 CHAPTER XII In Cassidy's canoe, driving himself with steady strokes deeper into the mystery of the starlit waters of Walliston, Jolly Roger felt the night suddenly filled with an exhilarating tonic. Its deadness was gone, its weight had lifted, a ripple broke the star gleams where an increasing breeze touched the surface of the lake, and the thrill of adventure stirred in his blood. He laughed as he put his skill and strength in the sweep of his paddle, and for a time the thought that he was an outlaw and in losing Neda had lost everything in life worth fighting for was not so oppressive. It was the old joyous laugh stirred by his sense of humor and the trick he had played on Cassidy. He could imagine Cassidy back on the shore, his temper redder than his hair, as he cursed and tore up the sand in his search for another canoe. We're inseparable, Jolly Roger explained to Peter. Wherever I go, Cassidy is sure to follow. You see, it's this way. A long time ago someone gave Cassidy what they call an assignment, and in that assignment it says, go get Jolly Roger McKay, dead or alive, or something to that effect. And Cassidy has been in the job ever since. But he can't quite catch up with me, Piebo. I'm always a little ahead. And yet, even as he laughed, there was in Jolly Roger's heart a yearning to which he had never given voice. Half a dozen times he might have killed Cassidy, and an equal number of times Cassidy might have killed him. But neither had taken advantage of the opportunity to destroy. They had played the long and thrilling game like men, and because of the fairness and sportsmanship of the man who hunted him, Jolly Roger thought of Cassidy as he might have thought of a brother, and more than once he yearned to go to him and hold out his hand in friendship. Yet he knew Corporal Cassidy was the deadliest menace on earth held for him, a menace that had followed him like a shadow through months and years, across the barren lands, along the rim of the Arctic, down the Mackenzie, and back again, a menace that never tired, and was never far behind in that ten thousand miles of wilderness they had covered. Together, in the blood-stirring game of one against one, they had faced the deadliest perils of the Northland. They had gone hungry, and cold, and more than once a thousand miles of nothingness lay behind them, and death seemed preferable to anything that might lie ahead. Yet in that aloneness, when companionship was more precious than anything else on earth, neither had cried quits. The game had gone on, Cassidy after his man, and Jolly Roger McKay fighting for his freedom. As he headed his canoe north and east, Jolly Roger thought again of the wager made weeks ago down at Cragg's Ridge when he had turned the tables on Cassidy, and when Cassidy had made a solemn oath to resign from the service if he failed to get his man in their next encounter. He knew Cassidy would keep his word, and something told him that tonight the last act in this tragedy of two had begun. He chuckled again as he pictured the probable course of events on shore. Cassidy, backed by the law, was demanding another canoe and a necessary outfit of slim buck. Slim buck, falling back on his tribal dignity, was killing all possible time in making the preparations. When pursuit was resumed, Jolly Roger would have at least a mile the start of the red-headed nemesis who hung to his trail, and Walliston Lake, sixty miles from end to end, and half as wide, offered plenty of room in which to find safety. The rising of the wind, which came from the south and west, was pleasing to Jolly Roger, and he put less caution and more force into the sweep of his paddle. For two hours he kept steadily eastward, and then swung a little north, guiding himself by the stars. With the breaking of dawn he made out the thickly wooded shore on the opposite side of the lake from Slim Buck's camp, and before the sun was half an hour high he had drawn up his canoe at the tip of a headland which gave him a splendid view of the lake in all directions. From this point, comfortably encamped in the cool shadows of a thick clump of sprues, Jolly Roger and Peter watched all that day for a sign of their enemy. As far as the eye could reach, no movement of human life appeared on the quiet surface of Walliston. Not until that hazy hour between sunset and dusk did he build a fire and cook a meal from the supplies in Cassidy's pack, for he knew smoke could be discerned much farther than a canoe. Yet even as he observed this caution he was confident there was no longer any danger in returning to Yellowbird and her people. You see, Piebo, he said discussing the matter with Peter while he smoked a pipeful of tobacco in the early evening, Cassidy thinks we're on our way north as fast as we can go. He'll hit for the upper end of the lake in the Black River waterway and keep right on into the porcupine country. It's a big country up there and we've always taken plenty of space for our travels. Should we go back to Yellowbird, Peter, and Sun Cloud? Peter tried to answer and thumped his tail, but even as he asked the questions there was a doubt growing in Jolly Roger's mind. He wanted to go back and, as darkness gathered about him, he was urged by a great loneliness. Only Yellowbird grieved with him in his loss of Neda and understood how empty life had become for him. She had, in a way, become a part of Neda. Her presence raised him out of despair, her voice gave him hope, her unconquerable spirit, fighting for his happiness, inspired him until he saw light where there had been only darkness. The impelling desire to return to her brought him to his feet and down to the pebbly shore of the lake where the water rippled softly in the thickening gloom. But a still more powerful force held him back and he went to his blankets, spread over a thick couch of balsam bows. For hours his eyes were wide open and sleepless. He no longer thought of Cassidy but of Yellowbird. Doubt, a charitable inclination to half believe, gave way in him to a conviction which he could not fight down. More than once in his years of wilderness life strange facts had compelled him to give some credence to the power of the Indian conjurer. Belief in the mastery of the mind was part of his faith in nature. It had come to him from his mother who had lived and died in the strength of her creed. "'Think hard and with faith if you want anything to come true,' she had told him. And this was also Yellowbird's creed. Was it possible she had told him the truth? Had her mind actually communed with the mind of Neda? Had she, through the sheer force of her illimitable faith, projected her subconscious self into the future that she might show him the way? His eyes were staring, his ears unhearing as he thought of the proof which Yellowbird had given to him. A few hours ago she had brought him warning of impending danger. There had been no hesitation and no doubt. She had come to him unequivocal and sure. Without seeing, without hearing, she knew Cassidy was stealing upon him through the night. In the darkness Jolly Roger sat up, his heart beating fast. Without effort and with no thought of the necessity of proof, Yellowbird had given him a test of her power. It had been a spontaneous and unstage thing, a woman's heart reaching out for him as she had promised that it would. And yet, even as the simplicity and truth of it pressed upon him, doubt followed with its questions. If after this Yellowbird had told him to return to Neda as swiftly as he could, he would have believed, and this night would have seen him on his way. But she had warned him against this, predicting desolation and grief if he returned. She had urged him to go on, somewhere, anywhere, seeking for an illusion and an unreality which the spirits had named to her as the country beyond. And when he reached this country beyond, wherever it might be, he would possess Neda again and happiness for all time. After all, there was something archaically crude in what he was trying to believe when he came to analyze it. Yellowbird possessed her powers, but they were definitely limited. And to believe beyond those limitations, to ride upon the wings of superstition and imagination, was sheer savagery. Sly Roger stretched himself upon his blankets again, repeating this final argument to himself. But as the night drew closer about him and his eyes closed and sleep came, there was a lightness in his heart which he had not known for many days. He dreamed, and his dream was of Neda. He was with her again, and it seemed in this dream that Yellowbird was always watching them, and they could not quite get away from her. They ran through the jack pine openings where the strawberries and blue violets grew, and he always ran behind Neda so that he could see her brown curls flying about her. But they never could rid themselves of Yellowbird no matter how fast they ran or where they tried to hide. From somewhere Yellowbird's dark eyes would look out at them, and finally, laughing at his own discomforture, he drew Neda down beside him in a little fenn, white and yellow and blue with wild flowers, and boldly took her head in his arms and kissed her, with Yellowbird looking at them from behind a bankshine clump twenty feet away. So real was the kiss, and so real the warm pressure of Neda's slim arms about his neck, and he awoke with a glad cry and sat up to find the dawn had come. For a few moments he sat stupidly, looking about him as if not quite believing the unreality of it all. Then, with Peter, he went down to the edge of the lake. All that day Peter sensed a quiet change in his master. Jolly Roger did not talk, he did not whistle or laugh, but moved quietly when he moved it all with a set strange look in his face. He was making his last big fight against the desire to return to Cragg's Ridge. Yellowbird's predictions and her warning had no influence with him now. He was thinking of Neda alone. She was back there waiting for him, praying for his return, ready and happy to become a fugitive with him, to accept her chances of life or death, of happiness or grief, in his company. A dozen times the determination to return for her almost won. But each time came the other picture, a vision of ceaseless flight, of hiding, of hunger and cold and never-ending hardship, and at the last, inevitable as the dawning of another day, prison, and possibly the hangman. Not until late that afternoon did Peter see the old Jolly Roger in the face of his master. And Jolly Roger said, We've made up our mind, Piebo. We can't go back. We'll hit north and spend the winter along the edge of the barren lands. It's the biggest country I know of, and if Cassidy comes, he shrugged his shoulders grimly. In half an hour they had started with the sun beginning to sink in the west. For two days Jolly Roger and Peter paddled their way slowly up the eastern shore of Walliston. That he had correctly analyzed the mental arguments which would guide Cassidy in his pursuit, Jolly Roger had little doubt. He would keep to the west shore and up through the hatchet lake and Black River waterways, as his quarry had never failed to hit straight for the farther north in time of peril. Meanwhile Jolly Roger had decided to make his way, without haste, up the east shore of Walliston, and paddle north and east through the Dubruce and Tiwiasa River waterways. If these courses were followed each hour would add to the distance between them, and when the way was safe they would head straight