ealized 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 Tete
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
for