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The Flaming Jewel

by Robert W. Chambers · English · Gutenberg #24306 · 395,914 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Flaming Jewel

Author: Robert W. Chambers


        
Release date: January 15, 2008 [eBook #24306]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/24306

Credits: Produced by Ben Collver


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FLAMING JEWEL ***




Produced by Ben Collver




The Flaming Jewel By Robert W. Chambers

Author of "Ailsa Paige," "Athalie," "Barbarians," "The Business of
Life," "The Crimson Tide," "The Dark Star," "The Fighting Chance," "The
Girl Philippa," "The Hidden Children," "The Laughing Girl," "The Little
Red Foot," "The Moonlit Way," "The Restless Sex," "The Slayer of Souls,"
"Who Goes There," etc.

A.L. Burt Company Publishers, New York Published by arrangement with
George H. Doran Company

Copyright, 1922, By George H. Doran Company

Transcriber's Note:
The irregular spelling of words ("inquire", "enquire", etc.) in this
etext tend to be reproduced faithfully from the 1922 edition, but
accents are not preserved . . .

* * * * *

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 'n
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.

May, 1922  R.W.C.

* * * * *

Contents

Episode One
Eve

Episode Two
The Ruling Passion

Episode Three
On Star Peak

Episode Four
A Private War

Episode Five
Drowned Valley

Episode Six
The Jewel Aflame

Episode Seven
Clinch's Dump

Episode Eight
Cup and Lip

Episode Nine
The Forest and Mr. Sard

Episode Ten
The Twilight of Mike

Episode Eleven
The Place of Pines

Episode Twelve
Her Highness Intervenes

* * * * *

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 -- 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 step-daughter's education became expensive.  He
as in a bad way.  Harrod offered him a high 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 around 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 introductions, 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 this
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 sad.  "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 the blue-jay and the 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 traveled 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 form 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 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 his 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 the girl?"

"Handcuffed out yonder."

"Then for God's sake go back and ac 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 the 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 left 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 probably 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 dear 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 noise; 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 the 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
sad 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' 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 on
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 warn't bon 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 her swell friends, in a big
house like she is educated for----"

H 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 here playing cards, shooting craps, lolling around tables and
tilting sloping 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' 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, 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 names 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 Nichole 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 going to have  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 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_ 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 kicking 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 Flies has went to get the
Commissaire for to frisk me,' 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!  Alez vouz en!' says he.

"`How the hell,' sez I, `do I get out of here?' `You're a Yankee
soldier.  The Flies 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 cope 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 Charly 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 gag 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 part
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 past 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.

Clinch 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 had 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, 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
instance 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 out 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.  I now 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 any time," grumbled Beck.

Clinch looked at Smith.  The latter smiled, leaned over, and whispered:

"Can you walk all right?"

Clinch nodded.

"Well, we 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. ... Get 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 the
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 way, 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 own throat before I'd tell her," he said softly.

"She wouldn't stand for it?"

"Hal, when you said to me, `Eve's a lad, 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 had 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 under 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 over-powered 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 where 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 the 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 treat 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 of the 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, and
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 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 to 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 stopped 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 no 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 the 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 grasping 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 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, plating
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 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 pause: 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, sheet 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 to 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 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 about 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 feed, 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 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 of 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 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, cradle, 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 the
backwoods riff-raff lounged in the 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 way 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 to 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 into 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 pleasant and cozy.  She ain't
had no ma.  You tell her to set snug and ca'm.  Then you cook her an 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 on Star
Peak. ... No, I wouldn't like for to be that there rat.  Fer he's
a-going' 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.  Yes, 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.  Harvey, 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, o
the Hastings boys: "If you shoot, aim low for their bellies.  Don't
leave on blood around.  Scrape it up.  We bury what we get."

He and Smith stood looking after the five slouching figures moving away
toward their blind trails.  When all had disappeared:

"Show me Jake's mark," he said calmly.

Smith led him to the edge of the bog, knelt down, drew aside a branch of
witch-hopple.  A man's footprint was plainly visible in the mud.

"That's Jake," said Clinch slowly.  "I know them half-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 the 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 going 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 the 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 the 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. ... Bu 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, bettered,
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 an 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 her 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' 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 linking
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, gilding 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; the 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 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 pallour
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 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 had ever died.

* * * * *

II

A coward died 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 the tangled undergrowth
toward the hard ridge.  No human power could have blocked the frantic
creature thrashing toward solid ground.

But there Quintana held him in his wiry grip.

"Fool!  Mule!  Crazee fellow!  What did 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's 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, 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 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 mean 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 sad, calmly inspecting the whimpering creature who had
started to crawl toward him.

He hesitate, lifted his automatic, then, as though annoyed by Leverett's
deafening shriek, shrugged, hesitated, pocket 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 stopped 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 tamarracks, 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 Hal Smith fiercely, shaking Leverett till his
haws 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----"

Bu 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
an 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 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," sad 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, sit, 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.

For 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 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 himself 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, Harvey,"
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' on 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 o
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.  Has 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 beats 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 as 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 me warning',
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 busy, 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 own 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-goin 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 snarlin, 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 the 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 the 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 simpler 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 had ever stirred her virgin mind and body.

If it was love, then it had come suddenly, and strangely.  It had come
on that day -- at the very moment 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 no 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 humble 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 yet!" 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 pricket 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 down 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 stars, 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.  I was all my fault for
leaving this room even for a minute----"

"No, no, no!  It's all 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 b 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 that
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 stream-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 is 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 the darkness.

Instantly, close ahead, three blinding flashes broke out.

For Hal Smith it had all 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 that you, Harry Beck?"

Instinct leg 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 do 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 moment 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 their 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?"

"Christi!" 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 do I do, eh?  Christi!  What to do?  What do
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 did you say those carbiniery?  Eh?"

"At Ghost lake.  _Your_ signature is in the hotel ledger."

"Christi!  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 bandana.

"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 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 bandana 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 weeds 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 as 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 take 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 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 bandana 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, splattering, 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 crock 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.

About of him, somewhere in the darkness -- but how far he did not know
-- Quintana and his people were moving swiftly at 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, he was going to make good his pledge.

He knew 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
his blindly loyal girl.  For the arrest of Clinch meant ruin to both,
and Smith realised it thoughtfully.

* * * * *

A slight sound form one of the out-houses -- a sort of wagon-shed --
attracted his attention.  Through the frost-highlighted rag-weeds a
faint glow appeared in the shed.  There was a crackling noise.  The glow
grew pinker.

* * * * *

III

Inside Clinch's home Eve awoke with a start.  Her ears were filled with
a strange, rushing, cracking noise.  A rosy glare danced and shook
outside her windows.

As she sprang to the floor on bandaged feet, a shrill scream burst out
of the ruddy darkness -- unearthly, horrible; and there came a
thunderous battering from the burn.

The girl tore open her bedroom door.  "Jack!" she cried in a terrified
voice.  "The barn's on fire!"

"Good Good!" 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 house!  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 conceel 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 y

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