Episode 4. A Private War

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_ EPISODE FOUR. A PRIVATE WAR

I

When State Trooper Stormont rode up to Clinch's with Eve Strayer lying in his arms, Mike Clinch strode out of the motley crowd around the tavern, laid his rifle against a tree, and stretched forth his powerful hands to receive his stepchild.

He held her, cradled, looking down at her in silence as the men clustered around.

"Eve," he said hoarsely, "be you hurted?"

The girl opened her sky-blue eyes.

"I'm all right, dad, ... just tired.... I've got your parcel ... safe...."

"To hell with the gol-dinged parcel," he almost sobbed; "--did Quintana harm you?"

"No, dad."

As he carried her to the veranda the packet fell from her cramped fingers. Clinch kicked it under a chair and continued on into the house and up the stairs to Eve's bedroom.

Flat on the bed, the girl opened her drowsy eyes again, unsmiling.

"Did that dirty louse misuse you?" demanded Clinch unsteadily. "G'wan tell me, girlie."

"He knocked me down.... He went away to get fire to make me talk. I cut up the blanket they gave me and made a rope. Then I went over the cliff into the big pine below. That was all, dad."

Clinch filled a tin basin and washed the girl's torn feet. When he had dried them he kissed them. She felt his unshaven lips trembling, heard him whimper for the first time in his life.

"Why the hell didn't you give Quintana the packet?" he demanded. "What does that count for--what does any damn thing count for against you, girlie?"

She looked up at him out of heavy-lidded eyes: "You told me to take good care of it."

"It's only a little truck I'd laid by for you," he retorted unsteadily, "--a few trifles for to make a grand lady of you when the time's ripe. 'Tain't worth a thorn in your little foot to me.... The hull gol-dinged world full o' money ain't worth that there stone-bruise onto them little white feet o' yourn, Eve.

"Look at you now--my God, look at you there, all peaked an' scairt an' bleedin'--plum tuckered out, 'n' all ragged 'n' dirty----"

A blaze of fury flared in his small pale eyes: "--And he hit you, too, did he?--that skunk! Quintana done that to my little girlie, did he?"

"I don't know if it was Quintana. I don't know who he was, dad," she murmured drowsily.

"Masked, wa'n't he?"

"Yes."

Clinch's iron visage twitched and quivered. He gnawed his thin lips into control:

"Girlie, I gotta go out a spell. But I ain't a-leavin' you alone here. I'll git somebody to set up with you. You jest lie snug and don't think about nothin' till I come back."

"Yes, dad," she sighed, closing her eyes.

Clinch stood looking at her for a moment, then he went downstairs heavily, and out to the veranda where State Trooper Stormont still sat his saddle, talking to Hal Smith. On the porch a sullen crowd of backwoods riff-raff lounged in silence, awaiting events.

Clinch called across to Smith: "Hey, Hal, g'wan up and set with Eve a spell while she's nappin'. Take a gun."

Smith said to Stormont in a low voice: "Do me a favour, Jack?"

"You bet."

"That girl of Clinch's is in real danger if left here alone. But I've got another job on my hands. Can you keep a watch on her till I return?"

"Can't you tell me a little more, Jim?"

"I will, later. Do you mind helping me out now?"

"All right."

Trooper Stormont swung out of his saddle and led his horse away toward the stable.

Hal Smith went into the bar where Clinch stood, oiling a rifle.

"G'wan upstairs," he muttered. "I got a private war on. It's me or Quintana, now."

"You're going after Quintana?" inquired Smith, carelessly.

"I be. And I want you should git your gun and set up by Evie. And I want you should kill any living human son of a slut that comes botherin' around this here hotel."

"I'm going after Quintana with you, Mike."

"B'gosh, you ain't. You're a-goin' to keep watch here."

"No. Trooper Stormont has promised to stay with Eve. You'll need every man to-day, Mike. This isn't a deer drive."

Clinch let his rifle sag across the hollow of his left arm.

"Did you beef to that trooper?" he demanded in his pleasant, misleading way.

"Do you think I'm crazy?" retorted Smith.

