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

to discuss the situation, or waste time in listening to further advice. He was anxious to be alone again with Joanne, and tell her what he had learned from Peter Keller. For half an hour he repressed his uneasiness. The brothers then went on to their corral. A few minutes later Joanne was once more at his side, and they were walking slowly over the trail that led to the cabin on the river.
He could see that the night had made a change in her. There were circles under her eyes which were not there yesterday. When she looked at him their velvety blue depths betrayed something which he knew she was struggling desperately to keep from him. It was not altogether fear. It was more a betrayal of pain--a torment of the soul and not of the body. He noticed that in spite of the vivid colouring of her lips her face was strangely pale. The beautiful flush that had come into it when she first saw him was gone.
Then he began to tell her of his visit to Peter Keller. His own heart was beating violently when he came to speak of the grave and the slab over it that bore the name of FitzHugh. He had expected that what he had discovered from Keller would create some sort of a sensation. He had even come up to the final fact gradually, so that it would not appear bald and shocking. Joanne's attitude stunned him. She looked straight ahead. When she turned to him he did not see in her eyes what he had expected to see. They were quiet, emotionless, except for that shadow of inward torture which did not leave them.
"Then to-morrow we can go to the grave?" she asked simply.
Her voice, too, was quiet and without emotion.
He nodded. "We can leave at sunrise," he said. "I have my own horses at Tete Jaune and there need be no delay. We were to start into the North from there."
"You mean on the adventure you were telling me about?"
She had looked at him quickly.
"Yes. Old Donald, my partner, has been waiting for me a week. That's why I was so deuced anxious to rush the book to an end. I'm behind Donald's schedule, and he's growing nervous. It's rather an unusual enterprise that's taking us north this time, and Donald can't understand why I should hang back to write the tail end of a book. He has lived sixty years in the mountains. His full name is Donald MacDonald. Sometimes, back in my own mind, I've called him History. He seems like that--as though he'd lived for ages in these mountains instead of sixty years. If I could only write what he has lived--even what one might imagine that he has lived! But I cannot. I have tried three times, and have failed. I think of him as The Last Spirit--a strange wandering ghost of the mighty ranges. His kind passed away a hundred years ago. You will understand--when you see him."
She put her hand on his arm and let it rest there lightly as they walked. Into her eyes had returned some of the old warm glow of yesterday.
"I want you to tell me about this adventure," she entreated softly. "I understand--about the other. You have been good--oh! so good to me! And I should tell you things; you are expecting me to explain. It is only fair and honest that I should. I know what is in your mind, and I only want you to wait--until to-morrow. Will you? And I will tell you then, when we have found the grave."
Involuntarily his hand sought Joanne's. For a single moment he felt the warm, sweet thrill of it in his own as he pressed it more closely to his arm. Then he freed it, looking straight ahead. A soft flush grew in Joanne's cheeks.
"Do you care a great deal for riches?" he asked. "Does the golden pot at the end of the rainbow hold out a lure for you?" He did not realize the strangeness of his question until their eyes met. "Because if you don't," he added, smiling, "this adventure of ours isn't going to look very exciting to you."
She laughed softly.
"No, I don't care for riches," she replied. "I am quite sure that just as great education proves to one how little one knows, so great wealth brings one face to face with the truth of how little one can enjoy. My father used to say that the golden treasure at the end of the rainbow in every human life was happiness, and that is something which you cannot buy. So why crave riches, then? But please don't let my foolish ideas disappoint you. I'll promise to be properly excited."
She saw his face suddenly aflame with enthusiasm.
"By George, but you're a--a brick, Joanne!" he exclaimed. "You are! And I--I----" He was fumbling in his breast pocket. He brought out his wallet and extracted from it the bit of paper Stevens had given him. "You dropped that, and Stevens found it," he explained, giving it to her. "I thought those figures might represent your fortune--or your income. Don't mind telling you I went over 'em carefully. There's a mistake in the third column. Five and four don't make seven. They make nine. In the final, when you come to the multiplication part of it, that correction will make you just thirty-two thousand five hundred dollars richer."
"Thanks," said Joanne, lowering her eyes, and beginning to tear the paper into small pieces. "And will it disappoint you, Mr. John Aldous, if I tell you that all these figures stand for riches which some one else possesses? And won't you let me remind you that we're getting a long way from what I want to know--about your trip into the North?"
