The Hunted Woman

by James Oliver Curwood

  CHAPTER XXVIII

  If MacDonald slept at all that night Aldous did not know it. The oldmountaineer watched until a little after twelve in the deep shadow of arock between the two camps.

  "I can't sleep," he protested, when Aldous urged him to take his rest. "Imight take a little stroll up the plain, Johnny--but I can't sleep."

  The plain lay in a brilliant starlight at this hour; they could see thegleam of the snow-peaks--the light was almost like the glow of the moon.

  "There'll be plenty of sleep after to-morrow," added MacDonald, and therewas a finality in his voice and words which set the other's blood stirring.

  "You think they will show up to-morrow?"

  "Yes. This is the same valley the cabins are in, Johnny. That big mountainruns out an' splits it, an' it curves like a horseshoe. From that mount'inwe can see them, no matter which way they come. They'll go straight to thecabins. There's a deep little run under the slope. You didn't see it whenwe came out, but it'll take us within a hunderd yards of 'em. An' at ahunderd yards----"

  He shrugged his shoulders suggestively in the starlight, and there was asmile on his face.

  "It seems almost like murder," shuddered Aldous.

  "But it ain't,'" replied MacDonald quickly. "It's self-defence! If wedon't do it, Johnny--if we don't draw on them first, what happened thereforty years ago is goin' to happen again--with Joanne!"

  "A hundred yards," breathed Aldous, his jaws setting hard. "And there arefive!"

  "They'll go into the cabins," said MacDonald. "At some time there will betwo or three outside, an' we'll take them first. At the sound of the shotsthe others will run out, and it will be easy. Yo' can't very well miss aman at a hunderd yards, Johnny?"

  "No, I won't miss."

  MacDonald rose.

  "I'm goin' to take a little stroll, Johnny."

  For two hours after that Aldous was alone. He knew why old Donald could notsleep, and where he had gone, and he pictured him sitting before the littleold cabin in the starlit valley communing with the spirit of Jane. Andduring those two hours he steeled himself for the last time to the thingthat was going to happen when the day came.

  It was nearly three o'clock when MacDonald returned. It was four o'clockbefore he roused Joanne; and it was five o'clock when they had eaten theirbreakfast, and MacDonald prepared to leave for the mountain with histelescope. Aldous had observed Joanne talking to him for several minutesalone, and he had also observed that her eyes were very bright, and thatthere was an unusual eagerness in her manner of listening to what the oldman was saying. The significance of this did not occur to him when sheurged him to accompany MacDonald.

  "Two pairs of eyes are better than one, John," she said, "and I cannotpossibly be in danger here. I can see you all the time, and you can seeme--if I don't run away, or hide." And she laughed a little breathlessly."There is no danger, is there, Donald?"

  The old hunter shook his head.

  "There's no danger, but--you might be lonesome," he said.

  Joanne put her pretty mouth close to Aldous' ear.

  "I want to be alone for a little while, dear," she whispered, and there wasthat mystery in her voice which kept him from questioning her, and made himgo with MacDonald.

  In three quarters of an hour they had reached the spur of the mountain fromwhich MacDonald had said they could see up the valley, and also the breakthrough which they had come the preceding afternoon. The morning mistsstill hung low, but as these melted away under the sun mile after mile of amarvellous panorama spread out swiftly under them, and as the distance oftheir vision grew, the deeper became the disappointment in MacDonald'sface. For half an hour after the mists had gone he neither spoke norlowered the telescope from his eyes. A mile away Aldous saw three cariboucrossing the valley. A little later, on a green slope, he discerned amoving hulk that he knew was a bear. He did not speak until old Donaldlowered the glass.

  "I can see for eight miles up the valley, an' there ain't a soul in sight,"said MacDonald in answer to his question. "I figgered they'd be along aboutnow, Johnny."

  A dozen times Aldous had looked back at the camp. Twice he had seen Joanne.He looked now through the telescope. She was nowhere in sight. A bitnervously he returned the telescope to MacDonald.

  "And I can't see Joanne," he said.

  MacDonald looked. For five minutes he levelled the glass steadily at thecamp. Then he shifted it slowly westward, and a low exclamation broke fromhis lips as he lowered the glass, and looked at Aldous.

  "Johnny, she's just goin' into the gorge! She was just disappearin' when Icaught her!"

  "Going into--the gorge!" gasped Aldous, jumping to his feet. "Mac----"

  MacDonald rose and stood at his side. There was something reassuring in therumbling laugh that came from deep in his chest.

