"Almost," said Aldous softly. "But the great finale in the tragedy of Donald MacDonald's life is yet to come, Ladygray. It will come when once more he stands in the soft white sand of that cavern floor, and sometimes I tremble when I think that when that moment comes I will be at his side. To me it will be terrible. To him it will be—what? That hour has not quite arrived. It happened this way: Old Donald was coming down from the North on the early slush snows this spring when he came to a shack in which a man was almost dead of the smallpox. It was DeBar, the half-breed.
"Fearlessly MacDonald nursed him. He says it was God who sent him to that shack. For DeBar, in his feverish ravings, revealed the fact that he had stumbled upon that little Valley of Gold for which MacDonald had searched through forty years. Old Donald knew it was the same valley, for the half-breed raved of dead men, of rotting buckskin sacks of yellow nuggets, of crumbling log shacks, and of other things the memories of which stabbed like knives into Donald's heart. How he fought to save that man! And, at last, he succeeded.
"They continued south, planning to outfit and go back for the gold. They would have gone back at once, but they had no food and no horses. Foot by foot, in the weeks that followed, DeBar described the way to the hidden valley, until at last MacDonald knew that he could go to it as straight as an eagle to its nest. When they reached Tête Jaune he came to me. And I promised to go with him, Ladygray—back to the Valley of Gold. He calls it that; but I—I think of it as The Valley of Silent Men. It is not the gold, but the cavern with the soft white floor that is calling us."
In her saddle Joanne had straightened. Her head was thrown back, her lips were parted, and her eyes shone as the eyes of a Joan of Arc must have shone when she stood that day before the Hosts.
"And this man, the half-breed, has sold himself—for a woman?" she said, looking straight ahead at the bent shoulders of old MacDonald.
"Yes, for a woman. Do you ask me why I go now? Why I shall fight, if fighting there must be?"
She turned to him. Her face was a blaze of glory.
"No, no, no!" she cried. "Oh, John Aldous! if I were only a man, that I might go with you and stand with you two in that Holy Sepulchre—the Cavern—— If I were a man, I'd go—and, yes, I would fight!"
And Donald MacDonald, looking back, saw the two clasping hands across the trail. A moment later he turned his horse from the broad road into a narrow trail that led over the range.