The Hunted Woman Part 9

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, d.a.m.n 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 d.a.m.ned C.N.R. gang has done?"

"They haven't shot her?"

"No, they haven't shot her. I wish to G.o.d 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, d.a.m.n '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--a.s.sistant 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 a.s.sociating 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 Tete 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 Tete 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 Tete 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 Tete 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 Tete Jaune came," he began, between puffs. "Up on the side of White k.n.o.b Mountain there's the grave of a man who was torn to bits by a grizzly. But his name was Humphrey. Old Yellowhead John--Tete 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 Tete 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 G.o.d, _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 d.a.m.ned 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 pa.s.sed 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.