Chapter 13

Somewhere among the birches, between him and Star Pond, was Harrod Place. And the idea occurred to him that Quintana might have ventured to ask food and shelter there. Yet, that was not likely because Trooper Stormont had called him that morning on the telephone from the Hatchery Lodge.

No; the only logical retreat for Quintana was northward to the mountains, where patrols were plenty and fire-wardens on duty in every watch-tower. Or, the fugitive could make for Drowned Valley by a blind trail which, Stormont informed him, existed but which Lannis never had heard of.

However, to reassure himself, Lannis rode as far as Harrod Place, and found game wardens on duty along the line.

Then he turned west and trotted his mount down to the hatchery, where he saw Ralph Wier, the Superintendent, standing outside the lodge talking to his assistant, George Fry.

When Lannis rode up on the opposite side of the brook, he called across to Wier:

"You haven't seen anything of any crooked outfit around here, have you, Ralph? I'm looking for that kind."

"See here," said the Superintendent, "I don't know but George Fry may have seen one of your guys. Come over and he'll tell you what happened an hour ago."

Trooper Lannis pivotted his horse and put him to the brook with scarcely any take-off; and the splendid animal cleared the water like a deer and came cantering up to the door of the lodge.

Fry's boyish face seemed agitated; he looked up at the State Trooper with the flush of tears in his gaze and pointed at the rifle Lannis carried:

"If I'd had _that,_" he said excitedly, "I'd have brought in a crook, you bet!"

"Where did you see him?" inquired Lannis.

"Jest west of the Scaur, about an hour and a half ago. Wier and me was stockin' the head of Scaur Brook with fingerlings. There's more good water -- two miles of it -- to the east, and all it needed was a fish-ladder around Scaur Falls.

"So I toted in cement and sand and grub last week, and I built me a shanty on the Scaur, and I been laying up a fish-way around the falls. So that's how I come there----" He clicked his teeth and darted a furious glance at the woods. "By God," he said, "I was such a fool I didn't take no rifle. All I had was an axe and a few traps. ... I wasn't going to let the mink get our trout whatever you fellows say," he added defiantly, "-- and law or no law----"

"Get along with your story, young man," interrupted Lannis; "-- you can spill the rest out to the Commissioner."

"All right, then. This is the way it happened down to the Scaur. I was eating lunch by the fish-stairs, looking up at 'em and kind of planning how to save cement, and not thinking about anybody being near me, when _something_ made me turn my head. ... You know how it is in the woods. ... I kinda _felt_ somebody near. And, by cracky! -- there stood a man with a big, black automatic pistol, and he had a bead on my belly.

"`Well,' said I, `what's troubling _you_ and your gun, my friend?' -- I was that astonished.

"He was a slim-built, powerful guy with a foreign face and voice and way. He wanted to know if he had the honour -- as he put it -- to introduce himself to a detective or game constable, or a friend of Mike Clinch.

"I told him I wasn't any of these, and that I worked in a private hatchery; and he called me a liar."

Young Fry's face flushed and his voice began to quiver:

"That's the way he misused me; and he backed me into the shanty and I had to sit down with both hands up. Then he filled my pack-basket with grub, and took my axe, and strapped my kit onto his back. ... And talking all the time in his mean, sneery, foreign way -- and I guess he thought he was funny, for he laughed at his own jokes.

"He told me his name was Quintana, and that he ought to shoot me for a rat, but he wouldn't because of the stink. Then he said he was going to do a quick job that the police were too cowardly to do; -- that he was a-going to find Mike Clinch down to Drowned Valley and kill him; and if he could catch Mike's daughter, too, he'd spoil her face for life----"

The boy was breathing so hard and his rage made him so incoherent that Lannis took him by the shoulder and shook him:

"What next?" demanded the Trooper impatiently. "Tell your story and quit thinking how you were misused!"

