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Updated: May 14, 2025
He forgot Quade, and Culver Rann, and the gold; he forgot his own danger, his own work, almost his own existence.
He had discovered that Quade and Culver Rann, his partner at Tête Jaune, were forces to be reckoned with even by the "powers" along the line of rail. They were the two chiefs of the "underground," the men who controlled the most dangerous element from Miette to Fort George.
His grip relaxed. His hands fell limp. The last that he realized was that Quade was over him, and that he must be dying. Then it was, as he lay within a final second or two of death, no longer conscious of physical attack or of Joanne's terrible cries, that a strange and unforeseen thing occurred. Beyond the tepee a man had risen from the earth.
He went on more smoothly: "What was you saying about a girl-faced gent?" "The schoolteacher he plugged a feller named Quade. Sinclair got him clean away from Sheriff Kern." "And what sort of a looking gent is Sinclair? Long, brown, and pretty husky-looking, with a mean eye?" "You've named him! Where'd you meet up with him?"
"Queer thing how I come to blunder into all this information, partner. I come into a room where Lowrie was. The minute he heard my name he figured I was after him on account of Hal. Up he comes with his gun like a flash. Afterward he told me all about it, and I give him a pretty fine funeral. I'll do the same by you, Quade. How you feeling now?" "Curse you!" exclaimed Quade.
And this mess, as he viewed it in these cooler moments, was even less disturbing than the thought of what might have happened had he succeeded in his intention of killing both Quade and Rann. Twenty times as he made his way through the darkness toward MacDonald's camp he told himself that he must have been mad.
It was becoming more and more evident to him that Quade and his pals were keeping the affair of the afternoon as quiet as possible. Stevens had heard of it. He wondered how. Aldous retraced his steps. As though nothing had happened, he entered Quade's place. There were a dozen men inside, and among them he recognized three who had been there that afternoon. He nodded to them.
To have killed Rann or Quade in self-defence, or in open fight, would have been playing the game with a shadow of mountain law behind it. But he had invaded Rann's home. Had he killed them he would have had but little more excuse than a house-breaker or a suspicious husband might have had. Tête Jaune would not countenance cold-blooded shooting, even of criminals.
He flung out his arm before Quade had fully recovered, and blind luck carried the keen edge of the knife across his enemy's pouchy cheek. The blood came in a spurt, and with a terrible cry Quade leaped back toward the pile of saddles and panniers. Before Aldous could follow his advantage the other had dropped his knife and had snatched up a four-foot length of a tepee pole.
Quade beat Penny to a pulp down by the Perkin water hole." "Penny wouldn't do a murder." "Maybe it was a fair fight," broke in Larsen. "Fair nothin'," said Buck Mason. "Don't we all know that Quade was fast with a gun? He barely had it out in his hand when the other gent drilled him. And he was shot from above. No, sir, the way it happened was something like this.
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