It was in the blood of John Aldous to kill Quade.  He ran with the quickness of a hare around the end of the cabin, past the window, and then stopped to listen, his automatic in his hand, his eye piercing the gloom for some moving shadow.  He had not counted on an instant’s hesitation.  He would 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 women.  Quade is the viler of the two.  He is like a horrible beast.  Culver Rann makes me think of a sleek and shining serpent.  But it is this man Quade——­”