"Well, what the hell----"

"They all know that some man used your girl roughly. That's all I said to him--'keep an eye on Eve until we can get back.' And I tell you, Mike, if we drive Star Peak we won't be back till long after sundown."

Clinch growled: "I ain't never asked no favours of no State Trooper----"

"He did you a favour, didn't he? He brought your daughter in."

"Yes, 'n' he'd jail us all if he got anything on us."

"Yes; and he'll shoot to kill if any of Quintana's people come here and try to break in."

Clinch grunted, peeled off his coat and got into a leather vest bristling with cartridge loops.

Trooper Stormont came in the back door, carrying his rifle.

"Some rough fellow been bothering your little daughter, Clinch?" he inquired. "The child was nearly all in when she met me out by Owl Marsh--clothes half torn off her back, bare-foot and bleeding. She's a plucky youngster. I'll say so, Clinch. If you think the fellow may come here to annoy her I'll keep an eye on her till you return."

Clinch went up to Stormont, put his powerful hands on the young fellow's shoulders.

After a moment's glaring silence: "You _look_ clean. I guess you be, too. I wanta tell you I'll cut the guts outa any guy that lays the heft of a single finger onto Eve."

"I'd do so, too, if I were you," said Stormont.

"Would ye? Well, I guess you're a real man, too, even if you're a State Trooper," growled Clinch. "G'wan up. She's a-nappin'. If she wakes up you kinda talk pleasant to her. You act kind pleasant and cosy. She ain't had no ma. You tell her to set snug and ca'm. Then you cook her a egg if she wants it. There's pie, too. I cal'late to be back by sundown."

"Nearer morning," remarked Smith.

Stormont shrugged. "I'll stay until you show up, Clinch."

The latter took another rifle from the corner and handed it to Smith with a loop of ammunition.

"Come on," he grunted.

On the veranda he strode up to the group of sullen, armed men who regarded his advent in expressionless silence.

Sid Hone was there, and Harvey Chase, and the Hastings boys, and Cornelius Blommers.

"You fellas comin'?" inquired Clinch.

"Where?" drawled Sid Hone.

"Me an' Hal Smith is cal'kalatin' to drive Star Peak. It ain't a deer, neither."

There ensued a grim interval. Clinch's wintry smile began to glimmer.

"Booze agents or game protectors? Which?" asked Byron Hastings. "They both look like deer--if a man gits mad enough."

Clinch's smile became terrifying. "I shell out five hundred dollars for every _deer_ that's dropped on Star Peak to-day," he said. "And I hope there won't be no accidents and no mistakin' no _stranger_ for a deer," he added, wagging his great, square head.

"Them accidents is liable to happen," remarked Hone, reflectively.

After another pause: "Where's Jake Kloon?" inquired Smith.

Nobody seemed to know.

"He was here when Mike called me into the bar," insisted Smith. "Where'd he go?"

Then, of a sudden, Clinch recollected the packet which he had kicked under a veranda chair. It was no longer there.

"Any o' you fellas seen a package here on the pyazza?" demanded Clinch harshly.

"Jake Kloon, he had somethin'," drawled Chase. "I supposed it was his lunch. Mebbe 'twas, too."

In the intense stillness Clinch glared into one face after another.

"Boys," he said in his softly modulated voice, "I kinda guess there's a rat amongst us. I wouldn't like for to be that there rat--no, not for a billion hundred dollars. No, I wouldn't. Becuz that there rat has bit my little girlie, Eve,--like that there deer bit her up onto Star Peak.... No, I wouldn't like for to be that there rat. Fer he's a-goin' to die like a rat, same's that there deer is a-goin' to die like a deer.... Anyone seen which way Jake Kloon went?"

"Now you speak of it," said Byron Hastings, "seems like I noticed Jake and Earl Leverett down by the woods near the pond. I kinda disremembered when you asked, but I guess I seen them."

"Sure," said Sid Hone. "Now you mention it, I seen 'em, too. Thinks I to m'self, they is pickin' them blackberries down to the crick. Yas, I seen 'em."

Clinch tossed his rifle across his left shoulder.

