The Hunted Woman

by James Oliver Curwood

  CHAPTER III

  If John Aldous had betrayed no visible sign of inward vanquishment he atleast was feeling its effect. For years his writings had made him thetarget for a world of women, and many men. The men he had regarded withindifferent toleration. The women were his life--the "frail and ineffectivecreatures" who gave spice to his great adventure, and made his daysanything but monotonous. He was not unchivalrous. Deep down in hisheart--and this was his own secret--he did not even despise women. But hehad seen their weaknesses and their frailties as perhaps no other man hadever seen them, and he had written of them as no other man had everwritten. This had brought him the condemnation of the host, the admirationof the few. His own personal veneer of antagonism against woman was purelyartificial, and yet only a few had guessed it. He had built it up about himas a sort of protection. He called himself "an adventurer in the mysteriesof feminism," and to be this successfully he had argued that he mustdestroy in himself the usual heart-emotions of the sex-man and the animal.

  How far he had succeeded in this he himself did not know--until these lastmoments when he had bid good-bye to Joanne Gray. He confessed that she hadfound a cleft in his armour, and there was an uneasy thrill in his blood.It was not her beauty alone that had affected him. He had trained himselfto look at a beautiful woman as he might have looked at a beautiful flower,confident that if he went beyond the mere admiration of it he would findonly burned-out ashes. But in her he had seen something that was more thanbeauty, something that for a flashing moment had set stirring everymolecule in his being. He had felt the desire to rest his hand upon hershining hair!

  He turned off into a winding path that led into the thick poplars,restraining an inclination to look back in the direction of the Otto camp.He pulled out the pipe he had dropped into his shirt pocket, filled it withfresh tobacco, and began smoking. As he smoked, his lips wore a quizzicalsmile, for he was honest enough to give Joanne Gray credit for her triumph.She had awakened a new kind of interest in him--only a passing interest, tobe sure--but a new kind for all that. The fact amused him. In a large wayhe was a humourist--few guessing it, and he fully appreciated the humour ofthe present situation--that he, John Aldous, touted the world over as awoman-hater, wanted to peer out through the poplar foliage and see thatwonderful gold-brown head shining in the sun once more!

  He wandered more slowly on his way, wondering with fresh interest what hisfriends, the women, would say when they read his new book. His title for itwas "Mothers." It was to be a tremendous surprise.

  Suddenly his face became serious. He faced the sound of a distantphonograph. It was not the phonograph in Quade's place, but that of a rivaldealer in soft drinks at the end of the "street." For a moment Aldoushesitated. Then he turned in the direction of the camp.

  Quade was bolstered up on a stool, his back against the thin partition,when John Aldous sauntered in. There was still a groggy look in his mottledface. His thick bulk hung a bit limply. In his heavy-lidded eyes,under-hung by watery pouches of sin and dissipation, there was a vengefuland beastlike glare. He was surrounded by his friends. One of them wastaking a wet cloth from his head. There were a dozen in the canvas-walledroom, all with their backs to the door, their eyes upon their fallen anddishonoured chief. For a moment John Aldous paused in the door. The cooland insolent smile hovered about his lips again, and little crinkles hadgathered at the corners of his eyes.

  "Did I hit you pretty hard, Bill?" he asked.

  Every head was turned toward him. Bill Quade stared, his mouth open. Hestaggered to his feet, and stood dizzily.

  "You--damn you!" he cried huskily.

  Three or four of the men had already begun to move toward the stranger.Their hands were knotted, their faces murderously dark.

  "Wait a minute, boys," warned Aldous coolly. "I've got something to say toyou--and Bill. Then eat me alive if you want to. Do you want to be squareenough to give me a word?"

  Quade had settled back sickly on his stool. The others had stopped,waiting. The quiet and insolently confident smile had not left Aldous'lips.

  "You'll feel better in a few minutes, Bill," he consoled. "A hard blow onthe jaw always makes you sick at the pit of the stomach. That dizzinesswill pass away shortly. Meanwhile, I'm going to give you and your pals alittle verbal and visual demonstration of what you're up against, and warnyou to bait no traps for a certain young woman whom you've lately seen.She's going on to Tete Jaune. And I know how your partner plays his game upthere. I'm not particularly anxious to butt into your affairs and thebusiness of this pretty bunch that's gathered about you, but I've come togive you a friendly warning for all that. If this young woman isembarrassed up at Tete Jaune you're going to settle with me."

