d
shoot Quade, for he knew why the mottled beast had been at the window.
Stevens' boy had been right. Quade was after Joanne. His ugly soul was
disrupted with a desire to possess her, and Aldous knew that when roused by
passion he was more like a devil-fish than a man--a creeping, slimy,
night-seeking creature who had not only the power of the underworld back of
him, but wealth as well. He did not think of him as a man as he stood
listening, but as a beast. He was ready to shoot. But he saw nothing. He
heard no sound that could have been made by a stumbling foot or a moving
body. An hour later, the moon would have been up, but it was dark now
except for the stars. He heard the hoot of an owl a hundred yards away. Out
in the river something splashed. From the timber beyond Buffalo Prairie
came the yapping bark of a coyote. For five minutes he stood as silent as
one of the rocks behind him. He realized that to go on--to seek blindly for
Quade in the darkness, would be folly. He went back, tapped at the door,
and reentered the cabin when Joanne threw back the lock.

She was still pale. Her eyes were bright.

"I was coming--in a moment," she said, "I was beginning to fear that----"

"--he had struck me down in the dark?" added Aldous, as she hesitated.
"Well, he would like to do just that, Joanne." Unconsciously her name had
slipped from him. It seemed the most natural thing in the world for him to
call her Joanne now. "Is it necessary for me to tell you what this man
Quade is--why he was looking through the window?"

She shuddered.

"No--no--I understand!"

"Only partly," continued Aldous, his face white and set. "It is necessary
that you should know more than you have guessed, for your own protection.
If you were like most other women I would not tell you the truth, but would
try to shield you from it. As it is you should know. There is only one
other man in the Rocky Mountains more dangerous than Bill Quade. He is
Culver Rann, up at Tete Jaune. They are partners--partners in crime, in
sin, in everything that is bad and that brings them gold. Their influence
among the rougher elements along the line of rail is complete. They are so
strongly entrenched that they have put contractors out of business because
they would not submit to blackmail. The few harmless police we have
following the steel have been unable to touch them. They have cleaned up
hundreds of thousands, chiefly in three things--blackmail, whisky, and
wo