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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Country Beyond, by James Oliver Curwood
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Country Beyond
+
+Author: James Oliver Curwood
+
+Release Date: December, 2003 [Etext #4743]
+Posting Date: December 8, 2009 [EBook #4743]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE COUNTRY BEYOND ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Robert Rowe, Dianne Bean, Charles Franks, and
+the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE COUNTRY BEYOND
+
+A ROMANCE OF THE WILDERNESS
+
+By James Oliver Curwood
+
+Author Of The Valley Of Silent Men, The Flaming Forest, Etc.
+
+
+A glass of wine once lost a kingdom, a nail turned the tide of a mighty
+battle, and a woman's smile once upon a time destroyed the homes of a
+million people. Thus have trivial things played their potent parts in
+the history of human lives; yet these things Peter did not know.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE COUNTRY BEYOND
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+Not far from the rugged and storm-whipped north shore of Lake Superior,
+and south of the Kaministiqua, yet not as far south as the Rainy
+River waterway, there lay a paradise lost in the heart of a wilderness
+world--and in that paradise "a little corner of hell."
+
+That was what the girl had called it once upon a time, when sobbing out
+the shame and the agony of it to herself. That was before Peter had come
+to leaven the drab of her life. But the hell was still there.
+
+One would not have guessed its existence, standing at the bald top of
+Cragg's Ridge this wonderful thirtieth day of May. In the whiteness of
+winter one could look off over a hundred square miles of freezing forest
+and swamp and river country, with the gleam of ice-covered lakes here
+and there, fringed by their black spruce and cedar and balsam--a country
+of storm, of deep snows, and men and women whose blood ran red with the
+thrill that the hardship and the never-ending adventure of the wild.
+
+But this was spring. And such a spring as had not come to the Canadian
+north country in many years. Until three days ago there had been a
+deluge of warm rains, and since then the sun had inundated the land with
+the golden warmth of summer. The last chill was gone from the air, and
+the last bit of frozen earth and muck from the deepest and blackest
+swamps, North, south, east and west the wilderness world was a glory of
+bursting life, of springtime mellowing into summer. Ridge upon ridge of
+yellows and greens and blacks swept away into the unknown distances like
+the billows of a vast sea; and between them lay the valleys and swamps,
+the lakes and waterways, glad with the rippling song of running waters,
+the sweet scents of early flowering time, and the joyous voice of all
+mating creatures.
+
+Just under Cragg's Ridge lay the paradise, a meadow-like sweep of plain
+that reached down to the edge of Clearwater Lake, with clumps of poplars
+and white birch and darker tapestries of spruce and balsams dotting it
+like islets in a sea of verdant green. The flowers were two weeks ahead
+of their time and the sweet perfumes of late June, instead of May,
+rose up out of the plain, and already there was nesting in the velvety
+splashes of timber.
+
+In the edge of a clump of this timber, flat on his belly, lay Peter. The
+love of adventure was in him, and today he had sallied forth on his most
+desperate enterprise. For the first time he had gone alone to the edge
+of Clearwater Lake, half a mile away; boldly he had trotted up and down
+the white strip of beach where the girl's footprints still remained in
+the sand, and defiantly he had yipped at the shimmering vastness of the
+water, and at the white gulls circling near him in quest of dead fish
+flung ashore. Peter was three months old. Yesterday he had been a timid
+pup, shrinking from the bigness and strangeness of everything about him;
+but today he had braved the lake trail on his own nerve, and nothing had
+dared to come near him in spite of his yipping, so that a great courage
+and a great desire were born in him.
+
+Therefore, in returning, he had paused in the edge of a great clump of
+balsams and spruce, and lay flat on his belly, his sharp little eyes
+leveled yearningly at the black mystery of its deeper shadows. The bit
+of forest filled a cup-like depression in the plain, and was possibly
+half a rifle-shot distance from end to end--but to Peter it was as vast
+as life itself. And something urged him to go in.
+
+And as he lay there, desire and indecision struggling for mastery within
+him, no power could have told Peter that destinies greater than his own
+were working through the soul of the dog that was in him, and that on
+his decision to go in or not to go in--on the triumph of courage or
+cowardice--there rested the fates of lives greater than his own, of men,
+and women, and of little children still unborn. A glass of wine once
+lost a kingdom, a nail turned the tide of a mighty battle, and a woman's
+smile once upon a time destroyed the homes of a million people. Thus
+have trivial things played their potent parts in the history of human
+lives, yet these things Peter did not know--nor that his greatest hour
+had come.
+
+At last he rose from his squatting posture, and stood upon his feet.
+He was not a beautiful pup, this Peter Pied-Bot--or Peter Club-foot, as
+Jolly Roger McKay--who lived over in the big cedar swamp--had named
+him when he gave Peter to the girl. He was, in a way, an accident and a
+homely one at that. His father was a blue-blooded fighting Airedale who
+had broken from his kennel long enough to commit a MESALLIANCE with
+a huge big footed and peace-loving Mackenzie hound--and Peter was the
+result. He wore the fiercely bristling whiskers of his Airedale father
+at the age of three months; his ears were flappy and big, his tail was
+knotted, and his legs were ungainly and loose, with huge feet at the end
+of them--so big and heavy that he stumbled frequently, and fell on his
+nose. One pitied him at first--and then loved him. For Peter, in spite
+of his homeliness, had the two best bloods of all dog creation in his
+veins. Yet in a way it was like mixing nitro-glycerin with olive oil, or
+dynamite and saltpeter with milk and honey.
+
+Peter's heart was thumping rapidly as he took a step toward the deeper
+shadows. He swallowed hard, as if to clear a knot out of his scrawny
+throat. But he had made up his mind. Something was compelling him,
+and he would go in. Slowly the gloom engulfed him, and once again the
+whimsical spirit of fatalism had chosen a trivial thing to work out its
+ends in the romance and tragedy of human lives.
+
+Grim shadows began to surround Peter, and his ears shot up, and a
+scraggly brush stood out along his spine. But he did not bark, as he
+had barked along the shore of the lake, and in the green opens. Twice
+he looked back to the shimmer of sunshine that was growing more and more
+indistinct. As long as he could see this, and knew that his retreat
+was open, there still remained a bit of that courage which was swiftly
+ebbing in the thickening darkness. But the third time he looked back the
+light of the sun was utterly gone! For an instant the knot rose up in
+his throat and choked him, and his eyes popped, and grew like little
+balls of fire in his intense desire to see through the gloom. Even the
+girl, who was afraid of only one thing in the world, would have paused
+where Peter stood, with a little quickening of her heart. For all the
+light of the day, it seemed to Peter, had suddenly died out. Over his
+head the spruce and cedar and balsam tops grew so thick they were like
+a canopy of night. Through them the snow never came in winter, and under
+them the light of a blazing sun was only a ghostly twilight.
+
+And now, as he stood there, his whole soul burning with a desire to see
+his way out, Peter began to hear strange sounds. Strangest of all, and
+most fearsome, was a hissing that came and went, sometimes very near to
+him, and always accompanied by a grating noise that curdled his blood.
+Twice after that he saw the shadow of the great owl as it swooped over
+him, and he flattened himself down, the knot in his throat growing
+bigger and more choking. And then he heard the soft and uncanny movement
+of huge feathered bodies in the thick shroud of boughs overhead, and
+slowly and cautiously he wormed himself around, determined to get back
+to sunshine and day as quickly as he could. It was not until he had
+made this movement that the real chill of horror gripped at his heart.
+Straight behind him, directly in the path he had traveled, he saw two
+little green balls of flame!
+
+It was instinct, and not reason or experience, which told Peter there
+was menace and peril in these two tiny spots blazing in the gloom.
+He did not know that his own eyes, popping half out of his head, were
+equally terrifying in that pit of silence, nor that from him emanated a
+still more terrifying thing--the scent of dog. He trembled on his wobbly
+legs as the green eyes stared at him, and his back seemed to break
+in the middle, so that he sank helplessly down upon the soft spruce
+needles, waiting for his doom. In another flash the twin balls of green
+fire were gone. In a moment they appeared again, a little farther away.
+Then a second time they were gone, and a third time they flashed back
+at him--so distant they appeared like needle-points in the darkness.
+Something stupendous rose up in Peter. It was the soul of his Airedale
+father, telling him the other thing was running away! And in the joy of
+triumph Peter let out a yelp. In that night-infested place, alive
+with hiding things, the yelp set loose weird rustlings in the tangled
+treetops, strange murmurings of chortling voices, and the nasty snapping
+of beaks that held in them the power to rend Peter's skinny body into
+a hundred bits. From deeper in the thicket came the sudden crash of
+a heavy body, and with it the chuckling notes of a porcupine, and a
+HOO-HOO-HOO-EE of startled inquiry that at first Peter took for a human
+voice. And again he lay shivering close to the foot-deep carpet of
+needles under him, while his heart thumped against his ribs, and his
+whiskers stood out in mortal fear. There followed a weird and appalling
+silence, and in that stillness Peter quested vainly for the sunlight he
+had lost. And then, indistinctly, but bringing with it a new thrill,
+he heard another sound. It was a soft and distant rippling of running
+water. He knew that sound. It was friendly. He had played among the
+rocks and pebbles and sand where it was made. His courage came back, and
+he rose up on his legs, and made his way toward it. Something inside
+him told him to go quietly, but his feet were big and clumsy, and half a
+dozen times in the next two minutes he stumbled on his nose. At last he
+came to the stream, scarcely wider than a man might have reached across,
+rippling and plashing its way through the naked roots of trees. And
+ahead of him Peter saw light. He quickened his pace, until at the last
+he was running when he came out into the edge of the meadowy plain,
+with its sweetness of flowers and green grass and song of birds, and its
+glory of blue sky and sun.
+
+If he had ever been afraid, Peter forgot it now. The choking went out of
+his throat, his heart fell back in its place, and the fierce conviction
+that he had vanquished everything in the world possessed him. He peered
+back into the dark cavern of evergreen out of which the streamlet
+gurgled, and then trotted straight away from it, growling back his
+defiance as he ran. At a safe distance he stopped, and faced about.
+Nothing was following him, and the importance of his achievements grew
+upon him. He began to swell; his fore-legs he planted pugnaciously, he
+hollowed his back, and began to bark with all the puppyish ferocity that
+was in him. And though he continued to yelp, and pounded the earth
+with his paws, and tore up the green grass with his sharp little
+teeth, nothing dared to come out of the black forest in answer to his
+challenge!
+
+His head was high and his ears cocked jauntily as he trotted up the
+slope, and for the first time in his three months of existence he
+yearned to give battle to something that was alive. He was a changed
+Peter, no longer satisfied with the thought of gnawing sticks or stones
+or mauling a rabbit skin. At the crest of the slope he stopped, and
+yelped down, almost determined to go back to that black patch of forest
+and chase out everything that was in it. Then he turned toward Cragg's
+Ridge, and what he saw seemed slowly to shrink up the pugnaciousness
+that was in him, and his stiffened tail drooped until the knotty end of
+it touched the ground.
+
+Three or four hundred yards away, out of the heart of that cup-like
+paradise which ran back through a break in the ridge, rose a spiral
+of white smoke, and with the sight of that smoke Peter heard also the
+chopping of axe. It made him shiver, and yet he made his way toward it.
+He was not old enough--nor was it in the gentle blood of his Mackenzie
+mother--to know the meaning of hate; but something was growing swiftly
+in Peter's shrewd little head, and he sensed impending danger whenever
+he heard the sound of the axe. For always there was associated with that
+sound the cat-like, thin-faced man with the red bristle on his upper
+lip, and the one eye that never opened but was always closed. And
+Peter had come to fear this one eyed man more than he feared any of the
+ghostly monsters hidden in the black pit of the forest he had braved
+that day.
+
+But the owls, and the porcupine, and the fiery-eyed fox that had
+run away from him, had put into Peter something which was not in him
+yesterday, and he did not slink on his belly when he came to the edge
+of the cup between the broken ridge, but stood up boldly on his crooked
+legs and looked ahead of him. At the far edge of the cup, under the
+western shoulder of the ridge, was a thick scattering of tall cedars and
+green poplars and white birch, and in the shelter of these was a cabin
+built of logs. A lovelier spot could not have been chosen for the home
+of man. The hollow, from where Peter stood, was a velvety carpet of
+green, thickly strewn with flowers and ferns, sweet with the scent
+of violets and wild honey-suckle, and filled with the song of birds.
+Through the middle of it purled a tiny creek which disappeared between
+the ragged shoulders of rock, and close to this creek stood the cabin,
+its log walls smothered under a luxuriant growth of wood-vine. But
+Peter's quizzical little eyes were not measuring the beauty of the
+place, nor were his ears listening to the singing of birds, or the
+chattering of a red-squirrel on a stub a few yards away. He was looking
+beyond the cabin, to a chalk-white mass of rock that rose like a giant
+mushroom in the edge of the trees--and he was listening to the ringing
+of the axe, and straining his ears to catch the sound of a voice.
+
+It was the voice he wanted most of all, and when this did not come he
+choked back a whimper in his throat, and went down to the creek, and
+waded through it, and came up cautiously behind the cabin, his eyes and
+ears alert and his loosely jointed legs ready for flight at a sign of
+danger. He wanted to set up his sharp yipping signal for the girl, but
+the menace of the axe choked back his desire. At the very end of the
+cabin, where the wood-vine grew thick and dense, Peter had burrowed
+himself a hiding-place, and into this he skulked with the quickness of
+a rat getting away from its enemies. From this protecting screen he
+cautiously poked forth his whiskered face, to make what inventory he
+could of his chances for supper and a safe home-coming.
+
+And as he looked forth his heart gave a sudden jump.
+
+It was the girl, and not the man who was using the axe today. At the
+big wood-pile half a stone's throw away he saw the shimmer of her brown
+curls in the sun, and a glimpse of her white face as it was turned for
+an instant toward the cabin. In his gladness he would have leaped out,
+but the curse of a voice he had learned to dread held him back.
+
+A man had come out of the cabin, and close behind the man, a woman. The
+man was a long, lean, cadaverous-faced creature, and Peter knew that the
+devil was in him as he stood there at the cabin door. His breath, if
+one had stood close enough to smell it, was heavy with whiskey. Tobacco
+juice stained the corners of his mouth, and his one eye gleamed with
+an animal-like exultation as he nodded toward the girl with the shining
+curls.
+
+"Mooney says he'll pay seven-fifty for her when he gets his tie-money
+from the Government, an' he paid me fifty down," he said. "It'll help
+pay for the brat's board these last ten years--an' mebby, when it comes
+to a show-down, I can stick him for a thousand."
+
+The woman made no answer. She was, in a way, past answering with a mind
+of her own. The man, as he stood there, was wicked and cruel, every line
+in his ugly face and angular body a line of sin. The woman was bent,
+broken, a wreck. In her face there was no sign of a living soul. Her
+eyes were dull, her heart burned out, her hands gnarled with toil under
+the slavedom of a beast. Yet even Peter, quiet as a mouse where he lay,
+sensed the difference between them. He had seen the girl and this woman
+sobbing in each other's arms. And often he had crawled to the woman's
+feet, and occasionally her hand had touched him, and frequently she had
+given him things to eat. But it was seldom he heard her voice when the
+man was near.
+
+The man was biting off a chunk of black tobacco. Suddenly he asked,
+
+"How old is she, Liz?"
+
+And the woman answered in a strange and husky voice.
+
+"Seventeen the twelfth day of this month."
+
+The man spat.
+
+"Mooney ought to pay a thousand. We've had her better'n ten years--an'
+Mooney's crazy as a loon to git her. He'll pay!"
+
+"Jed--" The woman's voice rose above its hoarseness. "Jed--it ain't
+right!"
+
+The man laughed. He opened his mouth wide, until his yellow fangs
+gleamed in the sun, and the girl with the axe paused for a moment in her
+work, and flung back her head, staring at the two before the cabin door.
+
+"Right?" jeered the man. "Right? That's what you been preachin' me these
+last ten years 'bout whiskey-runnin,' but it ain't made me stop sellin'
+whiskey, has it? An' I guess it ain't a word that'll come between Mooney
+and me--not if Mooney gits his thousand." Suddenly he turned upon her,
+a hand half raised to strike. "An' if you whisper a word to her--if y'
+double-cross me so much as the length of your little finger--I'll break
+every bone in your body, so help me God! You understand? You won't say
+anything to her?"
+
+The woman's uneven shoulders drooped lower.
+
+"I won't say ennything, Jed. I--promise."
+
+The man dropped his uplifted hand with a harsh grunt.
+
+"I'll kill y' if you do," he warned.
+
+The girl had dropped her axe, and was coming toward them. She was a
+slim, bird-like creature, with a poise to her head and an up-tilt to her
+chin which warned that the man had not yet beaten her to the level of
+the woman. She was dressed in a faded calico, frayed at the bottom,
+and with the sleeves bobbed off just above the elbows of her slim white
+arms. Her stockings were mottled with patches and mends, and her shoes
+were old, and worn out at the toes.
+
+But to Peter, worshipping her from his hiding place, she was the most
+beautiful thing in the world. Jolly Roger had said the same thing, and
+most men--and women, too--would have agreed that this slip of a girl
+possessed a beauty which it would take a long time for unhappiness
+and torture to crush entirely out of her. Her eyes were as blue as the
+violets Peter had thrust his nose among that day. And her hair was a
+glory, loosed by her exertion from its bondage of faded ribbon, and
+falling about her shoulders and nearly to her waist in a mass of curling
+brown tresses that at times had made even Jed Hawkins' one eye light of
+with admiration. And yet, even in those times, he hated her, and more
+than once his bony fingers had closed viciously in that mass of radiant
+hair, but seldom could he wring a scream of pain from Nada. Even now,
+when she could see the light of the devil in his one gleaming eye, it
+was only her flesh--and not her soul--that was afraid.
+
+But the strain had begun to show its mark. In the blue of her eyes was
+the look of one who was never free of haunting visions, her cheeks were
+pallid, and a little too thin, and the vivid redness of her lips was not
+of health and happiness, but a touch of the color which should have been
+in her face, and which until now had refused to die.
+
+She faced the man, a little out of the reach of his arm.
+
+"I told you never again to raise your hand to strike her," she cried in
+a fierce, suppressed little voice, her blue eyes flaming loathing and
+hatred at him. "If you hit her once more--something is going to happen.
+If you want to hit anyone, hit me. I kin stand it. But--look at her!
+You've broken her shoulder, you've crippled her--an' you oughta die!"
+
+The man advanced half a step, his eye ablaze. Deep down in him Peter
+felt something he had never felt before. For the first time in his life
+he had no desire to run away from the man. Something rose up from his
+bony little chest, and grew in his throat, until it was a babyish snarl
+so low that no human ears could hear it. And in his hiding-place his
+needle-like fangs gleamed under snarling lips.
+
+But the man did not strike, nor did he reach out to grip his fingers in
+the silken mass of Nada's hair. He laughed, as if something was choking
+him, and turned away with a toss of his arms.
+
+"You ain't seein' me hit her any more, are you, Nady?" he said, and
+disappeared around the end of the cabin.
+
+The girl laid a hand on the woman's arm. Her eyes softened, but she was
+trembling.
+
+"I've told him what'll happen, an' he won't dare hit you any more," she
+comforted. "If he does, I'll end him. I will! I'll bring the police.
+I'll show 'em the places where he hides his whiskey. I'll--I'll put him
+in jail, if I die for it!"
+
+The woman's bony hands clutched at one of Nada's.
+
+"No, no, you mustn't do that," she pleaded. "He was good to me once,
+a long time ago, Nada. It ain't Jed that's bad--it's the whiskey. You
+mustn't tell on him, Nada--you mustn't!"
+
+"I've promised you I won't--if he don't hit you any more. He kin shake
+me by the hair if he wants to. But if he hits you--"
+
+She drew a deep breath, and also passed around the end of the cabin.
+
+For a few moments Peter listened. Then he slipped back through the
+tunnel he had made under the wood-vine, and saw Nada walking swiftly
+toward the break in the ridge. He followed, so quietly that she was
+through the break, and was picking her way among the tumbled masses
+of rock along the farther foot of the ridge, before she discovered his
+presence. With a glad cry she caught him up in her arms and hugged him
+against her breast.
+
+"Peter, Peter, where have you been?" she demanded. "I thought something
+had happened to you, and I've been huntin' for you, and so has Roger--I
+mean Mister Jolly Roger."
+
+Peter was hugged tighter, and he hung limply until his mistress came
+to a thick little clump of dwarf balsams hidden among the rocks. It
+was their "secret place," and Peter had come to sense the fact that its
+mystery was not to be disclosed. Here Nada had made her little bower,
+and she sat down now upon a thick rug of balsam boughs, and held Peter
+out in front of her, squatted on his haunches. A new light had come into
+her eyes, and they were shining like stars. There was a flush in her
+cheeks, her red lips were parted, and Peter, looking up--and being
+just dog--could scarcely measure the beauty of her. But he knew that
+something had happened, and he tried hard to understand.
+
+"Peter, he was here ag'in today--Mister Roger--Mister Jolly Roger," she
+cried softly, the pink in her cheeks growing brighter. "And he told me I
+was pretty!"
+
+She drew a deep breath, and looked out over the rocks to the valley and
+the black forest beyond. And her fingers, under Peter's scrawny armpits,
+tightened until he grunted.
+
+"And he asked me if he could touch my hair--mind you he asked me that,
+Peter!--And when I said 'yes' he just put his hand on it, as if he was
+afraid, and he said it was beautiful, and that I must take wonderful
+care of it!"
+
+Peter saw a throbbing in her throat.
+
+"Peter--he said he didn't want to do anything wrong to me, that he'd cut
+off his hand first. He said that! And then he said--if I didn't think it
+was wrong--he'd like to kiss me--"
+
+She hugged Peter up close to her again.
+
+"And--I told him I guessed it wasn't wrong, because I liked him, and
+nobody else had ever kissed me, and--Peter--he didn't kiss me! And when
+he went away he looked so queer--so white-like--and somethin' inside me
+has been singing ever since. I don't know what it is, Peter. But it's
+there!"
+
+And then, after a moment.
+
+"Peter," she whispered, "I wish Mister Jolly Roger would take us away!"
+
+The thought drew a tightening to her lips, and the pucker of a frown
+between her eyes, and she sat Peter down beside her and looked over
+the valley to the black forest, in the heart of which was Jolly Roger's
+cabin.
+
+"It's funny he don't want anybody to know he's there, ain't it--I
+mean--isn't it, Peter?" she mused. "He's livin' in the old shack Indian
+Tom died in last winter, and I've promised not to tell. He says it's a
+great secret, and that only you, and I, and the Missioner over at Sucker
+Creek know anything about it. I'd like to go over and clean up the shack
+for him. I sure would."
+
+Peter, beginning to nose among the rocks, did not see the flash of fire
+that came slowly into the blue of the girl's eyes. She was looking at
+her ragged shoes, at the patched stockings, at the poverty of her faded
+dress, and her fingers clenched in her lap.
+
+"I'd do it--I'd go away--somewhere--and never come back, if it wasn't
+for her," she breathed. "She treats me like a witch most of the time,
+but Jed Hawkins made her that way. I kin remember--"
+
+Suddenly she jumped up, and flung back her head defiantly, so that her
+hair streamed out in a sun-filled cloud in a gust of wind that came up
+the valley.
+
+"Some day, I'll kill 'im," she cried to the black forest across the
+plain. "Some day--I will!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+She followed Peter. For a long time the storm had been gathering in her
+brain, a storm which she had held back, smothered under her unhappiness,
+so that only Peter had seen the lightning-flashes of it. But today the
+betrayal had forced itself from her lips, and in a hard little voice
+she had told Jolly Roger--the stranger who had come into the black
+forest--how her mother and father had died of the same plague more than
+ten years ago, and how Jed Hawkins and his woman had promised to keep
+her for three silver fox skins which her father had caught before the
+sickness came. That much the woman had confided in her, for she was only
+six when it happened. And she had not dared to look at Jolly Roger when
+she told him of what had passed since then, so she saw little of the
+hardening in his face as he listened. But he had blown his nose--hard.
+It was a way with Jolly Roger, and she had not known him long enough
+to understand what it meant. And a little later he had asked her if
+he might touch her hair--and his big hand had lain for a moment on her
+head, as gently as a woman's.
+
+Like a warm glow in her heart still remained the touch of that hand.
+It had given her a new courage, and a new thrill, just as Peter's
+vanquishment of unknown monsters that day had done the same for him.
+Peter was no longer afraid, and the girl was no longer afraid, and
+together they went along the slope of the ridge, until they came to
+a dried-up coulee which was choked with a wild upheaval of rock. Here
+Peter suddenly stopped, with his nose to the ground, and then his legs
+stiffened, and for the first time the girl heard the babyish growl in
+his throat. For a moment she stood very still, and listened, and faintly
+there came to her a sound, as if someone was scraping rock against
+rock. The girl drew in a quick breath; she stood straighter, and
+Peter--looking up--saw her eyes flashing, and her lips apart. And then
+she bent down, and picked up a jagged stick.
+
+"We'll go up, Peter," she whispered. "It's one of his hiding-places!"
+
+There was a wonderful thrill in the knowledge that she was no longer
+afraid, and the same thrill was in Peter's swiftly beating little heart
+as he followed her. They went very quietly, the girl on tip-toe, and
+Peter making no sound with his soft footpads, so that Jed Hawkins was
+still on his knees, with his back toward them, when they came out into a
+square of pebbles and sand between two giant masses of rock. Yesterday,
+or the day before, both Peter and Nada would have slunk back, for
+Jed was at his devil's work, and only evil could come to the one who
+discovered him at it. He had scooped out a pile of sand from under the
+edge of the biggest rock, and was filling half a dozen grimy leather
+flasks from a jug which he had pulled from the hole. And then he paused
+to drink. They could hear the liquor gurgling down his throat.
+
+Nada tapped the end of her stick against the rock, and like a shot the
+man whirled about to face them. His face turned livid when he saw who
+it was, and he drew himself up until he stood on his feet, his two big
+fists clenched, his yellow teeth snarling at her.
+
+"You damned--spy!" he cried chokingly. "If you was a man--I'd kill you!"
+
+The girl did not shrink. Her face did not whiten. Two bright spots
+flamed in her cheeks, and Hawkins saw the triumph shining in her eyes.
+And there was a new thing in the odd twist of her red lips, as she said
+tauntingly.
+
+"If I was a man, Jed Hawkins--you'd run!"
+
+He took a step toward her.
+
+"You'd run," she repeated, meeting him squarely, and taking a tighter
+grip of her stick. "I ain't ever seen you hit anything but a woman, an'
+a girl, or some poor animal that didn't dare bite back. You're a coward,
+Jed Hawkins, a low-down, sneakin,' whiskey-sellin' coward--and you
+oughta die!"
+
+Even Peter sensed the cataclysmic change that had come in this moment
+between the two big rocks. It held something in the air, like the
+impending crash of dynamite, or the falling down of the world. He forgot
+himself, and looked up at his mistress, a wonderful, slim little thing
+standing there at last unafraid before the future--and in his dog heart
+and soul a part of the truth came to him, and he planted his big feet
+squarely in front of Jed Hawkins, and snarled at him as he had never
+snarled before in his life.
+
+And the bootlegger, for a moment, was stunned, For a while back he had
+humored the girl a little, to hold her in peace and without suspicion
+until Mooney was able to turn over her body-money. After that--after he
+had delivered her to the other's shack--it would all be up to Mooney, he
+figured. And this was what had come of his peace-loving efforts! She was
+taking advantage of him, defying him, spying upon him--the brat he had
+fed and brought up for ten years! Her beauty as she stood there did not
+hold him back. It was punishment she needed, a beating, a hair-pulling,
+until there was no breath left in her impudent body. He sprang forward,
+and Peter let out a wild yip as he saw Nada raise her stick. But she
+was a moment too slow. The man's hand caught it, and his right hand shot
+forward and buried itself in the thick, soft mass of her hair.
+
+It was then that something broke loose in Peter. For this day, this
+hour, this minute the gods of destiny had given him birth. All things in
+the world were blotted out for him except one--the six inches of naked
+shank between the bootlegger's trouser-leg and his shoe. He dove in.
+His white teeth, sharp as stiletto-points, sank into it. And a wild and
+terrible yell came from Jed Hawkins as he loosed the girl's hair. Peter
+heard the yell, and his teeth sank deeper in the flesh of the first
+thing he had ever hated. It was the girl, more than Peter, who realized
+the horror of what followed. The man bent down and his powerful fingers
+closed round Peter's scrawny neck, and Peter felt his wind suddenly shut
+off, and his mouth opened. Then Jed Hawkins drew back the arm that held
+him, as he would have drawn it back to fling a stone.
+
+With a scream the girl tore at him as his arm straightened out, and
+Peter went hurtling through the air. Her stick struck him fiercely
+across the face, and in that same moment there was a sickening, crushing
+thud as Peter's loosely-jointed little body struck against the face of
+the great rock. When Nada turned Peter was groveling in the sand, his
+hips and back broken down, but his bright eyes were on her, and without
+a whimper or a whine he was struggling to drag himself toward her. Only
+Jolly Roger could tell the story of how Peter's mother had died for a
+woman, and in this moment it must have been that her spirit entered into
+Peter's soul, for the pain of his terrible hurt was forgotten in his
+desire to drag himself back to the feet of the girl, and die facing her
+enemy--the man. He did not know that he was dragging his broken body
+only an inch at a time through the sand. But the girl saw the terrible
+truth, and with a cry of agony which all of Hawkin's torture could
+not have wrung from her she ran to him, and fell upon her knees, and
+gathered him tenderly in her arms. Then, in a flash, she was on her
+feet, facing Jed Hawkins like a little demon.
+
+"For that--I'll kill you!" she panted. "I will. I'll kill you!"
+
+The blow of her stick had half blinded the bootlegger's one eye, but he
+was coming toward her. Swift as a bird Nada turned and ran, and as the
+man's footsteps crunched in the gravel and rock behind her a wild fear
+possessed her--fear for Peter, and not for herself. Very soon Hawkins
+was left behind, cursing at the futility of the pursuit, and at the fate
+that had robbed him of an eye.
+
+Down the coulee and out into the green meadowland of the plain ran Nada,
+her hair streaming brightly in the sun, her arms clutching Peter to her
+breast. Peter was whimpering now, crying softly and piteously, just as
+once upon a time she had heard a baby cry--a little baby that was dying.
+And her soul cried out in agony, for she knew that Peter, too, was
+dying. And as she stumbled onward--on toward the black forest, she put
+her face down to Peter and sobbed over and over again his name.
+
+"Peter--Peter--Peter--"
+
+And Peter, joyous and grateful for her love and the sound of her voice
+even in these moments, thrust out his tongue and caressed her cheek, and
+the girl's breath came in a great sob as she staggered on.
+
+"It's all right now, Peter," she crooned. "It's all right, baby. He
+won't hurt you any more, an' we're goin' across the creek to Mister
+Roger's cabin, an' you'll be happy there. You'll be happy--"
+
+Her voice choked full, and her mother-heart seemed to break inside her,
+just as life had gone out of that other mother's heart when the baby
+died. For their grief, in God's reckoning of things, was the same; and
+little Peter, sensing the greatness of this thing that had made them one
+in flesh and blood, snuggled his wiry face closer in her neck, crying
+softly to her, and content to die there close to the warmth of the
+creature he loved.
+
+"Don't cry, baby," she soothed. "Don't cry, Peter, dear. It'll soon
+be all right--all right--" And the sob came again into her throat, and
+clung there like a choking fist, until they came to the edge of the big
+forest.
+
+She looked down, and saw that Peter's eyes were closed; and not until
+then did the miracle of understanding come upon her fully that there was
+no difference at all between the dying baby's face and dying Peter's,
+except that one had been white and soft, and Peter's was different--and
+covered with hair.
+
+"God'll take care o' you, Peter," she whispered. "He will--God, 'n' me,
+and Mister Roger--"
+
+She knew there was untruth in what she was saying for no one, not even
+God, would ever take care of Peter again--in life. His still little face
+and the terrible grief in her own heart told her that. For Peter's back
+was broken, and he was going--going even now--as she ran moaningly with
+him through the deep aisles of the forest. But before he died, before
+his heart stopped beating in her arms, she wanted to reach Jolly Roger's
+friendly cabin, in the big swamp beyond the creek. It was not that he
+could save Peter, but something told her that Jolly Roger's presence
+would make Peter's dying easier, both for Peter and for her, for in this
+first glad spring of her existence the stranger in the forest shack had
+brought sunshine and hope and new dreams into her life; and they had set
+him up, she and Peter, as they would have set up a god on a shrine.
+
+So she ran for the fording place on Sucker Creek, which was a good
+half mile above the shack in which the stranger was living. She was
+staggering, and short of wind, when she came to the ford, and when she
+saw the whirl and rush of water ahead of her she remembered what Jolly
+Roger had said about the flooding of the creek, and her eyes widened.
+Then she looked down at Peter, piteously limp and still in her arms,
+and she drew a quick breath and made up her mind. She knew that at this
+shallow place the water could not be more than up to her waist, even at
+the flood-tide. But it was running like a mill-race.
+
+She put her lips down to Peter's fuzzy little face, and held them there
+for a moment, and kissed him.
+
+"We'll make it, Peter," she whispered. "We ain't afraid, are we, baby?
+We'll make it--sure--sure--we'll make it--"
+
+She set out bravely, and the current swished about her ankles, to her
+knees, to her hips. And then, suddenly, unseen hands under the water
+seemed to rouse themselves, and she felt them pulling and tugging at her
+as the water deepened to her waist. In another moment she was fighting,
+fighting to hold her feet, struggling to keep the forces from driving
+her downstream. And then came the supreme moment, close to the shore for
+which she was striving. She felt herself giving away, and she cried out
+brokenly for Peter not to be afraid. And then something drove pitilessly
+against her body, and she flung out one arm, holding Peter close with
+the other--and caught hold of a bit of stub that protruded like a handle
+from the black and slippery log the flood-water had brought down upon
+her.
+
+"We're all right, Peter," she cried, even in that moment when she knew
+she had lost. "We're all ri--"
+
+And then suddenly the bright glory of her head went down, and with her
+went Peter, still held to her breast under the sweeping rush of the
+flood.
+
+Even then it was thought of Peter that filled her brain. Somehow she
+was not afraid. She was not terrified, as she had often been of the
+flood-rush of waters that smashed down the creeks in springtime. An
+inundating roar was over her, under her, and all about her; it beat in
+a hissing thunder against the drums of her ears, yet it did not frighten
+her as she had sometimes been frightened. Even in that black chaos which
+was swiftly suffocating the life from her, unspoken words of cheer for
+Peter formed in her heart, and she struggled to hold him to her, while
+with her other hand she fought to raise herself by the stub of the log
+to which she clung. For she was not thinking of him as Peter, the dog,
+but as something greater--something that had fought for her that day,
+and because of her had died.
+
+Suddenly she felt a force pulling her from above. It was the big log,
+turning again to that point of equilibrium which for a space her weight
+had destroyed. In the edge of a quieter pool where the water swirled but
+did not rush, her brown head appeared, and then her white face, and with
+a last mighty effort she thrust up Peter so that his dripping body was
+on the log. Sobbingly she filled her lungs with air. But the drench of
+water and her hair blinded her so that she could not see. And she found
+all at once that the strength had gone from her body. Vainly she tried
+to drag herself up beside Peter, and in the struggle she raised herself
+a little, so that a low-hanging branch of a tree swept her like a mighty
+arm from the log.
+
+With a cry she reached out for Peter. But he was gone, the log was gone,
+and she felt a vicious pulling at her hair, as Jed Hawkins himself had
+often pulled it, and for a few moments the current pounded against her
+body and the tree-limb swayed back and forth as it held her there by her
+hair.
+
+If there was pain from that tugging, Nada did not feel it. She could see
+now, and thirty yards below her was a wide, quiet pool into which the
+log was drifting. Peter was gone. And then, suddenly, her heart seemed
+to stop its beating, and her eyes widened, and in that moment of
+astounding miracle she forgot that she was hanging by her hair in the
+ugly lip of the flood, with slippery hands beating and pulling at her
+from below. For she saw Peter--Peter in the edge of the pool--making his
+way toward the shore! For a space she could not believe. It must be his
+dead body drifting. It could not be Peter--swimming! And yet--his head
+was above the water--he was moving shoreward--he was struggling--
+
+Frantically she tore at the detaining clutch above her. Something gave
+way. She felt the sharp sting of it, and then she plunged into the
+current, and swept down with it, and in the edge of the pool struck out
+with all her last strength until her feet touched bottom, and she could
+stand. She wiped the water from her eyes, sobbing in her breathless
+fear--her mighty hope. Peter had reached the shore. He had dragged
+himself out, and had crumpled down in a broken heap--but he was facing
+her, his bright eyes wide open and questing for her. Slowly Nada went
+to him. Until now, when it was all over, she had not realized how
+helplessly weak she was. Something was turning round and round in her
+head, and she was so dizzy that the shore swam before her eyes, and it
+seemed quite right to her that Peter should be alive--and not dead.
+She was still in a foot of water when she fell on her knees and dragged
+herself the rest of the way to him, and gathered him in her arms again,
+close up against her wet, choking breast.
+
+And there the sun shone down upon them, without the shade of a twig
+overhead; and the water that a little while before had sung of death
+rippled with its old musical joy, and about them the birds sang, and
+very near to them a pair of mating red-squirrels chattered and played in
+a mountain-ash tree. And Nada's hair brightened in the sun, and began
+to ripple into curls at the end, and Peter's bristling whiskers grew
+dry--so that half an hour after she had dragged herself out of the water
+there was a new light in the girl's eyes, and a color in her cheeks that
+was like the first dawning of summer pink in the heart of a rose.
+
+"We're a'most dry enough to go to Mister Jolly Roger, Peter," she
+whispered, a little thrill in her voice.
+
+She stood up, and shook out her half dry hair, and then picked up
+Peter--and winced when he gave a little moan.
+
+"He'll fix you, Peter," she comforted. "An' it'll be so nice over
+here--with him."
+
+Her eyes were looking ahead, down through the glory of the sun-filled
+forest, and the song of birds and the beauty of the world filled her
+soul, and a new and wonderful freedom seemed to thrill in the touch of
+the soft earth under her feet.
+
+"Flowers," she cried softly. "Flowers, an' birds, an' the sun, Peter--"
+She paused a moment, as if listening to the throb of light and life
+about her. And then, "I guess we'll go to Mister Jolly Roger now," she
+said.
+
+She shook her hair again, so that it shone in a soft and rebellious
+glory about her, and the violet light grew a little darker in her eyes,
+and the color a bit deeper in her cheeks as she walked on into the
+forest over the faintly worn foot-trail that led to the old cabin where
+Jolly Roger was keeping himself away from the eyes of men.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+From the little old cabin of dead Indian Tom, built in a grassy glade
+close to the shore of Sucker Creek, came the sound of a man's laughter.
+In this late afternoon the last flooding gold of the sun filled the
+open door of the poplar shack. The man's laughter, like the sun on the
+mottled tapestry of the poplar-wood, was a heart-lightening thing there
+on the edge of the great swamp that swept back for miles to the north
+and west. It was the sort of laughter one seldom hears from a man, not
+riotous of over-bold, but a big, clean laughter that came from the soul
+out. It was an infectious thing. It drove the gloom out of the blackest
+night. It dispelled fear, and if ever there were devils lurking in the
+edge of old Indian Tom's swamp they slunk away at the sound of it. And
+more than once, as those who lived in tepee and cabin and far-away shack
+could testify, that laugh had driven back death itself.
+
+In the shack, this last day of May afternoon, stood leaning over a rough
+table the man of the laugh--Roger McKay, known as Jolly Roger, outlaw
+extraordinary, and sought by the men of every Royal Northwest Mounted
+Police patrol north of the Height of Land.
+
+It was incongruous and inconceivable to think of him as an outlaw, as he
+stood there in the last glow of the sun--an outlaw with the weirdest and
+strangest record in all the northland hung up against his name. He was
+not tall, and neither was he short, and he was as plump as an apple
+and as rosy as its ripest side. There was something cherubic in the
+smoothness and the fullness of his face, the clear gray of his eyes,
+the fine-spun blond of his short-cropped hair, and the plumpness of his
+hands and half-bared arms. He was a priestly, well-fed looking man, was
+this Jolly Roger, rotund and convivial in all his proportions, and some
+in great error would have called him fat. But it was a strange kind of
+fatness, as many a man on the trail could swear to. And as for sin, or
+one sign of outlawry, it could not be found in any mark upon him--unless
+one closed his eyes to all else and guessed it by the belt and revolver
+holster which he wore about his rotund waist. In every other respect
+Jolly Roger appeared to be not only a harmless creature, but one
+especially designed by the Creator of things to spread cheer and
+good-will wherever he went. His age, if he had seen fit to disclose it,
+was thirty-four.
+
+There seemed, at first, to be nothing that even a contented man might
+laugh at in the cabin, and even less to bring merriment from one on
+whose head a price was set--unless it was the delicious aroma of a
+supper just about ready to be served. On a little stove in the farthest
+corner of the shack the breasts of two spruce partridges were turning
+golden brown in a skittle, and from the broken neck of a coffee pot a
+rich perfume was rising with the steam. Piping hot in the open oven half
+a dozen baked potatoes were waiting in their crisp brown jackets.
+
+From the table Jolly Roger turned, rubbing his hands and chuckling as he
+went for a third time to a low shelf built against the cabin wall. There
+he carefully raised a mass of old papers from a box, and at the movement
+there came a protesting squeak, and a little brown mouse popped up
+to the edge of it and peered at him with a pair of bright little
+questioning eyes.
+
+"You little devil!" he exulted. "You nervy little devil!"
+
+He raised the papers higher, and again looked upon his discovery of half
+an hour ago. In a soft nest lay four tiny mice, still naked and blind,
+and as he lowered the mass of papers the mother burrowed back to them,
+and he could hear her squeaking and chirruping to the little ones, as if
+she was trying to tell them not to be afraid of this man, for she knew
+him very well, and it wasn't in his mind to hurt them. And Jolly Roger,
+as he returned to the setting of his table, laughed again--and the laugh
+rolled out into the golden sunset, and from the top of a spruce at the
+edge of the creek a big blue-jay answered it in a riotous challenge.
+
+But at the bottom of that laugh, if one could have looked a bit deeper,
+was something more than the naked little mice in the nest of torn-up
+paper. Today happiness had strangely come this gay-hearted freebooter's
+way, and he might have reached out, and seized it, and have kept it for
+his own. But in the hour of his opportunity he had refused it--because
+he was an outlaw--because strong within him was a peculiar code of honor
+all his own. There was nothing of man-made religion in the soul of Roger
+McKay. Nature was his god; its manifestations, its life, and the air it
+gave him to breathe were the pages which made up the Book that guided
+him. And within the last hour, since the sun had begun to drop behind
+the tips of the tallest trees, these things had told him that he was
+a fool for turning away from the one great thing in all life--simply
+because his own humors of existence had made him an outcast and hunted
+by the laws of men. So the change had come, and for a space his soul was
+filled with the thrill of song and laughter.
+
+Half an hour ago he believed that he had definitely made up his mind.
+He had forced himself into forgetfulness of laws he had broken, and the
+scarlet-coated men who were ever on the watch for his trail. They would
+never seek him here, in the wilderness country close to the edge of
+civilization, and time, he had told himself in that moment of optimism,
+would blot out both his identity and his danger. Tomorrow he would go
+over to Cragg's Ridge again, and then--
+
+His mind was crowded with a vision of blue eyes, of brown curls glowing
+in the pale sun, of a wistful, wide-eyed little face turned up to him,
+and red lips that said falteringly, "I don't think it's wrong for you to
+kiss me--if you want to, Mister Jolly Roger!"
+
+Boldly he had talked about it to the bright-eyed little mother-mouse who
+peered at him now and then over the edge of her box.
+
+"You're a little devil of iniquity yourself," he told her. "You're a
+regular Mrs. Captain Kidd, and you've eaten my cheese, and chawed my
+snowshoe laces, and robbed me of a sock to make your nest. I ought
+to catch you in a trap, or blow your head off. But I don't. I let you
+live--and have a fam'ly. And it's you who have given me the Big Idea,
+Mrs. Captain Kidd. You sure have! You've told me I've got a right to
+have a nest of my own, and I'm going to have it--an' in that nest is
+going to be the sweetest, prettiest little angel that God Almighty ever
+forgot to make into a flower! Yessir. And if the law comes--"
+
+And then, suddenly, the vision clouded, and there came into Jolly
+Roger's face the look of a man who knew--when he stood the truth out
+naked--that he was facing a world with his back to the wall.
+
+And now, as the sun went down, and his supper waited--that cloud which
+came to blot out his picture grew deeper and more sinister, and the
+chill of it entered his heart. He turned from his table to the open
+door, and his fingers drew themselves slowly into clenched fists, and he
+looked out quietly and steadily into his world. The darkening depths
+of the forest reached out before his eyes, mottled and painted in the
+fading glory of the sun. It was his world, his everything--father,
+mother, God. In it he was born, and in it he knew that some day he would
+die. He loved it, understood it, and night and day, in sunshine and
+storm, its mighty spirit was the spirit that kept him company. But it
+held no message for him now. And his ears scarcely heard the raucous
+scolding of the blue-jay in the fire-tipped crest of the tall black
+spruce.
+
+And then that something which was bigger than desire came up within him,
+and forced itself in words between his grimly set lips.
+
+"She's only a--a kid," he said, a fierce, low note of defiance in his
+voice. "And I--I'm a damned pirate, and there's jails waiting for me,
+and they'll get me sooner or later, sure as God lets me live!"
+
+He turned from the sun to his shadowing cabin, and for a moment a
+ghost of a smile played in his face as he heard the little mother-mouse
+rustling among her papers.
+
+"We can't do it," he said. "We simply can't do it, Mrs. Captain Kidd.
+She's had hell enough without me taking her into another. And it'd be
+that, sooner or later. It sure would, Mrs. Captain Kidd. But I'm glad,
+mighty glad, to think she'd let me kiss her--if I wanted to. Think of
+that, Mrs. Captain Kidd!--if I wanted to. Oh, Lord!"
+
+And the humor of it crept in alongside the tragedy in Jolly Roger's
+heart, and he chuckled as he bent over his partridge breasts.
+
+"If I wanted to," he repeated. "Why, if I had a life to give, I'd give
+it--to kiss her just once! But, as it happens, Mrs. Captain Kidd--"
+
+Jolly Roger's breath cut itself suddenly short, and for an instant he
+grew tense as he bent over the stove. His philosophy had taught him one
+thing above all others, that he was a survival of the fittest--only so
+long as he survived. And he was always guarding against the end. His
+brain was keen, his ears quick, and every fibre in him trained to
+its duty of watchfulness. And he knew, without turning his head, that
+someone was standing in the doorway behind him. There had come a faint
+noise, a shadowing of the fading sun-glow on the wall, the electrical
+disturbance of another presence, gazing at him quietly, without motion,
+and without sound. After that first telegraphic shock of warning he
+stabbed his fork into a partridge breast, flopped it over, chuckled
+loudly--and then with a lightning movement was facing the door, his
+forty-four Colt leveled waist-high at the intruder.
+
+Almost in the same movement his gun-arm dropped limply to his side.
+
+"Well, I'll be--"
+
+He stared. And the face in the doorway stared back at him.
+
+"Nada!" he gasped. "Good Lord, I thought--I thought--" He swallowed as
+he tried to lie. "I thought--it might be a bear!"
+
+He did not, at first, see that the slim, calico-dressed little figure
+of Jed Hawkins' foster-girl was almost dripping wet. Her blue eyes were
+shining at him, wide and startled. Her cheeks were flushed. A strange
+look had frozen on her parted red lips, and her hair was falling loose
+in a cloud of curling brown tresses about her shoulders. Jolly Roger,
+dreaming of her in his insane happiness of a few minutes ago, sensed
+nothing beyond the beauty and the unexpectedness of her in this first
+moment. Then--swiftly--he saw the other thing. The last glow of the sun
+glistened in her wet hair, her dress was sodden and clinging, and little
+pools of water were widening slowly about her ragged shoes. These things
+he might have expected, for she had to cross the creek. But it was the
+look in her eyes that startled him, as she stood there with Peter, the
+mongrel pup, clasped tightly in her arms.
+
+"Nada, what's happened?" he asked, laying his gun on the table. "You
+fell in the creek--"
+
+"It--it's Peter," she cried, with a sobbing break in her voice. "We come
+on Jed Hawkins when he was diggin' up some of his whiskey, and he was
+mad, and pulled my hair, and Peter bit him--and then he picked up Peter
+and threw him against a rock--and he's terribly hurt! Oh, Mister Jolly
+Roger--"
+
+She held out the pup to him, and Peter whimpered as Jolly Roger took his
+wiry little face between his hands, and then lifted him gently. The girl
+was sobbing, with passionate little catches in her breath, but there
+were no tears in her eyes as they turned for an instant from Peter to
+the gun on the table.
+
+"If I'd had that," she cried, "I'd hev killed him!"
+
+Jolly Roger's face was coldly gray as he knelt down on the floor and
+bent over Peter.
+
+"He--pulled your hair, you say?"
+
+"I--forgot," she whispered, close at his shoulder. "I wasn't goin' to
+tell you that. But it didn't hurt. It was Peter--"
+
+He felt the damp caress of her curls upon his neck as she bent over him.
+
+"Please tell me, Mister Jolly Roger--is he hurt--bad?"
+
+With the tenderness of a woman Jolly Roger worked his fingers over
+Peter's scrawny little body. And Peter, whimpering softly, felt the
+infinite consolation of their touch. He was no longer afraid of Jed
+Hawkins, or of pain, or of death. The soul of a dog is simple in its
+measurement of blessings, and to Peter it was a great happiness to lie
+here, broken and in pain, with the face of his beloved mistress over
+him and Jolly Roger's hands working to mend his hurt. He whimpered when
+Jolly Roger found the broken place, and he cried out like a little child
+when there came the sudden quick snapping of a bone--but even then he
+turned his head so that he could thrust out his hot tongue against the
+back of his man-friend's hand. And Jolly Roger, as he worked, was giving
+instructions to the girl, who was quick as a bird to bring him cloth
+which she tore into bandages, so that at the end of ten minutes Peter's
+right hind leg was trussed up so tightly that it was as stiff and as
+useless as a piece of wood.
+
+"His hip was dislocated and his leg-bone broken," said Jolly Roger when
+he had finished. "He is all right now, and inside of three weeks will be
+on his feet again."
+
+He lifted Peter gently, and made him a nest among the blankets in his
+bunk. And then, still with that strange, gray look in his face, he
+turned to Nada.
+
+She was standing partly facing the door, her eyes straight on him. And
+Jolly Roger saw in them that wonderful something which had given his
+storm-beaten soul a glimpse of paradise earlier that day. They were
+blue, so blue that he had never seen violets like them--and he knew that
+in her heart there was no guile behind which she could hide the secret
+they were betraying. A yearning such as had never before come into his
+life urged him to open his arms to her, and he knew that she would have
+come into them; but a still mightier will held them tense and throbbing
+at his side. Her cheeks were aflame as she looked at him, and he told
+himself that God could not have made a lovelier thing, as she stood
+there in her worn dress and her ragged shoes, with that light of glory
+in her face, and her damp hair waving and curling about her in the last
+light of the day.