for the barren lands. Peter and only Peter sensed the glory of that third afternoon when they paddled slowly ashore close to the shimmering stream of spring water that was called Limping Moose Creek. The sun was still two hours high in the west. There was no wind and Walliston was like a mirror, yet in the still air was the clean, cool tang of early autumn, and shoreward the world reached out in ridges and billows of tinted forests with a September haze pulsing softly over them, fleecy as the misty shower of a lady's powder puff. It was destined to be a memorable afternoon for Peter, a going down of the sun that he would never forget as long as he lived. Yet there was no warning of the thing impending, and his eyes saw only the mystery and wonder of the big world, and his ears heard only the drowsing murmur of it, and his nose caught only the sweet sense of cedars and balsams and of flowering and ripening things. Straight ahead, beyond the white shoreline, was a low ridge, and this ridge, where it was not purple and black with the evergreen, was red with the crimson blotches of mountain ash berries and patches of fire-flowers that glowed like flame in the setting sun. From out of this paradise, as they drew near to it, came softly the voice and song of birds and the chatter of red squirrels. A big jay was screeching over it all, and between the first ridge and the second, which rose still higher beyond it, a cloud of crows were circling excitedly over a mother-black bear and her half-grown cubs as they feasted on the red ash berries. But Peter could not smell the bears, nor hear them, and the distant crows were of less interest than the wonder and mystery of the shore close at hand. He turned from his place in the bow of the canoe and looked at his master. There was little of inspiration in Jolly Roger's face or eyes. The glory of the world ahead gave him no promise, as it gave promise to Peter. Beyond what he could see there lay, for him, a vast emptiness, a chaos of loneliness, an eternity of shattered hopes and broken dreams. Love of life was gone out of him. He saw no beauty. The sun had changed. The sky was different. The bigness of his wilderness no longer thrilled him, but oppressed him. Peter sensed sharply the change in his master without knowing the reason for it. Just as the world had changed for Jolly Roger, so Jolly Roger had changed for Peter. They landed on a beach of sand, soft as a velvet carpet. Peter jumped out. A long-legged sandpiper and her mate ran down the shore ahead of him. He perked up his angular ears and then his nose caught a fresh scent under his feet where a porcupine had left his trail. And he heard more clearly the rockest tumult of the jay and the musical chattering of the red squirrels. All these things were satisfactory to Peter. They were life, and life thrilled him, just as it had thrilled his master a few days ago. He had ventured a little distance up to the edge of the green willows and the young birch and the crimson masses of fireflowers that fringed the beginning of the forest. It had rained recently here and the scents were fresh and sweet. He found a wild current bush, glistening with its luscious black berries, and began nibbling at them. A gopher, coming to his supper-bush, gave a little squeak of annoyance, and Peter saw the bright eyes of the midget glaring at him from under a big fern leaf. Peter wagged his tail, for the savagery of his existence was qualified by that mellowing sense of humor which had always been a part of his master. He yipped softly in a compeniable sort of way. And then there smote upon his ears a sound which hardened every muscle in his body. Throw up your hands, McKay! He turned his head. Close to him stood a man. In an instant he had recognized him. It was the man whose scent he had first discovered down a crags ridge. The man from whom his master was always running away, the man whose voice he had heard again at Yellow Bird's camp a few nights ago, corporal Terrence Cassidy of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police. Twenty paces away stood McKay. His donnage was on his back, his paddle in his hand. And Cassidy, smiling grimly, a dangerous humor in his eyes, was leveling and automatic at his breast. It was, in that instant, a tableau which no man could ever forget. Cassidy was bareheaded, and the sun burned hotly in his red hair. And his face was red, and in the pale blue of his Irish eyes was a fierce joy of achievement. At last, after months and years, the thrilling game of one against one was at an end. Cassidy had made the last move, and he was winner. For half a minute after the command to throw up his hands, McKay did not move. And Cassidy did not repeat the command, for he sensed the shock that had fallen upon his adversary and was charitable enough to give him time. And then, with something like a deep sigh from between his lips, Jolly Roger's body sagged. The donnage dropped from his shoulder to the sand. The paddle slipped from his hand. Slowly he raised his arms above his head, and Cassidy laughed softly. A few days ago, McKay would have grinned back, coolly, good-humoredly, appreciative of the other's craftsmanship, even in the hour of his defeat. But today there was another soul within him. His eyes no longer saw the old Cassidy, brave and loyal to his duty, a chivalrous enemy, the man he had yearned to love as brother loves brother, even in the hours of sharpest pursuit. In Cassidy he saw now the hangman himself. The whole world had turned against him, and in this hour of his greatest despair and hopelessness, a bitter fate had turned up Cassidy to deal him the finishing blow. A swift rage burned in him, even as he raised his hands. It swept through his brain in a blinding inundation. He did not think of the law or of death or of freedom. It was the unfairness of the thing that filled his soul with the blackness of one last terrible desire for vengeance. Cassidy's gun, leveled at his breast, meant nothing. A thousand guns leveled at his breast, would have meant nothing. A choking sound came from his lips, and like a shot his right hand went to his revolver holster. In that last second or two Cassidy had foreseen the impending thing, and with the movement of the other's hand he cried out, Stop! For God's sake, stop, or I shall fire! Even into the soul of Peter there came in that moment the electrical thrill of something terrific about to happen, of impending death, of tragedy close at hand. Once a long time ago Peter had felt another moment such as this when he had buried his fangs in Jed Hawkins' leg to save Neda. In that fraction of a second which carried Peter through space, Corporal Cassidy's finger was pressing the trigger of his automatic, for McKay's gun was half out of its holster. He was aiming at the other's shoulder, somewhere not to kill. The shock of Peter's assault came simultaneously with the explosion of his gun, and McKay heard the hissing spit of the bullet past his ear. His arm darted out, and as Peter buried his teeth deeper into Cassidy's leg he heard a second shot and knew that it came from his master. There was no third. He drooped and something like a little laugh came from him, only it was not a laugh. His body sagged and then crumpled down so that the weight of him fell upon Peter. For many seconds after that Jolly Roger stood with his gun in his hand, not a muscle of his body moving and with something like stupor in his staring eyes. Peter struggled out from under Cassidy and looked inquisitively from his master to the man who lay sprawled out like a great spider upon the sand. It was then that life seemed to come back into Jolly Roger's body. His gun fell as if it was the last thing in the world to count for anything now, and with a choking cry he ran to Cassidy and dropped upon his knees beside him. Cassidy! Cassidy! he cried. Good God! I didn't mean to do it! Cassidy, old pal! The agony in his voice stilled the growl in Peter's throat. McKay saw nothing for a space as he raised Cassidy's head and shoulders and brushed back the mop of red hair. Everything was a blur before his eyes. He had killed Cassidy. He knew it. He had shot to kill and not once in a hundred times did he miss his mark. At last he was what the law wanted him to be, a murderer. And his victim was Cassidy, the man who had played him fairly and squarely from beginning to end, the man who had never taken a mean advantage of him and who had died there in the white sand because he had not shot to kill. With sobbing breath he cried out his grief and then looking down he saw the miracle in Cassidy's face. The Irishman's eyes were wide open and there was pain and also a grin about his mouth. I'm glad you're sorry, he said. I'd hate to have a bad opinion of you, McKay, but you're a rotten shot. Cassidy's body sagged heavily and the grin slowly left his lips and a moan came from between them. He struggled and spoke. It may be you'll want help, McKay. If you do, there's a cabin half a mile up the creek. Saw the smoke, heard axe. I don't blame you. You're a good sport. Pretty quick, but rotten shot. Oh, Lord, such rotten shot! And he tried vainly to grin up into Jolly Roger's face as he became a lifeless weight in the other's arms. Jolly Roger was sobbing. He was sobbing in a strange, hard man fashion as he tore open Cassidy's shirt and saw the red wound that went clean through Cassidy's right breast just under the shoulder. And Peter still heard that strange sound coming from his lips, a moaning as if for breath as his master ran and brought up water and worked over the fallen man. And then he got under Cassidy and rose up with him on his shoulders and staggered off with him toward the creek. There he found a path, a narrow foot trail, and not once did he stop with his burden until he came into a little clearing out of which Cassidy had seen the smoke rising. In this clearing was a cabin, and from the cabin came an old man to meet him, an old man and a girl. At first something shot up into Peter's throat, for he thought it was Neda who came behind the grizzled and white-headed man. There was the same lithe slimness in her body, the same brown glint in her hair, and the same—but he saw then that it was not Neda. She was older, she was a bit taller, and her face was white when she saw the bleeding burden on Jolly Roger's back. I shot him, panted McKay. God knows I didn't mean to. I'm afraid— He did not finish giving voice to the fear that Cassidy was dead or dying, and for a moment he saw only the big staring eyes of the girl as the gray-bearded man helped him with his burden. Not until the Irishman was on a cot in the cabin did he discover how childishly weak he had become and what a terrific struggle he had made with the weight on his shoulders. He sank into a chair while the old trapper worked over Cassidy. He heard the girl call him grandfather. She was no longer frightened, and she moved like a swift bird about the cabin, getting water and bandages and pillows, and the sight of fresh blood and of Cassidy's dead white face brought a glow of tenderness into her eyes. McKay, sitting dumbly, saw that her hands were doing twice the work his own could have accomplished, and not until he heard a low moan from the wounded man did he come to her side. The bullet went through clean as a whistle, the old man said. Lucky, you don't use soft-nosed bullets, friend. A deep sigh came from Cassidy's lips. His eyelids fluttered, and then slowly his eyes opened. The girl was