Complete weird tales of.., p.1178
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 1178
“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.
“He’ll never find no one in them logans an’ sinks,” muttered Chase, squatting to hoist Jimmy Hastings to his broad back.
“I guess he’ll be over Star Peak side by sundown,” nodded Blommers.
Eve watched him slouching off into the woods, followed sullenly by
Berry. Then she looked down at the dead man in silence.
“Be you ready, Eve?” grunted Chase.
She turned with a heavy heart to the home trail; but her mind was passionately with Clinch in the spectral forests of Drowned Valley.
* * * * *
II
And Clinch’s mind was on her. All else — his watchfulness, his stealthy advance — all the alertness of eye and ear, all the subtlety, the cunning, the infinite caution — were purely instinctive mechanics.
Somewhere in this flooded twilight of gigantic trees was Jose Quintana. Knowing that, he dismissed that fact from his mind and turned his thoughts to Eve.
Sometimes his lips moved. They usually did when he was arguing with God or calling his Creator’s attention to the justice of his case. His two cases — each, to him, a cause celebre; the matter of Harrod; the affair of Quintana.
Many a time he had pleaded these two causes before the Most High.
But now his thoughts were chiefly concerned with Eve — with the problem of her future — his master passion — this daughter of the dead wife he had loved.
He sighed unconsciously; halted.
“Well, Lord,” he concluded, in his wordless way, “my girlie has gotta have a chance if I gotta go to hell for it. That’s sure as shootin’. … Amen.”
At that instant he saw Quintana.
Recognition was instant and mutual. Neither man stirred. Quintana was standing beside a giant hemlock. His pack lay at his feet.
Clinch had halted — always the mechanics! — close to a great ironwood tree.
Probably both men knew that they could cover themselves before the other moved a muscle. Clinch’s small, light eyes were blazing; Quintana’s black eyes had become two slits.
Finally: “You — dirty — skunk,” drawled Clinch in his agreeably misleading voice, “by Jesus Christ I got you now.”
“Ah — h,” said Quintana, “thees has happen ver’ nice like I expec’. … Always I say myse’f, yet a little patience, Jose, an’ one day you shall meet thees fellow Clinch, who has rob you. … I am ver’ thankful to the good God — —”
He had made the slightest of movements: instantly both men were behind their trees. Clinch, in the ferocious pride of woodcraft, laughed exultingly — filled the dim and spectral forest with his roar of laughter.
“Quintana,” he called out, “you’re a-going to cash in. Savvy? You’re a-going to hop off. An’ first you gotta hear why. ‘Tain’t for the stuff. Naw! I hooked it off’n you; you hooked it off’n me; now I got it again. That’s all square. … No, ‘tain’t that grudge, you green-livered whelp of a cross-bred, still-born slut! No! It’s becuz you laid the heft o’ your dirty little finger onto my girlie. ‘N’ now you gotta hop!”
Quintana’s sinister laughter was his retort. Then: “You damfool Clinch,” he said. “I got in my pocket what you rob of me. Now I kill you, and then I feel ver’ well. I go home, live like some kings; yes. But you,” he sneered, “you shall not go home never no more. No. You shall remain in thees damn wood like ver’ dead old rat that is all wormy. … He! I got a million dollaire — five million franc in my pocket. You shall learn what it cost to rob Jose Quintana! Understan’?”
“You liar,” said Clinch contemptuously, “I got them jools in my pants pocket. — —”
Quintana’s derisive laugh cu him short: “I give you thee Flaming Jewel if you show me you got my gems in you pants pocket!”
“I’ll show you. Lay down your rifle so’s I see the stock.”
“First you, my frien’ Mike,” said Quintana cautiously.
Clinch took his rifle by the muzzle and shoved the stock into view so that Quintana could see it without moving.
To his surprise, Quintana did the same, then coolly stepped a pace outside the shelter of his hemlock stump.
“You show me now!” he called across the swamp.
Clinch stepped into view, dug into his pocket, and, cupping both hands, displayed a glittering heap of gems.
“I wanted you should know who’s gottem” he said, “before you hop. It’ll give you something to think over in hell.”
Quintana’s eyes had become slits again. Neither man stirred. Then:
“So you are a buzzard, eh, Clinch? You feed on dead man’s pockets, eh? You find Sard somewhere an’ you feed.” He held up the morocco case, emblazoned with the arms of the Grand Duchess of Esthonia, and shook it at Clinch.
“In there is my share. … Not all. Ver’ quick, now, I take yours, too — —”
Clinch vanished and so did his rifle; and Quintana’s first bullet struck the moss where the stock had rested.
“You black crow!” jeered Clinch, laughing, “ — I need that empty case of yours. And I’m going after it. … But it’s because your filthy claw touched my girlie that you gotta hop!”
Twilight lay over the phantom wood, touching with pallid tints the flooded forest.
So far only that one shot had been fired. Both men were still manoeuvering, always creeping in circles and always lining some great tree for shelter.
