Then Yellow Bird called, and the girl went to her mother, and Jolly Roger hugged her in his arms and kissed her on the scarlet mouth she turned up to him. Then they hurried along the shore toward the fishing camp, the children racing ahead to tell the news, led by Sun Cloud–with Peter running at her heels.
Never had Peter heard anything from a man’s throat like the two yells that came from Slim Buck, Yellow Bird’s husband and chief of the tribe, after he had greeted Jolly Roger McKay. It was a note harking back to the old war trails of the Crees, and what followed it that night was most exciting to Peter. Big fires were built of white driftwood, and there was singing and dancing, and a great deal of laughter and eating, and the interminable howling of half a hundred Siwash dogs. Peter did not like the dogs, but he did no fighting because his love for Sun Cloud kept him close to the touch of her little brown hand.
That night, in the glow of the big fire outside of Slim Buck’s tepee, Jolly Roger’s heart thrilled with a pleasure which it had not known for a long time. He loved to look at Yellow Bird. Five years had not changed her. Her eyes were starry bright. Her teeth were like milk. The color still came and went in her brown cheeks, even as it did in Sun Cloud’s. All of which, in this heart of a wilderness, meant that she had been happy and prosperous. And he also loved to look at Sun Cloud, who possessed all of that rare wildflower beauty sometimes given to the northern Crees. And it did him good to look at Slim Buck. He was a splendid mate, and a royal father, and Jolly Roger found himself strangely happy in their happiness. In the eyes of men and women and little children he saw that happiness all about him. For three winters there had been splendid trapping, Slim Buck told him, and this season they had caught and dried enough fish to carry them through the following winter, even if black days should come. His people were rich. They had many warm blankets, and good clothes, and the best of tepees and guns and sledges, and several treasures besides. Two of these Yellow Bird and her husband disclosed to Jolly Roger this first night. One of them was a sewing machine, and the other–a phonograph! And Jolly Roger listened to “Mother Machree” and “The Rosary” that night as he sat by Wollaston Lake with six hundred miles of wilderness between him and Cragg’s Ridge.
Later, when the camp slept, Yellow Bird and Slim Buck and Jolly Roger still sat beside the red embers of their fire, and Jolly Roger told of what had happened down at the edge of civilization. It was what his heart needed, and he left out none of the details. Slim Buck was listening, but Jolly Roger knew he was talking straight at Yellow Bird, and that her warm heart was full of understanding. Softly, in that low Cree voice which is the sweetest of all voices, she asked him many questions about Nada, and gently her slim fingers caressed the tress of Nada’s hair which he let her take in her hands. And after a long time, she said.
“I have given her a name. She is Oo-Mee, the Pigeon.”
Slim Buck started at the strange note in her voice.
“The Pigeon,” he repeated,
“Yes, Oo-Mee, the Pigeon,” Yellow Bird nodded. She was not looking at them. In the firelight her eyes were glowing pools. Her body had grown a little tense. Without asking Jolly Roger’s permission she placed the tress of Nada’s hair in her bosom. “Oo-Mee, the Pigeon,” she said again, looking far away. “That is her name, because the Pigeon flies fast and straight and true. Over forests and lakes and worlds the Pigeon flies. It is tireless. It is swift. It always–flies home.”
Slim Buck rose quietly to his feet.
“Come,” he whispered, looking at Jolly Roger,
Yellow Bird did not look at them or speak to them, and Slim Buck– with his hand on Jolly Roger’s arm–pulled him gently away. In his eyes was a little something of fear, and yet along with it a sublime faith.
“Her spirit will be with Oo-Mee, the Pigeon, tonight,” he said in a voice struck with awe. “It will go to this place which you have described, and it will live in the body of the girl, and through Yellow Bird it will tell you tomorrow what has happened, and what is going to happen.”
In the edge of the shore-willows Jolly Roger stood for a time watching Yellow Bird as she sat under the stars, motionless as a figure graven out of stone. He felt a curious tingling at his heart, something stirring uneasily in his breast, and he stood alone even after Slim Buck had stretched himself out in the soft sand to sleep. He was not superstitious. Yet it was equally a part of his philosophy and his creed to believe in the overwhelming power of the mind. “If you have faith enough, and think hard enough, you can think anything until it comes true,” he had told himself more than once. And he knew Yellow Bird possessed that illimitable faith, and that behind her divination lay generations and centuries of an unbreakable certainty in the power of mind over matter. He realized his own limitations, but a mysterious voice in the still night seemed whispering to him that in the crude wisdom of Yellow Bird’s brain lay the secret to strange achievement, and that on this night her mind might perform for him what he, in his greater wisdom, would call a miracle. He had seen things like that happen. And he sat down in the sand, sleepless, and with Peter at his feet waited for Yellow Bird to stir.
He could see the dull shimmer of starlight in her hair, but the rest of her was a shadow that gave no sign of life. The camp was asleep. Even the dogs were buried in their wallows of sand, and the last red spark of the fires had died out. The hour passed, and another hour followed, and the lids of Jolly Roger’s eyes grew heavier as the fading stars seemed to be sinking deeper into infinity. At last he slept, with his back leaning against a sand- dune the children had made. He dreamed, and was flying through the air with Yellow Bird. She was traveling swift and straight, like an arrow, and he had difficulty in keeping up with her, and at last he cried out for her to wait–that he could go no farther. The cry roused him. He opened his eyes, and found cool, gray dawn in the sky. Peter, alert, was muzzling his hand. Slim Buck lay in the sand, still asleep. There was no stir in the camp. And then, with a sudden catch in his breath, he looked toward Yellow Bird’s tepee.
Yellow Bird still sat in the sand. Through the hours of fading starlight and coming dawn she had not moved. Slowly McKay rose to his feet. When he came to her, making no sound, she looked up. The shimmer of glistening dew was in her hair. Her long lashes were wet with it. Her face was very pale, and her eyes so large and dark that for a moment they startled him. She was tired. Exhaustion was in her slim, limp body.
A sigh came from her lips, and her shoulders swayed a little.
“Sit down, Neekewa,” she whispered, drawing the ropes of her hair about her as if she were cold.
Then she drew a slim hand over her eyes, and shivered.
“It is well, Neekewa,” she spoke softly. “I have gone through the clouds to where lives Oo-Mee, the Pigeon. I found her crying in a trail. I whispered to her and happiness came, and that happiness is going to live–for Neekewa and The Pigeon. It cannot die. It cannot be killed. The Red Coated men of the Great White Father will never destroy it. You will live. She will live. You will meet again–in happiness. And happiness will follow ever after. That much I learned, Neekewa. In happiness–you will meet again.”
“Where? When?” whispered Jolly Roger, his heart beating with sudden swiftness.
Again Yellow Bird passed her hand over her eyes, and as she held it there for a moment she bowed her head until Jolly Roger could see only her dew-wet hair and she said,
“In the Country Beyond, Neekewa.”
Her eyes were looking at him again, big, dark and filled with mystery.
“And where is this country, Yellow Bird?” he asked, a strange chill driving the warmth out of his heart. “You mean–up there?” And he pointed to the gray sky above them.
“No, it is happiness to come in life, not in death,” said Yellow Bird slowly. “It is not beyond the stars. It is–“
He waited, leaning toward her.
“In the Country Beyond,” she repeated with a tired little droop of her head. “And where that is I do not know, Neekewa. I could not pass beyond the great white cloud that shut me out. But it is– somewhere, I will find it. And then I will tell you–and The Pigeon.”
She stood up, and swayed in the gray light, like one worn out by hard travel. Then she passed into the tepee, and Jolly Roger heard her fall on her blanket-bed.
