Produced by Suzanne Shell and PG Distributed Proofreaders




THE HUNTED WOMAN

BY

JAMES OLIVER CURWOOD

Author of KAZAN, Etc.

Illustrated by

FRANK B. HOFFMAN


1915

TO MY WIFE

AND

OUR COMRADES OF THE TRAIL




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

"'Look at MacDonald.... It's not the gold, but MacDonald, that's taking me
North, Ladygray.... Up there, another grave is calling MacDonald.'"

A tall, slim, exquisitely poised figure.... "'Another o' them Dotty Dimples
come out to save the world. I thought I'd help eggicate her a little, an'
so I sent her to Bill's place'"

"A crowd was gathering.... A slim, exquisitely formed woman in shimmering
silk was standing beside a huge brown bear"

"'The tunnel is closed,' she whispered.... 'That means we have just
forty-five minutes to live.... Let us not lie to one another.'"




CHAPTER I


It was all new--most of it singularly dramatic and even appalling to the
woman who sat with the pearl-gray veil drawn closely about her face. For
eighteen hours she had been a keenly attentive, wide-eyed, and partly
frightened bit of humanity in this onrush of "the horde." She had heard a
voice behind her speak of it as "the horde"--a deep, thick, gruff voice
which she knew without looking had filtered its way through a beard. She
agreed with the voice. It was the Horde--that horde which has always beaten
the trails ahead for civilization and made of its own flesh and blood the
foundation of nations. For months it had been pouring steadily into the
mountains--always in and never out, a laughing, shouting, singing,
blaspheming Horde, every ounce of it toughened sinew and red brawn, except
the Straying Angels. One of these sat opposite her, a dark-eyed girl with
over-red lips and hollowed cheeks, and she heard the bearded man say
something to his companions about "dizzy dolls" and "the little angel in
the other seat." This same voice, gruffened in its beard, had told her that
ten thousand of the Horde had gone up ahead of them. Then it whispered
something that made her hands suddenly tighten and a hot flush sweep
through her. She lifted her veil and rose slowly from her seat, as if to
rearrange her dress. Casually she looked straight into the faces of the
bearded man and his companion in the seat behind. They stared. After that
she heard nothing more of the Straying Angels, but only a wildly mysterious
confabulation about "rock hogs," and "coyotes" that blew up whole
mountains, and a hundred and one things about the "rail end." She learned
that it was taking five hundred steers a week to feed the Horde that lay
along the Grand Trunk Pacific between Hogan's Camp and the sea, and that
there were two thousand souls at Tête Jaune Cache, which until a few months
before had slumbered in a century-old quiet broken only by the Indian and
his trade. Then the train stopped in its twisting trail, and the bearded
man and his companion left the car. As they passed her they glanced down.
Again the veil was drawn close. A shimmering tress of hair had escaped its
bondage; that was all they saw.

[Illustration: "Look at MacDonald.... It's not the gold, but MacDonald,
that's taking me north, Ladygray.... Up there, another grave is calling
MacDonald."]

The veiled woman drew a deeper breath when they were gone. She saw that
most of the others were getting off. In her end of the car the
hollow-cheeked girl and she were alone. Even in their aloneness these two
women had not dared to speak until now. The one raised her veil again, and
their eyes met across the aisle. For a moment the big, dark, sick-looking
eyes of the "angel" stared. Like the bearded man and his companion, she,
too, understood, and an embarrassed flush added to the colour of the rouge
on her cheeks. The eyes that looked across at her were blue--deep, quiet,
beautiful. The lifted veil had disclosed to her a face that she could not
associate with the Horde. The lips smiled at her--the wonderful eyes
softened with a look of understanding, and then the veil was lowered again.
The flush in the girl's cheek died out, and she smiled back.

"You are going to Tête Jaune?" she asked.

"Yes. May I sit with you for a few minutes? I want to ask questions--so
many!"

The hollow-cheeked girl made room for her at her side.

"You are new?"

"Quite new--to this."

The words, and the manner in which they were spoken, made the other glance
quickly at her companion.

"It is a strange place to go--Tête Jaune," she said. "It is a terrible
place for a woman."

"And yet you are going?"

"I have friends there. Have you?"

"No."

The girl stared at her in amazement. Her voice and her eyes were bolder
now.

"And without friends you are going--_there?_" she cried. "You have no
husband--no brother----"

"What place is this?" interrupted the other, raising her veil so that she
could look steadily into the other's face. "Would you mind telling me?"

"It is Miette," replied the girl, the flush reddening her cheeks again.
"There's one of the big camps of the railroad builders down on the Flats.
You can see it through the window. That river is the Athabasca."

"Will the train stop here very long?"

The Little Angel shrugged her thin shoulders despairingly.

"Long enough to get me into The Cache mighty late to-night," she
complained. "We won't move for two hours."

"I'd be so glad if you could tell me where I can go for a bath and
something to eat. I'm not very hungry--but I'm terribly dusty. I want to
change some clothes, too. Is there a hotel here?"

Her companion found the question very funny. She had a giggling fit before
she answered.

"You're sure new," she explained. "We don't have hotels up here. We have
bed-houses, chuck-tents, and bunk-shacks. You ask for Bill's Shack down
there on the Flats. It's pretty good. They'll give you a room, plenty of
water, and a looking-glass--an' charge you a dollar. I'd go with you, but
I'm expecting a friend a little later, and if I move I may lose him.
Anybody will tell you where Bill's place is. It's a red an' white striped
tent--and it's respectable."

The stranger girl thanked her, and turned for her bag. As she left the car,
the Little Angel's eyes followed her with a malicious gleam that gave them
the strange glow of candles in a sepulchral cavern. The colours which she
unfurled to all seeking eyes were not secret, and yet she was filled with
an inward antagonism that this stranger with the wonderful blue eyes had
dared to see them and recognize them. She stared after the retreating
form--a tall, slim, exquisitely poised figure that filled her with envy and
a dull sort of hatred. She did not hear a step behind her. A hand fell
familiarly on her shoulder, and a coarse voice laughed something in her ear
that made her jump up with an artificial little shriek of pleasure. The man
nodded toward the end of the now empty car.

"Who's your new friend?" he asked.

"She's no friend of mine," snapped the girl. "She's another one of them
Dolly Dimples come out to save the world. She's that innocent she wonders
why Tête Jaune ain't a nice place for ladies without escort. I thought I'd
help eggicate her a little an' so I sent her to Bill's place. Oh, my Lord,
I told her it was respectable!"

She doubled over the seat in a fit of merriment, and her companion seized
the opportunity to look out of the window.

The tall, blue-eyed stranger had paused for a moment on the last step of
the car to pin up her veil, fully revealing her face. Then she stepped
lightly to the ground, and found herself facing the sunlight and the
mountains. She drew a slow, deep breath between her parted lips, and turned
wonderingly, for a moment forgetful. It was the first time she had left the
train since entering the mountains, and she understood now why some one in
the coach had spoken of the Miette Plain as Sunshine Pool. Where-ever she
looked the mountains fronted her, with their splendid green slopes reaching
up to their bald caps of gray shale and reddish rock or gleaming summits of
snow. Into this "pool"--this pocket in the mountains--the sun descended in
a wonderful flood. It stirred her blood like a tonic. She breathed more
quickly; a soft glow coloured her cheeks; her eyes grew more deeply violet
as they caught the reflection of the blue sky. A gentle wind fretted the
loose tendrils of brown hair about her face. And the bearded man, staring
through the car window, saw her thus, and for an hour after that the
hollow-cheeked girl wondered at the strange change in him.

The train had stopped at the edge of the big fill overlooking the Flats. It
was a heavy train, and a train that was helping to make history--a
combination of freight, passenger, and "cattle." It had averaged eight
miles an hour on its climb toward Yellowhead Pass and the end of steel. The
"cattle" had already surged from their stifling and foul-smelling cars in a
noisy inundation of curiously mixed humanity. They were of a dozen
different nationalities, and as the girl looked at them it was not with
revulsion or scorn but with a sudden quickening of heartbeat and a little
laugh that had in it something both of wonder and of pride. This was the
Horde, that crude, monstrous thing of primitive strength and passions that
was overturning mountains in its fight to link the new Grand Trunk Pacific
with the seaport on the Pacific. In that Horde, gathered in little groups,
shifting, sweeping slowly toward her and past her, she saw something as
omnipotent as the mountains themselves. They could not know defeat. She
sensed it without ever having seen them before. For her the Horde now had a
heart and a soul. These were the builders of empire--the man-beasts who
made it possible for Civilization to creep warily and without peril into
new places and new worlds. With a curious shock she thought of the
half-dozen lonely little wooden crosses she had seen through the car window
at odd places along the line of rail.

And now she sought her way toward the Flats. To do this she had to climb
over a track that was waiting for ballast. A car shunted past her, and on
its side she saw the big, warning red placards--Dynamite. That one word
seemed to breathe to her the spirit of the wonderful energy that was
expending itself all about her. From farther on in the mountains came the
deep, sullen detonations of the "little black giant" that had been rumbling
past her in the car. It came again and again, like the thunderous voice of
the mountains themselves calling out in protest and defiance. And each time
she felt a curious thrill under her feet and the palpitant touch of
something that was like a gentle breath in her ears. She found another
track on her way, and other cars slipped past her crunchingly. Beyond this
second track she came to a beaten road that led down into the Flats, and
she began to descend.

[Illustration: A tall, slim, exquisitely poised figure.... "Another o' them
Dotty Dimples come out to save the world. I thought I'd help eggicate her a
little, an' so I sent her to Bill's place. Oh, my Lord, I told her it was
respectable!"]

Tents shone through the trees on the bottom. The rattle of the cars grew
more distant, and she heard the hum and laughter of voices and the jargon
of a phonograph. At the bottom of the slope she stepped aside to allow a
team and wagon to pass. The wagon was loaded with boxes that rattled and
crashed about as the wheels bumped over stones and roots. The driver of the
team did not look at her. He was holding back with his whole weight; his
eyes bulged a little; he was sweating, in his face was a comedy of
expression that made the girl smile in spite of herself. Then she saw one
of the bobbing boxes and the smile froze into a look of horror. On it was
painted that ominous word--DYNAMITE!

Two men were coming behind her.

"Six horses, a wagon an' old Fritz--blown to hell an' not a splinter left
to tell the story," one of them was saying. "I was there three minutes
after the explosion and there wasn't even a ravelling or a horsehair left.
This dynamite's a dam' funny thing. I wouldn't be a rock-hog for a
million!"

"I'd rather be a rock-hog than Joe--drivin' down this hill a dozen times a
day," replied the other.

The girl had paused again, and the two men stared at her as they were about
to pass. The explosion of Joe's dynamite could not have startled them more
than the beauty of the face that was turned to them in a quietly appealing
inquiry.

"I am looking for a place called--Bill's Shack," she said, speaking the
Little Sister's words hesitatingly. "Can you direct me to it, please?"

The younger of the two men looked at his companion without speaking. The
other, old enough to regard feminine beauty as a trap and an illusion,
turned aside to empty his mouth of a quid of tobacco, bent over, and
pointed under the trees.

"Can't miss it--third tent-house on your right, with canvas striped like a
barber-pole. That phonnygraff you hear is at Bill's."

"Thank you."

She went on.

Behind her, the two men stood where she had left them. They did not move.
The younger man seemed scarcely to breathe.

"Bill's place!" he gasped then. "I've a notion to tell her. I can't
believe----"

"Shucks!" interjected the other.

"But I don't. She isn't that sort. She looked like a Madonna--with the
heart of her clean gone. I never saw anything so white an' so beautiful.
You call me a fool if you want to--I'm goin' on to Bill's!"

He strode ahead, chivalry in his young and palpitating heart. Quickly the
older man was at his side, clutching his arm.

"Come along, you cotton-head!" he cried. "You ain't old enough or big
enough in this camp to mix in with Bill. Besides," he lied, seeing the
wavering light in the youth's eyes, "I know her. She's going to the right
place."

At Bill's place men were holding their breath and staring. They were not
unaccustomed to women. But such a one as this vision that walked calmly and
undisturbed in among them they had never seen. There were half a dozen
lounging there, smoking and listening to the phonograph, which some one now
stopped that they might hear every word that was spoken. The girl's head
was high. She was beginning to understand that it would have been less
embarrassing to have gone hungry and dusty. But she had come this far, and
she was determined to get what she wanted--if it was to be had. The colour
shone a little more vividly through the pure whiteness of her skin as she
faced Bill, leaning over his little counter. In him she recognized the
Brute. It was blazoned in his face, in the hungry, seeking look of his
eyes--in the heavy pouches and thick crinkles of his neck and cheeks. For
once Bill Quade himself was at a loss.

"I understand that you have rooms for rent," she said unemotionally. "May I
hire one until the train leaves for Tête Jaune Cache?"

The listeners behind her stiffened and leaned forward. One of them grinned
at Quade. This gave him the confidence he needed to offset the fearless
questioning in the blue eyes. None of them noticed a newcomer in the door.
Quade stepped from behind his shelter and faced her.

"This way," he said, and turned to the drawn curtains beyond them.

She followed. As the curtains closed after them a chuckling laugh broke the
silence of the on-looking group. The newcomer in the doorway emptied the
bowl of his pipe, and thrust the pipe into the breast-pocket of his flannel
shirt. He was bareheaded. His hair was blond, shot a little with gray. He
was perhaps thirty-eight, no taller than the girl herself, slim-waisted,
with trim, athletic shoulders. His eyes, as they rested on the
still-fluttering curtains, were a cold and steady gray. His face was thin
and bronzed, his nose a trifle prominent. He was a man far from handsome,
and yet there was something of fascination and strength about him. He did
not belong to the Horde. Yet he might have been the force behind it,
contemptuous of the chuckling group of rough-visaged men, almost arrogant
in his posture as he eyed the curtains and waited.

What he expected soon came. It was not the usual giggling, the usual
exchange of badinage and coarse jest beyond the closed curtains. Quade did
not come out rubbing his huge hands, his face crinkling with a sort of
exultant satisfaction. The girl preceded him. She flung the curtains aside
and stood there for a moment, her face flaming like fire, her blue eyes
filled with the flash of lightning. She came down the single step. Quade
followed her. He put out a hand.

"Don't take offence, girly," he expostulated. "Look here--ain't it
reasonable to s'pose----"

He got no farther. The man in the door had advanced, placing himself at the
girl's side. His voice was low and unexcited.

"You have made a mistake?" he said.

She took him in at a glance--his clean-cut, strangely attractive face, his
slim build, the clear and steady gray of his eyes.

"Yes, I have made a mistake--a terrible mistake!"

"I tell you it ain't fair to take offence," Quade went on. "Now, look
here----"

In his hand was a roll of bills. The girl did not know that a man could
strike as quickly and with as terrific effect as the gray-eyed stranger
struck then. There was one blow, and Quade went down limply. It was so
sudden that he had her outside before she realized what had happened.

"I chanced to see you go in," he explained, without a tremor in his voice.
"I thought you were making a mistake. I heard you ask for shelter. If you
will come with me I will take you to a friend's."

"If it isn't too much trouble for you, I will go," she said. "And for
that--in there--thank you!"




CHAPTER II


They passed down an aisle through the tall trees, on each side of which
faced the vari-coloured and many-shaped architecture of the little town. It
was chiefly of canvas. Now and then a structure of logs added an appearance
of solidity to the whole. The girl did not look too closely. She knew that
they passed places in which there were long rows of cots, and that others
were devoted to trade. She noticed signs which advertised soft drinks and
cigars--always "soft drinks," which sometimes came into camp marked as
"dynamite," "salt pork," and "flour." She was conscious that every one
stared at them as they passed. She heard clearly the expressions of wonder
and curiosity of two women and a girl who were spreading out blankets in
front of a rooming-tent. She looked at the man at her side. She appreciated
his courtesy in not attempting to force an acquaintanceship. In her eyes
was a ripple of amusement.

"This is all strange and new to me--and not at all uninteresting," she
said. "I came expecting--everything. And I am finding it. Why do they stare
at me so? Am I a curiosity?"

"You are," he answered bluntly. "You are the most beautiful woman they have
ever seen."

His eyes encountered hers as he spoke. He had answered her question fairly.
There was nothing that was audacious in his manner or his look. She had
asked for information, and he had given it. In spite of herself the girl's
lips trembled. Her colour deepened. She smiled.

"Pardon me," she entreated. "I seldom feel like laughing, but I almost do
now. I have encountered so many curious people and have heard so many
curious things during the past twenty-four hours. You don't believe in
concealing your thoughts out here in the wilderness, do you?"

"I haven't expressed _my_ thoughts," he corrected. "I was telling you what
_they_ think."

"Oh-h-h--I beg your pardon again!"

"Not at all," he answered lightly, and now his eyes were laughing frankly
into her own. "I don't mind informing you," he went on, "that I am the
biggest curiosity you will meet between this side of the mountains and the
sea. I am not accustomed to championing women. I allow them to pursue their
own course without personal interference on my part. But--I suppose it will
give you some satisfaction if I confess it--I followed you into Bill's
place because you were more than ordinarily beautiful, and because I wanted
to see fair play. I knew you were making a mistake. I knew what would
happen."

They had passed the end of the street, and entered a little green plain
that was soft as velvet underfoot. On the farther side of this, sheltered
among the trees, were two or three tents. The man led the way toward these.

"Now, I suppose I've spoiled it all," he went on, a touch of irony in his
voice. "It was really quite heroic of me to follow you into Bill's place,
don't you think? You probably want to tell me so, but don't quite dare.
And I should play up to my part, shouldn't I? But I cannot--not
satisfactorily. I'm really a bit disgusted with myself for having taken as
much interest in you as I have. I write books for a living. My name is John
Aldous."

With a little cry of amazement, his companion stopped. Without knowing it,
her hand had gripped his arm.

"You are John Aldous--who wrote 'Fair Play,' and 'Women!'" she gasped.

"Yes," he said, amusement in his face.

"I have read those books--and I have read your plays," she breathed, a
mysterious tremble in her voice. "You despise women!"

"Devoutly."

She drew a deep breath. Her hand dropped from his arm.

"This is very, very funny," she mused, gazing off to the sun-capped peaks
of the mountains. "You have flayed women alive. You have made them want to
mob you. And yet----"

"Millions of them read my books," he chuckled.

"Yes--all of them read your books," she replied, looking straight into his
face. "And I guess--in many ways--you have pointed out things that are
true."

It was his turn to show surprise.

"You believe that?"

"I do. More than that--I have always thought that I knew your secret--the
big, hidden thing under your work, the thing which you do not reveal
because you know the world would laugh at you. And so--_you despise me!_"

"Not you."

"I am a woman."

He laughed. The tan in his cheeks burned a deeper red.

"We are wasting time," he warned her. "In Bill's place I heard you say you
were going to leave on the Tête Jaune train. I am going to take you to a
real dinner. And now--I should let those good people know your name."

A moment--unflinching and steady--she looked into his face.

"It is Joanne, the name you have made famous as the dreadfulest woman in
fiction. Joanne Gray."

"I am sorry," he said, and bowed low. "Come. If I am not mistaken I smell
new-baked bread."

As they moved on he suddenly touched her arm. She felt for a moment the
firm clasp of his fingers. There was a new light in his eyes, a glow of
enthusiasm.

"I have it!" he cried. "You have brought it to me--the idea. I have been
wanting a name for _her_--the woman in my new book. She is to be a
tremendous surprise. I haven't found a name, until now--one that fits. I
shall call her Ladygray!"

He felt the girl flinch. He was surprised at the sudden startled look that
shot into her eyes, the swift ebbing of the colour from her cheeks. He drew
away his hand at the strange change in her. He noticed how quickly she was
breathing--that the fingers of her white hands were clasped tensely.

"You object," he said.

"Not enough to keep you from using it," she replied in a low voice. "I owe
you a great deal." He noted, too, how quickly she had recovered herself.
Her head was a little higher. She looked toward the tents. "You were not
mistaken," she added. "I smell new-made bread!"

"And I shall emphasize the first half of it--_Lady_gray," said John Aldous,
as if speaking to himself. "That diminutizes it, you might say--gives it
the touch of sentiment I want. You can imagine a lover saying 'Dear little
_Lady_gray, are you warm and comfy?' He wouldn't say Ladygray as if she
wore a coronet, would he?"

"Smell-o'-bread--fresh bread!" sniffed Joanne Gray, as if she had not heard
him. "It's making me hungry. Will you please hurry me to it, John Aldous?"

They were approaching the first of the three tent-houses, over which was a
crudely painted sign which read "Otto Brothers, Guides and Outfitters." It
was a large, square tent, with weather-faded red and blue stripes, and from
it came the cheerful sound of a woman's laughter. Half a dozen
trampish-looking Airedale terriers roused themselves languidly as they drew
nearer. One of them stood up and snarled.

"They won't hurt you," assured Aldous. "They belong to Jack Bruce and
Clossen Otto--the finest bunch of grizzly dogs in the Rockies." Another
moment, and a woman had appeared in the door. "And that is Mrs. Jack Otto,"
he added under his breath. "If all women were like her I wouldn't have
written the things you have read!"

He might have added that she was Scotch. But this was not necessary. The
laughter was still in her good-humoured face. Aldous looked at his
companion, and he found her smiling back. The eyes of the two women had
already met.

Briefly Aldous explained what had happened at Quade's, and that the young
woman was leaving on the Tête Jaune train. The good-humoured smile left
Mrs. Otto's face when he mentioned Quade.

"I've told Jack I'd like to poison that man some day," she cried. "You poor
dear, come in, I'll get you a cup of tea."

"Which always means dinner in the Otto camp," added Aldous.

"I'm not so hungry, but I'm tired--so tired," he heard the girl say as she
went in with Mrs. Otto, and there was a new and strangely pathetic note in
her voice. "I want to rest--until the train goes."

He followed them in, and stood for a moment near the door.

"There's a room in there, my dear," said the woman, drawing back a curtain.
"Make yourself at home, and lie down on the bed until I have the tea
ready."

When the curtain had closed behind her, John Aldous spoke in a low voice to
the woman.

"Will you see her safely to the train, Mrs. Otto?" he asked. "It leaves at
a quarter after two. I must be going."

He felt that he had sufficiently performed his duty. He left the tent, and
paused for a moment outside to touzle affectionately the trampish heads of
the bear dogs. Then he turned away, whistling. He had gone a dozen steps
when a low voice stopped him. He turned. Joanne had come from the door.

For one moment he stared as if something more wonderful than anything he
had ever seen had risen before him. The girl was bareheaded, and she stood
in a sun mellowed by a film of cloud. Her head was piled with lustrous
coils of gold-brown hair that her hat and veil had hidden. Never had he
looked upon such wonderful hair, crushed and crumpled back from her smooth
forehead; nor such marvellous whiteness of skin and pure blue depths of
eyes! In her he saw now everything that was strong and splendid in woman.
She was not girlishly sweet. She was not a girl. She was a woman--glorious
to look at, a soul glowing out of her eyes, a strength that thrilled him in
the quiet and beautiful mystery of her face.

"You were going without saying good-bye," she said. "Won't you let me thank
you--a last time?"

Her voice brought him to himself again. A moment he bent over her hand. A
moment he felt its warm, firm pressure in his own. The smile that flashed
to his lips was hidden from her as he bowed his blond-gray head.

"Pardon me for the omission," he apologized. "Good-bye--and may good luck
go with you!"

Their eyes met once more. With another bow he had turned, and was
continuing his way. At the door Joanne Gray looked back. He was whistling
again. His careless, easy stride was filled with a freedom that seemed to
come to her in the breath of the mountains. And then she, too, smiled
strangely as she reëntered the tent.




CHAPTER III


If John Aldous had betrayed no visible sign of inward vanquishment he at
least was feeling its effect. For years his writings had made him the
target for a world of women, and many men. The men he had regarded with
indifferent toleration. The women were his life--the "frail and ineffective
creatures" who gave spice to his great adventure, and made his days
anything but monotonous. He was not unchivalrous. Deep down in his
heart--and this was his own secret--he did not even despise women. But he
had seen their weaknesses and their frailties as perhaps no other man had
ever seen them, and he had written of them as no other man had ever
written. This had brought him the condemnation of the host, the admiration
of the few. His own personal veneer of antagonism against woman was purely
artificial, and yet only a few had guessed it. He had built it up about him
as a sort of protection. He called himself "an adventurer in the mysteries
of feminism," and to be this successfully he had argued that he must
destroy in himself the usual heart-emotions of the sex-man and the animal.

How far he had succeeded in this he himself did not know--until these last
moments when he had bid good-bye to Joanne Gray. He confessed that she had
found a cleft in his armour, and there was an uneasy thrill in his blood.
It was not her beauty alone that had affected him. He had trained himself
to look at a beautiful woman as he might have looked at a beautiful flower,
confident that if he went beyond the mere admiration of it he would find
only burned-out ashes. But in her he had seen something that was more than
beauty, something that for a flashing moment had set stirring every
molecule in his being. He had felt the desire to rest his hand upon her
shining hair!

He turned off into a winding path that led into the thick poplars,
restraining an inclination to look back in the direction of the Otto camp.
He pulled out the pipe he had dropped into his shirt pocket, filled it with
fresh tobacco, and began smoking. As he smoked, his lips wore a quizzical
smile, for he was honest enough to give Joanne Gray credit for her triumph.
She had awakened a new kind of interest in him--only a passing interest, to
be sure--but a new kind for all that. The fact amused him. In a large way
he was a humourist--few guessing it, and he fully appreciated the humour of
the present situation--that he, John Aldous, touted the world over as a
woman-hater, wanted to peer out through the poplar foliage and see that
wonderful gold-brown head shining in the sun once more!

He wandered more slowly on his way, wondering with fresh interest what his
friends, the women, would say when they read his new book. His title for it
was "Mothers." It was to be a tremendous surprise.

Suddenly his face became serious. He faced the sound of a distant
phonograph. It was not the phonograph in Quade's place, but that of a rival
dealer in soft drinks at the end of the "street." For a moment Aldous
hesitated. Then he turned in the direction of the camp.

Quade was bolstered up on a stool, his back against the thin partition,
when John Aldous sauntered in. There was still a groggy look in his mottled
face. His thick bulk hung a bit limply. In his heavy-lidded eyes,
under-hung by watery pouches of sin and dissipation, there was a vengeful
and beastlike glare. He was surrounded by his friends. One of them was
taking a wet cloth from his head. There were a dozen in the canvas-walled
room, all with their backs to the door, their eyes upon their fallen and
dishonoured chief. For a moment John Aldous paused in the door. The cool
and insolent smile hovered about his lips again, and little crinkles had
gathered at the corners of his eyes.

"Did I hit you pretty hard, Bill?" he asked.

Every head was turned toward him. Bill Quade stared, his mouth open. He
staggered to his feet, and stood dizzily.

"You--damn you!" he cried huskily.

Three or four of the men had already begun to move toward the stranger.
Their hands were knotted, their faces murderously dark.

"Wait a minute, boys," warned Aldous coolly. "I've got something to say to
you--and Bill. Then eat me alive if you want to. Do you want to be square
enough to give me a word?"

Quade had settled back sickly on his stool. The others had stopped,
waiting. The quiet and insolently confident smile had not left Aldous'
lips.

"You'll feel better in a few minutes, Bill," he consoled. "A hard blow on
the jaw always makes you sick at the pit of the stomach. That dizziness
will pass away shortly. Meanwhile, I'm going to give you and your pals a
little verbal and visual demonstration of what you're up against, and warn
you to bait no traps for a certain young woman whom you've lately seen.
She's going on to Tête Jaune. And I know how your partner plays his game up
there. I'm not particularly anxious to butt into your affairs and the
business of this pretty bunch that's gathered about you, but I've come to
give you a friendly warning for all that. If this young woman is
embarrassed up at Tête Jaune you're going to settle with me."

Aldous had spoken without a tremor of excitement in his voice. Not one of
the men noticed his speaking lips, his slim hands, or his careless posture
as he leaned in the door. They were looking straight into his eyes,
strangely scintillating and deadly earnest. In such a man mere bulk did not
count.

"That much--for words," he went on. "Now I'm going to give you the visual
demonstration. I know your game, Bill. You're already planning what you're
going to do. You won't fight fair--because you never have. You've already
decided that some morning I'll turn up missing, or be dug out from under a
fall of rock, or go peacefully floating down the Athabasca. See! There's
nothing in that hand, is there?"

He stretched out an empty hand toward them, palm up.

"And now!"

A twist of the wrist so swift their eyes could not follow, a metallic
click, and the startled group were staring into the black muzzle of a
menacing little automatic.

"That's known as the sleeve trick, boys," explained Aldous with his
imperturbable smile. "It's a relic of the old gun-fighting days when the
best man was quickest. From now on, especially at night, I shall carry this
little friend of mine just inside my wristband. There are eleven shots in
it, and I shoot fairly straight. Good-day!"

Before they had recovered from their astonishment he was gone.

He did not follow the road along which Joanne had come a short time before,
but turned again into the winding trail that led riverward through the
poplars. Where before he had been a little amused at himself, he was now
more seriously disgusted. He was not afraid of Quade, who was perhaps the
most dangerous man along the line of rail. Neither was he afraid of the
lawless men who worked his ends. But he knew that he had made powerful
enemies, and all because of an unknown woman whom he had never seen until
half an hour before. It was this that disturbed his equanimity--the _woman_
of it, and the knowledge that his interference had been unsolicited and
probably unnecessary. And now that he had gone this far he found it not
easy to recover his balance. Who was this Joanne Gray? he asked himself.
She was not ordinary--like the hundred other women who had gone on ahead of
her to Tête Jaune Cache. If she had been that, he would soon have been in
his little shack on the shore of the river, hard at work. He had planned
work for himself that afternoon, and he was nettled to discover that his
enthusiasm for the grand finale of a certain situation in his novel was
gone. Yet for this he did not blame her. He was the fool. Quade and his
friends would make him feel that sooner or later.

His trail led him to a partly dry muskeg bottom. Beyond this was a thicker
growth of timber, mostly spruce and cedar, from behind which came the
rushing sound of water. A few moments more and he stood with the wide
tumult of the Athabasca at his feet. He had chosen this spot for his little
cabin because the river ran wild here among the rocks, and because
pack-outfits going into the southward mountains could not disturb him by
fording at this point. Across the river rose the steep embankments that
shut in Buffalo Prairie, and still beyond that the mountains, thick with
timber rising billow on billow until trees looked like twigs, with gray
rock and glistening snow shouldering the clouds above the last purple line.
The cabin in which he had lived and worked for many weeks faced the river
and the distant Saw Tooth Range, and was partly hidden in a clump of
jack-pines. He opened the door and entered. Through the window to the south
and west he could see the white face of Mount Geikie, and forty miles away
in that wilderness of peaks, the sombre frown of Hardesty; through it the
sun came now, flooding his work as he had left it. The last page of
manuscript on which he had been working was in his typewriter. He sat down
to begin where he had left off in that pivotal situation in his
masterpiece.

He read and re-read the last two or three pages of the manuscript,
struggling to pick up the threads where he had dropped them. With each
reading he became more convinced that his work for that afternoon was
spoiled. And by whom? By _what?_ A little fiercely he packed his pipe with
fresh tobacco. Then he leaned back, lighted it, and laughed. More and more
as the minutes passed he permitted himself to think of the strange young
woman whose beauty and personality had literally projected themselves into
his workshop. He marvelled at the crudity of the questions which he asked
himself, and yet he persisted in asking them. Who was she? What could be
her mission at Tête Jaune Cache? She had repeated to him what she had said
to the girl in the coach--that at Tête Jaune she had no friends. Beyond
that, and her name, she had offered no enlightenment.

In the brief space that he had been with her he had mentally tabulated her
age as twenty-eight--no older. Her beauty alone, the purity of her eyes,
the freshness of her lips, and the slender girlishness of her figure, might
have made him say twenty, but with those things he had found the maturer
poise of the woman. It had been a flashlight picture, but one that he was
sure of.

Several times during the next hour he turned to his work, and at last gave
up his efforts entirely. From a peg in the wall he took down a little
rifle. He had found it convenient to do much of his own cooking, and he had
broken a few laws. The partridges were out of season, but temptingly fat
and tender. With a brace of young broilers in mind for supper, he left the
cabin and followed the narrow foot-trail up the river. He hunted for half
an hour before he stirred a covey of birds. Two of these he shot.
Concealing his meat and his gun near the trail he continued toward the ford
half a mile farther up, wondering if Stevens, who was due to cross that
day, had got his outfit over. Not until then did he look at his watch. He
was surprised to find that the Tête Jaune train had been gone three
quarters of an hour. For some unaccountable reason he felt easier. He went
on, whistling.

At the ford he found Stevens standing close to the river's edge, twisting
one of his long red moustaches in doubt and vexation.

"Damn this river," he growled, as Aldous came up. "You never can tell what
it's going to do overnight. Look there! Would you try to cross?"

"I wouldn't," replied Aldous. "It's a foot higher than yesterday. I
wouldn't take the chance."

"Not with two guides, a cook, and a horse-wrangler on your pay-roll--and a
hospital bill as big as Geikie staring you in the face?" argued Stevens,
who had been sick for three months. "I guess you'd pretty near take a
chance. I've a notion to."

"I wouldn't," repeated Aldous.

"But I've lost two days already, and I'm taking that bunch of sightseers
out for a lump sum, guaranteeing 'em so many days on the trail. This ain't
what you might call _on the trail_. They don't expect to pay for this
delay, and that outfit back in the bush is costing me thirty dollars a day.
We can get the dunnage and ourselves over in the flat-boat. It'll make our
arms crack--but we can do it. I've got twenty-seven horses. I've a notion
to chase 'em in. The river won't be any lower to-morrow."

"But you may be a few horses ahead."

Stevens bit off a chunk of tobacco and sat down. For a few moments he
looked at the muddy flood with an ugly eye. Then he chuckled, and grinned.

"Came through the camp half an hour ago," he said. "Hear you cleaned up on
Bill Quade."

"A bit," said Aldous.

Stevens rolled his quid and spat into the water slushing at his feet.

"Guess I saw the woman when she got off the train," he went on. "She
dropped something. I picked it up, but she was so darned pretty as she
stood there looking about I didn't dare go up an' give it to her. If it had
been worth anything I'd screwed up my courage. But it wasn't--so I just
gawped like the others. It was a piece of paper. Mebby you'd like it as a
souvenir, seein' as you laid out Quade for her."

As he spoke, Stevens fished a crumpled bit of paper from his pocket and
gave it to his companion. Aldous had sat down beside him. He smoothed the
page out on his knee. There was no writing on it, but it was crowded thick
with figures, as if the maker of the numerals had been doing some problem
in mathematics. The chief thing that interested him was that wherever
monetary symbols were used it was the "pound" and not the "dollar" sign.
The totals of certain columns were rather startling.

"Guess she's a millionaire if that's her own money she's been figgering,"
said Stevens. "Notice that figger there!" He pointed with a stubby
forefinger. "Pretty near a billion, ain't it?"

"Seven hundred and fifty thousand," said Aldous.

He was thinking of the "pound" sign. She had not looked like the
Englishwomen he had met. He folded the slip of paper and put it in his
pocket.

Stevens eyed him seriously.

"I was coming over to give you a bit of advice before I left for the
Maligne Lake country," he said. "You'd better move. Quade won't want you
around after this. Besides----"

"What?"

"My kid heard something," continued the packer, edging nearer. "You was
mighty good to the kid when I was down an' out, Aldous. I ought to tell
you. It wasn't an hour ago the kid was behind the tent an' he heard Quade
and Slim Barker talking. So far as I can find from the kid, Quade has gone
nutty over her. He's ravin'. He told Slim that he'd give ten thousand
dollars to get her in his hands. What sent the boy down to me was Quade
tellin' Slim that he'd get _you_ first. He told Slim to go on to Tête
Jaune--follow the girl!"

"The deuce you say!" cried Aldous, clutching the other's arm suddenly.
"He's done that?"

"That's what the kid says."

Aldous rose to his feet slowly. The careless smile was playing about his
mouth again. A few men had learned that in those moments John Aldous was
dangerous.

"The kid is undoubtedly right," he said, looking down at Stevens. "But I am
quite sure the young woman is capable of taking care of herself. Quade has
a tremendous amount of nerve, setting Slim to follow her, hasn't he? Slim
may run up against a husband or a brother."

Stevens haunched his shoulders.

"It's not the woman I'm thinking about. It's you. I'd sure change my
location."

"Why wouldn't it be just as well if I told the police of his threat?" asked
Aldous, looking across the river with a glimmer of humour in his eyes.

"Oh, hell!" was the packer's rejoinder.

Slowly he unwound his long legs and rose to his feet.

"Take my advice--move!" he said. "As for me, I'm going to cross that cussed
river this afternoon or know the reason why."

He stalked away in the direction of his outfit, chewing viciously at his
quid. For a few moments Aldous stood undecided. He would liked to have
joined the half-dozen men he saw lounging restfully a distance beyond the
grazing ponies. But Stevens had made him acutely aware of a new danger. He
was thinking of his cabin--and the priceless achievement of his last months
of work, his manuscript. If Quade should destroy that----

He clenched his hands and walked swiftly toward his camp. To "burn out" an
enemy was one of Quade's favourite methods of retaliation. He had heard
this. He also knew that Quade's work was done so cleverly that the police
had been unable to call him to account.

Quade's status had interested Aldous from the beginning. He had discovered
that Quade and Culver Rann, his partner at Tête Jaune, were forces to be
reckoned with even by the "powers" along the line of rail. They were the
two chiefs of the "underground," the men who controlled the most dangerous
element from Miette to Fort George. He had once seen Culver Rann, a quiet,
keen-eyed, immaculately groomed man of forty--the cleverest scoundrel that
had ever drifted into the Canadian west. He had been told that Rann was
really the brain of the combination, and that the two had picked up a
quarter of a million in various ways. But it was Quade with whom he had to
deal now, and he began to thank Stevens for his warning. He was filled with
a sense of relief when he reached his cabin and found it as he had left
it. He always made a carbon copy of his work. This copy he now put into a
waterproof tin box, and the box he concealed under a log a short distance
back in the bush.

"Now go ahead, Quade," he laughed to himself, a curious, almost exultant
ring in his voice. "I haven't had any real excitement for so long I can't
remember, and if you start the fun there's going to _be_ fun!"

He returned to his birds, perched himself behind a bush at the river's
edge, and began skinning them. He had almost finished when he heard hoarse
shouts from up the river. From his position he could see the stream a
hundred yards below the ford. Stevens had driven in his horses. He could
see them breasting the first sweep of the current, their heads held high,
struggling for the opposite shore. He rose, dropped his birds, and stared.

"Good God, what a fool!" he gasped.

He saw the tragedy almost before it had begun. Still three hundred yards
below the swimming horses was the gravelly bar which they must reach on the
opposite side. He noted the grayish strip of smooth water that marked the
end of the dead-line. Three or four of the stronger animals were forging
steadily toward this. The others grouped close together, almost motionless
in their last tremendous fight, were left farther and farther behind. Then
came the break. A mare and her yearling colt had gone in with the bunch.
Aldous saw the colt, with its small head and shoulders high out of the
water, sweep down like a chip with the current. A cold chill ran through
him as he heard the whinneying scream of the mother--a warning cry that
held for him the pathos and the despair of a creature that was human. He
knew what it meant. "Wait--I'm coming--I'm coming!" was in that cry. He saw
the mare give up and follow resistlessly with the deadly current, her eyes
upon her colt. The heads behind her wavered, then turned, and in another
moment the herd was sweeping down to its destruction.

Aldous felt like turning his head. But the spectacle fascinated him, and he
looked. He did not think of Stevens and his loss as the first of the herd
plunged in among the rocks. He stood with white face and clenched hands,
leaning over the water boiling at his feet, cursing softly in his
helplessness. To him came the last terrible cries of the perishing animals.
He saw head after head go under. Out of the white spume of a great rock
against which the flood split itself with the force of an avalanche he saw
one horse pitched bodily, as if thrown from a huge catapault. The last
animal had disappeared when chance turned his eyes upstream and close in to
shore. Here flowed a steady current free of rock, and down this--head and
shoulders still high out of the water--came the colt! What miracle had
saved the little fellow thus far Aldous did not stop to ask. Fifty yards
below it would meet the fate of the others. Half that distance in the
direction of the maelstrom below was the dead trunk of a fallen spruce
overhanging the water for fifteen or twenty feet. In a flash Aldous was
racing toward it. He climbed out on it, leaned far over, and reached down.
His hand touched the water. In the grim excitement of rescue he forgot his
own peril. There was one chance in twenty that the colt would come within
his reach, and it did. He made a single lunge and caught it by the ear. For
a moment after that his heart turned sick. Under the added strain the dead
spruce sagged down with a warning crack. But it held, and Aldous hung to
his grip on the ear. Foot by foot he wormed his way back, until at last he
had dragged the little animal ashore.

And then a voice spoke behind him, a voice that he would have recognized
among ten thousand, low, sweet, thrilling.

"That was splendid, John Aldous!" it said. "If I were a man I would want to
be a man like you!"

He turned. A few steps from him stood Joanne Gray. Her face was as white as
the bit of lace at her throat. Her lips were colourless, and her bosom rose
and fell swiftly. He knew that she, too, had witnessed the tragedy. And the
eyes that looked at him were glorious.




CHAPTER IV


To John Aldous Joanne's appearance at this moment was like an anti-climax.
It plunged him headlong for a single moment into what he believed to be the
absurdity of a situation. He had a quick mental picture of himself out on
the dead spruce, performing a bit of mock-heroism by dragging in a
half-drowned colt by one ear. In another instant this had passed, and he
was wondering why Joanne Gray was not on her way to Tête Jaune.

"It was splendid!" she was saying again, her eyes glowing at him. "I know
men who would not have risked that for a human!"

"Perhaps they would have been showing good judgment," replied Aldous.

He noticed now that she was holding with one hand the end of a long slender
sapling which a week or two before he had cut and trimmed for a fish-pole.
He nodded toward it, a half-cynical smile on his lips.

"Were you going to fish me out--or the colt?" he asked.

"You," she replied. "I thought you were in danger." And then she added, "I
suppose you are deeply grateful that fate did not compel you to be saved by
a woman."

"Not at all. If the spruce had snapped, I would have caught at the end of
your sapling like any drowning rat--or man. Allow me to thank you."

She had stepped down to the level strip of sand on which the colt was
weakly struggling to rise to its feet. She was breathing quickly. Her face
was still pale. She was without a hat, and as she bent for a moment over
the colt Aldous felt his eyes drawn irresistibly to the soft thick coils of
her hair, a glory of colour that made him think of the lustrous brown of a
ripe wintelberry. She looked up suddenly and caught his eyes upon her.

"I came quite by accident," she explained quickly. "I wanted to be alone,
and Mrs. Otto said this path would lead to the river. When I saw you I was
about to turn back. And then I saw the other--the horses coming down the
stream. It was terrible. Are they all drowned?"

"All that you saw. It wasn't a pretty sight, was it?" There was a
suggestive inquiry in his voice as he added, "If you had gone to Tête Jaune
you would have missed the unpleasantness of the spectacle."

"I would have gone, but something happened. They say it was a cave-in, a
slide--something like that. The train cannot go on until to-morrow."

"And you are to stay with the Ottos?"

She nodded.

Quick as a flash she had seemed to read his thoughts.

"I am sorry," she added, before he could speak. "I can see that I have
annoyed you. I have literally projected myself into your work, and I am
afraid that I have caused you trouble. Mrs. Otto has told me of this man
they call Quade. She says he is dangerous. And I have made him your enemy."

"I am, not afraid of Quade. The incident was nothing more than an agreeable
interruption to what was becoming a rather monotonous existence up here. I
have always believed, you know, that a certain amount of physical
excitement is good oil for our mental machinery. That, perhaps, was why you
caught me hauling at His Coltship's ear."

He had spoken stiffly. There was a hard note in his voice, a suggestion of
something that was displeasing in his forced laugh. He knew that in these
moments he was fighting against his inner self--against his desire to tell
her how glad he was that something had held back the Tête Jaune train, and
how wonderful her hair looked in the afternoon sun. He was struggling to
keep himself behind the barriers he had built up and so long maintained in
his writings. And yet, as he looked, he felt something crumbling into
ruins. He knew that he had hurt her. The hardness of his words, the
coldness of his smile, his apparently utter indifference to her had sent
something that was almost like a quick, physical pain into her eyes. He
drew a step nearer, so that he caught the soft contour of her cheek. Joanne
Gray heard him, and lowered her head slightly, so that he could not see.
She was a moment too late. On her cheek Aldous saw a single creeping
drop--a tear.

In an instant he was at her side. With a quick movement she brushed the
tear away before she faced him.

"I've hurt you," he said, looking her straight in the eyes. "I've hurt you,
and God knows I'm a brute for doing it. I've treated you as badly as
Quade--only in a different way. I know how I've made you feel--that you've
been a nuisance, and have got me into trouble, and that I don't want to
have anything more to do with you. Have I made you feel that?"

"I am afraid--you have."

He reached out a hand, and almost involuntarily her own came to it. She saw
the change in his face, regret, pain, and then that slow-coming, wonderful
laughter in his eyes.

"That's just how I set out to make you feel," he confessed, the warmth of
her hand sending a thrill through him. "I might as well be frank, don't you
think? Until you came I had but one desire, and that was to finish my book.
I had planned great work for to-day. And you spoiled it. I couldn't get you
out of my mind. And it made me--ugly."

"And that was--all?" she whispered, a tense waiting in her eyes. "You
didn't think----"

"What Quade thought," he bit in sharply. The grip of his fingers hurt her
hand. "No, not that. My God, I didn't make you think _that?_"

"I'm a stranger--and they say women don't go to Tête Jaune alone," she
answered doubtfully.

"That's true, they don't--not as a general rule. Especially women like you.
You're alone, a stranger, and too beautiful. I don't say that to flatter
you. You are beautiful, and you undoubtedly know it. To let you go on alone
and unprotected among three or four thousand men like most of those up
there would be a crime. And the women, too--the Little Sisters. They'd
blast you. If you had a husband, a brother or a father waiting for you it
would be different. But you've told me you haven't. You have made me change
my mind about my book. You are of more interest to me just now than that.
Will you believe me? Will you let me be a friend, if you need a friend?"

To Aldous it seemed that she drew herself up a little proudly. For a moment
she seemed taller. A rose-flush of colour spread over her cheeks. She drew
her hand from him. And yet, as she looked at him, he could see that she was
glad.

"Yes, I believe you," she said. "But I must not accept your offer of
friendship. You have done more for me now than I can ever repay. Friendship
means service, and to serve me would spoil your plans, for you are in great
haste to complete your book."

"If you mean that you need my assistance, the book can wait."

"I shouldn't have said that," she cut in quickly, her lips tightening
slightly. "It was utterly absurd of me to hint that I might require
assistance--that I cannot take care of myself. But I shall be proud of the
friendship of John Aldous."

"Yes, you can take care of yourself, Ladygray," said Aldous softly, looking
into her eyes and yet speaking as if to himself. "That is why you have
broken so curiously into my life. It's _that_--and not your beauty. I have
known beautiful women before. But they were--just women, frail things that
might snap under stress. I have always thought there is only one woman in
ten thousand who would not do that--under certain conditions. I believe you
are that one in ten thousand. You can go on to Tête Jaune alone. You can go
anywhere alone--and care for yourself."

He was looking at her so strangely that she held her breath, her lips
parted, the flush in her cheeks deepening.

"And the strangest part of it all is that I have always known you away back
in my imagination," he went on. "You have lived there, and have troubled
me. I could not construct you perfectly. It is almost inconceivable that
you should have borne the same name--Joanne. Joanne, of 'Fair Play.'"

She gave a little gasp.

"Joanne was--terrible," she cried. "She was bad--bad to the heart and soul
of her!"

"She was splendid," replied Aldous, without a change in his quiet voice.
"She was splendid--but bad. I racked myself to find a soul for her, and I
failed. And yet she was splendid. It was my crime--not hers--that she
lacked a soul. She would have been my ideal, but I spoiled her. And by
spoiling her I sold half a million copies of the book. I did not do it
purposely. I would have given her a soul if I could have found one. She
went her way."

"And you compare me to--_her?_"

"Yes," said Aldous deliberately. "You are that Joanne. But you possess what
I could not give to her. Joanne of 'Fair Play' was splendid without a soul.
You have what she lacked. You may not understand, but you have come to
perfect what I only partly created."

The colour had slowly ebbed from Joanne's face. There was a mysterious
darkness in her eyes.

"If you were not John Aldous I would--strike you," she said. "As it
is--yes--I want you as a friend."

She held out her hand. For a moment he felt its warmth again in his own.
He bowed over it. Her eyes rested steadily on his blond head, and again she
noted the sprinkle of premature gray in his hair. For a second time she
felt almost overwhelmingly the mysterious strength of this man. Perhaps
each took three breaths before John Aldous raised his head. In that time
something wonderful and complete passed between them. Neither could have
told the other what it was. When their eyes met again, it was in their
faces.

"I have planned to have supper in my cabin to-night," said Aldous, breaking
the tension of that first moment. "Won't you be my guest, Ladygray?"

"Mrs. Otto----" she began.

"I will go to her at once and explain that you are going to eat partridges
with me," he interrupted. "Come--let me show you into my workshop and
home."

He led her to the cabin and into its one big room.

"You will make yourself at home while I am gone, won't you?" he invited.
"If it will give you any pleasure you may peel a few potatoes. I won't be
gone ten minutes."

Not waiting for any protest she might have, Aldous slipped back through the
door and took the path up to the Ottos'.




CHAPTER V


As soon as he had passed from the view of the cabin door Aldous shortened
his pace. He knew that never in his life had he needed to readjust himself
more than at the present moment. A quarter of an hour had seen a complete
and miraculous revolution within him. It was a change so unusual and
apparently so impossible that he could not grasp the situation and the fact
all at once. But the truth of it swept over him more and more swiftly as he
made his way along the dark, narrow trail that led up to the Miette Plain.
It was something that not only amazed and thrilled him. First--as in all
things--he saw the humour of it. He, John Aldous of all men, had utterly
obliterated himself, and for a _woman_. He had even gone so far as to offer
the sacrifice of his most important work. Frankly he had told Joanne that
she interested him more just now than his book. Again he repeated to
himself that it had not been a surrender--but an obliteration. With a pair
of lovely eyes looking quietly into him, he had wiped the slate clean of
the things he had preached for ten years and the laws he had made for
himself. And as he came in sight of the big Otto tent, he found himself
smiling, his breath coming quickly, strange voices singing within him.

