant from the most southern edge of that vast
+desolation, but already tamaracks appeared in the beauty of their burnt
+gold; little pools glimmered here and there; patches of amber sphagnum
+and crimson pitcher-plants became frequent; and once or twice Kloon'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 larcenous way
+through the world, always in deadly fear of sink holes.
+
+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 spoor of
+Jake Kloon, his narrow, pointed head alert, 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 pitiable misdemeanours he slunk through life in 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 protector's tread as he slunk from the bagged
+trout brook or crawled away, belly dragging, and pockets full of snared
+grouse.
+
+Always he had dreamed of the day when, through some sudden bold 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 the blue peaks 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, furtively at Jake
+Kloon'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 Kloon's massive head. One shot would blow that
+skull into fragments, he thought, shivering.
+
+One shot from behind,--and 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
+if revealed?
+
+Always in his mean and busy brain he was trying to figure to himself
+what that packet must contain. And, to make the bribe worth while,
+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 Kloon had
+turned a deaf ear to his suggestions,--Kloon, who never entertained
+ambitions beyond his hootch rake-off,--whose miserable imagination
+stopped at a wretched percentage, satisfied.
+
+One shot! There was the back of Kloon's bushy head. One shot!--and fear,
+which had shadowed him from birth, was at an end forever. Ended, too,
+privation,--the bitter rigour 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 died or recovered 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 coward's "if" blocked him; and
+the coward's rage,--fiercest of all fury,--ravaged him, almost crazing
+him with his own impotence.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Tamaracks, sphagnum, 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 Kloon 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 Kloon would have to turn partly around to look at him.
+
+"Where the hell do we meet up with Quintana?" growled Kloon, tearing a
+mouthful from a gnawed tobacco plug and shoving the remainder deep into
+his trousers pocket.
+
+"We gotta travel a piece, yet.... Say, Jake, be you a man or be you a
+poor dumb critter what ain't got no spunk?"
+
+Kloon, chewing on his cud, turned and glanced at him. Then he spat, as
+answer.
+
+"If you got the spunk of a chipmunk you and me'll take a peek at that
+there packet. I bet you it's thousand-dollar bills--more'n a billion
+million dollars, likely."
+
+Kloon'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 Kloon spat, then, by infinitesimal degrees,
+continued to edge the muzzle toward Kloon.
+
+"Jake?"
+
+"Aw, shut your head," grumbled Kloon disdainfully. "You allus was a
+dirty rat--you sneakin' trap robber. Enough's enough. I ain't got no use
+for no billion million dollar bills. Ten thousand'll buy me all I
+cal'late to need till I'm planted. But you're like a hawg; you ain't
+never had enough o' nothin' and you won't never git enough,
+neither,--not if you wuz God a'mighty you wouldn't."
+
+"Ten thousand dollars hain't nothin' to a billion million, Jake."
+
+Kloon squirted a stream of tobacco at a pitcher plant and 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 width to the left,
+shivered, moved it again. Under his soggy, sun-tanned skin a
+pallor made his visage sickly grey.
+
+"Jake?"
+
+No answer.
+
+"Say, Jake?"
+
+No notice.
+
+"Jake, I wanta take a peek at them bills."
+
+Merely another stream of tobacco soiling the crimson pitcher.
+
+"I'm--I'm desprit. I gotta take a peek. I gotta--gotta----"
+
+Something in Leverett's unsteady voice made Kloon turn his head.
+
+"You gol rammed fool," he said, "what you doin' with your----"
+
+The loud detonation of the rifle punctuated Kloon'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 down 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 a delicate stain of vapour 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 and 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 ruddy through
+the woods. A green fly appeared, buzzing about the dead man. Another
+zig-zagged through the sunshine, lacing it with streaks 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 Kloon'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 soiled clothing which once had 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 stiff step
+toward the dead man.
+
+But as he bent over he changed his mind, turned, reeling a little, then
+crept slowly out among the pitcher-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 Kloon and, from the left inside coat pocket, he drew the
+packet and placed it inside his own flannel shirt.
+
+Then, turning his back to the dead, he squatted down and clutched
+Kloon's burly ankles, as a man grasps the handles of a wheelbarrow to
+draw it after him.
+
+Dragging, rolling, bumping over roots, Jake Kloon took his last trail
+through the wilderness, leaving a redder path than was left by the
+setting sun through fern and moss and wastes of pitcher-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 sink hole the trap-thief dropped Kloon. Then he drew his
+hunting knife and cut a tall, slim swamp maple. The sapling was about
+twenty feet in height. Leverett thrust the butt of it into the pool.
+Without any effort he pushed the entire sapling out of sight in the
+depthless silt.
+
+He had to manoeuvre very gingerly to dump Kloon into the pool and keep
+out of it himself. Finally he managed it.
+
+To his alarm, Kloon 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 suspended in the
+clouding water.
+
+Leverett went back to the little ridge and covered with dead leaves the
+spot where Kloon had lain. There were broken ferns, but he could not
+straighten them. And there lay Kloon'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 downward, 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.
+
+
+II
+
+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 dulled roar
+of returning consciousness filled his being.
+
+Somebody was shaking him, shouting at him. Suddenly instinct resumed its
+function, and he struggled madly to get away from the edge of the
+sink-hole--fought his way, blindly, through 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! Crazee fellow! What you do, eh? For why you make jumps like
+rabbits! Eh? You expec' 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 stab you. Such an ass!"
+
+The sickly greenish hue changed in Leverett's face as the warmer tide
+stirred from its stagnation. He lifted his head and tried to look at
+Quintana.
+
+"Where Jake Kloon?" demanded the latter.
+
+At that the weasel wits of the trap-robber awoke to the instant crisis.
+Blood and pulse began to jump. He passed one dirty hand over his mouth
+to mask any twitching.
+
+"Where my packet, eh?" inquired Quintana.
+
+"Jake's got it." Leverett's voice was growing stronger. His small eyes
+switched for an instant toward his rifle, where it stood against a tree
+behind Quintana.
+
+"Where is he, then, this Jake?" repeated Quintana impatiently.
+
+"He got bogged."
+
+"Bogged? What is that, then?"
+
+"He got into a sink-hole."
+
+"What!"
+
+"That's all I know," said Leverett, sullenly. "Him and me was travellin'
+hell-bent to meet up with you,--Jake, he was for a short cut to Drowned
+Valley,--but 'no,' sez I, 'gimme a good hard ridge an' a long deetoor
+when there's sink-holes into the woods----'"
+
+"What is it the talk you talk to me?" asked Quintana, whose perplexed
+features began to darken. "Where is it, my packet?"
+
+"I'm tellin' you, ain't I?" retorted the other, raising a voice now
+shrill with the strain of this new crisis rushing so unexpectedly upon
+him: "I heard Jake give a holler. 'What the hell's the trouble?' I
+yells. Then he lets out a beller, 'Save me!' he screeches, 'I'm into a
+sink-hole! The quicksand's got me,' sez he. So I drop my rifle, I
+did,--there she stands against that birch sapling!--and I run down into
+them there pitcher-plants.
+
+"'Whar be ye!' I yells. Then I listens, and don't hear nothin' only a
+kina wallerin' noise an' a slobber like he was gulpin' mud.
+
+"Then I foller them there sounds and I come out by that sink-hole. The
+water was a-shakin' all over it but Jake he had went down plum out o'
+sight. T'want no use. I cut a sapling an' I poked down. I was sick and
+scared like, so when you come up over the moss, not makin' no noise, an'
+grabbed me--God!--I guess you'd jump, too."
+
+Quintana's dark, tense face was expressionless when Leverett ventured to
+look at him. Like most liars he realised 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 toward his rifle. Quintana blocked his way.
+
+"Where my packet?"
+
+"Gol ram it! Ain't I told you? Jake had it in his pocket."
+
+"My packet?"
+
+"Yaas, yourn."
+
+"My packet, it is down in thee sink 'ole?"
+
+"You think I'm lyin'?" blustered Leverett, trying to move around
+Quintana's extended arm. The arm swerved and clutched him by the collar
+of his flannel shirt.
+
+"Wait, my frien'," said Quintana in a soft voice. "You shall explain to
+me some things before you go."
+
+"Explain what!--you gol dinged----"
+
+Quintana shook him into speechlessness.
+
+"Listen, my frien'," he continued with a terrifying smile, "I mus' ask
+you what it was, that gun-shot, which I hear while I await at Drown'
+Vallee. Eh? Who fire a gun?"
+
+"I ain't heard no gun," replied Leverett in a strangled voice.
+
+"You did not shoot? No?"
+
+"No!--damn it all----"
+
+"And Jake? He did not fire?"
+
+"No, I tell yeh----"
+
+"Ah! Someone lies. It is not me, my frien'. No. Let us examine your
+rifle----"
+
+Leverett made a rush for the gun; Quintana slung him back against the
+oak tree and thrust an automatic pistol against his chin.
+
+"Han's up, my frien'," he said gently, "--up! high up!--or someone will
+fire another shot you shall never hear.... So!... Now I search the
+other pocket.... So!... Still no packet. Bah! Not in the pants,
+either? Ah, bah! But wait! Tiens! What is this you hide inside your
+shirt----?"
+
+"I was jokin'," gasped Leverett; "--I was jest a-goin' to give it to
+you----"
+
+"Is that my packet?"
+
+"Yes. It was all in fun; I wan't a-going to steal it----"
+
+Quintana unbuttoned the grey wool shirt, thrust in his hand and drew
+forth the packet for which Jake Kloon had died within the hour.
+
+Suddenly Leverett's knees gave way and he dropped to the ground,
+grovelling at Quintana's feet in an agony of fright:
+
+"Don't hurt me," he screamed, "--I didn't meant no harm! Jake, he wanted
+me to steal it. I told him I was honest. I fired a shot to scare him,
+an' he tuk an' run off! I wan't a-goin' to steal it off you, so help me
+God! I was lookin' for you--as God is my witness----"
+
+He got Quintana by one foot. Quintana kicked him aside and backed away.
+
+"Swine," he said, calmly inspecting the whimpering creature who had
+started to crawl toward him.
+
+He hesitated, lifted his automatic, then, as though annoyed by
+Leverett's deafening shriek, shrugged, hesitated, pocketed both pistol
+and packet, and turned on his heel.
+
+By the birch sapling he paused and picked up Leverett'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 and picked
+up the empty cartridge case 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 the
+fallen leaves, revealing the mess underneath.
+
+After he had contemplated the crimson traces of murder for a few
+moments, he turned and looked at Leverett with faint curiosity.
+
+"So," he said in his leisurely, emotionless way, "you have fight with my
+frien' Jake for thee packet. Yes? Ver' 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 Valley, unhurriedly.
+
+
+III
+
+When Quintana disappeared among the tamaracks, Leverett 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 trap-robber to
+his feet, stifling the muffled yell in his throat.
+
+"I want that packet you picked up on Clinch's veranda," said Hal Smith.
+
+"M-my God," stammered Leverett, "Quintana just took it off me. He ain't
+been gone a minute----"
+
+"You lie!"
+
+"I ain't lyin'. Look at his foot-marks there in the mud!"
+
+"Quintana!"
+
+"Yaas, Quintana! He tuk my gun, too----"
+
+"Which way!" whispered Smith fiercely, shaking Leverett till his jaws
+wagged.
+
+"Drowned Valley.... Lemme loose!--I'm chokin'----"
+
+Smith pushed him aside.
+
+"You rat," he said, "if you're lying to me I'll come back and settle
+your affair. And Kloon's, too!"
+
+"Quintana shot Jake and stuck him into a sink-hole!" snivelled Leverett,
+breaking down and sobbing; "--oh, Gawd--Gawd--he's down under all that
+black mud with his brains spillin' out----"
+
+But Smith was already gone, running lightly along the string of
+footprints which led straight away across slime and sphagnum toward the
+head of Drowned Valley.
+
+In the first clump of hard-wood trees Smith saw Quintana. He had halted
+and he was fumbling at the twine which bound a 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 operations. Then, warily, he
+lifted his head and looked into the muzzle of Smith's rifle.
+
+"Ah, bah!" he said tranquilly. "There were three of you, then."
+
+"Lay that packet on the ground."
+
+"My frien'----"
+
+"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 Leverett's rifle beside the packet.
+
+"Kneel down with your hands up and your back toward me!" said Smith.
+
+"My frien'----"
+
+"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 loosened string, 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 sheathed dirk into his
+belt, placed the captured rifle handy, after examining the 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 ten 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, Monsieur Quintana, the famous Flaming
+Jewel and the other gems contained in this packet of mine, belonged to
+Her Highness the Grand Duchess Theodorica of Esthonia.
+
+"Very interesting. More interesting still--along comes Don Jose Quintana
+and his celebrated gang of international thieves, and steals from the
+Grand Duchess of Esthonia the Flaming Jewel and all her rubies, emeralds
+and diamonds. Yes?"
+
+"Certainly," said Quintana, with a polite inclination of acknowledgment.
+
+"Bon! 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 baron, Sir Jacobus Kloon, swiped,--as Froissart has it,--the
+Esthonian 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?"
+
+"Gewiss."
+
+"Yes, and you got Jake Kloon, I hear," laughed Smith.
+
+"No."
+
+"Didn't you kill Kloon?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Oh, pardon. The mistake was natural. You merely robbed Kloon and
+Leverett. You should have killed them."
+
+"Yes," said Quintana slowly, "I should have. It was my mistake."
+
+"Signor Quintana, it is human for the human crook to err. Sooner or
+later he always does it. 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 to an
+amalgamation of interests with myself."
+
+"As you say, Quintana mea, 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," laughed Smith, "but not on the proceeds of this
+coup-de-main. Non pas! I am going to return this packet to its rightful
+owner, the Grand Duchess Theodorica of Esthonia. 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. And now we'll take a little inventory of
+these marvellous gems before we part.... Sit very, very still,
+Quintana,--unless you want to lie stiller 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
+ghastly fashion:
+
+"Yes," he said hoarsely, "as you have just said, sir, it is usually the
+unusual which happens in the world."
+
+
+
+
+EPISODE SIX
+
+THE JEWEL AFLAME
+
+
+I
+
+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 offal still smouldered,
+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 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 a rotten bough 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:
+
+"O God A'mighty, in your big, swell mansion up there, all has went
+contrary with me sence you let that there damn millionaire, Harrod, come
+into this here forest.... He went and built unto hisself an
+habitation, and he put up a wall of law all around me where I was
+earnin' a lawful livin' in Thy nice, clean wilderness.... And now comes
+this here Quintana and robs my girlie.... I promised her mother I'd
+make a lady of her little Eve.... I loved my wife, O Lord.... Once she
+showed me a piece in the Bible,--I ain't never found it sence,--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 into your
+own Bible, O God! You can't go back on it. I seen it.
+
+"And now I wanta to ask, What place did you prepare for my Eve? What
+spot have you reference 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'd 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-goin' to git
+Quintana. Then I'm a-goin' to git them two minks that robbed my
+girlie,--I am!... Jake Kloon, he done it in cahoots with Earl Leverett;
+and Quintana set 'em on. And they gotta die, O Lord of Israel, them
+there Egyptians is about to hop the twig.... I ain't aimin' to be mean
+to nobody. I buy hootch of them that runs it. I eat mountain mutton in
+season and out. I trade with law-breakers, I do. But, Lord, I gotta get
+my girlie outa here; and Harrod he walled me in with the chariots and
+spears of Egypt, till I nigh went wild.... And now comes Quintana, and
+here I be a-lyin' out to get him so's my girlie can become a lady,
+same's them fine folks with all their butlers and automobiles and
+what-not----"
+
+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 slowly rose, grasping his rifle, his small, grey eyes ablaze.
+
+"Where's Quintana?" he demanded.
+
+"H'ain't you seen nobody?"
+
+"No."
+
+In the intense silence other sounds broke sharply in the sunset forest;
+Harvey Chase's halloo rang out from the rocks above; Blommers and the
+Hastings boys came slouching through the ferns.
+
+Byron Hastings greeted Clinch with upflung gun: "Me and Jim heard a shot
+away out on Drowned Valley," he announced. "Was you out that way,
+Mike?"
+
+"No."
+
+One by one the men who had driven Star Peak lounged up in the red sunset
+light, gathering around Clinch and wiping the sweat from sun-reddened
+faces.
+
+"Someone's in Drowned Valley," repeated Byron. "Them minks slid off'n
+Star in a hurry, I reckon, judgin' how they left their shanty. Phew! It
+stunk! They had French hootch, too."
+
+"Mebby Leverett and Kloon told 'em we was fixin' to visit them,"
+suggested Blommers.
+
+"They didn't know," said Clinch.
+
+"Where's Hal Smith?" inquired Hone.
+
+Clinch made no reply. Blommers 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 Blommers drily.
+
+"Not amongst them sink-holes," 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 gotta get Quintana. I can't never sleep another wink
+till 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.
+
+As they looked at him they saw his teeth.
+
+"All right, all right," growled Hone, shouldering his rifle with a jerk.
+
+The Hastings boys, young and rash, shuffled into the trail. Blommers
+hesitated, glanced askance at Clinch, and instantly made up his mind to
+take a chance with the sink-holes rather than with Clinch.
+
+"God A'mighty, Mike, what be you aimin' to do?" faltered Harvey.
+
+"I'm aimin' to stop the inlet and outlet to Drowned Valley, Harve,"
+replied Clinch in his pleasant voice. "God is a-goin' to deliver
+Quintana into my hands."
+
+"All right. What next?"
+
+"Then," continued Clinch, "I cal'late to set down and wait."
+
+"How long?"
+
+"Ask God, boys. I don't know. All I know is that whatever is livin' in
+Drowned Valley at this hour has gotta live and die there. For it can't
+never live to come outen that there morass walkin' onto two legs like a
+real man."
+
+He moved slowly along the file of sullen men, his rifle a-trail in one
+huge fist.
+
+"Boys," he said, "I got first. There ain't no sink-hole deep enough to
+drowned me while Eve needs me.... And my little girlie needs me bad....
+After she gits what's her'n, then I don't care no more...." He looked up
+into the sky, where the last ashes of sunset faded from the zenith....
+"Then I don't care," he murmured. "Like's not I'll creep away like some
+shot-up critter, n'kinda find some lone, safe spot, n'kinda fix me f'r
+a long nap.... I guess that'll be the way ... when Eve's a lady down to
+Noo York 'r'som'ers----" he added vaguely.
+
+Then, still looking up at the fading heavens, he moved forward, head
+lifted, silent, unhurried, with the soundless, stealthy, and certain
+tread of those who walk unseeing and asleep.
+
+
+II
+
+Clinch had not taken a dozen strides before Hal Smith loomed up ahead in
+the rosy dusk, driving in Leverett 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 gol-dinged catamount that suspicioned Hal? I wa'nt worried
+none, neither. Hal's a gent. Mebbe 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 gait, hustling Leverett along with
+prods from gun-butt or muzzle, as came handiest.
+
+The prisoner turned a ghastly visage on Clinch, who ignored him.
+
+"Got my packet, Hal?" he demanded.
+
+Smith poked Leverett with his rifle: "Tune up," he said; "tell Clinch
+your story."
+
+As a caged rat looks death in the face, his ratty wits working like
+lightning and every atom of cunning and ferocity alert for attack or
+escape, so the little, mean eyes of Earl Leverett became fixed on Clinch
+like two immobile and glassy beads of jet.
+
+"G'wan," said Clinch softly, "spit it out."
+
+"Jake done it," muttered Leverett, thickly.
+
+"Done what?"
+
+"Stole that there packet o' yourn--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.
+
+"Ten thousand."
+
+"How about you?"
+
+"I told 'em I wouldn't touch it. Then they pulled 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 travelled stealthily around the circle of men, then
+reverted to Clinch.
+
+"I dassn't touch it," he said, "but I dassn't squeal.... I was huntin'
+onto Drowned Valley when Jake meets up with me."
+
+"'I got the packet,' he sez, 'and I'm a-going to double criss-cross
+Quintana, I am, and beat it. Don't you wish you was whacks with me?'
+
+"'No,' sez I, 'honesty is my policy, no matter what they tell about me.
+S'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 hootch,
+same's everybody.'"
+
+He licked his lips furtively, his cold, bright eyes fastened on Clinch.
+
+"G'wan, Earl," nodded the latter, "heave her up."
+
+"That's all. I sez, 'Good-bye, Jake. An' if you heed my warnin',
+ill-gotten gains ain't a-going to prosper nobody.' That's what I said to
+Jake Kloon, 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 wa'nt
+gone ten yards when, bang! goes a gun, and I see this here Quintana come
+outen the bush, I do, and walk up to Jake and frisk him, and Jake still
+a-kickin' the moss to slivers. Yessir, that's what I seen."
+
+"G'wan."
+
+"Yessir.... 'N'then Quintana he shoved Jake into a sink-hole. Thaswot I
+seen with my two eyes. Yessir. 'N'then Quintana he run off, 'n'I jest
+set down in the trail, I did; 'n'then Hal come up and acted like I had
+stole your packet, he did; 'n'then I told him what Quintana done.
+'N'Hal, he takes after Quintana, but I don't guess he meets up with him,
+for he come back and ketched holt o' me, 'n'he druv me in like I was a
+caaf, he did. 'N'here I be."
+
+The dusk in the forest had deepened so that the men's faces had become
+mere blotches of grey.
+
+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 wa'nt nothin' 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!" he roared at Leverett, "you was into this, too,
+a-robbin' my little Eve----"
+
+"Run!" yelled somebody, giving Leverett a violent shove into the woods.
+
+In the darkness and confusion, Clinch shouldered his way out of the
+circle and fired at the crackling noise that marked Leverett's
+course,--fired again, lower, and again as a distant crash revealed the
+frenzied flight of the trap-robber. After he had fired a fourth shot,
+somebody struck up his rifle.
+
+"Aw," said Jim Hastings, "that ain't no good. You act up like a kid,
+Mike. 'Tain't so far to Ghost Lake, n'them Troopers might hear you."
+
+After a silence, Clinch spoke, his voice heavy with reaction:
+
+"Into that there packet is my little girl's dower. It's all I got to
+give her. It's all she's got to make her a lady. I'll kill any man that
+robs her or that helps rob her. 'N'that's that."
+
+"Are you going on after Quintana?" asked Smith.
+
+"I am. 'N'these fellas are a-going with me. N' I want you should go back
+to my Dump and look after my girlie while I'm gone."
+
+"How long are you going to be away?"
+
+"I dunno."
+
+There was a silence. Then,
+
+"All right," said Smith, briefly. He added: "Look out for sink-holes,
+Mike."
+
+Clinch tossed his heavy rifle to his shoulder: "Let's go," he said in
+his pleasant, misleading way, "--and I'll shoot the guts outa any fella
+that don't show up at roll call."
+
+
+III
+
+For its size there is no fiercer animal than a rat.
+
+Rat-like rage possessed Leverett. In his headlong flight through 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 Clinch's bullets
+whining around him; and he ran on, beginning to sob and curse in a
+frenzy of fury, fear, and shame.
+
+Shots from Clinch's rifle ceased; the fugitive dropped into a heavy,
+shuffling walk, slavering, gasping, gesticulating with his weaponless
+fists in the darkness.
+
+"Gol ram ye, I'll fix ye!" he kept stammering in his snarling, jangling
+voice, broken by sobs. "I'll learn ye, yeh poor danged thing, gol ram
+ye----"
+
+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 from his cheek-bone.
+
+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 stars shining faintly through
+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 shack 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--the deep,
+superstitious horror of Jake Kloon's empty bunk--the repugnant sight of
+Kloon's spare clothing hanging from its peg--the dead man's shoes----
+
+No, he could not go to Stinking Lake and sleep.... And wake with the
+faint stench of sulphur in his throat.... And see the worm-like leeches
+unfolding in the shallows, and the big, reddish water-lizards, livid as
+skinned eels, wriggling convulsively toward their sunless lairs....
+
+At the mere thought of his dead bunk-mate he sought relief in vindictive
+rage--stirred up the smouldering embers again, cursed Clinch and Hal
+Smith, violently searching 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 step-daughter. 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 lightning across his turbid mind;--_the
+packet_!
+
+Bribed by Quintana, Jake Kloon, lurking at Clinch's door, had heard him
+direct Eve to take a packet to Owl Marsh, and had notified Quintana.
+
+Wittingly or unwittingly, the girl had taken a packet of sugar-milk
+chocolate instead of the priceless parcel expected.
+
+Again, carried in, exhausted, by a State Trooper, Jake Kloon had been
+fooled; and it was the packet of sugar-milk chocolate that Jake had
+purloined from the veranda where Clinch kicked it. For two cakes of
+chocolate Kloon had died. For two cakes of chocolate he, Earl Leverett,
+had become a man-slayer, a homeless fugitive in peril of his life.
+
+He stood licking his blood-dried lips there in the darkness, striving to
+hatch courage out of the dull fury eating at a coward's heart.
+
+Somewhere in Clinch's Dump was the packet that would make him rich....
+Here was his opportunity. He had only to dare; and pain and poverty and
+fear--above all else _fear_--would end forever!...
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When, at last, he came out to the edge of Clinch's clearing, the dark
+October heavens were but a vast wilderness of stars.
+
+Star Pond, set to its limpid depths with the heavenly gems, glittered
+and darkled with its million diamond incrustations. The humped-up lump
+of Clinch's Dump crouched like some huge and feeding night-beast on the
+bank, ringed by the solemn forest.
+
+There was a kerosene lamp burning in Eve Strayer's rooms. Another
+light--a candle--flickered in the kitchen.
+
+Leverett, crouching, ran rat-like down to the barn, slid in between the
+ice house and corn-crib, crawled out among the wilderness of weeds and
+lay flat.
+
+The light burned steadily from Eve's window.
+
+
+IV
+
+From his form among frost-blackened rag-weeds, the trap-robber could see
+only the plastered ceiling of the bed chamber.
+
+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 State
+Trooper.
+
+Eve sat on her bed's edge, swathed in a lilac silk kimona--delicate
+relic of school days. Her bandaged feet, crossed, dangled above the
+rag-rug on the floor; her slim, tanned fingers were interlaced over the
+book on her lap.
+
+Near the door stood State Trooper Stormont, spurred, booted, trig and
+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
+Volsung_. Stormont had been reading to her--they having found, after the
+half shy tentatives of new friends, a point d'appui 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 mutual friends among the nobler
+Victorians--surprised to discover _Sigurd_ there--and, carrying it to
+her bedside, looked leisurely through the half forgotten pages.
+
+"Would you read a little?" she ventured.
+
+He blushed but did his best. His was an agreeable, boyish voice,
+betraying taste and understanding. Time passed quickly--not so much in
+the reading but in the conversations intervening.
