 6 A frosty mist dulled the light of the stars, but this cleared away, as Jolly Roger and Peter crossed the plain between the creek and crags ridge. They did not hurry, for McKay had faith in Cassidy's word. He knew the red-headed man-hunter would not break his promise. He would wait the full two hours in Indian Tom's cabin, and another five minutes after that. In Jolly Roger, as the minutes passed, exultation at his achievement died away, and there filled him again the old loneliness, the loneliness which called out against the fate which had made of Cassidy an enemy instead of a friend. And yet what an enemy! He reached down and touched Peter's bushy head with his hand. Why didn't the law give another man the assignment to run us down, he protested, someone we could have hated, and who would have hated us? Why did they send Cassidy, the fairest and squarist man that ever wore red? We can't do him a dirty turn, we can't hurt him, piebo, even at the worst. And if ever he takes us into headquarters, and looks at us through the bars, I feel it's going to be like a knife in his heart. But he'll do it, Peter, if he can. It's his job. And he's honest, we've got to say that of Cassidy. The ridge loomed up at the edge of the level plain, and for a few moments Jolly Roger paused while he looked off through the eastward gloom. A mile in that direction, beyond the cleft that ran like a great furrow through the ridge, was Jed Hawkins' cabin, still and dark under the faint glow of the stars. And in that cabin was Neda. He felt that she was sitting at her little window, looking out into the night, thinking of him, and a great desire gripped at his heart, tugging him in its direction. But he turned toward the west. We can't let her know what has happened, boy, he said, feeling the urge of caution. For a little while we must let her think we have left the country. If Cassidy sees her and talks with her, something in those blue flower eyes of hers might give us away if she knew we were hiding up among the rocks of the stew kettle. But I'm hoping God Almighty won't let her see Cassidy, and I'm thinking he won't, Piebo, because I've got a pretty good hunch he wants us to settle with Jed Hawkins before we go. It was a habit of his years of aloneness, this talking to a creature that could make no answer. But even in the darkness he sensed the understanding of Peter. Rocks grew thicker and heavier under their feet, and they went more slowly and occasionally stumbled in the gloom. But after a fashion they knew their way even in darkness. More than once Peter had wondered why his master had so carefully explored this useless mass of upheaved rock at the end of Crags Ridge. They had never seen an animal or a blade of grass in all its gray, sun-blasted sterility. It was like a hostile thing, overhung with a half-dead, slow-beating something that was like the dying pulse of an evil thing. And now darkness added to its mystery and its unfriendliness as Peter nosed close at his master's heels. Up and up they picked their way, over and between, ragged upheavals of rock, twisting into this broken path and that, feeling their way, partly sensing it, and always ascending toward the stars. Roger Mackay did not speak again to Peter. Each time he came out where the sky was clear, he looked toward the solitary dark pinnacle, far up into head, strangely resembling a giant tombstone in the star glow that was their guide. And after many minutes of strange climbing in which it seemed to Jolly Roger, the nail heads in the soles of his boots made weirdly loud noises on the rocks, they came near to the top. There they stopped, and in a deeply shadowed place where there was a carpet of soft sand with walls of rock close on either side, Jolly Roger spread out his blankets. Then he went out from the black shadow so that a million stars seemed not far away over their heads. Here he sat down and began to smoke, thinking of what tomorrow would hold for him and of the many days destined to follow that tomorrow. Nowhere in the world was there to be, for him, the peace of an absolute certainty. Not until he felt the cold steel of iron bars with his two hands and the fatal game had been played to the end. There was no corrosive bitterness of the vengeful in Jolly Roger's heart. For that reason even his enemies, the police, had fallen into the habit of using the nickname which the wilderness people had given him. He did not hate these police. Curiously, he loved them. Their type was to him the living flesh and blood of the finest manhood since the Crusaders. And he did not hate the law. At times the law, as personified in all of its unswerving majesty, amused him. It was so terribly serious over such trivial things, like himself, for instance. It could not seem to sleep or rest until a man was hanged or snugly put behind hard steel, no matter how well that man loved his humankind and the world. And Jolly Roger loved both. In his heart he believed he had not committed a crime by achieving justice where otherwise there would have been no justice. Yet outwardly he cursed himself for a lawbreaker. And he loved life. He loved the stars silently glowing down at him tonight. He loved even the gray lifeless rock, which recall to his imaginative genius the terrific and interesting life that had once existed. He loved the ghostly majesty of the grave-like pinnacle that rose above him, and beyond that he loved all the world. But most of all, more than his own life or all that a thousand lives might hold for him, he loved the violet-eyed girl who had come into his life from the desolation and unhappiness of Jed Hawkins' cabin. Forgetting the law, forgetting all but her, he went at last into the dungeon-like gloom between the rocks, and after Peter had wallowed himself a bed in the carpet of sand they fell asleep. They awoke with the dawn. But for three days thereafter they went forth only at night, and for three days did not show themselves above the barricade of rocks. The stew-kettle was what Jolly Roger had called it, and when the sun was straight above, or descending with the last half of the day, the name fitted. It was a hot place, so hot that at a distance its piled-up masses of white rock seemed to simmer and broil in the blazing heat of the July sun. Neither man nor beast would look into the heart of it, Jolly Roger had assured Peter, unless the one was half-witted and the other a fool. Looking at it from the meadowy green plain that lay between the ridge and the forest, their temporary retreat was anything but a temptation to the eye. Something had happened there a few thousand centuries before, and in a moment of evident spleen and vexation the earth had vomited up that pile of rock debris, and Jolly Roger, good-humoredly, told himself and Peter that it was an act of providence especially intended for them, though planned and erupted some years before they were born. The third afternoon of their hiding Jolly Roger decided upon action. This afternoon all of the caloric guns of an unclouded sun had seemed to concentrate themselves on the gigantic rock pile. Though it was now almost sunset, a swirling and dizzying incandescent still hovered about it. The huge masses of stone were like baked things to the touch of hand and foot, and one breathed the smoldering air in between their gray and white walls. Thus forbidding looked the stew kettle when viewed from the plain, but from the topmost crag of the mass which rose a hundred feet high at the end of the ridge, one might find his reward for a blistering climb. On all sides a paradise of green and yellow and gold stretched the vast wilderness, studded with shimmering lakes that gleamed here and there from out of their rich dark frames of spruce and cedar and balsam. And halfway between the edge of the plain and this highest pinnacle of rock, utterly hidden from the eyes of both man and beast, nestled the hiding place which Jolly Roger and Peter had found. It was a cool and cavernous spot in spite of the Sahara-like heat of the great pile. In the very heart of it two gigantic masses of rock had put their shoulders together, like Gog and Magog, so that under their ten thousand tons of weight was a crypt-like tunnel as high as a man's head into which the light and the glare of the sun never came. Peter, now that he had grown accustomed to the deadness of it, liked this change from Indian Tom's cabin. He liked his wallow of soft sand during the day, and he liked still more the aloneness and the aloofness of their ramparded stronghold when the cool of evening came. He did not, of course, understand just what their escape from Cassidy had meant, but instinct was shrewdly at work within him, and no wolf could have guarded the place more carefully than he. And he had all creation in mind when he guarded the rock-pile. All but Neda. Many times he whimpered for her, just as the great call for her was in Jolly Roger's own heart. And on this third afternoon, as the hut-July sun dipped halfway to the western forests, both Peter and his master were looking yearningly and with the same thought toward the east, where over the backbone of Cragg's Ridge, Jed Hawkins' cabin lay. We'll let her know tonight, Roger McKay said at last, with something very slow and deliberate in his voice. We'll take the chance and let her know. Peter's bristling, air-dale whiskers, standing out like a bunch of broom-splints about his face, quivered sympathetically, and he thumped his tail in the sand. He was an artful hypocrite, was Peter, because he always looked as if he understood whether he did or not. And Jolly Roger, staring at the gray rock-backs outside their tunnel-door, went on. We must play square with her, Piebo, and it's a crime worse than murder not to let her know the truth. If she wasn't a kid, Peter, but she's that, just a kid, the sweetest, purest thing God Almighty ever made, and it isn't fair to live this lie any longer, no matter how we love her. And we do love her, Peter. Peter lay very