And still stranger whisperings filled his heart as he faced the east, where the first red blush of day drove back the star-mists of dawn. He heard a step in the soft sand, and Slim Buck stood beside him. And he asked.
“Did you ever hear of the Country Beyond?” Slim Buck shook his head, and both looked in silence toward the rising sun.
Peter was glad when the camp roused itself out of sleep with waking voices, and laughter, and the building of fires. He waited eagerly for Sun Cloud. At last she came out of Yellow Bird’s tepee, rubbing her eyes in the face of the glow in the east, and then her white teeth flashed a smile of welcome at him. Together they ran down to the edge of the lake, and Peter wagged his tail while Sun Cloud went out knee-deep and scrubbed her pretty face with handfuls of the cool water. It was a happy day for him. He was different from the Indian dogs, and Sun Cloud and her playmates made much of him. But never, even in their most exciting play, did he entirely lose track of his master.
Jolly Roger, to an extent, forgot Peter. He tried to deaden within him the impulses which Yellow Bird’s conjuring had roused. He tried to see in them a menace and a danger, and he repeated to himself the folly of placing credence in Yellow Bird’s “medicine.” But his efforts were futile, and he was honest enough to admit it. The uneasiness was in his breast. A new hope was rising up. And with that hope were fear and suspense, for deep in him was growing stronger the conviction that what Yellow Bird would tell him would be true. He noted the calm and dignified stiffness with which Slim Buck greeted the day. The young chief passed quietly among his people. A word traveled in whispers, voices and footsteps were muffled and before the sun was an hour high there was no tepee standing but one on that white strip of beach. And the one tepee was Yellow Bird’s,
Not until the camp was gone, leaving her alone, did Yellow Bird come out into the day. She saw the food placed at her tepee door. She saw the empty places where the homes of her people had stood, and in the wet sand of the beach the marks of their missing canoes. Then she turned her pale face and tired eyes to the sun, and unbraided her hair so that it streamed glistening all about her and covered the white sand when she sat down again in front of the smoke-darkened canvas that had become her conjurer’s house.
Two miles up the beach Slim Buck’s people made another camp. But Slim Buck and Jolly Roger remained in the cover of a wooded headland only half a mile from Yellow Bird. They saw her when she came out. They watched for an hour after she sat down in the sand. And then Slim Buck grunted, and with a gesture of his hands said they would go. Jolly Roger protested. It was not safe for Yellow Bird to remain entirely beyond their protection. There were bears prowling about. And human beasts occasionally found their way through the wilderness. But Slim Buck’s face was like a bronze carving in its faith and pride.
“Yellow Bird only goes with the good spirits,” he assured Jolly Roger. “She does not do witchcraft with the bad. And no harm can come while the good spirits are with her. It is thus she has brought us happiness and prosperity since the days of the famine, Neekewa!”
He spoke these words in Cree, and McKay answered him in Cree as they turned in the direction of the camp. Half way, Sun Cloud came to meet them, with Peter at her side. She put a brown little hand in Jolly Roger’s. It was quite new and pleasant to be kissed as Jolly Roger had kissed her, and she held up her mouth to him again. Then she ran ahead, with Peter yipping foolishly and happily at her moccasined heels.
And Jolly Roger said,
“I wish I was your brother, Slim Buck, and Nada was Yellow Bird’s sister–and that I had many like her,” and his eyes followed Sun Cloud with hungry yearning.
And as he said these words, Yellow Bird sat with bowed head and closed eyes, with the soft tress of Nada’s hair in her hands. It was the physical union between them, and all that day, and the night that followed, Yellow Bird held it in her hand or against her breast as she struggled to send out the soul that was in her on its mission to Oo-Mee the Pigeon. In darkness she buried the food that was left her, and stamped on it with her feet. The sacrifice of her body had begun, and for two days thereafter Jolly Roger and Slim Buck saw no movement of life about the lone tepee in the sand.
But the third morning they saw the smoke of a little greenwood fire rising straight up from in front of it.
Slim Buck drew in a deep breath. It was the signal fire.
“She knows,” he said, pointing for Jolly Roger to go. “She is calling you!”
The tenseness was gone from the bronze muscles of his face. He was lonely without Yellow Bird, and the signal fire meant she would be with him again soon. Jolly Roger walked swiftly over the white beach. Again he tried to tell himself what folly it all was, and that he was answering the signal-fire only to humor Yellow Bird and Slim Buck. But words, even spoken half aloud, did not quiet the eager beating of his heart.
Not until he was very near did Yellow Bird come out of the tepee. And it was then Jolly Roger stopped short, a gasp on his lips. She was changed. Her radiant hair was still down, polished smooth; but her face was whiter than he had ever seen it, and drawn and pinched almost as in the days of the famine. For two days and two nights she had taken no food, and for two days and two nights she had not slept. But there was triumph in her big, wide-open eyes, and Jolly Roger felt something strange rising up in his breast.
Yellow Bird held out her hands toward him.
“We have been together, The Pigeon and I,” she said. “We have slept in each other’s arms, and the warmth of her head has lain against my breast. I have learned the secrets, Neekewa–all but one. The spirits will not tell me where lies the Country Beyond. But it is not up there–beyond the stars. It is not in death, but in life you will find it. That they have told me. And you must not go back to where The Pigeon lives, for you will find black desolation there–but always you must keep on and on, seeking for the Country Beyond. You will find it. And there also you will find The Pigeon–and happiness. You cannot fail, Neekewa, yet my heart stings me that I cannot tell you where that strange country is. But when I came to it gold and silver clouds shut it in, and I could see nothing, and yet out of it came the singing of birds and the promise of sweet voices that it shall be found–if you seek faithfully, Neekewa. I am glad.”
Each word that she spoke in her soft and tremulous Cree was a new message of hope in the empty heart of Jolly Roger McKay. The world might laugh. Men might tap their heads and smile. His own voice might argue and taunt. But deep in his heart he believed.
Something of the radiance of the new day came into his face, even as it was returning into Yellow Bird’s. He looked about him–east, west, north and south–upon the sunlit glory of water and earth, and suddenly he reached out his arms.
“I’ll find it, Yellow Bird,” he cried. “I’ll find this place you call the Country Beyond! And when I do–“
He turned and took one of Yellow Bird’s slim hands in both his own.
“And when I do, we’ll come back to you, Yellow Bird,” he said.
And like a cavalier of old he touched his lips gently to the palm of Yellow Bird’s little brown hand.
CHAPTER XI
Days of new hope and gladness followed in the camp of Yellow Bird and Slim Buck. It was as if McKay, after a long absence, had come back to his own people. The tenderness of mother and sister lay warm in Yellow Bird’s breast. Slim Buck loved him as a brother. The wrinkled faces of the old softened when he came near and spoke to them; little children followed him, and at dusk and dawn Sun Cloud held up her mouth to be kissed. For the first time in years McKay felt as if he had found home. The northland Indian Summer held the world in its drowsy arms, and the sun-filled days and the starry nights seemed overflowing with the promise of all time. Each day he put off his going until tomorrow, and each day Slim Buck urged him to remain with them always.
But in Yellow Bird’s eyes was a strange, quiet mystery, and she did not urge. Each day and night she was watching–and waiting.
And at last that for which she watched and waited came to pass.
It was night, a dark, still night with a creeping restlessness in it. This restlessness was like the ghostly pulse of a great living body, still for a time, then moving, hiding, whispering between the clouds in the sky and the deeper shadowed earth below. A night of uneasiness, of unseen forces chained and stifled, of impending doubt and oppressive lifelessness.
There was no wind, yet under the stars gray masses of cloud sped as if in flight.
There was no breeze in the treetops, yet they whispered and sighed.
In the strange spell of this midnight, heavy with its unrest, the wilderness lay half asleep, half awake, with the mysterious stillness of death enshrouding it.
