The Hunted Woman Part 17

"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 gla.s.s 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 s.h.i.+ning 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 s.h.a.ggy 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 s.p.a.ce 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 s.h.a.ggy 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.