The Hunted Woman | Page 9

growth of timber, mostly spruce and cedar, from behind which
came the rushing sound of water. A few moments more and he stood
with the wide tumult of the Athabasca at his feet. He had chosen this
spot for his little cabin because the river ran wild here among the rocks,
and because pack-outfits going into the southward mountains could not
disturb him by fording at this point. Across the river rose the steep
embankments that shut in Buffalo Prairie, and still beyond that the
mountains, thick with timber rising billow on billow until trees looked
like twigs, with gray rock and glistening snow shouldering the clouds
above the last purple line. The cabin in which he had lived and worked
for many weeks faced the river and the distant Saw Tooth Range, and
was partly hidden in a clump of jack-pines. He opened the door and
entered. Through the window to the south and west he could see the
white face of Mount Geikie, and forty miles away in that wilderness of
peaks, the sombre frown of Hardesty; through it the sun came now,
flooding his work as he had left it. The last page of manuscript on
which he had been working was in his typewriter. He sat down to begin
where he had left off in that pivotal situation in his masterpiece.
He read and re-read the last two or three pages of the manuscript,
struggling to pick up the threads where he had dropped them. With
each reading he became more convinced that his work for that
afternoon was spoiled. And by whom? By what? A little fiercely he
packed his pipe with fresh tobacco. Then he leaned back, lighted it, and
laughed. More and more as the minutes passed he permitted himself to
think of the strange young woman whose beauty and personality had
literally projected themselves into his workshop. He marvelled at the
crudity of the questions which he asked himself, and yet he persisted in
asking them. Who was she? What could be her mission at Tête Jaune
Cache? She had repeated to him what she had said to the girl in the
coach--that at Tête Jaune she had no friends. Beyond that, and her
name, she had offered no enlightenment.

In the brief space that he had been with her he had mentally tabulated
her age as twenty-eight--no older. Her beauty alone, the purity of her
eyes, the freshness of her lips, and the slender girlishness of her figure,
might have made him say twenty, but with those things he had found
the maturer poise of the woman. It had been a flashlight picture, but
one that he was sure of.
Several times during the next hour he turned to his work, and at last
gave up his efforts entirely. From a peg in the wall he took down a little
rifle. He had found it convenient to do much of his own cooking, and
he had broken a few laws. The partridges were out of season, but
temptingly fat and tender. With a brace of young broilers in mind for
supper, he left the cabin and followed the narrow foot-trail up the river.
He hunted for half an hour before he stirred a covey of birds. Two of
these he shot. Concealing his meat and his gun near the trail he
continued toward the ford half a mile farther up, wondering if Stevens,
who was due to cross that day, had got his outfit over. Not until then
did he look at his watch. He was surprised to find that the Tête Jaune
train had been gone three quarters of an hour. For some unaccountable
reason he felt easier. He went on, whistling.
At the ford he found Stevens standing close to the river's edge, twisting
one of his long red moustaches in doubt and vexation.
"Damn this river," he growled, as Aldous came up. "You never can tell
what it's going to do overnight. Look there! Would you try to cross?"
"I wouldn't," replied Aldous. "It's a foot higher than yesterday. I
wouldn't take the chance."
"Not with two guides, a cook, and a horse-wrangler on your
pay-roll--and a hospital bill as big as Geikie staring you in the face?"
argued Stevens, who had been sick for three months. "I guess you'd
pretty near take a chance. I've a notion to."
"I wouldn't," repeated Aldous.
"But I've lost two days already, and I'm taking that bunch of sightseers

out for a lump sum, guaranteeing 'em so many days on the trail. This
ain't what you might call on the trail. They don't expect to pay for this
delay, and that outfit back in the bush is costing me thirty dollars a day.
We can get the dunnage and ourselves over in the