For a few moments afterward the old hunter smoked quietly at his pipe.  Then he said: 

“I don’t know but you’re right, Johnny.  If they were behind us they’d most likely have tried something before this.  But it ain’t in the law of the mount’ins to be careless.  We’ve got to watch.”

“I agree with you there, Mac,” replied Aldous.  “We cannot afford to lose our caution for a minute.  But I’m feeling a deuced sight better over the situation just the same.  If we can only get there ahead of them!”

“If Quade is in the bunch we’ve got a chance of beating them,” said MacDonald thoughtfully.  “He’s heavy, Johnny—­that sort of heaviness that don’t stand up well in the mount’ins; whisky-flesh, I call it.  Culver Rann don’t weigh much more’n half as much, but he’s like iron.  Quade may be a drag.  An’ Joanne, Lord bless her!—­she’s facing the music like an’ ’ero, Johnny!”

“And the journey is almost half over.”

“This is the fourth day.  I figger we can make it in ten at most, mebby nine,” said old Donald.  “You see we’re in that part of the Rockies where there’s real mount’ins, an’ the ranges ain’t broke up much.  We’ve got fairly good travel to the end.”

On this night Aldous slept from eight until twelve.  The next, their fifth, his watch was from midnight until morning.  As the sixth and the seventh days and nights passed uneventfully the belief that there were no enemies behind them became a certainty.  Yet neither Aldous nor MacDonald relaxed their vigilance.

The eighth day dawned, and now a new excitement took possession of Donald MacDonald.  Joanne and Aldous saw his efforts to suppress it, but it did not escape their eyes.  They were nearing the tragic scenes of long ago, and old Donald was about to reap the reward of a search that had gone faithfully and untiringly through the winters and summers of forty years.  He spoke seldom that day.  There were strange lights in his eyes.  And once his voice was husky and strained when he said to Aldous: 

“I guess we’ll make it to-morrow, Johnny—­jus’ about as the sun’s going down.”

They camped early, and Aldous rolled himself in his blanket when Joanne extinguished the candle in her tent.  He found that he could not sleep, and he relieved MacDonald at eleven o’clock.

“Get all the rest you can, Mac,” he urged.  “There may be doings to-morrow—­at about sundown.”

There was but little moonlight now, but the stars were clear.  He lighted his pipe, and with his rifle in the crook of his arm he walked slowly up and down over a hundred-yard stretch of the narrow plain in which they had camped.  That night they had built their fire beside a fallen log, which was now a glowing mass without flame.  Finally he sat down with his back to a rock fifty paces from Joanne’s tepee.  It was a splendid night.  The air was cool and sweet.  He leaned back until his head rested against the rock, and there fell upon him the fatal temptation to close his eyes and snatch a few minutes of the slumber which had not come to him during the early hours of the night.  He was in a doze, oblivious to movement and the softer sounds of the night, when a cry pierced the struggling consciousness of his brain like the sting of a dart.  In an instant he was on his feet.