impalpable as the dusty sunbeamthat slanted from her window, gilding the boarded floor.
* * * * *
Three spectres, gilding near, paused to gaze at State Trooper Stormont,on guard by the stairs. Then they looked at the closed door of Eve'schamber.
Then the three spectres, Fate, Chance, and Destiny, whispering together,passed 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, thehootch runner, and Earl Leverett, trap thief, came to Drowned Valley.
They were still a mile distant from the most southern edge of that vastdesolation, but already tamaracks appeared in the beauty of their burntgold; the little pools glimmered here and there; patches of ambersphagnum and crimson pitcher-plants became frequent; and once or twiceKloon's big boots broke through the crust of fallen leaves, soaking himto the ankles with black silt.
Leverett, always a coward, had pursued his devious and larcenous waythrough the world, always in deadly fear of sink holes.
His movements and paths were those of a weasel, preferring always solidground; but he lacked the courage of that sinuous little beast, thoughhe possessed all of its ferocity and far more cunning.
Now trotting lightly and tirelessly in the broad and careless spoor ofJake Kloon, his narrow, pointed head alert, and every fear-sharpenedinstinct tensely observant, the trap-thief continued to meditate murder.
Like all cowards, he had always been inclined to bold and ruthlessaction; but inclination was all that ever had happened.
Yet, even in his pitiable misdemeanours he slunk through life in terrorof that strength which never hesitates at violence. In his pettypilfering he died a hundred deaths for every trapped mink or otter hefilched; he heard the game protector's tread as he slunk from the baggedtrout brook or crawled away, belly dragging, and pockets full of snaredgrouse.
Always he had dreamed of the day when, through some sudden bold andsavage stroke, he could deliver himself from a life of fear and live ina city, grossly, replete with the pleasures of satiation, never again tosee a tree or a lonely lake or the blue peaks which, always, he hadhated because they seemed to spy on him from their sky-blue heights.
They were spying on him now as he moved lightly, furtively at JakeKloon's heels, meditating once more that swift, bold stroke whichforever would free him from all care and fear.
He looked at the back of Kloon's massive head. One shot would blow thatskull into fragments, he thought, shivering.
One shot from behind, -- and twenty thousand dollars, -- or, if itproved a better deal, the contents of the packet. For, if Quintana'sbribery had dazzled them, what effect might the contents of that secretpacket have if revealed?
Always in his mean and busy brain he was trying to figure to himselfwhat that packet must contain. And, to make the bribe worth while,Leverett had concluded that only a solid packet of thousand-dollar billscould account for the twenty thousand offered.
There might easily be half a million in bills pressed together in thatheavy, flat packet. Bills were absolutely safe plunder. But Kloon hadturned a deaf ear to his suggestions, -- Kloon, who never entertainedambitions beyond his hootch rake-off, -- whose miserable imaginationstopped at a wretched percentage, satisfied.
One shot! There was the back of Kloon's bushy head. One shot! -- andfear, 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, likeother creatures of the wild, men stricken died or recovered by chancealone.
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 himselfthat he couldn't miss. No use; always the coward's "if" blocked him;and the coward's rage, -- fiercest of all fury, -- ravaged him, almostcrazing him with his own impotence.
* * * * *
Tamaracks, sphagnum, crimson pitcher-plants grew thicker; wet woods setwith little black pools stretched away on every side.
It was still nearly a mile from Drowned Valley when Jake Kloon halted inhis tracks and seated himself on a narrow ridge of hard ground. AndLeverett came lightly up and, after nosing the whole vicinity, sat downcautiously where Kloon would have to turn partly around to look at him.
"Where the hell do we meet up with Quintana?" growled Kloon, tearing amouthful from a gnawed tobacco plug and shoving the remainder deep intohis trousers pocket.
"We gotta travel a piece, yet. ... Say, Jake, be you a man or be you apoor dumb critter what ain't got no spunk?"