bending over him, and Cassidy saw only her face and the brown sheen of her hair. He'll live, Jolly Roger said tremulously. The older man remained mute. It was Cassidy turning his head a little, who answered weakly, Don't worry, McKay, I'll live. Jolly Roger bent over the cot between Cassidy and the girl. Gently he took one of the wounded man's hands in both his own. I'm sorry, old man, he whispered. You won, fair and square, and I won't go far away. I'll be waiting for you when you get in your feet. I promise that. I'll wait. A one smile came over Cassidy's lips, and then he moaned again, and his eyes closed. The girl thrust Jolly Roger back. No, you better not go far, and you better wait, she said, and there was an unspoken thing in the dark glow of her eyes that made him think of Neda on that day when she told him how Jed Hawkins had struck her in the cabin at Cragg's Ridge. That night Jolly Roger made his camp close to the mouth of the limping moose, and for three days thereafter his trail led only between this camp and the cabin of old Robert Barron and his granddaughter Giselle. All this time Cassidy was telling things in a fever. He talked a great deal about Jolly Roger, and the girl, nursing him night and day with scarcely a wink of sleep between, came to believe they had been great comrades and had been inseparable for a long time. Even then she would not let McKay take her plates at Cassidy's side. The third day she started him off for a post, sixty miles away, to get a fresh supply of bandages and medicines. It was evening, three days later, when Jolly Roger and Peter returned. The windows of the cabin were brightly lighted, and McKay came up to one of these windows and looked in. Cassidy was bolstered up in his cot. He was very much alive, and on the floor at his side, sitting on a bear rug, was the girl. A lump rose in Jolly Roger's throat. Quietly he placed the bundle which he had brought from the post close up against the door and knocked. When Giselle opened it he had disappeared into darkness with Peter at his heels. The next morning he found old Robert and said to him, I'm restless and I'm going to move a little. I'll be back in two weeks. Tell Cassidy that, will you? Ten minutes later he was paddling up the shore of Walliston, and for a week thereafter he haunted the creeks and inlets always on the move. Peter saw him growing thinner each day. There was less and less of cheer in his voice, seldom a smile on his lips, and never did his laugh ring out as of old. Peter tried to understand, and Jolly Roger talked to him, but not in the old happy way. We might have finished him and got rid of him for good, he said to Peter one chilling night beside their campfire. But we couldn't, just like we couldn't have brought Neda up here with us. And we're going back. I'm going to keep that promise. We're going back, Peter, if we hang for it. And Jolly Roger's jaw would set grimly as he measured the time between. The tenth day came and he set out for the mouth of the Canoe River. On the afternoon of the twelfth he paddled slowly into Limping Moose Creek. Without any reason he looked at his watch when he started for old Robert's cabin. It was four o'clock. He was two days ahead of his promise and there was a bit of satisfaction in that. There was an odd thumping at his heart. He had faith in Cassidy, a belief that the Irishman would call their affair a draw and tell him to take another chance in the big open. He was the sort of man to live up to the letter of a wager when it was honestly made. But if he didn't, Jolly Roger paused long enough to take the cartridges from his gun. There would be no more shooting on his part. The mellow autumn sun was flooding the open door of the cabin when he came up. He heard laughter. It was Giselle. She was talking, too. And then he heard a man's voice, and from far off to his right came the chopping of an axe. Old Robert was at work. Giselle and Cassidy were at home. He stepped up to the door, coughing to give notice of his approach. And then suddenly he stopped, staring thunderstruck at what was happening within. Terrence Cassidy was sitting in a big chair. The girl was behind him. Her white arms were around his neck. Her face was bent down. Her lips were kissing him. In an instant Cassidy's eyes had caught him. Come in! He cried so suddenly and so loudly that it startled the girl. McKay, come in! Jolly Roger entered, and the girl stood up straight behind Cassidy's chair. Her cheeks aflame and her eyes filled with the glow of the sunset. And Terrence Cassidy was grinning in that old triumphant way as he leaned forward in his chair, gripping the arms of it with both hands. McKay, you've lost! he cried. I'm the winner! In the same moment he took the girl's hand and drew her from behind his chair. Giselle, do as you said you are going to do. Prove to him that I've won! Slowly she came to Jolly Roger. Her cheeks were like the red of the sunset. Her eyes were flaming. Her lips were parted. And dumbly he waited and wondered until she stood close to him. Then swiftly her arms were around his neck and she kissed him. In an instant she was back on her knees at the wounded man's side, her burning face hidden against him, and Cassidy was laughing and holding out both hands to McKay. McKay! Roger McKay! I want you to meet Mrs. Terrence Cassidy, my wife, he said, and the girl raised her face so that her shining eyes were on Jolly Roger. Well dumbly he stood where he was. The missioner from Dubrochet was here yesterday and married us, he heard Cassidy saying, and we've written out my resignation together, old man. We've both won. I thank God you put that bullet into me down on the shore for it's brought me paradise. And here's my hand on it, McKay, forever and ever. Half an hour later, when McKay stumbled out into the forest trail again, his eyes were blinded by tears and his heart choked by a new hope as big as the world itself. Yellowbird was right, and God must have been with her that night when her soul went to commune with natives, for Yellowbird had proved herself again. And now he believed her. He believed in the world again. He believed in love and happiness and the glory of life, and as he went down the narrow trail to his canoe with Peter close behind him, his heart was crying out Nate's name and Yellowbird's promise that some time, somewhere, they too would find happiness together as Giselle and Terrence Cassidy had found it. And Peter heard the chopping of the distant axe and the song of birds and the chattering of squirrels, but thrilling his soul most of all was the voice of his master, the old voice, the glad voice, the voice he had first learned to love at Cragg's Ridge in the days of blue violets and red strawberries when Nata had filled his world. End of Chapter 12, Recording by Roger Maline CHAPTER XIII OF THE COUNTRY BEYOND This Libervox Recording is in the public domain. Recording by Roger Maline. THE COUNTRY BEYOND BY JAMES OLLIVER CURWOOD CHAPTER XIII McKay still had his mind on a certain stretch of timber that reached out into the barren lands, hundreds of miles farther north. In this hiding place, three years before, he had built himself a cabin and had caught foxes during half the long winter. Not only the cabin, but the foxes were drawing him. Necessity was close upon his heels. What little money he possessed after leaving Cragg's Ridge was exhausted, his supplies were gone, and his boots and clothes were patched with deer-hide. In the snow-bird lake country, a week after he left Cassidy in his paradise at Walliston, he fell in with good fortune. Two trappers had come in from Churchill. One of them was sick, and the other needed help in the building of their winter cabin. McKay remained with them for ten days, and when he continued his journey northward, his pack was stuffed with supplies, and he wore new boots and more comfortable clothes. It was the middle of October when he found his old cabin a thousand miles from Cragg's Ridge. It was as he had left it three years ago. No one had opened its door since then. The little box-stove was waiting for a fire. Behind it was a pile of wood. On the table were the old tin dishes, and hanging from babish-cords fastened to the roof-timbers, out of reach of mice and ermine, were blankets and clothing and other possessions he had left behind him in that winter break-up of what seemed like ages ago to him. He raised a small section in the floor, and there were his traps, thickly coated with caribou grease. For half an hour before he built a fire, he sought eagerly for the things he had concealed here and there. He found oil and a tin lamp and candles, and as darkness of the first night gathered outside, a roaring fire sent sparks up the chimney, and the little cabin's one window glowed with light, and the battered old coffee-pot bubbled and steamed again as if rejoicing at his return. With the breaking of another day he immediately began preparations for the season's trapping. In two days' hunting he killed three caribou, his wintermeat. Then he cut wood and made his strick-nine poison-bates, and marked out his trap-lines. The first of November brought the chill whispers of an early winter through the Northland. Farther south Autumn was dying, or dead. The last of the red ash berries hung shriveled and frost-bitten on naked twigs, freezing nights were nipping the face of the earth, the voices of the wilderness were filled with a new note, and the winds held warning for every man and beast between Hudson's Bay and the Great Slave, and from the height of land to the Arctic Sea. Seven years before there had come such a winter, and the land had not forgotten it, a winter sudden and swift, deadly in its unexpectedness, terrific in its cold, bringing with it such famine and death as the Northland had not known for two generations. But this year there was premonition. Omen of it came with the first wailing night winds that bore the smell of icebergs from over the black forests north and west. The moon came up red, and it went down red, and the sun came up red in the morning. The loons called died a month ahead of its time. The wild geese drove steadily south when they should have been feeding from the Kogatuk to Baffins Bay, and the beaver built his walls thick and anchored his alders and his willows deep so that he would not starve when the ice grew heavy. East, west, north, and south, in forest and swamp, in the trappers' cabin and the wolf's hiding place, was warning of it. Gray rabbits turned white. Moose and caribou began to herd. The foxes yipped shrilly in the night, and a new hunger and a new thrill sent the wolves hunting in packs, while the gray geese streaked southward under the red moon overhead. Through this November and all of December Jolly Roger and Peter were busy from two hours before dawn of each day until late at night. The foxes were plentiful, and McKay was compelled to shorten his lines and put out fewer baits, and on the 10th of December he set out for a fur trading post ninety miles south with two hundred and forty skins. He had made a toboggan and a harness for Peter, and pulling together they made the trip in three days, and on the fourth started for the cabin again with supplies and something over a thousand dollars in cash. Through the weeks of increasing storm and cold that followed, McKay continued to trap, and early in February he made another trip to the fur post. It was on their return that they were caught in the black storm. It will be a long