At the edge of the white sands of Wollaston, whose broad water was like oil tonight, stood the tepees of Yellow Bird’s people. Smoke- blackened and seasoned by wind and rain they were dark blotches sentineling the shore of the big lake. Behind them, beyond the willows, were the Indian dogs. From them came an occasional whine, a deep sigh, the snapping of a jaw, and in the gloom their bodies moved restlessly. In the tepees was the spell of this same unrest. Sleep was never quite sure of itself. Men, women and little children twisted and rolled, or lay awake, and weird and distorted shapes and fancies came in dreams.
In her tepee Yellow Bird lay with her eyes wide open, staring at the gray blur of the smoke hole above. Her husband was asleep. Sun Cloud, tossing on her blankets, had flung one of her long braids so that it lay across her mother’s breast. Yellow Bird’s slim fingers played with its silken strands as she looked straight up into nothingness. Wide awake, she was thinking–thinking as Slim Buck–would never be able to think, back to the days when a white woman had been her goddess, and when a little white boy–the woman’s son–had called Yellow Bird “my fairy.”
In the gloom, with foreboding eating at her heart, Yellow Bird’s red lips parted in a smile as those days came back to her, for they were pleasing days to think about. But after that the years sped swiftly in her mind until the day when the little boy–a man grown–came to save her tribe, and her own life, and the life of Sun Cloud, and of Slim Buck her husband. Since then prosperity and happiness had been her lot. The spirits had been good. They had not let her grow old, but had kept her still beautiful. And Sun Cloud, her little daughter, was beautiful, and Slim Buck was more than ever her god among men, and her people were happy. And all this she owed to the man who was sleeping under the gloom of the sky outside, the hunted man, the outlaw, “the little boy grown up”–Jolly Roger McKay.
As she listened, and stared up at the smoke hole, strange spirits were whispering to her, and Yellow Bird’s blood ran a little faster and her eyes grew bigger and brighter in the darkness. They seemed to be accusing her. They told her it was because of her that Roger McKay had come in that winter of starvation and death, and had robbed and almost killed, that she and Slim Buck and little Sun Cloud might live. That was the beginning, and the thrill of it had got into the blood of Neekewa, her “little white brother grown up.” And now he was out there, alone with his dog in the night–and the red-coated avengers of the law were hunting him. They wanted him for many things, but chiefly for the killing of a man.
Yellow Bird sat up, her little hands clenched about the thick braid of Sun Cloud’s hair. She had conjured with the spirits and had let the soul go out of her body that she might learn the future for Neekewa, her white brother. And they had told her that Roger McKay had done right to think of killing.
Their voices had whispered to her that he would not suffer more than he had already suffered–and that in the Country Beyond he would find Nada the white girl, and happiness, and peace. Yellow Bird did not disbelieve. Her faith was illimitable. The spirits would not lie. But the unrest of the night was eating at her heart. She tried to lift herself to the whisperings above the tepee top. But they were unintelligible, like many voices mingling, and with them came a dull fear into her soul.
She put out a hand, as if to rouse Slim Buck. Then she drew it back, and placed Sun Cloud’s braid away from her. She rose to her feet so quietly that even in their restlessness they did not fully awake. Through the tepee door she went, and stood up straight in the night, as if now she might hear more clearly, and understand.
For a space she breathed in the oppressive something that was in the air, and her eyes went east and west for sign of storm. But there was no threat of storm. The clouds were drifting slowly and softly, with starlight breaking through their rifts, and there was no moan of thunder or wail of wind far away. Her heart, for a little, seemed to stop its beating, and her hands clasped tightly at her breast. She began to understand, and a strange thrill crept into her. The spirits had put a great burden upon the night so that it might drive sleep from her eyes. They were warning her. They were telling her of danger, approaching swiftly, almost impending. And it was peril for the white man who was sleeping somewhere near.
Swiftly she began seeking for him, her naked little brown feet making no sound in the soft white sands of Wollaston.
And as she sought, the clouds thinned out above, and the stars shone through more clearly, as if to make easier for her the quest in the gloom.
Where he had made his bed of blankets in the sand, close beside a flat mass of water-washed sandstone, Jolly Roger lay half asleep. Peter was wide awake. His eyes gleamed brightly and watchfully. His lank and bony body was tense and alert. He did not whine or snap his jaws, though he heard the Indian dogs occasionally doing so. The comradeship of a fugitive, ever on the watch for his fellow men, had made him silent and velvet-footed, and had sharpened his senses to the keenness of knives. He, too, felt the impelling force of an approaching menace in this night of stillness and mystery, and he watched closely the restless movements of his master’s body, and listened with burning eyes to the name which he had spoken three times in the last five minutes of his sleep.
It was Nada’s name, and as Jolly Roger cried it out softly in the old way, as if Nada was standing before them, he reached out, and his hands struck the sandstone rock. His eyes opened, and slowly he sat up. The sky had cleared of clouds, and there was starlight, and in that starlight Jolly Roger saw a figure standing near him in the sand. At first he thought it was Sun Cloud, for Peter stood with his head raised to her. Then he saw it was Yellow Bird, with her beautiful eyes looking at him steadily and strangely as he awakened.
He got upon his feet and went to her, and took one of her hands. It was cold. He felt the shiver that ran through her slim body, and suddenly her eyes swept from him out into the night.
“Listen, Neekewa!”
Her fingers tightened in his hand. For a space he could hear the beating of her heart.
“Twice I have heard it,” she whispered then. “Neekewa, you must go!”
“Heard what?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“Something–I don’t know what. But it tells me there is danger. And I saw danger over the tepee top, and I have heard whisperings of it all about me. It is coming. It is coming slowly and cautiously. It is very near. Hark, Neekewa! Was that not a sound out on the water?”
“I think it was the wing of a duck, Yellow Bird.”
“And THAT!” she cried swiftly, her fingers tightening still more. “That sound–as if wood strikes on wood!”
“The croak of a loon far up the shore, Yellow Bird.”
She drew her hand away.
“Neekewa, listen to me,” she importuned him in Cree. “The spirits have made this night heavy with warning. I could not sleep. Sun Cloud twitches and moans. Slim Buck whispers to himself. You were crying out the name of Nada–Oo-Mee the Pigeon–when I came to you. I know. It is danger. It is very near. And it is danger for you.”
“And only a short time ago you were confident happiness and peace were coming to me, Yellow Bird,” reminded Jolly Roger. “The spirits, you said, promised the law should never get me, and I would find Nada again in that strange place you called the Country Beyond. Have the spirits changed their message, because the night is heavy?”
Yellow Bird’s eyes were staring into darkness.
“No, they have not changed,” she whispered. “They have spoken the truth. They want to tell me more, but for some reason it is impossible. They have tried to tell me where lies this place they call the Country Beyond–where you will again find Oo-Mee the Pigeon. But a cloud always comes between. And they are trying to tell me what the danger is off there–in the darkness.” Suddenly she caught his arm. “Nee-kewa, DID YOU HEAR?”
“A fish leaping in the still water, Yellow Bird.”
He heard a low whimper in Peter’s throat, and looking down he saw Peter’s muzzle pointing toward the thick cloud of gloom over the lake.
“What is it, Pied-Bot?” he asked.
Peter whimpered again.
Jolly Roger touched the cold hand that rested on his arm.
“Go back to your bed, Yellow Bird. There is only one danger for me–the red-coated police. And they do not travel in the dark hours of a night like this.”
“They are coming,” she replied. “I cannot hear or see, but they are coming!”
Her fingers tightened.
“And they are near,” she cried softly.