quiet, watching the strange gray look that had settled in Jolly Roger's face. I've got to tell her that I'm a damned highwayman, he added, in a moment. And she won't understand, Peter. She can't. But I'm going to do it. I'm going to tell her, today. And then I think we'll be hitting north pretty soon, Piebo. And if it wasn't for Jed Hawkins, he rose up out of the sand, his hands clenched. We ought to kill Jed Hawkins before we go. It would be safer for her, he finished. He went out, forgetting Peter, and climbed a rock-splintered path until he stood in the knob of a mighty boulder, looking off into the northern wilderness. Off there, a hundred, five hundred, a thousand miles, was home. It was all his home, from Hudson's Bay to the Rockies, from the height of land to the Arctic Plains, and in it he had lived the thrill of life according to his own peculiar code. He knew that he had loved life as few had ever loved it. He had worshipped the sun and the moon and the stars. The world had been a glorious place in which to live, in spite of its ceaseless peril for him. But there was nothing of cheer left in his heart now as he stood in the blaze of the setting sun. Paradise had come to him for a little while, and because of it he had lived a lie. He had not told Jed Hawkins Foster Girl that he was an outlaw, and that he had come to the edge of civilization because he thought it was the last place the Royal Monod would look for him. When he went to her this evening, it would probably be for the last time. He would tell her the truth. He would tell her the police were after him from one end of the Canadian Northland to the other. And that same night, with Peter, he would hit the trail for the barren lands a thousand miles away. He was sure of himself now. Sure, even as the dark wall of the forest across the plain faded out and gave place to a pale, girlish face with eyes blue as flowers and brown curls filled with the luster of the sun, a face that had taken the place of mother, sister, and God deep down in his soul. Yes, he was sure of himself, even with that face rising to give battle to his last great test of honor. He was an outlaw, and the police wanted him. But Peter was troubled by the grimness that settled in his master's face. They waited for dusk, and when deep shadows had gathered in the valley, Mackay led the way out of the rock pile. An hour later, they came cautiously through the darkness that lay between the broken shoulders of Cragg's Ridge. There was a light in the cabin, but Nate's window was dark. Peter crouched down under the warning pressure of Mackay's hand. I'll go on alone, he said. You stay here. It seemed a long time that he waited in the darkness. He could not hear the low tap, tap, tap of his master's fingers against the glass of Nate's darkened window. And Jolly Roger, in response to that signal tapping, heard nothing from within, except a monotone of voice that came from the outer room. For half an hour he waited, repeating the signals at intervals. At last a door opened, and Nate stood silhouetted against the light of the room beyond. Mackay tapped again very lightly, and the door closed quickly behind the girl. In a moment she was at the window which was raised a little from the bottom. Mr. Roger! she whispered. Is it you? Yes, he said, finding a little hand in the darkness. It's me. The hand was cold and its fingers clung tightly to his as if the girl was frightened. Peter, restless with waiting, had come up quietly in the dark, and he heard the low, trembling whisper of Nate's voice at the window. There was something in the note of it and in the caution of Jolly Roger's reply that held him stiff and attentive, his ears wide open for approaching sound. For several minutes he stood thus, and then the whispering voices at the window ceased, and he heard his master retreating very quietly through the night. When Jolly Roger spoke to him, back under the broken shoulder of the ridge, he did not know that Peter had stood near the window. Mackay stood looking back at the pale glow of light in the cabin. Something happened there to-night, something she wouldn't tell me about, he said, speaking half to Peter and half to himself. I could feel it. I wish I could have seen her face. He set out over the plain, and then, as if remembering that he must explain the matter to Peter, he said, She can't get out to-night, Piebo, but she'll come to us in the jackpines tomorrow afternoon. We'll have to wait. He tried to say the thing cheerfully, but between this night and tomorrow afternoon seemed an interminable time, now that he was determined to make a clean breast of his affairs to Neda and leave the country. Most of that night he walked in the coolness of the moonlit plain, and for a long time he sat amid the flower scented shadows of the tristing place in the heart of the jackpine clump, where Neda had a hidden place all her own. It was here that Peter discovered something which Jolly Roger could not see in the deep shadows, a bundle warm and soft and sweet with the presence of Neda herself. It was hidden under a clump of young bankshines, very carefully hidden, and tucked about with grass and evergreen bows. When McKay left the jackpines, he wondered why it was that Peter showed no inclination to follow him until he was urged. They did not return to the stew kettle until dawn, and most of that day Jolly Roger spent in sleep between the two big rocks. It was late afternoon when they made their last meal. In this farewell hour McKay climbed up close to the pinnacle where he smoked his pipe and measured the shadows of the declining sun until it was time to leave for the jackpines. Retracing his steps to the hiding place under Gog and Magog, he looked for Peter. But Peter's sand wallow was empty and Peter was gone. End of Chapter 6, Recording by Roger Maline. Peter was on his way to the mystery of the bundle he had found in the jackpines. At the foot of the ridge where the green plain fought with the blighting edge of the stew kettle, he stood for many minutes before he started eastward. With keen eyes gleaming behind his mop of scraggly face bristles, he critically surveyed both land and air, and then, with a slight limp in his gate which would always remain as a mark of Jed Hawkins' brutality, he trotted deliberately in the direction of the whiskey runner's cabin home. A bitter memory of Jed Hawkins flattened his ears when he came near the rock-cluttered coolly in which he had fought for Neda and had suffered his broken bones, and today, even as he obeyed the instinctive caution to stop and listen, Jed Hawkins himself came out of the mouth of the coolly, bearing a brown jug in one hand and a thick cudgel in the other. His one wicked eye gleamed in the waning sun. His lean and scraggly face was alight with a sinister exultation as he paused for a moment close to the rock behind which Peter was hidden, and Peter's fangs lay bare and his body trembled while the man stood there. Then he moved on and Peter did not stir, but waited until the jug and the cudgel and the man were out of sight. Low under his breath he was snarling when he went on. Hatred for a moment had flamed hot in his soul. Then he turned and buried himself in a clump of balsams that reached out into the plain, and a few moments later came to the edge of a tiny meadow in the heart of them where a warbler was bursting its throat in evening song. Around the edge of the meadow Peter circled his feet deep in butter-cups and red fire-flowers and crushing softly ripe strawberries that grew in scarlet profusion in the open until he came to a screen of young jackpines, and through these he quietly and apologetically nosed his way. Then he stood wagging his tail with Neda sitting in the grass half a dozen steps from him, wiping the strawberries stained from her fingertips. And the stain was on her red lips and a bit of it against the flush of her cheek as she gave a little cry of gladness and greeting to Peter. Her eyes flashed beyond him and every drop of blood in her slim, beautiful little body seemed to be throbbing with an excitement new to Peter as she looked for Jolly Roger. Peter went to her and dropped down with his head in her lap, and looking up through his bushy eyebrows he saw a livid bruise just under the ripples of her brown hair where there had been no mark yesterday or the day before. Neda's hands drew him closer until he was half in her lap and she bet her face down to him so that her thick, shining hair fell all about him. Peter loved her hair almost as much as Jolly Roger loved it and he closed his eyes and drew a deep breath of content as the smothering sweetness of it shut out the sunlight from him. Peter, she whispered, I'm almost scared to have him come today. I've promised him. You remember I promised to tell him if Jed Hawkins struck me again? And he has. He made that mark and if Jolly Roger knows it he'll kill him. I've got to lie, lie! Peter wriggled to show his interest and his hard tail thumped the ground. For a space Neda said nothing more and he could hear and feel the beating of her heart close down against him. Then she raised her head and looked in the direction from which she would first hear Jolly Roger as he came through the young jackpines. Peter, with his eyes half closed in a vast contentment, did not see or sense the change in her today that her blue eyes were brighter, her cheeks flushed, and in her body a strange and subdued throbbing that had never been there before. Not even to Peter did she whisper her secret, but waited and listened for Jolly Roger, and when at last she heard him and he came through the screen of jackpines the color in her cheeks was like the stain of strawberries crimsoning her fingertips. In an instant, looking down upon her, Jolly Roger saw what Peter had not discovered and he stopped in his tracks, his heart thumping like a hammer inside him. Never, even in his dreams, had the girl looked lovelier than she did now, and never had