"He told me to stay in the shanty for an hour or he'd do for me good," cried Fry. ... "Once I got up and went to the door; and there he stood by the brook, wolfing my lunch with both hands. I tell you he cursed and drove me, like a dog, inside with his big pistol -- my God -- like a dog. ...

"Then, the next time I took a chance he was gone. ... And I beat it here to get me a rifle----" The boy broke down and sobbed: "He drove me around -- like a dog -- he did----"

"You leave that to me," interrupted Lannis sharply. And, to Wier: "You and George had better get a gun apiece. That fellow _might_ come back here or go to Harrod Place if we starve him out."

Wier said to Fry: "Go up to Harrod Place and tell Jansen your story and bring back two 45-70's. ... And quit snivelling. ... You may get a shot at him yet."

Lannis had already ridden down to the brook. Now he jumped his horse across, pulled up, called back to Wier:

"I think our man is making for Drowned Valley, all right. My mate, Stormont, telephoned me that some of his gang are there, and that Mike Clinch and his gang have them stopped on the other side! Keep your eye on Harrod Place!"

And away he cantered into the North.

* * * * *

Behind the curtains of her open window Eve Strayer, lying on her bed, had heard every word.

Crouched there beside her pillow she peered out and saw Trooper Lannis ride away; saw the Fry boy start toward Harrow Place on a run; saw Ralph Wier watch them out of sight and then turn and re-enter the lodge.

Wrapped in Darragh's big blanket robe she got off the bed and opened her chamber door as Wier was passing through the living-room.

"Please -- I'd like to speak to you a moment," she called.

Wier turned instantly and came to the partly open door.

"I want to know," she said, "where I am."

"Ma'am?"

"What is this place?"

"It's a hatchery----"

"Whose?"

"Ma'am?"

"Whose lodge is this? Does it belong to Harrod Place?"

"We're h-hootch runners, Miss----" stammered Wier, mindful of instructions, but making a poor business of deception; "-- I and Hal Smith, we run a `Easy One,' and we strip trout for a blind and sell to Harrod Place -- Hal and I----"

"_Who_ is Hal Smith?" she asked.

"Ma'am?"

The girl's flower-blue eyes turned icy: "Who is the man who calls himself Hal Smith?" she repeated.

Wier looked at her, red and dumb.

"Is he a Trooper in plain clothes?" she demanded in a bitter voice. "Is he one of the Commissioner's spies? Are _you_ one, too?"

Wier gazed miserably at her, unable to formulate a convincing lie.

She flushed swiftly as a terrible suspicion seized her:

"Is this Harrod property? Is Hal Smith old Harrod's heir? _Is_ he?"

"My God, Miss----"

"He _is!_"

"Listen, Miss----"

She flung open the door and came out into the living-room.

"Hal Smith is that nephew of old Harrod," she said calmly. "His name is Darragh. And you are one of his wardens. ... And I can't stay here. Do you understand?"

Wier wiped his hot face and waited. The cat was out; there was a hole in the bag; and he knew there was no use in such lies as he could tell.

He said: "All I know, Miss, is that I was to look after you and get you whatever you want----"

"I want my clothes!"

"Ma'am?"

"My _clothes!_" she repeated impatiently. "I've _got_ to have them!"

"Where are they, ma'am?" asked the bewildered man.

At the same moment the girl's eyes fell on a pile of men's sporting clothing -- garments sent down from Harrod Place to the Lodge -- lying on a leather lounge near a gun-rack.

Without a glance at Wier, Eve went to the heap of clothing, tossed it about, selected cords, two pairs of woollen socks, grey shirt, puttees, shoes, flung the garments through the door into her own room followed them, and locked herself in.

* * * * *

When she was dressed -- the two heavy of socks helping to fit her feet to the shoes -- she emptied her handful of diamonds, sapphires and emeralds, including the Flaming Jewel, into the pockets of her breeches.

Now she was ready. She unlocked her door and went out, scarcely limping at all, now.

Wier gazed at her helplessly as she coolly chose a rifle and cartridge-belt at the gun-rack.

