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The Hunted Woman, a fiction by James Oliver Curwood |
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CHAPTER 28 |
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_ CHAPTER XXVIII If MacDonald slept at all that night Aldous did not know it. The old mountaineer watched until a little after twelve in the deep shadow of a rock between the two camps. "I can't sleep," he protested, when Aldous urged him to take his rest. "I might 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 the gleam 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 there was 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 mountain runs out an' splits it, an' it curves like a horseshoe. From that mount'in we can see them, no matter which way they come. They'll go straight to the cabins. There's a deep little run under the slope. You didn't see it when we came out, but it'll take us within a hunderd yards of 'em. An' at a hunderd yards----" He shrugged his shoulders suggestively in the starlight, and there was a smile on his face. "It seems almost like murder," shuddered Aldous. "But it ain't,'" replied MacDonald quickly. "It's self-defence! If we don't do it, Johnny--if we don't draw on them first, what happened there forty years ago is goin' to happen again--with Joanne!" "A hundred yards," breathed Aldous, his jaws setting hard. "And there are five!" "They'll go into the cabins," said MacDonald. "At some time there will be two or three outside, an' we'll take them first. At the sound of the shots the others will run out, and it will be easy. Yo' can't very well miss a man 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 not sleep, and where he had gone, and he pictured him sitting before the little old cabin in the starlit valley communing with the spirit of Jane. And during those two hours he steeled himself for the last time to the thing that was going to happen when the day came. It was nearly three o'clock when MacDonald returned. It was four o'clock before he roused Joanne; and it was five o'clock when they had eaten their breakfast, and MacDonald prepared to leave for the mountain with his telescope. Aldous had observed Joanne talking to him for several minutes alone, and he had also observed that her eyes were very bright, and that there was an unusual eagerness in her manner of listening to what the old man was saying. The significance of this did not occur to him when she urged him to accompany MacDonald. "Two pairs of eyes are better than one, John," she said, "and I cannot possibly be in danger here. I can see you all the time, and you can see me--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 was that mystery in her voice which kept him from questioning her, and made him go with MacDonald. In three quarters of an hour they had reached the spur of the mountain from which MacDonald had said they could see up the valley, and also the break through which they had come the preceding afternoon. The morning mists still hung low, but as these melted away under the sun mile after mile of a marvellous panorama spread out swiftly under them, and as the distance of their vision grew, the deeper became the disappointment in MacDonald's face. For half an hour after the mists had gone he neither spoke nor lowered the telescope from his eyes. A mile away Aldous saw three caribou crossing the valley. A little later, on a green slope, he discerned a moving hulk that he knew was a bear. He did not speak until old Donald lowered 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 about now, 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 bit nervously 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 the camp. Then he shifted it slowly westward, and a low exclamation broke from his lips as he lowered the glass, and looked at Aldous. "Johnny, she's just goin' into the gorge! She was just disappearin' when I caught her!" "Going into--the gorge!" gasped Aldous, jumping to his feet. "Mac----" MacDonald rose and stood at his side. There was something reassuring in the rumbling laugh that came from deep in his chest. "She's beat us!" he chuckled. "Bless her, she's beat us! I didn't guess why she was askin' me all them questions. An' I told her, Johnny--told her just where the cavern was up there in the gorge, an' how you wouldn't hardly miss 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 still staring 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 three hours, an' we'll be back before then." Again he rumbled with that curious chuckling laugh. "She beat us, Johnny, she beat us fair! An' she's got spirrit, a wunnerful spirrit, to go up there alone!" Aldous wanted to run, but he held himself down to MacDonald's stride. His heart trembled apprehensively as they hurriedly descended the mountain and cut across the plain. He could not quite bring himself to MacDonald's point of assurance regarding Quade and Mortimer FitzHugh. The old mountaineer was positive that the other party was behind them. Aldous asked himself if it were not possible that Quade and FitzHugh were _ahead_ of them, and already waiting and watching for their opportunity. He had suggested that they might have swung farther to the west, with the plan of descending upon the valley 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 they hurried after Joanne. She had half an hour's start of them when they reached the mouth of the gorge, and not until they had travelled another half-hour up the rough bed of the break between the two mountains, and MacDonald pointed ahead, and said: "There's the cavern!" did he breathe easier. They could see the mouth of the cavern when they were yet a couple of hundred yards from it. It was a wide, low cleft in the north face of the chasm 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 out in a space cleared of its chaotic litter of rock and broken slate. At first glance Aldous guessed that the cavern had once been the exit of a subterranean stream. The sand deadened the sound of their footsteps as they approached. At the mouth of the cave they paused. It was perhaps forty or fifty feet deep, and as high as a nine-foot room. Inside it was quite light. Halfway to the back of it, upon her knees, and with her face turned from them, was Joanne. They were very close to her before she heard them. With a startled cry she sprang 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 which Donald had planted there forty years before; and about this, and scattered over the grave, were dozens of wild asters and purple hyacinths which Joanne had brought from the plain. Aldous did not speak, but he took her hand, and looked down with