“Run for the spruce!” he commanded.  “Joanne, run!”

Marie had crumpled down in a moaning heap at Joanne’s feet, and sat swaying with her face in her hands.

“They killed him—­they murdered my Joe!” she was sobbing.  “And it was my fault—­my fault!  I trapped him!  I sold him!  And, oh, my God, I loved him—­I loved him!”

“Run, Joanne!” commanded Aldous a second time.  “Run for the spruce!”

Instead of obeying him, Joanne knelt down beside Marie.

He went to speak again, but there came an interruption—­a thing that was like the cold touch of lead in his own heart.  From up on the mountain where the old mountaineer had walked into the face of death there came the sharp, splitting report of a rifle; and in that same instant it was followed by another and still a third—­quick, stinging, whiplike reports—­and he knew that not one of them had come from the gun of Donald MacDonald!

And then he saw that the rocks behind the tepee had become suddenly alive with men!

CHAPTER XXIX

Sheer amazement made Aldous hold his fire in that first moment.  Marie had said that two men were after MacDonald.  He had heard three shots nearly a mile away, and she was still sobbing that DeBar was dead.  That accounted for three.  He had expected to see only Quade, and FitzHugh, and one other behind the tepee.  And there were six!  He counted them as they came swiftly out from the shelter of the rocks to the level of the plain.  He was about to fire when he thought of Joanne and Marie.  They were still behind him, crouching upon the ground.  To fire from where he stood would draw a fusillade of bullets in their direction, and with another warning cry to Joanne, he sped twenty paces to one side so that they would not be within range.  Not until then did the attacking party see him.

At a hundred and fifty yards he had no time to pick out Quade or Mortimer FitzHugh.  He fired first at a group of three, and one of the three crumpled down as though his skull had been crushed from above.  A rifle spat back at him and the bullet sang like a ripping cloth close over his head.  He dropped to his knees before he fired again, and a bullet clove the air where he had stood.  The crack of rifles did not hurry him.  He knew that he had six cartridges, and only six, and he aimed deliberately.  At his second shot the man he had fired at ran forward three or four steps, and then pitched flat on his face.  For a flash Aldous thought that it was Mortimer FitzHugh.  Then, along his gun barrel, he saw FitzHugh—­and pulled the trigger.  It was a miss.