"That's just it: we're hot on the trail," chuckled Aldous, deliberately placing her hand on his arm again. "You don't care for riches. Neither do I. I'm delighted to know we're going tandem in that respect. I've never had any fun with money. It's the money that's had fun with me. I've no use for yachts and diamonds and I'd rather travel afoot with a gun over my shoulder than in a private car. Half the time I'm doing my own cooking, and I haven't worn a white shirt in a year. My publishers persist in shoving more money my way than I know what to do with.
"You see, I pay only ten cents a plug for my smoking tobacco, and other things accordingly. Somebody has said something about the good Lord sitting up in Heaven and laughing at the jokes He plays on men. Well, I'm sitting back and laughing now and then at the tussle between men and money over all creation. There's a whole lot of humour in the way men and women fight and die for money, if you only take time to stand out on the side and look on. There's nothing big or dramatic about it. I may be a heathen, but to my mind the funniest of all things is to see the world wringing its neck for a dollar. And Donald--old History--needs even less money than I. So that puts the big element of humour in this expedition of ours. We don't want money, particularly. Donald wouldn't wear more than four pairs of boots a year if he was a billionaire. And yet----"
He turned to Joanne. The pressure of her hand was warmer on his arm. Her beautiful eyes were glowing, and her red lips parted as she waited breathlessly for him to go on.
"And yet, we're going to a place where you can scoop gold up with a shovel," he finished. "That's the funny part of it."
"It isn't funny--it's tremendous!" gasped Joanne. "Think of what a man like you could do with unlimited wealth, the good you might achieve, the splendid endowments you might make----"
"I have already made several endowments," interrupted Aldous. "I believe that I have made a great many people happy, Ladygray--a great many. I am gifted to make endowments, I think, above most people. Not one of the endowments I have made has failed of complete success."
"And may I ask what some of them were?"
"I can't remember them all. There have been a great, great many. Most conspicuous among them were three endowments which I made to some very worthy people at various times for seven salted mines. I suppose you know what a salted mine is, Ladygray? At other times I have endowed railroad stocks which were very much in need of my helping mite, two copper companies, a concern that was supposed to hoist up pure asbestos from the stomach of Popocatapetl, and a steamship company that never steamed. As I said before, they were all very successful endowments."
"And how many of the other kind have you made?" she asked gently, looking down the trail. "Like--Stevens', for instance?"
He turned to her sharply.
"What the deuce----"
"Did you succeed in getting the new outfit from Mr. Curly?" she asked.
"Yes. How did you know?"
She smiled at the amazement which had gathered in his face. A glad, soft light shone in her eyes.
"I guess Mrs. Otto has been like a mother to that poor little boy," she explained. "When you and Mr. Stevens went up to buy the outfit this morning Jimmy ran over to tell her the news. We were all there--at breakfast. He was so excited he could scarcely breathe. But it all came out, and he ran back to camp before you came because he thought you wouldn't want me to know. Wasn't that funny? He told me so when I walked a little way up the path with him."
"The little reprobate!" chuckled Aldous. "He's the best publicity man I ever had, Ladygray. I did want you to know about this, and I wanted it to come to you in just this way, so that I wouldn't be compelled to tell you myself of the big and noble act I have done. It was my hope and desire that you, through some one else, would learn of it, and come to understand more fully what a generous and splendid biped I am. I even plotted to give this child of Stevens' a silver dollar if he would get the news to you in some one of his innocent ways. He's done it. And he couldn't have done it better--even for a dollar. Ah, here we are at the cabin. Will you excuse me while I pick up a few things that I want to take on to Tete Jaune with me?"
Between two trees close to the cabin he had built a seat, and here he left Joanne. He was gone scarcely five minutes when he reappeared with a small pack-sack over his shoulders, locked the door, and rejoined her.
"You see it isn't much of a task for me to move," he said, as they turned back in the direction of the Ottos'. "I'll wash the dishes when I come back next October."
"Five months!" gasped Joanne, counting on her fingers. "John Aldous, do you mean----"
"I do," he nodded emphatically. "I frequently leave dishes unwashed for quite a spell at a time. That's the one unpleasant thing about this sort of life--washing dishes. It's not so bad in the rainy season, but it's fierce during a dry spell. When it rains I put the dishes out on a flat rock, dirty side up, and the good Lord does the scrubbing."
He looked at Joanne, face and eyes aglow with the happiness that was sweeping in a mighty tumult within him. Half an hour had worked a transformation in Joanne. There was no longer a trace of anguish or of fear in