The Hunted Woman Part 11

He nodded. "We can leave at sunrise," he said. "I have my own horses at Tete 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 pa.s.sed 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 s.h.i.+rt 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 steams.h.i.+p 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 n.o.ble 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 Tete 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--was.h.i.+ng 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 Tete Jaune again until they reached the Otto tent-house, and then only to a.s.sure 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 Tete 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 circ.u.mstances 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 Tete Jaune. Why not have these friends meet them at the train and take Joanne direct to their house? Such recognition and friends.h.i.+p 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 s.h.i.+mmer 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 sc.r.a.pe 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 s.h.i.+ver pa.s.s 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 Tete 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 Tete Jaune and the Blacktons, and tried to take an interest in the scenery they were pa.s.sing. 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 Tete 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!