CHAPTER XXVII
As they went up out of the basin into the broad meadows of the largervalley, MacDonald rode between Aldous and Joanne, and the pack-horses, ledby Pinto, trailed behind.
Again old Donald said, as he searched the valley:
"We've beat 'em, Johnny. Quade an' Rann are coming up on the other side ofthe range, and I figger they're just about a day behind--mebby only hours,or an hour. You can't tell. There's more gold back there. We got about ahunderd pounds in them fifteen sacks, an' there was twice that much. It'shid somewhere. Calkins used to keep his'n under the floor. So did Watts.We'll find it later. An' the river, an' the dry gulches on both sides ofthe valley--they're full of it! It's all gold, Johnny--gold everywhere!"
He pointed ahead to where the valley rose in a green slope between twomountains half a mile away.
"That's the break," he said. "It don't seem very far now, do it, Joanne?"His silence seemed to have dropped from him like a mantle, and there wasjoy in what he was telling. "But it was a distance that night--a tumbledistance," he continued, before she could answer. "That was forty-one yearsago, coming November. An' it was cold, an' the snow was deep. It was bittercold--so cold it caught my Jane's lungs, an' that was what made her go alittle later. The slope up there don't look steep now, but it was steepthen--with two feet of snow to drag ourselves through. I don't think thecavern is more'n five or six miles away, Johnny, mebby less, an' it took ustwenty hours to reach it. It snowed so heavy that night, an' the windblowed so, that our trail was filled up or they might ha' followed."
Many times Aldous had been on the point of asking old Donald a question.For the first time he asked it now, even as his eyes swept slowly andsearchingly over the valley for signs of Mortimer FitzHugh and Quade.
"I've often wondered why you ran away with Jane," he said. "I know whatthreatened her--a thing worse than death. But why did you run? Why didn'tyou stay and fight?"
A low growl rumbled in MacDonald's beard.
"Johnny, Johnny, if I only ha' could!" he groaned. "There was five of themleft when I ran into the cabin an' barricaded myself there with Jane. Istuck my gun out of the window an' they was afraid to rush the cabin. Theywas _afraid_, Johnny, all that afternoon--_an' I didn't have a cartridgeleft to fire!_ That's why we went just as soon as we could crawl out in thedark. I knew they'd come that night. I might ha' killed one or two hand tohand, for I was big an' strong in them days, Johnny, but I knew I couldn'tbeat 'em all. So we went."
"After all, death isn't so very terrible," said Joanne softly, and she wasriding so close that for a moment she laid one of her warm hands on DonaldMacDonald's.
"No, it's sometimes--wunnerful--an' beautiful," replied Donald, a littlebrokenly, and with that he rode ahead, and Joanne and Aldous waited untilthe pack-horses had passed them.
"He's going to see that all is clear at the summit," explained Aldous.
They seemed to be riding now right into the face of that mysterious rumbleand roar of the mountains. It was an hour before they all stood together atthe top of the break, and here MacDonald swung sharply to the right, andcame soon to the rock-strewn bed of a dried-up stream that in ages past hadbeen a wide and rushing torrent. Steadily, as they progressed down this,the rumble and roar grew nearer. It seemed that it was almost under theirfeet, when again MacDonald turned, and a quarter of an hour later theyfound themselves at the edge of a small plain; and now all about them werecold and towering mountains that shut out the sun, and a hundred yards totheir right was a great dark cleft in the floor of the plain, and up out ofthis came the rumble and roar that was like the sullen anger of monsterbeasts imprisoned deep down in the bowels of the earth.
MacDonald got off his horse, and Aldous and Joanne rode up to him. In theold man's face was a look of joy and triumph.
"It weren't so far as I thought it was, Johnny!" he cried. "Oh, it must ha'been a turrible night--a turrible night when Jane an' I come this way! Ittook us twenty hours, Johnny!"
"We are near the cavern?" breathed Joanne.
"It ain't more'n half a mile farther on, I guess. But we'll camp here.We're pretty well hid. They can't find us. An' from that summit up therewe can keep watch in both valleys."
Knowing the thoughts that were in MacDonald's mind, and how full his heartwas with a great desire, Aldous went to him when they had dismounted.
"You go on alone if there is time to-night, Mac," he said, knowing that theother would understand him. "I will make camp."
"There ain't no one in the valley," mused the old man, a little doubtfullyat first. "It would be safe--quite safe, Johnny."
"Yes, it will be safe."
"And I will stand guard while John is working," said Joanne, who had cometo them. "No one can approach us without being seen."
For another moment MacDonald hesitated. Then he said:
"Do you see that break over there across the plain? It's the open to agorge. Johnny, it do seem unreasonable--it do seem as though I must ha'been dreamin'--when I think that it took us twenty hours! But the snow wasto my waist in this plain, an' it was slow work--turrible slow work! Ithink the cavern--ain't on'y a little way up that gorge."
"You can make it before the sun is quite gone."
"An' I could hear you shout, or your gun. I could ride back in fiveminutes--an' I wouldn't be gone an hour."
"There is no danger," urged Aldous.
