For its size there is no fiercer animal than a rat.
Rat-like rage possessed Leverett. In his headlong flight through the
dusk, fear, instead of quenching, added to his rage; and he ran on and
on, crashing through the undergrowth, made wilder by the pain of vicious
blows from branches which flew back and struck him in the dark.
Thorns bled him; unseen logs tripped him; he heard Clinch's bullets
whining around him; and he ran on, beginning to sob and curse in a
frenzy of fury, fear, and shame.
Shots from Clinch's rifle ceased; the fugitive dropped into a heavy,
shuffling walk, slavering, gasping, gesticulating with his weaponless
fists in the darkness.
"Gol ram ye, I'll fix ye!" he kept stammering in his snarling, jangling
voice, broken by sobs. "I'll learn ye, yeh poor danged thing, gol ram
ye----"
An unseen limb struck him cruelly across the face, and a moose-bush
tripped him flat. Almost crazed, he got up, yelling in his pain, one
hand wet and sticky from blood welling up from his cheek-bone.
He stood listening, infuriated, vindictive, but heard nothing save the
panting, animal sounds in his own throat.
He strove to see in the ghostly obscurity around him, but could make out
little except the trees close by.
But wood-rats are never completely lost in their native darkness; and
Leverett presently discovered the far stars shining faintly through
rifts in the phantom foliage above.
These heavenly signals were sufficient to give him his directions. Then
the question suddenly came, _which_ direction?
To his own shack on Stinking Lake he dared not go. He tried to believe
that it was fear of Clinch that made him shy of the home shanty; but, in
his cowering soul, he knew it was fear of another kind--the deep,
superstitious horror of Jake Kloon's empty bunk--the repugnant sight of
Kloon's spare clothing hanging from its peg--the dead man's shoes----
No, he could not go to Stinking Lake and sleep.... And wake with the
faint stench of sulphur in his throat.... And see the worm-like leeches
unfolding in the shallows, and the big, reddish water-lizards, livid as
skinned eels, wriggling convulsively toward their sunless lairs....
At the mere thought of his dead bunk-mate he sought relief in vindictive
rage--stirred up the smouldering embers again, cursed Clinch and Hal
Smith, violently searching in his inflamed brain some instant vengeance
upon these men who had driven him out from the only place on earth where
he knew how to exist--the wilderness.
All at once he thought of Clinch's step-daughter. The thought instantly
scared him. Yet--what a revenge!--to strike Clinch through the only
creature he cared for in all the world!... What a revenge!... Clinch
was headed for Drowned Valley. Eve Strayer was alone at the Dump....
Another thought flashed like lightning across his turbid mind;--_the
packet_!
Bribed by Quintana, Jake Kloon, lurking at Clinch's door, had heard him
direct Eve to take a packet to Owl Marsh, and had notified Quintana.
Wittingly or unwittingly, the girl had taken a packet of sugar-milk
chocolate instead of the priceless parcel expected.
Again, carried in, exhausted, by a State Trooper, Jake Kloon had been
fooled; and it was the packet of sugar-milk chocolate that Jake had
purloined from the veranda where Clinch kicked it. For two cakes of
chocolate Kloon had died. For two cakes of chocolate he, Earl Leverett,
had become a man-slayer, a homeless fugitive in peril of his life.
He stood licking his blood-dried lips there in the darkness, striving to
hatch courage out of the dull fury eating at a coward's heart.
Somewhere in Clinch's Dump was the packet that would make him rich....
Here was his opportunity. He had only to dare; and pain and poverty and
fear--above all else _fear_--would end forever!...
* * * * *
When, at last, he came out to the edge of Clinch's clearing, the dark
October heavens were but a vast wilderness of stars.
Star Pond, set to its limpid depths with the heavenly gems, glittered
and darkled with its million diamond incrustations. The humped-up lump
of Clinch's Dump crouched like some huge and feeding night-beast on the
bank, ringed by the solemn forest.
There was a kerosene lamp burning in Eve Strayer's rooms. Another
light--a candle--flickered in the kitchen.
Leverett, crouching, ran rat-like down to the barn, slid in between the
ice house and corn-crib, crawled out among the wilderness of weeds and
lay flat.
The light burned steadily from Eve's window.