Complete weird tales of.., p.1161
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 1161
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.
