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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Country Beyond, by James Oliver Curwood
+#8 in our series by James Oliver Curwood
+
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+Title: The Country Beyond
+
+Author: James Oliver Curwood
+
+Release Date: December, 2003 [Etext #4743]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on March 12, 2002]
+
+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT 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 juscious 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 ringers 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 Wiliam, 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. Where-ever 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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