The Hunted Woman Part 13

"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 pa.s.sed, 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 s.h.i.+mmering silk was standing beside a huge brown bear. Her sleek black hair, s.h.i.+ning 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!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: A slim, exquisitely formed woman in s.h.i.+mmering 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. Crus.h.i.+ng 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 s.h.i.+ning 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. c.u.m 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 pa.s.sed 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 s.p.a.ces 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 a.s.sa.s.sinate 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 a.s.sa.s.sination 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 s.h.i.+vered, 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 pa.s.sing 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 att.i.tude 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, s.h.a.ggy 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," a.s.sured 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 ma.s.s 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!_"