“Because,” she interrupted him, “we have known each other such a very short time, and I have allowed myself to become so very, very well acquainted with you.  It has all been so delightfully sudden, and strange, and I am—­just as happy as I can be.  You don’t think it is immodest for me to say these things to my husband, John—­even if I have only known him three days?”

He answered by crushing her so closely in his arms that for a few moments afterward she lay helplessly on his breast, gasping for breath.  His brain was afire with the joyous madness of possession.  Never had woman come to man more sweetly than Joanne had come to him, and as he felt her throbbing and trembling against him he was ready to rise up and shout forth a challenge to a hundred Quades and Culver Ranns hiding in the darkness of the mountains.  For a long time he held her nestled close in his arms, and at intervals there were silences between them, in which they listened to the glad tumult of their own hearts, and the strange silence that came to them from out of the still night.

It was their first hour alone—­of utter oblivion to all else but themselves; to Joanne the first sacrament hour of her wifehood, to him the first hour of perfect possession and understanding.  In that hour their souls became one, and when at last they rose to their feet, and the moon came up over a crag of the mountain and flooded them in its golden light, there was in Joanne’s face a tenderness and a gentle glory that made John Aldous think of an angel.  He led her to the tepee, and lighted a candle for her, and at the last, with the sweet demand of a child in the manner of her doing it, she pursed up her lips to be kissed good-night.

And when he had tied the tent-flap behind her, he took his rifle and sat down with it across his knees in the deep black shadow of a spruce, and waited and listened for the coming of Donald MacDonald.

CHAPTER XXIV

For an hour after Joanne had gone into her tent Aldous sat silent and watchful.  From where he had concealed himself he could see over a part of the moonlit basin, and guard the open space between the camp and the clump of timber that lay in the direction of the nearest mountain.  After Joanne had blown out her candle the silence of the night seemed to grow deeper about him.  The hobbled horses had wandered several hundred yards away, and only now and then could he hear the thud of a hoof, or the clank of a steel shoe on rock.  He believed that it was impossible for any one to approach without ears and eyes giving him warning, and he felt a distinct shock when Donald MacDonald suddenly appeared in the moonlight not twenty paces from him.  With an ejaculation of amazement he jumped to his feet and went to him.

“How the deuce did you get here?” he demanded.

“Were you asleep, Johnny?”

“I was awake—­and watching!”