He stopped to load and light his pipe before he faced Mrs. Otto, and he
clouded himself in as much smoke as possible while he explained to her
that he had almost forced Joanne to stop at his cabin and eat partridges
with him. He learned that the Tête Jaune train could not go on until the
next day, and after Mrs. Otto had made him take a loaf of fresh bread and a
can of home-made marmalade as a contribution to their feast, he turned back
toward the cabin, trying to whistle in his old careless way.

The questions he had first asked himself about Joanne forced themselves
back upon him now with deeper import. Almost unconsciously he had revealed
himself to her. He had spread open for her eyes and understanding the page
which he had so long hidden. He had as much as confessed to her that she
had come to change him--to complete what he had only half created. It had
been an almost inconceivable and daring confession, and he believed that
she understood him. More than that, she had read about him. She had read
his books. She knew John Aldous--the man.

But what did he know about her beyond the fact that her name was Joanne
Gray, and that the on-sweeping Horde had brought her into his life as
mysteriously as a storm might have flung him a bit of down from a swan's
breast? Where had she come from? And why was she going to Tête Jaune? It
must be some important motive was taking her to a place like Tête Jaune,
the rail-end, a place of several thousand men, with its crude muscle and
brawn and the seven passions of man. It was an impossible place for a young
and beautiful woman unprotected. If Joanne had known any one among the
engineers or contractors, or had she possessed a letter of introduction to
them, the tense lines would not have gathered so deeply about the corners
of Aldous' mouth. But these men whose brains were behind the Horde--the
engineers and the contractors--knew what women alone and unprotected meant
at Tête Jaune. Such women floated in with the Horde. And Joanne was going
in with the Horde. There lay the peril--and the mystery of it.

So engrossed was Aldous in his thoughts that he had come very quietly to
the cabin door. It was Joanne's voice that roused him. Sweet and low she
was singing a few lines from a song which he had never heard.

She stopped when Aldous appeared at the door. It seemed to him that her
eyes were a deeper, more wonderful blue as she looked up at him, and
smiled. She had found a towel for an apron, and was peeling potatoes.

"You will have some unusual excuses to make very soon," she greeted him.
"We had a visitor while you were gone. I was washing the potatoes when I
looked up to find a pair of the fiercest, reddest moustaches I have ever
seen, ornamenting the doorway. The man had two eyes that seemed about to
fall out when he saw me. He popped away like a rabbit--and--and--there's
something he left behind in his haste!"

Joanne's eyes were flooded with laughter as she nodded at the door. On the
sill was a huge quid of tobacco.

"Stevens!" Aldous chuckled. "God bless my soul, if you frightened him into
giving up a quid of tobacco like that you sure _did_ startle him some!" He
kicked Stevens' lost property out with the toe of his boot and turned to
Joanne, showing her the fresh bread and marmalade. "Mrs. Otto sent these to
you," he said. "And the train won't leave until to-morrow."

In her silence he pulled a chair in front of her, sat down close, and
thrust the point of his hunting knife into one of the two remaining
potatoes.

"And when it does go I'm going with you," he added.

He expected this announcement would have some effect on her. As she jumped
up with the pan of potatoes, leaving the one still speared on the end of
his knife, he caught only the corner of a bewitching smile.

"You still believe that I will be unable to take care of myself up at this
terrible Tête Jaune?" she asked, bending for a moment over the table. "Do
you?"

"No. You can care for yourself anywhere, Ladygray," he repeated. "But I am
quite sure that it will be less troublesome for me to see that no insults
are offered you than for you to resent those insults when they come. Tête
Jaune is full of Quades," he added.

The smile was gone from her face when she turned to him. Her blue eyes were
filled with a tense anxiety.

"I had almost forgotten that man," she whispered. "And you mean that you
would fight for me--again?"

"A thousand times."

The colour grew deeper in her cheeks. "I read something about you once that
I have never forgotten, John Aldous," she said. "It was after you returned
from Thibet. It said that you were largely made up of two emotions--your
contempt for woman and your love of adventure; that it would be impossible
for you not to see a flaw in one, and that for the other--physical
excitement--you would go to the ends of the earth. Perhaps it is this--your
desire for adventure--that makes you want to go with me to Tête Jaune?"

"I am beginning to believe that it will be the greatest adventure of my
life," he replied, and something in his quiet voice held her silent. He
rose to his feet, and stood before her. "It is already the Great
Adventure," he went on. "I feel it. And I am the one to judge. Until to-day
I would have staked my life that no power could have wrung from me the
confession I am going to make to you voluntarily. I have laughed at the
opinion the world has held of me. To me it has all been a colossal joke. I
have enjoyed the hundreds of columns aimed at me by excited women through
the press. They have all asked the same question: Why do you not write of
the good things in women instead of always the bad? I have never given them
an answer. But I answer you now--here. I have not picked upon the
weaknesses of women because I despise them. Those weaknesses--the
destroying frailties of womankind--I have driven over rough-shod through
the pages of my books because I have always believed that Woman was the one
thing which God came nearest to creating _perfect_. I believe they should
be perfect. And because they have not quite that perfection which should be
theirs I have driven the cold facts home as hard as I could. I have been a
fool and an iconoclast instead of a builder. This confession to you is
proof that you have brought me face to face with the greatest adventure of
all."

The colour in her cheeks had centred in two bright spots. Her lips formed
words which came slowly, strangely.

"I guess--I understand," she said. "Perhaps I, too, would have been that
kind of an iconoclast--if I could have put the things I have thought into
written words." She drew a deep breath, and went on, her eyes full upon
him, speaking as if out of a dream. "The Great Adventure--for you. Yes; and
perhaps for both."

Her hands were drawn tightly to her breast. Something about her as she
stood there, her back to the table, drew John Aldous to her side, forced
the question from his lips: "Tell me, Ladygray--why are you going to Tête
Jaune?"

In that same strange way, as if her lips were framing words beyond their
power to control, she answered:

"I am going--to find--my husband."




CHAPTER VI


Silent, his head bowed a little, John Aldous stood before her after those
last words. A slight noise outside gave him the pretext to turn to the
door. She was going to Tête Jaune--to find her husband! He had not expected
that. For a breath, as he looked out toward the bush, his mind was in a
strange daze. A dozen times she had given him to understand there was no
husband, father, or brother waiting for her at the rail-end. She had told
him that she was alone--without friends. And now, like a confession, those
words had come strangely from her lips.

What he had heard was one of Otto's pack-horses coming down to drink. He
turned toward her again.

Joanne stood with her back still to the table. She had slipped a hand into
the front of her dress and had drawn forth a long thick envelope. As she
opened it, Aldous saw that it contained banknotes. From among these she
picked out a bit of paper and offered it to him.

"That will explain--partly," she said.

It was a newspaper clipping, worn and faded, with a date two years old. It
had apparently been cut from an English paper, and told briefly of the
tragic death of Mortimer FitzHugh, son of a prominent Devonshire family,
who had lost his life while on a hunting trip in the British Columbia
Wilds.

"He was my husband," said Joanne, as Aldous finished. "Until six months ago
I had no reason to believe that the statement in the paper was not true.
Then--an acquaintance came out here hunting. He returned with a strange
story. He declared that he had seen Mr. FitzHugh alive. Now you know why I
am here. I had not meant to tell you. It places me in a light which I do
not think that I can explain away--just now. I have come to prove or
disprove his death. If he is alive----"

For the first time she betrayed the struggle she was making against some
powerful emotion which she was fighting to repress. Her face had paled. She
stopped herself with a quick breath, as if knowing that she had already
gone too far.

"I guess I understand," said Aldous. "For some reason your anxiety is not
that you will find him dead, Ladygray, but that you may find him alive."

"Yes--yes, that is it. But you must not urge me farther. It is a terrible
thing to say. You will think I am not a woman, but a fiend. And I am your
guest. You have invited me to supper. And--the potatoes are ready, and
there is no fire!"

She had forced a smile back to her lips. John Aldous whirled toward the
door.

"I will have the partridges in two seconds!" he cried. "I dropped them when
the horses went through the rapids."

The oppressive and crushing effect of Joanne's first mention of a husband
was gone. He made no effort to explain or analyze the two sudden changes
that swept over him. He accepted them as facts, and that was all. Where a
few moments before there had been the leaden grip of something that seemed
to be physically choking him, there was now again the strange buoyancy with
which he had gone to the Otto tent. He began to whistle as he went to the
river's edge. He was whistling when he returned, the two birds in his hand.
Joanne was waiting for him in the door. Again her face was a faintly tinted
vision of tranquil loveliness; her eyes were again like the wonderful blue
pools over the sunlit mountains. She smiled as he came up. He was
amazed--not that she had recovered so completely from the emotional
excitement that had racked her, but because she betrayed in no way a sign
of grief--of suspense or of anxiety. A few minutes ago he had heard her
singing. He could almost believe that her lips might break into song again
as she stood there.

From that moment until the sun sank behind the mountains and gray shadows
began to creep in where the light had been, there was no other reference to
the things that had happened or the things that had been said since
Joanne's arrival. For the first time in years John Aldous completely forgot
his work. He was lost in Joanne. With the tremendous reaction that was
working out in him she became more and more wonderful to him with each
breath that he drew. He made no effort to control the change that was
sweeping through him. His one effort was to keep it from being too apparent
to her.

The way in which Joanne had taken his invitation was as delightful as it
was new to him. She had become both guest and hostess. With her lovely arms
bared halfway to the shoulders she rolled out a batch of biscuits. "Hot
biscuits go so well with marmalade," she told him. He built a fire. Beyond
that, and bringing in the water, she gave him to understand that his duties
were at an end, and that he could smoke while she prepared the supper. With
the beginning of dusk he closed the cabin door that he might have an excuse
for lighting the big hanging lamp a little earlier. He had imagined how its
warm glow would flood down upon the thick soft coils of her shining hair.

Every fibre in him throbbed with a keen and exquisite satisfaction as he
sat down opposite her. During the meal he looked into the quiet, velvety
blue of her eyes a hundred times. He found it a delightful sensation to
talk to her and look into those eyes at the same time. He told her more
about himself than he had ever told another soul. It was she who spoke
first of the manuscript upon which he was working. He had spoken of certain
adventures that had led up to the writing of one of his books.

"And this last book you are writing, which you call 'Mothers,'" she said.
"Is it to be like 'Fair Play?'"

"It was to have been the last of the trilogy. But it won't be now,
Ladygray. I've changed my mind."

"But it is so nearly finished, you say?"

"I would have completed it this week. I was rushing it to an end at fever
heat when--you came."

He saw the troubled look in her eyes, and hastened to add:

"Let us not talk about that manuscript, Ladygray. Some day I will let you
read it, and then you will understand why your coming has not hurt it. At
first I was unreasonably disturbed because I thought that I must finish it
within a week from to-day. I start out on a new adventure then--a strange
adventure, into the North."

"That means--the wild country?" she asked. "Up there in the North--there
are no people?"

"An occasional Indian, perhaps a prospector now and then," he said. "Last
year I travelled a hundred and twenty-seven days without seeing a human
face except that of my Cree companion."

She had leaned a little over the table, and was looking at him intently,
her eyes shining.

"That is why I have understood you, and read between the printed lines in
your books," she said. "If I had been a man, I would have been a great deal
like you. I love those things--loneliness, emptiness, the great spaces
where you hear only the whisperings of the winds and the fall of no other
feet but your own. Oh, I should have been a man! It was born in me. It was
a part of me. And I loved it--loved it."

A poignant grief had shot into her eyes. Her voice broke almost in a sob.
Amazed, he looked at her in silence across the table.

"You have lived that life, Ladygray?" he said after a moment. "You have
seen it?"

"Yes," she nodded, clasping and unclasping her slim white hands. "For years
and years, perhaps even more than you, John Aldous! I was born in it. And
it was my life for a long time--until my father died." She paused, and he
saw her struggling to subdue the quivering throb in her throat. "We were
inseparable," she went on, her voice becoming suddenly strange and quiet.
"He was father, mother--everything to me. It was too wonderful. Together
we hunted out the mysteries and the strange things in the out-of-the-way
places of the earth. It was his passion. He had given birth to it in me. I
was always with him, everywhere. And then he died, soon after his discovery
of that wonderful buried city of Mindano, in the heart of Africa. Perhaps
you have read----"

"Good God," breathed Aldous, so low that his voice did not rise above a
whisper. "Joanne--Ladygray--you are not speaking of Daniel Gray--Sir Daniel
Gray, the Egyptologist, the antiquarian who uncovered the secrets of an
ancient and wonderful civilization in the heart of darkest Africa?"

"Yes."

"And you--are his daughter?"

She bowed her head.

Like one in a dream John Aldous rose from his chair and went to her. He
seized her hands and drew her up so that they stood face to face. Again
that strange and beautiful calmness filled her eyes.

"Our trails have strangely crossed, Lady Joanne," he said. "They have been
crossing--for years. While Sir Daniel was at Murja, on the eve of his great
discovery, I was at St. Louis on the Senegal coast. I slept in that little
Cape Verde hotel, in the low whitewashed room overlooking the sea. The
proprietor told me that Sir Daniel had occupied it before me, and I found a
broken fountain pen in the drawer of that sickly black teakwood desk, with
the carved serpent's head. And I was at Gampola at another time, headed for
the interior of Ceylon, when I learned that I was travelling again one of
Sir Daniel's trails. And you were with him!"

"Always," said Joanne.

For a few tense moments they had looked steadily into each other's eyes.
Swiftly, strangely, the world was bridging itself for them. Their minds
swept back swiftly as the fire in a thunder-sky. They were no longer
strangers. They were no longer friends of a day. The grip of Aldous' hands
tightened. A hundred things sprang to his lips. Before he could speak, he
saw a sudden, startled change leap into Joanne's face. She had turned her
face a little, so that she was looking toward the window. A frightened cry
broke from her lips. Aldous whirled about. There was nothing there. He
looked at Joanne again. She was white and trembling. Her hands were
clutched at her breast. Her eyes, big and dark and staring, were still
fixed on the window.

"That man!" she panted. "His face was there--against the glass--like a
devil's!"

"Quade?"

"Yes."

She caught at his arm as he sprang toward the door.

"Stop!" she cried. "You mustn't go out----"

For a moment he turned at the door. He was as she had seen him in Quade's
place, terribly cool, a strange, quiet smile on his lips. His eyes were
gray, smiling steel.

"Close the door after me and lock it until I return," he said. "You are the
first woman guest I ever had, Ladygray. I cannot allow you to be insulted!"

As he went out she saw him slip something from his pocket. She caught the
glitter of it in the lamp-glow.




CHAPTER VII


It was in the blood of John Aldous to kill Quade. He ran with the quickness
of a hare around the end of the cabin, past the window, and then stopped to
listen, his automatic in his hand, his eye piercing the gloom for some
moving shadow. He had not counted on an instant's hesitation. He would
shoot Quade, for he knew why the mottled beast had been at the window.
Stevens' boy had been right. Quade was after Joanne. His ugly soul was
disrupted with a desire to possess her, and Aldous knew that when roused by
passion he was more like a devil-fish than a man--a creeping, slimy,
night-seeking creature who had not only the power of the underworld back of
him, but wealth as well. He did not think of him as a man as he stood
listening, but as a beast. He was ready to shoot. But he saw nothing. He
heard no sound that could have been made by a stumbling foot or a moving
body. An hour later, the moon would have been up, but it was dark now
except for the stars. He heard the hoot of an owl a hundred yards away. Out
in the river something splashed. From the timber beyond Buffalo Prairie
came the yapping bark of a coyote. For five minutes he stood as silent as
one of the rocks behind him. He realized that to go on--to seek blindly for
Quade in the darkness, would be folly. He went back, tapped at the door,
and reëntered the cabin when Joanne threw back the lock.

She was still pale. Her eyes were bright.

"I was coming--in a moment," she said, "I was beginning to fear that----"

"--he had struck me down in the dark?" added Aldous, as she hesitated.
"Well, he would like to do just that, Joanne." Unconsciously her name had
slipped from him. It seemed the most natural thing in the world for him to
call her Joanne now. "Is it necessary for me to tell you what this man
Quade is--why he was looking through the window?"

She shuddered.

"No--no--I understand!"

"Only partly," continued Aldous, his face white and set. "It is necessary
that you should know more than you have guessed, for your own protection.
If you were like most other women I would not tell you the truth, but would
try to shield you from it. As it is you should know. There is only one
other man in the Rocky Mountains more dangerous than Bill Quade. He is
Culver Rann, up at Tête Jaune. They are partners--partners in crime, in
sin, in everything that is bad and that brings them gold. Their influence
among the rougher elements along the line of rail is complete. They are so
strongly entrenched that they have put contractors out of business because
they would not submit to blackmail. The few harmless police we have
following the steel have been unable to touch them. They have cleaned up
hundreds of thousands, chiefly in three things--blackmail, whisky, and
women. Quade is the viler of the two. He is like a horrible beast. Culver
Rann makes me think of a sleek and shining serpent. But it is this man
Quade----"

He found it almost impossible to go on with Joanne's blue eyes gazing so
steadily into his.

"--whom we have made our enemy," she finished for him.

"Yes--and more than that," he said, partly turning his head away. "You
cannot go on to Tête Jaune alone, Joanne. You must go nowhere alone. If you
do----"

"What will happen?"

"I don't know. Perhaps nothing would happen. But you cannot go alone. I am
going to take you back to Mrs. Otto now. And to-morrow I shall go on to
Tête Jaune with you. It is fortunate that I have a place up there to which
I can take you, and where you will be safe."

As they were preparing to go, Joanne glanced ruefully at the table.

"I am ashamed to leave the dishes in that mess," she said.

He laughed, and tucked her hand under his arm as they went through the
door. When they had passed through the little clearing, and the darkness of
the spruce and balsam walls shut them in, he took her hand.

"It is dark and you may stumble," he apologized. "This isn't much like the
shell plaza in front of the Cape Verde, is it?"

"No. Did you pick up any of the little red bloodshells? I did, and they
made me shiver. There were strange stories associated with them."

He knew that she was staring ahead into the blank wall of gloom as she
spoke, and that it was not thought of the bloodshells, but of Quade, that
made her fingers close more tightly about his own. His right hand was
gripping the butt of his automatic. Every nerve in him was on the alert,
yet she could detect nothing of caution or preparedness in his careless
voice.

"The bloodstones didn't trouble me," he answered. "I can't remember
anything that upset me more than the snakes. I am a terrible coward when it
comes to anything that crawls without feet. I will run from a snake no
longer than your little finger--in fact, I'm just as scared of a little
grass snake as I am of a python. It's the _thing_, and not its size, that
horrifies me. Once I jumped out of a boat into ten feet of water because my
companion caught an eel on his line, and persisted in the argument that it
was a fish. Thank Heaven we don't have snakes up here. I've seen only three
or four in all my experience in the Northland."

She laughed softly in spite of the uneasy thrill the night held for her.

"It is hard for me to imagine you being afraid," she said. "And yet if you
were afraid I know it would be of just some little thing like that. My
father was one of the bravest men in the world, and a hundred times I have
seen him show horror at sight of a spider. If you were afraid of snakes,
why did you go up the Gampola, in Ceylon?"

"I didn't know the snakes were there," he chuckled. "I hadn't dreamed there
were a half so many snakes in the whole world as there were along that
confounded river. I slept sitting up, dressed in rubber wading boots that
came to my waist, and wore thick leather gloves. I got out of the country
at the earliest possible moment."

When they entered the edge of the Miette clearing and saw the glow of
lights ahead of them, Aldous caught the sudden upturn of his companion's
face, laughing at him in the starlight.

"Kind, thoughtful John Aldous!" she whispered, as if to herself. "How nice
of you it was to talk of such pleasant things while we were coming through
that black, dreadful swamp--with a Bill Quade waiting for us on the side!"

A low ripple of laughter broke from her lips, and he stopped dead in his
tracks, forgetting to put the automatic back in his pocket. At sight of it
the amusement died in her face. She caught his arm, and one of her hands
seized the cold steel of the pistol.

"Would he--_dare?_" she demanded.

"You can't tell," replied Aldous, putting the gun in his pocket. "And that
was a creepy sort of conversation to load you down with, wasn't it,
Ladygray? I imagine you'll catch me in all sorts of blunders like that." He
pointed ahead. "There's Mrs. Otto now. She's looking this way and wondering
with all her big heart if you ought not to be at home and in bed."

The door of the Otto home was wide open, and silhouetted in the flood of
light was the good-natured Scotchwoman. Aldous gave the whistling signal
which she and her menfolk always recognized, and hurried on with Joanne.

Before they had quite reached the tent-house, Joanne put a detaining hand
on his arm.

"I don't want you to go back to the cabin to-night," she said. "The face at
the window--was terrible. I am afraid. I don't want you to be there alone."

Her words sent a warm glow through him.

"Nothing will happen," he assured her. "Quade will not come back."

"I don't want you to return to the cabin," she persisted. "Is there no
other place where you can stay?"

"I might go down and console Stevens, and borrow a couple of his horse
blankets for a bed if that will please you."

"It will," she cried quickly. "If you don't return to the cabin you may go
on to Tête Jaune with me to-morrow. Is it a bargain?"

"It is!" he accepted eagerly. "I don't like to be chased out, but I'll
promise not to sleep in the cabin to-night."

Mrs. Otto was advancing to meet them. At the door he bade them good-night,
and walked on in the direction of the lighted avenue of tents and shacks
under the trees. He caught a last look in Joanne's eyes of anxiety and
fear. Glancing back out of the darkness that swallowed him up, he saw her
pause for a moment in the lighted doorway, and look in his direction. His
heart beat faster. Joyously he laughed under his breath. It was strangely
new and pleasing to have some one thinking of him in that way.

He had not intended to go openly into the lighted avenue. From the moment
he had plunged out into the night after Quade, his fighting blood was
roused. He had subdued it while with Joanne, but his determination to find
Quade and have a settlement with him had grown no less. He told himself
that he was one of the few men along the line whom it would be difficult
for Quade to harm in other than a physical way. He had no business that
could be destroyed by the other's underground methods, and he had no job to
lose. Until he had seen Joanne enter the scoundrel's red-and-white striped
tent he had never hated a man as he now hated Quade. He had loathed him
before, and had evaded him because the sight of him was unpleasant; now he
wanted to grip his fingers around his thick red throat. He had meant to
come up behind Quade's tent, but changed his mind and walked into the
lighted trail between the two rows of tents and shacks, his hands thrust
carelessly into his trousers pockets. The night carnival of the railroad
builders was on. Coarse laughter, snatches of song, the click of pool balls
and the chink of glasses mingled with the thrumming of three or four
musical instruments along the lighted way. The phonograph in Quade's place
was going incessantly. Half a dozen times Aldous paused to greet men whom
he knew. He noted that there was nothing new or different in their manner
toward him. If they had heard of his trouble with Quade, he was certain
they would have spoken of it, or at least would have betrayed some sign.
For several minutes he stopped to talk with MacVeigh, a young Scotch
surveyor. MacVeigh hated Quade, but he made no mention of him. Purposely he
passed Quade's tent and walked to the end of the street, nodding and
looking closely at those whom he knew. It was becoming more and more
evident to him that Quade and his pals were keeping the affair of the
afternoon as quiet as possible. Stevens had heard of it. He wondered how.

Aldous retraced his steps. As though nothing had happened, he entered
Quade's place. There were a dozen men inside, and among them he recognized
three who had been there that afternoon. He nodded to them. Slim Barker was
in Quade's place behind the counter. Barker was Quade's right-hand man at
Miette, and there was a glitter in his rat-like eyes as Aldous leaned over
the glass case at one end of the counter and asked for cigars. He fumbled a
bit as he picked out half a dollar's worth from the box. His eyes met
Slim's.

"Where is Quade?" he asked casually.

Barker shrugged his shoulders.

"Busy to-night," he answered shortly. "Want to see him?"

"No, not particularly. Only--I don't want him to hold a grudge."

Barker replaced the box in the case and turned away. After lighting a cigar
Aldous went out. He was sure that Quade had not returned from the river.
Was he lying in wait for him near the cabin? The thought sent a sudden
thrill through him. In the same breath it was gone. With half a dozen men
ready to do his work, Aldous knew that Quade would not redden his own hands
or place himself in any conspicuous risk. During the next hour he visited
the places where Quade was most frequently seen. He had made up his mind to
walk over to the engineers' camp, when a small figure darted after him out
of the gloom of the trees.

It was Stevens' boy.

"Dad wants to see you down at the camp," he whispered excitedly. "He says
right away--an' for no one to see you. He said not to let any one see me.
I've been waiting for you to come out in the dark."

"Skip back and tell him I'll come," replied Aldous quickly. "Be sure you
mind what he says--and don't let any one see you!"

The boy disappeared like a rabbit. Aldous looked back, and ahead, and then
dived into the darkness after him.

A quarter of an hour later he came out on the river close to Stevens' camp.
A little nearer he saw Stevens squatted close to a smouldering fire about
which he was drying some clothes. The boy was huddled in a disconsolate
heap near him. Aldous called softly, and Stevens slowly rose and stretched
himself. The packer advanced to where he had screened himself behind a
clump of bush. His first look at the other assured him that he was right in
using caution. The moon had risen, and the light of it fell in the packer's
face. It was a dead, stonelike gray. His cheeks seemed thinner than when
Aldous had seen him a few hours before and there was despair in the droop
of his shoulders. His eyes were what startled Aldous. They were like coals
of fire, and shifted swiftly from point to point in the bush. For a moment
they stood silent.

"Sit down," Stevens said then. "Get out of the moonlight. I've got
something to tell you."

They crouched behind the bush.

"You know what happened," Stevens said, in a low voice. "I lost my outfit."

"Yes, I saw what happened, Stevens."

The packer hesitated for a moment. One of his big hands reached out and
gripped John Aldous by the arm.

"Let me ask you something before I go on," he whispered. "You won't take
offence--because it's necessary. She looked like an angel to me when I saw
her up at the train. But you _know_. Is she good, or----You know what we
think of women who come in here alone. That's why I ask."

"She's what you thought she was, Stevens," replied Aldous. "As pure and as
sweet as she looks. The kind we like to fight for."

"I was sure of it, Aldous. That's why I sent the kid for you. I saw her in
your cabin--after the outfit went to hell. When I come back to camp, Quade
was here. I was pretty well broken up. Didn't talk to him much. But he seen
I had lost everything. Then he went on down to your place. He told me that
later. But I guessed it soon as he come back. I never see him look like he
did then. I'll cut it short. He's mad--loon mad--over that girl. I played
the sympathy act, thinkin' of you--an' _her_. He hinted at some easy money.
I let him understand that at the present writin' I'd be willing to take
money most any way, and that I didn't have any particular likin' for you.
Then it come out. He made me a proposition."

Stevens lowered his voice, and stopped to peer again about the bush.

"Go on," urged Aldous. "We're alone."

Stevens bent so near that his tobacco-laden breath swept his companion's
cheek.

"He said he'd replace my lost outfit if I'd put you out of the way some
time day after to-morrow!"

"Kill me?"

"Yes."

For a few moments there was a silence broken only by their tense breathing.
Aldous had found the packer's hand. He was gripping it hard.

"Thank you, old man," he said. "And he believes you will do it?"

"I told him I would--day after to-morrow--an' throw your body in the
Athabasca."

"Splendid, Stevens! You've got Sherlock Holmes beat by a mile! And does he
want you to do this pretty job because I gave him a crack on the jaw?"

"Not a bit of it!" exclaimed Stevens quickly. "He knows the girl is a
stranger and alone. You've taken an interest in her. With you out of the
way, she won't be missed. Dammit, man, don't you know his system? And, if
he ever wanted anything in his life he wants her. She's turned that
poison-blood of his into fire. He raved about her here. He'll go the limit.
He'll do anything to get her. He's so crazy I believe he'd give every
dollar he's got. There's just one thing for you to do. Send the girl back
where she come from. Then you get out. As for myself--I'm goin' to
emigrate. Ain't got a dollar now, so I might as well hit for the prairies
an' get a job on a ranch. Next winter I guess me 'n the kid will trap up on
the Parsnip River."

"You're wrong--clean wrong," said Aldous quietly. "When I saw your outfit
going down among the rocks I had already made up my mind to help you. What
you've told me to-night hasn't made any difference. I would have helped you
anyway, Stevens. I've got more money than I know what to do with right now.
Roper has a thirty-horse outfit for sale. Buy it to-morrow. I'll pay for
it, and you needn't consider yourself a dollar in debt. Some day I'll have
you take me on a long trip, and that will make up for it. As for the girl
and myself--we're going on to Tête Jaune to-morrow."

Aldous could see the amazed packer staring at him in the gloom. "You don't
think I'm sellin' myself, do you, Aldous?" he asked huskily. "That ain't
why you're doin' this--for me 'n the kid--is it?"

"I had made up my mind to do it before I saw you to-night," repeated
Aldous. "I've got lots of money, and I don't use but a little of it. It
sometimes accumulates so fast that it bothers me. Besides, I've promised to
accept payment for the outfit in trips. These mountains have got a hold on
me, Stevens. I'm going to take a good many trips before I die."

"Not if you go on to Tête Jaune, you ain't," replied Stevens, biting a huge
quid from a black plug.

Aldous had risen to his feet. Stevens stood up beside him.

"If you go on to Tête Jaune you're a bigger fool than I was in tryin' to
swim the outfit across the river to-day," he added. "Listen!" He leaned
toward Aldous, his eyes gleaming. "In the last six months there's been
forty dead men dragged out of the Frazer between Tête Jaune an' Fort
George. You know that. The papers have called 'em accidents--the 'toll of
railroad building.' Mebby a part of it is. Mebby a half of them forty died
by accident. The other half didn't. They were sent down by Culver Rann and
Bill Quade. Once you go floatin' down the Frazer there ain't no questions
asked. Somebody sees you an' pulls you out--mebby a Breed or an Indian--an'
puts you under a little sand a bit later. If it's a white man he does
likewise. There ain't no time to investigate floaters over-particular in
the wilderness. Besides, you git so beat up in the rocks you don't look
like much of anything. I know, because I worked on the scows three months,
an' helped bury four of 'em. An' there wasn't anything, not even a scrap of
paper, in the pockets of two of 'em! Is that suspicious, or ain't it? It
don't pay to talk too much along the Frazer. Men keep their mouths shut.
But I'll tell you this: Culver Rann an' Bill Quade know a lot."

"And you think I'll go in the Frazer?"

"Egzactly. Quade would rather have you in there than in the Athabasca. And
then----"

"Well?"

Stevens spat into the bush, and shrugged his shoulders. "This beautiful
lady you've taken an interest in will turn up missing, Aldous. She'll
disappear off the face of the map--just like Stimson's wife did. You
remember Stimson?"

"He was found in the Frazer," said Aldous, gripping the other's arm in the
darkness.

"Egzactly. An' that pretty wife of his disappeared a little later. Up there
everybody's too busy to ask where other people go. Culver Rann an' Bill
Quade know what happened to Stimson, an' they know what happened to
Stimson's wife. You don't want to go to Tête Jaune. You don't want to let
_her_ go. I know what I'm talking about. Because----"

There fell a moment's silence. Aldous waited. Stevens spat again, and
finished in a whisper:

"Quade went to Tête Jaune to-night. He went on a hand-car. He's got
something he wants to tell Culver Rann that he don't dare telephone or
telegraph. An' he wants to get that something to him ahead of to-morrow's
train. Understand?"




CHAPTER VIII


John Aldous confessed to himself that he did not quite understand, in spite
of the effort Stevens had made to impress upon him, the importance of not
going to Tête Jaune. He was bewildered over a number of things, and felt
that he needed to be alone for a time to clear his mind. He left Stevens,
promising to return later to share a couple of blankets and a part of his
tepee, for he was determined to keep his promise to Joanne, and not return
to his own cabin, even though Quade had left Miette. He followed a moonlit
trail along the river to an abandoned surveyors' camp, knowing that he
would meet no one, and that in this direction he would have plenty of
unbroken quiet in which to get some sort of order out of the chaotic tangle
of events through which he had passed that day.

Aldous had employed a certain amount of caution, but until he had talked
with Stevens he had not believed that Quade, in his twofold desire to
avenge himself and possess Joanne, would go to the extraordinary ends
predicted by the packer. His point of view was now entirely changed. He
believed Stevens. He knew the man was not excitable. He was one of the
coolest heads in the mountains. And he had abundant nerve. Thought of
Stimson and Stimson's wife had sent the hot blood through Aldous like fire.
Was Stevens right in that detail? And was Quade actually planning the same
end for him and Joanne? Why had Quade stolen on ahead to Tête Jaune? Why
had he not waited for to-morrow's train?

He found himself walking swiftly along the road, where he had intended to
walk slowly--a hundred questions pounding through his brain. Suddenly a
thought came to him that stopped him in the trail, his unseeing eyes
staring down into the dark chasm of the river. After all, was it so strange
that Quade would do these things? Into his own life Joanne had come like a
wonderful dream-creature transformed into flesh and blood. He no longer
tried to evade the fact that he could not think without thinking of Joanne.
She had become a part of him. She had made him forget everything but her,
and in a few hours had sent into the dust of ruin his cynicism and
aloneness of a lifetime. If Joanne had come to him like this, making him
forget his work, filling him more and more with the thrilling desire to
fight for her, was it so very strange that a beast like Quade would
fight--in another way?

He went on down the trail, his hands clenched tightly. After all, it was
not fear of Quade or of what he might attempt that filled him with
uneasiness. It was Joanne herself, her strange quest, its final outcome.
With the thought that she was seeking for the man who was her husband, a
leaden hand seemed gripping at his heart. He tried to shake it off, but it
was like a sickness. To believe that she had been the wife of another man
or that she could ever belong to any other man than himself seemed like
shutting his eyes forever to the sun. And yet she had told him. She had
belonged to another man; she might belong to him even now. She had come to
find if he was alive--or dead.

And if alive? Aldous stopped again, and looked down into the dark pit
through which the river was rushing a hundred feet below him. It tore in
frothing maelstroms through a thousand rocks, filling the night with a low
thunder. To John Aldous the sound of it might have been a thousand miles
away. He did not hear. His eye saw nothing in the blackness. For a few
moments the question he had asked himself obliterated everything. If they
found Joanne's husband alive at Tête Jaune--what then? He turned back,
retracing his steps over the trail, a feeling of resentment--of hatred for
the man he had never seen--slowly taking the place of the oppressive thing
that had turned his heart sick within him. Then, in a flash, came the
memory of Joanne's words--words in which, white-faced and trembling, she
had confessed that her anxiety was not that she would find him dead, but
that _she would find him alive_. A joyous thrill shot through him as he
remembered that. Whoever this man was, whatever he might have been to her
once, or was to her now, Joanne did not want to find him alive! He laughed
softly to himself as he quickened his pace. The tense grip of his fingers
loosened. The grim, almost ghastly part of it did not occur to him--the
fact that deep in his soul he was wishing a man dead and in his grave.

He did not return at once to the scenes about Quade's place, but went to
the station, three quarters of a mile farther up the track. Here, in a
casual way, he learned from the little pink-faced Cockney Englishman who
watched the office at night that Stevens had been correct in his
information. Quade had gone to Tête Jaune. Although it was eleven o'clock,
Aldous proceeded in the direction of the engineers' camp, still another
quarter of a mile deeper in the bush. He was restless. He did not feel that
he could sleep that night. The engineers' camp he expected to find in
darkness, and he was surprised when he saw a light burning brightly in
Keller's cabin.

Keller was the assistant divisional engineer, and they had become good
friends. It was Keller who had set the first surveyor's line at Tête Jaune,
and it was he who had reported it as the strategic point from which to push
forward the fight against mountain and wilderness, both by river and rail.
He was, in a way, accountable for the existence of Tête Jaune just where it
did exist, and he knew more about it than any other man in the employ of
the Grand Trunk Pacific. For this reason Aldous was glad that Keller had
not gone to bed. He knocked at the door and entered without waiting for an
invitation.

The engineer stood in the middle of the floor, his coat off, his fat,
stubby hands thrust into the pockets of his baggy trousers, his red face
and bald cranium shining in the lamplight. A strange fury blazed in his
eyes as he greeted his visitor. He began pacing back and forth across the
room, puffing volumes of smoke from a huge bowled German pipe as he
motioned Aldous to a chair.

"What's the matter, Peter?"

"Enough--an' be damned!" growled Peter. "If it wasn't enough do you think
I'd be out of bed at this hour of the night?"

"I'm sure it's enough," agreed Aldous. "If it wasn't you'd be in your
little trundle over there, sleeping like a baby. I don't know of any one
who can sleep quite as sweetly as you, Peter. But what the devil _is_ the
trouble?"

"Something that you can't make me feel funny over. You haven't heard--about
the bear?"

"Not a word, Peter."

Keller took his hands from his pockets and the big, bowled pipe from his
mouth.

"You know what I did with that bear," he said. "More than a year ago I made
friends with her up there on the hill instead of killing her. Last summer I
got her so she'd eat out of my hands. I fed her a barrel of sugar between
July and November. We used to chum it an hour at a time, and I'd pet her
like a dog. Why, damn it, man, I thought more of that bear than I did of
any human in these regions! And she got so fond of me she didn't leave to
den up until January. This spring she came out with two cubs, an' as soon
as they could waddle she brought 'em out there on the hillside an' waited
for me. We were better chums than ever. I've got another half barrel of
sugar--lump sugar--on the way from Edmonton. An' now what do you think that
damned C.N.R. gang has done?"

"They haven't shot her?"

"No, they haven't shot her. I wish to God they had! They've _blown her
up!_"

The little engineer subsided into a chair.

"Do you hear?" he demanded. "They've blown her up! Put a stick of dynamite
under some sugar, attached a battery wire to it, an' when she was licking
up the sugar touched it off. An' I can't do anything, damn 'em! Bears ain't
protected. The government of this province calls 'em 'pests.' Murder 'em
on sight, it says. An' those fiends over there think it's a good joke on
me--an' the bear!"

Keller was sweating. His fat hands were clenched, and his round, plump body
fairly shook with excitement and anger.

"When I went over to-night they laughed at me--the whole bunch," he went on
thickly. "I offered to lick every man in the outfit from A to Z, an' I
ain't had a fight in twenty years. Instead of fighting like men, a dozen of
them grabbed hold of me, chucked me into a blanket, an' bounced me for
fifteen minutes straight! What do you think of _that_, Aldous?
Me--assistant divisional engineer of the G.T.P.--_bounced in a blanket_!"

Peter Keller hopped from his chair and began pacing back and forth across
the room again, sucking truculently on his pipe.

"If they were on our road I'd--I'd chase every man of them out of the
country. But they're not. They belong to the C.N.R. They're out of my
reach." He stopped, suddenly, in front of Aldous. "What can I do?" he
demanded.

"Nothing," said Aldous. "You've had something like this coming to you,
Peter. I've been expecting it. All the camps for twenty miles up and down
the line know what you thought of that bear. You fired Tibbits because, as
you said, he was too thick with Quade. You told him that right before
Quade's face. Tibbits is now foreman of that grading gang over there. Two
and two make four, you know. Tibbits--Quade--the blown-up bear. Quade
doesn't miss an opportunity, no matter how small it is. Tibbits and Quade
did this to get even with you. You might report the blanket affair to the
contractors of the other road. I don't believe they would stand for it."

Aldous had guessed correctly what the effect of associating Quade's name
with the affair would be. Keller was one of Quade's deadliest enemies. He
sat down close to Aldous again. His eyes burned deep back. It was not
Keller's physique, but his brain, and the fearlessness of his spirit, that
made him dangerous.

"I guess you're right, Aldous," he said. "Some day--I'll even up on Quade."

"And so shall I, Peter."

The engineer stared into the other's eyes.

"You----"

Aldous nodded.

"Quade left for Tête Jaune to-night, on a hand-car. I follow him to-morrow,
on the train. I can't tell you what's up, Peter, but I don't think it will
stop this side of death for Quade and Culver Rann--or me. I mean that quite
literally. I don't see how more than one side can come out alive. I want to
ask you a few questions before I go on to Tête Jaune. You know every
mountain and trail about the place, don't you?"

"I've tramped them all, afoot and horseback."

"Then perhaps you can direct me to what I must find--a man's grave."

Peter Keller paused in the act of relighting his pipe. For a moment he
stared in amazement.

"There are a great many graves up at Tête Jaune," he said, at last. "A
great many graves--and many of them unmarked. If it's a _Quade_ grave
you're looking for, Aldous, it will be unmarked."

"I am quite sure that it is marked--or _was_ at one time," said Aldous.
"It's the grave of a man who had quite an unusual name, Peter, and you
might remember it--Mortimer FitzHugh."

"FitzHugh--FitzHugh," repeated Keller, puffing out fresh volumes of smoke.
"Mortimer FitzHugh----"

"He died, I believe, before there was a Tête Jaune, or at least before the
steel reached there," added Aldous. "He was on a hunting trip, and I have
reason to think that his death was a violent one."

Keller rose and fell into his old habit of pacing back and forth across the
room, a habit that had worn a path in the bare pine boards of the floor.

"There's graves an' graves up there, but not so many that were there before
Tête Jaune came," he began, between puffs. "Up on the side of White Knob
Mountain there's the grave of a man who was torn to bits by a grizzly. But
his name was Humphrey. Old Yellowhead John--Tête Jaune, they called
him--died years before that, and no one knows where his grave is. We had
five men die before the steel came, but there wasn't a FitzHugh among 'em.
Crabby--old Crabby Tompkins, a trapper, is buried in the sand on the
Frazer. The last flood swept his slab away. There's two unmarked graves in
Glacier Canyon, but I guess they're ten years old if a day. Burns was shot.
I knew him. Plenty died after the steel came, but before that----"

Suddenly he stopped. He faced Aldous. His breath came in quick jerks.

"By Heaven, I do remember!" he cried. "There's a mountain in the Saw Tooth
Range, twelve miles from Tête Jaune--a mountain with the prettiest basin
you ever saw at the foot of it, with a lake no bigger than this camp, and
an old cabin which Yellowhead himself must have built fifty years ago.
There's a blind canyon runs out of it, short an' dark, on the right. We
found a grave there. I don't remember the first name on the slab. Mebby it
was washed out. But, so 'elp me God, _the last name was FitzHugh_!"

With a sudden cry, Aldous jumped to his feet and caught Keller's arm.

"You're sure of it, Peter?"

"Positive!"

It was impossible for Aldous to repress his excitement. The engineer stared
at him even harder than before.

"What can that grave have to do with Quade?" he asked. "The man died before
Quade was known in these regions."

"I can't tell you now, Peter," replied Aldous, pulling the engineer to the
table. "But I think you'll know quite soon. For the present, I want you to
sketch out a map that will take me to the grave. Will you?"

On the table were pencil and paper. Keller seated himself and drew them
toward him.

"I'm damned if I can see what that grave can have to do with Quade," he
said; "but I'll tell you how to find it!"

For several minutes they bent low over the table, Peter Keller describing
the trail to the Saw Tooth Mountain as he sketched it, step by step, on a
sheet of office paper. When it was done, Aldous folded it carefully and
placed it in his wallet.

"I can't go wrong, and--thank you, Keller!"

After Aldous had gone, Peter Keller sat for some time in deep thought.

"Now I wonder what the devil there can be about a grave to make him so
happy," he grumbled, listening to the whistle that was growing fainter down
the trail.

And Aldous, alone, with the moon straight above him as he went back to the
Miette Plain, felt, in truth, this night had become brighter for him than
any day he had ever known. For he knew that Peter Keller was not a man to
make a statement of which he was not sure. Mortimer FitzHugh was dead. His
bones lay under the slab up in that little blind canyon in the shadow of
the Saw Tooth Mountain. To-morrow he would tell Joanne. And, blindly, he
told himself that she would be glad.

Still whistling, he passed the Chinese laundry shack on the creek, crossed
the railroad tracks, and buried himself in the bush beyond. A quarter of an
hour later he stole quietly into Stevens' camp and went to bed.




CHAPTER IX


Stevens, dreaming of twenty horses plunging to death among the rocks in the
river, slept uneasily. He awoke before it was dawn, but when he dragged
himself from his tepee, moving quietly not to awaken his boy, he found John
Aldous on his knees before a small fire, slicing thin rashers of bacon into
a frying-pan. The weight of his loss was in the tired packer's eyes and
face and the listless droop of his shoulders. John Aldous, with three hours
between the blankets to his credit, was as cheery as the crackling fire
itself. He had wanted to whistle for the last half-hour. Seeing Stevens, he
began now.

"I wasn't going to rouse you until breakfast was ready," he interrupted
himself to say. "I heard you groaning, Stevens. I know you had a bad night.
And the kid, too. He couldn't sleep. But I made up my mind you'd have to
get up early. I've got a lot of business on to-day, and we'll have to rouse
Curly Roper out of bed to buy his pack outfit. Find the coffee, will you? I
couldn't."

For a moment Stevens stood over him.

"See here, Aldous, you didn't mean what you said last night, did you? You
didn't mean--that?"

"Confound it, yes! Can't you understand plain English, Stevens? Don't you
believe a man when he's a gentleman? Buy that outfit! Why, I'd buy twenty
outfits to-day, I'm--I'm feeling so fine, Stevens!"

For the first time in forty-eight hours Stevens smiled.

"I was wondering if I hadn't been dreaming," he said. "Once, a long time
ago, I guess I felt just like you do now."

With which cryptic remark he went for the coffee.

Aldous looked up in time to see the boy stagger sleepily out of the tepee.
There was something pathetic about the motherlessness of the picture, and
he understood a little of what Stevens had meant.

An hour later, with breakfast over, they started for Curly's. Curly was
pulling on his boots when they arrived, while his wife was frying the
inevitable bacon in the kitchen.

"I hear you have some horses for sale, Curly," said Aldous.

"Hi 'ave."

"How many?"

"Twenty-nine, 'r twenty-eight--mebby twenty-seven."

"How much?"

Curly looked up from the task of pulling on his second boot.

"H'are you buying 'orses or looking for hinformation?" he asked.

"I'm buying, and I'm in a hurry. How much do you want a head?"

"Sixty, 'r six----"

"I'll give you sixty dollars apiece for twenty-eight head, and that's just
ten dollars apiece more than they're worth," broke in Aldous, pulling a
check-book and a fountain pen from his pocket. "Is it a go?"

A little stupefied by the suddenness of it all, Curly opened his mouth and
stared.

"Is it a go?" repeated Aldous. "Including blankets, saddles, pack-saddles,
ropes, and canvases?"

Curly nodded, looking from Aldous to Stevens to see if he could detect
anything that looked like a joke.

"Hit's a go," he said.

Aldous handed him a check for sixteen hundred and eighty dollars.

"Make out the bill of sale to Stevens," he said. "I'm paying for them, but
they're Stevens' horses. And, look here, Curly, I'm buying them only with
your agreement that you'll say nothing about who paid for them. Will you
agree to that?"

Curly was joyously looking at the check.

"Gyve me a Bible," he demanded. "Hi'll swear Stevens p'id for them! I give
you the word of a Hinglish gentleman!"

Without another word Aldous opened the cabin door and was gone, leaving
Stevens quite as much amazed as the little Englishman whom everybody called
Curly, because he had no hair.

Aldous went at once to the station, and for the first time inquired into
the condition that was holding back the Tête Jaune train. He found that a
slide had given way, burying a section of track under gravel and rock. A
hundred men were at work clearing it away, and it was probable they would
finish by noon. A gang boss, who had come back with telegraphic reports,
said that half a dozen men had carried Quade's hand-car over the
obstruction about midnight.

It was seven o'clock when Aldous left for the Miette bottom. He believed
that Joanne would be up. At this season of the year the first glow of day
usually found the Ottos at breakfast, and for half an hour the sun had been
shining on the top of Pyramid Mountain. He was eager to tell her what had
passed between him and Keller. He laughed softly when he confessed to
himself how madly he wanted to see her.

He always liked to come up to the Otto home very early of a morning, or in
the dusk of evening. Very frequently he was filled with a desire to stand
outside the red-and-white striped walls of the tent-house and listen
unseen. Inside there was always cheer: at night the crackle of fire and the
glow of light, the happy laughter of the gentle-hearted Scotchwoman, and
the affectionate banter of her "big mountain man," who looked more like a
brigand than the luckiest and most contented husband in the mountains--the
luckiest, quite surely, with the one exception of his brother Clossen, who
had, by some occult strategy or other, induced a sweet-faced and
aristocratic little woman to look upon his own honest physiognomy as the
handsomest and finest in the world. This morning Aldous followed a narrow
path that brought him behind the tent-house. He heard no voices. A few
steps more and he emerged upon a scene that stopped him and set his heart
thumping.

Less than a dozen paces away stood Mrs. Otto and Joanne, their backs toward
him. They were gazing silently and anxiously in the direction of the thick,
low bush across the clearing, through which led the trail to his cabin. He
did not look toward the bush. His eyes were upon Joanne. Her slender figure
was full in the golden radiance of the morning sun, and Aldous felt himself
under the spell of a joyous wonder as he looked at her. For the first time
he saw her hair as he had pictured it--as he had given it to that other
_Joanne_ in the book he had called "Fair Play." She had been brushing it in
the sun when he came, but now she stood poised in that tense and waiting
attitude--silent--gazing in the direction of the bush, with that marvellous
mantle sweeping about her in a shimmering silken flood. He would not have
moved, nor would he have spoken, until Joanne herself broke the spell. She
turned, and saw him. With a little cry of surprise she flung back her hair.
He could not fail to see the swift look of relief and gladness that had
come into her eyes. In another instant her face was flushing crimson.

"I beg your pardon for coming up like an eavesdropper," he apologized. "I
thought you would just about be at breakfast, Mrs. Otto."

The Scotchwoman heaved a tremendous sigh of relief.

