The Flaming Jewel

For its size there is no fiercer animal than a rat.

Rat-like rage possessed Leverett. In his headlong flight through the dusk, fear, instead of quenching, added to his rage; and he ran on and on, crashing through the undergrowth, made wilder by the pain of vicious blows from branches which flew back and struck him in the dark.

Thorns bled him; unseen logs tripped him; he heard Clinch's bullets whining around him; and he ran on, beginning to sob and curse in a frenzy of fury, fear, and shame.

Shots from Clinch's rifle ceased; the fugitive dropped into a heavy, shuffling walk, slavering, gasping, gesticulating with his weaponless fists in the darkness.

"Gol ram ye, I'll fix ye!" he kept stammering in his snarlin, jangling voice, broken by sobs. "I'll learn ye, yeh poor danged thing, gol ram ye----"

An unseen limb struck him cruelly across the face, and a moose-bush tripped him flat. Almost crazed, he got up, yelling in his pain, one hand wet and sticky from blood welling up from his cheek-bone.

He stood listening, infuriated, vindictive, but heard nothing save the panting, animal sounds in his own throat.

He strove to see in the ghostly obscurity around him, but could make out little except the trees close by.

But wood-rats are never completely lost in their native darkness; and Leverett presently discovered the far stars shining faintly through rifts in the phantom foliage above.

These heavenly signals were sufficient to give him his directions. Then the question suddenly came, which direction?

To his own shack on Stinking Lake he dared not go. He tried to believe that it was fear of Clinch that made him shy of the home shanty; but, in his cowering soul, he knew it was fear of another kind -- the deep, superstitious horror of Jake Kloon's empty bunk -- the repugnant sight of Kloon's spare clothing hanging from its peg -- the dead man's shoes---No, he could not go to Stinking Lake and sleep. ... And wake with the faint stench of sulphur in his throat. ... And see the worm-like leeches unfolding in the shallows, and the big, reddish water-lizards, livid as skinned eels, wriggling convulsively toward their sunless lairs. ...

At the mere thought of his dead bunk-mate he sought relief in vindictive rage -- stirred up the smouldering embers again, cursed Clinch and Hal Smith, violently searching in his inflamed brain some instant vengeance upon these men who had driven him out from the only place on earth where he knew how to exist -- the wilderness.

All at once he thought of Clinch's step-daughter. The thought instantly scared him. Yet -- what a revenge! -- to strike Clinch through the only creature he cared for in all the world! ... What a revenge! ... Clinch was headed for Drowned Valley. Eve Strayer was alone at the Dump. ... Another thought flashed like lightning across his turbid mind; -- the packet!