+
+"I knew you'd fix him, Mister-Roger," she whispered, a great pride and
+faith and worship in the low thrill of her voice. "I knew it!"
+
+Something choked Jolly Roger, and he turned to the stove and began
+spearing the crisp brown potatoes on the end of a fork. And he said,
+with his back toward her,
+
+"You came just in time for supper, Nada. We'll eat--and then I'll go
+home with you, as far as the Ridge."
+
+Peter watched them. His pain was gone, and it was nice and comfortable
+in Jolly Roger's blanket, and with his whiskered face on his fore-paws
+his bright eyes followed every movement of these two who so completely
+made up his world. He heard that sweet little laugh which came only now
+and then from Nada's lips, when for a moment she was happy; he saw her
+shake out her hair in the glow of the lamp which Jolly Roger lighted,
+and he observed Jolly Roger standing at the stove--looking at her as she
+did it--a worship in his face which changed the instant her eyes turned
+toward him. In Peter's active little brain this gave birth to nothing
+of definite understanding, except that in it all he sensed happiness,
+for--somehow--there was always that feeling when they were with Jolly
+Roger, no matter whether the sun was shining or the day was dark and
+filled with gloom. Many times in his short life he had seen grief and
+tears in Nada's face, and had seen her cringe and hide herself at the
+vile cursing and witch-like voice of the man and woman back in the other
+cabin. But there was nothing like that in Jolly Roger's company. He
+had two eyes, and he was not always cursing, and he did not pull Nada's
+hair--and Peter loved him from the bottom of his soul. And he knew that
+his mistress loved him, for she had told him so, and there was always
+a different look in her eyes when she was with Jolly Roger, and it was
+only then that she laughed in that glad little way--as she was laughing
+now.
+
+Jolly Roger was seated at the table, and Nada stood behind him, her face
+flushed joyously at the wonderful privilege of pouring his coffee. And
+then she sat down, and Jolly Roger gave her the nicest of the partridge
+breasts, and tried hard to keep his eyes calm and quiet as he looked at
+the adorable sweetness of her across the table from him. To Nada there
+was nothing of shame in what lay behind the happiness in the violet
+radiance of her eyes. Jolly Roger had brought to her the only happiness
+that had ever come into her life. Next to her God, which Jed Hawkins
+and his witch-woman had not destroyed within her, she thought of this
+stranger who for three months had been hiding in Indian Tom's cabin.
+And, like Peter, she loved him. The innocence of it lay naked in her
+eyes.
+
+"Nada," said Jolly Roger. "You're seventeen--"
+
+"Goin' on eighteen," she corrected quickly. "I was seventeen two weeks
+ago!"
+
+The quick, undefined little note of eagerness in her voice made his
+heart thump. He nodded, and smiled.
+
+"Yes, going on eighteen," he said. "And pretty soon some young fellow
+will come along, and see you, and marry you--"
+
+"O-o-o-h-h-h!"
+
+It was a little, strange cry that came to her lips, and Jolly Roger saw
+a quick throbbing in her bare throat, and her eyes were so wide-open
+and startled as she looked at him that he felt, for a moment, as if the
+resolution in his soul was giving way.
+
+"Where are you goin', Mister Roger?"
+
+"Me? Oh, I'm not going anywhere--not for a time, at least. But
+you--you'll surely be going away with some one--some day."
+
+"I won't," she denied hotly. "I hate men! I hate all but you, Mister
+Jolly Roger. And if you go away--"
+
+"Yes, if I go away--
+
+"I'll kill Jed Hawkins!"
+
+Involuntarily she reached out a slim hand to the big gun on the corner
+of the table.
+
+"I'll kill 'im, if you go away," she threatened again, "He's broken his
+wife, and crippled her, and if it wasn't for her I'd have gone long ago.
+But I've promised, and I'm goin' to stay--until something happens. And
+if you go--now--"
+
+At the choking throb in her throat and the sudden quiver that came to
+her lips, Jolly Roger jumped up for the coffee pot, though his cup was
+still half full.
+
+"I won't go, Nada," he cried, trying to laugh. "I promise--cross my
+heart and hope to die! I won't go--until you tell me I can."
+
+And then, feeling that something had almost gone wrong for a moment,
+Peter yipped from his nest in the bunk, and the gladness in Nada's eyes
+thanked Jolly Roger for his promise when he came back with the coffee
+pot. Standing behind her, he made pretense of refilling her cup, though
+she had scarcely touched it, and all the time his eyes were looking at
+her beautiful head, and he saw again the dampness in her hair.
+
+"What happened in the creek, Nada?" he asked.
+
+She told him, and at the mention of his name Peter drew his bristling
+little head erect, and waited expectantly. He could see Jolly Roger's
+face, now staring and a bit shocked, and then with a quick smile
+flashing over it; and when Nada had finished, Jolly Roger leaned a
+little toward her in the lampglow, and said,
+
+"You've got to promise me something, Nada. If Jed Hawkins ever hits you
+again, or pulls your hair, or even threatens to do it--will you tell
+me?" Nada hesitated.
+
+"If you don't--I'll take back my promise, and won't stay," he added.
+
+"Then--I'll promise," she said. "If he does it, I'll tell you. But I
+ain't--I mean I am not afraid, except for Peter. Jed Hawkins will sure
+kill him if I take him back, Mister Roger. Will you keep him here?
+And--o-o-o-h!--if I could only stay, too--"
+
+The words came from her in a frightened breath, and in an instant a
+flood of color rushed like fire into her cheeks. But Jolly Roger turned
+again to the stove, and made as if he had not seen the blush or heard
+her last words, so that the shame of her embarrassment was gone as
+quickly as it had come.
+
+"Yes, I'll keep Peter," he said over his shoulder. And in his heart
+another voice which she could not hear, was crying, "And I'd give my
+life if I could keep you!"
+
+Devouring his bits of partridge breast, Peter watched Jolly Roger and
+Nada out of the corner of his eye as they left the cabin half an hour
+later. It was dark when they went, and Jolly Roger closed only the
+mosquito-screen, leaving the door wide open, and Peter could hear their
+footsteps disappearing slowly into the deep gloom of the forest. It
+was a little before moonrise, and under the spruce and cedar and thick
+balsam the world was like a black pit. It was very still, and except for
+the soft tread of their own feet and the musical ripple of water in the
+creek there was scarcely a sound in this first hour of the night. In
+Jolly Roger there rose something of exultation, for Nada's warm little
+hand lay in his as he guided her through the darkness, and her fingers
+had clasped themselves tightly round his thumb. She was very close to
+him when he paused to make sure of the unseen trail, so close that her
+cheek rested against his arm, and--bending a little--his lips touched
+the soft ripples of her hair. But he could not see her in the gloom, and
+his heart pounded fiercely all the way to the ford.
+
+Then he laughed a strange little laugh that was not at all like Jolly
+Roger.
+
+"I'll try and not let you get wet again, Nada," he said.
+
+Her fingers still held to his thumb, as if she was afraid of losing him
+there in the blackness that lay about them like a great ink-blotch. And
+she crept closer to him, saying nothing, and all the power in his soul
+fought in Jolly Roger to keep him from putting his arms about her slim
+little body and crying out the worship that was in him.
+
+"I ain't--I mean I'm not afraid of gettin' wet," he heard her whisper
+then. "You're so big and strong, Mister Roger--"
+
+Gently he freed his thumb from her fingers, and picked her up, and held
+her high, so that she was against his breast and above the deepest of
+the water. Lightly at first Nada's arms lay about his shoulders, but
+as the flood began to rush higher and she felt him straining against
+it,--her arms tightened, until the clasp of them was warm and thrilling
+round Jolly Roger's neck. She gave a big gasp of relief when he stood
+her safely down upon her feet on the other side. And then again she
+reached out, and found his hand, and twined her fingers about his big
+thumb--and Jolly Roger went on with her over the plain toward Cragg's
+Ridge, dripping wet, just as the rim of the moon began to rise over the
+edge of the eastern forests.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+It seemed an interminable wait to Peter, back in the cabin. Jolly Roger
+had put out the light, and when the moon came up the glow of it did not
+come into the dark room where Peter lay, for the open door was to the
+west, and curtains were drawn closely at both windows. But through the
+door he could see the first mellowing of the night, and after that the
+swift coming of a soft, golden radiance which swallowed all darkness and
+filled his world with the ghostly shadows which seemed alive, yet never
+made a sound. It was a big, splendid moon this night, and Peter loved
+the moon, though he had seen it only a few times in his three months of
+life. It fascinated him more than the sun, for it was always light when
+the sun came, and he had never seen the sun eat up darkness, as the
+moon did. Its mystery awed him, but did not frighten. He could not quite
+understand the strange, still shadows which were always unreal when he
+nosed into them, and it puzzled him why the birds did not fly about in
+the moon glow, and sing as they did in the day-time. And something deep
+in him, many generations older than himself, made his blood run faster
+when this thing that ate up darkness came creeping through the sky, and
+he was filled with a yearning to adventure out into the strange glow
+of it, quietly and stealthily, watching and listening for things he had
+never seen or heard.
+
+In the gloom of the cabin his eyes remained fixed steadily upon the open
+door, and for a long time he listened only for the returning footsteps
+of Jolly Roger and Nada. Twice he made efforts to drag himself to the
+edge of the bunk, but the movement sent such a cutting pain through him
+that he did not make a third. And outside, after a time, he heard the
+Night People rousing themselves. They were very cautious, these Night
+People, for unlike the creatures of the dawn, waking to greet the
+sun with song and happiness, most of them were sharp-fanged and
+long-clawed-rovers and pirates of the great wilderness, ready to kill.
+And this, too, Peter sensed through the generations of northland dog
+that was in him. He heard a wolf howl, coming faintly through the night
+from miles away, and something told him it was not a dog. From nearer
+came the call of a moose, and that same sense told him he had heard
+a monster bear which his eyes had never seen. He did not know of the
+soft-footed, night-eyed creatures of prey--the fox, the lynx, the
+fisher-cat, the mink and the ermine, nor of the round-eyed, feathered
+murderers in the tree-tops--yet that same something told him they were
+out there among the shadows, under the luring glow of the moon. And
+a thing happened, all at once, to stab the truth home to him. A baby
+snowshoe rabbit, a third grown, hopped out into the open close to the
+cabin door, and as it nibbled at the green grass, a gray catapult of
+claw and feathers shot out of the air, and Peter heard the crying agony
+of the rabbit as the owl bore it off into the thick spruce tops. Even
+then--unafraid--Peter wanted to go out into the moon glow!
+
+At last, there was an end to his wait. He heard footsteps, and Jolly
+Roger came from out of the yellow moon-mist of the night and stopped in
+front of the door. There he stood, making no sound, and looking into the
+west, where the sky was ablaze with stars over the tree-tops. There was
+a glad little yip in Peter's throat, but he choked it back. Jolly Roger
+was strangely quiet, and Peter could not hear Nada, and as he sniffed,
+and gulped the lump in his throat, he seemed to catch the breath of
+something impending in the air. Then Jolly Roger came in, and sat down
+in darkness near the table, and for a long time Peter kept his eyes
+fixed on the shadowy blotch of him there in the gloom, and listened to
+his breathing, until he could stand it no longer, and whined.
+
+The sound stirred Jolly Roger. He got up, struck a match--and then blew
+the match out, and came and sat down beside Peter, and stroked him with
+his hand.
+
+"Peter," he said in a low voice, "I guess we've got a job on our hands.
+You began it today--and I've got to finish it. We're goin' to kill Jed
+Hawkins!"
+
+Peter snuggled closer.
+
+"Mebby I'm bad, and mebby the law ought to have me," Jolly Roger went
+on in the darkness, "but until tonight I never made up my mind to kill a
+man. I'm ready--now. If Jed Hawkins hurts her again we're goin' to kill
+him! Understand, Pied-Bot?"
+
+He got up, and Peter could hear him undressing. Then he made a nest for
+Peter on the floor, and stretched himself out in the bunk; and after
+that, for a long time, there seemed to be something heavier than the
+gloom of night in the cabin for Peter, and he listened and waited and
+prayed in his dog way for Nada's return, and wondered why it was that
+she left him so long. And the Night People held high carnival under the
+yellow moon, and there was flight and terror and slaughter in the glow
+of it--and Jolly Roger slept, and the wolf howled nearer, and the creek
+chortled its incessant song of running water, and in the end Peter's
+eyes closed, and a red-eyed ermine peeped over the sill into the man-and
+dog-scented stillness of the outlaw's cabin.
+
+For many days after this first night in the cabin, Peter did not see
+Nada. There was more rain, and the creek flooded higher, so that each
+time Jolly Roger went over to Cragg's Ridge he took his life in his
+hands in fording the stream. Peter saw no one but Jolly Roger, and at
+the end of the second week he was going about on his mended leg. But
+there would always be a limp in his gait, and always his right hind-foot
+would leave a peculiar mark in the trail.
+
+These two weeks of helplessness were an education in Peter's life and
+were destined to leave their mark upon him always. He learned to know
+Jolly Roger, not alone from seeing events, but through an intuitive
+instinct that grew swiftly somewhere in his shrewd head. This instinct,
+given widest scope in these weeks of helplessness, developed faster than
+any other in him, until in the end, he could judge Jolly Roger's humor
+by the sound of his approaching footsteps. Never was there a waking hour
+in which he was not fighting to comprehend the mystery of the change
+that had come over his life. He knew that Nada was gone, and each day
+that passed put her farther away from him, yet he also sensed the fact
+that Jolly Roger went to her, and when the outlaw returned to the cabin
+Peter was filled with a yearning hope that Nada was returning with him.
+
+But gradually Peter came to think less about Nada, and more about Jolly
+Roger, until at last his heart beat with a love for this man which was
+greater than all other things in his world. And in these days Jolly
+Roger found in Peter's comradeship and growing understanding a
+comforting outlet for the things which at times consumed him. Peter saw
+it all--hours when Jolly Roger's voice and laughter filled the cabin
+with cheer and happiness, and others when his face was set in grim
+lines, with that hard, far-away look in his eyes that Peter could never
+quite make out. It was at such times, when Jolly Roger held a choking
+grip on the love in his heart, that he told Peter things which he had
+never revealed to a human soul.
+
+In the dusk of one evening, as he sat wet with the fording of the creek,
+he said to Peter,
+
+"We ought to go, Peter. We ought to pack up--and go tonight.
+Because--sometimes I'm afraid of myself, Pied-Bot. I'd kill for her. I'd
+die for her. I'd give up the whole world, and live in a prison cell--if
+I could have her with me. And that's dangerous, Peter, because we can't
+have her. It's impossible, boy. She doesn't guess why I'm here. She
+doesn't know I've been outlawin' it for years, and that I'm hiding here
+because the Police would never think of looking for Jolly Roger McKay
+this close to civilization. If I told her, she would think I was
+worse than Jed Hawkins, and she wouldn't believe me if I told her I've
+outlawed with my wits instead of a gun, and that I've never criminally
+hurt a person in my life. No, she wouldn't believe that, Peter. And
+she--she cares for me, Pied-Bot. That's the hell of it! And she's got
+faith in me, and would go with me to the Missioner's tomorrow. I know
+it. I can see it, feel it, and I--"
+
+His fingers tightened in the loose hide of Peter's neck.
+
+"Peter," he whispered in the thickening darkness. "I believe there's a
+God, but He's a different sort of God than most people believe in. He
+lives in the trees out there, in the flowers, in the birds, the sky, in
+everything--and I hope that God will strike me dead if I do what isn't
+right with her, Peter! I do. I hope he strikes me dead!"
+
+And that night Peter knew that Jolly Roger tossed about restlessly in
+his bunk, and slept but little.
+
+But the next morning he was singing, and the warm sun flooding over
+the wilderness was not more cheerful than his voice as he cooked their
+breakfast. That, to Peter, was the most puzzling thing about this man.
+With gloom and oppression fastened upon him he would rise up suddenly,
+and start whistling or singing, and once he said to Peter,
+
+"I take my cue from the sun, Peter Clubfoot. It's always shining, no
+matter if the clouds are so thick underneath that we can't see it. A
+laugh never hurts a man, unless he's got a frozen lung."
+
+Jolly Roger did not cross the ford that day.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+It was in the third week after his hurt that Peter saw Nada. By that
+time he could easily follow Jolly Roger as far as the fording-place, and
+there he would wait, sometimes hours at a stretch, while his comrade and
+master went over to Cragg's Ridge. But frequently Jolly Roger would not
+cross, but remained with Peter, and would lie on his back at the edge of
+a grassy knoll they had found, reading one of the little old-fashioned
+red books which Peter knew were very precious to him. Often he wondered
+what was between the faded red covers that was so interesting, and if he
+could have read he would have seen such titles as "Margaret of Anjou,"
+"History of Napoleon," "History of Peter the Great," "Caesar," "Columbus
+the Discoverer," and so on through the twenty volumes which Jolly Roger
+had taken from a wilderness mail two years before, and which he now
+prized next to his life.
+
+This afternoon, as they lay in the sleepy quiet of June, Jolly Roger
+answered the questioning inquisitiveness in Peter's face and eyes.
+
+"You see, Pied-Bot, it was this way," he said, beginning a little
+apologetically. "I was dying for something to read, and I figgered
+there'd be something on the Mail--newspapers, you know. So I stopped
+it, and tied up the driver, and found these. And I swear I didn't take
+anything else--that time. There's twenty of them, and they weigh nine
+pounds, and in the last two years I've toted them five thousand miles. I
+wouldn't trade them for my weight in gold, and I'm pretty heavy. I
+named you after one of them--Peter. I pretty near called you Christopher
+Columbus. And some day we've got to take these books to the man they
+were going to, Peter. I've promised myself that. It seems sort of like
+stealing the soul out of someone. I just borrowed them, that's all. And
+I've kept the address of the owner, away up on the edge of the Barrens.
+Some day we're going to make a special trip to take the books home."
+
+Peter, all at once, had become interested in something else, and
+following the direction of his pointed nose Jolly Roger saw Nada
+standing quietly on the opposite side of the stream, looking at them. In
+a moment Peter knew her, and he was trembling in every muscle when
+Jolly Roger caught him up under his arm, and with a happy laugh plunged
+through the creek with him. For a good five minutes after that Jolly
+Roger stood aside watching Peter and Nada, and there was a glisten
+of dampness in his eyes when he saw the wet on Nada's cheeks, and the
+whimpering joy of Peter as he caressed her face and hands. Three weeks
+had been a long time to Peter, but he could see no difference in the
+little mistress he worshipped. There were still the radiant curls to
+hide his nose in, the gentle hands, the sweet voice, the warm thrill of
+her body as she hugged him in her arms. He did not know that she had new
+shoes and a new dress, and that some of the color had gone from her red
+lips, and that her cheeks were paler, and that she could no longer hide
+the old haunted look in her eyes.
+
+But Jolly Roger saw the look, and the growing pallor, and had noted
+them for two weeks past. And later that afternoon, when Nada returned to
+Cragg's Ridge, and he re-crossed the stream with Peter, there was a hard
+and terrible look in his eyes which Peter had caught there more and more
+frequently of late. And that evening, in the twilight of their cabin,
+Jolly Roger said,
+
+"It's coming soon, Peter. I'm expecting it. Something is happening which
+she won't tell us about. She is afraid for me. I know it. But I'm going
+to find out--soon. And then, Pied-Bot, I think we'll probably kill Jed
+Hawkins, and hit for the North."
+
+The gloom of foreboding that was in Jolly Roger's voice and words seemed
+to settle over the cabin for many days after that, and more than ever
+Peter sensed the thrill and warning of that mysterious something
+which was impending. He was developing swiftly, in flesh and bone and
+instinct, and there began to possess him now the beginning of that
+subtle caution and shrewdness which were to mean so much to him later
+on. An instinct greater than reason, if it was not reason itself, told
+him that his master was constantly watching for something which did not
+come. And that same instinct, or reason, impinged upon him the fact that
+it was a thing to be guarded against. He did not go blindly into the
+mystery of things now. He circumvented them, and came up from behind.
+Craft and cunning replaced mere curiosity and puppyish egoism. He was
+quick to learn, and Jolly Roger's word became his law, so that only once
+or twice was he told a thing, and it became a part of his understanding.
+While the keen, shrewd brain of his Airedale father developed inside
+Peter's head, the flesh and blood development of his big, gentle,
+soft-footed Mackenzie hound mother kept pace in his body. His legs and
+feet began to lose their grotesqueness. Flesh began to cover the knots
+in his tail. His head, bristling fiercely with wiry whiskers, seemed to
+pause for a space to give his lanky body a chance to catch up with it.
+And in spite of his big feet, so clumsy that a few weeks ago they had
+stumbled over everything in his way, he could now travel without making
+a sound.
+
+So it came to pass, after a time, that when Peter heard footsteps
+approaching the cabin he made no effort to reveal himself until he knew
+it was Jolly Roger who was coming. And this was strangely in spite of
+the fact that in the five weeks since Nada had brought him from Cragg's
+Ridge no one but Jolly Roger and Nada had set foot within sight of the
+shack. It was an inborn caution, growing stronger in him each day. There
+came one early evening when Peter made a discovery. He had returned with
+Jolly Roger from a fishing trip farther down the creek, and scarcely had
+he set nose to the little clearing about the cabin when he caught the
+presence of a strange scent. He investigated it swiftly, and found it
+all about the cabin, and very strong close up against the cabin door.
+There were no doubts in Peter's mind. A man had been there, and this man
+had gone around and around the cabin, and had opened the door, and had
+even gone inside, for Peter found the scent of him on the floor. He
+tried, in a way, to tell Jolly Roger. He bristled, and whined, and
+looked searchingly into the darkening edge of the forest. Jolly Roger
+quested with him for a few moments, and when he failed to find marks in
+the ground he began cleaning a fish for supper, and said.
+
+"Probably a wolverine, Pied-Bot. The rascal came to see what he could
+find while we were away."
+
+But Peter was not satisfied. He was restless all that night. Sounds
+which had been familiar now held a new significance for him. The next
+day he was filled with a quiet but brooding expectancy. He resented
+the intrustion of the strange footprints. It was, in his process of
+instinctive reasoning, an encroachment upon the property rights of his
+master, and he was--true to the law of his species--the guardian of
+those rights.
+
+The fourth evening after the stranger's visit to the cabin Jolly Roger
+was later than usual in returning from Cragg's Ridge. Peter had been on
+a hunting adventure of his own, and came to the cabin at sunset. But he
+never came out of cover now without standing quietly for a few moments,
+getting the wind, and listening. And tonight, poking his head between
+some balsams twenty yards from the shack, he was treated to a sudden
+thrill. The cabin door was open. And standing close to this door,
+looking quietly and cautiously about, stood a stranger. He was not
+like Jed Hawkins, was Peter's first impression. He was tall, with a
+wide-brimmed hat, and wore boots with striped trousers tucked into them,
+and on his coat were bits of metal which caught the last gleams of the
+sun. Peter knew nothing of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police. But he
+sensed danger, and he remained very quiet, without moving a muscle of
+his head or body, while the stranger looked about, with a hand on his
+unbuttoned pistol holster. Not until he entered the cabin, and closed
+the door after him, did Peter move back into the deeper gloom of the
+forest. And then, silent as a fox, he skulked through cover to the
+foot-trail, and down the trail to the ford, across which Jolly Roger
+would come from Cragg's Ridge.
+
+There was still half an hour of daylight when Jolly Roger arrived. Peter
+did not, as usual, run to the edge of the bank to meet him. He remained
+sitting stolidly on his haunches, with his ears flattened, and in his
+whole attitude no sign of gladness at his master's coming. With every
+instinct of caution developed to the highest degree within him, Jolly
+Roger was lightning quick to observe the significance of small things.
+He spoke to Peter, caressed him with his hand, and moved on along the
+foot-trail toward the cabin. Peter fell in behind him moodily, and after
+a few moments stopped, and squatted on his haunches again. Jolly Roger
+was puzzled.
+
+"What is it, Peter?" he asked. "Are you afraid of that wolverine--"
+
+Peter whined softly; but even as he whined, his ears were flat, and his
+eyes filled with a red light as they glared down the trail beyond the
+outlaw. Jolly Roger turned and went on, until he disappeared around
+a twist in the path. There he stopped, and peered back. Peter was not
+following him, but still sat where he had left him. A quicker breath
+came to Jolly Roger's lips, and he went back to Peter. For fully a
+minute he stood beside him, watching and listening, and not once did the
+reddish glare in Peter's eyes leave the direction of the cabin. Jolly
+Roger's eyes had grown very bright, and suddenly he dropped on his knees
+beside Peter, and spoke softly, close up to his flattened ear.
+
+"You say it isn't a wolverine, Peter? Is that what you're trying to tell
+me?"
+
+Peter's teeth clicked, and he whimpered, never taking his eyes from
+ahead.
+
+There was a cold light in Jolly Roger's eyes as he rose to his feet, and
+he turned swiftly and quietly into the edge of the forest, and in the
+gloom that was gathering there his hand carried the big automatic. Peter
+followed him now, and Jolly Roger swung in a wide circle, so that they
+came up on that forest side of the cabin where there was no window. And
+here Jolly Roger knelt down beside Peter again, and whispered to him.
+
+"You stay here, Pied-Bot. Understand? You stay here."
+
+He pressed him down gently with his hand, so that Peter understood.
+Then, slinking low, and swift as a cat, Jolly Roger ran to the end of
+the cabin where there was no window. With his head close to the ground
+he peered out cautiously at the door. It was closed. Then he looked at
+the windows. To the west the curtains were up, as he had left them. And
+to the east--
+
+A whimsical smile played at the corners of his mouth. Those curtains
+he had kept tightly drawn. One of them was down now. But the other was
+raised two inches, so that one hidden within the cabin could watch the
+approach from the trail!
+
+He drew back, and under his breath he chuckled. He recognized the sheer
+nerve of the thing, the clever handiwork of it. Someone was inside the
+cabin, and he was ready to stake his life it was Cassidy, the Irish
+bloodhound of "M" Division. If anyone ferreted him out way down here on
+the edge of civilization he had gambled with himself that it would be
+Cassidy. And Cassidy had come--Cassidy, who had hung like a wolf to his
+trails for three years, who had chased him across the Barren Lands, who
+had followed him up the Mackenzie, and back again--who had fought with
+him, and starved with him, and froze with him, yet had never brought him
+to prison. Deep down in his heart Jolly Roger loved Cassidy. They had
+played, and were still playing, a thrilling game, and to win that game
+had become the life's ambition of each. And now Cassidy was in there,
+confident that at last he had his man, and waiting for him to step into
+the trap.
+
+To Jolly Roger, in the face of its possible tragedy, there was a
+deep-seated humor in the situation. Three times in the last year and a
+half had he turned the tables on Cassidy, leaving him floundering in the
+cleverly woven webs which the man-hunter had placed for his victim. This
+was the fourth time. And Cassidy would be tremendously upset!
+
+Praying that Peter would remain quiet, Jolly Roger took off his shoes.
+After that he made no more sound than a ferret as he crept to the door.
+An inch at a time he raised himself, until he was standing up, with
+his ear half an inch from the crack that ran lengthwise of the frame.
+Holding his breath, he listened. For an interminable time, it seemed
+to him, there was no sound from within. He guessed what Cassidy was
+doing--peering through that slit of window under the curtain. But he was
+not absolutely sure. And he knew the necessity of making no error, with
+Cassidy in there, gripping the butt of his gun.
+
+Suddenly he heard a movement. A man's steps, subdued and yet distinct,
+were moving from the window toward the door. Half way they paused, and
+turned to one of the windows looking westward. But it was evident the
+watcher was not expecting his game from that direction, for after a
+moment's silence he returned to the window through which he could see
+the trail. This time Jolly Roger was sure. Cassidy was again peering
+through the window, with his back toward him, and every muscle in the
+forest rover's body gathered for instant action. In another moment he
+had flung open the door, and the watcher at the window whirled about to
+find himself looking straight into the muzzle of Jolly Roger's gun.
+
+For several minutes after that last swift movement of Jolly Roger's,
+Peter lay where his master had left him, his eyes fairly popping from
+his head in his eagerness to see what was happening. He heard voices,
+and then the wild thrill of Jolly Roger's laughter, and restraining
+himself no longer he trotted cautiously to the open door of the cabin.
+In a chair sat the stranger with the broad-brimmed hat and high boots,
+with his hands securely tied behind him. And Jolly Roger was hustling
+about, filling a shoulder-pack in the last light of the day.
+
+"Cassidy, I oughta kill you," Jolly Roger was saying as he worked, an
+exultant chuckle in his voice. "You don't give me any peace. No matter
+where I go you're sure to come, and I can't remember that I ever invited
+you. I oughta put you out of the way, and plant flowers over you, now
+that I've got the chance. But I'm too chicken-hearted. Besides, I like
+you. By the time you get tired of chasing me you should be a pretty good
+man-hunter. But just now you lack finesse, Cassidy--you lack finesse."
+And Jolly Roger's chuckle broke into another laugh.
+
+Cassidy heaved out a grunt.
+
+"It's luck--just damned luck!" he growled.
+
+"If it is, I hope it keeps up," said Jolly Roger. "Now, look here,
+Cassidy! Let's make a man's bet of it. If you don't get me next time--if
+you fail, and I turn the trick on you once more--will you quit?"
+
+Cassidy's eyes gleamed in the thickening dusk.
+
+"If I don't get you next time--I'll hand in my resignation!"
+
+The laughter went out of Jolly Roger's voice.
+
+"I believe you, Cassidy. You've played square--always. And now--if I
+free your hands--will you swear to give me a two hours' start before you
+leave this cabin?"
+
+"I'll give you the start," said Cassidy.
+
+His lean face was growing indistinct in the gloom.
+
+Jolly Roger came up behind him. There was the slash of a knife. Then he
+picked up his shoulder-pack. At the door he paused.
+
+"Look at your watch when I'm gone, Cassidy, and be sure you make it a
+full two hours."
+
+"I'll make it two hours and five minutes," said Cassidy. "Hittin' north
+are you, Jolly Roger?"
+
+"I'm hittin'--bushward," replied the outlaw. "I'm going where it's
+plenty thick and hard to travel, Cassidy. Goodby--"
+
+He was gone. He hit straight north, making noise as he went, but once in
+the timber he swung southward, and plunged through the creek with Peter
+under his arm. Not until they had traveled a good half mile over the
+plain did Jolly Roger speak. Then he said, speaking directly at Peter,
+
+"Cassidy thinks I'll sure hit for the North country again, Pied-Bot.
+But we're foolin' him. I've sort of planned on something like this
+happening, and right now we're hittin' for the tail-end of Cragg's Ridge
+where there's a mess of rock that the devil himself can hardly get into.
+We've got to do it, boy. We can't leave the girl--just now. We can't
+leave--her--"
+
+Jolly Roger's voice choked. Then he paused for a moment, and bent over
+to put his hand on Peter.
+
+"If it hadn't been for you, Peter--Cassidy would have got me--sure. And
+I'm wondering, Peter--I'm wondering--why did God forget to give a dog
+speech?"
+
+Peter whined in answer, and through the darkness of the night they went
+on together.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+A frosty mist dulled the light of the stars, but this cleared away as
+Jolly Roger and Peter crossed the plain between the creek and Cragg's
+Ridge.
+
+They did not hurry, for McKay had faith in Cassidy's word. He knew the
+red-headed man-hunter would not break his promise--he would wait the
+full two hours in Indian Tom's cabin, and another five minutes
+after that. In Jolly Roger, as the minutes passed, exultation at
+his achievement died away, and there filled him again the old
+loneliness--the loneliness which called out against the fate which had
+made of Cassidy an enemy instead of a friend. And yet--what an enemy!
+
+He reached down, and touched Peter's bushy head with his hand.
+
+"Why didn't the Law give another man the assignment to run us down," he
+protested. "Someone we could have hated, and who would have hated us!
+Why did they send Cassidy--the fairest and squarest man that ever wore
+red? We can't do him a dirty turn--we can't hurt him, Pied-Bot, even at
+the worst. And if ever he takes us in to Headquarters, and looks at us
+through the bars, I feel it's going to be like a knife in his heart. But
+he'll do it, Peter, if he can. It's his job. And he's honest. We've got
+to say that of Cassidy."
+
+The Ridge loomed up at the edge of the level plain, and for a few
+moments Jolly Roger paused, while he looked off through the eastward
+gloom. A mile in that direction, beyond the cleft that ran like a great
+furrow through the Ridge, was Jed Hawkins' cabin, still and dark under
+the faint glow of the stars. And in that cabin was Nada. He felt that
+she was sitting at her little window, looking out into the night,
+thinking of him--and a great desire gripped at his heart, tugging him in
+its direction. But he turned toward the west.
+
+"We can't let her know what has happened, boy," he said, feeling the
+urge of caution. "For a little while we must let her think we have left
+the country. If Cassidy sees her, and talks with her, something in those
+blue-flower eyes of hers might give us away if she knew we were hiding
+up among the rocks of the Stew-Kettle. But I'm hopin' God A'mighty won't
+let her see Cassidy. And I'm thinking He won't, Pied-Bot, because I've a
+pretty good hunch He wants us to settle with Jed Hawkins before we go."
+
+It was a habit of his years of aloneness, this talking to a creature
+that could make no answer. But even in the darkness he sensed the
+understanding of Peter.
+
+Rocks grew thicker and heavier under their feet, and they went more
+slowly, and occasionally stumbled in the gloom. But, after a fashion,
+they knew their way even in darkness. More than once Peter had wondered
+why his master had so carefully explored this useless mass of upheaved
+rock at the end of Cragg's Ridge. They had never seen an animal or a
+blade of grass in all its gray, sun-blasted sterility. It was like a
+hostile thing, overhung with a half-dead, slow-beating something that
+was like the dying pulse of an evil thing. And now darkness added to
+its mystery and its unfriendliness as Peter nosed close at his master's
+heels. Up and up they picked their way, over and between ragged
+upheavals of rock, twisting into this broken path and that, feeling
+their way, partly sensing it, and always ascending toward the stars.
+Roger McKay did not speak again to Peter. Each time he came out where
+the sky was clear he looked toward the solitary dark pinnacle, far up
+and ahead, strangely resembling a giant tombstone in the star-glow, that
+was their guide. And after many minutes of strange climbing, in which
+it seemed to Jolly Roger the nail-heads in the soles of his boots made
+weirdly loud noises on the rocks, they came near to the top.
+
+There they stopped, and in a deeply shadowed place where there was a
+carpet of soft sand, with walls of rock close on either side, Jolly
+Roger spread out his blankets. Then he went out from the black shadow,
+so that a million stars seemed not far away over their heads. Here he
+sat down, and began to smoke, thinking of what tomorrow would hold for
+him, and of the many days destined to follow that tomorrow. Nowhere in
+the world was there to be--for him--the peace of an absolute certainty.
+Not until he felt the cold steel of iron bars with his two hands, and
+the fatal game had been played to the end.
+
+There was no corrosive bitterness of the vengeful in Jolly Roger's
+heart. For that reason even his enemies, the Police, had fallen into the
+habit of using the nickname which the wilderness people had given him.
+He did not hate these police. Curiously, he loved them. Their type
+was to him the living flesh and blood of the finest manhood since the
+Crusaders. And he did not hate the law. At times the Law, as personified
+in all of its unswerving majesty, amused him. It was so terribly serious
+over such trivial things--like himself, for instance. It could not
+seem to sleep or rest until a man was hanged, or snugly put behind hard
+steel, no matter how well that man loved his human-kind--and the
+world. And Jolly Roger loved both. In his heart he believed he had not
+committed a crime by achieving justice where otherwise there would have
+been no justice. Yet outwardly he cursed himself for a lawbreaker. And
+he loved life. He loved the stars silently glowing down at him tonight.
+He loved even the gray, lifeless rock, which recalled to his imaginative
+genius the terrific and interesting life that had once existed--he loved
+the ghostly majesty of the grave-like pinnacle that rose above him, and
+beyond that he loved all the world.
+
+But most of all, more than his own life or all that a thousand lives
+might hold for him, he loved the violet-eyed girl who had come into his
+life from the desolation and unhappiness of Jed Hawkins' cabin.
+
+Forgetting the law, forgetting all but her, he went at last into the
+dungeon-like gloom between the rocks, and after Peter had wallowed
+himself a bed in the carpet of sand they fell asleep.
+
+They awoke with the dawn. But for three days thereafter they went forth
+only at night, and for three days did not show themselves above the
+barricade of rocks. The Stew-Kettle was what Jolly Roger had called it,
+and when the sun was straight above, or descending with the last half of
+the day, the name fitted.
+
+It was a hot place, so hot that at a distance its piled-up masses of
+white rock seemed to simmer and broil in the blazing heat of the July
+sun. Neither man nor beast would look into the heart of it, Jolly Roger
+had assured Peter, unless the one was half-witted and the other a fool.
+Looking at it from the meadowy green plain that lay between the Ridge
+and the forest their temporary retreat was anything but a temptation to
+the eye. Something had happened there a few thousand centuries before,
+and in a moment of evident spleen and vexation the earth had vomited up
+that pile of rock debris, and Jolly Roger good humoredly told himself
+and Peter that it was an act of Providence especially intended for them,
+though planned and erupted some years before they were born.
+
+The third afternoon of their hiding, Jolly Roger decided upon action.
+
+This afternoon all of the caloric guns of an unclouded sun had seemed
+to concentrate themselves on the gigantic rock-pile. Though it was now
+almost sunset, a swirling and dizzying incandescence still hovered about
+it. The huge masses of stone were like baked things to the touch of hand
+and foot, and one breathed a smoldering air in between their gray and
+white walls.
+
+Thus forbidding looked the Stew-Kettle, when viewed from the plain. But
+from the top-most crag of the mass, which rose a hundred feet high at
+the end of the Ridge, one might find his reward for a blistering climb.
+On all sides, a paradise of green and yellow and gold, stretched the
+vast wilderness, studded with shimmering lakes that gleamed here and
+there from out of their rich dark frames of spruce and cedar and balsam.
+And half way between the edge of the plain and this highest pinnacle of
+rock, utterly hidden from the eyes of both man and beast, nestled the
+hiding place which Jolly Roger and Peter had found.
+
+It was a cool and cavernous spot, in spite of the Sahara-like heat of
+the great pile. In the very heart of it two gigantic masses of rock had
+put their shoulders together, like Gog and Magog, so that under their
+ten thousand tons of weight was a crypt-like tunnel as high as a man's
+head, into which the light and the glare of the sun never came.
+
+Peter, now that he had grown accustomed to the deadness of it, liked
+this change from Indian Tom's cabin. He liked his wallow of soft sand
+during the day, and he liked still more the aloneness and the aloofness
+of their ramparted stronghold when the cool of evening came. He did not,
+of course, understand just what their escape from Cassidy had meant, but
+instinct was shrewdly at work within him, and no wolf could have guarded
+the place more carefully than he. And he had all creation in mind when
+he guarded the rock-pile.
+
+All but Nada. Many times he whimpered for her, just as the great call
+for her was in Jolly Roger's own heart. And on this third afternoon, as
+the hot July sun dipped half way to the western forests, both Peter and
+his master were looking yearningly, and with the same thought, toward
+the east, where over the back-bone of Cragg's Ridge Jed Hawkins' cabin
+lay.
+
+"We'll let her know tonight," Roger McKay said at last, with something
+very slow and deliberate in his voice. "We'll take the chance--and let
+her know."
+
+Peter's bristling Airedale whiskers, standing out like a bunch of broom
+splints about his face, quivered sympathetically, and he thumped his
+tail in the sand. He was an artful hypocrite, was Peter, because he
+always looked as if he understood, whether he did or not. And Jolly
+Roger, staring at the gray rock-backs outside their tunnel door, went
+on.
+
+"We must play square with her, Pied-Bot, and it's a crime worse than
+murder not to let her know the truth. If she wasn't a kid, Peter! But
+she's that--just a kid--the sweetest, purest thing God A'mighty ever
+made, and it isn't fair to live this lie any longer, no matter how we
+love her. And we do love her, Peter."
+
+Peter lay very quiet, watching the strange gray look that had settled in
+Jolly Roger's face.
+
+"I've got to tell her that I'm a damned highwayman," he added, in a
+moment. "And she won't understand, Peter. She can't. But I'm going to
+do it. I'm going to tell her--today. And then--I think we'll be hittin'
+north pretty soon, Pied-Bot. If it wasn't for Jed Hawkins--" He rose up
+out of the sand, his hands clenched.
+
+"We ought to kill Jed Hawkins before we go. It would be safer for her,"
+he finished.
+
+He went out, forgetting Peter, and climbed a rock-splintered path until
+he stood on the knob of a mighty boulder, looking off into the northern
+wilderness. Off there, a hundred, five hundred, a thousand miles--was
+home. It was ALL his home, from Hudson's Bay to the Rockies, from the
+Height of Land to the Arctic plains, and in it he had lived the thrill
+of life according to his own peculiar code. He knew that he had loved
+life as few had ever loved it. He had worshipped the sun and the moon
+and the stars. The world had been a glorious place in which to live, in
+spite of its ceaseless peril for him.
+
+But there was nothing of cheer left in his heart now as he stood in the
+blaze of the setting sun. Paradise had come to him for a little while,
+and because of it he had lived a lie. He had not told Jed Hawkins'
+foster-girl that he was an outlaw, and that he had come to the edge of
+civilization because he thought it was the last place the Royal Mounted
+would look for him. When he went to her this evening it would probably
+be for the last time. He would tell her the truth. He would tell her
+the police were after him from one end of the Canadian northland to the
+other. And that same night, with Peter, he would hit the trail for
+the Barren Lands, a thousand miles away. He was sure of himself
+now--sure--even as the dark wall of the forest across the plain faded
+out, and gave place to a pale, girlish face with eyes blue as flowers,
+and brown curls filled with the lustre of the sun--a face that had taken
+the place of mother, sister and God deep down in his soul. Yes, he was
+sure of himself--even with that face rising lo give battle to his last
+great test of honor. He was an outlaw, and the police wanted him, but--
+
+Peter was troubled by the grimness that settled in his master's face.
+They waited for dusk, and when deep shadows had gathered in the valley
+McKay led the way out of the rock-pile.
+
+An hour later they came cautiously through the darkness that lay between
+the broken shoulders of Cragg's Ridge. There was a light in the cabin,
+but Nada's window was dark. Peter crouched down under the warning
+pressure of McKay's hand.
+
+"I'll go on alone," he said. "You stay here."
+
+It seemed a long time that he waited in the darkness. He could not
+hear the low tap, tap, tap of his master's fingers against the glass
+of Nada's darkened window. And Jolly Roger, in response to that
+signal-tapping, heard nothing from within, except a monotone of voice
+that came from the outer room. For half an hour he waited, repeating the
+signals at intervals. At last a door opened, and Nada stood silhouetted
+against the light of the room beyond.
+
+McKay tapped again, very lightly, and the door closed quickly behind the
+girl. In a moment she was at the window, which was raised a little from
+the bottom.
+
+"Mister--Roger--" she whispered. "Is it--YOU?"
+
+"Yes," he said, finding a little hand in the darkness. "It's me."
+
+The hand was cold, and its fingers clung tightly to his, as if the girl
+was frightened. Peter, restless with waiting, had come up quietly in
+the dark, and he heard the low, trembling whisper of Nada's voice at
+the window. There was something in the note of it, and in the caution
+of Jolly Roger's reply, that held him stiff and attentive, his ears
+wide-open for approaching sound. For several minutes he stood thus, and
+then the whispering voices at the window ceased and he heard his master
+retreating very quietly through the night. When Jolly Roger spoke to
+him, back under the broken shoulder of the ridge, he did not know that
+Peter had stood near the window.
+
+McKay stood looking back at the pale glow of light in the cabin.
+
+"Something happened there tonight--something she wouldn't tell me
+about," he said, speaking half to Peter and half to himself. "I could
+FEEL it. I wish I could have seen her face."
+
+He set out over the plain; and then, as if remembering that he must
+explain the matter to Peter, he said:
+
+"She can't get out tonight, Pied-Bot, but she'll come to us in the
+jackpines tomorrow afternoon. We'll have to wait."
+
+He tried to say the thing cheerfully, but between this night and
+tomorrow afternoon seemed an interminable time, now that he was
+determined to make a clean breast of his affairs to Nada, and leave the
+country. Most of that night he walked in the coolness of the moonlit
+plain, and for a long time he sat amid the flower-scented shadows of
+the trysting-place in the heart of the jackpine clump, where Nada had
+a hidden place all her own. It was here that Peter discovered something
+which Jolly Roger could not see in the deep shadows, a bundle warm and
+soft and sweet with the presence of Nada herself. It was hidden under a
+clump of young banksians, very carefully hidden, and tucked about with
+grass and evergreen boughs. When McKay left the jackpines he wondered
+why it was that Peter showed no inclination to follow him until he was
+urged.
+
+They did not return to the Stew-Kettle until dawn, and most of that
+day Jolly Roger spent in sleep between the two big rocks. It was late
+afternoon when they made their last meal. In this farewell hour McKay
+climbed up close to the pinnacle, where he smoked his pipe and measured
+the shadows of the declining sun until it was time to leave for the
+jackpines.
+
+Retracing his steps to the hiding place under Gog and Magog he looked
+for Peter. But Peter's sand-wallow was empty, and Peter was gone.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+Peter was on his way to the mystery of the bundle he had found in the
+jackpines.
+
+At the foot of the ridge, where the green plain fought with the
+blighting edge of the Stew-Kettle, he stood for many minutes before he
+started east-ward. With keen eyes gleaming behind his mop of scraggly
+face-bristles he critically surveyed both land and air, and then, with
+the slight limp in his gait which would always remain as a mark of Jed
+Hawkins' brutality, he trotted deliberately in the direction of the
+whiskey-runner's cabin home.
+
+A bitter memory of Jed Hawkins flattened his ears when he came near the
+rock-cluttered coulee in which he had fought for Nada, and had suffered
+his broken bones, and today--even as he obeyed the instinctive caution
+to stop and listen--Jed Hawkins himself came out of the mouth of the
+coulee, bearing a brown jug in one hand and a thick cudgel in the other.
+His one wicked eye gleamed in the waning sun. His lean and scraggly face
+was alight with a sinister exultation as he paused for a moment close to
+the rock behind which Peter was hidden, and Peter's fangs lay bare and
+his body trembled while the man stood there. Then he moved on, and Peter
+did not stir, but waited until the jug and the cudgel and the man were
+out of sight.
+
+Low under his breath he was snarling when he went on. Hatred, for a
+moment, had flamed hot in his soul. Then he turned, and buried himself
+in a clump of balsams that reached out into the plain, and a few moments
+later came to the edge of a tiny meadow in the heart of them, where a
+warbler was bursting its throat in evening-song.
+
+Around the edge of the meadow Peter circled, his feet deep in buttercups
+and red fire-flowers, and crushing softly ripe strawberries that grew
+in scarlet profusion in the open, until he came to a screen of young
+jackpines, and through these he quietly and apologetically nosed his
+way. Then he stood wagging his tail, with Nada sitting on the grass
+half a dozen steps from him, wiping the strawberry stain from her
+finger-tips. And the stain was on her red lips, and a bit of it against
+the flush of her cheek, as she gave a little cry of gladness and
+greeting to Peter. Her eyes flashed beyond him, and every drop of
+blood in her slim, beautiful little body seemed to be throbbing with an
+excitement new to Peter as she looked for Jolly Roger.
+
+Peter went to her, and dropped down, with his head in her lap, and
+looking up through his bushy eye-brows he saw a livid bruise just under
+the ripples of her brown hair, where there had been no mark yesterday,
+or the day before. Nada's hands drew him closer, until he was half in
+her lap, and she bent her face down to him, so that her thick, shining
+hair fell all about him. Peter loved her hair, almost as much as Jolly
+Roger loved it, and he closed his eyes and drew a deep breath of content
+as the smothering sweetness of it shut out the sunlight from him.
+
+"Peter," she whispered, "I'm almost scared to have him come today. I've
+promised him. You remember--I promised to tell him if Jed Hawkins struck
+me again. And he has! He made that mark, and if Jolly Roger knows it
+he'll kill him. I've got to lie--lie--"
+
+Peter wriggled, to show his interest, and his hard tail thumped the
+ground. For a space Nada said nothing more, and he could hear and feel
+the beating of her heart close down against him. Then she raised her
+head, and looked in the direction from which she would first hear Jolly
+Roger as he came through the young jackpines. Peter, with his eyes half
+closed in a vast contentment, did not see or sense the change in her
+today--that her blue eyes were brighter, her cheeks flushed, and in her
+body a strange and subdued throbbing that had never been there before.
+Not even to Peter did she whisper her secret, but waited and listened
+for Jolly Roger, and when at last she heard him and he came through
+the screen of jackpines, the color in her cheeks was like the stain of
+strawberries crimsoning her finger-tips. In an instant, looking down
+upon her, Jolly Roger saw what Peter had not discovered, and he stopped
+in his tracks, his heart thumping like a hammer inside him. Never, even
+in his dreams, had the girl looked lovelier than she did now, and never
+had her eyes met his eyes as they met them today, and never had her red
+lips said as much to him, without uttering a word. In the same instant
+he saw the livid bruise, half hidden under her hair--and then he saw a
+big bundle behind her, partly screened by a dwarfed banksian. After that
+his eyes went back to the bruise.
+
+"Jed Hawkins didn't do it," said Nada, knowing what was in his mind. "It
+was Jed's woman. And you can't kill her!" she added a little defiantly.
+
+Jolly Roger caught the choking throb in her throat, and he knew she was
+lying. But Nada thrust Peter from her lap, and stood up, and she seemed
+taller and more like a woman than ever before in her life as she faced
+Jolly Roger there in the tiny open, with violets and buttercups and red
+strawberries in the soft grass under their feet. And behind them, and
+very near, a rival to the warbler in the meadow began singing. But Nada
+did not hear. The color had rushed hot into her cheeks at first, but now
+it was fading out as swiftly, and her hands trembled, clasped in front
+of her. But the blue in her eyes was as steady as the blue in the sky as
+she looked at Jolly Roger.
+
+"I'm not going back to Jed Hawkins' any more, Mister Roger," she said.
+
+A soft breath of wind lifted the tress of hair from her forehead,
+revealing more clearly the mark of Jed Hawkins' brutality, and Nada saw
+gathering in Jolly Roger's eyes that cold, steely glitter which always
+frightened her when it came. His hands clenched, and when she reached
+out and touched his arm the flesh of it was as hard as white birch. Even
+in her fear there was glory in the thought that at a word from her he
+would kill the man who had struck her. Her fingers crept up his arm,
+timidly, and the blue in her eyes darkened, and there was a pleading
+tremble in the curve of her lips as she looked straight at him.
+
+"I'm not going back," she repeated.
+
+Jolly Roger, looking beyond her, saw the significance of the bundle.
+His eyes met her steady gaze again, and his heart seemed to swell in his
+chest, and choke him. He tried to let his tense muscles relax. He tried
+to smile. He struggled to bring up the courage which would make possible
+the confession he had to make. And Peter, sitting on his haunches in a
+patch of violets, watched them both, wondering what was going to happen
+between these two.
