Blackton whistled softly.

“A boy brought the note,” he said.  “He stood in the dark when he handed it to me.  And I didn’t recognize any one of the three men who jumped out on us.  I didn’t have much of a chance to fight, but if there’s any one on the face of the earth who has got it over Peggy when it comes to screaming, I’d like to know her name!  Joanne didn’t have time to make a sound.  But they didn’t touch Peggy until she began screaming, and then one of the men began choking her.  They had about laid me out with a club, so I was helpless.  Good God——­”

He shuddered.

“They were river men,” said MacDonald.  “Probably some of Tomman’s scow-men.  They were making for the river.”

A few minutes later, when Aldous was saying good-night to MacDonald, the old hunter said again, in a whisper: 

“Now what do ’ee think, Johnny?”

“That you’re right, Mac,” replied Aldous in a low voice.  “There is no longer a choice.  Joanne must go with us.  You will come early?”

“At dawn, Johnny.”

He returned to the bungalow with Blackton, and until midnight the lights there burned brightly while the two men answered a thousand questions about the night’s adventure, and Aldous told of his and Joanne’s plans for the honeymoon trip into the North that was to begin the next day.

It was half-past twelve when be locked the door of his and sat down to think.

CHAPTER XXIII

There was no doubt in the mind of John Aldous now.  The attempt upon Joanne left him but one course to pursue:  he must take her with him, in spite of the monumental objections which he had seen a few hours before.  He realized what a fight this would mean for him, and with what cleverness and resource he must play his part.  Joanne had not given herself to him as she had once given herself to Mortimer FitzHugh.  In the “coyote,” when they had faced death, she had told him that were there to be a to-morrow in life for them she would have given herself to him utterly and without reservation.  And that to-morrow had dawned.  It was present.  She was his wife.  And she had come to him as she had promised.  In her eyes he had seen love and trust and faith—­and a glorious happiness.  She had made no effort to hide that happiness from him.  Consciousness of it filled him with his own great happiness, and yet it made him realize even more deeply how hard his fight was to be.  She was his wife.  In a hundred little ways she had shown him that she was proud of her wifehood.  And again he told himself that she had come to him as she had promised, that she had given into his keeping all that she had to give.  And yet—­she was not his wife!