Then she turned on him as still and dangerous as a young puma:

"Tell Darragh he'd better keep clear of Clinch's," she said. "Tell him I always thought he was a rat. Now I know he's one."

She plunged one slim hand into her pocket and drew out a diamond.

"Here," she said insolently. "This will pay your _gentleman_ for his gun and clothing."

She tossed the gem onto a table, where it rolled, glittering.

"For heaven's sake, Miss----" burst out Wier, horrified, but she cut him short:

"-- He may keep the change," she said. "We're no swindlers at Clinch's Dump!"

Wier started forward as though to intercept her. Eve's eyes flamed. And he stood still. She wrenched open the door and walked out among the silver birches.

At the edge of the brook she stood a moment, coolly loading the magazine of her rifle. Then, with one swift glance of hatred, flung at the place that Harrod's money had built, she sprang across the brook, tossed her rifle to her shoulder, and passed lithely into the golden wilderness of poplar and silver birch.

* * * * *

II

Quintana, on a fox-trot along the rock-trail into Drowned Valley, now thoroughly understood that it was the only sanctuary left him for the moment. Egress to the southward was closed; to the eastward, also; and he was too wary to venture westward toward Ghost Lake.

No, the only temporary safety lay in the swamps of Drowned Valley.

And there, he decided as he jogged along, if worse came to worst and starvation drove him out, he'd settle matters with Mike Clinch and break through to the north.

He meant to settle matters with Mike Clinch anyway. He was not afraid of Clinch; not really afraid of anybody. It had been the dogs that demoralised Quintana. He'd had no experience with hunting hounds, -- did not know what to expect, -- how to manoeuvre. If only he could have _seen_ these beasts that filled the forest with their hob-goblin outcries -- if he could have had a good look at the creatures who gave forth that weird, crazed, melancholy volume of sound!---

"Bon!" he said coolly to himself. "It was a crisis of nerves which I experience. yes. ... I should have shot him, that fat Sard. Yes. ... Only those damn dog---- And now he shall die an' rot -- that fat Sard -- all by himse'f, parbleu! -- like one big dead thing all alone in the wood. ... A puddle of guts full of diamonds! Ah! -- mon dieu! -- a million francs in gems that shine like festering stars in this damn wood till the world end. Ah, bah -- nome de dieu de----"

"Halte la!" came a sharp voice from the cedar fringe in front. A pause, then recognition; and Henri Picquet walked out on the hard ridge beyond and stood leaning on his rifle and looking sullenly at his leader.

Quintana came forward, carelessly, a disagreeable expression in his eyes and on his narrow lips, and continued on pas Picquet.

The latter slouched after his leader, who had walked over to the lean-to before which a pile of charred logs lay in cold ashes.

As Picquet came up, Quintana turned on him, with a gesture toward the extinguished fire: "It is cold like hell," he said. "Why do you not have some fire?"

"Not for me, non." growled Picquet, and jerked a dirty thumb in the direction of the lean-to.

And there Quintana saw a pair of muddy boots protruding from a blanket.

"It is Harry Beck, yes?" he inquired. Then _something_ about the boots and blanket silenced him. He kept his eyes on them for a full minute, then walked into the lean-to. The blanket also covered Harry Beck's features and there was a stain on it where it outlined the prostrate man's features, making a ridge over the bony nose.

After a moment Quintana looked around at Picquet:

"So. He is dead. Yes?"

Picquet shrugged: "Since noon, mon capitaine."

"Comment?"

"How shall I know. It was the fire, perhaps, -- green wood or wet -- it is no matter now. ... I said to him, `Pay attention, Henri; your wood makes too much smoke.' To me he reply I shall go to hell. ... Well, there was too much smoke for me. I arise to search for wood more dry, when, crack! -- they begin to shoot out there----" He waved a dirty hand toward the forest.

"`Bon,' said I, `Clinch, he have seen your damn smoke!'

"`What shall I care?' he make reply, Henri Beck, to me. `Clinch he shall shoot and be damn to him. I cook me my dejeuner all the same.'