+
+"Where are you going?" Jolly Roger asked.
+
+Nada's fingers had crept almost to his shoulder. They were twisting at
+his flannel shirt nervously, but not for the tenth part of a second did
+she drop her eyes, and that strange, wonderful something which he saw
+looking at him so clearly out of her soul brought the truth to Jolly
+Roger, before she had spoken.
+
+"I'm goin' with you and Peter."
+
+The low cry that came from Jolly Roger was almost a sob as he stepped
+back from her. He looked away from her--at Peter. But her pale face, her
+parted red lips, her wide-open, wonderful eyes, her radiant hair stirred
+by the wind--came between them. She was no longer the little girl--"past
+seventeen, goin' on eighteen." To Jolly Roger she was all that the world
+held of glorious womanhood.
+
+"But--you can't!" he cried desperately. "I've come to tell you things,
+Nada. I'm not fit. I'm not what you think I am. I've been livin' a
+lie--"
+
+He hesitated, and then lashed himself on to the truth.
+
+"You'll hate me when I tell you, Nada. You think Jed Hawkins is bad.
+But the law thinks I'm worse. The police want me. They've wanted me
+for years. That's why I came down here, and hid over in Indian Tom's
+cabin--near where I first met you. I thought they wouldn't find me away
+down here, but they did. That's why Peter and I moved over to the big
+rock-pile at the end of the Ridge. I'm--an outlaw. I've done a lot of
+bad things--in the eyes of the law, and I'll probably die with a bullet
+in me, or in jail. I'm sorry, but that don't help. I'd give my life
+to be able to tell you what's in my heart. But I can't. It wouldn't be
+square."
+
+He wondered why no change came into the steady blue of her eyes as he
+went on with the truth. The pallor was gone from her cheeks. Her lips
+seemed redder, and what he was saying did not seem to startle her, or
+frighten her.
+
+"Don't you understand, Nada?" he cried. "I'm bad. The police want me.
+I'm a fugitive--always running away, always hiding--an outlaw--"
+
+She nodded.
+
+"I know it, Mister Roger," she said quietly. "I heard you tell Peter
+that a long time ago. And Mister Cassidy was at our place the day after
+you and Peter ran away from Indian Tom's cabin, and I showed him the
+way to Father John's, and he told me a lot about you, and he told Father
+John a lot more, and it made me awful proud of you, Mister Roger--and I
+want to go with you and Peter!"
+
+"Proud!" gasped Jolly Roger. "Proud, of ME--"
+
+She nodded again.
+
+"Mister Cassidy--the policeman--he used just the word you used a minute
+ago. He said you was square, even when you robbed other people. He said
+he had to get you in jail if he could, but he hoped he never would. He
+said he'd like to have a man like you for a brother. And Peter loves
+you. And I--"
+
+The color came into her white face.
+
+"I'm goin' with you and Peter," she finished.
+
+Something came to relieve the tenseness of the moment for Jolly Roger.
+Peter, nosing in a thick patch of bunch-grass, put out a huge snowshoe
+rabbit, and the two crashed in a startling avalanche through the young
+jackpines, Peter's still puppyish voice yelling in a high staccato as he
+pursued. Jolly Roger turned from Nada, and stared where they had gone.
+But he was seeing nothing. He knew the hour of his mightiest fight had
+come. In the reckless years of his adventuring he had more than once
+faced death. He had starved. He had frozen. He had run the deadliest
+gantlets of the elements, of beast, and of man. Yet was the strife in
+him now the greatest of all his life. His heart thumped. His brain was
+swirling in a vague and chaotic struggle for the mastery of things, and
+as he fought with himself--his unseeing eyes fixed on the spot where
+Peter and the snowshoe rabbit had disappeared--he heard Nada's voice
+behind him, saying again that she was going with him and Peter. In those
+seconds he felt himself giving way, and the determined action he
+had built up for himself began to crumble like sand. He had made his
+confession and in spite of it this young girl he worshipped--sweeter and
+purer than the flowers of the forest--was urging herself upon him! And
+his soul cried out for him to turn about, and open his arms to her, and
+gather her into them for as long as God saw fit to give him freedom and
+life.
+
+But still he fought against that mighty urge, dragging reason and right
+back fragment by fragment, while Nada stood behind him, her wide-open,
+childishly beautiful eyes beginning to comprehend the struggle that was
+disrupting the heart of this man who was an outlaw--and her god among
+men. And when Jolly Roger turned, his face had aged to the grayness of
+stone, and his eyes were dull, and there was a terribly dead note in his
+voice.
+
+"You can't go with us," he said. "You can't. It's wrong--all wrong. I
+couldn't take care of you in jail, and some day--that's where I'll be."
+
+More than once when she had spoken of Jed Hawkins he had seen the swift
+flash of lightning come into the violet of her eyes. And it came now,
+and her little hands grew tight at her sides, and bright spots burned in
+her cheeks.
+
+"You won't!" she cried. "I won't let you go to jail. I'll fight for
+you--if you'll let me go with you and Peter!"
+
+She came a step nearer.
+
+"And if I stay here Jed Hawkins is goin' to sell me to a tie-cutter
+over on the railroad. That's what it is--sellin' me. I ain't--I mean
+I haven't--told you before, because I was afraid of what you'd do.
+But it's goin' to happen, unless you let me go with you and Peter. Oh,
+Mister Roger--Mister Jolly Roger--"
+
+Her fingers crept up his arms. They reached his shoulders, and her blue
+eyes, and her red lips, and the woman's soul in her girl-body were so
+close to him he could feel their sweetness and thrill, and then he saw a
+slow-gathering mist, and tears--
+
+"I'll go wherever you go," she was whispering, "And we'll hide where
+they won't ever find us, and I'll be happy, so happy, Mister Roger--and
+if you won't take me I want to die. Oh--"
+
+She was crying, with her head on his breast, and her slim, half bare
+arms around his neck, and Jolly Roger listened like a miser to the
+choking words that came with her sobs. And where there had been tumult
+and indecision in his heart there came suddenly the clearness of
+sunshine and joy, and with it the happiness of a new and mighty
+possession as his arms closed about her, and he turned her face up,
+so that for the first time he kissed the soft red lips that for some
+inscrutable reason the God of all things had given into his keeping this
+day.
+
+And then, holding her close, with her arms still tighter about his neck,
+he cried softly,
+
+"I'm goin' to take you, little girl. You're goin' with Peter and me, for
+ever--and ever. And we'll go--tonight!"
+
+When Peter came back, just in the last sunset glow of the evening, he
+found his master alone in the bit of jackpine opening, and Nada was
+swiftly crossing the larger meadow that lay between them and the break
+in Cragg's Ridge, beyond which was Jed Hawkins' cabin. It was not the
+same Jolly Roger whom he had left half an hour before. It was not the
+man of the hiding-place in the rock-pile. Jolly Roger McKay, standing
+there in the last soft glow of the day, was no longer the fugitive and
+the outcast. He stood with silent lips, yet his soul was crying out its
+gratitude to all that God of Life which breathed its sweetness of summer
+evening about him. He was the First Possessor of the earth. In that
+hour, that moment, he would not have sold his place for all the
+happiness of all the remaining people in the world. He cried out
+aloud, and Peter, squatted at his feet with his red tongue lolling out,
+listened to him.
+
+"She is mine, mine, mine," he was saying, and he repeated that word over
+and over, until Peter quirked his ears, and wondered what it meant. And
+then, seeing Peter, Jolly Roger laughed softly, and bent over him, with
+a look of awe and wonderment mingling with the happiness in his face.
+
+"She's mine--ours," he cried boyishly. "God A'mighty took a hand,
+Pied-Bot, and she's going with us! We're going tonight, when the moon
+comes up. And Peter--Peter--we're going straight to the Missioner's, and
+he'll marry us, and then we'll hit for a place where no one in the world
+will ever find us. The law may want us, Pied-Bot, but God--this God all
+around--is good to us. And we'll try and pay Him back. We will, Peter!"
+
+He straightened himself, and faced the west. Then he picked up the
+bundle Nada had brought, and dived through the jackpines, with Peter at
+his heels. Swiftly they moved through the shadowing dusk of the plain,
+and came at last to the Stew-Kettle, and to their hiding-place under
+the shoulders of Gog and Magog. There was still a faint twilight in the
+tunnel, and in this twilight Jolly Roger McKay packed his possessions;
+and then, with fingers that trembled as if they were committing a
+sacrilege, he drew Nada's few treasures from her bundle and placed them
+tenderly with his own. And all the time Peter heard him saying things
+under his breath, so softly that it was like the whispered drone of
+song.
+
+In darkness they went down through the rocks to the plain, and half an
+hour later they came to the break in the Ridge, and went through it,
+and stopped in the black shadow of a great rock, with Jed Hawkins' cabin
+half a rifle-shot away. Here Nada was to come to them with the first
+rising of the moon.
+
+It was very still all about, and Peter sensed a significance in the
+silence, and lay very quietly watching the light in the cabin, and the
+shadowy form of his master. Also he knew that somewhere in the distance
+a storm was gathering. The breath of it was in the air, though the sky
+was clear of cloud overhead, except for the haze of a gray and ghostly
+mist that lay between them and the yellow stars. Jolly Roger counted the
+seconds between then and moonrise. It seemed hours before the golden
+rim of it rose in the east. Shadows grew swiftly after that. Grotesque
+things took shape. The rock-caps of the ridge began to light up, like
+timid signal-fires. Black spruce and balsam and cedar glistened as
+if bathed in enamel. And the moon came on, and mellow floods of light
+played in the valleys and plains, and danced over the forest-tops, and
+in voice-less and soundless miracle called upon all living things to
+look upon the glory of God. In his soul Jolly Roger McKay felt the urge
+and the call of that voiceless Master Power, and through his lips came
+an unconscious whisper of prayer--of gratitude.
+
+And he watched the light in Jed Hawkins' cabin, and strained his ears to
+hear a sound of footsteps coming through the moonlight.
+
+But there was no change. The light did not move. A door did not open or
+close. There was no sound, except the growing whisper of the wind, the
+call of a night bird, and the howl of the old gray wolf that always
+cried out to the moon from the tangled depths of Indian Tom's swamp.
+
+A thrill of nervousness swept through Jolly Roger. He waited half an
+hour, three-quarters, an hour--after the moon had risen. And Nada
+did not come. The nervousness grew in him, and he moved out into
+the moon-glow, and slowly and watchfully followed the edge of the
+rock-shadows until he came to the fringe of cedars and spruce behind
+the cabin. Peter, careful not to snap a twig under his paws, followed
+closely. They came to the cabin, and there--very distinctly--Jolly Roger
+McKay heard the low moaning of a voice.
+
+He edged his way to the window, and looked in.
+
+Crouched beside a chair in the middle of the floor was Jed Hawkins's
+woman. She was moaning, and her thin body was rocking back and forth,
+and with her hands clasped at her bony breast she was staring at the
+open door. With a shock Jolly Roger saw that except for the strangely
+crying old woman the cabin was empty. Sudden fear chilled his blood--a
+fear that scarcely took form before he was at the door, and in the
+cabin. The woman's eyes were red and wild as she stared at him, and she
+stopped her moaning, and her hands unclasped. Jolly Roger went nearer
+and bent over her and shivered at the half-mad terror he saw in her
+face.
+
+"Where is Nada?" he demanded. "Tell me--where is she?"
+
+"Gone, gone, gone," crooned the woman, clutching her hands at her breast
+again. "Jed has taken her--taken her to Mooney's shack, over near the
+railroad. Oh, my God!--I tried to keep her, but I couldn't. He dragged
+her away, and tonight he's sellin' her to Mooney--the devil--the black
+brute--the tie-cutter--"
+
+She choked, and began rocking herself back and forth, and the moaning
+came again from her thin lips. Fiercely McKay gripped her by the
+shoulder.
+
+"Mooney's shack--where?" he cried. "Quick! Tell me!"
+
+"A thousand--a thousand--he's givin' a thousand dollars to git her in
+the shack--alone," she cried in a dull, sing-song voice. "The road out
+there leads straight to it. Near the railroad. A mile. Two miles. I
+tried to keep him from doin' it, but I couldn't--I couldn't--"
+
+Jolly Roger heard no more. He was out of the door, and running across
+the open, with Peter racing close behind him. They struck the road, and
+Jolly Roger swung into it, and continued to run until the breath was out
+of his lungs. And all that time the things Nada had told him about Jed
+Hawkins and the tie-cutter were rushing madly through his brain. An
+hour or two ago, when the words had come from her lips in the jackpine
+thicket, he had believed that Nada was frightened, that a distorted fear
+possessed her, that such a thing as she had half confessed to him
+was too monstrous to happen. And now he cried out aloud, a groaning,
+terrible cry as he went on. Hawkins and Nada had reached Mooney's shack
+long before this, a shack buried deep in the wilderness, a shack from
+which no cries could be heard--
+
+Peter, trotting behind, whined at what he heard in Jolly Roger McKay's
+panting voice. And the moon shone on them as they staggered and ran,
+and here and there dark clouds were racing past the face of it, and the
+slumberous whisper of storm grew nearer in the air. And then came the
+time when one of the dark clouds rode under the moon and the two ran on
+in darkness. The cloud passed, and the moon flooded the road again with
+light--and suddenly Jolly Roger stopped in his tracks, and his heart
+almost broke in the strain of that moment.
+
+Ahead of them, staggering toward them, sobbing as she came, was Nada.
+Jolly Roger's blazing eyes saw everything in that vivid light of the
+moon. Her hair was tangled and twisted about her shoulders and over her
+breast. One arm was bare where the sleeve had been torn away, and her
+girlish breast gleamed white where her waist had been stripped half from
+her body. And then she saw Jolly Roger in the trail, with wide-open,
+reaching arms, and with a cry such as Peter had never heard come from
+her lips before she ran into them, and held up her face to him in the
+yellow moon-light. In her eyes--great, tearless, burning pools--he saw
+the tragedy and yet it was only that, and not horror, not despair, NOT
+the other thing. His arms closed crushingly about her. Her slim body
+seemed to become a part of him. Her hot lips reached up and clung to
+his.
+
+And then,
+
+"Did--he get you--to--Mooney's shack--" He felt her body stiffen against
+him.
+
+"No," she panted. "I fought--every inch. He dragged me, and hit me, and
+tore my clothes--but I fought. And up there--in the trail--he turned
+his back for a moment, when he thought I was done, and I hit him with a
+club. And he's there, now, on his back--"
+
+She did not finish. Jolly Roger thrust her out from him, arm's length. A
+cloud under the moon hid his face. But his voice was low, and terrible.
+
+"Nada, go to the Missioner's as fast as you can," he said, fighting to
+speak coolly. "Take Peter--and go. You will make it before the storm
+breaks. I am going back to have a few words with Jed Hawkins--alone.
+Then I will join you, and the Missioner will marry us--"
+
+The cloud was gone, and he saw joy and radiance in her face. Fear had
+disappeared. Her eyes were luminous with the golden glow of the night.
+Her red lips were parted, entreating him with the lure of their purity
+and love, and for a moment he held her close in his arms again, kissing
+her as he might have kissed an angel, while her little hands stroked his
+face, and she laughed softly and strangely in her happiness--the wonder
+of a woman's soul rising swiftly out of the sweetness of her girlhood.
+
+And then Jolly Roger set her firmly in the direction she was to go.
+
+"Hurry, little girl," he said. "Hurry--before the storm breaks!"
+
+She went, calling Peter softly, and Jolly Roger strode down the trail,
+not once looking back, and bent only upon the vengeance he would this
+night wreak upon the two lowest brutes in creation. Never before had he
+felt the desire to kill. But he felt that desire now. Before the night
+was much older he would do unto Hawkins and Mooney as Hawkins had done
+unto Peter. He would leave them alive, but broken and crippled and
+forever punished.
+
+And then he stumbled over something in another darkening of the moon. He
+stopped, and the light came again, and he looked down into the upturned
+face of Jed Hawkins. It was a distorted and twisted face, and its one
+eye was closed. The body did not move. And close to the head was the
+club which Nada had used.
+
+Jolly Roger laughed grimly. Fate was kind to him in making a half of his
+work so easy. But he wanted Hawkins to rouse himself first. Roughly he
+stirred him with the toe of his boot.
+
+"Wake up, you fiend," he said. "I'm going to break your bones, your
+arms, your legs, just as you broke Peter--and that poor old woman back
+in the cabin. Wake up!"
+
+Jed Hawkins made no stir. He was strangely limp. For many seconds Jolly
+Roger stood looking down at him, his eyes growing wider, more staring.
+Darkness came again. It was an inky blackness this time, like a
+blotter over the world. Low thunder came out of the west. The tree-tops
+whispered in a frightened sort of way. And Jolly Roger could hear his
+heart beating. He dropped upon his knees, and his hands moved over Jed
+Hawkins. For a space not even Peter could have heard his movement or his
+breath.
+
+In the ebon darkness he rose to his feet, and the night--lifelessly
+still for a moment--heard the one choking word that came from his lips.
+
+"Dead!"
+
+And there he stood, the heat of his rage changing to an icy chill, his
+heart dragging within him like a chunk of lead, his breath choking in
+his throat. Jed Hawkins was dead! He was growing stiff there in the
+black trail. He had ceased to breathe. He had ceased to be a part of
+life. And the wind, rising a little with the coming of storm, seemed to
+whisper and chortle over the horrible thing, and the lone wolf in Indian
+Tom's swamp howled weirdly, as if he smelled death.
+
+Jolly Roger McKay's finger-nails dug into the flesh of his palms. If he
+had killed the human viper at his feet, if his own hands had meted out
+his punishment, he would not have felt the clammy terror that wrapped
+itself about him in the darkness. But he had come too late. It was Nada
+who had killed Jed Hawkins. Nada, with her woman's soul just born in
+all its glory, had taken the life of her foster-father. And Canadian law
+knew no excuse for killing.
+
+The chill crept to his finger-tips, and unconsciously, in a childish
+sort of way, he sobbed between his clenched teeth. The thunder was
+rolling nearer, and it was like a threatening voice, a deep-toned
+booming of a thing inevitable and terrible. He felt the air shivering
+about him, and suddenly something moved softly against his foot, and he
+heard a questioning whine. It was Peter--come back to him in this hour
+when he needed a living thing to give him courage. With a groan he
+dropped on his knees again, and clutched his hands about Peter.
+
+"My God," he breathed huskily. "Peter, she's killed him. And she mustn't
+know. We mustn't let anyone know--"
+
+And there he stopped, and Peter felt him growing rigid as stone, and for
+many moments Jolly Roger's body seemed as lifeless as that of the man
+who lay with up-turned face in the trail. Then he fumbled in a pocket
+and found a pencil and an old envelope. And on the envelope, with the
+darkness so thick he could not see his hand, he scribbled, "I killed
+Jed Hawkins," and after that he signed his name firmly and fully--"Jolly
+Roger McKay."
+
+Then he tucked the envelope under Jed Hawkins' body, where the rain
+could not get at it. And after that, to make the evidence complete, he
+covered the dead man's face with his coat.
+
+"We've got to do it, Peter," he said, and there was a new note in his
+voice as he stood up on his feet again. "We've got to do it--for her.
+We'll--tell her we caught Jed Hawkins in the trail and killed him."
+
+Caution, cleverness, his old mental skill returned to him. He dragged
+the boot-legger's body to a new spot, turned it face down, threw the
+club away, and kicked up the earth with his boots to give signs of a
+struggle.
+
+The note in his voice was triumph--triumph in spite of its
+heartbreak--as he turned back over the trail after he had finished, and
+spoke to Peter.
+
+"We may have done some things we oughtn't to, Pied-Bot," he said, "but
+tonight I sort o' think we've tried to make--restitution. And if they
+hang us, which they probably will some time, I sort o' think it'll make
+us happy to know we've done it--for her. Eh, Pied-Bot?"
+
+And the moon sailed out for a space, and shone on the dead whiteness
+of Jolly Roger's face. And on the lips of that face was a strange, cold
+smile, a smile of mastery, of exaltation, and the eyes were looking
+straight ahead--the eyes of a man who had made his sacrifice for a thing
+more precious to him than his God.
+
+Only now and then did the moon gleam through the slow-moving masses of
+black cloud when he came to the edge of the Indian settlement clearing
+three miles away, where stood the cabin of the Missioner. The storm had
+not broken, but seemed holding back its forces for one mighty onslaught
+upon the world. The thunder was repressed, and the lightning held in
+leash, with escaping flashes of it occasionally betraying the impending
+ambuscades of the sky.
+
+The clearing itself was a blot of stygian darkness, with a yellow patch
+of light in the center of it--the window of the Missioner's cabin. And
+Jolly Roger stood looking at it for a space, as a carven thing of rock
+might have stared. His heart was dead. His soul crushed. His dream
+broken. There remained only his brain, his mind made up, his worship for
+the girl--a love that had changed from a thing of joy to a fire of agony
+within him. Straight ahead he looked, knowing there was only one thing
+for him to do. And only one. There was no alternative. No hope. No
+change of fortune that even the power of God might bring about. What lay
+ahead of him was inevitable.
+
+After all, there is something unspeakable in the might and glory of
+dying for one's country--or for a great love. And Jolly Roger McKay felt
+that strength as he strode through the blackness, and knocked at the
+door, and went in to face Nada and the little old gray-haired Missioner
+in the lampglow.
+
+Swift as one of the flashes of lightning in the sky the anxiety and fear
+had gone out of Nada's face, and in an instant it was flooded with the
+joy of his coming. She did not mark the strange change in him, but
+went to him as she had gone to him in the trail, and Jolly Roger's arms
+closed about her, but gently this time, and very tenderly, as he might
+have held a little child he was afraid of hurting. Then she felt the
+chill of his lips as she pressed her own to them. Startled, she looked
+up into his eyes. And as he had done in the trail, so now Jolly Roger
+stood her away from him, and faced the Missioner. In a cold, hard voice
+he told what had happened to Nada that evening, and of the barbarous
+effort Jed Hawkins had made to sell her to Mooney. Then, from a pocket
+inside his shirt, he drew out a small, flat leather wallet, and thrust
+it in the little Missioner's hand.
+
+"There's close to a thousand dollars in that," he said. "It's mine. And
+I'm giving it to you--for Nada. I want you to keep her, and care for
+her, and mebby some day--"
+
+With both her hands Nada clutched his arm. Her eyes had widened. Swift
+pallor had driven the color from her face, and a broken cry was in her
+voice.
+
+"I'm goin' with you," she protested. "I'm goin' with you--and Peter!"
+
+"You can't--now," he said. "I've got to go alone, Nada. I went back--and
+I killed Jed Hawkins."
+
+Over the roof of the cabin rolled a crash of thunder. As the explosion
+of it rocked the floor under their feet, Jolly Roger pointed to a door,
+and said,
+
+"Father, if you will leave us alone--just a minute--"
+
+White-faced, clutching the wallet, the little gray Missioner nodded, and
+went to the door, and as he opened it and entered into the darkness of
+the other room he saw Jolly Roger McKay open wide his arms, and the girl
+go into them. After that the storm broke. The rain descended in a deluge
+upon the cabin roof. The black night was filled with the rumble and roar
+and the hissing lightning-flare of pent-up elements suddenly freed of
+bondage. And in the darkness and tumult the Missioner stood, a little
+gray man of tragedy, of deeply buried secrets, a man of prayer and of
+faith in God--his heart whispering for guidance and mercy as he waited.
+The minutes passed. Five. Ten. And then there came a louder roaring of
+the storm, shut off quickly, and the little Missioner knew that a door
+was opened--and closed.
+
+He lifted the latch, and looked out again into the lampglow. Huddled
+at the side of a chair on the floor, her arms and face buried in the
+lustrous, disheveled mass of her shining hair--lay Nada, and close
+beside her was Peter. He went to her. Tenderly he knelt down beside her.
+His thin arm went about her, and as the storm raved and shrieked above
+them he tried to comfort her--and spoke of God.
+
+And through that storm, his head bowed, his heart gone, went Jolly Roger
+McKay--heading north.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+Peter, thrust back from the door through which through which his master
+had gone, listened vainly for the sound of returning footsteps in the
+beat of rain and the crash of thunder outside. A strange thing had
+burned itself into his soul, a thing that made his flesh quiver and set
+hot fires running in his blood. As a dog sometimes senses the stealthy
+approach of death, so he began to sense the tragedy of this night that
+had brought with it not only a chaos of blackness and storm, but an
+anguish which roused an answering whimper in his throat as he turned
+toward Nada.
+
+She was crumpled with her head in her arms, where she had flung herself
+with Jolly Roger's last kiss of worship on her lips, and she was sobbing
+like a child with its heart broken. And beside her knelt the old gray
+Missioner, man of God in the deep forest, who stroked her hair with his
+thin hand, whispering courage and consolation to her, with the wind and
+rain beating overhead and the windows rattling to the accompaniment of
+ghostly voices that shrieked and wailed in the tree-tops outside.
+
+Peter trembled at the sobbing, but his heart and his desire were with
+the man who had gone. In his unreasoning little soul it was Jed Hawkins
+who was rattling the windows with his unseen hands and who was pounding
+at the door with the wind, and who was filling the black night with its
+menace and fear. He hated this man, who lay back in the trail with his
+lifeless face turned up to the deluge that poured out of the sky. And he
+was afraid of the man, even as he hated him, and he believed that Nada
+was afraid of him, and that because of her fear she was crying there
+in the middle of the floor, with Father John patting her shoulder
+and stroking her hair, and saying things to her which he could not
+understand. He wanted to go to her. He wanted to feel himself close
+against her, as Nada had held him so often in those hours when she had
+unburdened her grief and her unhappiness to him. But even stronger than
+this desire was the one to follow his master.
+
+He went to the door, and thrust his nose against the crack at the bottom
+of it. He felt the fierceness of the wind fighting to break in, and the
+broken mist of it filled his nostrils. But there came no scent of Jolly
+Roger McKay. For a moment he struggled at the crack with his paws. Then
+he flopped himself down, his heart beating fast, and fixed his eyes
+inquiringly on Nada and the Missioner.
+
+His four and a half months of life in the big wilderness, and his weeks
+of constant comradeship with Jolly Roger, had developed in him a brain
+that was older than his body. No process of reasoning could impinge
+upon him the fact that his master was an outlaw, but with the swift
+experiences of tragedy and hiding and never-ceasing caution had come
+instinctive processes which told him almost as much as reason. He knew
+something was wrong tonight. It was in the air. He breathed it. It
+thrilled in the crash of thunder, in the lightning fire, in the mighty
+hands of the wind rocking the cabin and straining at the windows. And
+vaguely the knowledge gripped him that the dead man back in the trail
+was responsible for it all, and that because of this something that
+had happened his mistress was crying and his master was gone. And he
+believed he should also have gone with Jolly Roger into the blackness
+and mystery of the storm, to fight with him against the one creature in
+all the world he hated--the dead man who lay back in the thickness of
+gloom between the forest walls.
+
+And the Missioner was saying to Nada, in a quiet, calm voice out of
+which the tragedies of years had burned all excitement and passion:
+
+"God will forgive him, my child. In His mercy He will forgive Roger
+McKay, because he killed Jed Hawkins to save YOU. But man will not
+forgive. The law has been hunting him because he is an outlaw, and to
+outlawry he has added what the law will call murder. But God will not
+look at it in that way. He will look into the heart of the man, the man
+who sacrificed himself--"
+
+And then, fiercely, Nada struck up the Missioner's comforting hand, and
+Peter saw her young face white as star-dust in the lampglow.
+
+"I don't care what God thinks," she cried passionately. "God didn't do
+right today. Mister Roger told me everything, that he was an outlaw, an'
+I oughtn't to marry him. But I didn't care. I loved him. I could hide
+with him. An' we were coming to have you marry us tonight when God let
+Jed Hawkins drag me away, to sell me to a man over on the railroad--an'
+it was God who let Mister Roger go back and kill him. I tell you He
+didn't do right! He didn't--he didn't--because Mister Roger brought me
+the first happiness I ever knew, an' I loved him, an' he loved me--an'
+God was wicked to let him kill Jed Hawkins--"
+
+Her voice cried out, a woman's soul broken in a girl's body, and Peter
+whimpered and watched the Missioner as he raised Nada to her feet
+and went with her into his bedroom, where a few minutes before he had
+lighted a lamp. And Peter crept in quietly after them, and when the
+Missioner had gone and closed the door, leaving them alone in their
+tragedy, Nada seemed to see him for the first time and slowly she
+reached out her arms.
+
+"Peter!" she whispered. "Peter--Peter--"
+
+In the minutes that followed, Peter could feel her heart beating.
+Clutched against her breast he looked up at the white, beautiful face,
+the trembling throat, the wide-open blue eyes staring at the one black
+window between them and the outside night. A lull had come in the storm.
+It was quiet and ominous stillness, and the ticking of a clock, old and
+gray like the Missioner himself, filled the room. And Nada, seated on
+the edge of Father John's bed, no longer looked like the young girl of
+"seventeen goin' on eighteen." That afternoon, in the hidden jackpine
+open, with its sweet-scented jasmines, its violets and its crimson
+strawberries under their feet, the soul of a woman had taken possession
+of her body. In that hour the first happiness of her life had come to
+her. She had heard Jolly Roger McKay tell her those things which she
+already knew--that he was an outlaw, and that he was hiding down on
+the near-edge of civilization because the Royal Mounted were after him
+farther north--and that he was not fit to love her, and that it was a
+crime to let her love him. It was then the soul of the woman had come
+to her in all its triumph. She had made her choice, definitely and
+decisively, without hesitation and without fear. And now, as she stared
+unseeingly at the window against which the rain was beating, the
+woman in her girlish body rose in her mightier than in the hour of her
+happiness, fighting to find a way--crying out for the man she loved.
+
+Her mind swept back in a single flash through all the years she had
+lived, through her years of unhappiness and torment as the foster-girl
+of Jed Hawkins and his broken, beaten wife; through summers and winters
+that had seemed ages to her, eternities of desolation, of heartache,
+of loneliness, with the big wilderness her one friend on earth. As the
+window rattled in a fresh blast of storm, she thought of the day months
+ago when she had accidentally stumbled upon the hiding-place of Roger
+McKay. Since that day he had been her God, and she had lived in a
+paradise. He had been father, mother, brother, and at last--what she
+most yearned for--a lover to her. And this day, when for the first time
+he had held her in his arms, when the happiness of all the earth had
+reached out to them, God had put it into Jed Hawkins' heart to destroy
+her--and Jolly Roger had killed him!
+
+With a sharp little cry she sprang to her feet, so suddenly that Peter
+fell with a thump to the floor. He looked up at her, puzzled, his jaws
+half agape. She was breathing quickly. Her slender body was quivering.
+Suddenly Peter saw the fire in her eyes and the flame that was rushing
+into her white cheeks. Then she turned to him, and panted in a wild
+little whisper, so low that the Missioner could not hear:
+
+"Peter, I was wrong. God wasn't wicked to let Mister Roger kill
+Jed Hawkins. He oughta been killed. An' God meant him to be killed.
+Peter--Peter--we don't care if he's an outlaw! We're goin' with him.
+We're goin'--goin'--"
+
+She sprang to the window, and Peter was at her heels as she strained at
+it with all her strength, and he could hear her sobbing:
+
+"We're goin' with him, Peter. We're goin'--if we die for it!"
+
+An inch at a time she pried the window up. The storm beat in. A gust of
+wind blew out the light, but in the last flare of it Nada saw a knife in
+an Eskimo sheath hanging on the wall. She groped for it, and clutched it
+in her hand as she climbed through the window and dropped to the soggy
+ground beneath. In a single leap Peter followed her. Blackness swallowed
+them as they turned toward the trail leading north--the only trail which
+Jolly Roger could travel on a night like this. They heard the voice
+of the Missioner calling from the window behind them. Then a crash of
+thunder set the earth rolling under their feet, and the lull in
+the storm came to an end. The sky split open with the vivid fire
+of lightning. The trees wailed and whined, the rain fell again in a
+smothering deluge, and through it Nada ran, gripping the knife as her
+one defense against the demons of darkness--and always close at her side
+ran Peter.
+
+He could not see her in that pitchy blackness, except when the lightning
+flashes came. Then she was like a ghostly wraith, with drenched
+clothes clinging to her until she seemed scarcely dressed, her wet hair
+streaming and her wide, staring eyes looking straight ahead. After
+the lightning flashes, when the world was darkest, he could hear the
+stumbling tread of her feet and the panting of her breath, and now and
+then the swish of brush as it struck across her face and breast. The
+rain had washed away the scent of his master's feet but he knew they
+were following Jolly Roger, and that the girl was running to overtake
+him. In him was the desire to rush ahead, to travel faster through the
+night, but Nada's stumbling feet and her panting breath and the strange
+white pictures he saw of her when the sky split open with fire held him
+back. Something told him that Nada must reach Jolly Roger. And he was
+afraid she would stop. He wanted to bark to give her encouragement, as
+he had often barked in their playful races in the green plain-lands on
+the farther side of Cragg's Ridge. But the rain choked him. It beat down
+upon him with the weight of heavy hands, it slushed up into his face
+from pools in the trail and drove the breath from him when he attempted
+to open his jaws. So he ran close--so close that at times Nada felt the
+touch of his body against her.
+
+In these first minutes of her fight to overtake the man she loved Nada
+heard but one voice--a voice crying out from her heart and brain and
+soul, a voice rising above the tumult of thunder and wind, urging her
+on, whipping the strength from her frail body in pitiless exhortation.
+Jolly Roger was less than half an hour ahead of her. And she must
+overtake him--quickly--before the forests swallowed him, before he was
+gone from her life forever.
+
+The wall of blackness against which she ran did not frighten her. When
+the brush tore at her face and hair she swung free of it, and stumbled
+on. Twice she ran blindly into broken trees that lay across her path,
+and dragged her bruised body through their twisted tops, moaning to
+Peter and clutching tightly to the sheathed knife in her hand. And the
+wild spirits that possessed the night seemed to gather about her, and
+over her, exulting in the helplessness of their victim, shrieking in
+weird and savage joy at the discovery of this human plaything struggling
+against their might. Never had Peter heard thunder as he heard it now.
+It rocked the earth under his feet. It filled the world with a ceaseless
+rumble, and the lightning came like flashes from swift-loading guns, and
+with it all a terrific assault of wind and rain that at last drove Nada
+down in a crumpled heap, panting for breath, with hands groping out
+wildly for him.
+
+Peter came to them, sodden and shivering. His warm tongue found the palm
+of her hand, and for a space Nada hugged him close to her, while she
+bowed her head until her drenched curls became a part of the mud and
+water of the trail. Peter could hear her sobbing for breath. And then
+suddenly, there came a change. The thunder was sweeping eastward. The
+lightning was going with it. The wind died out in wailing sobs among the
+treetops, and the rain fell straight down. Swiftly as its fury had come,
+the July storm was passing. And Nada staggered to her feet again and
+went on.
+
+Her mind began to react with the lessening of the storm, dragging itself
+out quickly from under the oppression of fear and shock. She began to
+reason, and with that reason the beginning of faith and confidence gave
+her new strength. She knew that Jolly Roger would take this trail, for
+it was the one trail leading from the Missioner's cabin through the
+thick forest country north. And in half an hour he would not travel far.
+The thrilling thought came to her that possibly he had sought shelter in
+the lee of a big tree trunk during the fury of the storm. If he had done
+that he would be near, very near. She paused in the trail and gathered
+her breath, and cried out his name. Three times she called it, and only
+the low whine in Peter's throat came in answer. Twice again during the
+next ten minutes she cried out as loudly as she could into the darkness.
+And still no answer came back to her through the gloom ahead.
+
+The trail had dipped, and she felt the deepening slush of swamp-mire
+under her feet. She sank in it to her shoe-tops, and stumbled into pools
+knee-deep, and Peter wallowed in it to his belly. A quarter of an hour
+they fought through it to the rising ground beyond. And by that time the
+last of the black storm clouds had passed overhead. The rain had ceased.
+The rumble of thunder came more faintly. There was no lightning, and the
+tree-tops began to whisper softly, as if rejoicing in the passing of the
+wind. About them--everywhere--they could hear the run and drip of water,
+the weeping of the drenched trees, the gurgle of flooded pools, and the
+trickle of tiny rivulets that splashed about their feet. Through a rift
+in the breaking clouds overhead came a passing flash of the moon.
+
+"We'll find him now, Peter," moaned the girl. "We'll find him--now. He
+can't be very far ahead--"
+
+And Peter waited, holding his breath, listening for an answer to the cry
+that went out for Jolly Roger McKay.
+
+The glory of July midnight, with a round, full moon straight overhead,
+followed the stress of storm. The world had been lashed and inundated,
+every tree whipped of its rot and slag, every blade of grass and flower
+washed clean. Out of the earth rose sweet smells of growing life, the
+musky fragrance of deep moss and needle-mold, and through the clean air
+drifted faintly the aroma of cedar and balsam and the subtle tang of
+unending canopies and glistening tapestries of evergreen breathing into
+the night. The deep forest seemed to tremble with the presence of an
+invisible and mysterious life--life that was still, yet wide-awake,
+breathing, watchful, drinking in the rejuvenating tonic of the air which
+had so quietly followed thunder and lightning and the roar of wind and
+rain. And the moon, like a queen who had so ordered these things,
+looked down in a mighty triumph. Her radiance, without dust or fog or
+forest-smoke to impede its way, was like the mellow glow of half-day. It
+streamed through the treetops in paths of gold and silver, throwing dark
+shadows where it failed to penetrate, and gathering in wide pools where
+its floods poured through broad rifts in the roofs of the forest.
+And the trail, leading north, was like a river of shimmering silver,
+splitting the wilderness from earth to sky.
+
+In this trail, clearly made in the wet soil, were Jolly Roger's
+foot-prints, and in a wider space, where at some time a trapper had
+cleared himself a spot for his tepee or shack, Jolly Roger had paused
+to rest after his fight through the storm--and had then continued on his
+way. And into this clearing, three hours after they left the Missioner's
+cabin, came Nada and Peter.
+
+They came slowly, the girl a slim wraith in the moon-light; in the open
+they stood for a moment, and Peter's heart weighed heavily within him as
+his mistress cried out once more for Jolly Roger. Her voice rose only in
+a sob, and ended in a sob. The last of her strength was gone. Her little
+figure swayed, and her face was white and haggard, and in her drawn lips
+and staring eyes was the agony of despair. She had lost, and she
+knew that she had lost as she crumpled down in the trail, crying out
+sobbingly to the footprints which led so clearly ahead of her.
+
+"Peter, I can't go on," she moaned. "I can't--go on--"
+
+Her hands clutched at her breast. Peter saw the glint of the moonlight
+on the ivory sheath of the Eskimo knife, and he saw her white face
+turned up to the sky--and also that her lips were moving, but he did not
+hear his name come from them, or any other sound. He whined, and foot by
+foot began to nose along the trail on the scent left by Jolly Roger. It
+was very clear to his nostrils, and it thrilled him. He looked back, and
+again he whined his encouragement to the girl.
+
+"Peter!" she called. "Peter!"
+
+He returned to her. She had drawn the knife out of its scabbard, and the
+cold steel glistened in her hand. Her eyes were shining, and she reached
+out and clutched Peter close up against her, so that he could hear the
+choke and throb of her heart.
+
+"Oh, Peter, Peter," she panted. "If you could only talk! If you could
+run and catch Mister Roger, an' tell him I'm here, an' that he must come
+back--"
+
+She hugged him closer. He sensed the sudden thrill that leapt through
+her body.
+
+"Peter," she whispered, "will you do it?"
+
+For a few moments she did not seem to breathe. Then he heard a quick
+little cry, a sob of inspiration and hope, and her arms came from about
+him, and he saw the knife flashing in the yellow moonlight.
+
+He did not understand, but he knew that he must watch her carefully. She
+had bent her head, and her hair, nearly dry, glowed softly in the face
+of the moon. Her hands were fumbling in the disheveled curls, and Peter
+saw the knife flash back and forth, and heard the cut of it, and then he
+saw that in her hand she held a thick brown tress of hair that she had
+severed from her head. He was puzzled. And Nada dropped the knife, and
+his curiosity increased when she tore a great piece out of her tattered
+dress, and carefully wrapped the tress of hair in it. Then she drew
+him to her again, and tied the knotted fold of dress securely about his
+neck; after that she tore other strips from her dress, and wound them
+about his neck until he felt muffled and half smothered.
+
+And all the time she was talking to him in a half sobbing, excited
+little voice, and the blood in Peter's body ran swifter, and the strange
+thrill in him was greater. When she had finished she rose to her feet,
+and stood there swaying back and forth, like one of the spruce-top
+shadows, while she pointed up the moonlit trail.
+
+"Go, Peter!" she cried softly. "Quick! Follow him, Peter--catch
+him--bring him back! Mister Roger--Jolly Roger--go, Peter! Go--go--go--"
+
+It was strange to Peter. But he was beginning to understand. He sniffed
+in Jolly Roger's footprints, and then he looked up quickly, and saw
+that it had pleased the girl. She was urging him on. He sniffed from one
+footprint to another, and Nada clapped her hands and cried out that he
+was right--for him to hurry--hurry--
+
+Impulse, thought, swiftly growing knowledge of something to be done
+thrilled in his brain. Nada wanted him to go. She wanted him to go to
+Jolly Roger. And she had put something around his neck which she wanted
+him to take with him. He whined eagerly, a bit excitedly. Then he began
+to trot. Instinctively it was his test. She did not call him back. He
+flattened his ears, listening for her command to return, but it did not
+come. And then the thrill in him leapt over all other things. He was
+right. He was not abandoning Nada. He was not running away. She WANTED
+him to go!
+
+The night swallowed him. He became a part of the yellow floods of its
+moonlight, a part of its shifting shadows, a part of its stillness, its
+mystery, its promise of impending things. He knew that grim and terrible
+happenings had come with the storm, and he still sensed the nearness of
+tragedy in this night-world through which he was passing. He did not go
+swiftly, yet he went three times as fast as the girl and he had traveled
+together. He was cautious and watchful, and at intervals he stopped and
+listened, and swallowed hard to keep the whine of eagerness out of his
+throat. Now that he was alone every instinct in him was keyed to the
+pulse and beat of life about him. He knew the Night People of the
+deep forests were awake. Softly padded, clawed, sharp-beaked and
+feathered--the prowlers of darkness were on the move. With the stillness
+of shadows they were stealing through the moonlit corridors of the
+wilderness, or hovering gray-winged and ghostly in the ambuscades of the
+treetops, eager to waylay and kill, hungering for the flesh and blood
+of creatures weaker than themselves. Peter knew. Both heritage and
+experience warned him. And he watched the shadows, and sniffed the air,
+and kept his fangs half bared and ready as he followed the trail of
+McKay.
+
+He was not stirred by the impulse of adventure alone. Without the
+finesse of what man might charitably call reason in a beast, he had
+sensed a responsibility. It was present in the closely drawn strips
+of faded cloth about his neck. It was, in a way, a part of the girl
+herself, a part of her flesh and blood, a part of her spirit--something
+vital to her and dependent upon him. He was ready to guard it with every
+instinct of caution and every ounce of courage there was in him. And
+to protect it meant to fight. That was the first law of his breed,
+the primal warning which came to him through the red blood of many
+generations of wilderness forefathers. So he listened, and he watched,
+and his blood pounded hot in his veins as he followed the footprints in
+the trail. A bit of brush, swinging suddenly free from where it had been
+prisoned by the storm, drew a snarl from him as he faced the sound with
+the quickness of a cat. A gray streak, passing swiftly over the trail
+ahead of him, stirred a low growl in his throat. It was a lynx, and for
+a space Peter paused, and then sped soft-footed past the moon-lit spot
+where the stiletto-clawed menace of the woods had passed.
+
+Now that he was alone, and no longer accompanied by a human presence
+whose footsteps and scent held the wild things aloof and still, Peter
+felt nearer and nearer to him the beat and stir of life. Powerful beaks,
+instead of remaining closed and without sound, snapped and hissed at
+him as the big gray owls watched his passing. He heard the rustling of
+brush, soft as the stir of a woman's dress, where living things were
+secretly moving, and he heard the louder crash of clumsy and piggish
+feet, and caught the strong scent of a porcupine as it waddled to its
+midnight lunch of poplar bark. Then the trail ended, and Jolly Roger's
+scent led into the pathless forest, with its shifting streams and
+pools of moonlight, its shadows and black pits of darkness. And
+here--now--Peter began his trespass into the strongholds of the People
+of the Night. He heard a wolf howl, a cry filled with loneliness, yet
+with a shivering death-note in it; he caught the musky, skunkish odor of
+a fox that was stalking prey in the face of a whispering breath of wind;
+once, in a moment of dead stillness, he listened to the snap of
+teeth and the crackle of bones in one of the dark pits, where a
+fisher-cat--with eyes that gleamed like coals of fire--was devouring the
+warm and bleeding carcass of a mother partridge. And beaks snapped at
+him more menacingly as he went on, and gray shapes floated over his
+head, and now and then he heard the cries of dying things--the agonized
+squeak of a wood-mouse, the cry of a day-bird torn from its sleeping
+place by a sinuous, beady-eyed creature of fur and claw, the noisy
+screaming of a rabbit swooped upon and pierced to the vitals by one of
+the gray-feathered pirates of the air. And then, squarely in the center
+of a great pool of moonlight, Peter came upon a monster. It was a bear,
+a huge mother bear, with two butter-fat cubs wrestling and rolling in
+the moon glow. Peter had never seen a bear. But the mother, who raised
+her brown nose suddenly from the cool mold out of which she had been
+digging lily-bulbs, had seen dogs. She had seen many dogs, and she had
+heard their howl, and she knew that always they traveled with man.
+She gave a deep, chesty sniff, and close after that sniff a WHOOF that
+startled the cubs like the lashing end of a whip. They rolled to her,
+and with two cuffs of the mother's huge paws they were headed in the
+right direction, and all three crashed off into darkness.
+
+In spite of his swelling heart Peter let out a little yip. It was
+a great satisfaction, just at a moment when his nerves were getting
+unsteady, to discover that a monster like this one in the moonlight
+was anxious to run away from him. And Peter went on, a bit of pride and
+jauntiness in his step, his bony tail a little higher.
+
+A mile farther on, in another yellow pool of the moon, lay the partly
+devoured carcass of a fawn. A wolf had killed it, and had fed, and now
+two giant owls were rending and tearing in the flesh and bowels of what
+the wolf had left. They were Gargantuans of their kind, one a male, the
+other a female. Their talons warm in blood, their beaks red, their slow
+brains drunk with a ravenous greed, they rose on their great wings in
+sullen rage when Peter came suddenly upon them. He had ceased to be
+afraid of owls. There was something shivery in the gritting of their
+beaks, especially in the dark places, but they had never attacked him,
+and had always kept out of his reach. So their presence in a black
+spruce top directly over the dead fawn did not hold him back now. He
+sniffed at the fresh, sweet meat, and hunger all at once possessed him.
+Where the wolf had stripped open a tender flank he began to eat, and
+as he ate he growled, so that warning of his possessorship reached the
+spruce top.
+
+In answer to it came a stir of wings, and the male owl launched himself
+out into the moon glow. The female followed. For a few moments they
+floated like gray ghosts over Peter, silent as the night shadows. Then,
+with the suddenness and speed of a bolt from a catapult, the giant male
+shot out of a silvery mist of gloom and struck Peter. The two rolled
+over the carcass of the fawn, and for a space Peter was dazed by the
+thundering beat of powerful wings, and the hammering of the owl's beak
+at the back of his neck. The male had missed his claw-hold, and driven
+by rage and ferocity, fought to impale his victim from the ground,
+without launching himself into the air again. Swiftly he struck, again
+and again, while his wings beat like clubs. Suddenly his talons sank
+into the cloth wrapped about Peter's neck. Terror and shock gave way to
+a fighting madness inside Peter now. He struck up, and buried his fangs
+in a mass of feathers so thick he could not feel the flesh. He tore at
+the padded breast, snarling and beating with his feet, and then, as
+the stiletto-points of the owl's talons sank through the cloth into his
+neck, his jaws closed on one of the huge bird's legs. His teeth sank
+deep, there was a snapping and grinding of tendon and bone, and a
+hissing squawk of pain and fear came from above him as the owl made a
+mighty effort to launch himself free. As the five-foot pinions beat
+the air Peter was lifted from the ground. But the owl's talons were
+hopelessly entangled in the cloth, and the two fell in a heap again.
+Peter scarcely sensed what happened after that, except that he was
+struggling against death. He closed his eyes, and the leg between his
+jaws was broken and twisted into pulp. The wings beat about him in a
+deafening thunder, and the owl's beak tore at his flesh, until the pool
+of moonlight in which they fought was red with blood. At last something
+gave way. There was a ghastly cry that was like the cry of neither bird
+nor beast, a weak flutter of wings, and Gargantua of the Air staggered
+up into the treetops and fell with a crash among the thick boughs of the
+spruce.
+
+Peter raised himself weakly, the severed leg of the owl dropping from
+his jaws. He was half blinded. Every muscle in his body seemed to be
+torn and bleeding, yet in his discomfort the thrilling conviction came
+to him that he had won. He tensed himself for another attack, hugging
+the ground closely as he watched and waited, but no attack came. He
+could hear the flutter and wheeze of his maimed adversary, and slowly he
+drew himself back--still facing the scene of battle--until in a farther
+patch of gloom he turned once more to his business of following the
+trail of Jolly Roger McKay.
+
+There was no mark of bravado in his advance now. If he had possessed
+an over-growing confidence, Gargantua's attack had set it back, and he
+stole like a shifty fox through the night. Driven into his brain was the
+knowledge that all things were not afraid of him, for even the snapping
+beaks and floating gray shapes to which he had paid but little attention
+had now become a deadly menace. His egoism had suffered a jolt,
+a healthful reaction from its too swift ascendency. He sensed the
+narrowness of his escape without the mental action of reasoning it out,
+and his injuries were secondary to the oppressive horror of the uncanny
+combat out of which he had come alive. Yet this horror was not a fear.
+Heretofore he had recognized the ghostly owl-shapes of night more or
+less as a curious part of darkness, inspiring neither like nor dislike
+in him. Now he hated them, and ever after his fangs gleamed white when
+one of them floated over his head.
+
+He was badly hurt. There were ragged tears in his flank and back, and a
+last stroke of Gargantua's talons had stabbed his shoulder to the bone.
+Blood dripped from him, and one of his eyes was closing, so that shapes
+and shadows were grotesquely dim in the night. Instinct and caution, and
+the burning pains in his body, urged him to lie down in a thicket and
+wait for the day. But stronger than these were memory of the girl's
+urging voice, the vague thrill of the cloth still about his neck, and
+the freshness of Jolly Roger's trail as it kept straight on through the
+forest's moonlit corridors and caverns of gloom.