+
+And now, made uneasy by chance consultation with his wrist-watch, and
+being rather a conscientious young man, he had risen and had informed
+Eve that she ought to go to sleep.
+
+And she had denounced the idea, almost fretfully.
+
+"Even if you go I shan't sleep till daddy comes," she said. "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 going to do?"
+
+"Take a chair on the landing outside your door."
+
+"What!"
+
+"Certainly. What did you expect me to do, Eve?"
+
+"Go to bed, of course. The beds in the guest rooms are all made up."
+
+"Your father didn't expect me to do that," he said, smiling.
+
+"I'm not afraid, as long as you're in the house," she said.
+
+She looked up at him again, wistfully. Perhaps he was restless, bored,
+sitting there beside her half the day, and, already, half the night. Men
+of that kind--active, nervous young men accustomed to the open, can't
+stand caging.
+
+"I want you to go out and get some fresh air," she said. "It's a
+wonderful night. Go and walk a while. And--if you feel like--coming back
+to me----"
+
+"Will you sleep?"
+
+"No, I'll wait for you."
+
+Her words were natural and direct, but in their simplicity there seemed
+a delicate sweetness that stirred him.
+
+"I'll come back to you," he said.
+
+Then, in his response, the girl in 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 and
+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 on the bed's edge, scarcely
+breathing.
+
+For the girl was beginning to dare formulate the deepest of any thoughts
+that ever had 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 when he 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
+Clinch's 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 brier
+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 instant, and saw her pale face, like a
+flower in the starlight.
+
+"Why, Eve," he said, "you ought not to 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 the step-child of Mike Clinch.
+
+Stormont had come directly under her window and stood looking up.
+
+"I dared not offer 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--as 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 that rather matter-of-fact young man, "I don't
+believe you have forgiven me after all."
+
+"I have--everything except the handkerchief----"
+
+"Then I'm coming up to complete my penance----"
+
+"I'll lock 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 your sin by
+doing--penance----" And hesitated: "Do you so desire?"
+
+"Yes, I do."
+
+"Humbly? Contritely?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Very well. Say 'Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.'"
+
+"Mea maxima culpa," 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 gaiety left her, too, suddenly,
+leaving only a still excitement in her breast.
+
+"You--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, as 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
+own 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 to-night, or
+whether, when you return, I ought to be asleep and--and my door bolted."
+
+After a long pause: "All right," he said in a low voice.
+
+
+V
+
+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 to him through the night, "I do love you! I do love you!
+Come back quickly, quickly!----"
+
+Fog hung over Star Pond, edging the veranda, rising in frail shreds to
+her window. The lapping of the water sounded very near. An 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 unstirring,
+with lowered head, awaiting Destiny.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It came, noiselessly. And so swiftly that the rush of air from her
+violently opened door was what first startled her.
+
+For in the same second Earl Leverett was upon her in his stockinged
+feet, one bony hand gripping her mouth, the other flung around her,
+pinning both arms to her sides.
+
+"The packet!" he panted, "--quick, yeh dirty little cat, 'r'I'll break
+yeh head off'n yeh 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 and quilt around
+her, swathed 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, unsheathed his
+hunting knife, and pricked her throat till the blood spurted.
+
+"Now, gol ram yeh!" he whispered fiercely, "where's Mike's packet?
+Yell, and I'll hog-stick yeh fur fair! Where is it, you dum thing!"
+
+He took his left hand from her mouth. The distorted, scarlet lips
+writhed back, displaying her white teeth clenched.
+
+"Where's Mike's bundle!" he repeated, hoarse with rage and fear.
+
+"You rat!" she gasped.
+
+At that he closed her mouth again, and again he pricked her with his
+knife, cruelly. The blood welled up onto the sheets.
+
+"Now, by God!" he said in a ghastly voice, "answer or I'll hog-stick yeh
+next time! Where is it? Where! where!"
+
+She only showed her teeth in answer. Her eyes flamed.
+
+"Where! Quick! Gol ding yeh, I'll shove this knife in behind your ear if
+you don't tell! Go on. Where is it? It's in this Dump som'ers. I know it
+is--don't lie! You want that I should stick you good? That what you
+want--you dirty little dump-slut? Well, then, gol ram yeh--I'll fix yeh
+like Quintana was aimin' at----"
+
+He slit the sheet downward from her imprisoned knees, seized one wounded
+foot and tried to slash the bandages.
+
+"I'll cut a coupla toes off'n yeh," he snarled, "--I'll hamstring yeh
+fur keeps!"--struggling to mutilate her while she flung her helpless and
+entangled body from side to side and bit at 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 it he saw a packet lying under it.
+
+"By God!" he panted.
+
+As he seized it she screamed for the first time: "Jack! Jack
+Stormont!"--and fairly hurled her helpless little body at Leverett,
+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 armour of bed-clothes turned the knife, although his
+violence dashed all 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 gasping for
+breath, she tore herself from the sheets and blankets, reeled across the
+room to where Stormont's rifle stood, threw in a cartridge, dragged
+herself to the window.
+
+Dimly she saw a running figure in the night mist, flung the rifle across
+the window sill and fired. Then she 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 at sight of her.
+
+"Eve! My God!" he whispered, taking her blood-wet body into his arms.
+
+"Go after Leverett," she gasped. "He's robbed daddy. He's running
+away--out there--somewhere----"
+
+"Where did he hurt you, Eve--my little Eve----"
+
+"Oh, go! go!" she wailed,--"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, twisting and sobbing in his arms, "don't
+lose time here with me! Don't stand here while he's running away with
+dad'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 laid her there.
+
+He said: "I couldn't risk following anybody now, after what has happened
+to you. I can't leave you alone here! 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, no! It's my fault. I sent you away. Oh, I wish I hadn't. I wish
+I had 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 was under my pillow," she wailed. "Leverett tried to make
+me tell 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 and 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 lint, sterilised the two cuts from his emergency packet, and
+bound them.
+
+He was still bending low 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.
+
+"Lie very still," he said huskily. "I'll be back in a moment to
+rebandage 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 rob me. How can I sleep?"
+
+"I'll bring you something to make you sleep."
+
+"I can't!"
+
+"I promise you you will sleep. Lie still."
+
+He rose, went away downstairs and out to the barn, where his campaign
+hat lay in 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 clutched 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 bullet had crashed through from ear to
+cheek-bone, 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."
+
+Deftly he unbandaged, bathed, dressed, and rebandaged her slim white
+feet--little wounded feet so lovely, so exquisite that his hand trembled
+as he touched them.
+
+"They're doing fine," he said cheerily. "You've half a degree of fever
+and I'm going to give you something to drink before you go to sleep----"
+
+He poured out a glass of water, dissolved two tablets, supported 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 back 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 all 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.
+
+It 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 clothed her from brow to ankle.
+
+The Flaming Jewel in its morocco casket under her pillow burned with no
+purer fire than the enchanted flame glowing in the virgin heart of Eve
+Strayer of Clinch's Dump.
+
+Thus they lay together, two lovely flaming jewels burning softly,
+steadily through the misty splendour of the night.
+
+Under a million stars, Death sprawled in squalor among the trampled
+weeds. Under the same high stars dark mountains waited; and there was a
+silvery sound of waters stirring somewhere in the mist.
+
+
+
+
+EPISODE SEVEN
+
+CLINCH'S DUMP
+
+
+I
+
+When Mike Clinch bade Hal 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
+Leverett was loose. If anything had called Trooper Stormont away, Eve
+would be alone in the house. And nobody on earth could forecast what a
+coward like Leverett 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 Harrod knew.
+
+When Jake Kloon was a young man and Darragh was a boy, Kloon had shown
+him the rocky, submerged game trail into Drowned Valley. Doubtless Kloon
+had used it in hootch running since. If ever he had told anybody else
+about it, probably he had revealed the trail to Quintana.
+
+And that was why Darragh, or Hal Smith, finally decided to return to
+Star Pond;--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 still there, how long could one
+State Trooper stand off Quintana's gang?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+No sooner had Clinch and his motley followers disappeared in the dusk
+than Smith unslung his basket-pack, fished out a big electric torch,
+flashed it tentatively, and then, reslinging the pack and taking his
+rifle in his left hand, he set off at an easy swinging stride.
+
+His course was not toward Star Pond; it was at right angles with that
+trail. For he was taking no chances. Quintana might already have left
+Drowned Valley by that 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 economise 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 towered 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 five thousand acre patch of State
+land. The ugly whine of the steam-saw 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 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 travelled 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 that rocky rivulet which was the other entrance and exit penetrating
+that immense horror of marsh and bog and depthless sink-hole known as
+Drowned Valley.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For a long while he did not dare to use his torch; but now he was
+obliged to.
+
+He 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 levelled 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 three hundred yards, counting his strides, he continued on. Then, in
+total darkness, he pocketed the torch, slid a cartridge into the breech
+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, levelled it, sent three quick
+flashes out into darkness.
+
+Instantly, close ahead, three blinding flashes broke out.
+
+For Hal Smith it all had become a question of seconds.
+
+Death lay depthless 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 little 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 is Sard?"
+
+The silence became terrible. Once the glaring light in front moved, then
+become fixed. There was a light splashing. Instantly Smith realised that
+the man in front had set his torch in a tree-crotch and was now cowering
+somewhere behind a levelled weapon. His voice came presently:
+
+"He! Drap-a that-a gun damn 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 coolly. "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 here to find Quintana."
+
+"How I know? Eh? Why shall I believe that? You tell-a me queeck or I
+blow-a your damn head off!"
+
+"Quintana will blow-a _your_ head off unless you take me to Sard,"
+drawled Smith.
+
+A movement might have meant death, but 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 Salzar, aren't you?"
+
+"Si! I am Salzar. 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,
+Picquet, Sanchez, Georgiades and Harry Beck,--and _you_!"
+
+After a dead 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 why you com-a here, eh?" demanded Salzar, in a less aggressive
+manner. "What-a da matt', eh?"
+
+"Well," said Smith, "if you've got to know, there are people from
+Esthonia in New York.... If you understand that."
+
+"Christi! When do 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 his papers. City, State, and Federal
+officers are looking for him. The Constabulary rode into Ghost Lake
+yesterday. Now, don't you think you'd better lead me to Sard?"
+
+"Cristi!" exclaimed Salzar. "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? Cristi! What to do? What you say I
+should do, eh, Abrams?"
+
+A new fear had succeeded the old one--that was evident--and Salzar came
+forward into the light of his own fixed torch--a well-knit figure in
+slouch hat, grey shirt, and grey breeches, and wearing a red bandanna
+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! Si! Where you say those carbinieri? Eh?"
+
+"At Ghost Lake. _Your_ signature is in the hotel ledger."
+
+"Cristi! You know where Clinch is?"
+
+"You know, too. He is on the way to Drowned Valley."
+
+"Damn! I knew it. Quintana also. You know where is Quintana? And Sard? I
+tell-a you. They march ver' fast to the Dump of Clinch. Si! And there
+they would discover these-a beeg-a dimon'--these-a Flame-Jewel. Si!
+_Now_, you tell-a me what I do?"
+
+Smith said slowly: "If Quintana is marching on Clinch's he's marching
+into a trap!"
+
+Salzar blanched above his bandanna.
+
+"The State Troopers are there," said Smith. "They'll get him sure."
+
+"Cristi," faltered Salzar, "--then they are gobble--Quintana, Sard,
+everybody! Si?"
+
+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 Drowned
+Valley."
+
+He picked up his rifle, stood a moment in troubled 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 Drowned Valley."
+
+Suddenly Salzar tore the bandanna from his face, flung it down and
+stamped on it.
+
+"What I tell Quintana!" he yelled, his features distorted with rage. "I
+don't-a like!--no, not me!--no, I tell-a heem, stay at those Ghost-a
+Lake and watch thees-a fellow Clinch. Si! Not for me thees-a wood. No! I
+spit upon it! I curse like hell! I tell Quintana I don't-a like. Now,
+eet is trouble that comes and we lose-a out! Damn! _Damn!_ Me, I find me
+Beck. You shall say to Jose Quintana how he is a damfool. Me, I am
+finish--me, Nick Salzar! 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-a heem he is the bigg-a fool! You
+tell-a heem Nick Salzar is no damn fool. No! Adios, my frien' Abrams. I
+beat it. I save my skin!"
+
+Once more Salzar turned and headed for Drowned 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.
+
+"Salzar!" he called sharply.
+
+The man halted and looked around.
+
+"Come back!"
+
+Salzar hesitated, turned finally, slouched toward him.
+
+Smith laid aside his pack and rifle, and, as Salzar came up, he quietly
+took his weapon from him and laid it beside his own.
+
+"What-a da matt'?" demanded Salzar, astonished. "Why you taka my gun?"
+
+Smith measured him. They were well matched.
+
+"Set your torch in that crotch," he said.
+
+Salzar, puzzled and impatient, demanded to know why. Smith took both
+torches, set them opposite each other and drew Salzar into the white
+glare.
+
+"Now," he said, "you dirty desperado, I am going to try to kill you
+clean. Look out for yourself!"
+
+For a second Salzar stood rooted in blank astonishment.
+
+"I'm one of Clinch's 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; Salzar was on him, clawing, biting,
+kicking, striving to strangle him, to wrestle him off his feet. Smith
+reeled, staggering under the sheer rush of the man, almost blinded by
+blows, clutched, bewildered in Salzar's panther grip.
+
+For a moment he writhed there, searching blindly for his enemy's wrist,
+striving to avoid the teeth that snapped at his throat, stifled by the
+hot stench of the man's breath in his face.
+
+"I keel you! I keel you! Damn! Damn!" panted Salzar, in convulsive fury
+as Smith freed his left arm and struck him in the face.
+
+Now, on the narrow, wet and slippery strip of rock they swayed to and
+fro, murderously interlocked, their heavy boots splashing, battling with
+limb and body.
+
+Twice Salzar forced Smith outward over the sink, trying to end it, but
+could not free himself.
+
+Once, too, he managed to get at a hidden knife, drag it out and stab at
+head and throat; but Smith caught the fist that wielded it, forced back
+the arm, held it while Salzar screamed at him, lunging at his face with
+bared teeth.
+
+Suddenly the end came: Salzar's body heaved upward, sprawled for an
+instant in the dazzling glare, hurtled over Smith's head and fell into
+the sink with a crashing splash.
+
+Frantically 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 a tamarack,
+sickened.
+
+After all sound had ceased he straightened up with an effort. Presently
+he bent and recovered Salzar's red bandanna and his hat, lifted his own
+rifle and pack and struggled into the harness. Then, kicking Salzar'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 noises
+in the mud, the deadened flopping of the sinking body--mud-plastered
+hands beating frantically on mud, spattering, agonising in darkness--"My
+God," he breathed, "anything but that--anything but that!----"
+
+
+II
+
+Before midnight he struck the hard forest. Here there was no trail at
+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 Clinch's 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 bandanna was still wet, but he tied it 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 the people ahead were moving without much
+caution, evidently fearing no unfriendly ear or eye in that section of
+the wilderness.
+
+Smith could hear their tread on rock and root and rotten branch, or
+swishing through frosted fern and brake, 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 trunks, spread out,
+fanlike, 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 lustre
+over the pond, turning the mist to a silvery splendour.
+
+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 travelling in single file; he had a glimpse of them against
+the ghostly radiance ahead. Indeed, so near had he approached that he
+could hear the heavy, laboured 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 from the
+clearing. Through the trees starlight glimmered on water. The perfume of
+the open land grew in the night air,--the 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 now,--spectral
+shapes against the light. There were five of them at the forest's 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 sheered 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 wood's edge, crouched,
+and looked down.
+
+Below stood Clinch's 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 out-buildings.
+
+Smith crept after him through the sumacs; and, at the foot of the slope,
+squatted low in a clump of rag-weed.
+
+So close to the house was he now that he could hear the dew rattling on
+the veranda 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 out-buildings, very silent about whatever he had on
+hand.
+
+The stillness was absolute save for the drumming dew and a faint ripple
+from the water's edge.
+
+Smith crouched, listened, searched the starlight with intent eyes, and
+waited.
+
+Until something happened he could not solve the problem before him. He
+could be of no use to Eve Strayer and to Stormont until he found out
+what Quintana was going to do.
+
+He could be of little use anyway unless he got into the house, where two
+rifles might hold out 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 the 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 Clinch's prepared to reveal himself to Stormont,
+and then, masked to the eyes--and to save Eve from a broken heart, and
+Clinch from States 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 realised it thoroughly.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A slight sound from one of the out-houses--a sort of
+wagon-shed--attracted his attention. Through the frost-blighted
+rag-weeds he peered intently, listening.
+
+After a few moments a faint glow appeared in the shed. There was a
+crackling noise. The glow grew pinker.
+
+
+III
+
+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 at the kitchen door and
+his spurred boots 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 afire.
+
+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, and 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, recognised 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 darkness, she wriggled out, somehow, leaving her blanket
+wrapped in their clutches. In another instant she was up the stairs
+again, only to discover that the rifle was gone.
+
+The red glare from the wagon-house lighted her bedroom; she sprang
+inside and bolted the door.
+
+Her chamois jacket with its loops full of cartridges hung on a peg. She
+got into it, seized her rifle and 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.
+
+The blows upon her bedroom door had ceased; there came a loud trampling,
+the sound of excited voices; Quintana's sarcastic tones, clear,
+dominant:
+
+"Dios! The police! Why you bring me this gendarme? What am I to do with
+a gentleman of the Constabulary, eh? Do you think I am fool enough to
+cut his throat? Well, Senor Gendarme, 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 this house."
+
+"So?" said Quintana. "Well, that is what I expec', my frien'. It is
+thees lady upon whom I do myse'f the honour to call!"
+
+Eve, listening, 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.... Nor for any of you, if you harm her."
+
+"Calm youse'f, my frien'," said Quintana. "I demand of thees young lady
+only that she return to me the property of which I have been rob by
+Monsieur Clinch."
+
+"I knew nothing of any theft. Nor does she----"
+
+"Pardon; Senor Clinch knows; and I know." His tone changed, offensively:
+"Senor Gendarme, am I permit to understan' that you are a frien' of
+thees young lady?--a heart-frien', per'aps----"
+
+"I am her friend," said Stormont bluntly.
+
+"Ah," said Quintana, "then you shall persuade her to return to me thees
+packet of which Monsieur Clinch has rob me."
+
+There was a short silence, then Quintana's voice again:
+
+"I know thees packet is concel in thees house. Peaceably, if possible, I
+would recover my property.... If she refuse----"
+
+Another pause.
+
+"Well?" inquired Stormont, coolly.
+
+"Ah! It is ver' painful to say. Alas, Senor Gendarme, I mus' have my
+property.... If she refuse, then I mus' sever one of her pretty
+fingers.... An' if she still refuse--I sever her pretty fingers, one by
+one, until----"
+
+"You know what would happen to _you_?" interrupted Stormont, in a voice
+that quivered in spite of himself.
+
+"I take my chance. Senor Gendarme, she is within that room. If you are
+her frien', you shall advise her to return to me my property."
+
+After another silence:
+
+"Eve!" he called sharply.
+
+She placed her lips to the door: "Yes, Jack."
+
+He said: "There are five masked men out here who say that 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 and
+plenty of ammunition. 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 frien',
+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 night-dress.
+
+Quintana made her an elaborate and ironical bow, slouch hat in hand;
+another masked man took her 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 rob me for
+ver' long time."
+
+Slowly the girl lifted her blue eyes to Stormont. He was standing
+between two masked men. Their pistols were pressed slightly against his
+stomach.
+
+Stormont reddened painfully:
+
+"It was not for myself that I let you open your 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 gendarme who had--_accorded me his hand_!"
+
+Two of the masked men laughed loudly.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Outside in the rag-weed 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 caresses of your faithful gendarme,--who should thank
+God that he still possesses two good hands to fondle you! Alons! Come
+then! My packet!"
+
+One of the masked men said: "Take her downstairs and lock her up
+somewhere or she'll shoot us from her window."
+
+"Lead out that gendarme, too!" added Quintana, grasping Eve by the arm.
+
+Down the stairs tramped the men, forcing their prisoners with them.
+
+In the big kitchen the glare from the burning out-house 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 sombre shadows,
+then, slowly, 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 through the doorway, and ran toward the barn.
+
+Somebody recognised the hat and red bandanna:
+
+"Salzar!" he yelled. "Nick Salzar!"
+
+"A traitor, by God!" shouted Quintana. Even before he had reached the
+door, his pistol flashed twice, deafening all in 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, slammed the pantry door
+and bolted it.
+
+Through the iron bars of the pantry window, Stormont saw a man, wearing
+a red bandanna tied under his eyes, run up and 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 Star Pond, 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, hallooing 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 unstirring, every atom of intelligence in
+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 bars, striving to catch a glimpse of
+what was going on. Eve crouched at the pantry doors, her face in her
+hands, listening.
+
+Suddenly she heard Quintana's 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 and tried to open it.
+
+"Come out," he said coldly, "or it will not go well with you when my men
+return."
+
+"You've got what you say is your property," replied. Stormont. "What do
+you want now?"
+
+"I tell you what I want ver' damn quick. Who was he, thees man who rides
+with my property on your horse away? Eh? Because it was not Nick Salzar!
+No! Salzar can not ride thees way. No! Alors?"
+
+"I can't tell you who he was," replied Stormont. "That's your affair,
+not ours."
+
+"No? Ah! Ver' well, then. I shall tell you, Senor Flic! He was one of
+_yours_. I understan'. It is a trap, a cheat--what you call a _plant_!
+Thees man who rode your horse he is disguise! Yes! He also is a
+gendarme! Yes! You think I let a gendarme rob me? I got you where I want
+you now. You shall write your gendarme frien' that he return to me my
+property, _one day's time_, or I send him by parcel post two nice,
+fresh-out right-hands--your sweetheart's and your own!"
+
+Stormont drew Eve's head close to his:
+
+"This man is blood mad or 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
+hootch 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.
+
+"You open thees 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, two hundred feet away.
+
+Now, as she straightened up and looked silently at Stormont, they heard
+the trample of boots in the kitchen, voices, 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 colour swept her
+face. But 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 ears, Stormont slid into the
+smooth tunnel.
+
+In an instant he was shooting down a polished toboggan slide, and in
+another moment was under the icy water of Star Pond.
+
+Shocked, blinded, fighting his way to the surface, he felt his spurred
+boots dragging at 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 his 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 lithely
+through the chilled water, which washed his body to the nostrils and
+numbed his legs till he could scarcely move them.
+
+And 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 up 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,--and, among them, one great, flashing gem blazing in the
+starlight,--the Flaming Jewel!
+
+Like a naiad of the lake she stood, white, slim, silent, the heaped gems
+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 into
+your pocket?"
+
+
+
+
+EPISODE EIGHT
+
+CUP AND LIP
+
+
+I
+
+Two miles beyond Clinch's Dump, Hal Smith pulled Stormont's horse to a
+walk. He was tremendously excited.
+
+With naive sincerity he believed that what he had done on the spur of
+the moment had been the only thing to do.
+
+By snatching the Flaming Jewel from Quintana's very fingers he had
+diverted that vindictive bandit's fury from Eve, from Clinch, from
+Stormont, and had centred it upon himself.
+
+More than that, he had sown the seeds of suspicion among Quintana's own
+people. They never could discover Salzar's body. Always they must
+believe that it was Nicolas Salzar and no other who so treacherously
+robbed them, and who rode away in a rain of bullets, shaking the
+emblazoned morocco case above his masked head in triumph, derision and
+defiance.
+
+At the recollection of what had happened, Hal Smith drew bridle, and,
+sitting his saddle there in the false dawn, threw back his handsome head
+and laughed until the fading stars overhead swam in his eyes through
+tears of sheerest mirth.
+
+For he was still young enough to have had the time of his life. Nothing
+in the Great War had so thrilled him. For, in what had just happened,
+there was humour. There had been none in the Great Grim Drama.
+
+Still, Smith began to realise that he had taken the long, long chance of
+the opportunist who rolls the bones with Death. He had kept his pledge
+to the little Grand Duchess. It was a clean job. It was even good
+drama----
+
+The picturesque angle of the affair shook Hal Smith with renewed
+laughter. As a moving picture hero he thought himself the funniest thing
+on earth.
+
+From the time he had poked a pistol against Sard's fat paunch, to this
+bullet-pelted ride for life, life had become one ridiculously exciting
+episode after another.
+
+He had come through like the hero in a best-seller.... Lacking only a
+heroine.... If there had been any heroine it was Eve Strayer. Drama had
+gone wrong in that detail.... So perhaps, after all, it was real life
+he had been living and not drama. Drama, for the masses, must have a
+definite beginning and ending. Real life lacks the latter. In life
+nothing is finished. It is always a premature curtain which is yanked by
+that doddering old stage-hand, Johnny Death.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Smith sat his saddle, thinking, beginning to be sobered now by the
+inevitable reaction which follows excitement and mirth as relentlessly
+as care dogs the horseman.
+
+He had had a fine time,--save for the horror of the Rocktrail.... He
+shuddered.... Anyway, at worst he had not shirked a clean deal in that
+ghastly game.... It was God's mercy that he was not lying where Salzar
+lay, ten feet--twenty--a hundred deep, perhaps--in immemorial slime----
+
+He shook himself in his saddle as though to be rid of the creeping
+horror, and wiped his clammy face.
+
+Now, in the false dawn, a blue-jay awoke somewhere among the oaks and
+filled the misty silence with harsh grace-notes.
+
+Then reaction, setting in like a tide, stirred more sombre depths in the
+heart of this young man.
+
+He thought of Riga; and of the Red Terror; of murder at noon-day, and
+outrage by night. He remembered his only encounter with a lovely
+child--once Grand Duchess of Esthonia--then a destitute refugee in
+silken rags.
+
+What a day that had been.... Only one day and one evening.... And
+never had he been so near in love in all his life....
+
+That one day and evening had been enough for her to confide to an
+American officer her entire life's history.... Enough for him to pledge
+himself to her service while life endured.... And if emotion had swept
+every atom of reason out of his youthful head, there in the turmoil and
+alarm--there in the terrified, riotous city jammed with refugees,
+reeking with disease, half frantic from famine and the filthy, rising
+flood of war--if really it all had been merely romantic impulse, ardour
+born of overwrought sentimentalism, nevertheless, what he had pledged
+that day to a little Grand Duchess in rags, he had fulfilled to the
+letter within the hour.
+
+As the false dawn began to fade, he loosened hunting coat and cartridge
+sling, drew from his shirt-bosom the morocco case.
+
+It bore the arms and crest of the Grand Duchess Theodorica of Esthonia.
+
+His fingers trembled slightly as he pressed the jewelled spring. It
+opened on an empty casket.