  Aldous had spoken without a tremor of excitement in his voice. Not one ofthe men noticed his speaking lips, his slim hands, or his careless postureas he leaned in the door. They were looking straight into his eyes,strangely scintillating and deadly earnest. In such a man mere bulk did notcount.

  "That much--for words," he went on. "Now I'm going to give you the visualdemonstration. I know your game, Bill. You're already planning what you'regoing to do. You won't fight fair--because you never have. You've alreadydecided that some morning I'll turn up missing, or be dug out from under afall of rock, or go peacefully floating down the Athabasca. See! There'snothing in that hand, is there?"

  He stretched out an empty hand toward them, palm up.

  "And now!"

  A twist of the wrist so swift their eyes could not follow, a metallicclick, and the startled group were staring into the black muzzle of amenacing little automatic.

  "That's known as the sleeve trick, boys," explained Aldous with hisimperturbable smile. "It's a relic of the old gun-fighting days when thebest man was quickest. From now on, especially at night, I shall carry thislittle friend of mine just inside my wristband. There are eleven shots init, and I shoot fairly straight. Good-day!"

  Before they had recovered from their astonishment he was gone.

  He did not follow the road along which Joanne had come a short time before,but turned again into the winding trail that led riverward through thepoplars. Where before he had been a little amused at himself, he was nowmore seriously disgusted. He was not afraid of Quade, who was perhaps themost dangerous man along the line of rail. Neither was he afraid of thelawless men who worked his ends. But he knew that he had made powerfulenemies, and all because of an unknown woman whom he had never seen untilhalf an hour before. It was this that disturbed his equanimity--the _woman_of it, and the knowledge that his interference had been unsolicited andprobably unnecessary. And now that he had gone this far he found it noteasy to recover his balance. Who was this Joanne Gray? he asked himself.She was not ordinary--like the hundred other women who had gone on ahead ofher to Tete Jaune Cache. If she had been that, he would soon have been inhis little shack on the shore of the river, hard at work. He had plannedwork for himself that afternoon, and he was nettled to discover that hisenthusiasm for the grand finale of a certain situation in his novel wasgone. Yet for this he did not blame her. He was the fool. Quade and hisfriends would make him feel that sooner or later.

  His trail led him to a partly dry muskeg bottom. Beyond this was a thickergrowth of timber, mostly spruce and cedar, from behind which came therushing sound of water. A few moments more and he stood with the widetumult of the Athabasca at his feet. He had chosen this spot for his littlecabin because the river ran wild here among the rocks, and becausepack-outfits going into the southward mountains could not disturb him byfording at this point. Across the river rose the steep embankments thatshut in Buffalo Prairie, and still beyond that the mountains, thick withtimber rising billow on billow until trees looked like twigs, with grayrock and glistening snow shouldering the clouds above the last purple line.The cabin in which he had lived and worked for many weeks faced the riverand the distant Saw Tooth Range, and was partly hidden in a clump ofjack-pines. He opened the door and entered. Through the window to the southand west he cou
ld see the white face of Mount Geikie, and forty miles awayin that wilderness of peaks, the sombre frown of Hardesty; through it thesun came now, flooding his work as he had left it. The last page ofmanuscript on which he had been working was in his typewriter. He sat downto begin where he had left off in that pivotal situation in hismasterpiece.

  He read and re-read the last two or three pages of the manuscript,struggling to pick up the threads where he had dropped them. With eachreading he became more convinced that his work for that afternoon wasspoiled. And by whom? By _what?_ A little fiercely he packed his pipe withfresh tobacco. Then he leaned back, lighted it, and laughed. More and moreas the minutes passed he permitted himself to think of the strange youngwoman whose beauty and personality had literally projected themselves intohis workshop. He marvelled at the crudity of the questions which he askedhimself, and yet he persisted in asking them. Who was she? What could beher mission at Tete Jaune Cache? She had repeated to him what she had saidto the girl in the coach--that at Tete Jaune she had no friends. Beyondthat, and her name, she had offered no enlightenment.

  In the brief space that he had been with her he had mentally tabulated herage as twenty-eight--no older. Her beauty alone, the purity of her eyes,the freshness of her lips, and the slender girlishness of her figure, mighthave made him say twenty, but with those things he had found the maturerpoise of the woman. It had been a flashlight picture, but one that he wassure of.