+
+It was in the first graying light of July dawn that Peter dragged
+himself up the rough side of a ridge and looked down into a narrow strip
+of plain on the other side. Just as Nada had given up in weakness and
+despair, so now he was almost ready to quit. He had traveled miles since
+the owl fight, and his wounds had stiffened, and with every step gave
+him excruciating pain. His injured eye was entirely closed, and there
+was a strange, dull ache in the back of his head, where Gargantua had
+pounded him with his beak. The strip of valley, half hidden in its
+silvery mist of dawn, seemed a long distance away to Peter, and he
+dropped on his belly and began to lick his raw shoulder with a feverish
+tongue. He was sick and tired, and the futility of going farther
+oppressed him. He looked again down into the strip of plain, and whined.
+
+Then, suddenly, he smelled something that was not the musty fog-mist
+that hung between the ridges. It was smoke. Peter's heart beat faster,
+and he pulled himself to his feet, and went in its direction.
+
+Hidden in a little grassy cup between two great boulders that thrust
+themselves out from the face of the ridge, he found Jolly Roger. First
+he saw the smouldering embers of a fire that was almost out--and then
+his master. Jolly Roger was asleep. Storm-beaten and strangely haggard
+and gray his face was turned to the sky. Peter did not awaken him. There
+was something in his master's face that quieted the low whimper in his
+throat. Very gently he crept to him, and lay down. The movement, slight
+as it was, made the man stir. His hand rose, and then fell limply across
+Peter's body. But the fingers moved.
+
+Unconsciously, as if guided by the spirit and prayer of the girl waiting
+far back in the forest, they twined about the cloth around Peter's
+neck--his message to his master.
+
+And for a long time after that, as the sun rose over a wonderful world,
+Peter and his master slept.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+It was the restlessness of Peter that roused Jolly Roger. Half awake,
+and before he opened his eyes, life seized upon him where sleep had cut
+it off for a time last night. His muscles ached. His neck was stiff. He
+seemed weighted like a log to the hard earth. Swiftly the experience
+of the preceding hours rushed upon him, and it was in the first of this
+wakefulness that he felt the presence of Peter.
+
+He sat up and stared wide-eyed at the dog. The fact that Peter had
+escaped from the cabin, and had followed him, was not altogether
+amazing. It was quite the natural thing for a one-man dog to do. But
+the unexpectedness of it held McKay speechless, and at first a little
+disappointed. It was as if Peter had deliberately betrayed a trust.
+During the storm and flight of the night McKay had thought of him as the
+one connecting link remaining between him and the girl he loved. He
+had left Peter to fill his place, to guard and watch and keep alive
+the memory of the man who was gone. For him there had been something of
+consolation in this giving up of his comradeship to Nada. And Peter had
+turned traitor.
+
+Even Peter seemed to sense the argument and condemnation that was
+passing behind McKay's unsmiling eyes. He did not move, but lay squatted
+on his belly, with his nose straight out on the ground between his
+forepaws. It was his attitude of self-immolation. His acknowledgment of
+the other's right to strike with lash or club. Yet in his eyes, bright
+and steady behind his mop of whiskers, Jolly Roger saw a prayer.
+
+Without a word he held out his arms. It was all Peter needed, and in
+a moment he was hugged up close against McKay. After all, there was
+a mighty something that reached from heart to heart of these two, and
+Jolly Roger said, with a sound that was half laugh and half sob in his
+throat,
+
+"Pied-Bot, you devil--you little devil--"
+
+His fingers closed in the cloth about Peter's neck, and his heart jumped
+when he saw what it was--a piece of Nada's dress. Peter, realizing that
+at last the importance of his mission was understood, waited in eager
+watchfulness while his master untied the knot. And in another moment,
+out in the clean and glorious sun that had followed storm, McKay held
+the shining tress of Nada's hair.
+
+It was a real sob that broke in his throat now, and Peter saw him crush
+the shining thing to his face, and hold it there, while strange quivers
+ran through his strong shoulders, and a wetness that was not rain
+gathered in his eyes.
+
+"God bless her!" he whispered. And then he said, "I wish I was a kid,
+Peter--a kid. Because--if I ever wanted to cry--IT'S NOW."
+
+In his face, even with the tears and the strange quivering of his lips,
+Peter saw a radiance that was joy. And McKay stood up, and looked south,
+back over the trail he had followed through the blackness and storm
+of night. He was visioning things. He saw Nada in Father John's cabin,
+urging Peter out into the wild tumult of thunder and lightning with
+that precious part of her which she knew he would love forever. Her
+last message to him. Her last promise of love and faith until the end of
+time.
+
+He guessed only the beginning of the truth. And Peter, denied the power
+of thought transmission because of an error in the creation of things,
+ran back a little way over the trail, trying to tell his master that
+Nada had come with him through the storm, and was back in the deep
+forest calling for him to return.
+
+But McKay's mind saw nothing beyond the dimly lighted room of the
+Missioner's cabin.
+
+He pressed his lips to the silken tress of Nada's hair, still damp with
+the rain; and after that, with the care of a miser he smoothed it out,
+and tied the end of the tress tightly with a string, and put it away in
+the soft buckskin wallet which he carried.
+
+There was a new singing in his heart as he gathered sticks with which to
+build a small fire, for after this he would not travel quite alone.
+
+That day they went on; and day followed day, until August came, and
+north--still farther north they went into the illimitable wilderness
+which reached out in the drowsing stillness of the Flying-up-Month--the
+month when newly fledged things take to their wings, and the deep
+forests lie asleep.
+
+Days added themselves into weeks, until at last they were in the country
+of the Reindeer waterways.
+
+To the east was Hudson's Bay; westward lay the black forests
+and twisting waterways of Upper Saskatchewan; and north--always
+north--beckoned the lonely plains and unmapped wildernesses of the
+Athabasca, the Slave and the Great Bear--toward which far country their
+trail was slowly but surely wending its way.
+
+The woodlands and swamps were now empty of man. Cabin and shack and
+Indian tepee were lifeless, and waited in the desolation of abandonment.
+No smoke rose in the tree-tops; no howl of dog came with the early dawn
+and the setting sun; trap lines were over-growing, and laughter and song
+and the ring of the trapper's axe were gone, leaving behind a brooding
+silence that seemed to pulse and thrill like a great heart--the heart of
+the wild unchained for a space from its human bondage.
+
+It was the vacation time--the midsummer carnival weeks of the wilderness
+people. Wild things were breeding. Fur was not good. Flesh was unfit to
+kill. And so they had disappeared, man, woman and child, and their dogs
+as well, to foregather at the Hudson's Bay Company's posts scattered
+here and there in the fastnesses of the wilderness lands. A few weeks
+more and they would return. Cabins would send up their smoke again.
+Brown-faced children would play about the tepee door. Ten thousand
+dwellers of the forests, white and half-breed and Indian born, would
+trickle in twos and threes and family groups back into the age-old trade
+of a domain that reached from Hudson's Bay to the western mountains and
+from the Height of Land to the Arctic Sea.
+
+Until then nature was free, and in its freedom ran in riotous silence
+over the land. These were days when the wolf lay with her young, but did
+not howl; when the lynx yawned sleepily, and hunted but little--days
+of breeding, nights of drowsy whisperings, and of big red moons, and of
+streams rippling softly at lowest ebb while they dreamed of rains and
+flood-time. And through it all--through the lazy drone of insects, the
+rustling sighs of the tree-tops and the subdued notes of living things
+ran a low and tremulous whispering, as if nature had found for itself a
+new language in this temporary absence of man.
+
+To Jolly Roger this was Life, It breathed for him out of the cool earth.
+He heard it over him, and under him, and on all sides of him where other
+ears would have found only a thing vast and oppressive and silent. On
+what he called these "motherhood days of the earth" the passing years
+had built his faith and his creed.
+
+One evening he stopped for camp at the edge of the Burntwood. From his
+feet reached out the wide river, ankle deep in places, knee deep in
+others, rippling and singing between sandbars and driftwood where in May
+and June it had roared with the fury of flood Peter, half asleep after
+their day's travel through a hot forests watched his master. Since their
+flight from the edge of civilization far south he had grown heavier and
+broadened out. The hardship of adventuring and the craft of fighting for
+food and life had whipped the last of his puppyhood behind him At six
+months of age he was scarred, and lithe-muscled, and ready for instant
+action at all times. Through the mop of Airedale whiskers that covered
+his face his bright eyes were ever alert, and always they watched the
+back-trail as he wondered why the slim, blue-eyed girl they both loved
+and missed so much did not come. And vaguely he wondered why it was that
+his master always went on and on, and never waited for her to catch up
+with them.
+
+And Jolly Roger was changed. He was not the plump and rosy-faced
+wilderness freebooter who whistled and sang away down at Cragg's Ridge
+even when he knew the Law was at his heels. The steadiness of their
+flight had thinned him, and a graver look had settled in his face. But
+in his clear eyes was still the love of life--a thing even stronger than
+the grief which was eating at his heart as their trail reached steadily
+toward the Barren Lands.
+
+In the sunset glow of this late afternoon Peter's watchful eyes saw his
+master draw forth their treasure.
+
+It was something he had come to look for, and expect--once, twice, and
+sometimes half a dozen times between the rising and the setting of the
+sun. And at night, when they paused in their flight for the day, Jolly
+Roger never failed to do what he was doing now. Peter drew nearer to
+where his master was sitting with his back to the big rock, and his eyes
+glistened. Always he caught the sweet, illusive perfume of the girl when
+Jolly Roger drew out their preciously guarded package. He unwrapped it
+gently now, and in a moment held in his hands the tress of Nada's hair,
+the last of her they would ever possess or see. And Peter wondered again
+why they did not go back to where they had left the rest of the girl.
+Many times, seeing his restlessness and his yearning, Jolly Roger had
+tried to make him understand. And Peter tried to comprehend. But always
+in his dreams he was with the girl he loved, following her, playing with
+her, fighting for her, hearing her voice--feeling the touch of her hand.
+In his dog soul he wanted her, just as Jolly Roger wanted her with all
+the yearning and heartbreak of the man. Yet always when he awoke from
+his dreams they went on again--not south--but north. To Peter this was
+hopeless mystery, and he possessed no power of reason to solve it. Nor
+could he speak in words the message which he carried in his heart--that
+last crying agony of the girl when she had sent him out on the trail of
+Roger McKay, entreating him to bring back the man she loved and would
+always love in spite of all the broken and unbroken laws in the world.
+
+That night, as they lay beside the Burntwood, Peter heard his master
+crying out Nada's name in his sleep.
+
+And the next dawn they went on--still farther north.
+
+In these days and weeks, with the hot inundation of the wilderness about
+him, McKay fought doggedly against the forces which were struggling
+to break down the first law of his creed. The law might catch him,
+and probably would, and when it caught him the law might hang him--and
+probably would. But it would never KNOW him. There was something grimly
+and tragically humorous in this. It would never know of the consuming
+purity of his worship for little children, and old people--and women.
+It would laugh at the religion he had built up for himself, and it
+would cackle tauntingly if he dared to say he was not wholly bad. For it
+believed he was bad, and it believed he had killed Jed Hawkins, and he
+knew that seven hundred men were anxious to get him, dead or alive.
+
+But was he bad?
+
+He took the matter up one evening, with Peter.
+
+"If I'm bad, mebby it isn't all my fault, Pied-Bot," he said. "Mebby
+it's this--" and he swept his arms out to the gathering night. "I was
+born in the open, on a night just like this is going to be. My mother,
+before she died, told me many times how she watched the moon come up
+that night, and how it seemed to look down on her, and talk to her, like
+a living thing. And I've loved the moon ever since, and the sun, and
+everything that's outdoors--and if there's a God I don't believe He ever
+intended man to make a law that wasn't right according to the plans He
+laid out. That's where I've got in wrong, Pied-Bot, I haven't always
+believed in man-made law, and I've settled a lot of things in my own
+way. And I guess I've loved trees and flowers and sunshine and wind and
+storm too much. I've just wandered. And I've done things along the way.
+The thrill of it got into me, Pied-Bot, and--the law wants me!"
+
+Peter heard the subdued humor of the man, a low laugh that held neither
+fear nor regret.
+
+"It was the Treaty Money first," he went on, leaning very seriously
+toward Peter, as if he expected an argument. "You see, Yellow Bird was
+in that particular tribe, Pied-Bot. I remember her as she looked to me
+when a boy, with her two long, shining black braids and her face that
+was almost as beautiful to me as my mother's. My mother loved her, and
+she loved my mother, and I loved Yellow Bird, just as a child loves a
+fairy. And always Yellow Bird has been my fairy, Peter. I guess child
+worship is the one thing that lasts through life, always remaining
+ideal, and never forgotten. Years after my mother's death, when I was a
+young man, and had been down to Montreal and Ottawa and Quebec, I went
+back to Yellow Bird's tribe. And it was starving, Pied-Bot. Starving to
+death!"
+
+Reminiscent tenderness and humor were gone from McKay's voice. It was
+hard and flinty.
+
+"It was winter," he continued, "the dead of winter. And cold. So cold
+that even the wolves and foxes had buried themselves in. No fish that
+autumn, no game in the deep snows, and the Indians were starving.
+Pied-Bot, my heart went dead when I saw Yellow Bird. There didn't seem
+to be anything left of her but her eyes and her hair--those two great,
+shining braids, and eyes that were big and deep and dark, like beautiful
+pools. Boy, you never saw an Indian--an Indian like Yellow Bird--cry.
+They don't cry very much. But when that childhood fairy of mine first
+saw me she just stood there, swaying in her weakness, and the tears
+filled those big, wide-open eyes and ran down her thin cheeks. She
+had married Slim Buck. Two of their three children had died within a
+fortnight. Slim Buck was dying of hunger and exhaustion. And Yellow
+Bird's heart was broken, and her soul was crying out for God to let her
+lie down beside Slim Buck and die with him--when I happened along.
+
+"Peter--" Jolly Roger leaned over in the thickening dusk, and his eyes
+gleamed. "Peter, if there's a God, an' He thinks I did wrong then, let
+Him strike me dead right here! I'm willin'. I found out what the trouble
+was. There was a new Indian Agent, a cur. And near the tribe was a Free
+Trader, another cur. The two got together. The Agent sent up the Treaty
+Money, and along with it--underground, mind you--he sent a lot of
+whiskey to the Free Trader. Inside of five days the whiskey got the
+Treaty Money from the Indians. Then came winter. Everything went bad,
+When I came--and found out what had happened--eighteen out of sixty
+had died, and inside of another two weeks half the others would follow.
+Pied-Bot, away back--somewhere--there must have been a pirate before
+me--mebby a great-grandfather of mine. I set out, I came back in three
+days, and I had a sledge-load of grub, and warm things to wear--plenty
+of them. My God, how those starving things did eat! I went again, and
+returned in another week, with a still bigger sledge-load. And Yellow
+Bird was getting beautiful again, and Slim Buck was on his feet, growing
+strong, and there was happiness--and I think God A'mighty was glad. I
+kept it up for two months. Then the back-bone of the winter broke. Game
+came into the country I left them well supplied--and skipped. That was
+what made me an outlaw, Pied-Bot. That!"
+
+He chuckled, and Peter heard the rubbing of his hands in the gloom.
+
+"Want to know why?" he asked. "Well, you see, I went over to the Free
+Trader's, and this God the law don't take into account went with me, and
+we found the skunk alone. First I licked him until he was almost dead.
+Then, sticking a knife into him about half an inch, I made him write
+a note saying he was called south suddenly, and authorizing me to take
+charge in his absence. Then I chained him in a dugout in a place
+where nobody would find him. And I took charge. Pied-Bot, I sure did!
+Everybody was on the trap-lines, and I wasn't bothered much by callers.
+And I fed and clothed my tribe for eight straight weeks, fed 'em until
+they grew fat, Boy--and Yellow Bird's eyes were bright as stars again.
+Then I brought Roach--that was his name--back to his empty post, and I
+lectured him, an' gave him another licking--and left."
+
+McKay rose to his feet. The first stars were peeping out of the
+velvety darkness of the sky, and Peter heard his master draw in a deep
+breath--the breath of a man whose lungs rejoice in the glory of life.
+
+After a moment he said,
+
+"And the Royal Mounted have been after me ever since that winter, Peter.
+And the harder they've chased me the more I've given them reason to
+chase me. I half killed Beaudin, the Government mail-runner, because
+he insulted another man's wife when that man--my friend--was away. Then
+Beaudin, seeing his chance, robbed the mail himself, and the crime was
+laid to me. Well, I got even, and stuck up a mail-sledge myself--but I
+guess there was a good reason for it. I've done a lot of things since
+then, but I've done it all with my naked fists, and I've never put
+a bullet or a knife into a man except Roach the Free Trader. And the
+funniest thing of the whole business, Pied-Bot, is this--I didn't kill
+Jed Hawkins. Some day mebby I'll tell you about what happened on the
+trail, the thing which you and Nada didn't see. But now--"
+
+For a moment he stood very still, and Peter sensed the sudden thrill
+that was going through the man as he stood there in darkness. And then,
+suddenly, Jolly Roger bent over him.
+
+"Peter, there's three women we'll love as long as we live," he
+whispered. "There's my mother, and she is dead. There's Nada back there,
+and we'll never see her again--" His voice choked for an instant. "And
+then--there's Yellow Bird--" he added. "It's five years since I fed the
+tribe. Mebby they've had more kids! Boy, let's go and see!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+North and west, in the direction of Yellow Bird's people, went Jolly
+Roger and Peter after that night. They traveled slowly and cautiously,
+and with each day Peter came to understand more clearly there was
+some reason why they must be constantly on their guard. His master,
+he noticed, was thrillingly attentive whenever a sound came to their
+ears--perhaps the cracking of a twig, a mysterious movement of brush, or
+the tread of a cloven hoof. And instinctively he came to know they were
+evading Man. He remembered vividly their escape from Cassidy and their
+quiet hiding for many days in the mass of sun-baked rocks which Jolly
+Roger had called the Stew-Kettle. The same vigilance seemed to be a part
+of his master's movements now. He did not laugh, or sing, or whistle, or
+talk loudly. He built fires so small that at first Peter was absorbed
+in an almost scientific analysis of them; and instead of shooting
+game which could have been easily secured he set little snares in the
+evening, and caught fish in the streams. At night they always slept
+half a mile or more from the place where they had built their tiny
+supper-fire. And during these hours of sleep Peter was ready to rouse
+himself at the slightest sound of movement near them. Scarcely a night
+passed that his low growl of warning did not bring Jolly Roger out of
+his slumber, a hand on his gun, and his eyes and ears wide open.
+
+Whether he would have used the gun had the red-coated police suddenly
+appeared, McKay had not quite assured himself. Day after day the same
+old fight went on within him. He analyzed his situation from every point
+of view, and always--no matter how he went about it--eventually found
+himself face to face with the same definite fact. If the law succeeded
+in catching Him it would not trouble itself to punish him for stealing
+back the Treaty Money, or for holding up Government mails, or for any of
+his other misdemeanors. It would hang him for the murder of Jed Hawkins.
+And the minions of the law would laugh at the truth, even if he told
+it--which he never would. More than once his imaginative genius had
+drawn up a picture of that impossible happening. For it was a truth so
+inconceivable that he found the absurdity of it a grimly humorous thing.
+Even Nada believed he had killed her scoundrelly foster-father. Yet it
+was she--herself--who had killed him! And it was Nada whom the law would
+hang, if the truth was known--and believed.
+
+Frequently he went back over the scenes of that tragic night at Cragg's
+Ridge when all the happiness in the world seemed to be offering itself
+to him--the night when Nada was to go with him to the Missioner's,
+to become his wife, And then--the dark trail--the disheveled girl
+staggering to him through the starlight, and her sobbing story of how
+Jed Hawkins had tried to drag her through the forest to Mooney's cabin,
+and how--at last--she had saved herself by striking him down with a
+stick which she had caught up out of the darkness. Would the police
+believe HIM--an outlaw--if he told the rest of the story?--how he had
+gone back to give Jed Hawkins the beating of his life, and had found him
+dead in the trail, where Nada had struck him down? Would they believe
+him if, in a moment of cowardice, he told them that to protect the girl
+he loved he had fastened the responsibility of the crime upon himself?
+No, they would not. He had made the evidence too complete. The world
+would call him a lying yellow-back if he betrayed what had actually
+happened on the trail between Cragg's Ridge and Mooney's cabin.
+
+And this, after all, was the one remaining bit of happiness in Jolly
+Roger's heart, the knowledge that he had made the evidence utterly
+complete, and that Nada would never know, and the world would never
+know--the truth. His love for the blue-eyed girl-woman who had given
+her heart and her soul into his keeping, even when she knew he was an
+outlaw, was an undying thing, like his love for the mother of years ago.
+"It will be easy to die for her," he told Peter, and this, in the end,
+was what he knew he was going to do. Thought of the inevitable did not
+make him afraid. He was determined to keep his freedom and his life
+as long as he could, but he was fatalistic enough, and sufficiently
+acquainted with the Royal Northwest Mounted Police, to know what the
+ultimate of the thing would be. And yet, with tragedy behind him, and a
+still grimmer tragedy ahead, the soul of Jolly Roger was not dead or in
+utter darkness. In it, waking and sleeping, he enshrined the girl who
+had been willing to give up all other things in the world for him,
+who had pleaded with him in the last hour of storm down on the edge
+of civilization that she be given the privilege of accompanying him
+wherever his fate might lead. That he was an outlaw had not destroyed
+her faith in him. That he had killed a man--a man unfit to live--had
+only drawn her arms more closely about him, and had made her more
+completely a part of him. And a thousand times the maddening thought
+possessed Jolly Roger--was he wrong, and not right, in refusing to
+accept the love and companionship which she had begged him to accept, in
+spite of all that had happened and all that might happen?
+
+Day by day he slowly won for himself, and at last, as they traveled in
+the direction of Yellow Bird's country, he crushed the final doubt that
+oppressed him, and knew that he was right. In his selfishness he had not
+shackled her to an outlaw. He had left her free. Life and hope and other
+happiness were ahead of her. He had not destroyed her, and this thought
+would strengthen him and leave something of gladness in his heart,
+even in that gray dawn when the law would compel him to make his final
+sacrifice.
+
+It is a strange peace which follows grief, a secret happiness no other
+soul but one can understand. Out of it excitement and passion have been
+burned, and it is then the Great God of things comes more closely into
+the possession of his own. And now, as they went westward and north
+toward the Wollaston Lake country, this peace possessed Jolly Roger. It
+mellowed his world. It was half an ache, half a steady and undying pain,
+but it drew Life nearer to him than he had ever known it before. His
+love for the sun and the sky, for the trees and flowers and all growing
+things of the earth was more worship of the divine than a love for
+physical things, and each day he felt it drawing more closely about him
+in its comradeship, whispering to him of its might, and of its power to
+care for him in the darkest hours of stress that might come.
+
+He did not travel fast after he had reached the decision to go to Yellow
+Bird's people. And he tried to imagine, a great deal of the time, that
+Nada was with him. He succeeded in a way that bewildered Peter, for
+quite frequently the man talked to someone who was not there.
+
+The slowness and caution with which they traveled developed Peter's
+mental faculties with marvelous swiftness. His master, free of egoism
+and prejudice, had placed him on a plane of intimate equality, and Peter
+struggled each day to live up a little more to the responsibility of
+this intimacy and confidence. Instinct, together with human training,
+taught him woodcraft until in many ways he was more clever than his
+master. And along with this Jolly Roger slowly but surely impressed upon
+him the difference between wanton slaughter and necessary killing.
+
+"Everything that's got a breath of life must kill--up to a certain
+point," Jolly Roger explained to him, repeating the lesson over and
+over. "And that isn't wrong, Peter. The sin is in killing when you
+don't have to. See that tree over there, with a vine as big as my wrist
+winding around it, like a snake? Well, that vine is choking the life out
+of the tree, and in time the tree will die. But the vine is doing just
+what God A'mighty meant it to do. It needs a tree to live on. But I'm
+going to cut the vine, because I think more of the tree than I do the
+vine. That's MY privilege--following my conscience. And we're eating
+young partridges tonight, because we had to have something to keep us
+alive. It's the necessity of the thing that counts, Peter. Think you can
+understand that?"
+
+It was pretty hard for Peter at first, but he was observant, and his
+mind worked quickly. The crime of destroying birdlings in their nest, or
+on the ground, was impressed upon him. He began to understand there was
+a certain humiliating shame attached to an attack upon a creature weaker
+than himself, unless there was a reason for it. He looked chiefly to
+his master for decisions in the matter. Snowshoe rabbits, young and half
+grown, were very tame in this month of August, and ordinarily he would
+have destroyed many of them in a day's travel. But unless Jolly
+Roger gave him a signal, or he was hungry, he would pass a snowshoe
+unconcernedly. This phase of Peter's development interested Jolly
+Roger greatly. The outlaw's philosophy had not been punctured by the
+egotistical "I am the only reasoning being" arguments of narrow-gauged
+nature scientists. He believed that Peter possessed not only a brain and
+super-instinct, but also a very positive reasoning power which he was
+helping to develop. And the process was one that fascinated him. When he
+was not sleeping, or traveling, or teaching Peter he was usually reading
+the wonderful little red volumes of history which he had purloined from
+the mail sledge up near the Barren Lands. He knew their contents nearly
+by heart. His favorites were the life-stories of Napoleon, Margaret of
+Anjou, and Peter the Great, and always when he compared his own
+troubles with the difficulties and tragedies over which these people
+had triumphed he felt a new courage and inspiration, and faced the world
+with better cheer. If Nature was his God and Bible, and Nada his Angel,
+these finger-worn little books written by a man half a century dead
+were voices out of the past urging him on to his best. Their pages were
+filled with the vivid lessons of sacrifice, of courage and achievement,
+of loyalty, honor and dishonor--and of the crashing tragedy which comes
+always with the last supreme egoism and arrogance of man. He marked the
+dividing lines, and applied them to himself. And he told Peter of his
+conclusions. He felt a consuming tenderness for the glorious Margaret of
+Anjou, and his heart thrilled one day when a voice seemed to whisper to
+him out of the printed page that Nada was another Margaret--only more
+wonderful because she was not a princess and a queen.
+
+"The only difference," he explained to Peter, "is that Margaret
+sacrificed and fought and died for a king, and our Nada is willing to
+do all that for a poor beggar of an outlaw. Which makes Margaret a
+second-rater compared with Nada," he added. "For Margaret wanted a
+kingdom along with her husband, and Nada would take--just you and me.
+And that's where we're pulling some Peter the Great stuff," he tried to
+laugh. "We won't let her do it!"
+
+And so they went on, day after day, toward the Wollaston waterways--the
+country of Yellow Bird and her people.
+
+It was early September when they crossed the Geikie and struck up the
+western shore of Wollaston Lake. The first golden tints were ripening in
+the canoe-birch leaves, and the tremulous whisper of autumn was in the
+rustle of the aspen trees. The poplars were yellowing, the ash were
+blood red with fruit, and in cool, dank thickets wild currants were
+glossy black and lusciously ripe. It was the season which Jolly Roger
+loved most of all, and it was the beginning of Peter's first September.
+The days were still hot, but at night there was a bracing something in
+the air that stirred the blood, and Peter found a sharp, new note in the
+voices of the wild. The wolf howled again in the middle of the night.
+The loon forgot his love-sickness, and screamed raucous defiance at the
+moon. The big snowshoes were no longer tame, but wary and alert, and the
+owls seemed to slink deeper into darkness and watch with more cunning.
+And Jolly Roger knew the human masters of the wilderness were returning
+from the Posts to their cabins and trap-lines, and he advanced with
+still greater caution. And as he went, watching for smoke and listening
+for sound, he began to reflect upon the many changes which five
+years might have produced among Yellow Bird's people. Possibly other
+misfortunes had come, other winters of hunger and pestilence, scattering
+and destroying the tribe. It might even be that Yellow Bird was dead.
+
+For three days he followed slowly the ragged shore of Wollaston
+Lake, and foreboding of evil was oppressing him when he came upon the
+fish-racks of the Indians. They had been abandoned for many days, for
+black bear tracks fairly inundated the place, and Peter saw two of the
+bears--fat and unafraid--nosing along the shore where the fish offal had
+been thrown.
+
+It was the next day, in the hour before sunset, that Jolly Roger and
+Peter came out on the edge of a shelving beach where Indian children
+were playing in the white sand. Among these children, playing and
+laughing with them, was a woman. She was tall and slim, with a skirt of
+soft buckskin that came only a little below her knees, and two shining
+black braids which tossed like velvety ropes when she ran. And she was
+running when they first saw her--running away from them, pursued by the
+children; and then she twisted suddenly, and came toward them, until
+with a startled cry she stopped almost within the reach of Jolly Roger's
+hands. Peter was watching. He saw the half frightened look in her face,
+then the slow widening of her dark eyes, and the quick intake of her
+breath. And in that moment Jolly Roger cried out a name.
+
+"Yellow Bird!"
+
+He went to her slowly, wondering if it could be possible the years had
+touched Yellow Bird so lightly; and Yellow Bird reached out her hands to
+him, her face flaming up with sudden happiness, and Peter wondered what
+it was all about as he cautiously eyed the half dozen brown-faced little
+Indian children who had now gathered quietly about them. In another
+moment there was an interruption. A girl came through the fringe of
+willows behind them. It was as if another Yellow Bird had come to puzzle
+Peter--the same slim, graceful little body, the same shining eyes, and
+yet she was half a dozen years younger than Nada. For the first time
+Peter was looking at Sun Cloud, the daughter of Yellow Bird. And in that
+moment he loved her, just as something gave him confidence and faith in
+the starry-eyed woman whose hands were in his master's. Then Yellow Bird
+called, and the girl went to her mother, and Jolly Roger hugged her in
+his arms and kissed her on the scarlet mouth she turned up to him.
+Then they hurried along the shore toward the fishing camp, the children
+racing ahead to tell the news, led by Sun Cloud--with Peter running at
+her heels.
+
+Never had Peter heard anything from a man's throat like the two yells
+that came from Slim Buck, Yellow Bird's husband and chief of the tribe,
+after he had greeted Jolly Roger McKay. It was a note harking back to
+the old war trails of the Crees, and what followed it that night was
+most exciting to Peter. Big fires were built of white driftwood, and
+there was singing and dancing, and a great deal of laughter and eating,
+and the interminable howling of half a hundred Siwash dogs. Peter did
+not like the dogs, but he did no fighting because his love for Sun Cloud
+kept him close to the touch of her little brown hand.
+
+That night, in the glow of the big fire outside of Slim Buck's tepee,
+Jolly Roger's heart thrilled with a pleasure which it had not known for
+a long time. He loved to look at Yellow Bird. Five years had not changed
+her. Her eyes were starry bright. Her teeth were like milk. The color
+still came and went in her brown cheeks, even as it did in Sun Cloud's.
+All of which, in this heart of a wilderness, meant that she had been
+happy and prosperous. And he also loved to look at Sun Cloud, who
+possessed all of that rare wildflower beauty sometimes given to the
+northern Crees. And it did him good to look at Slim Buck. He was
+a splendid mate, and a royal father, and Jolly Roger found himself
+strangely happy in their happiness. In the eyes of men and women and
+little children he saw that happiness all about him. For three winters
+there had been splendid trapping, Slim Buck told him, and this season
+they had caught and dried enough fish to carry them through the
+following winter, even if black days should come. His people were rich.
+They had many warm blankets, and good clothes, and the best of tepees
+and guns and sledges, and several treasures besides. Two of these Yellow
+Bird and her husband disclosed to Jolly Roger this first night. One of
+them was a sewing machine, and the other--a phonograph! And Jolly Roger
+listened to "Mother Machree" and "The Rosary" that night as he sat by
+Wollaston Lake with six hundred miles of wilderness between him and
+Cragg's Ridge.
+
+Later, when the camp slept, Yellow Bird and Slim Buck and Jolly Roger
+still sat beside the red embers of their fire, and Jolly Roger told
+of what had happened down at the edge of civilization. It was what
+his heart needed, and he left out none of the details. Slim Buck was
+listening, but Jolly Roger knew he was talking straight at Yellow Bird,
+and that her warm heart was full of understanding. Softly, in that
+low Cree voice which is the sweetest of all voices, she asked him many
+questions about Nada, and gently her slim fingers caressed the tress of
+Nada's hair which he let her take in her hands. And after a long time,
+she said.
+
+"I have given her a name. She is Oo-Mee, the Pigeon."
+
+Slim Buck started at the strange note in her voice.
+
+"The Pigeon," he repeated,
+
+"Yes, Oo-Mee, the Pigeon," Yellow Bird nodded. She was not looking at
+them. In the firelight her eyes were glowing pools. Her body had grown
+a little tense. Without asking Jolly Roger's permission she placed the
+tress of Nada's hair in her bosom. "Oo-Mee, the Pigeon," she said again,
+looking far away. "That is her name, because the Pigeon flies fast and
+straight and true. Over forests and lakes and worlds the Pigeon flies.
+It is tireless. It is swift. It always--flies home."
+
+Slim Buck rose quietly to his feet.
+
+"Come," he whispered, looking at Jolly Roger,
+
+Yellow Bird did not look at them or speak to them, and Slim Buck--with
+his hand on Jolly Roger's arm--pulled him gently away. In his eyes was a
+little something of fear, and yet along with it a sublime faith.
+
+"Her spirit will be with Oo-Mee, the Pigeon, tonight," he said in
+a voice struck with awe. "It will go to this place which you have
+described, and it will live in the body of the girl, and through Yellow
+Bird it will tell you tomorrow what has happened, and what is going to
+happen."
+
+In the edge of the shore-willows Jolly Roger stood for a time watching
+Yellow Bird as she sat under the stars, motionless as a figure graven
+out of stone. He felt a curious tingling at his heart, something
+stirring uneasily in his breast, and he stood alone even after Slim
+Buck had stretched himself out in the soft sand to sleep. He was not
+superstitious. Yet it was equally a part of his philosophy and his creed
+to believe in the overwhelming power of the mind. "If you have faith
+enough, and think hard enough, you can think anything until it comes
+true," he had told himself more than once. And he knew Yellow Bird
+possessed that illimitable faith, and that behind her divination lay
+generations and centuries of an unbreakable certainty in the power of
+mind over matter. He realized his own limitations, but a mysterious
+voice in the still night seemed whispering to him that in the crude
+wisdom of Yellow Bird's brain lay the secret to strange achievement,
+and that on this night her mind might perform for him what he, in his
+greater wisdom, would call a miracle. He had seen things like that
+happen. And he sat down in the sand, sleepless, and with Peter at his
+feet waited for Yellow Bird to stir.
+
+He could see the dull shimmer of starlight in her hair, but the rest of
+her was a shadow that gave no sign of life. The camp was asleep. Even
+the dogs were buried in their wallows of sand, and the last red spark of
+the fires had died out. The hour passed, and another hour followed, and
+the lids of Jolly Roger's eyes grew heavier as the fading stars seemed
+to be sinking deeper into infinity. At last he slept, with his back
+leaning against a sand-dune the children had made. He dreamed, and was
+flying through the air with Yellow Bird. She was traveling swift and
+straight, like an arrow, and he had difficulty in keeping up with her,
+and at last he cried out for her to wait--that he could go no farther.
+The cry roused him. He opened his eyes, and found cool, gray dawn in
+the sky. Peter, alert, was muzzling his hand. Slim Buck lay in the sand,
+still asleep. There was no stir in the camp. And then, with a sudden
+catch in his breath, he looked toward Yellow Bird's tepee.
+
+Yellow Bird still sat in the sand. Through the hours of fading starlight
+and coming dawn she had not moved. Slowly McKay rose to his feet.
+When he came to her, making no sound, she looked up. The shimmer of
+glistening dew was in her hair. Her long lashes were wet with it. Her
+face was very pale, and her eyes so large and dark that for a moment
+they startled him. She was tired. Exhaustion was in her slim, limp body.
+
+A sigh came from her lips, and her shoulders swayed a little.
+
+"Sit down, Neekewa," she whispered, drawing the ropes of her hair about
+her as if she were cold.
+
+Then she drew a slim hand over her eyes, and shivered.
+
+"It is well, Neekewa," she spoke softly. "I have gone through the clouds
+to where lives Oo-Mee, the Pigeon. I found her crying in a trail. I
+whispered to her and happiness came, and that happiness is going to
+live--for Neekewa and The Pigeon. It cannot die. It cannot be killed.
+The Red Coated men of the Great White Father will never destroy it.
+You will live. She will live. You will meet again--in happiness. And
+happiness will follow ever after. That much I learned, Neekewa. In
+happiness--you will meet again."
+
+"Where? When?" whispered Jolly Roger, his heart beating with sudden
+swiftness.
+
+Again Yellow Bird passed her hand over her eyes, and as she held it
+there for a moment she bowed her head until Jolly Roger could see only
+her dew-wet hair and she said,
+
+"In the Country Beyond, Neekewa."
+
+Her eyes were looking at him again, big, dark and filled with mystery.
+
+"And where is this country, Yellow Bird?" he asked, a strange chill
+driving the warmth out of his heart. "You mean--up there?" And he
+pointed to the gray sky above them.
+
+"No, it is happiness to come in life, not in death," said Yellow Bird
+slowly. "It is not beyond the stars. It is--"
+
+He waited, leaning toward her.
+
+"In the Country Beyond," she repeated with a tired little droop of her
+head. "And where that is I do not know, Neekewa. I could not pass beyond
+the great white cloud that shut me out. But it is--somewhere, I will
+find it. And then I will tell you--and The Pigeon."
+
+She stood up, and swayed in the gray light, like one worn out by hard
+travel. Then she passed into the tepee, and Jolly Roger heard her fall
+on her blanket-bed.
+
+And still stranger whisperings filled his heart as he faced the east,
+where the first red blush of day drove back the star-mists of dawn. He
+heard a step in the soft sand, and Slim Buck stood beside him. And he
+asked.
+
+"Did you ever hear of the Country Beyond?" Slim Buck shook his head, and
+both looked in silence toward the rising sun.
+
+Peter was glad when the camp roused itself out of sleep with waking
+voices, and laughter, and the building of fires. He waited eagerly for
+Sun Cloud. At last she came out of Yellow Bird's tepee, rubbing her eyes
+in the face of the glow in the east, and then her white teeth flashed a
+smile of welcome at him. Together they ran down to the edge of the
+lake, and Peter wagged his tail while Sun Cloud went out knee-deep and
+scrubbed her pretty face with handfuls of the cool water. It was a happy
+day for him. He was different from the Indian dogs, and Sun Cloud and
+her playmates made much of him. But never, even in their most exciting
+play, did he entirely lose track of his master.
+
+Jolly Roger, to an extent, forgot Peter. He tried to deaden within him
+the impulses which Yellow Bird's conjuring had roused. He tried to see
+in them a menace and a danger, and he repeated to himself the folly
+of placing credence in Yellow Bird's "medicine." But his efforts were
+futile, and he was honest enough to admit it. The uneasiness was in
+his breast. A new hope was rising up. And with that hope were fear and
+suspense, for deep in him was growing stronger the conviction that
+what Yellow Bird would tell him would be true. He noted the calm and
+dignified stiffness with which Slim Buck greeted the day. The young
+chief passed quietly among his people. A word traveled in whispers,
+voices and footsteps were muffled and before the sun was an hour high
+there was no tepee standing but one on that white strip of beach. And
+the one tepee was Yellow Bird's,
+
+Not until the camp was gone, leaving her alone, did Yellow Bird come
+out into the day. She saw the food placed at her tepee door. She saw
+the empty places where the homes of her people had stood, and in the wet
+sand of the beach the marks of their missing canoes. Then she turned her
+pale face and tired eyes to the sun, and unbraided her hair so that it
+streamed glistening all about her and covered the white sand when she
+sat down again in front of the smoke-darkened canvas that had become her
+conjurer's house.
+
+Two miles up the beach Slim Buck's people made another camp. But Slim
+Buck and Jolly Roger remained in the cover of a wooded headland only
+half a mile from Yellow Bird. They saw her when she came out. They
+watched for an hour after she sat down in the sand. And then Slim Buck
+grunted, and with a gesture of his hands said they would go. Jolly Roger
+protested. It was not safe for Yellow Bird to remain entirely beyond
+their protection. There were bears prowling about. And human beasts
+occasionally found their way through the wilderness. But Slim Buck's
+face was like a bronze carving in its faith and pride.
+
+"Yellow Bird only goes with the good spirits," he assured Jolly Roger.
+"She does not do witchcraft with the bad. And no harm can come while the
+good spirits are with her. It is thus she has brought us happiness and
+prosperity since the days of the famine, Neekewa!"
+
+He spoke these words in Cree, and McKay answered him in Cree as they
+turned in the direction of the camp. Half way, Sun Cloud came to meet
+them, with Peter at her side. She put a brown little hand in Jolly
+Roger's. It was quite new and pleasant to be kissed as Jolly Roger had
+kissed her, and she held up her mouth to him again. Then she ran ahead,
+with Peter yipping foolishly and happily at her moccasined heels.
+
+And Jolly Roger said,
+
+"I wish I was your brother, Slim Buck, and Nada was Yellow Bird's
+sister--and that I had many like her," and his eyes followed Sun Cloud
+with hungry yearning.
+
+And as he said these words, Yellow Bird sat with bowed head and closed
+eyes, with the soft tress of Nada's hair in her hands. It was the
+physical union between them, and all that day, and the night that
+followed, Yellow Bird held it in her hand or against her breast as she
+struggled to send out the soul that was in her on its mission to Oo-Mee
+the Pigeon. In darkness she buried the food that was left her, and
+stamped on it with her feet. The sacrifice of her body had begun, and
+for two days thereafter Jolly Roger and Slim Buck saw no movement of
+life about the lone tepee in the sand.
+
+But the third morning they saw the smoke of a little greenwood fire
+rising straight up from in front of it.
+
+Slim Buck drew in a deep breath. It was the signal fire.
+
+"She knows," he said, pointing for Jolly Roger to go. "She is calling
+you!"
+
+The tenseness was gone from the bronze muscles of his face. He was
+lonely without Yellow Bird, and the signal fire meant she would be with
+him again soon. Jolly Roger walked swiftly over the white beach.
+Again he tried to tell himself what folly it all was, and that he was
+answering the signal-fire only to humor Yellow Bird and Slim Buck. But
+words, even spoken half aloud, did not quiet the eager beating of his
+heart.
+
+Not until he was very near did Yellow Bird come out of the tepee. And it
+was then Jolly Roger stopped short, a gasp on his lips. She was changed.
+Her radiant hair was still down, polished smooth; but her face was
+whiter than he had ever seen it, and drawn and pinched almost as in the
+days of the famine. For two days and two nights she had taken no food,
+and for two days and two nights she had not slept. But there was triumph
+in her big, wide-open eyes, and Jolly Roger felt something strange
+rising up in his breast.
+
+Yellow Bird held out her hands toward him.
+
+"We have been together, The Pigeon and I," she said. "We have slept
+in each other's arms, and the warmth of her head has lain against my
+breast. I have learned the secrets, Neekewa--all but one. The spirits
+will not tell me where lies the Country Beyond. But it is not up
+there--beyond the stars. It is not in death, but in life you will find
+it. That they have told me. And you must not go back to where The Pigeon
+lives, for you will find black desolation there--but always you must
+keep on and on, seeking for the Country Beyond. You will find it. And
+there also you will find The Pigeon--and happiness. You cannot fail,
+Neekewa, yet my heart stings me that I cannot tell you where that
+strange country is. But when I came to it gold and silver clouds shut it
+in, and I could see nothing, and yet out of it came the singing of birds
+and the promise of sweet voices that it shall be found--if you seek
+faithfully, Neekewa. I am glad."
+
+Each word that she spoke in her soft and tremulous Cree was a new
+message of hope in the empty heart of Jolly Roger McKay. The world might
+laugh. Men might tap their heads and smile. His own voice might argue
+and taunt. But deep in his heart he believed.
+
+Something of the radiance of the new day came into his face, even as it
+was returning into Yellow Bird's. He looked about him--east, west, north
+and south--upon the sunlit glory of water and earth, and suddenly he
+reached out his arms.
+
+"I'll find it, Yellow Bird," he cried. "I'll find this place you call
+the Country Beyond! And when I do--"
+
+He turned and took one of Yellow Bird's slim hands in both his own.
+
+"And when I do, we'll come back to you, Yellow Bird," he said.
+
+And like a cavalier of old he touched his lips gently to the palm of
+Yellow Bird's little brown hand.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+Days of new hope and gladness followed in the camp of Yellow Bird and
+Slim Buck. It was as if McKay, after a long absence, had come back to
+his own people. The tenderness of mother and sister lay warm in Yellow
+Bird's breast. Slim Buck loved him as a brother. The wrinkled faces of
+the old softened when he came near and spoke to them; little children
+followed him, and at dusk and dawn Sun Cloud held up her mouth to be
+kissed. For the first time in years McKay felt as if he had found home.
+The northland Indian Summer held the world in its drowsy arms, and
+the sun-filled days and the starry nights seemed overflowing with the
+promise of all time. Each day he put off his going until tomorrow, and
+each day Slim Buck urged him to remain with them always.
+
+But in Yellow Bird's eyes was a strange, quiet mystery, and she did not
+urge. Each day and night she was watching--and waiting.
+
+And at last that for which she watched and waited came to pass.
+
+It was night, a dark, still night with a creeping restlessness in it.
+This restlessness was like the ghostly pulse of a great living body,
+still for a time, then moving, hiding, whispering between the clouds in
+the sky and the deeper shadowed earth below. A night of uneasiness, of
+unseen forces chained and stifled, of impending doubt and oppressive
+lifelessness.
+
+There was no wind, yet under the stars gray masses of cloud sped as if
+in flight.
+
+There was no breeze in the treetops, yet they whispered and sighed.
+
+In the strange spell of this midnight, heavy with its unrest, the
+wilderness lay half asleep, half awake, with the mysterious stillness of
+death enshrouding it.
+
+At the edge of the white sands of Wollaston, whose broad water was like
+oil tonight, stood the tepees of Yellow Bird's people. Smoke-blackened
+and seasoned by wind and rain they were dark blotches sentineling the
+shore of the big lake. Behind them, beyond the willows, were the Indian
+dogs. From them came an occasional whine, a deep sigh, the snapping of
+a jaw, and in the gloom their bodies moved restlessly. In the tepees
+was the spell of this same unrest. Sleep was never quite sure of itself.
+Men, women and little children twisted and rolled, or lay awake, and
+weird and distorted shapes and fancies came in dreams.
+
+In her tepee Yellow Bird lay with her eyes wide open, staring at the
+gray blur of the smoke hole above. Her husband was asleep. Sun Cloud,
+tossing on her blankets, had flung one of her long braids so that it lay
+across her mother's breast. Yellow Bird's slim fingers played with its
+silken strands as she looked straight up into nothingness. Wide awake,
+she was thinking--thinking as Slim Buck--would never be able to think,
+back to the days when a white woman had been her goddess, and when a
+little white boy--the woman's son--had called Yellow Bird "my fairy."
+
+In the gloom, with foreboding eating at her heart, Yellow Bird's red
+lips parted in a smile as those days came back to her, for they were
+pleasing days to think about. But after that the years sped swiftly in
+her mind until the day when the little boy--a man grown--came to save
+her tribe, and her own life, and the life of Sun Cloud, and of Slim Buck
+her husband. Since then prosperity and happiness had been her lot. The
+spirits had been good. They had not let her grow old, but had kept her
+still beautiful. And Sun Cloud, her little daughter, was beautiful,
+and Slim Buck was more than ever her god among men, and her people were
+happy. And all this she owed to the man who was sleeping under the gloom
+of the sky outside, the hunted man, the outlaw, "the little boy grown
+up"--Jolly Roger McKay.
+
+As she listened, and stared up at the smoke hole, strange spirits were
+whispering to her, and Yellow Bird's blood ran a little faster and
+her eyes grew bigger and brighter in the darkness. They seemed to be
+accusing her. They told her it was because of her that Roger McKay had
+come in that winter of starvation and death, and had robbed and almost
+killed, that she and Slim Buck and little Sun Cloud might live. That was
+the beginning, and the thrill of it had got into the blood of Neekewa,
+her "little white brother grown up." And now he was out there, alone
+with his dog in the night--and the red-coated avengers of the law
+were hunting him. They wanted him for many things, but chiefly for the
+killing of a man.
+
+Yellow Bird sat up, her little hands clenched about the thick braid of
+Sun Cloud's hair. She had conjured with the spirits and had let the
+soul go out of her body that she might learn the future for Neekewa, her
+white brother. And they had told her that Roger McKay had done right to
+think of killing.
+
+Their voices had whispered to her that he would not suffer more than he
+had already suffered--and that in the Country Beyond he would find
+Nada the white girl, and happiness, and peace. Yellow Bird did not
+disbelieve. Her faith was illimitable. The spirits would not lie. But
+the unrest of the night was eating at her heart. She tried to
+lift herself to the whisperings above the tepee top. But they were
+unintelligible, like many voices mingling, and with them came a dull
+fear into her soul.
+
+She put out a hand, as if to rouse Slim Buck. Then she drew it back, and
+placed Sun Cloud's braid away from her. She rose to her feet so quietly
+that even in their restlessness they did not fully awake. Through the
+tepee door she went, and stood up straight in the night, as if now she
+might hear more clearly, and understand.
+
+For a space she breathed in the oppressive something that was in the
+air, and her eyes went east and west for sign of storm. But there was
+no threat of storm. The clouds were drifting slowly and softly, with
+starlight breaking through their rifts, and there was no moan of thunder
+or wail of wind far away. Her heart, for a little, seemed to stop its
+beating, and her hands clasped tightly at her breast. She began to
+understand, and a strange thrill crept into her. The spirits had put a
+great burden upon the night so that it might drive sleep from her eyes.
+They were warning her. They were telling her of danger, approaching
+swiftly, almost impending. And it was peril for the white man who was
+sleeping somewhere near.
+
+Swiftly she began seeking for him, her naked little brown feet making no
+sound in the soft white sands of Wollaston.
+
+And as she sought, the clouds thinned out above, and the stars shone
+through more clearly, as if to make easier for her the quest in the
+gloom.
+
+Where he had made his bed of blankets in the sand, close beside a flat
+mass of water-washed sandstone, Jolly Roger lay half asleep. Peter was
+wide awake. His eyes gleamed brightly and watchfully. His lank and bony
+body was tense and alert. He did not whine or snap his jaws, though
+he heard the Indian dogs occasionally doing so. The comradeship of a
+fugitive, ever on the watch for his fellow men, had made him silent and
+velvet-footed, and had sharpened his senses to the keenness of knives.
+He, too, felt the impelling force of an approaching menace in this night
+of stillness and mystery, and he watched closely the restless movements
+of his master's body, and listened with burning eyes to the name which
+he had spoken three times in the last five minutes of his sleep.
+
+It was Nada's name, and as Jolly Roger cried it out softly in the old
+way, as if Nada was standing before them, he reached out, and his hands
+struck the sandstone rock. His eyes opened, and slowly he sat up.
+The sky had cleared of clouds, and there was starlight, and in that
+starlight Jolly Roger saw a figure standing near him in the sand. At
+first he thought it was Sun Cloud, for Peter stood with his head raised
+to her. Then he saw it was Yellow Bird, with her beautiful eyes looking
+at him steadily and strangely as he awakened.
+
+He got upon his feet and went to her, and took one of her hands. It was
+cold. He felt the shiver that ran through her slim body, and suddenly
+her eyes swept from him out into the night.