time before the Northland will forget that storm. It was a storm in which the sarsies died to a man, woman, and child over on the debaunt waterways, and when trees froze solid and split open with the sharp explosions of high-powered guns. In it all furred and feathered life and all hoof and horn along the edge of the barren lands from Aberdeen Lake to the copper mine was swallowed up. It was in this storm that streams froze solid, and the man who was cautious fashioned a babishrope about his waist when he went forth from his cabin for food or water, so that his wife might help to pull and guide him back through that blinding avalanche of wind and freezing fury that held a twisted and broken world in its grip. In the country west of Artillery Lake and south of the Thealon River, Jolly Roger and Peter were compelled to dig in. They were in a country where the biggest stick of wood that thrust itself up out of the snow was no bigger than McKay's thumb, a country of green grass and succulent moss on which the caribou fed in season but a hell on earth when Arctic Storm howled and screamed across it in winter. Piled up against a mass of rock, Jolly Roger found a huge snowdrift. This drift was as long as a church and half as high, with its outer shell blistered and battered to the hardness of rock by wind and sleet. Through this shell he cut a small door with his knife, and after that dug out the soft snow from within until he had a room half as big as his cabin and so snug and warm after a little with the body heat of himself and Peter that he could throw off the thick coat which he wore. To Peter, in the first night of this storm, it seemed as though all the people in the world were shrieking and wailing and sobbing in the blackness outside. Jolly Roger sat smoking his pipe at intervals in the gloom, though there was little pleasure in smoking a pipe in darkness. The storm did not oppress him, but filled him with an odd sense of security and comfort. The wind shrieked and lashed itself about his snow dune, but it could not get at him. Its mightiest efforts to destroy only beat more snow upon him and made him safer and warmer. In a way there was something of humor as well as tragedy in his wild frenzy, and Peter heard him laugh softly in the darkness. More and more frequently he had heard that laugh since those warm days of autumn when they had last met the red-headed man, Terence Cassidy, of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police, and his master had shot him on the white shore of Walliston. "'You see,' said McKay, caressing Peter's hairy neck in the gloom, "'everything is turning out right for us, and I'm beginning to believe more and more what Yellowbird told us, and that in the end we're going to be happy, somewhere with Neda. What do you think, Piebo? Shall we take a chance and go back to Cragg's Ridge in the spring?' Peter wriggled himself in answer as a wild shriek of wind wailed over the huge snow dune. Jolly Roger's fingers tightened at Peter's neck. "'Well, we're going,' he said, as though he were telling Peter something new. "'Unbelieving Yellowbird, Piebo. Unbelieving her, now. What she told us was more than fortune-telling. It wasn't just Indian sorcery. When she shut herself up and starred for those three days and nights in her little conjurer's house, just for you and me, something happened. Didn't it? Wouldn't you say something happened?' Peter swallowed, and his teeth clicked as he gave evidence of understanding. "'She told us a lot of truth,' went on Jolly Roger, with deep faith in his voice. "'And we must believe, Piebo. She told us Cassidy was coming after us, and he came. She said the spirits promised her the law would never get us, and we thought it looked bad when Cassidy had us covered with his gun on the shore at Walliston. But something more than luck was with us, and we shot him. Then we brought him back to life and lugged him to a cabin, and the little stranger girl took him and nursed him, and Cassidy fell in love with her and married her. "'So Yellowbird was right again, Piebo. We've got to believe her. And she says everything is coming out right for us, and that we are going back to Neda and be happy.' Jolly Roger's pipe bowl glowed in the blackness. "'I'm going to light the alcohol lamp,' he said. "'We can't sleep, and I want a good smoke. It isn't fun when you can't see the smoke. Too bad God forgot to make you so you could use a pipe, Peter. You don't know what you're missing in times like these.' He fumbled in his pack and found the alcohol lamp, which was fresh filled and screwed tight. Peter heard him working for a moment in the darkness. Then he struck a match, and the yellow flare of it lighted up his face. In his joy Peter whined. It was good to see his master. And then, in another moment, the little lamp was filling their white-walled refuge with a mellow glow. Jolly Roger's eyes, coming suddenly out of darkness, were wide and staring. His face was covered with a scrub beard. But there was something of cheer about him, even in this night of terror outside. And when he had driven his snowshoe into the snow wall, and had placed the lamp on it, he grinned companiably at Peter. Then, with a deep breath of satisfaction, he puffed out clouds of smoke from his pipe and stood up to look about their room. Not so bad, is it? he asked. We could have a big house here if we wanted to dig out rooms, eh, Peter? Parlers and bedrooms and a library, and not a policeman within a million miles of us. That's the nice part of it, Piebo. None of the royal mouties to trouble us. They would never think of looking for us in the heart of a big snow-dune out in this godforsaken barren, would they? The thought was a pleasing one to Jolly Roger. He spread out his blankets on the snow floor and sat down on them, facing Peter. We've got him beat, he said, a chuckling note of pride in his voice. The world is small when it comes to hiding, Piebo, but all the people in it couldn't find us here, not in a million years. If we could only find a place as safe as this where a girl could live and had NATO with us, many times during the past few weeks Peter had seen the light that flamed up now in his master's eyes. That and the strange thrill in Jolly Roger's voice stirred him more than the words to which he listened and tried to understand. And we're going to, finished McKay, almost fiercely his hands clenching as he leaned toward Peter. We have made a big mistake, Piebo, and it has taken us a long time to see it. It'll be hard for us to leave our North country, but that is what we must do. Maybe Yellowbird's good spirits meant that when they said we would find happiness with NATO in a place called the country beyond. There are a lot of countries beyond Peter, and as soon as the spring break-up comes and we can travel without leaving trails behind us, we will go back to Cragg's Ridge and get NATO, and hit for some place where the law won't expect to find us. There's China, for instance, a lot of yellow people, but what do we care for color as long as we have her with us? I say, suddenly he stopped, and Peter's body grew tense. Both faced the round hole, half filled with softly packed snow, which McKay had cut as a door into the heart of the big drift. They had grown accustomed to the tumult of the storm, its strange wailings and the shrieking voices which at times seemed born in the moaning sweep of it no longer sent shivers of apprehension through Peter. But in that moment when both turned to listen, there came a sound which was not like the other sounds they had heard. It was a voice, not one of the phantom voices of the screaming wind, but a voice so real and so near that for a beat or two even Jolly Roger McKay's heart stood still. It was as if a man, standing just beyond their snow barricade, had shouted a name. But there came no second call. The wind lulled so that for a space there was stillness outside. Jolly Roger laughed a little uneasily. Good thing we don't believe in ghosts, Peter, or we would swear it was a loop-jiru smelling us through the wall. He thumbed the tobacco down in his pipe and nodded. Then there is South America, he said. They have everything down there, the biggest rivers in the world, the biggest mountains, and so much room that even a loop-jiru couldn't hunt us out. She will love it, Piebo. But if it happens she likes Africa better, or Australia, or the South Sea. Now what the devil was that? Peter had jumped as if stung, and for a moment Jolly Roger sat tense as a carbon Indian. Then he rose to his feet, a look of perplexity and doubt in his eyes. What was it, Peter? Can the wind shoot a gun like that? Peter was sniffing at the loosely blocked door of their snow room. A whimper rose in his throat. He looked up at Jolly Roger, his eyes glowing fiercely through the massive air-dale whiskers that covered his face. He wanted to dig. He wanted to plunge out into the howling darkness. Slowly, McKay beat the ash out of his pipe and placed the pipe in his pocket. We'll take a look, he said, something repressive in his voice. But it isn't reasonable, Peter. It is the wind. There couldn't be a man out there, and it wasn't a rifle, we heard. It is the wind, with the devil himself behind it. With a few sweeps of his hand and arms he scooped out the loose snow from the hull. The opening was on the sheltered side of the drift, and only the whirling eddies of the storm swept about him as he thrust out his head and shoulders. But over him it was rushing like an avalanche. He could hear nothing but the moaning advance of it, and he could see nothing. He held out his hand before his face, and blackness swallowed it. We have been chased so much that we're what you might call supersensitive, he said, pulling himself back and nodding at Peter in the gray light of the alcohol lamp. Guess we'd better turn in, boy. This is a good place to sleep, plenty of fresh air, no mosquitoes or black flies, and the police so far away that we will soon forget how they look. If you say so we will have a nip of cold tea and a bite. He did not finish. For a moment the wind had lessened in fury as if gathering a deeper breath, and what he heard drew a cry from him this time and a sharper whine from Peter. Out of the blackness of the night had come a woman's voice. In that first instant of shock and amazement he would have staked his life that what he heard was not a mad outcry of the night or an illusion of his brain. It was clear, distinct, a woman's voice coming from out of the barren, rising above the storm in an agony of appeal and dying out quickly until it became a part of the moaning wind. And then with equal force came the absurdity of it to McKay. A woman! He swallowed the lump that had risen in his throat and tried to laugh. A woman, out in that storm, a thousand miles from nowhere. It was inconceivable. The laugh which he forced from his lips was husky and unreal, and there was a smothering grip of something at his heart. In the ghostly light of the alcohol lamp his eyes were wide open and staring. He looked at Peter. The dog stood stiff-legged before the hole. His body was trembling. Peter! With a responsive wag of his tail Peter turned his bristling face up to his master. Many times Jolly Roger had seen that unfailing warning in his comrades' eyes. There was someone outside, or Peter's brain, like his own, was twisted and fooled by the storm. Against his reasoning, in the face of the absurdity of it, Jolly Roger was urged into action. He