The Flaming Jewel - Robert W. Chambers (popular romance novels .txt) 📗

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.


II

A coward dies many times before Old Man Death really gets him.

The swimming minutes passed; his mind ceased to live for a space. Then, as through the swirling waters of the last dark whirlpool, a dulled roar of returning consciousness filled his being.

Somebody was shaking him, shouting at him. Suddenly instinct resumed its function, and he struggled madly to get away from the edge of the sink-hole--fought his way, blindly, through tangled undergrowth toward the hard ridge. No human power could have blocked the frantic creature thrashing toward solid ground.

But there Quintana held him in his wiry grip.

"Fool! Mule! Crazee fellow! What you do, eh? For why you make jumps like rabbits! Eh? You expec' Quintana? Yes? Alors!"

Leverett, in a state of collapse, sagged back against an oak tree. Quintana's nervous grasp fell from his arms and they swung, dangling.

"What you do by that pond-hole? Eh? I come and touch you, and, my God!--one would think I have stab you. Such an ass!"

The sickly greenish hue changed in Leverett's face as the warmer tide stirred from its stagnation. He lifted his head and tried to look at Quintana.

"Where Jake Kloon?" demanded the latter.

At that the weasel wits of the trap-robber awoke to the instant crisis. Blood and pulse began to jump. He passed one dirty hand over his mouth to mask any twitching.

"Where my packet, eh?" inquired Quintana.

"Jake's got it." Leverett's voice was growing stronger. His small eyes switched for an instant toward his rifle, where it stood against a tree behind Quintana.

"Where is he, then, this Jake?" repeated Quintana impatiently.

"He got bogged."

"Bogged? What is that, then?"

"He got into a sink-hole."

"What!"

"That's all I know," said Leverett, sullenly. "Him and me was travellin' hell-bent to meet up with you,--Jake, he was for a short cut to Drowned Valley,--but 'no,' sez I, 'gimme a good hard ridge an' a long deetoor when there's sink-holes into the woods----'"

"What is it the talk you talk to me?" asked Quintana, whose perplexed features began to darken. "Where is it, my packet?"

"I'm tellin' you, ain't I?" retorted the other, raising a voice now shrill with the strain of this new crisis rushing so unexpectedly upon him: "I heard Jake give a holler. 'What the hell's the trouble?' I yells. Then he lets out a beller, 'Save me!' he screeches, 'I'm into a sink-hole! The quicksand's got me,' sez he. So I drop my rifle, I did,--there she stands against that birch sapling!--and I run down into them there pitcher-plants.

"'Whar be ye!' I yells. Then I listens, and don't hear nothin' only a kina wallerin' noise an' a slobber like he was gulpin' mud.

"Then I foller them there sounds and I come out by that sink-hole. The water was a-shakin' all over it but Jake he had went down plum out o' sight. T'want no use. I cut a sapling an' I poked down. I was sick and scared like, so when you come up over the moss, not makin' no noise, an' grabbed me--God!--I guess you'd jump, too."

Quintana's dark, tense face was expressionless when Leverett ventured to look at him. Like most liars he realised the advisability of looking his victim straight in the eyes. This he managed to accomplish, sustaining the cold intensity of Quintana's gaze as long as he deemed it necessary. Then he started toward his rifle. Quintana blocked his way.

"Where my packet?"

"Gol ram it! Ain't I told you? Jake had it in his pocket."

"My packet?"

"Yaas, yourn."

"My packet, it is down in thee sink 'ole?"

"You think I'm lyin'?" blustered Leverett, trying to move around Quintana's extended arm. The arm swerved and clutched him by the collar of his flannel shirt.

"Wait, my frien'," said Quintana in a soft voice. "You shall explain to me some things before you go."

"Explain what!--you gol dinged----"

Quintana shook him into speechlessness.

"Listen, my frien'," he continued with a terrifying smile, "I mus' ask you what it was, that gun-shot, which I hear while I await at Drown' Vallee. Eh? Who fire a gun?"

"I ain't heard no gun," replied Leverett in a strangled voice.

"You did not shoot? No?"

"No!--damn it all----"

"And Jake? He did not fire?"