“You are nervous, Yellow Bird,” he said, thinking of the two days and three nights of her conjuring, when she had neither slept nor taken food, that she might more successfully commune with the spirits. “There is no danger. The night is a hard one for sleep. It has frightened you.”
“It has warned me,” she persisted, standing as motionless as a statue at his side. “Neekewa, the spirits do not forget. They have not forgotten that winter when you came, and my people were dying of famine and sickness–when I dreaded to see little Sun Cloud close her eyes even in sleep, fearing she would never open them again. They have not forgotten how all that winter you robbed the white people over on the Des Chenes, that we might live. If they remember those things, and lie, I would not be afraid to curse them. But they do not lie.”
Jolly Roger McKay did not answer. Deep down in him that strange something was at work again, compelling him to believe Yellow Bird. She did not look at him, but in her low Cree voice, soft as the mellow notes of a bird, she was saying:
“You will be going very soon, Neekewa, and I shall not see you again for a long time. Do not forget what I have told you. And you must believe. Somewhere there is this place called the Country Beyond. The spirits have said so. And it is there you will find your Oo-Mee the Pigeon–and happiness. But if you go back to the place where you left The Pigeon when you fled from the red-coated men of the law, you will find only blackness and desolation. Believe, and you shall be guided. If you disbelieve–“
She stopped.
“You heard that, Neekewa? It was not the wing of a duck, nor was it the croak of a loon far up the shore, or a fish leaping in the still water. IT WAS A PADDLE!”
In the star-gloom Jolly Roger McKay bowed his head, and listened.
“Yes, a paddle,” he said, and his voice sounded strange to him. “Probably it is one of your people returning to camp, Yellow Bird.”
She turned toward him, and stood very near. Her hands reached out to him. Her hair and eyes were filled with the velvety glow of the stars, and for an instant he saw the tremble of her parted lips.
“Goodby, Neekewa,” she whispered.
And then, without letting her hands touch him, she was gone. Swiftly she ran to Slim Buck’s tepee, and entered, and very soon she came out again with Slim Buck beside her. Jolly Roger did not move, but watched as Yellow Bird and her husband went down to the edge of the lake, and stood there, waiting for the strange canoe to pass–or come in. It was approaching. Slowly it came up, an indistinct shadow at first, but growing clearer, until at last he could see the silhouette of it against the star-silvered water beyond. There were two people in it. Before the canoe reached the shore Slim Buck stood out knee-deep in the water and hailed it.
A voice answered. And at the sound of that voice McKay dropped like a shot beside Peter, and Peter’s lips curled up, and he snarled. His master’s hand warned him, and together they slipped back into the shadows, and from under a piece of canvas Jolly Roger dragged forth his pack, and quietly strapped it over his shoulders while he waited and listened.
And then, as he heard the voice again, he grinned, and chuckled softly.
“It’s Cassidy, Pied-Bot! We can’t lose that redheaded fox, can we?”
A good humored deviltry lay in his eyes, and Peter–looking up– thought for a moment his master was laughing. Then Jolly Roger made a megaphone of his hands, and called very clearly out into the night.
“Ho, Cassidy! Is that you, Cassidy?”
Peter’s heart was choking him as he listened. He sensed a terrific danger. There was no sound at the edge of the lake. There was no sound anywhere. For a few moments a death-like stillness followed Jolly Roger’s words.
Then a voice came in answer, each word cutting the gloom with the decisive clearness of a bullet coming from a gun.
“Yes, this is Cassidy–Corporal Terence Cassidy, of ‘M’ Division, Royal Northwest Mounted Police. Is that you, McKay?”
“Yes, it’s me,” replied Jolly Roger. “Does the wager still hold, Cassidy?”
“It holds.”
There was a shadowy movement on the beach. The voice came again.
“Watch yourself, McKay. If I see you I shall fire!”
With drawn gun Cassidy rushed toward the spot where Jolly Roger and Peter had stood. It was empty now, except for the bit of old canvas. Cassidy’s Indian came up and stood behind him, and for many minutes they listened for the crackling of brush. Slim Buck joined them, and last came Yellow Bird, her dark eyes glowing like pools of fire in their excitement. Cassidy looked at her, marveling at her beauty, and suspicious of something that was in her face. He went back to the beach. There he caught himself short, astonishment bringing a sharp exclamation from his lips.
His canoe and outfit were gone!
Out of the star-gloom behind him floated a soft ripple of laughter as Yellow Bird ran to her tepee.
And from the mist of water–far out–came a voice, the voice of Jolly Roger McKay.
“Goodby, Cassidy!”
With it mingled the defiant bark of a dog.
In her tepee, a moment later, Yellow Bird drew Sun Cloud’s glossy head close against her warm breast, and turned her radiant face up thankfully to the smoke hole in the tepee top, through which the spirits had whispered their warning to her. Indistinctly, and still farther away, her straining ears heard again the cry,
“Goodby, Cassidy!”
CHAPTER XII
In Cassidy’s canoe, driving himself with steady strokes deeper into the mystery of the starlit waters of Wollaston, Jolly Roger felt the night suddenly filled with an exhilarating tonic. Its deadness was gone. Its weight had lifted. A ripple broke the star gleams where an increasing breeze touched the surface of the lake. And the thrill of adventure stirred in his blood. He laughed as he put his skill and strength in the sweep of his paddle, and for a time the thought that he was an outlaw, and in losing Nada had lost everything in life worth righting for, was not so oppressive. It was the old, joyous laugh, stirred by his sense of humor, and the trick he had played on Cassidy. He could imagine Cassidy back on the shore, his temper redder than his hair as he cursed and tore up the sand in his search for another canoe.
“We’re inseparable,” Jolly Roger explained to Peter. “Wherever I go, Cassidy is sure to follow. You see, it’s this way. A long time ago someone gave Cassidy what they call an assignment, and in that assignment it says ‘go get Jolly Roger McKay, dead or alive’–or something to that effect. And Cassidy has been on the job ever since. But he can’t quite catch up with me, Pied-Bot. I’m always a little ahead.”
And yet, even as he laughed, there was in Jolly Roger’s heart a yearning to which he had never given voice. Half a dozen times he might have killed Cassidy, and an equal number of times Cassidy might have killed him. But neither had taken advantage of the opportunity to destroy. They had played the long and thrilling game like men, and because of the fairness and sportsmanship of the man who hunted him Jolly Roger thought of Cassidy as he might have thought of a brother, and more than once he yearned to go to him, and hold out his hand in friendship. Yet he knew Corporal Cassidy was the deadliest menace the earth held for him, a menace that had followed him like a shadow through months and years– across the Barren Lands, along the rim of the Arctic, down the Mackenzie, and back again–a menace that never tired, and was never far behind in that ten thousand miles of wilderness they had covered. Together in the bloodstirring game of One against One they had faced the deadliest perils of the northland. They had gone hungry, and cold, and more than once a thousand miles of nothingness lay behind them, and death seemed preferable to anything that might lie ahead. Yet in that aloneness, when companionship was more precious than anything else on earth, neither had cried quits. The game had gone on, Cassidy after his man–and Jolly Roger McKay fighting for his freedom.
As he headed his canoe north and east, Jolly Roger thought again of the wager made weeks ago down at Cragg’s Ridge, when he had turned the tables on Cassidy and when Cassidy had made a solemn oath to resign from the service if he failed to get his man in their next encounter. He knew Cassidy would keep his word, and something told him that tonight the last act in this tragedy of two had begun. He chuckled again as he pictured the probable course of events on shore. Cassidy, backed by the law, was demanding another canoe and a necessary outfit of Slim Buck. Slim Buck, falling back on his tribal dignity, was killing all possible time in making the preparations. When pursuit was resumed Jolly Roger would have at least a mile the start of the red-headed nemesis who hung to his trail. And Wollaston Lake, sixty miles from end to end, and half as wide, offered plenty of room in which to find safety.
