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Updated: August 14, 2024
At one side of this, partly facing him, was Culver Rann. Opposite him sat Quade. Rann was speaking, while Quade, with his bullish shoulders hunched forward and his fleshy red neck, rolling over the collar of his coat, leaned across the table in a tense and listening attitude. With his eyes glued to the aperture, Aldous strained his ears to catch what Rann was saying.
He had no business that could be destroyed by the other's underground methods, and he had no job to lose. Until he had seen Joanne enter the scoundrel's red-and-white striped tent he had never hated a man as he now hated Quade. He had loathed him before, and had evaded him because the sight of him was unpleasant; now he wanted to grip his fingers around his thick red throat.
Quade would rather have you in there than in the Athabasca. And then " "Well?" Stevens spat into the bush, and shrugged his shoulders. "This beautiful lady you've taken an interest in will turn up missing, Aldous. She'll disappear off the face of the map just like Stimson's wife did. You remember Stimson?" "He was found in the Frazer," said Aldous, gripping the other's arm in the darkness.
Did anybody owe Quade money, anybody Quade was pressing for it?" It was the judge who advanced the argument in this solemn and dry form. Denver Jim declared that to his personal knowledge Quade had neither borrowed nor loaned. "Well, then, had Quade ever made many enemies? We know Quade was a fighter. Recollect any gents that might hold grudges?" "Young Penny hated the ground he walked on.
"But I am quite sure the young woman is capable of taking care of herself. Quade has a tremendous amount of nerve, setting Slim to follow her, hasn't he? Slim may run up against a husband or a brother." Stevens haunched his shoulders. "It's not the woman I'm thinking about. It's you. I'd sure change my location."
And the answer to them drew a deep breath of fear and of anguish from him as he tried again to run among the rocks. There could be but one answer: Quade would fight. He would fight like a madman, and if this fight had happened and FitzHugh had been killed Joanne had already gone utterly and helplessly into his power.
It wasn't an hour ago the kid was behind the tent an' he heard Quade and Slim Barker talking. So far as I can find from the kid, Quade has gone nutty over her. He's ravin'. He told Slim that he'd give ten thousand dollars to get her in his hands. What sent the boy down to me was Quade tellin' Slim that he'd get you first. He told Slim to go on to Tête Jaune follow the girl!"
Would he even believe Joanne if, to save herself from him, she told him FitzHugh was her husband? Even if he believed them, would he give her up? Would Quade allow Mortimer FitzHugh to stand between him and the object for which he was willing to sacrifice everything? As Aldous asked himself these questions his blood ran hot and cold by turns.
On the table were pencil and paper. Keller seated himself and drew them toward him. "I'm damned if I can see what that grave can have to do with Quade," he said; "but I'll tell you how to find it!" For several minutes they bent low over the table, Peter Keller describing the trail to the Saw Tooth Mountain as he sketched it, step by step, on a sheet of office paper.
Stevens spat again, and finished in a whisper: "Quade went to Tête Jaune to-night. He went on a hand-car. He's got something he wants to tell Culver Rann that he don't dare telephone or telegraph. An' he wants to get that something to him ahead of to-morrow's train. Understand?"
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