"Comment?"
"How shall I know? It was the fire, perhaps,--green wood or wet--it is
no matter now.... I said to him, 'Pay attention, Henri; your wood makes
too much smoke.' To me he reply I shall go to hell.... Well, there was
too much smoke for me. I arise to search for wood more dry, when,
crack!--they begin to shoot out there----" He waved a dirty hand toward
the forest.
"'Bon,' said I, 'Clinch, he have seen your damn smoke!'
"'What shall I care?' he make reply, Henri Beck, to me. 'Clinch he
shall shoot and be damn to him. I cook me my dejeuner all the same.'
"I make representations to that Johnbull; he say to me that I am a frog,
and other injuries, while he lay yet more wood on his sacre fire.
"Then crack! crack! crack! and zing-gg!--whee-ee! come the big bullets
of Clinch and his voyous yonder.
"'Bon,' I say, 'me, I make my excuse to retire.'
"Then Henri Beck he laugh and say, 'Hop it, frog!' And that is all he
has find time to say, when crack! spat! Bien droit he has it--tenez, mon
capitaine--here, over the left eye!... Like a beef surprise he go over,
crash! thump! And like a beef that dies, the air bellows out from his
big lungs----"
Picquet looked down at the dead comrade in a sort of weary compassion
for such stupidity.
"--So he pass, this ros-biff goddam Johnbull.... Me, I roll him in
there.... Je ne sais pas pourquoi.... Then I put out the fire and
leave."
Quintana let his sneering glance rest on the dead a moment, and his thin
lip curled immemorial contempt for the Anglo-Saxon.
Then he divested himself of the basket-pack which he had stolen from the
Fry boy.
"Alors," he said calmly, "it has been Mike Clinch who shoot my frien'
Beck. Bien."
He threw a cartridge into the breech of his rifle, adjusted his
ammunition belt _en bandouliere_, carelessly.
Then, in a quiet voice: "My frien' Picquet, the time has now arrive when
it become ver' necessary that we go from here away. Donc--I shall now
go kill me my frien' Mike Clinch."
Picquet, unastonished, gave him a heavy, bovine look of inquiry.
Quintana said softly: "Me, I have enough already of this damn woods. Why
shall we starve here when there lies our path?" He pointed north; his
arm remained outstretched for a while.
"Clinch, he is there," growled Picquet.
"Also our path, l'ami Henri.... And, behind us, they hunt us now with
_dogs_."
Picquet bared his big white teeth in fierce surprise. "Dogs?" he
repeated with a sort of snarl.
"That is how they now hunt us, my frien'--like they hunt the hare in the
Cote d'Or.... Me, I shall now reconnoitre--_that_ way!" And he looked
where he was pointing, into the north--with smouldering eyes. Then he
turned calmly to Picquet: "An' you, l'ami?"
"At orders, mon capitaine."
"C'est bien. Venez."
They walked leisurely forward with rifles shouldered, following the hard
ridge out across a vast and flooded land where the bark of trees
glimmered with wet mosses.
After a quarter of a mile the ridge broadened and split into two, one
hog-back branching northeast! They, however, continued north.
About twenty minutes later Picquet, creeping along on Quintana's left,
and some sixty yards distant, discovered something moving in the woods
beyond, and fired at it. Instantly two unseen rifles spoke from the
woods ahead. Picquet was jerked clear around, lost his balance and
nearly fell. Blood was spurting from his right arm, between elbow and
shoulder.
He tried to lift and level his rifle; his arm collapsed and dangled
broken and powerless; his rifle clattered to the forest floor.
For a moment he stood there in plain view, dumb, deathly white; then he
began screaming with fury while the big, soft-nosed bullets came
streaming in all around him. His broken arm was hit again. His screaming
ceased; he dragged out his big clasp-knife with his left hand and
started running toward the shooting.
As he ran, his mangled arm flopping like a broken wing, Byron Hastings
stepped out from behind a tree and coolly shot him down at close
quarters.
