The Flaming Jewel

Slim and straight as a young boy in her grey shirt and breeches, Eve continued on lightly through the woods, her rifle over her shoulder, her eyes of gentian-blue always alert.

The morning turned warm; she pulled off her soft felt hat, shook out her clipped curls, stripped open the shirt at where her snowy throat where sweat glimmered like melted frost.

The forest was lovely in the morning sunlight -- lovely and still -- save for the blue-jays -- for the summer birds had gone and only birds destined to a long Northern winter remained.

Now and then, ahead of her, she saw a ruffed grouse wandering in the trail. These, and a single tiny grey bird with a dreary note interminably repeated, were the only living things she saw except here and there a summer-battered butterfly of the Vanessa tribe flitting in some stray sunbeam.

The haunting odour of the late autumn was in the air -- delicately acrid -- the scent of frost-killed brake and ripening wild grasses, of brilliant dead leaves and black forest loam pungent with mast from beech and oak.

Eve's treat was light on the moist trail; her quick eyes missed nothing -- not the dainty imprint of deer, fresh made, nor the sprawling insignia of rambling raccoons -- nor the big barred owl huddled on a pine limb overhead, nor, where the swift gravelly reaches of the brook caught sunlight, did she miss the swirl of the furrowing and milling of painted trout on the spawning beds.

Once she took cover, hearing something stirring; but it was only a yearling buck that came out of the witch-hazel to stare, stamp, and wheel and trot away, displaying the danger signal.

In her cartridge-pouch she carried the flat, sealed packet which Clinch had trusted to her. The sack swayed gently as she strode on, slapping her left hip at every step; and always her subconscious mind remained on guard and aware of it; and now and then she dropped her hand to feel of the pouch and strap.

The character of the forest was now changing as she advanced. The first tamaracks appeared, slim, silvery trunks, crowned with the gold of autumn foliage, outer sentinels of that vast maze of swamp and stream called Owl Marsh, the stronghold and refuge of forest wild things -- sometimes the sanctuary of hunted men.

From Star Peak's left flank an icy stream clatters down to the level floor of the woods, here; and it was here that Eve had meant to quench her thirst with a mouthful of sweet water.

But as she approached the tiny ford, warily, she saw a saddled horse tied to a sapling and a man seated on a mossy log.