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Updated: May 24, 2025
A moment later Aldous was advancing to meet the old mountaineer. "They've gone, Johnny," was Donald's first greeting. "Gone?" "Yes. The whole bunch Quade, Culver Rann, DeBar, and the woman who rode the bear. They've gone, hide and hair, and nobody seems to know where." Aldous was staring. "Also," resumed old Donald slowly, "Culver Rann's outfit is gone twenty horses, including six saddles.
It wasn't much, but I told her what happened at Miette: about you, and Quade, and how I saw him at the station, and again later, following us. And then she told me! Perhaps she didn't know how it was frightening me, but she told me all about these men Quade and Culver Rann. And now I'm more afraid of Culver Rann than Quade, and I've never seen him. They can't hurt me. But I'm afraid for you!"
I ain't been able to set my eyes on Joe. I looked for hours through the telescope an' I couldn't find him. He's gone, or Culver Rann is keeping him out of sight." For several moments Aldous looked at his companion in silence. Then he said: "You're sure of all this, are you, Donald? You have good proof that Joe has turned traitor?"
I wasn't expecting you for a week. To-morrow I was goin' to start on a hike for Miette. I been watching through my telescope from the mountain up there. I see Quade come in this morning on a hand-car. Twice I see him and Rann together. Then I saw Blackton hike out into the bush. I was worrying about you an' wondered if he had any word. So I laid for him on the trail an' I guess it was lucky.
The last word was scarcely out of his mouth when the room was in darkness a darkness so complete and sudden that for an instant his hand faltered, and in that instant he heard the overturning of a chair and the falling of a body. Twice his automatic sent a lightning-flash of fire where Culver Rann had sat; twice it spat threadlike ribbons of flame through the blackness where Quade had stood.
"It is necessary that you should know more than you have guessed, for your own protection. If you were like most other women I would not tell you the truth, but would try to shield you from it. As it is you should know. There is only one other man in the Rocky Mountains more dangerous than Bill Quade. He is Culver Rann, up at Tête Jaune.
He handed Galt a typewritten sheet, watching him closely as he read it. "This looks as if they feared me, doesn't it?" he asked. Galt's reply was an oath of sudden anger. "This is Rann!" he cried. "I see his mark!" A flush of red rose to his face and his voice came again in a long-drawn whistle of helpless rage. "The scoundrel!" he said sharply.
Not a word was said of the fire, but John kept serving him with large portions of the vegetables and the excellent and expensive steak which had been bought in his honor; and John's wife kept spurring him on. "I'm sure Mr. Joe could stand just a weeny sliver more." "Mrs. Rann" Joe put down knife and fork "do you want me to burst?" "A big man like you? Give him the sliver, John." "John, spare me!"
In an hour I lived a thousand years of misery, and when the sentence was read, the words carried no sense to my withered brain. It was only in my cell I realised that I had seen Jack Rann for the last time; that his pea-green coat would prove a final and ineffaceable memory. 'Alas!
There was no excitement, nothing of the passion and half-madness with which he had faced Quade and Rann the night before. He laughed softly, and his nails dug as harshly into the palms of his hands as they had dug into the sills of the window. "You poor, drivelling, cowardly fool!" he said to his reflection. "And you dare to say you dare to think that she is not your wife?"
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