The Hunted Woman Part 27

"What time is it?" she asked.

He drew out his watch, and as they both looked his blood ran cold.

"Twelve minutes," she murmured, and there was not a quiver in her voice.

"Let us sit down, John--you on this box, and I on the floor, at your feet--like this."

He seated himself on the box, and Joanne nestled herself at his knees, her hands clasped in his.

"I think, John," she said softly, "that very, very often we would have visited like this--you and I--in the evening."

A lump choked him, and he could not answer.

"I would very often have come and perched myself at your feet like this."

"Yes, yes, my beloved."

"And you would always have told me how beautiful my hair was--always. You would not have forgotten that, John--or have grown tired?"

"No, no--never!"

His arms were about her. He was drawing her closer.

"And we would have had beautiful times together, John--writing, and going adventuring, and--and----"

He felt her trembling, throbbing, and her arms tightened about him.

And now, again up through the smother of her hair, came the _tick-tick-tick_ of his watch.

He felt her fumbling at his watch pocket, and in a moment she was holding the timepiece between them, so that the light of the lantern fell on the face of it.

"It is three minutes of four, John."

The watch slipped from her fingers, and now she drew herself up so that her arms were about his neck, and their faces touched.

"Dear John, you love me?"

"So much that even now, in the face of death, I am happy," he whispered.

"Joanne, sweetheart, we are not going to be separated. We are going--together. Through all eternity it must be like this--you and I, together. Little girl, wind your hair about me--tight!"

"There--and there--and there, John! I have tied you to me, and you are buried in it! Kiss me, John----"

And then the wild and terrible fear of a great loneliness swept through him. For Joanne's voice had died away in a whispering breath, and the lips he kissed did not kiss him back, and her body lay heavy, heavy, heavy in his arms. Yet in his loneliness he thanked G.o.d for bringing her oblivion in these last moments, and with his face crushed to hers he waited. For he knew that it was no longer a matter of minutes, but of seconds, and in those seconds he prayed, until up through the warm smother of her hair--with the clearness of a tolling bell--came the sound of the little gong in his watch striking the Hour of Four!

In s.p.a.ce other worlds might have crumbled into ruin; on earth the stories of empires might have been written and the lives of men grown old in those first century-long seconds in which John Aldous held his breath and waited after the chiming of the hour-bell in the watch on the cavern floor. How long he waited he did not know; how closely he was crushing Joanne to his breast he did not realize. Seconds, minutes, and other minutes--and his brain ran red in dumb, silent madness. And the watch! It _ticked, ticked, ticked!_ It was like a hammer.

He had heard the sound of it first coming up through her hair. But it was not in her hair now. It was over him, about him--it was no longer a ticking, but a throb, a steady, jarring, beating throb. It grew louder, and the air stirred with it. He lifted his head. With the eyes of a madman he stared--and listened. His arms relaxed from about Joanne, and she slipped crumpled and lifeless to the floor. He stared--and that steady _beat-beat-beat_--a hundred times louder than the ticking of a watch--pounded in his brain. Was he mad? He staggered to the choked mouth of the tunnel, and then there fell shout upon shout, and shriek upon shriek from his lips, and twice, like a madman now, he ran back to Joanne and caught her up in his arms, calling and sobbing her name, and then shouting--and calling her name again. She moved; her eyes opened, and like one gazing upon the spirit of the dead she looked into the face of John Aldous, a madman's face in the lantern-glow.

"John--John----"

She put up her hands, and with a cry he ran with her in his arms to the choked tunnel.

"Listen! Listen!" he cried wildly. "Dear G.o.d in Heaven, Joanne--can you not hear them? It's Blackton--Blackton and his men! Hear--hear the rock-hammers smashing! Joanne--Joanne--we are saved!"

She did not sense him. She swayed, half on her feet, half in his arms, as consciousness and reason returned to her. Dazedly her hands went to his face in their old, sweet way. Aldous saw her struggling to understand--to comprehend; and he kissed her soft upturned lips, fighting back the excitement that made him want to raise his voice again in wild and joyous shouting.

"It is Blackton!" he said over and over again. "It is Blackton and his men!

Listen!--you can hear their picks and the pounding of their rock-hammers!"

