I
The soft, bluish forest shadows had lengthened, and the barred sun-rays,
filtering through, were tinged with a rosy hue before Jake Kloon, the
hootch runner, and Earl Leverett, trap thief, came to Drowned Valley.
They were still a mile distant from the most southern edge of that vast
desolation, but already tamaracks appeared in the beauty of their burnt
gold; little pools glimmered here and there; patches of amber sphagnum
and crimson pitcher-plants became frequent; and once or twice Kloon's
big boots broke through the crust of fallen leaves, soaking him to the
ankles with black silt.
Leverett, always a coward, had pursued his devious and larcenous way
through the world, always in deadly fear of sink holes.
His movements and paths were those of a weasel, preferring always solid
ground; but he lacked the courage of that sinuous little beast, though
he possessed all of its ferocity and far more cunning.
Now trotting lightly and tirelessly in the broad and careless spoor of
Jake Kloon, his narrow, pointed head alert, and every fear-sharpened
instinct tensely observant, the trap-thief continued to meditate murder.
Like all cowards, he had always been inclined to bold and ruthless
action; but inclination was all that ever had happened.
Yet, even in his pitiable misdemeanours he slunk through life in terror
of that strength which never hesitates at violence. In his petty
pilfering he died a hundred deaths for every trapped mink or otter he
filched; he heard the game protector's tread as he slunk from the bagged
trout brook or crawled away, belly dragging, and pockets full of snared
grouse.
Always he had dreamed of the day when, through some sudden bold and
savage stroke, he could deliver himself from a life of fear and live in
a city, grossly, replete with the pleasures of satiation, never again to
see a tree or a lonely lake or the blue peaks which, always, he had
hated because they seemed to spy on him from their sky-blue heights.
They were spying on him now as he moved lightly, furtively at Jake
Kloon's heels, meditating once more that swift, bold stroke which
forever would free him from all care and fear.
He looked at the back of Kloon's massive head. One shot would blow that
skull into fragments, he thought, shivering.
One shot from behind,--and twenty thousand dollars,--or, if it proved a
better deal, the contents of the packet. For, if Quintana's bribery had
dazzled them, what effect might the contents of that secret packet have
if revealed?
Always in his mean and busy brain he was trying to figure to himself
what that packet must contain. And, to make the bribe worth while,
Leverett had concluded that only a solid packet of thousand-dollar bills
could account for the twenty thousand offered.
There might easily be half a million in bills pressed together in that
heavy, flat packet. Bills were absolutely safe plunder. But Kloon had
turned a deaf ear to his suggestions,--Kloon, who never entertained
ambitions beyond his hootch rake-off,--whose miserable imagination
stopped at a wretched percentage, satisfied.
One shot! There was the back of Kloon's bushy head. One shot!--and fear,
which had shadowed him from birth, was at an end forever. Ended, too,
privation,--the bitter rigour of black winters; scorching days; bodily
squalor; ills that such as he endured in a wilderness where, like other
creatures of the wild, men stricken died or recovered by chance alone.
A single shot would settle all problems for him.... But if he missed?
At the mere idea he trembled as he trotted on, trying to tell himself
that he couldn't miss. No use; always the coward's "if" blocked him; and
the coward's rage,--fiercest of all fury,--ravaged him, almost crazing
him with his own impotence.
* * * * *
Tamaracks, sphagnum, crimson pitcher-plants grew thicker; wet woods set
with little black pools stretched away on every side.
It was still nearly a mile from Drowned Valley when Jake Kloon halted in
his tracks and seated himself on a narrow ridge of hard ground. And
Leverett came lightly up and, after nosing the whole vicinity, sat down
cautiously where Kloon would have to turn partly around to look at him.
"Where the hell do we meet up with Quintana?" growled Kloon, tearing a
mouthful from a gnawed tobacco plug and shoving the remainder deep into
his trousers pocket.
"We gotta travel a piece, yet.... Say, Jake, be you a man or be you a
poor dumb critter what ain't got no spunk?"
Kloon, chewing on his cud, turned and glanced at him. Then he spat, as
answer.
"If you got the spunk of a chipmunk you and me'll take a peek at that
there packet. I bet you it's thousand-dollar bills--more'n a billion
million dollars, likely."
Kloon's dogged silence continued. Leverett licked his dry lips. His
rifle lay on his knees. Almost imperceptibly he moved it, moved it
again, froze stiff as Kloon spat, then, by infinitesimal degrees,
continued to edge the muzzle toward Kloon.
"Jake?"
"Aw, shut your head," grumbled Kloon disdainfully. "You allus was a
dirty rat--you sneakin' trap robber. Enough's enough. I ain't got no use
for no billion million dollar bills. Ten thousand'll buy me all I
cal'late to need till I'm planted. But you're like a hawg; you ain't
never had enough o' nothin' and you won't never git enough,
neither,--not if you wuz God a'mighty you wouldn't."