"Goodness gracious, but I'm glad to see you!" she exclaimed thankfully.
"Jack and Bruce have just gone out to see if they could find your dead
body!"

"We thought perhaps something might have happened," said Joanne, who had
moved nearer the door. "You will excuse me, won't you, while I finish my
hair?"

Without waiting for him to answer, she ran into the tent. No sooner had she
disappeared than the good-natured smile left Mrs. Otto's face. There was a
note of alarm in her low voice as she whispered:

"Jack and Bruce went to the barn last night, and she slept with me. She
tried to be quiet, but I know she didn't sleep much. And she cried. I
couldn't hear her, but the pillow was wet. Once my hand touched her cheek,
and it was wet. I didn't ask any questions. This morning, at breakfast, she
told us everything that happened, all about Quade--and your trouble. She
told us about Quade looking in at the window, and she was so nervous
thinking something might have happened to you last night that the poor dear
couldn't even drink her coffee until Jack and Bruce went out to hunt for
you. But I don't think that was why she cried!"

"I wish it had been," said Aldous. "It makes me happy to think she was
worried about--me."

"Good Lord!" gasped Mrs. Otto.

He looked for a moment into the slow-growing amazement and understanding in
her kind eyes.

"You will keep my little secret, won't you, Mrs. Otto?" he asked. "Probably
you'll think it's queer. I've only known her a day. But I feel--like that.
Somehow I feel that in telling this to you I am confiding in a mother, or a
sister. I want you to understand why I'm going on to Tête Jaune with her.
That is why she was crying--because of the dread of something up there. I'm
going with her. She shouldn't go alone."

Voices interrupted them, and they turned to find that Jack and Bruce Otto
had come out of the bush and were quite near. Aldous was sorry that Joanne
had spoken of his trouble with Quade. He did not want to discuss the
situation, or waste time in listening to further advice. He was anxious to
be alone again with Joanne, and tell her what he had learned from Peter
Keller. For half an hour he repressed his uneasiness. The brothers then
went on to their corral. A few minutes later Joanne was once more at his
side, and they were walking slowly over the trail that led to the cabin on
the river.

He could see that the night had made a change in her. There were circles
under her eyes which were not there yesterday. When she looked at him their
velvety blue depths betrayed something which he knew she was struggling
desperately to keep from him. It was not altogether fear. It was more a
betrayal of pain--a torment of the soul and not of the body. He noticed
that in spite of the vivid colouring of her lips her face was strangely
pale. The beautiful flush that had come into it when she first saw him was
gone.

Then he began to tell her of his visit to Peter Keller. His own heart was
beating violently when he came to speak of the grave and the slab over it
that bore the name of FitzHugh. He had expected that what he had discovered
from Keller would create some sort of a sensation. He had even come up to
the final fact gradually, so that it would not appear bald and shocking.
Joanne's attitude stunned him. She looked straight ahead. When she turned
to him he did not see in her eyes what he had expected to see. They were
quiet, emotionless, except for that shadow of inward torture which did not
leave them.

"Then to-morrow we can go to the grave?" she asked simply.

Her voice, too, was quiet and without emotion.

He nodded. "We can leave at sunrise," he said. "I have my own horses at
Tête Jaune and there need be no delay. We were to start into the North from
there."

"You mean on the adventure you were telling me about?"

She had looked at him quickly.

"Yes. Old Donald, my partner, has been waiting for me a week. That's why I
was so deuced anxious to rush the book to an end. I'm behind Donald's
schedule, and he's growing nervous. It's rather an unusual enterprise
that's taking us north this time, and Donald can't understand why I should
hang back to write the tail end of a book. He has lived sixty years in the
mountains. His full name is Donald MacDonald. Sometimes, back in my own
mind, I've called him History. He seems like that--as though he'd lived for
ages in these mountains instead of sixty years. If I could only write what
he has lived--even what one might imagine that he has lived! But I cannot.
I have tried three times, and have failed. I think of him as The Last
Spirit--a strange wandering ghost of the mighty ranges. His kind passed
away a hundred years ago. You will understand--when you see him."

She put her hand on his arm and let it rest there lightly as they walked.
Into her eyes had returned some of the old warm glow of yesterday.

"I want you to tell me about this adventure," she entreated softly. "I
understand--about the other. You have been good--oh! so good to me! And I
should tell you things; you are expecting me to explain. It is only fair
and honest that I should. I know what is in your mind, and I only want you
to wait--until to-morrow. Will you? And I will tell you then, when we have
found the grave."

Involuntarily his hand sought Joanne's. For a single moment he felt the
warm, sweet thrill of it in his own as he pressed it more closely to his
arm. Then he freed it, looking straight ahead. A soft flush grew in
Joanne's cheeks.

"Do you care a great deal for riches?" he asked. "Does the golden pot at
the end of the rainbow hold out a lure for you?" He did not realize the
strangeness of his question until their eyes met. "Because if you don't,"
he added, smiling, "this adventure of ours isn't going to look very
exciting to you."

She laughed softly.

"No, I don't care for riches," she replied. "I am quite sure that just as
great education proves to one how little one knows, so great wealth brings
one face to face with the truth of how little one can enjoy. My father used
to say that the golden treasure at the end of the rainbow in every human
life was happiness, and that is something which you cannot buy. So why
crave riches, then? But please don't let my foolish ideas disappoint you.
I'll promise to be properly excited."

She saw his face suddenly aflame with enthusiasm.

"By George, but you're a--a brick, Joanne!" he exclaimed. "You are! And
I--I----" He was fumbling in his breast pocket. He brought out his wallet
and extracted from it the bit of paper Stevens had given him. "You dropped
that, and Stevens found it," he explained, giving it to her. "I thought
those figures might represent your fortune--or your income. Don't mind
telling you I went over 'em carefully. There's a mistake in the third
column. Five and four don't make seven. They make nine. In the final, when
you come to the multiplication part of it, that correction will make you
just thirty-two thousand five hundred dollars richer."

"Thanks," said Joanne, lowering her eyes, and beginning to tear the paper
into small pieces. "And will it disappoint you, Mr. John Aldous, if I tell
you that all these figures stand for riches which some one else possesses?
And won't you let me remind you that we're getting a long way from what I
want to know--about your trip into the North?"

"That's just it: we're hot on the trail," chuckled Aldous, deliberately
placing her hand on his arm again. "You don't care for riches. Neither do
I. I'm delighted to know we're going tandem in that respect. I've never had
any fun with money. It's the money that's had fun with me. I've no use for
yachts and diamonds and I'd rather travel afoot with a gun over my shoulder
than in a private car. Half the time I'm doing my own cooking, and I
haven't worn a white shirt in a year. My publishers persist in shoving more
money my way than I know what to do with.

"You see, I pay only ten cents a plug for my smoking tobacco, and other
things accordingly. Somebody has said something about the good Lord sitting
up in Heaven and laughing at the jokes He plays on men. Well, I'm sitting
back and laughing now and then at the tussle between men and money over all
creation. There's a whole lot of humour in the way men and women fight and
die for money, if you only take time to stand out on the side and look on.
There's nothing big or dramatic about it. I may be a heathen, but to my
mind the funniest of all things is to see the world wringing its neck for a
dollar. And Donald--old History--needs even less money than I. So that puts
the big element of humour in this expedition of ours. We don't want money,
particularly. Donald wouldn't wear more than four pairs of boots a year if
he was a billionaire. And yet----"

He turned to Joanne. The pressure of her hand was warmer on his arm. Her
beautiful eyes were glowing, and her red lips parted as she waited
breathlessly for him to go on.

"And yet, we're going to a place where you can scoop gold up with a
shovel," he finished. "That's the funny part of it."

"It isn't funny--it's tremendous!" gasped Joanne. "Think of what a man like
you could do with unlimited wealth, the good you might achieve, the
splendid endowments you might make----"

"I have already made several endowments," interrupted Aldous. "I believe
that I have made a great many people happy, Ladygray--a great many. I am
gifted to make endowments, I think, above most people. Not one of the
endowments I have made has failed of complete success."

"And may I ask what some of them were?"

"I can't remember them all. There have been a great, great many. Most
conspicuous among them were three endowments which I made to some very
worthy people at various times for seven salted mines. I suppose you know
what a salted mine is, Ladygray? At other times I have endowed railroad
stocks which were very much in need of my helping mite, two copper
companies, a concern that was supposed to hoist up pure asbestos from the
stomach of Popocatapetl, and a steamship company that never steamed. As I
said before, they were all very successful endowments."

"And how many of the other kind have you made?" she asked gently, looking
down the trail. "Like--Stevens', for instance?"

He turned to her sharply.

"What the deuce----"

"Did you succeed in getting the new outfit from Mr. Curly?" she asked.

"Yes. How did you know?"

She smiled at the amazement which had gathered in his face. A glad, soft
light shone in her eyes.

"I guess Mrs. Otto has been like a mother to that poor little boy," she
explained. "When you and Mr. Stevens went up to buy the outfit this morning
Jimmy ran over to tell her the news. We were all there--at breakfast. He
was so excited he could scarcely breathe. But it all came out, and he ran
back to camp before you came because he thought you wouldn't want me to
know. Wasn't that funny? He told me so when I walked a little way up the
path with him."

"The little reprobate!" chuckled Aldous. "He's the best publicity man I
ever had, Ladygray. I did want you to know about this, and I wanted it to
come to you in just this way, so that I wouldn't be compelled to tell you
myself of the big and noble act I have done. It was my hope and desire that
you, through some one else, would learn of it, and come to understand more
fully what a generous and splendid biped I am. I even plotted to give this
child of Stevens' a silver dollar if he would get the news to you in some
one of his innocent ways. He's done it. And he couldn't have done it
better--even for a dollar. Ah, here we are at the cabin. Will you excuse
me while I pick up a few things that I want to take on to Tête Jaune with
me?"

Between two trees close to the cabin he had built a seat, and here he left
Joanne. He was gone scarcely five minutes when he reappeared with a small
pack-sack over his shoulders, locked the door, and rejoined her.

"You see it isn't much of a task for me to move," he said, as they turned
back in the direction of the Ottos'. "I'll wash the dishes when I come back
next October."

"Five months!" gasped Joanne, counting on her fingers. "John Aldous, do you
mean----"

"I do," he nodded emphatically. "I frequently leave dishes unwashed for
quite a spell at a time. That's the one unpleasant thing about this sort of
life--washing dishes. It's not so bad in the rainy season, but it's fierce
during a dry spell. When it rains I put the dishes out on a flat rock,
dirty side up, and the good Lord does the scrubbing."

He looked at Joanne, face and eyes aglow with the happiness that was
sweeping in a mighty tumult within him. Half an hour had worked a
transformation in Joanne. There was no longer a trace of anguish or of fear
in her eyes. Their purity and limpid beauty made him think of the rock
violets that grew high up on the mountains. Her lips and cheeks were
flushed, and the soft pressure of her hand again resting on his arm filled
him with the exquisite thrill of possession and joy. He did not speak of
Tête Jaune again until they reached the Otto tent-house, and then only to
assure her that he would call for her half an hour before the train was
ready to leave.

As soon as possible after that he went to the telegraph office and sent a
long message to MacDonald. Among other things he told him to prepare their
cabin for a lady guest. He knew this would shock the old mountain wanderer,
but he also knew that Donald would follow his instructions in spite of
whatever alarm he might have. There were other women at Tête Jaune, the
wives of men he knew, to whom he might have taken Joanne. Under the
conditions, however, he believed his own cabin would be her best refuge, at
least for a day or so. In that time he could take some one into his
confidence, probably Blackton and his wife. In fact, as he thought the
circumstances over, he saw the necessity of confiding in the Blacktons that
very night.

He left the station, growing a bit nervous. Was it right for him to take
Joanne to his cabin at all? He had a tremendous desire to do so, chiefly on
account of Quade. The cabin was a quarter of a mile in the bush, and he was
positive if Joanne was there that Quade, and perhaps Culver Rann, would
come nosing about. This would give him the opportunity of putting into
execution a plan which he had already arranged for himself and old
MacDonald. On the other hand, was this arrangement fair to Joanne, even
though it gave him the chance to square up accounts with Quade?

He stopped abruptly, and faced the station. All at once there swept upon
him a realization of how blind he had been, and what a fool he had almost
made of himself. Blackton was one of the contractors who were working
miracles in the mountains. He was a friend who would fight for him if
necessary. Mrs. Blackton, who preferred to be on the firing line with her
husband than in her luxurious city home, was the leader of all that was
decent and womanly in Tête Jaune. Why not have these friends meet them at
the train and take Joanne direct to their house? Such recognition and
friendship would mean everything to Joanne. To take her to his cabin would
mean----

Inwardly he swore at himself as he hurried back to the station, and his
face burned hotly as he thought of the chance such a blunder on his part
would have given Quade and Culver Rann to circulate the stories with which
they largely played their scoundrelly game. He sent another and longer
telegram. This time it was to Blackton.

He ate dinner with Stevens, who had his new outfit ready for the mountains.
It was two o'clock before he brought Joanne up to the station. She was
dressed now as he had first seen her when she entered Quade's place. A veil
covered her face. Through the gray film of it he caught the soft warm glow
of her eyes and the shimmer of gold-brown tendrils of her hair. And he knew
why she wore that veil. It set his heart beating swiftly--the fact that she
was trying to hide from all eyes but his own a beauty so pure and wonderful
that it made her uncomfortable when under the staring gaze of the Horde.

The hand that rested on his arm he pressed closer to his side as they
walked up the station platform, and under his breath he laughed softly and
joyously as he felt the thrill of it. He spoke no word. Not until they were
in their seat in the coach did Joanne look at him after that pressure of
her hand, and then she did not speak. But in the veiled glow of her eyes
there was something that told him she understood--a light that was
wonderfully gentle and sweet. And yet, without words, she asked him to
keep within his soul the things that were pounding madly there for speech.

As the train rolled on and the babble of voices about them joined the
crunching rumble of the wheels, he wanted to lean close to her and tell her
how a few hours had changed the world for him. And then, for a moment, her
eyes turned to him again, and he knew that it would be a sacrilege to give
voice to the things he wanted to say. For many minutes he was silent,
gazing with her upon the wild panorama of mountain beauty as it drifted
past the car window. A loud voice two seats ahead of them proclaimed that
they were about to make Templeton's Curve. The man was talking to his
companion.

"They shot up a hundred thousand pounds of black powder an' dynamite to
make way for two hundred feet of steel on that curve," he explained in a
voice heard all over the car. "They say you could hear the explosion fifty
miles away. Jack Templeton was near-sighted, an' he didn't see a rock
coming down on him that was half as big as a house. I helped scrape up what
was left of 'im an' we planted him at this end of the curve. It's been
Templeton's Curve ever since. You'll see his grave--with a slab over it!"

It was there almost as he spoke, marked by a white-painted cross in a
circle of whitewashed stones. John Aldous felt a sudden shiver pass through
his companion. She turned from the window. Through her veil he saw her lips
tighten. Until he left the car half an hour later the man in the second
seat ahead talked of Templeton's grave and a dozen other graves along the
right of way. He was a rock-hog, and a specialist on the subject of
graves. Inwardly Aldous cursed him roundly. He cursed him all the way to
Tête Jaune, for to him he attributed the change which had again come over
Joanne.

This change she could only partly conceal from him under her veil. She
asked him many questions about Tête Jaune and the Blacktons, and tried to
take an interest in the scenery they were passing. In spite of this he
could see that she was becoming more and more nervous as they progressed
toward the end of their journey. He felt the slow dampening of his own joy,
the deadening clutch of yesterday at his heart. Twice she lifted her veil
for a moment and he saw she was pale and the tense lines had gathered about
her mouth again. There was something almost haggard in her look the second
time.

In the early dusk of evening they arrived at Tête Jaune. Aldous waited
until the car had emptied itself before he rose from his seat. Joanne's
hand clutched at his arm as they walked down the aisle. He felt the fierce
pressure of her fingers in his flesh. On the car platform they paused for a
moment, and he felt her throbbing beside him. She had taken her hand from
his arm, and he turned suddenly. She had raised her veil. Her face was dead
white. And she was staring out over the sea of faces under them in a
strange questing way, and her breath came from between her slightly parted
lips as if she had been running. Amazed for the moment, John Aldous did not
move. Somewhere in that crowd _Joanne expected to find a face she knew!_
The truth struck him dumb--made him inert and lifeless. He, too, stared as
if in a trance. And then, suddenly, every drop of blood in his body blazed
into fierce life.

In the glow of one of the station lamps stood a group of men. The faces of
all were turned toward them. One he recognized--a bloated, leering face
grinning devilishly at them. It was Quade!

A low, frightened cry broke from Joanne's lips, and he knew that she, too,
had seen him. But it was not Quade that she had looked for. It was not his
face that she had expected to see nor because of him that she had lifted
her veil for the mob!

He stepped down from the car and gave her his hand. Her fingers clutched
his convulsively. And they were cold as the fingers of the dead.




CHAPTER X


A moment later some one came surging through the crowd, and called Aldous
by name. It was Blackton. His thin, genial face with its little spiked
moustache rose above the sea of heads about him, and as he came he grinned
a welcome.

"A beastly mob!" he exclaimed, as he gripped his friend's hand. "I'm sorry
I couldn't bring my wife nearer than the back platform."

Aldous turned to Joanne. He was still half in a daze. His heart was choking
him with its swift and excited beating. Even as he introduced her to
Blackton the voice kept crying in his brain that she had expected to find
some one in this crowd whom she knew. For a space it was as if the Joanne
whom he had known had slipped away from him. She had told him about the
grave, but this other she had kept from him. Something that was almost
anger surged up in him. His face bore marks of the strain as he watched her
greet Blackton. In an instant, it seemed to him, she had regained a part of
her composure. Blackton saw nothing but the haggard lines about her eyes
and the deep pallor in her face, which he ascribed to fatigue.

"You're tired, Miss Gray," he said. "It's a killing ride up from Miette
these days. If we can get through this mob we'll have supper within fifteen
minutes!"

With a word to Aldous he began worming his long, lean body ahead of them.
An instant Joanne's face was very close to Aldous', so close that he felt
her breath, and a tendril of her hair touched his lips. In that instant her
eyes looked into his steadily, and he felt rush over him a sudden shame. If
she was seeking and expecting, it was to him more than ever that she was
now looking for protection. The haunting trouble in her eyes, their
entreaty, their shining faith in him told him that, and he was glad that
she had not seen his sudden fear and suspicion. She clung more closely to
him as they followed Blackton. Her little fingers held his arm as if she
were afraid some force might tear him from her. He saw that she was looking
quickly at the faces about them with that same questing mystery in her
search.

At the thin outer edge of the crowd Blackton dropped back beside them. A
few steps more and they came to the end of the platform, where a buckboard
was waiting in the dim light of one of the station lamps. Blackton
introduced Joanne, and assisted her into the seat beside his wife.

"We'll leave you ladies to become acquainted while we rustle the baggage,"
he said. "Got the checks, Aldous?"

Joanne had given Aldous two checks on the train, and he handed them to
Blackton. Together they made their way to the baggage-room.

"Thought Miss Gray would have some luggage, so I had one of my men come
with another team," he explained. "We won't have to wait. I'll give him the
checks."

Before they returned to the buckboard, Aldous halted his friend.

"I couldn't say much in that telegram," he said. "If Miss Gray wasn't a
bit tired and unstrung I'd let her explain. I want you to tell Mrs.
Blackton that she has come to Tête Jaune on a rather unpleasant mission,
old man. Nothing less than to attend to the grave of a--a near relative."

"I regret that--I regret it very much," replied Blackton, flinging away the
match he had lighted without touching it to his cigar. "I guessed something
was wrong. She's welcome at our place, Aldous--for as long as she remains
in Tête Jaune. Perhaps I knew this relative. If I can assist you--or
her----"

"He died before the steel came," said Aldous. "FitzHugh was his name. Old
Donald and I are going to take her to the grave. Miss Gray is an old friend
of mine," he lied boldly. "We want to start at dawn. Will that be too much
trouble for you and your wife?"

"No trouble at all," declared Blackton. "We've got a Chinese cook who's
more like an owl than a human. How will a four o'clock breakfast suit you?"

"Splendidly!"

As they went on, the contractor said:

"I carried your word to MacDonald. Hunted him down out in the bush. He is
very anxious to see you. He said he would not be at the depot, but that you
must not fail him. He's kept strangely under cover of late. Curious old
ghost, isn't he?"

"The strangest man in the mountains," said Aldous "And, when you come to
know him, the most lovable. We're going North together."

This time it was Blackton who stopped, with a hand on his companion's arm.
A short distance from them they could see the buckboard in the light of
the station lamp.

"Has old Donald written you lately?" he asked.

"No. He says he hasn't written a letter in twenty years."

Blackton hesitated.

"Then you haven't heard of his--accident?"

The strange look in the contractor's face as he lighted a cigar made John
Aldous catch him sharply by the arm.

"What do you mean?"

"He was shot. I happened to be in Dr. Brady's office when he dragged
himself in, late at night. Doc got the bullet out of his shoulder. It
wasn't a bad wound. The old man swore it was an accident, and asked us to
say nothing about it. We haven't. But I've been wondering. Old Donald said
he was careless with his own pistol. But the fact is, Aldous--_he was shot
from behind!_"

"The deuce you say!"

"There was no perforation except from _behind_. In some way the bullet had
spent itself before it reached him. Otherwise it would have killed him."

For a moment Aldous stared in speechless amazement into Blackton's face.

"When did this happen?" he asked then.

"Three days ago. Since then I have not seen old Donald until to-night.
Almost by accident I met him out there in the timber. I delivered the
telegram you sent him. After he had read it I showed him mine. He scribbled
something on a bit of paper, folded it, and pinned it with a porcupine
quill. I've been mighty curious, but I haven't pulled out that quill. Here
it is."

From his pocket he produced the note and gave it to Aldous.

"I'll read it a little later," said Aldous. "The ladies may possibly become
anxious about us."

He dropped it in his pocket as he thanked Blackton for the trouble he had
taken in finding MacDonald. As he climbed into the front seat of the
buckboard his eyes met Joanne's. He was glad that in a large measure she
had recovered her self-possession. She smiled at him as they drove off, and
there was something in the sweet tremble of her lips that made him almost
fancy she was asking his forgiveness for having forgotten herself. Her
voice sounded more natural to him as she spoke to Mrs. Blackton. The
latter, a plump little blue-eyed woman with dimples and golden hair, was
already making her feel at home. She leaned over and placed a hand on her
husband's shoulder.

"Let's drive home by way of town, Paul," she suggested. "It's only a little
farther, and I'm quite sure Miss Gray will be interested in our Great White
Way of the mountains. And I'm crazy to see that bear you were telling me
about," she added.

Nothing could have suited Aldous more than this suggestion. He was sure
that Quade, following his own and Culver Rann's old methods, had already
prepared stories about Joanne, and he not only wanted Quade's friends--but
all of Tête Jaune as well--to see Joanne in the company of Mrs. Paul
Blackton and her husband. And this was a splendid opportunity, for the
night carnival was already beginning.

"The bear is worth seeing," said Blackton, turning his team in the
direction of the blazing light of the half-mile street that was the
Broadway of Tête Jaune. "And the woman who rides him is worth seeing, too,"
he chuckled. "He's a big fellow--and she plays the Godiva act. Rides him up
and down the street with her hair down, collecting dimes and quarters and
half dollars as she goes."

A minute later the length of the street swept out ahead of them. It is
probable that the world had never before seen a street just like this
Broadway in Tête Jaune--the pleasure Mecca of five thousand workers along
the line of steel. There had been great "camps" in the building of other
railroads, but never a city in the wilderness like this--a place that had
sprung up like magic and which, a few months later, was doomed to disappear
as quickly. For half a mile it blazed out ahead of them, two garishly
lighted rows of shacks, big tents, log buildings, and rough board
structures, with a rough, wide street between.

To-night Tête Jaune was like a blazing fire against the darkness of the
forest and mountain beyond. A hundred sputtering "jacks" sent up columns of
yellow flame in front of places already filled with the riot and tumult of
the night. A thousand lamps and coloured lanterns flashed like fireflies
along the way, and under them the crowd had gathered, and was flowing back
and forth. It was a weird and fantastic sight--this one strange and almost
uncanny street that was there largely for the play and the excitement of
men.

Aldous turned to Joanne. He knew what this town meant. It was the first and
the last of its kind, and its history would never be written. The world
outside the mountains knew nothing of it. Like the men who made up its
transient life it would soon be a forgotten thing of the past. Even the
mountains would forget it. But more than once, as he had stood a part of
it, his blood had warmed at the thought of the things it held secret, the
things that would die with it, the big human drama it stood for, its hidden
tragedies, its savage romance, its passing comedy. He found something of
his own thought in Joanne's eyes.

"There isn't much to it," he said, "but to-night, if you made the hunt, you
could find men of eighteen or twenty nationalities in that street."

"And a little more besides," laughed Blackton. "If you could write the
complete story of how Tête Jaune has broken the law, Aldous, it would fill
a volume as big as Peggy's family Bible!"

"And after all, it's funny," said Peggy Blackton. "There!" she cried
suddenly. "Isn't _that_ funny?"

The glare and noisy life were on both sides of them now. Half a dozen
phonographs were going. From up the street came the softer strains of a
piano, and from in between the shrieking notes of bagpipe. Peggy Blackton
was pointing to a brilliantly lighted, black-tarpaulined shop. Huge white
letters on its front announced that Lady Barbers were within. They could
see two of them at work through the big window. And they were pretty. The
place was crowded with men. Men were waiting outside.

"Paul says they charge a dollar for a haircut and fifty cents for a shave,"
explained Peggy Blackton. "And the man over there across the street is
going broke because he can't get business at fifteen cents a shave. _Isn't_
it funny?"

As they went on Aldous searched the street for Quade. Several times he
turned to the back seat, and always he found Joanne's eyes questing in that
strange way for the some one whom she expected to see. Mrs. Blackton was
pointing out lighted places, and explaining things as they passed, but he
knew that in spite of her apparent attention Joanne heard only a part of
what she was saying. In that crowd she hoped--or feared--to find a certain
face. And again Aldous told himself that it was not Quade's face.

Near the end of the street a crowd was gathering, and here, for a moment,
Blackton stopped his team within fifty feet of the objects of attraction. A
slim, exquisitely formed woman in shimmering silk was standing beside a
huge brown bear. Her sleek black hair, shining as if it had been oiled,
fell in curls about her shoulders. Her rouged lips were smiling. Even at
that distance her black eyes sparkled like diamonds. She had evidently just
finished taking up a collection, for she was fastening the cord of a silken
purse about her neck. In another moment she bestrode the bear, the crowd
fell apart, and as the onlookers broke into a roar of applause the big
beast lumbered slowly up the street with its rider.

"One of Culver Rann's friends," said Blackton _sotto voce_, as he drove on.
"She takes in a hundred a night if she makes a cent!"

[Illustration: A slim, exquisitely formed woman in shimmering silk was
standing beside a huge brown bear. In another moment she bestrode the bear,
and the big beast lumbered up the street with its rider.]

Blackton's big log bungalow was close to the engineers' camp half a mile
distant from the one lighted street and the hundreds of tents and shacks
that made up the residential part of the town. Not until they were inside,
and Peggy Blackton had disappeared with Joanne for a few moments, did
Aldous take old Donald MacDonald's note from his pocket. He pulled out the
quill, unfolded the bit of paper, and read the few crudely written words
the mountain man had sent him. Blackton turned in time to catch the sudden
amazement in his face. Crushing the note in his hand, Aldous looked at the
other, his mouth tightening.

"You must help me make excuses, old man," he said quietly. "It will seem
strange to them if I do not stay for supper. But--it is impossible. I must
see old Donald as quickly as I can get to him."

His manner more than his words kept Blackton from urging him to remain. The
contractor stared at him for a moment, his own eyes growing harder and more
direct.

"It's about the shooting," he said. "If you want me to go with you,
Aldous----"

"Thanks. That will be unnecessary."

Peggy Blackton and Joanne were returning. Aldous turned toward them as they
entered the room. With the note still in his hand he repeated to them what
he had told Blackton--that he had received word which made it immediately
urgent for him to go to MacDonald. He shook hands with the Blacktons,
promising to be on hand for the four o'clock breakfast.

Joanne followed him to the door and out upon the veranda. For a moment they
were alone, and now her eyes were wide and filled with fear as he clasped
her hands closely in his own.

"I saw him," she whispered, her fingers tightening convulsively. "I saw
that man--Quade--at the station. He followed us up the street. Twice I
looked behind--and saw him. I am afraid--afraid to let you go back there. I
believe he is somewhere out there now--waiting for you!"

She was frightened, trembling; and her fear for him, the fear in her
shining eyes, in her throbbing breath, in the clasp of her fingers, sent
through John Aldous a joy that almost made him free her hands and crush her
in his arms in the ecstasy of that wonderful moment. Then Peggy Blackton
and her husband appeared in the door. He released her hands, and stepped
out into the gloom. The cheery good-nights of the Blacktons followed him.
And Joanne's good-night was in her eyes--following him until he was gone,
filled with their entreaty and their fear.

A hundred yards distant, where the trail split to lead to the camp of the
engineers, there was a lantern on a pole. Here Aldous paused, out of sight
of the Blackton bungalow, and in the dim light read again MacDonald's note.

In a cramped and almost illegible hand the old wanderer of the mountains
had written:

   Don't go to cabin. Culver Rann waiting to kill you. Don't show
   yorself in town. Cum to me as soon as you can on trail striking
   north to Loon Lake. Watch yorself. Be ready with yor gun.

   DONALD MacDONALD.

Aldous shoved the note in his pocket and slipped back out of the
lantern-glow into deep shadow. For several minutes he stood silent and
listening.




CHAPTER XI


As John Aldous stood hidden in the darkness, listening for the sound of a
footstep, Joanne's words still rang in his ears. "I believe he is out
there--waiting for you," she had said; and, chuckling softly in the gloom,
he told himself that nothing would give him more satisfaction than an
immediate and material proof of her fear. In the present moment he felt a
keen desire to confront Quade face to face out there in the lantern-glow,
and settle with the mottled beast once for all. The fact that Quade had
seen Joanne as the guest of the Blacktons hardened him in his
determination. Quade could no longer be in possible error regarding her. He
knew that she had friends, and that she was not of the kind who could be
made or induced to play his game and Culver Rann's. If he followed her
after this----

Aldous gritted his teeth and stared up and down the black trail. Five
minutes passed and he heard nothing that sounded like a footstep, and he
saw no moving shadow in the gloom. Slowly he continued along the road until
he came to where a narrow pack-trail swung north and east through the thick
spruce and balsam in the direction of Loon Lake. Remembering MacDonald's
warning, he kept his pistol in his hand. The moon was just beginning to
rise over the shoulder of a mountain, and after a little it lighted up the
more open spaces ahead of him. Now and then he paused, and turned to
listen. As he progressed with slowness and caution, his mind worked
swiftly. He knew that Donald MacDonald was the last man in the world to
write such a message as he had sent him through Blackton unless there had
been a tremendous reason for it. But why, he asked himself again and again,
should Culver Rann want to kill him? Rann knew nothing of Joanne. He had
not seen her. And surely Quade had not had time to formulate a plot with
his partner before MacDonald wrote his warning. Besides, an attempt had
been made to assassinate the old mountaineer! MacDonald had not warned him
against Quade. He had told him to guard himself against Rann. And what
reason could this Culver Rann have for doing him injury? The more he
thought of it the more puzzled he became. And then, in a flash, the
possible solution of it all came to him.

Had Culver Rann discovered the secret mission on which he and the old
mountaineer were going into the North? Had he learned of the gold--where it
was to be found? And was their assassination the first step in a plot to
secure possession of the treasure?

The blood in Aldous' veins ran faster. He gripped his pistol harder. More
closely he looked into the moonlit gloom of the trail ahead of him. He
believed that he had guessed the meaning of MacDonald's warning. It was the
gold! More than once thought of the yellow treasure far up in the North had
thrilled him, but never as it thrilled him now. Was the old tragedy of it
to be lived over again? Was it again to play its part in a terrible drama
of men's lives, as it had played it more than forty years ago? The gold!
The gold that for nearly half a century had lain with the bones of its
dead, alone with its terrible secret, alone until Donald MacDonald had
found it again! He had not told Joanne the story of it, the appalling and
almost unbelievable tragedy of it. He had meant to do so. But they had
talked of other things. He had meant to tell her that it was not the gold
itself that was luring him far to the north--that it was not the gold alone
that was taking Donald MacDonald back to it.

And now, as he stood for a moment listening to the low sweep of the wind in
the spruce-tops, it seemed to him that the night was filled with whispering
voices of that long-ago--and he shivered, and held his breath. A cloud had
drifted under the moon. For a few moments it was pitch dark. The fingers of
his hand dug into the rough bark of a spruce. He did not move. It was then
that he heard something above the caressing rustle of the wind in the
spruce-tops.

It came to him faintly, from full half a mile deeper in the black forest
that reached down to the bank of the Frazer. It was the night call of an
owl--one of the big gray owls that turned white as the snow in winter.
Mentally he counted the notes in the call. One, two, three, _four_--and a
flood of relief swept over him. It was MacDonald. They had used that signal
in their hunting, when they had wished to locate each other without
frightening game. Always there were three notes in the big gray owl's
quavering cry. The fourth was human. He put his hands to his mouth and sent
back an answer, emphasizing the fourth note. The light breeze had died down
for a moment, and Aldous heard the old mountaineer's reply as it floated
faintly back to him through the forest. Continuing to hold his pistol, he
went on, this time more swiftly.

MacDonald did not signal again. The moon was climbing rapidly into the sky,
and with each passing minute the night was becoming lighter. He had gone
half a mile when he stopped again and signalled softly. MacDonald's voice
answered, so near that for an instant the automatic flashed in the
moonlight. Aldous stepped out where the trail had widened into a small open
spot. Half a dozen paces from him, in the bright flood of the moon, stood
Donald MacDonald.

The night, the moon-glow, the tense attitude of his waiting added to the
weirdness of the picture which the old wanderer of the mountains made as
Aldous faced him. MacDonald was tall; some trick of the night made him
appear almost unhumanly tall as he stood in the centre of that tiny moonlit
amphitheatre. His head was bowed a little, and his shoulders drooped a
little, for he was old. A thick, shaggy beard fell in a silvery sheen over
his breast. His hair, gray as the underwing of the owl whose note he
forged, straggled in uncut disarray from under the drooping rim of a
battered and weatherworn hat. His coat was of buckskin, and it was short at
the sleeves--four inches too short; and the legs of his trousers were cut
off between the knees and the ankles, giving him a still greater appearance
of height.

In the crook of his arm MacDonald held a rifle, a strange-looking,
long-barrelled rifle of a type a quarter of a century old. And Donald
MacDonald, in the picture he made, was like his gun, old and gray and
ghostly, as if he had risen out of some graveyard of the past to warm
himself in the yellow splendour of the moon. But in the grayness and
gauntness of him there was something that was mightier than the strength of
youth. He was alert. In the crook of his arm there was caution. His eyes
were as keen as the eyes of an animal. His shoulders spoke of a strength
but little impaired by the years. Ghostly gray beard, ghostly gray hair,
haunting eyes that gleamed, all added to the strange and weird
impressiveness of the man as he stood before Aldous. And when he spoke, his
voice had in it the deep, low, cavernous note of a partridge's drumming.

"I'm glad you've come, Aldous," he said. "I've been waiting ever since the
train come in. I was afraid you'd go to the cabin!"

Aldous stepped forth and gripped the old mountaineer's outstretched hand.
There was intense relief in Donald's eyes.

"I got a little camp back here in the bush," he went on, nodding riverward.
"It's safer 'n the shack these days. Yo're sure--there ain't no one
following?"

"Quite certain," assured Aldous. "Look here, MacDonald--what in thunder has
happened? Don't continue my suspense! Who shot you? Why did you warn me?"

Deep in his beard the old hunter laughed.

"Same fellow as would have shot you, I guess," he answered. "They made a
bad job of it, Johnny, an awful bad job, an' mebby there'd been a better
man layin' for you!"

He was pulling Aldous in the bush as he spoke. For ten minutes he dived on
ahead through a jungle in which there was no trail. Suddenly he turned,
led the way around the edge of a huge mass of rock, and paused a moment
later before a small smouldering fire. Against the face of a gigantic
boulder was a balsam shelter. A few cooking utensils were scattered about.
It was evident that MacDonald had been living here for several days.

"Looks as though I'd run away, don't it, Johnny?" he asked, laughing in his
curious, chuckling way again. "An' so I did, boy. From the mountain up
there I've been watching things through my telescope--been keepin' quiet
since Doc pulled the bullet out. I've been layin' for the Breed. I wanted
him to think I'd vamoosed. I'm goin' to kill him!"

He had squatted down before the fire, his long rifle across his knees, and
spoke as quietly as though he was talking of a partridge or a squirrel
instead of a human being. He wormed a hand into one of his pockets and
produced a small dark object which he handed to Aldous The other felt an
uncanny chill as it touched his fingers. It was a mis-shapened bullet.

"Doc gave me the lead," continued MacDonald coolly, beginning to slice a
pipeful of tobacco from a tar-black plug. "It come from Joe's gun. I've
hunted with him enough to know his bullet. He fired through the window of
the cabin. If it hadn't been for the broom handle--just the end of it
stickin' up"--he shrugged his gaunt shoulders as he stuffed the tobacco
into the bowl of his pipe--"I'd been dead!" he finished tersely.

"You mean that Joe----"

"Has sold himself to Culver Rann!" exclaimed MacDonald. He sprang to his
feet. For the first time he showed excitement. His eyes blazed with
repressed rage. A hand gripped the barrel of his rifle as if to crush it.
"He's sold himself to Culver Rann!" he repeated. "He's sold him our secret.
He's told him where the gold is, Johnny! He's bargained to guide Rann an'
his crowd to it! An' first--they're goin' to kill _us!_"

With a low whistle Aldous took off his hat. He ran a hand through his
blond-gray hair. Then he replaced his hat and drew two cigars from his
pocket. MacDonald accepted one. Aldous' eyes were glittering; his lips were
smiling.

"They are, are they, Donald? They're going to kill us?"

"They're goin' to try," amended the old hunter, with another curious
chuckle in his ghostly beard. "They're goin' to try, Johnny. That's why I
told you not to go to the cabin. I wasn't expecting you for a week.
To-morrow I was goin' to start on a hike for Miette. I been watching
through my telescope from the mountain up there. I see Quade come in this
morning on a hand-car. Twice I see him and Rann together. Then I saw
Blackton hike out into the bush. I was worrying about you an' wondered if
he had any word. So I laid for him on the trail--an' I guess it was lucky.
I ain't been able to set my eyes on Joe. I looked for hours through the
telescope--an' I couldn't find him. He's gone, or Culver Rann is keeping
him out of sight."

For several moments Aldous looked at his companion in silence. Then he
said:

"You're sure of all this, are you, Donald? You have good proof--that Joe
has turned traitor?"

"I've been suspicious of him ever since we come down from the North,"
spoke MacDonald slowly. "I watched him--night an' day. I was afraid he'd
get a grubstake an' start back alone. Then I saw him with Culver Rann. It
was late. I heard 'im leave the shack, an' I followed. He went to Rann's
house--an' Rann was expecting him. Three times I followed him to Culver
Rann's house. I knew what was happening then, an' I planned to get him back
in the mountains on a hunt, an' kill him. But I was too late. The shot came
through the window. Then he disappeared. An'--Culver Rann is getting an
outfit together! Twenty head of horses, with grub for three months!"

"The deuce! And our outfit? Is it ready?"

"To the last can o' beans!"

"And your plan, Donald?"

All at once the old mountaineer's eyes were aflame with eagerness as he
came nearer to Aldous.

"Get out of Tête Jaune to-night!" he cried in a low, hissing voice that
quivered with excitement. "Hit the trail before dawn! Strike into the
mountains with our outfit--far enough back--and then wait!"

"Wait?"

"Yes--wait. If they follow us--_fight!_"

Slowly Aldous held out a hand. The old mountaineer's met it. Steadily they
looked into each other's eyes.

Then John Aldous spoke:

"If this had been two days ago I would have said yes. But to-night--it is
impossible."

The fingers that had tightened about his own relaxed. Slowly a droop came
into MacDonald's shoulders. Disappointment, a look that was almost despair
settled in his eyes. Seeing the change, Aldous held the old hunter's hand
more firmly.

"That doesn't mean we're not going to fight," he said quickly. "Only we've
got to plan differently. Sit down, Donald. Something has been happening to
me. And I'm going to tell you about it."

A little back from the fire they seated themselves, and Aldous told Donald
MacDonald about Joanne.

He began at the beginning, from the moment his eyes first saw her as she
entered Quade's place. He left nothing out. He told how she had come into
his life, and how he intended to fight to keep her from going out of it. He
told of his fears, his hopes, the mystery of their coming to Tête Jaune,
and how Quade had preceded them to plot the destruction of the woman he
loved. He described her as she had stood that morning, like a radiant
goddess in the sun; and when he came to that he leaned nearer, and said
softly:

"And when I saw her there, Donald, with her hair streaming about her like
that, I thought of the time you told me of that other woman--the woman of
years and years ago--and how you, Donald, used to look upon her in the sun,
and rejoice in your possession. Her spirit has been with you always. You
have told me how for nearly fifty years you have followed it over these
mountains. And this woman means as much to me. If she should die to-night
her spirit would live with me in that same way. You understand, Donald. I
can't go into the mountains to-night. God knows when I can go--now. But
you----"

MacDonald had risen. He turned his face to the black wall of the forest.
Aldous thought he saw a sudden quiver pass through the great, bent
shoulders.

"And I," said MacDonald slowly, "will have the horses ready for you at
dawn. We will fight this other fight--later."




CHAPTER XII


For an hour after Donald MacDonald had pledged himself to accompany Joanne
and Aldous on their pilgrimage to the grave in the Saw Tooth Range the two
men continued to discuss the unusual complications in which they had
suddenly become involved, and at the same time prepared themselves a supper
of bacon and coffee over the fire. They agreed upon a plan of action with
one exception. Aldous was determined to return to the town, arguing there
was a good strategic reason for showing himself openly and without fear.
MacDonald opposed this apprehensively.

"Better lay quiet until morning," he expostulated. "You'd better listen to
me, an' do that, Johnny. I've got something in my shoulder that tells me
you'd better!"

In the face of the old hunter's misgiving, Aldous prepared to leave. It was
nearly ten o'clock when he set back in the direction of Tête Jaune, Donald
accompanying him as far as the moonlit amphitheatre in the forest. There
they separated, and Aldous went on alone.

He believed that Joanne and the Blacktons would half expect him to return
to the bungalow after he had seen MacDonald. He was sure that Blackton, at
least, would look for him until quite late. The temptation to take
advantage of their hospitality was great, especially as it would bring him
in the company of Joanne again. On the other hand, he was certain that this
first night in Tête Jaune held very large possibilities for him. The
detective instinct in him was roused, and his adventurous spirit was alive
for action. First of all, he wanted proof of what MacDonald had told him.
That an attempt had been made to assassinate the old mountaineer he did not
for an instant doubt. But had Joe DeBar, the half-breed, actually betrayed
them? Had he sold himself to Culver Rann, and did Rann hold the key to the
secret expedition they had planned into the North? He did not, at first,
care to see Rann. He made up his mind that if he did meet him he would stop
and chat casually with him, as though he had heard and seen nothing to
rouse his suspicions. He particularly wanted to find DeBar; and, next to
DeBar, Quade himself.

The night carnival was at its height when Aldous re-entered the long,
lighted street. From ten until eleven was the liveliest hour of the night.
Even the restaurants and soup-kitchens were crowded then. He strolled
slowly down the street until he came to a little crowd gathered about the
bear equestrienne. The big canvas dance-hall a few doors away had lured
from her most of her admirers by this time, and Aldous found no difficulty
in reaching the inner circle. He looked first for the half-breed. Failing
to find him, he looked at the woman, who stood only a few feet from him.
Her glossy black curls were a bit dishevelled, and the excitement of the
night had added to the vivid colouring of her rouged lips and cheeks. Her
body was sleek and sinuous in its silken vesture; arms and shoulders were
startlingly white; and when she turned, facing Aldous, her black eyes
flashed fires of deviltry and allurement.

For a moment he stared into her face. If he had not been looking closely he
would not have caught the swift change that shot into the siren-like play
of her orbs. It was almost instantaneous. Her slow-travelling glance
stopped as she saw him. He saw the quick intake of her breath, a sudden
compression of her lips, the startled, searching scrutiny of a pair of eyes
from which, for a moment, all the languor and coquetry of her trade were
gone. Then she passed him, smiling again, nodding, sweeping a hand and arm
effectively through her handsome curls as she flung a shapely limb over the
broad back of the bear. In a garish sort of way the woman was beautiful,
and this night, as on all others, her beauty had nearly filled the silken
coin-bag suspended from her neck. As she rode down the street Aldous
recalled Blackton's words: She was a friend of Culver Rann's. He wondered
if this fact accounted for the strangeness of the look she had given him.

He passed on to the dance-hall. It was crowded, mostly with men. But here
and there, like so many faces peering forth from living graves, he saw the
Little Sisters of Tête Jaune Cache. Outnumbered ten to one, their voices
rang out in shrill banter and delirious laughter above the rumble of men.
At the far end, a fiddle, a piano, and a clarinet were squealing forth
music. The place smelled strongly of whisky. It always smelled of that, for
most of the men who sought amusement here got their whisky in spite of the
law. There were rock-hogs from up the line, and rock-hogs from down the
line, men of all nationalities and of almost all ages; teamsters,
trail-cutters, packers, and rough-shod navvies; men whose daily task was to
play with dynamite and giant powder; steel-men, tie-men, and men who
drilled into the hearts of mountains. More than once John Aldous had looked
upon this same scene, and had listened to the trample and roar and wild
revelry of it, marvelling that to-morrow the men of this saturnalia would
again be the builders of an empire. The thin, hollow-cheeked faces that
passed and repassed him, rouged and smiling, could not destroy in his mind
the strength of the picture. They were but moths, fluttering about in their
own doom, contending with each other to see which should quickest achieve
destruction.

For several minutes Aldous scanned the faces in the big tent-hall, and
nowhere did he see DeBar. He dropped out, and continued leisurely along the
lighted way until he came to Lovak's huge black-and-white striped
soup-tent. At ten o'clock, and until twelve, this was as crowded as the
dance-hall. Aldous knew Lovak, the Hungarian.

Through Lovak he had found the key that had unlocked for him many curious
and interesting things associated with that powerful Left Arm of the Empire
Builders--the Slav. Except for a sprinkling of Germans, a few Italians, and
now and then a Greek or Swiss, only the Slavs filled Lovak's place!--Slavs
from all the Russias and the nations south: the quick and chattering Polak;
the thick-set, heavy-jowled Croatian; the silent and dangerous-eyed
Lithuanian. All came in for Lovak's wonderful soup, which he sold in big
yellow bowls at ten cents a bowl--soup of barley, rice, and cabbage, of
beef and mutton, of everything procurable out of which soup could be made,
and, whether of meat or vegetable, smelling to heaven of garlic.

Fifty men were eating when Aldous went in, devouring their soup with the
utter abandon and joy of the Galician, so that the noise they made was like
the noise of fifty pigs at fifty troughs. Now and then DeBar, the
half-breed, came here for soup, and Aldous searched quickly for him. He was
turning to go when his friend, Lovak, came to him. No, Lovak had not seen
DeBar. But he had news. That day the authorities--the police--had
confiscated twenty dressed hogs, and in each porcine carcass they had found
four-quart bottles of whisky, artistically imbedded in the leaf-lard fat.
The day before those same authorities had confiscated a barrel of
"kerosene." They were becoming altogether too officious, Lovak thought.

Aldous went on. He looked in at a dozen restaurants, and twice as many
soft-drink emporiums, where phonographs were worked until they were cracked
and dizzy. He stopped at a small tobacco shop, and entered to buy himself
some cigars. There was one other customer ahead of him. He was lighting a
cigar, and the light of a big hanging lamp flashed on a diamond ring. Over
his sputtering match his eyes met those of John Aldous. They were dark
eyes, neither brown nor black, but dark, with the keenness and strange
glitter of a serpent's. He wore a small, clipped moustache; his hands were
white; he was a man whom one might expect to possess the _sang froid_ of a
devil in any emergency. For barely an instant he hesitated in the operation
of lighting his cigar as he saw Aldous. Then he nodded.

"Hello, John Aldous," he said.

"Good evening, Culver Rann," replied Aldous.

For a moment his nerves had tingled--the next they were like steel. Culver
Rann's teeth gleamed. Aldous smiled back. They were cold, hard, rapierlike
glances. Each understood now that the other was a deadly enemy, for Quade's
enemies were also Culver Rann's. Aldous moved carelessly to the glass case
in which were the cigars. With the barest touch of one of his slim white
hands Culver Rann stopped him.

"Have one of mine, Aldous," he invited, opening a silver case filled with
cigars. "We've never had the pleasure of smoking together, you know."

"Never," said Aldous, accepting one of the cigars. "Thanks."

As he lighted it, their eyes met again. Aldous turned to the case.

"Half a dozen 'Noblemen,'" he said to the man behind the counter; then, to
Rann: "Will you have one on me?"

"With pleasure," said Rann. He added, smiling straight into the other's
eyes, "What are you doing up here, Aldous? After local colour?"

"Perhaps. The place interests me."

"It's a lively town."

"Decidedly. And I understand that you've played an important part in the
making of it," replied Aldous carelessly.

For a flash Rann's eyes darkened, and his mouth hardened, then his white
teeth gleamed again. He had caught the insinuation, and he had scarcely
been able to ward off the shot.

"I've tried to do my small share," he admitted. "If you're after local
colour for your books, Aldous, I possibly may be able to assist you--if
you're in town long."

"Undoubtedly you could," said Aldous. "I think you could tell me a great
deal that I would like to know, Rann. But--will you?"

There was a direct challenge in his coldly smiling eyes.

"Yes, I think I shall be quite pleased to do so," said Rann.
"Especially--if you are long in town." There was an odd emphasis on those
last words.

He moved toward the door.