+
+"Listen, Neekewa!"
+
+Her fingers tightened in his hand. For a space he could hear the beating
+of her heart.
+
+"Twice I have heard it," she whispered then. "Neekewa, you must go!"
+
+"Heard what?" he asked.
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"Something--I don't know what. But it tells me there is danger. And I
+saw danger over the tepee top, and I have heard whisperings of it all
+about me. It is coming. It is coming slowly and cautiously. It is very
+near. Hark, Neekewa! Was that not a sound out on the water?"
+
+"I think it was the wing of a duck, Yellow Bird."
+
+"And THAT!" she cried swiftly, her fingers tightening still more. "That
+sound--as if wood strikes on wood!"
+
+"The croak of a loon far up the shore, Yellow Bird."
+
+She drew her hand away.
+
+"Neekewa, listen to me," she importuned him in Cree. "The spirits
+have made this night heavy with warning. I could not sleep. Sun Cloud
+twitches and moans. Slim Buck whispers to himself. You were crying out
+the name of Nada--Oo-Mee the Pigeon--when I came to you. I know. It is
+danger. It is very near. And it is danger for you."
+
+"And only a short time ago you were confident happiness and peace were
+coming to me, Yellow Bird," reminded Jolly Roger. "The spirits, you
+said, promised the law should never get me, and I would find Nada again
+in that strange place you called the Country Beyond. Have the spirits
+changed their message, because the night is heavy?"
+
+Yellow Bird's eyes were staring into darkness.
+
+"No, they have not changed," she whispered. "They have spoken the truth.
+They want to tell me more, but for some reason it is impossible. They
+have tried to tell me where lies this place they call the Country
+Beyond--where you will again find Oo-Mee the Pigeon. But a cloud always
+comes between. And they are trying to tell me what the danger is off
+there--in the darkness." Suddenly she caught his arm. "Nee-kewa, DID YOU
+HEAR?"
+
+"A fish leaping in the still water, Yellow Bird."
+
+He heard a low whimper in Peter's throat, and looking down he saw
+Peter's muzzle pointing toward the thick cloud of gloom over the lake.
+
+"What is it, Pied-Bot?" he asked.
+
+Peter whimpered again.
+
+Jolly Roger touched the cold hand that rested on his arm.
+
+"Go back to your bed, Yellow Bird. There is only one danger for me--the
+red-coated police. And they do not travel in the dark hours of a night
+like this."
+
+"They are coming," she replied. "I cannot hear or see, but they are
+coming!"
+
+Her fingers tightened.
+
+"And they are near," she cried softly.
+
+"You are nervous, Yellow Bird," he said, thinking of the two days and
+three nights of her conjuring, when she had neither slept nor taken
+food, that she might more successfully commune with the spirits. "There
+is no danger. The night is a hard one for sleep. It has frightened you."
+
+"It has warned me," she persisted, standing as motionless as a statue at
+his side. "Neekewa, the spirits do not forget. They have not forgotten
+that winter when you came, and my people were dying of famine and
+sickness--when I dreaded to see little Sun Cloud close her eyes even in
+sleep, fearing she would never open them again. They have not forgotten
+how all that winter you robbed the white people over on the Des Chenes,
+that we might live. If they remember those things, and lie, I would not
+be afraid to curse them. But they do not lie."
+
+Jolly Roger McKay did not answer. Deep down in him that strange
+something was at work again, compelling him to believe Yellow Bird. She
+did not look at him, but in her low Cree voice, soft as the mellow notes
+of a bird, she was saying:
+
+"You will be going very soon, Neekewa, and I shall not see you again for
+a long time. Do not forget what I have told you. And you must believe.
+Somewhere there is this place called the Country Beyond. The spirits
+have said so. And it is there you will find your Oo-Mee the Pigeon--and
+happiness. But if you go back to the place where you left The Pigeon
+when you fled from the red-coated men of the law, you will find only
+blackness and desolation. Believe, and you shall be guided. If you
+disbelieve--"
+
+She stopped.
+
+"You heard that, Neekewa? It was not the wing of a duck, nor was it the
+croak of a loon far up the shore, or a fish leaping in the still water.
+IT WAS A PADDLE!"
+
+In the star-gloom Jolly Roger McKay bowed his head, and listened.
+
+"Yes, a paddle," he said, and his voice sounded strange to him.
+"Probably it is one of your people returning to camp, Yellow Bird."
+
+She turned toward him, and stood very near. Her hands reached out to
+him. Her hair and eyes were filled with the velvety glow of the stars,
+and for an instant he saw the tremble of her parted lips.
+
+"Goodby, Neekewa," she whispered.
+
+And then, without letting her hands touch him, she was gone. Swiftly she
+ran to Slim Buck's tepee, and entered, and very soon she came out again
+with Slim Buck beside her. Jolly Roger did not move, but watched as
+Yellow Bird and her husband went down to the edge of the lake, and
+stood there, waiting for the strange canoe to pass--or come in. It
+was approaching. Slowly it came up, an indistinct shadow at first, but
+growing clearer, until at last he could see the silhouette of it against
+the star-silvered water beyond. There were two people in it. Before the
+canoe reached the shore Slim Buck stood out knee-deep in the water and
+hailed it.
+
+A voice answered. And at the sound of that voice McKay dropped like
+a shot beside Peter, and Peter's lips curled up, and he snarled. His
+master's hand warned him, and together they slipped back into the
+shadows, and from under a piece of canvas Jolly Roger dragged forth his
+pack, and quietly strapped it over his shoulders while he waited and
+listened.
+
+And then, as he heard the voice again, he grinned, and chuckled softly.
+
+"It's Cassidy, Pied-Bot! We can't lose that redheaded fox, can we?"
+
+A good humored deviltry lay in his eyes, and Peter--looking up--thought
+for a moment his master was laughing. Then Jolly Roger made a megaphone
+of his hands, and called very clearly out into the night.
+
+"Ho, Cassidy! Is that you, Cassidy?"
+
+Peter's heart was choking him as he listened. He sensed a terrific
+danger. There was no sound at the edge of the lake. There was no sound
+anywhere. For a few moments a death-like stillness followed Jolly
+Roger's words.
+
+Then a voice came in answer, each word cutting the gloom with the
+decisive clearness of a bullet coming from a gun.
+
+"Yes, this is Cassidy--Corporal Terence Cassidy, of 'M' Division, Royal
+Northwest Mounted Police. Is that you, McKay?"
+
+"Yes, it's me," replied Jolly Roger. "Does the wager still hold,
+Cassidy?"
+
+"It holds."
+
+There was a shadowy movement on the beach. The voice came again.
+
+"Watch yourself, McKay. If I see you I shall fire!"
+
+With drawn gun Cassidy rushed toward the spot where Jolly Roger and
+Peter had stood. It was empty now, except for the bit of old canvas.
+Cassidy's Indian came up and stood behind him, and for many minutes they
+listened for the crackling of brush. Slim Buck joined them, and last
+came Yellow Bird, her dark eyes glowing like pools of fire in their
+excitement. Cassidy looked at her, marveling at her beauty, and
+suspicious of something that was in her face. He went back to the beach.
+There he caught himself short, astonishment bringing a sharp exclamation
+from his lips.
+
+His canoe and outfit were gone!
+
+Out of the star-gloom behind him floated a soft ripple of laughter as
+Yellow Bird ran to her tepee.
+
+And from the mist of water--far out--came a voice, the voice of Jolly
+Roger McKay.
+
+"Goodby, Cassidy!"
+
+With it mingled the defiant bark of a dog.
+
+In her tepee, a moment later, Yellow Bird drew Sun Cloud's glossy head
+close against her warm breast, and turned her radiant face up thankfully
+to the smoke hole in the tepee top, through which the spirits had
+whispered their warning to her. Indistinctly, and still farther away,
+her straining ears heard again the cry,
+
+"Goodby, Cassidy!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+In Cassidy's canoe, driving himself with steady strokes deeper into the
+mystery of the starlit waters of Wollaston, Jolly Roger felt the night
+suddenly filled with an exhilarating tonic. Its deadness was gone. Its
+weight had lifted. A ripple broke the star gleams where an increasing
+breeze touched the surface of the lake. And the thrill of adventure
+stirred in his blood. He laughed as he put his skill and strength in the
+sweep of his paddle, and for a time the thought that he was an outlaw,
+and in losing Nada had lost everything in life worth righting for, was
+not so oppressive. It was the old, joyous laugh, stirred by his sense of
+humor, and the trick he had played on Cassidy. He could imagine Cassidy
+back on the shore, his temper redder than his hair as he cursed and tore
+up the sand in his search for another canoe.
+
+"We're inseparable," Jolly Roger explained to Peter. "Wherever I go,
+Cassidy is sure to follow. You see, it's this way. A long time
+ago someone gave Cassidy what they call an assignment, and in that
+assignment it says 'go get Jolly Roger McKay, dead or alive'--or
+something to that effect. And Cassidy has been on the job ever since.
+But he can't quite catch up with me, Pied-Bot. I'm always a little
+ahead."
+
+And yet, even as he laughed, there was in Jolly Roger's heart a yearning
+to which he had never given voice. Half a dozen times he might have
+killed Cassidy, and an equal number of times Cassidy might have killed
+him. But neither had taken advantage of the opportunity to destroy.
+They had played the long and thrilling game like men, and because of the
+fairness and sportsmanship of the man who hunted him Jolly Roger thought
+of Cassidy as he might have thought of a brother, and more than once he
+yearned to go to him, and hold out his hand in friendship. Yet he knew
+Corporal Cassidy was the deadliest menace the earth held for him,
+a menace that had followed him like a shadow through months and
+years--across the Barren Lands, along the rim of the Arctic, down the
+Mackenzie, and back again--a menace that never tired, and was never
+far behind in that ten thousand miles of wilderness they had covered.
+Together in the bloodstirring game of One against One they had faced the
+deadliest perils of the northland. They had gone hungry, and cold, and
+more than once a thousand miles of nothingness lay behind them, and
+death seemed preferable to anything that might lie ahead. Yet in that
+aloneness, when companionship was more precious than anything else on
+earth, neither had cried quits. The game had gone on, Cassidy after his
+man--and Jolly Roger McKay fighting for his freedom.
+
+As he headed his canoe north and east, Jolly Roger thought again of
+the wager made weeks ago down at Cragg's Ridge, when he had turned the
+tables on Cassidy and when Cassidy had made a solemn oath to resign from
+the service if he failed to get his man in their next encounter. He knew
+Cassidy would keep his word, and something told him that tonight the
+last act in this tragedy of two had begun. He chuckled again as he
+pictured the probable course of events on shore. Cassidy, backed by the
+law, was demanding another canoe and a necessary outfit of Slim Buck.
+Slim Buck, falling back on his tribal dignity, was killing all possible
+time in making the preparations. When pursuit was resumed Jolly Roger
+would have at least a mile the start of the red-headed nemesis who hung
+to his trail. And Wollaston Lake, sixty miles from end to end, and half
+as wide, offered plenty of room in which to find safety.
+
+The rising of the wind, which came from the south and west, was pleasing
+to Jolly Roger, and he put less caution and more force into the sweep
+of his paddle. For two hours he kept steadily eastward, and then swung a
+little north, guiding himself by the stars. With the breaking of dawn he
+made out the thickly wooded shore on the opposite side of the lake from
+Slim Buck's camp, and before the sun was half an hour high he had drawn
+up his canoe at the tip of a headland which gave him a splendid view of
+the lake in all directions.
+
+From this point, comfortably encamped in the cool shadows of a thick
+clump of spruce, Jolly Roger and Peter watched all that day for a sign
+of their enemy. As far as the eye could reach no movement of human life
+appeared on the quiet surface of Wollaston. Not until that hazy hour
+between sunset and dusk did he build a fire and cook a meal from the
+supplies in Cassidy's pack, for he knew smoke could be discerned much
+farther than a canoe. Yet even as he observed this caution he was
+confident there was no longer any danger in returning to Yellow Bird and
+her people.
+
+"You see, Pied-Bot," he said, discussing the matter with Peter, while he
+smoked a pipeful of tobacco in the early evening, "Cassidy thinks we're
+on our way north, as fast as we can go. He'll hit for the upper end
+of the Lake and the Black River waterway, and keep right on into the
+Porcupine country. It's a big country up there, and we've always taken
+plenty of space for our travels. Shall we go back to Yellow Bird, Peter?
+And Sun Cloud?"
+
+Peter tried to answer, and thumped his tail, but even as he asked the
+questions there was a doubt growing in Jolly Roger's mind. He wanted
+to go back, and as darkness gathered about him he was urged by a great
+loneliness. Only Yellow Bird grieved with him in his loss of Nada, and
+understood how empty life had become for him. She had, in a way, become
+a part of Nada; her presence raised him out of despair, her voice gave
+him hope, her unconquerable spirit--fighting for his happiness--inspired
+him until he saw light where there had been only darkness. The impelling
+desire to return to her brought him to his feet and down to the pebbly
+shore of the lake, where the water rippled softly in the thickening
+gloom. But a still more powerful force held him back, and he went to his
+blankets, spread over a thick couch of balsam boughs. For hours his eyes
+were wide open and sleepless.
+
+He no longer thought of Cassidy, but of Yellow Bird. Doubt--a charitable
+inclination to half believe--gave way in him to a conviction which he
+could not fight down. More than once in his years of wilderness life
+strange facts had compelled him to give some credence to the power of
+the Indian conjurer. Belief in the mastery of the mind was part of his
+faith in nature. It had come to him from his mother, who had lived and
+died in the strength of her creed.
+
+"Think hard, and with faith, if you want anything to come true," she had
+told him. And this was also Yellow Bird's creed. Was it possible she
+had told him the truth? Had her mind actually communed with the mind
+of Nada? Had she, through the sheer force of her illimitable faith,
+projected her subconscious self into the future that she might show him
+the way? His eyes were staring, his ears unhearing, as he thought of
+the proof which Yellow Bird had given to him. A few hours ago she had
+brought him warning of impending danger. There had been no hesitation
+and no doubt. She had come to him unequivocal and sure. Without seeing,
+without hearing, she knew Cassidy was stealing upon him through the
+night.
+
+In the darkness Jolly Roger sat up, his heart beating fast. Without
+effort, and with no thought of the necessity of proof, Yellow Bird had
+given him a test of her power. It had been a spontaneous and unstaged
+thing, a woman's heart reaching out for him--as she had promised that it
+would. And yet, even as the simplicity and truth of it pressed upon him,
+doubt followed with its questions. If, after this, Yellow Bird had told
+him to return to Nada as swiftly as he could, he would have believed,
+and this night would have seen him on his way. But she had warned him
+against this, predicting desolation and grief if he returned. She had
+urged him to go on, somewhere, anywhere, seeking for an illusion and an
+unreality which the spirits had named, to her as the Country Beyond.
+And when he reached this Country Beyond, wherever it might be, he would
+possess Nada again, and happiness for all time. After all, there was
+something archaically crude in what he was trying to believe, when he
+came to analyze it. Yellow Bird possessed her powers, but they were
+definitely limited. And to believe beyond those limitations, to ride
+upon the wings of superstition and imagination, was sheer savagery.
+
+Jolly Roger stretched himself upon his blankets again, repeating this
+final argument to himself. But as the night drew closer about him, and
+his eyes closed, and sleep came, there was a lightness in his heart
+which he had not known for many days. He dreamed, and his dream was of
+Nada. He was with her again and it seemed, in this dream, that Yellow
+Bird was always watching them, and they could not quite get away from
+her. They ran through the jackpine openings where the strawberries and
+blue violets grew, and he always ran behind Nada, so he could see her
+brown curls flying about her.
+
+But they never could rid themselves of Yellow Bird, no matter how fast
+they ran or where they tried to hide. From somewhere Yellow Bird's
+dark eyes would look out at them, and finally, laughing at his own
+discomfiture, he drew Nada down beside him in a little fen, white and
+yellow and blue with wildflowers, and boldly took her head in his arms
+and kissed her--with Yellow Bird looking at them from behind a banksian
+clump twenty feet away. So real was the kiss, and so real the warm
+pressure of Nada's slim arms about his neck that he awoke with a glad
+cry--and sat up to find the dawn had come.
+
+For a few moments he sat stupidly, looking about him as if not quite
+believing the unreality of it all. Then with Peter he went down to the
+edge of the lake.
+
+All that day Peter sensed a quiet change in his master. Jolly Roger did
+not talk. He did not whistle or laugh, but moved quietly when he moved
+at all, with a set, strange look in his face. He was making his last
+big fight against the desire to return to Cragg's Ridge. Yellow Bird's
+predictions, and her warning, had no influence with him now. He was
+thinking of Nada alone. She was back there, waiting for him, praying for
+his return, ready and happy to become a fugitive with him--to accept her
+chances of life or death, of happiness or grief, in his company. A dozen
+times the determination to return for her almost won. But each time came
+the other picture--a vision of ceaseless flight, of hiding, of hunger
+and cold and never ending hardship, and at the last, inevitable as the
+dawning of another day--prison, and possibly the hangman.
+
+Not until late that afternoon did Peter see the old Jolly Roger in the
+face of his master. And Jolly Roger said:
+
+"We've made up our mind, Pied-Bot. We can't go back. We'll hit north and
+spend the winter along the edge of the Barren Lands. It's the biggest
+country I know of, and if Cassidy comes--"
+
+He shrugged his shoulders grimly.
+
+In half an hour they had started, with the sun beginning to sink in the
+west.
+
+For two days Jolly Roger and Peter paddled their way slowly up the
+eastern shore of Wollaston. That he had correctly analyzed the mental
+arguments which would guide Cassidy in his pursuit Jolly Roger had
+little doubt. He would keep to the west shore, and up through the
+Hatchet Lake and Black River waterways, as his quarry had never failed
+to hit straight for the farther north in time of peril. Meanwhile Jolly
+Roger had decided to make his way without haste up the east shore
+of Wollaston, and paddle north and east through the Du Brochet and
+Thiewiaza River waterways. If these courses were followed, each hour
+would add to the distance between them, and when the way was safe they
+would head straight for the Barren Lands.
+
+Peter, and only Peter, sensed the glory of that third afternoon when
+they paddled slowly ashore close to the shimmering stream of spring
+water that was called Limping Moose Creek. The sun was still two hours
+high in the west. There was no wind, and Wollaston was like a mirror;
+yet in the still air was the clean, cool tang of early autumn, and
+shoreward the world reached out in ridges and billows of tinted forests,
+with a September haze pulsing softly over them, fleecy as the misty
+shower of a lady's powder puff. It was destined to be a memorable
+afternoon for Peter, a going down of the sun that he would never forget
+as long as he lived.
+
+Yet there was no warning of the thing impending, and his eyes saw only
+the mystery and wonder of the big world, and his ears heard only the
+drowsing murmur of it, and his nose caught only the sweet scents of
+cedars and balsams and of flowering and ripening things. Straight ahead,
+beyond the white shore line, was a low ridge, and this ridge--where it
+was not purple and black with the evergreen--was red with the crimson
+blotches of mountain-ash berries, and patches of fire flowers that
+glowed like flame in the setting sun.
+
+From out of this paradise, as they drew near to it, came softly the
+voice and song of birds and the chatter of red squirrels. A big jay
+was screeching over it all, and between the first ridge and the
+second--which rose still higher beyond it--a cloud of crows were
+circling excitedly over a mother black bear and her half grown cubs
+as they feasted on the red ash berries. But Peter could not smell the
+bears, nor hear them, and the distant crows were of less interest than
+the wonder and mystery of the shore close at hand.
+
+He turned from his place in the bow of the canoe, and looked at his
+master. There was little of inspiration in Jolly Roger's face or eyes.
+The glory of the world ahead gave him no promise, as it gave promise to
+Peter. Beyond what he could see there lay, for him, a vast emptiness, a
+chaos of loneliness, an eternity of shattered hopes and broken dreams.
+Love of life was gone out of him. He saw no beauty. The sun had changed.
+The sky was different. The bigness of his wilderness no longer thrilled
+him, but oppressed him.
+
+Peter sensed sharply the change in his master without knowing the reason
+for it. Just as the world had changed for Jolly Roger, so Jolly Roger
+had changed for Peter.
+
+They landed on a beach of sand, soft as a velvet carpet. Peter jumped
+out. A long-legged sandpiper and her mate ran down the shore ahead of
+him. He perked up his angular ears, and then his nose caught a fresh
+scent under his feet where a porcupine had left his trail. And he heard
+more clearly the raucous tumult of the jay and the musical chattering of
+the red squirrels.
+
+All these things were satisfactory to Peter. They were life, and life
+thrilled him, just as it had thrilled his master a few days ago. He
+adventured a little distance up to the edge of the green willows and
+the young birch and the crimson masses of fire flowers that fringed the
+beginning of the forest. It had rained recently here, and the scents
+were fresh and sweet.
+
+He found a wild currant bush, glistening with its luscious black
+berries, and began nibbling at them. A gopher, coming to his supper
+bush, gave a little squeak of annoyance, and Peter saw the bright eyes
+of the midget glaring at him from under a big fern leaf. Peter wagged
+his tail, for the savagery of his existence was qualified by that
+mellowing sense of humor which had always been a part of his master. He
+yipped softly, in a companionable sort of way.
+
+And then there smote upon his ears a sound which hardened every muscle
+in his body.
+
+"Throw up your hands, McKay!"
+
+He turned his head. Close to him stood a man. In an instant he had
+recognized him. It was the man whose scent he had first discovered down
+at Cragg's Ridge, the man from whom his master was always running away,
+the man whose voice he had heard again at Yellow Bird's Camp a few
+nights ago--Corporal Terence Cassidy, of the Royal Northwest Mounted
+Police.
+
+Twenty paces away stood McKay. His dunnage was on his back, his paddle
+in his hand. And Cassidy, smiling grimly, a dangerous humor in his eyes,
+was leveling an automatic at his breast. It was, in that instant, a
+tableau which no man could ever forget. Cassidy was bareheaded, and the
+sun burned hotly in his red hair. And his face was red, and in the pale
+blue of his Irish eyes was a fierce joy of achievement. At last, after
+months and years, the thrilling game of One against One was at an end.
+Cassidy had made the last move, and he was winner.
+
+For half a minute after the command to throw up his hands McKay did not
+move. And Cassidy did not repeat the command, for he sensed the shock
+that had fallen upon his adversary, and was charitable enough to give
+him time. And then, with something like a deep sigh from between his
+lips, Jolly Roger's body sagged. The dunnage dropped from his shoulder
+to the sand. The paddle slipped from his hand. Slowly he raised his arms
+above his head, and Cassidy laughed softly.
+
+A few days ago McKay would have grinned back, coolly, good humoredly,
+appreciative of the other's craftsmanship even in the hour of his
+defeat. But today there was another soul within him.
+
+His eyes no longer saw the old Cassidy, brave and loyal to his duty,
+a chivalrous enemy, the man he had yearned to love as brother loves
+brother, even in the hours of sharpest pursuit. In Cassidy he saw now
+the hangman himself. The whole world had turned against him, and in this
+hour of his greatest despair and hopelessness a bitter fate had turned
+up Cassidy to deal him the finishing blow.
+
+A swift rage burned in him, even as he raised his hands. It swept
+through his brain in a blinding inundation. He did not think of the
+law, or of death, or of freedom. It was the unfairness of the thing
+that filled his soul with the blackness of one last terrible desire
+for vengeance. Cassidy's gun, leveled at his breast, meant nothing. A
+thousand guns leveled at his breast would have meant nothing. A choking
+sound came from his lips, and like a shot his right hand went to his
+revolver holster.
+
+In that last second or two Cassidy had foreseen the impending thing, and
+with the movement of the other's hand he cried out:
+
+"Stop! For God's sake stop--or I shall fire!"
+
+Even into the soul of Peter there came in that moment the electrical
+thrill of something terrific about to happen, of impending death, of
+tragedy close at hand. Once, a long time ago, Peter had felt another
+moment such as this--when he had buried his fangs in Jed Hawkins' leg to
+save Nada.
+
+In that fraction of a second which carried Peter through space, Corporal
+Cassidy's finger was pressing the trigger of his automatic, for McKay's
+gun was half out of its holster. He was aiming at the other's shoulder,
+somewhere not to kill.
+
+The shock of Peter's assault came simultaneously with the explosion of
+his gun, and McKay heard the hissing spit of the bullet past his ear.
+His arm darted out. And as Peter buried his teeth deeper into Cassidy's
+leg, he heard a second shot, and knew that it came from his master.
+There was no third. Cassidy drooped, and something like a little laugh
+came from him--only it was not a laugh. His body sagged, and then
+crumpled down, so that the weight of him fell upon Peter.
+
+For many seconds after that Jolly Roger stood with his gun in his hand,
+not a muscle of his body moving, and with something like stupor in
+his staring eyes. Peter struggled out from under Cassidy, and looked
+inquisitively from his master to the man who lay sprawled out like a
+great spider upon the sand. It was then that life seemed to come back
+into Jolly Roger's body. His gun fell, as if it was the last thing in
+the world to count for anything now, and with a choking cry he ran to
+Cassidy and dropped upon his knees beside him.
+
+"Cassidy--Cassidy--" he cried. "Good God, I didn't mean to do it!
+Cassidy, old pal--"
+
+The agony in his voice stilled the growl in Peter's throat. McKay saw
+nothing for a space, as he raised Cassidy's head and shoulders, and
+brushed back the mop of red hair. Everything was a blur before his eyes.
+He had killed Cassidy. He knew it. He had shot to kill, and not once in
+a hundred times did he miss his mark. At last he was what the law wanted
+him to be--a murderer. And his victim was Cassidy--the man who had
+played him fairly and squarely from beginning to end, the man who had
+never taken a mean advantage of him, and who had died there in the white
+sand because he had not shot to kill. With sobbing breath he cried out
+his grief, and then, looking down, he saw the miracle in Cassidy's face.
+The Irishman's eyes were wide open, and there was pain, and also a grin,
+about his mouth.
+
+"I'm glad you're sorry," he said. "I'd hate to have a bad opinion of
+you, McKay. But--you're a rotten shot!"
+
+His body sagged heavily, and the grin slowly left his lips, and a moan
+came from between them. He struggled and spoke.
+
+"It may be--you'll want help, McKay. If you do--there's a cabin half a
+mile up the creek. Saw the smoke--heard axe--I don't blame you.
+You're a good sport--pretty quick--but--rotten shot! Oh,
+Lord--such--rotten--shot--"
+
+And he tried vainly to grin up into Jolly Roger's face as he became a
+lifeless weight in the other's arms.
+
+Jolly Roger was sobbing. He was sobbing, in a strange, hard man-fashion,
+as he tore open Cassidy's shirt and saw the red wound that went clean
+through Cassidy's right breast just under the shoulder. And Peter still
+heard that strange sound coming from his lips, a moaning as if for
+breath, as his master ran and brought up water, and worked over the
+fallen man. And then he got under Cassidy, and rose up with him on his
+shoulders, and staggered off with him toward the creek. There he found
+a path, a narrow foot trail, and not once did he stop with his burden
+until he came into a little clearing, out of which Cassidy had seen the
+smoke rising. In this clearing was a cabin, and from the cabin came an
+old man to meet him--an old man and a girl.
+
+At first something shot up into Peter's throat, for he thought it was
+Nada who came behind the grizzled and white-headed man. There was the
+same lithe slimness in her body, the same brown glint in her hair, and
+the same--but he saw then that it was not Nada. She was older. She was
+a bit taller. And her face was white when she saw the bleeding burden on
+Jolly Roger's back.
+
+"I shot him," panted McKay. "God knows I didn't mean to! I'm afraid--"
+
+He did not finish giving voice to the fear that Cassidy was dead--or
+dying, and for a moment he saw only the big staring eyes of the girl as
+the gray-bearded man helped him with his burden. Not until the Irishman
+was on a cot in the cabin did he discover how childishly weak he had
+become and what a terrific struggle he had made with the weight on
+his shoulders. He sank into a chair, while the old trapper worked over
+Cassidy.
+
+He heard the girl call him grandfather. She was no longer frightened,
+and she moved like a swift bird about the cabin, getting water and
+bandages and pillows, and the sight of fresh blood and of Cassidy's
+dead-white face brought a glow of tenderness into her eyes. McKay,
+sitting dumbly, saw that her hands were doing twice the work his own
+could have accomplished, and not until he heard a low moan from the
+wounded man did he come to her side.
+
+"The bullet went through clean as a whistle," the old man said. "Lucky
+you don't use soft nosed bullets, friend."
+
+A deep sigh came from Cassidy's lips. His eyelids fluttered, and then
+slowly his eyes opened. The girl was bending over him, and Cassidy saw
+only her face, and the brown sheen of her hair.
+
+"He'll live?" Jolly Roger said tremulously.
+
+The older man remained mute. It was Cassidy, turning his head a little,
+who answered weakly.
+
+"Don't worry, McKay. I'll--live."
+
+Jolly Roger bent over the cot, between Cassidy and the girl. Gently he
+took one of the wounded man's hands in both his own.
+
+"I'm sorry, old man," he whispered. "You won, fair and square. And I
+won't go far away. I'll be waiting for you when you get on your feet. I
+promise that. I'll wait."
+
+A wan smile came over Cassidy's lips, and then he moaned again, and his
+eyes closed. The girl thrust Jolly Roger back.
+
+"No--you better not go far, an' you better wait," she said, and there
+was an unspoken thing in the dark glow of her eyes that made him think
+of Nada on that day when she told him how Jed Hawkins had struck her in
+the cabin at Cragg's Ridge.
+
+That night Jolly Roger made his camp close to the mouth of the Limping
+Moose. And for three days thereafter his trail led only between this
+camp and the cabin of old Robert Baron and his granddaughter, Giselle.
+All this time Cassidy was telling things in a fever. He talked a great
+deal about Jolly Roger. And the girl, nursing him night and day, with
+scarcely a wink of sleep between, came to believe they had been great
+comrades, and had been inseparable for a long time. Even then she
+would not let McKay take her place at Cassidy's side. The third day she
+started him off for a post sixty miles away to get a fresh supply of
+bandages and medicines.
+
+It was evening, three days later, when Jolly Roger and Peter returned.
+The windows of the cabin were brightly lighted, and McKay came up to one
+of these windows and looked in. Cassidy was bolstered up in his cot.
+He was very much alive, and on the floor at his side, sitting on a
+bear rug, was the girl. A lump rose in Jolly Roger's throat. Quietly he
+placed the bundle which he had brought from the post close up against
+the door, and knocked. When Giselle opened it he had disappeared into
+darkness, with Peter at his heels.
+
+The next morning he found old Robert and said to him:
+
+"I'm restless, and I'm going to move a little. I'll be back in two
+weeks. Tell Cassidy that, will you?"
+
+Ten minutes later he was paddling up the shore of Wollaston, and for a
+week thereafter he haunted the creeks and inlets, always on the move.
+Peter saw him growing thinner each day. There was less and less of cheer
+in his voice, seldom a smile on his lips, and never did his laugh ring
+out as of old. Peter tried to understand, and Jolly Roger talked to him,
+but not in the old happy way.
+
+"We might have finished him, an' got rid of him for good," he said to
+Peter one chilly night beside their campfire. "But we couldn't, just
+like we couldn't have brought Nada up here with us. And we're going
+back. I'm going to keep that promise. We're going back, Peter, if we
+hang for it!"
+
+And Jolly Roger's jaw would set grimly as he measured the time between.
+
+The tenth day came and he set out for the mouth of the Canoe River. On
+the afternoon of the twelfth he paddled slowly into Limping Moose
+Creek. Without any reason he looked at his watch when he started for
+old Robert's cabin. It was four o'clock. He was two days ahead of his
+promise, and there was a bit of satisfaction in that. There was an
+odd thumping at his heart. He had faith in Cassidy, a belief that the
+Irishman would call their affair a draw, and tell him to take another
+chance in the big open. He was the sort of man to live up to the letter
+of a wager, when it was honestly made. But, if he didn't--
+
+Jolly Roger paused long enough to take the cartridges from his gun.
+There would be no more shooting'--on his part.
+
+The mellow autumn sun was flooding the open door of the cabin when he
+came up. He heard laughter. It was Giselle. She was talking, too. And
+then he heard a man's voice--and from far off to his right came the
+chopping of an axe. Old Robert was at work. Giselle and Cassidy were at
+home.
+
+He stepped up to the door, coughing to give notice of his approach. And
+then, suddenly, he stopped, staring thunderstruck at what was happening
+within.
+
+Terence Cassidy was sitting in a big chair. The girl was behind him. Her
+white arms were around his neck, her face was bent down, her lips were
+kissing him.
+
+In an instant Cassidy's eyes had caught him.
+
+"Come in," he cried, so suddenly and so loudly that it startled the
+girl. "McKay, come in!"
+
+Jolly Roger entered, and the girl stood up straight behind Cassidy's
+chair, her cheeks aflame and her eyes filled with the glow of the
+sunset. And Terence Cassidy was grinning in that old triumphant way as
+he leaned forward in his chair, gripping the arms of it with both hands.
+
+"McKay, you've lost," he cried. "I'm the winner!"
+
+In the same moment he took the girl's hand and drew her from behind his
+chair.
+
+"Giselle, do as you said you were going to do. Prove to him that I've
+won."
+
+Slowly she came to Jolly Roger. Her cheeks were like the red of the
+sunset. Her eyes were flaming. Her lips were parted. And dumbly he
+waited, and wondered, until she stood close to him. Then, swiftly, her
+arms were around his neck, and she kissed him. In an instant she was
+back on her knees at the wounded man's side, her burning face hidden
+against him, and Cassidy was laughing, and holding out both hands to
+McKay.
+
+"McKay, Roger McKay, I want you to meet Mrs. Terence Cassidy, my wife,"
+he said. And the girl raised her face, so that her shining eyes were on
+Jolly Roger.
+
+Still dumbly he stood where he was.
+
+"The Missioner from Du Brochet was here yesterday, and married us," he
+heard Cassidy saying. "And we've written out my resignation together,
+old man. We've both won. I thank God you put that bullet into me down
+on the shore, for it's brought me paradise. And here's my hand on it,
+McKay--forever and ever!"
+
+Half an hour later, when McKay stumbled out into the forest trail again,
+his eyes were blinded by tears and his heart choked by a new hope as big
+as the world itself. Yellow Bird was right, and God must have been with
+her that night when her soul went to commune with Nada's. For Yellow
+Bird had proved herself again. And now he believed her.
+
+He believed in the world again. He believed in love and happiness and
+the glory of life, and as he went down the narrow trail to his canoe,
+with Peter close behind him, his heart was crying out Nada's name and
+Yellow Bird's promise that sometime--somewhere--they two would find
+happiness together, as Giselle and Terence Cassidy had found it.
+
+And Peter heard the chopping of the distant axe, and the song of birds,
+and the chattering of squirrels--but thrilling his soul most of all was
+the voice of his master, the old voice, the glad voice, the voice he had
+first learned to love at Cragg's Ridge in the days of blue violets and
+red strawberries, when Nada had filled his world.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+McKay still had his mind on a certain stretch of timber that reached out
+into the Barren Lands, hundreds of miles farther north. In this hiding
+place, three years before, he had built himself a cabin, and had caught
+foxes during half the long winter. Not only the cabin, but the foxes,
+were drawing him. Necessity was close upon his heels. What little money
+he possessed after leaving Cragg's Ridge was exhausted, his supplies
+were gone, and his boots and clothes were patched with deer hide.
+
+In the Snowbird Lake country, a week after he left Cassidy in his
+paradise at Wollaston, he fell in with good fortune. Two trappers had
+come in from Churchill. One of them was sick, and the other needed help
+in the building of their winter cabin. McKay remained with them for ten
+days, and when he continued his journey northward his pack was stuffed
+with supplies, and he wore new boots and more comfortable clothes.
+
+It was the middle of October when he found his old cabin, a thousand
+miles from Cragg's Ridge. It was as he had left it three years ago. No
+one had opened its door since then. The little box stove was waiting
+for a fire. Behind it was a pile of wood. On the table were the old tin
+dishes, and hanging from babiche cords fastened to the roof timbers,
+out of reach of mice and ermine, were blankets and clothing and other
+possessions he had left behind him in that winter break-up of what
+seemed like ages ago to him. He raised a small section in the floor, and
+there were his traps, thickly coated with caribou grease. For half an
+hour before he built a fire he sought eagerly for the things he had
+concealed here and there. He found oil, and a tin lamp, and candles,
+and as darkness of the first night gathered outside a roaring fire sent
+sparks up the chimney, and the little cabin's one window glowed with
+light, and the battered old coffee pot bubbled and steamed again, as if
+rejoicing at his return.
+
+With the breaking of another day he immediately began preparations for
+the season's trapping. In two days' hunting he killed three caribou, his
+winter meat. Then he cut wood, and made his strychnine poison baits, and
+marked out his trap-lines.
+
+The first of November brought the chill whisperings of an early winter
+through the Northland. Farther south autumn was dying, or dead. The last
+of the red ash berries hung shriveled and frost-bitten on naked twigs,
+freezing nights were nipping the face of the earth, the voices of the
+wilderness were filled with a new note and the winds held warning for
+every man and beast between Hudson's Bay and the Great Slave and from
+the Height of Land to the Arctic Sea. Seven years before there had come
+such a winter, and the land had not forgotten it--a winter sudden and
+swift, deadly in its unexpectedness, terrific in its cold, bringing
+with it such famine and death as the Northland had not known for two
+generations.
+
+But this year there was premonition. Omen of it came with the first
+wailing night winds that bore the smell of icebergs from over the black
+forests north and west. The moon came up red, and it went down red, and
+the sun came up red in the morning. The loon's call died a month ahead
+of its time. The wild geese drove steadily south when they should have
+been feeding from the Kogatuk to Baffin's Bay, and the beaver built his
+walls thick, and anchored his alders and his willows deep so that he
+would not starve when the ice grew heavy. East, west, north and south,
+in forest and swamp, in the trapper's cabin and the wolf's hiding-place,
+was warning of it. Gray rabbits turned white. Moose and caribou began to
+herd. The foxes yipped shrilly in the night, and a new hunger and a new
+thrill sent the wolves hunting in packs, while the gray geese streaked
+southward under the red moon overhead.
+
+Through this November, and all of December, Jolly Roger and Peter were
+busy from two hours before dawn of each day until late at night. The
+foxes were plentiful, and McKay was compelled to shorten his lines
+and put out fewer baits, and on the tenth of December he set out for a
+fur-trading post ninety miles south with two hundred and forty skins. He
+had made a toboggan, and a harness for Peter, and pulling together they
+made the trip in three days, and on the fourth started for the cabin
+again with supplies and something over a thousand dollars in cash.
+
+Through the weeks of increasing storm and cold that followed, McKay
+continued to trap, and early in February he made another trip to the fur
+post.
+
+It was on their return that they were caught in the Black Storm. It will
+be a long time before the northland will forget that storm. It was a
+storm in which the Sarcees died to a man, woman and child over on the
+Dubawnt waterways, and when trees froze solid and split open with the
+sharp explosions of high-power guns. In it, all furred and feathered
+life and all hoof and horn along the edge of the Barren Lands from
+Aberdeen Lake to the Coppermine was swallowed up. It was in this storm
+that streams froze solid, and the man who was cautious fastened a
+babiche rope about his waist when he went forth from his cabin for wood
+or water, so that his wife might help to pull and guide him back through
+that blinding avalanche of wind and freezing fury that held a twisted
+and broken world in its grip.
+
+In the country west of Artillery Lake and south of the Theolon River,
+Jolly Roger and Peter were compelled to "dig in." They were in a country
+where the biggest stick of wood that thrust itself up out of the snow
+was no bigger than McKay's thumb; a country of green grass and succulent
+moss on which the caribou fed in season, but a hell on earth when arctic
+storm howled and screamed across it in winter.
+
+Piled up against a mass of rock Jolly Roger found a huge snow drift.
+This drift was as long as a church and half as high, with its outer
+shell blistered and battered to the hardness of rock by wind and sleet.
+Through this shell he cut a small door with his knife, and after that
+dug out the soft snow from within until he had a room half as big as his
+cabin, and so snug and warm after a little with the body heat of himself
+and Peter that he could throw off the thick coat which he wore.
+
+To Peter, in the first night of this storm, it seemed as though all
+the people in the world were shrieking and wailing and sobbing in the
+blackness outside. Jolly Roger sat smoking his pipe at intervals in the
+gloom, though there was little pleasure in smoking a pipe in darkness.
+The storm did not oppress him, but filled him with an odd sense of
+security and comfort. The wind shrieked and lashed itself about his
+snow-dune, but it could not get at him. Its mightiest efforts to destroy
+only beat more snow upon him, and made him safer and warmer. In a way,
+there was something of humor as well as tragedy in its wild frenzy, and
+Peter heard him laugh softly in the darkness. More and more frequently
+he had heard that laugh since those warm days of autumn when they had
+last met the red-headed man, Terence Cassidy, of the Royal Northwest
+Mounted Police, and his master had shot him on the white shore of
+Wollaston.
+
+"You see," said McKay, caressing Peter's hairy neck in the gloom.
+"Everything is turning out right for us, and I'm beginning to believe
+more and more what Yellow Bird told us, and that in the end we're going
+to be happy--somewhere--with Nada. What do you think, Pied-Bot? Shall we
+take a chance, and go back to Cragg's Ridge in the spring?"
+
+Peter wriggled himself in answer, as a wild shriek of wind wailed over
+the huge snow-dune.
+
+Jolly Roger's fingers tightened at Peter's neck.
+
+"Well, we're going," he said, as though he was telling Peter something
+new. "I'm believing Yellow Bird, Pied-Bot. I'm believing her--now.
+What she told us was more than fortune-telling. It wasn't just Indian
+sorcery. When she shut herself up and starved for those three days and
+nights in her little conjurer's house, just for you and me--SOMETHING
+HAPPENED. Didn't it? Wouldn't you say something happened?"
+
+Peter swallowed and his teeth clicked as he gave evidence of
+understanding.
+
+"She told us a lot of truth," went on Jolly Roger, with deep faith in
+his voice "And we must believe, Pied-Bot. She told us Cassidy was coming
+after us, and he came. She said the spirits promised her the law would
+never get us, and we thought it looked bad when Cassidy had us covered
+with his gun on the shore at Wollaston. But something more than luck was
+with us, and we shot him. Then we brought him back to life and lugged
+him to a cabin, and the little stranger girl took him, and nursed him,
+and Cassidy fell in love with her--and married her. So Yellow Bird was
+right again, Pied-Bot. We've got to believe her. And she says everything
+is coming out right for us, and that we are going back to Nada, and be
+happy--"
+
+Jolly Roger's pipe-bowl glowed in the blackness.
+
+"I'm going to light the alcohol lamp," he said. "We can't sleep. And I
+want a good smoke. It isn't fun when you can't see the smoke. Too bad
+God forgot to make you so you could use a pipe, Peter. You don't know
+what you are missing--in times like these."
+
+He fumbled in his pack and found the alcohol lamp, which was fresh
+filled and screwed tight. Peter heard him working for a moment in the
+darkness. Then he struck a match, and the yellow flare of it lighted up
+his face. In his joy Peter whined. It was good to see his master. And
+then, in another moment, the little lamp was filling their white-walled
+refuge with a mellow glow. Jolly Roger's eyes, coming suddenly out
+of darkness, were wide and staring. His face was covered with a scrub
+beard. But there was something of cheer about him even in this night of
+terror outside, and when he had driven his snowshoe into the snow wall,
+and had placed the lamp on it, he grinned companionably at Peter.
+
+Then, with a deep breath of satisfaction, he puffed out clouds of smoke
+from his pipe, and stood up to look about their room.
+
+"Not so bad, is it?" he asked. "We could have a big house here if
+we wanted to dig out rooms--eh, Peter? Parlors, and bed-rooms, and a
+library--and not a policeman within a million miles of us. That's the
+nice part of it, PIED-BOT--none of the Royal Mounties to trouble us.
+They would never think of looking for us in the heart of a big snow-dune
+out in this God-forsaken barren, would they?"
+
+The thought was a pleasing one to Jolly Roger. He spread out his
+blankets on the snow floor, and sat down on them, facing Peter.
+
+"We've got 'em beat," he said, a chuckling note of pride in his voice.
+"The world is small when it comes to hiding, Pied-Bot, but all the
+people in it couldn't find us here--not in a million years. If we could
+only find a place as safe as this--where a girl could live--and had Nada
+with us--"
+
+Many times during the past few weeks Peter had seen the light that
+flamed up now in his master's eyes. That, and the strange thrill
+in Jolly Roger's voice, stirred him more than the words to which he
+listened, and tried to understand.
+
+"And we're GOING to," finished McKay, almost fiercely, his hands
+clenching as he leaned toward Peter. "We have made a big mistake,
+Pied-Bot, and it has taken us a long time to see it. It will be hard for
+us to leave our north country, but that is what we must do. Maybe Yellow
+Bird's good spirits meant that when they said we would find happiness
+with Nada in a place called The Country Beyond. There are a lot of
+'Countries Beyond,' Peter, and as soon as the spring break-up comes
+and we can travel without leaving trails behind us we will go back to
+Cragg's Ridge and get Nada, and hit for some place where the law won't
+expect to find us. There's China, for instance. A lot of yellow people.
+But what do we care for color as long as we have her with us? I say--"
+
+Suddenly he stopped. And Peter's body grew tense. Both faced the round
+hole, half filled with softly packed snow, which McKay had cut as a door
+into the heart of the big drift. They had grown accustomed to the tumult
+of the storm. Its strange wailings and the shrieking voices which at
+times seemed borne in the moaning sweep of it no longer sent shivers
+of apprehension through Peter. But in that moment when both turned to
+listen there came a sound which was not like the other sounds they had
+heard. It was a voice--not one of the phantom voices of the screaming
+wind, but a voice so real and so near that for a beat or two even Jolly
+Roger McKay's heart stood still. It was as if a man, standing just
+beyond their snow barricade, had shouted a name. But there came no
+second call. The wind lulled, so that for a space there was stillness
+outside.
+
+Jolly Roger laughed a little uneasily.
+
+"Good thing we don't believe in ghosts, Peter, or we would swear it was
+a Loup-Garou smelling us through the wall!" He thumbed the tobacco down
+in his pine, and nodded. "Then--there is South America," he said. "They
+have everything down there--the biggest rivers in the world, the biggest
+mountains, and so much room that even a Loup-Garou couldn't hunt us out.
+She will love it, Pied-Bot. But if it happens she likes Africa better,
+or Australia, or the South Sea--Now, what the devil was that?"
+
+Peter had jumped as if stung, and for a moment Jolly Roger sat tense
+as a carven Indian. Then he rose to his feet, a look of perplexity and
+doubt in his eyes.
+
+"What was it, Peter? Can the wind shoot a gun--like THAT?"
+
+Peter was sniffing at the loosely blocked door of their snow-room.
+A whimper rose in his throat. He looked up at Jolly Roger, his eyes
+glowing fiercely through the mass of Airedale whiskers that covered
+his face. He wanted to dig. He wanted to plunge out into the howling
+darkness. Slowly McKay beat the ash out of his pipe and placed the pipe
+in his pocket.
+
+"We'll take a look," he said, something repressive in his voice. "But
+it isn't reasonable, Peter. It is the wind. There couldn't be a man out
+there, and it wasn't a rifle we heard. It is the wind--with the devil
+himself behind it!"
+
+With a few sweeps of his hands and arms he scooped out the loose snow
+from the hole. The opening was on the sheltered side of the drift, and
+only the whirling eddies of the storm swept about him as he thrust out
+his head and shoulders. But over him it was rushing like an avalanche.
+He could hear nothing but the moaning advance of it. And he could see
+nothing. He held out his hand before his face, and blackness swallowed
+it.
+
+"We have been chased so much that we're what you might call
+super-sensitive," he said, pulling himself back and nodding at Peter
+in the gray light of the alcohol lamp. "Guess we'd better turn in, boy.
+This is a good place to sleep--plenty of fresh air, no mosquitoes or
+black flies, and the police so far away that we will soon forget how
+they look. If you say so we will have a nip of cold tea and a bite--"
+
+He did not finish. For a moment the wind had lessened in fury, as if
+gathering a deeper breath. And what he heard drew a cry from him this
+time, and a sharper whine from Peter. Out of the blackness of the night
+had come a woman's voice! In that first instant of shock and amazement
+he would have staked his life that what he heard was not a mad outcry of
+the night or an illusion of his brain. It was clear--distinct--a woman's
+voice coming from out on the Barren, rising above the storm in an agony
+of appeal, and dying out quickly until it became a part of the moaning
+wind. And then, with equal force, came the absurdity of it to McKay. A
+woman! He swallowed the lump that had risen in his throat, and tried to
+laugh. A WOMAN--out in that storm--a thousand miles from nowhere! It was
+inconceivable.
+
+The laugh which he forced from his lips was husky and unreal, and there
+was a smothering grip of something at his heart. In the ghostly light of
+the alcohol lamp his eyes were wide open and staring.
+
+He looked at Peter. The dog stood stiff-legged before the hole. His body
+was trembling.
+
+"Peter!"
+
+With a responsive wag of his tail Peter turned his bristling face up to
+his master. Many times Jolly Roger had seen that unfailing warning in
+his comrade's eyes. THERE WAS SOME ONE OUTSIDE--or Peter's brain, like
+his own, was twisted and fooled by the storm!
+
+Against his reasoning--in the face of the absurdity of it--Jolly Roger
+was urged into action. He changed the snowshoe and replaced the alcohol
+lamp so that the glow of light could be seen more clearly from the
+Barren. Then he went to the hole and crawled through. Peter followed
+him.
+
+As if infuriated by their audacity, the storm lashed itself over the top
+of the dune. They could hear the hissing whine of fine hard snow tearing
+above their heads like volleys of shot, and the force of the wind
+reached them even in their shelter, bringing with it the flinty sting
+of the snow-dust. Beyond them the black barren was filled with a dismal
+moaning. Looking up, and yet seeing nothing in the darkness, Peter
+understood where the weird shriekings and ghostly cries came from. It
+was the wind whipping itself up the side and over the top of the dune.
+
+Jolly Roger listened, hearing only the convulsive sweep of that mighty
+force over a thousand miles of barren. And then came again one of those
+brief intervals when the storm seemed to rest for a moment, and its
+moaning grew less and less, until it was like the sound of giant chariot
+wheels receding swiftly over the face of the earth. Then came the
+silence--a few seconds of it--while in the north gathered swiftly the
+whispering rumble of a still greater force.
+
+And in this silence came once more a cry--a cry which Jolly Roger McKay
+could no longer disbelieve, and close upon the cry the report of a
+rifle. Again he could have sworn the voice was a woman's voice. As
+nearly as he could judge it came from dead ahead, out of the chaos of
+blackness, and in that direction he shouted an answer. Then he ran out
+into the darkness, followed by Peter. Another avalanche of wind gathered
+at their heels, driving them on like the crest of a flood. In the first
+force of it Jolly Roger stumbled and fell to his knees, and in that
+moment he saw very faintly the glow of his light at the opening in the
+snow dune. A realization of his deadly peril if he lost sight of the
+light flashed upon him. Again and again he called into the night. After
+that, bowing his head in the fury of the storm, he plunged on deeper
+into darkness.
