* * * * *
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."