  Several times during the next hour he turned to his work, and at last gaveup his efforts entirely. From a peg in the wall he took down a littlerifle. He had found it convenient to do much of his own cooking, and he hadbroken a few laws. The partridges were out of season, but temptingly fatand tender. With a brace of young broilers in mind for supper, he left thecabin and followed the narrow foot-trail up the river. He hunted for halfan hour before he stirred a covey of birds. Two of these he shot.Concealing his meat and his gun near the trail he continued toward the fordhalf a mile farther up, wondering if Stevens, who was due to cross thatday, had got his outfit over. Not until then did he look at his watch. Hewas surprised to find that the Tete Jaune train had been gone threequarters of an hour. For some unaccountable reason he felt easier. He wenton, whistling.

  At the ford he found Stevens standing close to the river's edge, twistingone of his long red moustaches in doubt and vexation.

  "Damn this river," he growled, as Aldous came up. "You never can tell whatit's going to do overnight. Look there! Would you try to cross?"

  "I wouldn't," replied Aldous. "It's a foot higher than yesterday. Iwouldn't take the chance."

  "Not with two guides, a cook, and a horse-wrangler on your pay-roll--and ahospital bill as big as Geikie staring you in the face?" argued Stevens,who had been sick for three months. "I guess you'd pretty near take achance. I've a notion to."

  "I wouldn't," repeated Aldous.

  "But I've lost two days already, and I'm taking that bunch of sightseersout for a lump sum, guaranteeing 'em so many days on the trail. This ain'twhat you might call _on the trail_. They don't expect to pay for thisdelay, and that outfit back in the bush is costing me thirty dollars a day.We can get the dunnage and ourselves over in the flat-boat. It'll make ourarms crack--but we can do it. I've got twenty-seven horses. I've a notionto chase 'em in. The river won't be any lower to-morrow."

  "But you may be a few horses ahead."

  Stevens bit off a chunk of tobacco and sat down. For a few moments helooked at the muddy flood with an ugly eye. Then he chuckled, and grinned.

  "Came through the camp half an hour ago," he said. "Hear you cleaned up onBill Quade."

  "A bit," said Aldous.

  Stevens rolled his quid and spat into the water slushing at his feet.

  "Guess I saw the woman when she got off the train," he went on. "Shedropped something. I picked it up, but she was so darned pretty as shestood there looking about I didn't dare go up an' give it to her. If it hadbeen worth anything I'd screwed up my courage. But it wasn't--so I justgawped like the others. It was a piece of paper. Mebby you'd like it as asouvenir, seein' as you laid out Quade for her."

  As he spoke, Stevens fished a crumpled bit of paper from his pocket andgave it to his companion. Aldous had sat down beside him. He smoothed thepage out on his knee. There was no writing on it, but it was crowded thickwith figures, as if the maker of the numerals had been doing some problemin mathematics. The chief thing that interested him was that wherevermonetary symbols were used it was the "pound" and not the "dollar" sign.The totals of certain columns were rather startling.

  "Guess she's a millionaire if that's her own money she's been figgering,"said Stevens. "Notice that figger there!" He pointed with a stubbyforefinger. "Pretty near a billion, ain't it?"

  "Seven hundred and fifty thousand," said Aldous.

  He was thinking of the "pound" sign. She had not looked like theEnglishwomen he had met. He folded the slip of paper and put it in hispocket.

  Stevens eyed him seriously.

  "I was coming over to give you a bit of advice before I left for theMaligne Lake country," he said. "You'd better move. Quade won't want youaround after this. Besides----"

  "What?"

  "My kid heard something," continued the packer, edging nearer. "You wasmighty good to the kid when I was down an' out, Aldous. I ought to tellyou. It wasn't an hour ago the kid was behind the tent an' he heard Quadeand Slim Barker talking. So far as I can find from the kid, Quade has gonenutty over her. He's ravin'. He told Slim that he'd give ten thousanddollars to get her in his hands. What sent the boy down to me was Quadetellin' Slim that he'd get _you_ first. He told Slim to go on to TeteJaune--follow the girl!"

  "The deuce you say!" cried Aldous, clutching the other's arm suddenly."He's done that?"

  "That's what the kid says."

  Aldous rose to his feet slowly. The careless smile was playing about hismouth again. A few men had learned that in those moments John Aldous wasdangerous.

  "The kid is undoubtedly right," he said, looking down at Stevens. "But I amquite sure the young woman is capable of taking care of herself. Quade hasa tremendous amount of nerve, setting Slim to follow her, hasn't he? Slimmay run up against a husband or a brother."

  Stevens haunched his shoulders.

  "It's not the woman I'm thinking about. It's you. I'd sure change mylocation."