"And if you are here very long," he added, his eyes gleaming significantly,
"it is possible you may have experiences of your own which would make very
interesting reading if they ever got into print. Good-night, Aldous!"

For two or three minutes after Rann had gone Aldous loitered in the tobacco
shop. Then he went out. All at once it struck him that he should have kept
his eyes on Quade's partner. He should have followed him. With the hope of
seeing him again he walked up and down the street. It was eleven o'clock
when he went into Big Ben's pool-room. Five minutes later he came out just
as a woman hurried past him, carrying with her a strong scent of perfume.
It was the Lady of the Bear. She was in a street dress now, her glossy
curls still falling loose about her--probably homeward bound after her
night's harvest. It struck Aldous that the hour was early for her
retirement, and that she seemed somewhat in a hurry.

The woman was going in the direction of Rann's big log bungalow, which was
built well out of town toward the river. She had not seen him as he stood
in the pool-room doorway, and before she had passed out of sight he was
following her. There were a dozen branch trails and "streets" on the way to
Rann's, and into the gloom of some one of these the woman disappeared, so
that Aldous lost her entirely. He was not disappointed when he found she
had left the main trail.

Five minutes later he stood close to Rann's house. From the side on which
he had approached it was dark. No gleam of light showed through the
windows. Slowly he walked around the building, and stopped suddenly on the
opposite side. Here a closely drawn curtain was illuminated by a glow from
within. Cautiously Aldous made his way along the log wall of the house
until he came to the window. At one side the curtain had caught against
some object, leaving perhaps a quarter of an inch of space through which
the light shone. Aldous brought his eyes on a level with this space.

A half of the room came within his vision. Directly in front of him,
lighted by a curiously shaped iron lamp suspended from the ceiling, was a
dull red mahogany desk-table. At one side of this, partly facing him, was
Culver Rann. Opposite him sat Quade.

Rann was speaking, while Quade, with his bullish shoulders hunched forward
and his fleshy red neck, rolling over the collar of his coat, leaned across
the table in a tense and listening attitude. With his eyes glued to the
aperture, Aldous strained his ears to catch what Rann was saying. He heard
only the low and unintelligible monotone of his voice. A mocking smile was
accompanying Rann's words. To-night, as at all times, this hawk who preyed
upon human lives was immaculate. In all ways but one he was the antithesis
of the beefy scoundrel who sat opposite him. On the hand that toyed
carelessly with the fob of his watch flashed a diamond; another sparkled in
his cravat. His dark hair was sleek and well brushed; his bristly little
moustache was clipped in the latest fashion. He was not large. His hands,
as he made a gesture toward Quade, were of womanish whiteness. Casually, on
the street or in a Pullman, Aldous would have taken him for a gentleman.
Now, as he stared through the narrow slit between the bottom of the curtain
and the sill, he knew that he was looking upon one of the most dangerous
men in all the West. Quade was a villain. Culver Rann, quiet and cool and
suave, was a devil. Behind his depravity worked the brain which Quade
lacked, and a nerve which, in spite of that almost effeminate
immaculateness, had been described to Aldous as colossal.

Suddenly Quade turned, and Aldous saw that he was flushed and excited. He
struck the desk a blow with his fist. Culver Rann leaned back and smiled.
And John Aldous slipped away from the window.

His nerves were quivering; in the darkness he unbuttoned the pocket that
held his automatic. Through the window he had seen an open door behind
Rann, and his blood thrilled with the idea that had come to him. He was
sure the two partners in crime were discussing himself and MacDonald--and
Joanne. To hear what they were saying, to discover their plot, would be
three quarters of the fight won, if it came to a fight. The open door was
an inspiration.

Swiftly and silently he went to the rear of the house. He tried the door
and found it unlocked. Softly he opened it, swinging it inward an inch at
a time, and scarcely breathing as he entered. It was dark, and there was a
second closed door ahead of him. From beyond that he heard voices. He
closed the outer door so that he would not be betrayed by a current of air
or a sound from out of the night. Then, even more cautiously and slowly, he
began to open the second door.

An inch at first, then two inches, three inches--a foot--he worked the door
inward. There was no light in this second room, and he lay close to the
floor, head and shoulders thrust well in. Through the third and open door
he saw Quade and Culver Rann. Rann was laughing softly as he lighted a
fresh cigar. His voice was quiet and good humoured, but filled with a
banter which it was evident Quade was not appreciating.

"You amaze me," Rann was saying. "You amaze me utterly. You've gone
mad--mad as a rock-rabbit, Quade! Do you mean to tell me you're on the
square when you offer to turn over a half of your share in the gold if I
help you to get this woman?"

"I do," replied Quade thickly. "I mean just that! And we'll put it down in
black an' white--here, now. You fix the papers, same as any other deal, and
I'll sign!"

For a moment Culver Rann did not reply. He leaned back in his chair, thrust
the thumbs of his white hands in his vest, and sent a cloud of smoke above
his head. Then he looked at Quade, a gleam of humour in his eyes.

"Nothing like a woman for turning a man's head soft," he chuckled. "Nothing
in the world like it, 'pon my word, Quade. First it was DeBar. I don't
believe we'd got him if he hadn't seen Marie riding her bear. Marie and
her curls and her silk tights, Quade--s'elp me, it wouldn't have surprised
me so much if you'd fallen in love with _her!_ And over this other woman
you're as mad as Joe is over Marie. At first sight he was ready to sell his
soul for her. So--I gave Marie to him. And now, for some other woman,
you're just as anxious to surrender a half of your share of what we've
bought through Marie. Good heaven, man, if you were in love with Marie----"

"Damn Marie!" growled Quade. "I know the time when you were bugs over her
yourself, Rann. It wasn't so long ago. If I'd looked at her then----"

"Of course, not then," interrupted Rann smilingly. "That would have been
impolite, Quade, and not at all in agreement with the spirit of our
brotherly partnership. And, you must admit, Marie is a devilish
good-looking girl. I've surrendered her only for a brief spell to DeBar.
After he has taken us to the gold--why, the poor idiot will probably have
been sufficiently happy to----"

He paused, with a suggestive shrug of his shoulders.

"--go into cold storage," finished Quade.

"Exactly."

Again Quade leaned over the table, and for a moment there was silence, a
silence in which Aldous thought the pounding of his heart must betray him.
He lay motionless on the floor. The nails of his fingers dug into the bare
wood. Under the palm of his right hand lay his automatic.

Then Quade spoke. There must have been more in his face than was spoken in
his words, for Culver Rann took the cigar from between his lips, and a
light that was deadly serious slowly filled his eyes.

"Rann, we'll talk business!" Quade's voice was harsh, deep, and quivering.
"I want this woman. I may be a fool, but I'm going to have her. I might get
her alone, but we've always done things together--an' so I made you that
proposition. It ain't a hard job. It's one of the easiest jobs we ever had.
Only that fool of a writer is in the way--an' he's got to go anyway. We've
got to get rid of him on account of the gold, him an' MacDonald. We've got
that planned. An' I've showed you how we can get the woman, an' no one ever
know. Are you in on this with me?"

Culver Rann's reply was as quick and sharp as a pistol shot.

"I am."

For another moment there was silence. Then Quade asked:

"Any need of writin', Culver?"

"No. There can't be a written agreement in this deal because--it's
dangerous. There won't be much said about old MacDonald. But questions, a
good many of them, will be asked about this man Aldous. As for the
woman----" Rann shrugged his shoulders with a sinister smile. "She will
disappear like the others," he finished. "No one will ever get on to that.
If she doesn't make a pal like Marie--after a time, why----"

Again Aldous saw that peculiar shrug of his shoulders.

Quade's head nodded on his thick neck.

"Of course, I agree to that," he said. "After a time. But most of 'em have
come over, ain't they, Culver? Eh? Most of 'em have," he chuckled coarsely.
"When you see her you won't call me a fool for going dippy over her,
Culver. And she'll come round all right after she's gone through what we've
got planned for her. I'll make a pal of her!"

In that moment, as he listened to the gloating passion and triumph in
Quade's brutal voice, something broke in the brain of John Aldous. It
filled him with a fire that in an instant had devoured every thought or
plan he had made, and in this madness he was consumed by a single
desire--the desire to kill. And yet, as this conflagration surged through
him, it did not blind or excite him. It did not make him leap forth in
animal rage. It was something more terrible. He rose so quietly that the
others did not see or hear him in the dark outer room. They did not hear
the slight metallic click of the safety on his pistol.

For the space of a breath he stood and looked at them. He no longer sensed
the words Quade was uttering. He was going in coolly and calmly to kill
them. There was something disagreeable in the flashing thought that he
might kill them from where he stood. He would not fire from the dark. He
wanted to experience the exquisite sensation of that one first moment when
they would writhe back from him, and see in him the presence of death. He
would give them that one moment of life--just that one. Then he would kill.

With his pistol ready in his hand he stepped out into the lighted room.

"Good evening, gentlemen!" he said.




CHAPTER XIII


For a space of perhaps twenty seconds after John Aldous announced himself
there was no visible sign of life on the part of either Quade or Culver
Rann. The latter sat stunned. Not the movement of a finger broke the
stonelike immobility of his attitude. His eyes were like two dark coals
gazing steadily as a serpent's over Quade's hunched shoulders and bowed
head. Quade seemed as if frozen on the point of speaking to Rann. One hand
was still poised a foot above the table. It was he who broke the tense and
lifeless tableau.

Slowly, almost as slowly as Aldous had opened the door, Quade turned his
head, and stared into the coldly smiling face of the man whom he had
plotted to kill, and saw the gleaming pistol in his hand. A curious look
overcame his pouchy face, a look not altogether of terror--but of shock. He
knew Aldous had heard. He accepted in an instant, and perceptibly, the
significance of the pistol in his hand. But Culver Rann sat like a rock.
His face expressed nothing. Not for the smallest part of a second had he
betrayed any emotion that might be throbbing within him. In spite of
himself Aldous admired the man's unflinching nerve.

"Good evening, gentlemen!" he repeated.

Then Rann leaned slowly forward over the table. One hand rose to his
moustache. It was his right hand. The other was invisible. Quade pulled
himself together and stepped to the end of the table, his two empty hands
in front of him. Aldous, still smiling, faced Rann's glittering eyes and
covered him with his automatic. Culver Rann twisted the end of his
moustache, and smiled back.

"Well?" he said. "Is it checkmate?"

"It is," replied Aldous. "I've promised you scoundrels one minute of life.
I guess that minute is about up."

The last word was scarcely out of his mouth when the room was in
darkness--a darkness so complete and sudden that for an instant his hand
faltered, and in that instant he heard the overturning of a chair and the
falling of a body. Twice his automatic sent a lightning-flash of fire where
Culver Rann had sat; twice it spat threadlike ribbons of flame through the
blackness where Quade had stood. He knew what had happened, and also what
to expect if he lost out now. The curiously shaped iron lamp had concealed
an electric bulb, and Rann had turned off the switch-key under the table.
He had no further time to think. An object came hurtling through the thick
gloom and fell with terrific force on his outstretched pistol arm. His
automatic flew from his hand and struck against the wall. Unarmed, he
sprang back toward the open door--full into the arms of Quade!

Aldous knew that it was Quade and not Culver Rann, and he struck out with
all the force he could gather in a short-arm blow. His fist landed against
Quade's thick neck. Again and again he struck, and Quade's grip loosened.
In another moment he would have reached the door if Rann had not caught him
from behind. Never had Aldous felt the clutch of hands like those of the
womanish hands of Culver Rann. It was as if sinuous fingers of steel were
burying themselves in his flesh. Before they found his throat he flung
himself backward with all his weight, and with a tremendous effort freed
himself.

Both Quade and Culver Rann now stood between him and the door. He could
hear Quade's deep, panting breath. Rann, as before, was silent as death.
Then he heard the door close. A key clicked in the lock. He was trapped.

"Turn on the light, Billy," he heard Rann say in a quiet, unexcited voice.
"We've got this house-breaker cornered, and he's lost his gun. Turn on the
light--and I'll make one shot do the business!"

Aldous heard Quade moving, but he was not coming toward the table.
Somewhere in the room was another switch connected with the iron lamp, and
Aldous felt a curious chill shoot up his spine. Without seeing through that
pitch darkness of the room he sensed the fact that Culver Rann was standing
with his back against the locked door, a revolver in his hand. And he knew
that Quade, feeling his way along the wall, held a revolver in his hand.
Men like these two did not go unarmed. The instant the light was turned on
they would do their work. As he stood, silent as Culver Rann, he realized
the tables were turned. In that moment's madness roused by Quade's gloating
assurance of possessing Joanne he had revealed himself like a fool, and now
he was about to reap the whirlwind of his folly. Deliberately he had given
himself up to his enemies. They, too, would be fools if they allowed him to
escape alive.

He heard Quade stop. His thick hand was fumbling along the wall. Aldous
guessed that he was feeling for the switch. He almost fancied he could see
Rann's revolver levelled at him through the darkness. In that thrilling
moment his mind worked with the swiftness of a powder flash. One of his
hands touched the edge of the desk-table, and he knew that he was standing
directly opposite the curtained window, perhaps six feet from it. If he
flung himself through the window the curtain would save him from being cut
to pieces.

No sooner had the idea of escape come to him than he had acted. A flood of
light filled the room as his body crashed through the glass. He heard a
cry--a single shot--as he struck the ground. He gathered himself up and ran
swiftly. Fifty yards away he stopped, and looked back. Quade and Rann were
in the window. Then they disappeared, and a moment later the room was again
in gloom.

For a second time Aldous hurried in the direction of MacDonald's camp. He
knew that, in spite of the protecting curtain, the glass had cut him. He
felt the warm blood dripping over his face; both hands were wet with it,
The arm on which he had received the blow from the unseen object in the
room gave him considerable pain, and he had slightly sprained an ankle in
his leap through the window, so that he limped a little. But his mind was
clear--so clear that in the face of his physical discomfort he caught
himself laughing once or twice as he made his way along the trail.

Aldous was not of an ordinary type. To a curious and superlative degree he
could appreciate a defeat as well as a triumph. His adventures had been a
part of a life in which he had not always expected to win, and in
to-night's game he admitted that he had been hopelessly and ridiculously
beaten. Tragedy, to him, was a first cousin of comedy; to-night he had set
out to kill, and, instead of killing, he had run like a jack-rabbit for
cover. Also, in that same half-hour Rann and Quade had been sure of him,
and he had given them the surprise of their lives by his catapultic
disappearance through the window. There was something ludicrous about it
all--something that, to him, at least, had turned a possible tragedy into a
very good comedy-drama.

Nor was Aldous blind to the fact that he had made an utter fool of himself,
and that the consequences of his indiscretion might prove extremely
serious. Had he listened to the conspirators without betraying himself he
would have possessed an important advantage over them. The knowledge he had
gained from overhearing their conversation would have made it comparatively
easy for MacDonald and him to strike them a perhaps fatal blow through the
half-breed DeBar. As the situation stood now, he figured that Quade and
Culver Rann held the advantage. Whatever they had planned to do they would
put into quick execution. They would not lose a minute.

It was not for himself that Aldous feared. Neither did he fear for Joanne.
Every drop of red fighting blood in him was ready for further action, and
he was determined that Quade should find no opportunity of accomplishing
any scheme he might have against Joanne's person. On the other hand, unless
they could head off DeBar, he believed that Culver Rann's chances of
reaching the gold ahead of them would grow better with the passing of each
hour. To protect Joanne from Quade he must lose no time. MacDonald would
be in the same predicament, while Rann, assisted by as many rascals of his
own colour as he chose to take with him, would be free to carry out the
other part of the conspirators' plans.

The longer he thought of the mess he had stirred up the more roundly Aldous
cursed his imprudence. And this mess, as he viewed it in these cooler
moments, was even less disturbing than the thought of what might have
happened had he succeeded in his intention of killing both Quade and Rann.
Twenty times as he made his way through the darkness toward MacDonald's
camp he told himself that he must have been mad. To have killed Rann or
Quade in self-defence, or in open fight, would have been playing the game
with a shadow of mountain law behind it. But he had invaded Rann's home.
Had he killed them he would have had but little more excuse than a
house-breaker or a suspicious husband might have had. Tête Jaune would not
countenance cold-blooded shooting, even of criminals. He should have taken
old Donald's advice and waited until they were in the mountains. An
unpleasant chill ran through him as he thought of the narrowness of his
double escape.

To his surprise, John Aldous found MacDonald awake when he arrived at the
camp in the thickly timbered coulee. He was preparing a midnight cup of
coffee over a fire that was burning cheerfully between two big rocks.
Purposely Aldous stepped out into the full illumination of it. The old
hunter looked up. For a moment he stared into the blood-smeared face of his
friend; then he sprang to his feet, and caught him by the arm.

"Yes, I got it," nodded Aldous cheerfully. "I went out for it, Mac, and I
got it! Get out your emergency kit, will you? I rather fancy I need a
little patching up."

MacDonald uttered not a word. From the balsam lean-to he brought out a
small rubber bag and a towel. Into a canvas wash-basin he then turned a
half pail of cold water, and Aldous got on his knees beside this. Not once
did the old mountaineer speak while he was washing the blood from Aldous'
face and hands. There was a shallow two-inch cut in his forehead, two
deeper ones in his right cheek, and a gouge in his chin. There were a dozen
cuts on his hands, none of them serious. Before he had finished MacDonald
had used two thirds of a roll of court-plaster.

Then he spoke.

"You can soak them off in the morning," he said. "If you don't, the lady'll
think yo're a red Indian on the warpath. Now, yo' fool, what have yo' gone
an' done?"

Aldous told him what had happened, and before MacDonald could utter an
expression of his feelings he admitted that he was an inexcusable idiot and
that nothing MacDonald might say could drive that fact deeper home.

"If I'd come out after hearing what they had to say, we could have got
DeBar at the end of a gun and settled the whole business," he finished. "As
it is, we're in a mess."

MacDonald stretched his gaunt gray frame before the fire. He picked up his
long rifle, and fingered the lock.

"You figger they'll get away with DeBar?"

"Yes, to-night."

MacDonald threw open the breech of his single-loader and drew out a
cartridge as long as his finger. Replacing it, he snapped the breech shut.

"Don't know as I'm pertic'lar sad over what's happened," he said, with a
curious look at Aldous. "We might have got out of this without what you
call strenu'us trouble. Now--it's _fight!_ It's goin' to be a matter of
guns an' bullets, Johnny--back in the mountains. You figger Rann an' the
snake of a half-breed'll get the start of us. Let 'em have a start! They've
got two hundred miles to go, an' two hundred miles to come back. Only--they
won't come back!"

Under his shaggy brows the old hunter's eyes gleamed as he looked at
Aldous.

"To-morrow we'll go to the grave," he added. "Yo're cur'ous to know what's
goin' to happen when we find that grave, Johnny. So am I. I hope----"

"What do you hope?"

MacDonald shook his great gray head in the dying firelight.

"Let's go to bed, Johnny," he rumbled softly in his beard. "It's gettin'
late."




CHAPTER XIV


To sleep after the excitement through which he had passed, and with
to-morrow's uncertainties ahead of him, seemed to Aldous a physical
impossibility. Yet he slept, and soundly. It was MacDonald who roused him
three hours later. They prepared a quick breakfast over a small fire, and
Aldous heated water in which he soaked his face until the strips of
court-plaster peeled off. The scratches were lividly evident, but, inasmuch
as he had a choice of but two evils, he preferred that Joanne should see
these instead of the abominable disfigurement of court-plaster strips.

Old Donald took one look at him through half-closed eyes.

"You look as though you'd come out of a tussle with a grizzly," he grinned.
"Want some fresh court-plaster?"

"And look as though I'd come out of a circus--no!" retorted Aldous. "I'm
invited to breakfast at the Blacktons', Mac. How the devil am I going to
get out of it?"

"Tell 'em you're sick," chuckled the old hunter, who saw something funny in
the appearance of Aldous' face. "Good Lord, how I'd liked to have seen you
come through that window--in daylight!"

Aldous led off in the direction of the trail. MacDonald followed close
behind him. It was dark--that almost ebon-black hour that precedes summer
dawn in the northern mountains. The moon had long ago disappeared in the
west. When a few minutes later they paused in the little opening on the
trail Aldous could just make out the shadowy form of the old mountaineer.

"I lost my gun when I jumped through the window, Mac," he explained.
"There's another thirty-eight automatic in my kit at the corral. Bring
that, and the .303 with the gold-bead sight--and plenty of ammunition.
You'd better take that forty-four hip-cannon of yours along, as well as
your rifle. Wish I could civilize you, Mac, so you'd carry one of the
Savage automatics instead of that old brain-storm of fifty years ago!"

MacDonald gave a grunt of disgust that was like the whoof of a bear.

"It's done business all that time," he growled good humouredly. "An' it
ain't ever made me jump through any window as I remember of, Johnny!"

"Enough," said Aldous, and in the gloom he gripped the other's hand.
"You'll be there, Mac--in front of the Blacktons'--just as it's growing
light?"

"That means in three quarters of an hour, Johnny. I'll be there. Three
saddle-horses and a pack."

Where the trail divided they separated. Aldous went directly to the
Blacktons'. As he had expected, the bungalow was alight. In the kitchen he
saw Tom, the Oriental cook, busy preparing breakfast. Blackton himself,
comfortably dressed in duck trousers and a smoking-jacket, and puffing on a
pipe, opened the front door for him. The pipe almost fell from his mouth
when he saw his friend's excoriated face.

"What in the name of Heaven!" he gasped.

"An accident," explained Aldous, with a suggestive shrug of his shoulders.
"Blackton, I want you to do me another good turn. Tell the ladies anything
you can think of--something reasonable. The truth is, I went through a
window--a window with plenty of glass in it. Now how the deuce can I
explain going through a window like a gentleman?"

With folded arms, Blackton inspected him thoughtfully for a moment.

"You can't," he said. "But I don't think you went through a window. I
believe you fell over a cliff and were caught in an armful of wait-a-bit
bushes. They're devilish those wait-a-bits!"

They shook hands.

"I'm ready to blow up with curiosity again," said Blackton. "But I'll play
your game, Aldous."

A few minutes later Joanne and Peggy Blackton joined them. He saw again the
quick flush of pleasure in Joanne's lovely face when she entered the room.
It changed instantly when she saw the livid cuts in his skin. She came to
him quickly, and gave him her hand. Her lips trembled, but she did not
speak. Blackton accepted this as the psychological moment.

"What do you think of a man who'll wander off a trail, tumble over a ledge,
and get mixed up in a bunch of wait-a-bit like _that?_" he demanded,
laughing as though he thought it a mighty good joke on Aldous. "Wait-a-bit
thorns are worse than razors, Miss Gray," he elucidated further.
"They're--they're perfectly devilish, you know!"

"Indeed they _are_," emphasized Peggy Blackton, whom her husband had given
a quick look and a quicker nudge, "They're dreadful!"

Looking straight into Joanne's eyes, Aldous guessed that she did not
believe, and scarcely heard, the Blacktons.

"I had a presentiment something was going to happen," she said, smiling at
him. "I'm glad it was no worse than that."

She withdrew her hand, and turned to Peggy Blackton. To John's delight she
had arranged her wonderful shining hair in a braid that rippled in a thick,
sinuous rope of brown and gold below her hips. Peggy Blackton had in some
way found a riding outfit for her slender figure, a typical mountain
outfit, with short divided skirt, loose blouse, and leggings. She had never
looked more beautiful to him. Her night's rest had restored the colour to
her soft cheeks and curved lips; and in her eyes, when she looked at him
again, there was a strange, glowing light that thrilled him. During the
next half-hour he almost forgot his telltale disfigurements. At breakfast
Paul and Peggy Blackton were beautifully oblivious of them. Once or twice
he saw in Joanne's clear eyes a look which made him suspect that she had
guessed very near to the truth.

MacDonald was prompt to the minute. Gray day, with its bars of golden tint,
was just creeping over the shoulders of the eastern mountains when he rode
up to the Blacktons'. The old hunter was standing close to the horse which
Joanne was to ride when Aldous brought her out. Joanne gave him her hand,
and for a moment MacDonald bowed his shaggy head over it. Five minutes
later they were trailing up the rough wagon-road, MacDonald in the lead,
and Joanne and Aldous behind, with the single pack horse between.

For several miles this wagon-trail reached back through the thick timber
that filled the bottom between the two ranges of mountains. They had
travelled but a short distance when Joanne drew her horse close in beside
Aldous.

"I want to know what happened last night," she said. "Will you tell me?"

Aldous met her eyes frankly. He had made up his mind that she would believe
only the truth, and he had decided to tell her at least a part of that. He
would lay his whole misadventure to the gold. Leaning over the pommel of
his saddle he recounted the occurrences of the night before, beginning with
his search for Quade and the half-breed, and his experience with the woman
who rode the bear. He left out nothing--except all mention of herself. He
described the events lightly, not omitting those parts which appealed to
him as being very near to comedy.

In spite of his effort to rob the affair of its serious aspect his recital
had a decided effect upon Joanne. For some time after he had finished one
of her small gloved hands clutched tightly at the pommel of her saddle; her
breath came more quickly; the colour had ebbed from her cheeks, and she
looked straight ahead, keeping her eyes from meeting his. He began to
believe that in some way she was convinced he had not told her the whole
truth, and was possibly displeased, when she again turned her face to him.
It was tense and white. In it was the fear which, for a few minutes, she
had tried to keep from him.

"They would have killed you?" she breathed.

"Perhaps they would only have given me a good scare," said Aldous. "But I
didn't have time to wait and find out. I was very anxious to see MacDonald
again. So I went through the window!"

"No, they would have killed you," said Joanne. "Perhaps I did wrong, Mr.
Aldous, but I confided--a little--in Peggy Blackton last night. She seemed
like a sister. I love her. And I wanted to confide in some one--a woman,
like her. It wasn't much, but I told her what happened at Miette: about
you, and Quade, and how I saw him at the station, and again--later,
following us. And then--she told me! Perhaps she didn't know how it was
frightening me, but she told me all about these men--Quade and Culver Rann.
And now I'm more afraid of Culver Rann than Quade, and I've never seen him.
They can't hurt me. But I'm afraid for you!"

At her words a joy that was like the heat of a fire leaped into his brain.

"For me?" he said. "Afraid--for me?"

"Yes. Why shouldn't I be, if I know that you are in danger?" she asked
quietly. "And now, since last night, and the discovery of your secret by
these men, I am terrified. Quade has followed you here. Mrs. Blackton told
me that Culver Rann was many times more dangerous than Quade. Only a little
while ago you told me you did not care for riches. Then why do you go for
this gold? Why do you run the risk? Why----"

He waited. The colour was flooding back into her face in an excited,
feverish flush. Her blue eyes were dark as thunder-clouds in their
earnestness.

"Don't you understand?" she went on. "It was because of me that you
incurred this deadly enmity of Quade's. If anything happens to you, I shall
hold myself responsible!"

"No, you will not be responsible," replied Aldous, steadying the tremble in
his voice. "Besides, nothing is going to happen. But you don't know how
happy you have made me by taking this sort of an interest in me. It--it
feels good," he laughed.

For a few paces he dropped behind her, where the overhead spruce boughs
left but the space for a single rider between. Then, again, he drew up
close beside her.

"I was going to tell you about this gold," he said. "It isn't the gold
we're going after."

He leaned over until his hand rested on her saddle-bow.

"Look ahead," he went on, a curious softness in his voice. "Look at
MacDonald!"

The first shattered rays of the sun were breaking over the mountains and
reflecting their glow in the valley. Donald MacDonald had lifted his face
to the sunrise; out from under his battered hat the morning breeze sweeping
through the valley of the Frazer tossed his shaggy hair; his great owl-gray
beard swept his breast; his broad, gaunt shoulders were hunched a little
forward as he looked into the east. Again Aldous looked into Joanne's eyes.

"It's not the gold, but MacDonald, that's taking me north, Ladygray. And
it's not the gold that is taking MacDonald. It is strange, almost
unbelievedly strange--what I am going to tell you. To-day we are seeking a
grave--for you. And up there, two hundred miles in the north, another grave
is calling MacDonald. I am going with him. It just happens that the gold is
there. You wouldn't guess that for more than forty years that blessed old
wanderer ahead of us has loved a dead woman, would you? You wouldn't think
that for nearly half a century, year in and year out, winter and summer
alike, he has tramped the northern mountains--a lost spirit with but one
desire in life--to find at last her resting-place? And yet it is so,
Ladygray. I guess I am the only living creature to whom he has opened his
heart in many a long year. A hundred times beside our campfire I have
listened to him, until at last his story seems almost to be a part of my
own. He may be a little mad, but it is a beautiful madness."

He paused.

"Yes," whispered Joanne. "Go on--John Aldous."

"It's--hard to tell," he continued. "I can't put the feeling of it in
words, the spirit of it, the wonder of it. I've tried to write it, and I
couldn't. Her name was Jane. He has never spoken of her by any other name
than that, and I've never asked for the rest of it. They were kids when
their two families started West over the big prairies in Conestoga wagons.
They grew up sweethearts. Both of her parents, and his mother, died before
they were married. Then, a little later, his father died, and they were
alone. I can imagine what their love must have been. I have seen it still
living in his eyes, and I have seen it in his strange hour-long dreams
after he has talked of her. They were always together. He has told me how
they roamed the mountains hand in hand in their hunts; how she was comrade
and chum when he went prospecting. He has opened his lonely old heart to
me--a great deal. He's told me how they used to be alone for months at a
time in the mountains, the things they used to do, and how she would sing
for him beside their campfire at night. 'She had a voice sweet as an
angel,' I remember he told me once. Then, more than forty years ago, came
the gold-rush away up in the Stikine River country. They went. They joined
a little party of twelve--ten men and two women. This party wandered far
out of the beaten paths of the other gold-seekers. And at last they found
gold."

Ahead of them Donald MacDonald had turned in his saddle and was looking
back. For a moment Aldous ceased speaking.

"Please--go on!" said Joanne.

"They found gold," repeated Aldous. "They found so much of it, Ladygray,
that some of them went mad--mad as beasts. It was placer gold--loose gold,
and MacDonald says that one day he and Jane filled their pockets with
nuggets. Then something happened. A great storm came; a storm that filled
the mountains with snow through which no living creature as heavy as a man
or a horse could make its way. It came a month earlier than they had
expected, and from the beginning they were doomed. Their supplies were
almost gone.

"I can't tell you the horrors of the weeks and months that followed, as old
Donald has told them to me, Joanne. You must imagine. Only, when you are
deep in the mountains, and the snow comes, you are like a rat in a trap. So
they were caught--eleven men and three women. They who could make their
beds in sheets of yellow gold, but who had no food. The horses were lost in
the storm. Two of their frozen carcasses were found and used for food. Two
of the men set out on snowshoes, leaving their gold behind, and probably
died.

"Then the first terrible thing happened. Two men quarrelled over a can of
beans, and one was killed. He was the husband of one of the women. The next
terrible thing happened to her--and there was a fight. On one side there
were young Donald and the husband of the other woman; on the other
side--the beasts. The husband was killed, and Donald and Jane sought refuge
in the log cabin they had built. That night they fled, taking what little
food they possessed, and what blankets they could carry. They knew they
were facing death. But they went together, hand in hand.

"At last Donald found a great cave in the side of a mountain. I have a
picture of that cave in my brain--a deep, warm cave, with a floor of soft
white sand, a cave into which the two exhausted fugitives stumbled, still
hand in hand, and which was home. But they found it a little too late.
Three days later Jane died. And there is another picture in my brain--a
picture of young Donald sitting there in the cave, clasping in his arms the
cold form of the one creature in the world that he loved; moaning and
sobbing over her, calling upon her to come back to life, to open her eyes,
to speak to him--until at last his brain cracked and he went mad. That is
what happened. He went mad."

Joanne's breath was coming brokenly through her lips. Unconsciously she had
clasped her fingers about the hand Aldous rested on her pommel.

"How long he remained in the cave with his dead, MacDonald has never been
able to say," he resumed.

"He doesn't know whether he buried his wife or left her lying on the sand
floor of the cave. He doesn't know how he got out of the mountains. But he
did, and his mind came back. And since then, Joanne--for a matter of forty
years--his life has been spent in trying to find that cave. All those years
his search was unavailing. He could find no trace of the little hidden
valley in which the treasure-seekers found their bonanza of gold. No word
of it ever came out of the mountains; no other prospector ever stumbled
upon it. Year after year Donald went into the North; year after year he
came out as the winter set in, but he never gave up hope.

"Then he began spending winter as well as summer in that forgotten
world--forgotten because the early gold-rush was over, and the old
Telegraph trail was travelled more by wolves than men. And always, Donald
has told me, his beloved Jane's spirit was with him in his wanderings over
the mountains, her hand leading him, her voice whispering to him in the
loneliness of the long nights. Think of it, Joanne! Forty years of that!
Forty years of a strange, beautiful madness, forty years of undying love,
of faith, of seeking and never finding! And this spring old Donald came
almost to the end of his quest. He knows, now; he knows where that little
treasure valley is hidden in the mountains, he knows where to find the
cave!"

"He found her--he found her?" she cried. "After all those years--he found
her?"

"Almost," said Aldous softly. "But the great finale in the tragedy of
Donald MacDonald's life is yet to come, Ladygray. It will come when once
more he stands in the soft white sand of that cavern floor, and sometimes
I tremble when I think that when that moment comes I will be at his side.
To me it will be terrible. To him it will be--what? That hour has not quite
arrived. It happened this way: Old Donald was coming down from the North on
the early slush snows this spring when he came to a shack in which a man
was almost dead of the smallpox. It was DeBar, the half-breed.

"Fearlessly MacDonald nursed him. He says it was God who sent him to that
shack. For DeBar, in his feverish ravings, revealed the fact that he had
stumbled upon that little Valley of Gold for which MacDonald had searched
through forty years. Old Donald knew it was the same valley, for the
half-breed raved of dead men, of rotting buckskin sacks of yellow nuggets,
of crumbling log shacks, and of other things the memories of which stabbed
like knives into Donald's heart. How he fought to save that man! And, at
last, he succeeded.

"They continued south, planning to outfit and go back for the gold. They
would have gone back at once, but they had no food and no horses. Foot by
foot, in the weeks that followed, DeBar described the way to the hidden
valley, until at last MacDonald knew that he could go to it as straight as
an eagle to its nest. When they reached Tête Jaune he came to me. And I
promised to go with him, Ladygray--back to the Valley of Gold. He calls it
that; but I--I think of it as The Valley of Silent Men. It is not the gold,
but the cavern with the soft white floor that is calling us."

In her saddle Joanne had straightened. Her head was thrown back, her lips
were parted, and her eyes shone as the eyes of a Joan of Arc must have
shone when she stood that day before the Hosts.

"And this man, the half-breed, has sold himself--for a woman?" she said,
looking straight ahead at the bent shoulders of old MacDonald.

"Yes, for a woman. Do you ask me why I go now? Why I shall fight, if
fighting there must be?"

She turned to him. Her face was a blaze of glory.

"No, no, no!" she cried. "Oh, John Aldous! if I were only a man, that I
might go with you and stand with you two in that Holy Sepulchre--the
Cavern----If I were a man, I'd go--and, yes, I would fight!"

And Donald MacDonald, looking back, saw the two clasping hands across the
trail. A moment later he turned his horse from the broad road into a narrow
trail that led over the range.




CHAPTER XV


From the hour in which she had listened to the story of old MacDonald a
change seemed to have come over Joanne. It was as if she had risen out of
herself, out of whatever fear or grief she might have possessed in her own
heart. John Aldous knew that there was some deep significance in her visit
to the grave under the Saw Tooth Mountain, and that from the beginning she
had been fighting under a tremendous mental and physical strain. He had
expected this day would be a terrible day for her; he had seen her efforts
to strengthen herself for the approaching crisis that morning. He believed
that as they drew nearer to their journey's end her suspense and
uneasiness, the fear which she was trying to keep from him, would, in spite
of her, become more and more evident. For these reasons the change which he
saw in her was not only delightfully unexpected but deeply puzzling. She
seemed to be under the influence of some new and absorbing excitement. Her
cheeks were flushed. There was a different poise to her head; in her voice,
too, there was a note which he had not noticed before.

It struck him, all at once, that this was a new Joanne--a Joanne who, at
least for a brief spell, had broken the bondage of oppression and fear that
had fettered her. In the narrow trail up the mountain he rode behind her,
and in this he found a pleasure even greater than when he rode at her
side. Only when her face was turned from him did he dare surrender himself
at all to the emotions which had transformed his soul. From behind he could
look at her, and worship without fear of discovery. Every movement of her
slender, graceful body gave him a new and exquisite thrill; every dancing
light and every darkening shadow in her shimmering hair added to the joy
that no fear or apprehension could overwhelm within him now. Only in those
wonderful moments, when her presence was so near, and yet her eyes did not
see him, could he submerge himself completely in the thought of what she
had become to him and of what she meant to him.

During the first hour of their climb over the break that led into the
valley beyond they had but little opportunity for conversation. The trail
was an abandoned Indian path, narrow, and in places extremely steep. Twice
Aldous helped Joanne from her horse that she might travel afoot over places
which he considered dangerous. When he assisted her in the saddle again,
after a stiff ascent of a hundred yards, she was panting from her exertion,
and he felt the sweet thrill of her breath in his face. For a space his
happiness obliterated all thoughts of other things. It was MacDonald who
brought them back.

They had reached the summit of the break, and through his long brass
telescope the old mountaineer was scanning the valley out of which they had
come. Under them lay Tête Jaune, gleaming in the morning sun, and it dawned
suddenly upon Aldous that this was the spot from which MacDonald had spied
upon his enemies. He looked at Joanne. She was breathing quickly as she
looked upon the wonder of the scene below them. Suddenly she turned, and
encountered his eyes.

"They might--follow?" she asked.

He shook his head.

"No danger of that," he assured her.

MacDonald had dismounted, and now he lay crouched behind a rock, with his
telescope resting over the top of it. He had leaned his long rifle against
the boulder; his huge forty-four, a relic of the old Indian days, hung at
his hip. Joanne saw these omens of preparedness, and her eyes shifted again
to Aldous. His .303 swung from his saddle. At his waist was the heavy
automatic. She smiled. In her eyes was understanding, and something like a
challenge. She did not question him again, but under her gaze Aldous
flushed.

A moment later MacDonald closed his telescope and without a word mounted
his horse. Where the descent into the second valley began he paused again.
To the north through the haze of the morning sun gleamed the snow-capped
peaks of the Saw Tooth Range. Apparently not more than an hour's ride
distant rose a huge red sandstone giant which seemed to shut in the end of
the valley MacDonald stretched forth a long arm in its direction.

"What we're seekin' is behind that mountain," he said. "It's ten miles from
here." He turned to the girl. "Are you gettin' lame, Mis' Joanne?"

Aldous saw her lips tighten.

"No. Let us go on, please."

She was staring fixedly at the sombre red mass of the mountain. Her eyes
did not take in the magnificent sweep of the valley below. They saw
nothing of the snow-capped peaks beyond. There was something wild and
unnatural in their steady gaze. Aldous dropped behind her as they began the
gradual descent from the crest of the break and his own heart began to beat
more apprehensively; the old question flashed back upon him, and he felt
again the oppression that once before had held him in its grip. His eyes
did not leave Joanne. And always she was staring at the mountain behind
which lay the thing they were seeking! It was not Joanne herself that set
his blood throbbing. Her face had not paled. Its colour was like the hectic
flush of a fever. Her eyes alone betrayed her; their strange intensity--the
almost painful steadiness with which they hung to the distant mountain, and
a dread of what was to come seized upon him. Again he found himself asking
himself questions which he could not answer. Why had Joanne not confided
more fully in him? What was the deeper significance of this visit to the
grave, and of her mission in the mountains?

Down the narrow Indian trail they passed into the thick spruce timber. Half
an hour later they came out into the grassy creek bottom of the valley.
During that time Joanne did not look behind her, and John Aldous did not
speak. MacDonald turned north, and the sandstone mountain was straight
ahead of them. It was not like the other mountains. There was something
sinister and sullen about it. It was ugly and broken. No vegetation grew
upon it, and through the haze of sunlight its barren sides and battlemented
crags gleamed a dark and humid red after the morning mists, as if freshly
stained with blood. Aldous guessed its effect upon Joanne, and he
determined to put an end to it. Again he rode up close beside her.

"I want you to get better acquainted with old Donald," he said. "We're sort
of leaving him out in the cold, Ladygray. Do you mind if I tell him to come
back and ride with you for a while?"

"I've been wanting to talk with him," she replied. "If you don't mind----"

"I don't," he broke in quickly. "You'll love old Donald, Ladygray. And, if
you can, I'd like to have you tell him all that you know about--Jane. Let
him know that I told you."

She nodded. Her lips trembled in a smile.

"I will," she said.

A moment later Aldous was telling MacDonald that Joanne wanted him. The old
mountaineer stared. He drew his pipe from his mouth, beat out its
half-burned contents, and thrust it into its accustomed pocket.

"She wants to see me?" he asked. "God bless her soul--what for?"

"Because she thinks you're lonesome up here alone, Mac. And look
here"--Aldous leaned over to MacDonald--"her nerves are ready to snap. I
know it. There's a mighty good reason why I can't relieve the strain she is
under. But you can. She's thinking every minute of that mountain up there
and the grave behind it. You go back, and talk. Tell her about the first
time you ever came up through these valleys--you and Jane. Will you, Mac?
Will you tell her that?"

MacDonald did not reply, but he dropped behind. Aldous took up the lead. A
few minutes later he looked back, and laughed softly under his breath.
Joanne and the old hunter were riding side by side in the creek bottom, and
Joanne was talking. He looked at his watch. He did not look at it again
until the first gaunt, red shoulder of the sandstone mountain began to loom
over them. An hour had passed since he left Joanne. Ahead of him, perhaps a
mile distant, was the cragged spur beyond which--according to the sketch
Keller had drawn for him at the engineers' camp--was the rough canyon
leading back to the basin on the far side of the mountain. He had almost
reached this when MacDonald rode up.

"You go back, Johnny," he said, a singular softness in his hollow voice.
"We're a'most there."

He cast his eyes over the western peaks, where dark clouds were shouldering
their way up in the face of the sun, and added:

"There's rain in that. I'll trot on ahead with Pinto and have a tent ready
when you come. I reckon it can't be more'n a mile up the canyon."

"And the grave, Mac?"

"Is right close to where I'll pitch the tent," said MacDonald, swinging
suddenly behind the pack-horse Pinto, and urging him into a trot. "Don't
waste any time, Johnny."

Aldous rode back to Joanne.

"It looks like rain," he explained. "These Pacific showers come up quickly
this side of the Divide, and they drench you in a jiffy. Donald is going on
ahead to put up a tent."

By the time they reached the mouth of the canyon MacDonald was out of
sight. A little creek that was a swollen torrent in spring time trickled
out of the gorge. Its channel was choked with a chaotic confusion of
sandstone rock and broken slate, and up through this Aldous carefully
picked his way, followed closely by Joanne. The sky continued to darken
above them, until at last the sun died out, and a thick and almost palpable
gloom began to envelop them. Low thunder rolled through the mountains in
sullen, rumbling echoes. He looked back at Joanne, and was amazed to see
her eyes shining, and a smile on her lips as she nodded at him.

"It makes me think of Henrik Hudson and his ten-pin players," she called
softly. "And ahead of us--is Rip Van Winkle!"

The first big drops were beginning to fall when they came to an open place.
The gorge swung to the right; on their left the rocks gave place to a
rolling meadow of buffalo grass, and Aldous knew they had reached the
basin. A hundred yards up the slope was a fringe of timber, and as he
looked he saw smoke rising out of this. The sound of MacDonald's axe came
to them. He turned to Joanne, and he saw that she understood. They were at
their journey's end. Perhaps her fingers gripped her rein a little more
tightly. Perhaps it was imagination that made him think there was a slight
tremble in her voice when she said:

"This--is the place?"

"Yes. It should be just above the timber. I believe I can see the upper
break of the little box canyon Keller told me about."

She rode without speaking until they entered the timber. They were just in
time. As he lifted her down from her horse the clouds opened, and the rain
fell in a deluge. Her hair was wet when he got her in the tent. MacDonald
had spread out a number of blankets, but he had disappeared. Joanne sank
down upon them with a little shiver. She looked up at Aldous. It was almost
dark in the tent, and her eyes were glowing strangely. Over them the
thunder crashed deafeningly. For a few minutes it was a continual roar,
shaking the mountains with mighty reverberations that were like the
explosions of giant guns. Aldous stood holding the untied flap against the
beat of the rain. Twice he saw Joanne's lips form words. At last he heard
her say:

"Where is Donald?"

He tied the flap, and dropped down on the edge of the blankets before he
answered her.

"Probably out in the open watching the lightning, and letting the rain
drench him," he said. "I've never known old Donald to come in out of a
rain, unless it was cold. He was tying up the horses when I ran in here
with you."

He believed she was shivering, yet he knew she was not cold. In the half
gloom of the tent he wanted to reach over and take her hand.

For a few minutes longer there was no break in the steady downpour and the
crashing of the thunder. Then, as suddenly as the storm had broken, it
began to subside. Aldous rose and flung back the tent-flap.

"It is almost over," he said. "You had better remain in the tent a little
longer, Ladygray. I will go out and see if MacDonald has succeeded in
drowning himself."

Joanne did not answer, and Aldous stepped outside. He knew where to find
the old hunter. He had gone up to the end of the timber, and probably this
minute was in the little box canyon searching for the grave. It was a
matter of less than a hundred yards to the upper fringe of timber, and when
Aldous came out of this he stood on the summit of the grassy divide that
separated the tiny lake Keller had described from the canyon. It was less
than a rifle shot distant, and on the farther side of it MacDonald was
already returning. Aldous hurried down to meet him. He did not speak when
they met, but his companion answered the question in his eyes, while the
water dripped in streams from his drenched hair and beard.

"It's there," he said, pointing back. "Just behind that big black rock.
There's a slab over it, an' you've got the name right. It's Mortimer
FitzHugh."

Above them the clouds were splitting asunder. A shaft of sunlight broke
through, and as they stood looking over the little lake the shaft
broadened, and the sun swept in golden triumph over the mountains.
MacDonald beat his limp hat against his knee, and with his other hand
drained the water from his beard.

"What you goin' to do?" he asked.

Aldous turned toward the timber. Joanne herself answered the question. She
was coming up the slope. In a few moments she stood beside them. First she
looked down upon the lake. Then her eyes turned to Aldous. There was no
need for speech. He held out his hand, and without hesitation she gave him
her own. MacDonald understood. He walked down ahead of them toward the
black rock. When he came to the rock he paused. Aldous and Joanne passed
him. Then they, too, stopped, and Aldous freed the girl's hand.

With an unexpectedness that was startling they had come upon the grave. Yet
not a sound escaped Joanne's lips. Aldous could not see that she was
breathing. Less than ten paces from them was the mound, protected by its
cairn of stones; and over the stones rose a weather-stained slab in the
form of a cross. One glance at the grave and Aldous riveted his eyes upon
Joanne. For a full minute she stood as motionless as though the last breath
had left her body. Then, slowly, she advanced. He could not see her face.
He followed, quietly, step by step as she moved. For another minute she
leaned over the slab, making out the fine-seared letters of the name. Her
body was bent forward; her two hands were clenched tightly at her side.
Even more slowly than she had advanced she turned toward Aldous and
MacDonald. Her face was dead white. She lifted her hands to her breast, and
clenched them there.

"It is his name," she said, and there was something repressed and terrible
in her low voice. "It is his name!"

She was looking straight into the eyes of John Aldous, and he saw that she
was fighting to say something which she had not spoken. Suddenly she came
to him, and her two hands caught his arm.

"It is terrible--what I am going to ask of you," she struggled. "You will
think I am a ghoul. But I must have proof! I must--I must!"

She was staring wildly at him, and all at once there leapt fiercely through
him a dawning of the truth. The name was there, seared by hot iron in that
slab of wood. The name! But under the cairn of stones----

Behind them MacDonald had heard. He towered beside them now. His great
mountain-twisted hands drew Joanne a step back, and strange gentleness was
in his voice as he said:

"You an' Johnny go back an' build a fire, Mis' Joanne. I'll find the
proof!"

"Come," said Aldous, and he held out his hand again.

MacDonald hurried on ahead of them. When they reached the camp he was gone,
so that Joanne did not see the pick and shovel which he carried back. She
went into the tent and Aldous began building a fire where MacDonald's had
been drowned out. There was little reason for a fire; but he built it, and
for fifteen minutes added pitch-heavy fagots of storm-killed jack-pine and
spruce to it, until the flames leapt a dozen feet into the air. Half a
dozen times he was impelled to return to the grave and assist MacDonald in
his gruesome task. But he knew that MacDonald had meant that he should stay
with Joanne. If he returned, she might follow.

He was surprised at the quickness with which MacDonald performed his work.
Not more than half an hour had passed when a low whistle drew his eyes to a
clump of dwarf spruce back in the timber. The mountaineer was standing
there, holding something in his hand. With a backward glance to see that
Joanne had not come from the tent, Aldous hastened to him. What he could
see of MacDonald's face was the lifeless colour of gray ash. His eyes
stared as if he had suffered a strange and unexpected shock. He went to
speak, but no words came through his beard. In his hand he held his faded
red neck-handkerchief. He gave it to Aldous.

"It wasn't deep," he said. "It was shallow, turribly shallow, Johnny--just
under the stone!"

His voice was husky and unnatural.

There was something heavy in the handkerchief, and a shudder passed through
Aldous as he placed it on the palm of his hand and unveiled its contents.
He could not repress an exclamation when he saw what MacDonald had brought.
In his hand, with a single thickness of the wet handkerchief between the
objects and his flesh, lay a watch and a ring. The watch was of gold. It
was tarnished, but he could see there were initials, which he could not
make out, engraved on the back of the case. The ring, too, was of gold. It
was one of the most gruesome ornaments Aldous had ever seen. It was in the
form of a coiled and writhing serpent, wide enough to cover half of one's
middle finger between the joints. Again the eyes of the two men met, and
again Aldous observed that strange, stunned look in the old hunter's face.
He turned and walked back toward the tent, MacDonald following him slowly,
still staring, his long gaunt arms and hands hanging limply at his side.