her eyes met his eyes as they met them today, and never had her red lips said as much to him without uttering a word. In the same instant he saw the livid bruise, half hidden under her hair, and then he saw a big bundle behind her partly screened by a dwarfed banksium. After that his eyes went back to the bruise. Jed Hawkins didn't do it, said Neda, knowing what was in his mind. It was Jed's woman, and you can't kill her, she added a little defiantly. Jolly Roger caught the choking throbbing her throat, and he knew she was lying. But Neda thrust Peter from her lap and stood up, and she seemed taller and more like a woman than ever before in her life, as she faced Jolly Roger there in the tiny open, with violets and buttercups and red strawberries in the soft grass under their feet, and behind them, and very near, a rival to the warbler in the meadow began singing. But Neda did not hear. The color had rushed hot into her cheeks at first, but now it was fading out as swiftly, and her hands trembled, clasped in front of her. But the blue in her eyes was as steady as the blue in the sky as she looked at Jolly Roger. I'm not going back to Jed Hawkins any more, Mr. Roger, she said. A soft breath of wind lifted the tress of hair from her forehead revealing more clearly the mark of Jed Hawkins' brutality, and Neda saw gathering in Jolly Roger's eyes that cold, steely glitter which always frightened her when it came. His hands clenched, and when she reached out and touched his arm, the flesh of it was as hard as white birch. Even in her fear there was glory in the thought that, at a word from her, he would kill the man who had struck her. Her fingers crept up his arm, timidly, and the blue in her eyes darkened, and there was a pleading tremble in the curve of her lips as she looked straight at him. I'm not going back, she repeated. Jolly Roger, looking beyond her, saw the significance of the bundle. His eyes met her steady gaze again, and his heart seemed to swell in his chest and choke him. He tried to let his tense muscles relax. He tried to smile. He struggled to bring up the courage which would make possible the confession he had to make. And Peter, sitting on his haunches in a patch of violets, watched them both, wondering what was going to happen between these two. Where are you going? Jolly Roger asked. Nata's fingers had crept almost to his shoulder. They were twisting at his flannel shirt nervously, but not for the tenth part of a second did she drop her eyes, and that strange, wonderful something which he saw looking at him so clearly out of her soul brought the truth to Jolly Roger before she had spoken. I'm going with you and Peter. The low cry that came from Jolly Roger was almost a sob as he stepped back from her. He looked away from her, at Peter. But her pale face, her parted red lips, her wide open, wonderful eyes, her radiant hair stirred by the wind, came between them. She was no longer the little girl, past seventeen, going on eighteen. To Jolly Roger, she was all that the world held of glorious womanhood. But you can't, he cried desperately. I've come to tell you things, Nata. I'm not fit. I'm not what you think I am. I've been livin' a lie. He hesitated and then lashed himself on to the truth. You'll hate me when I tell you, Nata. You think Jed Hawkins is bad, but the law thinks I'm worse. The police want me. They've wanted me for years. That's why I came down here and hid over an Indian tom's cabin near where I first met you. I thought they wouldn't find me away down here, but they did. That's why Peter and I moved over to the big rock pile at the end of the ridge. I'm an outlaw. I've done a lot of bad things in the eyes of the law and I'll probably die with a bullet in me or in jail. I'm sorry, but that don't help. I'd give my life to be able to tell you what's in my heart, but I can't. It wouldn't be square. He wondered why no change came into the steady blue of her eyes as he went on with the truth. The pallor was gone from her cheeks. Her lips seemed redder and what he was saying did not seem to startle her or frighten her. Don't you understand, Nata? he cried. I'm bad. The police want me. I'm a fugitive. Always running away. Always hiding. An outlaw. She nodded. I know it, Mr. Roger, she said quietly. I heard you tell Peter that a long time ago. And Mr. Cassidy was at our place the day after you and Peter ran away from Indian Tom's cabin and I showed him the way to Father John's, and he told me a lot about you and he told Father John a lot more. And it made me awful proud of you, Mr. Roger, and I want to go with you and Peter. Proud, gasped Jolly Roger. Proud of me? She nodded again. Mr. Cassidy, the policeman, he used just the word you used a minute ago. He said you was square even when you robbed other people. He said he had to get you in jail if he could, but he hoped he never would. He said he'd like to have a man like you for a brother. And Peter loves you, and I— The color came into her white face. I'm going with you and Peter, she finished. Something came to relieve the tenseness of the moment for Jolly Roger. Peter, nosing in a thick patch of bunch grass, put out a huge snowshoe rabbit, and the two crashed in a startling avalanche through the young jackpines. Peter's still-puppish voice yelling in a high staccato as he pursued. Jolly Roger turned from Neda and stared where they had gone. But he was seeing nothing. He knew the hour of his mightiest fight had come. In the reckless years of his adventuring he had more than once faced death. He had starved. He had frozen. He had run the deadliest gauntlets of the elements, of beast, and of man. Yet was the strife in him now the greatest of all his life. His heart thumped. His brain was swirling in a vague and chaotic struggle for the mastery of things. And as he fought with himself, his unseeing eyes fixed on the spot where Peter and the snowshoe rabbit had disappeared, he heard Neda's voice behind him, saying again that she was going with him and Peter. In those seconds he felt himself giving way, and the determined action he had built up for himself began to crumble like sand. He had made his confession, and in spite of it, this young girl he worshipped, sweeter and purer than the flowers of the forest, was urging herself upon him. And his soul cried out for him to turn about, and open his arms to her, and gather her into them for as long as God saw fit to give him freedom and life. But still he fought against that mighty urge, dragging reason and right back fragment by fragment, while Neda stood behind him, her wide open, childishly beautiful eyes beginning to comprehend the struggle that was disrupting the heart of this man who was an outlaw and her God among men. And when Jolly Roger turned, his face had aged to the grainness of stone, and his eyes were dull, and there was a terribly dead note in his voice. You can't go with us, he said. You can't. It's wrong, all wrong. I couldn't take care of you in jail, and some day that's where I'll be. More than once when she had spoken of Jed Hawkins, he had seen the swift flash of lightning come into the violet of her eyes. And it came now, and her little hands grew tight at her sides, and bright spots burned in her cheeks. You won't, she cried. I won't let you go to jail. I'll fight for you if you'll let me go with you and Peter. And if I stay here, Jed Hawkins is going to sell me to a tie-cutter over on the railroad. That's what it is, selling me. I ain't, I mean, I haven't, told you before because I was afraid of what you'd do. But it's going to happen unless you let me go with you and Peter. Oh, Mr. Jolly Roger! Mr. Jolly Roger! Her fingers crept up his arms. They reached his shoulders and her blue eyes and her red lips, and the woman's soul and her girl body were so close to him he could feel their sweetness and thrill, and then he saw a slow gathering mist and tears. I'll go wherever you go, she was whispering, and we'll hide where they won't ever find us. And I'll be happy, so happy, Mr. Roger, and if you won't take me, I want to die. Oh! She was crying with her head on his breast and her slim, half-bear arms around his neck, and Jolly Roger listened like a miser to the choking words that came with her sobs. And where there had been tumult and indecision in his heart there came suddenly the clearness of sunshine and joy, and with it the happiness of a new and mighty possession as his arms closed about her, and he turned her face up so that for the first time he kissed the soft red lips that for some inscrutable reason the God of all things had given into his keeping this day. And then, holding her close, with her arms still tighter about his neck, he cried softly, I'm going to take you, little girl. You're going with Peter and me, forever and ever. And we'll go to-night. When Peter came back, just in the last sunset glow of the evening, he found his master alone in the bit of jackpine opening, and Neda was swiftly crossing the larger meadow that lay between them and the break in Cragg's Ridge, beyond which was Jed Hawkins' cabin. It was not the same Jolly Roger whom he had left half an hour before. It was not the man of the hiding place in the rock-pile. Jolly Roger McKay, standing there in the last soft glow of the day, was no longer the fugitive and the outcast. He stood with silent lips, yet his soul was crying out his gratitude to all that God of life which breathed at sweetness of summer evening about him. He was the first possessor of the earth. In that hour, that moment, he would not have sold his place for all the happiness of all the remaining people in the world. He cried out loud, and Peter, squatted at his feet with his red tongue lolling out, listened to him. She is mine, mine, mine, he was saying, and he repeated that word over and over until Peter quirked his ears and wondered what it meant. And then, seeing Peter, Jolly Roger laughed softly and bent over him with a look of awe and wonderment mingling with the happiness