+
+In the sudden shock of horror and astonishment, his convulsive clutch on
+the spring started a tiny bell ringing. Then, under his very nose, the
+empty tray slid aside revealing another tray underneath, set solidly
+with brilliants. A rainbow glitter streamed from the unset gems in the
+silken tray. Like an incredulous child he touched them. They were
+magnificently real.
+
+In the centre lay blazing the great Erosite gem,--the Flaming Jewel
+itself. Priceless diamonds, sapphires, emeralds ringed it. In his hands
+he held nearly four millions of dollars.
+
+Gingerly he balanced the emblazoned case, fascinated. Then he replaced
+the empty tray, closed the box, thrust it into the bosom of his flannel
+shirt and buttoned it in.
+
+Now there was little more for this excited young man to do. He was
+through with Clinch. Hal Smith, hold-up man and dish-washer at Clinch's
+Dump, had ended his career. The time had now arrived for him to vanish
+and make room for James Darragh.
+
+Because there still remained a very agreeable role for Darragh to play.
+And he meant to eat it up--as Broadway has it.
+
+For by this time the Grand Duchess of Esthonia--Ricca, as she was called
+by her companion, Valentine, the pretty Countess Orloff-Strelwitz--must
+have arrived in New York.
+
+At the big hunting lodge of the late Henry Harrod--now inherited by
+Darragh--there might be a letter--perhaps a telegram--the cue for Hal
+Smith to vanish and for James Darragh to enter, play his brief but
+glittering part, and----
+
+Darragh's sequence of pleasing meditations halted abruptly.... To walk
+out of the life of the little Grand Duchess did not seem to suit his
+ideas--indefinite and hazy as they were, so far.
+
+He lifted the bridle from the horse's neck, divided curb and snaffle
+thoughtfully, touched the splendid animal with heel and knee.
+
+As he cantered on into the wide forest road that led to his late uncle's
+abode, curiosity led him to wheel into a narrower trail running east
+along Star Pond, and from whence he could take a farewell view of
+Clinch's Dump.
+
+He smiled to think of Eve and Stormont there together, and now in safety
+behind bolted doors and shutters.
+
+He grinned to think of Quintana and his precious crew, blood-crazy,
+baffled, probably already distrusting one another, yet running wild
+through the night like starving wolves galloping at hazard across a
+famine-stricken waste.
+
+"Only wait till Stormont makes his report," he thought, grinning more
+broadly still. "Every State Trooper north of Albany will be after Senor
+Quintana. Some hunting! And, if he could understand, Mike Clinch might
+thank his stars that what I've done this night has saved him his skin
+and Eve a broken heart!"
+
+He drew his horse to a walk, now, for the path began to run closer to
+Star Pond, skirting the pebbled shallows in the open just ahead.
+
+Alders still concealed the house across the lake, but the trail was
+already coming out into the starlight.
+
+Suddenly his horse stopped short, trembling, its ears pricked forward.
+
+Darragh sat listening intently for a moment. Then with infinite
+caution, he leaned over the cantle and gently parted the alders.
+
+On the pebbled beach, full in the starlight, stood two figures, one
+white and slim, the other dark.
+
+The arm of the dark figure clasped the waist of the white and slender
+one.
+
+Evidently they had heard his horse, for they stood motionless, looking
+directly at the alders behind which his horse had halted.
+
+To turn might mean a shot in the back as far as Darragh knew. He was
+still masked with Salzar's red bandanna. He raised his rifle, slid a
+cartridge into the breech, pressed his horse forward with a slight touch
+of heel and knee, and rode slowly out into the star-dusk.
+
+What Stormont saw was a masked man, riding his own horse, with menacing
+rifle half lifted for a shot! What Eve Strayer thought she saw was too
+terrible for words. And before Stormont could prevent her she sprang in
+front of him, covering his body with her own.
+
+At that the horseman tore off his red mask:
+
+"Eve! Jack Stormont! What the devil are you doing over _here_?"
+
+Stormont walked slowly up to his own horse, laid one unsteady hand on
+its silky nose, kept it there while dusty, velvet lips mumbled and
+caressed his fingers.
+
+"I knew it was a cavalryman," he said quietly. "I suspected you, Jim. It
+was the sort of crazy thing you were likely to do.... I don't ask you
+what you're up to, where you've been, what your plans may be. If you
+needed me you'd have told me.
+
+"But I've got to have my horse for Eve. Her feet are wounded. She's in
+her night-dress and wringing wet. I've got to set her on my horse and
+try to take her through to Ghost Lake."
+
+Darragh stared at Stormont, at the ghostly figure of the girl who had
+sunk down on the sand at the lake's edge. Then he scrambled out of the
+saddle and handed over the bridle.
+
+"Quintana came back," said Stormont. "I hope to reckon with him some
+day.... I believe he came back to harm Eve.... We got out of the
+house.... We swam the lake.... I'd have gone under except for her----"
+
+In his distress and overwhelming mortification, Darragh stood miserable,
+mute, irresolute.
+
+Stormont seemed to understand: "What you did, Jim, was well meant," he
+said. "I understand. Eve will understand when I tell her. But that
+fellow Quintana is a devil. You can't draw a herring across any trail he
+follows. I tell you, Jim, this fellow Quintana is either blood-mad or
+just plain crazy. Somebody will have to put him out of the way. I'll do
+it if I ever find him."
+
+"Yes.... Your people ought to do that.... Or, if you like, I'll
+volunteer.... I've a little business to transact in New York, first....
+Jack, your tunic and breeches are soaked; I'll be glad to chip in
+something for Eve.... Wait a moment----"
+
+He stepped into cover, drew the morocco box from his grey shirt, shoved
+it into his hip pocket.
+
+Then he threw off his cartridge belt and hunting coat, pulled the grey
+shirt over his head and came out in his undershirt and breeches, with
+the other garments hanging over his arm.
+
+"Give her these," he said. "She can button the coat around her waist
+for a skirt. She'd better go somewhere and get out of that soaking-wet
+night-dress----"
+
+Eve, crouched on the sand, trying to wring out and twist up her drenched
+hair, looked up at Stormont as he came toward her holding out Darragh's
+dry clothing.
+
+"You'd better do what you can with these," he said, trying to speak
+carelessly.... "_He_ says you'd better chuck--what you're wearing----"
+
+She nodded in flushed comprehension. Stormont walked back to his horse,
+his boots slopping water at every stride.
+
+"I don't know any place nearer than Ghost Lake Inn," he said ... "except
+Harrod's."
+
+"That's where we're going, Jack," said Darragh cheerfully.
+
+"That's _your_ place, isn't it?"
+
+"It is. But I don't want Eve to know it.... I think it better she
+should not know me except as Hal Smith--for the present, anyway. You'll
+see to that, won't you?"
+
+"As you wish, Jim.... Only, if we go to your own house----"
+
+"We're not going to the main house. She wouldn't, anyway. Clinch has
+taught that girl to hate the very name of Harrod--hate every foot of
+forest that the Harrod game keepers patrol. She wouldn't cross my
+threshold to save her life."
+
+"I don't understand, but--it's all right--whatever _you_ say, Jim."
+
+"I'll tell you the whole business some day. But where I'm going to take
+you now is into a brand new camp which I ordered built last spring. It's
+within a mile of the State Forest border. Eve won't know that it's
+Harrod property. I've a hatchery there and the State lets me have a man
+in exchange for free fry. When I get there I'll post my man.... It will
+be a roof for to-night, anyway, and breakfast in the morning, whenever
+you're ready."
+
+"How far is it?"
+
+"Only about three miles east of here."
+
+"That's the thing to do, then," said Stormont bluntly.
+
+He dropped one sopping-wet sleeve over his horse's neck, taking care not
+to touch the saddle. He was thinking of the handful of gems in his
+pocket; and he wondered why Darragh had said nothing about the empty
+case for which he had so recklessly risked his life.
+
+What this whole business was about Stormont had no notion. But he knew
+Darragh. That was sufficient to leave him tranquil, and perfectly
+certain that whatever Darragh was doing must be the right thing to do.
+
+Yet--Eve had swum Star Pond with her mouth filled with jewels.
+
+When she had handed the morocco box to Quintana, Stormont now realised
+that she must have played her last card on the utterly desperate chance
+that Quintana might go away without examining the case.
+
+Evidently she had emptied the case before she left her room. He
+recollected that, during all that followed, Eve had not uttered a single
+word. He knew why, now. How could she speak with her mouth full of
+diamonds?
+
+A slight sound from the shore caused him to turn. Eve was coming toward
+him in the dusk, moving painfully on her wounded feet. Darragh's flannel
+shirt and his hunting coat buttoned around her slender waist clothed
+her.
+
+The next instant he was beside her, lifting her in both arms.
+
+As he placed her in the saddle and adjusted one stirrup to her bandaged
+foot, she turned and quietly thanked Darragh for the clothing.
+
+"And that was a brave thing you did," she added, "--to risk your life
+for my father's property. Because the morocco case which you saved
+proved to be empty does not make what you did any the less loyal and
+gallant."
+
+Darragh gazed at her, astounded; took the hand she stretched out to him;
+held it with a silly expression on his features.
+
+"Hal Smith," she said with perceptible emotion, "I take back what I once
+said to you on Owl Marsh. No man is a real crook by nature who did what
+you have done. That is 'faithfulness unto death'--the supreme
+offer--loyalty----"
+
+Her voice broke; she pressed Darragh's hand convulsively and her lip
+quivered.
+
+Darragh, with the morocco case full of jewels buttoned into his hip
+pocket, stood motionless, mutely swallowing his amazement.
+
+What in the world did this girl mean, talking about an _empty_ case?
+
+But this was no time to unravel that sort of puzzle. He turned to
+Stormont who, as perplexed as he, had been listening in silence.
+
+"Lead your horse forward," he said. "I know the trail. All you need do
+is to follow me." And, shouldering his rifle, he walked leisurely into
+the woods, the cartridge belt sagging _en bandouliere_ across his
+woollen undershirt.
+
+
+II
+
+When Stormont gently halted his horse it was dawn, and Eve, sagging
+against him with one arm around his neck, sat huddled up on her saddle
+fast asleep.
+
+In a birch woods, on the eastern slope of the divide, stood the log
+camp, dimly visible in the silvery light of early morning.
+
+Darragh, cautioning Stormont with a slight gesture, went forward,
+mounted the rustic veranda, and knocked at a lighted window.
+
+A man, already dressed, came and peered out at him, then hurried to open
+the door.
+
+"I didn't know you, Captain Darragh----" he began, but fell silent under
+the warning gesture that checked him.
+
+"I've a guest outside. She's Clinch's step-daughter, Eve Strayer. She
+knows me by the name of Hal Smith. Do you understand?"
+
+"Yes, sir----"
+
+"Cut _that_ out, too. I'm Hal Smith to you, also. State Trooper Stormont
+is out there with Eve Strayer. He was a comrade of mine in Russia. I'm
+Hal Smith to him, by mutual agreement. _Now_ do you get me, Ralph?"
+
+"Sure, Hal. Go on; spit it out!"
+
+They both grinned.
+
+"You're a hootch runner," said Darragh. "This is your shack. The
+hatchery is only a blind. That's all you have to know, Ralph. So put
+that girl into my room and let her sleep till she wakes of her own
+accord.
+
+"Stormont and I will take two of the guest-bunks in the _L._ And for
+heaven's sake make us some coffee when you make your own. But first come
+out and take the horse."
+
+They went out together. Stormont lifted Eve out of the saddle. She did
+not wake. Darragh led the way into the log house and along a corridor to
+his own room.
+
+"Turn down the sheets," whispered Stormont. And, when the bed was ready:
+"Can you get a bath towel, Jim?"
+
+Darragh fetched one from the connecting bath-room.
+
+"Wrap it around her wet hair," whispered Stormont. "Good heavens, I wish
+there were a woman here."
+
+"I wish so too," said Darragh; "she's chilled to the bone. You'll have
+to wake her. She can't sleep in what she's wearing; it's almost as damp
+as her hair----"
+
+He went to the closet and returned with a man's morning robe, as soft as
+fleece.
+
+"Somehow or other she's got to get into that," he said.
+
+There was a silence.
+
+"Very well," said Stormont, reddening.... "If you'll step out
+I'll--manage...." He looked Darragh straight in the eyes: "I have asked
+her to marry me," he said.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Stormont came out a great fire of birch-logs was blazing in the
+living-room, and Darragh stood there, his elbow on the rough stone
+mantel-shelf.
+
+Stormont came straight to the fire and set one spurred boot on the
+fender.
+
+"She's warm and dry and sound asleep," he said. "I'll wake her again if
+you think she ought to swallow something hot."
+
+At that moment the fish-culturist came in with a pot of steaming coffee.
+
+"This is my friend, Ralph Wier," said Darragh. "I think you'd better
+give Eve a cup of coffee." And, to Wier, "Fill a couple of hot water
+bags, old chap. We don't want any pneumonia in this house."
+
+When breakfast was ready Eve once more lay asleep with a slight dew of
+perspiration on her brow.
+
+Darragh was half starved: Stormont ate little. Neither spoke at all
+until, satisfied, they rose, ready for sleep.
+
+At the door of his room Stormont took Darragh's offered hand,
+understanding what it implied:
+
+"Thanks, Jim.... Hers is the loveliest character I have ever known....
+If I weren't as poor as a homeless dog I'd marry her to-morrow.... I'll
+do it anyway, I think.... I _can't_ let her go back to Clinch's Dump!"
+
+"After all," said Darragh, smiling, "if it's only money that worries
+you, why not talk about a job to _me_!"
+
+Stormont flushed heavily: "That's rather wonderful of you, Jim----"
+
+"Why? You're the best officer I had. Why the devil did you go into the
+Constabulary without talking to me?"
+
+Stormont's upper lip seemed inclined to twitch but he controlled it and
+scowled at space.
+
+"Go to bed, you darned fool," said Darragh, carelessly. "You'll find dry
+things ready. Ralph will take care of your uniform and boots."
+
+Then he went into his own quarters to read two letters which, conforming
+to arrangements made with Mrs. Ray the day he had robbed Emanuel Sard,
+were to be sent to Trout Lodge to await his arrival.
+
+Both, written from the Ritz, bore the date of the day before: the first
+he opened was from the Countess Orloff-Strelwitz:
+
+    "Dear Captain Darragh,
+
+    "--You are so wonderful! Your messenger, with the _ten_ thousand
+    dollars which you say you already have recovered from those
+    miscreants who robbed Ricca, came aboard our ship before we
+    landed. It was a godsend; we were nearly penniless,--and oh,
+    _so_ shabby!
+
+    "Instantly, my friend, we shopped, Ricca and I. Fifth Avenue
+    enchanted us. All misery was forgotten in the magic of that
+    paradise for women.
+
+    "Yet, spendthrifts that we naturally are, we were not silly
+    enough to be extravagant. Ricca was wild for American
+    sport-clothes. I, also. Yet--only _two_ gowns apiece, excepting
+    our sport clothes. And other necessaries. Don't you think we
+    were economical?"
+
+    "Furthermore, dear Captain Darragh, we are hastening to follow
+    your instructions. We are leaving to-day for your chateau in the
+    wonderful forest, of which you told us that
+    never-to-be-forgotten day in Riga.
+
+    "Your agent is politeness, consideration and kindness itself. We
+    have our accommodations. We leave New York at midnight.
+
+    "Ricca is so excited that it is difficult for her to restrain
+    her happiness. God knows the child has seen enough unhappiness
+    to quench the gaiety of anybody!
+
+    "Well, all things end. Even tears. Even the Red Terror shall
+    pass from our beloved Russia. For, after all, Monsieur, God
+    still lives.
+
+            "VALENTINE."
+
+    "P. S. Ricca has written to you. I have read the letter. I have
+    let it go uncensored."
+
+Darragh went to the door of his room:
+
+"Ralph! Ralph!" he called. And, when Wier hurriedly appeared:
+
+"What time does the midnight train from New York get into Five Lakes?"
+
+"A little before nine----"
+
+"You can make it in the flivver, can't you?"
+
+"Yes, if I start _now_."
+
+"All right. Two ladies. You're to bring them to the _house_, not
+_here_. Mrs. Ray knows about them. And--get back here as soon as you
+can."
+
+He closed his door again, sat down on the bed and opened the other
+letter. His hand shook as he unfolded it. He was so scared and excited
+that he could scarcely decipher the angular, girlish penmanship:
+
+    "To dear Captain Darragh, our champion and friend--
+
+    "It is difficult for me, Monsieur, to express my happiness and
+    my deep gratitude in the so cold formality of the written page.
+
+    "Alas, sir, it will be still more difficult to find words for it
+    when again I have the happiness of greeting you in proper
+    person.
+
+    "Valentine has told you everything, she warns me, and I am,
+    therefore, somewhat at a loss to know what I should write to
+    you.
+
+    "Yet, I know very well what I would write if I dare. It is this:
+    that I wish you to know--although it may not pass the
+    censor--that I am most impatient to see you, Monsieur. _Not_
+    because of kindness past, nor with an unworthy expectation of
+    benefits to come. But because of friendship,--_the deepest,
+    sincerest of my_ WHOLE LIFE.
+
+    "Is it not modest of a young girl to say this? Yes, surely all
+    the world which was once _en regle_, formal, artificial, has
+    been burnt out of our hearts by this so frightful calamity which
+    has overwhelmed the world with fire and blood.
+
+    "If ever on earth there was a time when we might venture to
+    express with candour what is hidden within our minds and hearts,
+    it would seem, Monsieur, that the time is now.
+
+    "True, I have known you only for one day and one evening. Yet,
+    what happened to the world in that brief space of time--and to
+    us, Monsieur--brought _us_ together as though our meeting were
+    but a blessed reunion after the happy intimacy of many years....
+    I speak, Monsieur, for myself. May I hope that I speak, also,
+    for you?
+
+    "With a heart too full to thank you, and with expectations
+    indescribable--but with courage, always, for any event,--I take
+    my leave of you at the foot of this page. Like death--I
+    trust--my adieu is not the end, but the beginning. It is not
+    farewell; it is a greeting to him whom I most honour in all the
+    world.... And would willingly obey if he shall command. And
+    otherwise--_all_ else that in his mind--and heart--he might
+    desire.
+
+            "THEODORICA."
+
+It was the most beautiful love-letter any man ever received in all the
+history of love.
+
+And it had passed the censor.
+
+
+III
+
+It was afternoon when Darragh awoke in his bunk, stiff, sore, confused
+in mind and battered in body.
+
+However, when he recollected where he was he got out of bed in a hurry
+and jerked aside the window curtains.
+
+The day was magnificent; a sky of royal azure overhead, and everywhere
+the silver pillars of the birches supporting their splendid canopy of
+ochre, orange, and burnt-gold.
+
+Wier, hearing him astir, came in.
+
+"How long have you been back! Did you meet the ladies with your
+flivver?" demanded Darragh, impatiently.
+
+"I got to Five Lakes station just as the train came in. The young ladies
+were the only passengers who got out. I waited to get their two steamer
+trunks and then I drove them to Harrod Place----"
+
+"How did they seem, Ralph--worn-out--worried--ill?"
+
+Wier laughed: "No, sir, they looked very pretty and lively to me. They
+seemed delighted to get here. They talked to each other in some foreign
+tongue--Russian, I should say--at least, it sounded like what we heard
+over in Siberia, Captain----"
+
+"It _was_ Russian.... You go on and tell me while I take another hot
+bath!----"
+
+Wier followed him into the bath-room and vaulted to a seat on the deep
+set window-sill:
+
+"--When they weren't talking Russian and laughing they talked to me and
+admired the woods and mountains. I had to tell them everything--they
+wanted to see buffalo and Indians. And when I told them there weren't
+any, enquired for bears and panthers.
+
+"We saw two deer on the Scaur, and a woodchuck near the house; I thought
+they'd jump out of the flivver----"
+
+He began to laugh at the recollection: "No, sir, they didn't act tired
+and sad; they said they were crazy to get into their knickerbockers and
+go to look for you----"
+
+"Where did you say I was?" asked Darragh, drying himself vigorously.
+
+"Out in the woods, somewhere. The last I saw of them, Mrs. Ray had their
+hand-bags and Jerry and Tom were shouldering their trunks."
+
+"I'm going up there right away," interrupted Darragh excitedly. "--Good
+heavens, Ralph, I haven't any clothes here, have I?"
+
+"No, sir. But those you wore last night are dry----"
+
+"Confound it! I meant to send some decent clothes here---- All right;
+get me those duds I wore yesterday--and a bite to eat! I'm in a hurry,
+Ralph----"
+
+He ate while dressing, disgustedly arraying himself in the grey shirt,
+breeches, and laced boots which weather, water, rock, and brier had not
+improved.
+
+In a pathetic attempt to spruce up, he knotted the red bandanna around
+his neck and pinched Salzar's slouch hat into a peak.
+
+"I look like a hootch-running Wop," he said. "Maybe I can get into the
+house before I meet the ladies----"
+
+"You look like one of Clinch's bums," remarked Wier with native honesty.
+
+Darragh, chagrined, went to his bunk, pulled the morocco case from under
+the pillow, and shoved it into the bosom of his flannel shirt.
+
+"That's the main thing anyway," he thought. Then, turning to Wier, he
+asked whether Eve and Stormont had awakened.
+
+It appeared that Trooper Stormont had saddled up and cantered away
+shortly after sunrise, leaving word that he must hunt up his comrade,
+Trooper Lannis, at Ghost Lake.
+
+"They're coming back this evening," added Wier. "He asked you to look
+out for Clinch's step-daughter."
+
+"She's all right here. Can't you keep an eye on her, Ralph?"
+
+"I'm stripping trout, sir. I'll be around here to cook dinner for her
+when she wakes up."
+
+Darragh glanced across the brook at the hatchery. It was only a few
+yards away. He nodded and started for the veranda:
+
+"That'll be all right," he said. "Nobody is coming here to bother
+her.... And don't let her leave, Ralph, till I get back----"
+
+"Very well, sir. But suppose she takes it into her head to leave----"
+
+Darragh called back, gaily: "She can't: she hasn't any clothes!" And
+away he strode in the gorgeous sunshine of a magnificent autumn day, all
+the clean and vigorous youth of him afire in anticipation of a reunion
+which the letter from his lady-love had transfigured into a tryst.
+
+For, in that amazing courtship of a single day, he never dreamed that he
+had won the heart of that sad, white-faced, hungry child in rags--silken
+tatters still stained with the blood of massacre,--the very soles of her
+shoes still charred by the embers of her own home.
+
+Yet, that is what must have happened in a single day and evening. Life
+passes swiftly during such periods. Minutes lengthen into days; hours
+into years. The soul finds itself.
+
+Then mind and heart become twin prophets,--clairvoyant concerning what
+hides behind the veil; comprehending with divine clair-audience what the
+Three Sisters whisper there--hearing even the whirr of the spindle--the
+very snipping of the Eternal Shears!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The soul finds itself; the mind knows itself; the heart perfectly
+understands.
+
+He had not spoken to this young girl of love. The blood of friends and
+servants was still rusty on her skirt's ragged hem.
+
+Yet, that night, when at last in safety she had said good-bye to the man
+who had secured it for her, he knew that he was in love with her. And,
+at such crises, the veil that hides hearts becomes transparent.
+
+At that instant he had seen and known. Afterward he had dared not
+believe that he had known.
+
+But hers had been a purer courage.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As he strode on, the comprehension of her candour, her honesty, the
+sweet bravery that had conceived, created, and sent that letter,
+thrilled this young man until his heavy boots sprouted wings, and the
+trail he followed was but a path of rosy clouds over which he floated
+heavenward.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+About half an hour later he came to his senses with a distinct shock.
+
+Straight ahead of him on the trail, and coming directly toward him,
+moved a figure in knickers and belted tweed.
+
+Flecked sunlight slanted on the stranger's cheek and burnished hair,
+dappling face and figure with moving, golden spots.
+
+Instantly Darragh knew and trembled.
+
+But Theodorica of Esthonia had known him only in his uniform.
+
+As she came toward him, lovely in her lithe and rounded grace, only
+friendly curiosity gazed at him from her blue eyes.
+
+Suddenly she knew him, went scarlet to her yellow hair, then white: and
+tried to speak--but had no control of the short, rosy upper lip which
+only quivered as he took her hands.
+
+The forest was dead still around them save for the whisper of painted
+leaves sifting down from a sunlit vault above.
+
+Finally she said in a ghost of a voice: "My--friend...."
+
+"If you accept his friendship...."
+
+"Friendship is to be shared.... Ours mingled--on that day.... Your
+share is--as much as pleases you."
+
+"All you have to give me, then."
+
+"Take it ... all I have...." Her blue eyes met his with a little
+effort. All courage is an effort.
+
+Then that young man dropped on both knees at her feet and laid his lips
+to her soft hands.
+
+In trembling silence she stood for a moment, then slowly sank on both
+knees to face him across their clasped hands.
+
+So, in the gilded cathedral of the woods, pillared with silver, and
+azure-domed, the betrothal of these two was sealed with clasp and lip.
+
+Awed, a little fearful, she looked into her lover's eyes with a gaze so
+chaste, so oblivious to all things earthly, that the still purity of her
+face seemed a sacrament, and he scarcely dared touch the childish lips
+she offered.
+
+But when the sacrament of the kiss had been accomplished, she rested one
+hand on his shoulder and rose, and drew him with her.
+
+Then _his_ moment came: he drew the emblazoned case from his breast,
+opened it, and, in silence, laid it in her hands. The blaze of the
+jewels in the sunshine almost blinded them.
+
+That was _his_ moment.
+
+The next moment was Quintana's.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Darragh hadn't a chance. Out of the bushes two pistols were thrust hard
+against his stomach. Quintana's face was behind them. He wore no mask,
+but the three men with him watched him over the edges of
+handkerchiefs,--over the sights of levelled rifles, too.
+
+The youthful Grand Duchess had turned deadly white. One of Quintana's
+men took the morocco case from her hands and shoved her aside without
+ceremony.
+
+Quintana leered at Darragh over his levelled weapons:
+
+"My frien' Smith!" he exclaimed softly. "So it is you, then, who have
+twice try to rob me of my property!
+
+"Ah! You recollec'? Yes? How you have rob me of a pacquet which contain
+only some chocolate?"
+
+Darragh's face was burning with helpless rage.
+
+"My frien', Smith," repeated Quintana, "do you recollec' what it was you
+say to me? Yes?... How often it is the onexpected which so usually
+happen? You are quite correc', l'ami Smith. It has happen."
+
+He glanced at the open jewel box which one of the masked men held, then,
+like lightning, his sinister eyes focussed on Darragh.
+
+"So," he said, "it was also you who rob me las' night of my property....