CHAPTER XX

At last Joanne realized that the explosion was not to come, that Blackton and his men were working to save them. And now, as she listened with him, her breath began to come in sobbing excitement between her lips--for there was no mistaking that sound, that steady _beat-beat-beat_ that came from beyond the cavern wall and seemed to set strange tremors stirring in the air about their ears. For a few moments they stood stunned and silent, as if not yet quite fully comprehending that they had come from out of the pit of death, and that men were fighting for their rescue. They asked themselves no questions--why the "coyote" had not been fired? how those outside knew they were in the cavern. And, as they listened, there came to them a voice. It was faint, so faint that it seemed to whisper to them through miles and miles of s.p.a.ce--yet they knew that it was a voice!

"Some one is shouting," spoke Aldous tensely. "Joanne, my darling, stand around the face of the wall so flying rock will not strike you and I will answer with my pistol!"

When he had placed her in safety from split lead and rock chips, he drew his automatic and fired it close up against the choked tunnel. He fired five times, steadily, counting three between each shot, and then he placed his ear to the ma.s.s of stone and earth and listened. Joanne slipped to him like a shadow. Her hand sought his, and they held their breaths. They no longer heard sounds--nothing but the crumbling and falling of dust and pebbles where the bullets had struck, and their own heart-beats. The picks and rock-hammers had ceased.

Tighter and tighter grew the clasp of Joanne's fingers, and a terrible thought flashed into John's brain. Perhaps a, rock from the slide had cut a wire, and they had found the wire--had repaired it! Was that thought in Joanne's mind, too? Her finger-nails p.r.i.c.ked his flesh. He looked at her.

Her eyes were closed, and her lips were tense and gray. And then her eyes shot open--wide and staring. They heard, faintly though it came to them--once, twice, three times, four, five--the firing of a gun!

John Aldous straightened, and a great breath fell from his lips.

"Five times!" he said. "It is an answer. There is no longer doubt."

He was holding out his arms to her, and she came into them with a choking cry; and now she sobbed like a little child with her head against his breast, and for many minutes he held her close, kissing her wet face, and her damp hair, and her quivering lips, while the beat of the picks and the crash of the rock-hammers came steadily nearer.

Where those picks and rock-hammers fell a score of men were working like fiends: Blackton, his arms stripped to the shoulders; Gregg, sweating and urging the men; and among them--lifting and tearing at the rock like a madman--old Donald MacDonald, his shirt open, his great hands bleeding, his hair and beard tossing about him in the wind. Behind them, her hands clasped to her breast--crying out to them to hurry, _hurry_--stood Peggy Blackton. The strength of five men was in every pair of arms. Huge boulders were rolled back. Men pawed earth and shale with their naked hands.

Rock-hammers fell with blows that would have cracked the heart of a granite obelisk. Half an hour--three quarters--and Blackton came back to where Peggy was standing, his face black and grimed, his arms red-seared where the edges of the rocks had caught them, his eyes shining.

"We're almost there, Peggy," he panted. "Another five minutes and----"

A shout interrupted him. A cloud of dust rolled out of the mouth of the tunnel, and into that dust rushed half a dozen men led by old Donald.

Before the dust had settled they began to reappear, and with a shrill scream Peggy Blackton darted forward and flung her arms about the gold-shrouded figure of Joanne, swaying and laughing and sobbing in the sunshine. And old Donald, clasping his great arms about Aldous, cried brokenly:

"Oh, Johnny, Johnny--something told me to foller ye--an' I was just in time--just in time to see you go into the coyote!"

"G.o.d bless you, Mac!" said Aldous, and then Paul Blackton was wringing his hands; and one after another the others shook his hand, but Peggy Blackton was crying like a baby as she hugged Joanne in her arms.

"MacDonald came just in time," explained Blackton a moment later; and he tried to speak steadily, and tried to smile. "Ten minutes more, and----"

He was white.

"Now that it has turned out like this I thank G.o.d that it happened, Paul,"

said Aldous, for the engineer's ears alone. "We thought we were facing death, and so--I told her. And in there, on our knees, we pledged ourselves man and wife. I want the minister--as quick as you can get him, Blackton.

Don't say anything to Joanne, but bring him to the house right away, will you?"