The Hunted Woman Part 12

A low, frightened cry broke from Joanne's lips, and he knew that she, too, had seen him. But it was not Quade that she had looked for. It was not his face that she had expected to see nor because of him that she had lifted her veil for the mob!

He stepped down from the car and gave her his hand. Her fingers clutched his convulsively. And they were cold as the fingers of the dead.

CHAPTER X

A moment later some one came surging through the crowd, and called Aldous by name. It was Blackton. His thin, genial face with its little spiked moustache rose above the sea of heads about him, and as he came he grinned a welcome.

"A beastly mob!" he exclaimed, as he gripped his friend's hand. "I'm sorry I couldn't bring my wife nearer than the back platform."

Aldous turned to Joanne. He was still half in a daze. His heart was choking him with its swift and excited beating. Even as he introduced her to Blackton the voice kept crying in his brain that she had expected to find some one in this crowd whom she knew. For a s.p.a.ce it was as if the Joanne whom he had known had slipped away from him. She had told him about the grave, but this other she had kept from him. Something that was almost anger surged up in him. His face bore marks of the strain as he watched her greet Blackton. In an instant, it seemed to him, she had regained a part of her composure. Blackton saw nothing but the haggard lines about her eyes and the deep pallor in her face, which he ascribed to fatigue.

"You're tired, Miss Gray," he said. "It's a killing ride up from Miette these days. If we can get through this mob we'll have supper within fifteen minutes!"

With a word to Aldous he began worming his long, lean body ahead of them.

An instant Joanne's face was very close to Aldous', so close that he felt her breath, and a tendril of her hair touched his lips. In that instant her eyes looked into his steadily, and he felt rush over him a sudden shame. If she was seeking and expecting, it was to him more than ever that she was now looking for protection. The haunting trouble in her eyes, their entreaty, their s.h.i.+ning faith in him told him that, and he was glad that she had not seen his sudden fear and suspicion. She clung more closely to him as they followed Blackton. Her little fingers held his arm as if she were afraid some force might tear him from her. He saw that she was looking quickly at the faces about them with that same questing mystery in her search.

At the thin outer edge of the crowd Blackton dropped back beside them. A few steps more and they came to the end of the platform, where a buckboard was waiting in the dim light of one of the station lamps. Blackton introduced Joanne, and a.s.sisted her into the seat beside his wife.

"We'll leave you ladies to become acquainted while we rustle the baggage,"

he said. "Got the checks, Aldous?"

Joanne had given Aldous two checks on the train, and he handed them to Blackton. Together they made their way to the baggage-room.

"Thought Miss Gray would have some luggage, so I had one of my men come with another team," he explained. "We won't have to wait. I'll give him the checks."

Before they returned to the buckboard, Aldous halted his friend.

"I couldn't say much in that telegram," he said. "If Miss Gray wasn't a bit tired and unstrung I'd let her explain. I want you to tell Mrs.

Blackton that she has come to Tete Jaune on a rather unpleasant mission, old man. Nothing less than to attend to the grave of a--a near relative."

"I regret that--I regret it very much," replied Blackton, flinging away the match he had lighted without touching it to his cigar. "I guessed something was wrong. She's welcome at our place, Aldous--for as long as she remains in Tete Jaune. Perhaps I knew this relative. If I can a.s.sist you--or her----"

"He died before the steel came," said Aldous. "FitzHugh was his name. Old Donald and I are going to take her to the grave. Miss Gray is an old friend of mine," he lied boldly. "We want to start at dawn. Will that be too much trouble for you and your wife?"

"No trouble at all," declared Blackton. "We've got a Chinese cook who's more like an owl than a human. How will a four o'clock breakfast suit you?"

"Splendidly!"

As they went on, the contractor said:

"I carried your word to MacDonald. Hunted him down out in the bush. He is very anxious to see you. He said he would not be at the depot, but that you must not fail him. He's kept strangely under cover of late. Curious old ghost, isn't he?"

"The strangest man in the mountains," said Aldous "And, when you come to know him, the most lovable. We're going North together."

This time it was Blackton who stopped, with a hand on his companion's arm.

A short distance from them they could see the buckboard in the light of the station lamp.

"Has old Donald written you lately?" he asked.

"No. He says he hasn't written a letter in twenty years."

Blackton hesitated.

"Then you haven't heard of his--accident?"