+What you do to Nick Salzar, eh?"
+
+"Killed him," said Darragh, dry lipped, nerved for death. "I ought to
+have killed you, too, when I had the chance. But--_I'm_ white, you see."
+
+At the insult flung into his face over the muzzles of his own pistols,
+Quintana burst into laughter.
+
+"Ah! You _should_ have shot me! You are quite right, my frien'. I mus'
+say you have behave ver' foolish."
+
+He laughed again so hard that Darragh felt his pistols shaking against
+his body.
+
+"So you have kill Nick Salzar, eh?" continued Quintana with perfect good
+humour. "My frien', I am oblige to you for what you do. You are
+surprise? Eh? It is ver' simple, my frien' Smith. What I want of a man
+who can be kill? Eh? Of what use is he to me? Voila!"
+
+He laughed, patted Darragh on the shoulder with one of his pistols.
+
+"You, now--_you_ could be of use. Why? Because you are a better man than
+was Nick Salzar. He who kills is better than the dead."
+
+Then, swiftly his dark features altered:
+
+"My frien' Smith," he said, "I have come here for my property, not to
+kill. I have recover my property. Why shall I kill you? To say that I am
+a better man? Yes, perhaps. But also I should be oblige to say that also
+I am a fool. Yaas! A poor damfool."
+
+Without shifting his eyes he made a motion with one pistol to his men.
+As they turned and entered the thicket, Quintana's intent gaze became
+murderous.
+
+"If I mus' kill you I shall do so. Otherwise I have sufficient trouble
+to keep me from ennui. My frien', I am going home to enjoy my property.
+If you live or die it signifies nothing to me. No! Why, for the pleasure
+of killing you, should I bring your dirty gendarmes on my heels?"
+
+He backed away to the edge of the thicket, venturing one swift and evil
+glance at the girl who stood as though dazed.
+
+"Listen attentively," he said to Darragh. "One of my men remains hidden
+very near. He is a dead shot. His aim is at your--sweetheart's--body.
+You understan'?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Ver' well. You shall not go away for one hour time. After that----" he
+took off his slouch hat with a sweeping bow--"you may go to hell!"
+
+Behind him the bushes parted, closed.
+
+Jose Quintana had made his adieux.
+
+
+
+
+EPISODE NINE
+
+THE FOREST AND MR. SARD
+
+
+I
+
+When at last Jose Quintana had secured what he had been after for years,
+his troubles really began.
+
+In his pocket he had two million dollars worth of gems, including the
+Flaming Jewel.
+
+But he was in the middle of a wilderness ringed in by hostile men, and
+obliged to rely for aid on a handful of the most desperate criminals in
+Europe.
+
+Those openly hostile to him had a wide net spread around him--wide of
+mesh too, perhaps; and it was through a mesh he meant to wriggle, but
+the net was intact from Canada to New York.
+
+Canadian police and secret agents held it on the north: this he had
+learned from Jake Kloon long since.
+
+East, west and south he knew he had the troopers of the New York State
+Constabulary to deal with, and in addition every game warden and fire
+warden in the State Forests, a swarm of plain clothes men from the
+Metropolis, and the rural constabulary of every town along the edges of
+the vast reservation.
+
+Just who was responsible for this enormous conspiracy to rob him of what
+he considered his own legitimate loot Quintana did not know.
+
+Sard's attorney, Eddie Abrams, believed that the French police
+instigated it through agents of the United States Secret Service.
+
+Of one thing Quintana was satisfied, Mike Clinch had nothing to do with
+stirring up the authorities. Law-breakers of his sort don't shout for
+the police or invoke State or Government aid.
+
+As for the status of Darragh--or Hal Smith, as he supposed him to
+be--Quintana took him for what he seemed to be, a well-born young man
+gone wrong. Europe was full of that kind. To Quintana there was nothing
+suspicious about Hal Smith. On the contrary, his clever recklessness
+confirmed that polished bandit's opinion that Smith was a gentleman
+degenerated into a crook. It takes an educated imagination for a man to
+do what Smith had done to him. If the common crook has any imagination
+at all it never is educated.
+
+Another matter worried Jose Quintana: he was not only short on
+provisions, but what remained was cached in Drowned Valley; and Mike
+Clinch and his men were guarding every outlet to that sinister region,
+excepting only the rocky and submerged trail by which he had made his
+exit.
+
+That was annoying; it cut off provisions and liquor from Canada, for
+which he had arranged with Jake Kloon. For Kloon's hootch-runners now
+would be stopped by Clinch; and not one among them knew about the rocky
+trail in.
+
+All these matters were disquieting enough: but what really and most
+deeply troubled Quintana was his knowledge of his own men.
+
+He did not trust one among them. Of international crookdom they were
+the cream. Not one of them but would have murdered his fellow if the
+loot were worth it and the chances of escape sufficient.
+
+There was no loyalty to him, none to one another, no "honour among
+thieves"--and it was Jose Quintana who knew that only in romance such a
+thing existed.
+
+No, he could not trust a single man. Only hope of plunder attached these
+marauders to him, and merely because he had education and imagination
+enough to provide what they wanted.
+
+Anyone among them would murder and rob him if opportunity presented.
+
+Now, how to keep his loot; how to get back to Europe with it, was the
+problem that confronted Quintana after robbing Darragh. And he
+determined to settle part of that question at once.
+
+About five miles from Harrod Place, within a hundred rods of which he
+had held up Hal Smith, Quintana halted, seated himself on a rotting log,
+and waited until his men came up and gathered around him.
+
+For a little while, in utter silence, his keen eyes travelled from one
+visage to the next, from Henri Picquet to Victor Georgiades, to Sanchez,
+to Sard. His intent scrutiny focussed on Sard; lingered.
+
+If there were anybody he might trust, a little way, it would be Sard.
+
+Then a polite, untroubled smile smoothed the pale, dark features of Jose
+Quintana:
+
+"Bien, messieurs, the coup has been success. Yes? Ver' well; in turn,
+then, en accord with our custom, I shall dispose myse'f to listen to
+your good advice."
+
+He looked at Henri Picquet, smiled and nodded invitation to speak.
+
+Picquet shrugged: "For me, mon capitaine, eet ees ver' simple. We are
+five. Therefore, divide into five ze gems. After zat, each one for
+himself to make his way out----"
+
+"Nick Salzar and Harry Beck are in the Drowned Valley," interrupted
+Quintana.
+
+Picquet shrugged again; Sanchez laughed, saying: "If they are there it
+is their misfortune. Also, we others are in a hurry."
+
+Picquet added: "Also five shares are sufficient division."
+
+"It is propose, then, that we abandon our comrades Beck and Salzar to
+the rifle of Mike Clinch?"
+
+"Why not?" demanded Georgiades sullenly;--"we shall have worse to face
+before we see the Place de l'Opera."
+
+"There remains, also, Eddie Abrams," remarked Quintana.
+
+Crooks never betray their attorney. Everybody expressed a willingness to
+have the five shares of plunder properly assessed to satisfy the fee due
+to Mr. Abrams.
+
+"Ver' well," nodded Quintana, "are you satisfy, messieurs, to divide an'
+disperse?"
+
+Sard said, heavily, that they ought to stick together until they arrived
+in New York.
+
+Sanchez sneered, accusing Sard of wanting a bodyguard to escort him to
+his own home. "In this accursed forest," he insisted, "five of us would
+attract attention where one alone, with sufficient stealth, can slip
+through into the open country."
+
+"Two by two is better," said Picquet. "You, Sanchez, shall travel alone
+if you desire----"
+
+"Divide the gems first," growled Georgiades, "and then let each do what
+pleases him."
+
+"That," nodded Quintana, "is also my opinion. It is so settle.
+Attention!" Two pistols were in his hands as by magic. With a slight
+smile he laid them on the moss beside him.
+
+He then spread a large white handkerchief flat on the ground; and, from
+his pockets, he poured out the glittering cascade. Yet, like a feeding
+panther, every sense remained alert to the slightest sound or movement
+elsewhere; and when Georgiades grunted from excess emotion, Quintana's
+right hand held a pistol before the grunt had ceased.
+
+It was a serious business, this division of loot; every reckless visage
+reflected the strain of the situation.
+
+Quintana, both pistols in his hands, looked down at the scintillating
+heap of jewels.
+
+"I estimate two and one quartaire million of dollaires," he said simply.
+"It has been agree that I accep' for me the erosite gem known as The
+Flaming Jewel. In addition, messieurs, it has been agree that I accep'
+for myse'f one part in five of the remainder."
+
+A fierce silence reigned. Every wolfish eye was on the leader. He
+smiled, rested his pair of pistols on either knee.
+
+"Is there," he asked softly, "any gentleman who shall objec'?"
+
+"Who," demanded Georgiades hoarsely, "is to divide for us?"
+
+"It is for such purpose," explained Quintana suavely, "that my frien',
+Emanuel Sard, has arrive. Monsieur Sard is a brokaire of diamon's, as
+all know ver' well. Therefore, it shall be our frien' Sard who will
+divide for us what we have gain to-day by our--industry."
+
+The savage tension broke with a laugh at the word chosen by Quintana to
+express their efforts of the morning.
+
+Sard had been standing with one fat hand flat against the trunk of a
+tree. Now, at a nod from Quintana, he squatted down, and, with the same
+hand that had been resting against the tree, he spread out the pile of
+jewels into a flat layer.
+
+As he began to divide this into five parts, still using the flat of his
+pudgy hand, something poked him lightly in the ribs. It was the muzzle
+of one of Quintana's pistols.
+
+Sard, ghastly pale, looked up. His palm, sticky with balsam gum,
+quivered in Quintana's grasp.
+
+"I was going to scrape it off," he gasped. "The tree was sticky----"
+
+Quintana, with the muzzle of his pistol, detached half a dozen diamonds
+and rubies that clung to the gum on Mr. Sard's palm.
+
+"Wash!" he said drily.
+
+Sard, sweating with fear, washed his right hand with whiskey from his
+pocket-flask, and dried it for general inspection.
+
+"My God," he protested tremulously, "it was accidental, gentlemen. Do
+you think I'd try to get away with anything like that----"
+
+Quintana coolly shoved him aside and with the barrel of his pistol he
+pushed the flat pile of gems into five separate heaps. Only he and
+Georgiades knew that a magnificent diamond had been lodged in the muzzle
+of his pistol. The eyes of the Greek flamed with rage at the trick, but
+he awaited the division before he should come to any conclusion.
+
+Quintana coolly picked out The Flaming Jewel and pocketed it. Then, to
+each man he indicated the heap which was to be his portion.
+
+A snarling wrangle instantly began, Sanchez objecting to rubies and
+demanding more emeralds, and Picquet complaining violently concerning
+the smallness of the diamonds allotted him.
+
+Sard's trained eyes appraised every allotment. Without weighing, and,
+lacking time and paraphernalia for expert examination, he was inclined
+to think the division fair enough.
+
+Quintana got to his feet lithely.
+
+"For me," he said, "it is finish. With my frien' Sard I shall now
+depart. Messieurs, I embrace and salute you. A bientot in Paris--if it
+be God's will! Donc--au revoir, les amis, et a la bonheur! Allons! Each
+for himself and gar' aux flics!"
+
+Sard, seized with a sort of still terror, regarded Quintana with
+enormous eyes. Torn between dismay of being left alone in the
+wilderness, and a very natural fear of any single companion, he did not
+know what to say or do.
+
+En masse, the gang were too distrustful of one another to unite on
+robbing any individual. But any individual might easily rob a companion
+when alone with him.
+
+"Why--why can't we all go together," he stammered. "It is safer,
+surer----"
+
+"I go with Quintana and you," interrupted Georgiades, smilingly; his
+mind on the diamond in the muzzle of Quintana's pistol.
+
+"I do not invite you," said Quintana. "But come if it pleases you."
+
+"I also prefer to come with you others," growled Sanchez. "To roam alone
+in this filthy forest does not suit me."
+
+Picquet shrugged his shoulders, turned on his heel in silence. They
+watched him moving away all alone, eastward. When he had disappeared
+among the trees, Quintana looked inquiringly at the others.
+
+"Eh, bien, non alors!" snarled Georgiades suddenly. "There are too many
+in your trupeau, mon capitaine. Bonne chance!"
+
+He turned and started noisily in the direction taken by Picquet.
+
+They watched him out of sight; listened to his careless trample after he
+was lost to view. When at length the last distant sound of his retreat
+had died away in the stillness, Quintana touched Sard with the point of
+his pistol.
+
+"Go first," he said suavely.
+
+"For God's sake, be a little careful of your gun----"
+
+"I am, my dear frien'. It is of _you_ I may become careless. You will
+mos' kin'ly face south, and you will be kin' sufficient to start
+immediate. Tha's what I mean.... I thank you.... Now, my frien',
+Sanchez! Tha's correc'! You shall follow my frien' Sard ver' close. Me,
+I march in the rear. So we shall pass to the eas' of thees Star Pon',
+then between the cross-road an' Ghos' Lake; an' then we shall repose;
+an' one of us, en vidette, shall discover if the Constabulary have
+patrol beyon'.... Allons! March!"
+
+
+II
+
+Guided by Quintana's directions, the three had made a wide detour to the
+east, steering by compass for the cross-roads beyond Star Pond.
+
+In a dense growth of cedars, on a little ridge traversing wet land,
+Quintana halted to listen.
+
+Sard and Sanchez, supposing him to be at their heels, continued on,
+pushing their way blindly through the cedars, clinging to the hard ridge
+in terror of sink-holes. But their progress was very slow; and they were
+still in sight, fighting a painful path amid the evergreens, when
+Quintana suddenly squatted close to the moist earth behind a juniper
+bush.
+
+At first, except for the threshing of Sard and Sanchez through the
+massed obstructions ahead, there was not a sound in the woods.
+
+After a little while there _was_ a sound--very, very slight. No dry
+stick cracked; no dry leaves rustled; no swish of foliage; no whipping
+sound of branches disturbed the intense silence.
+
+But, presently, came a soft, swift rhythm like the pace of a forest
+creature in haste--a discreetly hurrying tread which was more a series
+of light earth-shocks than sound.
+
+Quintana, kneeling on one knee, lifted his pistol. He already felt the
+slight vibration of the ground on the hard ridge. The cedars were moving
+just beyond him now. He waited until, through the parted foliage, a face
+appeared.
+
+The loud report of his pistol struck Sard with the horror of paralysis.
+Sanchez faced about with one spring, snarling, a weapon in either hand.
+
+In the terrible silence they could hear something heavy floundering in
+the bushes, choking, moaning, thudding on the ground.
+
+Sanchez began to creep back; Sard, more dead than alive, crawled at his
+heels. Presently they saw Quintana, waist deep in juniper, looking down
+at something.
+
+And when they drew closer they saw Georgiades lying on his back under a
+cedar, the whole front of his shirt from chest to belly a sopping mess
+of blood.
+
+There seemed no need of explanation. The dead Greek lay there where he
+had not been expected, and his two pistols lay beside him where they had
+fallen.
+
+Sanchez looked stealthily at Quintana, who said softly:
+
+"Bien sure.... In his left side pocket, I believe."
+
+Sanchez laid a cool hand on the dead man's heart; then, satisfied,
+rummaged until he found Georgiades' share of the loot.
+
+Sard, hurriedly displaying a pair of clean but shaky hands, made the
+division.
+
+When the three men had silently pocketed what was allotted to each,
+Quintana pushed curiously at the dead man with the toe of his shoe.
+
+"Peste!" he remarked. "I had place, for security, a ver' large
+diamon' in my pistol barrel. Now it is within the interior of this
+gentleman...." He turned to Sanchez: "I sell him to you. One sapphire.
+Yes?"
+
+Sanchez shook his head with a slight sneer: "We wait--if you want your
+diamond, mon capitaine."
+
+Quintana hesitated, then made a grimace and shook his head.
+
+"No," he said, "he has swallow. Let him digest. Allons! March!"
+
+But after they had gone on--two hundred yards, perhaps--Sanchez stopped.
+
+"Well?" inquired Quintana. Then, with a sneer: "I now recollec' that
+once you have been a butcher in Madrid.... Suit your tas'e, l'ami
+Sanchez."
+
+Sard gazed at Sanchez out of sickened eyes.
+
+"You keep away from me until you've washed yourself," he burst out,
+revolted. "Don't you come near me till you're clean!"
+
+Quintana laughed and seated himself. Sanchez, with a hang-dog glance at
+him, turned and sneaked back on the trail they had traversed. Before he
+was out of sight Sard saw him fish out a Spanish knife from his hip
+pocket and unclasp it.
+
+Almost nauseated, he turned on Quintana in a sort of frightened fury:
+
+"Come on!" he said hoarsely. "I don't want to travel with that man! I
+won't associate with a ghoul! My God, I'm a respectable business
+man----"
+
+"Yaas," drawled Quintana, "tha's what I saw always myse'f; my frien'
+Sard he is ver' respec'able, an' I trus' him like I trus' myse'f."
+
+However, after a moment, Quintana got up from the fallen tree where he
+had been seated.
+
+As he passed Sard he looked curiously into the man's frightened eyes.
+There was not the slightest doubt that Sard was a coward.
+
+"You shall walk behin' me," remarked Quintana carelessly. "If Sanchez
+fin' us, it is well; if he shall not, that also is ver' well.... We go,
+now."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Sanchez made no effort to find them. They had been gone half an hour
+before he had finished the business that had turned him back.
+
+After that he wandered about hunting for water--a rivulet, a puddle,
+anything. But the wet ground proved wet only on the surface moss.
+Sanchez needed more than damp moss for his toilet. Casting about him,
+hither and thither, for some depression that might indicate a stream, he
+came to a heavily wooded slope, and descended it.
+
+There was a bog at the foot. With his fouled hands he dug out a basin
+which filled up full of reddish water, discoloured by alders.
+
+But the water was redder still when his toilet ended.
+
+As he stood there, examining his clothing, and washing what he could of
+the ominous stains from sleeve and shoe, very far away to the north he
+heard a curious noise--a far, faint sound such as he never before had
+heard.
+
+If it were a voice of any sort there was nothing human about it....
+Probably some sort of unknown bird.... Perhaps a bird of prey.... That
+was natural, considering the attraction that Georgiades would have for
+such creatures.... If it were a bird it must be a large one, he
+thought.... Because there was a certain volume to the cry.... Perhaps
+it was a beast, after all.... Some unknown beast of the forest....
+
+Sanchez was suddenly afraid. Scarcely knowing what he was doing he began
+to run along the edge of the bog.
+
+First growth timber skirted it; running was unobstructed by underbrush.
+
+With his startled ears full of the alarming and unknown sound, he ran
+through the woods under gigantic pines which spread a soft green
+twilight around him.
+
+He was tired, or thought he was, but the alarming sounds were filling
+his ears now; the entire forest seemed full of them, echoing in all
+directions, coming in upon him from everywhere, so that he knew not in
+which direction to run.
+
+But he could not stop. Demoralised, he darted this way and that; terror
+winged his feet; the air vibrated above and around him with the
+dreadful, unearthly sounds.
+
+The next instant he fell headlong over a ledge, struck water, felt
+himself whirled around in the icy, rushing current, rolled over, tumbled
+through rapids, blinded, deafened, choked, swept helplessly in a vast
+green wall of water toward something that thundered in his brain an
+instant, then dashed it into roaring chaos.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Half a mile down the turbulent outlet of Star Pond,--where a great sheet
+of green water pours thirty feet into the tossing foam below,--and
+spinning, dipping, diving, bobbing up like a lost log after the drive,
+the body of Senor Sanchez danced all alone in the wilderness, spilling
+from soggy pockets diamonds, sapphires, rubies, emeralds, into crystal
+caves where only the shadows of slim trout stirred.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Very far away to the eastward Quintana stood listening, clutching Sard
+by one sleeve to silence him.
+
+Presently he said: "My frien', somebody is hunting with houn's in this
+fores'.
+
+"Maybe they are not hunting _us_.... _Maybe._... But, for me, I shall
+seek running water. Go you your own way! Houp! Vamose!"
+
+He turned westward; but he had taken scarcely a dozen strides when Sard
+came panting after him:
+
+"Don't leave me!" gasped the terrified diamond broker. "I don't know
+where to go----"
+
+Quintana faced him abruptly--with a terrifying smile and glimmer of
+white teeth--and shoved a pistol into the fold of fat beneath Sard's
+double chin.
+
+"You hear those dogs? Yes? Ver' well; I also. Run, now. I say to you run
+ver' damn quick. He! Houp! Allez vous en! Beat eet!"
+
+He struck Sard a stinging blow on his fleshy ear with the pistol barrel,
+and Sard gave a muffled shriek which was more like the squeak of a
+frightened animal.
+
+"My God, Quintana----" he sobbed. Then Quintana's eyes blazed murder:
+and Sard turned and ran lumbering through the thicket like a stampeded
+ox, crashing on amid withered brake, white birch scrub and brier, not
+knowing whither he was headed, crazed with terror.
+
+Quintana watched his flight for a moment, then, pistol swinging, he ran
+in the opposite direction, eastward, speeding lithely as a cat down a
+long, wooded slope which promised running water at the foot.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Sard could not run very far. He could scarcely stand when he pulled up
+and clung to the trunk of a tree.
+
+More dead than alive he embraced the tree, gulping horribly for air,
+every fat-incrusted organ labouring, his senses swimming.
+
+As he sagged there, gripping his support on shaking knees, by degrees
+his senses began to return.
+
+He could hear the dogs, now, vaguely as in a nightmare. But after a
+little while he began to believe that their hysterical yelping was
+really growing more distant.
+
+Then this man whose every breath was an outrage on God, prayed.
+
+He prayed that the hounds would follow Quintana, come up with him, drag
+him down, worry him, tear him to shreds of flesh and clothing.
+
+He listened and prayed alternately. After a while he no longer prayed
+but concentrated on his ears.
+
+Surely, surely, the diabolical sound was growing less distinct.... It
+was changing direction too. But whether in Quintana's direction or not
+Sard could not tell. He was no woodsman. He was completely turned
+around.
+
+He looked upward through a dense yellow foliage, but all was grey in the
+sky--very grey and still;--and there seemed to be no traces of the sun
+that had been shining.
+
+He looked fearfully around: trees, trees, and more trees. No break, no
+glimmer, nothing to guide him, teach him. He could see, perhaps, fifty
+feet; no further.
+
+In panic he started to move on. That is what fright invariably does to
+those ignorant of the forest. Terror starts them moving.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Sobbing, frightened almost witless, he had been floundering forward for
+over an hour, and had made circle after circle without knowing, when, by
+chance, he set foot in a perfectly plain trail.
+
+Emotion overpowered him. He was too overcome to stir for a while. At
+length, however, he tottered off down the trail, oblivious as to what
+direction he was taking, animated only by a sort of madness--horror of
+trees--an insane necessity to see open ground, get into it, and lie down
+on it.
+
+And now, directly ahead, he saw clear grey sky low through the trees.
+The wood's edge!
+
+He began to run.
+
+As he emerged from the edge of the woods, waist-deep in brush and weeds,
+wide before his blood-shot eyes spread Star Pond.
+
+Even in his half-stupefied brain there was memory enough left for
+recognition.
+
+He remembered the lake. His gaze travelled to the westward; and he saw
+Clinch's Dump standing below, stark, silent, the doors swinging open in
+the wind.
+
+When terror had subsided in a measure and some of his trembling strength
+returned, he got up out of the clump of rag-weeds where he had lain
+down, and earnestly nosed the unpainted house, listening with all his
+ears.
+
+There was not a sound save the soughing of autumn winds and the delicate
+rattle of falling leaves in the woods behind him.
+
+He needed food and rest. He gazed earnestly at the house. Nothing
+stirred there save the open doors swinging idly in every vagrant wind.
+
+He ventured down a little way--near enough to see the black cinders of
+the burned barn, and close enough to hear the lake waters slapping the
+sandy shore.
+
+If he dared----
+
+And after a long while he ventured to waddle nearer, slinking through
+brush and frosted weed, creeping behind boulders, edging always closer
+and closer to that silent house where nothing moved except the
+wind-blown door.
+
+And now, at last, he set a furtive foot upon the threshold, stood
+listening, tip-toed in, peered here and there, sidled to the
+dining-room, peered in.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When, at length, Emanuel Sard discovered that Clinch's Dump was
+tenantless, he made straight for the pantry. Here was cheese, crackers,
+an apple pie, half a dozen bottles of home-brewed beer.
+
+He loaded his arms with all they could carry, stole through the
+dance-hall out to the veranda, which overlooked the lake.
+
+Here, hidden in the doorway, he could watch the road from Ghost Lake and
+survey the hillside down which an intruder must come from the forest.
+
+And here Sard slaked his raging thirst and satiated the gnawing appetite
+of the obese, than which there is no crueller torment to an inert liver
+and distended paunch.
+
+Munching, guzzling, watching, Sard squatted just within the veranda
+doorway, anxiously considering his chances.
+
+He knew where he was. At the foot of the lake, and eastward, he had been
+robbed by a highwayman on the forest road branching from the main
+highway. Southwest lay Ghost Lake and the Inn.
+
+Somewhere between these two points he must try to cross the State
+Road.... After that, comparative safety. For the miles that still
+would lie between him and distant civilisation seemed as nothing to
+the horror of that hell of trees.
+
+He looked up now at the shaggy fringing woods, shuddered, opened another
+bottle of beer.
+
+In all that panorama of forest, swale, and water the only thing that had
+alarmed him at all by moving was something in the water. When first he
+noticed it he almost swooned, for he took it to be a swimming dog.
+
+In his agitation he had risen to his feet; and then the swimming
+creature almost frightened Sard out of his senses, for it tilted
+suddenly and went down with a report like the crack of a pistol.
+
+However, when Sard regained control of his wits he realised that a
+swimming dog doesn't dive and doesn't whack the water with its tail.
+
+He dimly remembered hearing that beavers behaved that way.
+
+Watching the water he saw the thing out there in the lake again,
+swimming in erratic circles, its big, dog-like head well out of the
+water.
+
+It certainly was no dog. A beaver, maybe. Whatever it was, Sard didn't
+care any longer.
+
+Idly he watched it. Sometimes, when it swam very near, he made a sudden
+motion with his fat arm; and crack!--with a pistol-shot report down it
+dived. But always it reappeared.
+
+What had a creature like that to do with him? Sard watched it with
+failing interest, thinking of other things--of Quintana and the chances
+that the dogs had caught him,--of Sanchez, the Ghoul, hoping that dire
+misfortune might overtake him, too;--of the dead man sprawling under the
+cedar-tree, all sopping crimson---- Faugh!
+
+Shivering, Sard filled his mouth with apple-pie and cheese and pulled
+the cork from another bottle of home-brewed beer.