changed the snowshoe and replaced the alcohol lamp so that the glow of light could be seen more clearly from the barren. Then he went to the hole and crawled through. Peter followed him. As if infuriated by their audacity, the storm lashed itself over the top of the dune. They could hear the hissing wine of fine hard snow tearing above their heads like volleys of shot and the force of the wind reached them even in their shelter, bringing with it the flinty sting of the snow dust. Beyond them the black barren was filled with a dismal moaning. Looking up and yet seeing nothing in the darkness, Peter understood where the weird shriekings and ghostly cries came from. It was the wind whipping itself up the side and over the top of the dune. Jolly Roger listened, hearing only the convulsive sweep of that mighty force over a thousand miles of barren. And then came again one of those brief intervals when the storm seemed to rest for a moment and its moaning grew less and less until it was like the sound of giant chariot wheels receding swiftly over the face of the earth. Then came the silence, a few seconds of it, while in the north gathered swiftly the whispering rumble of a still greater force. And in this silence came once more a cry, a cry which Jolly Roger McKay could no longer disbelieve and close upon the cry the report of a rifle. Again he could have sworn the voice was a woman's voice. As nearly as he could judge it came from dead ahead out of the chaos of blackness and in that direction he shouted an answer. Then he ran out into the darkness followed by Peter. Another avalanche of wind gathered at their heels, driving them on like the crest of a flood. In the first force of it Jolly Roger stumbled and fell to his knees, and in that moment he saw very faintly the glow of his light at the opening in the snow dune. A realization of his deadly peril if he lost sight of the light flashed upon him. Again and again he called into the night. After that, bowing his head in the fury of the storm, he plunged on deeper into darkness. A sudden wild thought seized upon his soul and thrilled him into forgetfulness of the light and the snow dune and his own safety. In the heart of this mad world he had heard a voice. He no longer doubted it, and the voice was a woman's voice. Could it be Neda? Was it possible she had followed him after his flight, determined to find him and share his fate? His heart pounded. Who else, of all the women in the world, could be following his trail across the barrens a thousand miles from civilization? He began to shout her name. Neda! Neda! Neda! And hidden in the gloom at his side Peter barked. Storm and darkness swallowed them. The last faint gleam of the alcohol lamp died out. Jolly Roger did not look back. Blindly he stumbled ahead, counting his footsteps as he went, and shouting Neda's name. Twice he thought he heard a reply, and each time the will of the wisp voice seemed to be still farther ahead of him. Then, with a fiercer blast of the wind beating upon his back, he stumbled and fell forward upon his face. His hand reached out and touched the thing that had tripped him. It was not snow. His naked fingers clutched in something soft and furry. It was a man's coat. He could feel buttons, a belt, and the sudden thrill of a bearded face. He stood up. The wind was wailing off over the barren again, leaving an instant of stillness about him, and he shouted, Neda! Neda! Neda! An answer came so quickly that it startled him, not one voice, but two, three, and one of them the shrill agonized cry of a woman. They came toward him as he continued to shout, until a few feet away he could make out a great blur moving through the gloom. He went to it, staggering under the weight of the man he had found in the snow. The blur was made up of two men dragging a sledge, and behind the sledge was a third figure moaning in the darkness. I found someone in the snow! Jolly Rogers shouted. Here he is! He dropped his burden, and the last of his words were twisted by a fresh blast of the storm. But the figure behind the sledge had heard, and Jolly Rogers saw her indistinctly at his feet, shielding the man he had found with her arms and body, and crying out a name which he could not understand in that howling of the wind. But a thing like cold steel sank into his heart, and he knew it was not Neda he had found this night on the barren. He placed the unconscious man on the sledge, believing he was dead. The girl was crying out something to him, unintelligible in the storm, and one of the men shouted in a thick, throaty voice which he could not understand. Jolly Rogers felt the weight of him as he staggered in the wind, fighting to keep his feet, and he knew he was ready to drop down in the snow and die. It's only a step, he shouted. Can you make it? His words reached the ears of the others. The girl swayed through the darkness and gripped his arm. The two men began to tug at the sledge, and Jolly Rogers seized the rope between them, wondering why there were no dogs, and faced the driving of the storm. It seemed an interminable time before he saw the faint glow of the alcohol lamp. The last fifty feet was like struggling against an irresistible hail from machine guns. Then came the shelter of the dune. One at a time McKay helped to drag them through the hole which he used for a door. For a space his vision was blurred, and he saw through the hazy film of storm blindness the gray faces and heavily coated forms of those he had rescued. The man he had found in the snow he placed on his blankets, and the girl fell down upon her knees beside him. It was then Jolly Rogers began to see more clearly, and in that same instant came a shock as unexpected as the smash of dynamite under his feet. The girl had thrown back her parky and was sobbing over the man on the blankets, and calling him Father. She was not like Nada. Her hair was in thick dark coils, and she was older. She was not pretty now. Her face was twisted by the brutal beating of the storm, and her eyes were nearly closed. But it was the man Jolly Rogers stared at while his heart choked inside him. He was grizzled and gray bearded with military mustaches and a bald head. He was not dead. His eyes were open, and his blue lips were struggling to speak to the girl whose blindness kept her from seeing that he was alive. And the coat which he wore was the regulation service garment of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police. Slowly McKay turned, wiping the film of snow sweat from his eyes, and stared at the other two. One of them had sunk down with his back to the snow wall. He was a much younger man, possibly not over thirty, and his face was ghastly. The third lay where he had fallen from exhaustion after crawling through the hole. Both wore service coats with holsters at their sides. The man against the snow wall was making an effort to rise. He sagged back and grinned up apologetically at McKay. Damn fine of you, old man, he mumbled between blistered lips. I'm Porter, end division, taking Superintendent Tavish to Fort Churchill. Tavish and his daughter made a hell of a mess of it, haven't I? He struggled to his knees. There's Brandy in our kit. It might help over there. And he nodded toward the girl and the gray bearded man on the blankets. End of Chapter 13, Recording by Roger Maline The Country Beyond by James Oliver Kerwood Chapter 14 Jolly Roger did not answer, but crawled through the hole and found the sledge in the outer darkness. He heard Peter coming after him and he saw Porter's bloodless face in the illumination of the alcohol lamp where he waited to help him with the dunnage. In those seconds he fought to get a grip on himself. A quarter of an hour ago he had laughed at the thought of the law. Never had it seemed to be so far away from him and never had he been more utterly isolated from the world. His mind was still a bit dazed by the thing that had happened. The police had not trailed him. They had not ferreted him out, nor had they stumbled upon him by accident. It was he who had gone out into the night and deliberately dragged them in. Of all the trickery fate had played upon him, this was the least to be expected. His mind began to work more swiftly, as in darkness he cut the babish cordage that bound the patrol dunnage to the sledge. End Division, he told himself, was away over an Athabasca country. He had never heard of Porter nor of Superintendent Tavish, and in as much as the outfit was evidently a special escort to Fort Churchill, it was very likely that Porter and his companions would not be thinking of outlaws and especially of Jolly Roger McKay. This was his one chance. To attempt an escape through the blizzard was not only a desperate hazard, it was death. There were only two packs on the sledge, and these he passed through the hole to Porter. A few moments later he was holding a flask of liquor to the lips of the gray bearded man, while the girl looked at him with eyes that were widening as the snowsting left them. Tavish gulped and his mitten hand closed on the girl's arm. I'm all right, Joe, he mumbled. All right. His eyes met McKay's and then took in the snow walls of the dugout. They were deep, piercing eyes overhung by shaggy brows. Jolly Roger felt the intentness of their gaze as he gave the girl a swallow of the brandy and then passed the flask to Porter. You have saved our lives, said Tavish, in a voice that was clearer. I don't just understand how it happened. I remember stumbling in the darkness and being unable to rise. I was behind the sledge. Porter and Breaux were dragging it, and Josephine, my daughter, was sheltered under the blankets. After that he paused, and Jolly Roger explained how it all had come about. He pointed to Peter. It was the dog, he said. Peter had insisted there was someone outside, and they had taken a chance by going in search of them. He was John Cummings, a fox trapper, and the storm had caught him fifty miles from his cabin. He was traveling without a dog sledge and had only a pack outfit. Breaux, the third man, had regained his wind and was listening to him. One look at his dark, thin face told McKay that he was the wilderness man of the three. He was staring at Jolly Roger in a strange sort of way. And then, as if catching himself, he nodded and began rubbing his frosted face with handfuls of snow. Porter had thrown off his heavy coat and was unpacking one of the Dunnidge sacks. He and the girl seemed to have suffered less than the other two. Joe, the girl, was looking at him. And then her eyes turned to Jolly Roger. They were large, fine eyes, wide open and clear now. There was something of splendid strength about her as she smiled at McKay. She was not of the hysterical sort. He could see that. If we could have some hot soup, she suggested. May we? There was gratitude in her eyes which she made no attempt to express in words. Jolly Roger liked her, and Peter crept up behind her and watched her as she followed Breaux's example and rubbed the cheeks of the bearded man with snow. There's an alcohol stove in the other pack, said Breaux, with his hard, narrow eyes fixed steadily on Jolly Roger's face. By the way, what did you say your name was? Cummings. John Cummings. Breaux made no answer. During the next half hour, Jolly Roger felt stealing over him a growing sense of uneasiness. They drank soup and ate bannock. It grew warm, and the girl threw off the heavy fur garment that enveloped her. Colour returned into her cheeks. Her