The strange look in the contractor's face as he lighted a cigar made John Aldous catch him sharply by the arm.

"What do you mean?"

"He was shot. I happened to be in Dr. Brady's office when he dragged himself in, late at night. Doc got the bullet out of his shoulder. It wasn't a bad wound. The old man swore it was an accident, and asked us to say nothing about it. We haven't. But I've been wondering. Old Donald said he was careless with his own pistol. But the fact is, Aldous--_he was shot from behind!_"

"The deuce you say!"

"There was no perforation except from _behind_. In some way the bullet had spent itself before it reached him. Otherwise it would have killed him."

For a moment Aldous stared in speechless amazement into Blackton's face.

"When did this happen?" he asked then.

"Three days ago. Since then I have not seen old Donald until to-night.

Almost by accident I met him out there in the timber. I delivered the telegram you sent him. After he had read it I showed him mine. He scribbled something on a bit of paper, folded it, and pinned it with a porcupine quill. I've been mighty curious, but I haven't pulled out that quill. Here it is."

From his pocket he produced the note and gave it to Aldous.

"I'll read it a little later," said Aldous. "The ladies may possibly become anxious about us."

He dropped it in his pocket as he thanked Blackton for the trouble he had taken in finding MacDonald. As he climbed into the front seat of the buckboard his eyes met Joanne's. He was glad that in a large measure she had recovered her self-possession. She smiled at him as they drove off, and there was something in the sweet tremble of her lips that made him almost fancy she was asking his forgiveness for having forgotten herself. Her voice sounded more natural to him as she spoke to Mrs. Blackton. The latter, a plump little blue-eyed woman with dimples and golden hair, was already making her feel at home. She leaned over and placed a hand on her husband's shoulder.

"Let's drive home by way of town, Paul," she suggested. "It's only a little farther, and I'm quite sure Miss Gray will be interested in our Great White Way of the mountains. And I'm crazy to see that bear you were telling me about," she added.

Nothing could have suited Aldous more than this suggestion. He was sure that Quade, following his own and Culver Rann's old methods, had already prepared stories about Joanne, and he not only wanted Quade's friends--but all of Tete Jaune as well--to see Joanne in the company of Mrs. Paul Blackton and her husband. And this was a splendid opportunity, for the night carnival was already beginning.

"The bear is worth seeing," said Blackton, turning his team in the direction of the blazing light of the half-mile street that was the Broadway of Tete Jaune. "And the woman who rides him is worth seeing, too,"

he chuckled. "He's a big fellow--and she plays the G.o.diva act. Rides him up and down the street with her hair down, collecting dimes and quarters and half dollars as she goes."

A minute later the length of the street swept out ahead of them. It is probable that the world had never before seen a street just like this Broadway in Tete Jaune--the pleasure Mecca of five thousand workers along the line of steel. There had been great "camps" in the building of other railroads, but never a city in the wilderness like this--a place that had sprung up like magic and which, a few months later, was doomed to disappear as quickly. For half a mile it blazed out ahead of them, two garishly lighted rows of shacks, big tents, log buildings, and rough board structures, with a rough, wide street between.

To-night Tete Jaune was like a blazing fire against the darkness of the forest and mountain beyond. A hundred sputtering "jacks" sent up columns of yellow flame in front of places already filled with the riot and tumult of the night. A thousand lamps and coloured lanterns flashed like fireflies along the way, and under them the crowd had gathered, and was flowing back and forth. It was a weird and fantastic sight--this one strange and almost uncanny street that was there largely for the play and the excitement of men.

Aldous turned to Joanne. He knew what this town meant. It was the first and the last of its kind, and its history would never be written. The world outside the mountains knew nothing of it. Like the men who made up its transient life it would soon be a forgotten thing of the past. Even the mountains would forget it. But more than once, as he had stood a part of it, his blood had warmed at the thought of the things it held secret, the things that would die with it, the big human drama it stood for, its hidden tragedies, its savage romance, its pa.s.sing comedy. He found something of his own thought in Joanne's eyes.

"There isn't much to it," he said, "but to-night, if you made the hunt, you could find men of eighteen or twenty nationalities in that street."

"And a little more besides," laughed Blackton. "If you could write the complete story of how Tete Jaune has broken the law, Aldous, it would fill a volume as big as Peggy's family Bible!"