The Hunted Woman, James Oliver Curwood [13 inch ebook reader .TXT] 📗

mountain in the Saw Tooth Range, twelve miles from Tete Jaune--a mountain with the prettiest basin you ever saw at the foot of it, with a lake no bigger than this camp, and an old cabin which Yellowhead himself must have built fifty years ago. There's a blind canyon runs out of it, short an' dark, on the right. We found a grave there. I don't remember the first name on the slab. Mebby it was washed out. But, so 'elp me God, _the last name was FitzHugh_!"
With a sudden cry, Aldous jumped to his feet and caught Keller's arm.
"You're sure of it, Peter?"
"Positive!"
It was impossible for Aldous to repress his excitement. The engineer stared at him even harder than before.
"What can that grave have to do with Quade?" he asked. "The man died before Quade was known in these regions."
"I can't tell you now, Peter," replied Aldous, pulling the engineer to the table. "But I think you'll know quite soon. For the present, I want you to sketch out a map that will take me to the grave. Will you?"
On the table were pencil and paper. Keller seated himself and drew them toward him.
"I'm damned if I can see what that grave can have to do with Quade," he said; "but I'll tell you how to find it!"
For several minutes they bent low over the table, Peter Keller describing the trail to the Saw Tooth Mountain as he sketched it, step by step, on a sheet of office paper. When it was done, Aldous folded it carefully and placed it in his wallet.
"I can't go wrong, and--thank you, Keller!"
After Aldous had gone, Peter Keller sat for some time in deep thought.
"Now I wonder what the devil there can be about a grave to make him so happy," he grumbled, listening to the whistle that was growing fainter down the trail.
And Aldous, alone, with the moon straight above him as he went back to the Miette Plain, felt, in truth, this night had become brighter for him than any day he had ever known. For he knew that Peter Keller was not a man to make a statement of which he was not sure. Mortimer FitzHugh was dead. His bones lay under the slab up in that little blind canyon in the shadow of the Saw Tooth Mountain. To-morrow he would tell Joanne. And, blindly, he told himself that she would be glad.
Still whistling, he passed the Chinese laundry shack on the creek, crossed the railroad tracks, and buried himself in the bush beyond. A quarter of an hour later he stole quietly into Stevens' camp and went to bed.


CHAPTER IX
Stevens, dreaming of twenty horses plunging to death among the rocks in the river, slept uneasily. He awoke before it was dawn, but when he dragged himself from his tepee, moving quietly not to awaken his boy, he found John Aldous on his knees before a small fire, slicing thin rashers of bacon into a frying-pan. The weight of his loss was in the tired packer's eyes and face and the listless droop of his shoulders. John Aldous, with three hours between the blankets to his credit, was as cheery as the crackling fire itself. He had wanted to whistle for the last half-hour. Seeing Stevens, he began now.
"I wasn't going to rouse you until breakfast was ready," he interrupted himself to say. "I heard you groaning, Stevens. I know you had a bad night. And the kid, too. He couldn't sleep. But I made up my mind you'd have to get up early. I've got a lot of business on to-day, and we'll have to rouse Curly Roper out of bed to buy his pack outfit. Find the coffee, will you? I couldn't."
For a moment Stevens stood over him.
"See here, Aldous, you didn't mean what you said last night, did you? You didn't mean--that?"
"Confound it, yes! Can't you understand plain English, Stevens? Don't you believe a man when he's a gentleman? Buy that outfit! Why, I'd buy twenty outfits to-day, I'm--I'm feeling so fine, Stevens!"
For the first time in forty-eight hours Stevens smiled.
"I was wondering if I hadn't been dreaming," he said. "Once, a long time ago, I guess I felt just like you do now."
With which cryptic remark he went for the coffee.
Aldous looked up in time to see the boy stagger sleepily out of the tepee. There was something pathetic about the motherlessness of the picture, and he understood a little of what Stevens had meant.
An hour later, with breakfast over, they started for Curly's. Curly was pulling on his boots when they arrived, while his wife was frying the inevitable bacon in the kitchen.
"I hear you have some horses for sale, Curly," said Aldous.
"Hi 'ave."
"How many?"
"Twenty-nine, 'r twenty-eight--mebby twenty-seven."
"How much?"
Curly looked up from the task of pulling on his second boot.
"H'are you buying 'orses or looking for hinformation?" he asked.
"I'm buying, and I'm in a hurry. How much do you want a head?"
"Sixty, 'r six----"
"I'll give you sixty dollars apiece for twenty-eight head, and that's just ten dollars apiece more than they're worth," broke in Aldous, pulling a check-book and a fountain pen from his pocket. "Is it a go?"
A little stupefied by the suddenness of it all, Curly opened his mouth and stared.
"Is it a go?" repeated Aldous. "Including blankets, saddles, pack-saddles, ropes, and canvases?"
Curly nodded, looking from Aldous to Stevens to see if he could detect anything that looked like a joke.
