Sheer amazement made Aldous hold his fire in that first moment. Marie had
said that two men were after MacDonald. He had heard three shots nearly a
mile away, and she was still sobbing that DeBar was dead. That accounted
for _three_. He had expected to see only Quade, and FitzHugh, and one other
behind the tepee. And there were six! He counted them as they came swiftly
out from the shelter of the rocks to the level of the plain. He was about
to fire when he thought of Joanne and Marie. They were still behind him,
crouching upon the ground. To fire from where he stood would draw a
fusillade of bullets in their direction, and with another warning cry to
Joanne, he sped twenty paces to one side so that they would not be within
range. Not until then did the attacking party see him.
At a hundred and fifty yards he had no time to pick out Quade or Mortimer
FitzHugh. He fired first at a group of three, and one of the three crumpled
down as though his skull had been crushed from above. A rifle spat back at
him and the bullet sang like a ripping cloth close over his head. He
dropped to his knees before he fired again, and a bullet clove the air
where he had stood. The crack of rifles did not hurry him. He knew that he
had six cartridges, and only six, and he aimed deliberately. At his second
shot the man he had fired at ran forward three or four steps, and then
pitched flat on his face. For a flash Aldous thought that it was Mortimer
FitzHugh. Then, along his gun barrel, he saw FitzHugh--and pulled the
trigger. It was a miss.
Two men had dropped upon their knees and were aiming more carefully. He
swung his sight to the foremost, and drove a bullet straight through his
chest. The next moment something seemed to have fallen upon him with
crushing weight. A red sea rose before his eyes. In it he was submerged;
the roar of it filled his ears; it blinded him; and in the suffocating
embrace of it he tried to cry out. He fought himself out of it, his eyes
cleared, and he could see again. His rifle was no longer in his hands, and
he was standing. Twenty feet away men were rushing upon him. His brain
recovered itself with the swiftness of lightning. A bullet had stunned him,
but he was not badly hurt. He jerked out his automatic, but before he could
raise it, or even fire from his hip, the first of his assailants was upon
him with a force that drove it from his hand. They went down together, and
as they struggled on the bare rock Aldous caught for a fraction of a second
a scene that burned itself like fire in his brain. He saw Mortimer FitzHugh
with a revolver in his hand. He had stopped; he was staring like one
looking upon the ghost of the dead, and as he stared there rose above the
rumbling roar of the chasm a wild and terrible shriek from Joanne.
Aldous saw no more then. He was not fighting for his life, but for her, and
he fought with the mad ferocity of a tiger. As he struck, and choked, and
beat the head of his assailant on the rock, he heard shriek after shriek
come from Joanne's lips; and then for a flash he saw them again, and
Joanne was struggling in the arms of Quade!
He struggled to his knees, and the man he was fighting struggled to his
knees; and then they came to their feet, locked in a death-grip on the edge
of the chasm. From Quade's clutch he saw Joanne staring at Mortimer
FitzHugh; then her eyes shot to him, and with another shriek she fought to
free herself.
For thirty seconds of that terrible drama Mortimer FitzHugh stood as if
hewn out of rock. Then he sprang toward the fighters.
In the arms of John Aldous was the strength of ten men. He twisted the head
of his antagonist under his arm; he braced his feet--in another moment he
would have flung him bodily into the roaring maelstrom below. Even as his
muscles gathered themselves for the final effort he knew that all was lost.
Mortimer FitzHugh's face leered over his shoulder, his demoniac intention
was in his eyes before he acted. With a cry of hatred and of triumph he
shoved them both over the edge, and as Aldous plunged to the depths below,
still holding to his enemy, he heard a last piercing scream from Joanne.
As the rock slid away from under his feet his first thought was that the
end had come, and that no living creature could live in the roaring
maelstrom of rock and, flood into which he was plunging. But quicker than
he dashed through space his mind worked. Instinctively, without time for
reasoning, he gripped at the fact that his one chance lay in the close
embrace of his enemy. He hung to him. It seemed to him that they turned
over and over a hundred times in that distance of fifty feet. Then a mass
of twisting foam broke under him, and up out of it shot the head of one of
the roaring monsters of rock that he and Joanne had looked upon. They
struck it fairly, and Aldous was uppermost. He felt the terrific impact of
the other's body. The foam boiled upward again, and they slipped off into
the flood.
Still Aldous held to his enemy. He could feel that he was limp now; he no
longer felt the touch of the hands that had choked him, or the embrace of
the arms that had struggled with him. He believed that his antagonist was
dead. The fifty-foot fall, with the rock splitting his back, had killed
him. For a moment Aldous still clung to him as they sank together under the
surface, torn and twisted by the whirling eddies and whirlpools. It seemed
to him that they would never cease going down, that they were sinking a
vast distance.