+
+
+III
+
+About that time, a mile and a half to the southward, James Darragh came
+out on the rocky and rushing outlet to Star Pond.
+
+Over his shoulder was a rifle, and all around him ran dogs,--big,
+powerful dogs, built like foxhounds but with the rough, wiry coats of
+Airedales, even rougher of ear and features.
+
+The dogs,--half a dozen or so in number,--seemed very tired. All ran
+down eagerly to the water and drank and slobbered and panted, lolling
+their tongues, and slaking their thirst again and again along the
+swirling edge of a deep trout pool.
+
+Darragh's rifle lay in the hollow of his left arm; his khaki waistcoat
+was set with loops full of cartridges. From his left wrist hung a
+raw-hide whip.
+
+Now he laid aside his rifle and whip, took from the pocket of his
+shooting coat three or four leather dog-leashes, went down among the
+dogs and coupled them up.
+
+They followed him back to the bank above. Here he sat down on a rock and
+inspected his watch.
+
+He had been seated there for ten minutes, possibly, with his tired dogs
+lying around him, when just above him he saw a State Trooper emerge from
+the woods on foot, carrying a rifle over one shoulder.
+
+"Jack!" he called in a guarded voice.
+
+Trooper Stormont turned, caught sight of Darragh, made a signal of
+recognition, and came toward him.
+
+Darragh said: "Your mate, Trooper Lannis, is down stream. I've two of my
+own game wardens at the cross-roads, two more on the Ghost Lake Road,
+and two foresters and an inspector out toward Owl Marsh."
+
+Stormont nodded, looked down at the dogs.
+
+"This isn't the State Forest," said Darragh, smiling. Then his face grew
+grave: "How is Eve?" he asked.
+
+"She's feeling better," replied Stormont. "I telephoned to Ghost Lake
+Inn for the hotel physician.... I was afraid of pneumonia, Jim. Eve had
+chills last night.... But Dr. Claybourn thinks she's all right.... So
+I left her in care of your housekeeper."
+
+"Mrs. Ray will look out for her.... You haven't told Eve who I am, have
+you?"
+
+"No."
+
+"I'll tell her myself to-night. I don't know how she'll take it when she
+learns I'm the heir to the mortal enemy of Mike Clinch."
+
+"I don't know either," said Stormont.
+
+There was a silence; the State Trooper looked down at the dogs:
+
+"What are they, Jim?"
+
+"Otter-hounds," said Darragh, "--a breed of my own.... But that's _all_
+they are capable of hunting, I guess," he added grimly.
+
+Stormont's gaze questioned him.
+
+Darragh said: "After I telephoned you this morning that a guest of mine
+at Harrod Place, and I, had been stuck up and robbed by Quintana's
+outfit, what did you do, Jack?"
+
+"I called up Bill Lannis first," said Stormont, "--then the doctor.
+After he came, Mrs. Ray arrived with a maid. Then I went in and spoke to
+Eve. Then I did what you suggested--I crossed the forest diagonally
+toward The Scaur, zig-zagged north, turned by the rock hog-back south of
+Drowned Valley, came southeast, circled west, and came out here as you
+asked me to."
+
+"Almost on the minute," nodded Darragh.... "You saw no signs of
+Quintana's gang?"
+
+"None."
+
+"Well," said Darragh, "I left my two guests at Harrod Place to amuse
+each other, got out three couple of my otter-hounds and started
+them,--as I hoped and supposed,--on Quintana's trail."
+
+"What happened?" inquired Stormont curiously.
+
+"Well--I don't know. I think they were following some of Quintana's
+gang--for a while, anyway. After that, God knows,--deer, hare,
+cotton-tail,--_I_ don't know. They yelled their bally heads off--I on
+the run--they're slow dogs, you know--and whatever they were after
+either fooled them or there were too many trails.... I made a mistake,
+that's all. These poor beasts don't know anything except an otter. I
+just _hoped_ they might take Quintana's trail if I put them on it."
+
+"Well," said Stormont, "it can't be helped now.... I told Bill Lannis
+that we'd rendezvous at Clinch's Dump."
+
+"All right," nodded Darragh. "Let's keep to the open; my dogs are
+leashed couples."
+
+They had been walking for twenty minutes, possibly, exchanging scarcely
+a word, and they were now nearing the hilly basin where Star Pond lay,
+when Darragh said abruptly:
+
+"I'm going to tell you about things, Jack. You've taken my word so far
+that it's all right----"
+
+"Naturally," said Stormont simply.
+
+The two men, who had been brother officers in the Great War, glanced at
+each other, slightly smiling.
+
+"Here it is then," said Darragh. "When I was on duty in Riga for the
+Intelligence Department, I met two ladies in dire distress, whose
+mansion had been burned and looted, supposedly by the Bolsheviki.
+
+"They were actually hungry and penniless; the only clothing they
+possessed they were wearing. These ladies were the Countess
+Orloff-Strelwitz, and a young girl, Theodorica, Grand Duchess of
+Esthonia.... I did what I could for them. After a while, in the course
+of other duty, I found out that the Bolsheviki had had nothing to do
+with the arson and robbery, but that the crime had been perpetrated by
+Jose Quintana's gang of international crooks masquerading as
+Bolsheviki."
+
+Stormont nodded: "I also came across similar cases," he remarked.
+
+"Well, this was a flagrant example. Quintana had burnt the chateau and
+had made off with over two million dollars worth of the little Grand
+Duchess's jewels--among them the famous Erosite gem known as The Flaming
+Jewel."
+
+"I've heard of it."
+
+"There are only two others known.... Well, I did what I could with the
+Esthonian police, who didn't believe me.
+
+"But a short time ago the Countess Orloff sent me word that Quintana
+really was the guilty one, and that he had started for America.
+
+"I've been after him ever since.... But, Jack, until this morning
+Quintana did not possess these stolen jewels. _Clinch did!_"
+
+"What!"
+
+"Clinch served over-seas in a Forestry Regiment. In Paris he robbed
+Quintana of these jewels. That's why I've been hanging around Clinch."
+
+Stormont's face was flushed and incredulous. Then it lost colour as he
+thought of the jewels that Eve had concealed--the gems for which she had
+risked her life.
+
+He said: "But you tell me Quintana robbed you this morning."
+
+"He did. The little Grand Duchess and the Countess Orloff-Strelwitz are
+my guests at Harrod Place.
+
+"Last night I snatched the case containing these gems from Quintana's
+fingers. This morning, as I offered them to the Grand Duchess, Quintana
+coolly stepped between us----"
+
+His voice became bitter and his features reddened with rage poorly
+controlled:
+
+"By God, Jack, I should have shot Quintana when the opportunity offered.
+Twice I've had the chance. The next time I shall kill him any way I
+can.... Legitimately."
+
+"Of course," said Stormont gravely. But his mind was full of the jewels
+which Eve had. What and whose were they,--if Quintana again had the
+Esthonian gems in his possession?
+
+"Had you recovered all the jewels for the Grand Duchess?" he asked
+Darragh.
+
+"Every one, Jack.... Quintana has done me a terrible injury. I shan't
+let it go. I mean to hunt that man to the end."
+
+Stormont, terribly perplexed, nodded.
+
+A few minutes later, as they came out among the willows and alders on
+the northeast side of Star Pond, Stormont touched his comrade's arm.
+
+"Look at that enormous dog-otter out there in the lake!"
+
+"Grab those dogs! They'll strangle each other," cried Darragh quickly.
+"That's it--unleash them, Jack, and let them go!"--he was struggling
+with the other two couples while speaking.
+
+And now the hounds, unleashed, lifted frantic voices. The very sky
+seemed full of the discordant tumult; wood and shore reverberated with
+the volume of convulsive and dissonant baying.
+
+"Damn it," said Darragh, disgusted, "--that's what they've been trailing
+all the while across-woods,--that devilish dog-otter yonder.... And I
+had hoped they were on Quintana's trail----"
+
+A mass rush and scurry of crazed dogs nearly swept him off his feet, and
+both men caught a glimpse of a large bitch-otter taking to the lake from
+a ledge of rock just beyond.
+
+Now the sky vibrated with the deafening outcry of the dogs, some taking
+to water, others racing madly along shore.
+
+Crack! The echo of the dog-otter's blow on the water came across to them
+as the beast dived.
+
+"Well, I'm in for it now," muttered Darragh, starting along the bank
+toward Clinch's Dump, to keep an eye on his dogs.
+
+Stormont followed more leisurely.
+
+
+IV
+
+A few minutes before Darragh and Stormont had come out on the farther
+edge of Star Pond, Sard, who had heard from Quintana about the big drain
+pipe which led from Clinch's pantry into the lake, decided to go in and
+take a look at it.
+
+He had been told all about its uses,--how Clinch,--in the event of a
+raid by State Troopers or Government enforcement agents,--could empty
+his contraband hootch into the lake if necessary,--and even could slide
+a barrel of ale or a keg of rum, intact, into the great tile tunnel and
+recover the liquor at his leisure.
+
+Also, and grimly, Quintana had admitted that through this drain Eve
+Strayer and the State Trooper, Stormont, had escaped from Clinch's Dump.
+
+So now Sard, full of curiosity, went back into the pantry to look at it
+for himself.
+
+Almost instantly the idea occurred to him to make use of the drain for
+his own safety and comfort.
+
+Why shouldn't he sleep in the pantry, lock the door, and, in case of
+intrusion,--other exits being unavailable,--why shouldn't he feel
+entirely safe with such an avenue of escape open?
+
+For swimming was Sard's single accomplishment. He wasn't afraid of the
+water; he simply couldn't sink. Swimming was the only sport he ever had
+indulged in. He adored it.
+
+Also, the mere idea of sleeping alone amid that hell of trees terrified
+Sard. Never had he known such horror as when Quintana abandoned him in
+the woods. Never again could he gaze upon a tree without malignant
+hatred. Never again did he desire to lay eyes upon even a bush. The very
+sight, now, of the dusky forest filled him with loathing. Why should he
+not risk one night in this deserted house,--sleep well and warmly, feed
+well, drink his bellyfull of Clinch's beer, before attempting the
+dead-line southward, where he was only too sure that patrols were riding
+and hiding on the lookout for the fancy gentlemen of Jose Quintana's
+selected company of malefactors?
+
+Well, here in the snug pantry were pies, crullers, bread, cheeses,
+various dried meats, tinned vegetables, ham, bacon, fuel and range to
+prepare what he desired.
+
+Here was beer, too; and doubtless ardent spirits if he could nose out
+the hidden demijohns and bottles.
+
+He peered out of the pantry window at the forest, shuddered, cursed
+it and every separate tree in it; cursed Quintana, too, wishing him
+black mischance. No; it was settled. He'd take his chance here in the
+pantry.... And there must be a mattress somewhere upstairs.
+
+He climbed the staircase, cautiously, discovered Clinch's bedroom, took
+the mattress and blankets from the bed, dragged them to the pantry.
+
+Could any honest man be more tight and snug in this perilous world of
+the desperate and undeserving? Sard thought not. But one matter troubled
+him: the lock of the pantry door had been shattered. To remedy this he
+moused around until he discovered some long nails and a claw-hammer.
+When he was ready to go to sleep he'd nail himself in. And in the
+morning he'd pry the door loose. That was simple. Sard chuckled for the
+first time since he had set eyes upon the accursed region.
+
+And now the sun came out from behind a low bank of solid grey cloud, and
+fell upon the countenance of Emanuel Sard. It warmed his parrot-nose
+agreeably; it cheered and enlivened him.
+
+Not for him a night of terrors in that horrible forest which he could
+see through the pantry window.
+
+A sense of security and of well-being pervaded Sard to his muddy shoes.
+He even curled his fat toes in them with animal contentment.
+
+A little snack before cooking a heavily satisfactory dinner? Certainly.
+
+So he tucked a couple of bottles of beer under one arm, a loaf of bread
+and a chunk of cheese under the other, and waddled out to the veranda
+door.
+
+And at that instant the very heavens echoed with that awful tumult which
+had first paralysed, then crazed him in the woods.
+
+Bottles, bread, cheese fell from his grasp and his knees nearly
+collapsed under him. In the bushes on the lake shore he saw animals
+leaping and racing, but, in his terror, he did not recognise them for
+dogs.
+
+Then, suddenly, he saw a man, close to the house, running: and another
+man not far behind. _That_ he understood, and it electrified him into
+action.
+
+It was too late to escape from the house now. He understood that
+instantly.
+
+He ran back through the dance-hall and dining-room to the pantry; but he
+dared not let these intruders hear the noise of hammering.
+
+In an agony of indecision he stood trembling, listening to the infernal
+racket of the dogs, and waiting for the first footstep within the house.
+
+No step came. But, chancing to look over his shoulder, he saw a man
+peering through the pantry window at him.
+
+Ungovernable terror seized Sard. Scarcely aware what he was about, he
+seized the edges of the big drain-pipe and crowded his obese body into
+it head first. He was so fat and heavy that he filled the tile. To start
+himself down he pulled with both hands and kicked himself forward,
+tortoise-like, down the slanting tunnel, sticking now and then, dragging
+himself on and downward.
+
+Now he began to gain momentum; he felt himself sliding, not fast but
+steadily.
+
+There came a hitch somewhere; his heavy body stuck on the steep incline.
+
+Then, as he lifted his bewildered head and strove to peer into the
+blackness in front, he saw four balls of green fire close to him in
+darkness.
+
+He began to slide at the same instant, and flung out both hands to check
+himself. But his palms slid in the slime and his body slid after.
+
+He shrieked once as his face struck a furry obstruction where four balls
+of green fire flamed horribly and a fury of murderous teeth tore his
+face and throat to bloody tatters as he slid lower, lower, settling
+through crimson-dyed waters into the icy depths of Star Pond.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Stormont, down by the lake, called to Darragh, who appeared on the
+veranda:
+
+"Oh, Jim! Both otters crawled into the drain! I think your dogs must
+have killed one of them under water. There's a big patch of blood
+spreading off shore."
+
+"Yes," said Darragh, "something has just been killed, somewhere ...
+Jack!"
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Pull both your guns and come up here, quick!"
+
+
+
+
+EPISODE TEN
+
+THE TWILIGHT OF MIKE
+
+
+I
+
+When Quintana turned like an enraged snake on Sard and drove him to his
+destruction, he would have killed and robbed the frightened diamond
+broker had he dared risk the shot. He had intended to do this anyway,
+sooner or later. But with the noise of the hunting dogs filling the
+forest, Quintana was afraid to fire. Yet, even then he followed Sard
+stealthily for a few minutes, afraid yet murderously desirous of the
+gems, confused by the tumult of the hounds, timid and ferocious at the
+same time, and loath to leave his fat, perspiring, and demoralised
+victim.
+
+But the racket of the dogs proved too much for Quintana. He sheered away
+toward the South, leaving Sard floundering on ahead, unconscious of the
+treachery that had followed furtively in his panic-stricken tracks.
+
+About an hour later Quintana was seen, challenged, chased and shot at by
+State Trooper Lannis.
+
+Quintana ran. And what with the dense growth of seedling beech and oak
+and the heavily falling birch and poplar leaves, Lannis first lost
+Quintana and then his trail.
+
+The State Trooper had left his horse at the cross-roads near the scene
+of Darragh's masked exploit, where he had stopped and robbed Sard--and
+now Lannis hastened back to find and mount his horse, and gallop
+straight into the first growth timber.
+
+Through dim aisles of giant pine he spurred to a dead run on the chance
+of cutting Quintana from the eastward edge of the forest and forcing him
+back toward the north or west, where patrols were more than likely to
+hold him.
+
+The State Trooper rode with all the reckless indifference and grace of
+the Western cavalryman, and he seemed to be part of the superb animal he
+rode--part of its bone and muscle, its litheness, its supple power--part
+of its vertebrae and ribs and limbs, so perfect was their bodily
+co-ordination.
+
+Rifle and eyes intently alert, the rider scarce noticed his rushing
+mount; and if he guided with wrist and knee it was instinctive and as
+though the horse were guiding them both.
+
+And now, far ahead through this primeval stand of pine, sunshine
+glimmered, warning of a clearing. And here Trooper Lannis pulled in his
+horse at the edge of what seemed to be a broad, flat meadow, vividly
+green.
+
+But it was the intense, arsenical green of hair-fine grass that covers
+with its false velvet those quaking bogs where only a thin, crust-like
+skin of root-fibre and vegetation cover infinite depths of silt.
+
+The silt had no more substance than a drop of ink colouring the water in
+a tumbler.
+
+Sitting his fast-breathing mount, Lannis searched this wide, flat
+expanse of brilliant green. Nothing moved on it save a great heron
+picking its deliberate way on stilt-like legs. It was well for Quintana
+that he had not attempted it.
+
+Very cautiously Lannis walked his horse along the hard ground which
+edged this marsh on the west. Nowhere was there any sign that Quintana
+had come down to the edge among the shrubs and swale grasses.
+
+Beyond the marsh another trooper patrolled; and when at length he and
+Lannis perceived each other and exchanged signals, the latter wheeled
+his horse and retraced his route at an easy canter, satisfied that
+Quintana had not yet broken cover.
+
+Back through the first growth he cantered, his rifle at a ready,
+carefully scanning the more open woodlands, and so came again to the
+cross-roads.
+
+And here stood a State Game Inspector, with a report that some sort of
+beagle-pack was hunting in the forest to the northwest; and very curious
+to investigate.
+
+So it was arranged that the Inspector should turn road-patrol and the
+Trooper become the rover.
+
+There was no sound of dogs when Lannis rode in on the narrow, spotted
+trail whence he had flushed Quintana into the dense growth of saplings
+that bordered it.
+
+His horse made little noise on the moist layer of leaves and forest
+mould; he listened hard for the sound of hounds as he rode; heard
+nothing save the chirr of red squirrels, the shriek of a watching jay,
+or the startling noise of falling acorns rapping and knocking on great
+limbs in their descent to the forest floor.
+
+Once, very, very far away westward in the direction of Star Pond he
+fancied he heard a faint vibration in the air that might have been
+hounds baying.
+
+He was right. And at that very moment Sard was dying, horribly, among
+two trapped otters as big and fierce as the dogs that had driven them
+into the drain.
+
+But Lannis knew nothing of that as he moved on, mounted, along the
+spotted trail, now all a yellow glory of birch and poplar which made the
+woodland brilliant as though lighted by yellow lanterns.
+
+Somewhere among the birches, between him and Star Pond, was Harrod
+Place. And the idea occurred to him that Quintana might have ventured to
+ask food and shelter there. Yet, that was not likely because Trooper
+Stormont had called him that morning on the telephone from the Hatchery
+Lodge.
+
+No; the only logical retreat for Quintana was northward to the
+mountains, where patrols were plenty and fire-wardens on duty in every
+watch-tower. Or, the fugitive could make for Drowned Valley by a blind
+trail which, Stormont informed him, existed but which Lannis never had
+heard of.
+
+However, to reassure himself, Lannis rode as far as Harrod Place, and
+found game wardens on duty along the line.
+
+Then he turned west and trotted his mount down to the hatchery, where he
+saw Ralph Wier, the Superintendent, standing outside the lodge talking
+to his assistant, George Fry.
+
+When Lannis rode up on the opposite side of the brook, he called across
+to Wier:
+
+"You haven't seen anything of any crooked outfit around here, have you,
+Ralph? I'm looking for that kind."
+
+"See here," said the Superintendent, "I don't know but George Fry may
+have seen one of your guys. Come over and he'll tell you what happened
+an hour ago."
+
+Trooper Lannis pivotted his horse and put him to the brook with scarcely
+any take-off; and the splendid animal cleared the water like a deer and
+came cantering up to the door of the lodge.
+
+Fry's boyish face seemed agitated; he looked up at the State Trooper
+with the flush of tears in his gaze and pointed at the rifle Lannis
+carried:
+
+"If I'd had _that_," he said excitedly, "I'd have brought in a crook,
+you bet!"
+
+"Where did you see him?" inquired Lannis.
+
+"Jest west of the Scaur, about an hour and a half ago. Wier and me was
+stockin' the head of Scaur Brook with fingerlings. There's more good
+water--two miles of it--to the east, and all it needed was a fish-ladder
+around Scaur Falls.
+
+"So I toted in cement and sand and grub last week, and I built me a
+shanty on the Scaur, and I been laying up a fish-way around the falls.
+So that's how I come there----" He clicked his teeth and darted a
+furious glance at the woods. "By God," he said, "I was such a fool I
+didn't take no rifle. All I had was an axe and a few traps.... I wasn't
+going to let the mink get our trout whatever you fellows say," he added
+defiantly, "--and law or no law----"
+
+"Get along with your story, young man," interrupted Lannis; "--you can
+spill the rest out to the Commissioner."
+
+"All right, then. This is the way it happened down to the Scaur. I was
+eating lunch by the fish-stairs, looking up at 'em and kind of planning
+how to save cement, and not thinking about anybody being near me, when
+_something_ made me turn my head.... You know how it is in the woods....
+I kinda _felt_ somebody near. And, by cracky!--there stood a man with a
+big, black automatic pistol, and he had a bead on my belly.
+
+"'Well,' said I, 'what's troubling _you_ and your gun, my friend?'--I
+was that astonished.
+
+"He was a slim-built, powerful guy with a foreign face and voice and
+way. He wanted to know if he had the honour--as he put it--to introduce
+himself to a detective or game constable, or a friend of Mike Clinch.
+
+"I told him I wasn't any of these, and that I worked in a private
+hatchery; and he called me a liar."
+
+Young Fry's face flushed and his voice began to quiver:
+
+"That's the way he misused me: and he backed me into the shanty and I
+had to sit down with both hands up. Then he filled my pack-basket with
+grub, and took my axe, and strapped my kit onto his back.... And
+talking all the time in his mean, sneery, foreign way--and I guess he
+thought he was funny, for he laughed at his own jokes.
+
+"He told me his name was Quintana, and that he ought to shoot me for a
+rat, but wouldn't because of the stink. Then he said he was going to do
+a quick job that the police were too cowardly to do;--that he was
+a-going to find Mike Clinch down to Drowned Valley and kill him; and if
+he could catch Mike's daughter, too, he'd spoil her face for life----"
+
+The boy was breathing so hard and his rage made him so incoherent that
+Lannis took him by the shoulder and shook him:
+
+"What next?" demanded the Trooper impatiently. "Tell your story and quit
+thinking how you were misused!"
+
+"He told me to stay in the shanty for an hour or he'd do for me good,"
+cried Fry.... "Once I got up and went to the door; and there he stood
+by the brook, wolfing my lunch with both hands. I tell you he cursed and
+drove me, like a dog, inside with his big pistol--my God--like a dog....
+
+"Then, the next time I took a chance he was gone.... And I beat it here
+to get me a rifle----" The boy broke down and sobbed: "He drove me
+around--like a dog--he did----"
+
+"You leave that to me," interrupted Lannis sharply. And, to Wier: "You
+and George had better get a gun apiece. That fellow _might_ come back
+here or go to Harrod Place if we starve him out."
+
+Wier said to Fry: "Go up to Harrod Place and tell Jansen your story and
+bring back two 45-70's.... And quit snivelling.... You may get a shot
+at him yet."
+
+Lannis had already ridden down to the brook. Now he jumped his horse
+across, pulled up, called back to Wier:
+
+"I think our man is making for Drowned Valley, all right. My mate,
+Stormont, telephoned me that some of his gang are there, and that Mike
+Clinch and his gang have them stopped on the other side! Keep your eye
+on Harrod Place!"
+
+And away he cantered into the North.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Behind the curtains of her open window Eve Strayer, lying on her bed,
+had heard every word.
+
+Crouched there beside her pillow she peered out and saw Trooper Lannis
+ride away; saw the Fry boy start toward Harrod Place on a run; saw Ralph
+Wier watch them out of sight and then turn and re-enter the lodge.
+
+Wrapped in Darragh's big blanket robe she got off the bed and opened her
+chamber door as Wier was passing through the living-room.
+
+"Please--I'd like to speak to you a moment," she called.
+
+Wier turned instantly and came to the partly open door.
+
+"I want to know," she said, "where I am."
+
+"Ma'am?"
+
+"What is this place?"
+
+"It's a hatchery----"
+
+"Whose?"
+
+"Ma'am?"
+
+"Whose lodge is this? Does it belong to Harrod Place?"
+
+"We're h-hootch runners, Miss----" stammered Wier, mindful of
+instructions, but making a poor business of deception; "--I and Hal
+Smith, we run a 'Easy One,' and we strip trout for a blind and sell to
+Harrod Place--Hal and I----"
+
+"_Who_ is Hal Smith?" she asked.
+
+"Ma'am?"
+
+The girl's flower-blue eyes turned icy: "Who is the man who calls
+himself Hal Smith?" she repeated.
+
+Wier looked at her, red and dumb.
+
+"Is he a Trooper in plain clothes?" she demanded in a bitter voice. "Is
+he one of the Commissioner's spies? Are _you_ one, too?"
+
+Wier gazed miserably at her, unable to formulate a convincing lie.
+
+She flushed swiftly as a terrible suspicion seized her:
+
+"Is this Harrod property? Is Hal Smith old Harrod's heir? _Is_ he?"
+
+"My God, Miss----"
+
+"He _is_!"
+
+"Listen, Miss----"
+
+She flung open the door and came out into the living-room.
+
+"Hal Smith is that nephew of old Harrod," she said calmly. "His name is
+Darragh. And you are one of his wardens.... And I can't stay here. Do
+you understand?"
+
+Wier wiped his hot face and waited. The cat was out; there was a hole in
+the bag; and he knew there was no use in such lies as he could tell.
+
+He said: "All I know, Miss, is that I was to look after you and get you
+whatever you want----"
+
+"I want my clothes!"
+
+"Ma'am?"
+
+"My _clothes_!" she repeated impatiently. "I've _got_ to have them!"
+
+"Where are they, ma'am?" asked the bewildered man.
+
+At the same moment the girl's eyes fell on a pile of men's sporting
+clothing--garments sent down from Harrod Place to the Lodge--lying on a
+leather lounge near a gun-rack.
+
+Without a glance at Wier, Eve went to the heap of clothing, tossed it
+about, selected cords, two pairs of woollen socks, grey shirt, puttees,
+shoes, flung the garments through the door into her own room, followed
+them, and locked herself in.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When she was dressed--the two heavy pairs of socks helping to fit her
+feet to the shoes--she emptied her handful of diamonds, sapphires and
+emeralds, including the Flaming Jewel, into the pockets of her breeches.
+
+Now she was ready. She unlocked her door and went out, scarcely limping
+at all, now.
+
+Wier gazed at her helplessly as she coolly chose a rifle and
+cartridge-belt at the gun-rack.
