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The Country Beyond: A Romance of the Wilderness

by James Oliver Curwood · English · Gutenberg #4743 · 478,309 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Country Beyond: A Romance of the Wilderness

Author: James Oliver Curwood


        
Release date: December 1, 2003 [eBook #4743]
                Most recently updated: December 28, 2020

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE COUNTRY BEYOND: A ROMANCE OF THE WILDERNESS ***




Produced by Robert Rowe, Dianne Bean, Charles Franks and
the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. HTML version by
Al Haines.











[Frontispiece: “We'll make it, Peter,” she whispered.]



THE COUNTRY BEYOND

A ROMANCE OF THE WILDERNESS

BY JAMES OLIVER CURWOOD

AUTHOR OF THE VALLEY OF SILENT MEN, THE FLAMING FOREST, ETC.

JTABLE 5 23 1


List of Illustrations


“We'll make it, Peter,” she whispered. . . . . . . _Frontispiece_

“I've come to tell you things, Nada.  I've been living a lie.”

They hurried to the camp, the children racing ahead to tell the news.

“--a squaw named Yellow Bird sent word that you would be welcome.”





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
intrusion 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--”

[Illustration: “I've come to tell you things, Nada.  I've been living
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 i

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