Dully he felt the beat of rocks. Then it flashed upon him that the dead man
was sinking like a weighted thing. He freed himself. Fiercely he struggled
to bring himself to the surface. It seemed an eternity before he rose to
the top. He opened his mouth and drew a great gulp of air into his lungs.
The next instant a great rock reared like a living thing in his face; he
plunged against it, was beaten over it, and again he was going
down--down--in that deadly clutch of maelstrom and undertow. Again he
fought, and again he came to the surface. He saw a black, slippery wall
gliding past him with the speed of an express train. And now it seemed as
though a thousand clubs were beating him. Ahead of him were rocks--nothing
but rocks.
He shot through them like a piece of driftwood. The roaring in his ears
grew less, and he felt the touch of something under his feet. Sunlight
burst upon him. He caught at a rock, and hung to it. His eyes cleared a
little. He was within ten feet of a shore covered with sand and gravel. The
water was smooth and running with a musical ripple. Waist-deep he waded
through it to the shore, and fell down upon his knees, with his face buried
in his arms. He had been ten minutes in the death-grip of the chasm. It was
another ten minutes before he staggered to his feet and looked about him.
His face was beaten until he was almost blind. His shirt had been torn from
his shoulders and his flesh was bleeding. He advanced a few steps. He
raised one arm and then the other. He limped. One arm hurt him when he
moved it, but the bone was sound. He was terribly mauled, but he knew that
no bones were broken, and a gasp of thankfulness fell from his lips. All
this time his mind had been suffering even more than his body. Not for an
instant, even as he fought for life between the chasm walls, and as he lay
half unconscious on the rock, had he forgotten Joanne. His one thought was
of her now. He had no weapon, but as he stumbled in the direction of the
camp in the little plain he picked up a club that lay in his path.
That MacDonald was dead, Aldous was certain. There would be four against
him--Quade and Mortimer FitzHugh and the two men who had gone to the
mountain. His brain cleared swiftly as a part of his strength returned, and
it occurred to him that if he lost no time he might come upon Joanne and
her captors before the two men came from killing old Donald. He tried to
run. Not until then did he fully realize the condition he was in. Twice in
the first hundred yards his legs doubled under him and he fell down among
the rocks. He grew steadily stronger, though each time he tried to run or
spring a distance of a few feet his legs doubled under him like that. It
took him twenty minutes to get back to the edge of the plain, and when he
got there it was empty. There was no sign of Quade or FitzHugh, or of
Joanne and Marie; and there was no one coming from the direction of the
mountain.
He tried to run again, and he found that over the level floor of the valley
he could make faster time than among the rocks. He went to where he had
dropped his rifle. It was gone. He searched for his automatic. That, too,
was gone. There was one weapon left--a long skinning-knife in one of the
panniers near the tepee. As he went for this, he passed two of the men whom
he had shot. Quade and FitzHugh had taken their weapons, and had turned
them over to see if they were alive or dead. They were dead. He secured the
knife, and behind the tepee he passed the third body, its face as still and
white as the others. He shuddered as he recognized it. It was Slim Barker.
His rifle was gone.
More swiftly now he made his way into the break out of which his assailants
had come a short time before. The thought came to him again that he had
been right, and that Donald MacDonald, in spite of all his years in the
mountains, had been fatally wrong. Their enemies had come down from the
north, and this break led to their hiding-place. Through it Joanne must
have been taken by her captors. As he made his way over the rocks, gaining
a little more of his strength with each step, his mind tried to picture the
situation that had now arisen between Quade and Mortimer FitzHugh. How
would Quade, who was mad for possession of Joanne, accept FitzHugh's claim
of ownership? Would he believe his partner? Would he even believe Joanne
if, to save herself from him, she told him FitzHugh was her husband? Even
if he believed them, _would he give her up?_ Would Quade allow Mortimer
FitzHugh to stand between him and the object for which he was willing to
sacrifice everything?
