The Hunted Woman

by James Oliver Curwood

  CHAPTER XVII

  Half an hour later Blackton had shown Aldous to his room and bath. It wasfour o'clock when he rejoined the contractor in the lower room, freshlybathed and shaven and in a change of clothes. He had not seen Joanne, buthalf a dozen times he had heard her and Peggy Blackton laughing and talkingin Mrs. Blackton's big room at the head of the stairs, and he heard themnow as they sat down to smoke their cigars. Blackton was filled withenthusiasm over the accomplishment of his latest work, and Aldous triedhard not to betray the fact that the minutes were passing with gruellingslowness while he waited for Joanne. He wanted to see her. His heart wasbeating like an excited boy's. He could hear her footsteps over his head,and he distinguished her soft laughter, and her sweet voice when she spoke.There was something tantalizing in her nearness and the fact that she didnot once show herself at the top of the stair. Blackton was still talkingabout "coyotes" and dynamite when, an hour later, Aldous looked up, and hisheart gave a big, glad jump.

  Peggy Blackton, a plump little golden-haired vision of happiness, wasalready half a dozen steps down the stairs. At the top Joanne, for aninstant, had paused. Through that space, before the contractor had turned,her eyes met those of John Aldous. She was smiling. Her eyes were shiningat him. Never had he seen her look at him in that way, he thought, andnever had she seemed such a perfect vision of loveliness. She was dressedin a soft, clinging something with a flutter of white lace at her throat,and as she came down he saw that she had arranged her hair in a marvellousway. Soft little curls half hid themselves in the shimmer of rich coils shehad wreathed upon her head, and adorable little tendrils caressed thelovely flush in her cheeks, and clung to the snow-whiteness of her neck.

  For a moment, as Peggy Blackton went to her husband, he stood very close toJoanne, and into his eyes she was smiling, half laughing, her beautifulmouth aquiver, her eyes glowing, the last trace of their old suspense andfear vanished in a new and wondrous beauty. He would not have said she wastwenty-eight now. He would have sworn she was twenty.

  "Joanne," he whispered, "you are wonderful. Your hair is glorious!"

  "Always--my hair," she replied, so low that he alone heard. "Can you neversee beyond my hair, John Aldous?"

  "I stop there," he said. "And I marvel. It is glorious!"

  "Again!" And up from her white throat there rose a richer, sweeter colour."If you say that again now, John Aldous, I shall never make curls for youagain as long as I live!"

  "For me----"

  His heart seemed near bursting with joy. But she had left him, and waslaughing with Peggy Blackton, who was showing her husband where he hadmissed a stubbly patch of beard on his cheek. He caught her eyes, turnedswiftly to him, and they were laughing at him, and there came a suddenpretty upturn to her chin as he continued to stare, and he saw again thecolour deepening in her face. When Peggy Blackton led her husband to thestair, and drove him up to shave off the stubbly patch, Joanne found theopportunity to whisper to him:

  "You are rude, John Aldous! You must not stare at me like that!"

  And as she spoke the rebellious colour was still in her face, in spite ofthe tantalizing curve of her red lips and the sparkle in her eyes.

  "I can't help it," he pleaded. "You are--glorious!"

  During the next hour, and while they were at supper, he could see that shewas purposely avoiding his eyes, and that she spoke oftener to PaulBlackton than she did to him, apparently taking the keenest interest in hisfriend's enthusiastic descriptions of the mighty work along the line ofsteel. And as pretty Peggy Blackton never seemed quite so happy as whenlistening to her husband, he was forced to content himself by looking atJoanne most of the time, without once receiving her smile.

  The sun was just falling behind the western mountains when Peggy andJoanne, hurried most incontinently by Blackton, who had looked at hiswatch, left the table to prepare themselves for the big event of theevening.

  "I want to get you there before dusk," he explained. "So please hurry!"

  They were back in five minutes. Joanne had slipped on a long gray coat, andwith a veil that trailed a yard down her back she had covered her head.Not a curl or a tress of her hair had she left out of its filmy prison, andthere was a mischievous gleam of triumph in her eyes when she looked atAldous.

  A moment later, when they went ahead of Blackton and his wife to where thebuckboard was waiting for them, he said:

  "You put on that veil to punish me, Ladygray?"

  "It is a pretty veil," said she.

  "But your hair is prettier," said he.

  "And you embarrassed me very much by staring as you did, John Aldous!"

  "Forgive me. It is--I mean you are--so beautiful."

  "And you are sometimes--most displeasing," said she. "Your ingenuousness,John Aldous, is shocking!"

  "Forgive me," he said again.

  "And you have known me but two days," she added.

  "Two days--is a long time," he argued. "One can be born, and live, and diein two days. Besides, our trails have crossed for years."

  "But--it displeases me."

  "What I have said?"

  "Yes."

  "And the way I have looked at you?"

  "Yes."

  Her voice was low and quiet now, her eyes were serious, and she was notsmiling.

  "I know--I know," he groaned, and there was a deep thrill in his voice."It's been only two days after all, Ladygray. It seems like--like alifetime. I don't want you to think badly of me. God knows I don't!"

  "No, no. I don't," she said quickly and gently. "You are the finestgentleman I ever knew, John Aldous. Only--it embarrasses me."