A deep breath came from old Donald's breast.
"I guess--I'll go, Johnny, if you an' Joanne don't mind."
He looked about him, and then he pointed toward the face of a great rock.
"Put the tepee up near that," he said. "Pile the saddles, an' the blankets,an' the panniers around it, so it'll look like a real camp, Johnny. But itwon't be a real camp. It'll be a dummy. See them thick spruce an' cedarover there? Build Joanne a shelter of boughs in there, an' take in somegrub, an' blankets, an' the gold. See the point, Johnny? If anything shouldhappen----"
"They'd tackle the bogus camp!" cried Aldous with elation. "It's a splendididea!"
He set at once about unpacking the horses, and Joanne followed close at hisside to help him. MacDonald mounted his horse and rode at a trot in thedirection of the break in the mountain.
The sun had disappeared, but its reflection was still on the peaks; andafter he had stripped and hobbled the horses Aldous took advantage of thelast of day to scrutinize the plain and the mountain slopes through thetelescope. After that he found enough dry poles with which to set up thetepee, and about this he scattered the saddles and panniers, as MacDonaldhad suggested. Then he cleared a space in the thick spruce, and brought toit what was required for their hidden camp.
It was almost dark when he completed the spruce and cedar lean-to forJoanne. He knew that to-night they must build no fire, not even for tea;and when they had laid out the materials for their cold supper, whichconsisted of beans, canned beef and tongue, peach marmalade, bread bannock,and pickles and cheese, he went with Joanne for water to a small creek theyhad crossed a hundred yards away. In both his hands, ready for instantaction, he carried his rifle. Joanne carried the pail. Her eyes were bigand bright and searching in that thick-growing dusk of night. She walkedvery close to Aldous, and she said:
"John, I know how careful you and Donald have been in this journey into theNorth. I know what you have feared. Culver Rann and Quade are after thegold, and they are near. But why does Donald talk as though we are _surely_going to be attacked by them, or are _surely_ going to attack them? I don'tunderstand it, John. If you don't care for the gold so much, as you told meonce, and if we find Jane to-morrow, or to-night, why do we remain to havetrouble with Quade and Culver Rann? Tell me, John."
He could not see her face fully in the gloom, and he was glad that shecould not see his.
"If we can get away without fighting, we will, Joanne," he lied. And heknew that she would have known that he was lying if it had not been for thedarkness.
"You won't fight--over the gold?" she asked, pressing his arm. "Will yo
upromise me that, John?"
"Yes, I promise that. I swear it!" he cried, and so forcefully that shegave a glad little laugh.
"Then if they don't find us to-morrow, we'll go back home?" She trembled,and he knew that her heart was filled with a sudden lightness. "And I don'tbelieve they will find us. They won't come beyond that terrible place--andthe gold! Why should they, John? Why should they follow us--if we leavethem everything? Oh-h-h-h!" She shuddered, and whispered: "I wish we hadnot brought the gold, John. I wish we had left it behind!"
"What we have is worth thirty or forty thousand dollars," he saidreassuringly, as he filled his pail with water and they began to return."We can do a great deal of good with that. Endowments, for instance," helaughed.
As he spoke, they both stopped, and listened. Plainly they heard theapproaching thud of hoofs. MacDonald had been gone nearer two hours thanone, and believing that it was him, Aldous gave the owl signal. The signalfloated back to them softly. Five minutes later MacDonald rode up anddismounted. Until he had taken the saddle off, and had hobbled his horse,he did not speak. Neither Joanne nor Aldous asked the question that was intheir hearts. But even in the darkness they felt something. It was as ifnot only the torrent rushing through the chasm, but MacDonald's heart aswell, was charging the air with a strange and subdued excitement. And whenMacDonald spoke, that which they had felt was in his voice.
"You ain't seen or heard anything, Johnny?"
"Nothing. And you--Donald?"
In the darkness, Joanne went to the old man, and her hand found one of his,and clasped it tightly; and she found that Donald MacDonald's big hand wastrembling in a strange and curious way, and she could feel him quivering.
"You found Jane?" she whispered.
"Yes, I found her, little Joanne."
She did not let go of his hand until they entered the open space whichAldous had made in the spruce. Then she remembered what Aldous had said toher earlier in the day, and cheerfully she lighted the two candles theyhad set out, and forced Aldous down first upon the ground, and thenMacDonald, and began to help them to beans and meat and bannock, while allthe time her heart was crying out to know about the cavern--and Jane. Thecandleglow told her a great deal, for in it Donald MacDonald's face wasvery calm, and filled with a great peace, despite the trembling she hadfelt. Her woman's sympathy told her that his heart was too full on thisnight for speech, and when he ate but little she did not urge him to eatmore; and when he rose and went silently and alone out into the darknessshe held Aldous back; and when, still a little later, she went into hernest for the night, she whispered softly to him:
"I know that he found Jane as he wanted to find her, and he is happy. Ithink he has gone out there alone--to cry." And for a time after that, ashe sat in the gloom, John Aldous knew that Joanne was sobbing like a littlechild in the spruce and cedar shelter he had built for her.
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