her on the grave. And then something caught his eyes among the flowers, and Joanne drew him a step nearer, her eyes shining like velvet stars, while his heart beat faster when he saw what the object was. It was a book, open in the middle, and it lay face downward on the grave. It was old, and looked as though it might have fallen into dust at the touch of his finger. Joanne's voice was low and filled with a whispering awe. "It was her Bible, John!" He turned a little, and noticed that Donald had gone to the mouth of the cavern, and was looking toward the mountain. "It was her Bible," he heard Joanne repeating; and then MacDonald turned toward them, and he saw in his face a look that seemed strange and out of place in this home of his dead. He went to him, and Joanne followed. MacDonald had turned again--was listening--and holding his breath. Then he said, 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 guess we'd better get back to camp, Johnny." He started ahead of them, and Aldous followed as swiftly as he could with Joanne. She was panting with excitement, but she asked no questions. MacDonald began to spring more quickly from rock to rock; over the level spaces he began to run. He reached the edge of the plain four or five hundred yards in advance of them, and was scanning the valley through his telescope when they came up. "They're not on this side," he said. "They're comin' up the other leg of the valley, Johnny. We've got to get to the mount'in before we can see them." He closed the glass with a snap and swung it over his shoulder. Then he pointed 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 the slope. Only once before had Aldous seen MacDonald employ greater haste, and that was on the night of the attack on Joanne. He was convinced there was no doubt in Donald's mind about the rifle-shot, and that the shot could mean but one thing--the nearness of Mortimer FitzHugh and Quade. Why they should reveal their presence in that way he did not ask himself as he hurried down into the plain with Joanne. By the time they reached the camp old Donald had covered two thirds of the distance to the mountain. Aldous looked at his watch and a curious thrill shot through him. Only a little more than an hour had passed since they had left the mountain to follow Joanne, and in that time it would have been impossible for their enemies to have covered more than a third of the eight-mile stretch of valley which they had found empty of human life under the searching scrutiny of the telescope! He was right--and MacDonald was wrong! The sound of the shot, if there had been a shot, must have come from some other direction! He wanted to shout his warning to MacDonald, but already too great a distance separated them. Besides, if he was right, MacDonald would run into no danger in that direction. Their menace was to the north--beyond the chasm out of which came the rumble and roar of the stream. When Donald had disappeared up the slope he looked more closely at the rugged walls of rock that shut them in on that side. He could see no break in them. His eyes followed the dark streak in the floor of the plain, which was the chasm. It was two hundred yards below where they were standing; and a hundred yards beyond 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 to investigate the chasm," he said. She followed him, a few steps behind. The roar grew in their ears as they advanced. After a little solid rock replaced the earth under their feet, and twenty paces from the precipice Aldous took Joanne by the hand. They went to the edge and looked over. Fifty feet below them the stream was caught in the narrow space between the two chasm walls, and above the rush and roar of it Aldous heard the startled cry that came from Joanne. She clutched his hand fiercely. Fascinated she gazed down. The water, speeding like a millrace, was a lather of foam; and up through this foam there shot the crests of great rocks, as though huge monsters of some kind were at play, whipping the torrent into greater fury, and bellowing forth thunderous voices. Downstream Aldous could see that the tumult grew less; from the rent in the mountain came the deeper, more distant-rolling thunder that 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. Her hair was streaming wildly about her, and in the sun it was black as a crow's wing. She rushed to the tepee, opened the flap, and looked in. Then she turned, and a cry that was almost a scream rang from her lips. In another moment she had seen Aldous and Joanne, and was running toward them. They advanced to meet her. Suddenly Aldous stopped, and with a sharp warning to Joanne he threw his rifle half to his shoulder, and faced the rocks from which the speeding figure had come. In that same instant they both recognized her. It was Marie, the woman who had ridden the bear at Tete Jaune, and with whom Mortimer FitzHugh had bought Joe DeBar! She staggered up to them, panting, exhausted, her breath coming in gulping sobs. For a moment she could not speak. Her dress was torn; her waist was ripped so that it exposed her throat and shoulder; and the front of the waist and her face were stained with blood. Her black eyes shone like a madwoman's. Fiercely she fought to get her breath, and all the time she clung to Joanne, and looked at Aldous. She pointed toward the rocks--the chaotic upheaval that lay between the tepee and the chasm--and words broke gaspingly from her lips. "They're coming!--coming!" she cried. "They killed Joe--murdered him--and they're coming--to kill you!" She clutched a hand to her breast, and then pointed with it to the mountain where MacDonald had gone. "They saw him go--and they sent two men to kill him; and the rest are coming through the rocks!" 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 John Aldous. "Run for the spruce!" he commanded. "Joanne, run!" Marie had crumpled down in a moaning heap at Joanne's feet, and sat swaying with her face in her hands. "They killed him--they murdered my Joe!" she was sobbing. "And it was my fault--my fault! I trapped him! I sold him! And, oh, my God, I loved him--I loved 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 was like the cold touch of lead in his own heart. From up on the mountain where the old mountaineer had walked into the face of death there came the sharp, splitting report of a rifle; and in that same instant it was followed by another and still a third--quick, stinging, whiplike reports--and he knew that not one of them had come from the gun of Donald MacDonald! And then he saw that the rocks behind the tepee had become suddenly alive with men! _ |
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