Now, the gathering dusk was making them bolder and swifter; and twice, already, Clinch caught the shadow of a fading edge of something that vanished against the shadows too swiftly for a shot.
Now Quintana, keeping a tree in line, brushed with his little back a leafy moose-bush that stood swaying as he avoided it.
Instantly a stealthy hope seized him: he slipped out of his coat, spread it on the bush, set the naked branches swaying, and darted to his tree.
Waiting, he saw that grey blot his coat made in the dusk was still moving a little — just vibrating a little bit in the twilight. He touched the bush with his rifle barrel, then crouched almost flat.
Suddenly the red crash of a rifle lit up Clinch’s visage for a fraction of a second. And Quintana’s bullet smashed Clinch between the eyes.
* * * * *
After a long while Quintana ventured to rise and creep forward.
Night, too, came creeping like an assassin amid the ghostly trees.
So twilight died in the stillness of Drowned Valley and the pall of night lay over all things, — living and dead alike.
* * * * *
Episode Eleven
The Place Of Pines
* * * * *
I
The last sound that Mike Clinch heard on earth was the detonation of his own rifle. Probably it was an agreeable sound to him. He lay there with a pleasant expression on his massive features. His watch had fallen out of his pocket.
Quintana shined him with an electric torch; picked up the watch. Then, holding the torch in one hand, he went through the dead man’s pockets very thoroughly.
When Quintana had finished, both trays of the flat morocco case were full of jewels. And Quintana was full of wonder and suspicion.
Unquietly he looked upon the dead — upon the glittering contents of the jewel-box, — but always his gaze reverted to the dead. The faintest shadow of a smile edged Clinch’s lips. Quintana’s lips grew graver. He said slowly, like one who does his thinking aloud:
“What is it you have done to me, l’ami Clinch? … Are there truly two sets of precious stones? — two Flaming Jewels? — two gems of Erosite like there never has been in all thees worl’ excep’ only two more? … Or is one set false? … Have I here one set of paste facsimiles? … My frien’ Clinch, why do you lie there an’ smile at me so ver’ funny … like you are amuse? … I am wondering what you may have done to me, my frien’ Clinch. …”
For a while he remained kneeling beside the dead. Then: “Ah, bah,” he said, pocketing the morocco case and getting to his feet.
He moved a little way toward the open trail, stopped, came back, stood his rifle against a tree.
For a while he was busy with his sharp Spanish clasp knife, whittling and fitting together two peeled twigs. A cross was the ultimate result. Then he placed Clinch’s hands palm to palm upon his chest, lay the cross on his breast, and shined the result with complacency.
Then Quintana took off his hat.
“L’ami Mike,” he said, “you were a man! … Adios!”
* * * * *
Quintana put on his hat. The path was free. The world lay open before
Jose Quintana once more; — the world, his hunting ground.
“But,” he thought uneasily, “what is it that I bring home this time? How much is paste? My God, how droll that smile of Clinch. … Which is the false — his jewels or mine? Dieu que j’etais bete! —— Me who have not suspec’ that there are two trays within my jewel-box! … I unnerstan’. It is ver’ simple. In the top tray the false gems. Ah! Paste on top to deceive a thief! … Alors. … Then what I have recover of Clinch is the real! … Nom de Dieu! … I think thees dead man make mock of me — all inside himse’f — —”
So, in darkness, prowling south by west, shining the trail furtively, and loaded rifle ready, Quintana moved with stealthy, unhurried tread out of the wilderness that had trapped him and toward the tangled border of that outer world which led to safe, obscure, uncharted labyrinths — old-world mazes, immemorial hunting grounds — haunted by men who prey.
* * * * *
The night had turned frosty. Quintana, wet to the knees and very tired, moved slowly, not daring to leave the trail because of sink-holes.
However, the trail led to Clinch’s Dump, and sooner or later he must leave it.
What he had to have was a fire; he realised that. Somewhere off the trail, in big timber if possible, he must built a fire and master this deadly chill that was slowly paralysing all power of movement.
He knew that a fire in the forest, particularly in big timber, could be seen only a little way. He must take his chances with sink-holes and find some spot in the forest to build that fire.
Who could discover him except by accident?
Who would prowl the midnight wilderness? At thirty yards the fire would not be visible. And, as for the odour — well, he’d be gone before dawn. … Meanwhile, he must have that fire. He could wait no longer.
He cut a pole first. Then he left the trail where a little spring flowed west, and turned to the right, shining the forest floor as he moved and sounding with his pole every wet stretch of moss, every strip of mud, every tiniest glimmer of water.
At last he came to a place of pines, first growth giants towering into night, and, looking up, saw stars, infinitely distant. … where perhaps those things called souls drifted like wisps of vapour.
When the fire took, Quintana’s thin dark hands had become nearly useless from cold. He could not have crooked finger to trigger.