+
+Then she turned on him as still and dangerous as a young puma:
+
+"Tell Darragh he'd better keep clear of Clinch's," she said. "Tell him I
+always thought he was a rat. Now I know he's one."
+
+She plunged one slim hand into her pocket and drew out a diamond.
+
+"Here," she said insolently. "This will pay your _gentleman_ for his gun
+and clothing."
+
+She tossed the gem onto a table, where it rolled, glittering.
+
+"For heaven's sake, Miss----" burst out Wier, horrified, but she cut him
+short:
+
+"--He may keep the change," she said. "We're no swindlers at Clinch's
+Dump!"
+
+Wier started forward as though to intercept her. Eve's eyes flamed. And
+he stood still. She wrenched open the door and walked out among the
+silver birches.
+
+At the edge of the brook she stood a moment, coolly loading the magazine
+of her rifle. Then, with one swift glance of hatred, flung at the place
+that Harrod's money had built, she sprang across the brook, tossed her
+rifle to her shoulder, and passed lithely into the golden wilderness of
+poplar and silver birch.
+
+
+II
+
+Quintana, on a fox-trot along the rock-trail into Drowned Valley, now
+thoroughly understood that it was the only sanctuary left him for the
+moment. Egress to the southward was closed; to the eastward, also; and
+he was too wary to venture westward toward Ghost Lake.
+
+No, the only temporary safety lay in the swamps of Drowned Valley.
+
+And there, he decided as he jogged along, if worse came to worst and
+starvation drove him out, he'd settle matters with Mike Clinch and break
+through to the north.
+
+He meant to settle matters with Mike Clinch anyway. He was not afraid of
+Clinch; not really afraid of anybody. It had been the dogs that
+demoralised Quintana. He'd had no experience with hunting hounds,--did
+not know what to expect,--how to manoeuvre. If only he could have
+_seen_ these beasts that filled the forest with their hob-goblin
+outcries--if he could have had a good look at the creatures who gave
+forth that weird, crazed, melancholy volume of sound!----
+
+"Bon!" he said coolly to himself. "It was a crisis of nerves which I
+experience. Yes.... I should have shot him, that fat Sard. Yes....
+Only those damn dog---- And now he shall die an' rot--that fat Sard--all
+by himse'f, parbleu!--like one big dead thing all alone in the wood....
+A puddle of guts full of diamonds! Ah!--mon dieu!--a million francs in
+gems that shine like festering stars in this damn wood till the world
+end. Ah, bah--nome de dieu de----"
+
+"Halte la!" came a sharp voice from the cedar fringe in front. A pause,
+then recognition; and Henri Picquet walked out on the hard ridge beyond
+and stood leaning on his rifle and looking sullenly at his leader.
+
+Quintana came forward, carelessly, a disagreeable expression in his
+eyes and on his narrow lips, and continued on past Picquet.
+
+The latter slouched after his leader, who had walked over to the lean-to
+before which a pile of charred logs lay in cold ashes.
+
+As Picquet came up, Quintana turned on him, with a gesture toward the
+extinguished fire: "It is cold like hell," he said. "Why do you not have
+some fire?"
+
+"Not for me, non," growled Picquet, and jerked a dirty thumb in the
+direction of the lean-to.
+
+And there Quintana saw a pair of muddy boots protruding from a blanket.
+
+"It is Harry Beck, yes?" he inquired. Then _something_ about the boots
+and the blanket silenced him. He kept his eyes on them for a full
+minute, then walked into the lean-to. The blanket also covered Harry
+Beck's features and there was a stain on it where it outlined the
+prostrate man's features, making a ridge over the bony nose.
+
+After a moment Quintana looked around at Picquet:
+
+"So. He is dead. Yes?"
+
+Picquet shrugged: "Since noon, mon capitaine."
+
+"Comment?"
+
+"How shall I know? It was the fire, perhaps,--green wood or wet--it is
+no matter now.... I said to him, 'Pay attention, Henri; your wood makes
+too much smoke.' To me he reply I shall go to hell.... Well, there was
+too much smoke for me. I arise to search for wood more dry, when,
+crack!--they begin to shoot out there----" He waved a dirty hand toward
+the forest.
+
+"'Bon,' said I, 'Clinch, he have seen your damn smoke!'
+
+"'What shall I care?' he make reply, Henri Beck, to me. 'Clinch he
+shall shoot and be damn to him. I cook me my dejeuner all the same.'
+
+"I make representations to that Johnbull; he say to me that I am a frog,
+and other injuries, while he lay yet more wood on his sacre fire.
+
+"Then crack! crack! crack! and zing-gg!--whee-ee! come the big bullets
+of Clinch and his voyous yonder.
+
+"'Bon,' I say, 'me, I make my excuse to retire.'
+
+"Then Henri Beck he laugh and say, 'Hop it, frog!' And that is all he
+has find time to say, when crack! spat! Bien droit he has it--tenez, mon
+capitaine--here, over the left eye!... Like a beef surprise he go over,
+crash! thump! And like a beef that dies, the air bellows out from his
+big lungs----"
+
+Picquet looked down at the dead comrade in a sort of weary compassion
+for such stupidity.
+
+"--So he pass, this ros-biff goddam Johnbull.... Me, I roll him in
+there.... Je ne sais pas pourquoi.... Then I put out the fire and
+leave."
+
+Quintana let his sneering glance rest on the dead a moment, and his thin
+lip curled immemorial contempt for the Anglo-Saxon.
+
+Then he divested himself of the basket-pack which he had stolen from the
+Fry boy.
+
+"Alors," he said calmly, "it has been Mike Clinch who shoot my frien'
+Beck. Bien."
+
+He threw a cartridge into the breech of his rifle, adjusted his
+ammunition belt _en bandouliere_, carelessly.
+
+Then, in a quiet voice: "My frien' Picquet, the time has now arrive when
+it become ver' necessary that we go from here away. Donc--I shall now
+go kill me my frien' Mike Clinch."
+
+Picquet, unastonished, gave him a heavy, bovine look of inquiry.
+
+Quintana said softly: "Me, I have enough already of this damn woods. Why
+shall we starve here when there lies our path?" He pointed north; his
+arm remained outstretched for a while.
+
+"Clinch, he is there," growled Picquet.
+
+"Also our path, l'ami Henri.... And, behind us, they hunt us now with
+_dogs_."
+
+Picquet bared his big white teeth in fierce surprise. "Dogs?" he
+repeated with a sort of snarl.
+
+"That is how they now hunt us, my frien'--like they hunt the hare in the
+Cote d'Or.... Me, I shall now reconnoitre--_that_ way!" And he looked
+where he was pointing, into the north--with smouldering eyes. Then he
+turned calmly to Picquet: "An' you, l'ami?"
+
+"At orders, mon capitaine."
+
+"C'est bien. Venez."
+
+They walked leisurely forward with rifles shouldered, following the hard
+ridge out across a vast and flooded land where the bark of trees
+glimmered with wet mosses.
+
+After a quarter of a mile the ridge broadened and split into two, one
+hog-back branching northeast! They, however, continued north.
+
+About twenty minutes later Picquet, creeping along on Quintana's left,
+and some sixty yards distant, discovered something moving in the woods
+beyond, and fired at it. Instantly two unseen rifles spoke from the
+woods ahead. Picquet was jerked clear around, lost his balance and
+nearly fell. Blood was spurting from his right arm, between elbow and
+shoulder.
+
+He tried to lift and level his rifle; his arm collapsed and dangled
+broken and powerless; his rifle clattered to the forest floor.
+
+For a moment he stood there in plain view, dumb, deathly white; then he
+began screaming with fury while the big, soft-nosed bullets came
+streaming in all around him. His broken arm was hit again. His screaming
+ceased; he dragged out his big clasp-knife with his left hand and
+started running toward the shooting.
+
+As he ran, his mangled arm flopping like a broken wing, Byron Hastings
+stepped out from behind a tree and coolly shot him down at close
+quarters.
+
+Then Quintana's rifle exploded twice very quickly, and the Hastings boy
+stumbled sideways and fell sprawling. He managed to rise to his knees
+again; he even was trying to stand up when Quintana, taking his time,
+deliberately began to empty his magazine into the boy, riddling him limb
+and body and head.
+
+Down once more, he still moved his arms. Sid Hone reached out from
+behind a fallen log to grasp the dying lad's ankle and draw him into
+shelter, but Quintana reloaded swiftly and smashed Hone's left hand with
+the first shot.
+
+Then Jim Hastings, kneeling behind a bunch of juniper, fired a
+high-velocity bullet into the tree behind which Quintana stood; but
+before he could fire again Quintana's shot in reply came ripping through
+the juniper and tore a ghastly hole in the calf of his left leg,
+striking a blow that knocked young Hastings flat and paralysed as a dead
+flounder.
+
+A mile to the north, blocking the other exit from Drowned Valley, Mike
+Clinch, Harvey Chase, Cornelius Blommers, and Dick Berry stood listening
+to the shooting.
+
+"B'gosh," blurted out Chase, "it sounds like they was goin' through,
+Mike. B'gosh, it does!"
+
+Clinch's little pale eyes blazed, but he said in his soft, agreeable
+voice:
+
+"Stay right here, boys. Like as not some of 'em will come this way."
+
+The shooting below ceased. Clinch's nostrils expanded and flattened with
+every breath, as he stood glaring into the woods.
+
+"Harve," he said presently, "you an' Corny go down there an' kinda look
+around. And you signal if I'm wanted. G'wan, both o' you. Git!"
+
+They started, running heavily, but their feet made little noise on the
+moss.
+
+Berry came over and stood near Clinch. For ten minutes neither man
+moved. Clinch stared at the woods in front of him. The younger man's
+nervous glance flickered like a snake's tongue in every direction, and
+he kept moistening his lips with his tongue.
+
+Presently two shots came from the south. A pause; a rattle of shots from
+hastily emptied magazines.
+
+"G'wan down there, Dick!" said Clinch.
+
+"You'll be alone, Mike----"
+
+"Au' right. You do like I say; git along quick!"
+
+Berry walked southward a little way. He had turned very white under his
+tan.
+
+"Gol ding ye!" shouted Clinch, "take it on a lope or I'll kick the pants
+off'n ye!"
+
+Berry began to run, carrying his rifle at a trail.
+
+For half an hour there was not a sound in the forests of Drowned Valley
+except in the dead timber where unseen woodpeckers hammered fitfully at
+the ghosts of ancient trees.
+
+Always Clinch's little pale eyes searched the forest twilight in front
+of him; not a falling leaf escaped him; not a chipmunk.
+
+And all the while Clinch talked to himself; his lips moved a little now
+and then, but uttered no sound:
+
+"All I want God should do," he repeated again and again, "is to just let
+Quintana come _my_ way. 'Tain't for because he robbed my girlie. 'Tain't
+for the stuff he carries onto him.... No, God, 'tain't them things. But
+it's what that there skunk done to my Evie.... O God, be you listenin'?
+He _hurt_ her, Quintana did. That's it. He misused her.... God, if you
+had seen my girlie's little bleeding feet!---- _That's_ the reason....
+'Tain't the stuff. I can work. I can save for to make my Evie a lady
+same's them high-steppers on Fifth Avenoo. I can moil and toil and slave
+an' run hootch--hootch---- They wuz wine 'n' fixin's into the Bible. It
+ain't you, God, it's them fanatics.... Nobody in my Dump wanted I
+should sell 'em more'n a bottle o' beer before this here prohybishun set
+us all crazy. 'Tain't right.... O God, don't hold a little hootch agin
+me when all I want of you is to let Quintana----"
+
+The slightest noise behind him. He waited, turned slowly. Eve stood
+there.
+
+Hell died in his pale eyes as she came to him, rested silently in his
+gentle embrace, returned his kiss, laid her flushed, sweet cheek against
+his unshaven face.
+
+"Dad, darling?"
+
+"Yes, my baby----"
+
+"You're watching to kill Quintana. But there's no use watching any
+longer."
+
+"Have the boys below got him?" he demanded.
+
+"They got one of his gang. Byron Hastings is dead. Jim is badly hurt;
+Sid Hone, too,--not so badly----"
+
+"Where's Quintana?"
+
+"Dad, he's gone.... But it don't matter. See here!----" She dug her
+slender hand into her breeches' pocket and pulled out a little
+fistful of gems.
+
+Clinch, his powerful arm closing her shoulders, looked dully at the
+jewels.
+
+"You see, dad, there's no use killing Quintana. These are the things he
+robbed you of."
+
+"'Tain't them that matter.... I'm glad you got 'em. I allus wanted you
+should be a great lady, girlie. Them's the tickets of admission. You put
+'em in your pants. I gotta stay here a spell----"
+
+"Dad! Take them!"
+
+He took them, smiled, shoved them into his pocket.
+
+"What is it, girlie?" he asked absently, his pale eyes searching the
+woods ahead.
+
+"I've just told you," she said, "that the boys went in as far as
+Quintana's shanty. There was a dead man there, too; but Quintana has
+gone."
+
+Clinch said,--not removing his eyes from the forest: "If any o' them
+boys has let Quintana crawl through I'll kill _him_, too.... G'wan
+home, girlie. I gotta mosey--I gotta kinda loaf around f'r a spell----"
+
+"Dad, I want you to come back with me----"
+
+"You go home; you hear me, Eve? Tell Corny and Dick Berry to hook it for
+Owl Marsh and stop the Star Peak trails--both on 'em.... Can Sid and
+Jimmy walk?"
+
+"Jim can't----"
+
+"Well, let Harve take him on his back. You go too. You help fix Jimmy up
+at the house. He's a little fella, Jimmy Hastings is. Harve can tote
+him. And you go along----"
+
+"Dad, Quintana says he means to kill you! What is the use of hurting
+him? You have what he took----"
+
+"I gotta have more'n he took. But even that ain't enough. He couldn't
+pay for all he ever done to me, girlie.... I'm aimin' to draw on him on
+sight----"
+
+Clinch's set visage relaxed into an alarming smile which flickered,
+faded, died in the wintry ferocity of his eyes.
+
+"Dad----"
+
+"G'wan home!" he interrupted harshly. "You want that Hastings boy to
+bleed to death?"
+
+She came up to him, not uttering a word, yet asking him with all the
+tenderness and eloquence of her eyes to leave this blood-trail where it
+lay and hunt no more.
+
+He kissed her mouth, infinitely tender, smiled; then, again prim and
+scowling:
+
+"G'wan home, you little scut, an' do what I told ye, or, by God, I'll
+cut a switch that'll learn ye good! Never a word, now! On yer way!
+G'wan!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Twice she turned to look back. The second time, Clinch was slowly
+walking into the woods straight ahead of him. She waited; saw him go in;
+waited. After a while she continued on her way.
+
+When she sighted the men below she called to Blommers and Dick Berry:
+
+"Dad says you're to stop Star Peak trail by Owl Marsh."
+
+Jimmy Hastings sat on a log, crying and looking down at his dead
+brother, over whose head somebody had spread a coat.
+
+Blommers had made a tourniquet for Jimmy out of a bandanna and a peeled
+stick.
+
+The girl examined it, loosened it for a moment, twisted it again, and
+bade Harvey Chase take him on his back and start for Clinch's.
+
+The boy began to sob that he didn't want his brother to be left out
+there all alone; but Chase promised to come back and bring him in before
+night.
+
+Sid Hone came up, haggard from pain and loss of blood, resting his
+mangled hand in the sling of his cartridge-belt.
+
+Berry and Blommers were already starting across toward Owl Marsh; and
+the latter, passing by, asked Eve where Mike was.
+
+"He went into Drowned Valley by the upper outlet," she said.
+
+"He'll never find no one in them logans an' sinks," muttered Chase,
+squatting to hoist Jimmy Hastings to his broad back.
+
+"I guess he'll be over Star Peak side by sundown," nodded Blommers.
+
+Eve watched him slouching off into the woods, followed sullenly by
+Berry. Then she looked down at the dead man in silence.
+
+"Be you ready, Eve?" grunted Chase.
+
+She turned with a heavy heart to the home trail; but her mind was
+passionately with Clinch in the spectral forests of Drowned Valley.
+
+
+III
+
+And Clinch's mind was on her. All else--his watchfulness, his stealthy
+advance--all the alertness of eye and ear, all the subtlety, the
+cunning, the infinite caution--were purely instinctive mechanics.
+
+Somewhere in this flooded twilight of gigantic trees was Jose Quintana.
+Knowing that, he dismissed that fact from his mind and turned his
+thoughts to Eve.
+
+Sometimes his lips moved. They usually did when he was arguing with God
+or calling his Creator's attention to the justice of his case. His _two_
+cases--each, to him, a cause celebre; the matter of Harrod; the affair
+of Quintana.
+
+Many a time he had pleaded these two causes before the Most High.
+
+But now his thoughts were chiefly concerned with Eve--with the problem
+of her future--his master passion--this daughter of the dead wife he had
+loved.
+
+He sighed unconsciously; halted.
+
+"Well, Lord," he concluded, in his wordless way, "my girlie has gotta
+have a chance if I gotta go to hell for it. That's sure as shootin'....
+Amen."
+
+At that instant he saw Quintana.
+
+Recognition was instant and mutual. Neither man stirred. Quintana was
+standing beside a giant hemlock. His pack lay at his feet.
+
+Clinch had halted--always the mechanics!--close to a great ironwood
+tree.
+
+Probably both men knew that they could cover themselves before the other
+moved a muscle. Clinch's small, light eyes were blazing; Quintana's
+black eyes had become two slits.
+
+Finally: "You--dirty--skunk," drawled Clinch in his agreeably misleading
+voice, "by Jesus Christ I got you now."
+
+"Ah--h," said Quintana, "thees has happen ver' nice like I expec'....
+Always I say myse'f, yet a little patience, Jose, an' one day you shall
+meet thees fellow Clinch, who has rob you.... I am ver' thankful to the
+good God----"
+
+He had made the slightest of movements: instantly both men were behind
+their trees. Clinch, in the ferocious pride of woodcraft, laughed
+exultingly--filled the dim and spectral forest with his roar of
+laughter.
+
+"Quintana," he called out, "you're a-going to cash in. Savvy? You're
+a-going to hop off. An' first you gotta hear why. 'Tain't for the stuff.
+Naw! I hooked it off'n you; you hooked it off'n me; now I got it again.
+_That's_ all square.... No, 'tain't _that_ grudge, you green-livered
+whelp of a cross-bred, still-born slut! No! It's becuz you laid the heft
+o' your dirty little finger onto my girlie. 'N' now you gotta hop!"
+
+Quintana's sinister laughter was his retort. Then: "You damfool Clinch,"
+he said, "I got in my pocket what you rob of me. Now I kill you, and
+then I feel ver' well. I go home, live like some kings; yes. But you,"
+he sneered, "you shall not go home never no more. No. You shall remain
+in thees damn wood like ver' dead old rat that is all wormy.... He! I
+got a million dollaire--five million franc in my pocket. You shall learn
+what it cost to rob Jose Quintana! Unnerstan'?"
+
+"You liar," said Clinch contemptuously, "I got them jools in my pants
+pocket----"
+
+Quintana's derisive laugh cut him short: "I give you thee Flaming Jewel
+if you show me you got my gems in you pants pocket!"
+
+"I'll show you. Lay down your rifle so's I see the stock."
+
+"First you, my frien' Mike," said Quintana cautiously.
+
+Clinch took his rifle by the muzzle and shoved the stock into view so
+that Quintana could see it without moving.
+
+To his surprise, Quintana did the same, then coolly stepped a pace
+outside the shelter of his hemlock stump.
+
+"You show me now!" he called across the swamp.
+
+Clinch stepped into view, dug into his pocket, and, cupping both hands,
+displayed a glittering heap of gems.
+
+"I wanted you should know who's gottem," he said, "before you hop. It'll
+give you something to think over in hell."
+
+Quintana's eyes had become slits again. Neither man stirred. Then:
+
+"So you are buzzard, eh, Clinch? You feed on dead man's pockets, eh? You
+find Sard somewhere an' you feed." He held up the morocco case,
+emblazoned with the arms of the Grand Duchess of Esthonia, and shook it
+at Clinch.
+
+"In there is my share.... Not all. Ver' quick, now, I take yours,
+too----"
+
+Clinch vanished and so did his rifle; and Quintana's first bullet struck
+the moss where the stock had rested.
+
+"You black crow!" jeered Clinch, laughing, "--I need that empty case of
+yours. And I'm going after it.... But it's because your filthy claw
+touched my girlie that you gotta hop!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Twilight lay over the phantom wood, touching with pallid tints the
+flooded forest.
+
+So far only that one shot had been fired. Both men were still
+manoeuvring, always creeping in circles and always lining some great
+tree for shelter.
+
+Now, the gathering dusk was making them bolder and swifter; and twice,
+already, Clinch caught the shadow of a fading edge of something that
+vanished against the shadows too swiftly for a shot.
+
+Now Quintana, keeping a tree in line, brushed with his lithe back a
+leafless moose-bush that stood swaying as he avoided it.
+
+Instantly a stealthy hope seized him: he slipped out of his coat, spread
+it on the bush, set the naked branches swaying, and darted to his tree.
+
+Waiting, he saw that the grey blot his coat made in the dusk was still
+moving a little--just vibrating a little bit in the twilight. He touched
+the bush with his rifle barrel, then crouched almost flat.
+
+Suddenly the red crash of a rifle lit up Clinch's visage for a fraction
+of a second. And Quintana's bullet smashed Clinch between the eyes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+After a long while Quintana ventured to rise and creep forward.
+
+Night, too, came creeping like an assassin amid the ghostly trees.
+
+So twilight died in the stillness of Drowned Valley and the pall of
+night lay over all things,--living and dead alike.
+
+
+
+
+EPISODE ELEVEN
+
+THE PLACE OF PINES
+
+
+I
+
+The last sound that Mike Clinch heard on earth was the detonation of his
+own rifle. Probably it was an agreeable sound to him. He lay there with
+a pleasant expression on his massive features. His watch had fallen out
+of his pocket.
+
+Quintana shined him with an electric torch; picked up the watch. Then,
+holding the torch in one hand, he went through the dead man's pockets
+very thoroughly.
+
+When Quintana had finished, both trays of the flat morocco case were
+full of jewels. And Quintana was full of wonder and suspicion.
+
+Unquietly he looked upon the dead--upon the glittering contents of the
+jewel-box,--but always his gaze reverted to the dead. The faintest
+shadow of a smile edged Clinch's lips. Quintana's lips grew graver. He
+said slowly, like one who does his thinking aloud:
+
+"What is it you have done to me, l'ami Clinch?... Are there truly then
+two sets of precious stones?--_two_ Flaming Jewels?--two gems of Erosite
+like there never has been in all thees worl' excep' only two more?...
+Or is one set false?... Have I here one set of paste facsimiles?... My
+frien' Clinch, why do you lie there an' smile at me so ver' funny ...
+like you are amuse?... I am wondering what you may have done to me, my
+frien' Clinch...."
+
+For a while he remained kneeling beside the dead. Then: "Ah, bah," he
+said, pocketing the morocco case and getting to his feet.
+
+He moved a little way toward the open trail, stopped, came back, stood
+his rifle against a tree.
+
+For a while he was busy with his sharp Spanish clasp knife, whittling
+and fitting together two peeled twigs. A cross was the ultimate result.
+Then he placed Clinch's hands palm to palm upon his chest, laid the
+cross on his breast, and shined the result with complacency.
+
+Then Quintana took off his hat.
+
+"L'ami Mike," he said, "you were a _man_!... Adios!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Quintana put on his hat. The path was free. The world lay open before
+Jose Quintana once more;--the world, his hunting ground.
+
+"But," he thought uneasily, "what is it that I bring home this time? How
+much is paste? My God, how droll that smile of Clinch.... Which is the
+false--his jewels or mine? Dieu que j'etais bete!---- Me who have not
+suspec' that there are _two_ trays within my jewel-box!... I
+unnerstan'. It is ver' simple. In the top tray the false gems. Ah! Paste
+on top to deceive a thief!... Alors.... Then what I have recover of
+Clinch is the _real_!... Nom de Dieu!... How should I know? His smile
+is so ver' funny.... I think thees dead man make mock of me--all inside
+himse'f----"
+
+So, in darkness, prowling south by west, shining the trail furtively,
+and loaded rifle ready, Quintana moved with stealthy, unhurried tread
+out of the wilderness that had trapped him and toward the tangled
+border of that outer world which led to safe, obscure, uncharted
+labyrinths--old-world mazes, immemorial hunting grounds--haunted by
+men who prey.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The night had turned frosty. Quintana, wet to the knees and very tired,
+moved slowly, not daring to leave the trail because of sink-holes.
+
+However, the trail led to Clinch's Dump, and sooner or later he must
+leave it.
+
+What he had to have was a fire; he realised that. Somewhere off the
+trail, in big timber if possible, he must build a fire and master this
+deadly chill that was slowly paralysing all power of movement.
+
+He knew that a fire in the forest, particularly in big timber, could be
+seen only a little way. He must take his chances with sink-holes and
+find some spot in the forest to build that fire.
+
+Who could discover him except by accident?
+
+Who would prowl the midnight wilderness? At thirty yards the fire
+would not be visible. And, as for the odour--well, he'd be gone
+before dawn.... Meanwhile, he must have that fire. He could wait no
+longer.
+
+He cut a pole first. Then he left the trail where a little spring flowed
+west, and turned to the right, shining the forest floor as he moved and
+sounding with his pole every wet stretch of moss, every strip of mud,
+every tiniest glimmer of water.
+
+At last he came to a place of pines, first growth giants towering into
+night, and, looking up, saw stars, infinitely distant, ... where
+perhaps those things called souls drifted like wisps of vapour.
+
+When the fire took, Quintana's thin dark hands had become nearly useless
+from cold. He could not have crooked finger to trigger.
+
+For a long time he sat close to the blaze, slowly massaging his torpid
+limbs, but did not dare strip off his foot-gear.
+
+Steam rose from puttee and heavy shoe and from the sodden woollen
+breeches. Warmth slowly penetrated. There was little smoke; the big dry
+branches were dead and bleached and he let the fire eat into them
+without using his axe.
+
+Once or twice he sighed, "Oh, my God," in a weary demi-voice, as though
+the content of well-being were permeating him.
+
+Later he ate and drank languidly, looking up at the stars, speculating
+as to the possible presence of Mike Clinch up there.
+
+"Ah, the dirty thief," he murmured; "--nevertheless a man. Quel homme!
+Mais bete a faire pleurer! Je l'ai bien triche, moi! Ha!"
+
+Quintana smiled palely as he thought of the coat and the gently-swaying
+bush--of the red glare of Clinch's shot, of the death-echo of his own
+shot.