  "She's beat us!" he chuckled. "Bless her, she's beat us! I didn't guess whyshe was askin' me all them questions. An' I told her, Johnny--told her justwhere the cavern was up there in the gorge, an' how you wouldn't hardlymiss it if you tried. An' she asked me how long it would take to _walk_there, an' I told her half an hour. An' she's going to the cavern, Johnny!"

  He was telescoping his long glass as he spoke, and while Aldous was stillstaring toward the gorge in wonderment and a little fear, he added:

  "We'd better follow. Quade an' Rann can't get here inside o' two or threehours, an' we'll be back before then." Again he rumbled with that curiouschuckling laugh. "She beat us, Johnny, she beat us fair! An' she's gotspirrit, a wunnerful spirrit, to go up there alone!"

  Aldous wanted to run, but he held himself down to MacDonald's stride. Hisheart trembled apprehensively as they hurriedly descended the mountain andcut across the plain. He could not quite bring himself to MacDonald's pointof assurance regarding Quade and Mortimer FitzHugh. The old mountaineer waspositive that the other party was behind them. Aldous asked himself if itwere not possible that Quade and FitzHugh were _ahead_ of them, and alreadywaiting and watching for their opportunity. He had suggested that theymight have swung farther to the west, with the plan of descending upon thevalley from the north, and MacDonald had pointed out how unlikely this was.In spite of this, Aldous was not in a comfortable frame of mind as theyhurried after Joanne. She had half an hour's start of them when theyreached the mouth of the gorge, and not until they had travelled anotherhalf-hour up the rough bed of the break between the two mountains, andMacDonald pointed ahead, and said: "There's the cavern!" did he breatheeasier.

  They could see the mouth of the cavern when they were yet a couple ofhundred yards from it. It was a wide, low cleft in the north face of thechasm wall, and in front of it, spreading out like the flow of a stream,was a great spatter of white sand, like a huge rug that had been spread outin a space cleared of its chaotic litter of rock and broken slate. At firstglance Aldous guessed that the cavern had once been the exit of asubterranean stream. The sand deadened the sound of their footsteps as theyapproached. At the mouth of the cave they paused. It was perhaps forty orfifty feet deep, and as high as a nine-foot room. Inside it was quitelight. Halfway to the back of it, upon her knees, and with her face turnedfrom them, was Joanne.

  They were very close to her before she heard them. With a startled cry shesprang to her feet, and Aldous and MacDonald saw what she had been doing.Over a long mound in the white sand still rose the sapling stake whichDonald had planted there forty years before; and about this, and scatteredover the grave, were dozens of wild asters and purple hyacinths whichJoanne had brought from the plain. Aldous did not speak, but he took herhand, and looked down with her on the grave. And then something caught hiseyes among the flowers, and Joanne drew him a step nearer, her eyes shininglike velvet stars, while his heart beat faster when he saw what the objectwas. It was a book, open in the middle, and it lay face downward on thegrave. It was old, and looked as though it might have fallen into dust atthe touch of his finger. Joanne's voice was low and filled with awhispering awe.

  "It was her Bible, John!"

>   He turned a little, and noticed that Donald had gone to the mouth of thecavern, and was looking toward the mountain.

  "It was her Bible," he heard Joanne repeating; and then MacDonald turnedtoward them, and he saw in his face a look that seemed strange and out ofplace in this home of his dead. He went to him, and Joanne followed.

  MacDonald had turned again--was listening--and holding his breath. Then hesaid, still with his face toward the mountain and the valley:

  "I may be mistaken, Johnny, but I think I heard--a rifle-shot!"

  For a full minute they listened.

  "It seemed off there," said MacDonald, pointing to the south. "I guesswe'd better get back to camp, Johnny."

  He started ahead of them, and Aldous followed as swiftly as he could withJoanne. She was panting with excitement, but she asked no questions.MacDonald began to spring more quickly from rock to rock; over the levelspaces he began to run. He reached the edge of the plain four or fivehundred yards in advance of them, and was scanning the valley through histelescope when they came up.

  "They're not on this side," he said. "They're comin' up the other leg ofthe valley, Johnny. We've got to get to the mount'in before we can seethem."

  He closed the glass with a snap and swung it over his shoulder. Then hepointed toward the camp.

  "Take Joanne down there," he commanded. "Watch the break we came through,an' wait for me. I'm goin' up on the mount'in an' take a look!"