The rising of the wind, which came from the south and west, was pleasing to Jolly Roger, and he put less caution and more force into the sweep of his paddle. For two hours he kept steadily eastward, and then swung a little north, guiding himself by the stars. With the breaking of dawn he made out the thickly wooded shore on the opposite side of the lake from Slim Buck’s camp, and before the sun was half an hour high he had drawn up his canoe at the tip of a headland which gave him a splendid view of the lake in all directions.
From this point, comfortably encamped in the cool shadows of a thick clump of spruce, Jolly Roger and Peter watched all that day for a sign of their enemy. As far as the eye could reach no movement of human life appeared on the quiet surface of Wollaston. Not until that hazy hour between sunset and dusk did he build a fire and cook a meal from the supplies in Cassidy’s pack, for he knew smoke could be discerned much farther than a canoe. Yet even as he observed this caution he was confident there was no longer any danger in returning to Yellow Bird and her people.
“You see, Pied-Bot,” he said, discussing the matter with Peter, while he smoked a pipeful of tobacco in the early evening, “Cassidy thinks we’re on our way north, as fast as we can go. He’ll hit for the upper end of the Lake and the Black River waterway, and keep right on into the Porcupine country. It’s a big country up there, and we’ve always taken plenty of space for our travels. Shall we go back to Yellow Bird, Peter? And Sun Cloud?”
Peter tried to answer, and thumped his tail, but even as he asked the questions there was a doubt growing in Jolly Roger’s mind. He wanted to go back, and as darkness gathered about him he was urged by a great loneliness. Only Yellow Bird grieved with him in his loss of Nada, and understood how empty life had become for him. She had, in a way, become a part of Nada; her presence raised him out of despair, her voice gave him hope, her unconquerable spirit –fighting for his happiness–inspired him until he saw light where there had been only darkness. The impelling desire to return to her brought him to his feet and down to the pebbly shore of the lake, where the water rippled softly in the thickening gloom. But a still more powerful force held him back, and he went to his blankets, spread over a thick couch of balsam boughs. For hours his eyes were wide open and sleepless.
He no longer thought of Cassidy, but of Yellow Bird. Doubt–a charitable inclination to half believe–gave way in him to a conviction which he could not fight down. More than once in his years of wilderness life strange facts had compelled him to give some credence to the power of the Indian conjurer. Belief in the mastery of the mind was part of his faith in nature. It had come to him from his mother, who had lived and died in the strength of her creed.
“Think hard, and with faith, if you want anything to come true,” she had told him. And this was also Yellow Bird’s creed. Was it possible she had told him the truth? Had her mind actually communed with the mind of Nada? Had she, through the sheer force of her illimitable faith, projected her subconscious self into the future that she might show him the way? His eyes were staring, his ears unhearing, as he thought of the proof which Yellow Bird had given to him. A few hours ago she had brought him warning of impending danger. There had been no hesitation and no doubt. She had come to him unequivocal and sure. Without seeing, without hearing, she knew Cassidy was stealing upon him through the night.
In the darkness Jolly Roger sat up, his heart beating fast. Without effort, and with no thought of the necessity of proof, Yellow Bird had given him a test of her power. It had been a spontaneous and unstaged thing, a woman’s heart reaching out for him–as she had promised that it would. And yet, even as the simplicity and truth of it pressed upon him, doubt followed with its questions. If, after this, Yellow Bird had told him to return to Nada as swiftly as he could, he would have believed, and this night would have seen him on his way. But she had warned him against this, predicting desolation and grief if he returned. She had urged him to go on, somewhere, anywhere, seeking for an illusion and an unreality which the spirits had named, to her as the Country Beyond. And when he reached this Country Beyond, wherever it might be, he would possess Nada again, and happiness for all time. After all, there was something archaically crude in what he was trying to believe, when he came to analyze it. Yellow Bird possessed her powers, but they were definitely limited. And to believe beyond those limitations, to ride upon the wings of superstition and imagination, was sheer savagery.
Jolly Roger stretched himself upon his blankets again, repeating this final argument to himself. But as the night drew closer about him, and his eyes closed, and sleep came, there was a lightness in his heart which he had not known for many days. He dreamed, and his dream was of Nada. He was with her again and it seemed, in this dream, that Yellow Bird was always watching them, and they could not quite get away from her. They ran through the jackpine openings where the strawberries and blue violets grew, and he always ran behind Nada, so he could see her brown curls flying about her.
But they never could rid themselves of Yellow Bird, no matter how fast they ran or where they tried to hide. From somewhere Yellow Bird’s dark eyes would look out at them, and finally, laughing at his own discomfiture, he drew Nada down beside him in a little fen, white and yellow and blue with wildflowers, and boldly took her head in his arms and kissed her–with Yellow Bird looking at them from behind a banksian clump twenty feet away. So real was the kiss, and so real the warm pressure of Nada’s slim arms about his neck that he awoke with a glad cry–and sat up to find the dawn had come.
For a few moments he sat stupidly, looking about him as if not quite believing the unreality of it all. Then with Peter he went down to the edge of the lake.
All that day Peter sensed a quiet change in his master. Jolly Roger did not talk. He did not whistle or laugh, but moved quietly when he moved at all, with a set, strange look in his face. He was making his last big fight against the desire to return to Cragg’s Ridge. Yellow Bird’s predictions, and her warning, had no influence with him now. He was thinking of Nada alone. She was back there, waiting for him, praying for his return, ready and happy to become a fugitive with him–to accept her chances of life or death, of happiness or grief, in his company. A dozen times the determination to return for her almost won. But each time came the other picture–a vision of ceaseless flight, of hiding, of hunger and cold and never ending hardship, and at the last, inevitable as the dawning of another day–prison, and possibly the hangman.
Not until late that afternoon did Peter see the old Jolly Roger in the face of his master. And Jolly Roger said:
“We’ve made up our mind, Pied-Bot. We can’t go back. We’ll hit north and spend the winter along the edge of the Barren Lands. It’s the biggest country I know of, and if Cassidy comes–“
He shrugged his shoulders grimly.
In half an hour they had started, with the sun beginning to sink in the west.
For two days Jolly Roger and Peter paddled their way slowly up the eastern shore of Wollaston. That he had correctly analyzed the mental arguments which would guide Cassidy in his pursuit Jolly Roger had little doubt. He would keep to the west shore, and up through the Hatchet Lake and Black River waterways, as his quarry had never failed to hit straight for the farther north in time of peril. Meanwhile Jolly Roger had decided to make his way without haste up the east shore of Wollaston, and paddle north and east through the Du Brochet and Thiewiaza River waterways. If these courses were followed, each hour would add to the distance between them, and when the way was safe they would head straight for the Barren Lands.
Peter, and only Peter, sensed the glory of that third afternoon when they paddled slowly ashore close to the shimmering stream of spring water that was called Limping Moose Creek. The sun was still two hours high in the west. There was no wind, and Wollaston was like a mirror; yet in the still air was the clean, cool tang of early autumn, and shoreward the world reached out in ridges and billows of tinted forests, with a September haze pulsing softly over them, fleecy as the misty shower of a lady’s powder puff. It was destined to be a memorable afternoon for Peter, a going down of the sun that he would never forget as long as he lived.
Yet there was no warning of the thing impending, and his eyes saw only the mystery and wonder of the big world, and his ears heard only the drowsing murmur of it, and his nose caught only the sweet scents of cedars and balsams and of flowering and ripening things. Straight ahead, beyond the white shore line, was a low ridge, and this ridge–where it was not purple and black with the evergreen– was red with the crimson blotches of mountain-ash berries, and patches of fire flowers that glowed like flame in the setting sun.
