“Two pairs of eyes are better than one, John,” she said, “and I cannot possibly be in danger here.  I can see you all the time, and you can see me—­if I don’t run away, or hide.”  And she laughed a little breathlessly.  “There is no danger, is there, Donald?”

The old hunter shook his head.

“There’s no danger, but—­you might be lonesome,” he said.

Joanne put her pretty mouth close to Aldous’ ear.

“I want to be alone for a little while, dear,” she whispered, and there was that mystery in her voice which kept him from questioning her, and made him go with MacDonald.

In three quarters of an hour they had reached the spur of the mountain from which MacDonald had said they could see up the valley, and also the break through which they had come the preceding afternoon.  The morning mists still hung low, but as these melted away under the sun mile after mile of a marvellous panorama spread out swiftly under them, and as the distance of their vision grew, the deeper became the disappointment in MacDonald’s face.  For half an hour after the mists had gone he neither spoke nor lowered the telescope from his eyes.  A mile away Aldous saw three caribou crossing the valley.  A little later, on a green slope, he discerned a moving hulk that he knew was a bear.  He did not speak until old Donald lowered the glass.

“I can see for eight miles up the valley, an’ there ain’t a soul in sight,” said MacDonald in answer to his question.  “I figgered they’d be along about now, Johnny.”

A dozen times Aldous had looked back at the camp.  Twice he had seen Joanne.  He looked now through the telescope.  She was nowhere in sight.  A bit nervously he returned the telescope to MacDonald.

“And I can’t see Joanne,” he said.

MacDonald looked.  For five minutes he levelled the glass steadily at the camp.  Then he shifted it slowly westward, and a low exclamation broke from his lips as he lowered the glass, and looked at Aldous.

“Johnny, she’s just goin’ into the gorge!  She was just disappearin’ when I caught her!”

“Going into—­the gorge!” gasped Aldous, jumping to his feet.  “Mac——­”

MacDonald rose and stood at his side.  There was something reassuring in the rumbling laugh that came from deep in his chest.

“She’s beat us!” he chuckled.  “Bless her, she’s beat us!  I didn’t guess why she was askin’ me all them questions.  An’ I told her, Johnny—­told her just where the cavern was up there in the gorge, an’ how you wouldn’t hardly miss it if you tried.  An’ she asked me how long it would take to walk there, an’ I told her half an hour.  An’ she’s going to the cavern, Johnny!”

He was telescoping his long glass as he spoke, and while Aldous was still staring toward the gorge in wonderment and a little fear, he added: 

“We’d better follow.  Quade an’ Rann can’t get here inside o’ two or three hours, an’ we’ll be back before then.”  Again he rumbled with that curious chuckling laugh.  “She beat us, Johnny, she beat us fair!  An’ she’s got spirrit, a wunnerful spirrit, to go up there alone!”