The Hunted Woman Part 18

"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 carca.s.ses 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 G.o.d 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 Tete 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 wors.h.i.+p 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 s.h.i.+mmering 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 a.s.sisted 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 s.p.a.ce 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 bra.s.s telescope the old mountaineer was scanning the valley out of which they had come. Under them lay Tete 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 a.s.sured 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 s.h.i.+fted 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 ma.s.s 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 pa.s.sed into the thick spruce timber. Half an hour later they came out into the gra.s.sy 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. "G.o.d 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 pa.s.sed 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."