"I make representations to that Johnbull; he say to me that I am a frog, and other injuries, while he lay yet more wood on his sacre fire.

"Then crack! crack! crack! and zing-gg! -- whee-ee! come the big bullets of Clinch and his voyous yonder.

"`Bon,' I say, `me, I make my excuse to retire.'

"Then Henri Beck he laugh and he say, `Hop it, frog!' And that is all he has find time to say, when crack! spat! Bien droit he has it -- tenez, mon capitaine -- here, over the left eye! ... Like a beef surprise he go over, crash! thump! And like a beef that dies, the air bellows out from his big lungs----"

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

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

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

Then he divested himself of the basket-pack which he had stolen from the Fry boy.

"Alors," he said calmly, "it has been Mike Clinch who shoot my frien' Beck. Bien."

He threw a cartridge into the breech of his rifle, adjusted his ammunition belt _en bandouliere,_ carelessly.

Then, in a quiet voice: "My frien' Picquet, the time has now arrive when it become ver' necessary that we go from here away. Done -- I shall no go kill me my frien' Mike Clinch."

Picquet, unastonished, gave him a heavy, bovine look of inquiry.

Quintana said softly: "Me, I have enough already of this damn woods. Why shall we starve here when there lies our path?" He pointed north; his arm remained outstretched for a while.

"Clinch, he is there," growled Picquet.

"Also our path, l'ami Henri. ... And, behind us, they hunt us now with _dogs._"

Picquet bared his big white teeth in fierce surprise. "Dogs?" he repeated with a sort of snarl.

"That is how they now hunt us, my frien' -- like they hunt the hare in the Cote d'Or. ... Me, I shall now reconnoitre -- _that_ way!" And he looked where he was pointing, into the north -- with smouldering eyes. Then he turned calmly to Picquet: "An' you, l'ami?"

"At orders, mon capitaine."

"C'est bien. Venez."

They walked leisurely forward with rifles shouldered, following the hard ridge out across a vast and flooded land where the bark of trees glimmered with wet mosses.

After a quarter of a mile the ridge broadened and split into two, one hog-back branching northeast! They, however, continued north.

About twenty minutes later Picquet, creeping along on Quintana's left, and some sixty yards distant, discovered something moving in the woods beyond, and fired at it. Instantly two unseen rifles spoke from the woods ahead. Picquet was jerked clear around, lost his balance and nearly fell. Blood was spurting from his right arm, between elbow and shoulder.

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

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

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

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

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

Them Jim Hastings, kneeling behind a bunch of juniper, fired a high-velocity bullet into the tree behind which Quintana stood; but before he could fire again Quintana's shot in reply came ripping through the juniper and tore a ghastly hole in the calf of his left leg, striking a blow that knocked young Hastings flat and paralysed as a dead flounder.

A mile to the north, blocking the other exit from Drowned Valley, Mike Clinch, Harve Chase, Cornelius Blommers, and Dick Berry stood listening to the shooting.

"B'gosh," blurted out Chase, "it sounds like they was goin' through, Mike. B'gosh, it does!"

Clinch's little pale eyes blazed, but he said in his soft, agreeable voice:

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

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

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

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

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

Presently two shots came from the south. A pause; a rattle of shots from hastily emptied magazines.

"G'wan down there, Dick!" said Clinch.

"You'll be alone, Mike----"

"Au right. You do like I say; git along quick!"

Berry walked southward a little way. He had turned very white under his tan.

"Gol ding ye!" shouted Clinch, "take it on a lope or I'll kick the pants off'n ye!"

Berry began to run, carrying his rifle at a trail.

For half an hour there was not a sound in the forests of Drowned Valley except in the dead timber where unseen woodpeckers hammered fitfully at the ghosts of ancient trees.