Kloon, chewing on his cud, turned and glanced at him. Then he spat, asanswer.
"If you got the spunk of a chipmunk you and me'll take a peek at thatthere packet. I bet you it's thousand-dollar bills -- more'n a billionmillion dollars, likely."
Kloon's dogged silence continued. Leverett licked his dry lips. Hisrifle lay on his knees. Almost imperceptibly he moved it, moved itagain, froze stiff as Kloon spat, then, by infinitesimal degrees,continued to edge the muzzle toward Kloon.
"Jake?"
"Aw, shut your head," grumbled Kloon disdainfully. "You allus was adirty rat -- you sneakin' trap robber. Enough's enough. I ain't no usefor no billion million dollar bills. Ten thousand'll buy me all Ical'late to need till I'm planted. But you're like a hawg; you ain'tnever had enough o' nothin' and you won't never git enough, neither, --not if you wuz God a'mighty you wouldn't."
"Ten thousand dollars hain't nothin' to a billion million, Jake."
Kloon squirted a stream of tobacco at a pitcher plant and filled thecup. Diverted and gratified by the accuracy of his aim, he took othershots at intervals.
Leverett moved the muzzle of his rifle a hair's width to the left,shivered, moved it again. Under his soggy, sun-tanned skin a pallourmade his visage sickly grey.
"Jake?"
No answer.
"Say, Jake?"
No notice.
"Jake, I wanta take a peek at them bills."
Merely another stream of tobacco soiling the crimson pitcher.
"I'm -- I'm desprit. I gotta take a peek. I gotta -- gotta----"
Something in Leverett's unsteady voice made Kloon turn his head.
"You gol rammed fool," he said, "what you doin' with your----"
The loud detonation of the rifle punctuated Kloon's inquiry with a finalperiod. The big, soft-nosed bullet struck him full in the face,spilling his brains and part of his skull down his back, and knockinghim flat as though he had been clubbed.
Leverett, stunned, sat staring, motionless, clutching the rifle from themuzzle of which a delicate stain of vapour floated and disappearedthrough a rosy bar of sunshine.
In the intense stillness of the place, suddenly the dead man made asound; and the trap-robber nearly fainted.
But it was only air escaping from the slowly collapsing lungs; andLeverett, ashy pale, shaking, got to his feet and leaned heavily againstan oak tree, his eyes never stirring from the sprawling thing on theground.
* * * * *
If it were a minute or a year he stood there he could never havereckoned the space of time. The sun's level rays glimmered ruddythrough the woods. A green fly appeared, buzzing about the dead man.Another zig-zagged through the sunshine, lacing it with streaks ofgreenish fire. Others appeared, whirling, gyrating, filling the silencewith their humming. And still Leverett dared not budge, dared notsearch the dead and take from it that for which the dead had died.
A little breeze came by and stirred the bushy hair on Kloon's head andfluttered the ferns around him where he lay.
Two delicate, pure-white butterflies -- rare survivors of a nativespecies driven from civilization into the wilderness by the advent ofthe foreign white -- fluttered in airy play over the dead man, driftingaway
into the woodland at times, yet always returning to wage a fairycombat above the heap of soiled clothing which once had been a man.
Then, near in the ferns, the withering fronds twitched, and a redsquirrel sprung his startling alarm, squeaking, squealing, chatteringhis opinion of murder; and Leverett, shaking with shock, wiped icy sweatfrom his face, laid aside his rifle, and took his first stiff steptoward the dead man.
But as he bent over he changed his mind, turned, reeling a little, thencrept slowly out among the pitcher-plants, searching about him as thoughsniffing.
In a few minutes he discovered what he was looking for; took hisbearings; carefully picked his way back over a leafy crust that trembledunder his cautious tread.
He bent over Kloon and, from the left inside coat pocket, he drew thepacket and placed it inside his own flannel shirt.
Then, turning his back to the dead, he squatted down and