in his face. She's mine, ours, he cried boyishly. God Almighty took a hand, Piebo, and she's going with us. We're going tonight when the moon comes up. And Peter, Peter, we're going straight to the missioners and he'll marry us, and then we'll hit for a place where no one in the world will ever find us. The law may want us, Piebo, but God, this God all around, is good to us, and we'll try and pay him back. We will, Peter. He straightened himself and faced the west. Then he picked up the bundle Neda had brought and dived through the jackpines with Peter at his heels. Swiftly they moved through the shadowing dusk of the plain and came at last to the stew kettle and to their hiding place under the shoulders of Gog and Magog. There was still a faint twilight in the tunnel and in this twilight Jolly Roger McKay packed his possessions. And then with fingers that trembled as if they were committing a sacrilege he drew Neda's few treasures from her bundle and placed them tenderly with his own. And all the time Peter heard him saying things under his breath so softly that it was like the whispered drone of song. In darkness they went down through the rocks to the plain and half an hour later they came to the break in the ridge and went through it and stopped in the black shadow of a great rock with Jed Hawkins' cabin half a rifle shot away. Here Neda was to come to them with the first rising of the moon. It was very still all about and Peter sensed a significance in the silence and lay very quietly watching the light in the cabin and the shadowy form of his master. Also he knew that somewhere in the distance a storm was gathering. The breath of it was in the air, though the sky was clear of cloud overhead except for the haze of a gray and ghostly mist that lay between them and the yellow stars. Jolly Roger counted the seconds between then and moonrise. It seemed hours before the golden rim of it rose in the east. Shadows grew swiftly after that. Grotesque things took shape. The rock caps of the ridge began to light up like timid signal fires. Black spruce and balsam and cedar glistened as if bathed in enamel. And the moon came on and mellow floods of light played in the valleys and plains and danced over the forest tops and in voiceless and soundless miracle called upon all living things to look upon the glory of God. In his soul Jolly Roger McKay felt the urge and the call of that voiceless master power and through his lips came an unconscious whisper of prayer, of gratitude. And he watched the light in Jedhakan's cabin and strained his ears to hear a sound of footsteps coming through the moonlight. But there was no change. The light did not move. A door did not open or close. There was no sound except the growing whisper of the wind, the call of a nightbird, and the howl of the old gray wolf that always cried out to the moon from the tangled depths of Indian Tom Swamp. A thrill of nervousness swept through Jolly Roger. He waited half an hour, three quarters, an hour after the moon had risen. And Neda did not come. The nervousness grew in him and he moved out into the moon glow and slowly and watchfully followed the edge of the rock shadows until he came to the fringe of cedars and spruces behind the cabin. Peter, careful not to snap a twig under his paws, followed closely. They came to the cabin and there, very distinctly, Jolly Roger McKay heard the low moaning of a voice. He edged his way to the window and looked in. Crouched beside a chair in the middle of the floor was Jedhakan's woman. She was moaning and her thin body was rocking back and forth, and with her hands clasped at her bony breast she was staring at the open door. With a shock Jolly Roger saw that except for the strangely crying old woman the cabin was empty. Sudden fear chilled his blood, a fear that scarcely took form before he was at the door and in the cabin. The woman's eyes were red and wild as she stared at him, and she stopped her moaning and her hands unclasped. Jolly Roger went nearer and bent over her and shivered at the half-mad terror he saw in her face. Where is Neda? he demanded. Tell me, where is she? Gone, gone, gone! crooned the woman clutching her hands at her breast again. Jedhakan has taken her, taken her to Mooney's shack over near the railroad. Oh, my God! I tried to keep her, but I couldn't. He dragged her away. And tonight he's selling her to Mooney, the devil, the black brute, the tie-cutter. She choked and began rocking herself back and forth, and the moaning came again from her thin lips. Fiercely McKay gripped her by the shoulder. Mooney's shack, where? he cried. Quick, tell me! A thousand, a thousand! He's given a thousand dollars to get her in the shack, alone! she cried in a dull, sing-song voice. The road out there leads straight to it, near the railroad. A mile, two miles. I tried to keep him from doing it, but I couldn't. I couldn't. Jolly Roger heard no more. He was out of the door and running across the open with Peter racing close behind him. They struck the road, and Jolly Roger swung into it and continued to run until the breath was out of his lungs. And all that time the things Neda had told him about Jedhakan's and the tie-cutter were rushing madly through his brain. An hour or two ago, when the words had come from her lips in the jackpine thicket, he had believed that Neda was frightened, that a distorted fear possessed her, that such a thing as she had half confessed to him was too monstrous to happen. And now he cried out aloud, a groaning, terrible cry as he went on. Harkins and Neda had reached Mooney's shack long before this, a shack buried deep in the wilderness, a shack from which no cries could be heard. Peter, trotting behind, whined at what he heard in Jolly Roger McKay's panting voice, and the moon shone on them as they staggered and ran, and here and there dark clouds were racing past the face of it, and the slumberous whisper of storm grew nearer in the air. And then came the time when one of the dark clouds rode under the moon and the two ran on in darkness. The cloud passed and the moon flooded the road again with light, and suddenly Jolly Roger stopped in his tracks and his heart almost broke in the strain of that moment. Ahead of them, staggering toward them, sobbing as she came, was Neda. Jolly Roger's blazing eyes saw everything in that vivid light of the moon. Her hair was tangled and twisted about her shoulders and over her breast. One arm was bare where the sleeve had been torn away, and her girlish breast gleamed white where her waist had been stripped half from her body. And then she saw Jolly Roger in the trail, with wide open, reaching arms and with a cry such as Peter had never heard come from her lips before, she ran into them and held up her face to him in the yellow moonlight. In her eyes great, tearless, burning pools he saw the tragedy and yet it was only that and not horror nor despair, not the other thing. His arms closed crushingly about her. Her slim body seemed to become a part of him. Her hot lips reached up and clung to his. And then, Did he get you to Mooney's shack? He felt her body stiffen against him. No, she panted. I fought every inch. He dragged me and hit me and tore my clothes, but I fought. And up there, in the trail, he turned his back for a moment when he thought I was done and I hit him with a club. And he's there now, on his back. She did not finish. Jolly Roger thrust her out from him, arms length. A cloud under the moon hit his face, but his voice was low and terrible. Nada, go to the missioners as fast as you can, he said, fighting to speak coolly. Take Peter and go. You will make it before the storm breaks. I am going back to have a few words with Jed Hawkins alone. Then I will join you and the missioner will marry us. The cloud was gone, and he saw joy and radiance in her face. Fear had disappeared. Her eyes were luminous with the golden glow of the night. Her red lips were parted and treating him with the lure of their purity and love, and for a moment he held her close in his arms again, kissing her as he might have kissed an angel, while her little hand stroked his face, and she laughed softly and strangely in her happiness, the wonder of a woman's soul rising swiftly out of the sweetness of her girlhood. And then Jolly Roger set her firmly in the direction she was to go. Hurry, little girl, he said, hurry, before the storm breaks! She went, calling Peter softly, and Jolly Roger strode down the trail, not once looking back, and bent only upon the vengeance he would this night wreak upon the two lowest brutes in creation. Never before had he felt the desire to kill, but he felt that desire now. Before the night was much older he would do unto Hawkins and Mooney as Hawkins had done unto Peter. He would leave them alive, but broken and crippled and forever punished. And then he stumbled over something in another darkening of the moon. He stopped, and the light came again, and he looked down into the upturned face of Jed Hawkins. It was a distorted and twisted face, and its one eye was closed. The body did not move, and close to the head was the club which Nada had used. Jolly Roger laughed grimly. Fate was kind to him in making a half of his work so easy, but he wanted Hawkins to rouse himself first. Roughly he stirred him with the toe of his boot. Wake up, you fiend! he said. I'm going to break your bones, your arms, your legs, just as you broke Peter and that poor old woman back in the cabin. Wake up! Jed Hawkins made no stir. He was strangely limp. For many seconds Jolly Roger stood looking down at him, his eyes growing wider, more staring. Darkness came again. It was an inky blackness this time, like a blotter over the world. Low thunder came out of the west. The treetops whispered in a frightened sort of way. And Jolly Roger could hear his heart beating. He dropped upon his knees and his hands moved over Jed Hawkins. For a space not even Peter could have heard his movement or his breath. In the