* * * * *
I
Toward noon the wind changed, and about one o'clock it began to snow.
Eve, exhausted, lay on the sofa in her bedroom. Her step-father lay on
a table in the dance hall below, covered by a sheet from his own bed.
And beside him sat Trooper Stormont, waiting.
It was snowing heavily when Mr. Lyken, the little undertaker from Ghost
Lake, arrived with several assistants, a casket, and what he called
"swell trimmings."
Long ago Mike Clinch had selected his own mortuary site and had driven a
section of iron pipe into the ground on a ferny knoll overlooking Star
Pond. In explanation he grimly remarked to Eve that after death he
preferred to be planted where he could see that Old Harrod's ghost
didn't trespass.
Here two of Mr. Lyken's able assistants dug a grave while the digging
was still good; for it Mike Clinch was to lie underground that season
there might be need of haste -- no weather prophet ever having
successfully forecast Adirondack weather.
Eve, exhausted by shock an a sleepless night, was spared the more
harrowing details of the coroner's visit and the subsequent jaunty
activities of Mr. Lyken and his efficient assistants.
She had managed to dress herself in a black wool gown, intending to
watch by Mike, but Stormont's blunt authority prevailed and she lay down
for an hour's rest.
The hour lengthened into many hours; the girl slept heavily on her sofa
under blankets laid over her by Stormont.
All that dark, snowy day she slept, mercifully unconscious of the
proceedings below.
In its own mysterious way the news penetrated the wilderness; and out of
the desolation of forest and swamp and mountain drifted the people who
somehow existed there -- a few shy, half wild young girls, a dozen
silent, lank men, two or three of Clinch's own people, who stood
silently about in the falling snow and lent a hand whenever requested.
One long shanked youth cut hemlock to line the grave; others erected a
little fence of silver birch around it, making of the enclosure a
"plot."
A gaunt old woman from God knows where aided Mr. Lyken at intervals: a
pretty, sulky-eyed girl with her slovenly, red-headed sister cooked for
anybody who desired nourishment.
When Mike was ready to hold the inevitable reception everybody filed
into the dance hall. Mr. Lyken was master of ceremonies: Trooper
Stormont stood very tall and straight by the head of the casket.
Clinch wore a vague, indefinable smile and his best clothes, -- that
same smile which had so troubled Jose Quintana.
Light was fading fast in the room when the last visitor took silent
leave of Clinch and rejoined the groups in the kitchen, where were the
funeral baked meats.
Eve still slept. Descending again from his reconnaissance, Trooper
Stormont encountered Trooper Lannis below.
"Has anybody picked up Quintana's tracks?" inquired the former.
"Not so far. An Inspector and two state Game Protectors are out beyond
Owl Marsh. The Troopers from Five Lakes are on the job, and we have
enforcement men along Drowned Valley from The Scaur to Harrod Place."
"Does Darragh know?"
"Yes. He's in there with Mike. He brought a lot of flowers from Harrod
Place."
The two troopers went into the dance hall where Darragh was arranging
the flowers from his greenhouses.
Stormont said quietly: "All right, Jim, but Eve must not know that they
came from Harrod's."