Joanne heard them, and came out of the tent. A choking cry fell from her
lips when she saw MacDonald. For a moment one of her hands clutched at the
wet canvas of the tent, and then she swayed forward, knowing what John
Aldous had in his hand. He stood voiceless while she looked. In that tense
half-minute when she stared at the objects he held it seemed to him that
her heart-strings must snap under the strain. Then she drew back from
them, her eyes filled with horror, her hands raised as if to shut out the
sight of them, and a panting, sobbing cry broke from between her pallid
lips.

"Oh, my God!" she breathed. "Take them away--take them away!"

She staggered back to the tent, and stood there with her hands covering her
face. Aldous turned to the old hunter and gave him the things he held.

A moment later he stood alone where the three had been, staring now as
Joanne had stared, his heart beating wildly.

For Joanne, in entering the tent, had uncovered her face; it was not grief
that he saw there, but the soul of a woman new-born. And as his own soul
responded in a wild rejoicing, MacDonald, going over the summit and down
into the hollow, mumbled in his beard:

"God ha' mercy on me! I'm doin' it for her an' Johnny, an' because she's
like my Jane!"




CHAPTER XVI


Plunged from one extreme of mental strain to another excitement that was as
acute in its opposite effect, John Aldous stood and stared at the tent-flap
that had dropped behind Joanne. Only a flash he had caught of her face; but
in that flash he had seen the living, quivering joyousness of freedom
blazing where a moment before there had been only horror and fear. As if
ashamed of her own betrayal, Joanne had darted into the tent. She had
answered his question a thousand times more effectively than if she had
remained to tell him with her lips that MacDonald's proofs were
sufficient--that the grave in the little box canyon had not disappointed
her. She had recognized the ring and the watch; from them she had shrank in
horror, as if fearing that the golden serpent might suddenly leap into life
and strike.

In spite of the mightiest efforts she might have made for self-control
Aldous had seen in her tense and tortured face a look that was more than
either dread or shock--it was abhorrence, hatred. And his last glimpse of
her face had revealed those things gone, and in their place the strange joy
she had run into the tent to hide. That she should rejoice over the dead,
or that the grim relics from the grave should bring that new dawn into her
face and eyes, did not strike him as shocking. In Joanne his sun had
already begun to rise and set. He had come to understand that for her the
grave must hold its dead; that the fact of death, death under the slab that
bore Mortimer FitzHugh's name, meant life for her, just as it meant life
and all things for him. He had prayed for it, even while he dreaded that it
might not be. In him all things were now submerged in the wild thought that
Joanne was free, and the grave had been the key to her freedom.

A calmness began to possess him that was in singular contrast to the
perturbed condition of his mind a few minutes before. From this hour Joanne
was his to fight for, to win if he could; and, knowing this, his soul rose
in triumph above his first physical exultation, and he fought back the
almost irresistible impulse to follow her into the tent and tell her what
this day had meant for him. Following this came swiftly a realization of
what it had meant for her--the suspense, the terrific strain, the final
shock and gruesome horror of it. He was sure, without seeing, that she was
huddled down on the blankets in the tent. She had passed through an ordeal
under which a strong man might have broken, and the picture he had of her
struggle in there alone turned him from the tent filled with a
determination to make her believe that the events of the morning, both with
him and MacDonald, were easily forgotten.

He began to whistle as he threw back the wet canvas from over the camp
outfit that had been taken from Pinto's back. In one of the two cow-hide
panniers he saw that thoughtful old Donald had packed materials for their
dinner, as well as utensils necessary for its preparation. That dinner they
would have in the valley, well beyond the red mountain. He began to repack,
whistling cheerily. He was still whistling when MacDonald returned. He
broke off sharply when he saw the other's face.

"What's the matter, Mac?" he asked. "You sick?"

"It weren't pleasant, Johnny."

Aldous nodded toward the tent.

"It was--beastly," he whispered. "But we can't let her feel that way about
it, Mac. Cheer up--and let's get out of this place. We'll have dinner
somewhere over in the valley."

They continued packing until only the tent remained to be placed on Pinto's
back. Aldous resumed his loud whistling as he tightened up the
saddle-girths, and killed time in half a dozen other ways. A quarter of an
hour passed. Still Joanne did not appear. Aldous scratched his head
dubiously, and looked at the tent.

"I don't want to disturb her, Mac," he said in a low voice. "Let's keep up
the bluff of being busy. We can put out the fire."

Ten minutes later, sweating and considerably smokegrimed, Aldous again
looked toward the tent.

"We might cut down a few trees," suggested MacDonald.

"Or play leap-frog," added Aldous.

"The trees'd sound more natcherel," said MacDonald. "We could tell her----"

A stick snapped behind them. Both turned at the same instant. Joanne stood
facing them not ten feet away.

"Great Scott!" gasped Aldous. "Joanne, I thought you were in the tent!"

The beautiful calmness in Joanne's face amazed him. He stared at her as he
spoke, forgetting altogether the manner in which he had intended to greet
her when she came from the tent.

"I went out the back way--lifted the canvas and crawled under just like a
boy," she explained. "And I've walked until my feet are wet."

"And the fire is out!"

"I don't mind wet feet," she hurried to assure him.

Old Donald was already at work pulling the tent-pegs. Joanne came close to
Aldous, and he saw again that deep and wonderful light in her eyes. This
time he knew that she meant he should see it, and words which he had
determined not to speak fell softly from his lips.

"You are no longer afraid, Ladygray? That which you dreaded----"

"Is dead," she said. "And you, John Aldous? Without knowing, seeing me only
as you have seen me, do you think that I am terrible?"

"No, could not think that."

Her hand touched his arm.

"Will you go out there with me, in the sunlight, where we can look down
upon the little lake?" she asked. "Until to-day I had made up my mind that
no one but myself would ever know the truth. But you have been good to me,
and I must tell you--about myself--about him."

He found no answer. He left no word with MacDonald. Until they stood on the
grassy knoll, with the lakelet shimmering in the sunlight below them,
Joanne herself did not speak again. Then, with a little gesture, she said:

"Perhaps you think what is down there is dreadful to me. It isn't. I shall
always remember that little lake, almost as Donald remembers the
cavern--not because it watches over something I love, but because it guards
a thing that in life would have destroyed me! I know how you must feel,
John Aldous--that deep down in your heart you must wonder at a woman who
can rejoice in the death of another human creature. Yet death, and death
alone, has been the key from bondage of millions of souls that have lived
before mine; and there are men--men, too--whose lives have been warped and
destroyed because death did not come to save them. One was my father. If
death had come for him, if it had taken my mother, that down there would
never have happened--for me!"

She spoke the terrible words so quietly, so calmly, that it was impossible
for him entirely to conceal their effect upon him. There was a bit of
pathos in her smile.

"My mother drove my father mad," she went on, with a simple directness that
was the most wonderful thing he had ever heard come from human lips. "The
world did not know that he was mad. It called him eccentric. But he was
mad--in just one way. I was nine years old when it happened, and I can
remember our home most vividly. It was a beautiful home. And my father!
Need I tell you that I worshipped him--that to me he was king of all men?
And as deeply as I loved him, so, in another way, he worshipped my mother.
She was beautiful. In a curious sort of way I used to wonder, as a child,
how it was possible for a woman to be so beautiful. It was a dark beauty--a
recurrence of French strain in her English blood.

"One day I overheard my father tell her that, if she died, he would kill
himself. He was not of the passionate, over-sentimental kind; he was a
philosopher, a scientist, calm and self-contained--and I remembered those
words later, when I had outgrown childhood, as one of a hundred proofs of
how devoutly he had loved her. It was more than love, I believe. It was
adoration. I was nine, I say, when things happened. Another man, a divorce,
and on the day of the divorce this woman, my mother, married her lover.
Somewhere in my father's brain a single thread snapped, and from that day
he was mad--mad on but one subject; and so deep and intense was his madness
that it became a part of me as the years passed, and to-day I, too, am
possessed of that madness. And it is the one greatest thing in the world
that I am proud of, John Aldous!"

Not once had her voice betrayed excitement or emotion. Not once had it
risen above its normal tone; and in her eyes, as they turned from the lake
to him, there was the tranquillity of a child.

"And that madness," she resumed, "was the madness of a man whose brain and
soul were overwrought in one colossal hatred--a hatred of divorce and the
laws that made it possible. It was born in him in a day, and it lived until
his death. It turned him from the paths of men, and we became wanderers
upon the face of the earth. Two years after the ruin of our home my mother
and the man she had married died in a ship that was lost at sea. This had
no effect upon my father. Possibly you will not understand what grew up
between us in the years and years that followed. To the end he was a
scientist, a man seeking after the unknown, and my education came to be a
composite of teachings gathered in all parts of the world. We were never
apart. We were more than father and daughter; we were friends,
comrades--he was my world, and I was his.

"I recall, as I became older, how his hatred of that thing that had broken
our home developed more and more strongly in me. His mind was titanic. A
thousand times I pleaded with him to employ it in the great fight I wanted
him to make--a fight against the crime divorce. I know, now, why he did
not. He was thinking of me. Only one thing he asked of me. It was more than
a request. It was a command. And this command, and my promise, was that so
long as I lived--no matter what might happen in my life--I would sacrifice
myself body and soul sooner than allow that black monster of divorce to
fasten its clutches on me. It is futile for me to tell you these things,
John Aldous. It is impossible--you cannot understand!"

"I can," he replied, scarcely above a whisper. "Joanne, I begin--to
understand!"

And still without emotion, her voice as calm as the unruffled lake at their
feet, she continued:

"It grew in me. It is a part of me now. I hate divorce as I hate the worst
sin that bars one from Heaven. It is the one thing I hate. And it is
because of this hatred that I suffered myself to remain the wife of the man
whose name is over that grave down there--Mortimer FitzHugh. It came about
strangely--what I am going to tell you now. You will wonder. You will think
I was insane. But remember, John Aldous--the world had come to hold but one
friend and comrade for me, and he was my father. It was after Mindano. He
caught the fever, and he was dying."

For the first time her breath choked her. It was only for an instant. She
recovered herself, and went on:

"Out of the world my father had left he had kept one friend--Richard
FitzHugh; and this man, with his son, was with us during those terrible
days of fever. I met Mortimer as I had met a thousand other men. His
father, I thought, was the soul of honour, and I accepted the son as such.
We were much together during those two weeks of my despair, and he seemed
to be attentive and kind. Then came the end. My father was dying. And I--I
was ready to die. In his last moments his one thought was of me. He knew I
was alone, and the fear of it terrified him. I believe he did not realize
then what he was asking of me. He pleaded with me to marry the son of his
old friend before he died. And I--John Aldous, I could not fight his last
wish as he lay dying before my eyes. We were married there at his bedside.
He joined our hands. And the words he whispered to me last of all were:
'Remember--Joanne--thy promise and thine honour!'"

For a moment Joanne stood facing the little lake, and when she spoke again
there was a note of thankfulness, of subdued joy and triumph, in her voice.

"Before that day had ended I had displeased Mortimer FitzHugh," she said,
and Aldous saw the fingers of her hands close tightly. "I told him that
until a month had passed I would not live with him as a wife lives with her
husband. And he was displeased. And my father was not yet buried! I was
shocked. My soul revolted.

"We went to London and I was made welcome in the older FitzHugh's wifeless
home, and the papers told of our wedding. And two days later there came
from Devonshire a woman--a sweet-faced little woman with sick, haunted
eyes; in her arms she brought a baby; and that baby _was Mortimer
FitzHugh's!_

"We confronted him--the mother, the baby, and I; and then I knew that he
was a fiend. And the father was a fiend. They offered to buy the woman off,
to support her and the child. They told me that many English gentlemen had
made mistakes like this, and that it was nothing--that it was quite common.
Mortimer FitzHugh had never touched me with his lips, and now, when he came
to touch me with his hands, I struck him. It was a serpent's house, and I
left it.

"My father had left me a comfortable fortune, and I went into a house of my
own. Day after day they came to me, and I knew that they feared I was going
to secure a divorce. During the six months that followed I learned other
things about the man who was legally my husband. He was everything that was
vile. Brazenly he went into public places with women of dishonour, and I
hid my face in shame.

"His father died, and for a time Mortimer FitzHugh became one of the
talked-about spendthrifts of London. Swiftly he gambled and dissipated
himself into comparative poverty. And now, learning that I would not get a
divorce, he began to regard me as a slave in chains. I remember, one time,
that he succeeded in laying his hands on me, and they were like the touch
of things that were slimy and poisonous. He laughed at my revulsion. He
demanded money of me, and to keep him away from me I gave it to him. Again
and again he came for money; I suffered as I cannot tell you, but never
once in my misery did I weaken in my promise to my father and to myself.
But--at last--I ran away.

"I went to Egypt, and then to India. A year later I learned that Mortimer
FitzHugh had gone to America, and I returned to London. For two years I
heard nothing of him; but day and night I lived in fear and dread. And then
came the news that he had died, as you read in the newspaper clipping. I
was free! For a year I believed that; and then, like a shock that had come
to destroy me, I was told that he _was not dead_ but that he was alive, and
in a place called Tête Jaune Cache, in British Columbia. I could not live
in the terrible suspense that followed. I determined to find out for myself
if he was alive or dead. And so I came, John Aldous. And he is dead. He is
down there--dead. And I am glad that he is dead!"

"And if he was not dead," said Aldous quietly, "I would kill him!"

He could find nothing more to say than that. He dared trust himself no
further, and in silence he held out his hands, and for a moment Joanne gave
him her own. Then she withdrew them, and with a little gesture, and the
smile which he loved to see trembling about her mouth, she said:

"Donald will think this is scandalous. We must go back and apologize!"

She led him down the slope, and her face was filled with the pink flush of
a wild rose when she ran up to Donald, and asked him to help her into her
saddle. John Aldous rode like one in a dream as they went back into the
valley, for with each minute that passed Joanne seemed more and more to
him like a beautiful bird that had escaped from its prison-cage, and in him
mind and soul were absorbed in the wonder of it and in his own rejoicing.
She was free, and in her freedom she was happy!

Free! It was that thought that pounded steadily in his brain. He forgot
Quade, and Culver Rann, and the gold; he forgot his own danger, his own
work, almost his own existence. Of a sudden the world had become
infinitesimally small for him, and all he could see was the soft shimmer of
Joanne's hair in the sun, the wonder of her face, the marvellous blue of
her eyes--and all he could hear was the sweet thrill of her voice when she
spoke to him or old Donald, and when, now and then, soft laughter trembled
on her lips in the sheer joy of the life that had dawned anew for her this
day.

They stopped for dinner, and then went on over the range and down into the
valley where lay Tête Jaune. And all this time he fought to keep from
flaming in his own face the desire that was like a hot fire within him--the
desire to go to Joanne and tell her that he loved her as he had never
dreamed it possible for love to exist in the whole wide world. He knew that
to surrender to that desire in this hour would be something like sacrilege.
He did not guess that Joanne saw his struggle, that even old MacDonald
mumbled low words in his beard. When they came at last to Blackton's
bungalow he thought that he had kept this thing from her, and he did not
see--and would not have understood if he had seen--the wonderful and
mysterious glow in Joanne's eyes when she kissed Peggy Blackton.

Blackton had come in from the work-end, dust-covered and jubilant.

"I'm glad you folks have returned," he cried, beaming with enthusiasm as he
gripped Aldous by the hand. "The last rock is packed, and to-night we're
going to shake the earth. We're going to blow up Coyote Number
Twenty-seven, and you won't forget the sight as long as you live!"

Not until Joanne had disappeared into the house with Peggy Blackton did
Aldous feel that he had descended firmly upon his feet once more into a
matter-of-fact world. MacDonald was waiting with the horses, and Blackton
was pointing over toward the steel workers, and was saying something about
ten thousand pounds of black powder and dynamite and a mountain that had
stood a million years and was going to be blown up that night.

"It's the best bit of work I've ever done, Aldous--that and Coyote Number
Twenty-eight. Peggy was going to touch the electric button to Twenty-seven
to-night, but we've decided to let Miss Gray do that, and Peggy'll fire
Twenty-eight to-morrow night. Twenty-eight is almost ready. If you say so,
the bunch of us will go over and see it in the morning. Mebby Miss Gray
would like to see for herself that a coyote isn't only an animal with a
bushy tail, but a cavern dug into rock an' filled with enough explosives to
play high jinks with all the navies in the world if they happened to be on
hand at the time. What do you say?"

"Fine!" said Aldous.

"And Peggy wants me to say that it's a matter of only common, every-day
decency on your part to make yourself our guest while here," added the
contractor, stuffing his pipe. "We've got plenty of room, enough to eat,
and a comfortable bed for you. You're going to be polite enough to accept,
aren't you?"

"With all my heart," exclaimed Aldous, his blood tingling at the thought of
being near Joanne. "I've got some business with MacDonald and as soon as
that's over I'll domicile myself here. It's bully of you, Blackton! You
know----"

"Why, dammit, of course I know!" chuckled Blackton, lighting his pipe.
"Can't I see, Aldous? D'ye think I'm blind? I was just as gone over Peggy
before I married her. Fact is, I haven't got over it yet--and never will. I
come up from the work four times a day regular to see her, and if I don't
come I have to send up word I'm safe. Peggy saw it first. She said it was a
shame to put you off in that cabin with Miss Gray away up here. I don't
want to stick my nose in your business, old man, but--by George!--I
congratulate you! I've only seen one lovelier woman in my life, and that's
Peggy."

He thrust out a hand and pumped his friend's limp arm, and Aldous felt
himself growing suddenly warm under the other's chuckling gaze.

"For goodness sake don't say anything, or act anything, old man," he
pleaded. "I'm--just--hoping."

Blackton nodded with prodigious understanding in his eyes.

"Come along when you get through with MacDonald," he said. "I'm going in
and clean up for to-night's fireworks."

A question was in Aldous' mind, but he did not put it in words. He wanted
to know about Quade and Culver Rann.

"Blackton is such a ridiculously forgetful fellow at times that I don't
want to rouse his alarm," he said to MacDonald as they were riding toward
the corral a few minutes later. "He might let something out to Joanne and
his wife, and I've got reasons--mighty good reasons, Mac--for keeping this
affair as quiet as possible. We'll have to discover what Rann and Quade are
doing ourselves."

MacDonald edged his horse in nearer to Aldous.

"See here, Johnny, boy--tell me what's in your mind?"

Aldous looked into the grizzled face, and there was something in the glow
of the old mountaineer's eyes that made him think of a father.

"You know, Mac."

Old Donald nodded.

"Yes, I guess I do, Johnny," he said in a low voice. "You think of Mis'
Joanne as I used to--to--think of _her_. I guess I know. But--what you
goin' to do?"

Aldous shook his head, and for the first time that afternoon a look of
uneasiness and gloom overspread his face.

"I don't know, Mac. I'm not ashamed to tell you. I love her. If she were to
pass out of my life to-morrow I would ask for something that belonged to
her, and the spirit of her would live in it for me until I died. That's how
I care, Mac. But I've known her such a short time. I can't tell her yet. It
wouldn't be the square thing. And yet she won't remain in Tête Jaune very
long. Her mission is accomplished. And if--if she goes I can't very well
follow her, can I, Mac?"

For a space old Donald was silent. Then he said, "You're thinkin' of me,
Johnny, an' what we was planning on?"

"Partly."

"Then don't any more. I'll stick to you, an' we'll stick to her. Only----"

"What?"

"If you could get Peggy Blackton to help you----"

"You mean----" began Aldous eagerly.

"That if Peggy Blackton got her to stay for a week--mebby ten
days--visitin' her, you know, it wouldn't be so bad if you told her then,
would it, Johnny?"

"By George, it wouldn't!"

"And I think----"

"Yes----"

"Bein' an old man, an' seein' mebby what you don't see----"

"Yes----"

"That she'd take you, Johnny."

In his breast John's heart seemed suddenly to give a jump that choked him.
And while he stared ahead old Donald went on.

"I've seen it afore, in a pair of eyes just like her eyes, Johnny--so soft
an' deeplike, like the sky up there when the sun's in it. I seen it when we
was ridin' behind an' she looked ahead at you, Johnny. I did. An' I've seen
it afore. An' I think----"

Aldous waited, his heart-strings ready to snap.

"An' I think--she likes you a great deal, Johnny."

Aldous reached over and gripped MacDonald's hand.

"The good Lord bless you, Donald! We'll stick! As for Quade and Culver
Rann----"

"I've been thinkin' of them," interrupted MacDonald. "You haven't got time
to waste on them, Johnny. Leave 'em to me. If it's only a week you've got
to be close an' near by Mis' Joanne. I'll find out what Quade an' Rann are
doing, and what they're goin' to do. I've got a scheme. Will you leave 'em
to me?"

Aldous nodded, and in the same breath informed MacDonald of Peggy
Blackton's invitation. The old hunter chuckled exultantly. He stopped his
horse, and Aldous halted.

"It's workin' out fine, Johnny!" he exclaimed. "There ain't no need of you
goin' any further. We understand each other, and there ain't nothin' for
you to do at the corral. Jump off your horse and go back. If I want you
I'll come to the Blacktons' 'r send word, and if you want me I'll be at the
corral or the camp in the coulee. Jump off, Johnny!"

Without further urging Aldous dismounted. They shook hands again, and
MacDonald drove on ahead of him the saddled horses and the pack. And as
Aldous turned back toward the bungalow old Donald was mumbling low in his
beard again, "God ha' mercy on me, but I'm doin' it for her an' Johnny--for
her an' Johnny!"




CHAPTER XVII


Half an hour later Blackton had shown Aldous to his room and bath. It was
four o'clock when he rejoined the contractor in the lower room, freshly
bathed and shaven and in a change of clothes. He had not seen Joanne, but
half a dozen times he had heard her and Peggy Blackton laughing and talking
in Mrs. Blackton's big room at the head of the stairs, and he heard them
now as they sat down to smoke their cigars. Blackton was filled with
enthusiasm over the accomplishment of his latest work, and Aldous tried
hard not to betray the fact that the minutes were passing with gruelling
slowness while he waited for Joanne. He wanted to see her. His heart was
beating like an excited boy's. He could hear her footsteps over his head,
and he distinguished her soft laughter, and her sweet voice when she spoke.
There was something tantalizing in her nearness and the fact that she did
not once show herself at the top of the stair. Blackton was still talking
about "coyotes" and dynamite when, an hour later, Aldous looked up, and his
heart gave a big, glad jump.

Peggy Blackton, a plump little golden-haired vision of happiness, was
already half a dozen steps down the stairs. At the top Joanne, for an
instant, had paused. Through that space, before the contractor had turned,
her eyes met those of John Aldous. She was smiling. Her eyes were shining
at him. Never had he seen her look at him in that way, he thought, and
never had she seemed such a perfect vision of loveliness. She was dressed
in a soft, clinging something with a flutter of white lace at her throat,
and as she came down he saw that she had arranged her hair in a marvellous
way. Soft little curls half hid themselves in the shimmer of rich coils she
had wreathed upon her head, and adorable little tendrils caressed the
lovely flush in her cheeks, and clung to the snow-whiteness of her neck.

For a moment, as Peggy Blackton went to her husband, he stood very close to
Joanne, and into his eyes she was smiling, half laughing, her beautiful
mouth aquiver, her eyes glowing, the last trace of their old suspense and
fear vanished in a new and wondrous beauty. He would not have said she was
twenty-eight now. He would have sworn she was twenty.

"Joanne," he whispered, "you are wonderful. Your hair is glorious!"

"Always--my hair," she replied, so low that he alone heard. "Can you never
see beyond my hair, John Aldous?"

"I stop there," he said. "And I marvel. It is glorious!"

"Again!" And up from her white throat there rose a richer, sweeter colour.
"If you say that again now, John Aldous, I shall never make curls for you
again as long as I live!"

"For me----"

His heart seemed near bursting with joy. But she had left him, and was
laughing with Peggy Blackton, who was showing her husband where he had
missed a stubbly patch of beard on his cheek. He caught her eyes, turned
swiftly to him, and they were laughing at him, and there came a sudden
pretty upturn to her chin as he continued to stare, and he saw again the
colour deepening in her face. When Peggy Blackton led her husband to the
stair, and drove him up to shave off the stubbly patch, Joanne found the
opportunity to whisper to him:

"You are rude, John Aldous! You must not stare at me like that!"

And as she spoke the rebellious colour was still in her face, in spite of
the tantalizing curve of her red lips and the sparkle in her eyes.

"I can't help it," he pleaded. "You are--glorious!"

During the next hour, and while they were at supper, he could see that she
was purposely avoiding his eyes, and that she spoke oftener to Paul
Blackton than she did to him, apparently taking the keenest interest in his
friend's enthusiastic descriptions of the mighty work along the line of
steel. And as pretty Peggy Blackton never seemed quite so happy as when
listening to her husband, he was forced to content himself by looking at
Joanne most of the time, without once receiving her smile.

The sun was just falling behind the western mountains when Peggy and
Joanne, hurried most incontinently by Blackton, who had looked at his
watch, left the table to prepare themselves for the big event of the
evening.

"I want to get you there before dusk," he explained. "So please hurry!"

They were back in five minutes. Joanne had slipped on a long gray coat, and
with a veil that trailed a yard down her back she had covered her head.
Not a curl or a tress of her hair had she left out of its filmy prison, and
there was a mischievous gleam of triumph in her eyes when she looked at
Aldous.

A moment later, when they went ahead of Blackton and his wife to where the
buckboard was waiting for them, he said:

"You put on that veil to punish me, Ladygray?"

"It is a pretty veil," said she.

"But your hair is prettier," said he.

"And you embarrassed me very much by staring as you did, John Aldous!"

"Forgive me. It is--I mean you are--so beautiful."

"And you are sometimes--most displeasing," said she. "Your ingenuousness,
John Aldous, is shocking!"

"Forgive me," he said again.

"And you have known me but two days," she added.

"Two days--is a long time," he argued. "One can be born, and live, and die
in two days. Besides, our trails have crossed for years."

"But--it displeases me."

"What I have said?"

"Yes."

"And the way I have looked at you?"

"Yes."

Her voice was low and quiet now, her eyes were serious, and she was not
smiling.

"I know--I know," he groaned, and there was a deep thrill in his voice.
"It's been only two days after all, Ladygray. It seems like--like a
lifetime. I don't want you to think badly of me. God knows I don't!"

"No, no. I don't," she said quickly and gently. "You are the finest
gentleman I ever knew, John Aldous. Only--it embarrasses me."

"I will cut out my tongue and put out my eyes----"

"Nothing so terrible," she laughed softly. "Will you help me into the
wagon? They are coming."

She gave him her hand, warm and soft; and Blackton forced him into the seat
between her and Peggy, and Joanne's hand rested in his arm all the way to
the mountain that was to be blown up, and he told himself that he was a
fool if he were not supremely happy. The wagon stopped, and he helped her
out again, her warm little hand again close in his own, and when she looked
at him he was the cool, smiling John Aldous of old, so cool, and strong,
and unemotional that he saw surprise in her eyes first, and then that
gentle, gathering glow that came when she was proud of him, and pleased
with him. And as Blackton pointed out the mountain she unknotted the veil
under her chin and let it drop back over her shoulders, so that the last
light of the day fell richly in the trembling curls and thick coils of her
hair.

"And that is my reward," said John Aldous, but he whispered it to himself.

They had stopped close to a huge flat rock, and on this rock men were at
work fitting wires to a little boxlike thing that had a white button-lever.
Paul Blackton pointed to this, and his face was flushed with excitement.

"That's the little thing that's going to blow it up, Miss Gray--the touch
of your finger on that little white button. Do you see that black base of
the mountain yonder?--right there where you can see men moving about? It's
half a mile from here, and the 'coyote' is there, dug into the wall of
it."

The tremble of enthusiasm was in his voice as he went on, pointing with his
long arm: "Think of it! We're spending a hundred thousand dollars going
through that rock that people who travel on the Grand Trunk Pacific in the
future will be saved seven minutes in their journey from coast to coast!
We're spending a hundred thousand there, and millions along the line, that
we may have the smoothest roadbed in the world when we're done, and the
quickest route from sea to sea. It looks like waste, but it isn't. It's
science! It's the fight of competition! It's the determination behind the
forces--the determination to make this road the greatest road in the world!
Listen!"

The gloom was thickening swiftly. The black mountain was fading slowly
away, and up out of that gloom came now ghostly and far-reaching voices of
men booming faintly through giant megaphones.

"_Clear away! Clear away! Clear away!_" they said, and the valley and the
mountain-sides caught up the echoes, until it seemed that a hundred voices
were crying out the warning. Then fell a strange and weird silence, and the
echoes faded away like the voices of dying men, and all was still save the
far-away barking of a coyote that answered the mysterious challenges of the
night. Joanne was close to the rock. Quietly the men who had been working
on the battery drew back.

"It is ready!" said one.

"Wait!" said Blackton, as his wife went to speak, "Listen!"

For five minutes there was silence. Then out of the night a single
megaphone cried the word:

"_Fire!_"

"All is clear," said the engineer, with a deep breath. "All you have to do,
Miss Gray, is to move that little lever from the side on which it now rests
to the opposite side. Are you ready?"

In the darkness Joanne's left hand had sought John's. It clung to his
tightly. He could feel a little shiver run through her.

"Yes," she whispered.

"Then--if you please--press the button!"

Slowly Joanne's right hand crept out, while the fingers of her left clung
tighter to Aldous. She touched the button--thrust it over. A little cry
that fell from between her tense lips told them she had done the work, and
a silence like that of death fell on those who waited.

A half a minute--perhaps three quarters--and a shiver ran under their feet,
but there was no sound; and then a black pall, darker than the night,
seemed to rise up out of the mountain, and with that, a second later, came
the explosion. There was a rumbling and a jarring, as if the earth were
convulsed under foot; volumes of dense black smoke shot upward, and in
another instant these rolling, twisting volumes of black became lurid, and
an explosion like that of a thousand great guns rent the air. As fast as
the eye could follow sheets of flame shot up out of the sea of smoke,
climbing higher and higher, in lightning flashes, until the lurid tongues
licked the air a quarter of a mile above the startled wilderness. Explosion
followed explosion, some of them coming in hollow, reverberating booms,
others sounding as if in midair. Unseen by the watchers, the heavens were
filled with hurtling rocks; solid masses of granite ten feet square were
thrown a hundred feet away; rocks weighing a ton were hurled still farther,
as if they were no more than stones flung by the hands of a giant; chunks
that would have crashed from the roof to the basement of a skyscraper
dropped a third of a mile away. For three minutes the frightful convulsions
continued, and the tongues of flame leaped into the night. Then the lurid
lights died out, shorter and shorter grew the sullen flashes, and then
again fell--silence!

During those appalling moments, unconscious of the act, Joanne had shrank
close to Aldous, so that he felt the soft crush of her hair and the swift
movement of her bosom. Blackton's voice brought them back to life.

He laughed, and it was the laugh of a man who had looked upon work well
done.

"It has done the trick," he said. "To-morrow we will come and see. And I
have changed my plans about Coyote Number Twenty-eight. Hutchins, the
superintendent, is passing through in the afternoon, and I want him to see
it." He spoke now to a man who had come up out of the darkness. "Gregg,
have Twenty-eight ready at four o'clock to-morrow afternoon--four
o'clock--sharp!"

Then he said:

"Dust and a bad smell will soon be settling about us. Come, let's go home!"

And as they went back to the buckboard wagon through the gloom John Aldous
still held Joanne's hand in his own, and she made no effort to take it from
him.




CHAPTER XVIII


The next morning, when Aldous joined the engineer in the dining-room below,
he was disappointed to find the breakfast table prepared for two instead of
four. It was evident that Peggy Blackton and Joanne were not going to
interrupt their beauty nap on their account.

Blackton saw his friend's inquiring look, and chuckled.

"Guess we'll have to get along without 'em this morning, old man. Lord
bless me, did you hear them last night--after you went to bed?"

"No."

"You were too far away," chuckled Blackton again, "I was in the room across
the hall from them. You see, old man, Peggy sometimes gets fairly starved
for the right sort of company up here, and last night they didn't go to bed
until after twelve o'clock. I looked at my watch. Mebby they were in bed,
but I could hear 'em buzzing like two bees, and every little while they'd
giggle, and then go on buzzing again. By George, there wasn't a break in
it! When one let up the other'd begin, and sometimes I guess they were both
going at once. Consequently, they're sleeping now."

When breakfast was finished Blackton looked at his watch.

"Seven o'clock," he said. "We'll leave word for the girls to be ready at
nine. What are you going to do meantime, Aldous?"

"Hunt up MacDonald, probably."

"And I'll run down and take a look at the work."

As they left the house the engineer nodded down the road. MacDonald was
coming.

"He has saved you the trouble," he said. "Remember, Aldous--nine o'clock
sharp!"

A moment later Aldous was advancing to meet the old mountaineer.

"They've gone, Johnny," was Donald's first greeting.

"Gone?"

"Yes. The whole bunch--Quade, Culver Rann, DeBar, and the woman who rode
the bear. They've gone, hide and hair, and nobody seems to know where."

Aldous was staring.

"Also," resumed old Donald slowly, "Culver Rann's outfit is gone--twenty
horses, including six saddles. An' likewise others have gone, but I can't
find out who."

"Gone!" repeated Aldous again.

MacDonald nodded.

"And that means----"

"That Culver Rann ain't lost any time in gettin' under way for the gold,"
said Donald. "DeBar is with him, an' probably the woman. Likewise three
cut-throats to fill the other saddles. They've gone prepared to fight."

"And Quade?"

Old Donald hunched his shoulders, and suddenly John's face grew dark and
hard.

"I understand," he spoke, half under his breath. "Quade has
disappeared--but he isn't with Culver Rann. He wants us to believe he has
gone. He wants to throw us off our guard. But he's watching, and
waiting--somewhere--like a hawk, to swoop down on Joanne! He----"

"That's it!" broke in MacDonald hoarsely. "That's it, Johnny! It's his old
trick--his old trick with women. There's a hunderd men who've got to do his
bidding--do it 'r get out of the mountains--an' we've got to watch Joanne.
We have, Johnny! If she should disappear----"

Aldous waited.

"You'd never find her again, so 'elp me God, you wouldn't, Johnny!" he
finished.

"We'll watch her," said Aldous quietly. "I'll be with her to-day, Mac, and
to-night I'll come down to the camp in the coulee to compare notes with
you. They can't very well steal her out of Blackton's house while I'm
gone."

For an hour after MacDonald left him he walked about in the neighbourhood
of the Blackton bungalow smoking his pipe. Not until he saw the contractor
drive up in the buckboard did he return. Joanne and Peggy were more than
prompt. They were waiting. If such a thing were possible Joanne was more
radiantly lovely than the night before. To Aldous she became more beautiful
every time he looked at her. But this morning he did not speak what was in
his heart when, for a moment, he held her hand, and looked into her eyes.
Instead, he said:

"Good morning, Ladygray. Have you used----"

"I have," she smiled. "Only it's Potterdam's Tar Soap, and not the other.
And you--have not shaved, John Aldous!"

"Great Scott, so I haven't!" he exclaimed, rubbing his chin. "But I did
yesterday afternoon, Ladygray!"

"And you will again this afternoon, if you please," she commanded. "I don't
like bristles."

"But in the wilderness----"

"One can shave as well as another can make curls," she reminded him, and
there came an adorable little dimple at the corner of her mouth as she
looked toward Paul Blackton.

Aldous was glad that Paul and Peggy Blackton did most of the talking that
morning. They spent half an hour where the explosion of the night before
had blown out the side of the mountain, and then drove on to Coyote Number
Twenty-eight. It was in the face of a sandstone cliff, and all they could
see of it when they got out of the wagon was a dark hole in the wall of
rock. Not a soul was about, and Blackton rubbed his hands with
satisfaction.

"Everything is completed," he said. "Gregg put in the last packing this
morning, and all we are waiting for now is four o'clock this afternoon."

The hole in the mountain was perhaps four feet square. Ten feet in front of
it the engineer paused, and pointed to the ground. Up out of the earth came
two wires, which led away from the mouth of the cavern.

"Those wires go down to the explosives," he explained. "They're battery
wires half a mile long. But we don't attach the battery until the final
moment, as you saw last night. There might be an accident."

He bent his tall body and entered the mouth of the cavern, leading his wife
by the hand. Observing that Joanne had seen this attention on the
contractor's part, Aldous held out his own hand, and Joanne accepted it.
For perhaps twenty feet they followed the Blacktons with lowered heads.
They seemed to have entered a black, cold pit, sloping slightly downward,
and only faintly could they see Blackton when he straightened.

His voice came strange and sepulchral:

"You can stand up now. We're in the chamber. Don't move or you might
stumble over something. There ought to be a lantern here."

He struck a match, and as he moved slowly toward a wall of blackness,
searching for the lantern, he called back encouragingly through the gloom:

"You folks are now standing right over ten tons of dynamite, and there's
another five tons of black powder----"

A little shriek from Peggy Blackton stopped him, and his match went out.

"What in heaven's name is the matter?" he asked anxiously. "Peggy----"

"Why in heaven's name do you light a match then, with us standing over all
those tons of dynamite?" demanded Peggy. "Paul Blackton, you're----"

The engineer's laughter was like a giant's roar in the cavern, and Joanne
gave a gasp, while Peggy shiveringly caught Aldous by the arm.

"There--I've got the lantern!" exclaimed Blackton. "There isn't any danger,
not a bit. Wait a minute and I'll tell you all about it." He lighted the
lantern, and in the glow of it Joanne's and Peggy's faces were white and
startled. "Why, bless my soul, I didn't mean to frighten you!" he cried. "I
was just telling you facts. See, we're standing on a solid floor--four feet
of packed rock and cement. The dynamite and black powder are under that.
We're in a chamber--a cave--an artificial cavern. It's forty feet deep,
twenty wide, and about seven high."

He held the lantern even with his shoulders and walked deeper into the
cavern as he spoke. The others followed. They passed a keg on which was a
half-burned candle. Close to the keg was an empty box. Beyond these things
the cavern was empty.

"I thought it was full of powder and dynamite," apologized Peggy.

"You see, it's like this," Blackton began. "We put the powder and dynamite
down there, and pack it over solid with rock and cement. If we didn't leave
this big air-chamber above it there would be only one explosion, and
probably two thirds of the explosive would not fire, and would be lost.
This chamber corrects that. You heard a dozen explosions last night, and
you'll hear a dozen this afternoon, and the biggest explosion of all is
usually the fourth or fifth. A 'coyote' isn't like an ordinary blast or
shot. It's a mighty expensive thing, and you see it means a lot of work.
Now, if some one were to touch off those explosives at this minute----
What's the matter, Peggy? Are you cold? You're shivering!"

"Ye-e-e-e-s!" chattered Peggy.

Aldous felt Joanne tugging at his hand.

"Let's take Mrs. Blackton out," she whispered. "I'm--I'm--afraid she'll
take cold!"

In spite of himself Aldous could not restrain his laughter until they had
got through the tunnel. Out in the sunlight he looked at Joanne, still
holding her hand. She withdrew it, looking at him accusingly.

"Lord bless me!" exclaimed Blackton, who seemed to understand at last.
"There's no danger--not a bit!"

"But I'd rather look at it from outside, Paul, dear," said Mrs. Blackton.

"But--Peggy--if it went off now you'd be in just as bad shape out here!"

"I don't think we'd be quite so messy, really I don't, dear," she
persisted.

"Lord bless me!" he gasped.

"And they'd probably be able to find something of us," she added.

"Not a button, Peggy!"

"Then I'm going to move, if you please!" And suiting her action to the word
Peggy led the way to the buckboard. There she paused and took one of her
husband's big hands fondly in both her own. "It's perfectly wonderful,
Paul--and I'm proud of you!" she said. "But, honestly, dear, I can enjoy it
so much better at four o'clock this afternoon."

Smiling, Blackton lifted her into the buckboard.

"That's why I wish Paul had been a preacher or something like that," she
confided to Joanne as they drove homeward. "I'm growing old just thinking
of him working over that horrid dynamite and powder all the time. Every
little while some one is blown into nothing."

"I believe," said Joanne, "that I'd like to do something like that if I
were a man. I'd want to be a man, not that preachers aren't men, Peggy,
dear--but I'd want to do things, like blowing up mountains for instance, or
finding buried cities, or"--she whispered, very, very softly under her
breath--"writing books, John Aldous!"

Only Aldous heard those last words, and Joanne gave a sharp little cry; and
when Peggy asked her what the matter was Joanne did not tell her that John
Aldous had almost broken her hand on the opposite side--for Joanne was
riding between the two.

"It's lame for life," she said to him half an hour later, when he was
bidding her good-bye, preparatory to accompanying Blackton down to the
working steel. "And I deserve it for trying to be kind to you. I think some
writers of books are--are perfectly intolerable!"

"Won't you take a little walk with me right after dinner?" he was asking
for the twentieth time.

"I doubt it very, very much."

"Please, Ladygray!"

"I may possibly think about it."

With that she left him, and she did not look back as she and Peggy Blackton
went into the house. But as they drove away they saw two faces at the
window that overlooked the townward road, and two hands were waving
good-bye. Both could not be Peggy Blackton's hands.

"Joanne and I are going for a walk this afternoon, Blackton," said Aldous,
"and I just want to tell you not to worry if we're not back by four
o'clock. Don't wait for us. We may be watching the blow-up from the top of
some mountain."

Blackton chuckled.

"Don't blame you," he said. "From an observer's point of view, John, it
looks to me as though you were going to have something more than hope to
live on pretty soon!"

"I--I hope so."

"And when I was going with Peggy I wouldn't have traded a quiet little walk
with her--like this you're suggesting--for a front seat look at a blow-up
of the whole Rocky Mountain system!"

"And you won't forget to tell Mrs. Blackton that we may not return by four
o'clock?"

"I will not. And"--Blackton puffed hard at his pipe--"and, John--the Tête
Jaune preacher is our nearest neighbour," he finished.

From then until dinner time John Aldous lived in an atmosphere that was not
quite real, but a little like a dream. His hopes and his happiness were at
their highest. He knew that Joanne would go walking with him that
afternoon, and in spite of his most serious efforts to argue to the
contrary he could not keep down the feeling that the event would mean a
great deal for him. Almost feverishly he interested himself in Paul
Blackton's work. When they returned to the bungalow, a little before noon,
he went to his room, shaved himself, and in other ways prepared for dinner.

Joanne and the Blacktons were waiting when he came down.

His first look at Joanne assured him. She was dressed in a soft gray
walking-suit. Never had the preparation of a dinner seemed so slow to him,
and a dozen times he found himself inwardly swearing at Tom, the Chinese
cook. It was one o'clock before they sat down at the table and it was two
o'clock when they arose. It was a quarter after two when Joanne and he left
the bungalow.

"Shall we wander up on the mountain?" he asked. "It would be fine to look
down upon the explosion."

"I have noticed that in some things you are very observant," said Joanne,
ignoring his question. "In the matter of curls, for instance, you are
unapproachable; in others you are--quite blind, John Aldous!"

"What do you mean?" he asked, bewildered.

"I lost my scarf this morning, and you did not notice it. It is quite an
unusual scarf. I bought it in Cairo, and I don't want to have it blown up."

"You mean----"

"Yes. I must have dropped it in the cavern. I had it when we entered."

"Then we'll return for it," he volunteered. "We'll still have plenty of
time to climb up the mountain before the explosion."

Twenty minutes later they came to the dark mouth of the tunnel. There was
no one in sight, and for a moment Aldous searched for matches in his
pocket.

"Wait here," he said. "I won't be gone two minutes."

He entered, and when he came to the chamber he struck a match. The lantern
was on the empty box. He lighted it, and began looking for the scarf.
Suddenly he heard a sound. He turned, and saw Joanne standing in the glow
of the lantern.

"Can you find it?" she asked.

"I haven't--yet."

They bent over the rock floor, and in a moment Joanne gave a little
exclamation of pleasure as she caught up the scarf. In that same moment, as
they straightened and faced each other, John Aldous felt his heart cease
beating, and Joanne's face had gone as white as death. The rock-walled
chamber was atremble; they heard a sullen, distant roaring, and as Aldous
caught Joanne's hand and sprang toward the tunnel the roar grew into a
deafening crash, and a gale of wind rushed into their faces, blowing out
the lantern, and leaving them in darkness. The mountain seemed crumbling
about them, and above the sound of it rang out a wild, despairing cry from
Joanne's lips. For there was no longer the brightness of sunshine at the
end of the tunnel, but darkness--utter darkness; and through that tunnel
there came a deluge of dust and rock that flung them back into the
blackness of the pit, and separated them.

"John--John Aldous!"

"I am here, Joanne! I will light the lantern!"

His groping hands found the lantern. He relighted it, and Joanne crept to
his side, her face as white as the face of the dead. He held the lantern
above him, and together they stared at where the tunnel had been. A mass of
rock met their eyes. The tunnel was choked. And then, slowly, each turned
to the other; and each knew that the other understood--for it was Death
that whispered about them now in the restless air of the rock-walled tomb,
a terrible death, and their lips spoke no words as their eyes met in that
fearful and silent understanding.




CHAPTER XIX


Joanne's white lips spoke first.

"The tunnel is closed!" she whispered.

Her voice was strange. It was not Joanne's voice. It was unreal, terrible,
and her eyes were terrible as they looked steadily into his. Aldous could
not answer; something had thickened in his throat, and his blood ran cold
as he stared into Joanne's dead-white face and saw the understanding in her
eyes. For a space he could not move, and then, as suddenly as it had fallen
upon him, the effect of the shock passed away.

[Illustration: "The tunnel is closed," she whispered.... "That means we
have just forty-five minutes to live.... Let us not lie to one another."]

He smiled, and put out a hand to her.

"A slide of rock has fallen over the mouth of the tunnel," he said, forcing
himself to speak as if it meant little or nothing. "Hold the lantern,
Joanne, while I get busy."

"A slide of rock," she repeated after him dumbly.

She took the lantern, her eyes still looking at him in that stricken way,
and with his naked hands John Aldous set to work. Five minutes and he knew
that it was madness to continue. Hands alone could not clear the tunnel.
And yet he worked, tearing into the rock and shale like an animal; rolling
back small boulders, straining at larger ones until the tendons of his arms
seemed ready to snap and his veins to burst. For a few minutes after that
he went mad. His muscles cracked, he panted as he fought with the rock
until his hands were torn and bleeding, and over and over again there ran
through his head Blackton's last words--_Four o'clock this afternoon!--Four
o'clock this afternoon!_

Then he came to what he knew he would reach very soon, a solid wall! Rock
and shale and earth were packed as if by battering rams. For a few moments
he fought to control himself before facing Joanne. Over him swept the grim
realization that his last fight must be for her. He steadied himself, and
wiped the dust and grime from his face with his handkerchief. For the last
time he swallowed hard. His soul rose within him almost joyously now in the
face of this last great fight, and he turned--John Aldous, the super-man.
There was no trace of fear in his face as he went to her. He was even
smiling in that ghostly glow of the lantern.

"It is hard work, Joanne."

She did not seem to hear what he had said. She was looking at his hands.
She held the lantern nearer.

"Your hands are bleeding, John!"

It was the first time she had spoken his name like that, and he was
thrilled by the calmness of her voice, the untrembling gentleness of her
hand as it touched his hand. From his bruised and bleeding flesh she raised
her eyes to him, and they were no longer the dumb, horrified eyes he had
gazed into fifteen minutes before. In the wonder of it he stood silent, and
the moment was weighted with an appalling silence.

It came to them both in that instant--the _tick-tick-tick_ of the watch in
his pocket!

Without taking her eyes from his face she asked:

"What time is it. John?"

"Joanne----"

"I am not afraid," she whispered. "I was afraid this afternoon, but I am
not afraid now. What time is it, John?"

"My God--they'll dig us out!" he cried wildly. "Joanne, you don't think
they won't dig us out, do you? Why, that's impossible! The slide has
covered the wires. They've got to dig us out! There is no danger--none at
all. Only it's chilly, and uncomfortable, and I'm afraid you'll take cold!"

"What time is it?" she repeated softly.

For a moment he looked steadily at her, and his heart leaped when he saw
that she must believe him, for though her face was as white as an ivory
cross she was smiling at him--yes! she was smiling at him in that gray and
ghastly death-gloom of the cavern!

He brought out his watch, and in the lantern-glow they looked at it.

"A quarter after three," he said. "By four o'clock they will be at
work--Blackton and twenty men. They will have us out in time for supper."

"A quarter after three," repeated Joanne, and the words came steadily from
her lips. "That means----"

He waited.

"_We have forty-five minutes in which to live!_" she said.

Before he could speak she had thrust the lantern into his hand, and had
seized his other hand in both her own.

"If there are only forty-five minutes let us not lie to one another," she
said, and her voice was very close. "I know why you are doing it, John
Aldous. It is for me. You have done a great deal for me in these two days
in which one 'can be born, and live, and die.' But in these last minutes
I do not want you to act what I know cannot be the truth. You know--and I
know. The wires are laid to the battery rock. There is no hope. At four
o'clock--we both know what will happen. And I--am not afraid."

She heard him choking for speech. In a moment he said:

"There are other lanterns--Joanne. I saw them when I was looking for the
scarf. I will light them."

He found two lanterns hanging against the rock wall. He lighted them, and
the half-burned candle.

"It is pleasanter," she said.

She stood in the glow of them when he turned to her, tall, and straight,
and as beautiful as an angel. Her lips were pale; the last drop of blood
had ebbed from her face; but there was something glorious in the poise of
her head, and in the wistful gentleness of her mouth and the light in her
eyes. And then, slowly, as he stood looking with a face torn in its agony
for her, she held out her arms.

"John--John Aldous----"

"Joanne! Oh, my God!--Joanne!"

She swayed as he sprang to her, but she was smiling--smiling in that new
and wonderful way as her arms reached out to him, and the words he heard
her say came low and sobbing:

"John--John, if you want to, now--you can tell me that my hair is
beautiful!"

