The Hunted Woman Part 4

He saw the tragedy almost before it had begun. Still three hundred yards below the swimming horses was the gravelly bar which they must reach on the opposite side. He noted the grayish strip of smooth water that marked the end of the dead-line. Three or four of the stronger animals were forging steadily toward this. The others grouped close together, almost motionless in their last tremendous fight, were left farther and farther behind. Then came the break. A mare and her yearling colt had gone in with the bunch.

Aldous saw the colt, with its small head and shoulders high out of the water, sweep down like a chip with the current. A cold chill ran through him as he heard the whinneying scream of the mother--a warning cry that held for him the pathos and the despair of a creature that was human. He knew what it meant. "Wait--I'm coming--I'm coming!" was in that cry. He saw the mare give up and follow resistlessly with the deadly current, her eyes upon her colt. The heads behind her wavered, then turned, and in another moment the herd was sweeping down to its destruction.

Aldous felt like turning his head. But the spectacle fascinated him, and he looked. He did not think of Stevens and his loss as the first of the herd plunged in among the rocks. He stood with white face and clenched hands, leaning over the water boiling at his feet, cursing softly in his helplessness. To him came the last terrible cries of the peris.h.i.+ng animals.

He saw head after head go under. Out of the white spume of a great rock against which the flood split itself with the force of an avalanche he saw one horse pitched bodily, as if thrown from a huge catapault. The last animal had disappeared when chance turned his eyes upstream and close in to sh.o.r.e. Here flowed a steady current free of rock, and down this--head and shoulders still high out of the water--came the colt! What miracle had saved the little fellow thus far Aldous did not stop to ask. Fifty yards below it would meet the fate of the others. Half that distance in the direction of the maelstrom below was the dead trunk of a fallen spruce overhanging the water for fifteen or twenty feet. In a flash Aldous was racing toward it. He climbed out on it, leaned far over, and reached down.

His hand touched the water. In the grim excitement of rescue he forgot his own peril. There was one chance in twenty that the colt would come within his reach, and it did. He made a single lunge and caught it by the ear. For a moment after that his heart turned sick. Under the added strain the dead spruce sagged down with a warning crack. But it held, and Aldous hung to his grip on the ear. Foot by foot he wormed his way back, until at last he had dragged the little animal ash.o.r.e.

And then a voice spoke behind him, a voice that he would have recognized among ten thousand, low, sweet, thrilling.

"That was splendid, John Aldous!" it said. "If I were a man I would want to be a man like you!"

He turned. A few steps from him stood Joanne Gray. Her face was as white as the bit of lace at her throat. Her lips were colourless, and her bosom rose and fell swiftly. He knew that she, too, had witnessed the tragedy. And the eyes that looked at him were glorious.

CHAPTER IV

To John Aldous Joanne's appearance at this moment was like an anti-climax.

It plunged him headlong for a single moment into what he believed to be the absurdity of a situation. He had a quick mental picture of himself out on the dead spruce, performing a bit of mock-heroism by dragging in a half-drowned colt by one ear. In another instant this had pa.s.sed, and he was wondering why Joanne Gray was not on her way to Tete Jaune.

"It was splendid!" she was saying again, her eyes glowing at him. "I know men who would not have risked that for a human!"

"Perhaps they would have been showing good judgment," replied Aldous.

He noticed now that she was holding with one hand the end of a long slender sapling which a week or two before he had cut and trimmed for a fish-pole.

He nodded toward it, a half-cynical smile on his lips.

"Were you going to fish me out--or the colt?" he asked.

"You," she replied. "I thought you were in danger." And then she added, "I suppose you are deeply grateful that fate did not compel you to be saved by a woman."

"Not at all. If the spruce had snapped, I would have caught at the end of your sapling like any drowning rat--or man. Allow me to thank you."

She had stepped down to the level strip of sand on which the colt was weakly struggling to rise to its feet. She was breathing quickly. Her face was still pale. She was without a hat, and as she bent for a moment over the colt Aldous felt his eyes drawn irresistibly to the soft thick coils of her hair, a glory of colour that made him think of the l.u.s.trous brown of a ripe wintelberry. She looked up suddenly and caught his eyes upon her.

"I came quite by accident," she explained quickly. "I wanted to be alone, and Mrs. Otto said this path would lead to the river. When I saw you I was about to turn back. And then I saw the other--the horses coming down the stream. It was terrible. Are they all drowned?"

"All that you saw. It wasn't a pretty sight, was it?" There was a suggestive inquiry in his voice as he added, "If you had gone to Tete Jaune you would have missed the unpleasantness of the spectacle."

"I would have gone, but something happened. They say it was a cave-in, a slide--something like that. The train cannot go on until to-morrow."

"And you are to stay with the Ottos?"

She nodded.

Quick as a flash she had seemed to read his thoughts.

