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She moved; her eyes opened, and like one gazing upon the spirit of the dead she looked into the face of John Aldous, a madman's face in the lantern-glow. "John John " She put up her hands, and with a cry he ran with her in his arms to the choked tunnel. "Listen! Listen!" he cried wildly. "Dear God in Heaven, Joanne can you not hear them? It's Blackton Blackton and his men!
A woman's voice telling stories behind shadow pictures, and the capricious play of the black puppets on her lighted screen, had the effect of incantation. Before the booth of a dentist, the long strings of black teeth swayed in the lantern-glow, rattling, like horrid necklaces of cannibals.
In a cramped and almost illegible hand the old wanderer of the mountains had written: Don't go to cabin. Culver Rann waiting to kill you. Don't show yorself in town. Cum to me as soon as you can on trail striking north to Loon Lake. Watch yorself. Be ready with yor gun. DONALD MacDONALD. Aldous shoved the note in his pocket and slipped back out of the lantern-glow into deep shadow.
For a moment he looked steadily at her, and his heart leaped when he saw that she must believe him, for though her face was as white as an ivory cross she was smiling at him yes! she was smiling at him in that gray and ghastly death-gloom of the cavern! He brought out his watch, and in the lantern-glow they looked at it. "A quarter after three," he said.
"Joanne Joanne, it is impossible!" he cried huskily, and he had her close in his arms again, even as her face was whitening in the lantern-glow. "I have lived for you, I have waited for you all these years you have been coming, coming, coming to me and now that you are mine mine it is impossible! It cannot happen " He freed her again, and caught up a lantern.
His thoughts were so far away that a soft footfall behind him and the rustle of satin seemed part of that other night until turning restlessly, he caught the sheen of satin, brightly gold in the lantern-glow. The dark, vivid skin, the hair and eyes that were somehow more Spanish than Indian the golden mask Carl's face went wildly scarlet. "Keela!" he cried, springing toward her, "Keela!"
In the present moment he felt a keen desire to confront Quade face to face out there in the lantern-glow, and settle with the mottled beast once for all. The fact that Quade had seen Joanne as the guest of the Blacktons hardened him in his determination. Quade could no longer be in possible error regarding her.
He was sitting on something hard a box fifty pounds of dynamite! The cold sweat stood out in beads on his face, glistening in the lantern-glow. From between his feet a thin, white, ghostly line ran out until it lost itself in the blackness under the lantern. It was the fuse, leading to the box of dynamite on which he was sitting!
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