+
+A sudden wild thought seized upon his soul and thrilled him into
+forgetfulness of the light and the snow-dune and his own safety. In the
+heart of this mad world he had heard a voice. He no longer doubted it.
+And the voice was a woman's voice! Could it be Nada? Was it possible she
+had followed him after his flight, determined to find him, and share his
+fate? His heart pounded. Who else, of all the women in the world,
+could be following his trail across the Barrens--a thousand miles from
+civilization? He began to shout her name. "Nada--Nada--Nada!" And hidden
+in the gloom at his side Peter barked.
+
+Storm and darkness swallowed them. The last faint gleam of the alcohol
+lamp died out. Jolly Roger did not look back. Blindly he stumbled ahead,
+counting his footsteps as he went, and shouting Nada's name. Twice
+he thought he heard a reply, and each time the will-o'-the-wisp voice
+seemed to be still farther ahead of him. Then, with a fiercer blast of
+the wind beating upon his back, he stumbled and fell forward upon his
+face. His hand reached out and touched the thing that had tripped him.
+It was not snow. His naked fingers clutched in something soft and furry.
+It was a man's coat. He could feel buttons, a belt, and the sudden
+thrill of a bearded face.
+
+He stood up. The wind was wailing off over the Barren again, leaving an
+instant of stillness about him. And he shouted:
+
+"Nada--Nada--Nada!"
+
+An answer came so quickly that it startled him, not one voice, but
+two--three--and one of them the shrill agonized cry of a woman. They
+came toward him as he continued to shout, until a few feet away he could
+make out a gray blur moving through the gloom. He went to it, staggering
+under the weight of the man he had found in the snow. The blur was
+made up of two men dragging a sledge, and behind the sledge was a third
+figure, moaning in the darkness.
+
+"I found some one in the snow," Jolly Roger shouted. "Here he is--"
+
+He dropped his burden, and the last of his words were twisted by a fresh
+blast of the storm. But the figure behind the sledge had heard, and
+Jolly Roger saw her indistinctly at his feet, shielding the man he had
+found with her arms and body, and crying out a name which he could not
+understand in that howling of the wind. But a thing like cold steel sank
+into his heart, and he knew it was not Nada he had found this night on
+the Barren. He placed the unconscious man on the sledge, believing he
+was dead. The girl was crying out something to him, unintelligible in
+the storm, and one of the men shouted in a thick throaty voice which he
+could not understand. Jolly Roger felt the weight of him as he staggered
+in the wind, fighting to keep his feet, and he knew he was ready to drop
+down in the snow and die.
+
+"It's only a step," he shouted. "Can you make it?"
+
+His words reached the ears of the others. The girl swayed through the
+darkness and gripped his arm. The two men began to tug at the sledge,
+and Jolly Roger seized the rope between them, wondering why there were
+no dogs, and faced the driving of the storm. It seemed an interminable
+time before he saw the faint glow of the alcohol lamp. The last fifty
+feet was like struggling against an irresistible hail from machine-guns.
+Then came the shelter of the dune.
+
+One at a time McKay helped to drag them through the hole which he used
+for a door. For a space his vision was blurred, and he saw through the
+hazy film of storm-blindness the gray faces and heavily coated forms of
+those he had rescued. The man he had found in the snow he placed on his
+blankets, and the girl fell down upon her knees beside him. It was then
+Jolly Roger began to see more clearly. And in that same instant came a
+shock as unexpected as the smash of dynamite under his feet.
+
+The girl had thrown back her parkee, and was sobbing over the man on the
+blankets, and calling him father. She was not like Nada. Her hair was in
+thick, dark coils, and she was older. She was not pretty--now. Her face
+was twisted by the brutal beating of the storm, and her eyes were nearly
+closed. But it was the man Jolly Roger stared at, while his heart choked
+inside him. He was grizzled and gray-bearded, with military mustaches
+and a bald head. He was not dead. His eyes were open, and his blue
+lips were struggling to speak to the girl whose blindness kept her from
+seeing that he was alive. And the coat which he wore was the regulation
+service garment of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police!
+
+Slowly McKay turned, wiping the film of snow-sweat from his eyes, and
+stared at the other two. One of them had sunk down with his back to the
+snow wall. He was a much younger man, possibly not over thirty, and
+his face was ghastly. The third lay where he had fallen from exhaustion
+after crawling through the hole. Both wore service coats, with holsters
+at their sides.
+
+The man against the snow-wall was making an effort to rise. He sagged
+back, and grinned up apologetically at McKay.
+
+"Dam' fine of you, old man," he mumbled between blistered lips.
+"I'm Porter--'N' Division--taking Superintendent Tavish to Fort
+Churchill--Tavish and his daughter. Made a hell of a mess of it, haven't
+I?"
+
+He struggled to his knees.
+
+"There's brandy in our kit. It might help--over there," and he nodded
+toward the girl and the gray-bearded man on the blankets.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+Jolly Roger did not answer, but crawled through the hole and found the
+sledge in the outer darkness. He heard Peter coming after him, and he
+saw Porter's bloodless face in the illumination of the alcohol lamp,
+where he waited to help him with the dunnage. In those seconds he fought
+to get a grip on himself. A quarter of an hour ago he had laughed at the
+thought of the law. Never had it seemed to be so far away from him, and
+never had he been more utterly isolated from the world. His mind was
+still a bit dazed by the thing that had happened. The police had not
+trailed him. They had not ferreted him out, nor had they stumbled
+upon him by accident. It was he who had gone out into the night and
+deliberately dragged them in! Of all the trickery fate had played upon
+him this was the least to be expected.
+
+His mind began to work more swiftly as in darkness he cut the babiche
+cordage that bound the patrol dunnage to the sledge. "N" Division, he
+told himself, was away over in the Athabasca country. He had never heard
+of Porter, nor of Superintendent Tavish, and inasmuch as the outfit was
+evidently a special escort to Fort Churchill it was very likely
+that Porter and his companions would not be thinking of outlaws, and
+especially of Jolly Roger McKay. This was his one chance. To attempt
+an escape through the blizzard was not only a desperate hazard. It was
+death.
+
+There were only two packs on the sledge, and these he passed through the
+hole to Porter. A few moments later he was holding a flask of liquor to
+the lips of the gray-bearded man, while the girl looked at him with eyes
+that were widening as the snow-sting left them. Tavish gulped, and his
+mittened hand closed on the girl's arm.
+
+"I'm all right, Jo," he mumbled. "All right--"
+
+His eyes met McKay's, and then took in the snow walls of the dug-out.
+They were deep, piercing eyes, overhung by shaggy brows. Jolly Roger
+felt the intentness of their gaze as he gave the girl a swallow of the
+brandy, and then passed the flask to Porter.
+
+"You have saved our lives," said Tavish, in a voice that was clearer.
+"I don't just understand how it happened. I remember stumbling in the
+darkness, and being unable to rise. I was behind the sledge. Porter
+and Breault were dragging it, and Josephine, my daughter, was sheltered
+under the blankets. After that--"
+
+He paused, and Jolly Roger explained how it all had come about. He
+pointed to Peter. It was the dog, he said. Peter had insisted there was
+someone outside, and they had taken a chance by going in search of them.
+He was John Cummings, a fox trapper, and the storm had caught him fifty
+miles from his cabin. He was traveling without a dog-sledge, and had
+only a pack-outfit.
+
+Breault, the third man, had regained his wind, and was listening to him.
+One look at his dark, thin face told McKay that he was the wilderness
+man of the three. He was staring at Jolly Roger in a strange sort of
+way. And then, as if catching himself, he nodded, and began rubbing his
+frosted face with handfuls of snow.
+
+Porter had thrown off his heavy coat, and was unpacking one of the
+dunnage sacks. He and the girl seemed to have suffered less than the
+other two. Jo, the girl, was looking at him. And then her eyes turned to
+Jolly Roger. They were large, fine eyes, wide open and clear now. There
+was something of splendid strength about her as she smiled at McKay. She
+was not of the hysterical sort. He could see that.
+
+"If we could have some hot soup," she suggested. "May we?"
+
+There was gratitude in her eyes, which she made no attempt to express in
+words. Jolly Roger liked her. And Peter crept up behind her, and watched
+her as she followed Breault's example, and rubbed the cheeks of the
+bearded man with snow.
+
+"There's an alcohol stove in the other pack," said Breault, with his
+hard, narrow eyes fixed steadily on Jolly Roger's face. "By the way,
+what did you say your name was?"
+
+"Cummings--John Cummings."
+
+Breault made no answer. During the next half hour Jolly Roger felt
+stealing over him a growing sense of uneasiness. They drank soup and ate
+bannock. It grew warm, and the girl threw off the heavy fur garment that
+enveloped her. Color returned into her cheeks. Her eyes were bright, and
+in her voice was a tremble of happiness at finding warmth and life where
+she had expected death. Porter's friendliness was almost brotherly. He
+explained what had happened. Two rascally Chippewyans had deserted them,
+stealing off into darkness and storm with both dog teams and one of
+their sledges. After that they had fought on, seeking for a drift into
+which they might dig a refuge. But the Barren was as smooth as a
+table. They had shouted, and Miss Tavish had screamed--not because they
+expected to find assistance--but on account of Tavish falling in the
+storm, and losing himself. It was quite a joke, Porter thought, that
+Superintendent Tavish, one of the iron men of the service, should have
+given up the ghost so easily.
+
+Tavish smiled grimly. They were all in good humor, and happy, with the
+possible exception of Breault. Not once did he laugh or smile. Yet Jolly
+Roger noted that each time he spoke the others were specially attentive.
+There was something repressive and mysterious about the man, and the
+girl would cut herself short in the middle of a laugh if he happened
+to speak, and the softness of her mouth would harden in an instant. He
+understood the significance of her gladness, and of Porter's, for twice
+he saw their hands come together, and their fingers entwine. And in
+their eyes was something which they could not hide when they looked at
+each other. But Breault puzzled him. He did not know that Breault
+was the best man-hunter in "N" Division, which reached from Athabasca
+Landing to the Arctic Ocean, or that up and down the two thousand-mile
+stretch of the Three River Country he was known as Shingoos, the Ferret.
+
+The girl fell asleep first that night, with her cheek on her father's
+shoulder. Breault, the Ferret, rolled himself in a blanket, and breathed
+deeply. Porter still smoked his pipe, and looked wistfully at the pale
+face of Josephine Tavish. He smiled a bit proudly at McKay.
+
+"She's mine," he whispered. "We're going to be married."
+
+Jolly Roger wanted to reach over and grip his hand.
+
+He nodded, a little lump coming in his throat.
+
+"I know how you feel," he said. "When I heard her calling out there--it
+made me think--of a girl down south."
+
+"Down south?" queried Porter. "Why down south--if you care for her--and
+you up here?"
+
+McKay shrugged his shoulders. He had said too much. Neither he nor
+Porter knew that Breault's eyes were half open, and that he was
+listening.
+
+Jolly Roger held up a hand, as if something in the wailing of the storm
+had caught his attention.
+
+"We'll have two or three days of this. Better turn in, Porter. I'm going
+to dig out another room--for Miss Tavish. I'm afraid she'll need the
+convenience of a private room before we're able to move. It's an easy
+job--and passes the time away."
+
+"I'll help," offered Porter.
+
+For an hour they worked, using McKay's snowshoes as shovels. During that
+hour Breault did not close his eyes. A curious smile curled his thin
+lips as he watched Jolly Roger. And when at last Porter turned in, and
+slept, the Ferret sat up, and stretched himself. McKay had finished his
+room, and was beginning a tunnel which would lead as a back door out of
+the drift, when Breault came in and picked up the snowshoe which Porter
+had used.
+
+"I'll take my turn," he said. "I'm a bit nervous, and not at all sleepy,
+Cummings." He began digging into the snow. "Been long in this country?"
+he asked.
+
+"Three winters. It's a good red fox country, with now and then a silver
+and a black."
+
+Breault grunted.
+
+"You must have met Cassidy, then," he said casually, without looking at
+McKay. "Corporal Terence Cassidy. This is his country."
+
+Jolly Roger did not look up from his work of digging.
+
+"Yes, I know him. Met him last winter. Red headed. A nice chap. I like
+him. You know him?"
+
+"Entered the service together," said Breault. "But he's unlucky. For
+two or three years he has been on the trail of a man named McKay. Jolly
+Roger, they call him--Jolly Roger McKay. Ever hear of him?"
+
+Jolly Roger nodded.
+
+"Cassidy told me about him when he was at my cabin. From what I've heard
+I--rather like him."
+
+"Who--Cassidy, or Jolly Roger?"
+
+"Both."
+
+For the first time the Ferret leveled his eyes at his companion. They
+were mystifying eyes, never appearing to open fully, but remaining half
+closed as if to conceal whatever thought might lie behind them. McKay
+felt their penetration. It was like a cold chill entering into him,
+warning him of a menace deadlier than the storm.
+
+"Haven't any idea where one might come upon this Jolly Roger, have you?"
+
+"No."
+
+"You see, he thinks he killed a man down south. Well, he didn't. The man
+lived. If you happen to see him at any time give him that information,
+will you?"
+
+Jolly Roger thrust his head and shoulders into the growing tunnel.
+
+"Yes, I will."
+
+He knew Breault was lying. And also knew that back of the narrow slits
+of Breault's eyes was the cunning of a fox.
+
+"You might also tell him the law has a mind to forgive him for sticking
+up that free trader's post a few years ago."
+
+Jolly Roger turned with his snowshoe piled high with a load of snow.
+
+"I'll tell him that, too," he said, chuckling at the obviousness of
+the other's trap. "What do you think my cabin is, Breault--a Rest for
+Homeless Outlaws?"
+
+Breault grinned. It was an odd sort of grin, and Jolly Roger caught it
+over his shoulder. When he returned from dumping his load, Breault said:
+
+"You see, we know this Jolly Roger fellow is spending the winter
+somewhere up here. And Cassidy says there is a girl down south--"
+
+Jolly Roger's face was hidden in the tunnel.
+
+"--who would like to see him," finished Breault.
+
+When McKay turned toward him the Ferret was carelessly lighting his
+pipe.
+
+"I remember--Cassidy told me about this girl," said Jolly Roger. "He
+said--some day--he would trap this--this man--through the girl. So if I
+happen to meet Jolly Roger McKay, and send him back to the girl, it will
+help out the law. Is that it, Breault? And is there any reward tacked to
+it? Anything in it for me?"
+
+Breault was looking at him in the pale light of the alcohol lamp,
+puffing out tobacco smoke, and with that odd twist of a smile about his
+thin lips.
+
+"Listen to the storm," he said. "I think it's getting worse--Cummings!"
+
+Suddenly he held out a hand to Peter, who sat near the lamp, his bright
+eyes fixed watchfully on the stranger.
+
+"Nice dog you have, Cummings. Come here, Peter! Peter--Peter--"
+
+Tight fingers seemed to grip at McKay's throat. He had not spoken
+Peter's name since the rescue of Breault.
+
+"Peter--Peter--"
+
+The Ferret was smiling affably. But Peter did not move. He made no
+response to the outstretched hand. His eyes were steady and challenging.
+In that moment McKay wanted to hug him up in his arms.
+
+The Ferret laughed.
+
+"He's a good dog, a very good dog, Cummings. I like a one-man dog, and
+I also like a one-dog man. That's what Jolly Roger McKay is, if you ever
+happen to meet him. Travels with one dog. An Airedale, with whiskers on
+him like a Mormon. And his name is Peter. Funny name for a dog, isn't
+it?"
+
+He faced the outer room, stretching his long arms above his head.
+
+"I'm going to try sleep again, Cummings. Goodnight! And--Mother of
+Heaven!--listen to the wind."
+
+"Yes, it's a bad night," said McKay.
+
+He looked at Peter when Breault was gone, and his heart was beating
+fast. He could hear the wind, too. It was sweeping over the Barren more
+fiercely than before, and the sound of it brought a steely glitter into
+his eyes. This time he could not run away from the law. Flight meant
+death. And Breault knew it. He was in a trap--a trap built by himself.
+That is, if Breault had guessed the truth, and he believed he had. There
+was only one way out--and that meant fight.
+
+He went into the outer room for his pack and a blanket. He did not look
+at Breault, but he knew the man's narrow eyes were following him. He
+left the alcohol lamp burning, but in his own room, after he had spread
+out his bed, he extinguished the light. Then, very quietly, he dug a
+hole through the snow partition between the two rooms. He waited for
+ten minutes before he thrust a finger-tip through the last thin crust
+of snow. With his eye close to the aperture he could see Breault. The
+Ferret was sitting up, and leaning toward Porter, who was sleeping an
+arm's length away. He reached over, and touched him on the shoulder.
+
+Jolly Roger widened the snow-slit another inch, straining his ears to
+hear. He could see Tavish and the girl asleep. In another moment Porter
+was sitting up, with the Ferret's hand gripping his arm warningly.
+Breault motioned toward the inner room, and Porter was silent. Then
+Breault bent over and began to whisper. Jolly Roger could hear only
+the indistinct monotone of his voice. But he could see very clearly the
+change that came into Porter's face. His eyes widened, and he stared
+toward the inner room, making a movement as if to rouse Tavish and the
+girl.
+
+The Ferret stopped him.
+
+"Don't get excited. Let them sleep."
+
+McKay heard that much--and no more. For some time after that the two
+men sat close together, conversing in whispers. There was an exultant
+satisfaction in Porter's clean-cut face, as well as in Breault's. Jolly
+Roger watched them until Breault extinguished the second lamp. Then he
+lightly plugged the hole in the partition with snow, and reached out in
+the darkness until his hand found Peter.
+
+"They think they've got us, boy," he whispered, "They think they've got
+us!"
+
+Very quietly they lay for an hour. McKay did not sleep, and Peter was
+wide awake. At the end of that hour Jolly Roger crept on his hands and
+knees to the doorway and listened. One after another he picked out the
+steady breathing of the sleepers. Then he began feeling his way around
+the wall of his room until he came to a place where the snow was very
+soft.
+
+"An air-drift," he whispered to Peter, close at his shoulder. "We'll
+fool 'em, boy. And we'll fight--if we have to."
+
+He began worming his head and shoulders and body into the air-drift like
+a gimlet. A foot at a time he burrowed himself through, heaving his body
+up and down and sideways to pack the light snow, leaving a round tunnel
+two feet in diameter behind him. Within an hour he had come to the
+outer crust on the windward side of the big snow-dune. He did not break
+through this crust, which was as tough as crystal-glass, but lay quietly
+for a time and listened to the sweep of the wind outside. It was warm,
+and very comfortable, and he had half-dozed off before he caught himself
+back into wakefulness and returned to his room. The mouth of his tunnel
+he packed with snow. After that he wound the blanket about him and gave
+himself up calmly to sleep.
+
+Only Peter lay awake after that. And it was Peter who roused Jolly Roger
+in what would have been the early dawn outside the snow-dune. McKay felt
+his restless movement, and opened his eyes. A faint light was illumining
+his room, and he sat up. In the outer room the alcohol lamp was burning
+again. He could hear movement, and voices that were very low and
+indistinct. Carefully he dug out once more the little hole in the snow
+wall, and widened the slit.
+
+Breault and Tavish were asleep, but Porter was sitting up, and close
+beside him sat the girl. Her coiled hair was loosened, and fallen over
+her shoulders. There was no sign of drowsiness in her wide-open eyes as
+they stared at the door between the two rooms. McKay could see her hand
+clasping Porter's arm. Porter was talking, with his face so close to her
+bent head that his lips touched her hair, and though Jolly Roger could
+understand no word that was spoken he knew Porter was whispering the
+exciting secret of his identity to Josephine Tavish. He could see, for
+a moment, a shadow of protest in her face, he could hear the quick,
+sibilant whisper of her voice, and Porter cautioned her with a finger
+at her lips, and made a gesture toward the sleeping Tavish. Then his
+fingers closed about her uncoiled hair as he drew her to him. McKay
+watched the long kiss between them. The girl drew away quickly then, and
+Porter tucked the blanket about her when she lay down beside her father.
+After that he stretched out again beside Breault.
+
+Jolly Roger guessed what had happened. The girl had awakened, a bit
+nervous, and had roused Porter and asked him to relight the alcohol
+lamp. And Porter had taken advantage of the opportunity to tell her of
+the interesting discovery which Breault had made--and to kiss her. McKay
+stroked Peter's scrawny neck, and listened. He could no longer hear the
+storm, and he wondered if the fury of it was spent.
+
+Every few minutes he looked through the slit in the snow wall. The last
+time, half an hour after Porter had returned to his blanket, Josephine
+Tavish was sitting up. She was very wide awake. McKay watched her as she
+rose slowly to her knees, and then to her feet. She bent over Porter and
+Breault to make sure they were asleep, and then came straight toward the
+door of his room.
+
+He lay back on his blanket, with the fingers of one hand gripped closely
+about Peter.
+
+"Be quiet, boy," he whispered. "Be quiet."
+
+He could see the shutting out of light at his door as the girl stood
+there, listening for his breathing. He breathed heavily, and before he
+closed his eyes he saw Josephine Tavish coming toward him. In a moment
+she was bending over him. He could feel the soft caress of her loose
+hair on his face and hands. Then she knelt quietly down beside him,
+stroking Peter with her hand, and shook him lightly by the shoulder.
+
+"Jolly Roger!" she whispered. "Jolly Roger McKay!"
+
+He opened his eyes, looking up at the white face in the gloom.
+
+"Yes," he replied softly. "What is it, Miss Tavish?"
+
+He could hear the choking breath in her throat as her fingers tightened
+at his shoulder. She bent her face still nearer to him, until her hair
+cluttered his throat and breast.
+
+"You are--awake?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then--listen to me. If you are Jolly Roger McKay you must get
+away--somewhere. You must go before Breault awakens in the morning. I
+think the storm is over--there is no wind--and if you are here when day
+comes--"
+
+Her fingers loosened. Jolly Roger reached out and somewhere in the
+darkness he found her hand. It clasped his own--firm, warm, thrilling.
+
+"I thank you for what you have done," she whispered. "But the law--and
+Breault--they have no mercy!"
+
+She was gone, swiftly and silently, and McKay looked through the slit in
+the wall until she was with her father again.
+
+In the gloom he drew Peter close to him.
+
+"We're up against it again, Pied-Bot," he confided under his breath.
+"We've got to take another chance."
+
+He worked without sound, and in a quarter of an hour his pack was ready,
+and the entrance to his tunnel dug out. He went into the outer room
+then, where Josephine Tavish was awake. Jolly Roger pantomimed his
+desire as she sat up. He wanted something from one of the packs. She
+nodded. On his knees he fumbled in the dunnage, and when he rose to
+his feet, facing the girl, her eyes opened wide at what he held in his
+hand--a small packet of old newspapers her father was taking to the
+factor at Fort Churchill. She saw the hungry, apologetic look in his
+eyes, and her woman's heart understood. She smiled gently at him, and
+her lips formed an unvoiced whisper of gratitude as he turned to go.
+At the door he looked back. He thought she was beautiful then, with her
+shining hair and eyes, and her lips parted, and her hands half reaching
+out to him, as if in that moment of parting she was giving him courage
+and faith. Suddenly she pressed the palms of her fingers to her mouth
+and sent the kiss of benediction to him through the twilight glow of the
+snow-room.
+
+A moment later, crawling through his tunnel with Peter close behind
+him, there was an exultant singing in Jolly Roger's heart. Again he was
+fleeing from the law, but always, as Yellow Bird had predicted in her
+sorcery, there were happiness and hope in his going. And always there
+was someone to urge him on, and to take a pride in him, like Josephine
+Tavish.
+
+He broke through the dune-crust at the end of his tunnel and crawled
+out into the thick, gray dawn of a barren-land day. The sky was heavy
+overhead, and the wind had died out. It was the beginning of the brief
+lull which came in the second day of the Great Storm.
+
+McKay laughed softly as he sensed the odds against them.
+
+"We'll be having the storm at our heels again before long, Pied-Bot," he
+said. "We'd better make for the timber a dozen miles south."
+
+He struck out, circling the dune, so that he was traveling straight away
+from the first hole he had cut through the shell of the drift. From that
+door, made by the outlaw who had saved them, Josephine Tavish watched
+the shadowy forms of man and dog until they were lost in the gray-white
+chaos of a frozen world.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+Through the blizzard Jolly Roger made his way a score of miles southward
+from the big dune on the Barren. For a day and a night he made his camp
+in the scrub timber which edged the vast treeless tundras reaching to
+the Arctic. He believed he was safe, for the unceasing wind and the
+blasts of shot-like snow filled his tracks a few moments after they were
+made. He struck a straight line for his cabin after that first day and
+night in the scrub timber. The storm was still a thing of terrific force
+out on the barren, but in the timber he was fairly well sheltered. He
+was convinced the police patrol would find his cabin very soon after the
+storm had worn itself out. Porter and Tavish did not trouble him. But
+from Breault he knew there was no getting away. Breault would nose out
+his cabin. And for that reason he was determined to reach it first.
+
+The second night he did not sleep. His mind was a wild thing--wild as a
+Loup-Garou seeking out its ghostly trails; it passed beyond his mastery,
+keeping sleep away from him though he was dead tired. It carried him
+back over all the steps of his outlawry, visioning for him the score of
+times he had escaped, as he was narrowly escaping now; and it pictured
+for him, like a creature of inquisition, the tightening net ahead of
+him, the final futility of all his effort. And at last, as if moved by
+pity to ease his suffering a little, it brought him back vividly to the
+green valley, the flowers and the blue skies of Cragg's Ridge--and Nada.
+
+It was like a dream. At times he could scarcely assure himself that he
+had actually lived those weeks and months of happiness down on the edge
+of civilization; it seemed impossible that Nada had come like an Angel
+into his life down there, and that she had loved him, even when he
+confessed himself a fugitive from the law and had entreated him to take
+her with him. He closed his eyes and that last roaring night of storm at
+Cragg's Ridge was about him again. He was in the little old Missioner's
+cabin, with thunder and lightning rending earth and sky outside and Nada
+was in his arms, her lips against his, the piteous heartbreak of despair
+in her eyes. Then he saw her--a moment later--a crumpled heap down
+beside the chair, the disheveled glory of her hair hiding her white face
+from him as he hesitated for a single instant before opening the door
+and plunging out into the night.
+
+With a cry he sprang up, dashing the vision from him, and threw fresh
+fuel on the fire. And he cried out the same old thought to Peter.
+
+"It would have been murder for us to bring her, Pied-Bot. It would have
+been murder!"
+
+He looked about him at the swirling chaos outside the rim of light made
+by his fire and listened to the moaning of the wind over the treetops.
+Beyond the circle of light the dry snow, which crunched like sand under
+his feet, was lost in ghostly gloom. It was forty degrees below zero.
+And he was glad, even with this sickness of despair in his heart, that
+she was not a fugitive with him tonight.
+
+Yet he built up a little make-believe world for himself as he sat with
+a blanket hugged close about him, staring into the fire. In a hundred
+different ways he saw her face, a will-o-the-wisp thing amid the flames;
+an illusive, very girlish, almost childish face--yet always with the
+light of a woman's soul shining in it. That was the miracle which
+startled him at last. It seemed as if the fiction he built up in his
+despair transformed itself subtly into fact and that her soul had come
+to him from out of the southland and was speaking to him with eyes which
+never changed or faltered in their adoration, their faith and their
+courage. She seemed to come to him, to creep into his arms under the
+folds of the blanket and he sensed the soft crush of her hair, the touch
+of her lips, the warm encircling of her arms about his neck. Closer to
+him pressed the mystery, until the beating of her heart was a living
+pulse against him; and then--suddenly, as an irresistible impulse closed
+his arms to hold the spirit to him, his eyes were drawn to the heart
+of the fire, and he saw there for an instant, wide-eyed and speaking to
+him, the face of Yellow Bird the Indian sorceress. The flames crept up
+the long braids of her hair, her lips moved, and then she was gone--but
+slowly, like a ghost slipping upward into the mist of smoke and night.
+
+Peter heard his master's cry. And after that Jolly Roger rose up and
+threw off the blanket and walked back and forth until his feet trod a
+path in the snow. He told himself it was madness to believe, and yet he
+believed. Faith fought itself back into that dark citadel of his heart
+from which for a time it had been driven. New courage lighted up again
+the black chaos of his soul. And at last he fell down on his knees and
+gripped Peter's shaggy head between his two hands.
+
+"Pied-Bot, she said everything would come out right in the end," he
+cried, a new note in his voice. "That's what Yellow Bird told us, wasn't
+it? Mebby they would have burned her as a witch a long time ago because
+she's a sorceress, and says she can send her soul out of her body and
+see what we can't see. BUT WE BELIEVE!" His voice choked up, and he
+laughed. "They were both here tonight," he added. "Nada--and Yellow
+Bird. And I believe--I believe--I know what it means!"
+
+He stood up again, and Peter saw the old smile on his master's lips as
+Jolly Roger looked up into the swirling black canopy of the spruce-tops.
+And the wailing of the storm seemed no longer to hold menace and taunt,
+but in it he heard the whisper of fierce, strong voices urging upon him
+the conviction that had already swept indecision from his heart.
+
+And then he said, holding out his arms as if encompassing something
+which he could not see.
+
+"Peter, we're going back to Nada!"
+
+Dawn was a scarcely perceptible thing when it came. Darkness seemed to
+fade a little, that was all. Frosty shapes took form in the gloom,
+and the spruce-tops became tangible in an abyss of sepulchral shadow
+overhead.
+
+Through this beginning of the barren-land day Jolly Roger set out in the
+direction of his cabin and in his blood was that new singing thing of
+fire and warmth that more than made up for the hours of sleep he had
+lost during the night. The storm was dying out, he thought, and it was
+growing warmer; yet the wind whistled and raved in the open spaces and
+his thermometer registered the fortieth and a fraction degree below
+zero. The air he breathed was softer, he fancied, yet it was still heavy
+with the stinging shot of blizzard; and where yesterday he had seen
+only the smothering chaos of twisted spruce and piled up snow, there
+was now--as the pale day broadened--his old wonderland of savage beauty,
+awaiting only a flash of sunlight to transform it into the pure glory of
+a thing indescribable. But the sun did not come and Jolly Roger did not
+miss it over-much for his heart was full of Nada, and a-thrill with the
+inspiration of his home-going.
+
+"That's what it means, GOING HOME" he said to Peter, who nosed close
+in the path of his snowshoes. "There's a thousand miles between us and
+Cragg's Ridge, a thousand miles of snow and ice--and hell, mebby. But
+we'll make it!"
+
+He was sure of himself now. It was as if he had come up from out of the
+shadow of a great sickness. He had been unwise. He had not reasoned as
+a man should reason. The hangman might be waiting for him at Cragg's
+Ridge, down on the rim of civilization, but that same grim executioner
+was also pursuing close at his heels. He would always be pursuing in the
+form of a Breault, a Cassidy, a Tavish, or a Somebody Else of the Royal
+Northwest Mounted Police. It would be that way until the end came. And
+when the end did come, when they finally got him, the blow would be
+easier at Cragg's Ridge than up here on the edge of the Barren Land.
+
+And again there was hope, a wild, almost unbelievable hope that with
+Nada he might find that place which Yellow Bird, the sorceress, had
+promised for them--that mystery-place of safety and of happiness which
+she had called The Country Beyond, where "all would end well." He had
+not the faith of Yellow Bird's people; he was not superstitious enough
+to believe fully in her sorcery, except that he seized upon it as
+a drowning man might grip at a floating sea-weed. Yet was the
+under-current of hope so persistent that at times it was near faith.
+Up to this hour Yellow Bird's sorcery had brought him nothing but the
+truth. For him she had conjured the spirits of her people, and these
+spirits, speaking through Yellow Bird's lips, had saved him from Cassidy
+at the fishing camp and had performed the miracle on the shore of
+Wollaston and had predicted the salvation that had come to him out on
+the Barren. And so--was it not conceivable that the other would also
+come true?
+
+But these visions came to him only in flashes. As he traveled through
+the hours the one vital desire of his being was to bring himself
+physically into the presence of Nada, to feel the wild joy of her in his
+arms once more, the crush of her lips to his, the caress of her hands in
+their old sweet way at his face--and to hear her voice, the girl's voice
+with the woman's soul behind it, crying out its undying love, as he had
+last heard it that night in the Missioner's cabin many months ago. After
+this had happened, then--if fate decreed it so--all other things might
+end. Breault, the Ferret, might come. Or Porter. Or that Somebody Else
+who was always on his trail. If the game finished thus, he would be
+satisfied.
+
+When he stopped to make a pot of black tea and warm a snack to eat Jolly
+Roger tried to explain this new meaning of life to Peter.
+
+"The big thing we must do is to get there--safely," he said, already
+beginning to make plans in the back of his head. And then he went on,
+building up his fabric of new hope before Peter, while he crunched his
+luncheon of toasted bannock and fat bacon. There was something joyous
+and definite in his voice which entered into Peter's blood and body.
+There was even a note of excitement in it, and Peter's whiskers bristled
+with fresh courage and his eyes gleamed and his tail thumped the snow
+comprehendingly. It was like having a master come back to him from the
+dead.
+
+And Jolly Roger even laughed, softly, under his breath.
+
+"This is February," he said. "We ought to make it late in March. I mean
+Cragg's Ridge, Pied-Bot."
+
+After that they went on, traveling hard to reach their cabin before the
+darkness of night, which would drop upon them like a thick blanket at
+four o'clock. In these last hours there pressed even more heavily upon
+Jolly Roger that growing realization of the vastness and emptiness of
+the world. It was as if blindness had dropped from his eyes and he saw
+the naked truth at last. Out of this world everything had emptied itself
+until it held only Nada. Only she counted. Only she held out her arms to
+him, entreating him to keep for her that life in his body which meant
+so little in all other ways. He thought of one of the little worn books
+which he carried in his shoulder-pack--Jeanne D'Arc. As she had fought,
+with the guidance of God, so he believed the blue-eyed girl down at
+Cragg's Ridge was fighting for him, and had sent her spirit out in quest
+of him. And he was going back to her. GOING!
+
+The last word, as it came from his lips, meant that nothing would stop
+them. He almost shouted it. And Peter answered.
+
+In spite of their effort, darkness closed in on them. With the first
+dusk of this night there came sudden lulls in which the blizzard seemed
+to have exhausted itself. Jolly Roger read the signs. By tomorrow there
+would be no storm and Breault the Ferret would be on the trail again,
+along with Porter and Tavish.
+
+It was his old craft, his old cunning, that urged him to go on.
+Strangely, he prayed for the blizzard not to give up the ghost.
+Something must be accomplished before its fury was spent; and he was
+glad when after each lull he heard again the moaning and screeching of
+it over the open spaces, and the slashing together of spruce tops where
+there was cover. In a chaos of gloom they came to the low ridge which
+reached across an open sweep of tundra to the finger of shelter where
+the cabin was built. An hour later they were at its door. Jolly Roger
+opened it and staggered in. For a space he stood leaning against the
+wall while his lungs drank in the warmer air. The intake of his breath
+made a whistling sound and he was surprised to find himself so near
+exhaustion. He heard the thud of Peter's body as it collapsed to the
+floor.
+
+"Tired, Pied-Bot?"
+
+It was difficult for his storm-beaten lips to speak the words.
+
+Peter thumped his tail. The rat-tap-tap of it came in one of those lulls
+of the storm which Jolly Roger had begun to dread.
+
+"I hope it keeps up another two hours," he said, wetting his lips to
+take the stiffness out of them. "If it doesn't--"
+
+He was thinking of Breault as he drew off his mittens and fumbled for a
+match. It was Breault he feared. The Ferret would find his cabin and his
+trail if the storm died out too soon.
+
+He lighted the tin lamp on his table and after that, assured that
+wastefulness would cost him nothing now, he set two bear-drip candles
+going, one at each end of the cabin. The illumination filled the single
+room. There was little for it to reveal--the table he had made, a chair,
+a battered little sheet-iron stove, and the humped up blanket in his
+bunk, under which he had stored the remainder of his possessions. Back
+of the stove was a pile of dry wood, and in another five minutes the
+roar of flames in the chimney mingled with a fresh bluster of the wind
+outside.
+
+Defying the exhaustion of limbs and body, Jolly Roger kept steadily at
+work. He threw off his heavier garments as the freezing atmosphere of
+the room became warmer, and prepared for a feast.
+
+"We'll call it Christmas, and have everything we've got, Pied-Bot.
+We'll cook a quart of prunes instead of six. No use stinting
+ourselves--tonight!"
+
+Even Peter was amazed at the prodigality of his master. An hour later
+they ate, and McKay drank a quart of hot coffee before he was done. Half
+of his fatigue was gone and he sat back for a few minutes to finish off
+with the luxury of his pipe. Peter, gorged with caribou meat, stretched
+himself out to sleep. But his eyes did not close. His master puzzled
+him. For after a little Jolly Roger put on his heavy coat and parkee
+and pocketed his pipe. After that he slipped the straps of his pack over
+head and shoulders and then, even more to Peter's bewilderment, emptied
+a quart bottle of kerosene over the pile of dry wood behind the hot
+stove. To this he touched a lighted match. His next movement drew from
+Peter a startled yelp. With a single thrust of his foot he sent the
+stove crashing into the middle of the floor.
+
+Half an hour later, when Peter and Jolly Roger looked back from the
+crest of the ridge, a red pillar of flame lighted up the gloomy chaos of
+the unpeopled world they were leaving behind them. The wind was driving
+fiercely from the Barren and with it came stinging volleys of the fine
+drift-snow. In the teeth of it Roger McKay stared back.
+
+"It's a good fire," he mumbled in his hood. "Half an hour and it will
+be out. There'll be nothing for Breault to find if this wind keeps up
+another two hours--nothing but drift-snow, with no sign of trail or
+cabin."
+
+He struck out, leaving the shelter of the ridge. Straight south he went,
+keeping always in the open spaces where the wind-swept drift covered his
+snowshoe trail almost as soon as it was made. Darkness did not trouble
+him now. The open barren was ahead, miles of it, while only a little to
+the westward was the shelter of timber. Twice he blundered to the edge
+of this timber, but quickly set his course again in the open, with the
+wind always quartering at his back. He could only guess how long he kept
+on. The time came when he began to count the swing of his snowshoes,
+measuring off half a mile, or a mile, and then beginning over again
+until at last the achievement of five hundred steps seemed to take an
+immeasurable length of time and great effort. Like the ache of a tooth
+came the first warning of snowshoe cramp in his legs. In the black night
+he grinned. He knew what it meant--a warning as deadly as swimmer's
+cramp in deep water. If he continued much longer he would be crawling on
+his hands and knees.
+
+Quickly he turned in the direction of the timber. He had traveled three
+hours, he thought, since abandoning his cabin to the flames. Another
+half hour, with the caution of slower, shorter steps, brought him to the
+timber. Luck was with him and he cried aloud to Peter as he felt himself
+in the darkness of a dense cover of spruce and balsam. He freed himself
+from his entangled snowshoes and went on deeper into the shelter. It
+became warmer and they could feel no longer a breath of the wind.
+
+He unloaded his pack and drew from it a jackpine torch, dried in his
+cabin and heavy with pitch. Shortly the flare of this torch lighted up
+their refuge for a dozen paces about them. In the illumination of it,
+moving it from place to place, he gathered dry fire wood and with his
+axe cut down green spruce for the smouldering back-fire that would last
+until morning. By the time the torch had consumed itself the fire was
+burning, and where Jolly Roger had scraped away the snow from the thick
+carpet of spruce needles underfoot he piled a thick mass of balsam
+boughs, and in the center of the bed he buried himself, wrapped warmly
+in his blankets, and with Peter snuggled close at his side.
+
+Through dark hours the green spruce fire burned slowly and steadily. For
+a long time there was wailing of wind out in the open. But at last it
+died away, and utter stillness filled the world. No life moved in these
+hours which followed the giving up of the big storm's last gasping
+breath. Slowly the sky cleared. Here and there a star burned through.
+But Jolly Roger and Peter, deep in the sleep of exhaustion, knew nothing
+of the change.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+It was Peter who roused Jolly Roger many hours later; Peter nosing about
+the still burning embers of the fire, and at last muzzling his master's
+face with increasing anxiety. McKay sat up out of his nest of balsam
+boughs and blankets and caught the bright glint of sunlight through
+the treetops. He rubbed his eyes and stared again to make sure. Then he
+looked at his watch. It was ten o'clock and peering in the direction of
+the open he saw the white edge of it glistening in the unclouded blaze
+of a sun. It was the first sun--the first real sun--he had seen for many
+days, and with Peter he went to the rim of the barren a hundred yards
+distant. He wanted to shout. As far as he could see the white plain was
+ablaze with eye-blinding light, and never had the sky at Cragg's Ridge
+been clearer than the sky that was over him now.
+
+He returned to the fire, singing. Back through the months leapt Peter's
+memory to the time when his master had sung like that. It was in Indian
+Tom's cabin, with Cragg's Ridge just beyond the creek, and it was in
+those days before Terence Cassidy had come to drive them to another
+hiding place; in the happy days of Nada's visits and of their trysts
+under the Ridge, when even the little gray mother mouse lived in a
+paradise with her nest of babies in the box on their cabin shelf. He
+had almost forgotten but it came back to him now. It was the old Jolly
+Roger--the old master come to life again.
+
+In the clear stillness of the morning one might have heard that shouting
+song half a mile away. But McKay was no longer afraid. As the storm
+seemed to have cleaned the world so the sun cleared his soul of its last
+shadow of doubt. It was not merely an omen or a promise, but for him
+proclaimed a certainty. God was with him. Life was with him. His world
+was opening its arms to him again--and he sang as if Nada was only a
+mile away from him instead of a thousand.
+
+When he went on, after their breakfast, he laughed at the thought of
+Breault discovering their trail. The Ferret would be more than human to
+do that after what wind and storm and fire had done for them.
+
+This first day of their pilgrimage into the southland was a day of glory
+from its beginning until the setting of the sun. There was no cloud in
+the sky. And it grew warmer, until Jolly Roger flung back the hood of
+his parkee and turned up the fur of his cap. That night a million stars
+lighted the heaven.
+
+After this first day and night nothing could break down the hope and
+confidence of Jolly Roger and his, dog. Peter knew they were going
+south, in which direction lay everything he had ever yearned for; and
+each night beside their campfire McKay made a note with pencil and paper
+and measured the distance they had come and the distance they had yet
+to go. Hope in a little while became certainty. Into his mind urged no
+thought of changes that might have taken place at Cragg's Ridge; or, if
+the thought did come, it caused him no uneasiness. Now that Jed Hawkins
+was dead Nada would be with the little old Missioner in whose care
+he had left her, and not for an instant did a doubt cloud the growing
+happiness of his anticipations. Breault and the hunters of the law were
+the one worry that lay ahead and behind him. If he outwitted them he
+would find Nada waiting for him.
+
+Day after day they kept south and west until they struck the Thelon; and
+then through a country unmapped, and at times terrific in its cold
+and storm, they fought steadily to the frozen regions of the Dubawnt
+waterways. Only once in the first three weeks did they seek human
+company. This was at a small Indian camp where Jolly Roger bartered for
+caribou meat and moccasins for Peter's feet. Twice between there and
+God's Lake they stopped at trappers' cabins.
+
+It was early in March when they struck the Lost Lake country, three
+hundred miles from Cragg's Ridge.
+
+And here it was, buried under a blind of soft snow, that Peter nosed
+out the frozen carcass of a disemboweled buck which Boileau, the French
+trapper, had poisoned for wolves. Jolly Roger had built a fire and was
+warming half a pint of deer tallow for a baking of bannock, when Peter
+dragged himself in, his rear legs already stiffening with the palsy of
+strychnine. In a dozen seconds McKay had the warm tallow down Peter's
+throat, to the last drop of it; and this he followed with another dose
+as quickly as he could heat it, and in the end Peter gave up what he had
+eaten.
+
+Half an hour later Boileau, who was eating his dinner, jumped up in
+wonderment when the door of his cabin was suddenly opened by a grim and
+white-faced man who carried the limp body of a dog in his arms.
+
+For a long time after this the shadow of death hung over the Frenchman's
+trapping-shack. To Boileau, with his brotherly sympathy and regret that
+his poison-bait had brought calamity, Peter was "just dog." But when at
+last he saw the strong shoulders of the grim-faced stranger shaking over
+Peter's paralyzed body and listened to the sobbing grief that broke in
+passionate protest from his white lips, he drew back a little awed. It
+seemed for a time that Peter was dead; and in those moments Jolly
+Roger put his arms about him and buried his despairing face in Peter's
+scraggly neck, calling in a wild fit of anguish for him to come back, to
+live, to open his eyes again. Boileau, crossing himself, felt of Peter's
+body and McKay heard his voice over him, saying that the dog was not
+dead, but that his heart was beating steadily and that he thought
+the last stiffening blow of the poison was over. To McKay it was like
+bringing the dead back to life. He raised his head and drew away his
+arms and knelt beside the bunk stunned and mutely hopeful while Boileau
+took his place and began dropping warm condensed milk down Peter's
+throat. In a little while Peter's eyes opened and he gave a great sigh.
+
+Boileau looked up and shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"That was a good breath, m'sieu," he said. "What is left of the poison
+has done its worst. He will live."
+
+A bit stupidly McKay rose to his feet. He swayed a little, and for the
+first time sensed the hot tears that had blinded his eyes and wet his
+cheeks. And then there came a sobbing laugh out of his throat and he
+went to the window of the Frenchman's shack and stared out into the
+white world, seeing nothing. He had stood in the presence of death many
+times before but never had that presence choked up his heart as in this
+hour when the soul of Peter, his comrade, had stood falteringly for a
+space half-way between the living and the dead.
+
+When he turned from the window Boileau was covering Peter's body with
+blankets and a warm bear skin. And for many days thereafter Peter was
+nursed through the slow sickness which followed.
+
+An early spring came this year in the northland. South of the Reindeer
+waterway country the snows were disappearing late in March and ice was
+rotting the first week in April. Winds came from the south and west and
+the sun was warmer and clearer than Boileau had ever known it at the
+winter's end in Lost Lake country. It was in this first week of April
+that Peter was able to travel, and McKay pointed his trail once more for
+Cragg's Ridge.
+
+He left a part of his winter dunnage at Boileau's shack and went on
+light, figuring to reach Cragg's Ridge before the new "goose moon" had
+worn itself out in the west. But for a week Peter lagged and until the
+darker red in the rims of his eyes cleared away Jolly Roger checked the
+impetus of his travel so that the goose moon had faded out and the "frog
+moon" of May was in its full before they came down the last slope that
+dipped from the Height of Land to the forests and lakes of the lower
+country.
+
+And now, in these days, it seemed to Jolly Roger that a great kindness,
+and not tragedy, had delayed him so that his "home coming" was in
+the gladness of spring. All about him was the sweetness and mystic
+whispering of new life just awakening. It was in the sky and the sun; it
+was underfoot, in the fragrance of the mold he trod upon, in the trees
+about him, and in the mate-chirping of the birds flocking back from the
+southland. His friends the jays were raucous and jaunty again, bullying
+and bluffing in the warmth of sunshine; the black glint of crows' wings
+flashed across the opens; the wood-sappers and pewees and big-eyed
+moose-birds were aflutter with the excitement of home planning;
+partridges were feasting on the swelling poplar buds--and then, one
+glorious sunset, he heard the chirruping evening song of his first
+robin.
+
+And the next day they would reach Cragg's Ridge!
+
+Half of that last night he sat up, awake, or smoked in the glow of his
+fire, waiting for the dawn. With the first lifting of darkness he was
+traveling swiftly ahead of Peter and the morning was only half gone
+when he saw far ahead of him the great ridge which shut out Indian Tom's
+swamp, and Nada's plain, and Cragg's Ridge beyond it.
+
+It was noon when he stood at the crest of this. He was breathing hard,
+for to reach this last precious height from which he might look upon the
+country of Nada's home he had half run up its rock-strewn side. There,
+with his lungs gasping for air, his eager eyes shot over the country
+below him and for a moment the significance of the thing which he saw
+did not strike him. And then in another instant it seemed that his heart
+choked up, like a fist suddenly tightened, and stopped its beating.
+
+Reaching away from him, miles upon miles of it, east, west and
+south--was a dead and char-stricken world.
+
+Up to the foot of the ridge itself had come the devastation of flame,
+and where it had swept, months ago, there was now no sign of the
+glorious spring that lay behind him.
+
+He looked for Indian Tom's swamp, and where it had been there was no
+longer a swamp but a stricken chaos of ten thousand black stubs, the
+shriven corpses of the spruce and cedar and jackpines out of which the
+wolves had howled at night.
+
+He looked for the timber on Sucker Creek where the little old
+Missioner's cabin lay, and where he had dreamed that Nada would be
+waiting for him. And he saw no timber there but only the littleness and
+emptiness of a blackened world.
+
+And then he looked to Cragg's Ridge, and along the bald crest of it,
+naked as death, he saw blackened stubs pointing skyward, painting
+desolation against the blue of the heaven beyond.
+
+A cry came from him, a cry of fear and of horror, for he was looking
+upon the fulfilment of Yellow Bird's prediction. He seemed to hear,
+whispering softly in his ears, the low, sweet voice of the sorceress, as
+on the night when she had told him that if he returned to Cragg's Ridge
+he would find a world that had turned black with ruin and that it would
+not be there he would ever find Nada.
+
+After that one sobbing cry he tore like a madman dawn into the valley,
+traveling swiftly through the muck of fire and under-foot tangle
+with Peter fighting behind him. Half an hour later he stood where the
+Missioner's cabin had been and he found only a ruin of ash and logs
+burned down to the earth. Where the trail had run there was no longer
+a trail. A blight, grim and sickening, lay upon the earth that had been
+paradise.
+
+Peter heard the choking sound in his master's throat and chest. He, too,
+sensed the black shadow of tragedy and cautiously he sniffed the
+air, knowing that at last they were home--and yet it was not home.
+Instinctively he had faced Cragg's Ridge and Jolly Roger, seeing the
+dog's stiffened body pointing toward the break beyond which lay Nada's
+old home, felt a thrill of hope leap up within him. Possibly the farther
+plain had escaped the scourge of fire. If so, Nada would be there, and
+the Missioner--
+
+He started for the break, a mile away. As he came nearer to it his hope
+grew less for he could see where the flames had swept in an inundating
+sea along Cragg's Ridge. They passed over the meadow where the thick
+young jackpines, the red strawberries and the blue violets had been and
+Peter heard the strange sob when they came to the little hollow--the
+old trysting place where Nada had first given herself into his master's
+arms. And there it was that Peter forgot master and caution and sped
+swiftly ahead to the break that cut the Ridge in twain.
+
+When Jolly Roger came to that break and ran through it he was staggering
+from the mad effort he had made. And then, all at once, the last of his
+wind came in a cry of gladness. He swayed against a rock and stood there
+staring wild-eyed at what was before him. The world was as black ahead
+of him as it was behind. But Jed Hawkins' cabin was untouched! The fire
+had crept up to its very door and there it had died.
+
+He went on the remaining hundred yards and before the closed door of
+Nada's old home he found Peter standing stiff-legged and strange. He
+opened the door and a damp chill touched his face. The cabin was empty.
