Jose Quintana lay somewhere in the forests with his gang, fiercely planning the recovery of the treasure of which Clinch had once robbed him. Clinch squatted on his runway, watching the mountain flank with murderous eyes. It was no longer the Flaming Jewel which mattered. His master passion ruled him now. Those who had offered violence to Eve must be reckoned with first of all. The hand that struck Eve Strayer had offered mortal insult to Mike Clinch.
As for the third pretender to the Flaming Jewel, Jake Kloon, he was now travelling in a fox's circle toward Drowned Valley — that shaggy wilderness of slime and tamarack and depthless bog which touches the northwest base of Star Peak. He was not hurrying, having no thought of pursuit. Behind him plodded Leverett, the trap thief, very, very busy with his own ideas.
To Leverett's repeated requests that Kloon halt and open the packet to see what it contained, Kloon gruffly refused.
"What do we care what's in it?" he said. "We get ten thousand apiece over our rifles for it from them guys. Ain't it a good enough job for you?"
"Maybe we make more if we take what's inside it for ourselves," argued
Leverett. "Let's take a peek, anyway."
"Naw. I don't want no peek nor nothin'. The ten thousand comes too
easy. More might scare us. Let that guy, Quintana, have what's his'n.
All I ask is my rake-off. You allus was a dirty, thieving mink, Earl.
Let's give him his and take ours and git. I'm going to Albany to live.
You bet I don't stay in no woods where Mike Clinch dens."
They plodded on, arguing, toward their rendezvous with Quintana's outpost on the edge of drowned valley.
* * * * *
The fourth pretender to the pearls, rubies, and great gem called the
Flaming Jewel, stolen from the young Grand Duchess Theodorica of
Esthonia by Jose Quintana, was an unconscious pretender, entirely
innocent of the role assigned her by Clinch.
For Eve Strayer had never heard where the packet came from or what it contained. All she knew was that her stepfather had told her that it belonged to her. And the knowledge left her incurious.