eyes were bright, and in her voice was a tremble of happiness at finding warmth and life where she had expected death. Porter's friendliness was almost brotherly. He explained what had happened. Two rascally Tip-o-Ions had deserted them, stealing off into darkness and storm with both dog teams and one of their sledges. After that they had fought on, seeking for a drift into which they might dig a refuge. But the Baron was as smooth as a table. They had shouted, and Miss Tavish had screamed, not because they expected to find assistance, but on account of Tavish falling in the storm and losing himself. It was quite a joke, Porter thought, that Superintendent Tavish, one of the iron men of the service, should have given up the ghost so easily. Tavish smiled grimly. They were all in good humour and happy, with the possible exception of Breaux. Not once did he laugh or smile. Yet Jolly Roger noted that each time he spoke the others were specially attentive. There was something repressive and mysterious about the man, and the girl would cut herself short in the middle of a laugh if he happened to speak, and the softness of her mouth would harden in an instant. He understood the significance of her gladness and of Porter's, for twice he saw their hands come together and their fingers entwined. And in their eyes was something which they could not hide when they looked at each other. But Breaux puzzled him. He did not know that Breaux was the best man-hunter in end-division, which reached from Athabasca landing to the Arctic Ocean, or that up and down the two-thousand-mile stretch of the Three River Country, he was known as Shingus, the ferret. The girl fell asleep first that night with her cheek on her father's shoulder. Breaux, the ferret, rolled himself in a blanket and breathed deeply. Porter still smoked his pipe and looked wistfully at the pale face of Josephine Tavish. He smiled a bit proudly at McKay. She's mine, he whispered, we're going to be married. Jolly Roger wanted to reach over and grip his hand. He nodded, a little lump coming in his throat. I know how you feel, he said. When I heard her calling out there, it made me think of a girl down south. Down south? queried Porter. Why down south if you care for her and you up here? McKay shrugged his shoulders. He had said too much. Neither he nor Porter knew that Breaux's eyes were half open and that he was listening. Jolly Roger held up a hand as if something in the wailing of the storm had caught his attention. We'll have two or three days of this. Better turn in, Porter. I'm going to dig out another room for Miss Tavish. I'm afraid she'll need the convenience of a private room before we're able to move. It's an easy job and passes the time away. I'll help, offered Porter. For an hour they worked, using McKay's snowshoes as shovels. During that hour Breaux did not close his eyes. A curious smile curled his thin lips as he watched Jolly Roger. And when at last Porter turned in and slept the ferret sat up and stretched himself. McKay had finished his room and was beginning a tunnel which would lead as a back door out of the drift when Breaux came in and picked up the snowshoe which Porter had used. I'll take my turn, he said. I'm a bit nervous and not at all sleepy comings. He began digging into the snow. Been long in this country? he asked. Three winters. It's a good red fox country with now and then a silver and a black. Breaux grunted. You must have met Cassidy then, he said casually without looking at McKay. Corporal Terrence Cassidy. This is his country. Jolly Roger did not look up from his work of digging. Yes, I know him. Met him last winter. Redheaded. A nice chap. I like him. You know him? Entered the service together, said Breaux. But he's unlucky. For two or three years he has been on the trail of a man named McKay. Jolly Roger, they call him. Jolly Roger McKay. Ever hear of him? Jolly Roger nodded. Cassidy told me about him when he was at my cabin. From what I've heard I rather like him. Who? Cassidy or Jolly Roger? Both. For the first time the ferret leveled his eyes at his companion. They were mystifying eyes, never appearing to open fully, but remaining half closed as if to conceal whatever thought might lie behind them. McKay felt their penetration. It was like a cold chill entering into him, warning him of a menace deadlier than the storm. Haven't any idea where one might come upon this Jolly Roger, have you? No. You see, he thinks he killed a man down south. Well, he didn't. The man lived. If you happen to see him at any time, give him that information, will you? Jolly Roger thrust his head and shoulders into the growing tunnel. Yes, I will. He knew Braille was lying, and also knew that back of the narrow slits of Braille's eyes was the cunning of a fox. You might also tell him the law has a mind to forgive him for sticking up that free trader's post a few years ago. Jolly Roger turned with a snowshoe piled high with a load of snow. I'll tell him that, too, he said, chuckling at the obviousness of the other's trap. What do you think my cabin is, Braille, of rest for homeless outlaws? Braille grinned. It was an odd sort of grin, and Jolly Roger caught it over his shoulder. When he returned from dumping his load, Braille said, You see, we know this Jolly Roger fellow is spending the winter somewhere up here, and Cassidy says there's a girl down south. Jolly Roger's face was hidden in the tunnel. Who would like to see him, finished Braille? When McCay turned toward him, the ferret was carelessly lighting his pipe. I remember, Cassidy told me about this girl, said Jolly Roger. He said some day he would trap this man through the girl. So if I happen to meet Jolly Roger McCay and send him back to the girl, it'll help out the law. Is that it, Braille? And is there any reward tack to it? Anything in it for me? Braille was looking at him in the pale light of the alcohol lamp, puffing out tobacco smoke, and with that odd twist of a smile about his thin lips. Listen to the storm, he said. I think it's getting worse. Cummings. Suddenly he held out a hand to Peter, who sat near the lamp, his bright eyes fixed watchfully on the stranger. Nice dog you have, Cummings. Come here, Peter. Peter. Peter. Tight ringers seemed to grip at McCay's throat. He had not spoken Peter's name since the rescue of Braille. Peter. Peter. The ferret was smiling affably. But Peter did not move. He made no response to the outstretched hand. His eyes were steady and challenging. In that moment McCay wanted to hug him up in his arms. The ferret laughed. He's a good dog, a very good dog, Cummings. I like a one-man dog, and I also like a one-dog man. That's what Jolly Roger McCay is, if you ever happen to meet him. Travels with one dog, an air-dale with whiskers on him like a Mormon. And his name is Peter. Funny name for a dog, isn't it? He faced the outer room, stretching his long arms over his head. I'm going to try sleep again, Cummings. Good night, and Mother of Heaven, listen to the wind. Yes, it's a bad night, said McCay. He looked at Peter when Braille was gone, and his heart was beating fast. He could hear the wind, too. It was sweeping over the barren more fiercely than before, and the sound of it brought a steely glitter into his eyes. This time he could not run away from the law. Flight meant death, and Braille knew it. He was in a trap, a trap built by himself. That is, if Braille had guessed the truth, and he believed he had. There was only one way out, and that meant fight. He went into the outer room for his pack and a blanket. He did not look at Braille, but he knew the man's narrow eyes were following him. He left the alcohol lamp burning, but in his own room, after he had spread out his bed, he extinguished the light. Then, very quietly, he dug a hole through the snow partition between the two rooms. He waited for ten minutes before he thrust a fingertip through the last thin crust of snow. With his eye close to the aperture, he could see Braille. The ferret was sitting up and leaning toward Porter, who was sleeping an arm's length away. He reached over and touched him on the shoulder. Jolly Roger widened the snow slit another inch, straining his ears to hear. He could see Tavish and the girl asleep. In another moment, Porter was sitting up with the ferret's hand gripping his arm warningly. Braille motioned toward the inner room, and Porter was silent. Then, Braille bent over and began to whisper. Jolly Roger could hear only the indistinct monotone of his voice, but he could see very clearly the change that came into Porter's face. His eyes watched widened, and he stared toward the inner room, making a movement as if to rouse Tavish and the girl. The ferret stopped him. Don't get excited. Let them sleep. McKay heard that much and no more. For some time after that the two men sat close together, conversing and whispers. There was an exultant satisfaction in Porter's clean-cut face as well as in Braille's. Jolly Roger watched them until Braille extinguished the second lamp. Then he lightly plugged the hole in the partition with snow and reached out in the darkness until his hand found Peter. They think they've got us, boy, he whispered. They think they've got us. Very quietly they lay for an hour. McKay did not sleep and Peter was wide awake. At the end of that hour Jolly Roger crept on his hands and knees to the doorway and listened. One after another he picked out the steady breathing of the sleepers. Then he began feeling his way around the wall of his room until he came to a place where the snow was very soft. An air-drift, he whispered to Peter, close at his shoulder. We'll fool him, boy, and we'll fight if we have to. He began worming his head and shoulders and body into the air-drift like a gimlet. A foot at a time he burrowed himself through, heaving his body up and down and sideways to pack the light snow, leaving a round tunnel two feet in diameter behind him. Within an hour he had come to the outer crust on the windward side of the big snow dune. He did not break through this crust, which was as tough as crystal glass, but lay quietly for a time and listened to the sweep of the wind outside. It was warm and very comfortable and he had half dozed off before he caught himself back into wakefulness and returned to his room. The mouth of his tunnel he packed with snow. After that he wound the blanket about him and gave himself up calmly to sleep. Only Peter lay awake after that, and it was Peter who roused Jolly Roger in what would have been the early dawn outside the snow dune. McKay felt his restless movement and opened his eyes. A faint light was illuminating his room and he sat up. In the other room the alcohol lamp was burning again. He could hear movement and voices that were very low and indistinct. Carefully he dug out once more the little hole in the snow wall and widened the slit. Breaux and Tavish were asleep, but Porter was sitting up and close behind him sat the girl. Her coiled hair was loosened and fallen over her shoulders. There was no sign of drowsiness in her wide open eyes as they stared at the door between the two rooms. McKay could see her hand clasping Porter's arm. Porter was talking with his face so close to her bent head that his lips touched her hair, and though Jolly Roger could understand no word that was spoken, he knew Porter was whispering the exciting secret of his identity to Josephine Tavish. He could see for a moment a shadow of protest in her face. He could hear the