And then she was in his arms, her warm, sweet body crushed close to him,
her face lifted to him, her soft hands stroking his face, and over and over
again she was speaking his name while from out of his soul there rushed
forth the mighty flood of his great love; and he held her there, forgetful
of time now, forgetful of death itself; and he kissed her tender lips, her
hair, her eyes--conscious only that in the hour of death he had found life,
that her hands were stroking his face, and caressing his hair, and that
over and over again she was whispering sobbingly his name, and that she
loved him. The pressure of her hands against his breast at last made him
free her. And now, truly, she was glorious. For the triumph of love had
overridden the despair of death, and her face was flooded with its colour
and in her eyes was its glory.

And then, as they stood there, a step between them, there came--almost like
the benediction of a cathedral bell--the soft, low tinkling chime of the
half-hour bell in Aldous' watch!

It struck him like a blow. Every muscle in him became like rigid iron, and
his torn hands clenched tightly at his sides.

"Joanne--Joanne, it is impossible!" he cried huskily, and he had her close
in his arms again, even as her face was whitening in the lantern-glow. "I
have lived for you, I have waited for you--all these years you have been
coming, coming, coming to me--and now that you are mine--_mine_--it is
impossible! It cannot happen----"

He freed her again, and caught up a lantern. Foot by foot he examined the
packed tunnel. It was solid--not a crevice or a break through which might
have travelled the sound of his voice or the explosion of a gun. He did not
shout. He knew that it would be hopeless, and that his voice would be
terrifying in that sepulchral tomb. Was it possible that there might be
some other opening--a possible exit--in that mountain wall? With the
lantern in his hand he searched. There was no break. He came back to
Joanne. She was standing where he had left her. And suddenly, as he looked
at her, all fear went out of him, and he put down the lantern and went to
her.

"Joanne," he whispered, holding her two hands against his breast, "you are
not afraid?"

"No, I am not afraid."

"And you know----"

"Yes, I know," and she leaned forward so that her head lay partly against
their clasped hands and partly upon his breast.

"And you love me, Joanne?"

"As I never dreamed that I should love a man, John Aldous," she whispered.

"And yet it has been but two days----"

"And I have lived an eternity," he heard her lips speak softly.

"You would be my wife?"

"Yes."

"To-morrow?"

"If you wanted me then, John."

"I thank God," he breathed in her hair. "And you would come to me without
reservation, Joanne, trusting me, believing in me--you would come to me
body, and heart, and soul?"

"In all those ways--yes."

"I thank God," he breathed again.

He raised her face. He looked deep into her eyes, and the glory of her love
grew in them, and her lips trembled as she lifted them ever so little for
him to kiss.

"Oh, I was happy--so happy," she whispered, putting her hands to his face.
"John, I knew that you loved me, and oh! I was fighting so hard to keep
myself from letting you know how happy it made me. And here, I was afraid
you wouldn't tell me--before it happened. And John--John----"

She leaned back from him, and her white hands moved like swift shadows in
her hair, and then, suddenly, it billowed about her--her glorious
hair--covering her from crown to hip; and with her hands she swept and
piled the lustrous masses of it over him until his face, and head, and
shoulders were buried in the flaming sheen and sweet perfume of it.

He strained her closer. Through the warm richness of her tresses his lips
pressed her lips, and they ceased to breathe. And up to their ears,
pounding through that enveloping shroud of her hair came the
_tick-tick-tick_ of the watch in his pocket.

"Joanne," he whispered.

"Yes, John."

"You are not afraid of--death?"

"No, not when you are holding me like this, John."

He still clasped her hands, and a sweet smile crept over her lips.

"Even now you are splendid," she said. "Oh, I would have you that way, my
John!"

Again they stood up in the unsteady glow of the lanterns.

"What time is it?" she asked.

He drew out his watch, and as they both looked his blood ran cold.

"Twelve minutes," she murmured, and there was not a quiver in her voice.
"Let us sit down, John--you on this box, and I on the floor, at your
feet--like this."

He seated himself on the box, and Joanne nestled herself at his knees, her
hands clasped in his.

"I think, John," she said softly, "that very, very often we would have
visited like this--you and I--in the evening."

A lump choked him, and he could not answer.

"I would very often have come and perched myself at your feet like this."

"Yes, yes, my beloved."

"And you would always have told me how beautiful my hair was--always. You
would not have forgotten that, John--or have grown tired?"

"No, no--never!"

His arms were about her. He was drawing her closer.

"And we would have had beautiful times together, John--writing, and going
adventuring, and--and----"

He felt her trembling, throbbing, and her arms tightened about him.

And now, again up through the smother of her hair, came the
_tick-tick-tick_ of his watch.

He felt her fumbling at his watch pocket, and in a moment she was holding
the timepiece between them, so that the light of the lantern fell on the
face of it.

"It is three minutes of four, John."

The watch slipped from her fingers, and now she drew herself up so that her
arms were about his neck, and their faces touched.

"Dear John, you love me?"

"So much that even now, in the face of death, I am happy," he whispered.
"Joanne, sweetheart, we are not going to be separated. We are
going--together. Through all eternity it must be like this--you and I,
together. Little girl, wind your hair about me--tight!"

"There--and there--and there, John! I have tied you to me, and you are
buried in it! Kiss me, John----"

And then the wild and terrible fear of a great loneliness swept through
him. For Joanne's voice had died away in a whispering breath, and the lips
he kissed did not kiss him back, and her body lay heavy, heavy, heavy in
his arms. Yet in his loneliness he thanked God for bringing her oblivion in
these last moments, and with his face crushed to hers he waited. For he
knew that it was no longer a matter of minutes, but of seconds, and in
those seconds he prayed, until up through the warm smother of her
hair--with the clearness of a tolling bell--came the sound of the little
gong in his watch striking the Hour of Four!

In space other worlds might have crumbled into ruin; on earth the stories
of empires might have been written and the lives of men grown old in those
first century-long seconds in which John Aldous held his breath and waited
after the chiming of the hour-bell in the watch on the cavern floor. How
long he waited he did not know; how closely he was crushing Joanne to his
breast he did not realize. Seconds, minutes, and other minutes--and his
brain ran red in dumb, silent madness. And the watch! It _ticked, ticked,
ticked!_ It was like a hammer.

He had heard the sound of it first coming up through her hair. But it was
not in her hair now. It was over him, about him--it was no longer a
ticking, but a throb, a steady, jarring, beating throb. It grew louder,
and the air stirred with it. He lifted his head. With the eyes of a madman
he stared--and listened. His arms relaxed from about Joanne, and she
slipped crumpled and lifeless to the floor. He stared--and that steady
_beat-beat-beat_--a hundred times louder than the ticking of a
watch--pounded in his brain. Was he mad? He staggered to the choked mouth
of the tunnel, and then there fell shout upon shout, and shriek upon shriek
from his lips, and twice, like a madman now, he ran back to Joanne and
caught her up in his arms, calling and sobbing her name, and then
shouting--and calling her name again. She moved; her eyes opened, and like
one gazing upon the spirit of the dead she looked into the face of John
Aldous, a madman's face in the lantern-glow.

"John--John----"

She put up her hands, and with a cry he ran with her in his arms to the
choked tunnel.

"Listen! Listen!" he cried wildly. "Dear God in Heaven, Joanne--can you not
hear them? It's Blackton--Blackton and his men! Hear--hear the rock-hammers
smashing! Joanne--Joanne--we are saved!"

She did not sense him. She swayed, half on her feet, half in his arms, as
consciousness and reason returned to her. Dazedly her hands went to his
face in their old, sweet way. Aldous saw her struggling to understand--to
comprehend; and he kissed her soft upturned lips, fighting back the
excitement that made him want to raise his voice again in wild and joyous
shouting.

"It is Blackton!" he said over and over again. "It is Blackton and his men!
Listen!--you can hear their picks and the pounding of their rock-hammers!"




CHAPTER XX


At last Joanne realized that the explosion was not to come, that Blackton
and his men were working to save them. And now, as she listened with him,
her breath began to come in sobbing excitement between her lips--for there
was no mistaking that sound, that steady _beat-beat-beat_ that came from
beyond the cavern wall and seemed to set strange tremors stirring in the
air about their ears. For a few moments they stood stunned and silent, as
if not yet quite fully comprehending that they had come from out of the pit
of death, and that men were fighting for their rescue. They asked
themselves no questions--why the "coyote" had not been fired? how those
outside knew they were in the cavern. And, as they listened, there came to
them a voice. It was faint, so faint that it seemed to whisper to them
through miles and miles of space--yet they knew that it was a voice!

"Some one is shouting," spoke Aldous tensely. "Joanne, my darling, stand
around the face of the wall so flying rock will not strike you and I will
answer with my pistol!"

When he had placed her in safety from split lead and rock chips, he drew
his automatic and fired it close up against the choked tunnel. He fired
five times, steadily, counting three between each shot, and then he placed
his ear to the mass of stone and earth and listened. Joanne slipped to him
like a shadow. Her hand sought his, and they held their breaths. They no
longer heard sounds--nothing but the crumbling and falling of dust and
pebbles where the bullets had struck, and their own heart-beats. The picks
and rock-hammers had ceased.

Tighter and tighter grew the clasp of Joanne's fingers, and a terrible
thought flashed into John's brain. Perhaps a, rock from the slide had cut a
wire, and they had found the wire--had repaired it! Was that thought in
Joanne's mind, too? Her finger-nails pricked his flesh. He looked at her.
Her eyes were closed, and her lips were tense and gray. And then her eyes
shot open--wide and staring. They heard, faintly though it came to
them--once, twice, three times, four, five--the firing of a gun!

John Aldous straightened, and a great breath fell from his lips.

"Five times!" he said. "It is an answer. There is no longer doubt."

He was holding out his arms to her, and she came into them with a choking
cry; and now she sobbed like a little child with her head against his
breast, and for many minutes he held her close, kissing her wet face, and
her damp hair, and her quivering lips, while the beat of the picks and the
crash of the rock-hammers came steadily nearer.

Where those picks and rock-hammers fell a score of men were working like
fiends: Blackton, his arms stripped to the shoulders; Gregg, sweating and
urging the men; and among them--lifting and tearing at the rock like a
madman--old Donald MacDonald, his shirt open, his great hands bleeding, his
hair and beard tossing about him in the wind. Behind them, her hands
clasped to her breast--crying out to them to hurry, _hurry_--stood Peggy
Blackton. The strength of five men was in every pair of arms. Huge boulders
were rolled back. Men pawed earth and shale with their naked hands.
Rock-hammers fell with blows that would have cracked the heart of a granite
obelisk. Half an hour--three quarters--and Blackton came back to where
Peggy was standing, his face black and grimed, his arms red-seared where
the edges of the rocks had caught them, his eyes shining.

"We're almost there, Peggy," he panted. "Another five minutes and----"

A shout interrupted him. A cloud of dust rolled out of the mouth of the
tunnel, and into that dust rushed half a dozen men led by old Donald.
Before the dust had settled they began to reappear, and with a shrill
scream Peggy Blackton darted forward and flung her arms about the
gold-shrouded figure of Joanne, swaying and laughing and sobbing in the
sunshine. And old Donald, clasping his great arms about Aldous, cried
brokenly:

"Oh, Johnny, Johnny--something told me to foller ye--an' I was just in
time--just in time to see you go into the coyote!"

"God bless you, Mac!" said Aldous, and then Paul Blackton was wringing his
hands; and one after another the others shook his hand, but Peggy Blackton
was crying like a baby as she hugged Joanne in her arms.

"MacDonald came just in time," explained Blackton a moment later; and he
tried to speak steadily, and tried to smile. "Ten minutes more, and----"

He was white.

"Now that it has turned out like this I thank God that it happened, Paul,"
said Aldous, for the engineer's ears alone. "We thought we were facing
death, and so--I told her. And in there, on our knees, we pledged ourselves
man and wife. I want the minister--as quick as you can get him, Blackton.
Don't say anything to Joanne, but bring him to the house right away, will
you?"

"Within half an hour," replied Blackton. "There comes Tony with the
buckboard. We'll hustle up to the house and I'll have the preacher there in
a jiffy."

As they went to the wagon, Aldous looked about for MacDonald. He had
disappeared. Requesting Gregg to hunt him up and send him to the bungalow,
he climbed into the back seat, with Joanne between him and Peggy. Her
little hand lay in his. Her fingers clung to him. But her hair hid her
face, and on the other side of her Peggy Blackton was laughing and talking
and crying by turns.

As they entered the bungalow, Aldous whispered to Joanne:

"Will you please go right to your room, dear? I want to say something to
you--alone."

When she went up the stair, Peggy caught a signal from her husband. Aldous
remained with them. In two minutes he told the bewildered and finally
delighted Peggy what was going to happen, and as Blackton hustled out for
the minister's house he followed Joanne. She had fastened her door behind
her. He knocked. Slowly she opened it.

"John----"

"I have told them, dear," he whispered happily. "They understand. And,
Joanne, Paul Blackton will be back in ten minutes--with the minister. Are
you glad?"

She had opened the door wide, and he was heading out his arms to her again.
For a moment she did not move, but stood there trembling a little, and
deeper and sweeter grew the colour in her face, and tenderer the look in
her eyes.

"I must brush my hair," she answered, as though she could think of no other
words. "I--I must dress."

Laughing joyously, he went to her and gathered the soft masses of her hair
in his hands, and piled it up in a glorious disarray about her face and
head, holding it there, and still laughing into her eyes.

"Joanne, you are mine!"

"Unless I have been dreaming--I am, John Aldous!"

"Forever and forever."

"Yes, forever--and ever."

"And because I want the whole world to know, we are going to be married by
a minister."

She was silent.

"And as my wife to be," he went on, his voice trembling with his happiness,
"you must obey me!"

"I think that I shall, John."

"Then you will not brush your hair, and you will not change your dress, and
you will not wash the dust from your face and that sweet little beauty-spot
from the tip of your nose," he commanded, and now he drew her head close to
him, so that he whispered, half in her hair: "Joanne, my darling, I want
you _wholly_ as you came to me there, when we thought we were going to die.
It was there you promised to become my wife, and I want you as you were
then--when the minister comes."

"John, I think I hear some one coming up the front steps!"

They listened. The door opened. They heard voices--Blackton's voice,
Peggy's voice, and another voice--a man's voice.

Blackton's voice came up to them very distinctly.

"Mighty lucky, Peggy," he said. "Caught Mr. Wollaver just as he was passing
the house. Where's----"

"Sh-h-hh!" came Peggy Blackton's sibilant whisper.

Joanne's hands had crept to John's face.

"I think," she said, "that it is the minister, John."

Her warm lips were near, and he kissed them.

"Come, Joanne. We will go down."

Hand in hand they went down the stair; and when the minister saw Joanne,
covered in the tangle and glory of her hair; and when he saw John Aldous,
with half-naked arms and blackened face; and when, with these things, he
saw the wonderful joy shining in their eyes, he stood like one struck dumb
at sight of a miracle descending out of the skies. For never had Joanne
looked more beautiful than in this hour, and never had man looked more like
entering into paradise than John Aldous.

Short and to the point was the little mountain minister's service, and when
he had done he shook hands with them, and again he stared at them as they
went back up the stair, still hand in hand. At her door they stopped. There
were no words to speak now, as her heart lay against his heart, and her
lips against his lips. And then, after those moments, she drew a little
back, and there came suddenly that sweet, quivering, joyous play of her
lips as she said:

"And now, my husband, may I dress my hair?"

"My hair," he corrected, and let her go from his arms.

Her door closed behind her. A little dizzily he turned to his room. His
hand was on the knob when he heard her speak his name. She had reopened her
door, and stood with something in her hand, which she was holding toward
him. He went back, and she gave him a photograph.

"John, you will destroy this," she whispered. "It is his
photograph--Mortimer FitzHugh's. I brought it to show to people, that it
might help me in my search. Please--destroy it!"

He returned to his room and placed the photograph on his table. It was
wrapped in thin paper, and suddenly there came upon him a most compelling
desire to see what Mortimer FitzHugh had looked like in life. Joanne would
not care. Perhaps it would be best for him to know.

He tore off the paper. And as he looked at the picture the hot blood in his
veins ran cold. He stared--stared as if some wild and maddening joke was
being played upon his faculties. A cry rose to his lips and broke in a
gasping breath, and about him the floor, the world itself, seemed slipping
away from under his feet.

For the picture he held in his hand was the picture of Culver Rann!




CHAPTER XXI


For a minute, perhaps longer, John Aldous stood staring at the photograph
which he held in his hand. It was the picture of Culver Rann--not once did
he question that fact, and not once did the thought flash upon him that
this might be only an unusual and startling resemblance. It was assuredly
Culver Rann! The picture dropped from his hand to the table, and he went
toward the door. His first impulse was to go to Joanne. But when he reached
the door he locked it, and dropped into a chair, facing the mirror in his
dresser.

The reflection of his own face was a shock to him. If he was pale, the dust
and grime of his fight in the cavern concealed his pallor. But the face
that stared at him from out of the glass was haggard, wildly and almost
grotesquely haggard, and he turned from it with a grim laugh, and set his
jaws hard. He returned to the table, and bit by bit tore the photograph
into thin shreds, and then piled the shreds on his ash-tray and burned
them. He opened a window to let out the smoke and smell of charring paper,
and the fresh, cool air of early evening struck his face. He could look off
through the fading sunshine of the valley and see the mountain where Coyote
Number Twenty-eight was to have done its work, and as he looked he gripped
the window-sill so fiercely that the nails of his fingers were bent and
broken against the wood. And in his brain the same words kept repeating
themselves over and over again. Mortimer FitzHugh was not dead. He was
alive. He was Culver Rann. And Joanne--Joanne was not _his_ wife; she was
still the wife of Mortimer FitzHugh--of Culver Rann!

He turned again to the mirror, and there was another look in his face. It
was grim, terribly grim--and smiling. There was no excitement, nothing of
the passion and half-madness with which he had faced Quade and Rann the
night before. He laughed softly, and his nails dug as harshly into the
palms of his hands as they had dug into the sills of the window.

"You poor, drivelling, cowardly fool!" he said to his reflection. "And you
dare to say--you dare to _think_ that she is not your wife?"

As if in reply to his words there came a knock at the door, and from the
hall Blackton called:

"Here's MacDonald, Aldous. He wants to see you."

Aldous opened the door and the old hunter entered.

"If I ain't interruptin' you, Johnny----"

"You're the one man in the world I want to see, Mac. No, I'll take that
back; there's one other I want to see worse than you--Culver Rann."

The strange look in his face made old Donald stare.

"Sit down," he said, drawing two chairs close to the table. "There's
something to talk about. It was a terribly close shave, wasn't it?"

"An awful close shave, Johnny. As close a shave as ever was."

Still, as if not quite understanding what he saw, old Donald was staring
into John's face.

"I'm glad it happened," said Aldous, and his voice became softer. "She
loves me, Mac. It all came out when we were in there, and thought we were
going to die. Not ten minutes ago the minister was here, and he made us man
and wife."

Words of gladness that sprang to the old man's lips were stopped by that
strange, cold, tense look in the face of John Aldous.

"And in the last five minutes," continued Aldous, as quietly as before, "I
have learned that Mortimer FitzHugh, her husband, is not dead. Is it very
remarkable that you do not find me happy, Mac? If you had come a few
minutes ago----"

"Oh, my God! Johnny! Johnny!"

MacDonald had pitched forward over the table, and now he bowed his great
shaggy head in his hands, and his gaunt shoulders shook as his voice came
brokenly through his beard.

"I did it, Johnny; I did it for you an' her! When I knew what it would mean
for her--I _couldn't_, Johnny, I couldn't tell her the truth, 'cause I knew
she loved you, an' you loved her, an' it would break her heart. I thought
it would be best, an' you'd go away together, an' nobody would ever know,
an' you'd be happy. I didn't lie. I didn't say anything. But
Johnny--Johnny, _there weren't no bones in the grave!_"

"My God!" breathed Aldous.

"There were just some clothes," went on MacDonald huskily, "an' the watch
an' the ring were on top. Johnny, there weren't nobody ever buried there,
an' I'm to blame--I'm to blame."

"And you did that for us," cried Aldous, and suddenly he reached over and
gripped old Donald's hands. "It wasn't a mistake, Mac. I thank God you kept
silent. If you had told her that the grave was empty, that it was a fraud,
I don't know what would have happened. And now--she is _mine!_ If she had
seen Culver Rann, if she had discovered that this scoundrel, this
blackmailer and murderer, was Mortimer FitzHugh, her husband----"

"Johnny! John Aldous!"

Donald MacDonald's voice came now like the deep growling roar of a
she-bear, and as he cried the other's name he sprang to his feet, and his
eyes gleamed in their deep sockets like raging fires.

"Johnny!"

Aldous rose, and he was smiling. He nodded.

"That's it," he said. "Mortimer FitzHugh is Culver Rann!"

"An'--an' you know this?"

"Absolutely. Joanne gave me Mortimer FitzHugh's photograph to destroy. I am
sorry that I burned it before you saw it. But there is no doubt. Mortimer
FitzHugh and Culver Rann are the same man."

Slowly the old mountaineer turned to the door. Aldous was ahead of him, and
stood with his hand on the knob.

"I don't want you to go yet, Mac."

"I--I'll see you a little later," said Donald clumsily.

"Donald!"

"Johnny!"

For a full half minute they looked steadily into each other's eyes.

"Only a week, Johnny," pleaded Donald. "I'll be back in a week."

"You mean that you will kill him?"

"He'll never come back. I swear it, Johnny!"

As gently as he might have led Joanne, Aldous drew the mountaineer back to
the chair.

"That would be cold-blooded murder," he said, "and I would be the murderer.
I can't send you out to do my killing, Mac, as I might send out a hired
assassin. Don't you see that I can't? Good heaven, some day--very soon--I
will tell you how this hound, Mortimer FitzHugh, poisoned Joanne's life,
and did his worst to destroy her. It's to me he's got to answer, Donald.
And to me he shall answer. I am going to kill him. But it will not be
murder. Since you have come into this room I have made my final plan, and I
shall follow it to the end coolly and deliberately. It will be a great
game, Mac--and it will be a fair game; and I shall play it happily, because
Joanne will not know, and I will be strengthened by her love.

"Quade wants my life, and tried to hire Stevens, up at Miette, to kill me.
Culver Rann wants my life; a little later it will come to be the greatest
desire of his existence to have me dead and out of the way. I shall give
him the chance to do the killing, Mac. I shall give him a splendid chance,
and he will not fail to accept his opportunity. Perhaps he will have an
advantage, but I am as absolutely certain of killing him as I am that the
sun is going down behind the mountains out there. If others should step
in, if I should have more than Culver Rann on my hands--why, then you may
deal yourself a hand if you like, Donald. It may be a bigger game than One
against One."

"It will," rumbled MacDonald. "I learned other things early this afternoon,
Johnny. Quade did not stay behind. He went with Rann. DeBar and the woman
are with them, and two other men. They went over the Lone Cache Pass, and
this minute are hurrying straight for the headwaters of the Parsnip. There
are five of 'em--five men."

"And we are two," smiled Aldous. "So there _is_ an advantage on their side,
isn't there, Mac? And it makes the game most eminently fair, doesn't it?"

"Johnny, we're good for the five!" cried old Donald in a low, eager voice.
"If we start now----"

"Can you have everything ready by morning?"

"The outfit's waiting. It's ready now, Johnny."

"Then we'll leave at dawn. I'll come to you to-night in the coulee, and
we'll make our final plans. My brain is a little muddled now, and I've got
to clear it, and make myself presentable before supper. We must not let
Joanne know. She must suspect nothing--absolutely nothing."

"Nothing," repeated MacDonald as he went to the door.

There he paused and, hesitating for a moment, leaned close to Aldous, and
said in a low voice:

"Johnny, I've been wondering why the grave were empty. I've been wondering
why there weren't somebody's bones there just t' give it the look it should
'a' had an' why the clothes were laid out so nicely with the watch an' the
ring on top!"

With that he was gone, and Aldous closed and relocked the door.

He was amazed at his own composure as he washed himself and proceeded to
dress for supper. What had happened had stunned him at first, had even
terrified him for a few appalling moments. Now he was superbly
self-possessed. He asked himself questions and answered them with a
promptness which left no room for doubt in his mind as to what his actions
should be. One fact he accepted as absolute: Joanne belonged to him. She
was his wife. He regarded her as that, even though Mortimer FitzHugh was
alive. In the eyes of both God and man FitzHugh no longer had a claim upon
her. This man, who was known as Culver Rann, was worse than Quade, a
scoundrel of the first water, a procurer, a blackmailer, even a
murderer--though he had thus far succeeded in evading the rather loose and
poorly working tentacles of mountain law.

Not for an instant did he think of Joanne as Culver Rann's wife. She was
_his_ wife. It was merely a technicality of the law--a technicality that
Joanne might break with her little finger--that had risen now between them
and happiness. And it was this that he knew was the mountain in his path,
for he was certain that Joanne would not break that last link of bondage.
She would know, with Mortimer FitzHugh alive, that the pledge between them
in the "coyote," and the marriage ceremony in the room below, meant
nothing. Legally, she was no more to him now than she was yesterday, or the
day before. And she would leave him, even if it destroyed her, heart and
soul. He was sure of that. For years she had suffered her heart to be
ground out of her because of the "bit of madness" that was in her, because
of that earlier tragedy in her life--and her promise, her pledge to her
father, her God, and herself. Without arguing a possible change in her
because of her love for him, John Aldous accepted these things. He believed
that if he told Joanne the truth he would lose her.

His determination not to tell her, to keep from her the secret of the grave
and the fact that Mortimer FitzHugh was alive, grew stronger in him with
each breath that he drew. He believed that it was the right thing to do,
that it was the honourable and the only thing to do. Now that the first
shock was over, he did not feel that he had lost Joanne, or that there was
a very great danger of losing her. For a moment it occurred to him that he
might turn the law upon Culver Rann, and in the same breath he laughed at
this absurdity. The law could not help him. He alone could work out his own
and Joanne's salvation. And what was to happen must happen very soon--up in
the mountains. When it was all over, and he returned, he would tell Joanne.

His heart beat more quickly as he finished dressing. In a few minutes more
he would be with Joanne, and in spite of what had happened, and what might
happen, he was happy. Yesterday he had dreamed. To-day was reality--and it
was a glorious reality. Joanne belonged to him. She loved him. She was his
wife, and when he went to her it was with the feeling that only a serpent
lay in the path of their paradise--a serpent which he would crush with as
little compunction as that serpent would have destroyed her. Utterly and
remorselessly his mind was made up.

The Blacktons' supper hour was five-thirty, and he was a quarter of an hour
late when he tapped at Joanne's door. He felt the warmth of a strange and
delightful embarrassment flushing his face as the door opened, and she
stood before him. In her face, too, was a telltale riot of colour which the
deep tan partly concealed in his own.

"I--I am a little late, am I not, Joanne?" he asked.

"You are, sir. If you have taken all this time dressing you are worse than
a woman. I have been waiting fifteen minutes!"

"Old Donald came to see me," he apologized. "Joanne----"

"You mustn't, John!" she expostulated in a whisper. "My face is afire now!
You mustn't kiss me again--until after supper----"

"Only once," he pleaded.

"If you will promise--just once----"

A moment later she gasped:

"Five times! John Aldous, I will never believe you again as long as I
live!"

They went down to the Blacktons, and Peggy and Paul, who were busy over
some growing geraniums in the dining-room window, faced about with a forced
and incongruous appearance of total oblivion to everything that had
happened. It lasted less than ten seconds. Joanne's lips quivered. Aldous
saw the two little dimples at the corners of her mouth fighting to keep
themselves out of sight--and then he looked at Peggy. Blackton could stand
it no longer, and grinned broadly.

"For goodness sake go to it, Peggy!" he laughed. "If you don't you'll
explode!"

The next moment Peggy and Joanne were in each other's arms, and the two men
were shaking hands.

"We know just how you feel," Blackton tried to explain. "We felt just like
you do, only we had to face twenty people instead of two. And you're not
hungry. I'll wager that. I'll bet you don't feel like swallowing a
mouthful. It had that peculiar effect on us, didn't it, Peggy?"

"And I--I almost choked myself," gurgled Peggy as they took their places at
the table. "There really did seem to be something thick in my throat,
Joanne, dear. I coughed and coughed and coughed before all those people
until I wanted to die right there! And I'm wondering----"

"If I'm going to choke, too?" smiled Joanne. "Indeed not, Peggy. I'm as
hungry as a bear!"

And now she did look glorious and self-possessed to Aldous as she sat
opposite him at that small round table, which was just fitted for four. He
told her so when the meal was finished, and they were following the
Blacktons into the front room. Blackton had evidently been carefully
drilled along the line of a certain scheme which Peggy had formed, for in
spite of a negative nod from her, which signified that he was to wait a
while, he pulled out his watch, and said:

"It isn't at all surprising if you people have forgotten that to-morrow is
Sunday. Peggy and I always do some Saturday-night shopping, and if you
don't mind, we'll leave you to care for the house while we go to town. We
won't be gone more than an hour."

A few minutes later, when the door had closed behind them, Aldous led
Joanne to a divan, and sat down beside her.

"I couldn't have arranged it better myself, dear," he exclaimed. "I have
been wondering how I could have you alone for a few minutes, and tell you
what is on my mind before I see MacDonald again to-night. I'm afraid you
will be displeased with me, Joanne. I hardly know how to begin. But--I've
got to."

A moment's uneasiness came into her eyes as she saw how seriously he was
speaking.

"You don't mean, John--there's more about Quade--and Culver Rann?"

"No, no--nothing like that," he laughed, as though amused at the absurdity
of her question. "Old Donald tells me they have skipped the country,
Joanne. It's not that. It's you I'm thinking of, and what you may think of
me a minute from now. Joanne, I've given my word to old Donald. He has
lived in my promise. I've got to keep that promise--I must go into the
North with him."

She had drawn one of his hands into her lap and was fondling it with her
own soft palm and fingers.

"Of course, you must, John. I love old Donald."

"And I must go--soon," he added.

"It is only fair to him that you should," she agreed.

"He--he is determined we shall go in the morning," he finished, keeping his
eyes from her.

For a moment Joanne did not answer. Her fingers interweaved with his, her
warm little palm stroked the rough back of his hand. Then she said, very
softly:

"And why do you think that will displease me, John, dear? I will be ready!"

"You!"

Her eyes were on him, full, and dark, and glowing, and in them were both
love and laughter.

"You dear silly John!" she laughed. "Why don't you come right out and tell
me to stay at home, instead of--of--'beating 'round the bush'--as Peggy
Blackton says? Only you don't know what a terrible little person you've
got, John. You really don't. So you needn't say any more. We'll start in
the morning--and I am going with you!"

In a flash John Aldous saw his whole scheme shaking on its foundation.

"It's impossible--utterly impossible!" he gasped.

"And why utterly?" she asked, bending her head so that her soft hair
touched his face and lips. "John, have you already forgotten what we said
in that terrible cavern--what we told ourselves we would have done if we
had lived? We were going adventuring, weren't we? And we are not dead--but
alive. And this will be a glorious trip! Why, John, don't you see, don't
you understand? It will be our honeymoon trip!"

"It will be a long, rough journey," he argued. "It will be hard--hard for a
woman."

With a little laugh, Joanne sprang up and stood before him in a glow of
light, tall, and slim, and splendid, and there was a sparkle of beautiful
defiance and a little of triumph in her eyes as she looked down on him.

"And it will be dangerous, too? You are going to tell me that?"

"Yes, it will be dangerous."

She came to him and rumpled up his hair, and turned his face up so that she
could look into his eyes.

"Is it worse than fever, and famine, and deep swamps, and crawling
jungles?" she asked. "Are we going to encounter worse things than beasts,
and poisonous serpents, and murderous savages--even hunger and thirst,
John? For many years we dared those together--my father and I. Are these
great, big, beautiful mountains more treacherous than those Ceylon jungles
from which you ran away--even you, John? Are they more terrible to live in
than the Great African Desert? Are your bears worse than tigers, your
wolves more terrible than lions? And if, through years and years, I faced
those things with my father, do you suppose that I want to be left behind
now, and by my husband?"

So sweet and wonderful was the sound of that name as it came softly from
her lips, that in his joy he forgot the part he was playing, and drew her
close down in his arms, and in that moment all that remained of the scheme
he had built for keeping her behind crumbled in ruin about him.

Yet in a last effort he persisted.

"Old Donald wants to travel fast--very fast, Joanne. I owe a great deal to
him. Even you I owe to him--for he saved us from the 'coyote.'"

"I am going, John."

"If we went alone we would be able to return very soon."

"I am going."

"And some of the mountains--it is impossible for a woman to climb them!"

"Then I will let you carry me up them, John. You are so strong----"

He groaned hopelessly.

"Joanne, won't you stay with the Blacktons, to please me?"

"No. I don't care to please you."

Her fingers were stroking his cheek.

"John?"

"Yes."

"Father taught me to shoot, and as we get better acquainted on our
honeymoon trip I'll tell you about some of my hunting adventures. I don't
like to shoot wild things, because I love them too well. But I can shoot.
And I want a gun!"

"Great Scott!"

"Not a toy--but a real gun," she continued. "A gun like yours. And then, if
by any chance we should have trouble--with Culver Rann----"

She felt him start, and her hands pressed harder against his face.

"Now I know," she whispered. "I guessed it all along. You told me that
Culver Rann and the others were after the gold. They've gone--and their
going isn't quite 'skipping the country' as you meant me to understand it,
John Aldous! So please let's not argue any more. If we do we may quarrel,
and that would be terrible. I'm going. And I will be ready in the morning.
And I want a gun. And I want you to be nice to me, and I want it to be our
honeymoon--even if it is going to be exciting!"

And with that she put her lips to his, and his last argument was gone.

Two hours later, when he went to the coulee, he was like one who had come
out of a strange and disturbing and altogether glorious dream. He had told
Joanne and the Blacktons that it was necessary for him to be with MacDonald
that night. Joanne's good-night kiss was still warm on his lips, the loving
touch of her hands still trembled on his face, and the sweet perfume of her
hair was in his nostrils. He was drunk with the immeasurable happiness that
had come to him, every fibre in him was aquiver with it--and yet, possessed
of his great joy, he was conscious of a fear; a fear that was new and
growing, and which made him glad when he came at last to the little fire in
the coulee.

He did not tell MacDonald the cause of this fear at first. He told the
story of Mortimer FitzHugh and Joanne, leaving no part of it unbared, until
he could see Donald MacDonald's great gaunt hands clenching in the
firelight, and his cavernous eyes flaming darkly through the gloom. Then he
told what had happened when the Blacktons went to town, and when he had
finished, and rose despairingly beside the fire, Donald rose, too, and his
voice boomed in a sort of ecstasy.

"My Jane would ha' done likewise," he cried in triumph. "She would that,
Johnny--she would!"

"But this is different!" groaned Aldous. "What am I going to do, Mac? What
can I do? Don't you see how impossible it is! Mac, Mac--she isn't my
wife--not entirely, not absolutely, not in the last and vital sense of
being a wife by law! If she knew the truth, she wouldn't consider herself
my wife; she would leave me. For that reason I can't take her. I can't.
Think what it would mean!"

Old Donald had come close to his side, and at the look in the gray old
mountaineer's face John Aldous paused. Slowly Donald laid his hands on his
shoulders.

"Johnny," he said gently, "Johnny, be you sure of yourself? Be you a man,
Johnny?"

"Good heaven, Donald. You mean----"

Their eyes met steadily.

"If you are, Johnny," went on MacDonald in a low voice, "I'd take her with
me. An' if you ain't, I'd leave these mount'ins to-night an' never look in
her sweet face again as long as I lived."

"You'd take her along?" demanded Aldous eagerly.

"I would. I've been thinkin' it over to-night. An' something seemed to tell
me we mustn't dare leave her here alone. There's just two things to do,
Johnny. You've got to stay with her an' let me go on alone or--you've got
to take her."

Slowly Aldous shook his head. He looked at his watch. It was a little after
ten.

"If I could make myself believe that she would not be safe here--I would
take her," he said. "But I can't quite make up my mind to that, Mac. She
will be in good hands with the Blacktons. I will warn Paul. Joanne is
determined to go, and I know she will think it pretty indecent to be told
emphatically that she can't go. But I've got to do it. I can't see----"

A break in the stillness of the night stopped him with the suddenness of a
bullet in his brain. It was a scream--a woman's scream, and there followed
it shriek after shriek, until the black forest trembled with the fear and
agony of the cries, and John Aldous stood as if suddenly stripped of the
power to move or act. Donald MacDonald roused him to life. With a roar in
his beard, he sprang forth into the darkness. And Aldous followed, a hot
sweat of fear in his blood where a moment before had been only a chill of
wonder and horror. For in Donald's savage beastlike cry he had caught
Joanne's name, and an answering cry broke from his own lips as he followed
the great gaunt form that was tearing with the madness of a wounded bear
ahead of him through the night.




CHAPTER XXII


Not until they had rushed up out of the coulee and had reached the pathlike
trail did the screaming cease. For barely an instant MacDonald paused, and
then ran on with a speed that taxed Aldous to keep up. When they came to
the little open amphitheatre in the forest MacDonald halted again. Their
hearts were thumping like hammers, and the old mountaineer's voice came
husky and choking when he spoke.

"It wasn't far--from here!" he panted.

Scarcely had he uttered the words when he sped on again. Three minutes
later they came to where the trail crossed the edge of a small
rock-cluttered meadow, and with a sudden spurt Aldous darted ahead of
MacDonald into this opening, where he saw two figures in the moonlight.
Half a dozen feet from them he stopped with a cry of horror. They were Paul
and Peggy Blackton! Peggy was dishevelled and sobbing, and was frantically
clutching at her husband. It was Paul Blackton who dragged the cry from his
lips. The contractor was swaying. He was hatless; his face was covered with
blood, and his eyes were only half open, as if he were fighting to pull
himself back into consciousness after a terrible blow. Peggy's hair was
down, her dress was torn at the throat, and she was panting so that for a
moment she could not speak.

"They've got--Joanne!" she cried then. "They went--there!"

She pointed, and Aldous ran where she pointed--into the timber on the far
side of the little meadow. MacDonald caught his arm as they ran.

"You go straight in," he commanded. "I'll swing--to right--toward
river----"

For two minutes after that Aldous tore straight ahead. Then for barely a
moment he stopped. He had not paused to question Peggy Blackton. His own
fears told him who Joanne's abductors were. They were men working under
instructions from Quade. And they could not be far away, for scarcely ten
minutes had passed since the first scream. He listened, and held his breath
so that the terrific beating of his heart would not drown the sound of
crackling brush. All at once the blood in him was frozen by a fierce yell.
It was MacDonald, a couple of hundred yards to his right, and after that
yell came the bellowing shout of his name.

"Johnny! Johnny! Oh, Johnny!"

He dashed in MacDonald's direction, and a few moments later heard the
crashing of bodies in the undergrowth. Fifty seconds more and he was in the
arena. MacDonald was fighting three men in a space over which the
spruce-tops grew thinly. The moon shone upon them as they swayed in a
struggling mass, and as Aldous sprang to the combat one of the three reeled
backward and fell as if struck by a battering-ram. In that same moment
MacDonald went down, and Aldous struck a terrific blow with the butt of his
heavy Savage. He missed, and the momentum of his blow carried him over
MacDonald. He tripped and fell. By the time he had regained his, feet the
two men had disappeared into the thick shadows of the spruce forest. Aldous
whirled toward the third man, whom he had seen fall. He, too, had
disappeared. A little lamely old Donald brought himself to his feet. He was
smiling.

"Now, what do 'ee think, Johnny?"

"Where is she? Where is Joanne?" demanded Aldous.

"Twenty feet behind you, Johnny, gagged an' trussed up nice as a whistle!
If they hadn't stopped to do that work you wouldn't ha' seen her ag'in,
Johnny--s'elp me, God, you wouldn't! They was hikin' for the river. Once
they had reached the Frazer, and a boat----"

He broke off to lead Aldous to a clump of dwarf spruce. Behind this, white
and still in the moonlight, but with eyes wide open and filled with horror,
lay Joanne. Hands and feet were bound, and a big handkerchief was tied over
her mouth. Twenty seconds later Aldous held her shivering and sobbing and
laughing hysterically by turns in his arms, while MacDonald's voice brought
Paul and Peggy Blackton to them. Blackton had recovered from the blow that
had dazed him. Over Joanne's head he stared at Aldous. And MacDonald was
staring at Blackton. His eyes were burning a little darkly.

"It's all come out right," he said, "but it ain't a special nice time o'
night to be taking a' evening walk in this locality with a couple o'
ladies!"

Blackton was still staring at Aldous, with Peggy clutching his arm as if
afraid of losing him.

It was Peggy who answered MacDonald.

"And it was a nice time of night for you to send a message asking us to
bring Joanne down the trail!" she cried, her voice trembling.

"We----" began Aldous, when he saw a sudden warning movement on MacDonald's
part, and stopped. "Let us take the ladies home," he said.

With Joanne clinging to him, he led the way. Behind them all MacDonald
growled loudly:

"There's got t' be something done with these damned beasts of furriners.
It's gettin' so no woman ain't safe at night!"

Twenty minutes later they reached the bungalow. Leaving Joanne and Peggy
inside, now as busily excited as two phoebe birds, and after Joanne had
insisted upon Aldous sleeping at the Blacktons' that night, the two men
accompanied MacDonald a few steps on his way back to camp.

As soon as they were out of earshot Blackton began cursing softly under his
breath.

"So you didn't send that damned note?" he asked. "You haven't said so, but
I've guessed you didn't send it!"

"No, we didn't send a note."

"And you had a reason--you and MacDonald--for not wanting the girls to know
the truth?"

"A mighty good reason," said Aldous. "I've got to thank MacDonald for
closing my mouth at the right moment. I was about to give it away. And now,
Blackton, I've got to confide in you. But before I do that I want your word
that you will repeat nothing of what I say to another person--even your
wife."

Blackton nodded.

"Go on," he said. "I've suspected a thing or two, Aldous. I'll give you my
word. Go on."

As briefly as possible, and without going deeply into detail, Aldous told
of Quade and his plot to secure possession of Joanne.

"And this is his work," he finished. "I've told you this, Paul, so that you
won't worry about Peggy. You can see from to-night's events that they were
not after her, but wanted Joanne. Joanne must not learn the truth. And your
wife must not know. I am going to settle with Quade. Just how and where and
when I'm going to settle with him I don't care to say now. But he's going
to answer to me. And he's going to answer soon."

Blackton whistled softly.

"A boy brought the note," he said. "He stood in the dark when he handed it
to me. And I didn't recognize any one of the three men who jumped out on
us. I didn't have much of a chance to fight, but if there's any one on the
face of the earth who has got it over Peggy when it comes to screaming, I'd
like to know her name! Joanne didn't have time to make a sound. But they
didn't touch Peggy until she began screaming, and then one of the men began
choking her. They had about laid me out with a club, so I was helpless.
Good God----"

He shuddered.

"They were river men," said MacDonald. "Probably some of Tomman's scow-men.
They were making for the river."

A few minutes later, when Aldous was saying good-night to MacDonald, the
old hunter said again, in a whisper:

"Now what do 'ee think, Johnny?"

"That you're right, Mac," replied Aldous in a low voice. "There is no
longer a choice. Joanne must go with us. You will come early?"

"At dawn, Johnny."

He returned to the bungalow with Blackton, and until midnight the lights
there burned brightly while the two men answered a thousand questions about
the night's adventure, and Aldous told of his and Joanne's plans for the
honeymoon trip into the North that was to begin the next day.

It was half-past twelve when be locked the door of his and sat down to
think.




CHAPTER XXIII


There was no doubt in the mind of John Aldous now. The attempt upon Joanne
left him but one course to pursue: he must take her with him, in spite of
the monumental objections which he had seen a few hours before. He realized
what a fight this would mean for him, and with what cleverness and resource
he must play his part. Joanne had not given herself to him as she had once
given herself to Mortimer FitzHugh. In the "coyote," when they had faced
death, she had told him that were there to be a to-morrow in life for them
she would have given herself to him utterly and without reservation. And
that to-morrow had dawned. It was present. She was his wife. And she had
come to him as she had promised. In her eyes he had seen love and trust and
faith--and a glorious happiness. She had made no effort to hide that
happiness from him. Consciousness of it filled him with his own great
happiness, and yet it made him realize even more deeply how hard his fight
was to be. She was his wife. In a hundred little ways she had shown him
that she was proud of her wifehood. And again he told himself that she had
come to him as she had promised, that she had given into his keeping all
that she had to give. And yet--_she was not his wife!_

He groaned aloud, and his fingers dug into the flesh of his knees as he
thought of that. Could he keep that terrible truth from her? If she went
with him into the North, would she not guess? And, even though he kept the
truth from her until Mortimer FitzHugh was dead, would he be playing fair
with her? Again he went over all that he had gone over before. He knew that
Joanne would leave him to-morrow, and probably forever, if he told her that
FitzHugh was alive. The law could not help him, for only death--and never
divorce--would free her. Within himself he decided for the last time. He
was about to do the one thing left for him to do. And it was the honourable
thing, for it meant freedom for her and happiness for them both. To him,
Donald MacDonald had become a man who lived very close to the heart and the
right of things, and Donald had said that he should take her. This was the
greatest proof that he was right.

But could he keep Joanne from guessing? Could he keep her from discovering
the truth until it was time for her to know that truth? In this necessity
of keeping her from suspecting that something was wrong he saw his greatest
fight. Compared with it, the final settlement with Quade and Mortimer
FitzHugh sank into a second importance. He knew what would happen then. But
Joanne--Joanne on the trail, as his wife----

He began pacing back and forth in his room, clouding himself in the smoke
of his pipe. Frequently Joanne's mind had filled him with an exquisite
delight by its quickness and at times almost magic perceptiveness, and he
realized that in these things, and the fineness of her woman's intuition,
now lay his greatest menace. He was sure that she understood the meaning of
the assault upon her that night, though she had apparently believed what
he and Blackton had told them--that it had been the attack of
irresponsible and drunken hoodlums. Yet he was certain that she had already
guessed that Quade had been responsible.

He went to bed, dreading what questions and new developments the morning
might bring forth. And when the morning came, he was both amazed and
delighted. The near tragedy of the previous night might never have happened
in so far as he could judge from Joanne's appearance. When she came out of
her room to meet him, in the glow of a hall lamp, her eyes were like stars,
and the colour in her cheeks was like that of a rose fresh from its slumber
in dew.

"I'm so happy, and what happened last night seems so like a bad dream," she
whispered, as he held her close to him for a few moments before descending
the stairs. "I shall worry about Peggy, John. I shall. I don't understand
how her husband dares to bring her among savages like these. You wouldn't
leave me among them, would you?" And as she asked the question, and his
lips pressed hers, John Aldous still believed that in her heart she knew
the truth of that night attack.

If she did know, she kept her secret from him all that day. They left Tête
Jaune before sunrise with an outfit which MacDonald had cut down to six
horses. Its smallness roused Joanne's first question, for Aldous had
described to her an outfit of twenty horses. He explained that a large
outfit made travel much more difficult and slow, but he did not tell her
that with six horses instead of twenty they could travel less
conspicuously, more easily conceal themselves from enemies, and, if
necessary, make quick flight or swift pursuit.

They stopped to camp for the night in a little basin that drew from Joanne
an exclamation of joy and wonder. They had reached the upper timber-line,
and on three sides the basin was shut in by treeless and brush-naked walls
of the mountains. In the centre of the dip was a lake fed by a tiny stream
that fell in a series of ribbonlike cataracts a sheer thousand feet from
the snow-peaks that towered above them. Small, parklike clumps of spruce
dotted the miniature valley; over it hung a sky as blue as sapphire and
under their feet was a carpet of soft grass sprayed with little blue
forget-me-nots and wild asters.

"I have never seen anything a half so beautiful as this!" cried Joanne, as
Aldous helped her from her horse.

As her feet touched the ground she gave a little cry and hung limply in his
arms.

"I'm lame--lame for life!" she laughed in mock humour. "John, I can't
stand. I really can't!"

Old Donald was chuckling in his beard as he came up.

"You ain't nearly so lame as you'll be to-morrow," he comforted her. "An'
you won't be nearly so lame to-morrow as you'll be next day. Then you'll
begin to get used to it, Mis' Joanne."

"_Mrs. Aldous_, Donald," she corrected sweetly. "Or--just Joanne."

At that Aldous found himself holding her so closely that she gave a little
gasp.

"Please don't," she expostulated. "Your arms are terribly strong, John!"

MacDonald had turned away, still chuckling, and began to unpack. Joanne
looked behind her, then quickly held up her softly pouted lips. Aldous
kissed her, and would have kissed her again but she slipped suddenly from
his arms and going to Pinto began to untie a dishpan that was fastened to
the top of his pack.

"Get to work, John Aldous!" she commanded.

MacDonald had camped before in the basin, and there were tepee poles ready
cut, as light and dry as matchwood. Joanne watched them as they put up the
tent, and when it was done, and she looked inside, she cried delightedly:

"It's the snuggest little home I ever had, John!"

After that she busied herself in a way that was a constantly growing
pleasure to him. She took possession at once of pots and pans and kettles.
She lost no time in impressing upon both Aldous and MacDonald the fact that
while she was their docile follower on the trail she was to be at the head
of affairs in camp. While they were straightening out the outfit, hobbling
the horses, and building a fire, she rummaged through the panniers and took
stock of their provisions. She bossed old Donald in a manner that made him
fairly glow with pleasure. She bared her white arms to the elbows and made
biscuits for the "reflector" instead of bannock, while Aldous brought water
from the lake, and MacDonald cut wood. Her cheeks were aflame. Her eyes
were laughing, joyous, happy. MacDonald seemed years younger. He obeyed her
like a boy, and once Aldous caught him looking at her in a way that set him
thinking again of those days of years and years ago, and of other camps,
and of another woman--like Joanne.

MacDonald had thought of this first camp--and there were porterhouse steaks
for supper, which he had brought packed in a kettle of ice. When they sat
down to the meal, Joanne was facing a distant snow-capped ridge that cut
the skyline, and the last of the sun, reflected from the face of the
mountain on the east, had set brown-and-gold fires aglow in her hair. They
were partly through when her eyes rested on the distant snow-ridge. Aldous
saw her looking steadily. Suddenly she pointed beyond him.