Then Quintana's rifle exploded twice very quickly, and the Hastings boy
stumbled sideways and fell sprawling. He managed to rise to his knees
again; he even was trying to stand up when Quintana, taking his time,
deliberately began to empty his magazine into the boy, riddling him limb
and body and head.
Down once more, he still moved his arms. Sid Hone reached out from
behind a fallen log to grasp the dying lad's ankle and draw him into
shelter, but Quintana reloaded swiftly and smashed Hone's left hand with
the first shot.
Then Jim Hastings, kneeling behind a bunch of juniper, fired a
high-velocity bullet into the tree behind which Quintana stood; but
before he could fire again Quintana's shot in reply came ripping through
the juniper and tore a ghastly hole in the calf of his left leg,
striking a blow that knocked young Hastings flat and paralysed as a dead
flounder.
A mile to the north, blocking the other exit from Drowned Valley, Mike
Clinch, Harvey Chase, Cornelius Blommers, and Dick Berry stood listening
to the shooting.
"B'gosh," blurted out Chase, "it sounds like they was goin' through,
Mike. B'gosh, it does!"
Clinch's little pale eyes blazed, but he said in his soft, agreeable
voice:
"Stay right here, boys. Like as not some of 'em will come this way."
The shooting below ceased. Clinch's nostrils expanded and flattened with
every breath, as he stood glaring into the woods.
"Harve," he said presently, "you an' Corny go down there an' kinda look
around. And you signal if I'm wanted. G'wan, both o' you. Git!"
They started, running heavily, but their feet made little noise on the
moss.
Berry came over and stood near Clinch. For ten minutes neither man
moved. Clinch stared at the woods in front of him. The younger man's
nervous glance flickered like a snake's tongue in every direction, and
he kept moistening his lips with his tongue.
Presently two shots came from the south. A pause; a rattle of shots from
hastily emptied magazines.
"G'wan down there, Dick!" said Clinch.
"You'll be alone, Mike----"
"Au' right. You do like I say; git along quick!"
Berry walked southward a little way. He had turned very white under his
tan.
"Gol ding ye!" shouted Clinch, "take it on a lope or I'll kick the pants
off'n ye!"
Berry began to run, carrying his rifle at a trail.
For half an hour there was not a sound in the forests of Drowned Valley
except in the dead timber where unseen woodpeckers hammered fitfully at
the ghosts of ancient trees.
Always Clinch's little pale eyes searched the forest twilight in front
of him; not a falling leaf escaped him; not a chipmunk.
And all the while Clinch talked to himself; his lips moved a little now
and then, but uttered no sound:
"All I want God should do," he repeated again and again, "is to just let
Quintana come _my_ way. 'Tain't for because he robbed my girlie. 'Tain't
for the stuff he carries onto him.... No, God, 'tain't them things. But
it's what that there skunk done to my Evie.... O God, be you listenin'?
He _hurt_ her, Quintana did. That's it. He misused her.... God, if you
had seen my girlie's little bleeding feet!---- _That's_ the reason....
'Tain't the stuff. I can work. I can save for to make my Evie a lady
same's them high-steppers on Fifth Avenoo. I can moil and toil and slave
an' run hootch--hootch---- They wuz wine 'n' fixin's into the Bible. It
ain't you, God, it's them fanatics.... Nobody in my Dump wanted I
should sell 'em more'n a bottle o' beer before this here prohybishun set
us all crazy. 'Tain't right.... O God, don't hold a little hootch agin
me when all I want of you is to let Quintana----"
The slightest noise behind him. He waited, turned slowly. Eve stood
there.
Hell died in his pale eyes as she came to him, rested silently in his
gentle embrace, returned his kiss, laid her flushed, sweet cheek against
his unshaven face.
"Dad, darling?"
"Yes, my baby----"
"You're watching to kill Quintana. But there's no use watching any
longer."
"Have the boys below got him?" he demanded.