+
+Then, uneasy, he drew out the morocco case and gazed at the two trays
+full of gems.
+
+The jewels blazed in the firelight. He touched them, moved them about,
+picked up several and examined them, testing the unset edges against his
+under lip as an expert tests jade.
+
+But he couldn't tell; there was no knowing. He replaced them, closed
+the case, pocketed it. When he had a chance he could try boiling water
+for one sort of trick. He could scratch one or two.... Sard would know.
+He wondered whether Sard had got away, not concerned except selfishly.
+However, there were others in Paris whom he could trust--at a price....
+
+Quintana rested both elbows on his knees and framed his dark face
+between both bony hands.
+
+What a chase Clinch had led him after the Flaming Jewel. And now Clinch
+lay dead in the forest--faintly smiling. At _what_?
+
+In a very low, passionless voice, Quintana cursed monotonously as he
+gazed into the fire. In Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian, he cursed
+Clinch. After a little while he remembered Clinch's daughter, and he
+cursed her, elaborately, thoroughly, wishing her black mischance awake
+and asleep, living or dead.
+
+Darragh, too, he remembered in his curses, and did not slight him. And
+the trooper, Stormont--ah, he should have killed all of them when he had
+the chance.... And those two Baltic Russians, also, the girl duchess
+and her friend. Why on earth hadn't he made a clean job of it?
+Over-caution. A wary disinclination to stir up civilization by needless
+murder. But after all, old maxims, old beliefs, old truths are the best,
+God knows. The dead don't talk! And that's the wisest wisdom of all.
+
+"If," murmured Quintana fervently, "God gives me further opportunity to
+acquire a little property to comfort me in my old age, I shall leave no
+gossiping fool to do me harm with his tongue. No! I kill.
+
+"And though they raise a hue and cry, dead tongues can not wag and I
+save myse'f much annoyance in the end."
+
+He leaned his back against the trunk of a massive pine.
+
+Presently Quintana slept after his own fashion--that is to say, looking
+closely at him one could discover a glimmer under his lowered eyelids.
+And he listened always in that kind of sleep. As though a shadowy part
+of him were detached from his body, and mounted guard over it.
+
+The inaudible movement of a wood-mouse venturing into the firelit circle
+awoke Quintana. Again a dropping leaf amid distant birches awoke him.
+Such things. And so he slept with wet feet to the fire and his rifle
+across his knees; and dreamed of Eve and of murder, and that the Flaming
+Jewel was but a mass of glass.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At that moment the girl of whose white throat Quintana was dreaming, and
+whining faintly in his dreams, stood alone outside Clinch's Dump, rifle
+in hand, listening, fighting the creeping dread that touched her slender
+body at times--seemed to touch her very heart with frost.
+
+Clinch's men had gone on to Ghost Lake with their wounded and dead,
+where there was fitter shelter for both. All had gone on; nobody
+remained to await Clinch's home-coming except Eve Strayer.
+
+Black Care, that tireless squire of dames, had followed her from the
+time she had left Clinch, facing the spectral forests of Drowned Valley.
+
+An odd, unusual dread weighted her heart--something in emotions that she
+never before had experienced in time of danger. In it there was the
+deathly unease of premonition. But of what it was born she did not
+understand,--perhaps of the strain of dangers passed--of the shock of
+discovery concerning Smith's identity with Darragh--Darragh!--the hated
+kinsman of Harrod the abhorred.
+
+Fiercely she wondered how much her lover knew about this miserable
+masquerade. Was Stormont involved in this deception--Stormont, the
+object of her first girl's passion--Stormont, for whom she would have
+died?
+
+Wretched, perplexed, fiercely enraged at Darragh, deadly anxious
+concerning Clinch, she had gone about cooking supper.
+
+The supper, kept warm on the range, still awaited the man who had no
+more need of meat and drink.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Of the tragedy of Sard Eve knew nothing. There were no traces save in
+the disorder in the pantry and the bottles and chair on the veranda.
+
+Who had visited the place excepting those from whom she and Stormont had
+fled, did not appear. She had no idea why her step-father's mattress and
+bed-quilt lay in the pantry.
+
+Her heart heavy with ceaseless anxiety, Eve carried mattress and
+bed-clothes to Clinch's chamber, re-made his bed, wandered through the
+house setting it in order; then, in the kitchen, seated herself and
+waited until the strange dread that possessed her drove her out into the
+starlight to stand and listen and stare at the dark forest where all her
+dread seemed concentrated.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was not yet dawn, but the girl could endure the strain no longer.
+
+With electric torch and rifle she started for the forest, almost running
+at first; then, among the first trees, moving with caution and in
+silence along the trail over which Clinch should long since have
+journeyed homeward.
+
+In soft places, when she ventured to flash her torch, foot-prints cast
+curious shadows, and it was hard to make out tracks so oddly distorted
+by the light. Prints mingled and partly obliterated other prints. She
+identified her own tracks leading south, and guessed at the others,
+pointing north and south, where they had carried in the wounded and had
+gone back to bring in the dead.
+
+But nowhere could she discover any impression resembling her
+step-father's,--that great, firm stride and solid imprint which so often
+she had tracked through moss and swale and which she knew so well.
+
+Once when she got up from her knees after close examination of the muddy
+trail, she became aware of the slightest taint in the night air--stood
+with delicate nostrils quivering--advanced, still conscious of the
+taint, listening, wary, every stealthy instinct alert.
+
+She had not been mistaken: somewhere in the forest there was smoke.
+Somewhere a fire was burning. It might not be very far away; it might be
+distant. _Whose fire?_ Her father's? Would a hunter of men build a fire?
+
+The girl stood shivering in the darkness. There was not a sound.
+
+Now, keeping her cautious feet in the trail by sense of touch alone, she
+moved on. Gradually, as she advanced, the odour of smoke became more
+distinct. She heard nothing, saw nothing; but there was a near reek of
+smoke in her nostrils and she stopped short.
+
+After a little while in the intense silence of the forest she ventured
+to touch the switch of her torch, very cautiously.
+
+In the faint, pale lustre she saw a tiny rivulet flowing westward from a
+spring, and, beside it, in the mud, imprints of a man's feet.
+
+The tracks were small, narrow, slimmer than imprints made by any man she
+could think of. Under the glimmer of her torch they seemed quite fresh;
+contours were still sharp, some ready to crumble, and water stood in the
+heels.
+
+A little way she traced them, saw where their maker had cut a pole,
+peeled it; saw, farther on, where this unknown man had probed in moss
+and mud--peppered some particularly suspicious swale with a series of
+holes as though a giant woodcock had been "boring" there.
+
+Who was this man wandering all alone at night off the Drowned Valley
+trail and probing the darkness with a pole?
+
+She knew it was not her father. She knew that no native--none of her
+father's men--would behave in such a manner. Nor could any of these have
+left such narrow, almost delicate tracks.
+
+As she stole along, dimly shining the tracks, lifting her head
+incessantly to listen and peer into the darkness, her quick eye caught
+something ahead--something very slightly different from the wall of
+black obscurity--a vague hint of colour--the very vaguest tint scarcely
+perceptible at all.
+
+But she knew it was firelight touching the trunk of an unseen tree.
+
+Now, soundlessly over damp pine needles she crept. The scent of smoke
+grew strong in nostril and throat; the pale tint became palely reddish.
+All about her the blackness seemed palpable--seemed to touch her body
+with its weight; but, ahead, a ruddy glow stained two huge pines. And
+presently she saw the fire, burning low, but redly alive. And, after a
+long, long while, she saw a man.
+
+He had left the fire circle. His pack and belted mackinaw still lay
+there at the foot of a great tree. But when, finally, she discovered
+him, he was scarcely visible where he crouched in the shadow of a
+tree-trunk, with his rifle half lowered at a ready.
+
+Had he heard her? It did not seem possible. Had he been crouching there
+since he made his fire? Why had he made it then--for its warmth could
+not reach him there. And why was he so stealthily watching--silent,
+unstirring, crouched in the shadows?
+
+She strained her eyes; but distance and obscurity made recognition
+impossible. And yet, somehow, every quivering instinct within her was
+telling her that the crouched and shadowy watcher beyond the fire was
+Quintana.
+
+And every concentrated instinct was telling her that he'd kill her if he
+caught sight of her; her heart clamoured it; her pulses thumped it in
+her ears.
+
+Had the girl been capable of it she could have killed him where he
+crouched. She thought of it, but knew it was not in her to do it. And
+yet Quintana had boasted that he meant to kill her father. That was what
+terribly concerned her. And there must be a way to stop that
+danger--some way to stop it short of murder,--a way to render this man
+harmless to her and hers.
+
+No, she could not kill him this way. Except in extremes she could not
+bring herself to fire upon any human creature. And yet this man must be
+rendered harmless--somehow--somehow--ah!----
+
+As the problem presented itself its solution flashed into her mind. Men
+of the wilderness knew how to take dangerous creatures alive. To take a
+dangerous and reasoning human was even less difficult, because reason
+makes more mistakes than does instinct.
+
+Stealthily, without a sound, the girl crept back through the shadows
+over the damp pine needles, until, peering fearfully over her shoulder,
+she saw the last ghost-tint of Quintana's fire die out in the terrific
+dark behind.
+
+Slowly, still, she moved until her sensitive feet felt the trodden path
+from Drowned Valley.
+
+Now, with torch flaring, she ran, carrying her rifle at a trail. Before
+her, here and there, little night creatures fled--a humped-up raccoon,
+dazzled by the glare, a barred owl still struggling with its wood-rat
+kill.
+
+She ran easily,--an agile, tireless young thing, part of the swiftness
+and silence of the woods--part of the darkness, the sinuous celerity,
+the ominous hush of wide, still places--part of its very blood and pulse
+and hot, sweet breath.
+
+Even when she came out among the birches by Clinch's Dump she was
+breathing evenly and without distress. She ran to the kitchen door but
+did not enter. On pegs under the porch a score or more of rusty traps
+hung. She unhooked the largest, wound the chain around it, tucked it
+under her left arm and started back.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When at last she arrived at the place of pines again, and saw the far,
+spectral glimmer of Quintana's fire, the girl was almost breathless. But
+dawn was not very far away and there remained little time for the
+taking alive of a dangerous man.
+
+Where two enormous pines grew close together near a sapling, she knelt
+down, and, with both hands, scooped out a big hollow in the immemorial
+layers of pine needles. Here she placed her trap. It took all her
+strength and skill to set it; to fasten the chain around the base of the
+sapling pine.
+
+And now, working with only the faintest glimmer of her torch, she
+covered everything with pine needles.
+
+It was not possible to restore the forest floor; the place remained
+visible--a darker, rougher patch on the bronzed carpet of needles beaten
+smooth by decades of rain and snow. No animal would have trodden that
+suspicious space. But it was with man she had to deal--a dangerous but
+reasoning man with few and atrophied instincts--and with no experience
+in traps; and, therefore, in no dread of them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Before she started she had thrown a cartridge into the breech of her
+rifle.
+
+Now she pocketed her torch and seated herself between the two big pines
+and about three feet behind the hidden trap.
+
+Dawn was not far away. She looked upward through high pine-tops where
+stars shone; and saw no sign of dawn. But the watcher by the fire beyond
+was astir, now, in the imminence of dawn, and evidently meant to warm
+himself before leaving.
+
+Eve could hear him piling dry wood on the fire; the light on the tree
+trunks grew redder; a pungent reek of smoke was drawn through the
+forest aisles. She sniffed it, listened, and watched, her rifle across
+her knees.
+
+Eve never had been afraid of anything. She was not afraid of this man.
+If it came to combat she would have to kill. It never entered her mind
+to fear Quintana's rifle. Even Clinch was not as swift with a rifle as
+she.... Only Stormont had been swifter--thank God!----
+
+She thought of Stormont--sat there in the terrific darkness loving him,
+her heart of a child tremulous with adoration.
+
+Then the memory of Darragh pushed in and hot hatred possessed her.
+Always, in her heart, she had distrusted the man.
+
+Instinct had warned her. A spy! What evil had he worked already?
+Where was her father? Evidently Quintana had escaped him at Drowned
+Valley.... Quintana was yonder by his fire, preparing to flee the
+wilderness where men hunted him.... But where was Clinch? Had this
+sneak, Darragh, betrayed him? Was Clinch already in the clutch of
+the State Troopers? Was he in _jail_?
+
+At the thought the girl felt slightly faint, then a rush of angry blood
+stung her face in the darkness. Except for game and excise violations
+the stories they told about Clinch were lies.
+
+He had nothing to fear, nothing to be ashamed of. Harrod had driven him
+to lawlessness; the Government took away what was left him to make a
+living. He had to live. What if he did break laws made by millionaire
+and fanatic! What of it? He had her love and her respect--and her deep,
+deep pity. And these were enough for any girl to fight for.
+
+Dawn spread a silvery light above the pines, but Quintana's fire still
+reddened the tree trunks; and she could hear him feeding it at
+intervals.
+
+Finally she saw him. He came out on the edge of the ruddy ring of light
+and stood peering around at the woods where already a vague greyness was
+revealing nearer trees.
+
+When, finally, he turned his back and looked at his fire, Eve rose and
+stood between the two big pines. Behind one of them she placed her
+rifle.
+
+It was growing lighter in the woods. She could see Quintana in the fire
+ring and outside,--saw him go to the spring rivulet, lie flat, drink,
+then, on his knees, wash face and hands in the icy water.
+
+It became plain to her that he was nearly ready to depart. She watched
+him preparing. And now she could see him plainly, and knew him to be
+Quintana and no other.
+
+He had a light basket pack. He put some articles into it, stretched
+himself and yawned, pulled on his hat, hoisted the pack and fastened it
+to his back, stood staring at the fire for a long time; then, with a
+sudden upward look at the zenith where a slight flush stained a cloud,
+he picked up his rifle.
+
+At that moment Eve called to him in a clear and steady voice.
+
+The effect on Quintana was instant; he was behind a tree before her
+voice ceased.
+
+"Hallo! Hi! You over there!" she called again. "This is Eve Strayer. I'm
+looking for Clinch! He hasn't been home all night. Have you seen him?"
+
+After a moment she saw Quintana's head watching her,--not at the
+shoulder-height of a man but close to the ground and just above the tree
+roots.
+
+"Hey!" she cried. "What's the matter with you over there? I'm asking you
+who you are and if you've seen my father?"
+
+After a while she saw Quintana coming toward her, circling, creeping
+swiftly from tree to tree.
+
+As he flitted through the shadows the trees between which she was
+standing hid her from him a moment. Instantly she placed her rifle on
+the ground and kicked the pine needles over it.
+
+As Quintana continued his encircling manoeuvres Eve, apparently
+perplexed, walked out into the clear space, putting the concealed trap
+between her and Quintana, who now came stealthily toward her from the
+rear.
+
+It was evident that he had reconnoitred sufficiently to satisfy himself
+that the girl was alone and that no trick, no ambuscade, threatened him.
+
+And now, from behind a pine, and startlingly near her, came Quintana,
+moving with confident grace yet holding his rifle ready for any
+emergency.
+
+Eve's horrified stare was natural; she had not realised that any man
+could wear so evil a smile.
+
+Quintana stopped short a dozen paces away. The dramatic in him demanded
+of the moment its full value. He swept off his hat with a flourish,
+bowed deeply where he stood.
+
+"Ah!" he cried gaily, "the happy encounter, Senorita. God is too good to
+us. And it was but a moment since my thoughts were of you! I swear
+it!----"
+
+It was not fear; it was a sort of slow horror of this man that began to
+creep over the girl. She stared at his brilliant eyes, at his thick
+mouth, too red--shuddered slightly. But the toe of her right foot
+touched the stock of her rifle under the pine needles.
+
+She held herself under control.
+
+"So it's you," she said unsteadily. "I thought our people had caught
+you."
+
+Quintana laughed: "Charming child," he said, "it is _I_ who have caught
+your people. And now, my God!--I catch _you_!... It is ver' funny. Is
+it not?"
+
+She looked straight into Quintana's black eyes, but the look he returned
+sent the shamed blood surging into her face.
+
+"By God," he said between his white, even teeth,--"by God!"
+
+Staring at her he slowly disengaged his pack, let it fall behind him on
+the pine needles; rested his rifle on it; slipped out of his mackinaw
+and laid that across his rifle--always keeping his brilliant eyes on
+her.
+
+His lips tightened, the muscles in his dark face grew tense; his eyes
+became a blazing insult.
+
+For an instant he stood there, unencumbered, a wiry, graceful shape in
+his woollen breeches, leggings, and grey shirt open at the throat. Then
+he took a step toward her. And the girl watched him, fascinated.
+
+One pace, two, a third, a fourth--the girl's involuntary cry echoed the
+stumbling crash of the man thrashing, clawing, scrambling in the
+clenched jaws of the bear-trap amid a whirl of flying pine needles.
+
+He screamed once, tried to rise, turned blindly to seize the jaws that
+clutched him; and suddenly crouched, loose-jointed, cringing like a
+trapped wolf--the true fatalist among our lesser brothers.
+
+Eve picked up her rifle. She was trembling violently. Then, mastering
+her emotion, she walked over to the pack, placed Quintana's rifle and
+mackinaw in it, coolly hoisted it to her shoulders and buckled it there.
+
+Over her shoulder she kept an eye on Quintana who crouched where he had
+fallen, unstirring, his deadly eyes watching her.
+
+She placed the muzzle of her rifle against his stomach, rested it so,
+holding it with one hand, and her finger at the trigger.
+
+At her brief order he turned out both breeches pockets. She herself
+stooped and drew the Spanish clasp-knife from its sheath at his belt,
+took a pistol from the holster, another out of his hip pocket. Reaching
+up and behind her, she dropped these into the pack.
+
+"Maybe," she said slowly, "your ankle is broken. I'll send somebody from
+Ghost Lake to find you. But whether you've a broken bone or not you'll
+not go very far, Quintana.... After I'm gone you'll be able to free
+yourself. But you can't get away. You'll be followed and caught.... So
+if you can walk at all you'd better go in to Ghost Lake and give
+yourself up.... It's that or starvation.... You've got a watch....
+Don't stir or touch that trap for half an hour.... And that's all."
+
+As she moved away toward the Drowned Valley trail she looked back at
+him. His face was bloodless but his black eyes blazed.
+
+"If ever you come into this forest again," she said, "my father will
+surely kill you."
+
+To her horror Quintana slowly grinned at her. Then, still grinning, he
+placed the forefinger of his left hand between his teeth and bit it.
+
+Whatever he meant by the gesture it seemed unclean, horrible; and the
+girl hurried on, seized with an overwhelming loathing through which a
+sort of terror pulsated like evil premonition in a heavy and tortured
+heart.
+
+Straight into the fire of dawn she sped. A pale primrose light glimmered
+through the woods; trees, bushes, undergrowth turned a dusky purple.
+Already the few small clouds overhead were edged with fiery rose.
+
+Then, of a sudden, a shaft of flame played over the forest. The sun had
+risen.
+
+Hastening, she searched the soft path for any imprint of her father's
+foot. And even in the vain search she hoped to find him at home--hurried
+on burdened with two rifles and a pack, still all nervous and aquiver
+from her encounter with Quintana.
+
+Surely, surely, she thought, if he had missed Quintana in Drowned Valley
+he would not linger in that ghastly place; he'd come home, call in his
+men, take counsel perhaps----
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mist over Star Pond was dissolving to a golden powder in the blinding
+glory of the sun. The eastern window-panes in Clinch's Dump glittered as
+though the rooms inside were all on fire.
+
+Down through withered weeds and scrub she hurried, ran across the grass
+to the kitchen door which swung ajar under its porch.
+
+"Dad!" she called, "Dad!"
+
+Only her own frightened voice echoed in the empty house. She climbed
+the stairs to his room. The bed lay undisturbed as she had made it. He
+was not in any of the rooms; there were no signs of him.
+
+Slowly she descended to the kitchen. He was not there. The food she had
+prepared for him had become cold on a chilled range.
+
+For a long while she stood staring through the window at the sunlight
+outside. Probably, since Quintana had eluded him, he'd come home for
+something to eat.... Surely, now that Quintana had escaped, Clinch
+would come back for some breakfast.
+
+Eve slipped the pack from her back and laid it on the kitchen table.
+There was kindling in the wood-box. She shook down the cinders, laid a
+fire, soaked it with kerosene, lighted it, filled the kettle with fresh
+water.
+
+In the pantry she cut some ham, and found eggs, condensed milk, butter,
+bread, and an apple pie. After she had ground the coffee she placed all
+these on a tray and carried them into the kitchen.
+
+Now there was nothing more to do until her father came, and she sat down
+by the kitchen table to wait.
+
+Outside the sunlight was becoming warm and vivid. There had been no
+frost after all--or, at most, merely a white trace in the shadow--on a
+fallen plank here and there--but not enough to freeze the ground. And,
+in the sunshine, it all quickly turned to dew, and glittered and
+sparkled in a million hues and tints like gems--like that handful of
+jewels she had poured into her father's joined palms--yesterday--there
+at the ghostly edge of Drowned Valley.
+
+At the memory, and quite mechanically, she turned in her chair and drew
+Quintana's basket pack toward her.
+
+First she lifted out his rifle, examined it, set it against the window
+sill. Then, one by one, she drew out two pistols, loaded; the murderous
+Spanish clasp-knife; an axe; a fry-pan and a tin pail, and the rolled-up
+mackinaw.
+
+Under these the pack seemed to contain nothing except food and
+ammunition; staples in sacks and a few cans--lard, salt, tea--such
+things.
+
+The cartridge boxes she piled up on the table; the food she tossed into
+a tin swill bucket.
+
+About the effects of this man it seemed to her as though something
+unclean lingered. She could scarcely bear to handle them,--threw them
+from her with disgust.
+
+The garment, also--the heavy brown and green mackinaw--she disliked to
+touch. To throw it out doors was her intention; but, as she lifted the
+coat, it unrolled and some things fell from the pockets to the kitchen
+table,--money, keys, a watch, a flat leather case----
+
+She looked stupidly at the case. It had a coat of arms emblazoned on it.
+
+Still, stupidly and as though dazed, she laid one hand on it, drew it to
+her, opened it.
+
+The Flaming Jewel blazed in her face amid a heap of glittering gems.
+
+Still she seemed slow to comprehend--as though understanding were
+paralysed.
+
+It was when her eyes fell upon the watch that her heart seemed to stop.
+Suddenly her stunned senses were lighted as by an infernal flare....
+Under the awful blow she swayed upright to her feet, sick with fright,
+her eyes fixed on her father's watch.
+
+It was still ticking.
+
+She did not know whether she cried out in anguish or was dumb under it.
+The house seemed to reel around her; under foot too.
+
+When she came to her senses she found herself outside the house, running
+with her rifle, already entering the woods. But, inside the barrier of
+trees, something blocked her way, stopped her,--a man--_her_ man!
+
+"Eve! In God's name!----" he said as she struggled in his arms; but she
+fought him and strove to tear her body from his embrace:
+
+"They've killed Dad!" she panted,--"Quintana killed him. I didn't
+know--oh, I didn't know!--and I let Quintana go! Oh, Jack, Jack, he's at
+the Place of Pines! I'm going there to shoot him! Let me go!--he's
+killed Dad, I tell you! He had Dad's watch--and the case of jewels--they
+were in his pack on the kitchen table----"
+
+"Eve!"
+
+"Let me go!----"
+
+"_Eve!_" He held her rigid a moment in his powerful grip, compelled her
+dazed, half-crazed eyes to meet his own:
+
+"You must come to your senses," he said. "Listen to what I say: they are
+_bringing in your father_."
+
+Her dilated blue eyes never moved from his.
+
+"We found him in Drowned Valley at sunrise," said Stormont quietly. "The
+men are only a few rods behind me. They are carrying him out."
+
+Her lips made a word without sound.
+
+"Yes," said Stormont in a low voice.
+
+There was a sound in the woods behind them. Stormont turned. Far away
+down the trail the men came into sight.
+
+Then the State Trooper turned the girl very gently and placed one arm
+around her shoulders.
+
+Very slowly they descended the hill together. His equipment was shining
+in the morning sun: and the sun fell on Eve's drooping head, turning her
+chestnut hair to fiery gold.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+An hour later Trooper Stormont was at the Place of Pines.
+
+There was nothing there except an empty trap and the ashes of the dying
+fire beyond.
+
+
+
+
+EPISODE TWELVE
+
+HER HIGHNESS INTERVENES
+
+
+I
+
+Toward noon the wind changed, and about one o'clock it began to snow.
+
+Eve, exhausted, lay on the sofa in her bedroom. Her step-father lay on a
+table in the dance hall below, covered by a sheet from his own bed. And
+beside him sat Trooper Stormont, waiting.
+
+It was snowing heavily when Mr. Lyken, the little undertaker from Ghost
+Lake, arrived with several assistants, a casket, and what he called
+"swell trimmings."
+
+Long ago Mike Clinch had selected his own mortuary site and had driven a
+section of iron pipe into the ground on a ferny knoll overlooking Star
+Pond. In explanation he grimly remarked to Eve that after death he
+preferred to be planted where he could see that Old Harrod's ghost
+didn't trespass.
+
+Here two of Mr. Lyken's able assistants dug a grave while the digging
+was still good; for if Mike Clinch was to lie underground that season
+there might be need of haste--no weather prophet ever having
+successfully forecast Adirondack weather.
+
+Eve, exhausted by shock and a sleepless night, was spared the more
+harrowing details of the coroner's visit and the subsequent jaunty
+activities of Mr. Lyken and his efficient assistants.
+
+She had managed to dress herself in a black wool gown, intending to
+watch by Mike, but Stormont's blunt authority prevailed and she lay down
+for an hour's rest.
+
+The hour lengthened into many hours; the girl slept heavily on her sofa
+under blankets laid over her by Stormont.
+
+All that dark, snowy day she slept, mercifully unconscious of the
+proceedings below.
+
+In its own mysterious way the news penetrated the wilderness; and out of
+the desolation of forest and swamp and mountain drifted the people who
+somehow existed there--a few shy, half wild young girls, a dozen silent,
+lank men, two or three of Clinch's own people, who stood silently about
+in the falling snow and lent a hand whenever requested.
+
+One long shanked youth cut hemlock to line the grave; others erected a
+little fence of silver birch around it, making of the enclosure a
+"plot."
+
+A gaunt old woman from God knows where aided Mr. Lyken at intervals: a
+pretty, sulky-eyed girl with her slovenly, red-headed sister cooked for
+anybody who desired nourishment.
+
+When Mike was ready to hold the inevitable reception everybody filed
+into the dance hall. Mr. Lyken was master of ceremonies; Trooper
+Stormont stood very tall and straight by the head of the casket.
