The Flaming Jewel Part 50

"'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, cras.h.!.+ 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 compa.s.sion for such stupidity.

"--So he pa.s.s, this ros-biff G.o.ddam 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 d.a.m.n 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. .h.i.t 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 d.i.c.k 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, d.i.c.k!" 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 woodp.e.c.k.e.rs 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 G.o.d 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, G.o.d, 'tain't them things. But it's what that there skunk done to my Evie.... O G.o.d, be you listenin'?

He _hurt_ her, Quintana did. That's it. He misused her.... G.o.d, 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, G.o.d, it's them fanatics.... n.o.body 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 G.o.d, 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.

h.e.l.l 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----"