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

/> His eyes were still on the timber, and he was wondering what a man with a rifle, or even a pistol, might do at that space. He made a good target, and MacDonald was probably several miles away.
"I've been thinking about the fire," he said. "We must put it out, Joanne. There are reasons why we should not let it burn. For one thing, the smoke will drive any game away that we may hope to see in the morning."
Her hands lay still against his cheek.
"I--understand, John," she replied quickly, and there was the smallest bit of a shudder in her voice. "I had forgotten. We must put it out!"
Five minutes later only a few glowing embers remained where the fire had been. He had spread out the pannier canvases, and now he seated himself with his back to a tree. Joanne snuggled close to him.
"It is much nicer in the dark," she whispered, and her arms reached up about him, and her lips pressed warm and soft against his hand. "Are you just a little ashamed of me, John?"
"Ashamed? Good heaven----"
"Because," she interrupted him, "we have known each other such a very short time, and I have allowed myself to become so very, very well acquainted with you. It has all been so delightfully sudden, and strange, and I am--just as happy as I can be. You don't think it is immodest for me to say these things to my husband, John--even if I have only known him three days?"
He answered by crushing her so closely in his arms that for a few moments afterward she lay helplessly on his breast, gasping for breath. His brain was afire with the joyous madness of possession. Never had woman come to man more sweetly than Joanne had come to him, and as he felt her throbbing and trembling against him he was ready to rise up and shout forth a challenge to a hundred Quades and Culver Ranns hiding in the darkness of the mountains. For a long time he held her nestled close in his arms, and at intervals there were silences between them, in which they listened to the glad tumult of their own hearts, and the strange silence that came to them from out of the still night.
It was their first hour alone--of utter oblivion to all else but themselves; to Joanne the first sacrament hour of her wifehood, to him the first hour of perfect possession and understanding. In that hour their souls became one, and when at last they rose to their feet, and the moon came up over a crag of the mountain and flooded them in its golden light, there was in Joanne's face a tenderness and a gentle glory that made John Aldous think of an angel. He led her to the tepee, and lighted a candle for her, and at the last, with the sweet demand of a child in the manner of her doing it, she pursed up her lips to be kissed good-night.
And when he had tied the tent-flap behind her, he took his rifle and sat down with it across his knees in the deep black shadow of a spruce, and waited and listened for the coming of Donald MacDonald.


CHAPTER XXIV
For an hour after Joanne had gone into her tent Aldous sat silent and watchful. From where he had concealed himself he could see over a part of the moonlit basin, and guard the open space between the camp and the clump of timber that lay in the direction of the nearest mountain. After Joanne had blown out her candle the silence of the night seemed to grow deeper about him. The hobbled horses had wandered several hundred yards away, and only now and then could he hear the thud of a hoof, or the clank of a steel shoe on rock. He believed that it was impossible for any one to approach without ears and eyes giving him warning, and he felt a distinct shock when Donald MacDonald suddenly appeared in the moonlight not twenty paces from him. With an ejaculation of amazement he jumped to his feet and went to him.
"How the deuce did you get here?" he demanded.
"Were you asleep, Johnny?"
"I was awake--and watching!"
The old hunter chuckled.
"It was so still when I come to those trees back there that I thought mebby something had 'appened," he said.
"So, I sneaked up, Johnny."
"Did you see anything over the range?" asked Aldous anxiously.
"I found footprints in the snow, an' when I got to the top I smelled smoke, but couldn't see a fire. It was dark then." MacDonald nodded toward the tepee. "Is she asleep, Johnny?"
"I think so. She must be very tired."
They drew back into the shadow of the spruce. It was a simultaneous movement of caution, and both, without speaking their thoughts, realized the significance of it. Until now they had had no opportunity of being alone since last night.
MacDonald spoke in a low, muffled voice:
"Quade an' Culver Rann are goin' the limit, Johnny," he said. "They left men on the job at Tete Jaune, and they've got others watching us. Consequently, I've hit on a scheme--a sort of simple and unreasonable scheme, mebby, but an awful good scheme at times."
"What is it?"
"Whenever you see anything that ain't a bear, or a goat, or a sheep, don't wait to change the time o' day--but shoot!" said MacDonald.
Aldous smiled grimly.
"If I had any ideas of chivalry, or what I call fair play, they were taken out of me last night, Mac," he said. "I'm ready to shoot on sight!"
MacDonald grunted his satisfaction.
"They can't beat us if we do that, Johnny. They ain't even ordinary cut-throats--they're sneaks in the bargain; an' if they could walk in our camp, smilin' an' friendly, and brain us when our backs was turned, they'd do it. We don't know who's with them, and if a stranger heaves in sight meet him with a chunk o' lead. They're the only ones in these mountains, an' we won't make any mistake. See that bunch of spruce over there?"
