As they went up out of the basin into the broad meadows of the larger
valley, MacDonald rode between Aldous and Joanne, and the pack-horses, led
by 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 of
the 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 a
hunderd pounds in them fifteen sacks, an' there was twice that much. It's
hid 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 of
the 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 two
mountains 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 was
joy in what he was telling. "But it was a distance that night--a tumble
distance," he continued, before she could answer. "That was forty-one years
ago, coming November. An' it was cold, an' the snow was deep. It was bitter
cold--so cold it caught my Jane's lungs, an' that was what made her go a
little later. The slope up there don't look steep now, but it was steep
then--with two feet of snow to drag ourselves through. I don't think the
cavern is more'n five or six miles away, Johnny, mebby less, an' it took us
twenty hours to reach it. It snowed so heavy that night, an' the wind
blowed 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 and
searchingly over the valley for signs of Mortimer FitzHugh and Quade.
"I've often wondered why you ran away with Jane," he said. "I know what
threatened her--a thing worse than death. But why did you run? Why didn't
you stay and fight?"
A low growl rumbled in MacDonald's beard.
"Johnny, Johnny, if I only ha' could!" he groaned. "There was five of them
left when I ran into the cabin an' barricaded myself there with Jane. I
stuck my gun out of the window an' they was afraid to rush the cabin. They
was _afraid_, Johnny, all that afternoon--_an' I didn't have a cartridge
left to fire!_ That's why we went just as soon as we could crawl out in the
dark. I knew they'd come that night. I might ha' killed one or two hand to
hand, for I was big an' strong in them days, Johnny, but I knew I couldn't
beat 'em all. So we went."
"After all, death isn't so very terrible," said Joanne softly, and she was
riding so close that for a moment she laid one of her warm hands on Donald
MacDonald's.
"No, it's sometimes--wunnerful--an' beautiful," replied Donald, a little
brokenly, and with that he rode ahead, and Joanne and Aldous waited until
the 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 rumble
and roar of the mountains. It was an hour before they all stood together at
the top of the break, and here MacDonald swung sharply to the right, and
came soon to the rock-strewn bed of a dried-up stream that in ages past had
been a wide and rushing torrent. Steadily, as they progressed down this,
the rumble and roar grew nearer. It seemed that it was almost under their
feet, when again MacDonald turned, and a quarter of an hour later they
found themselves at the edge of a small plain; and now all about them were
cold and towering mountains that shut out the sun, and a hundred yards to
their right was a great dark cleft in the floor of the plain, and up out of
this came the rumble and roar that was like the sullen anger of monster
beasts imprisoned deep down in the bowels of the earth.
MacDonald got off his horse, and Aldous and Joanne rode up to him. In the
old 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! It
took 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 there
we can keep watch in both valleys."
Knowing the thoughts that were in MacDonald's mind, and how full his heart
was 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 the
other would understand him. "I will make camp."
"There ain't no one in the valley," mused the old man, a little doubtfully
at 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 come
to 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 a
gorge. 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 was
to my waist in this plain, an' it was slow work--turrible slow work! I
think 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 five
minutes--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 it
won't be a real camp. It'll be a dummy. See them thick spruce an' cedar
over there? Build Joanne a shelter of boughs in there, an' take in some
grub, an' blankets, an' the gold. See the point, Johnny? If anything should
happen----"
"They'd tackle the bogus camp!" cried Aldous with elation. "It's a splendid
idea!"
He set at once about unpacking the horses, and Joanne followed close at his
side to help him. MacDonald mounted his horse and rode at a trot in the
direction of the break in the mountain.
The sun had disappeared, but its reflection was still on the peaks; and
after he had stripped and hobbled the horses Aldous took advantage of the
last of day to scrutinize the plain and the mountain slopes through the
telescope. After that he found enough dry poles with which to set up the
tepee, and about this he scattered the saddles and panniers, as MacDonald
had suggested. Then he cleared a space in the thick spruce, and brought to
it what was required for their hidden camp.
It was almost dark when he completed the spruce and cedar lean-to for
Joanne. 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, which
consisted of beans, canned beef and tongue, peach marmalade, bread bannock,
and pickles and cheese, he went with Joanne for water to a small creek they
had crossed a hundred yards away. In both his hands, ready for instant
action, he carried his rifle. Joanne carried the pail. Her eyes were big
and bright and searching in that thick-growing dusk of night. She walked
very close to Aldous, and she said:
"John, I know how careful you and Donald have been in this journey into the
North. I know what you have feared. Culver Rann and Quade are after the
gold, 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't
understand it, John. If you don't care for the gold so much, as you told me
once, and if we find Jane to-morrow, or to-night, why do we remain to have
trouble with Quade and Culver Rann? Tell me, John."
He could not see her face fully in the gloom, and he was glad that she
could not see his.
"If we can get away without fighting, we will, Joanne," he lied. And he
knew that she would have known that he was lying if it had not been for the
darkness.
"You won't fight--over the gold?" she asked, pressing his arm. "Will you
promise me that, John?"
"Yes, I promise that. I swear it!" he cried, and so forcefully that she
gave 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't
believe they will find us. They won't come beyond that terrible place--and
the gold! Why should they, John? Why should they follow us--if we leave
them everything? Oh-h-h-h!" She shuddered, and whispered: "I wish we had
not brought the gold, John. I wish we had left it behind!"
"What we have is worth thirty or forty thousand dollars," he said
reassuringly, 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," he
laughed.
As he spoke, they both stopped, and listened. Plainly they heard the
approaching thud of hoofs. MacDonald had been gone nearer two hours than
one, and believing that it was him, Aldous gave the owl signal. The signal
floated back to them softly. Five minutes later MacDonald rode up and
dismounted. 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 in
their hearts. But even in the darkness they felt something. It was as if
not only the torrent rushing through the chasm, but MacDonald's heart as
well, was charging the air with a strange and subdued excitement. And when
MacDonald 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 was
trembling 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 which
Aldous had made in the spruce. Then she remembered what Aldous had said to
her earlier in the day, and cheerfully she lighted the two candles they
had set out, and forced Aldous down first upon the ground, and then
MacDonald, and began to help them to beans and meat and bannock, while all
the time her heart was crying out to know about the cavern--and Jane. The
candleglow told her a great deal, for in it Donald MacDonald's face was
very calm, and filled with a great peace, despite the trembling she had
felt. Her woman's sympathy told her that his heart was too full on this
night for speech, and when he ate but little she did not urge him to eat
more; and when he rose and went silently and alone out into the darkness
she held Aldous back; and when, still a little later, she went into her
nest for the night, she whispered softly to him:
"I know that he found Jane as he wanted to find her, and he is happy. I
think he has gone out there alone--to cry." And for a time after that, as
he sat in the gloom, John Aldous knew that Joanne was sobbing like a little
child in the spruce and cedar shelter he had built for her.