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

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