From out of this paradise, as they drew near to it, came softly the voice and song of birds and the chatter of red squirrels. A big jay was screeching over it all, and between the first ridge and the second–which rose still higher beyond it–a cloud of crows were circling excitedly over a mother black bear and her half grown cubs as they feasted on the red ash berries. But Peter could not smell the bears, nor hear them, and the distant crows were of less interest than the wonder and mystery of the shore close at hand.
He turned from his place in the bow of the canoe, and looked at his master. There was little of inspiration in Jolly Roger’s face or eyes. The glory of the world ahead gave him no promise, as it gave promise to Peter. Beyond what he could see there lay, for him, a vast emptiness, a chaos of loneliness, an eternity of shattered hopes and broken dreams. Love of life was gone out of him. He saw no beauty. The sun had changed. The sky was different. The bigness of his wilderness no longer thrilled him, but oppressed him.
Peter sensed sharply the change in his master without knowing the reason for it. Just as the world had changed for Jolly Roger, so Jolly Roger had changed for Peter.
They landed on a beach of sand, soft as a velvet carpet. Peter jumped out. A long-legged sandpiper and her mate ran down the shore ahead of him. He perked up his angular ears, and then his nose caught a fresh scent under his feet where a porcupine had left his trail. And he heard more clearly the raucous tumult of the jay and the musical chattering of the red squirrels.
All these things were satisfactory to Peter. They were life, and life thrilled him, just as it had thrilled his master a few days ago. He adventured a little distance up to the edge of the green willows and the young birch and the crimson masses of fire flowers that fringed the beginning of the forest. It had rained recently here, and the scents were fresh and sweet.
He found a wild currant bush, glistening with its juscious black berries, and began nibbling at them. A gopher, coming to his supper bush, gave a little squeak of annoyance, and Peter saw the bright eyes of the midget glaring at him from under a big fern leaf. Peter wagged his tail, for the savagery of his existence was qualified by that mellowing sense of humor which had always been a part of his master. He yipped softly, in a companionable sort of way.
And then there smote upon his ears a sound which hardened every muscle in his body.
“Throw up your hands, McKay!”
He turned his head. Close to him stood a man. In an instant he had recognized him. It was the man whose scent he had first discovered down at Cragg’s Ridge, the man from whom his master was always running away, the man whose voice he had heard again at Yellow Bird’s Camp a few nights ago–Corporal Terence Cassidy, of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police.
Twenty paces away stood McKay. His dunnage was on his back, his paddle in his hand. And Cassidy, smiling grimly, a dangerous humor in his eyes, was leveling an automatic at his breast. It was, in that instant, a tableau which no man could ever forget. Cassidy was bareheaded, and the sun burned hotly in his red hair. And his face was red, and in the pale blue of his Irish eyes was a fierce joy of achievement. At last, after months and years, the thrilling game of One against One was at an end. Cassidy had made the last move, and he was winner.
For half a minute after the command to throw up his hands McKay did not move. And Cassidy did not repeat the command, for he sensed the shock that had fallen upon his adversary, and was charitable enough to give him time. And then, with something like a deep sigh from between his lips, Jolly Roger’s body sagged. The dunnage dropped from his shoulder to the sand. The paddle slipped from his hand. Slowly he raised his arms above his head, and Cassidy laughed softly.
A few days ago McKay would have grinned back, coolly, good humoredly, appreciative of the other’s craftsmanship even in the hour of his defeat. But today there was another soul within him.
His eyes no longer saw the old Cassidy, brave and loyal to his duty, a chivalrous enemy, the man he had yearned to love as brother loves brother, even in the hours of sharpest pursuit. In Cassidy he saw now the hangman himself. The whole world had turned against him, and in this hour of his greatest despair and hopelessness a bitter fate had turned up Cassidy to deal him the finishing blow.
A swift rage burned in him, even as he raised his hands. It swept through his brain in a blinding inundation. He did not think of the law, or of death, or of freedom. It was the unfairness of the thing that filled his soul with the blackness of one last terrible desire for vengeance. Cassidy’s gun, leveled at his breast, meant nothing. A thousand guns leveled at his breast would have meant nothing. A choking sound came from his lips, and like a shot his right hand went to his revolver holster.
In that last second or two Cassidy had foreseen the impending thing, and with the movement of the other’s hand he cried out:
“Stop! For God’s sake stop–or I shall fire!”
Even into the soul of Peter there came in that moment the electrical thrill of something terrific about to happen, of impending death, of tragedy close at hand. Once, a long time ago, Peter had felt another moment such as this–when he had buried his fangs in Jed Hawkins’ leg to save Nada.
In that fraction of a second which carried Peter through space, Corporal Cassidy’s finger was pressing the trigger of his automatic, for McKay’s gun was half out of its holster. He was aiming at the other’s shoulder, somewhere not to kill.
The shock of Peter’s assault came simultaneously with the explosion of his gun, and McKay heard the hissing spit of the bullet past his ear. His arm darted out. And as Peter buried his teeth deeper into Cassidy’s leg, he heard a second shot, and knew that it came from his master. There was no third. Cassidy drooped, and something like a little laugh came from him–only it was not a laugh. His body sagged, and then crumpled down, so that the weight of him fell upon Peter.
For many seconds after that Jolly Roger stood with his gun in his hand, not a muscle of his body moving, and with something like stupor in his staring eyes. Peter struggled out from under Cassidy, and looked inquisitively from his master to the man who lay sprawled out like a great spider upon the sand. It was then that life seemed to come back into Jolly Roger’s body. His gun fell, as if it was the last thing in the world to count for anything now, and with a choking cry he ran to Cassidy and dropped upon his knees beside him.
“Cassidy–Cassidy–” he cried. “Good God, I didn’t mean to do it! Cassidy, old pal–“
The agony in his voice stilled the growl in Peter’s throat. McKay saw nothing for a space, as he raised Cassidy’s head and shoulders, and brushed back the mop of red hair. Everything was a blur before his eyes. He had killed Cassidy. He knew it. He had shot to kill, and not once in a hundred times did he miss his mark. At last he was what the law wanted him to be–a murderer. And his victim was Cassidy–the man who had played him fairly and squarely from beginning to end, the man who had never taken a mean advantage of him, and who had died there in the white sand because he had not shot to kill. With sobbing breath he cried out his grief, and then, looking down, he saw the miracle in Cassidy’s face. The Irishman’s eyes were wide open, and there was pain, and also a grin, about his mouth.
“I’m glad you’re sorry,” he said. “I’d hate to have a bad opinion of you, McKay. But–you’re a rotten shot!”
His body sagged heavily, and the grin slowly left his lips, and a moan came from between them. He struggled and spoke.
“It may be–you’ll want help, McKay. If you do–there’s a cabin half a mile up the creek. Saw the smoke–heard axe–I don’t blame you. You’re a good sport–pretty quick–but–rotten shot! Oh, Lord–such–rotten–shot–“
And he tried vainly to grin up into Jolly Roger’s face as he became a lifeless weight in the other’s arms.
Jolly Roger was sobbing. He was sobbing, in a strange, hard man- fashion, as he tore open Cassidy’s shirt and saw the red wound that went clean through Cassidy’s right breast just under the shoulder. And Peter still heard that strange sound coming from his lips, a moaning as if for breath, as his master ran and brought up water, and worked over the fallen man. And then he got under Cassidy, and rose up with him on his shoulders, and staggered off with him toward the creek. There he found a path, a narrow foot trail, and not once did he stop with his burden until he came into a little clearing, out of which Cassidy had seen the smoke rising. In this clearing was a cabin, and from the cabin came an old man to meet him–an old man and a girl.