  The last words came back over his shoulder as he started on a trot down theslope. Only once before had Aldous seen MacDonald employ greater haste, andthat was on the night of the attack on Joanne. He was convinced there wasno doubt in Donald's mind about the rifle-shot, and that the shot couldmean but one thing--the nearness of Mortimer FitzHugh and Quade. Why theyshould reveal their presence in that way he did not ask himself as hehurried down into the plain with Joanne. By the time they reached the campold Donald had covered two thirds of the distance to the mountain. Aldouslooked at his watch and a curious thrill shot through him. Only a littlemore than an hour had passed since they had left the mountain to followJoanne, and in that time it would have been impossible for their enemies tohave covered more than a third of the eight-mile stretch of valley whichthey had found empty of human life under the searching scrutiny of thetelescope! He was right--and MacDonald was wrong! The sound of the shot, ifthere had been a shot, must have come from some other direction!

  He wanted to shout his warning to MacDonald, but already too great adistance separated them. Besides, if he was right, MacDonald would run intono danger in that direction. Their menace was to the north--beyond thechasm out of which came the rumble and roar of the stream. When Donald haddisappeared up the slope he looked more closely at the rugged walls of rockthat shut them in on that side. He could see no break in them. His eyesfollowed the dark streak in the floor of the plain, which was the chasm. Itwas two hundred yards below where they were standing; and a hundred yardsbeyond the tepee he saw where it came out of a great rent in the mountain.He looked at Joanne. She had been watching him, and was breathing quickly.

  "While Donald is taking his look from the mountain, I'm going toinvestigate the chasm," he said.

  She followed him, a few steps behind. The roar grew in their ears as theyadvanced. After a little solid rock replaced the earth under their feet,and twenty paces from the precipice Aldous took Joanne by the hand. Theywent to the edge and looked over. Fifty feet below them the stream wascaught in the narrow space between the two chasm walls, and above the rushand roar of it Aldous heard the startled cry that came from Joanne. Sheclutched his hand fiercely. Fascinated she gazed down. The water, speedinglike a millrace, was a lather of foam; and up through this foam there shotthe crests of great rocks, as though huge monsters of some kind were atplay, whipping the torrent into greater fury, and bellowing forththunderous voices. Downstream Aldous could see that the tumult grew less;from the rent in the mountain came the deeper, more distant-rolling thunderthat they had heard on the other side of the range. And then, as he looked,a sharper cry broke from Joanne, and she dragged him back from the ledge,and pointed toward the tepee.

  Out from among the rocks had appeared a human figure. It was a woman. Herhair was streaming wildly about her, and in the sun it was black as acrow's wing. She rushed to the tepee, opened the flap, and looked in. Thenshe turned, and a cry that was almost a scream rang from her lips. Inanother moment she had seen Aldous and Joanne, and was running toward them.They advanced to meet her. Suddenly Aldous stopped, and with a sharpwarning to Joanne he threw his rifle half to his shoulder, and faced therocks from which the speeding figure had come. In that same instant theyboth recognized her. It was Marie, the woman who had ridden the bear atTete Jaune, and with whom Mortimer FitzHugh had bought Joe DeBar!

  She staggered up to them, panting, exhausted, her breath coming in gulpingsobs. For a moment she could not speak. Her dress was torn; her waist wasripped so that it exposed her throat and shoulder; and the front of thewaist and her face were stained with blood. Her black eyes shone like amadwoman's. Fiercely she fought to get her breath, and all the time sheclung to Joanne, and looked at Aldous. She pointed toward the rocks--thechaotic upheaval that lay between the tepee and the chasm--and words brokegaspingly from her lips.

  "They're coming!--coming!" she cried. "They killed Joe--murdered him--andthey're coming--to kill you!" She clutched a hand to her breast, and thenpointed with it to the mountain where MacDonald had gone. "They saw himgo--and they sent two men to kill him; and the rest are coming through therocks!" She turned sobbingly to Joanne. "They killed Joe," she moaned."They killed Joe, and they're coming--for _you!_"

  The emphasis on that final word struck like a blow in the ears of JohnAldous.

  "Run for the spruce!" he commanded. "Joanne, run!"

  Marie had crumpled down in a moaning heap at Joanne's feet, and sat swayingwith her face in her hands.

  "They killed him--they murdered my Joe!" she was sobbing. "And it was myfault--my fault! I trapped him! I sold him! And, oh, my God, I loved him--Iloved him!"

  "Run, Joanne!" commanded Aldous a second time. "Run for the spruce!"

  Instead of obeying him, Joanne knelt down beside Marie.

  He went to speak again, but there came an interruption--a thing that waslike the cold touch of lead in his own heart. From up on the mountain wherethe old mountaineer had walked into the face of death there came thesharp, splitting report of a rifle; and in that same instant it wasfollowed by another and still a third--quick, stinging, whiplikereports--and he knew that not one of them had come from the gun of DonaldMacDonald!

  And then he saw that the rocks behind the tepee had become suddenly alivewith men!