"I see something moving over the snow on that mountain!" she cried a little
excitedly. "It is hurrying toward the summit--just under the skyline! What
is it?"

Aldous and MacDonald looked toward the ridge. Fully a mile away, almost
even with the skyline now, a small dark object was moving over the white
surface of the snow.

"It ain't a goat," said MacDonald, "because a goat is white, and we
couldn't see it on the snow. It ain't a sheep, 'cause it's too dark, an'
movin' too slow. It must be a bear, but why in the name o' sin a bear would
be that high, I don't know!"

He jumped up and ran for his telescope.

"A grizzly," whispered Joanne tensely. "Would it be a grizzly, John?"

"Possibly," he answered. "Indeed, it's very likely. This is a grizzly
country. If we hurry you can get a look at him through the telescope."

MacDonald was already studying the object through his long glass when they
joined him.

"It's a bear," he said.

"Please--please let me look at him," begged Joanne.

The dark object was now almost on the skyline. Half A minute more and it
would pass over and out of sight. MacDonald still held his eye to the
telescope, as though he had not heard Joanne. Not until the moving object
had crossed the skyline, and had disappeared, did he reply to her.

"The light's bad, an' you couldn't have made him out very well," he said.
"We'll show you plenty o' grizzlies, an' so near you won't want a
telescope. Eh, Johnny?"

As he looked at Aldous there was a strange look in his eyes, and during the
remainder of the supper he was restless, and ate hurriedly. When he had
finished he rose and picked up his long rifle.

"There's sheep somewhere near this basin, Johnny," he explained. "An' I
reckon Joanne'll scold us if we don't keep her in fresh meat. I'm goin' to
bring in some mutton if there's any to be got, an' I probably won't be back
until after dark."

Aldous knew that he had more to say, and he went with him a few steps
beyond the camp.

And MacDonald continued in a low, troubled voice:

"Be careful, Johnny. Watch yo'rself. I'm going to take a look over into the
next valley, an' I won't be back until late. It wasn't a goat, an' it
wasn't a sheep, an' it wasn't a bear. It was two-legged! It was a man,
Johnny, an' he was there to watch this trail, or my name ain't Donald
MacDonald. Mebby he came ahead of us last night, an' mebby he was here
before that happened. Anyway, be on your guard while I look over into the
next range."

With that he struck off in the direction of the snow-ridge, and for a few
moments Aldous stood looking after the tall, picturesque figure until it
disappeared behind a clump of spruce. Swiftly he was telling himself that
it was not the hunting season, and that it was not a prospector whom they
had seen on the snow-ridge. As a matter of caution, there could be but one
conclusion to draw. The man had been stationed there either by Quade or
FitzHugh, or both, and had unwittingly revealed himself.

He turned toward Joanne, who had already begun to gather up the supper
things. He could hear her singing happily, and as he looked she pressed a
finger to her lips and threw a kiss to him. His heart smote him even as he
smiled and waved a hand in response. Then he went to her. How slim and
wonderful she looked in that glow of the setting sun, he thought. How white
and soft were her hands, how tender and fragile her lovely neck! And how
helpless--how utterly helpless she would be if anything happened to him and
MacDonald! With an effort he flung the thought from him. On his knees he
wiped the dishes and pots and pans for Joanne. When this was done, he
seized an axe and showed her how to gather a bed. This was a new and
delightful experience for Joanne.

"You always want to cut balsam boughs when you can get them," he explained,
pausing before two small trees. "Now, this is a cedar, and this is a
balsam. Notice how prickly and needlelike on all sides these cedar branches
are. And now look at the balsam. The needles lay flat and soft. Balsam
makes the best bed you can get in the North, except moss, and you've got to
dry the moss."

For fifteen minutes he clipped off the soft ends of the balsam limbs and
Joanne gathered them in her arms and carried them into the tepee. Then he
went in with her, and showed her how to make the bed. He made it a narrow
bed, and a deep bed, and he knew that Joanne was watching him, and he was
glad the tan hid the uncomfortable glow in his face when he had finished
tucking in the end of the last blanket.

"You will be as cozy as can be in that," he said.

"And you, John?" she asked, her face flushing rosily. "I haven't seen
another tent for you and Donald."

"We don't sleep in a tent during the summer," he said. "Just our
blankets--out in the open."

"But--if it should rain?"

"We get under a balsam or a spruce or a thick cedar."

A little later they stood beside the fire. It was growing dusk. The distant
snow-ridge was swiftly fading into a pale and ghostly sheet in the gray
gloom of the night. Up that ridge Aldous knew that MacDonald was toiling.

Joanne put her hands to his shoulders.

"Are you sorry--so very, very sorry that you let me come, John?"

"I didn't let you come," he laughed softly, drawing her to him. "You came!"

"And are you sorry?"

"No."

It was deliciously sweet to have her tilt up her head and put her soft lips
to his, and it was still sweeter when her tender hands stroked his cheeks,
and eyes and lips smiled their love and gladness. He stood stroking her
hair, with her face laying warm and close against him, and over her head he
stared into the thickening darkness of the spruce and cedar copses. Joanne
herself had piled wood on the fire, and in its glow they were dangerously
illuminated. With one of her hands she was still caressing his cheek.

"When will Donald return?" she asked.

"Probably not until late," he replied, wondering what it was that had set a
stone rolling down the side of the mountain nearest to them. "He hunted
until dark, and may wait for the moon to come up before he returns."

"John----"

"Yes, dear?----" And mentally he measured the distance to the nearest clump
of timber between them and the mountain.

"Let's build a big fire, and sit down on the pannier canvases."

His eyes were still on the timber, and he was wondering what a man with a
rifle, or even a pistol, might do at that space. He made a good target, and
MacDonald was probably several miles away.

"I've been thinking about the fire," he said. "We must put it out, Joanne.
There are reasons why we should not let it burn. For one thing, the smoke
will drive any game away that we may hope to see in the morning."

Her hands lay still against his cheek.

"I--understand, John," she replied quickly, and there was the smallest bit
of a shudder in her voice. "I had forgotten. We must put it out!"

Five minutes later only a few glowing embers remained where the fire had
been. He had spread out the pannier canvases, and now he seated himself
with his back to a tree. Joanne snuggled close to him.

"It is much nicer in the dark," she whispered, and her arms reached up
about him, and her lips pressed warm and soft against his hand. "Are you
just a little ashamed of me, John?"

"Ashamed? Good heaven----"

"Because," she interrupted him, "we have known each other such a very short
time, and I have allowed myself to become so very, very well acquainted
with you. It has all been so delightfully sudden, and strange, and I
am--just as happy as I can be. You don't think it is immodest for me to say
these things to my husband, John--even if I have only known him three
days?"

He answered by crushing her so closely in his arms that for a few moments
afterward she lay helplessly on his breast, gasping for breath. His brain
was afire with the joyous madness of possession. Never had woman come to
man more sweetly than Joanne had come to him, and as he felt her throbbing
and trembling against him he was ready to rise up and shout forth a
challenge to a hundred Quades and Culver Ranns hiding in the darkness of
the mountains. For a long time he held her nestled close in his arms, and
at intervals there were silences between them, in which they listened to
the glad tumult of their own hearts, and the strange silence that came to
them from out of the still night.

It was their first hour alone--of utter oblivion to all else but
themselves; to Joanne the first sacrament hour of her wifehood, to him the
first hour of perfect possession and understanding. In that hour their
souls became one, and when at last they rose to their feet, and the moon
came up over a crag of the mountain and flooded them in its golden light,
there was in Joanne's face a tenderness and a gentle glory that made John
Aldous think of an angel. He led her to the tepee, and lighted a candle
for her, and at the last, with the sweet demand of a child in the manner of
her doing it, she pursed up her lips to be kissed good-night.

And when he had tied the tent-flap behind her, he took his rifle and sat
down with it across his knees in the deep black shadow of a spruce, and
waited and listened for the coming of Donald MacDonald.




CHAPTER XXIV


For an hour after Joanne had gone into her tent Aldous sat silent and
watchful. From where he had concealed himself he could see over a part of
the moonlit basin, and guard the open space between the camp and the clump
of timber that lay in the direction of the nearest mountain. After Joanne
had blown out her candle the silence of the night seemed to grow deeper
about him. The hobbled horses had wandered several hundred yards away, and
only now and then could he hear the thud of a hoof, or the clank of a steel
shoe on rock. He believed that it was impossible for any one to approach
without ears and eyes giving him warning, and he felt a distinct shock when
Donald MacDonald suddenly appeared in the moonlight not twenty paces from
him. With an ejaculation of amazement he jumped to his feet and went to
him.

"How the deuce did you get here?" he demanded.

"Were you asleep, Johnny?"

"I was awake--and watching!"

The old hunter chuckled.

"It was so still when I come to those trees back there that I thought mebby
something had 'appened," he said.

"So, I sneaked up, Johnny."

"Did you see anything over the range?" asked Aldous anxiously.

"I found footprints in the snow, an' when I got to the top I smelled smoke,
but couldn't see a fire. It was dark then." MacDonald nodded toward the
tepee. "Is she asleep, Johnny?"

"I think so. She must be very tired."

They drew back into the shadow of the spruce. It was a simultaneous
movement of caution, and both, without speaking their thoughts, realized
the significance of it. Until now they had had no opportunity of being
alone since last night.

MacDonald spoke in a low, muffled voice:

"Quade an' Culver Rann are goin' the limit, Johnny," he said. "They left
men on the job at Tête Jaune, and they've got others watching us.
Consequently, I've hit on a scheme--a sort of simple and unreasonable
scheme, mebby, but an awful good scheme at times."

"What is it?"

"Whenever you see anything that ain't a bear, or a goat, or a sheep, don't
wait to change the time o' day--but shoot!" said MacDonald.

Aldous smiled grimly.

"If I had any ideas of chivalry, or what I call fair play, they were taken
out of me last night, Mac," he said. "I'm ready to shoot on sight!"

MacDonald grunted his satisfaction.

"They can't beat us if we do that, Johnny. They ain't even ordinary
cut-throats--they're sneaks in the bargain; an' if they could walk in our
camp, smilin' an' friendly, and brain us when our backs was turned, they'd
do it. We don't know who's with them, and if a stranger heaves in sight
meet him with a chunk o' lead. They're the only ones in these mountains,
an' we won't make any mistake. See that bunch of spruce over there?"

The old hunter pointed to a clump fifty yards beyond the tepee toward the
little lake. Aldous nodded.

"I'll take my blankets over there," continued MacDonald. "You roll yourself
up here, and the tepee'll be between us. You see the system, Johnny? If
they make us a visit during the night we've got 'em between us, and
there'll be some real burying to do in the morning!"

Back under the low-hanging boughs of the dwarf spruce Aldous spread out his
blanket a few minutes later. He had made up his mind not to sleep, and for
hours he lay watchful and waiting, smoking occasionally, with his face
close to the ground so that the odour of tobacco would cling to the earth.
The moon rose until it was straight overhead, flooding the valley in a
golden splendour that he wished Joanne might have seen. Then it began
sinking into the west; slowly at first, and then more swiftly, its radiance
diminished. He looked at his watch before the yellow orb effaced itself
behind the towering peak of a distant mountain. It was a quarter of two.

With deepening darkness, his eyes grew heavier. He closed them for a few
moments at a time; and each time the interval was longer, and it took
greater effort to force himself into wakefulness. Finally he slept. But he
was still subconsciously on guard, and an hour later that consciousness was
beating and pounding within him, urging him to awake. He sat up with a
start and gripped his rifle. An owl was hooting--softly, very softly. There
were four notes. He answered, and a little later MacDonald came like a
shadow out of the gloom. Aldous advanced to meet him, and he noticed that
over the eastern mountains there was a break of gray.

"It's after three, Johnny," MacDonald greeted him. "Build a fire and get
breakfast. Tell Joanne I'm out after another sheep. Until it's good an'
light I'm going to watch from that clump of timber up there. In half an
hour it'll be dawn."

He moved toward the timber, and Aldous set about building a fire. He was
careful not to awaken Joanne. The fire was crackling cheerily when he went
to the lake for water. Returning he saw the faint glow of candlelight in
Joanne's tepee. Five minutes later she appeared, and all thought of danger,
and the discomfort of his sleepless night, passed from him at sight of her.
Her eyes were still a little misty with sleep when he took her in his arms
and kissed her, but she was deliciously alive, and glad, and happy. In one
hand she had brought a brush and in the other a comb.

"You slept like a log," he cried happily. "It can't be that you had very
bad dreams, little wife?"

"I had a beautiful dream, John," she laughed softly, and the colour flooded
up into her face.

She unplaited the thick silken strands of her braid and began brushing her
hair in the firelight, while Aldous sliced the bacon. Some of the slices
were thick, and some were thin, for he could not keep his eyes from her as
she stood there like a goddess, buried almost to her knees in that wondrous
mantle. He found himself whistling with a very light heart as she braided
her hair, and afterward plunged her face in a bath of cold water he had
brought from the lake. From that bath she emerged like a glowing Naiad.
Her eyes sparkled. Her cheeks were pink and her lips full and red. Damp
little tendrils of hair clung adorably about her face and neck. For another
full minute Aldous paused in his labours, and he wondered if MacDonald was
watching them from the clump of timber. The bacon was sputtering when
Joanne ran to it and rescued it from burning.

Dawn followed quickly after that first break of day in the east, but not
until one could see a full rifle-shot away did MacDonald return to the
camp. Breakfast was waiting, and as soon as he had finished the old hunter
went after the horses. It was five o'clock, and bars of the sun were
shooting over the tops of the mountains when once more they were in the
saddle and on their way.

Most of this day Aldous headed the outfit up the valley. On the pretext of
searching for game MacDonald rode so far in advance that only twice during
the forenoon was he in sight. When they stopped to camp for the night his
horse was almost exhausted, and MacDonald himself showed signs of
tremendous physical effort. Aldous could not question him before Joanne. He
waited. And MacDonald was strangely silent.

The proof of MacDonald's prediction concerning Joanne was in evidence this
second night. Every bone in her body ached, and she was so tired that she
made no objection to going to her bed as soon as it was dark.

"It always happens like this," consoled old Donald, as she bade him
good-night. "To-morrow you'll begin gettin' broke in, an' the next day you
won't have any lameness at all."

She limped to the tepee with John's arm snugly about her slim waist.
MacDonald waited patiently until he returned. He motioned Aldous to seat
himself close at his side. Both men lighted their pipes before the
mountaineer spoke.

"We can't both sleep at once to-night, Johnny," he said. "We've got to take
turns keeping watch."

"You've discovered something to-day?"

"No. It's what I haven't discovered that counts. There weren't no tracks in
this valley, Johnny, from mount'in to mount'in. They haven't travelled
through this range, an' that leaves just two things for us to figger on.
They're behind us--or DeBar is hitting another trail into the north. There
isn't no danger ahead right now, because we're gettin' into the biggest
ranges between here an' the Yukon. If Quade and Rann are in the next valley
they can't get over the mount'ins to get at us. Quade, with all his flesh,
couldn't climb over that range to the west of us inside o' three days, if
he could get over it at all. They're hikin' straight for the gold over
another trail, or they're behind us, an' mebby both."

"How--both?" asked Aldous.

"Two parties," explained MacDonald, puffing hard at his pipe. "If there's
an outfit behind us they were hid in the timber on the other side of the
snow-ridge, and they're pretty close this minute. Culver Rann--or FitzHugh,
as you call him--is hustling straight on with DeBar. Mebby Quade is with
him, an' mebby he ain't. Anyway, there's a big chance of a bunch behind us
with special instructions from Quade to cut our throats and keep Joanne."

That day Aldous had been turning a question over in his own mind. He asked
it now.

"Mac, are you sure you can go to the valley of gold without DeBar?"

For a long half minute MacDonald looked at him, and then his voice rumbled
in a low, exultant laugh in his beard.

"Johnny," he said, with a strange quiver in his voice, "I can go to it now
straighter an' quicker than DeBar! I know why I never found it. DeBar
helped me that much. The trail is mapped right out in my brain now, Johnny.
Five years ago I was within ten miles of the cavern--an' didn't know it!"

"And we can get there ahead of them?"

"We could--if it wasn't for Joanne. We're makin' twenty miles a day. We
could make thirty."

"If we could beat them to it!" exclaimed Aldous, clenching his hands. "If
we only could, Donald--the rest would be easy!"

MacDonald laid a heavy hand on his knee.

"You remember what you told me, Johnny, that you'd play the game fair, and
give 'em a first chance? You ain't figgerin' on that now, be you?"

"No, I'm with you now, Donald. It's----"

"Shoot on sight!"

"Yes."

Aldous rose from his seat as he spoke.

"You turn in, Mac," he said. "You're about bushed after the work you've
done to-day. I'll keep first watch. I'll conceal myself fifty or sixty
yards from camp, and if we have visitors before midnight the fun will all
be mine."

He knew that MacDonald was asleep within fifteen minutes after he had
stationed himself at his post. In spite of the fact that he had had almost
no sleep the preceding night, he was more than usually wakeful. He was
filled with a curious feeling that events were impending. Yet the hours
passed, the moon flooded the valley again, the horses grazed without alarm,
and nothing happened. He had planned not to awaken old Donald at midnight,
but MacDonald roused himself, and came to take his place a little before
twelve. From that hour until four Aldous slept like the dead. He was
tremendously refreshed when he arose, to find that the candle was alight in
Joanne's tepee, and that MacDonald had built a fire. He waited for Joanne,
and went with her to the tiny creek near the camp, where both bathed their
faces in the snow-cold water from the mountain tops. Joanne had slept
soundly for eight hours, and she was as fresh and as happy as a bird. Her
lameness was almost gone, and she was eager for the day's journey.

As they filed again up the valley that morning, with the early sun
transfiguring the great snow-topped ranges about them into a paradise of
colour and warmth, Aldous found himself mentally wondering if it were
really possible that a serious danger menaced them. He did not tell
MacDonald what was in his mind. He did not confess that he was about ready
to believe that the man on the snow-ridge had been a hunter or a prospector
returning to his camp in the other valley, and that the attack in Tête
Jaune was the one and only effort Quade would make to secure possession of
Joanne. While a few hours before he had almost expected an immediate
attack, he was now becoming more and more convinced that Quade, to a large
extent, had dropped out of the situation. He might be with Mortimer
FitzHugh, and probably was--a dangerous and formidable enemy to be
accounted for when the final settlement came.

But as an immediate menace to Joanne, Aldous was beginning to fear him less
as the hours passed. Joanne, and the day itself, were sufficient to disarm
him of his former apprehension. In places they could see for miles ahead
and behind them. And Joanne, each time that he looked at her, was a greater
joy to him. Constantly she was pointing out the wonders of the mountains to
him and MacDonald. Each new rise or fall in the valley held fresh and
delightful surprises for her; in the craggy peaks she pointed out
castlements, and towers, and battlemented strongholds of ancient princes
and kings. Her mind was a wild and beautiful riot of imagination, of
wonder, and of happiness, and in spite of the grimness of the mission they
were on even MacDonald found himself rejoicing in her spirit, and he
laughed and talked with them as they rode into the North.

They were entering now into a hunter's paradise. For the first time Joanne
saw white, moving dots far up on a mountain-side, which MacDonald told her
were goats. In the afternoon they saw mountain sheep feeding on a slide
half a mile away, and for ten breathless minutes Joanne watched them
through the telescope. Twice caribou sped over the opens ahead of them. But
it was not until the sun was settling toward the west again that Joanne saw
what she had been vainly searching the sides of the mountains to find.
MacDonald had stopped suddenly in the trail, motioning them to advance.
When they rode up to him he pointed to a green slope two hundred yards
ahead.

"There's yo'r grizzly, Joanne," he said.

A huge, tawny beast was ambling slowly along the crest of the slope, and at
sight of him Joanne gave a little cry of excitement.

"He's hunting for gophers," explained MacDonald.

"That's why he don't seem in a hurry. He don't see us because a b'ar's eyes
are near-sighted, but he could smell us half a mile away if the wind was
right."

He was unslinging his long rifle as he spoke. Joanne was near enough to
catch his arm.

"Don't shoot--please don't shoot!" she begged. "I've seen lions, and I've
seen tigers--and they're treacherous and I don't like them. But there's
something about bears that I love, like dogs. And the lion isn't a king
among beasts compared with him. Please don't shoot!"

"I ain't a-goin' to," chuckled old Donald. "I'm just getting ready to give
'im the proper sort of a handshake if he should happen to come this way,
Joanne. You know a grizzly ain't pertic'lar afraid of anything on earth as
I know of, an' they're worse 'n a dynamite explosion when they come
head-on. There--he's goin' over the slope!"

"Got our wind," said Aldous.

They went on, a colour in Joanne's face like the vivid sunset. They camped
two hours before dusk, and MacDonald figured they had made better than
twenty miles that day. The same precautions were observed in guarding the
camp as the night before, and the long hours of vigil were equally
uneventful. The next day added still more to Aldous' peace of mind
regarding possible attack from Quade, and on the night of this day, their
fourth in the mountains, he spoke his mind to MacDonald.

For a few moments afterward the old hunter smoked quietly at his pipe. Then
he said:

"I don't know but you're right, Johnny. If they were behind us they'd most
likely have tried something before this. But it ain't in the law of the
mount'ins to be careless. We've got to watch."

"I agree with you there, Mac," replied Aldous. "We cannot afford to lose
our caution for a minute. But I'm feeling a deuced sight better over the
situation just the same. If we can only get there ahead of them!"

"If Quade is in the bunch we've got a chance of beating them," said
MacDonald thoughtfully. "He's heavy, Johnny--that sort of heaviness that
don't stand up well in the mount'ins; whisky-flesh, I call it. Culver Rann
don't weigh much more'n half as much, but he's like iron. Quade may be a
drag. An' Joanne, Lord bless her!--she's facing the music like an' 'ero,
Johnny!"

"And the journey is almost half over."

"This is the fourth day. I figger we can make it in ten at most, mebby
nine," said old Donald. "You see we're in that part of the Rockies where
there's real mount'ins, an' the ranges ain't broke up much. We've got
fairly good travel to the end."

On this night Aldous slept from eight until twelve. The next, their fifth,
his watch was from midnight until morning. As the sixth and the seventh
days and nights passed uneventfully the belief that there were no enemies
behind them became a certainty. Yet neither Aldous nor MacDonald relaxed
their vigilance.

The eighth day dawned, and now a new excitement took possession of Donald
MacDonald. Joanne and Aldous saw his efforts to suppress it, but it did not
escape their eyes. They were nearing the tragic scenes of long ago, and old
Donald was about to reap the reward of a search that had gone faithfully
and untiringly through the winters and summers of forty years. He spoke
seldom that day. There were strange lights in his eyes. And once his voice
was husky and strained when he said to Aldous:

"I guess we'll make it to-morrow, Johnny--jus' about as the sun's going
down."

They camped early, and Aldous rolled himself in his blanket when Joanne
extinguished the candle in her tent. He found that he could not sleep, and
he relieved MacDonald at eleven o'clock.

"Get all the rest you can, Mac," he urged. "There may be doings
to-morrow--at about sundown."

There was but little moonlight now, but the stars were clear. He lighted
his pipe, and with his rifle in the crook of his arm he walked slowly up
and down over a hundred-yard stretch of the narrow plain in which they had
camped. That night they had built their fire beside a fallen log, which was
now a glowing mass without flame. Finally he sat down with his back to a
rock fifty paces from Joanne's tepee. It was a splendid night. The air was
cool and sweet. He leaned back until his head rested against the rock, and
there fell upon him the fatal temptation to close his eyes and snatch a few
minutes of the slumber which had not come to him during the early hours of
the night. He was in a doze, oblivious to movement and the softer sounds of
the night, when a cry pierced the struggling consciousness of his brain
like the sting of a dart. In an instant he was on his feet.

In the red glow of the log stood Joanne in her long white night robe. She
seemed to be swaying when he first saw her. Her hands were clutched at her
bosom, and she was staring--staring out into the night beyond the burning
log, and in her face was a look of terror. He sprang toward her, and out of
the gloom beyond her rushed Donald MacDonald. With a cry she turned to
Aldous and flung herself shivering and half-sobbing into his arms.
Gray-faced, his eyes burning like the smouldering coals in the fire, Donald
MacDonald stood a step behind them, his long rifle in his hands.

"What is it?" cried Aldous. "What has frightened you, Joanne?"

She was shuddering against his breast.

"It--it must have been a dream," she said. "It--it frightened me. But it
was so terrible, and I'm--I'm sorry, John. I didn't know what I was doing."

"What was it, dear?" insisted Aldous.

MacDonald had drawn very close.

Joanne raised her head.

"Please let me go back to bed, John. It was only a dream, and I'll tell it
to you in the morning, when there's sunshine--and day."

Something in MacDonald's tense, listening attitude caught Aldous' eyes.

"What was the dream?" he urged.

She looked from him to old Donald, and shivered.

"The flap of my tepee was open," she said slowly. "I thought I was awake. I
thought I could see the glow of the fire. But it was a dream--a _dream_,
only it was horrible! For as I looked I saw a face out there in the light,
a white, searching face--and it was his face!"

"Whose face?"

"Mortimer FitzHugh's," she shuddered.

Tenderly Aldous led her back to the tent.

"Yes, it was surely an unpleasant dream, dear," he comforted her. "Try and
sleep again. You must get all the rest you can."

He closed the flap after her, and turned back toward MacDonald. The old
hunter had disappeared. It was ten minutes before he came in from out of
the darkness. He went straight to Aldous.

"Johnny, you was asleep!"

"I'm afraid I was, Mac--just for a minute."

MacDonald's fingers gripped his arm.

"Jus' for a minute, Johnny--an' in that minute you lost the chance of your
life!"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean"--and old Donald's voice was filled with a low, choking tremble
that Aldous had never heard in it before--"I mean that it weren't no dream,
Johnny! Mortimer FitzHugh was in this camp to-night!"




CHAPTER XXV


Donald MacDonald's startling assertion that Mortimer FitzHugh had been in
the camp, and that Joanne's dream was not a dream, but reality, brought a
gasp of astonishment and disbelief from Aldous. Before he had recovered
sufficiently from his amazement to speak, MacDonald was answering the
question in his mind.

"I woke quicker'n you, Johnny," he said. "She was just coming out of the
tepee, an' I heard something running off through the brush. I thought mebby
it was a wolverine, or a bear, an' I didn't move until she cried out your
name an' you jumped up. If she had seen a bear in the fire-glow she
wouldn't have thought it was Mortimer FitzHugh, would she? It's possible,
but it ain't likely, though I do say it's mighty queer why he should be in
this camp alone. It's up to us to watch pretty close until daylight."

"He wouldn't be here alone," asserted Aldous. "Let's get out of the light,
Mac. If you're right, the whole gang isn't far away!"

"They ain't in rifle-shot," said MacDonald. "I heard him running a hundred
yards out there. That's the queer thing about it! Why didn't they jump on
us when they had the chance?"

"We'll hope that it was a dream," replied Aldous. "If Joanne was dreaming
of FitzHugh, and while still half asleep saw something in camp, she might
easily imagine the rest. But we'll keep watch. Shall I move out there?"

MacDonald nodded, and the two men separated. For two hours they patrolled
the darkness, waiting and listening. With dawn Aldous returned to camp to
arouse Joanne and begin breakfast. He was anxious to see what effect the
incident of the night had on her. Her appearance reassured him. When he
referred to the dream, and the manner in which she had come out into the
night, a lovely confusion sent the blushes into her face. He kissed her
until they grew deeper, and she hid her face on his neck.

And then she whispered something, with her face still against his shoulder,
that drove the hot blood into his own cheeks.

"You are my husband, John, and I don't suppose I should be ashamed to let
you see me in my bare feet. But, John--you have made me feel that way, and
I am--your wife!"

He held her head close against him so that she could not see his face.

"I wanted to show you--that I loved you--'that much," he said, scarcely
knowing what words he was speaking. "Joanne, my darling----"

A soft hand closed his lips.

"I know, John," she interrupted him softly. "And I love you so for it, and
I'm so proud of you--oh, so proud, John!"

He was glad that MacDonald came crashing through the bush then. Joanne
slipped from his arms and ran into the tepee.

In MacDonald's face was a grim and sullen look.

"You missed your chance, all right, Johnny," he growled. "I found where a
horse was tied out there. The tracks lead to a big slide of rock that opens
a break in the west range. Whoever it was has beat it back into the other
valley. I can't understand, s'elp me God, I can't, Johnny! Why should
FitzHugh come over into this valley alone? And he _rode_ over! I'd say the
devil couldn't do that!"

He said nothing more, but went out to lead in the hobbled horses, leaving
Aldous in half-stunned wonderment to finish the preparation of breakfast.
Joanne reappeared a little later, and helped him. It was six o'clock before
breakfast was over and they were ready to begin their day's journey. As
they were throwing the hitch over the last pack, MacDonald said in a low
voice to Aldous:

"Everything may happen to-day, Johnny. I figger we'll reach the end by
sundown. An' what don't happen there may happen along the trail. Keep a
rifle-shot behind with Joanne. If there's unexpected shooting, we want what
you might call a reserve force in the rear. I figger I can see danger, if
there is any, an' I can do it best alone."

Aldous knew that in these last hours Donald MacDonald's judgment must be
final, and he made no objection to an arrangement which seemed to place the
old hunter under a more hazardous risk than his own. And he realized fully
that these were the last hours. For the first time he had seen MacDonald
fill his pockets with the finger-long cartridges for his rifle, and he had
noted how carefully he had looked at the breech of that rifle. Without
questioning, he had followed the mountaineer's example. There were fifty
spare cartridges in his own pockets. His .303 was freshly cleaned and
oiled. He had tested the mechanism of his automatic. MacDonald had watched
him, and both understood what such preparations meant as they set out on
this last day's journey into the North. They had not kept from Joanne the
fact that they would reach the end before night, and as they rode the
prescribed distance behind the old hunter Aldous wondered how much she
guessed, and what she knew. They had given her to understand that they were
beating out the rival party, but he believed that in spite of all their
efforts there was in Joanne's mind a comprehension which she did not reveal
in voice or look. To-day she was no different than yesterday, or the day
before, except that her cheeks were not so deeply flushed, and there was an
uneasy questing in her eyes. He believed that she sensed the nearness of
tragedy, that she was conscious of what they were now trying to hide from
her, and that she did not speak because she knew that he and MacDonald did
not want her to know. His heart throbbed with pride. Her courage inspired
him. And he noticed that she rode closer to him--always at his side through
that day.

Early in the afternoon MacDonald stopped on the crest of a swell in the
valley and waited for them. When they came up he was facing the north. He
did not look at them. For a few moments he did not speak. His hat was
pulled low, and his beard was twitching.

They looked ahead. At their feet the valley broadened until it was a mile
in width. Half a mile away a band of caribou were running for the cover of
a parklike clump of timber. MacDonald did not seem to notice them. He was
still looking steadily, and he was gazing at a mountain. It was a
tremendous mountain, a terrible-looking, ugly mountain, perhaps three miles
away. Aldous had never seen another like it. Its two huge shoulders were of
almost ebon blackness, and glistened in the sunlight as if smeared with
oil. Between those two shoulders rose a cathedral-like spire of rock and
snow that seemed to tip the white fleece of the clouds.

MacDonald did not turn when he spoke. His voice was deep and vibrant with
an intense emotion. Yet he was not excited.

"I've been hunting for that mount'in for forty years, Johnny!"

"Mac!"

Aldous leaned over and laid a hand on the old mountaineer's shoulder. Still
MacDonald did not look at him.

"Forty years," he repeated, as if speaking to himself. "I see how I missed
it now, just as DeBar said. I hunted from the west, an' on that side the
mount'in ain't black. We must have crossed this valley an' come in from the
east forty years ago, Johnny----"

He turned now, and what Joanne and Aldous saw in his face was not grief; it
was not the sorrow of one drawing near to his beloved dead, but a joy that
had transfigured him. The fire and strength of the youth in which he had
first looked upon this valley with Jane at his side burned again in the
sunken eyes of Donald MacDonald. After forty years he had come into his
own. Somewhere very near was the cavern with the soft white floor of sand,
and for a moment Aldous fancied that he could hear the beating of
MacDonald's heart, while from Joanne's tender bosom there rose a deep,
sobbing breath of understanding.

And MacDonald, facing the mountain again, pointed with a long, gaunt arm,
and said:

"We're almost there, Johnny. God ha' mercy on them if they've beat us out!"




CHAPTER XXVI


They rode on into the Valley of Gold. Again MacDonald took the lead, and he
rode straight into the face of the black mountain. Aldous no longer made an
effort to keep Joanne in ignorance of what might be ahead of them. He put a
sixth cartridge into the chamber of his rifle, and carried the weapon
across the pommel of his saddle. He explained to her now why they were
riding behind--that if their enemies were laying in wait for them,
MacDonald, alone, could make a swift retreat. Joanne asked no questions.
Her lips were set tight. She was pale.

At the end of three quarters of an hour it seemed to them that MacDonald
was riding directly into the face of a wall of rock. Then he swung sharply
to the left, and disappeared. When they came to the point where he had
turned they found that he had entered a concealed break in the mountain--a
chasm with walls that rose almost perpendicular for a thousand feet above
their heads. A dark and solemn gloom pervaded this chasm, and Aldous drew
nearer to MacDonald, his rifle held in readiness, and his bridle-rein
fastened to his saddle-horn. The chasm was short. Sunlight burst upon them
suddenly, and a few minutes later MacDonald waited for them again.

Even Aldous could not restrain an exclamation of surprise when he rode up
with Joanne. Under them was another valley, a wide-sweeping valley between
two rugged ranges that ran to the southwest. Up out of it there came to
their ears a steady, rumbling roar; the air was filled with that roar; the
earth seemed to tremble with it under their feet--and yet it was not loud.
It came sullenly, as if from a great distance.

And then they saw that MacDonald was not looking out over the sweep of the
valley, but down. Half a mile under them there was a dip--a valley within a
valley--and through it ran the silver sheen of a stream. MacDonald spoke no
word now. He dismounted and levelled his long telescope at the little
valley. Aldous helped Joanne from her horse, and they waited. A great
breath came at last from the old hunter. Slowly he turned. He did not give
the telescope to Aldous, but to Joanne. She looked. For a full minute she
seemed scarcely to breathe. Her hands trembled when she turned to give the
glass to Aldous.

"I see--log cabins!" she whispered.

MacDonald placed a detaining hand on her arm.

"Look ag'in--Joanne," he said in a low voice that had in it a curious
quiver.

Again she raised the telescope to her eyes.

"You see the little cabin--nearest the river?" whispered Donald.

"Yes, I see it."

"That was our cabin--Jane's an' mine--forty years ago," he said, and now
his voice was husky.

Joanne's breath broke sobbingly as she gave Aldous the glass. Something
seemed to choke him as he looked down upon the scene of the grim tragedy
in which Donald MacDonald and Jane had played their fatal part. He saw the
cabins as they had stood for nearly half a century. There were four. Three
of them were small, and the fourth was large. They might have been built
yesterday, for all that he could see of ruin or decay. The doors and
windows of the larger cabin and two of the smaller ones were closed. The
roofs were unbroken. The walls appeared solid. Twice he looked at the
fourth cabin, with its wide-open door and window, and twice he looked at
the cabin nearest the stream, where had lived Donald MacDonald and Jane.

Donald had moved, and Joanne was watching him tensely, when he took the
glass from his eyes. Mutely the old mountaineer held out a hand, and Aldous
gave him the telescope. Crouching behind a rock he slowly swept the valley.
For half an hour he looked through the glass, and in that time scarce a
word was spoken. During the last five minutes of that half-hour both Joanne
and Aldous knew that MacDonald was looking at the little cabin nearest the
stream, and with hands clasped tightly they waited in silence.

At last old Donald rose, and his face and voice were filled with a
wonderful calm.

"There ain't been no change," he said softly. "I can see the log in front
o' the door that I used to cut kindling on. It was too tough for them to
split an' burn after we left. An' I can see the tub I made out o' spruce
for Jane. It's leaning next the door, where I put it the day before we went
away. Forty years ain't very long, Johnny! It ain't very long!"

Joanne had turned from them, and Aldous knew that she was crying.

"An' we've beat 'em to it, Johnny--we've beat 'em to it!" exulted
MacDonald. "There ain't a sign of life in the valley, and we sure could
make it out from here if there was!"

He climbed into his saddle, and started down the slope of the mountain.
Aldous went to Joanne. She was sobbing. Her eyes were blinded by tears.

"It's terrible, terrible," she whispered brokenly. "And it--it's beautiful,
John. I feel as though I'd like to give my life--to bring Jane back!"

"You must not betray tears or grief to Donald," said Aldous, drawing her
close in his arms for a moment. "Joanne--sweetheart--it is a wonderful
thing that is happening with him! I dreaded this day--I have dreaded it for
a long time. I thought that it would be terrible to witness the grief of a
man with a heart like Donald's. But he is not filled with grief, Joanne. It
is joy, a great happiness that perhaps neither you nor I can
understand--that has come to him now. Don't you understand? He has found
her. He has found their old home. To-day is the culmination of forty years
of hope, and faith, and prayer. And it does not bring him sorrow, but
gladness. We must rejoice with him. We must be happy with him. I love you,
Joanne. I love you above all else on earth or in heaven. Without you I
would not want to live. And yet, Joanne, I believe that I am no happier
to-day than is Donald MacDonald!"

With a sudden cry Joanne flung her arms about his neck.

"John, is it _that?_" she cried, and joy shone through her tears. "Yes,
yes, I understand now! His heart is not breaking. It is life returning into
a heart that was empty. I understand--oh, I understand now! And we must be
happy with him. We must be happy when we find the cavern--and Jane!"

"And when we go down there to the little cabin that was their home."

"Yes--yes!"

They followed behind MacDonald. After a little a spur of the mountain-side
shut out the little valley from them, and when they rounded this they found
themselves very near to the cabins. They rode down a beautiful slope into
the basin, and when he reached the log buildings old Donald stopped and
dismounted. Again Aldous helped Joanne from her horse. Ahead of them
MacDonald went to the cabin nearest the stream. At the door he paused and
waited for them.

"Forty years!" he said, facing them. "An' there ain't been so very much
change as I can see!"

Years had dropped from his shoulders in these last few minutes, and even
Aldous could not keep quite out of his face his amazement and wonder. Very
gently Donald put his hand to the latch, as though fearing to awaken some
one within; and very gently he pressed down on it, and put a bit of his
strength against the door. It moved inward, and when it had opened
sufficiently he leaned forward so that his head and a half of his shoulders
were inside; and he looked--a long time he looked, without a movement of
his body or a breath that they could see.

And then he turned to them again, and his eyes were shining as they had
never seen them shine before.

"I'll open the window," he said. "It's dark--dark inside."

He went to the window, which was closed with a sapling barricade that had
swung on hinges; and when he swung it back the rusted hinges gave way, and
the thing crashed down at his feet. And now through the open window the sun
poured in a warm radiance, and Donald entered the cabin, with Joanne and
Aldous close behind him.

There was not much in the cabin, but what it held was earth, and heaven,
and all else to Donald MacDonald. A strange, glad cry surged from his chest
as he looked about him, and now Joanne saw and understood what John Aldous
had told her--for Donald MacDonald, after forty years, had come back to his
home!

"Oh, my Gawd, Johnny, they didn't touch anything! They didn't touch
anything!" he breathed in ecstasy. "I thought after we ran away they'd come
in----"

He broke off, and his hat dropped from his hand, and he stood and stared;
and what he was looking at, the sun fell upon in a great golden splash, and
Joanne's hand gripped John's, and held to it tightly. Against the wall,
hanging as they had hung for forty years, were a woman's garments: a hood,
a shawl, a dress, and an apron that was half in tatters; and on the floor
under these things were _a pair of shoes_. And as Donald MacDonald went to
them, his arms reaching out, his lips moving, forgetful of all things but
that he had come home, and Jane was here, Joanne drew Aldous softly to the
door, and they went out into the day.

Joanne did not speak, and Aldous did not urge her. He saw her white throat
throbbing as if there were a little heart beating there, and her eyes were
big and dark and velvety, like the eyes of a fawn that had been frightened.
There was a thickness in his own throat, and he found that it was difficult
for him to see far out over the plain. They waited near the horses. Fifty
yards from them ran the stream; a clear, beautiful stream which flowed in
the direction from which the mysterious ramble of thunder seemed to come.
This, Aldous knew, was the stream of gold. In the sand he saw wreckage
which he knew were the ancient rockers; a shovel, thrust shaft-deep, still
remained where it had last been planted.

Perhaps for ten minutes Donald MacDonald remained in the cabin. Then he
came out. Very carefully he closed the door. His shoulders were thrown
back. His head was held high. He looked like a monarch.

And his voice was calm.

"Everything is there, Johnny--everything but the gold," he said. "They took
that."

Now he spoke to Joanne.

"You better not go with us into the other cabins," he said.

"Why?" she asked softly.

"Because--there's death in them all."

"I am going," she said.

From the window of the largest cabin MacDonald pulled the sapling shutter,
and, like the other, it fell at his feet. Then they opened the door, and
entered; and here the sunlight revealed the cabin's ghastly tragedy. The
first thing that they saw, because it was most terrible, was a rough table,
half over which lay the shrunken thing that had once been a man. A part of
its clothes still remained, but the head had broken from its column, and
the white and fleshless skull lay facing them. Out of tattered and
dust-crumbling sleeves reached the naked bones of hands and arms. And on
the floor lay another of these things, in a crumpled and huddled heap, only
the back of the skull showing, like the polished pate of a bald man. These
things they saw first, and then two others: on the table were a heap of
age-blackened and dusty sacks, and out of the back of the crumbling thing
that guarded them stuck the long buckhorn hilt of a knife.

"They must ha' died fighting," said MacDonald. "An' there, Johnny, is their
gold!"

White as death Joanne stood in the door and watched them. MacDonald and
Aldous went to the sacks. They were of buckskin. The years had not aged
them. When Aldous took one in his hands he found that it was heavier than
lead. With his knife MacDonald cut a slit in one of them, and the sun that
came through the window flashed in a little golden stream that ran from the
bag.

"We'll take them out and put 'em in a pannier," said MacDonald. "The others
won't be far behind us, Johnny."

Between them they carried out the seven sacks of gold. It was a load for
their arms. They put it in one of the panniers, and then MacDonald nodded
toward the cabin next the one that had been his own.

"I wouldn't go in there, Joanne," he said.

"I'm going," she whispered again.

"It was _their_ cabin--the man an' his wife," persisted old Donald. "An'
the men was beasts, Joanne! I don't know what happened in there--but I
guess."

"I'm going," she said again.

MacDonald pulled down the barricade from the window--a window that also
faced the south and west, and this time he had to thrust against the door
with his shoulder. They entered, and now a cry came from Joanne's lips--a
cry that had in it horror, disbelief, a woman's wrath. Against the wall was
a pile of something, and on that pile was the searching first light of day
that had fallen upon it for nearly half a century. The pile was a man
crumpled down; across it, her skeleton arms thrown about it protectingly,
was a woman. This time Aldous did not go forward. MacDonald was alone, and
Aldous took Joanne from the cabin, and held her while she swayed in his
arms. Donald came out a little later, and there was a curious look of
exultation and triumph in his face.

"She killed herself," he said. "That was her husband. I know him. I gave
him the rock-nails he put in the soles of his boots--and the nails are
still there."

He went alone into the remaining two cabins, while Aldous stood with
Joanne. He did not stay long. From the fourth cabin he brought an armful of
the little brown sacks. He returned, and brought a second armful.

"There's three more in that last cabin," he explained. "Two men, an' a
woman. She must ha' been the wife of the man they killed. They were the
last to live, an' they starved to death. An' now, Johnny----"

He paused, and he drew in a great breath.

He was looking to the west, where the sun was beginning to sink behind the
mountains.

"An' now, Johnny, if you're ready, an' if Joanne is ready, we'll go," he
said.




CHAPTER XXVII


As they went up out of the basin into the broad meadows of the larger
valley, MacDonald rode between Aldous and Joanne, and the pack-horses, led
by Pinto, trailed behind.

Again old Donald said, as he searched the valley:

"We've beat 'em, Johnny. Quade an' Rann are coming up on the other side of
the range, and I figger they're just about a day behind--mebby only hours,
or an hour. You can't tell. There's more gold back there. We got about a
hunderd pounds in them fifteen sacks, an' there was twice that much. It's
hid somewhere. Calkins used to keep his'n under the floor. So did Watts.
We'll find it later. An' the river, an' the dry gulches on both sides of
the valley--they're full of it! It's all gold, Johnny--gold everywhere!"

He pointed ahead to where the valley rose in a green slope between two
mountains half a mile away.

"That's the break," he said. "It don't seem very far now, do it, Joanne?"
His silence seemed to have dropped from him like a mantle, and there was
joy in what he was telling. "But it was a distance that night--a tumble
distance," he continued, before she could answer. "That was forty-one years
ago, coming November. An' it was cold, an' the snow was deep. It was bitter
cold--so cold it caught my Jane's lungs, an' that was what made her go a
little later. The slope up there don't look steep now, but it was steep
then--with two feet of snow to drag ourselves through. I don't think the
cavern is more'n five or six miles away, Johnny, mebby less, an' it took us
twenty hours to reach it. It snowed so heavy that night, an' the wind
blowed so, that our trail was filled up or they might ha' followed."

Many times Aldous had been on the point of asking old Donald a question.
For the first time he asked it now, even as his eyes swept slowly and
searchingly over the valley for signs of Mortimer FitzHugh and Quade.

"I've often wondered why you ran away with Jane," he said. "I know what
threatened her--a thing worse than death. But why did you run? Why didn't
you stay and fight?"

A low growl rumbled in MacDonald's beard.

"Johnny, Johnny, if I only ha' could!" he groaned. "There was five of them
left when I ran into the cabin an' barricaded myself there with Jane. I
stuck my gun out of the window an' they was afraid to rush the cabin. They
was _afraid_, Johnny, all that afternoon--_an' I didn't have a cartridge
left to fire!_ That's why we went just as soon as we could crawl out in the
dark. I knew they'd come that night. I might ha' killed one or two hand to
hand, for I was big an' strong in them days, Johnny, but I knew I couldn't
beat 'em all. So we went."

"After all, death isn't so very terrible," said Joanne softly, and she was
riding so close that for a moment she laid one of her warm hands on Donald
MacDonald's.

"No, it's sometimes--wunnerful--an' beautiful," replied Donald, a little
brokenly, and with that he rode ahead, and Joanne and Aldous waited until
the pack-horses had passed them.

"He's going to see that all is clear at the summit," explained Aldous.

They seemed to be riding now right into the face of that mysterious rumble
and roar of the mountains. It was an hour before they all stood together at
the top of the break, and here MacDonald swung sharply to the right, and
came soon to the rock-strewn bed of a dried-up stream that in ages past had
been a wide and rushing torrent. Steadily, as they progressed down this,
the rumble and roar grew nearer. It seemed that it was almost under their
feet, when again MacDonald turned, and a quarter of an hour later they
found themselves at the edge of a small plain; and now all about them were
cold and towering mountains that shut out the sun, and a hundred yards to
their right was a great dark cleft in the floor of the plain, and up out of
this came the rumble and roar that was like the sullen anger of monster
beasts imprisoned deep down in the bowels of the earth.

MacDonald got off his horse, and Aldous and Joanne rode up to him. In the
old man's face was a look of joy and triumph.

"It weren't so far as I thought it was, Johnny!" he cried. "Oh, it must ha'
been a turrible night--a turrible night when Jane an' I come this way! It
took us twenty hours, Johnny!"

"We are near the cavern?" breathed Joanne.

"It ain't more'n half a mile farther on, I guess. But we'll camp here.
We're pretty well hid. They can't find us. An' from that summit up there
we can keep watch in both valleys."

Knowing the thoughts that were in MacDonald's mind, and how full his heart
was with a great desire, Aldous went to him when they had dismounted.

"You go on alone if there is time to-night, Mac," he said, knowing that the
other would understand him. "I will make camp."

"There ain't no one in the valley," mused the old man, a little doubtfully
at first. "It would be safe--quite safe, Johnny."

"Yes, it will be safe."

"And I will stand guard while John is working," said Joanne, who had come
to them. "No one can approach us without being seen."

For another moment MacDonald hesitated. Then he said:

"Do you see that break over there across the plain? It's the open to a
gorge. Johnny, it do seem unreasonable--it do seem as though I must ha'
been dreamin'--when I think that it took us twenty hours! But the snow was
to my waist in this plain, an' it was slow work--turrible slow work! I
think the cavern--ain't on'y a little way up that gorge."

"You can make it before the sun is quite gone."

"An' I could hear you shout, or your gun. I could ride back in five
minutes--an' I wouldn't be gone an hour."

"There is no danger," urged Aldous.

A deep breath came from old Donald's breast.

"I guess--I'll go, Johnny, if you an' Joanne don't mind."

He looked about him, and then he pointed toward the face of a great rock.

"Put the tepee up near that," he said. "Pile the saddles, an' the blankets,
an' the panniers around it, so it'll look like a real camp, Johnny. But it
won't be a real camp. It'll be a dummy. See them thick spruce an' cedar
over there? Build Joanne a shelter of boughs in there, an' take in some
grub, an' blankets, an' the gold. See the point, Johnny? If anything should
happen----"

"They'd tackle the bogus camp!" cried Aldous with elation. "It's a splendid
idea!"

He set at once about unpacking the horses, and Joanne followed close at his
side to help him. MacDonald mounted his horse and rode at a trot in the
direction of the break in the mountain.

The sun had disappeared, but its reflection was still on the peaks; and
after he had stripped and hobbled the horses Aldous took advantage of the
last of day to scrutinize the plain and the mountain slopes through the
telescope. After that he found enough dry poles with which to set up the
tepee, and about this he scattered the saddles and panniers, as MacDonald
had suggested. Then he cleared a space in the thick spruce, and brought to
it what was required for their hidden camp.

