MacDonald uttered not a word.  From the balsam lean-to he brought out a small rubber bag and a towel.  Into a canvas wash-basin he then turned a half pail of cold water, and Aldous got on his knees beside this.  Not once did the old mountaineer speak while he was washing the blood from Aldous’ face and hands.  There was a shallow two-inch cut in his forehead, two deeper ones in his right cheek, and a gouge in his chin.  There were a dozen cuts on his hands, none of them serious.  Before he had finished MacDonald had used two thirds of a roll of court-plaster.

Then he spoke.

“You can soak them off in the morning,” he said.  “If you don’t, the lady’ll think yo’re a red Indian on the warpath.  Now, yo’ fool, what have yo’ gone an’ done?”

Aldous told him what had happened, and before MacDonald could utter an expression of his feelings he admitted that he was an inexcusable idiot and that nothing MacDonald might say could drive that fact deeper home.

“If I’d come out after hearing what they had to say, we could have got DeBar at the end of a gun and settled the whole business,” he finished.  “As it is, we’re in a mess.”

MacDonald stretched his gaunt gray frame before the fire.  He picked up his long rifle, and fingered the lock.

“You figger they’ll get away with DeBar?”

“Yes, to-night.”

MacDonald threw open the breech of his single-loader and drew out a cartridge as long as his finger.  Replacing it, he snapped the breech shut.

“Don’t know as I’m pertic’lar sad over what’s happened,” he said, with a curious look at Aldous.  “We might have got out of this without what you call strenu’us trouble.  Now—­it’s fight! It’s goin’ to be a matter of guns an’ bullets, Johnny—­back in the mountains.  You figger Rann an’ the snake of a half-breed’ll get the start of us.  Let ’em have a start!  They’ve got two hundred miles to go, an’ two hundred miles to come back.  Only—­they won’t come back!”

Under his shaggy brows the old hunter’s eyes gleamed as he looked at Aldous.

“To-morrow we’ll go to the grave,” he added.  “Yo’re cur’ous to know what’s goin’ to happen when we find that grave, Johnny.  So am I. I hope——­”

“What do you hope?”

MacDonald shook his great gray head in the dying firelight.

“Let’s go to bed, Johnny,” he rumbled softly in his beard.  “It’s gettin’ late.”

CHAPTER XIV

To sleep after the excitement through which he had passed, and with to-morrow’s uncertainties ahead of him, seemed to Aldous a physical impossibility.  Yet he slept, and soundly.  It was MacDonald who roused him three hours later.  They prepared a quick breakfast over a small fire, and Aldous heated water in which he soaked his face until the strips of court-plaster peeled off.  The scratches were lividly evident, but, inasmuch as he had a choice of but two evils, he preferred that Joanne should see these instead of the abominable disfigurement of court-plaster strips.