"They got one of his gang. Byron Hastings is dead. Jim is badly hurt;
Sid Hone, too,--not so badly----"
"Where's Quintana?"
"Dad, he's gone.... But it don't matter. See here!----" She dug her
slender hand into her breeches' pocket and pulled out a little
fistful of gems.
Clinch, his powerful arm closing her shoulders, looked dully at the
jewels.
"You see, dad, there's no use killing Quintana. These are the things he
robbed you of."
"'Tain't them that matter.... I'm glad you got 'em. I allus wanted you
should be a great lady, girlie. Them's the tickets of admission. You put
'em in your pants. I gotta stay here a spell----"
"Dad! Take them!"
He took them, smiled, shoved them into his pocket.
"What is it, girlie?" he asked absently, his pale eyes searching the
woods ahead.
"I've just told you," she said, "that the boys went in as far as
Quintana's shanty. There was a dead man there, too; but Quintana has
gone."
Clinch said,--not removing his eyes from the forest: "If any o' them
boys has let Quintana crawl through I'll kill _him_, too.... G'wan
home, girlie. I gotta mosey--I gotta kinda loaf around f'r a spell----"
"Dad, I want you to come back with me----"
"You go home; you hear me, Eve? Tell Corny and Dick Berry to hook it for
Owl Marsh and stop the Star Peak trails--both on 'em.... Can Sid and
Jimmy walk?"
"Jim can't----"
"Well, let Harve take him on his back. You go too. You help fix Jimmy up
at the house. He's a little fella, Jimmy Hastings is. Harve can tote
him. And you go along----"
"Dad, Quintana says he means to kill you! What is the use of hurting
him? You have what he took----"
"I gotta have more'n he took. But even that ain't enough. He couldn't
pay for all he ever done to me, girlie.... I'm aimin' to draw on him on
sight----"
Clinch's set visage relaxed into an alarming smile which flickered,
faded, died in the wintry ferocity of his eyes.
"Dad----"
"G'wan home!" he interrupted harshly. "You want that Hastings boy to
bleed to death?"
She came up to him, not uttering a word, yet asking him with all the
tenderness and eloquence of her eyes to leave this blood-trail where it
lay and hunt no more.
He kissed her mouth, infinitely tender, smiled; then, again prim and
scowling:
"G'wan home, you little scut, an' do what I told ye, or, by God, I'll
cut a switch that'll learn ye good! Never a word, now! On yer way!
G'wan!"
* * * * *
Twice she turned to look back. The second time, Clinch was slowly
walking into the woods straight ahead of him. She waited; saw him go in;
waited. After a while she continued on her way.
When she sighted the men below she called to Blommers and Dick Berry:
"Dad says you're to stop Star Peak trail by Owl Marsh."
Jimmy Hastings sat on a log, crying and looking down at his dead
brother, over whose head somebody had spread a coat.
Blommers had made a tourniquet for Jimmy out of a bandanna and a peeled
stick.
The girl examined it, loosened it for a moment, twisted it again, and
bade Harvey Chase take him on his back and start for Clinch's.
The boy began to sob that he didn't want his brother to be left out
there all alone; but Chase promised to come back and bring him in before
night.
Sid Hone came up, haggard from pain and loss of blood, resting his
mangled hand in the sling of his cartridge-belt.
Berry and Blommers were already starting across toward Owl Marsh; and
the latter, passing by, asked Eve where Mike was.
"He went into Drowned Valley by the upper outlet," she said.
"He'll never find no one in them logans an' sinks," muttered Chase,
squatting to hoist Jimmy Hastings to his broad back.
"I guess he'll be over Star Peak side by sundown," nodded Blommers.
Eve watched him slouching off into the woods, followed sullenly by
Berry. Then she looked down at the dead man in silence.
"Be you ready, Eve?" grunted Chase.
She turned with a heavy heart to the home trail; but her mind was
passionately with Clinch in the spectral forests of Drowned Valley.