It was almost dark when he completed the spruce and cedar lean-to for
Joanne. He knew that to-night they must build no fire, not even for tea;
and when they had laid out the materials for their cold supper, which
consisted of beans, canned beef and tongue, peach marmalade, bread bannock,
and pickles and cheese, he went with Joanne for water to a small creek they
had crossed a hundred yards away. In both his hands, ready for instant
action, he carried his rifle. Joanne carried the pail. Her eyes were big
and bright and searching in that thick-growing dusk of night. She walked
very close to Aldous, and she said:

"John, I know how careful you and Donald have been in this journey into the
North. I know what you have feared. Culver Rann and Quade are after the
gold, and they are near. But why does Donald talk as though we are _surely_
going to be attacked by them, or are _surely_ going to attack them? I don't
understand it, John. If you don't care for the gold so much, as you told me
once, and if we find Jane to-morrow, or to-night, why do we remain to have
trouble with Quade and Culver Rann? Tell me, John."

He could not see her face fully in the gloom, and he was glad that she
could not see his.

"If we can get away without fighting, we will, Joanne," he lied. And he
knew that she would have known that he was lying if it had not been for the
darkness.

"You won't fight--over the gold?" she asked, pressing his arm. "Will you
promise me that, John?"

"Yes, I promise that. I swear it!" he cried, and so forcefully that she
gave a glad little laugh.

"Then if they don't find us to-morrow, we'll go back home?" She trembled,
and he knew that her heart was filled with a sudden lightness. "And I don't
believe they will find us. They won't come beyond that terrible place--and
the gold! Why should they, John? Why should they follow us--if we leave
them everything? Oh-h-h-h!" She shuddered, and whispered: "I wish we had
not brought the gold, John. I wish we had left it behind!"

"What we have is worth thirty or forty thousand dollars," he said
reassuringly, as he filled his pail with water and they began to return.
"We can do a great deal of good with that. Endowments, for instance," he
laughed.

As he spoke, they both stopped, and listened. Plainly they heard the
approaching thud of hoofs. MacDonald had been gone nearer two hours than
one, and believing that it was him, Aldous gave the owl signal. The signal
floated back to them softly. Five minutes later MacDonald rode up and
dismounted. Until he had taken the saddle off, and had hobbled his horse,
he did not speak. Neither Joanne nor Aldous asked the question that was in
their hearts. But even in the darkness they felt something. It was as if
not only the torrent rushing through the chasm, but MacDonald's heart as
well, was charging the air with a strange and subdued excitement. And when
MacDonald spoke, that which they had felt was in his voice.

"You ain't seen or heard anything, Johnny?"

"Nothing. And you--Donald?"

In the darkness, Joanne went to the old man, and her hand found one of his,
and clasped it tightly; and she found that Donald MacDonald's big hand was
trembling in a strange and curious way, and she could feel him quivering.

"You found Jane?" she whispered.

"Yes, I found her, little Joanne."

She did not let go of his hand until they entered the open space which
Aldous had made in the spruce. Then she remembered what Aldous had said to
her earlier in the day, and cheerfully she lighted the two candles they
had set out, and forced Aldous down first upon the ground, and then
MacDonald, and began to help them to beans and meat and bannock, while all
the time her heart was crying out to know about the cavern--and Jane. The
candleglow told her a great deal, for in it Donald MacDonald's face was
very calm, and filled with a great peace, despite the trembling she had
felt. Her woman's sympathy told her that his heart was too full on this
night for speech, and when he ate but little she did not urge him to eat
more; and when he rose and went silently and alone out into the darkness
she held Aldous back; and when, still a little later, she went into her
nest for the night, she whispered softly to him:

"I know that he found Jane as he wanted to find her, and he is happy. I
think he has gone out there alone--to cry." And for a time after that, as
he sat in the gloom, John Aldous knew that Joanne was sobbing like a little
child in the spruce and cedar shelter he had built for her.




CHAPTER XXVIII


If MacDonald slept at all that night Aldous did not know it. The old
mountaineer watched until a little after twelve in the deep shadow of a
rock between the two camps.

"I can't sleep," he protested, when Aldous urged him to take his rest. "I
might take a little stroll up the plain, Johnny--but I can't sleep."

The plain lay in a brilliant starlight at this hour; they could see the
gleam of the snow-peaks--the light was almost like the glow of the moon.

"There'll be plenty of sleep after to-morrow," added MacDonald, and there
was a finality in his voice and words which set the other's blood stirring.

"You think they will show up to-morrow?"

"Yes. This is the same valley the cabins are in, Johnny. That big mountain
runs out an' splits it, an' it curves like a horseshoe. From that mount'in
we can see them, no matter which way they come. They'll go straight to the
cabins. There's a deep little run under the slope. You didn't see it when
we came out, but it'll take us within a hunderd yards of 'em. An' at a
hunderd yards----"

He shrugged his shoulders suggestively in the starlight, and there was a
smile on his face.

"It seems almost like murder," shuddered Aldous.

"But it ain't,'" replied MacDonald quickly. "It's self-defence! If we
don't do it, Johnny--if we don't draw on them first, what happened there
forty years ago is goin' to happen again--with Joanne!"

"A hundred yards," breathed Aldous, his jaws setting hard. "And there are
five!"

"They'll go into the cabins," said MacDonald. "At some time there will be
two or three outside, an' we'll take them first. At the sound of the shots
the others will run out, and it will be easy. Yo' can't very well miss a
man at a hunderd yards, Johnny?"

"No, I won't miss."

MacDonald rose.

"I'm goin' to take a little stroll, Johnny."

For two hours after that Aldous was alone. He knew why old Donald could not
sleep, and where he had gone, and he pictured him sitting before the little
old cabin in the starlit valley communing with the spirit of Jane. And
during those two hours he steeled himself for the last time to the thing
that was going to happen when the day came.

It was nearly three o'clock when MacDonald returned. It was four o'clock
before he roused Joanne; and it was five o'clock when they had eaten their
breakfast, and MacDonald prepared to leave for the mountain with his
telescope. Aldous had observed Joanne talking to him for several minutes
alone, and he had also observed that her eyes were very bright, and that
there was an unusual eagerness in her manner of listening to what the old
man was saying. The significance of this did not occur to him when she
urged him to accompany MacDonald.

"Two pairs of eyes are better than one, John," she said, "and I cannot
possibly be in danger here. I can see you all the time, and you can see
me--if I don't run away, or hide." And she laughed a little breathlessly.
"There is no danger, is there, Donald?"

The old hunter shook his head.

"There's no danger, but--you might be lonesome," he said.

Joanne put her pretty mouth close to Aldous' ear.

"I want to be alone for a little while, dear," she whispered, and there was
that mystery in her voice which kept him from questioning her, and made him
go with MacDonald.

In three quarters of an hour they had reached the spur of the mountain from
which MacDonald had said they could see up the valley, and also the break
through which they had come the preceding afternoon. The morning mists
still hung low, but as these melted away under the sun mile after mile of a
marvellous panorama spread out swiftly under them, and as the distance of
their vision grew, the deeper became the disappointment in MacDonald's
face. For half an hour after the mists had gone he neither spoke nor
lowered the telescope from his eyes. A mile away Aldous saw three caribou
crossing the valley. A little later, on a green slope, he discerned a
moving hulk that he knew was a bear. He did not speak until old Donald
lowered the glass.

"I can see for eight miles up the valley, an' there ain't a soul in sight,"
said MacDonald in answer to his question. "I figgered they'd be along about
now, Johnny."

A dozen times Aldous had looked back at the camp. Twice he had seen Joanne.
He looked now through the telescope. She was nowhere in sight. A bit
nervously he returned the telescope to MacDonald.

"And I can't see Joanne," he said.

MacDonald looked. For five minutes he levelled the glass steadily at the
camp. Then he shifted it slowly westward, and a low exclamation broke from
his lips as he lowered the glass, and looked at Aldous.

"Johnny, she's just goin' into the gorge! She was just disappearin' when I
caught her!"

"Going into--the gorge!" gasped Aldous, jumping to his feet. "Mac----"

MacDonald rose and stood at his side. There was something reassuring in the
rumbling laugh that came from deep in his chest.

"She's beat us!" he chuckled. "Bless her, she's beat us! I didn't guess why
she was askin' me all them questions. An' I told her, Johnny--told her just
where the cavern was up there in the gorge, an' how you wouldn't hardly
miss it if you tried. An' she asked me how long it would take to _walk_
there, an' I told her half an hour. An' she's going to the cavern, Johnny!"

He was telescoping his long glass as he spoke, and while Aldous was still
staring toward the gorge in wonderment and a little fear, he added:

"We'd better follow. Quade an' Rann can't get here inside o' two or three
hours, an' we'll be back before then." Again he rumbled with that curious
chuckling laugh. "She beat us, Johnny, she beat us fair! An' she's got
spirrit, a wunnerful spirrit, to go up there alone!"

Aldous wanted to run, but he held himself down to MacDonald's stride. His
heart trembled apprehensively as they hurriedly descended the mountain and
cut across the plain. He could not quite bring himself to MacDonald's point
of assurance regarding Quade and Mortimer FitzHugh. The old mountaineer was
positive that the other party was behind them. Aldous asked himself if it
were not possible that Quade and FitzHugh were _ahead_ of them, and already
waiting and watching for their opportunity. He had suggested that they
might have swung farther to the west, with the plan of descending upon the
valley from the north, and MacDonald had pointed out how unlikely this was.
In spite of this, Aldous was not in a comfortable frame of mind as they
hurried after Joanne. She had half an hour's start of them when they
reached the mouth of the gorge, and not until they had travelled another
half-hour up the rough bed of the break between the two mountains, and
MacDonald pointed ahead, and said: "There's the cavern!" did he breathe
easier.

They could see the mouth of the cavern when they were yet a couple of
hundred yards from it. It was a wide, low cleft in the north face of the
chasm wall, and in front of it, spreading out like the flow of a stream,
was a great spatter of white sand, like a huge rug that had been spread out
in a space cleared of its chaotic litter of rock and broken slate. At first
glance Aldous guessed that the cavern had once been the exit of a
subterranean stream. The sand deadened the sound of their footsteps as they
approached. At the mouth of the cave they paused. It was perhaps forty or
fifty feet deep, and as high as a nine-foot room. Inside it was quite
light. Halfway to the back of it, upon her knees, and with her face turned
from them, was Joanne.

They were very close to her before she heard them. With a startled cry she
sprang to her feet, and Aldous and MacDonald saw what she had been doing.
Over a long mound in the white sand still rose the sapling stake which
Donald had planted there forty years before; and about this, and scattered
over the grave, were dozens of wild asters and purple hyacinths which
Joanne had brought from the plain. Aldous did not speak, but he took her
hand, and looked down with her on the grave. And then something caught his
eyes among the flowers, and Joanne drew him a step nearer, her eyes shining
like velvet stars, while his heart beat faster when he saw what the object
was. It was a book, open in the middle, and it lay face downward on the
grave. It was old, and looked as though it might have fallen into dust at
the touch of his finger. Joanne's voice was low and filled with a
whispering awe.

"It was her Bible, John!"

He turned a little, and noticed that Donald had gone to the mouth of the
cavern, and was looking toward the mountain.

"It was her Bible," he heard Joanne repeating; and then MacDonald turned
toward them, and he saw in his face a look that seemed strange and out of
place in this home of his dead. He went to him, and Joanne followed.

MacDonald had turned again--was listening--and holding his breath. Then he
said, still with his face toward the mountain and the valley:

"I may be mistaken, Johnny, but I think I heard--a rifle-shot!"

For a full minute they listened.

"It seemed off there," said MacDonald, pointing to the south. "I guess
we'd better get back to camp, Johnny."

He started ahead of them, and Aldous followed as swiftly as he could with
Joanne. She was panting with excitement, but she asked no questions.
MacDonald began to spring more quickly from rock to rock; over the level
spaces he began to run. He reached the edge of the plain four or five
hundred yards in advance of them, and was scanning the valley through his
telescope when they came up.

"They're not on this side," he said. "They're comin' up the other leg of
the valley, Johnny. We've got to get to the mount'in before we can see
them."

He closed the glass with a snap and swung it over his shoulder. Then he
pointed toward the camp.

"Take Joanne down there," he commanded. "Watch the break we came through,
an' wait for me. I'm goin' up on the mount'in an' take a look!"

The last words came back over his shoulder as he started on a trot down the
slope. Only once before had Aldous seen MacDonald employ greater haste, and
that was on the night of the attack on Joanne. He was convinced there was
no doubt in Donald's mind about the rifle-shot, and that the shot could
mean but one thing--the nearness of Mortimer FitzHugh and Quade. Why they
should reveal their presence in that way he did not ask himself as he
hurried down into the plain with Joanne. By the time they reached the camp
old Donald had covered two thirds of the distance to the mountain. Aldous
looked at his watch and a curious thrill shot through him. Only a little
more than an hour had passed since they had left the mountain to follow
Joanne, and in that time it would have been impossible for their enemies to
have covered more than a third of the eight-mile stretch of valley which
they had found empty of human life under the searching scrutiny of the
telescope! He was right--and MacDonald was wrong! The sound of the shot, if
there had been a shot, must have come from some other direction!

He wanted to shout his warning to MacDonald, but already too great a
distance separated them. Besides, if he was right, MacDonald would run into
no danger in that direction. Their menace was to the north--beyond the
chasm out of which came the rumble and roar of the stream. When Donald had
disappeared up the slope he looked more closely at the rugged walls of rock
that shut them in on that side. He could see no break in them. His eyes
followed the dark streak in the floor of the plain, which was the chasm. It
was two hundred yards below where they were standing; and a hundred yards
beyond the tepee he saw where it came out of a great rent in the mountain.
He looked at Joanne. She had been watching him, and was breathing quickly.

"While Donald is taking his look from the mountain, I'm going to
investigate the chasm," he said.

She followed him, a few steps behind. The roar grew in their ears as they
advanced. After a little solid rock replaced the earth under their feet,
and twenty paces from the precipice Aldous took Joanne by the hand. They
went to the edge and looked over. Fifty feet below them the stream was
caught in the narrow space between the two chasm walls, and above the rush
and roar of it Aldous heard the startled cry that came from Joanne. She
clutched his hand fiercely. Fascinated she gazed down. The water, speeding
like a millrace, was a lather of foam; and up through this foam there shot
the crests of great rocks, as though huge monsters of some kind were at
play, whipping the torrent into greater fury, and bellowing forth
thunderous voices. Downstream Aldous could see that the tumult grew less;
from the rent in the mountain came the deeper, more distant-rolling thunder
that they had heard on the other side of the range. And then, as he looked,
a sharper cry broke from Joanne, and she dragged him back from the ledge,
and pointed toward the tepee.

Out from among the rocks had appeared a human figure. It was a woman. Her
hair was streaming wildly about her, and in the sun it was black as a
crow's wing. She rushed to the tepee, opened the flap, and looked in. Then
she turned, and a cry that was almost a scream rang from her lips. In
another moment she had seen Aldous and Joanne, and was running toward them.
They advanced to meet her. Suddenly Aldous stopped, and with a sharp
warning to Joanne he threw his rifle half to his shoulder, and faced the
rocks from which the speeding figure had come. In that same instant they
both recognized her. It was Marie, the woman who had ridden the bear at
Tête Jaune, and with whom Mortimer FitzHugh had bought Joe DeBar!

She staggered up to them, panting, exhausted, her breath coming in gulping
sobs. For a moment she could not speak. Her dress was torn; her waist was
ripped so that it exposed her throat and shoulder; and the front of the
waist and her face were stained with blood. Her black eyes shone like a
madwoman's. Fiercely she fought to get her breath, and all the time she
clung to Joanne, and looked at Aldous. She pointed toward the rocks--the
chaotic upheaval that lay between the tepee and the chasm--and words broke
gaspingly from her lips.

"They're coming!--coming!" she cried. "They killed Joe--murdered him--and
they're coming--to kill you!" She clutched a hand to her breast, and then
pointed with it to the mountain where MacDonald had gone. "They saw him
go--and they sent two men to kill him; and the rest are coming through the
rocks!" She turned sobbingly to Joanne. "They killed Joe," she moaned.
"They killed Joe, and they're coming--for _you!_"

The emphasis on that final word struck like a blow in the ears of John
Aldous.

"Run for the spruce!" he commanded. "Joanne, run!"

Marie had crumpled down in a moaning heap at Joanne's feet, and sat swaying
with her face in her hands.

"They killed him--they murdered my Joe!" she was sobbing. "And it was my
fault--my fault! I trapped him! I sold him! And, oh, my God, I loved him--I
loved him!"

"Run, Joanne!" commanded Aldous a second time. "Run for the spruce!"

Instead of obeying him, Joanne knelt down beside Marie.

He went to speak again, but there came an interruption--a thing that was
like the cold touch of lead in his own heart. From up on the mountain where
the old mountaineer had walked into the face of death there came the
sharp, splitting report of a rifle; and in that same instant it was
followed by another and still a third--quick, stinging, whiplike
reports--and he knew that not one of them had come from the gun of Donald
MacDonald!

And then he saw that the rocks behind the tepee had become suddenly alive
with men!




CHAPTER XXIX


Sheer amazement made Aldous hold his fire in that first moment. Marie had
said that two men were after MacDonald. He had heard three shots nearly a
mile away, and she was still sobbing that DeBar was dead. That accounted
for _three_. He had expected to see only Quade, and FitzHugh, and one other
behind the tepee. And there were six! He counted them as they came swiftly
out from the shelter of the rocks to the level of the plain. He was about
to fire when he thought of Joanne and Marie. They were still behind him,
crouching upon the ground. To fire from where he stood would draw a
fusillade of bullets in their direction, and with another warning cry to
Joanne, he sped twenty paces to one side so that they would not be within
range. Not until then did the attacking party see him.

At a hundred and fifty yards he had no time to pick out Quade or Mortimer
FitzHugh. He fired first at a group of three, and one of the three crumpled
down as though his skull had been crushed from above. A rifle spat back at
him and the bullet sang like a ripping cloth close over his head. He
dropped to his knees before he fired again, and a bullet clove the air
where he had stood. The crack of rifles did not hurry him. He knew that he
had six cartridges, and only six, and he aimed deliberately. At his second
shot the man he had fired at ran forward three or four steps, and then
pitched flat on his face. For a flash Aldous thought that it was Mortimer
FitzHugh. Then, along his gun barrel, he saw FitzHugh--and pulled the
trigger. It was a miss.

Two men had dropped upon their knees and were aiming more carefully. He
swung his sight to the foremost, and drove a bullet straight through his
chest. The next moment something seemed to have fallen upon him with
crushing weight. A red sea rose before his eyes. In it he was submerged;
the roar of it filled his ears; it blinded him; and in the suffocating
embrace of it he tried to cry out. He fought himself out of it, his eyes
cleared, and he could see again. His rifle was no longer in his hands, and
he was standing. Twenty feet away men were rushing upon him. His brain
recovered itself with the swiftness of lightning. A bullet had stunned him,
but he was not badly hurt. He jerked out his automatic, but before he could
raise it, or even fire from his hip, the first of his assailants was upon
him with a force that drove it from his hand. They went down together, and
as they struggled on the bare rock Aldous caught for a fraction of a second
a scene that burned itself like fire in his brain. He saw Mortimer FitzHugh
with a revolver in his hand. He had stopped; he was staring like one
looking upon the ghost of the dead, and as he stared there rose above the
rumbling roar of the chasm a wild and terrible shriek from Joanne.

Aldous saw no more then. He was not fighting for his life, but for her, and
he fought with the mad ferocity of a tiger. As he struck, and choked, and
beat the head of his assailant on the rock, he heard shriek after shriek
come from Joanne's lips; and then for a flash he saw them again, and
Joanne was struggling in the arms of Quade!

He struggled to his knees, and the man he was fighting struggled to his
knees; and then they came to their feet, locked in a death-grip on the edge
of the chasm. From Quade's clutch he saw Joanne staring at Mortimer
FitzHugh; then her eyes shot to him, and with another shriek she fought to
free herself.

For thirty seconds of that terrible drama Mortimer FitzHugh stood as if
hewn out of rock. Then he sprang toward the fighters.

In the arms of John Aldous was the strength of ten men. He twisted the head
of his antagonist under his arm; he braced his feet--in another moment he
would have flung him bodily into the roaring maelstrom below. Even as his
muscles gathered themselves for the final effort he knew that all was lost.
Mortimer FitzHugh's face leered over his shoulder, his demoniac intention
was in his eyes before he acted. With a cry of hatred and of triumph he
shoved them both over the edge, and as Aldous plunged to the depths below,
still holding to his enemy, he heard a last piercing scream from Joanne.

As the rock slid away from under his feet his first thought was that the
end had come, and that no living creature could live in the roaring
maelstrom of rock and, flood into which he was plunging. But quicker than
he dashed through space his mind worked. Instinctively, without time for
reasoning, he gripped at the fact that his one chance lay in the close
embrace of his enemy. He hung to him. It seemed to him that they turned
over and over a hundred times in that distance of fifty feet. Then a mass
of twisting foam broke under him, and up out of it shot the head of one of
the roaring monsters of rock that he and Joanne had looked upon. They
struck it fairly, and Aldous was uppermost. He felt the terrific impact of
the other's body. The foam boiled upward again, and they slipped off into
the flood.

Still Aldous held to his enemy. He could feel that he was limp now; he no
longer felt the touch of the hands that had choked him, or the embrace of
the arms that had struggled with him. He believed that his antagonist was
dead. The fifty-foot fall, with the rock splitting his back, had killed
him. For a moment Aldous still clung to him as they sank together under the
surface, torn and twisted by the whirling eddies and whirlpools. It seemed
to him that they would never cease going down, that they were sinking a
vast distance.

Dully he felt the beat of rocks. Then it flashed upon him that the dead man
was sinking like a weighted thing. He freed himself. Fiercely he struggled
to bring himself to the surface. It seemed an eternity before he rose to
the top. He opened his mouth and drew a great gulp of air into his lungs.
The next instant a great rock reared like a living thing in his face; he
plunged against it, was beaten over it, and again he was going
down--down--in that deadly clutch of maelstrom and undertow. Again he
fought, and again he came to the surface. He saw a black, slippery wall
gliding past him with the speed of an express train. And now it seemed as
though a thousand clubs were beating him. Ahead of him were rocks--nothing
but rocks.

He shot through them like a piece of driftwood. The roaring in his ears
grew less, and he felt the touch of something under his feet. Sunlight
burst upon him. He caught at a rock, and hung to it. His eyes cleared a
little. He was within ten feet of a shore covered with sand and gravel. The
water was smooth and running with a musical ripple. Waist-deep he waded
through it to the shore, and fell down upon his knees, with his face buried
in his arms. He had been ten minutes in the death-grip of the chasm. It was
another ten minutes before he staggered to his feet and looked about him.

His face was beaten until he was almost blind. His shirt had been torn from
his shoulders and his flesh was bleeding. He advanced a few steps. He
raised one arm and then the other. He limped. One arm hurt him when he
moved it, but the bone was sound. He was terribly mauled, but he knew that
no bones were broken, and a gasp of thankfulness fell from his lips. All
this time his mind had been suffering even more than his body. Not for an
instant, even as he fought for life between the chasm walls, and as he lay
half unconscious on the rock, had he forgotten Joanne. His one thought was
of her now. He had no weapon, but as he stumbled in the direction of the
camp in the little plain he picked up a club that lay in his path.

That MacDonald was dead, Aldous was certain. There would be four against
him--Quade and Mortimer FitzHugh and the two men who had gone to the
mountain. His brain cleared swiftly as a part of his strength returned, and
it occurred to him that if he lost no time he might come upon Joanne and
her captors before the two men came from killing old Donald. He tried to
run. Not until then did he fully realize the condition he was in. Twice in
the first hundred yards his legs doubled under him and he fell down among
the rocks. He grew steadily stronger, though each time he tried to run or
spring a distance of a few feet his legs doubled under him like that. It
took him twenty minutes to get back to the edge of the plain, and when he
got there it was empty. There was no sign of Quade or FitzHugh, or of
Joanne and Marie; and there was no one coming from the direction of the
mountain.

He tried to run again, and he found that over the level floor of the valley
he could make faster time than among the rocks. He went to where he had
dropped his rifle. It was gone. He searched for his automatic. That, too,
was gone. There was one weapon left--a long skinning-knife in one of the
panniers near the tepee. As he went for this, he passed two of the men whom
he had shot. Quade and FitzHugh had taken their weapons, and had turned
them over to see if they were alive or dead. They were dead. He secured the
knife, and behind the tepee he passed the third body, its face as still and
white as the others. He shuddered as he recognized it. It was Slim Barker.
His rifle was gone.

More swiftly now he made his way into the break out of which his assailants
had come a short time before. The thought came to him again that he had
been right, and that Donald MacDonald, in spite of all his years in the
mountains, had been fatally wrong. Their enemies had come down from the
north, and this break led to their hiding-place. Through it Joanne must
have been taken by her captors. As he made his way over the rocks, gaining
a little more of his strength with each step, his mind tried to picture the
situation that had now arisen between Quade and Mortimer FitzHugh. How
would Quade, who was mad for possession of Joanne, accept FitzHugh's claim
of ownership? Would he believe his partner? Would he even believe Joanne
if, to save herself from him, she told him FitzHugh was her husband? Even
if he believed them, _would he give her up?_ Would Quade allow Mortimer
FitzHugh to stand between him and the object for which he was willing to
sacrifice everything?

As Aldous asked himself these questions his blood ran hot and cold by
turns. And the answer to them drew a deep breath of fear and of anguish
from him as he tried again to run among the rocks. There could be but one
answer: Quade would fight. He would fight like a madman, and if this fight
had happened and FitzHugh had been killed Joanne had already gone utterly
and helplessly into his power. He believed that FitzHugh had not revealed
to Quade his relationship to Joanne while they were on the plain, and the
thought still more terrible came to him that he might not reveal it at all,
that he might repudiate Joanne even as she begged upon her knees for him to
save her. What a revenge it would be to see her helpless and broken in the
arms of Quade! And then, both being beasts----

He could think no farther. The sweat broke out on his face as he hobbled
faster over a level space. The sound of the water between the chasm walls
was now a thunder in his ears. He could not have heard a rifle-shot or a
scream a hundred yards away. The trail he was following had continually
grown narrower. It seemed to end a little ahead of him, and the fear that
he had come the wrong way after all filled him with dread. He came to the
face of the mountain wall, and then, to his left, he saw a crack that was
no wider than a man's body. In it there was sand, and the, sand was beaten
by footprints! He wormed his way through, and a moment later stood at the
edge of the chasm. Fifty feet above him a natural bridge of rock spanned
the huge cleft through which the stream was rushing. He crossed this,
exposing himself openly to a shot if it was guarded. But it was not
guarded. This fact convinced him that MacDonald had been killed, and that
his enemies believed he was dead. If MacDonald had escaped, and they had
feared a possible pursuit, some one would have watched the bridge.

The trail was easy to follow now. Sand and grassy earth had replaced rock
and shale; he could make out the imprints of feet--many of them--and they
led in the direction of a piece of timber that apparently edged a valley
running to the east and west. The rumble of the torrent in the chasm grew
fainter as he advanced. A couple of hundred yards farther on the trail
swung to the left again; it took him around the end of a huge rock, and as
he appeared from behind this, his knife clutched in his hand, he dropped
suddenly flat on his face, and his heart rose like a lump in his throat.
Scarcely fifty yards above him was the camp of his enemies! There were two
tepees and piles of saddles and panniers and blankets about them, but not a
soul that he could see. And then, suddenly, there rose a voice bellowing
with rage, and he recognized it as Quade's. It came from beyond the tepee,
and he rose quickly from where he had thrown himself and ran forward, with
the tepee between him and those on the other side. Close to the canvas he
dropped on his knees and crawled out behind a pile of saddles and panniers.
From here he could see.

So near that he could almost have touched them were Joanne and Marie,
seated on the ground, with their backs toward him. Their hands were tied
behind them. Their feet were bound with pannier ropes. A dozen paces beyond
them were Quade and Mortimer FitzHugh.

The two men were facing each other, a yard apart. Mortimer FitzHugh's face
was white, a deadly white, and he was smiling. His right hand rested
carelessly in his hunting-coat pocket. There was a sneering challenge on
his lips; in his eyes was a look that Aldous knew meant death if Quade
moved. And Quade was like a great red beast ready to spring. His eyes
seemed bulging out on his cheeks; his great hands were knotted; his
shoulders were hunched forward, and his mottled face was ablaze with
passion. In that moment's dramatic tableau Aldous glanced about swiftly.
The men from the mountain had not returned. He was alone with Quade and
Mortimer FitzHugh.

Then FitzHugh spoke, very quietly, a little laughingly; but his voice
trembled, and Aldous knew what the hand was doing in the hunting-coat
pocket.

"You're excited, Billy," he said. "I'm not a liar, as you've very
impolitely told me. And I'm not playing you dirt, and I haven't fallen in
love with the lady myself, as you seem to think. But she belongs to me,
body and soul. If you don't believe me--why, ask the lady herself, Billy!"

As he spoke, he turned his sneering eyes for the fraction of a second
toward Joanne. The movement was fatal. Quade was upon him. The hand in the
coat pocket flung itself upward, there followed a muffled report, but the
bullet flew wide. In all his life Aldous had never heard a sound like the
roar that came from Quade's throat then. He saw Mortimer FitzHugh's hand
appear with a pistol in it, and then the pistol was gone. He did not see
where it went to. He gripped his knife and waited, his heart beating with
what seemed like smothered explosions as he watched for the opportunity
which he knew would soon come. He expected to see FitzHugh go down under
Quade's huge bulk. Instead of that, a small, iron fist shot upward and
Quade's head went back as if broken from his neck.

FitzHugh sprang a step backward, and in the movement his heel caught the
edge of a pack-saddle. He stumbled, almost fell, and before he could
recover himself Quade was at him again. This time there was something in
the red brute's hand. It rose and fell once--and Mortimer FitzHugh reeled
backward with a moaning cry, swayed for a second or two on his feet, and
fell to the ground. Quade turned. In his hand was a bloody knife. Madness
and passion and the triumphant joy of a demon were in his face as he glared
at his helpless prey. As Aldous crouched lower his shoulder touched one of
the saddles. It slipped from the pile, one of the panniers followed it, and
Quade saw him. There was no longer reason for concealment, and as Quade
stood paralyzed for a moment Aldous sprang forth into the space between him
and Joanne. He heard the cry that broke strangely from her lips but he did
not turn his head. He advanced upon Quade, his head lowered, the long
skinning-knife gleaming in his hand.

John Aldous knew that words would avail nothing in these last few minutes
between him and Quade. The latter had already hunched himself forward, the
red knife in his hand poised at his waistline. He was terrible. His huge
bulk, his red face and bull neck, his eyes popping from behind their fleshy
lids, and the dripping blade in the shapeless hulk of his hand gave him the
appearance as he stood there of some monstrous gargoyle instead of a thing
of flesh and blood. And Aldous was terrible to look at, but in a way that
wrung a moaning cry from Joanne. His face was livid from the beat of the
rocks; it was crusted with blood; his eyes were partly closed, and what
remained of his shirt was drenched with blood that still ran from the deep
cuts in his arms and shoulders. But it was he who advanced, and Quade who
stood and waited.

Aldous knew little or nothing of knife-fighting; and he realized, also,
that there was a strange weakness in his arms and body caused by his battle
with the maelstroms in the chasm. But he had wrestled a great deal with the
Indians of the north, who fought as their half-wolf sledgedogs fought, and
he employed their methods now. Slowly and deliberately he began to circle
around Quade, so that Quade became the pivot of that circle, and as he
circled he drew nearer and nearer to his enemy, but never in a frontal
advance. He edged inward, with his knife-arm on the outside. His deadly
deliberateness and the steady glare of his eyes discomfited Quade, who
suddenly took a step backward.

It was always when the Indian made this step that his opponent darted in;
and Aldous, with this in mind, sprang to the attack. Their knives clashed
in midair. As they met, hilt to hilt, Aldous threw his whole weight against
Quade, darted sidewise, and with a terrific lunge brought the blade of his
knife down between Quade's shoulders. A straight blade would have gone from
back to chest through muscle and sinew, but the knife which Aldous held
scarcely pierced the other's clothes.

Not until then did he fully realize the tremendous odds against him. The
curved blade of his skinning-knife would not penetrate! His one hope was to
cut with it. He flung out his arm before Quade had fully recovered, and
blind luck carried the keen edge of the knife across his enemy's pouchy
cheek. The blood came in a spurt, and with a terrible cry Quade leaped back
toward the pile of saddles and panniers. Before Aldous could follow his
advantage the other had dropped his knife and had snatched up a four-foot
length of a tepee pole. For a moment he hesitated while the blood ran in a
hot flood down his thick neck. Then with a bellow of rage he rushed upon
Aldous.

It was no time for knife-work now. As the avalanche of brute strength
descended upon him Aldous gathered himself for the shock. He had already
measured his own weakness. Those ten minutes among the rocks of the chasm
had broken and beaten him until his strength was gone. He was panting from
his first onset with Quade, but his brain was working. And he knew that
Quade was no longer a reasoning thing. He had ceased to think. He was blind
with the passion of the brute, and his one thought was to crush his enemy
down under the weight of the club in his huge hands. Aldous waited. He
heard Joanne's terrified scream when Quade was almost upon him--when less
than five feet separated them. The club was descending when he flung
himself forward, straight for the other's feet. The club crashed over him,
and with what strength he had he gripped Quade at the knees. With a
tremendous thud Quade came to earth. The club broke from the grip of his
hands. For a moment he was stunned, and in that moment Aldous was at his
throat.

He would have sold the best of his life for the skinning-knife. But he had
lost it in gripping Quade. And now he choked--with every ounce of strength
in him he choked at the thick red neck of his enemy. Quade's hands reached
for his own throat. They found it. And both choked, lying there gasping and
covered with blood! while Joanne struggled vainly to free herself, and
scream after scream rang from her lips. And John Aldous knew that at last
the end had come. For there was no longer strength in his arms, and there
was something that was like a strange cramp in his fingers, while the
clutch at his own throat was turning the world black. His grip relaxed. His
hands fell limp. The last that he realized was that Quade was over him, and
that he must be dying.

Then it was, as he lay within a final second or two of death, no longer
conscious of physical attack or of Joanne's terrible cries, that a strange
and unforeseen thing occurred. Beyond the tepee a man had risen from the
earth. He staggered toward them, and it was from Marie that the wildest and
strangest cry of all came now. For the man was Joe DeBar! In his hand he
held a knife. Swaying and stumbling he came to the fighters--from behind.
Quade did not see him, and over Quade's huge back he poised himself. The
knife rose; for the fraction of a second it trembled in midair. Then it
descended, and eight inches of steel went to the heart of Quade.

And as DeBar turned and staggered toward Joanne and Marie, John Aldous was
sinking deeper and deeper into a black and abysmal night.




CHAPTER XXX


In that chaotic night in which he was drifting, light as a feather floating
on the wind, John Aldous experienced neither pain nor very much of the
sense of life. And yet, without seeing or feeling, he seemed to be living,
All was dead in him but that last consciousness, which is almost the
spirit; he might have been dreaming, and minutes, hours, or even years
might have passed in that dream. For a long time he seemed to be sinking
through the blackness; and then something stopped him, without jar or
shock, and he was rising. He could hear nothing. There was a vast silence
about him, a silence as deep and as unbroken as the abysmal pit in which he
seemed to be softly floating.

After a time Aldous felt himself swaying and rocking, as though tossed
gently on the billows of a sea. This was the first thought that took shape
in his struggling brain--he was at sea; he was on a ship in the heart of a
black night, and he was alone. He tried to call out, but his tongue seemed
gone. It seemed a very long time before day broke, and then it was a
strange day. Little needles of light pricked his eyes; silver strings shot
like flashes of weblike lightning through the darkness, and after that he
saw for an instant a strange glare. It was gone in one big, powderlike
flash, and he was in night again. These days and nights seemed to follow
one another swiftly now, and the nights grew less dark, and the days
brighter. He was conscious of sounds and buffetings, and it was very hot.

Out of this heat there came a cool, soft breeze that was continually
caressing his face, and eyes, and head. It was like the touch of a spirit
hand. It became more and more real to him. It caressed him into a dark and
comfortable oblivion. Out of this oblivion a still brighter day roused him.
His brain seemed clear. He opened his eyes. A white cloud was hovering over
them; it fell softly; it was cool and gentle. Then it rose again, and it
was not a cloud, but a hand! The hand moved away, and he was looking into a
pair of wide-open, staring, prayerful eyes, and a little cry came to him,
and a voice.

"John--John----"

He was drifting again, but now he knew that he was alive. He heard
movement. He heard voices. They were growing nearer and more distinct. He
tried to cry out Joanne's name, and it came in a whispering breath between
his lips. But Joanne heard; and he heard her calling to him; he felt her
hands; she was imploring him to open his eyes, to speak to her. It seemed
many minutes before he could do this, but at last he succeeded. And this
time his vision was not so blurred. He could see plainly. Joanne was there,
hovering over him, and just beyond her was the great bearded face of Donald
MacDonald. And then, before words had formed on his lips, he did a
wonderful thing. He smiled.

"O my God, I thank Thee!" he heard Joanne cry out, and then she was on her
knees, and her face was against his, and she was sobbing.

He knew that it was MacDonald who drew her away.

The great head bent over him.

"Take this, will 'ee, Johnny boy?"

Aldous stared.

"Mac, you're--alive," he breathed.

"Alive as ever was, Johnny. Take this."

He swallowed. And then Joanne hovered over him again, and he put up his
hands to her face, and her glorious eyes were swimming seas as she kissed
him and choked back the sobs in her throat. He buried his fingers in her
hair. He held her head close to him, and for many minutes no one spoke,
while MacDonald stood and looked down on them. In those minutes everything
returned to him. The fight was over. MacDonald had come in time to save him
from Quade. But--and now his eyes stared upward through the sheen of
Joanne's hair--he was in a cabin! He recognized it. It was Donald
MacDonald's old home. When Joanne raised her head he looked about him
without speaking. He was in the wide bunk built against the wall. Sunlight
was filtering through a white curtain at the window, and in the open door
he saw the anxious face of Marie.

He tried to lift himself, and was amazed to find that he could not. Very
gently Joanne urged him back on his pillow. Her face was a glory of life
and of joy. He obeyed her as he would have obeyed the hand of the Madonna.
She saw all his questioning.

"You must be quiet, John," she said, and never had he heard in her voice
the sweetness of love that was in it now. "We will tell you
everything--Donald and I. But you must be quiet. You were terribly beaten
among the rocks. We brought you here at noon, and the sun is setting--and
until now you have not opened your eyes. Everything is well. But you must
be quiet. You were terribly bruised by the rocks, dear."

It was sweet to lie under the caresses of her hand. He drew her face down
to him.

"Joanne, my darling, you understand now--why I wanted to come alone into
the North?"

Her lips pressed warm and soft against his.

"I know," she whispered, and he could feel her arras trembling, and her
breath coming quickly. Gently she drew away from him. "I am going to make
you some broth," she said then.

He watched her as she went out of the cabin, one white hand lifted to her
throat.

Old Donald MacDonald seated himself on the edge of the bunk. He looked down
at Aldous, chuckling in his beard; and Aldous, with his bruised and swollen
face and half-open eyes, grinned like a happy fiend.

"It was a wunerful, wunerful fight, Johnny!" said old Donald.

"It was, Mac. And you came in fine on the home stretch!"

"What d'ye mean--home stretch?" queried Donald leaning over.

"You saved me from Quade."

Donald fairly groaned.

"I didn't, Johnny--I didn't! DeBar killed 'im. It was all over when I come.
On'y--Johnny--I had a most cur'ous word with Culver Rann afore he died!"

In his eagerness Aldous was again trying to sit up when Joanne appeared in
the doorway. With a little cry she darted to him, forced him gently back,
and brushed old Donald off the edge of the bunk.

"Go out and watch the broth, Donald," she commanded firmly. Then she said
to Aldous, stroking back his hair, "I forbade you to talk. John, dear,
aren't you going to mind me?"

"Did Quade get me with the knife?" he asked.

"No, no."

"Am I shot?"

"No, dear."

"Any bones broken?"

"Donald says not."

"Then please give me my pipe, Joanne--and let me get up. Why do you want me
to lie here when I'm strong like an ox, as Donald says?"

Joanne laughed happily.

"You _are_ getting better every minute," she cried joyously. "But you were
terribly beaten by the rocks, John. If you will wait until you have the
broth I will let you sit up."

A few minutes later, when he had swallowed his broth, Joanne kept her
promise. Only then did he realize that there was not a bone or a muscle in
his body that did not have its own particular ache. He grimaced when Joanne
and Donald bolstered him up with blankets at his back. But he was happy.
Twilight was coming swiftly, and as Joanne gave the final pats and turns to
the blankets and pillows, MacDonald was lighting half a dozen candles
placed around the room.

"Any watch to-night, Donald?" asked Aldous.

"No, Johnny, there ain't no watch to-night," replied the old mountaineer.

He came and seated himself on a bench with Joanne. For half an hour after
that Aldous listened to a recital of the strange things that had
happened--how poor marksmanship had saved MacDonald on the mountain-side,
and how at last the duel had ended with the old hunter killing those who
had come to slay him. When they came to speak of DeBar, Joanne leaned
nearer to Aldous.

"It is wonderful what love will sometimes do," she spoke softly. "In the
last few hours Marie has bared her soul to me, John. What she has been she
has not tried to hide from me, nor even from the man she loves. She was one
of Mortimer FitzHugh's tools. DeBar saw her and loved her, and she sold
herself to him in exchange for the secret of the gold. When they came into
the North the wonderful thing happened. She loved DeBar--not in the way of
her kind, but as a woman in whom had been born a new heart and a new soul
and a new joy. She defied FitzHugh; she told DeBar how she had tricked him.

"This morning FitzHugh attempted his old familiarity with her, and DeBar
struck him down. The act gave them excuse for what they had planned to do.
Before her eyes Marie thought they had killed the man she loved. She flung
herself on his breast, and she said she could not feel his heart beat, and
his blood flowed warm against her hands and face. Both she and DeBar had
determined to warn us if they could. Only a few minutes before DeBar was
stabbed he had let off his rifle--an accident, he said. But it was not an
accident. It was the shot Donald heard in the cavern. It saved us, John!
And Marie, waiting her opportunity, fled to us in the plain. DeBar was not
killed. He says my screams brought him back to life. He came out--and
killed Quade with a knife. Then he fell at our feet. A few minutes later
Donald came. DeBar is in another cabin. He is not fatally hurt, and Marie
is happy."

She was stroking his hand when she finished. The curious rumbling came
softly in MacDonald's beard and his eyes were bright with a whimsical
humour.

"I pretty near bored a hole through poor Joe when I come up," he chuckled.
"But you bet I hugged him when I found what he'd done, Johnny! Joe says
their camp was just over the range from us that night FitzHugh looked us
up, an' Joanne thought she'd been dreamin'. He didn't have any help, but
his intention was to finish us alone--murder us asleep--when Joanne cried
out. Joe says it was just a devil's freak that took 'im to the top of the
mountain alone that night. He saw our fire an' came down to investigate."

A low voice was calling outside the door. It was Marie. As Joanne went to
her a quick gleam came into old Donald's eyes. He looked behind him
cautiously to see that she had disappeared, then he bent over Aldous, and
whispered hoarsely:

"Johnny, I had a most cur'ous word with Rann--or FitzHugh--afore he died!
He wasn't dead when I went to him. But he knew he was dyin'; an' Johnny, he
was smilin' an' cool to the end. I wanted to ask 'im a question, Johnny. I
was dead cur'ous to know _why the grave were empty!_ But he asked for
Joanne, an' I couldn't break in on his last breath. I brought her. The
first thing he asked her was how people had took it when they found out
he'd poisoned his father! When Joanne told him no one had ever thought he'd
killed his father, FitzHugh sat leanin' against the saddles for a minit so
white an' still I thought he 'ad died with his eyes open. Then it came out,
Johnny. He was smilin' as he told it. He killed his father with poison to
get his money. Later he came to America. He didn't have time to tell us how
he come to think they'd discovered his crime. He was dyin' as he talked. It
came out sort o' slobberingly, Johnny. He thought they'd found 'im out. He
changed his name, an' sent out the report that Mortimer FitzHugh had died
in the mount'ins. But Johnny, he died afore I could ask him about the
grave!"

There was a final note of disappointment in old Donald's voice that was
almost pathetic.

"It was such a cur'ous grave," he said. "An' the clothes were laid out so
prim an' nice."

Aldous laid his hand on MacDonald's.

"It's easy, Mac," he said, and he wanted to laugh at the disappointment
that was still in the other's face. "Don't you see? He never expected any
one to dig _into_ the grave. And he put the clothes and the watch and the
ring in there to get rid of them. They might have revealed his identity.
Why, Donald----"

Joanne was coming to them again. She laid a cool hand on his forehead and
held up a warning finger to MacDonald.

"Hush!" she said gently, "Your head is very hot, dear, and there must be
no more talking. You must lie down and sleep. Tell John good-night,
Donald!"

Like a boy MacDonald did as she told him, and disappeared through the cabin
door. Joanne levelled the pillows and lowered John's head.

"I can't sleep, Joanne," he protested.

"I will sit here close at your side and stroke your face and hair," she
said gently.

"And you will talk to me?"

"No, I must not talk. But, John----"

"Yes, dear."

"If you will promise to be very, very quiet, and let me be very quiet----"

"Yes."

"I will make you a pillow of my hair."

"I--will be quiet," he whispered.

She unbound her hair, and leaned over so that it fell in a flood on his
pillow. With a sigh of contentment he buried his face in the rich, sweet
masses of it. Gently, like the cooling breeze that had come to him in his
hours of darkness, her hand caressed him. He closed his eyes; he drank in
the intoxicating perfume of her tresses; and after a little he slept.

For many hours Joanne sat at his bedside, sleepless, and rejoicing.

When Aldous awoke it was dawn in the cabin. Joanne was gone. For a few
minutes he continued to lie with his face toward the window. He knew that
he had slept a long time, and that the day was breaking. Slowly he raised
himself. The terrible ache in his body was gone; he was still lame, but no
longer helpless. He drew himself cautiously to the edge of the bunk and
sat there for a time, testing himself before he got up. He was delighted at
the result of the experiments. He rose to his feet. His clothes were
hanging against the wall, and he dressed himself. Then he opened the door
and walked out into the morning, limping a little as he went. MacDonald was
up. Joanne's tepee was close to the cabin. The two men greeted each other
quietly, and they talked in low voices, but Joanne heard them, and a few
moments later she ran out with her hair streaming about her and went
straight into the arms of John Aldous.

This was the beginning of the three wonderful days that yet remained for
Joanne and John Aldous in Donald MacDonald's little valley of gold and
sunshine and blue skies. They were strange and beautiful days, filled with
a great peace and a great happiness, and in them wonderful changes were at
work. On the second day Joanne and Marie rode alone to the cavern where
Jane lay, and when they returned in the golden sun of the afternoon they
were leading their horses, and walking hand in hand. And when they came
down to where DeBar and Aldous and Donald MacDonald were testing the
richness of the black sand along the stream there was a light in Marie's
eyes and a radiance in Joanne's face which told again that world-old story
of a Mary Magdalene and the dawn of another Day. And now, Aldous thought,
Marie had become beautiful; and Joanne laughed softly and happily that
night, and confided many things into the ears of Aldous, while Marie and
DeBar talked for a long time alone out under the stars, and came back at
last hand in hand, like two children. Before they went to bed Marie
whispered something to Joanne, and a little later Joanne whispered it to
Aldous.

"They want to know if they can be married with us, John," she said. "That
is, if you haven't grown tired of trying to marry me, dear," she added with
a happy laugh. "Have you?"

His answer satisfied her. And when she told a small part of it to Marie,
the other woman's dark eyes grew as soft as the night, and she whispered
the words to Joe.

The third and last day was the most beautiful of all. Joe's knife wound was
not bad. He had suffered most from a blow on the head. Both he and Aldous
were in condition to travel, and plans were made to begin the homeward
journey on the fourth morning. MacDonald had unearthed another dozen sacks
of the hidden gold, and he explained to Aldous what must be done to secure
legal possession of the little valley. His manner of doing this was
unnatural and strained. His words came haltingly. There was unhappiness in
his eyes. It was in his voice. It was in the odd droop of his shoulders.
And finally, when they were alone, he said to Aldous, with almost a sob in
his voice:

"Johnny--Johnny, if on'y the gold were not here!"

He turned his eyes to the mountain, and Aldous took one of his big gnarled
hands in both his own.

"Say it, Mac," he said gently. "I guess I know what it is."

"It ain't fair to you, Johnny," said old Donald, still with his eyes on the
mountains. "It ain't fair to you. But when you take out the claims down
there it'll start a rush. You know what it means, Johnny. There'll be a
thousand men up here; an' mebby you can't understand--but there's the
cavern an' Jane an' the little cabin here; an' it seems like desecratin'
_her_."

His voice choked, and as Aldous gripped the big hand harder in his own he
laughed.

"It would, Mac," he said. "I've been watching you while we made the plans.
These cabins and the gold have been here for more than forty years without
discovery, Donald--and they won't be discovered again so long as Joe DeBar
and John Aldous and Donald MacDonald have a word to say about it. We'll
take out no claims, Mac. The valley isn't ours. It's Jane's valley and
yours!"

Joanne, coming up just then, wondered what the two men had been saying that
they stood as they did, with hands clasped. Aldous told her. And then old
Donald confessed to them what was in his mind, and what he had kept from
them. At last he had found his home, and he was not going to leave it
again. He was going to stay with Jane. He was going to bring her from the
cavern and bury her near the cabin, and he pointed out the spot, covered
with wild hyacinths and asters, where she used to sit on the edge of the
stream and watch him while he worked for gold. And they could return each
year and dig for gold, and he would dig for gold while they were away, and
they could have it all. All that he wanted was enough to eat, and Jane, and
the little valley. And Joanne turned from him as he talked, her face
streaming with tears, and in John's throat was a great lump, and he looked
away from MacDonald to the mountains.

So it came to pass that on the fourth morning, when they went into the
south, they stopped on the last knoll that shut out the little valley from
the larger valley, and looked back. And Donald MacDonald stood alone in
front of the cabin waving them good-bye.

THE END





End of Project Gutenberg's The Hunted Woman, by James Oliver Curwood