"Ten thousand dollars hain't nothin' to a billion million, Jake."
Kloon squirted a stream of tobacco at a pitcher plant and filled the
cup. Diverted and gratified by the accuracy of his aim, he took other
shots at intervals.
Leverett moved the muzzle of his rifle a hair's width to the left,
shivered, moved it again. Under his soggy, sun-tanned skin a
pallor made his visage sickly grey.
"Jake?"
No answer.
"Say, Jake?"
No notice.
"Jake, I wanta take a peek at them bills."
Merely another stream of tobacco soiling the crimson pitcher.
"I'm--I'm desprit. I gotta take a peek. I gotta--gotta----"
Something in Leverett's unsteady voice made Kloon turn his head.
"You gol rammed fool," he said, "what you doin' with your----"
The loud detonation of the rifle punctuated Kloon's inquiry with a final
period. The big, soft-nosed bullet struck him full in the face, spilling
his brains and part of his skull down his back, and knocking him flat as
though he had been clubbed.
Leverett, stunned, sat staring, motionless, clutching the rifle from the
muzzle of which a delicate stain of vapour floated and disappeared
through a rosy bar of sunshine.
In the intense stillness of the place, suddenly the dead man made a
sound; and the trap-robber nearly fainted.
But it was only air escaping from the slowly collapsing lungs; and
Leverett, ashy pale, shaking, got to his feet and leaned heavily against
an oak tree, his eyes never stirring from the sprawling thing on the
ground.
* * * * *
If it were a minute or a year he stood there he could never have
reckoned the space of time. The sun's level rays glimmered ruddy through
the woods. A green fly appeared, buzzing about the dead man. Another
zig-zagged through the sunshine, lacing it with streaks of greenish
fire. Others appeared, whirling, gyrating, filling the silence with
their humming. And still Leverett dared not budge, dared not search the
dead and take from it that for which the dead had died.
A little breeze came by and stirred the bushy hair on Kloon's head and
fluttered the ferns around him where he lay.
Two delicate, pure-white butterflies--rare survivors of a native species
driven from civilization into the wilderness by the advent of the
foreign white--fluttered in airy play over the dead man, drifting away
into the woodland at times, yet always returning to wage a fairy combat
above the heap of soiled clothing which once had been a man.
Then, near in the ferns, the withering fronds twitched, and a red
squirrel sprung his startling alarm, squeaking, squealing, chattering
his opinion of murder; and Leverett, shaking with the shock, wiped icy
sweat from his face, laid aside his rifle, and took his first stiff step
toward the dead man.
But as he bent over he changed his mind, turned, reeling a little, then
crept slowly out among the pitcher-plants, searching about him as though
sniffing.
In a few minutes he discovered what he was looking for; took his
bearings; carefully picked his way back over a leafy crust that trembled
under his cautious tread.
He bent over Kloon and, from the left inside coat pocket, he drew the
packet and placed it inside his own flannel shirt.
Then, turning his back to the dead, he squatted down and clutched
Kloon's burly ankles, as a man grasps the handles of a wheelbarrow to
draw it after him.
Dragging, rolling, bumping over roots, Jake Kloon took his last trail
through the wilderness, leaving a redder path than was left by the
setting sun through fern and moss and wastes of pitcher-plants.
Always, as Leverett crept on, pulling the dead behind him, the floor of
the woods trembled slightly, and a black ooze wet the crust of withered
leaves.
At the quaking edge of a little pool of water, Leverett halted. The
water was dark but scarcely an inch deep over its black bed of silt.
Beside this sink hole the trap-thief dropped Kloon. Then he drew his
hunting knife and cut a tall, slim swamp maple. The sapling was about
twenty feet in height. Leverett thrust the butt of it into the pool.
Without any effort he pushed the entire sapling out of sight in the
depthless silt.
He had to manoeuvre very gingerly to dump Kloon into the pool and keep
out of it himself. Finally he managed it.
To his alarm, Kloon did not sink far. He cut another sapling and pushed
the body until only the shoes were visible above the silt.
These, however, were very slowly sinking, now. Bubbles rose, dully
iridescent, floated, broke. Strings of blood hung suspended in the
clouding water.
Leverett went back to the little ridge and covered with dead leaves the
spot where Kloon had lain. There were broken ferns, but he could not
straighten them. And there lay Kloon's rifle.
For a while he hesitated, his habits of economy being ingrained; but he
remembered the packet in his shirt, and he carried the rifle to the
little pool and shoved it, muzzle first, driving it downward, out of
sight.
As he rose from the pool's edge, somebody laid a hand on his shoulder.
That was the most real death that Leverett ever had died.