Peggy Blackton and Joanne were returning. Aldous turned toward them as they entered the room. With the note still in his hand he repeated to them what he had told Blackton—that he had received word which made it immediately urgent for him to go to MacDonald. He shook hands with the Blacktons, promising to be on hand for the four o'clock breakfast.
Joanne followed him to the door and out upon the veranda. For a moment they were alone, and now her eyes were wide and filled with fear as he clasped her hands closely in his own.
"I saw him," she whispered, her fingers tightening convulsively. "I saw that man—Quade—at the station. He followed us up the street. Twice I looked behind—and saw him. I am afraid—afraid to let you go back there. I believe he is somewhere out there now—waiting for you!"
She was frightened, trembling; and her fear for him, the fear in her shining eyes, in her throbbing breath, in the clasp of her fingers, sent through John Aldous a joy that almost made him free her hands and crush her in his arms in the ecstasy of that wonderful moment. Then Peggy Blackton and her husband appeared in the door. He released her hands, and stepped out into the gloom. The cheery good-nights of the Blacktons followed him. And Joanne's good-night was in her eyes—following him until he was gone, filled with their entreaty and their fear.
A hundred yards distant, where the trail split to lead to the camp of the engineers, there was a lantern on a pole. Here Aldous paused, out of sight of the Blackton bungalow, and in the dim light read again MacDonald's note.
In a cramped and almost illegible hand the old wanderer of the mountains had written:
Don't go to cabin. Culver Rann waiting to kill you. Don't show yorself in town. Cum to me as soon as you can on trail striking north to Loon Lake. Watch yorself. Be ready with yor gun.
DONALD MacDONALD.
Aldous shoved the note in his pocket and slipped back out of the lantern-glow into deep shadow. For several minutes he stood silent and listening.