  "I will cut out my tongue and put out my eyes----"

  "Nothing so terrible," she laughed softly. "Will you help me into thewagon? They are coming."

  She gave him her hand, warm and soft; and Blackton forced him into the seatbetween her and Peggy, and Joanne's hand rested in his arm all the way tothe mountain that was to be blown up, and he told himself that he was afool if he were not supremely happy. The wagon stopped, and he helped herout again, her warm little hand again close in his own, and when she lookedat him he was the cool, smiling John Aldous of old, so cool, and strong,and unemotional that he saw surprise in her eyes first, and then thatgentle, gathering glow that came when she was proud of him, and pleasedwith him. And as Blackton pointed out the mountain she unknotted the veilunder her chin and let it drop back over her shoulders, so that the lastlight of the day fell richly in the trembling curls and thick coils of herhair.

  "And that is my reward," said John Aldous, but he whispered it to himself.

  They had stopped close to a huge flat rock, and on this rock men were atwork fitting wires to a little boxlike thing that had a white button-lever.Paul Blackton pointed to this, and his face was flushed with excitement.

  "That's the little thing that's going to blow it up, Miss Gray--the touchof your finger on that little white button. Do you see that black base ofthe mountain yonder?--right there where you can see men moving about? It'shalf a mile from here, and the 'coyote' is there, dug into the wall ofit."

  The tremble of enthusiasm was in his voice as he went on, pointing with hislong arm: "Think of it! We're spending a hundred thousand dollars goingthrough that rock that people who travel on the Grand Trunk Pacific in thefuture will be saved seven minutes in their journey from coast to coast!We're spending a hundred thousand there, and millions along the line, thatwe may have the smoothest roadbed in the world when we're done, and thequickest route from sea to sea. It looks like waste, but it isn't. It'sscience! It's the fight of competition! It's the determination behind theforces--the determination to make this road the greatest road in the world!Listen!"

  The gloom was thickening swiftly. The black mountain was fading slowlyaway, and up out of that gloom came now ghostly and far-reaching voices ofmen booming faintly through giant megaphones.

  "_Clear away! Clear away! Clear away!_" they said, and the valley and themountain-sides caught up the echoes, until
it seemed that a hundred voiceswere crying out the warning. Then fell a strange and weird silence, and theechoes faded away like the voices of dying men, and all was still save thefar-away barking of a coyote that answered the mysterious challenges of thenight. Joanne was close to the rock. Quietly the men who had been workingon the battery drew back.

  "It is ready!" said one.

  "Wait!" said Blackton, as his wife went to speak, "Listen!"

  For five minutes there was silence. Then out of the night a singlemegaphone cried the word:

  "_Fire!_"

  "All is clear," said the engineer, with a deep breath. "All you have to do,Miss Gray, is to move that little lever from the side on which it now reststo the opposite side. Are you ready?"

  In the darkness Joanne's left hand had sought John's. It clung to histightly. He could feel a little shiver run through her.

  "Yes," she whispered.

  "Then--if you please--press the button!"

  Slowly Joanne's right hand crept out, while the fingers of her left clungtighter to Aldous. She touched the button--thrust it over. A little crythat fell from between her tense lips told them she had done the work, anda silence like that of death fell on those who waited.

  A half a minute--perhaps three quarters--and a shiver ran under their feet,but there was no sound; and then a black pall, darker than the night,seemed to rise up out of the mountain, and with that, a second later, camethe explosion. There was a rumbling and a jarring, as if the earth wereconvulsed under foot; volumes of dense black smoke shot upward, and inanother instant these rolling, twisting volumes of black became lurid, andan explosion like that of a thousand great guns rent the air. As fast asthe eye could follow sheets of flame shot up out of the sea of smoke,climbing higher and higher, in lightning flashes, until the lurid tongueslicked the air a quarter of a mile above the startled wilderness. Explosionfollowed explosion, some of them coming in hollow, reverberating booms,others sounding as if in midair. Unseen by the watchers, the heavens werefilled with hurtling rocks; solid masses of granite ten feet square werethrown a hundred feet away; rocks weighing a ton were hurled still farther,as if they were no more than stones flung by the hands of a giant; chunksthat would have crashed from the roof to the basement of a skyscraperdropped a third of a mile away. For three minutes the frightful convulsionscontinued, and the tongues of flame leaped into the night. Then the luridlights died out, shorter and shorter grew the sullen flashes, and thenagain fell--silence!

  During those appalling moments, unconscious of the act, Joanne had shrankclose to Aldous, so that he felt the soft crush of her hair and the swiftmovement of her bosom. Blackton's voice brought them back to life.

  He laughed, and it was the laugh of a man who had looked upon work welldone.

  "It has done the trick," he said. "To-morrow we will come and see. And Ihave changed my plans about Coyote Number Twenty-eight. Hutchins, thesuperintendent, is passing through in the afternoon, and I want him to seeit." He spoke now to a man who had come up out of the darkness. "Gregg,have Twenty-eight ready at four o'clock to-morrow afternoon--fouro'clock--sharp!"

  Then he said:

  "Dust and a bad smell will soon be settling about us. Come, let's go home!"

  And as they went back to the buckboard wagon through the gloom John Aldousstill held Joanne's hand in his own, and she made no effort to take it fromhim.