THE HUNTED WOMAN (Western Thriller). James Oliver Curwood
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was a huge quid of tobacco.
"Stevens!" Aldous chuckled. "God bless my soul, if you frightened him into giving up a quid of tobacco like that you sure did startle him some!" He kicked Stevens' lost property out with the toe of his boot and turned to Joanne, showing her the fresh bread and marmalade. "Mrs. Otto sent these to you," he said. "And the train won't leave until to-morrow."
In her silence he pulled a chair in front of her, sat down close, and thrust the point of his hunting knife into one of the two remaining potatoes.
"And when it does go I'm going with you," he added.
He expected this announcement would have some effect on her. As she jumped up with the pan of potatoes, leaving the one still speared on the end of his knife, he caught only the corner of a bewitching smile.
"You still believe that I will be unable to take care of myself up at this terrible Tête Jaune?" she asked, bending for a moment over the table. "Do you?"
"No. You can care for yourself anywhere, Ladygray," he repeated. "But I am quite sure that it will be less troublesome for me to see that no insults are offered you than for you to resent those insults when they come. Tête Jaune is full of Quades," he added.
The smile was gone from her face when she turned to him. Her blue eyes were filled with a tense anxiety.
"I had almost forgotten that man," she whispered. "And you mean that you would fight for me—again?"
"A thousand times."
The colour grew deeper in her cheeks. "I read something about you once that I have never forgotten, John Aldous," she said. "It was after you returned from Thibet. It said that you were largely made up of two emotions—your contempt for woman and your love of adventure; that it would be impossible for you not to see a flaw in one, and that for the other—physical excitement—you would go to the ends of the earth. Perhaps it is this—your desire for adventure—that makes you want to go with me to Tête Jaune?"
"I am beginning to believe that it will be the greatest adventure of my life," he replied, and something in his quiet voice held her silent. He rose to his feet, and stood before her. "It is already the Great Adventure," he went on. "I feel it. And I am the one to judge. Until to-day I would have staked my life that no power could have wrung from me the confession I am going to make to you voluntarily. I have laughed at the opinion the world has held of me. To me it has all been a colossal joke. I have enjoyed the hundreds of columns aimed at me by excited women through the press. They have all asked the same question: Why do you not write of the good things in women instead of always the bad? I have never given them an answer. But I answer you now—here. I have not picked upon the weaknesses of women because I despise them. Those weaknesses—the destroying frailties of womankind—I have driven over rough-shod through the pages of my books because I have always believed that Woman was the one thing which God came nearest to creating perfect. I believe they should be perfect. And because they have not quite that perfection which should be theirs I have driven the cold facts home as hard as I could. I have been a fool and an iconoclast instead of a builder. This confession to you is proof that you have brought me face to face with the greatest adventure of all."
The colour in her cheeks had centred in two bright spots. Her lips formed words which came slowly, strangely.
"I guess—I understand," she said. "Perhaps I, too, would have been that kind of an iconoclast—if I could have put the things I have thought into written words." She drew a deep breath, and went on, her eyes full upon him, speaking as if out of a dream. "The Great Adventure—for you. Yes; and perhaps for both."
Her hands were drawn tightly to her breast. Something about her as she stood there, her back to the table, drew John Aldous to her side, forced the question from his lips: "Tell me, Ladygray—why are you going to Tête Jaune?"
In that same strange way, as if her lips were framing words beyond their power to control, she answered:
"I am going—to find—my husband."
CHAPTER VI
Silent, his head bowed a little, John Aldous stood before her after those last words. A slight noise outside gave him the pretext to turn to the door. She was going to Tête Jaune—to find her husband! He had not expected that. For a breath, as he looked out toward the bush, his mind was in a strange daze. A dozen times she had given him to understand there was no husband, father, or brother waiting for her at the rail-end. She had told him that she was alone—without friends. And now, like a confession, those words had come strangely from her lips.
What he had heard was one of Otto's pack-horses coming down to drink. He turned toward her again.
Joanne stood with her back still to the table. She had slipped a hand into the front of her dress and had drawn forth a long thick envelope. As she opened it, Aldous saw that it contained banknotes. From among these she picked out a bit of paper and offered it to him.
"That will explain—partly," she said.
It was a newspaper clipping, worn and faded, with a date two years old. It had apparently been cut from an English paper, and told briefly of the tragic death of Mortimer FitzHugh, son of a prominent Devonshire family, who had lost his life while on a hunting trip in the British Columbia Wilds.
"He was my husband," said Joanne, as Aldous finished. "Until six months ago I had no reason to believe that the statement in the paper was not true. Then—an acquaintance came out here hunting. He returned with a strange story. He declared that he had seen Mr. FitzHugh alive. Now you know why I am here. I had not meant to tell you. It places me in a light which I do not think that I can explain away—just now. I have come to prove or disprove his death. If he is alive——"
For the first time she betrayed the struggle she was making against some powerful emotion which she was fighting to repress. Her face had paled. She stopped herself with a quick breath, as if knowing that she had already gone too far.
"I guess I understand," said Aldous. "For some reason your anxiety is not that you will find him dead, Ladygray, but that you may find him alive."
"Yes—yes, that is it. But you must not urge me farther. It is a terrible thing to say. You will think I am not a woman, but a fiend. And I am your guest. You have invited me to supper. And—the potatoes are ready, and there is no fire!"
She had forced a smile back to her lips. John Aldous whirled toward the door.
"I will have the partridges in two seconds!" he cried. "I dropped them when the horses went through the rapids."
The oppressive and crushing effect of Joanne's first mention of a husband was gone. He made no effort to explain or analyze the two sudden changes that swept over him. He accepted them as facts, and that was all. Where a few moments before there had been the leaden grip of something that seemed to be physically choking him, there was now again the strange buoyancy with which he had gone to the Otto tent. He began to whistle as he went to the river's edge. He was whistling when he returned, the two birds in his hand. Joanne was waiting for him in the door. Again her face was a faintly tinted vision of tranquil loveliness; her eyes were again like the wonderful blue pools over the sunlit mountains. She smiled as he came up. He was amazed—not that she had recovered so completely from the emotional excitement that had racked her, but because she betrayed in no way a sign of grief—of suspense or of anxiety. A few minutes ago he had heard her singing. He could almost believe that her lips might break into song again as she stood there.
From that moment until the sun sank behind the mountains and gray shadows began to creep in where the light had been, there was no other reference to the things that had happened or the things that had been said since Joanne's arrival. For the first time in years John Aldous completely forgot his work. He was lost in Joanne. With the tremendous reaction that was working out in him she became more and more wonderful to him with each breath that he drew. He made no effort to control the change that was sweeping through him. His one effort was to