The Hunted Woman | Page 8

One of
them was taking a wet cloth from his head. There were a dozen in the
canvas-walled room, all with their backs to the door, their eyes upon
their fallen and dishonoured chief. For a moment John Aldous paused
in the door. The cool and insolent smile hovered about his lips again,
and little crinkles had gathered at the corners of his eyes.

"Did I hit you pretty hard, Bill?" he asked.
Every head was turned toward him. Bill Quade stared, his mouth open.
He staggered to his feet, and stood dizzily.
"You--damn you!" he cried huskily.
Three or four of the men had already begun to move toward the
stranger. Their hands were knotted, their faces murderously dark.
"Wait a minute, boys," warned Aldous coolly. "I've got something to
say to you--and Bill. Then eat me alive if you want to. Do you want to
be square enough to give me a word?"
Quade had settled back sickly on his stool. The others had stopped,
waiting. The quiet and insolently confident smile had not left Aldous'
lips.
"You'll feel better in a few minutes, Bill," he consoled. "A hard blow
on the jaw always makes you sick at the pit of the stomach. That
dizziness will pass away shortly. Meanwhile, I'm going to give you and
your pals a little verbal and visual demonstration of what you're up
against, and warn you to bait no traps for a certain young woman whom
you've lately seen. She's going on to Tête Jaune. And I know how your
partner plays his game up there. I'm not particularly anxious to butt into
your affairs and the business of this pretty bunch that's gathered about
you, but I've come to give you a friendly warning for all that. If this
young woman is embarrassed up at Tête Jaune you're going to settle
with me."
Aldous had spoken without a tremor of excitement in his voice. Not
one of the men noticed his speaking lips, his slim hands, or his careless
posture as he leaned in the door. They were looking straight into his
eyes, strangely scintillating and deadly earnest. In such a man mere
bulk did not count.
"That much--for words," he went on. "Now I'm going to give you the
visual demonstration. I know your game, Bill. You're already planning

what you're going to do. You won't fight fair--because you never have.
You've already decided that some morning I'll turn up missing, or be
dug out from under a fall of rock, or go peacefully floating down the
Athabasca. See! There's nothing in that hand, is there?"
He stretched out an empty hand toward them, palm up.
"And now!"
A twist of the wrist so swift their eyes could not follow, a metallic click,
and the startled group were staring into the black muzzle of a menacing
little automatic.
"That's known as the sleeve trick, boys," explained Aldous with his
imperturbable smile. "It's a relic of the old gun-fighting days when the
best man was quickest. From now on, especially at night, I shall carry
this little friend of mine just inside my wristband. There are eleven
shots in it, and I shoot fairly straight. Good-day!"
Before they had recovered from their astonishment he was gone.
He did not follow the road along which Joanne had come a short time
before, but turned again into the winding trail that led riverward
through the poplars. Where before he had been a little amused at
himself, he was now more seriously disgusted. He was not afraid of
Quade, who was perhaps the most dangerous man along the line of rail.
Neither was he afraid of the lawless men who worked his ends. But he
knew that he had made powerful enemies, and all because of an
unknown woman whom he had never seen until half an hour before. It
was this that disturbed his equanimity--the woman of it, and the
knowledge that his interference had been unsolicited and probably
unnecessary. And now that he had gone this far he found it not easy to
recover his balance. Who was this Joanne Gray? he asked himself. She
was not ordinary--like the hundred other women who had gone on
ahead of her to Tête Jaune Cache. If she had been that, he would soon
have been in his little shack on the shore of the river, hard at work. He
had planned work for himself that afternoon, and he was nettled to
discover that his enthusiasm for the grand finale of a certain situation in

his novel was gone. Yet for this he did not blame her. He was the fool.
Quade and his friends would make him feel that sooner or later.
His trail led him to a partly dry muskeg bottom. Beyond this was a
thicker