quick, sibilant whisper of her voice, and Porter cautioned her with a finger at her lips and made a gesture toward the sleeping Tavish. Then his fingers closed about her uncoiled hair as he drew her to him. McKay watched the long kiss between them. The girl drew away quickly then and Porter tucked the blanket about her when she lay down beside her father. After that he stretched out again beside Breaux. Jolly Roger guessed what had happened. The girl had awakened, a bit nervous, and had roused Porter and asked him to relight the alcohol lamp. And Porter had taken advantage of the opportunity to tell her of the interesting discovery which Breaux had made and to kiss her. McKay stroked Peter's scrawny neck and listened. He could no longer hear the storm and he wondered if the fury of it was spent. Every few minutes he looked through the slit in the snow wall. The last time, half an hour after Porter had returned to his blanket, Josephine Tavish was sitting up. She was very wide awake. McKay watched her as she rose slowly to her knees and then to her feet. She bent over Porter and Breaux to make sure they were asleep and then came straight toward the door of his room. He lay back on his blanket with the fingers of one hand gripped closely about Peter. Be quiet, boy! he whispered. Be quiet! He could see the shutting out of light at his door as the girl stood there listening for his breathing. He breathed heavily and before he closed his eyes he saw Josephine Tavish coming toward him. In a moment she was bending over him. He could feel the soft caress of her loose hair on his face and hands. Then she knelt quietly down beside him, stroking Peter with her hand, and shook him lightly by the shoulder. Jolly Roger! she whispered. Jolly Roger McKay! He opened his eyes, looking up at the white face in the gloom. Yes, he replied softly. What is it, Miss Tavish? He could hear the choking breath in her throat as her fingers tightened at his shoulder. She bent her face still nearer to him until her hair cluttered his throat and breast. You are awake? Yes. Then listen to me. If you are Jolly Roger McKay, you must get away somewhere. You must go before Brio awakens in the morning. I think the storm is over. There is no wind. And if you are here when day comes— Her fingers loosened. Jolly Roger reached out and somewhere in the darkness he found her hand. It clasped his own, firm, warm, thrilling. I thank you for what you have done, she whispered. But the law and Brio, they have no mercy. She was gone, swiftly and silently, and McKay looked through the slit in the wall until she was with her father again. In the gloom he drew Peter close to him. We're up against it again, Piebo. He confided under his breath. We've got to take another chance. He worked without sound, and in a quarter of an hour his pack was ready, and the entrance to his tunnel dug out. He went into the outer room, then, where Josephine Tavish was awake. Jolly Roger pantomimed as desire as she sat up. He wanted something from one of the packs. She nodded. On his knees he fumbled in the dunnage, and when he rose to his feet, facing the girl, her eyes opened wide at what he held in his hand. A small packet of old newspapers her father was taking to the factor at Fort Churchill. She saw the hungry, apologetic look in his eyes, and her woman's heart understood. She smiled gently at him, and her lips formed an unvoiced whisper of gratitude as he turned to go. At the door he looked back. He thought she was beautiful, then, with her shining hair and eyes, and her lips parted, and her hands half reaching out to him, as if in that moment of parting she was giving him courage and faith. Suddenly she pressed the palms of her fingers to her mouth, and sent the kiss of benediction to him through the twilight glow of the snow-room. A moment later, crawling through his tunnel with Peter close behind him, there was an exultant singing in Jolly Roger's heart. Again he was fleeing from the law, but always, as Yellowbird had predicted in her sorcery, there were happiness and hope in his going, and always there was someone to urge him on, and to take a pride in him, like Josephine Tavish. He broke through the dune crust at the end of his tunnel, and crawled out into the thick gray dawn of a barren land day. The sky was heavy overhead, and the wind had died out. It was the beginning of the brief lull which came in the second day of the great storm. McKay laughed softly as he sensed the odds against them. We'll be having the storm at our heels again before long Piebo, he said. We'd better make for the timber a dozen miles south. He struck out, circling the dune, so that he was traveling straight away from the first hole he had cut through the shell of the drift. From that door, made by the outlaw who had saved them, Josephine Tavish watched the shadowy forms of man and dog until they were lost in the gray-white chaos of a frozen world. End of Chapter 14, Recording by Roger Millean Chapter 15 of The Country Beyond This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Roger Millean The Country Beyond by James Oliver Kerwood Chapter 15 Through the blizzard Jolly Roger made his way a score of miles southward from the big dune on the barren. For a day and a night he made his camp in the scrub timber which edged the vast treeless tundras reaching to the arctic. He believed he was safe, for the unceasing wind and the blasts of shot-like snow filled his tracks a few moments after they were made. He struck a straight line for his cabin after that first day and night in the scrub timber. The storm was still a thing of terrific force out in the barren, but in the timber he was fairly well sheltered. He was convinced the police patrol would find his cabin very soon after the storm had worn itself out. Porter and Tavish did not trouble him, but from Breyaw he knew there was no getting away. Breyaw would nose out his cabin, and for that reason he was determined to get out of the cabin. And for that reason he was determined to reach it first. The second night he did not sleep. His mind was a wild thing, wild as a loop-jiru seeking out its ghostly trails. It passed beyond his mastery, keeping sleep away from him, though he was dead tired. It carried him back over all the steps of his outlawry, visioning for him the score of times he had escaped, as he was narrowly escaping now. And it pictured for him, like a creature of inquisition, the tightening net ahead of him, the final futility of all his effort. And at last, as if moved by pity to ease his suffering a little, it brought him back vividly to the green valley, the flowers, and the blue skies of Cragg's Ridge, and Neda. It was like a dream. At times he could scarcely assure himself that he had actually lived those weeks and months of happiness down on the edge of civilization. It seemed impossible that Neda had come like an angel into his life down there, and that she had loved him, even when he confessed himself a fugitive from the law and had entreated him to take her with him. He closed his eyes, and that last roaring night of storm at Cragg's Ridge was about him again. He was in the little old missioner's cabin, with thunder and lightning rending earth and sky outside, and Neda was in his arms, her lips against his, the piteous heartbreak of despair in her eyes. Then he saw her a moment later, a crumpled heap down beside the chair, the dishelled glory of her hair hiding her white face from him, as he hesitated for a single instant before opening the door and plunging out into the night. With a cry he sprang up, dashing the vision from him, and threw fresh fuel on the fire. And he cried out the same old thought to Peter, It would have been murder for us to bring her, Piebo. It would have been murder. He looked about him at the swirling chaos outside the rim of light made by his fire and listening to the moaning of the wind over the treetops. Beyond the circle of light the dry snow, which crunched like sand under his feet, was lost in ghostly gloom. It was forty degrees below zero. And he was glad, even with this sickness of despair in his heart, that she was not a fugitive with him tonight. Yet he built up a little make-believe world for himself, as he sat with a blanket hugged close about him, staring into the fire. In a hundred different ways he saw her face, a will of the wisp thing amid the flames, an elusive, very girlish, almost childish face, yet always with the light of a woman's soul shining in it. That was the miracle which startled him at last. It seemed as if the fiction he built up in his despair transformed itself subtly into fact, and that her soul had come to him from out of the Southland, and was speaking to him with eyes which never changed or faltered in their adoration, their faith, and their courage. She seemed to come to him, to creep into his arms under the folds of the blanket, and he sensed the soft crush of her hair, the touch of her lips, the warm and circling of her arms about his neck. Closer to him pressed the mystery, until the beating of her heart was a living pulse against him. And then suddenly, as an irresistible impulse closed his arms to hold the spirit to him, his eyes were drawn to the heart of the fire, and he saw there, for an instant, wide-eyed and speaking to him, the face of Yellowbird, the Indian sorceress. The flames crept up the long braids of her hair, her lips moved, and then she was gone, but slowly, like a ghost slipping upward into the mist of smoke and night. Peter heard his master's cry, and after that Jolly Roger rose up and threw off the blanket, and walked back and forth until his feet tried a path in the snow. He told himself it was madness to believe, and yet he believed. Faith fought itself back into that dark citadel of his heart, from which for a time it had been driven. New courage lighted up again the black chaos of his soul. And at last he fell down on his knees and gripped Peter's shaggy head between his two hands. P.A. Bow, she said everything would come out right in the end, he cried, a new note in his voice. That's what Yellowbird told us, wasn't it? Maybe they would have burned her as a witch a long time ago, because she's a sorceress, and says she can send her soul out of her body and see what we can't see. But we believe, his voice choked up and he laughed. They were both here to-night, he added, Neda and Yellowbird. And I believe, I believe I know what it means. He stood up again and Peter saw the old smile on his master's lips as Jolly Roger looked up into the swirling black canopy of the spruce tops. And the wailing of the storm seemed no longer to hold menace and taunt, but in it he heard the whisper of fierce, strong voices urging upon him the conviction that it had already swept in decision from his heart. And then he said, holding out his arms as if encompassing something which he could not see. Peter, we're going back to Neda. Dawn was a scarcely perceptible thing when it came. Darkness seemed to fade a little, that was all. Frosty shapes took form in the gloom and the spruce tops became tangible in an abyss of sepulchral shadow overhead. Through this beginning of the barren land day, Jolly Roger set out in the direction of his cabin and in his blood was that new singing thing of fire and warmth that more than made up for the hours of sleep he had lost during the night. The storm was dying out, he thought, and it was growing warmer. Yet the wind whistled and raved in the open spaces and his thermometer registered