  "Why wouldn't it be just as well if I told the police of his threat?" askedAldous, looking across the river with a glimmer of humour in his eyes.

  "Oh, hell!" was the packer's rejoinder.

  Slowly he unwound his long legs and rose to his feet.

  "Take my advice--move!" he said. "As for me, I'm going to cross that cussedriver this afternoon or know the reason why."

  He stalked away in the direction of his outfit, chewing viciously at hisquid. For a few moments Aldous stood undecided. He would liked to havejoined the half-dozen men he saw lounging restfully a distance beyond thegrazing ponies. But Stevens had made him acutely aware of a new danger. Hewas thinking of his cabin--and the priceless achievement of his last monthsof work, his manuscript. If Quade should destroy that----

  He clenched his hands and walked swiftly toward his camp. To "burn out" anenemy was one of Quade's favourite methods of retaliation. He had heardthis. He also knew that Quade's work was done so cleverly that the policehad been unable to call him to account.

  Quade's status had interested Aldous from the beginning. He had discoveredthat Quade and Culver Rann, his partner at Tete Jaune, were forces to bereckoned with even by the "powers" along the line of rail. They were thetwo chiefs of the "underground," the men who controlled the most dangerouselement from Miette to Fort George. He had once seen Culver Rann, a quiet,keen-eyed, immaculately groomed man of forty--the cleverest scoundrel thathad ever drifted into the Canadian west. He had been told that Rann wasreally the brain of the combination, and that the two had picked up aquarter of a million in various ways. But it was Quade with whom he had todeal now, and he began to thank Stevens fo
r his warning. He was filled witha sense of relief when he reached his cabin and found it as he had leftit. He always made a carbon copy of his work. This copy he now put into awaterproof tin box, and the box he concealed under a log a short distanceback in the bush.

  "Now go ahead, Quade," he laughed to himself, a curious, almost exultantring in his voice. "I haven't had any real excitement for so long I can'tremember, and if you start the fun there's going to _be_ fun!"

  He returned to his birds, perched himself behind a bush at the river'sedge, and began skinning them. He had almost finished when he heard hoarseshouts from up the river. From his position he could see the stream ahundred yards below the ford. Stevens had driven in his horses. He couldsee them breasting the first sweep of the current, their heads held high,struggling for the opposite shore. He rose, dropped his birds, and stared.

  "Good God, what a fool!" he gasped.

  He saw the tragedy almost before it had begun. Still three hundred yardsbelow the swimming horses was the gravelly bar which they must reach on theopposite side. He noted the grayish strip of smooth water that marked theend of the dead-line. Three or four of the stronger animals were forgingsteadily toward this. The others grouped close together, almost motionlessin their last tremendous fight, were left farther and farther behind. Thencame 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 thewater, sweep down like a chip with the current. A cold chill ran throughhim as he heard the whinneying scream of the mother--a warning cry thatheld for him the pathos and the despair of a creature that was human. Heknew what it meant. "Wait--I'm coming--I'm coming!" was in that cry. He sawthe mare give up and follow resistlessly with the deadly current, her eyesupon her colt. The heads behind her wavered, then turned, and in anothermoment the herd was sweeping down to its destruction.

  Aldous felt like turning his head. But the spectacle fascinated him, and helooked. He did not think of Stevens and his loss as the first of the herdplunged in among the rocks. He stood with white face and clenched hands,leaning over the water boiling at his feet, cursing softly in hishelplessness. To him came the last terrible cries of the perishing animals.He saw head after head go under. Out of the white spume of a great rockagainst which the flood split itself with the force of an avalanche he sawone horse pitched bodily, as if thrown from a huge catapault. The lastanimal had disappeared when chance turned his eyes upstream and close in toshore. Here flowed a steady current free of rock, and down this--head andshoulders still high out of the water--came the colt! What miracle hadsaved the little fellow thus far Aldous did not stop to ask. Fifty yardsbelow it would meet the fate of the others. Half that distance in thedirection of the maelstrom below was the dead trunk of a fallen spruceoverhanging the water for fifteen or twenty feet. In a flash Aldous wasracing 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 hisown peril. There was one chance in twenty that the colt would come withinhis reach, and it did. He made a single lunge and caught it by the ear. Fora moment after that his heart turned sick. Under the added strain the deadspruce sagged down with a warning crack. But it held, and Aldous hung tohis grip on the ear. Foot by foot he wormed his way back, until at last hehad dragged the little animal ashore.

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

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

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