ebb and darkness he rose to his feet, and the night, lifelessly still for a moment, heard the one choking word that came from his lips. Dead! And there he stood, the heat of his rage changing to an icy chill, his heart dragging within him like a chunk of lead, his breath choking in his throat. Jed Hawkins was dead. He was growing stiff there in the black trail. He had ceased to breathe. He had ceased to be a part of life. And the wind rising a little with the coming of storm seemed to whisper and chortle over the horrible thing. And the lone wolf in Indian Tom Swamp howled weirdly as if he smelled death. Jolly Roger McKay's fingernails dug into the flesh of his palms. If he had killed the human viper at his feet, if his own hands had meted out his punishment, he would not have felt the clammy terror that wrapped itself about him in the darkness. But he had come too late. It was Neda who had killed Jed Hawkins. Neda, with a woman's soul just born in all its glory, had taken the life of her foster-father. And Canadian law knew no excuse for killing. The chill crept to his fingertips and unconsciously in a childish sort of way. He sobbed between his clenched teeth. The thunder was rolling nearer, and it was like a threatening voice, a deep-toned booming of a thing inevitable and terrible. He felt the air shivering about him, and suddenly something moved softly against his foot, and he heard a questioning whine. It was Peter come back to him in this hour when he needed a living thing to give him courage. With a groan he dropped on his knees again and clutched his hands about Peter. My God! he breathed huskily. Peter, she's killed him, and she mustn't know. We mustn't let anyone know. And there he stopped, and Peter felt him growing rigid as stone, and for many moments Jolly Rogers' body seemed as lifeless as that of the man who lay with upturned face in the trail. Then he fumbled in a pocket and found a pencil and an old envelope. And on the envelope, with the darkness so thick he could not see his hand, he scribbled, I killed Jed Hawkins. And after that he signed his name firmly and fully, Jolly Roger McKay. Then he tucked the envelope under Jed Hawkins' body where the ring could not get at it. And after that, to make the evidence complete, he covered the dead man's face with his coat. We've got to do it, Peter, he said. And there was a new note in his voice as he stood up on his feet again. We've got to do it for her. We'll tell her we caught Jed Hawkins in the trail and killed him. Caution! cleverness! his old mental skill returned to him. He dragged the bootlegger's body to a new spot, turned it face down, threw the club away, and kicked up the earth with his boots to give signs of a struggle. The note in his voice was triumph, triumph in spite of its heartbreak as he turned back over the trail after he had finished and spoke to Peter. We may have done some things we oughtn't do, Piebo, he said. But tonight I sort of think we tried to make restitution. And if they hang us, which they probably will some time, I sort of think it'll make us happy to know we've done it for her, eh, Piebo? And the moon sailed out for a space and shone on the dead whiteness of Jolly Roger's face. And on the lips of that face was a strange, cold smile, a smile of mastery, of exultation, and the eyes were looking straight ahead, the eyes of a man who had made his sacrifice for a thing more precious to him than his god. Only now and then did the moon gleam through the slow-moving masses of black cloud when he came to the edge of the Indian settlement clearing three miles away, where stood the cabin of the missioner. The storm had not broken, but seemed holding back its forces for one mighty onslaught upon the world. The thunder was repressed, and the lightning held in leash, with escaping flashes of it occasionally betraying the impending ambuscades of the sky. The clearing itself was a blot of stygian darkness, with a yellow patch of light in the center of it, the window of the missioner's cabin. And Jolly Roger stood looking at it for a space as a carbon thing of rock might have stared. His heart was dead. His soul crushed. His dream broken. There remained only his brain, his mind made up, his worship for the girl, a love that had changed from a thing of joy to a fire of agony within him. Straight ahead he looked, knowing there was only one thing for him to do, and only one. There was no alternative, no hope, no change of fortune that even the power of God might bring about. What lay ahead of him was inevitable. After all, there is something unspeakable in the might and glory of dying for one's country, or for a great love. And Jolly Roger McKay felt that strength as he strode through the blackness and knocked at the door, and went in to face Neda and the little old gray-haired missioner in the lamp glow. Swift as one of the flashes of lightning in the sky, the anxiety and fear had gone out of Neda's face, and in an instant it was flooded with the joy of his coming. She did not mark the strange change in him, but went to him as he had gone to him in the trail, and Jolly Roger's arms closed about her, but gently, this time, and very tenderly, as he might have held a little child he was afraid of hurting. Then she felt the chill of his lips as she pressed her own to them. Startled, she looked up into his eyes. And as he had done in the trail, so now Jolly Roger stood her away from him and faced the missioner. In a cold, hard voice he told what had happened to Neda that evening, and of the barbarous effort Jed Hawkins had made to sell her to Mooney. Then, from a pocket inside his shirt, he drew out a small, flat leather wallet and thrust it in the little missioner's hand. There's close to a thousand dollars in that, he said. It's mine, and I'm giving it to you, for Neda. I want you to keep her and care for her, and maybe some day, with both her hands, Neda clutched his arm. Her eyes had widened, swift pallor had driven the color from her face, and a broken cry was in her voice. I'm going with you, she protested. I'm going with you, and Peter. You can't now, he said. I've got to go alone, Neda. I went back, and I killed Jed Hawkins. Over the roof of the cabin rolled a crash of thunder. As the explosion of it rocked the floor under their feet, Jolly Roger pointed to a door and said, Father, if you'll leave us alone, just a minute. White faced, clutching the wallet, the little gray missioner nodded and went to the door, and as he opened it and entered into the darkness of the other room, he saw Jolly Roger McKay open wide his arms and the girl go into them. After that the storm broke. The rain descended in a deluge upon the cabin roof. The black night was filled with the rumble and roar and the hissing lightning flare of pent-up elements suddenly freed of bondage. And in the darkness and tumult the missioner stood, a little gray man of tragedy, of deeply buried secrets, a man of prayer and of faith in God, his heart whispering for guidance and mercy as he waited. The minutes passed. Five. Ten. And then there came a louder roaring of the storm, shut off quickly, and the little missioner knew that a door was opened and closed. He lifted the latch and looked out again into the lamp-glow. Huddled at the side of a chair on the floor, her arms and face buried in the lustrous, disheve mass of her shining hair, lay Neda, and close beside her was Peter. He went to her. Tenderly he knelt down beside her. His thin arm went about her, and as the storm raved and shrieked above them he tried to comfort and spoke of God. And through that storm his head bowed, his heart gone, went Jolly Roger McKay, heading north. Chapter 8 Peter, thrust back from the door through which his master had gone, listened vainly for the sound of returning footsteps in the beat of rain and the crash of thunder outside. A strange thing had burned itself into his soul, a thing that made his flesh quiver and set hot fires running in his blood. As a dog sometimes senses the stealthy approach of death, so he began to sense the tragedy of this night that had brought with it not only a chaos of blackness and storm, but an anguish which roused an answering whimper in his throat as he turned toward Neda. She was crumpled with her head in her arms, where she had flung herself with Jolly Roger's last kiss of worship on her lips, and she was sobbing like a child with its heart broken. And beside her knelt the old gray missioner, man of God in the deep forest, who stroked her hair with his thin hand, whispering courage and consolation to her, with the wind and rain beating overhead and the windows rattling to the accompaniment of ghostly voices that shrieked and wailed in the treetops outside. Peter trembled at the sobbing, but his heart and his desire were with the man who had gone. In his unreasoning little soul it was Jed Hawkins who was rattling the windows with his unseen hands, and who was pounding at the door with the wind, and who was filling the black night with its menace and fear. He hated this man, who lay back in the trail with his lifeless face turned up to the deluge that poured out of the sky, and he was afraid of the man, even as he hated him, and he believed that Nada was afraid of him, and that because of her fear she was crying there in the middle of the floor, with Father John patting her shoulder and stroking her hair, and saying things to her which he could not understand. He wanted to go to her. He wanted to feel himself close against her, as Nada held him so often in those hours when she had unburdened her grief and her unhappiness to him. But even stronger than this desire was the one to follow his master. He went to the door and thrust his nose against the crack at the bottom of it. He felt the fierceness of the wind fighting to break in, and the broken mist of it filled his nostrils. But there came no scent of Jolly Roger McKay. For a moment he struggled at the crack with his paws. Then he flopped himself down, his