At first something shot up into Peter’s throat, for he thought it was Nada who came behind the grizzled and white-headed man. There was the same lithe slimness in her body, the same brown glint in her hair, and the same–but he saw then that it was not Nada. She was older. She was a bit taller. And her face was white when she saw the bleeding burden on Jolly Roger’s back.
“I shot him,” panted McKay. “God knows I didn’t mean to! I’m afraid–“
He did not finish giving voice to the fear that Cassidy was dead– or dying, and for a moment he saw only the big staring eyes of the girl as the gray-bearded man helped him with his burden. Not until the Irishman was on a cot in the cabin did he discover how childishly weak he had become and what a terrific struggle he had made with the weight on his shoulders. He sank into a chair, while the old trapper worked over Cassidy.
He heard the girl call him grandfather. She was no longer frightened, and she moved like a swift bird about the cabin, getting water and bandages and pillows, and the sight of fresh blood and of Cassidy’s dead-white face brought a glow of tenderness into her eyes. McKay, sitting dumbly, saw that her hands were doing twice the work his own could have accomplished, and not until he heard a low moan from the wounded man did he come to her side.
“The bullet went through clean as a whistle,” the old man said. “Lucky you don’t use soft nosed bullets, friend.”
A deep sigh came from Cassidy’s lips. His eyelids fluttered, and then slowly his eyes opened. The girl was bending over him, and Cassidy saw only her face, and the brown sheen of her hair.
“He’ll live?” Jolly Roger said tremulously.
The older man remained mute. It was Cassidy, turning his head a little, who answered weakly.
“Don’t worry, McKay. I’ll–live.”
Jolly Roger bent over the cot, between Cassidy and the girl. Gently he took one of the wounded man’s hands in both his own.
“I’m sorry, old man,” he whispered. “You won, fair and square. And I won’t go far away. I’ll be waiting for you when you get on your feet. I promise that. I’ll wait.”
A wan smile came over Cassidy’s lips, and then he moaned again, and his eyes closed. The girl thrust Jolly Roger back.
“No–you better not go far, an’ you better wait,” she said, and there was an unspoken thing in the dark glow of her eyes that made him think of Nada on that day when she told him how Jed Hawkins had struck her in the cabin at Cragg’s Ridge.
That night Jolly Roger made his camp close to the mouth of the Limping Moose. And for three days thereafter his trail led only between this camp and the cabin of old Robert Baron and his granddaughter, Giselle. All this time Cassidy was telling things in a fever. He talked a great deal about Jolly Roger. And the girl, nursing him night and day, with scarcely a wink of sleep between, came to believe they had been great comrades, and had been inseparable for a long time. Even then she would not let McKay take her place at Cassidy’s side. The third day she started him off for a post sixty miles away to get a fresh supply of bandages and medicines.
It was evening, three days later, when Jolly Roger and Peter returned. The windows of the cabin were brightly lighted, and McKay came up to one of these windows and looked in. Cassidy was bolstered up in his cot. He was very much alive, and on the floor at his side, sitting on a bear rug, was the girl. A lump rose in Jolly Roger’s throat. Quietly he placed the bundle which he had brought from the post close up against the door, and knocked. When Giselle opened it he had disappeared into darkness, with Peter at his heels.
The next morning he found old Robert and said to him:
“I’m restless, and I’m going to move a little. I’ll be back in two weeks. Tell Cassidy that, will you?”
Ten minutes later he was paddling up the shore of Wollaston, and for a week thereafter he haunted the creeks and inlets, always on the move. Peter saw him growing thinner each day. There was less and less of cheer in his voice, seldom a smile on his lips, and never did his laugh ring out as of old. Peter tried to understand, and Jolly Roger talked to him, but not in the old happy way.
“We might have finished him, an’ got rid of him for good,” he said to Peter one chilly night beside their campfire. “But we couldn’t, just like we couldn’t have brought Nada up here with us. And we’re going back. I’m going to keep that promise. We’re going back, Peter, if we hang for it!”
And Jolly Roger’s jaw would set grimly as he measured the time between.
The tenth day came and he set out for the mouth of the Canoe River. On the afternoon of the twelfth he paddled slowly into Limping Moose Creek. Without any reason he looked at his watch when he started for old Robert’s cabin. It was four o’clock. He was two days ahead of his promise, and there was a bit of satisfaction in that. There was an odd thumping at his heart. He had faith in Cassidy, a belief that the Irishman would call their affair a draw, and tell him to take another chance in the big open. He was the sort of man to live up to the letter of a wager, when it was honestly made. But, if he didn’t–
Jolly Roger paused long enough to take the cartridges from his gun. There would be no more shooting’–on his part.
The mellow autumn sun was flooding the open door of the cabin when he came up. He heard laughter. It was Giselle. She was talking, too. And then he heard a man’s voice–and from far off to his right came the chopping of an axe. Old Robert was at work. Giselle and Cassidy were at home.
He stepped up to the door, coughing to give notice of his approach. And then, suddenly, he stopped, staring thunderstruck at what was happening within.
Terence Cassidy was sitting in a big chair. The girl was behind him. Her white arms were around his neck, her face was bent down, her lips were kissing him.
In an instant Cassidy’s eyes had caught him.
“Come in,” he cried, so suddenly and so loudly that it startled the girl. “McKay, come in!”
Jolly Roger entered, and the girl stood up straight behind Cassidy’s chair, her cheeks aflame and her eyes filled with the glow of the sunset. And Terence Cassidy was grinning in that old triumphant way as he leaned forward in his chair, gripping the arms of it with both hands.
“McKay, you’ve lost,” he cried. “I’m the winner!”
In the same moment he took the girl’s hand and drew her from behind his chair.
“Giselle, do as you said you were going to do. Prove to him that I’ve won.”
Slowly she came to Jolly Roger. Her cheeks were like the red of the sunset. Her eyes were flaming. Her lips were parted. And dumbly he waited, and wondered, until she stood close to him. Then, swiftly, her arms were around his neck, and she kissed him. In an instant she was back on her knees at the wounded man’s side, her burning face hidden against him, and Cassidy was laughing, and holding out both hands to McKay.
“McKay, Roger McKay, I want you to meet Mrs. Terence Cassidy, my wife,” he said. And the girl raised her face, so that her shining eyes were on Jolly Roger.
Still dumbly he stood where he was.
“The Missioner from Du Brochet was here yesterday, and married us,” he heard Cassidy saying. “And we’ve written out my resignation together, old man. We’ve both won. I thank God you put that bullet into me down on the shore, for it’s brought me paradise. And here’s my hand on it, McKay–forever and ever!”
Half an hour later, when McKay stumbled out into the forest trail again, his eyes were blinded by tears and his heart choked by a new hope as big as the world itself. Yellow Bird was right, and God must have been with her that night when her soul went to commune with Nada’s. For Yellow Bird had proved herself again. And now he believed her.
He believed in the world again. He believed in love and happiness and the glory of life, and as he went down the narrow trail to his canoe, with Peter close behind him, his heart was crying out Nada’s name and Yellow Bird’s promise that sometime–somewhere– they two would find happiness together, as Giselle and Terence Cassidy had found it.
And Peter heard the chopping of the distant axe, and the song of birds, and the chattering of squirrels–but thrilling his soul most of all was the voice of his master, the old voice, the glad voice, the voice he had first learned to love at Cragg’s Ridge in the days of blue violets and red strawberries, when Nada had filled his world.
CHAPTER XIII
McKay still had his mind on a certain stretch of timber that reached out into the Barren Lands, hundreds of miles farther north. In this hiding place, three years before, he had built himself a cabin, and had caught foxes during half the long winter. Not only the cabin, but the foxes, were drawing him. Necessity was close upon his heels. What little money he possessed after leaving Cragg’s Ridge was exhausted, his supplies were gone, and his boots and clothes were patched with deer hide.