"I am sorry," she added, before he could speak. "I can see that I have annoyed you. I have literally projected myself into your work, and I am afraid that I have caused you trouble. Mrs. Otto has told me of this man they call Quade. She says he is dangerous. And I have made him your enemy."

"I am, not afraid of Quade. The incident was nothing more than an agreeable interruption to what was becoming a rather monotonous existence up here. I have always believed, you know, that a certain amount of physical excitement is good oil for our mental machinery. That, perhaps, was why you caught me hauling at His Colts.h.i.+p's ear."

He had spoken stiffly. There was a hard note in his voice, a suggestion of something that was displeasing in his forced laugh. He knew that in these moments he was fighting against his inner self--against his desire to tell her how glad he was that something had held back the Tete Jaune train, and how wonderful her hair looked in the afternoon sun. He was struggling to keep himself behind the barriers he had built up and so long maintained in his writings. And yet, as he looked, he felt something crumbling into ruins. He knew that he had hurt her. The hardness of his words, the coldness of his smile, his apparently utter indifference to her had sent something that was almost like a quick, physical pain into her eyes. He drew a step nearer, so that he caught the soft contour of her cheek. Joanne Gray heard him, and lowered her head slightly, so that he could not see.

She was a moment too late. On her cheek Aldous saw a single creeping drop--a tear.

In an instant he was at her side. With a quick movement she brushed the tear away before she faced him.

"I've hurt you," he said, looking her straight in the eyes. "I've hurt you, and G.o.d knows I'm a brute for doing it. I've treated you as badly as Quade--only in a different way. I know how I've made you feel--that you've been a nuisance, and have got me into trouble, and that I don't want to have anything more to do with you. Have I made you feel that?"

"I am afraid--you have."

He reached out a hand, and almost involuntarily her own came to it. She saw the change in his face, regret, pain, and then that slow-coming, wonderful laughter in his eyes.

"That's just how I set out to make you feel," he confessed, the warmth of her hand sending a thrill through him. "I might as well be frank, don't you think? Until you came I had but one desire, and that was to finish my book.

I had planned great work for to-day. And you spoiled it. I couldn't get you out of my mind. And it made me--ugly."

"And that was--all?" she whispered, a tense waiting in her eyes. "You didn't think----"

"What Quade thought," he bit in sharply. The grip of his fingers hurt her hand. "No, not that. My G.o.d, I didn't make you think _that?_"

"I'm a stranger--and they say women don't go to Tete Jaune alone," she answered doubtfully.

"That's true, they don't--not as a general rule. Especially women like you.

You're alone, a stranger, and too beautiful. I don't say that to flatter you. You are beautiful, and you undoubtedly know it. To let you go on alone and unprotected among three or four thousand men like most of those up there would be a crime. And the women, too--the Little Sisters. They'd blast you. If you had a husband, a brother or a father waiting for you it would be different. But you've told me you haven't. You have made me change my mind about my book. You are of more interest to me just now than that.

Will you believe me? Will you let me be a friend, if you need a friend?"

To Aldous it seemed that she drew herself up a little proudly. For a moment she seemed taller. A rose-flush of colour spread over her cheeks. She drew her hand from him. And yet, as she looked at him, he could see that she was glad.

"Yes, I believe you," she said. "But I must not accept your offer of friends.h.i.+p. You have done more for me now than I can ever repay. Friends.h.i.+p means service, and to serve me would spoil your plans, for you are in great haste to complete your book."

"If you mean that you need my a.s.sistance, the book can wait."

"I shouldn't have said that," she cut in quickly, her lips tightening slightly. "It was utterly absurd of me to hint that I might require a.s.sistance--that I cannot take care of myself. But I shall be proud of the friends.h.i.+p of John Aldous."

"Yes, you can take care of yourself, Ladygray," said Aldous softly, looking into her eyes and yet speaking as if to himself. "That is why you have broken so curiously into my life. It's _that_--and not your beauty. I have known beautiful women before. But they were--just women, frail things that might snap under stress. I have always thought there is only one woman in ten thousand who would not do that--under certain conditions. I believe you are that one in ten thousand. You can go on to Tete Jaune alone. You can go anywhere alone--and care for yourself."

He was looking at her so strangely that she held her breath, her lips parted, the flush in her cheeks deepening.

"And the strangest part of it all is that I have always known you away back in my imagination," he went on. "You have lived there, and have troubled me. I could not construct you perfectly. It is almost inconceivable that you should have borne the same name--Joanne. Joanne, of 'Fair Play.'"

She gave a little gasp.

"Joanne was--terrible," she cried. "She was bad--bad to the heart and soul of her!"

"She was splendid," replied Aldous, without a change in his quiet voice.

"She was splendid--but bad. I racked myself to find a soul for her, and I failed. And yet she was splendid. It was my crime--not hers--that she lacked a soul. She would have been my ideal, but I spoiled her. And by spoiling her I sold half a million copies of the book. I did not do it purposely. I would have given her a soul if I could have found one. She went her way."

"And you compare me to--_her?_"