The Flaming Jewel

"Oh, Jim! Both otters crawled into the drain! I think your dogs must have killed one of them under water. There's a big patch of blood spreading off shore."

"Yes," said Darragh, "something has just been killed, somewhere … Jack!"

"Yes?"

"Pull both your guns and come up here, quick!"

Episode Ten

THE TWILIGHT OF MIKE

I

WHEN Quintana turned like an enraged snake on Sard and drove him to his destruction, he would have killed and robbed the frightened diamond broker had he dared risk the shot. He had intended to do this anyway, sooner or later. But with the noise of the hunting dogs filling the forest, Quintana was afraid to fire. Yet, even then he followed Sard stealthily for a few minutes, afraid yet murderously desirous of the gems, confused by the tumult of the hounds, timid and ferocious at the same time, and loath to leave his fat, perspiring, and demoralised victim.

But the racket of the dogs proved too much for Quintana. He sheered away toward the South, leaving Sard floundering on ahead, unconscious of the treachery that had followed furtively in his panic-stricken tracks.

About an hour later Quintana was seen, challenged, chased and shot at by State Trooper Lannis.

Quintana ran. And what with the dense growth of seedling beech and oak and the heavily falling birch and poplar leaves, Lannis first lost Quintana and then his trail.

The State Trooper had left his horse at the cross-roads near the scene of Darragh's masked exploit, where he had stopped and robbed Sard – and now Lannis hastened back to find and mount his horse, and gallop straight into the first growth timber.

Through dim aisles of giant pine he spurred to a dead run on the chance of cutting Quintana from the eastward edge of the forest and forcing him back toward the north or west, where patrols were more than likely to hold him.

The State Trooper rode with all the reckless indifference and grace of the Western cavalryman, and he seemed to be part of the superb animal he rode – part of its bone and muscle, its litheness, its supple power – part of its vertebræ and ribs and limbs, so perfect was their bodily co-ordination.

Rifle and eyes intently alert, the rider scarce noticed his rushing mount; and if he guided with wrist and knee it was instinctive and as though the horse were guiding them both.

And now, far ahead through this primeval stand of pine, sunshine glimmered, warning of a clearing. And here Trooper Lannis pulled in his horse at the edge of what seemed to be a broad, flat meadow, vividly green.

But it was the intense, arsenical green of hair-fine grass that covers with its false velvet those quaking bogs where only a thin, crust-like skin of root-fibre and vegetation cover infinite depths of silt.

The silt had no more substance than a drop of ink colouring the water in a tumbler.

Sitting his fast-breathing mount, Lannis searched this wide, flat expanse of brilliant green. Nothing moved on it save a great heron picking its deliberate way on stilt-like legs. It was well for Quintana that he had not attempted it.

Very cautiously Lannis walked his horse along the hard ground which edged this marsh on the west. Nowhere was there any sign that Quintana had come down to the edge among the shrubs and swale grasses.

Beyond the marsh another trooper patrolled; and when at length he and Lannis perceived each other and exchanged signals, the latter wheeled his horse and retraced his route at an easy canter, satisfied that Quintana had not yet broken cover.

Back through the first growth he cantered, his rifle at a ready, carefully scanning the more open woodlands, and so came again to the cross-roads.

And here stood a State Game Inspector, with a report that some sort of beagle-pack was hunting in the forest to the northwest; and very curious to investigate.

So it was arranged that the Inspector should turn road-patrol and the Trooper become the rover.

There was no sound of dogs when Lannis rode in on the narrow, spotted trail whence he had flushed Quintana into the dense growth of saplings that bordered it.

His horse made little noise on the moist layer of leaves and forest mould; he listened hard for the sound of hounds as he rode; heard nothing save the chirr of red squirrels, the shriek of a watching jay, or the startling noise of falling acorns rapping and knocking on great limbs in their descent to the forest floor.