"No, I tell yeh----"

"Ah! Someone lies. It is not me, my frien'. No. Let us examine your rifle----"

Leverett made a rush for the gun; Quintana slung him back against the oak tree and thrust an automatic pistol against his chin.

"Han's up, my frien'," he said gently, "--up! high up!--or someone will fire another shot you shall never hear.... So!... Now I search the other pocket.... So!... Still no packet. Bah! Not in the pants, either? Ah, bah! But wait! Tiens! What is this you hide inside your shirt----?"

"I was jokin'," gasped Leverett; "--I was jest a-goin' to give it to you----"

"Is that my packet?"

"Yes. It was all in fun; I wan't a-going to steal it----"

Quintana unbuttoned the grey wool shirt, thrust in his hand and drew forth the packet for which Jake Kloon had died within the hour.

Suddenly Leverett's knees gave way and he dropped to the ground, grovelling at Quintana's feet in an agony of fright:

"Don't hurt me," he screamed, "--I didn't meant no harm! Jake, he wanted me to steal it. I told him I was honest. I fired a shot to scare him, an' he tuk an' run off! I wan't a-goin' to steal it off you, so help me God! I was lookin' for you--as God is my witness----"

He got Quintana by one foot. Quintana kicked him aside and backed away.

"Swine," he said, calmly inspecting the whimpering creature who had started to crawl toward him.

He hesitated, lifted his automatic, then, as though annoyed by Leverett's deafening shriek, shrugged, hesitated, pocketed both pistol and packet, and turned on his heel.

By the birch sapling he paused and picked up Leverett's rifle. Something left a red smear on his palm as he worked the ejector. It was blood.

Quintana gazed curiously at his soiled hand. Then he stooped and picked up the empty cartridge case which had been ejected. And, as he stooped, he noticed more blood on a fallen leaf.

With one foot, daintily as a game-cock scratches, he brushed away the fallen leaves, revealing the mess underneath.

After he had contemplated the crimson traces of murder for a few moments, he turned and looked at Leverett with faint curiosity.

"So," he said in his leisurely, emotionless way, "you have fight with my frien' Jake for thee packet. Yes? Ver' amusing." He shrugged his indifference, tossed the rifle to his shoulder and, without another glance at the cringing creature on the ground, walked away toward Drowned Valley, unhurriedly.


III

When Quintana disappeared among the tamaracks, Leverett ventured to rise to his knees. As he crouched there, peering after Quintana, a man came swiftly out of the forest behind him and nearly stumbled over him.

Recognition was instant and mutual as the man jerked the trap-robber to his feet, stifling the muffled yell in his throat.

"I want that packet you picked up on Clinch's veranda," said Hal Smith.

"M-my God," stammered Leverett, "Quintana just took it off me. He ain't been gone a minute----"

"You lie!"

"I ain't lyin'. Look at his foot-marks there in the mud!"

"Quintana!"

"Yaas, Quintana! He tuk my gun, too----"

"Which way!" whispered Smith fiercely, shaking Leverett till his jaws wagged.

"Drowned Valley.... Lemme loose!--I'm chokin'----"

Smith pushed him aside.

"You rat," he said, "if you're lying to me I'll come back and settle your affair. And Kloon's, too!"

"Quintana shot Jake and stuck him into a sink-hole!" snivelled Leverett, breaking down and sobbing; "--oh, Gawd--Gawd--he's down under all that black mud with his brains spillin' out----"

But Smith was already gone, running lightly along the string of footprints which led straight away across slime and sphagnum toward the head of Drowned Valley.

In the first clump of hard-wood trees Smith saw Quintana. He had halted and he was fumbling at the twine which bound a flat, paper-wrapped packet.

He did not start when Smith's sharp warning struck his ear: "Don't move! I've got you over my rifle, Quintana!"

Quintana's fingers had instantly ceased operations. Then, warily, he lifted his head and looked into the muzzle of Smith's rifle.

"Ah, bah!" he said tranquilly. "There were three of you, then."

"Lay that packet on the ground."

"My frien'----"

"Drop it or I'll drop _you_!"

Quintana carefully placed the packet on a bed of vivid moss.

"Now your gun!" continued Smith.

Quintana shrugged and laid Leverett's rifle beside the packet.

"Kneel down with your hands up and your back toward