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MacDonald got off his horse, and Aldous and Joanne rode up to him. In the old man's face was a look of joy and triumph. "It weren't so far as I thought it was, Johnny!" he cried. "Oh, it must ha' been a turrible night a turrible night when Jane an' I come this way! It took us twenty hours, Johnny!" "We are near the cavern?" breathed Joanne. "It ain't more'n half a mile farther on, I guess.
"Where is she? Where is Joanne?" demanded Aldous. "Twenty feet behind you, Johnny, gagged an' trussed up nice as a whistle! If they hadn't stopped to do that work you wouldn't ha' seen her ag'in, Johnny s'elp me, God, you wouldn't! They was hikin' for the river. Once they had reached the Frazer, and a boat " He broke off to lead Aldous to a clump of dwarf spruce.
He asked himself questions and answered them with a promptness which left no room for doubt in his mind as to what his actions should be. One fact he accepted as absolute: Joanne belonged to him. She was his wife. He regarded her as that, even though Mortimer FitzHugh was alive. In the eyes of both God and man FitzHugh no longer had a claim upon her.
Hand in hand they went down the stair; and when the minister saw Joanne, covered in the tangle and glory of her hair; and when he saw John Aldous, with half-naked arms and blackened face; and when, with these things, he saw the wonderful joy shining in their eyes, he stood like one struck dumb at sight of a miracle descending out of the skies.
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 her eyes.
He learned that the Tête Jaune train could not go on until the next day, and after Mrs. Otto had made him take a loaf of fresh bread and a can of home-made marmalade as a contribution to their feast, he turned back toward the cabin, trying to whistle in his old careless way. The questions he had first asked himself about Joanne forced themselves back upon him now with deeper import.
In the face of the old hunter's misgiving, Aldous prepared to leave. It was nearly ten o'clock when he set back in the direction of Tête Jaune, Donald accompanying him as far as the moonlit amphitheatre in the forest. There they separated, and Aldous went on alone. He believed that Joanne and the Blacktons would half expect him to return to the bungalow after he had seen MacDonald.
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.
In him all things were now submerged in the wild thought that Joanne was free, and the grave had been the key to her freedom. A calmness began to possess him that was in singular contrast to the perturbed condition of his mind a few minutes before.
At last Joanne realized that the explosion was not to come, that Blackton and his men were working to save them. And now, as she listened with him, her breath began to come in sobbing excitement between her lips for there was no mistaking that sound, that steady beat-beat-beat that came from beyond the cavern wall and seemed to set strange tremors stirring in the air about their ears.