James Oliver Curwood

“ Until they stood on the grassy knoll, with the lakelet shimmering in the sunlight below them, Joanne herself did not speak again. Then, with a little gesture, she said:
"Perhaps you think what is down there is dreadful to me. It isn't. I shall always remember that little lake, almost as Donald remembers the cavern—not because it watches over something I love, but because it guards a thing that in life would have destroyed me! I know how you must feel, John Aldous—that deep down in your heart you must wonder at a woman who can rejoice in the death of another human creature. ”

“ The engineer's laughter was like a giant's roar in the cavern, and Joanne gave a gasp, while Peggy shiveringly caught Aldous by the arm.
"There—I've got the lantern!" exclaimed Blackton. "There isn't any danger, not a bit. Wait a minute and I'll tell you all about it." He lighted the lantern, and in the glow of it Joanne's and Peggy's faces were white and startled. "Why, bless my soul, I didn't mean to frighten you!" he cried. "I was just telling you facts. See, we're standing on a solid floor—four feet of packed rock and cement. The dynamite and black powder are under that. ”

“ But as an immediate menace to Joanne, Aldous was beginning to fear him less as the hours passed. Joanne, and the day itself, were sufficient to disarm him of his former apprehension. In places they could see for miles ahead and behind them. And Joanne, each time that he looked at her, was a greater joy to him. Constantly she was pointing out the wonders of the mountains to him and MacDonald. Each new rise or fall in the valley held fresh and delightful surprises for her; in the craggy peaks she pointed out castlements, and towers, and battlemented strongholds of ancient princes and kings. ”

“ When they came at last to Blackton's bungalow he thought that he had kept this thing from her, and he did not see—and would not have understood if he had seen—the wonderful and mysterious glow in Joanne's eyes when she kissed Peggy Blackton.
Blackton had come in from the work-end, dust-covered and jubilant.
"I'm glad you folks have returned," he cried, beaming with enthusiasm as he gripped Aldous by the hand. "The last rock is packed, and to-night we're going to shake the earth. We're going to blow up Coyote Number Twenty-seven, and you won't forget the sight as long as you live!" ”

“ He had not counted on an instant's hesitation. He would shoot Quade, for he knew why the mottled beast had been at the window. Stevens' boy had been right. Quade was after Joanne. His ugly soul was disrupted with a desire to possess her, and Aldous knew that when roused by passion he was more like a devil-fish than a man—a creeping, slimy, night-seeking creature who had not only the power of the underworld back of him, but wealth as well. He did not think of him as a man as he stood listening, but as a beast. ”

“ He went on down the trail, his hands clenched tightly. After all, it was not fear of Quade or of what he might attempt that filled him with uneasiness. It was Joanne herself, her strange quest, its final outcome. With the thought that she was seeking for the man who was her husband, a leaden hand seemed gripping at his heart. He tried to shake it off, but it was like a sickness. To believe that she had been the wife of another man or that she could ever belong to any other man than himself seemed like shutting his eyes forever to the sun. ”

“ Where those picks and rock-hammers fell a score of men were working like fiends: Blackton, his arms stripped to the shoulders; Gregg, sweating and urging the men; and among them—lifting and tearing at the rock like a madman—old Donald MacDonald, his shirt open, his great hands bleeding, his hair and beard tossing about him in the wind. Behind them, her hands clasped to her breast—crying out to them to hurry, hurry—stood Peggy Blackton. The strength of five men was in every pair of arms. Huge boulders were rolled back. Men pawed earth and shale with their naked hands. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ How far he had succeeded in this he himself did not know—until these last moments when he had bid good-bye to Joanne Gray. He confessed that she had found a cleft in his armour, and there was an uneasy thrill in his blood. It was not her beauty alone that had affected him. He had trained himself to look at a beautiful woman as he might have looked at a beautiful flower, confident that if he went beyond the mere admiration of it he would find only burned-out ashes. ”

“ The blood in Aldous' veins ran faster. He gripped his pistol harder. More closely he looked into the moonlit gloom of the trail ahead of him. He believed that he had guessed the meaning of MacDonald's warning. It was the gold! More than once thought of the yellow treasure far up in the North had thrilled him, but never as it thrilled him now. Was the old tragedy of it to be lived over again? Was it again to play its part in a terrible drama of men's lives, as it had played it more than forty years ago? The gold! ”

“ The black mountain was fading slowly away, and up out of that gloom came now ghostly and far-reaching voices of men booming faintly through giant megaphones.
"Clear away! Clear away! Clear away!" they said, and the valley and the mountain-sides caught up the echoes, until it seemed that a hundred voices were crying out the warning. Then fell a strange and weird silence, and the echoes faded away like the voices of dying men, and all was still save the far-away barking of a coyote that answered the mysterious challenges of the night. Joanne was close to the rock. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He had come to understand that for her the grave must hold its dead; that the fact of death, death under the slab that bore Mortimer FitzHugh's name, meant life for her, just as it meant life and all things for him. He had prayed for it, even while he dreaded that it might not be. In him all things were now submerged in the wild thought that Joanne was free, and the grave had been the key to her freedom. ”

“ It plunged him headlong for a single moment into what he believed to be the absurdity of a situation. He had a quick mental picture of himself out on the dead spruce, performing a bit of mock-heroism by dragging in a half-drowned colt by one ear. In another instant this had passed, and he was wondering why Joanne Gray was not on her way to Tête Jaune.
"It was splendid!" she was saying again, her eyes glowing at him. "I know men who would not have risked that for a human!"
"Perhaps they would have been showing good judgment," replied Aldous. ”

“ But I shall be proud of the friendship of John Aldous."
"Yes, you can take care of yourself, Ladygray," said Aldous softly, looking into her eyes and yet speaking as if to himself. "That is why you have broken so curiously into my life. It's that—and not your beauty. I have known beautiful women before. But they were—just women, frail things that might snap under stress. I have always thought there is only one woman in ten thousand who would not do that—under certain conditions. I believe you are that one in ten thousand. You can go on to Tête Jaune alone. ”

“ 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. ”