I
Mike Clinch and his men "drove" Star Peak, and drew a blanket covert.
There was a new shanty atop, camp debris, plenty of signs of recent
occupation everywhere,--hot embers in which offal still smouldered,
bottles odorous of claret dregs, and an aluminum culinary outfit,
unwashed, as though Quintana and his men had departed in haste.
Far in the still valley below, Mike Clinch squatted beside the runway he
had chosen, a cocked rifle across his knees.
The glare in his small, pale eyes waned and flared as distant sounds
broke the forest silence, grew vague, died out,--the fairy clatter of a
falling leaf, the sudden scurry of a squirrel, a feathery rustle of
swift wings in play or combat, the soft crash of a rotten bough sagging
earthward to enrich the soil that grew it.
And, as Clinch squatted there, murderously intent, ever the fixed
obsession burned in his fever brain, stirring his thin lips to incessant
muttering,--a sort of soundless invocation, part chronicle, part prayer:
"O God A'mighty, in your big, swell mansion up there, all has went
contrary with me sence you let that there damn millionaire, Harrod, come
into this here forest.... He went and built unto hisself an
habitation, and he put up a wall of law all around me where I was
earnin' a lawful livin' in Thy nice, clean wilderness.... And now comes
this here Quintana and robs my girlie.... I promised her mother I'd
make a lady of her little Eve.... I loved my wife, O Lord.... Once she
showed me a piece in the Bible,--I ain't never found it sence,--but it
said: 'And the woman she fled into the wilderness where there was a
place prepared for her of God.' ... That's what _you_ wrote into your
own Bible, O God! You can't go back on it. I seen it.
"And now I wanta to ask, What place did you prepare for my Eve? What
spot have you reference to? You didn't mean my 'Dump,' did you? Why,
Lord, that ain't no place for no lady.... And now Quintana has went and
robbed me of what I'd saved up for Eve.... Does that go with Thee, O
Lord? No, it don't. And it don't go with me, neither. I'm a-goin' to git
Quintana. Then I'm a-goin' to git them two minks that robbed my
girlie,--I am!... Jake Kloon, he done it in cahoots with Earl Leverett;
and Quintana set 'em on. And they gotta die, O Lord of Israel, them
there Egyptians is about to hop the twig.... I ain't aimin' to be mean
to nobody. I buy hootch of them that runs it. I eat mountain mutton in
season and out. I trade with law-breakers, I do. But, Lord, I gotta get
my girlie outa here; and Harrod he walled me in with the chariots and
spears of Egypt, till I nigh went wild.... And now comes Quintana, and
here I be a-lyin' out to get him so's my girlie can become a lady,
same's them fine folks with all their butlers and automobiles and
what-not----"
A far crash in the forest stilled his twitching lips and stiffened every
iron muscle.
As he lifted his rifle, Sid Hone came into the glade.
"Yahoo! Yahoo!" he called. "Where be you, Mike?"
Clinch slowly rose, grasping his rifle, his small, grey eyes ablaze.
"Where's Quintana?" he demanded.
"H'ain't you seen nobody?"
"No."
In the intense silence other sounds broke sharply in the sunset forest;
Harvey Chase's halloo rang out from the rocks above; Blommers and the
Hastings boys came slouching through the ferns.
Byron Hastings greeted Clinch with upflung gun: "Me and Jim heard a shot
away out on Drowned Valley," he announced. "Was you out that way,
Mike?"
"No."
One by one the men who had driven Star Peak lounged up in the red sunset
light, gathering around Clinch and wiping the sweat from sun-reddened
faces.
"Someone's in Drowned Valley," repeated Byron. "Them minks slid off'n
Star in a hurry, I reckon, judgin' how they left their shanty. Phew! It
stunk! They had French hootch, too."
"Mebby Leverett and Kloon told 'em we was fixin' to visit them,"
suggested Blommers.
"They didn't know," said Clinch.
"Where's Hal Smith?" inquired Hone.
Clinch made no reply. Blommers silently gnawed a new quid from the
remains of a sticky plug.
"Well," inquired Jim Hastings finally, "do we quit, Mike, or do we
still-hunt in Drowned Valley?"
"Not me, at night," remarked Blommers drily.
"Not amongst them sink-holes," added Hone.
Suddenly Clinch turned and stared at him. Then the deadly light from his
little eyes shone on the others one by one.
"Boys," he said, "I gotta get Quintana. I can't never sleep another wink
till I get that man. Come on. Act up like gents all. Let's go."
Nobody stirred.
"Come on," repeated Clinch softly. But his lips shrank back, twitching.
As they looked at him they saw his teeth.
"All right, all right," growled Hone, shouldering his rifle with a jerk.
The Hastings boys, young and rash, shuffled into the trail. Blommers
hesitated, glanced askance at Clinch, and instantly made up his mind to
take a chance with the sink-holes rather than with Clinch.
"God A'mighty, Mike, what be you aimin' to do?" faltered Harvey.
"I'm aimin' to stop the inlet and outlet to Drowned Valley, Harve,"
replied Clinch in his pleasant voice. "God is a-goin' to deliver
Quintana into my hands."
"All right. What next?"
"Then," continued Clinch, "I cal'late to set down and wait."
"How long?"
"Ask God, boys. I don't know. All I know is that whatever is livin' in
Drowned Valley at this hour has gotta live and die there. For it can't
never live to come outen that there morass walkin' onto two legs like a
real man."
He moved slowly along the file of sullen men, his rifle a-trail in one
huge fist.
"Boys," he said, "I got first. There ain't no sink-hole deep enough to
drowned me while Eve needs me.... And my little girlie needs me bad....
After she gits what's her'n, then I don't care no more...." He looked up
into the sky, where the last ashes of sunset faded from the zenith....
"Then I don't care," he murmured. "Like's not I'll creep away like some
shot-up critter, n'kinda find some lone, safe spot, n'kinda fix me f'r
a long nap.... I guess that'll be the way ... when Eve's a lady down to
Noo York 'r'som'ers----" he added vaguely.
Then, still looking up at the fading heavens, he moved forward, head
lifted, silent, unhurried, with the soundless, stealthy, and certain
tread of those who walk unseeing and asleep.