+
+Clinch wore a vague, indefinable smile and his best clothes,--that same
+smile which had so troubled Jose Quintana.
+
+Light was fading fast in the room when the last visitor took silent
+leave of Clinch and rejoined the groups in the kitchen, where were the
+funeral baked meats.
+
+Eve still slept. Descending again from his reconnaissance, Trooper
+Stormont encountered Trooper Lannis below.
+
+"Has anybody picked up Quintana's tracks?" inquired the former.
+
+"Not so far. An Inspector and two State Game Protectors are out beyond
+Owl Marsh. The Troopers from Five Lakes are on the job, and we have
+enforcement men along Drowned Valley from The Scaur to Harrod Place."
+
+"Does Darragh know?"
+
+"Yes. He's in there with Mike. He brought a lot of flowers from Harrod
+Place."
+
+The two troopers went into the dance hall where Darragh was arranging
+the flowers from his greenhouses.
+
+Stormont said quietly: "All right, Jim, but Eve must not know that they
+came from Harrod's."
+
+Darragh nodded: "How is she, Jack?"
+
+"All in."
+
+"Do you know the story?"
+
+"Yes. Mike went into Drowned Valley early last evening after Quintana.
+He didn't come back. Before dawn this morning Eve located Quintana, set
+a bear-trap for him, and caught him with the goods----"
+
+"What goods?" demanded Darragh sharply.
+
+"Well, she got his pack and found Mike's watch and jewelry in it----"
+
+"What jewelry?"
+
+"The jewels Quintana was after. But that was after she'd arrived at the
+Dump, here, leaving Quintana to get free of the trap and beat it.
+
+"That's how I met her--half crazed, going to find Quintana again. We'd
+found Mike in Drowned Valley and were bringing him out when I ran into
+Eve.... I brought her back here and called Ghost Lake.... They haven't
+picked up Quintana's tracks so far."
+
+After a silence: "Too bad this snow came so late," remarked Trooper
+Lannis. "But we ought to get Quintana anyway."
+
+Darragh went over and looked silently at Mike Clinch.
+
+"I liked you," he said under his breath. "It wasn't your fault. And it
+wasn't mine, Mike.... I'll try to square things. Don't worry."
+
+He came back slowly to where Stormont was standing near the door:
+
+"Jack," he said, "you can't marry Eve on a Trooper's pay. Why not quit
+and take over the Harrod estate?... You and I can go into business
+together later if you like."
+
+After a pause: "That's rather wonderful of you, Jim," said Stormont,
+"but you don't know what sort of business man I'd make----"
+
+"I know what sort of officer you made.... I'm taking no chance.... And
+I'll make my peace with Eve--or somebody will do it for me.... Is it
+settled then?"
+
+"Thanks," said Trooper Stormont, reddening. They clasped hands. Then
+Stormont went about and lighted the candles in the room. Clinch's face,
+again revealed, was still faintly amused at something or other. The dead
+have much to be amused at.
+
+As Darragh was about to go, Stormont said: "We're burying Clinch at
+eleven to-morrow morning. The Ghost Lake Pilot officiates."
+
+"I'll come if it won't upset Eve," said Darragh.
+
+"She won't notice anybody, I fancy," remarked Stormont.
+
+He stood by the veranda and watched Darragh take the Lake Trail through
+the snow. Finally the glimmer of his swinging lantern was lost in the
+woods and Stormont mounted the stairs once more, stood silently by Eve's
+open door, realised she was still heavily asleep, and seated himself on
+a chair outside her door to watch and wait.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+All night long it snowed hard over the Star Pond country, and the late
+grey light of morning revealed a blinding storm pelting a white robed
+world.
+
+Toward ten o'clock, Stormont, on guard, noticed that Eve was growing
+restless.
+
+Downstairs the flotsam of the forest had gathered again: Mr. Lyken was
+there in black gloves; the Reverend Laomi Smatter had arrived in a
+sleigh from Ghost Lake. Both were breakfasting heavily.
+
+The pretty, sulky-faced girl fetched a tray and placed Eve's breakfast
+on it; and Trooper Stormont carried it to her room.
+
+She was awake when he entered. He set the tray on the table. She put
+both arms around his neck.
+
+"Jack," she murmured, her eyes tremulous with tears.
+
+"Everything has been done," he said. "Will you be ready by eleven? I'll
+come for you."
+
+She clung to him in silence for a while.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At eleven he knocked on her door. She opened it. She wore her black wool
+gown and a black fur turban. Some of her pallor remained,--traces of
+tears and bluish smears under both eyes. But her voice was steady.
+
+"Could I see Dad a moment alone?"
+
+"Of course."
+
+She took his arm: they descended the stairs. There seemed to be many
+people about but she did not lift her eyes until her lover led her into
+the dance hall where Clinch lay smiling his mysterious smile.
+
+Then Stormont left her alone there and closed the door.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In a terrific snow-storm they buried Mike Clinch on the spot he had
+selected, in order that he might keep a watchful eye upon the
+trespassing ghost of old man Harrod.
+
+It blew and stormed and stormed, and the thin, nasal voice of "Rev.
+Smatter" was utterly lost in the wind. The slanting lances of snow drove
+down on the casket, building a white mound over the flowers, blotting
+the hemlock boughs from sight.
+
+There was no time to be lost now; the ground was freezing under a
+veering and bitter wind out of the west. Mr. Lyken's talented assistants
+had some difficulty in shaping the mound which snow began to make into a
+white and flawless monument.
+
+The last slap of the spade rang with a metallic jar across the lake,
+where snow already blotted the newly forming film of ice; the human
+denizens of the wilderness filtered back into it one by one; "Rev.
+Smatter" got into his sleigh, plainly concerned about the road; Mr.
+Lyken betrayed unprofessional haste in loading his wagon with his
+talented assistants and starting for Ghost Lake.
+
+A Game Protector or two put on snow-shoes when they departed. Trooper
+Lannis led out his horse and Stormont's, and got into the saddle.
+
+"I'd better get these beasts into Ghost Lake while I can," he said.
+"You'll follow on snow-shoes, won't you, Jack?"
+
+"I don't know. I may need a sleigh for Eve. She can't remain here all
+alone. I'll telephone the Inn."
+
+Darragh, in blanket outfit, a pair of snow-shoes on his back, a rifle in
+his mittened hand, came trudging up from the lake. He and Stormont
+watched Lannis riding away with the two horses.
+
+"He'll make it all right, but it's time he started," said the latter.
+
+Darragh nodded: "Some storm. Where is Eve?"
+
+"In her room."
+
+"What is she going to do, Jack?"
+
+"Marry me as soon as possible. She wants to stay here for a few days but
+I can't leave her here alone. I think I'll telephone to Ghost Lake for a
+sleigh."
+
+"Let me talk to her," said Darragh in a low voice.
+
+"Do you think you'd better--at such a time?"
+
+"I think it's a good time. It will divert her mind, anyway. I want her
+to come to Harrod Place."
+
+"She won't," said Stormont grimly.
+
+"She might. Let me talk to her."
+
+"Do you realise how she feels toward you, Jim?"
+
+"I do, indeed. And I don't blame her. But let me tell you; Eve Strayer
+is the most honest and fair-minded girl I ever knew.... Except one....
+I'll take a chance that she'll listen to me.... Sooner or later she
+will be obliged to hear what I have to tell her.... But it will be
+easier for her--for everybody--if I speak to her now. Let me try,
+Jack."
+
+Stormont hesitated, looked at him, nodded. Darragh stood his rifle
+against the bench on the kitchen porch. They entered the house slowly.
+And met Eve descending the stairs.
+
+The girl looked at Darragh, astonished, then her pale face flushed with
+anger.
+
+"What are you doing in this house?" she demanded unsteadily. "Have you
+no decency, no shame?"
+
+"Yes," he said, "I am ashamed of what my kinsman has done to you and
+yours. That is partly why I am here."
+
+"You came here as a spy," she said with hot contempt. "You lied about
+your name; you lied about your purpose. You came here to betray Dad! If
+he'd known it he would have killed you!"
+
+"Yes, he would have. But--do you know why I came here, Eve?"
+
+"I've told you!"
+
+"And you are wrong. I didn't come here to betray Mike Clinch: I came to
+save him."
+
+"Do you suppose I believe a man who has lied to Dad?" she cried.
+
+"I don't ask you to, Eve. I shall let somebody else prove what I say. I
+don't blame you for your attitude. God knows I don't blame Mike Clinch.
+He stood up like a man to Henry Harrod.... All I ask is to undo some of
+the rotten things that my uncle did to you and yours. And that is partly
+why I came here."
+
+The girl said passionately: "Neither Dad nor I want anything from Harrod
+Place or from you! Do you suppose you can come here after Dad is dead
+and pretend you want to make amends for what your uncle did to us?"
+
+"Eve," said Darragh gravely, "I've made some amends already. You don't
+know it, but I have.... You may not believe it, but I liked your
+father. He was a real man. Had anybody done to me what Henry Harrod did
+to your father I'd have behaved as your father behaved; I'd never have
+budged from this spot; I'd have hunted where I chose; I'd have borne an
+implacable hatred against Henry Harrod and Harrod Place, and every soul
+in it!"
+
+The girl, silenced, looked at him without belief.
+
+He said: "I am not surprised that you distrust what I say. But the man
+you are going to marry was a junior officer in my command. I have no
+closer friend than Jack Stormont. Ask him whether I am to be believed."
+
+Astounded, the girl turned a flushed, incredulous face to Stormont.
+
+He said: "You may trust Darragh as you trust me. I don't know what he
+has to say to you, dear. But whatever he says will be the truth."
+
+Darragh said, gravely: "Through a misunderstanding your father came into
+possession of stolen property, Eve. He did not know it had been stolen.
+I did. But Mike Clinch would not have believed me if I had told him that
+the case of jewels in his possession had been stolen from a woman....
+Quintana stole them. By accident they came into your father's
+possession. I learned of this. I had promised this woman to recover her
+jewels.
+
+"I came here for that purpose, Eve. And for two reasons: first, because
+I learned that Quintana also was coming here to rob your father of these
+gems; second, because, when I knew your father, and knew _you_, I
+concluded that it would be an outrage to call on the police. It would
+mean prison for Clinch, misery and ruin for you, Eve. So--I tried to
+steal the jewels ... to save you both."
+
+He looked at Stormont, who seemed astonished.
+
+"To whom do these jewels belong, Jim?" demanded the trooper.
+
+"To the young Grand Duchess of Esthonia.... Do you remember that I
+befriended her over there?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Do you remember that the Reds were accused of burning her chateau and
+looting it?"
+
+"Yes, I remember."
+
+"Well, it was Quintana and his gang of international criminals who did
+that," said Darragh drily.
+
+And, to Eve: "By accident this case of jewels, emblazoned with the coat
+of arms of the Grand Duchess of Esthonia, came into your father's
+possession. That is the story, Eve."
+
+There was a silence. The girl looked at Stormont, flushed painfully,
+looked at Darragh.
+
+Then, without a word, she turned, ascended the stairs, and reappeared
+immediately carrying the leather case.
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Darragh," she said simply; and laid the case in his
+hand.
+
+"But," said Darragh, "I want you to do a little more, Eve. The owner of
+these gems is my guest at Harrod Place. I want you to give them to her
+yourself."
+
+"I--I can't go to Harrod Place," stammered the girl.
+
+"Please don't visit the sins of Henry Harrod on me, Eve."
+
+"I--don't. But--but that place----"
+
+After a silence: "If Eve feels that way," began Stormont awkwardly, "I
+couldn't become associated with you in business, Jim----"
+
+"I'd rather sell Harrod Place than lose you!" retorted Darragh almost
+sharply. "I want to go into business with you, Jack--if Eve will permit
+me----"
+
+She stood looking at Stormont, the heightened colour playing in her
+cheeks as she began to comprehend the comradeship between these two men.
+
+Slowly she turned to Darragh, offered her hand:
+
+"I'll go to Harrod Place," she said in a low voice.
+
+Darragh's quick smile brightened the sombre gravity of his face.
+
+"Eve," he said, "when I came over here this morning from Harrod Place I
+was afraid you would refuse to listen to me; I was afraid you would not
+even see me. And so I brought with me--somebody--to whom I felt certain
+you would listen.... I brought with me a young girl--a poor refugee
+from Russia, once wealthy, to-day almost penniless.... Her name is
+Theodorica.... Once she was Grand Duchess of Esthonia.... But this
+morning a clergyman from Five Lakes changed her name.... To such
+friends as you and Jack she is Ricca Darragh now ... and she's having a
+wonderful time on her new snow-shoes----"
+
+He took Eve by one hand and Stormont by the other, and drew them to the
+kitchen door and kicked it open.
+
+Through the swirling snow, over on the lake-slope at the timber edge, a
+graceful, boyish figure in scarlet and white wool moved swiftly over the
+drifts with all the naive delight of a child with a brand new toy.
+
+As Darragh strode out into the open the distant figure flung up one arm
+in salutation and came racing over the drifts, her brilliant scarf
+flying.
+
+All aglow and a trifle breathless, she met Darragh just beyond the
+veranda, rested one mittened hand on his shoulder while he knelt and
+unbuckled her snow-shoes, stepped lightly from them and came forward to
+Eve with out-stretched hand and a sudden winning gravity in her lovely
+face.
+
+"We shall be friends, surely," she said in her quick, winning
+voice;--"because my husband has told me--and I am so grieved for
+you--and I need a girl friend----"
+
+Holding both Eve's hands, her mittens dangling from her wrist, she
+looked into her eyes very steadily.
+
+Slowly Eve's eyes filled; more slowly still Ricca kissed her on both
+cheeks, framed her face in both hands, kissed her lightly on the lips.
+
+Then, still holding Eve's hands, she turned and looked at Stormont.
+
+"I remember you now," she said. "You were with my husband in Riga."
+
+She freed her right hand and held it out to Stormont. He had the grace
+to kiss it and did it very well for a Yankee.
+
+Together they entered the kitchen door and turned into the dining room
+on the left, where were chairs around the plain pine table.
+
+Darragh said: "The new mistress of Harrod Place has selected your
+quarters, Eve. They adjoin the quarters of her friend, the Countess
+Orloff-Strelwitz."
+
+"Valentine begged me," said Ricca, smiling. "She is going to be lonely
+without me. All hours of day and night we were trotting into one
+another's rooms----" She looked gravely at Eve: "You will like
+Valentine; and she will like you very much.... As for me--I already
+love you."
+
+She put one arm around Eve's shoulders: "How could you even think of
+remaining here all alone? Why, I should never close my eyes for thinking
+of you, dear."
+
+Eve's head drooped; she said in a stifled voice: "I'll go with you....
+I want to.... I'm very--tired."
+
+"We had better go now," said Darragh. "Your things can be brought over
+later. If you'll dress for snow-shoeing, Jack can pack what clothes you
+need.... Are there snow-shoes for him, too?"
+
+Eve turned tragically to her lover: "In Dad's closet----" she said,
+choking; then turned and went up the stairs, still clinging to Ricca's
+hand and drawing her with her.
+
+Stormont followed, entered Clinch's quarters, and presently came
+downstairs again, carrying Clinch's snow-shoes and a basket pack.
+
+He seated himself near Darragh. After a silence: "Your wife is
+beautiful, Jim.... Her character seems to be even more beautiful....
+She's like God's own messenger to Eve.... And--you're rather wonderful
+yourself----"
+
+"Nonsense," said Darragh, "I've given my wife her first American friend
+and I've done a shrewd stroke of business in nabbing the best business
+associate I ever heard of----"
+
+"You're crazy but kind.... I hope I'll be some good.... One thing;
+I'll never get over what you've done for Eve in this crisis----"
+
+"There'll be no crisis, Jack. Marry, and hook up with me in business.
+That solves everything.... Lord!--what a life Eve has had! But you'll
+make it all up to her ... all this loneliness and shame and misery of
+Clinch's Dump----"
+
+Stormont touched his arm in caution: Eve and Ricca came down the
+stairs--the former now in the grey wool snow-shoe dress, and carrying
+her snow-shoes, black gown, and toilet articles.
+
+Stormont began to stow away her effects in the basket pack; Darragh went
+over to her and took her hand.
+
+"I'm so glad we are to be friends," he said. "It hurt a lot to know you
+held me in contempt. But I had to go about it that way."
+
+Eve nodded. Then, suddenly recollecting: "Oh," she exclaimed, reddening,
+"I forgot the jewel case! It's under my pillow----"
+
+She turned and sped upstairs and reappeared almost instantly, carrying
+the jewel-case.
+
+Breathless, flushed, thankful and happy in the excitement of
+restitution, she placed the leather case in Ricca's hands.
+
+"My jewels!" cried the girl, astounded. Then, with a little cry of
+delight, she placed the case upon the table, stripped open the
+emblazoned cover, and emptied the two trays. All over the table rolled
+the jewels, flashing, scintillating, ablaze with blinding light.
+
+And at the same instant the outer door crashed open and Quintana covered
+them with Darragh's rifle.
+
+"Now, by Christ!" he shouted, "who stirs a finger shall go to God in one
+jump! You, my gendarme frien'--_you_, my frien' Smith--turn your damn
+backs--han's up high!--tha's the way!--now, ladies!--back away
+there--get back or I kill!--sure, by Jesus, I kill you like I would some
+white little mice!----"
+
+With incredible quickness he stepped forward and swept the jewels into
+one hand--filled the pocket of his trousers, caught up every stray stone
+and pocketed them.
+
+"You gendarme," he cried in a menacing voice, "you think you shall
+follow in my track. Yes? I blow your damn head off if you stir before
+the hour.... After that--well, follow and be damn!"
+
+Even as he spoke he stepped outside and slammed the door; and Darragh
+and Stormont leaped for it. Then the loud detonation of Quintana's rifle
+was echoed by the splintering rip of bullets tearing through the closed
+door; and both men halted in the face of the leaden hail.
+
+Eve ran to the pantry window and saw Quintana in somebody's stolen
+lumber-sledge, lash a big pair of horses to a gallop and go floundering
+past into the Ghost Lake road.
+
+As he sped by in a whirl of snow he fired five times at the house, then,
+rising and swinging his whip, he flogged the frantic horses into the
+woods.
+
+In the dining room, Stormont, red with rage and shame, and having found
+his rifle in the corridor outside Eve's bedroom, was trying to open the
+shutters for a shot; and Darragh, empty-handed, searched the house
+frantically for a weapon.
+
+Eve, terribly excited, came from the pantry:
+
+"He's gone!" she cried furiously. "He's in somebody's lumber-sledge with
+a pair of horses and he's driving west like the devil!"
+
+Stormont ran to the tap-room telephone, cranked it, and warned the
+constabulary at Five Lakes.
+
+"Good God!" he exclaimed, turning to Darragh, scarlet with
+mortification, "what a ghastly business! I never dreamed he was within
+miles of Clinch's! It's the most shameful thing that ever happened to
+me----"
+
+"What could anybody do under that rifle?" said Eve hotly. "That beast
+would have murdered the first person who stirred!"
+
+Darragh, exasperated and dreadfully humiliated, looked miserably at his
+brand-new wife.
+
+Eve and Stormont also looked at her. She had come forward from the rear
+of the stairway where Quintana had brutally driven her. Now she stood
+with one hand on the empty leather jewel case, looking at everybody out
+of pretty, bewildered eyes.
+
+To Darragh, in a perplexed, unsteady voice: "Is it the same bandit who
+robbed us before?"
+
+"Yes; Quintana," he said wretchedly. Rage began to redden his features.
+"Ricca," he said, "I promised I'd find your jewels.... I promise you
+again that I'll never drop this business until your gems--and the
+Flaming Jewel--are in your possession----"
+
+"But, Jim----"
+
+"I swear it!" he exclaimed violently. "I'm not such a stupid fool as I
+seem----"
+
+"Dear!" she protested excitedly, "you _have_ done what you promised. My
+gems _are_ in my possession--I believe----"
+
+She caught up the emblazoned case, stripped out the first tray, then the
+second, and flung them aside. Then, searching with the delicate tip of
+her forefinger in the empty case, she suddenly pressed the bottom
+hard,--thumb, middle finger and little finger forming the three apexes
+of an equilateral triangle.
+
+There came a clear, tiny sound like the ringing of the alarm in a
+repeating watch. Very gently the false bottom of the case detached
+itself and came away in the palm of her hand.
+
+And there, each embedded in its own shaped compartment of chamois, lay
+the Esthonian jewels--the true ones--deep hidden, always doubly guarded
+by two sets of perfect imitations lining the two visible trays above.
+
+And, in the centre, blazed the Erosite gem--the magnificent Flaming
+Jewel, a glory of living, blinding fire.
+
+Nobody stirred or spoke. Darragh blinked at the crystalline blaze as
+though stunned.
+
+Then the young girl who had once been Her Serene Highness Theodorica,
+Grand Duchess of Esthonia, looked up at her brand-new husband and
+laughed.
+
+"Did you really suppose it was these that brought me across the ocean?
+Did you suppose it was a passion for these that filled my heart? Did you
+think it was for these that I followed you?"
+
+She laughed again, turned to Eve:
+
+"_You_ understand. Tell him that if he had been in rags I would have
+followed him like a gypsy.... They say there is gypsy blood in us....
+God knows.... I think perhaps there is a little of it in all real
+women----" Still laughing she placed her hand lightly upon her
+heart--"In all women--perhaps--a Flaming Jewel imbedded here----"
+
+Her eyes, tender, and mocking, met his; she lifted the jewel-case,
+closed it, and placed it in his hands.
+
+"Now," she said, "you have everything in your possession; and we are
+safe--we are quite safe, now, my jewels and I."
+
+Then she went to Eve and rested both hands on her shoulders.
+
+"Shall we put on our snow-shoes and go--home?"
+
+Stormont flung open the bullet-splintered door. Outside in the snow he
+dropped on both knees to buckle on Eve's snow-shoes.
+
+Darragh was performing a like office for his wife, and the State
+Trooper, being unobserved, took Eve's slim hands and kissed them,
+looking up at her where he was kneeling.
+
+Her pale face blushed as it had that day in the woods on Owl Marsh, so
+long, so long ago, when this man's lips first touched her hands.
+
+As their eyes met both remembered. Then she smiled at her lover with the
+shy girl's soul of her gazing out at him through eyes as blue as the
+wild blind-gentians that grow among the ferns and mosses of Star Pond.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Far away in the northwestern forests Quintana still lashed his horses
+through the primeval pines.
+
+Triumphant, reckless, resourceful, dangerous, he felt that now nothing
+could stop him, nothing bar his way to freedom.
+
+Out of the wilderness lay his road and his destiny; out of it he must
+win his way, by strategy, by cunning, by violence--creep out, lie his
+way out, shoot his way out--it scarcely mattered. He was going out! He
+was going back to life once more. Who could forbid him? Who stop him?
+Who deny him, now, when, in his pockets, he held all that was worth
+living for--the keys to power, to pleasure,--the key to everything on
+earth!
+
+In fierce exultation he slapped the glass jewels in his pocket and
+laughed aloud.
+
+"The keys to the world!" he cried. "Let him stop me and take them who is
+a better man than I!" Then his long whip whistled and he cursed his
+horses.
+
+Then, of a sudden, close by in the snowy road ahead, he saw a State
+Trooper on snow-shoes,--saw the upflung arm warning him--screamed curses
+at his horses, flogged them forward to crush this thing to death that
+dared menace him--this object that suddenly rose up out of nowhere to
+snatch from him the keys of the world----
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For a moment the State Trooper looked after the runaway horses. There
+was no use following; they'd have to run till they dropped.
+
+Then he lowered the levelled rifle from his shoulder, looked grimly at
+the limp thing which had tumbled from the sledge into the snowy road and
+which sprawled there crimsoning the spotless flakes that fell upon it.
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+_Novels by_ ROBERT W. CHAMBERS
+
+
+    THE FLAMING JEWEL                   THE TREE OF HEAVEN
+    THE LITTLE RED FOOT                 THE MOONLIT WAY
+    THE SLAYER OF SOULS                 IN SECRET
+    THE CRIMSON TIDE                    CARDIGAN
+    THE LAUGHING GIRL                   THE RECKONING
+    THE RESTLESS SEX                    THE MAID-AT-ARMS
+    BARBARIANS                          AILSA PAIGE
+    THE DARK STAR                       SPECIAL MESSENGER
+    THE GIRL PHILIPPA                   THE HAUNTS OF MEN
+    WHO GOES THERE!                     LORRAINE
+    ATHALIE                             MAIDS OF PARADISE
+    THE BUSINESS OF LIFE                ASHES OF EMPIRE
+    THE GAY REBELLION                   THE RED REPUBLIC
+    THE STREETS OF ASCALON              BLUE-BIRD WEATHER
+    THE COMMON LAW                      A YOUNG MAN IN A HURRY
+    THE FIGHTING CHANCE                 THE GREEN MOUSE
+    THE YOUNGER SET                     IOLE
+    THE DANGER MARK                     THE MYSTERY OF CHOICE
+    THE FIRING LINE                     THE CAMBRIC MASK
+    JAPONETTE                           THE MAKER OF MOONS
+    QUICK ACTION                        THE KING IN YELLOW
+    THE ADVENTURES OF A MODEST MAN      IN SEARCH OF THE UNKNOWN
+    ANNE'S BRIDGE                       THE TRACER OF LOST PERSONS
+    BETWEEN FRIENDS                     THE CONSPIRATORS
+    THE BETTER MAN                      A KING AND A FEW DUKES
+    POLICE!!!                           THE HIDDEN CHILDREN
+    SOME LADIES IN HASTE                IN THE QUARTER
+    OUTSIDERS
+
+
+
+
+    +------------------------------------------------------------------+
+    |Transcriber's Note:                                               |
+    |                                                                  |
+    |[=a] is a macron                                                  |
+    |                                                                  |
+    |Page  14 "Stormond nodded" changed to "Stormont nodded"           |
+    |      40 Double close quotation mark added after "have a dance!"  |
+    |      95 "seated hmiself" changed to "seated himself"             |
+    |      96 "pallour" changed to "pallor"                            |
+    |     103 Open bracket removed from "Ah, bah! (But wait!"          |
+    |     112 Double close quotation mark added after "that way, Mike."|
+    |     118 Double close quotation mark added after "at roll call."  |
+    |     197 "swiming" changed to "swimming"                          |
+    |     226 "her breeches pocket" changed to "her breeches' pocket   |
+    |     258 Double open quotation mark added to "But we ought to"    |
+    |                                                                  |
+    |All other inconsistencies in spelling, hyphenation and dialect    |
+    |have been retained as they appear in the original book.           |
+    +------------------------------------------------------------------+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Flaming Jewel, by Robert W. Chambers
+
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+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #26651 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/26651)