Once, very, very far away westward in the direction of Star Pond he fancied he heard a faint vibration in the air that might have been hounds baying.

He was right. And at that very moment Sard was dying, horribly, among two trapped otters as big and fierce as the dogs that had driven them into the drain.

But Lannis knew nothing of that as he moved on, mounted, along the spotted trail, now all a yellow glory of birch and poplar which made the woodland brilliant as though lighted by yellow lanterns.

Somewhere among the birches, between him and Star Pond, was Harrod Place. And the idea occurred to him that Quintana might have ventured to ask food and shelter there. Yet, that was not likely because Trooper Stormont had called him that morning on the telephone from the Hatchery Lodge.

No; the only logical retreat for Quintana was northward to the mountains, where patrols were plenty and fire-wardens on duty in every watch-tower. Or, the fugitive could make for Drowned Valley by a blind trail which, Stormont informed him, existed but which Lannis never had heard of.

However, to reassure himself, Lannis rode as far as Harrod Place, and found game wardens on duty along the line.

Then he turned west and trotted his mount down to the hatchery, where he saw Ralph Wier, the Superintendent, standing outside the lodge talking to his assistant, George Fry.

When Lannis rode up on the opposite side of the brook, he called across to Wier:

"You haven't seen anything of any crooked outfit around here, have you, Ralph? I'm looking for that kind."

"See here," said the Superintendent, "I don't know but George Fry may have seen one of your guys. Come over and he'll tell you what happened an hour ago."

Trooper Lannis pivotted his horse and put him to the brook with scarcely any take-off; and the splendid animal cleared the water like a deer and came cantering up to the door of the lodge.

Fry's boyish face seemed agitated; he looked up at the State Trooper with the flush of tears in his gaze and pointed at the rifle Lannis carried:

"If I'd had that ," he said excitedly, "I'd have brought in a crook, you bet!"

"Where did you see him?" inquired Lannis.

"Jest west of the Scaur, about an hour and a half ago. Wier and me was stockin' the head of Scaur Brook with fingerlings. There's more good water – two miles of it – to the east, and all it needed was a fish-ladder around Scaur Falls.

"So I toted in cement and sand and grub last week, and I built me a shanty on the Scaur, and I been laying up a fish-way around the falls. So that's how I come there – " He clicked his teeth and darted a furious glance at the woods. "By God," he said, "I was such a fool I didn't take no rifle. All I had was an axe and a few traps… I wasn't going to let the mink get our trout whatever you fellows say," he added defiantly, " – and law or no law – "

"Get along with your story, young man," interrupted Lannis; " – you can spill the rest out to the Commissioner."

"All right, then. This is the way it happened down to the Scaur. I was eating lunch by the fish-stairs, looking up at 'em and kind of planning how to save cement, and not thinking about anybody being near me, when something made me turn my head… You know how it is in the woods… I kinda felt somebody near. And, by cracky! – there stood a man with a big, black automatic pistol, and he had a bead on my belly.

"'Well,' said I, 'what's troubling you and your gun, my friend?' – I was that astonished.

"He was a slim-built, powerful guy with a foreign face and voice and way. He wanted to know if he had the honour – as he put it – to introduce himself to a detective or game constable, or a friend of Mike Clinch.

"I told him I wasn't any of these, and that I worked in a private hatchery; and he called me a liar."

Young Fry's face flushed and his voice began to quiver:

"That's the way he misused me: and he backed me into the shanty and I had to sit down with both hands up. Then he filled my pack-basket with grub, and took my axe, and strapped my kit onto his back… And talking all the time in his mean, sneery, foreign way – and I guess he thought he was funny, for he laughed at his own jokes.

"He told me his name was Quintana, and that he ought to shoot me for a rat, but wouldn't because of the stink. Then he said he was going to do a quick job that the police were too cowardly to do; – that he was a-going to find Mike Clinch down to Drowned Valley and kill him; and if he could catch Mike's daughter, too, he'd spoil her face for life – "