"Rats an' deer," he said pleasantly. "Them's the articles we're lookin' for. Only for God's sake be careful you don't mistake a _man_ for 'em in the woods."

One or two men laughed.

* * * * *

On the edge of Owl Marsh Clinch halted in the trail, and, as his men came up, he counted them with a cold eye.

"Here's the runway and this here hazel bush is my station," he said. "You fellas do the barkin'. You, Sid Hone, and you, Corny, start drivin' from the west. Harve, you yelp 'em from the north by Lynx Brook. Jim and Byron, you get twenty minutes to go 'round to the eastward and drive by the Slide. And you, Hal Smith,"--he looked around--"where 'n hell be you, Hal?----"

Smith came up from the bog's edge.

"Send 'em out," he said in a low voice. "I've got Jake's tracks in the bog."

Clinch motioned his beaters to their duty. "Twenty minutes," he reminded Hone, Chase, and Blommers, "before you start drivin'." And, to the Hastings boys: "If you shoot, aim low for their bellies. Don't leave no blood around. Scrape it up. We bury what we get."

He and Smith stood looking after the five slouching figures moving away toward their blind trails. When all had disappeared:

"Show me Jake's mark," he said calmly.

Smith led him to the edge of the bog, knelt down, drew aside a branch of witch-hopple. A man's footprint was plainly visible on the mud.

"That's Jake," said Clinch slowly. "I know them half-soled boots o' hisn." He lifted another branch. "There's another man's track!"

"The other is probably Leverett's."

"Likely. He's got thin feet."

"I think I'd better go after them," said Smith, reflectively.

"They'll plug you, you poor jackass--two o' them like that, and one a-settin' up to watch out. Hell! Be you tired o' bed an' board?"

Smith smiled: "Don't you worry, Mike."

"Why? You think you're that smart? Jest becuz you stuck up a tourist you think you're cock o' the North Woods--with them two foxes lyin' out for to snap you up? Hey? Why, you poor dumb thing, Jake runs Canadian hootch for a livin' and Leverett's a trap thief! What could _you_ do with a pair o' foxes like that?"

"Catch 'em," said Smith, coolly. "You mind your business, Mike."

As he shouldered his rifle and started into the marsh, Clinch dropped a heavy hand on his shoulder; but the young man shook it off.

"Shut up," he said sharply. "You've a private war on your hands. So have I. I'll take care of my own."

"What's _your_ grievance?" demanded Clinch, surprised.

"Jake Kloon played a dirty trick on me."

"When was that?"

"Not very long ago."

"I hadn't heard," said Clinch.

"Well, you hear it now, don't you? All right. All right; I'm going after him."

As he started again across the marsh, Clinch called out in a guarded voice: "Take good care of that packet if you catch them rats. It belongs to Eve."

"I'll take such good care of it," replied Smith, "that its proper owner need not worry."

II

The "proper owner" of the packet was, at that moment, on the Atlantic Ocean, travelling toward the United States.

Four other pretended owners of the Grand Duchess Theodorica's jewels, totally unconscious of anything impending which might impair their several titles to the gems, were now gathered together in a wilderness within a few miles of one another.

Jose Quintana lay somewhere in the forests with his gang, fiercely planning the recovery of the treasure of which Clinch had once robbed him. Clinch squatted on his runway, watching the mountain flank with murderous eyes. It was no longer the Flaming Jewel which mattered. His master passion ruled him now. Those who had offered violence to Eve must be reckoned with first of all. The hand that struck Eve Strayer had offered mortal insult to Mike Clinch.

As for the third pretender to the Flaming Jewel, Jake Kloon, he was now travelling in a fox's circle toward Drowned Valley--that shaggy wilderness of slime and tamarack and depthless bog which touches the northwest base of Star Peak. He was not hurrying, having no thought of pursuit. Behind him plodded Leverett, the trap thief, very, very busy with his own ideas.

To Leverett's repeated requests that Kloon halt and open the packet to see what it contained, Kloon gruffly refused.

"What do we care what's in it?" he said. "We get ten thousand apiece over our rifles for it from them guys. Ain't it a good enough job for you?"