For a long time he sat close to the blaze, slowly massaging his torpid limbs, but did not dare strip off his foot-gear.
Steam rose from puttee and heavy shoe and from sodden woollen breeches. Warmth slowly penetrated. There was little smoke: the big dry branches were dead and bleached and he let the fire eat into them without using his axe.
Once or twice he signed, “Oh, my God,” in a weary demi-voice, as though the contentment of well-being were permeating him.
Later he ate and drank languidly, looking up at the stars, speculating as to the possible presence of Mike Clinch up there.
“Ah, the dirty thief,” he murmured: “ — nevertheless a man. Quel homme!
Mais bete a faire pleurer! Je l’ai bien triche, moi! Ha!”
Quintana smiled palely as he thought of the coat and the gently-swaying bush — of the red glare of Clinch’s shot, of the death-echo of his own shot.
Then, uneasy, he drew out the morocco case and gazed at the two trays full of gems.
The jewels blazed in the firelight. He touched them, moved them about, picked up several and examined them, testing the unset edges against his upper lip as an expert tests jade.
But he couldn’t tell; there was no knowing. He replaced them, closed the case, pocketed it. When he had a chance he could try boiling water for one sort of trick. He could scratch one or two. … Sard would know. He wondered whether Sard got away, not concerned except selfishly. However, there were others in Paris whom he could trust — at a price. …
Quintana rested both elbows on his knees and framed his dark face between both bony hands.
What a chase Clinch had led him after the Flaming Jewel. And now Clinch lay dead in the forest — faintly smiling. At what?
In a very low, passionless voice, Quintana cursed monotonously as he gazed into the fire. In Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian, he cursed Clinch. After a little while he remembered Clinch’s daughter, and he cursed her, elaborately, thoroughly, wishing her black mischance awake and asleep, living or dead.
Darragh, too, he remembered in his curses, and did not slight him. And the trooper, Stormont — ah, he should have killed all of them when he had the chance. … And those two Baltic Russians, also the girl duchess and her friend. Why on earth hadn’t he made a clean job of it? Overcaution. A wary disinclination to stir up civilization by needless murder. But after all, old maxims, old beliefs, old truths are the best, God knows. The dead don’t talk! And that’s the wisest wisdom of all.
“If,” murmured Quintana fervently, “God gives me further opportunity to acquire a little property to comfort me in my old age, I shall leave no gossiping fool to do me harm with his tongue. No! I kill.
“And though they raise a hue and cry, dead tongues can not wag and I save myse’f much annoyance in the end.”
He leaned his back against the trunk of a massive pine.
Presently Quintana slept after his own fashion — that is to say, looking closely at him one could discover a glimmer under his lowered eyelids. And he listened always in that kind of sleep. As though a shadowy part of him were detached from his body, and mounted to guard over it.
The inaudible movement of a wood-mouse venturing into the firelit circle awoke Quintana. Again a dropping leaf amid distant birches awoke him. Such things. And so he slept with wet feet to the fire and his rifle across his knees; and dreamed of Eve and of murder, and that the Flaming Jewel was but a mass of glass.
* * * * *
At that moment the girl whose white throat Quintana was dreaming, and whining faintly in his dreams, stood alone outside Clinch’s Dump, rifle in hand, listening, fighting the creeping dread that touched her slender body at times — seemed to touch her very heart with frost.
Clinch’s men had gone on to Ghost Lake with their wounded and dead, where there was fitter shelter for both. All had gone on; nobody remained to await Clinch’s homecoming except Eve Strayer.
Black Care, that tireless squire of dames, had followed her from the time she had left Clinch, facing the spectral forests of Drowned Valley.
An odd, unusual dread weighted her heart — something in emotions that she never before had experienced in time of danger. In it there was the deathly unease of premonition. But of what it was born she did not understand, — perhaps of the strain of dangers passed — of the shock of discovery concerning Smith’s identity with Darragh — Darragh! — the hated kinsman of Harrod the abhorred.
Fiercely she wondered how much her lover knew about this miserable masquerade. Was Stormont involved in this deception — Stormont, the object of her first girl’s passion — Stormont, for whom she would have died?
Wretched, perplexed, fiercely enraged at Darragh, deadly anxious concerning Clinch, she had gone about cooking supper.
The supper, kept warm on the range, still awaited the man who had no more need of meat and drink.
* * * * *
Of the tragedy of Sard Eve knew nothing. There was no traces save the disorder in the pantry and the bottles and chair on the veranda.
Who had visited the place excepting those from whom she and Stormont had fled, did not appear. She had no idea why her step-father’s mattress and bed-quilt lay in the pantry.
Her heart heavy with ceaseless anxiety, Eve carried mattress and bed-clothes to Clinch’s chamber, re-made his bed, wandered through the house setting it in order; then, in the kitchen, seated herself and waited until the strange dread that possessed her drove her out into the starlight to stand and listen and stare at the dark forest where all her dread seemed concentrated.