As Aldous asked himself these questions his blood ran hot and cold by
turns. And the answer to them drew a deep breath of fear and of anguish
from him as he tried again to run among the rocks. There could be but one
answer: Quade would fight. He would fight like a madman, and if this fight
had happened and FitzHugh had been killed Joanne had already gone utterly
and helplessly into his power. He believed that FitzHugh had not revealed
to Quade his relationship to Joanne while they were on the plain, and the
thought still more terrible came to him that he might not reveal it at all,
that he might repudiate Joanne even as she begged upon her knees for him to
save her. What a revenge it would be to see her helpless and broken in the
arms of Quade! And then, both being beasts----
He could think no farther. The sweat broke out on his face as he hobbled
faster over a level space. The sound of the water between the chasm walls
was now a thunder in his ears. He could not have heard a rifle-shot or a
scream a hundred yards away. The trail he was following had continually
grown narrower. It seemed to end a little ahead of him, and the fear that
he had come the wrong way after all filled him with dread. He came to the
face of the mountain wall, and then, to his left, he saw a crack that was
no wider than a man's body. In it there was sand, and the, sand was beaten
by footprints! He wormed his way through, and a moment later stood at the
edge of the chasm. Fifty feet above him a natural bridge of rock spanned
the huge cleft through which the stream was rushing. He crossed this,
exposing himself openly to a shot if it was guarded. But it was not
guarded. This fact convinced him that MacDonald had been killed, and that
his enemies believed he was dead. If MacDonald had escaped, and they had
feared a possible pursuit, some one would have watched the bridge.
The trail was easy to follow now. Sand and grassy earth had replaced rock
and shale; he could make out the imprints of feet--many of them--and they
led in the direction of a piece of timber that apparently edged a valley
running to the east and west. The rumble of the torrent in the chasm grew
fainter as he advanced. A couple of hundred yards farther on the trail
swung to the left again; it took him around the end of a huge rock, and as
he appeared from behind this, his knife clutched in his hand, he dropped
suddenly flat on his face, and his heart rose like a lump in his throat.
Scarcely fifty yards above him was the camp of his enemies! There were two
tepees and piles of saddles and panniers and blankets about them, but not a
soul that he could see. And then, suddenly, there rose a voice bellowing
with rage, and he recognized it as Quade's. It came from beyond the tepee,
and he rose quickly from where he had thrown himself and ran forward, with
the tepee between him and those on the other side. Close to the canvas he
dropped on his knees and crawled out behind a pile of saddles and panniers.
From here he could see.
So near that he could almost have touched them were Joanne and Marie,
seated on the ground, with their backs toward him. Their hands were tied
behind them. Their feet were bound with pannier ropes. A dozen paces beyond
them were Quade and Mortimer FitzHugh.
The two men were facing each other, a yard apart. Mortimer FitzHugh's face
was white, a deadly white, and he was smiling. His right hand rested
carelessly in his hunting-coat pocket. There was a sneering challenge on
his lips; in his eyes was a look that Aldous knew meant death if Quade
moved. And Quade was like a great red beast ready to spring. His eyes
seemed bulging out on his cheeks; his great hands were knotted; his
shoulders were hunched forward, and his mottled face was ablaze with
passion. In that moment's dramatic tableau Aldous glanced about swiftly.
The men from the mountain had not returned. He was alone with Quade and
Mortimer FitzHugh.
Then FitzHugh spoke, very quietly, a little laughingly; but his voice
trembled, and Aldous knew what the hand was doing in the hunting-coat
pocket.
"You're excited, Billy," he said. "I'm not a liar, as you've very
impolitely told me. And I'm not playing you dirt, and I haven't fallen in
love with the lady myself, as you seem to think. But she belongs to me,
body and soul. If you don't believe me--why, ask the lady herself, Billy!"
As he spoke, he turned his sneering eyes for the fraction of a second
toward Joanne. The movement was fatal. Quade was upon him. The hand in the
coat pocket flung itself upward, there followed a muffled report, but the
bullet flew wide. In all his life Aldous had never heard a sound like the
roar that came from Quade's throat then. He saw Mortimer FitzHugh's hand
appear with a pistol in it, and then the pistol was gone. He did not see
where it went to. He gripped his knife and waited, his heart beating with
what seemed like smothered explosions as he watched for the opportunity
which he knew would soon come. He expected to see FitzHugh go down under
Quade's huge bulk. Instead of that, a small, iron fist shot upward and
Quade's head went back as if broken from his neck.
FitzHugh sprang a step backward, and in the movement his heel caught the
edge of a pack-saddle. He stumbled, almost fell, and before he could
recover himself Quade was at him again. This time there was something in
the red brute's hand. It rose and fell once--and Mortimer FitzHugh reeled
backward with a moaning cry, swayed for a second or two on his feet, and
fell to the ground. Quade turned. In his hand was a bloody knife. Madness
and passion and the triumphant joy of a demon were in his face as he glared
at his helpless prey. As Aldous crouched lower his shoulder touched one of
the saddles. It slipped from the pile, one of the panniers followed it, and
Quade saw him. There was no longer reason for concealment, and as Quade
stood paralyzed for a moment Aldous sprang forth into the space between him
and Joanne. He heard the cry that broke strangely from her lips but he did
not turn his head. He advanced upon Quade, his head lowered, the long
skinning-knife gleaming in his hand.
