But could he keep Joanne from guessing? Could he keep her from discovering the truth until it was time for her to know that truth? In this necessity of keeping her from suspecting that something was wrong he saw his greatest fight. Compared with it, the final settlement with Quade and Mortimer FitzHugh sank into a second importance. He knew what would happen then. But Joanne—Joanne on the trail, as his wife——
He began pacing back and forth in his room, clouding himself in the smoke of his pipe. Frequently Joanne's mind had filled him with an exquisite delight by its quickness and at times almost magic perceptiveness, and he realized that in these things, and the fineness of her woman's intuition, now lay his greatest menace. He was sure that she understood the meaning of the assault upon her that night, though she had apparently believed what he and Blackton had told them—that it had been the attack of irresponsible and drunken hoodlums. Yet he was certain that she had already guessed that Quade had been responsible.
He went to bed, dreading what questions and new developments the morning might bring forth. And when the morning came, he was both amazed and delighted. The near tragedy of the previous night might never have happened in so far as he could judge from Joanne's appearance. When she came out of her room to meet him, in the glow of a hall lamp, her eyes were like stars, and the colour in her cheeks was like that of a rose fresh from its slumber in dew.
"I'm so happy, and what happened last night seems so like a bad dream," she whispered, as he held her close to him for a few moments before descending the stairs. "I shall worry about Peggy, John. I shall. I don't understand how her husband dares to bring her among savages like these. You wouldn't leave me among them, would you?" And as she asked the question, and his lips pressed hers, John Aldous still believed that in her heart she knew the truth of that night attack.
If she did know, she kept her secret from him all that day. They left Tête Jaune before sunrise with an outfit which MacDonald had cut down to six horses. Its smallness roused Joanne's first question, for Aldous had described to her an outfit of twenty horses. He explained that a large outfit made travel much more difficult and slow, but he did not tell her that with six horses instead of twenty they could travel less conspicuously, more easily conceal themselves from enemies, and, if necessary, make quick flight or swift pursuit.
They stopped to camp for the night in a little basin that drew from Joanne an exclamation of joy and wonder. They had reached the upper timber-line, and on three sides the basin was shut in by treeless and brush-naked walls of the mountains. In the centre of the dip was a lake fed by a tiny stream that fell in a series of ribbonlike cataracts a sheer thousand feet from the snow-peaks that towered above them. Small, parklike clumps of spruce dotted the miniature valley; over it hung a sky as blue as sapphire and under their feet was a carpet of soft grass sprayed with little blue forget-me-nots and wild asters.
"I have never seen anything a half so beautiful as this!" cried Joanne, as Aldous helped her from her horse.
As her feet touched the ground she gave a little cry and hung limply in his arms.
"I'm lame—lame for life!" she laughed in mock humour. "John, I can't stand. I really can't!"
Old Donald was chuckling in his beard as he came up.