+And the gloom and desolation of a grave filled the place.
+
+He stepped in, a moaning whisper of the truth coming to his lips. He
+heard the scurrying flight of a starved wood-rat, a flutter of loose
+papers, and then the silence of death fell about him. The door of Nada's
+little room was open and he entered through it. The bed was naked and
+there remained only the skeleton of things that had been.
+
+He moved now like a man numbed by a strange sickness and Peter followed
+gloomily and silently in the footsteps of his master. They went outside
+and a distance away Jolly Roger saw a thing rising up out of the char of
+fire, ugly and foreboding, like the evil spirit of desolation itself. It
+was a rude cross made of saplings, up which the flames had licked their
+way, searing it grim and black.
+
+His hands clenched slowly for he knew that under the cross lay the body
+of Jed Hawkins, the fiend who had destroyed his world.
+
+After that he re-entered the cabin and went into Nada's room, closing
+the door behind him; and for many minutes thereafter Peter remained
+outside guarding the outer door, and hearing no sound or movement from
+within.
+
+When Jolly Roger came out his face was set and white, and he looked
+where the thick forest had stood on that stormy night when he ran down
+the trail toward Mooney's cabin. There was no forest now. But he found
+the old tie-cutters' road, cluttered as it was with the debris of fire,
+and he knew when he came to that twist in the trail where long ago Jed
+Hawkins had lain dead on his back. Half a mile beyond he came to the
+railroad. Here it was that the fire had burned hottest, for as far as
+his vision went he could see no sign of life or of forest green alight
+in the waning sun.
+
+And now there fell upon him, along with the desolation of despair, a
+something grimmer and more terrible--a thing that was fear. About him
+everywhere reached this graveyard of death, leaving no spot untouched.
+Was it possible that Nada and the Missioner had not escaped its fury?
+The fear settled upon him more heavily as the sun went down and the
+gloom of evening came, bringing with it an unpleasant chill and a
+cloying odor of things burned dead.
+
+He did not talk to Peter now. There was a lamp in the cabin and wood
+behind the stove, and silently he built a fire and trimmed and lighted
+the wick when darkness came. And Peter, as if hiding from the ghosts
+of yesterday, slunk into a corner and lay there unmoving and still.
+And McKay did not get supper nor did he smoke, but after a long time he
+carried his blankets into Nada's room, and spread them out upon her bed.
+Then he put out the light and quietly laid himself down where through
+the nights of many a month and year Nada had slept in the moon glow.
+
+The moon was there tonight. The faint glow of it rose in the east and
+swiftly it climbed over the ragged shoulder of Cragg's Ridge, flooding
+the blackened world with light and filling the room with a soft and
+golden radiance. It was a moon undimmed, full and round and yellow; and
+it seemed to smile in through the window as if some living spirit in it
+had not yet missed Nada, and was embracing her in its glory. And now it
+came upon Jolly Roger why she had loved it even more than she had loved
+the sun; for through the little window it shut out all the rest of the
+world, and sitting up, he seemed to hear her heart beating at his
+side and clearly he saw her face in the light of it and her slim arms
+out-reaching, as if to gather it to her breast. Thus--many times, she
+had told him--had she sat up in her bed to greet the moon and to look
+for the smiling face that was almost always there, the face of the Man
+in the Moon, her friend and playmate in the sky.
+
+For a space his heart leapt up; and then, as if discovery of the usurper
+in her room had come, a cloud swept over the face of the moon like a
+mighty hand and darkness crowded him in. But the cloud sailed on and the
+light drove out the gloom again. Then it was that Jolly Roger saw the
+Old Man in the Moon was up and awake tonight, for never had he seen his
+face more clearly. Often had Nada pointed it out to him in her adorable
+faith that the Old Man loved her, telling him how this feature changed
+and that feature changed, how sometimes the Old Man looked sick and at
+others well, and how there were times when he smiled and was happy and
+other times when he was sad and stern and sat there in his castle in the
+sky sunk in a mysterious grief which she could not understand.
+
+"And always I can tell whether I'm going to be glad or sorry by the look
+of the Man in the Moon," she had said to him. "He looks down and tells
+me even when the clouds are thick and he can only peep through now and
+then. And he knows a lot about you, Mister--Jolly Roger--because I've
+told him everything."
+
+Very quietly Jolly Roger got up from the bed and very strange seemed his
+manner to Peter as he walked through the outer room and into the night
+beyond. There he stood making no sound or movement, like one of the
+lifeless stubs left by fire; and Peter looked up, as his master was
+looking, trying to make out what it was he saw in the sky. And nothing
+was there--nothing that he had not seen many times before; a billion
+stars, and the moon riding King among them all, and fleecy clouds as if
+made of web, and stillness, a great stillness that was like sleep in the
+lap of the world.
+
+For a little Jolly Roger was silent and then Peter heard him saying,
+
+"Yellow Bird was right--again. She said we'd find a black world down
+here and we've found it. And we're going to find Nada where she told us
+we'd find her, in that place she called The Country Beyond--the country
+beyond the forests, beyond the tall trees and the big swamps, beyond
+everything we've ever known of the wild and open spaces; the country
+where God lives in churches on Sunday and where people would laugh at
+some of our queer notions, Pied-Bot. It's there we'll find Nada, driven
+out by the fire, and waiting for us now in the settlements."
+
+He spoke with a strange and quiet conviction, the haggard look dying out
+of his face as he stared up into the splendor of the sky.
+
+And then he said.
+
+"We won't sleep tonight, Peter. We'll travel with the moon."
+
+Half an hour later, as the lonely figures of man and dog headed for the
+first settlement a dozen miles away, there seemed to come for an instant
+the flash of a satisfied smile in the face of the Man in the sky.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+From the cabin McKay went first to the great rock that jutted from the
+broken shoulder of Cragg's Ridge, and as they stood there Peter heard
+the strange something that was like a laugh, and yet was not a laugh, on
+his master's lips. But his scraggly face did not look up. There was
+an answering whimper in his throat. He had been slow in sensing the
+significance of the mysterious thing that had changed his old home since
+months ago. During the hours of afternoon, and these moonlit hours that
+followed, he tried to understand. He knew this was home. Yet the green
+grass was gone, and a million trees had changed into blackened stubs.
+The world was no longer shut in by deep forests. And Cragg's Ridge was
+naked where he and Nada had romped in sunshine and flowers, and out of
+it all rose the mucky death-smell of the flame-swept earth. These things
+he understood, in his dog way. But what he could not understand clearly
+was why Nada was not in the cabin, and why they did not find her, even
+though the world was changed.
+
+He sat back on his haunches, and Jolly Roger heard again the whimpering
+grief in his throat. It comforted the man to know that Peter remembered,
+and he was not alone in his desolation. Gently he placed a soot-grimed
+hand on his comrade's head.
+
+"Peter, it was from this rock--right where we're standing now--that I
+first saw her, a long time ago," he said, a bit of forced cheer breaking
+through the huskiness of his voice. "Remember the little jackpine clump
+down there? You climbed up onto her lap, a little know-nothing thing,
+and you pawed in her loose curls, and growled so fiercely I could hear
+you. And when I made a noise, and she looked up, I thought she was the
+most beautiful thing I had ever seen--just a kid, with those eyes like
+the flowers, and her hair shining in the sun, an' tear stains on her
+cheeks. Tear stains, Pied-Bot--because of that snake who's dead over
+there. Remember how you growled at me, Peter?"
+
+Peter wriggled an answer.
+
+"That was the beginning," said Jolly Roger, "and this--looks like the
+end. But--"
+
+He clenched his fists, and there was a sudden fierceness in the
+grotesque movement of his shadow on the rock.
+
+"We're going to find her before that end comes," he added defiantly.
+"We're going to find her, Pied-Bot, even if it takes us to the
+settlements--right up into the face of the law."
+
+He set out over the rocks, his boots making hollow sounds in the
+deadness of the world about them. Again he followed where once had been
+the trail that led to Mooney's shack, over on the wobbly line of rail
+that rambled for eighty miles into the wilderness from Fort William. The
+P. D. & W. it was named--Port Arthur, Duluth & Western; but it had
+never reached Duluth, and there were those who had nicknamed it Poverty,
+Destruction & Want. Many times Jolly Roger had laughed at the queer
+stories Nada told him about it; how a wrecking outfit was always carried
+behind on the twice-a-week train, and how the crew picked berries in
+season, and had their trapping lines, and once chased a bear half way
+to Whitefish Lake while the train waited for hours. She called it the
+"Cannon Ball," because once upon a time it had made sixty-nine miles
+in twenty-four hours. But there was nothing of humor about it as Jolly
+Roger and Peter came out upon it tonight. It stretched out both ways
+from them, a thin, grim line of tragedy in the moonlight, and from where
+they stood it appeared to reach into a black and abysmal sea.
+
+Once more man and dog paused, and looked back at what had been. And
+the whine came in Peter's throat again and something tugged inside him,
+urging him to bark up into the face of the moon, as he had often barked
+for Nada in the days of his puppyhood, and afterward.
+
+But his master went on and Peter followed him, stepping the uneven ties
+one by one. And with the black chaos of the world under and about them,
+and the glorious light of the moon filling; the sky over their heads,
+the journey they made seemed weirdly unreal. For the silver and gold
+of the moon and the black muck of the fire refused to mingle, and while
+over their heads they could see the tiniest clouds and beyond to the
+farthest stars, all was black emptiness when they looked about them upon
+what once had been a living earth. Only the two lines of steel caught
+the moon-glow and the charred ends of the fire-shriven stubs that rose
+up out of the earth shroud and silhouetted themselves against the sky.
+
+To Peter it was not what he failed to see, but what he did not hear
+or smell that oppressed him and stirred him to wide-eyed watchfulness
+against impending evil. Under many moons he had traveled with his master
+in their never-ending flight from the law, and many other nights with
+neither moon nor stars had they felt out their trails together. But
+always, under him and over him on all sides of him, there had been LIFE.
+And tonight there was no life, nor smell of life. There was no chirp of
+night bird, or flutter of owl's wing, no plash of duck or cry of loon.
+He listened in vain for the crinkling snap of twig, and the whisper
+of wind in treetops. And there was no smell--no musk of mink that had
+crossed his path, no taste in the air of the strong scented fox, no
+subtle breath of partridge and rabbit and fleshy porcupine. And even
+from the far distances there came no sound, no howl of wolf, no castanet
+clatter of stout moose horns against bending saplings--not even the howl
+of a trapper's dog.
+
+The stillness was of the earth, and yet unearthly. It was even as if
+some fearsome thing was smothering the sound of his master's feet. To
+McKay, sensing these same things that Peter sensed, came understanding
+that brought with it an uneasiness which changed swiftly into the
+chill of a growing fear. The utter lifelessness told him how vast the
+destruction of the fire had been. Its obliteration was so great no life
+had adventured back into the desolated country, though the conflagration
+must have passed in the preceding autumn, many months ago. The burned
+country was a grave and the nearest edge of it, judged from the
+sepulchral stillness of the night, was many miles away.
+
+For the first time came the horror of the thought that in such a fire
+as this people must have died. It had swept upon them like a tidal wave,
+galloping the forests with the speed of a race horse, with only this
+thin line of rail leading to the freedom of life outside. In places
+only a miracle could have made escape possible. And here, where Nada had
+lived, with the pitch-wood forests crowding close, the fire must have
+burned most fiercely. In this moment, when fear of the unspeakable set
+his heart trembling, his faith fastened itself grimly to the little old
+gray Missioner, Father John, in whose cabin Nada had taken refuge many
+months ago, when Jed Hawkins lay dead in the trail with his one-eyed
+face turned up to the thunder and lightning in the sky. Father John, on
+that stormy night when he fled north, had promised to care for Nada, and
+in silence he breathed a prayer that the Missioner had saved her from
+the red death that had swept like an avalanche upon them. He told
+himself it must be so. He cried out the words aloud, and Peter heard
+him, and followed closer, so that his head touched his master's leg as
+he walked.
+
+But the fear was there. From a spark it grew into a red-hot spot in
+Jolly Roger's heart. Twice in his own life he had raced against death
+in a forest fire. But never had he seen a fire like this must have been.
+All at once he seemed to hear the roar of it in his ears, the rolling
+thunder of the earth as it twisted in the cataclysm of flame, the
+hissing shriek of the flaming pitch-tops as they leapt in lightning
+fires against the smoke-smothered sky. A few hours ago he had stood
+where Father John's Cabin had been and the place was a ruin of char and
+ash. If the fire had hemmed them in and they had not escaped--
+
+His voice cried out in sudden protest.
+
+"It can't be, Peter. It can't be! They made the rail--or the lake--and
+we'll find them in the settlements. It couldn't happen. God wouldn't let
+her die like that!"
+
+He stopped, and stared into the moon-broken gloom on his left. Something
+was there, fifty feet away, that drew him down through the muck which
+lay knee deep in the right-of-way ditch. It was what was left of the
+cutter's cabin, a clutter of burned logs, a wind scattered heap of
+ash. Even there, within arm's reach of the railroad, there had been no
+salvation from the fire.
+
+He waded again through the muck of the ditch, and went on. Mentally
+and physically he was fighting the ogre that was striving to achieve
+possession of his brain. Over and over he repeated his faith that Nada
+and the Missioner had escaped and he would find them in the settlements.
+Less than ever he thought of the law in these hours. What happened to
+himself was of small importance now, if he could find Nada alive before
+the menace caught up with him from behind, or ambushed him ahead.
+Yet the necessity of caution impinged itself upon him even in the
+recklessness of his determination to find her if he had to walk into the
+arms of the law that was hunting him.
+
+For an hour they went on, and as the moon sank westward it seemed to
+turn its face to look at them; and behind them, when they looked back,
+the world was transformed into a black pit, while ahead--with the glow
+of it streaming over their shoulders--ghostly shapes took form, and
+vision reached farther. Twice they caught the silvery gleam of lakes
+through the tree-stubs, and again they walked with the rippling murmur
+of a stream that kept for a mile within the sound of their ears. But
+even here, with water crying out its invitation to life, there was no
+life.
+
+Another hour after that Jolly Roger's pulse beat a little faster as he
+strained his eyes to see ahead. Somewhere near, within a mile or two,
+was the first settlement with its sawmill and its bunkhouses, its one
+store and its few cabins, with flat mountains of sawdust on one side
+of it, and the evergreen forest creeping up to its doors on the other.
+Surely they would find life here, where there had been man power to hold
+fire back from the clearing. And it was here he might find Nada and
+the Missioner, for more than once Father John had preached to the
+red-cheeked women and children and the clear-eyed men of the Finnish
+community that thrived there.
+
+But as they drew nearer he listened in vain for the bark of a dog, and
+his eyes quested as futilely for a point of light in the wide canopy of
+gloom. At last, close together, they rounded a curve in the road, and
+crossed a small bridge with a creek running below, and McKay knew his
+arm should be able to send a stone to what he was seeking ahead. And
+then, a minute later, he drew in a great gasping breath of unbelief and
+horror.
+
+For the settlement was no longer in the clearing between him and the
+rim-glow of the moon. No living tree raised its head against the sky, no
+sign of cabin or mill shadowed the earth, and where the store had been,
+and the little church with its white-painted cross, was only a chaos of
+empty gloom.
+
+He went down, as he had gone to the tie cutter's cabin, and for many
+minutes he stared and listened, while Peter seemed to stand without
+breathing. Then making a wide megaphone of his hands, he shouted. It was
+an alarming thing to do and Peter started as if struck. For there were
+only ghosts to answer back and the hollowness of a shriven pit for the
+cry to travel in. Nothing was there. Even the great sawdust piles had
+shrunk into black scars under the scourge of the fire.
+
+A groaning agony was in the breath of Jolly Roger's lips as he went back
+to the railroad and hurried on Death must have come here, death sudden
+and swift. And if it had fallen upon the Finnish settlement, with its
+strong women and its stronger men, what might it not have done in the
+cabin of the little old gray Missioner--and Nada?
+
+For a long time after that he forgot Peter was with him. He forgot
+everything but his desire to reach a living thing. At times, where the
+road-bed was smooth, he almost ran, and at others he paused for a little
+to gather his breath and listen. And it was Peter, in one of these
+intervals, who caught the first message of life. From a long distance
+away came faintly the barking of a dog.
+
+Half a mile farther on they came to a clearing where no stubs of trees
+stood up like question marks against the sky, and in this clearing was a
+cabin, a dark blotch that was without light or sound. But from behind it
+the dog barked again, and Jolly Roger made quickly toward it. Here there
+was no ash under his feet, and he knew that at last he had found an
+oasis of life in the desolation. Loudly he knocked with his fist at the
+cabin door and soon there was a response inside, the heavy movement of a
+man's body getting out of bed, and after that the questioning voice of
+a woman. He knocked again and the flare of a lighted match illumined the
+window. Then came the drawing of a bar at the door and a man stood there
+in his night attire, a man with a heavy face and bristling beard, and a
+lamp in his hand.
+
+"I beg your pardon for waking you," said Jolly Roger, "but I am just
+down from the north, hoping to find my friends back here and I have seen
+nothing but destruction and death. You are the first living soul I have
+found to ask about them."
+
+"Where were they?" grunted the man.
+
+"At Cragg's Ridge."
+
+"Then God help them," came the woman's voice from back in the room.
+
+"Cragg's Ridge," said the man, "was a burning hell in the middle of the
+night."
+
+Jolly Roger's fingers dug into the wood at the edge of the door.
+
+"You mean--"
+
+"A lot of 'em died," said the man stolidly, as if eager to rid himself
+of the one who had broken his sleep. "If it was Mooney, he's dead. An'
+if it was Robson, or Jake the Swede, or the Adams family--they're dead,
+too."
+
+"But it wasn't," said Jolly Roger, his heart choking between fear and
+hope. "It was Father John, the Missioner, and Nada Hawkins, who lived
+with him--or with her foster-mother in the Hawkins' cabin."
+
+The man shook his head, and turned down the wick of his lamp.
+
+"I dunno about the girl, or the old witch who was her mother," he said,
+"but the Missioner made it out safe, and went to the settlements."
+
+"And no girl was with him?"
+
+"No, there was no girl," came the woman's voice again, and Peter jerked
+up his ears at the creaking of a bed. "Father John stopped here the
+second day after the fire had passed, and he said he was gathering up
+the bones of the dead. Nada Hawkins wasn't with him, and he didn't say
+who had died and who hadn't. But I think--"
+
+She stopped as the bearded man turned toward her.
+
+"You think what?" demanded Jolly Roger, stepping half into the room.
+
+"I think," said the woman, "that she died along with the others. Anyway,
+Jed Hawkins' witch-woman was burned trying to make for the lake, and
+little of her was left."
+
+The man with the lamp made a movement as if to close the door.
+
+"That's all we know," he growled.
+
+"For God's sake--don't!" entreated Jolly Roger, barring the door with
+his arm. "Surely there were some who escaped from Cragg's Ridge and
+beyond!"
+
+"Mebby a half, mebby less," said the man. "I tell you it burned like
+hell, and the worst of it came in the middle of the night with a wind
+behind it that blew a hurricane. We've twenty acres cleared here, with
+the cabin in the center of it, an' it singed my beard and burned her
+hair and scorched our hands, and my pigs died out there from the heat of
+it. Mebby it's a place to sleep in for the night you want, stranger?"
+
+"No, I'm going on," said Jolly Roger, the blood in his veins running
+with the chill of water. "How far before I come to the end of fire?"
+
+"Ten miles on. It started this side of the next settlement."
+
+Jolly Roger drew back and the door closed, and standing on the railroad
+once more he saw the light go out and after that the occasional barking
+of the settler's dog grew fainter and fainter behind them.
+
+He felt a great weariness in his bones and body now. With hope struck
+down the exhaustion of two nights and a day without sleep seized upon
+him and his feet plodded more and more slowly over the uneven ties of
+the road. Even in his weariness he fought madly against the thought that
+Nada was dead and he repeated the word "impossible--impossible" so often
+that it ran in sing-song through his brain. And he could not keep away
+from him the white, thin face of the Missioner, who had promised on his
+faith In God to care for Nada, and who had passed the settler's cabin
+ALONE.
+
+Another two hours they went on and then came the first of the green
+timber. Under the shelter of some balsams Jolly Roger found a resting
+place and there they waited for the break of dawn. Peter stretched out
+and slept. But Jolly Roger sat with his head and shoulders against the
+bole of a tree, and not until the light of the moon was driven away by
+the darkness that preceded dawn by an hour or two did his eyes close in
+restless slumber. He was roused by the wakening twitter of birds and in
+the cold water of a creek that ran near he bathed his face and hands.
+Peter wondered why there was no fire and no breakfast this morning.
+
+The settlement was only a little way ahead and it was very early when
+they reached it. People were still in their beds and out of only one
+chimney was smoke rising into the clear calm of the breaking day. From
+this cabin a young man came, and stood for a moment after he had closed
+the door, yawning and stretching his arms and looking up to see what
+sort of promise the sky held for the day. After that he went to a stable
+of logs, and Jolly Roger followed him there.
+
+He was unlike the bearded settler, and nodded with a youthful smile of
+cheer.
+
+"Good morning," he said. "You're traveling early, and--"
+
+He looked more keenly as his eyes took in Jolly Roger's boots and
+clothes, and the gray pallor in his face.
+
+"Just get in?" he asked kindly. "And--from the burnt country?"
+
+"Yes, from the burnt country. I've been away a long time, and I'm trying
+to find out if my friends are among the living or the dead. Did you ever
+hear of Father John, the Missioner at Cragg's Ridge?"
+
+The young man's face brightened.
+
+"I knew him," he said. "He helped me to bury my brother, three years
+ago. And if it's him you seek, he is safe. He went up to Fort William a
+week after the fire, and that was in September, eight months past."
+
+"And was there with him a girl named Nada Hawkins?" asked Jolly Roger,
+trying hard to speak calmly as he looked into the other's face.
+
+The youth shook his head.
+
+"No, he was alone. He slept in my cabin overnight, and he said nothing
+of a girl named Nada Hawkins."
+
+"Did he speak of others?"
+
+"He was very tired, and I think he was half dead with grief at what had
+happened. He spoke no names that I remember."
+
+Then he saw the gray look in Jolly Roger's face grow deeper, and saw the
+despair which could not hide itself in his eyes.
+
+"But there were a number of girls who passed here, alone or with
+their friends," he said hopefully. "What sort of looking girl was Nada
+Hawkins?"
+
+"A--kid. That's what I called her," said Jolly Roger, in a dead, cold
+voice. "Eighteen, and beautiful, with blue eyes, and brown hair that she
+couldn't keep from blowing in curls about her face. So like an angel you
+wouldn't forget her if you'd seen her--just once."
+
+Gently the youth placed a hand on Jolly Roger's arm.
+
+"She didn't come this way," he said, "but maybe you'll find her
+somewhere else. Won't you have breakfast with me? I've a stranger in
+the cabin, still sleeping, who's going into the fire country from which
+you've come. He's hunting for some one, and maybe you can give him
+information. He's going to Cragg's Ridge."
+
+"Cragg's Ridge!" exclaimed Jolly Roger. "What is his name?"
+
+"Breault," said the youth. "Sergeant Breault, of the Royal Northwest
+Mounted Police."
+
+Jolly Roger turned to stroke the neck of a horse waiting for its morning
+feed. But he felt nothing of the touch of flesh under his hand. Cold as
+iron went his heart, and for half a minute he made no answer. Then he
+said:
+
+"Thanks, friend. I breakfasted before it was light and I'm hitting out
+into the brush west and north, for the Rainy River country. Please don't
+tell this man Breault that you saw me, for he'll think badly of me
+for not waiting to give him information he might want. But--you
+understand--if you loved the brother who died--that it's hard for me to
+talk with anyone just now."
+
+The young man's fingers touched his arm again.
+
+"I understand," he said, "and I hope to God you'll find her."
+
+Silently they shook hands, and Jolly Roger hurried away from the cabin
+with the rising spiral of smoke.
+
+Three days later a man and a dog came from the burned country into
+the town of Fort William, seeking for a wandering messenger of God who
+called himself Father John, and a young and beautiful girl whose name
+was Nada Hawkins. He stopped first at the old mission, in whose shadow
+the Indians and traders of a century before had bartered their wares,
+and Father Augustine, the aged patriarch who talked with him, murmured
+as he went that he was a strange man, and a sick one, with a little
+madness lurking in his eyes.
+
+And it was, in fact, a madness of despair eating out the life in Jolly
+Roger's heart. For he no longer had hope Nada had escaped the fire, even
+though at no place had he found a conclusive evidence of her death. But
+that signified little, for there were many of the missing who had not
+been found between the last of September and these days of May. What
+he did find, with deadly regularity, was the fact that Father John had
+escaped--and that he had traveled to safety ALONE.
+
+And Father Augustine told him that when Father John stopped to rest
+for a few days at the Mission he was heading north, for somewhere on
+Pashkokogon Lake near the river Albany.
+
+There was little rest for Peter and his master at Fort William town.
+That Breault must be close on their trail, and following it with the
+merciless determination of the ferret from which he had been named,
+there was no shadow of doubt in the mind of Jolly Roger McKay. So after
+outfitting his pack at a little corner shop, where Breault would be slow
+to enquire about him, he struck north through the bush toward Dog Lake
+and the river of the same name. Five or six days, he thought, would
+bring him to Father John and the truth which he dreaded more and more to
+hear.
+
+The despondency of his master had sunk, in some mysterious way, into
+the soul of Peter. Without the understanding of language he sensed the
+oppressive gloom of tragedy behind and about him and there was a wolfish
+slinking in the manner of his travel now, and his confidence was going
+as he caught the disease of despair of the man who traveled with him.
+But constantly and vigilantly his eyes and scent were questing about
+them, suspicious of the very winds that whispered in the treetops. And
+at night after they had built their little cooking fire in the deepest
+heart of the bush he would lie half awake during the hours of darkness,
+the watchfulness of his senses never completely dulled in the stupor of
+sleep.
+
+Since the night they had stopped at the settler's cabin Jolly Roger's
+face had grown grayer and thinner. A number of times he had tried to
+assure himself what he would do in that moment which was coming when he
+would stand face to face with Breault the man-hunter. His caution, after
+he left Fort William, was in a way an automatic instinct that worked for
+self-preservation in face of the fact that he was growing less and less
+concerned regarding Breault's appearance. It was not in his desire
+to delay the end much longer. The chase had been a long one, with its
+thrills and its happiness at times, but now he was growing tired and
+with Nada gone there was only hopeless gloom ahead. If she were dead he
+wanted to go to her. That thought was a dawning pleasure in his breast,
+and it was warm in his heart when he tied in a hard knot the buckskin
+string which locked the flap of his pistol holster. When Breault
+overtook him the law would know, because of the significance of this
+knot, that he had welcomed the end of the game.
+
+Never in the northland had there come a spring more beautiful than this
+of the year in which McKay and his dog went through the deep wilds to
+Pashkokogon Lake. In a few hours, it seemed, the last chill died out of
+the air and there came the soft whispers of those bridal-weeks between
+May and Summer, a month ahead of their time. But Jolly Roger, for the
+first time in his life, failed to respond to the wonder and beauty of
+the earth's rejoicing. The first flowers did not fill him with the old
+joy. He no longer stood up straight, with expanding chest, to drink in
+the rare sweetness of air weighted with the tonic of balsams and cedar
+spruce. Vainly he tried to lift up his soul with the song and bustle
+of mating things. There was no longer music for him in the flood-time
+rushing of spring waters. An utter loneliness filled the cry of the
+loon. And all about him was a vast emptiness from which the spirit of
+life had fled for him.
+
+Thus he came at last to a stream in the Burntwood country which ran into
+Pashkokogon Lake; and it was this day, in the mellow sunlight of late
+afternoon, that they heard coming to them from out of the dense forest
+the chopping of an axe.
+
+Toward this they made their way, with caution and no sound, until in a
+little clearing in a bend of the stream they saw a cabin. It was a newly
+built cabin, and smoke was rising from the chimney.
+
+But the chopping was nearer them, in the heart of a thick cover of
+evergreen and birch. Into this Jolly Roger and Peter made their way and
+came within a dozen steps of the man who was wielding the axe. It was
+then that Jolly Roger rose up with a cry on his lips, for the man was
+Father John the Missioner.
+
+In spite of the tragedy through which he had passed the little gray man
+seemed younger than in that month long ago when Jolly Roger had fled to
+the north. He dropped his axe now and stood as if only half believing,
+a look of joy shining in his face as he realized the truth of what had
+happened. "McKay," he cried, reaching out his hands. "McKay, my boy!"
+
+A look of pity mellowed the gladness in his eyes as he noted the change
+in Jolly Roger's face, and the despair that had set its mark upon it.
+
+They stood for a moment with clasped hands, questioning and answering
+with the silence of their eyes. And then the Missioner said:
+
+"You have heard? Someone has told you?"
+
+"No," said Jolly Roger, his head dropping a little. "No one has told
+me," and he was thinking of Nada, and her death.
+
+Father John's fingers tightened.
+
+"It is strange how the ways of God bring themselves about," he spoke in
+a low voice. "Roger, you did not kill Jed Hawkins!"
+
+Dumbly, his lips dried of words, Jolly Roger stared at him.
+
+"No, you didn't kill him," repeated Father John. "On that same night of
+the storm when you thought you left him dead in the trail, he stumbled
+back to his cabin, alive. But God's vengeance came soon.
+
+"A few days later, while drunk, he missed his footing and fell from a
+ledge to his death. His wife, poor creature, wished him buried in sight
+of the cabin door--"
+
+But in this moment Roger McKay was thinking less of Breault the Ferret
+and the loosening of the hangman's rope from about his neck than he was
+of another thing. And Father John was saying in a voice that seemed far
+away and unreal:
+
+"We've sent out word to all parts of the north, hoping someone would
+find you and send you back. And she has prayed each night, and each hour
+of the day the same prayer has been in her heart and on her lips. And
+now--"
+
+Someone was coming to them from the direction of the cabin--someone, a
+girl, and she was singing,
+
+McKay's face went whiter than the gray ash of fire.
+
+"My God," he whispered huskily. "I thought--she had died!"
+
+It was only then Father John understood the meaning of what he had seen
+in his face.
+
+"No, she is alive," he cried. "I sent her straight north through the
+bush with an Indian the day after the fire. And later I left word for
+you with the Fire Relief Committee at Fort William, where I thought you
+would first enquire."
+
+"And it was there," said Jolly Roger, "that I did not enquire at all!"
+
+In the edge of the clearing, close to the thicket of timber, Nada had
+stopped. For across the open space a strange looking creature had raced
+at the sound of her voice; a dog with bristling Airedale whiskers, and
+a hound's legs, and wild-wolf's body hardened and roughened by months of
+fighting in the wilderness. As in the days of his puppyhood, Peter leapt
+up against her, and a cry burst from Nada's lips, a wild and sobbing cry
+of PETER, PETER, PETER--and it was this cry Jolly Roger heard as he tore
+away from Father John.
+
+On her knees, with her arms about Peter's shaggy head, Nada stared
+wildly at the clump of timber, and in a moment she saw a man break out
+of it, and stand still, as if the mellow sunlight blinded him, and made
+him unable to move. And the same choking weakness was at her own heart
+as she rose up from Peter, and reached out her arms toward the gray
+figure in the edge of the wood, sobbing, trying to speak and yet saying
+no word.
+
+And a little slower, because of his age, Father John came a moment
+later, and peered out with the knowledge of long years from a thicket
+of young banksians, and when he saw the two in the open, close in
+each other's arms, and Peter hopping madly about them, he drew out a
+handkerchief and wiped his eyes, and went back then for the axe which he
+had dropped in the timber clump.
+
+There was a great drumming in Jolly Roger's head, and for a time he
+failed even to hear Peter yelping at their side, for all the world was
+drowned in those moments by the breaking sobs in Nada's breath and the
+wild thrill of her body in his arms; and he saw nothing but the upturned
+face, crushed close against his breast, and the wide-open eyes, and the
+lips to kiss. And even Nada's face he seemed to see through a silvery
+mist, and he felt her arms strangely about his neck, as if it was all
+half like a dream--a dream of the kind that had come to him beside his
+campfire. It was a little cry from Nada that drove the unreality away.
+
+"Roger--you're--breaking me," she cried, gasping for her breath in his
+arms, yet without giving up the clasp of her own arms about his neck in
+the least; and at that he sensed the brutality of his strength, and held
+her off a little, looking into her face.
+
+Pride and happiness and the courage in his heart would have slunk away
+could he have seen himself then, as Father John saw him, coming from
+the edge of the bush, and as Nada saw him, held there at the end of his
+arms. Since the day he had come with Peter to Cragg's Ridge the blade
+of a razor had not touched his face, and his beard was like a brush,
+and with it his hair unkempt and straggling; and his eyes were red from
+sleeplessness and the haunting of that grim despair which had dogged his
+footsteps.
+
+But these things Nada did not see. Or, if she did, there must have been
+something beautiful about them for her. For it was not a little girl,
+but a woman who was standing there before Jolly Roger now--Nada grown
+older, very much older it seemed to McKay, and taller, with her hair no
+longer rioting free about her, but gathered up in a wonderful way on the
+crown of her head. This change McKay discovered as she stood there, and
+it swept upon him all in a moment, and with it the prick of something
+swift and terrorizing inside him. She was not the little girl of Cragg's
+Ridge. She was a WOMAN. In a year had come this miracle of change, and
+it frightened him, for such a creature as this that stood before him
+now Jed Hawkins would never have dared to curse or beat, and he--Roger
+McKay--was afraid to gather her back into his arms again.
+
+And then, even as his fingers slowly drew themselves away from her
+shoulders, he saw that which had not changed--the wonder-light in her
+eyes, the soul that lay as open to him now as on that other day in
+Indian Tom's cabin, when Mrs. Captain Kidd had bustled and squeaked on
+the pantry shelf, and Peter had watched them as he lay with his broken
+leg in the going down of the sun. And as he hesitated it was Nada
+herself who came into his arms, and laid her head on his breast, and
+trembled and laughed and cried there, while Father John came up and
+patted her shoulder, and smiled happily at McKay, and then went on to
+the cabin in the clearing. For a time after that Jolly Roger crushed his
+face in Nada's hair, and neither said a word, but there was a strange
+throbbing of their hearts together, and after a little Nada reached up a
+hand to his cheek, and stroked it tenderly, bristly beard and all.
+
+"I'll never let you run away from me again--Mister--Jolly Roger," she
+said, and it was the little Nada of Cragg's Ridge who whispered the
+words, half sobbing; but in the voice there was also something very
+definite and very sure, and McKay felt the glorious thrill of it as he
+raised his face from her hair, and saw once more the sun-filled world
+about him.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+Following this day Peter was observant of a strange excitement in
+the cabin on the Burntwood. It was not so much a thing of physical
+happening, but more the mysterious FEEL of something impending and very
+near. The day following their arrival in the Pashkokogon country his
+master seemed to have forgotten him entirely. It was Nada who noticed
+him, but even she was different; and Father John went about, overseeing
+two Indians whom he kept very busy, his pale, thin face luminous with an
+anticipation which roused Peter's curiosity, and kept him watchful. He
+was puzzled, too, by the odd actions of the humans about him. The second
+morning Nada remained in her room, and Jolly Roger wandered off into the
+woods without his breakfast, and Father John ate alone, smiling
+gently as he looked at the tightly closed door of Nada's bedroom. Even
+Oosimisk, the Leaf Bud, the sleek-haired Indian woman who cared for the
+house, was nervously expectant as she watched for Nada, and Mistoos,
+her husband, grunted and grimaced as he carried in from the edge of the
+forest many loads of soft evergreens on his shoulders.
+
+Into the forest Jolly Roger went alone, puffing furiously at his pipe.
+He was all a-tremble and his blood seemed to quiver and dance as it ran
+through his veins. Since the first rose-flush of dawn he had been awake,
+fighting against this upsetting of every nerve that was in him.
+
+He felt pitiably weak and helpless. But it was the weakness and
+helplessness of a happiness too vast for him to measure. It was Nada in
+her ragged shoes and dress, with the haunting torture of Jed Hawkins'
+brutality in her eyes and face, that he had expected to find, if he
+found her at all; someone to fight for, and kill for if necessary,
+someone his muscle and brawn would always protect against evil. He had
+not dreamed that in these many months with Father John she would change
+from "a little kid goin' on eighteen" into--A WOMAN.
+
+He tried to recall just what he had said to her last night--that he was
+still an outlaw, and would always be, no matter how well he lived from
+this day on; and that she, now that she had Father John's protection,
+was very foolish to care for him, or keep her troth with him, and would
+be happier if she could forget what had happened at Cragg's Ridge.
+
+"You're a WOMAN now," he said. "A WOMAN--" he had emphasized that--"and
+you don't need me any more."
+
+And she had looked at him, without speaking, as if reading what was
+inside him; and then, with a sudden little laugh, she swiftly pulled her
+hair down about her shoulders, and repeated the very words she had said
+to him a long time ago--"Without you--I'd want to die--Mister--Jolly
+Roger," and with that she turned and ran into the cabin, her hair flying
+riotously, and he had not seen her again since that moment.
+
+Since then his heart had behaved like a thing with the fever, and it
+was beating swiftly now as he looked at his watch and noted the quick
+passing of time.
+
+Back in the cabin Peter was sniffing at the crack under Nada's door,
+and listening to her movement. For a long time he had heard her, but not
+once had she opened the door. And he wondered, after that, why Oosimisk
+and her husband and Father John piled evergreens all about, until the
+cabin looked like the little jackpine trysting-place down at Cragg's
+Ridge, even to the soft carpet of grass on the floor, and flowers
+scattered all about.
+
+Hopeless of understanding what it meant, he went outside, and waited in
+the warm May-day sun until his master came back through the clearing.
+What happened after that puzzled him greatly. When he followed Jolly
+Roger into the cabin Mistoos and the Leaf Bud were seated in chairs,
+their hands folded, and Father John stood behind a small table on which
+lay an open book, and he was looking at his watch when they came in. He
+nodded, and smiled, and very clearly Peter saw his master gulp, as if
+swallowing something that was in his throat. And the ruddiness had gone
+completely out of his smooth-shaven cheeks. It was the first time
+Peter had seen his master so clearly afraid, and from his burrow in the
+evergreens he growled under his breath, eyeing the open door with sudden
+thought of an enemy.
+
+And then Father John was tapping at Nada's door.
+
+He went back to the table and waited, and as the knob of the door turned
+very slowly Jolly Roger swallowed again, and took a step toward it. It
+opened, and Nada stood there. And Jolly Roger gave a little cry, so low
+that Peter could just hear it, as he held out his hands to her.
+
+For Nada was no longer the Nada who had come to him in Father John's
+clearing. She was the Nada of Cragg's Ridge, the Nada of that wild night
+of storm when he had fled into the north. Her hair fell about her, as in
+the old days when Peter and she had played together among the rocks and
+flowers, and her wedding dress was faded and torn, for it was the dress
+she had worn that night of despair when she sent her message to Peter's
+master, and on her little feet were shoes broken and disfigured by her
+flight in those last hours of her mighty effort to go with the man
+she loved. In Father John's eyes, as she stood there, was a great
+astonishment; but in Jolly Roger's there came such a joy that, in answer
+to it, Nada went straight into his arms and held up her lips to be
+kissed.
+
+Her cheeks were very pink when she stood beside McKay, with Father John
+before them, the open book in his hands; and then, as her long lashes
+drooped over her eyes, and her breath came a little more quickly, she
+saw Peter staring at her questioningly, and made a little motion to
+him with her hand. He went to her, and her fingers touched his head as
+Father John began speaking. Peter looked up, and listened, and was
+very quiet in these moments. Jolly Roger was staring straight at the
+balsam-decked wall opposite him, but there was something mighty strong
+and proud in the way he held his head, and the fear had gone completely
+out of his eyes. And Nada stood very close to him, so that her brown
+head lightly touched his shoulder and he could see the silken shimmer of
+loose tresses which with sweet intent she had let fall over his arm. And
+her little fingers clung tightly to his thumb, as on that blessed night
+when they had walked together across the plain below Cragg's Ridge, with
+the moon lighting their way.
+
+Peter, in his dog way, fell a-wondering as he stood there, but kept his
+manners and remained still. When it was all over he felt a desire to
+show his teeth and growl, for when Father John had kissed Nada, and was
+shaking Jolly Roger's hand, he saw his mistress crying in that strange,
+silent way he had so often seen her crying in his puppyhood days. Only
+now her blue eyes were wide open as she looked at Jolly Roger, and her
+cheeks were flushed to the pink of wild rose petals, and her lips were
+trembling a little, and there was a tiny something pulsing in her soft
+white throat. And all at once there came a smile with the tears, and
+Jolly Roger--turning from Father John to find her thus--gathered her
+close in his arms, and Peter wagged his tail and went out into the
+sun-filled day, where he heard a red squirrel challenging him from a
+stub in the edge of the clearing.
+
+A little later he saw Nada and his master come out of the cabin, and
+walk hand in hand across the open into the sweet-smelling timber where
+Father John had been chopping with his axe.
+
+On a fresh-cut log Nada sat down, and McKay sat beside her, still
+holding her hand. Not once had he spoken in crossing the open, and it
+seemed as though little devils were holding his lips closed now.
+
+With her eyes looking down at the greening earth under their feet, Nada
+said, very softly,
+
+"Mister--Jolly Roger--are you glad?"
+
+"Yes," he said.
+
+"Glad that I am--your wife?"
+
+The word drew a great, sobbing breath from him, and looking up suddenly
+she saw that he was staring over the balsam-tops into the wonderful blue
+of the sky.
+
+"Your WIFE," she whispered, touching his shoulder gently with her lips.
+
+"Yes, I'm glad," he said. "So glad that I'm--afraid."
+
+"Then--if you are glad--please kiss me again."
+
+He stood up, and drew her to him, and held her face between his hands as
+he kissed her red lips; and after that he kissed her shining hair again
+and again, and when he let her go her eyes were a glory of happiness.
+
+"And you will never run away from me again?" she demanded, holding him
+at arm's length. "Never?"
+
+"Never!"
+
+"Then--I want nothing more in this life," she said, nestling against him
+again. "Only you, for ever and ever."
+
+Jolly Roger made no answer, but held her a long time in his arms, with
+the soft beating of her heart against him, and listened to the twitter
+and song of nesting and mating things about them. In this silence she
+lay content, until Peter--growing restless--started quietly into the
+golden depths of the forest.
+
+It was Pied-Bot's going, cautious and soft-footed, as if danger and
+menace might lurk just ahead of him, that brought another look into
+McKay's eyes as Nada's hand crept to his cheek, and rested there.
+
+"You love me--very much?"
+
+"More than life," he answered, and as he spoke he was watching Peter,
+questing the soft wind that came whispering from the south.
+
+Her finger touched his lips, gentle and sweet.
+
+"And wherever you go, I go--forever and always?" she questioned.
+
+"Yes, forever and always"--and his eyes were looking through miles upon
+miles of deep forest, and at the end he saw the thin and pitiless face
+of a man who was following his trail, Breault the Ferret.
+
+His arms closed more tightly about her, and he pressed her face against
+him.
+
+"And I pray God you will never be sorry," he said, still looking through
+the miles of forest.
+
+"No, no--sorry I shall never be," she cried softly. "Not if we fly, and
+go hungry, and fight--and die. Never shall I be sorry--with you," and he
+felt the tightening of her arms.
+
+And then, as he remained silent, with his lips on the velvety smoothness
+of her hair, she told him what Father John had already told him--of her
+wild effort to overtake him in that night of storm when he had fled
+from the Missioner's cabin at Cragg's Ridge; and in turn he told her how
+Peter came to him in the break of the morning with the treasure which
+had saved him heart and soul, and how he had given that treasure into
+the keeping of Yellow Bird, on the shores of Wollaston.
+
+And thereafter, for an hour, as they wandered through the May-time
+sweetness of the forest, she would permit him to talk of only Yellow
+Bird and Sun Cloud; and, one thing leading to another, she learned how
+it was that Yellow Bird had been his fairy in childhood days, and how
+he came to be an outlaw for her in later manhood. Her eyes were shining
+when he had finished, and her red lips were a-tremble with the quickness
+of her breathing.
+
+"Some day--you'll take me there," she whispered. "Oh, I'm so proud of
+you, my Roger. And I love Yellow Bird. And Sun Cloud. Some day--we'll
+go!"
+
+He nodded, happiness overshadowing the fear of Breault that had grown in
+his heart.
+
+"Yes, we'll go. I've dreamed it, and the dream helped to keep me
+alive--"
+
+And then he told her of Cassidy, and of the paradise he had found with
+Giselle and her grandfather on the other side of Wollaston.
+
+And so it happened the hours passed swiftly, and it was afternoon when
+they returned to Father John's cabin, and Nada went into her room.
+
+In the early waning of the sun the feast which the Leaf Bud had been
+preparing was ready, and not until then did Nada appear again.
+
+And once more the lump rose up in Roger's throat at the wonder of her,
+for very completely she had transformed herself into a woman again,
+from the softly shining coils of hair on the crown of her head to the
+coquettish little slippers that set off her dainty feet. And he saw the
+white gleam of soft shoulders and tender arms where once had been rags
+and bruises, and held there by the slim beauty and exquisite daintiness
+of her he stared like a fool, until suddenly she laughed joyously at
+his amaze, and ran to him with wide-open arms, and kissed him so soundly
+that Peter cocked up his ears a bit startled. And then she kissed Father
+John, and after that was mistress at the table, radiant in her triumph
+and her eyes starry with happiness.
+
+And she was no longer shy in speaking his name, but called him
+Roger boldly and many times, and twice during that meal of marvelous
+forgetfulness--though long lashes covered her eyes when she spoke
+it--she called him 'my husband.'
+
+In truth she was a woman and for the most part Roger McKay--fighting man
+and very strong though he was--looked at her in dumb worship, speaking
+little, his heart a-throb, and his brain reeling in the marvel of what
+at last had come into his possession.
+
+And yet, even in this hour of supreme happiness that held him half mute,
+there was always lurking in the back of his brain a thought of Breault,
+the Ferret.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+In the star dusk of evening the time came when he spoke his fears to
+Father John.
+
+Nada had gone into her room, taking Peter with her, and out under the
+cool of the skies Father John's pale face was turned up to the unending
+glory of the firmament, and his lips were whispering a prayer of
+gratitude and blessing, when Roger laid a hand gently on his arm.
+
+"Father," he said, "it is a wonderful night."
+
+"A night of gladness and omen," replied Father John. "See the stars!
+They seem to be alive and rejoicing, and it is not sacrilege to believe
+they are, giving you their benediction."
+
+"And yet--I am afraid."
+
+"Afraid?"
+
+Father John looked into his eyes, and saw him staring off over the
+forest-tops.
+
+"Yes--afraid for her."
+
+Briefly he told him of what had happened on the Barren months ago,
+and how he had narrowly escaped Breault in coming away from the burned
+country.
+
+"He is on my trail," he said, "and tonight he is not very far away."
+
+The Missioner's hand rested in a comforting way on his arm.
+
+"You did not kill Jed Hawkins, my son, and for that we have thanked God
+each day and night of our lives--Nada and I. And each evening she has
+prayed for you, kneeling at my side, and through every hour of the day
+I know she was praying for you in her heart--and I believe in the answer
+to prayer such as that, Roger. Her faith, now, is as deep as the sea.
+And you, too, must have faith."
+
+"She is more precious to me than life--a thousand lives, if I had them,"
+whispered Jolly Roger. "If anything should happen--now--"
+
+"Yes, if the thing you fear should happen, what then?" cried Father
+John, faith ringing like a note of inspiration in his low voice. "What,
+then, Roger? You did not kill Jed Hawkins. If the law compels you to pay
+a price for the errors it believes you have committed, will that price
+be so terribly severe?"
+
+"Prison, Father. Probably five years."
+
+Father John laughed softly, the star-glow revealing a radiance in his
+face.
+
+"Five years!" he repeated. "Oh, my boy, my dear boy, what are five years
+to pay for such a treasure as that which has come into your possession
+tonight? Five short years--only five. And she waiting for you, proud of
+you for those very achievements which sent you to prison, planning for
+all the future that lies beyond those five short years, growing sweeter
+and more beautiful for you as she waits--Roger, is that a very great
+sacrifice? Is it too great a price to pay? Five years, and after
+that--peace, love, happiness for all time? Is it, Roger?"
+
+McKay felt his voice tremble as he tried to answer.
+
+"But she, father--"
+
+"Yes, yes, I know what you would say," interrupted Father John gently.
+"I argued with her, just as you would have argued, Roger. I appealed
+to her reason. I told her that if you returned it would mean prison for
+you, and strangely I said that same thing--five years. But I found her
+selfish, Roger, very selfish--and set upon her desire beyond all reason.
+And it was she who asked first those very questions I have asked you
+tonight. 'What are five years?' she demanded of me, defying my logic.
+'What are five years--or ten--or twenty, IF I KNOW I AM TO HAVE HIM
+AFTER THAT?' Yes, she was selfish, Roger. Just that great is her love
+for you."
+
+"Dear God in Heaven," breathed Jolly Roger, and stopped, his eyes
+staring wide at the stars.
+
+"And after that, after I had given in to her selfishness, Roger, she
+planned how we--she and I--would live very near to the place where they
+imprisoned you, and how each day some sight or sign should pass between
+you, and the baby--"
+
+"The baby, Father?"
+
+"Thus it seems she dreams, Roger. She, in the wilfulness of her desire
+and selfishness--"
+
+With a choking cry Roger bowed his face in his hands.
+
+For a moment Father John was silent. And then he said, so very low that
+it was almost a whisper,
+
+"I have passed many years in the wilderness, Roger, many years trying
+to look into the hearts of people--and of God. And this--this love of
+Nada's--is the greatest of all the miracles I have witnessed in a life
+that is now reaching to its three score and five. Do you see the wonder
+of it, son? And does it make you happy, and fearless now?"
+
+He did not wait for an answer, but turned slowly and went in the
+direction of the cabin, leaving Roger alone under the thickening stars.
+And McKay's face was like Father John's, filled with a strange and
+wonderful radiance when he looked up. But with that light of happiness
+was also the fiercer underglow of a great determination. For Nada--for
+THE BABY--the worst should not happen; he breathed the thought aloud,
+and in the words was a prayer that God might help him, and make
+unnecessary the sacrifice from which Father John had taken the sting of
+fear. And yet, if that sacrifice came, he saw clearly now that it would
+not be a great tragedy but only a brief shadow cast over the
+undying happiness in his soul. For they--NADA AND THE BABY--would be
+waiting--waiting--
+
+Suddenly he was conscious of a sound very near, and he beheld Nada,
+taller and slimmer and more beautiful than ever, it seemed to him, in
+the starlight.
+
+"I have told him," Father John had whispered to her only a moment
+before. "I have told him, so that he will not fear prison--either for
+himself or for you."
+
+And she had come to him quietly, all of the pretty triumph and
+playfulness gone, so that she stood like an angel in the soft glow of
+the skies, much older than he had ever seen her before, and smiled at
+him with a new and wonderful tenderness as she held out her hands to
+him.
+
+Not until she lay in his arms, looking up at him from under her long
+lashes, did he dare to speak. And then,
+
+"Is it true--what Father John has told me?" he asked.
