The Hunted Woman - James Oliver Curwood (books to read for beginners TXT) 📗

had Quade stolen on ahead to Tete Jaune? Why had he not waited for to-morrow's train?
He found himself walking swiftly along the road, where he had intended to walk slowly--a hundred questions pounding through his brain. Suddenly a thought came to him that stopped him in the trail, his unseeing eyes staring down into the dark chasm of the river. After all, was it so strange that Quade would do these things? Into his own life Joanne had come like a wonderful dream-creature transformed into flesh and blood. He no longer tried to evade the fact that he could not think without thinking of Joanne. She had become a part of him. She had made him forget everything but her, and in a few hours had sent into the dust of ruin his cynicism and aloneness of a lifetime. If Joanne had come to him like this, making him forget his work, filling him more and more with the thrilling desire to fight for her, was it so very strange that a beast like Quade would fight--in another way?
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. And yet she had told him. She had belonged to another man; she might belong to him even now. She had come to find if he was alive--or dead.
And if alive? Aldous stopped again, and looked down into the dark pit through which the river was rushing a hundred feet below him. It tore in frothing maelstroms through a thousand rocks, filling the night with a low thunder. To John Aldous the sound of it might have been a thousand miles away. He did not hear. His eye saw nothing in the blackness. For a few moments the question he had asked himself obliterated everything. If they found Joanne's husband alive at Tete Jaune--what then? He turned back, retracing his steps over the trail, a feeling of resentment--of hatred for the man he had never seen--slowly taking the place of the oppressive thing that had turned his heart sick within him. Then, in a flash, came the memory of Joanne's words--words in which, white-faced and trembling, she had confessed that her anxiety was not that she would find him dead, but that _she would find him alive_. A joyous thrill shot through him as he remembered that. Whoever this man was, whatever he might have been to her once, or was to her now, Joanne did not want to find him alive! He laughed softly to himself as he quickened his pace. The tense grip of his fingers loosened. The grim, almost ghastly part of it did not occur to him--the fact that deep in his soul he was wishing a man dead and in his grave.
He did not return at once to the scenes about Quade's place, but went to the station, three quarters of a mile farther up the track. Here, in a casual way, he learned from the little pink-faced Cockney Englishman who watched the office at night that Stevens had been correct in his information. Quade had gone to Tete Jaune. Although it was eleven o'clock, Aldous proceeded in the direction of the engineers' camp, still another quarter of a mile deeper in the bush. He was restless. He did not feel that he could sleep that night. The engineers' camp he expected to find in darkness, and he was surprised when he saw a light burning brightly in Keller's cabin.
Keller was the assistant divisional engineer, and they had become good friends. It was Keller who had set the first surveyor's line at Tete Jaune, and it was he who had reported it as the strategic point from which to push forward the fight against mountain and wilderness, both by river and rail. He was, in a way, accountable for the existence of Tete Jaune just where it did exist, and he knew more about it than any other man in the employ of the Grand Trunk Pacific. For this reason Aldous was glad that Keller had not gone to bed. He knocked at the door and entered without waiting for an invitation.
The engineer stood in the middle of the floor, his coat off, his fat, stubby hands thrust into the pockets of his baggy trousers, his red face and bald cranium shining in the lamplight. A strange fury blazed in his eyes as he greeted his visitor. He began pacing back and forth across the room, puffing volumes of smoke from a huge bowled German pipe as he motioned Aldous to a chair.
"What's the matter, Peter?"
"Enough--an' be damned!" growled Peter. "If it wasn't enough do you think I'd be out of bed at this hour of the night?"
"I'm sure it's enough," agreed Aldous. "If it wasn't you'd be in your little trundle over there, sleeping like a baby. I don't know of any one who can sleep quite as sweetly as you, Peter. But what the devil _is_ the trouble?"
"Something that you can't make me feel funny over. You haven't heard--about the bear?"
"Not a word, Peter."
Keller took his hands from his pockets and the big, bowled pipe from his mouth.
"You know what I did with that bear," he said. "More than a year ago I made friends with her up there on the hill instead of killing her. Last summer I got her so she'd eat out of my hands. I fed her a barrel of sugar between July and November. We used to chum it an hour at a time, and I'd pet her like a dog. Why, damn it, man, I thought more of that bear than I did of any human in these regions! And she got so fond of me she didn't leave to den up until January. This spring she came out with two cubs, an' as soon as they could waddle she brought 'em out there on the hillside an' waited for me. We were better chums than ever. I've got another half barrel of sugar--lump sugar--on the way from Edmonton. An' now what do you think that damned C.N.R. gang has done?"