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

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

"All I want God should do," he repeated again and again, "is to just let Quintana come _my_ way. 'Tain't for because he robbed my girlie. 'Tain't for the stuff he carries onto him. ... No, God, 'tain't them things. But it's what that there skunk done to my Evie. ... O God, be you listenin'? He _hurt_ her, Quintana did. That's it. He misused her. ... God, if you had seen my girlie's little bleeding feet!---- _That's_ the reason. ... 'Tain't the stuff. I can work. I can save for to make my Evie a lady same's them high-steppers on Fifth Avenoo. I can moil and toil and slave an' run hootch -- hootch---- They wuz wine 'n' fixin's into the Bible. It ain't you, God, it's them fanatics. ... Nobody in my Dump wanted I should sell 'em more'n a bottle o' beer before this here prohybishun set us all crazy. 'Tain't right. ... O God, don't hold a little hootch agin me when all I want of you is to let Quintana----"

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

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

"Dad, darling?"

"Yes, my baby---"

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

"Have the boys below got him?" he demanded.

"They got one of his gang. Byron Hastings is dead. Jim is badly hurt: Sid Hone, too, -- not so badly----"

"Where's Quintana?"

"Dad, he's gone. ... But it don't matter. See here!----" She dug her slender hand into her breeches pocket and pulled out a little fistful of gems.

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

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

"'Tain't them that matter. ... I'm glad you got 'em. I allus wanted you should be a great lady, girlie. Them's the ticket of admission. You put them in your pants. I gotta stay here a spell---"

"Dad! Take them!"

He took them, smiled, shoved them into his pocket.

"What is it, girlie?" he asked absently, his pale eyes searching the woods ahead.

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

Clinch said, -- not removing his eyes from the forest: "If any o' them boys has let Quintana crawl through I'll kill _him,_ too. ... G'wan home, girlie. I gotta mosey -- I gotta kinda loaf around f'r a spell----"

"Dad, I want you to come back with me---"

"You go home; you hear me, Eve? Tell Corny and Dick Berry to hook it for Owl Marsh and stop the Star Peak trails -- both on 'em. ... Can Sid and Jimmy walk?"

"Jim can't---"

"Well, let Harve take him on his back. You go too. You help fix Jimmy up at the house. He's a little fella, Jimmy Hastings is. Harve can tote him. And you go along----"

"Dad, Quintana says he means to kill you! What is the use of hurting him? You have what he took----"

"I gotta have more'n he took. But even that ain't enough. He couldn't pay for all he ever done to me, girlie. ... I'm aimin' to draw him on sight---"

Clinch's set visage relaxed into an alarming smile which flickered, faded, died in the wintry ferocity of his eyes.

"Dad----"

"G'wan home!" he interrupted harshly. "You want that Hastings boy to bleed to death?"

She came up to him, not uttering a word, yet asking him with all the tenderness and eloquence of her eyes to leave this blood-trail where it lay and hunt no more.

He kissed her mouth, infinitely tender, smiled; then, again prim and scowling:

"G'wan home, you little scut, an' do what I told ye, or, by God, I'll cut a switch that'll learn ye good! Never a word, now! On yer way! G'wan!"

* * * * *

Twice she turned to look back. The second time, Clinch was slowly walking into the woods straight ahead of him. She waited; saw him go in; waited. After a while she continued on her way.

When she sighted the men below she called to Blommers and Dick Berry:

"Dad says you're to stop Star Peak trail by Owl Marsh."

Jimmy Hastings sat on a log, crying and looking down at his dead brother, over whose head somebody had spread a coat.

Blommers had made a tourniquet for Jimmy out of a bandanna and a peeled stick.

The girl examined it, loosened it for a moment, twisted it again, and bade Harvey Chase take him on his back and start for Clinch's.

The boy began to sob that he didn't want his brother to be left out there all alone; but Chase promised to come back and bring him in before night.

Sid Hone came up, haggard from pain and loss of blood, resting his mangled hand in the sling of his cartridge-belt.

Berry and Blommers were already starting across toward Owl Marsh; and the latter, passing by, asked Eve where Mike was.

"He went into Drowned Valley by the upper outlet," she said.