The Flaming Jewel Part 21

She looked up at him in a dazed way when he came in with the tea and bread. He set the tin tray on her bureau and came over to the bedside.

"Eve," he said, "you look very white and ill. Have you been hurt somewhere, and haven't you admitted it?"

She seemed unable to speak, and he took both her hands and looked anxiously into the lovely, pallid features.

After a moment she turned her head and buried her face in the pillow, trembling now in overwhelming realization of what she had endured for the sake of two cakes of sugar-milk chocolate hidden under a bush in the forest.

For a long while the girl lay there, the feverish flush of tears on her partly hidden face, her nervous hands tremulous, restless, now seeking his, convulsively, now striving to escape his clasp--eloquent, uncertain little hands that seemed to tell so much and yet were telling him nothing he could understand.

"Eve, dear," he said, "are you in pain? What is it that has happened to you? I thought you were all right. You seemed all right----"

"I am," she said in a smothered voice. "You'll stay here with me, won't you?"

"Of course I will. It's just the reaction. It's all over. You're relaxing. That's all, dear. You're safe. Nothing can harm you now----"

"Please don't leave me."

After a moment: "I won't leave you.... I wish I might never leave you."

In the tense silence that followed her trembling ceased. Then his heart, heavy, irregular, began beating so that the startled pulses in her body awoke, wildly responsive.

Deep emotions, new, unfamiliar, were stirring, awaking, confusing them both. In a sudden instinct to escape, she turned and partly rose on one elbow, gazing blindly about her out of tear-marred eyes.

"I want my room to myself," she murmured in a breathless sort of way, "--I want you to go out, please----"

A boyish flush burnt his face. He got up slowly, took his rifle from the corner, went out, closing the door, and seated himself on the stairs.

And there, on guard, sat Trooper Stormont, rigid, unstirring, hour after hour, facing the first great pa.s.sion of his life, and stunned by the impact of its swift and unexpected blow.

In her chamber, on the bed's edge, sat Eve Strayer, her deep eyes fixed on s.p.a.ce. Vague emotions, exquisitely recurrent, new born, possessed her. The whole world, too, all around her seemed to have become misty and golden and all pulsating with a faint, still rhythm that indefinably thrilled her pulses to response.

Pa.s.sion, full-armed, springs flaming from the heart of man. Woman is slow to burn. And it was the delicate phantom of pa.s.sion that Eve gazed upon, there in her unpainted chamber, her sun-tanned fingers linked listlessly in her lap, her little feet like bruised white flowers drooping above the floor.

Hour after hour she sat there dreaming, staring at the tinted ghost of Eros, rose-hued, near-smiling, unreal, impalpable as the dusty sunbeam that slanted from her window, gilding the boarded floor.

Three spectres, gliding near, paused to gaze at State Trooper Stormont, on guard by the stairs. Then they looked at the closed door of Eve's chamber.

Then the three spectres, Fate, Chance and Destiny, whispering together, pa.s.sed on toward the depths of the sunset forest.

EPISODE FIVE

DROWNED VALLEY

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 ma.s.sive 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 h.e.l.l 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 s.p.u.n.k?"

Kloon, chewing on his cud, turned and glanced at him. Then he spat, as answer.