"They haven't shot her?"
"No, they haven't shot her. I wish to God they had! They've _blown her up!_"
The little engineer subsided into a chair.
"Do you hear?" he demanded. "They've blown her up! Put a stick of dynamite under some sugar, attached a battery wire to it, an' when she was licking up the sugar touched it off. An' I can't do anything, damn 'em! Bears ain't protected. The government of this province calls 'em 'pests.' Murder 'em on sight, it says. An' those fiends over there think it's a good joke on me--an' the bear!"
Keller was sweating. His fat hands were clenched, and his round, plump body fairly shook with excitement and anger.
"When I went over to-night they laughed at me--the whole bunch," he went on thickly. "I offered to lick every man in the outfit from A to Z, an' I ain't had a fight in twenty years. Instead of fighting like men, a dozen of them grabbed hold of me, chucked me into a blanket, an' bounced me for fifteen minutes straight! What do you think of _that_, Aldous? Me--assistant divisional engineer of the G.T.P.--_bounced in a blanket_!"
Peter Keller hopped from his chair and began pacing back and forth across the room again, sucking truculently on his pipe.
"If they were on our road I'd--I'd chase every man of them out of the country. But they're not. They belong to the C.N.R. They're out of my reach." He stopped, suddenly, in front of Aldous. "What can I do?" he demanded.
"Nothing," said Aldous. "You've had something like this coming to you, Peter. I've been expecting it. All the camps for twenty miles up and down the line know what you thought of that bear. You fired Tibbits because, as you said, he was too thick with Quade. You told him that right before Quade's face. Tibbits is now foreman of that grading gang over there. Two and two make four, you know. Tibbits--Quade--the blown-up bear. Quade doesn't miss an opportunity, no matter how small it is. Tibbits and Quade did this to get even with you. You might report the blanket affair to the contractors of the other road. I don't believe they would stand for it."
Aldous had guessed correctly what the effect of associating Quade's name with the affair would be. Keller was one of Quade's deadliest enemies. He sat down close to Aldous again. His eyes burned deep back. It was not Keller's physique, but his brain, and the fearlessness of his spirit, that made him dangerous.
"I guess you're right, Aldous," he said. "Some day--I'll even up on Quade."
"And so shall I, Peter."
The engineer stared into the other's eyes.
"You----"
Aldous nodded.
"Quade left for Tete Jaune to-night, on a hand-car. I follow him to-morrow, on the train. I can't tell you what's up, Peter, but I don't think it will stop this side of death for Quade and Culver Rann--or me. I mean that quite literally. I don't see how more than one side can come out alive. I want to ask you a few questions before I go on to Tete Jaune. You know every mountain and trail about the place, don't you?"
"I've tramped them all, afoot and horseback."
"Then perhaps you can direct me to what I must find--a man's grave."
Peter Keller paused in the act of relighting his pipe. For a moment he stared in amazement.
"There are a great many graves up at Tete Jaune," he said, at last. "A great many graves--and many of them unmarked. If it's a _Quade_ grave you're looking for, Aldous, it will be unmarked."
"I am quite sure that it is marked--or _was_ at one time," said Aldous. "It's the grave of a man who had quite an unusual name, Peter, and you might remember it--Mortimer FitzHugh."
"FitzHugh--FitzHugh," repeated Keller, puffing out fresh volumes of smoke. "Mortimer FitzHugh----"
"He died, I believe, before there was a Tete Jaune, or at least before the steel reached there," added Aldous. "He was on a hunting trip, and I have reason to think that his death was a violent one."
Keller rose and fell into his old habit of pacing back and forth across the room, a habit that had worn a path in the bare pine boards of the floor.
"There's graves an' graves up there, but not so many that were there before Tete Jaune came," he began, between puffs. "Up on the side of White Knob Mountain there's the grave of a man who was torn to bits by a grizzly. But his name was Humphrey. Old Yellowhead John--Tete Jaune, they called him--died years before that, and no one knows where his grave is. We had five men die before the steel came, but there wasn't a FitzHugh among 'em. Crabby--old Crabby Tompkins, a trapper, is buried in the sand on the Frazer. The last flood swept his slab away. There's two unmarked graves in Glacier Canyon, but I guess they're ten years old if a day. Burns was shot. I knew him. Plenty died after the steel came, but before that----"
Suddenly he stopped. He faced Aldous. His breath came in quick jerks.
"By Heaven, I do remember!" he cried. "There's a