heart beating fast, and fixed his eyes inquiringly on Nada and the missioner. His four and a half months of life in the big wilderness, and his weeks of constant comradeship with Jolly Roger, had developed in him a brain that was older than his body. No process of reasoning could impinge upon him the fact that his master was an outlaw, but with the swift experiences of tragedy and hiding and never-seizing caution had come instinctive processes which told him almost as much as reason. He knew something was wrong to-night. It was in the air. He breathed it. It thrilled in the crash of thunder, in the lightning fire, in the mighty hands of the wind rocking the cabin and straining at the windows. And vaguely the knowledge gripped him that the dead man in the trail was responsible for it all, and because of this something that had happened his mistress was crying and his master was gone. And he believed he should also have gone with Jolly Roger into the blackness and mystery of the storm to fight with him against the one creature in all the world he hated, the dead man who lay back in the thickness of gloom between the forest walls. And the missionary was saying to Neda in a quiet, calm voice out of which the tragedies of years had burned all excitement and passion, God will forgive him, my child. In his mercy he will forgive Roger McKay because he killed Jed Hawkins to save you. But man will not forgive. The law has been hunting him because he is an outlaw, and to outlaw he has added what the law will call murder. But God will not look at it in that way. He will look into the heart of the man, the man who sacrificed himself. And then fiercely Neda struck up the missioner's comforting hand and Peter saw her young face white as stardust in the lamp glow. I don't care what God thinks, she cried passionately. God didn't do right today. Mr. Roger told me everything, that he was an outlaw and I oughtn't to marry him. But I didn't care. I loved him. I could hide with him. And we were coming to have you marry us tonight when God let Jed Hawkins drag me away to sell me to a man over on the railroad. And it was God who let Mr. Roger go back and kill him. I tell you he didn't do right. He didn't. He didn't, because Mr. Roger brought me the first happiness I ever knew. And I loved him. And he loved me. And God was wicked to let him kill Jed Hawkins. Her voice cried out, a woman's soul broken in a girl's body. And Peter whimpered and watched the missioner as he raised Neda to her feet and went with her into his bedroom, were a few minutes before he had lighted a lamp. And Peter crept in quietly after them and when the missioner had gone and closed the door, leaving them alone in their tragedy, Neda seemed to see him for the first time and slowly she reached out her arms. Peter! she whispered. Peter! Peter! In the minutes that followed Peter could feel her heart beating. Clutched against her breast he looked up at the white, beautiful face, the trembling throat, the wide open blue eyes staring at the one black window between them and the outside night. A lull had come in the storm. It was quiet and ominous stillness, and the ticking of a clock, old and gray like the missioner himself, filled the room. And Neda, seated on the edge of Father John's bed, no longer looked like the young girl of seventeen going on eighteen. That afternoon, in the hidden jack pine open, with its sweet-scented jazz mines, its violets, and its crimson strawberries under their feet, the soul of a woman had taken possession of her body. In that hour the first happiness of her life had come to her. She had heard Jolly Roger McKay teller those things which she already knew, that he was an outlaw, and that he was hiding down on the near edge of civilization because the royal mounted were after him Father North, and that he was not fit to love her, and that it was a crime to let her love him. It was then the soul of the woman had come to her in all its triumph. She had made her choice, definitely and decisively, without hesitation and without fear. And now, as she stared unseeingly at the window against which the rain was beating, the woman in her girlish body rose in her, mightier than in the hour of her happiness, fighting to find a way, crying out for the man she loved. Her mind swept back in a single flash through all the years she had lived, through her years of unhappiness and torment as the foster girl of Jed Hawkins and his broken, beaten wife. Through summers and winters that had seemed ages to her, eternities of desolation, of heartache, of loneliness, with the big wilderness her one friend on earth. As the window rattled in a fresh blast of storm, she thought of the day months ago when she had accidentally stumbled upon the hiding place of Roger McKay. Since that day, he had been her god, and she had lived in a paradise. He had been father, mother, brother, and at last what she most yearned for, a lover to her. And this day, when for the first time he had held her in his arms, when the happiness of all the earth had reached out to them, God had put it into Jed Hawkins' heart to destroy her, and Jolly Roger had killed him. With a sharp little cry she sprang to her feet so suddenly that Peter fell with a thump to the floor. He looked up at her, puzzled, his jaws half a gape. She was breathing quickly. Her slender body was quivering. Suddenly Peter saw the fire in her eyes and the flame that was rushing into her white cheeks. Then she turned to him and panted in a wild little whisper so low that the missioner could not hear. Peter, I was wrong. God wasn't wicked to let Mr. Roger kill Jed Hawkins. He oughta been killed. And God meant him to be killed. Peter, Peter, we don't care if he's an outlaw. We're going with him. We're going, going. She sprang to the window and Peter was at her heels as she strained at it with all her strength and he could hear her sobbing. We're going with him, Peter. We're going if we die for it. An inch at a time she pried the window up. The storm beat in. Our gust of wind blew out the light, but in the last flare of it Neda saw a knife in an Eskimo sheath hanging on the wall. She groped for it and clutched it in her hand as she climbed through the window and dropped to the soggy ground beneath. In a single leap Peter followed her. Blackness swallowed them as they turned toward the trail leading north, the only trail which Jolly Roger could travel on a night like this. They heard the voice of the missioner calling from the window behind them. Then a crash of thunder set the earth rolling under their feet and the lull in the storm came to an end. The sky split open with the vivid fire of lightning. The trees wailed and whined. The rain fell again in a smothering deluge and through it Neda ran, gripping the knife as her one defense against the demons of darkness and always close at her side ran Peter. He could not see her in that pitchy blackness except when the lightning flashes came. Then she was like a ghostly wraith with drenched clothes clinging to her until she seemed scarcely dressed, her wet hair streaming and her wide staring eyes looking straight ahead. After the lightning flashes when the world was darkest he could hear the stumbling tread of her feet and the panting of her breath and now and then the swish of brush as it struck across her face and breast. The rain had washed away the scent of his master's feet but he knew they were following Jolly Roger and that the girl was running to overtake him. In him was the desire to rush ahead to travel faster through the night but Neda's stumbling feet and her panting breath and the strange white pictures he saw of her when the sky split open with fire held him back. Something told him that Neda must reach Jolly Roger and he was afraid she would stop. He wanted to bark to give her encouragement as he had often barked in their playful races in the green plainlands on the farther side of Cragg's Ridge. But the rain choked him. It beat down upon him with the weight of heavy hands. It slushed up into his face from pools in the trail and drove the breath from him when he attempted to open his jaws. So he ran close, so close, that at times Neda felt the touch of his body against her. In these first minutes of her fight to overtake the man she loved, Neda heard but one voice, a voice crying out from her heart and brain and soul, a voice rising above the tumult of thunder and wind urging her on, whipping the strength from her frail body in pitiless exhortation. Jolly Roger was less than half an hour ahead of her and she must overtake him quickly before the forest swallowed him, before he was gone from her life forever. The wall of blackness against which she ran did not frighten her. When the brush tore at her face and hair she swung free of it and stumbled on. Twice she ran blindly into broken trees that lay across her path and dragged her bruised body through their twisted tops, moaning to Peter and clutching tightly to the sheathed knife in her hand. And the wild spirits that possessed the night seemed to gather about her and over her, exulting in the helplessness of their victim, shrieking in weird and savage joy at the discovery of this human plaything struggling against their might. Never had Peter heard thunder as he heard it now. It rocked the earth under his feet. It filled the world with the ceaseless rumble and the lightning came like flashes from swift-loading guns, and with it all a terrific assault of wind and rain that at last drove Neda down in a crumpled heap, panting for breath, with hands groping out wildly for him. Peter came to them, sodden and shivering. His warm tongue found the palm of her hand, and for a space Neda hugged him close to her while she bowed her head until her drenched curls became a part of the mud and water of the trail. Peter could hear her sobbing for breath, and then suddenly there came a change. The thunder was sweeping eastward, the lightning was going with it. The wind died out in