"Maybe we make more if we take what's inside it for ourselves," argued Leverett. "Let's take a peek, anyway."

"Naw. I don't want no peek nor nothin'. The ten thousand comes too easy. More might scare us. Let that guy, Quintana, have what's his'n. All I ask is my rake-off. You allus was a dirty, thieving mink, Earl. Let's give him his and take ours and git. I'm going to Albany to live. You bet I don't stay in no woods where Mike Clinch dens."

They plodded on, arguing, toward their rendezvous with Quintana's outpost on the edge of Drowned Valley.

* * * * *

The fourth pretender to the pearls, rubies, and great gem called the Flaming Jewel, stolen from the young Grand Duchess Theodorica of Esthonia by Jose Quintana, was an unconscious pretender, entirely innocent of the role assigned her by Clinch.

For Eve Strayer had never heard where the packet came from or what it contained. All she knew was that her stepfather had told her that it belonged to her. And the knowledge left her incurious.

III

Eve slept the sleep of mental and physical exhaustion. Reaction from fear brings a fatigue more profound than that which follows physical overstrain. But the healthy mind, like the healthy body, disposes very thoroughly of toxics which arise from terror and exhaustion.

The girl slept profoundly, calmly. Her bruised young mind and body left her undisturbed. There was neither restlessness nor fever. Sleep swept her with its clean, sweet tide, cleansing the superb youth and health of her with the most wonderful balm in the Divine pharmacy.

She awoke late in the afternoon, opened her flower-blue eyes, and saw State Trooper Stormont sitting by the window, and gazing out.

Perhaps Eve's confused senses mistook the young man for a vision; for she lay very still, nor stirred even her little finger.

After a while Stormont glanced around at her. A warm, delicate colour stained her skin slowly, evenly, from throat to hair.

He got up and came over to the bed.

"How do you feel?" he asked, awkwardly.

"Where is dad?" she managed to inquire in a steady voice.

"He won't be back till late. He asked me to stick around--in case you needed anything----"

The girl's clear eyes searched his.

"Trooper Stormont?"

"Yes, Eve."

"Dad's gone after Quintana."

"Is he the fellow who misused you?"

"I think so."

"Who is he?"

"I don't know."

"Is he your enemy or your stepfather's?"

But the girl shook her head: "I can't discuss dad's affairs with--with----"

"With a State Trooper," smiled Stormont. "That's all right, Eve. You don't have to."

There was a pause; Stormont stood beside the bed, looking down at her with his diffident, boyish smile. And the girl gazed back straight into his eyes--eyes she had so often looked into in her dreams.

"I'm to cook you an egg and bring you some pie," he remarked, still smiling.

"Did dad say I am to stay in bed?"

"That was my inference. Do you feel very lame and sore?"

"My feet burn."

"You poor kid!... Would you let me look at them? I have a first-aid packet with me."

After a moment she nodded and turned her face on the pillow. He drew aside the cover a little, knelt down beside the bed.

Then he rose and went downstairs to the kitchen. There was hot water in the kettle. He fetched it back, bathed her feet, drew out from cut and scratch the flakes of granite-grit and brier-points that still remained there.

From his first-aid packet he took a capsule, dissolved it, sterilized the torn skin, then bandaged both feet with a deliciously cool salve, and drew the sheets into place.

Eve had not stirred nor spoken. He washed and dried his hands and came back, drawing his chair nearer to the bedside.

"Sleep, if you feel like it," he said pleasantly.

As she made no sound or movement he bent over to see if she had already fallen asleep. And noticed that her flushed cheeks were wet with tears.

"Are you suffering?" he asked gently.

"No.... You are so wonderfully kind...."

"Why shouldn't I be kind?" he said, amused and touched by the girl's emotion.

"I tried to shoot you once. That is why you ought to hate me."

He began to laugh: "Is _that_ what you're thinking about?"

"I--never can--forget----"

"Nonsense. We're quits anyway. Do you remember what I did to _you_?"

