“No, no, I am not afraid.”
“Yet you are trembling.”
“It is this strange gloom, Alan.”
Never had the arctic twilight gone more completely. Not half a dozen times had he seen the phenomenon in all his years on the tundras, where thunder-storm and the putting out of the summer sun until twilight thickens into the gloom of near-night is an occurrence so rare that it is more awesome than the weirdest play of the northern lights. It seemed to him now that what was happening was a miracle, the play of a mighty hand opening their way to salvation. An inky wall was shutting out the world where the glow of the midnight sun should have been. It was spreading quickly; shadows became part of the gloom, and this gloom crept in, thickening, drawing nearer, until the tundra was a weird chaos, neither night nor twilight, challenging vision until eyes strained futilely to penetrate its mystery.
And as it gathered about them, enveloping them in their own narrowing circle of vision, Alan was thinking quickly. It had taken him only a moment to accept the significance of the running figures his companion had seen. Graham’s men were near, had seen them, and were getting between them and the range. Possibly it was a scouting party, and if there were no more than five or six, the number which Mary had counted, he was quite sure of the situation. But there might be a dozen or fifty of them. It was possible Graham and Rossland were advancing upon the range with their entire force. He had at no time tried to analyze just what this force might be, except to assure himself that with the overwhelming influence behind him, both political and financial, and fired by a passion for Mary Standish that had revealed itself as little short of madness, Graham would hesitate at no convention of law or humanity to achieve his end. Probably he was playing the game so that he would be shielded by the technicalities of the law, if it came to a tragic end. His gunmen would undoubtedly be impelled to a certain extent by an idea of authority. For Graham was an injured husband “rescuing” his wife, while he—Alan Holt—was the woman’s abductor and paramour, and a fit subject to be shot upon sight!
His free hand gripped the butt of his pistol as he led the way straight ahead. The sudden gloom helped to hide in his face the horror he felt of what that “rescue” would mean to Mary Standish; and then a cold and deadly definiteness possessed him, and every nerve in his body gathered itself in readiness for whatever might happen.
If Graham’s men had seen them, and were getting between them and retreat, the neck of the trap lay ahead—and in this direction Alan walked so swiftly that the girl was almost running at his side. He could not hear her footsteps, so lightly they fell! her fingers were twined about his own, and he could feel the silken caress of her loose hair. For half a mile he kept on, watching for a moving shadow, listening for a sound. Then he stopped. He drew Mary into his arms and held her there, so that her head lay against his breast. She was panting, and he could feel and hear her thumping heart. He found her parted lips and kissed them.
“You are not afraid?” he asked again.
Her head made a fierce little negative movement against his breast. “No!”
He laughed softly at the beautiful courage with which she lied. “Even if they saw us, and are Graham’s men, we have given them the slip,” he comforted her. “Now we will circle eastward back to the range. I am sorry I hurried you so. We will go more slowly.”