waiting sobs among the treetops, and the rain fell straight down. Swiftly as its fury had come the July storm was passing, and Neda staggered to her feet again and went on. Her mind began to react with the lessening of the storm, dragging itself out quickly from under the oppression of fear and shock. She began to reason, and with that reason the beginning of faith and confidence gave her new strength. She knew that Jolly Roger would take this trail, for it was the one trail leading from the missioner's cabin through the thick forest country north, and in half an hour he would not travel far. The thrilling thought came to her that possibly he had sought shelter in the lee of a big tree trunk during the fury of the storm. If he had done that he would be near, very near. She paused in the trail and gathered her breath and cried out his name. Three times she called it, and only the low wine in Peter's throat came an answer. Twice again during the next ten minutes she cried out as loudly as she could into the darkness. And still no answer came back to her through the gloom ahead. The trail had dipped, and she felt the deepening slush of swamp mire under her feet. She sank in it to her shoe tops and stumbled into pools knee-deep, and Peter wallowed in it to his belly. A quarter of an hour they fought through it to the rising ground beyond. And by that time the last of the black storm clouds had passed overhead. The rain had ceased. The rumble of thunder came more faintly. There was no lightning, and the tree tops began to whisper softly as if rejoicing in the passing of the wind. About them, everywhere, they could hear the run and drip of water, the weeping of the drenched trees, the gurgle of flooded pools, and the trickle of tiny rivulets that splashed about their feet. Through a rift in the breaking clouds overhead came a passing flash of the moon. We'll find him now, Peter, moaned the girl. We'll find him now. He can't be very far ahead. And Peter waited, holding his breath, listening for an answer to the cry that went out for Jolly Roger McKay. The glory of July midnight, with a round, full moon straight overhead, followed the stress of storm. The world had been lashed and inundated, every tree whipped of its rotten slag, every blade of grass and flower washed clean. Out of the earth rose sweet smells of growing life, the musky fragrance of deep moss and needle mold, and through the clean air drifted faintly the aroma of cedar and balsam and the subtle tang of unending canopies and glistening tapestries of evergreen breathing into the night. The deep forest seemed to tremble with the presence of an invisible and mysterious life, life that was still yet wide awake, breathing, watchful, drinking in the rejuvenating tonic of the air which had so quietly followed thunder and lightning and the roar of wind and rain. And the moon, like a queen who had so ordered these things, looked down in a mighty triumph. Her radiance, without dust or fog or forest smoke to impede its way, was like the mellow glow of half-day. It streamed through the treetops and paths of gold and silver, throwing dark shadows where it failed to penetrate and gathering in wide pools where its floods poured through broad rifts in the roofs of the forest. And the trail leading north was like a river of shimmering silver splitting the wilderness from earth to sky. In this trail clearly made in the wet soil were Jolly Roger's footprints, and in a wider space where at some time a trapper had cleared himself a spot for his teepee or shack, Jolly Roger had paused to rest after his fight through the storm and had then continued on his way. And into this clearing three hours after they left the missioner's cabin came Neda and Peter. They came slowly, the girl, a slim wraith in the moonlight. In the open they stood for a moment, and Peter's heart weighed heavily within him as his mistress cried out once more for Jolly Roger. Her voice rose only in a sob and ended in a sob. The last of her strength was gone. Her little figure swayed and her face was white and haggard, and in her drawn lips and staring eyes was the agony of despair. She had lost, and she knew that she had lost as she crumbled down in the trail, crying out sobbingly to the footprints which led so clearly ahead of her. Peter, I can't go on, she moaned. I can't go on. Her hands clutched at her breast. Peter saw the glint of the moonlight on the ivory sheath of the Eskimo's knife, and he saw her white face turned up to the sky, and also that her lips were moving but he did not hear his name come from them or any other sound. He whined and foot by foot began to nose along the trail on the scent left by Jolly Roger. It was very clear to his nostrils and it thrilled him. He looked back and again he whined his encouragement to the girl. Peter, she called, Peter. He returned to her. She had drawn the knife out of its scabbard and the cold steel glistened in her hand. Her eyes were shining and she reached out and clutched Peter close up against her so that he could hear the choke and throb of her heart. Oh, Peter, Peter, she panted, if you could only talk, if you could run and catch Mr. Roger and tell him I'm here and that he must come back. She hugged him closer. He sensed the sudden thrill that leapt through her body. Peter, she whispered, will you do it? For a few moments she did not seem to breathe. Then he heard a quick little cry, a sob of inspiration and hope, and her arms came from about him and he saw the knife flashing in the yellow moonlight. He did not understand, but he knew that he must watch her carefully. She had bent her head and her hair, nearly dry, glowed softly in the face of the moon. Her hands were fumbling in the deshelved curls, and Peter saw the knife flash back and forth and heard the cut of it, and then he saw that in her hand she held a thick brown tress of hair that she had severed from her head. He was puzzled. And Anita dropped the knife, and as curiosity increased when she tore a great piece out of her tattered dress and carefully wrapped the tress of hair in it. Then she drew him to her again and tied the knotted fold of dress securely about his neck. After that she tore other strips from her dress and wound them about his neck until he felt muffled and half smothered. And all the time she was talking to him in a half sobbing excited little voice, and the blood in Peter's body ran swifter, and the strange thrill in him was greater. When she had finished she rose to her feet and stood there swaying back and forth like one of the spruce-top shadows while she pointed up the moonlit trail. Go, Peter! she cried softly. Quick! Follow him, Peter! Catch him! Bring him back! Mr. Roger! Jolly Roger! Go, Peter! Go! Go! Go! Go! It was strange to Peter, but he was beginning to understand. He sniffed in Jolly Roger's footprints, and then he looked up quickly and saw that it had pleased the girl. She was urging him on. He sniffed from one footprint to another, and Anita clapped her hands and cried out that he was right for him to hurry, hurry! Impulse thought swiftly growing knowledge of something to be done thrilled in his brain. Anita wanted him to go. She wanted him to go to Jolly Roger, and she had put something around his neck which she wanted him to take with him. He whined eagerly, a bit excitedly. Then he began to trot. Instinctively it was his test. She did not call him back. He flattened his ears, listening for her command to return, but it did not come. And then the thrill in him leapt over all other things. He was right. He was not abandoning Anita. He was not running away. She wanted him to go. The night swallowed him. He became a part of the yellow floods of its moonlight, a part of its shifting shadows, a part of its stillness, its mystery, its promise of impending things. He knew that grim and terrible happenings had come with the storm, and he still sensed the nearness of tragedy in this night world through which he was passing. He did not go swiftly, yet he went three times as fast as the girl and he had travelled together. He was cautious and watchful, and at intervals he stopped and listened, and swallowed hard to keep the whine of eagerness out of his throat. Now that he was alone, every instinct in him was keyed to the pulse and beat of life about him. He knew the night people of the deep forests were awake. Softly padded, clawed, sharp beaked and feathered, the prowlers of darkness were on the move. With the stillness of shadows they were stealing through the moonlit corridors of the wilderness, or hovering gray-winged and ghostly in the ambuscades of the treetops, eager to waylay and kill, hungering for the flesh and blood of creatures weaker than themselves. Peter knew. Both heritage and experience warned him, and he watched the shadows and sniffed the air, and kept his fangs half-bared and ready as he followed the trail of Mackay. He was not stirred by the impulse of adventure alone. Without the finesse of what man might charitably call reason in a beast, he had sensed a responsibility. It was present in the closely drawn strips of faded cloth about his neck. It was, in a way, a part of the girl herself, a part of her flesh and blood, a part of her spirit, something vital to her and dependent upon him. He was ready to guard it with every instinct of caution and every ounce of courage there was in him. And to protect it meant to fight. That was the first law of his breed, the primal warning which came to him through the red blood of many generations of wilderness forefathers. So he listened, and he watched, and his blood pounded hut in his veins as he followed the footprints in the trail. A bit of brush, swinging suddenly free from where it had been prisoned by the storm, drew a snarl from him as he faced the south with the quickness of a cat. A gray streak, passing swiftly over the trail ahead of him, stirred a low growl in his throat. It was a lynx, and for a space Peter paused, and then sped softfoot had