"Hit's a go," he said.
Aldous handed him a check for sixteen hundred and eighty dollars.
"Make out the bill of sale to Stevens," he said. "I'm paying for them, but they're Stevens' horses. And, look here, Curly, I'm buying them only with your agreement that you'll say nothing about who paid for them. Will you agree to that?"
Curly was joyously looking at the check.
"Gyve me a Bible," he demanded. "Hi'll swear Stevens p'id for them! I give you the word of a Hinglish gentleman!"
Without another word Aldous opened the cabin door and was gone, leaving Stevens quite as much amazed as the little Englishman whom everybody called Curly, because he had no hair.
Aldous went at once to the station, and for the first time inquired into the condition that was holding back the Tete Jaune train. He found that a slide had given way, burying a section of track under gravel and rock. A hundred men were at work clearing it away, and it was probable they would finish by noon. A gang boss, who had come back with telegraphic reports, said that half a dozen men had carried Quade's hand-car over the obstruction about midnight.
It was seven o'clock when Aldous left for the Miette bottom. He believed that Joanne would be up. At this season of the year the first glow of day usually found the Ottos at breakfast, and for half an hour the sun had been shining on the top of Pyramid Mountain. He was eager to tell her what had passed between him and Keller. He laughed softly when he confessed to himself how madly he wanted to see her.
He always liked to come up to the Otto home very early of a morning, or in the dusk of evening. Very frequently he was filled with a desire to stand outside the red-and-white striped walls of the tent-house and listen unseen. Inside there was always cheer: at night the crackle of fire and the glow of light, the happy laughter of the gentle-hearted Scotchwoman, and the affectionate banter of her "big mountain man," who looked more like a brigand than the luckiest and most contented husband in the mountains--the luckiest, quite surely, with the one exception of his brother Clossen, who had, by some occult strategy or other, induced a sweet-faced and aristocratic little woman to look upon his own honest physiognomy as the handsomest and finest in the world. This morning Aldous followed a narrow path that brought him behind the tent-house. He heard no voices. A few steps more and he emerged upon a scene that stopped him and set his heart thumping.
Less than a dozen paces away stood Mrs. Otto and Joanne, their backs toward him. They were gazing silently and anxiously in the direction of the thick, low bush across the clearing, through which led the trail to his cabin. He did not look toward the bush. His eyes were upon Joanne. Her slender figure was full in the golden radiance of the morning sun, and Aldous felt himself under the spell of a joyous wonder as he looked at her. For the first time he saw her hair as he had pictured it--as he had given it to that other _Joanne_ in the book he had called "Fair Play." She had been brushing it in the sun when he came, but now she stood poised in that tense and waiting attitude--silent--gazing in the direction of the bush, with that marvellous mantle sweeping about her in a shimmering silken flood. He would not have moved, nor would he have spoken, until Joanne herself broke the spell. She turned, and saw him. With a little cry of surprise she flung back her hair. He could not fail to see the swift look of relief and gladness that had come into her eyes. In another instant her face was flushing crimson.
"I beg your pardon for coming up like an eavesdropper," he apologized. "I thought you would just about be at breakfast, Mrs. Otto."
The Scotchwoman heaved a tremendous sigh of relief.
"Goodness gracious, but I'm glad to see you!" she exclaimed thankfully. "Jack and Bruce have just gone out to see if they could find your dead body!"
"We thought perhaps something might have happened," said Joanne, who had moved nearer the door. "You will excuse me, won't you, while I finish my hair?"
Without waiting for him to answer, she ran into the tent. No sooner had she disappeared than the good-natured smile left Mrs. Otto's face. There was a note of alarm in her low voice as she whispered:
"Jack and Bruce went to the barn last night, and she slept with me. She tried to be quiet, but I know she didn't sleep much. And she cried. I couldn't hear her, but the pillow was wet. Once my hand touched her cheek, and it was wet. I didn't ask any questions. This morning, at breakfast, she told us everything that happened, all about Quade--and your trouble. She told us about Quade looking in at the window, and she was so nervous thinking something might have happened to you last night that the poor dear couldn't even drink her coffee until Jack and Bruce went out to hunt for you. But I don't think that was why she cried!"
"I wish it had been," said Aldous. "It makes me happy to think she was worried about--me."
"Good Lord!" gasped Mrs. Otto.
He looked for a moment into the slow-growing amazement and understanding in her kind eyes.
"You will keep my little secret, won't you, Mrs. Otto?" he asked. "Probably you'll think it's queer. I've only known her a day. But I feel--like that. Somehow I feel that in telling this to you I am confiding in a mother, or a sister. I want you to understand why I'm going on to Tete Jaune with her. That is why she was crying--because of the dread of something up there. I'm going with her. She shouldn't go alone."
Voices interrupted them, and they turned to find that Jack and Bruce Otto had come out of the bush and were quite near. Aldous was sorry that Joanne had spoken of his trouble with Quade. He did not want