The old hunter pointed to a clump fifty yards beyond the tepee toward the little lake. Aldous nodded.
"I'll take my blankets over there," continued MacDonald. "You roll yourself up here, and the tepee'll be between us. You see the system, Johnny? If they make us a visit during the night we've got 'em between us, and there'll be some real burying to do in the morning!"
Back under the low-hanging boughs of the dwarf spruce Aldous spread out his blanket a few minutes later. He had made up his mind not to sleep, and for hours he lay watchful and waiting, smoking occasionally, with his face close to the ground so that the odour of tobacco would cling to the earth. The moon rose until it was straight overhead, flooding the valley in a golden splendour that he wished Joanne might have seen. Then it began sinking into the west; slowly at first, and then more swiftly, its radiance diminished. He looked at his watch before the yellow orb effaced itself behind the towering peak of a distant mountain. It was a quarter of two.
With deepening darkness, his eyes grew heavier. He closed them for a few moments at a time; and each time the interval was longer, and it took greater effort to force himself into wakefulness. Finally he slept. But he was still subconsciously on guard, and an hour later that consciousness was beating and pounding within him, urging him to awake. He sat up with a start and gripped his rifle. An owl was hooting--softly, very softly. There were four notes. He answered, and a little later MacDonald came like a shadow out of the gloom. Aldous advanced to meet him, and he noticed that over the eastern mountains there was a break of gray.
"It's after three, Johnny," MacDonald greeted him. "Build a fire and get breakfast. Tell Joanne I'm out after another sheep. Until it's good an' light I'm going to watch from that clump of timber up there. In half an hour it'll be dawn."
He moved toward the timber, and Aldous set about building a fire. He was careful not to awaken Joanne. The fire was crackling cheerily when he went to the lake for water. Returning he saw the faint glow of candlelight in Joanne's tepee. Five minutes later she appeared, and all thought of danger, and the discomfort of his sleepless night, passed from him at sight of her. Her eyes were still a little misty with sleep when he took her in his arms and kissed her, but she was deliciously alive, and glad, and happy. In one hand she had brought a brush and in the other a comb.
"You slept like a log," he cried happily. "It can't be that you had very bad dreams, little wife?"
"I had a beautiful dream, John," she laughed softly, and the colour flooded up into her face.
She unplaited the thick silken strands of her braid and began brushing her hair in the firelight, while Aldous sliced the bacon. Some of the slices were thick, and some were thin, for he could not keep his eyes from her as she stood there like a goddess, buried almost to her knees in that wondrous mantle. He found himself whistling with a very light heart as she braided her hair, and afterward plunged her face in a bath of cold water he had brought from the lake. From that bath she emerged like a glowing Naiad. Her eyes sparkled. Her cheeks were pink and her lips full and red. Damp little tendrils of hair clung adorably about her face and neck. For another full minute Aldous paused in his labours, and he wondered if MacDonald was watching them from the clump of timber. The bacon was sputtering when Joanne ran to it and rescued it from burning.
Dawn followed quickly after that first break of day in the east, but not until one could see a full rifle-shot away did MacDonald return to the camp. Breakfast was waiting, and as soon as he had finished the old hunter went after the horses. It was five o'clock, and bars of the sun were shooting over the tops of the mountains when once more they were in the saddle and on their way.
Most of this day Aldous headed the outfit up the valley. On the pretext of searching for game MacDonald rode so far in advance that only twice during the forenoon was he in sight. When they stopped to camp for the night his horse was almost exhausted, and MacDonald himself showed signs of tremendous physical effort. Aldous could not question him before Joanne. He waited. And MacDonald was strangely silent.
The proof of MacDonald's prediction concerning Joanne was in evidence this second night. Every bone in her body ached, and she was so tired that she made no objection to going to her bed as soon as it was dark.
"It always happens like this," consoled old Donald, as she bade him good-night. "To-morrow you'll begin gettin' broke in, an' the next day you won't have any lameness at all."
She limped to the tepee with John's arm snugly about her slim waist. MacDonald waited patiently until he returned. He motioned Aldous to seat himself close at his side. Both men lighted their pipes before the mountaineer spoke.
"We can't both sleep at once to-night, Johnny," he said. "We've got to take turns keeping watch."
"You've discovered something to-day?"
"No. It's what I haven't discovered that counts. There weren't no tracks in this valley, Johnny, from mount'in to mount'in. They haven't travelled through this range, an' that leaves just two things for us to figger