passed the moonlit spot where the stiletto-clawed menace of the woods had passed. Now that he was alone and no longer accompanied by a human presence whose footsteps and scent held the wild things aloof and still, Peter felt nearer and nearer to him the beat and stir of life. Powerful beaks, instead of remaining closed and without sound, snapped and hissed at him as the big gray owls watched his passing. He heard the rustling of brush, soft as the stir of a woman's dress, where living things were secretly moving, and he heard the louder crash of clumsy and pigish feet, and caught the strong scent of a porcupine as it waddled to its midnight lunch of poplar bark. Then the trail ended, and Jolly Rogers' scent led into the pathless forest, with its shifting streams and pools of moonlight, its shadows and black pits of darkness. And here, now, Peter began his trespass into the strong holds of the people of the night. He heard a wolf howl, a cry filled with loneliness, yet with a shivering death-node in it. He caught the musky, skunkish odor of a fox that was stalking prey in the face of a whispering breath of wind. Once, in a moment of dead stillness, he listened to the snap of teeth and the crackle of bones in one of the dark pits, where a fisher-cat with eyes that gleamed like coals of fire was devouring the warm and bleeding carcass of a mother partridge. And Beaks snapped at him more menacingly as he went on, and gray shapes floated over his head, and now and then he heard the cries of dying things, the agonized squeak of a woodmouse, the cry of a daybird torn from its sleeping place by a sinuous, beady-eyed creature of fur and claw, the noisy screaming of a rabbit, swooped upon and pierced to the vitals by one of the gray-feathered pirates of the air. And then, squarely in the center of a great pool of moonlight, Peter came upon a monster. It was a bear, a huge mother bear, with two butter-fat cubs wrestling and rolling in the moon glow. Peter had never seen a bear, but the mother, who raised her brown nose suddenly from the cool mold out of which she had been digging lily-bulbs, had seen dogs. She had seen many dogs, and she had heard their howl, and she knew that always they traveled with man. She gave a deep, chesty sniff, and close after that sniff a hoof that startled the cubs like the lashing end of a whip. They rolled to her, and with two cuffs of the mother's huge paws they were headed in the right direction, and all three crashed off into the darkness. In spite of his swelling heart Peter let out a little yip. It was a great satisfaction, just at a moment when his nerves were getting unsteady, to discover that a monster like this one in the moonlight was anxious to run away from him. And Peter went on, a bit of pride and giantiness in his step, his bony tail a little higher. A mile farther on, in another yellow pool of the moon, lay the partly devoured carcass of a fawn. A wolf had killed it, and had fed, and now two giant owls were rending and tearing in the flesh and bowels of what the wolf had left. They were gargantuans of their kind, one a male, the other a female. Their talons, warm in blood, their beaks red, their slow brains drunk with a ravenous greed, they rose on their great wings in sullen rage when Peter came suddenly upon them. He had seized to be afraid of owls. There was something shivery in the gritting of their beaks, especially in the dark places, but they had never attacked him and had always kept out of his reach. So their presence in a black spruce top directly over the dead fawn did not hold him back now. He sniffed at the fresh, sweet meat and hunger all at once possessed him. Where the wolf had stripped open a tender flank he began to eat, and as he ate he growled, so that warning of his possessorship reached the spruce top. In answer to it came a stir of wings, and the male owl launched himself out into the moon glow. The female followed. For a few moments they floated like gray ghosts over Peter, silent as the night shadows. Then, with the suddenness and speed of a bolt from a catapult, the giant male shot out of a silvery mist of gloom and struck Peter. The two rolled over the carcass of the fawn, and for a space Peter was dazed by the thundering beat of powerful wings and the hammering of the owl's beak at the back of his neck. The male had missed his claw-hold and, driven by rage and ferocity, fought to impale his victim from the ground without launching himself into the air again. Swiftly he struck again and again, while his wings beat like clubs. Suddenly his talons sank into the cloth wrapped about Peter's neck. Terror and shock gave way to a fighting madness inside Peter now. He struck up and buried his fangs in a mass of feathers so thick he could not feel the flesh. He tore at the padded breast, snarling and beating with his feet, and then, as the stiletto points of the owl's talons sank through the cloth into his neck, his jaw closed on one of the huge bird's legs. His teeth sank deep, there was a snapping and grinding of tendon and bone, and a hissing squawk of pain and fear came from above him as the owl made a mighty effort to launch himself free. As the five-foot pinions beat the air, Peter was lifted from the ground. But the owl's talons were hopelessly entangled in the cloth, and the two fell in a heap again. Peter scarcely sensed what happened after that, except that he was struggling against death. He closed his eyes, and the leg between his jaws was broken and twisted into pulp. The wings beat about him in a deafening thunder, and the owl's beak tore at his flesh until the pool of moonlight in which they fought was red with blood. At last something gave way. There was a ghastly cry that was like the cry of neither bird nor beast, a weak flutter of wings, and gargantua of the air staggered up into the treetops and fell with a crash among the thick bows of the spruce. Peter raised himself weakly, the severed leg of the owl dropping from his jaws. He was half-blinded. Every muscle in his body seemed to be torn and bleeding, yet in his discomfort the thrilling conviction came to him that he had won. He tensed himself for another attack, hugging the ground closely as he watched and waited, but no attack came. He could hear the flutter and wheeze of his maimed adversary, and slowly he drew himself back, still facing the scene of battle until, in a farther patch of gloom, he turned once more to his business of following the trail of Jolly Roger McKay. There was no mark of bravado in his advance now. If he had possessed an overgrowing confidence, gargantua's attack had set it back, and he stole like a shifty fox through the night. Driven into his brain was the knowledge that all things were not afraid of him, for even the snapping beaks and floating gray shapes of which he had paid but little attention had now become a deadly menace. His egoism had suffered a jolt, a healthful reaction from its too swift ascendancy. He sensed the narrowness of his escape without the mental action of reasoning it out, and his injuries were secondary to the oppressive horror of the uncanny combat out of which he had come alive. Yet this horror was not a fear. Here, too, for, he had recognized the ghostly owl shapes of night more or less as a curious part of darkness, inspiring neither like nor dislike in him. Now he hated them, and ever after his fangs gleamed white when one of them floated over his head. He was badly hurt. There were ragged tears in his flank and back, and a last stroke of gargantua's talons had stabbed his shoulder to the bone. Blood dripped from him, and one of his eyes was closing so that shapes and shadows were grotesquely dim in the night. Instinct and caution, and the burning pains in his body, urged him to lie down in a thicket and wait for the day. But stronger than these were memory of the girl's urging voice, the vague thrill of the cloth still about his neck, and the freshness of Jolly Roger's trail as it kept straight on through the forest's moonlit corridors and caverns of gloom. It was in the first graying light of July dawn that Peter dragged himself up the rough side of a ridge and looked down into a narrow strip of plain on the other side. Just as Neda had given up in weakness and despair, so now he was almost ready to quit. He had traveled miles since the owl fight, and his wounds had stiffened and with every step gave him excruciating pain. His injured eye was entirely closed, and there was a strange dull ache in the back of his head where gargantua had pounded him with his beak. The strip of valley, half hidden in its silvery mist of dawn, seemed a long distance away to Peter, and he dropped on his belly and began to lick his raw shoulder with a feverish tongue. He was sick and tired, and the futility of going farther oppressed him. He looked again down into the strip of plain and whined. Then suddenly he smelled something that was not the musty fog mist that hung between the ridges. It was smoke. Peter's heart beat faster, and he pulled himself to his feet and went in its direction. Hidden in a little grassy cup between two great boulders that thrust themselves out from the face of the ridge, he found Jolly Roger. First he saw the smoldering embers of a fire that was almost out, and then his master. Jolly Roger was asleep. Storm beaten and strangely haggard and gray his face was turned to the sky. Peter did not awaken him. There was something in his master's face that quieted the low whimper in his throat. Very gently he crept to him and lay down. The movement, slight as it was, made the man stir. His hand rose and then fell limply across Peter's body. But the fingers moved. Unconsciously, as if guided by the spirit and prayer of the girl waiting far back in the forest, they twined about the cloth around Peter's neck, his message to his master. And for a long time after that, as the sun rose over a wonderful world, Peter and his master slept. End of chapter 8, recording by Jolly Roger Maline.