+
+"It is true," she whispered, and the silken lashes covered her eyes.
+
+Her hand crept up to his face in the silence that followed, and rested
+there; and with no desire to hear more than the three words she had
+spoken he crushed his lips in the sweet coils of her hair, and
+together, in that peace ands understanding, they listened to the gentle
+whisperings of the night.
+
+"Roger," she whispered at last.
+
+"Yes, my NEWA--"
+
+"What does that mean, Roger?"
+
+"It means--beloved--wife"
+
+"Then I like it. But I shall like the others--one of the others--best."
+
+"My--WIFE."
+
+"That--that makes me happiest, Roger. Your WIFE. Oh, it is the sweetest
+word in the world, that--and--"
+
+He felt her warm face hide itself softly against his neck.
+
+"Mother," he added.
+
+"Yes--Mother," she repeated after him in an awed little voice. "Oh, I
+have dreamed of Mothers since I have been old enough to dream, Roger! My
+Mother--I never had one that I can remember, except in a dream. It must
+be wonderful to--to--have a Mother, Roger."
+
+"And yet, I think, not quite so wonderful as to BE a Mother, my Nada."
+
+"Listen!" she whispered.
+
+"It is the Leaf Bud singing."
+
+"A love song?"
+
+"Yes, in Cree."
+
+She raised her head, so that her eyes were wide open, and looking at
+him.
+
+"Since we came up here all this wonderful world has been promising
+song for me, Roger. And since you came back to me it has been
+singing--singing--singing--every hour of night and day. Have you ever
+dreamed of leaving it, Roger--of going down into that world of towns and
+cities of which Father John has told me so much?"
+
+"Would you like to go there, Nada?"
+
+"Only to look upon it, and come away. I want to live in the forests,
+where I found you. Always and always, Roger."
+
+She raised herself on tip-toe, and kissed him.
+
+"I want to live near Yellow Bird and Sun Cloud--please--Mister Jolly
+Roger--I do. And Father John will go with us. And we'll be so happy
+there all together, Yellow Bird and Sun Cloud and Giselle and I--oh!"
+
+His arms had tightened so suddenly that the little cry came from her.
+
+"And yet--I may have to leave you for a little time, Nada. But it
+will not be for long. What are five years, when all life reaches out a
+paradise before us? They are nothing--nothing--and will pass swiftly--"
+
+"Yes, they will pass swiftly," she said, so gently that scarce did he
+hear.
+
+But on his breast she gave a little sob which would not choke itself
+back, a sob which bravely she smiled through a moment later, and which
+he--knowing that it was best--made as if he had not heard.
+
+And so, this night, while Father John and Peter waited and watched in
+the cabin, did they plan their future in the company of the stars.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+
+The Sabbath was a day of glory and peace in the Burntwood country. The
+sun rose warm and golden, the birds were singing, and never had the air
+seemed sweeter to Father John when he came out quietly from the cabin
+and breathed it in the early break of dawn. Best of all he loved this
+very beginning of day, before darkness was quite gone, when the world
+seemed to be awakening mid sleepy whisperings and sounds came clearly
+from a long distance.
+
+This morning he heard the barking of a dog, a mile away it must have
+been, and Peter, who followed close beside him, pricked up his ears at
+the sound of it. Father John had noted Peter's vigilance, the cautious
+expectancy with which he was always sniffing the air, and the keen
+alertness of his eyes and ears. McKay had explained the reason for
+it. And this morning, as they made their way down to the pool at
+the creekside, Peter's ceaseless watching for danger held a deeper
+significance for Father John. All through the night, in spite of his
+faith and his words of consolation, he was thinking of the menace which
+was following McKay, and which eventually must catch up with him.
+
+And yet, how short a time was five years! Looking backward, each five
+years of his life seemed but a yesterday. It was eight times five years
+ago that a sweet-faced girl had first filled his life, as Nada filled
+Jolly Roger's now, and through the thirty years since he had lost her he
+could still hear her voice as clearly as though he had held her in his
+arms only a few hours ago, so swift had been the passing of time. But
+looking ahead, and not backward, five years seemed an eternity of time,
+and the dread of it was in Father John's heart as he stood at the side
+of the pool, with the first pink glow of sunrise coming to him over the
+forest-tops.
+
+Five years, and he was an old man now. A long and dreary wait it would
+be for him. But for youth, the glorious youth of Roger and Nada, it
+would seem very short when in later years they looked back upon it. And
+for a time as he contemplated the long span of life that lay behind
+him, and the briefness of that which lay ahead, a yearning selfishness
+possessed the soul of Father John, an almost savage desire to hold those
+five years away from the violation of the law--not alone for Nada's sake
+and Roger McKay's--but for his own. In this twilight of a tragic life a
+great happiness had come to him in the love of these two, and thought of
+its menace, its desecration by a pitiless and mistaken justice, roused
+in him something that was more like the soul of a fighting man than the
+spirit of a missioner of God.
+
+Vainly he tried to stamp out the evil of this resentment, for evil he
+believed it to be. And shame possessed him when he saw the sweet glory
+in Nada's face later that morning, and the happiness that was in Roger
+McKay's. Yet was that aching place in his heart, and the hidden fear
+which he could not vanquish.
+
+And that day, it seemed to him, his lips gave voice to lies. For, being
+Sunday, the wilderness folk gathered from miles about, and he preached
+to them in the little mission house which they had helped him to build
+of logs in the clearing. Partly he spoke in Cree, and partly in English,
+and his message was one of hope and inspiration, pointing out the silver
+linings that always lay beyond the darkness of clouds. To McKay, holding
+Nada's hand in his own as they listened, Father John's words brought a
+great and comforting faith. And in Nada's eyes and voice as she led in
+Cree the song, "Nearer, My God, to Thee," he heard and saw the living
+fire of that faith, and had Breault come in through the open doorway
+then he would have accepted him calmly as the beginning of that
+sacrifice which he had made up his mind to make.
+
+In the afternoon, when the wilderness people had gone, Father John heard
+again the story of Yellow Bird, for Nada was ever full of questions
+about her, and for the first time the Missioner learned of the
+inspiration which the Indian woman's sorcery had been to Jolly Roger.
+
+"It was foolish," McKay apologized, in spite of the certainty and faith
+which he saw shining in Nada's eyes. "But--it helped me."
+
+"It wasn't foolish," replied Nada quickly. "Yellow Bird DID come to me.
+And--SHE KNEW."
+
+"No true faith is folly," said Father John, in his soft, low voice. "The
+great fact is that Yellow Bird believed. She was inspired by a great
+confidence, and confidence and faith give to the mind a power which it
+is utterly incapable of possessing without them. I believe in the mind,
+children. I believe that in some day to come it will reach those heights
+where it will unlock the mystery of life itself to us. I have seen many
+strange things in my forty-odd years in the wilderness, and not the
+least of these have been the achievements of the primitive mind. And it
+seems to me, Roger, that Yellow Bird told you much that has come true.
+And has it occurred to you--"
+
+He stopped, knowing that the cloud of unrest which was almost fear in
+his heart was driving him to say these things.
+
+"What, father," questioned Nada, bending toward him.
+
+"I was about to express a thought which suggests an almost childish
+curiosity, and you will laugh at me, my dear. I am wondering if it has
+occurred to Roger the mysterious 'Country Beyond' of which Yellow
+Bird dreamed might be the great country down there--south--BEYOND THE
+BORDER--the United States?"
+
+Something which he could not control seemed to drive the words from
+his lips, and in an instant he saw that Nada had seized upon their
+significance. Her eyes widened. The blue in them grew darker, and Roger
+observed her fingers grip suddenly in the softness of her dress as she
+turned from Father John to look at him.
+
+"Or--it might be China, or Africa, or the South Seas," he tried to
+laugh, remembering his old visions. "It might be--anywhere."
+
+Nada's lips trembled, as if she were about to speak; and then very
+quietly she sat, with her hands tightly clasped in her lap, and Father
+John knew she was not expressing the thought in her heart when she said,
+
+"Someday I want to tell Yellow Bird how much I love her."
+
+Now in these hours since he and his master had come to the Burntwood
+it seemed to Peter that he had lost something very great, for in his
+happiness McKay had taken but scant notice of him, and Nada seemed to
+have found a greater joy than that which a long time ago she had found
+in his comradeship. So now, as she saw him lying in his loneliness a
+short distance away, Nada suddenly ran to him, and together they went
+into the thick screen of the balsams, Peter yipping joyously, and Nada
+without so much as turning her head in the direction of Roger and Father
+John. But even in that bird-like swiftness with which she had left them,
+Father John had caught the look in her eyes.
+
+"I have made a mistake," he confessed humbly. "I have sinned, because in
+her I have roused the temptation to urge you to fly away with her--down
+there--south. She is a woman, and being a woman she has infinite
+faith in Yellow Bird, for Yellow Bird helped to give you to her. She
+believes--"
+
+"And I--I--also believe," said McKay, staring at the green balsams.
+
+"And yet--it is better for you to remain. God means that judgment and
+happiness should come in their turn."
+
+Jolly Roger rose to his feet, facing the south.
+
+"It is a temptation, father. It would be hard to give her up--now. If
+Breault would only wait a little while. But if he comes--NOW--"
+
+He walked away slowly, following through the balsams where Nada and
+Peter had gone. Father John watched him go, and a trembling smile came
+to his lips when he was alone. In his heart he knew he was a coward,
+and that these young people had been stronger than he. For in their
+happiness and the faith which he had falsely built up in them they had
+resigned themselves to the inevitable, while he, in these moments of
+cowardice, had shown them the way to temptation. And yet as he stood
+there, looking in the direction they had gone, he felt no remorse
+because of what he had done, and a weight seemed to have lifted itself
+from his shoulders.
+
+For a time the more selfish instincts of the man rose in him, fighting
+down the sacrificial humility of the great faith of which he was a
+messenger. The new sensation thrilled him, and in its thrill he felt his
+heart beating a little faster, and hope rising in him. Five years were
+a long time--FOR HIM. That was the thought which kept repeating itself
+over and over in his brain, and with it came that other thought, that
+self-preservation was the first law of existence, and therefore could
+not be a sin. Thus did Father John turn traitor to his spoken words,
+though his calm and smiling face gave no betrayal of it when Nada and
+Roger returned to the cabin an hour later, their arms filled with red
+bakneesh vines and early wildflowers.
+
+Nada's cheeks were as pink as the bakneesh, and her eyes as blue as the
+rock-violets she wore on her breast.
+
+And Father John knew that Jolly Roger was no longer oppressed by
+the fear of a menace which he was helpless to oppose, for there was
+something very confident in the look of his eyes and the manner in which
+they rested upon Nada.
+
+Peter alone saw the mysterious thing which happened in the early
+evening. He was with Nada in her room. And she was the old Nada again,
+hugging his shaggy head in her arms, and whispering to him in the old,
+excited way. And strange memory of a bundle came back to Peter, for very
+quietly, as if unseen ears might be listening to her, Nada gathered many
+things in a pile on the table, and made another bundle. This bundle she
+thrust under her bed, just as a long time ago she had thrust a similar
+bundle under a banksian clump in the meadowland below Cragg's Ridge.
+
+Father John went to his bed very early, and he was thinking of Breault.
+The Hudson's Bay Company post was only twelve miles away, and Breault
+would surely go there before questing from cabin to cabin for his
+victim.
+
+So it happened that a little after midnight he rose without making a
+sound, and by the light of a candle wrote a note for Nada, saying he
+had business at the post that day, and without wakening them had made an
+early start. This note Nada read to McKay when they sat at breakfast.
+
+"Quite frequently he has gone like that," Nada explained. "He loves the
+forests at night--in the light of the moon."
+
+"But last night there was no moon," said Roger.
+
+"Yes--"
+
+"And when Father John left the cabin the sky was clouded, and it was
+very dark."
+
+"You heard him go?"
+
+"Yes, and saw him. There was a worried look in his face when he wrote
+that note in the candle-glow."
+
+"Roger, what do you mean?"
+
+McKay went behind her chair, and tilted up her face, and kissed her
+shining hair and questioning eyes.
+
+"It means, precious little wife, that Father John is hurrying to the
+post to get news of Breault if he can. It means that deep in his heart
+he wants us to follow Yellow Bird's advice to the end. For he is sure
+that he knows what Yellow Bird meant by 'The Country Beyond.' It is the
+great big world outside the forests, a world so big that if need be we
+can put ourselves ten thousand miles away from the trails of the mounted
+police. That is the thought which is urging him to the post to look for
+Breault."
+
+Her arms crept up to his neck, and in a little voice trembling with
+eagerness she said,
+
+"Roger, my bundle is ready. I prepared it last night--and it is under
+the bed."
+
+He held her more closely.
+
+"And you are willing to go with me--anywhere?"
+
+"Yes, anywhere."
+
+"To the end of the earth?"
+
+Her crumpled head nodded against his breast.
+
+"And leave Father John?"
+
+"Yes, for you. But I think--sometime--he will come to us."
+
+Her fingers touched his cheek.
+
+"And there must be forests, big, beautiful forests, in some other part
+of the world, Roger."
+
+"Or a desert, where they would never think of looking for us," he
+laughed happily.
+
+"I'd love the desert, Roger."
+
+"Or an uninhabited island?"
+
+Against him her head nodded again.
+
+"I'd love life anywhere--WITH YOU."
+
+"Then--we'll go," he said, trying to speak very calmly in spite of the
+joy that was consuming him like a fire. And then he went on, steadying
+his voice until it was almost cold. "But it means giving up everything
+you've dreamed of, Nada--these forests you love, Father John, Yellow
+Bird, Sun Cloud--"
+
+"I have only one dream," she interrupted him softly.
+
+"And five years will pass very quickly," he continued. "Possibly it will
+not be as bad as that, and afterward all this land we love will be free
+to us forever. Gladly will I remain and take my punishment if in the end
+it will make us happier, Nada."
+
+"I have only one dream," she repeated, caressing his cheek with her
+hand, "and that is you, Roger. Wherever you take me I shall be the
+happiest woman in the world."
+
+"WOMAN," he laughed, scarcely breathing the word aloud.
+
+"Yes, I am a woman--now"
+
+"And yet forever and ever the little girl of Cragg's Ridge," he cried
+with sudden passion, crushing her close to him. "I'd lose my life
+sooner than I would lose her, Nada--the little girl with flying hair and
+strawberry stain on her nose, and who believed so faithfully in the Man
+in the Moon. Always I shall worship her as the little goddess who came
+down to me from somewhere in heaven!"
+
+Yet all through that day, as they waited for Father John's return, he
+saw more and more of the wonder of woman that had come to crown the
+glory of Nada's wifehood, and his heart trembled with joy at the miracle
+of it. There was something vastly sweet in the change of her. She was
+no longer the utterly dependent little thing, possibly caring for him
+because he was big and strong and able to protect her; she was a woman,
+and loved him as a woman, and not because of fear or helplessness. And
+then came the thrilling mystery of another thing. He found himself,
+in turn, beginning to depend upon her, and in their planning her calm
+decision and quiet reasoning strengthened him with new confidence and
+made his heart sing with gladness. With his eyes on the smooth and
+velvety coils of hair which she had twisted woman-like on her head, he
+said,
+
+"With your hair like that you are my Margaret of Anjou, and the other
+way--with it down you are my little Nada of Cragg's Ridge. And I--I
+don't quite understand why God should be so good to me."
+
+And this day Peter was trying in his dumb way to analyze the change. The
+touch of Nada's hand thrilled him, as it did a long time ago, and still
+he sensed the difference. Her voice was even softer when she put her
+cheek down to his whiskered face and talked to him, but in it he missed
+that which he could not quite bring back clearly through the lapse of
+time--the childish comradeship of her. Yet he began to worship her anew,
+even more fiercely than he had loved the Nada of old. He was content now
+to lie with his nose touching her foot or dress; but when in the sunset
+of early evening she went into her room, and came out a little later
+with her curling hair clouding her shoulders and breast, and tied with
+a faded ribbon she had brought from Cragg's Ridge, he danced about her,
+yelping joyously, and she accepted the challenge in a wild race with him
+to the edge of the clearing.
+
+Panting and flushed she ran back to Jolly Roger, and rested in his arms.
+
+And it was McKay, with his face half hidden in her riotous hair, who saw
+a figure come suddenly out of the forest at the far end of the clearing.
+It was Father John. He saw him pause for an instant, and then stagger
+toward them, swaying as if about to fall.
+
+The sudden stopping of his breath--the tightening of his arms--drew
+Nada's shining eyes to his face, and then she, too, saw the little old
+Missioner as he swayed and staggered across the clearing. With a cry she
+was out of McKay's arms and running toward him.
+
+Father John was leaning heavily upon her when McKay came up. His face
+was tense and his breath came in choking gasps. But he tried to smile as
+he clutched a hand at his breast.
+
+"I have hurried," he said, making a great effort to speak calmly, "and I
+am--winded--"
+
+He drew in a deep breath, and looked at Jolly Roger.
+
+"Roger--I have hurried to tell you--Breault is coming. He cannot be far
+behind me. Possibly half a mile, or a mile--"
+
+In the thickening dusk he took Nada's white face between his hands.
+
+"I find--at last--that I was mistaken, child," he said, very calmly now.
+"I believe it is not God's will that you remain to be taken by Breault.
+You must go. There is no time to lose. If Breault does not stumble off
+the trail in this gloom he will be here in a few minutes. Come."
+
+Not a word did Nada say as they went to the cabin, and McKay saw her
+tense face as pale as an ivory cameo in the twilight. But something in
+the up-tilt of her chin and the poise of her head assured him she was
+prepared, and unafraid.
+
+In the cabin the Leaf Bud met them, and to her Nada spoke quickly. There
+was understanding between them, and Oosimisk dragged in a filled pack
+from the kitchen while Nada ran into her room and came out with the
+bundle.
+
+Suddenly she was standing before McKay and Father John, her breast
+throbbing with excitement.
+
+"There is nothing more to make ready," she said. "Yellow Bird has
+been with me all this day, and her spirit told me to prepare. We have
+everything we need."
+
+And then she saw only Father John, and put her arms closely about his
+neck, and with wide, tearless eyes looked into his face.
+
+"Father, you will come to us?" she whispered. "You promise that?"
+
+The Missioner's arms closed about her, and he bowed his face against her
+lips and cheek.
+
+"I pray God that it may be so," he said.
+
+Nada's arms tightened convulsively, and in that moment there came a
+warning growl from outside the cabin door.
+
+"Peter!" she cried.
+
+In another moment Father John had extinguished the light.
+
+"Go, my children," he commanded. "You must be quick. Twenty paces below
+the pool is a canoe. I had one of my Indians leave it there yesterday,
+and it is ready. Roger--Nada--"
+
+He groped out, and the hands of the three met in the darkness.
+
+"God bless you--both! And go south--always south. Now go--go! I think I
+hear footsteps--"
+
+He thrust them to the door, Nada with her bundle and Roger with his
+pack. Suddenly he felt Peter at his side, and reaching down he fastened
+his fingers in the scruff of his neck, and held him back.
+
+"Good-bye," he whispered huskily. "Good-bye--Nada--Roger--"
+
+A sob came back out of the gloom.
+
+"Good-bye, father."
+
+And then they listened, Peter and Father John, until the swift footsteps
+of the two they loved passed beyond their hearing.
+
+Peter whimpered, and struggled a little, but Father John held him as he
+closed the door.
+
+"It's best for you to stay, Peter," he tried to explain. "It's best for
+you to stay--with me. For I think they are going a far distance, and
+will come to a land where you would shrivel up and die. Besides, you
+could not go in the canoe. So be good, and remain with me, Peter--with
+me--"
+
+And the Leaf Bud, standing wide-eyed and motionless, heard a strange
+little choking laugh come from Father John as he groped in darkness for
+a light.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+
+A slow illumination filled the cabin, first the yellow flare of a match
+and then the light of a lamp, and as Father John's waxen face grew out
+of the darkness Peter whimpered and whined and scratched with, his paws
+at the closed door.
+
+Oosimisk, the Leaf Bud, stood like a statue, with her wide, dark eyes
+staring at Father John, but scarcely seeming to breathe.
+
+In the old Missioner's face came a trembling smile and a look of triumph
+as he read the fear-written question in her steady gaze,
+
+"All is well, Oosimisk," he said quietly, speaking in Cree. "They are
+safely away, and will not be caught. Continue with your duties and let
+no one see that anything unusual has happened. Breault will come very
+soon."
+
+He straightened his shoulders, as if to give himself confidence and
+strength, and then he called Peter, and comforted the dog whose master
+and mistress were fleeing through the dark.
+
+"They have reached the pool," he said, seating himself and holding
+Peter's shaggy head between his hands. "They have just about reached the
+pool, and Breault must be entering the clearing on the other side. Roger
+cannot miss the canoe--twenty paces down and with nothing to shadow
+it overhead; I think he has found it by this time, and in another half
+minute they will be off. And it is very black down the Burntwood, with
+deep timber close to the water, and for many miles no man can follow by
+night along its shores." Suddenly his hands tightened, and the Leaf Bud,
+watching him slyly, saw the last of suspense go out of his face.
+"And now--they are safe," he cried exultantly. "They must be on their
+way--and Breault has not come across the clearing!"
+
+He rose to his feet, and began pacing back and forth, while Peter
+sniffed yearningly at the door again. Oosimisk, with the caution of her
+race in moments of danger, was drawing the curtains at the windows,
+and Father John smiled his approbation. He did not want Breault, the
+man-hunter, peering through one of the windows at him. Even as he walked
+back and forth he listened intently for Breault's footsteps. Peter, with
+a sigh, gave up his scratching and settled himself on his haunches close
+to Nada's door.
+
+Father John, in passing him, paused to lay a hand on his head.
+
+"Some day it may please God to let us go to them," he consoled, speaking
+for himself even more than for Peter. "Some day, when they are far
+away--and safe."
+
+He felt Peter suddenly stiffen under his hand, and from the Leaf Bud
+came a low, swift word of warning.
+
+She began singing softly, and dishes and pans already clean rattled
+under her hands in the kitchen, and she continued to sing even as the
+cabin door opened and Breault the man-hunter stood in it.
+
+The unexpectedness of his appearance, without the sound of a warning
+footstep outside, was amazing even to Peter. In the open door he stood
+for a moment, his thin, ferret-like face standing out against the black
+background of the night, and his strange eyes, apparently half closed
+yet bright as diamonds, sweeping the interior without effort but with
+the quickness of lightning.
+
+There was something deadly and foreboding about him as he stood here,
+and Peter growled low in his throat. Recognition flashed upon him in an
+instant. It was the man of the snow-dune, away up on the Barren, the man
+whom he had mistrusted from the beginning, and from whom they had fled
+into the face of the Big Storm months ago. His mind worked swiftly, even
+as swiftly as Breault's in its way, and without any process of reasoning
+he sensed menace and enmity in this man's appearance, and associated
+with it the mysterious flight of Jolly Roger and Nada.
+
+Breault had nodded, without speaking. Then his eyes rested on Peter,
+and his face broke into a twisted sort of smile. It was not altogether
+unpleasant, yet was there something about it which made one shiver. It
+spoke the character of the man, pitiless, determined, omniscient almost,
+as if the spirit of a grim and unrelenting fate walked with him.
+
+Again he nodded, and held out a hand.
+
+"Peter," he called. "Come here, Peter!"
+
+Peter flattened his ears a fraction of an inch, but did not move. Even
+that fraction of an inch caught Breault's keen eyes.
+
+"Still a one-man dog," he observed, stepping well inside the cabin, and
+facing Father John. "Where is McKay, Father?"
+
+He had not closed the door, and Peter saw his chance. The Leaf Bud saw
+him pass like a shot out into the night, but as he went she made no
+effort to call him back, for her ears were wide open as Breault repeated
+his question,
+
+"Where is McKay, Father?"
+
+Peter heard the man-hunter's voice from the darkness outside. For barely
+an instant he paused, picking up the fresh scent of Nada and Jolly
+Roger. It was easy to follow--straight to the pool, and from the pool
+twenty paces down-stream, where a little finger of sand and pebbles had
+been formed by the eddies. In this bar was fresh imprint of the canoe,
+and here the footprints ended.
+
+Peter whimpered, peering into the tunnel of darkness between forest
+trees, where the water rippled and gurgled softly on its way into
+a deeper and more tangled wilderness. He waded belly-deep into the
+current, half determined to swim; and then he waited, listening
+intently, but could hear no sound of voice or paddle stroke.
+
+Yet he knew Jolly Roger and Nada could not be far away.
+
+He returned to the edge of the pool, and began sniffing his way
+down-stream, pausing every two or three minutes to listen. Now and
+then he caught the presence of those he sought, in the air, but those
+intervals in which he stopped to catch sound of voice or paddle lost him
+time, so the canoe was traveling faster than Peter.
+
+Half way between himself and the bow of that canoe McKay could dimly
+make out Nada's pale face in the star glow that filtered like a mist
+through the tops of the close-hanging trees.
+
+Scarcely above his breath he laughed in joyous confidence.
+
+"At last my dream is coming true, Nada," he whispered. "You are mine.
+And we are going into another world. And no one will ever find us
+there--no one but Father John, when we send him word. You are not
+afraid?"
+
+Her voice trembled a little in the gloom.
+
+"No, I am not afraid. But it is dark--so dark--"
+
+"The moon will be with us again in a few nights--your moon, with the Old
+Man smiling down on us. I know how the Man in the Moon must feel when
+he's on the other side of the world, and can't see you, Nada."
+
+Her silence made him lean toward her, striving to get a better view of
+her face where the starlight broke through an opening in the tree-tops.
+
+And in that moment he heard a little breath that was almost a sob.
+
+"It's Peter," she said, before he could speak. "Oh, Roger, why didn't we
+bring Peter?"
+
+"Possibly--we should have," he replied, skipping a stroke with his
+paddle. "But I think we have done the best thing for Peter. He is a
+wilderness dog, and has never known anything different. Over there,
+where we are going--"
+
+"I understand. And some day, Father John will bring him?"
+
+"Yes. He has promised that. Peter will come to us when Father John
+comes."
+
+She had turned, looking into the pit-gloom ahead of them, so dark that
+the canoe seemed about to drive against a wall. Under its bow the water
+gurgled like oil.
+
+"We are entering the big cedar swamp," he explained. "It is like Blind
+Man's Buff, isn't it? Can you see?"
+
+"Not beyond the bow of the canoe, Roger."
+
+"Work back to me," he said, "very carefully."
+
+She came, obediently.
+
+"Now turn slowly, so that you face the bow, and lean back with your head
+against my knees."
+
+This also, she did.
+
+"This is much nicer," she whispered, nestling her head comfortably
+against him. "So much nicer."
+
+By leaning over until his back nearly cracked he was able to find her
+lips in the darkness.
+
+"I was thinking of the brush that overhangs the stream," he explained
+when he had straightened himself. "Sitting up as you were it might have
+caused you hurt."
+
+There was a little silence between them, in which his paddle caught
+again its slow and steady rhythm. Then,
+
+"Were you thinking only of the brush, Roger--and of the hurt it might
+cause me?"
+
+"Yes, only of that," and he chuckled softly.
+
+"Then I don't think it nice here at all," she complained. "I shall sit
+up straight so the brush may put my eyes out!"
+
+But her head pressed even closer against him, and careful not to
+interrupt his paddle-stroke she touched his face for an instant with her
+hand.
+
+"It's there," she purled, as if utterly comforted. "I wanted to be
+sure--it is so dark!"
+
+With cimmerian blackness on all sides of them, and a chaotic tunnel
+ahead, they were happy. Staring straight before him, though utterly
+unable to see, McKay sensed in every movement he made and in every
+breath he drew the exquisite thrill of a miracle. And the same thrill
+swept into him and through him from the softly breathing body of Nada.
+Light or darkness made no difference now. Together, inseparable from
+this time forth, they had started on the one great adventure of their
+lives, and for them fear had ceased to exist. The night sheltered
+them. Its very blackness held in its embrace a warmth of welcome and
+of unending hope. Twice in the next half hour he put his hand to Nada's
+face, and each time she pressed her lips against it, sweet with that
+confidence which so completely possessed her soul.
+
+Very slowly they moved through the swamp, for because of the gloom
+his paddle-strokes were exceedingly short, and he was feeling his
+way. Frequently he ran into brush, or struck the boggy shore, and
+occasionally Nada would hold lighted matches while he extricated the
+canoe from tree-tops and driftwood that impeded the way. He loved the
+brief glimpses he caught of her face in the match-glow, and twice he
+deliberately wasted the tiny flares that he might hold the vision of her
+a little longer.
+
+At last he began to feel the pulse of a current against his paddle,
+and soon after that the star-mist began filtering through the thinning
+tree-tops again, so that he knew they were almost through the swamp.
+Another half-hour and they were free of it, with a clear sky overhead
+and the cheering song of running water on both sides of them.
+
+Nada sat up, and it was now so light that he could see the soft shimmer
+of her hair in the starlight. He also saw a pretty little grimace in her
+face, even as she smiled at him.
+
+"I--I can't move," she exclaimed. "UGH! my feet are asleep--"
+
+"We'll go ashore and stretch ourselves," said McKay, who had looked at
+his watch in the light of the last match. "We've two hours the start of
+Breault, and there is no other canoe."
+
+He began watching the shore closely, and it was not long before he made
+out the white smoothness of a sandbar on their right. Here they landed
+and for half an hour rested their cramped limbs.
+
+Then they went on, and in his heart McKay blessed the deep swamp that
+lay between them and Breault.
+
+"I don't think he can make it without a canoe, even if he guesses we
+went this way," he explained to Nada. "And that means--we are safe."
+
+There was a cheery ring in his voice which would have changed to the
+deadness of cold iron could he have looked back into that sluggish pit
+of the Burntwood through which they had come, or could he have seen into
+the heart of the still blacker swamp.
+
+For through the swamp, feeling his way in the black abysses and amid the
+monster-ghosts of darkness, came Peter.
+
+And down the Burntwood, between the boggy mucklips of the swamp, a man
+followed with slow but deadly surety, guiding with a long pole two light
+cedar timbers which he had lashed together with wire, and which bore him
+safely and in triumph where the canoe had gone before him.
+
+This man was Breault, the man-hunter.
+
+"The swamp will hold him!" McKay was saying again, exultantly. "Even if
+he guesses our way, the swamp will hold him back, Nada."
+
+"But he won't know the way we have come," cried Nada, the faith in
+her voice answering his own. "Father John will guide him in another
+direction."
+
+Back in the pit-gloom, with a grim smile now and then relaxing the
+tight-set compression of his thin lips, and with eyes that stared like a
+night-owl's into the gloom ahead of him, Breault poled steadily on.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+
+Dripping from the bog-holes and lathered with mud, it was the mystery of
+Breault's noiseless presence somewhere near him in the still night that
+drew Peter continually deeper into the swamp.
+
+Half a dozen times he caught the scent of him in a quiet air that
+seemed only now and then to rise up in his face softly, as if stirred by
+butterflies' wings. Always it came from ahead, and Peter's mind worked
+swiftly to the decision that where Breault was there also would be Nada
+and Jolly Roger. Yet he caught the scent of neither of these two, and
+that puzzled him.
+
+Many times he found himself at the edge of the black lip of water, but
+never quite at the right time to see a shadow in its darkness, or hear
+the sound of Breault's pole.
+
+But in the swamp, as he went on, he saw nothing but shadow, and heard
+weird and nameless sounds which made his blood creep, even though his
+courage was now full-grown within him.
+
+He was not frightened at the ugly sputter of the owls, as in the days of
+old. Their throaty menace and snapping beaks did not stop him nor turn
+him aside. The slashing scrape of claws in the bark of trees and the
+occasional crackling of brush were matters of intimate knowledge, and
+he gave but little attention to them in his eagerness to reach those
+who had gone ahead of him. What troubled him, and filled his eyes with
+sudden red glares, were the oily gurgles of the pitfalls which tried to
+suck him down; the laughing madness of muck that held him as if living
+things were in it, and which spluttered and coughed when he freed
+himself.
+
+Half blinded at times, so that even the black shadows were blotted out,
+he went on. And at last, coming again to the edge of the stream, he
+heard a new kind of sound--the slow, steady dipping of Breault's pole.
+
+He hurried on, finding harder ground under his feet, and came
+noiselessly abreast of the man on his raft of cedar timbers. He could
+almost hear his breathing. And very faintly he could see in the vast
+gloom a shadow--a shadow that moved slowly against the background of a
+still deeper shadow beyond.
+
+But there was no scent of Nada or Jolly Roger, and whatever desire
+had risen in him to make himself known was smothered by caution and
+suspicion. After this he did not go ahead of Breault, but kept behind
+him or abreast of him, within sound of the dipping pole. And every
+minute his heart thumped expectantly, and he sniffed the new air for
+signs of those he most desired to find.
+
+Dawn was breaking in the sky when they came out of the swamp, and the
+first flush of the sun was lighting up the east when Breault headed his
+improvised craft for the sandbar upon which Nada and McKay had rested
+many hours before.
+
+Breault was tired, but his eyes lighted up when he saw the footprints in
+the sand, and he chuckled--almost good humoredly. As a matter of fact
+he was in a good humor. But one would not have reckoned it as such in
+Breault. A hard man, the forests called him; a man with the hunting
+instincts of the fox and the wolf and the merciless persistency of the
+weazel--a man who lived his code to the last letter of the law, without
+pity and without favoritism. At least so he was judged, and his hard,
+narrow eyes, his thin lips and his cynically lined face seldom betrayed
+the better thoughts within him, if he possessed any at all. In the
+Service he was regarded as a humanly perfect mechanism, a bit of
+machinery that never failed, the dreaded Nemesis to be set on the trail
+of a wrong-doer when all others had failed.
+
+But this morning, with every bone and muscle in him aching from his long
+night of tedious exertion, the chuckle grew into a laugh as he looked
+upon the telltale signs in the sand.
+
+He stretched himself and his tired bones cracked.
+
+Breault did not think aloud. But he was saying to himself.
+
+"There, against that rock, Jolly Roger McKay sat There is the imprint of
+only one person sitting. The girl was in his arms. Here are little holes
+where her outstretched heels rested in the sand. She is wearing shoes
+and not moccasins."
+
+He grinned as he drew his service pack from the two-log cedar raft.
+
+"Plenty of time now," he continued to think. "They are mine this
+time--sure. They believe they have fooled me, and they haven't. That's
+fatal. Always."
+
+Not infrequently, when entirely alone, Breault let a little part of
+himself loose, as if freeing a prisoner from bondage for a short time.
+For instance, he whistled. It was not an unpleasant whistle, but rather
+oddly reminiscent of tender things he remembered away back somewhere;
+and as he fried his bacon and steamed a handful of desiccated potatoes
+he hummed a song, also rather pleasant to ears that were as closely
+attentive as Peter's.
+
+For Peter had crept up through a tangle of ground-scrub and lay not
+twenty paces away, smelling of the bacon hungrily, and watching intently
+from his concealment.
+
+Peter knew the fox and the wolf, but he did not know Breault, and he
+did not guess why the man's whistling grew a little louder, nor why his
+humming voice grew stronger. But after a time, with his back and not his
+face toward Peter, Breault called in the most natural and matter-of-fact
+voice in the world,
+
+"Come on, Peter. Breakfast is ready!"
+
+Peter's jaws dropped in amazement. And as Breault turned toward him, his
+thin face a-grin, and continued to invite him in a most companionable
+way, he forgot his concealment entirely and stood up straight, ready
+either to fight or fly.
+
+Breault tossed him a dripping slice of bacon which he held in his hand.
+It fell within a foot of Peter's nose, and Peter was ravenously hungry.
+The delicious odor of it demoralized his senses and his caution. For a
+few seconds he resisted, then thrust himself out toward it an inch at a
+time, made a sudden grab, and swallowed it at one gulp.
+
+Breault laughed outright, and with the first of the sun striking into
+his face he did not look like an enemy to Peter.
+
+A second slice of bacon followed the first, and then a third--until
+Breault was frying another mess over the fire.
+
+"That's partial payment for what you did up on the Barren," he was
+saying inside himself. "If it hadn't been for you--"
+
+He didn't even imagine the rest. Nor after that did he pay the slightest
+attention to Peter. For Breault knew dogs possibly even better than he
+knew men, and not by the smallest sign did he give Peter to understand
+that he was interested in him at all. He washed his dishes, whistling
+and humming, reloaded his pack on the raft, and once more began poling
+his way downstream.
+
+Peter, still in the edge of the scrub, was not only puzzled, but felt a
+further sense of abandonment. After all, this man was not his enemy, and
+he was leaving him as his master and mistress had left him. He whined.
+And Breault was not out of sight when he trotted down to the sandbar,
+and quickly found the scent of Nada and McKay. Purposely Breault had
+left a lump of desiccated potato as big as his fist, and this Peter ate
+as ravenously as he had eaten the bacon. Then, just as Breault knew he
+would do, he began following the raft.
+
+Breault did not hurry, and he did not rest. There was something almost
+mechanically certain in his slow but steady progress, though he knew
+it was possible for the canoe to outdistance him three to one. He was
+missing nothing along the shore. Three times during the forenoon he saw
+where the canoe had landed, and he chuckled each time, thinking of the
+old story of the tortoise and the hare. He stopped for not more than two
+or three minutes at each of these places, and was then on his way again.
+
+Peter was fascinated by the unexcited persistency of the man's movement.
+He followed it, watched it, and became more and more interested in the
+unvarying monotony of it. There were the same up-and-down strokes of
+the long pole, the slight swaying of the upstanding body, the same eddy
+behind the cedar logs--and occasionally wisps of smoke floating behind
+when the pursuer smoked his pipe. Not once did Peter see Breault turn
+his head to look behind him. Yet Breault was seeing everything. Five
+times that morning he saw Peter, but not once did he make a sign or call
+to him.
+
+He drove his raft ashore at twelve o'clock to prepare his dinner, and
+after he had built a fire, and his cooking things were scattered about,
+he straightened himself up and called in that same matter-of-fact way,
+as if expecting an immediate response,
+
+"Here, Peter!--Peter!--Come in, Boy!"
+
+And Peter came. Fighting against the last instinct that held him back he
+first thrust his head out from the brush and looked at Breault. Breault
+paid no attention to him for a few moments, but sliced his bacon. When
+the perfume of the cooking meat reached Peter's nose he edged himself
+a little nearer, and with a whimpering sigh flattened himself on his
+belly.
+
+Breault heard the sigh, and grunted a reply,
+
+"Hungry again, Peter?" he inquired casually.
+
+He had saved for this moment a piece of cooked bacon held over from
+breakfast, and tearing this with his fingers he tossed the strips to
+Peter. As he did this he was thinking to himself,
+
+"Why am I doing this? I don't want the dog. He will be a nuisance. He
+will eat my grub. But it's fair. I'm paying a debt. He helped to save me
+up on the Barren."
+
+Thus did Breault, the man without mercy, the Nemesis, briefly analyze
+the matter. And he cooked five pieces of bacon for Peter.
+
+During the rest of that day Peter made no effort to keep himself in
+concealment as he followed Breault and his raft. This afternoon Breault
+shot a fawn, and when he made camp that night both he and Peter feasted
+on fresh meat. This broke down the last of Peter's suspicion, and
+Breault laid a hand on his head. He did not particularly like the feel
+of the hand, but he tolerated it, and Breault grunted aloud, with a note
+of commendation in his hard voice.
+
+"A one-man dog--never anything else."
+
+Half a dozen times during the day Peter had found the scent of Nada and
+Roger where they had come ashore, and from this night on he associated
+Breault as a necessary agent in his search for them. And with Breault he
+went, instinctively guessing the truth.
+
+The next day they found where Nada and McKay had abandoned the canoe,
+and had struck south through the wilderness. This pleased Breault, who
+was tired of his poling. This third night there was a new moon, and
+something about it stirred in Peter an impulse to run ahead and overtake
+those he was seeking. But a still strong instinct held him to Breault.
+
+Tonight Breault slept like a dead man on his cedar boughs. He was up and
+had a fire built an hour before dawn, and with the first gray streaking
+of day was on the trail again. He made no further effort to follow signs
+of the pursued, for that was a hopeless task. But he knew how McKay was
+heading, and he traveled swiftly, figuring to cover twice the distance
+that Nada might travel in the same given time. It was three o'clock in
+the afternoon when he came to a great ridge, and on its highest pinnacle
+he stopped.
+
+Peter had grown restless again, and a little more suspicious of Breault.
+He was not afraid of him, but all that day he had found no scent of Nada
+or Jolly Roger, and slowly the conviction was impinging itself upon him
+that he should seek for himself in the wilderness.
+
+Breault saw this restlessness, and understood it.
+
+"I'll keep my eye on the dog," he thought. "He has a nose, and an
+uncanny sixth sense, and I haven't either. He will bear watching.
+I believe McKay and the girl cannot be far away. Possibly they have
+traveled more slowly than I thought, and haven't passed this ridge; or
+it may be they are down there, in the plain. If so I should catch sign
+of smoke or fire--in time."
+
+For an hour he kept watch over the plain through his binoculars, seeking
+for a wisp of smoke that might rise at any time over the treetops. He
+did not lose sight of Peter, questing out in widening circles below him.
+And then, quite unexpectedly, something happened. In the edge of a
+tiny meadow an eighth of a mile away Peter was acting strangely. He was
+nosing the ground, gulping the wind, twisting eagerly back and forth.
+Then he set out, steadily and with unmistakable decision, south and
+west.
+
+In a flash Breault was on his feet, had caught up his pack, and was
+running for the meadow. And there he found something in the velvety
+softness of the earth which brought a grim smile to his thin lips as he,
+too, set out south and west.
+
+The scent he had found, hours old, drew Peter on until in the edge of
+the dusk of evening it brought him to a foot-worn trail leading to the
+Hudson's Bay Company post many miles south. In this path, beaten by the
+feet of generations of forest dwellers, the hard heels of McKay's boots
+had made their imprint, and after this the scent was clearer under
+Peter's nose. But with forest-bred caution he still traveled slowly,
+though his blood was burning like a pitch-fed fire in his veins. Almost
+as swiftly followed Breault behind him.
+
+Again came darkness, and then the moon, brighter than last night,
+lighting his way between the two walls of the forest.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+
+Dawn came softly where the quiet waters of the Willow Bud ran under deep
+forests of evergreen out into the gold and silver birch of the Nelson
+River flats. A veiling mist rose out of the earth to meet the promise
+of day, gentle and sweet, like scented raiment, stirring sleepily to the
+pulse of an awakening earth. Through it came the first low twitter of
+birdsong, a sound that seemed to swell and grow until it filled the
+world. Yet was it still a sound of sleep, of half wakefulness, and the
+mist was thinning away when, a ruffled little breast sent out its full
+throat-song from the tip of a silver birch that overhung the stream.
+
+The little warbler was looking down, as if wondering why there was no
+stir of life beneath him, where in last night's sunset there had been
+much to wonder at and a new kind of song to thrill him. But the girl
+was no longer there to sing back at him. The cedar and balsam shelter
+dripped with morning dew, the place where fire had been was black
+and dead, and ruffling his feathers the warbler continued his song in
+triumph.
+
+Nada, hidden under her shelter, and still half dreaming, heard him. She
+lay with her head nestled in the crook of Roger's arm, and the birdsong
+seemed to come to her from a great distance away. She smiled, and her
+lips trembled, as if even in sleep she--was about to answer it. And then
+the song drifted away until she could no longer hear it, and she sank
+back into an oblivion of darkness in which she seemed lost for a long
+time, and out of which some invisible force was struggling to drag her.
+
+There came at last a sudden irresistible pull at her senses, and she
+opened her eyes, awake. Her head was no longer in the crook of Jolly
+Roger's arm. She could see him sitting up straight, and he was not
+looking at her. It must be late, she thought, for the light was strong
+in his face, warm with the first golden flow of the sun. She smiled, and
+sat up, and shook her soft curls with a happy little laugh.
+
+"Roger--"
+
+And then she, too, was staring, wide-eyed and speechless. For she saw
+Peter under Jolly Roger's hand. But it was not Peter who drew her breath
+short and sent fear cutting like a sharp knife through her heart.
+
+Facing them, seated coldly on a log which McKay had dragged in from the
+timber, was a thin-faced sharp-eyed man who was studying them with an
+odd smile on his lips, and instantly Nada knew this man was Breault.
+
+There was something peculiarly appalling about him as he sat there, in
+spite of the fact that for a few moments he neither spoke nor moved. His
+eyes, Nada thought, were not like human eyes, and his lips were like the
+blades of two knives set together. Yet he was smiling, or half smiling,
+not in a comforting or humorous way, but with exultation and triumph.
+From looking at him one would never have guessed that Breault loved his
+joke.
+
+He nodded.
+
+"Good morning, Jolly Roger McKay! And--good morning, Mrs. Jolly Roger
+McKay! Pardon me for watching you like this, but duty is duty. I am
+Breault, of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police."
+
+McKay wet his lips. Breault saw him, and the grin on his thin face
+widened.
+
+"I know, it's hard," he said. "But you've got Peter to thank for it.
+Peter led me to you."
+
+He stood up, and in a most casual fashion covered Jolly Roger with his
+automatic.
+
+"Would you mind stepping out, McKay?" he asked.
+
+In his other hand he dangled a pair of handcuffs. McKay stood up, and
+Nada rose beside him, gripping his arms with both hands.
+
+"No need of those things, Breault," he said. "I'll go peaceably."
+
+"Still--it's safer," argued Breault, a wicked glitter in his eyes. "Hold
+out one hand, please--"
+
+The manacle snapped over Jolly Roger's wrist.
+
+"I'm Breault--not Terence Cassidy," he chuckled. "Never take a chance,
+you know. Never!"
+
+Swift as a flash was his movement then, as the companion bracelet
+snapped over Nada's wrist. He stepped back, facing them with a grin.
+
+"Got you both now, haven't I?" he gloated. "Can't get away, can you?" He
+put his gun away, and bowed low to Nada. "How do you like married life,
+Mrs. Jolly Roger?"
+
+McKay's face was whiter than Nada's.
+
+"You coward!" he spoke in a low, quiet voice. "You low-down miserable
+coward. You're a disgrace to the Service. Do you mean you are going to
+keep my wife ironed like this?"
+
+"Sure," said Breault. "I'm going to make you pay for some of the trouble
+I've had over you. I believe in a man paying his debts, you know. And a
+woman, too. And probably you've lied to her like the very devil."
+
+"He hasn't!" protested Nada fiercely. "You're a--a--"
+
+"Say it," nodded Breault good humoredly. "By all means say it, Mrs.
+Jolly Roger. If you can't find words, let me help you," and while he
+waited he loaded his pipe and lighted it.
+
+"You see I don't exactly live up to regulations when I'm with good
+friends like you," he apologized cynically. "In other words you're a
+couple of hard cases. Cassidy has turned in all sorts of evidence about
+you. He says that you, McKay, should be hung the moment we catch you.
+He warned me not to take a chance--that you'd slit my throat in the dark
+without a prick of conscience. And I'm a valuable man in the Service. It
+can't afford to lose me."
+
+McKay shut his lips tightly, and did not answer.
+
+"Now, while you're helpless, I want to tell you a few things," Breault
+went on. "And while I'm talking I'll start the fire, so we can have
+breakfast. Peter and, I are hungry. A good dog, McKay. He saved us up on
+the Barren. Have you told Mrs. Jolly Roger about that?"
+
+He expected no answer, and whistled as he lighted a pile of birchbark
+which he had already placed under dry cedar wood which McKay had
+gathered the preceding evening.
+
+"That's where MY trouble began--up there on the Barren, Mrs. Jolly
+Roger," he continued, ignoring McKay. "You see the three of us,
+Superintendent Tavish, and Porter--who is now his son-in-law--and I
+had a splendid chance to die like martyrs, and go down forever in the
+history of the Service, if it hadn't been for this fool of a husband
+of yours, and Peter. I can't blame Peter, because he's only a dog. But
+McKay is responsible. He robbed us of a beautiful opportunity of dying
+in an unusual way by hunting us up and dragging us into his shelter. A
+shabby trick, don't you think? And inasmuch as Superintendent Tavish is
+about the biggest man in the Service, and Porter is his son-in-law, and
+Miss Tavish was saved along with us--why, they reckoned something ought
+to be done about it."
+
+Breault did not look up. With, exasperating slowness he added fuel to
+the fire.
+
+"And so--"
+
+He rose and stood before them again.
+
+"And so--they assigned me to the very unpleasant duty of running you
+down with a pardon, McKay--a pardon forgiving you for all your sins,
+forever and ever, Amen. And here it is!"
+
+He had drawn an official-looking envelope from inside his coat, and held
+it out now--not to McKay--but to Nada.
+
+Neither reached for it. Standing there with the cynical smile still on
+his lips, his strange eyes gimleting them with a cold sort of laughter,
+it was as if Breault tortured them with a last horrible joke. Then,
+suddenly, Nada seized the envelope and tore it open, while McKay stared
+at Breault, believing, and yet not daring to speak.
+
+It was Nada's cry, a cry wild and sobbing and filled with gladness, that
+told him the truth, and with the precious paper clutched in her hand
+she smothered her face against McKay's breast, while Breault came up
+grinning behind them, and Jolly Roger heard the click of his key in the
+handcuffs.
+
+"I am also loaded down with a number of foolish messages for you,"
+he said, attending to the fire again. "For instance, that red-headed
+good-for-nothing, Cassidy, says to tell you he is building a four-room
+bungalow for you in their clearing, and that it will be finished by
+the time you arrive. Also, a squaw named Yellow Bird, and a redskin who
+calls himself Slim Buck, sent word that you will always be welcome in
+their hunting grounds. And a pretty little thing named Sun Cloud sent as
+many kisses as there are leaves on the trees--"
+
+He paused, chuckling, and did not look up to see the wide, glorious eyes
+of the girl upon him.
+
+"But the funniest thing of all is the baby," he went on, preparing to
+slice bacon. "They're going to have one pretty soon--Cassidy's wife, I
+mean. They've given it a name already. If it's a boy it's Roger--if it's
+a girl it's Nada. They wanted me to tell you that. Silly bunch, aren't
+they? A couple of young fools--"
+
+Just then something new happened in the weirdly adventurous life of
+Frangois Breault. Without warning he was suddenly smothered in a pair of
+arms, his head was jerked back, and against his hard and pitiless mouth
+a pair of soft red lips pressed for a single thrilling instant. "Well,
+I'll be damned," he gasped, dropping his bacon and staggering to his
+feet like a man who had been shot. "I'll be--CUSSED!"
+
+And he picked up his pack and walked off into the thick young spruce
+at the edge of the timber, without saying another word or once looking
+behind him. And breakfast waited, and Nada and Jolly Roger and
+Peter waited, but Frangois Breault did not return. For a strange and
+unaccountable man was he, a hard and pitiless man and a deadly hunter
+who knew no fear. Yet the wilderness swallowed him, a coward at
+last--running away from the two red lips that had kissed him.
+
+So went Breault, for the first time in his life a messenger of mercy;
+and at the top of the silver birch the little warbler knew that
+something glad had happened, and offered up its gratitude in a sudden
+burst of song.
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Country Beyond, by James Oliver Curwood
+
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