He was thinking of the handcuffs. Then, in her vivid blush he read what she was thinking. And he remembered his lips on her palms.

He, too, now was blushing brilliantly at memory of that swift, sudden rush of romantic tenderness which this girl had witnessed that memorable day on Owl Marsh.

In the hot, uncomfortable silence, neither spoke. He seated himself after a while. And, after a while, she turned on her pillow part way toward him.

Somehow they both understood that it was friendship which had subtly filled the interval that separated them since that amazing day.

"I've often thought of you," he said,--as though they had been discussing his absence.

No hour of the waking day that she had not thought of him. But she did not say so now. After a little while:

"Is yours a lonely life?" she asked in a low voice.

"Sometimes. But I love the forest."

"Sometimes," she said, "the forest seems like a trap that I can't escape. Sometimes I hate it."

"Are you lonely, Eve?"

"As you are. You see I know what the outside world is. I miss it."

"You were in boarding school and college."

"Yes."

"It must be hard for you here at Star Pond."

The girl sighed, unconsciously:

"There are days when I--can scarcely--stand it.... The wilderness would be more endurable if dad and I were all alone.... But even then----"

"You need young people of your own age,--educated companions----"

"I need the city, Mr. Stormont. I need all it can give: I'm starving for it. That's all."

She turned on her pillow, and he saw that she was smiling faintly. Her face bore no trace of the tragic truth she had uttered. But the tragedy was plain enough to him, even without her passionless words of revolt. The situation of this young, educated girl, aglow with youth, fettered, body and mind, to the squalor of Clinch's dump, was perfectly plain to anybody.

She said, seeing his troubled expression: "I'm sorry I spoke that way."

"I knew how you must feel, anyway."

"It seems ungrateful," she murmured. "I love my step-father."

"You've proven that," he remarked with a dry humour that brought the hot flush to her face again.

"I must have been crazy that day," she said. "It scares me to remember what I tried to do.... What a frightful thing--if I had killed you----How _can_ you forgive me?"

"How can you forgive _me_, Eve?"

She turned her head: "I do."

"Entirely?"

"Yes."

He said,--a slight emotion noticeable in his voice: "Well, I forgave you before the darned gun exploded in our hands."

"How _could_ you?" she protested.

"I was thinking all the while that you were acting as I'd have acted if anything threatened _my_ father."

"Were you thinking of _that_?"

"Yes,--and also how to get hold of you before you shot me." He began to laugh.

After a moment she turned her head to look at him, and her smile glimmered, responsive to his amusement. But she shivered slightly, too.

"How about that egg?" he inquired.

"I can get up----"

"Better keep off your feet. What is there in the pantry? You must be starved."

"I could eat a little before supper time," she admitted. "I forgot to take my lunch with me this morning. It is still there in the pantry on the bread box, wrapped up in brown paper, just as I left it----"

She half rose in bed, supported on one arm, her curly brown-gold hair framing her face:

"--Two cakes of sugar-milk chocolate in a flat brown packet tied with a string," she explained, smiling at his amusement.

So he went down to the pantry and discovered the parcel on the bread box where she had left it that morning before starting for the cache on Owl Marsh.

He brought it to her, placed both pillows upright behind her, stepped back gaily to admire the effect. Eve, with her parcel in her hands, laughed shyly at his comedy.

"Begin on your chocolate," he said. "I'm going back to fix you some bread and butter and a cup of tea."

When again he had disappeared, the girl, still smiling, began to untie her packet, unhurriedly, slowly loosening string and wrapping.

Her attention was not fixed on what her slender fingers were about.

She drew from the parcel a flat morocco case with a coat of arms and crest stamped on it in gold, black, and scarlet.

For a few moments she stared at the object stupidly. The next moment she heard Stormont's spurred tread on the stairs; and she thrust the morocco case and the wrapping under the pillows behind her.

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 passion 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 space. 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.

Passion, full-armed, springs flaming from the heart of man. Woman is slow to burn. And it was the delicate phantom of passion 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, passed on toward the depths of the sunset forest. _

Read next: Episode 5. Drowned Valley

Read previous: Episode 3. On Star Peak

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