ur 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 Tete 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.

CHAPTER XV

From the hour in which she had listened to the story of old MacDonald a
change seemed to have come over Joanne. It was as if she had risen out of
herself, out of whatever fear or grief she might have possessed in her own
heart