John Aldous knew that words would avail nothing in these last few minutes
between him and Quade. The latter had already hunched himself forward, the
red knife in his hand poised at his waistline. He was terrible. His huge
bulk, his red face and bull neck, his eyes popping from behind their fleshy
lids, and the dripping blade in the shapeless hulk of his hand gave him the
appearance as he stood there of some monstrous gargoyle instead of a thing
of flesh and blood. And Aldous was terrible to look at, but in a way that
wrung a moaning cry from Joanne. His face was livid from the beat of the
rocks; it was crusted with blood; his eyes were partly closed, and what
remained of his shirt was drenched with blood that still ran from the deep
cuts in his arms and shoulders. But it was he who advanced, and Quade who
stood and waited.
Aldous knew little or nothing of knife-fighting; and he realized, also,
that there was a strange weakness in his arms and body caused by his battle
with the maelstroms in the chasm. But he had wrestled a great deal with the
Indians of the north, who fought as their half-wolf sledgedogs fought, and
he employed their methods now. Slowly and deliberately he began to circle
around Quade, so that Quade became the pivot of that circle, and as he
circled he drew nearer and nearer to his enemy, but never in a frontal
advance. He edged inward, with his knife-arm on the outside. His deadly
deliberateness and the steady glare of his eyes discomfited Quade, who
suddenly took a step backward.
It was always when the Indian made this step that his opponent darted in;
and Aldous, with this in mind, sprang to the attack. Their knives clashed
in midair. As they met, hilt to hilt, Aldous threw his whole weight against
Quade, darted sidewise, and with a terrific lunge brought the blade of his
knife down between Quade's shoulders. A straight blade would have gone from
back to chest through muscle and sinew, but the knife which Aldous held
scarcely pierced the other's clothes.
Not until then did he fully realize the tremendous odds against him. The
curved blade of his skinning-knife would not penetrate! His one hope was to
cut with it. He flung out his arm before Quade had fully recovered, and
blind luck carried the keen edge of the knife across his enemy's pouchy
cheek. The blood came in a spurt, and with a terrible cry Quade leaped back
toward the pile of saddles and panniers. Before Aldous could follow his
advantage the other had dropped his knife and had snatched up a four-foot
length of a tepee pole. For a moment he hesitated while the blood ran in a
hot flood down his thick neck. Then with a bellow of rage he rushed upon
Aldous.
It was no time for knife-work now. As the avalanche of brute strength
descended upon him Aldous gathered himself for the shock. He had already
measured his own weakness. Those ten minutes among the rocks of the chasm
had broken and beaten him until his strength was gone. He was panting from
his first onset with Quade, but his brain was working. And he knew that
Quade was no longer a reasoning thing. He had ceased to think. He was blind
with the passion of the brute, and his one thought was to crush his enemy
down under the weight of the club in his huge hands. Aldous waited. He
heard Joanne's terrified scream when Quade was almost upon him--when less
than five feet separated them. The club was descending when he flung
himself forward, straight for the other's feet. The club crashed over him,
and with what strength he had he gripped Quade at the knees. With a
tremendous thud Quade came to earth. The club broke from the grip of his
hands. For a moment he was stunned, and in that moment Aldous was at his
throat.
He would have sold the best of his life for the skinning-knife. But he had
lost it in gripping Quade. And now he choked--with every ounce of strength
in him he choked at the thick red neck of his enemy. Quade's hands reached
for his own throat. They found it. And both choked, lying there gasping and
covered with blood! while Joanne struggled vainly to free herself, and
scream after scream rang from her lips. And John Aldous knew that at last
the end had come. For there was no longer strength in his arms, and there
was something that was like a strange cramp in his fingers, while the
clutch at his own throat was turning the world black. His grip relaxed. His
hands fell limp. The last that he realized was that Quade was over him, and
that he must be dying.
Then it was, as he lay within a final second or two of death, no longer
conscious of physical attack or of Joanne's terrible cries, that a strange
and unforeseen thing occurred. Beyond the tepee a man had risen from the
earth. He staggered toward them, and it was from Marie that the wildest and
strangest cry of all came now. For the man was Joe DeBar! In his hand he
held a knife. Swaying and stumbling he came to the fighters--from behind.
Quade did not see him, and over Quade's huge back he poised himself. The
knife rose; for the fraction of a second it trembled in midair. Then it
descended, and eight inches of steel went to the heart of Quade.
And as DeBar turned and staggered toward Joanne and Marie, John Aldous was
sinking deeper and deeper into a black and abysmal night.