the 40th and a fraction degree below zero. The air he breathed was softer, he fancied, yet it was still heavy with the stinging shot of blizzard, and where yesterday he had seen only the smothering chaos of twisted spruce and piled-up snow, there was now, as the pale day broadened, his old wonderland of savage beauty, awaiting only a flash of sunlight to transform it into the pure glory of a thing indescribable. But the sun did not come, and Jolly Roger did not miss it over much, for his heart was full of nada and a thrill with the inspiration of his home going. That's what it means, going home, he said to Peter, who knows close in the patch of his snowshoes. There's a thousand miles between us and Cragg's Ridge, a thousand miles of snow and ice and hell maybe, but we'll make it. He was sure of himself now, it was as if he had come up from out of the shadow of a great sickness. He had been unwise, he had not reasoned, as a man should reason. The hangman might be waiting for him at Cragg's Ridge, down in the rim of civilization, but that same grim executioner was also pursuing close at his heels. He would always be pursuing in the form of a braille, a cassidy, a tavish, or a somebody else of the royal northwest mountain police. It would be that way until the end came. And when the end did come, when they finally got him, the blow would be easier at Cragg's Ridge than up here in the edge of the barren land. And again there was hope, a wild, almost unbelievable hope that with Neda he might find that place which Yellowbird, the Sorceress, had promised for them. That mystery place of safety and of happiness which she had called the country beyond, where all would end well. He had not the faith of Yellowbird's people, he was not superstitious enough to believe fully in her sorcery, except that he seized upon it as a drowning man might grip at a floating seaweed. Yet was the undercurrent of hope so persistent that at times it was near faith. Up to this hour Yellowbird's sorcery had brought him nothing but the truth. For him she had conjured the spirits of her people, and these spirits, speaking through Yellowbird's lips, had saved him from Cassidy at the fishing-camp, and had performed the miracle on the shore of Walliston, and had predicted the salvation that had come to him out in the barren. And so was it not conceivable that the other would also come true? But these visions came to him only in flashes. As he travelled through the hours the one vital desire of his being was to bring himself physically into the presence of Neda, to feel the wild joy of her in his arms once more, the crush of her lips to his. The caress of her hands in their old sweet way at his face. And to hear her voice, the girl's voice with the woman's soul behind it, crying out its undying love as he had last heard it that night in the missioner's cabin many months ago. After this had happened, then, if fate decreed it so, all other things might end. Breaux, the ferret, might come, or porter, or that somebody else who was always on his trail. If the game finished thus he would be satisfied. When he stopped to make a pot of black tea and warm a snack to eat, Jolly Roger tried to explain this new meaning of life to Peter. The big thing we must do is to get there safely, he said, already beginning to make plans in the back of his head. And then he went on, building up his fabric of new hope before Peter, while he crunched his luncheon of toasted bannock and fat bacon. There was something joyous and definite in his voice, which entered into Peter's blood and body. There was even a note of excitement in it, and Peter's whiskers bristled with fresh courage, and his eyes gleamed and his tail thumped the snow comprehendingly. It was like having a master come back to him from the dead. And Jolly Roger even laughed, softly, under his breath. This is February, he said. We ought to make it late in March. I mean, Cragg's Ridge, P. A. Bow. After that they went on, traveling hard to reach their cabin before the darkness of night, which would drop upon them like a thick blanket at four o'clock. In these last hours they're pressed even more heavily upon Jolly Roger that growing realization of the vastness and emptiness of the world. It was as if blindness had dropped from his eyes, and he saw the naked truth at last. Out of this world everything had emptied itself until it held only Neda. Only she counted. Only she held out her arms to him, and treating him to keep for her that life in his body which meant so little in all other ways. He thought of one of the little worn books which he carried in a shoulder-pack, Jean Dark. As she had fought, with the guidance of God, so he believed the blue-eyed girl down at Cragg's Ridge was fighting for him, and had sent her spirit out in quest of him. And he was going back to her. Going. The last word, as it came from his lips, meant that nothing would stop them. He almost shouted it, and Peter answered. In spite of their effort darkness closed in on them. With the first dusk of this night there came sudden lulls in which the Blizzard seemed to have exhausted itself. Jolly Roger read the signs. By tomorrow there would be no storm, and Breaux the Ferret would be on the trail again, along with Porter and Tavish. It was his old craft, his old cunning that urged him to go on. Strangely he prayed for the Blizzard not to give up the ghost. Something must be accomplished before its fury was spent, and he was glad when after each lull he heard again the moaning and screeching of it over the open spaces, and the slashing together of spruce tops where there was cover. In a chaos of gloom they came to the low ridge which reached across an open swamp of tundra to the finger of shelter where the cabin was built. An hour later they were at its door. Jolly Roger opened it and staggered in. For a space he stood leaning against the wall while his lungs drank in the warmer air. The intake of his breath made a whistling sound, and he was surprised to find himself so near exhaustion. He heard the thud of Peter's body as it collapsed to the floor. Tired, Piebo? It was difficult for his storm-beaten lips to speak the words. Peter thumped his tail. The rat-tap-tap of it came in one of those lulls of the storm which Jolly Roger had begun to dread. I hope it keeps up another two hours, he said, wetting his lips to take the stiffness out of them. If it doesn't, he was thinking of Breaux as he drew off his mittens and fumbled for a match. It was Breaux he feared. The ferret would find his cabin and his trail if the storm died out too soon. He lighted the tin lamp on his table, and after that assured that wastefulness would cost him nothing now, he set two bear-drip candles going, one at each end of the cabin. The illumination filled the single room. There was little for it to reveal the table he had made, a chair, a battered little sheet-iron stove, and the humped-up blanket in his bunk, under which he had stored the remainder of his possessions. Back of the stove was a pile of dry wood, and in another five minutes the roar of flames in the chimney mingled with a fresh bluster of the wind outside. Defying the exhaustion of limbs and body, Jolly Roger kept steadily at work. He threw off his heavier garments as the freezing atmosphere of the room became warmer and prepared for a feast. We'll call it Christmas and have everything we've got, piebo. We'll cook a quart of prunes instead of six. No use stinting ourselves to-night. Even Peter was amazed at the prodigality of his master. An hour later they ate, and McKay drank a quart of hot coffee before he was done. Half of his fatigue was gone, and he sat back for a few minutes to finish off with a luxury of his pipe. Peter, gorged with caribou meat, stretched himself out to sleep, but his eyes did not close. His master puzzled him. For after a little Jolly Roger put on his heavy coat and parkie and pocketed his pipe. After that he slipped the straps of his pack overhead in shoulders, and then, even more to Peter's bewilderment, emptied a quart bottle of kerosene over the pile of dry wood behind the hot stove. To this he touched a lighted match. His next movement drew from Peter a startled yelp. With a single thrust of his foot he sent the stove crashing into the middle of the floor. Half an hour later, when Peter and Jolly Roger looked back from the crest of the ridge, a red pillar of flame lighted up the gloomy chaos of the unpeopled world they were leaving behind them. The wind was driving fiercely from the barren, and with it came stinging volleys of the fine drift snow. In the teeth of it Roger McKay stared back. It's a good fire, he mumbled in his hood. Half an hour and it will be out. There'll be nothing for Brio to find if this wind keeps up another two hours. Nothing but drift snow with no sign of trail or cabin. He struck out, leaving the shelter of the ridge. Straight south he went, keeping always in the open spaces where the wind-swept drift covered his snowshoe trail almost as soon as it was made. Darkness did not trouble him now. The open barren was ahead, miles of it, while only a little to the westward was the shelter of timber. Twice he blundered to the edge of this timber, but quickly set his course again in the open, with the wind always quartering at his back. He could only guess how long he kept on. The time came when he began to count the swing of his snowshoes, measuring off half a mile or a mile, and then beginning over again until at last the achievement of five hundred steps seemed to take an immeasurable length of time and great effort. Like the ache of a tooth came the first warning of snowshoe cramp in his legs. In the black night he grinned. He knew what it meant, a warning as deadly as swimmers cramp in deep water. If he continued much longer he would be crawling on his hands and knees. Quickly he turned in the direction of the timber. He had traveled three hours, he thought, since abandoning his cabin to the flames. Another half-hour, with the caution of slower, shorter steps, brought him to the timber. Luck was with him and he cried aloud to Peter as he felt himself in the darkness of a dense cover of spruce and balsam. He freed himself from his entangled snowshoes and went on deeper into the shelter. It became warmer and they could feel no longer a breath of the wind. He unloaded his pack and drew from it a jackpine torch, dried in his cabin and heavy with pitch. Shortly the flare of this torch lighted up their refuge for a dozen paces about them. In the illumination of it, moving it from place to place, he gathered dry firewood and with his axe cut down green spruce for the smoldering backfire that would last until morning. By the time the torch had consumed itself the fire was burning and where Jolly Roger had scraped away the snow from the thick carpet of spruce needles underfoot he piled a thick mass of balsam boughs and in the center of the bed he buried himself, wrapped warmly in his blankets and with Peter snuggled close at his side. Through dark hours the green spruce fire burned slowly and steadily. For a long time there was wailing of wind out in the open, but at last it died away and utter stillness filled the world. No life moved in these hours which followed the giving up of the big storm's last gasping breath. Slowly the sky cleared. Here and there a star burned through. But Jolly Roger and Peter, deep in the sleep of exhaustion, knew nothing of the change. End of Chapter 15 Recording by Roger Maline