In the Snowbird Lake country, a week after he left Cassidy in his paradise at Wollaston, he fell in with good fortune. Two trappers had come in from Churchill. One of them was sick, and the other needed help in the building of their winter cabin. McKay remained with them for ten days, and when he continued his journey northward his pack was stuffed with supplies, and he wore new boots and more comfortable clothes.
It was the middle of October when he found his old cabin, a thousand miles from Cragg’s Ridge. It was as he had left it three years ago. No one had opened its door since then. The little box stove was waiting for a fire. Behind it was a pile of wood. On the table were the old tin dishes, and hanging from babiche cords fastened to the roof timbers, out of reach of mice and ermine, were blankets and clothing and other possessions he had left behind him in that winter break-up of what seemed like ages ago to him. He raised a small section in the floor, and there were his traps, thickly coated with caribou grease. For half an hour before he built a fire he sought eagerly for the things he had concealed here and there. He found oil, and a tin lamp, and candles, and as darkness of the first night gathered outside a roaring fire sent sparks up the chimney, and the little cabin’s one window glowed with light, and the battered old coffee pot bubbled and steamed again, as if rejoicing at his return.
With the breaking of another day he immediately began preparations for the season’s trapping. In two days’ hunting he killed three caribou, his winter meat. Then he cut wood, and made his strychnine poison baits, and marked out his trap-lines.
The first of November brought the chill whisperings of an early winter through the Northland. Farther south autumn was dying, or dead. The last of the red ash berries hung shriveled and frost- bitten on naked twigs, freezing nights were nipping the face of the earth, the voices of the wilderness were filled with a new note and the winds held warning for every man and beast between Hudson’s Bay and the Great Slave and from the Height of Land to the Arctic Sea. Seven years before there had come such a winter, and the land had not forgotten it–a winter sudden and swift, deadly in its unexpectedness, terrific in its cold, bringing with it such famine and death as the Northland had not known for two generations.
But this year there was premonition. Omen of it came with the first wailing night winds that bore the smell of icebergs from over the black forests north and west. The moon came up red, and it went down red, and the sun came up red in the morning. The loon’s call died a month ahead of its time. The wild geese drove steadily south when they should have been feeding from the Kogatuk to Baffin’s Bay, and the beaver built his walls thick, and anchored his alders and his willows deep so that he would not starve when the ice grew heavy. East, west, north and south, in forest and swamp, in the trapper’s cabin and the wolf’s hiding- place, was warning of it. Gray rabbits turned white. Moose and caribou began to herd. The foxes yipped shrilly in the night, and a new hunger and a new thrill sent the wolves hunting in packs, while the gray geese streaked southward under the red moon overhead.
Through this November, and all of December, Jolly Roger and Peter were busy from two hours before dawn of each day until late at night. The foxes were plentiful, and McKay was compelled to shorten his lines and put out fewer baits, and on the tenth of December he set out for a fur-trading post ninety miles south with two hundred and forty skins. He had made a toboggan, and a harness for Peter, and pulling together they made the trip in three days, and on the fourth started for the cabin again with supplies and something over a thousand dollars in cash.
Through the weeks of increasing storm and cold that followed, McKay continued to trap, and early in February he made another trip to the fur post.
It was on their return that they were caught in the Black Storm. It will be a long time before the northland will forget that storm. It was a storm in which the Sarcees died to a man, woman and child over on the Dubawnt waterways, and when trees froze solid and split open with the sharp explosions of high-power guns. In it, all furred and feathered life and all hoof and horn along the edge of the Barren Lands from Aberdeen Lake to the Coppermine was swallowed up. It was in this storm that streams froze solid, and the man who was cautious fastened a babiche rope about his waist when he went forth from his cabin for wood or water, so that his wife might help to pull and guide him back through that blinding avalanche of wind and freezing fury that held a twisted and broken world in its grip.
In the country west of Artillery Lake and south of the Theolon River, Jolly Roger and Peter were compelled to “dig in.” They were in a country where the biggest stick of wood that thrust itself up out of the snow was no bigger than McKay’s thumb; a country of green grass and succulent moss on which the caribou fed in season, but a hell on earth when arctic storm howled and screamed across it in winter.
Piled up against a mass of rock Jolly Roger found a huge snow drift. This drift was as long as a church and half as high, with its outer shell blistered and battered to the hardness of rock by wind and sleet. Through this shell he cut a small door with his knife, and after that dug out the soft snow from within until he had a room half as big as his cabin, and so snug and warm after a little with the body heat of himself and Peter that he could throw off the thick coat which he wore.
To Peter, in the first night of this storm, it seemed as though all the people in the world were shrieking and wailing and sobbing in the blackness outside. Jolly Roger sat smoking his pipe at intervals in the gloom, though there was little pleasure in smoking a pipe in darkness. The storm did not oppress him, but filled him with an odd sense of security and comfort. The wind shrieked and lashed itself about his snow-dune, but it could not get at him. Its mightiest efforts to destroy only beat more snow upon him, and made him safer and warmer. In a way, there was something of humor as well as tragedy in its wild frenzy, and Peter heard him laugh softly in the darkness. More and more frequently he had heard that laugh since those warm days of autumn when they had last met the red-headed man, Terence Cassidy, of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police, and his master had shot him on the white shore of Wollaston.
“You see,” said McKay, caressing Peter’s hairy neck in the gloom. “Everything is turning out right for us, and I’m beginning to believe more and more what Yellow Bird told us, and that in the end we’re going to be happy–somewhere–with Nada. What do you think, Pied-Bot? Shall we take a chance, and go back to Cragg’s Ridge in the spring?”
Peter wriggled himself in answer, as a wild shriek of wind wailed over the huge snow-dune.
Jolly Roger’s fingers tightened at Peter’s neck.
“Well, we’re going,” he said, as though he was telling Peter something new. “I’m believing Yellow Bird, Pied-Bot. I’m believing her–now. What she told us was more than fortune-telling. It wasn’t just Indian sorcery. When she shut herself up and starved for those three days and nights in her little conjurer’s house, just for you and me–SOMETHING HAPPENED. Didn’t it? Wouldn’t you say something happened?”
Peter swallowed and his teeth clicked as he gave evidence of understanding.
“She told us a lot of truth,” went on Jolly Roger, with deep faith in his voice “And we must believe, Pied-Bot. She told us Cassidy was coming after us, and he came. She said the spirits promised her the law would never get us, and we thought it looked bad when Cassidy had us covered with his gun on the shore at Wollaston. But something more than luck was with us, and we shot him. Then we brought him back to life and lugged him to a cabin, and the little stranger girl took him, and nursed him, and Cassidy fell in love with her–and married her. So Yellow Bird was right again, Pied- Bot. We’ve got to believe her. And she says everything is coming out right for us, and that we are going back to Nada, and be happy–“
Jolly Roger’s pipe-bowl glowed in the blackness.
“I’m going to light the alcohol lamp,” he said. “We can’t sleep. And I want a good smoke. It isn’t fun when you can’t see the smoke. Too bad God forgot to make you so you could use a pipe, Peter. You don’t know what you are missing–in times like these.”
He fumbled in his pack and found the alcohol lamp, which was fresh filled and screwed tight. Peter heard him working for a moment in the darkness. Then he struck a match, and the yellow flare of it lighted up his face. In his joy Peter whined. It was good to see his master. And then, in another moment, the little lamp was filling their white-walled refuge with a mellow glow. Jolly Roger’s eyes, coming suddenly out of darkness, were wide and staring. His face was covered with a scrub beard. But there was something of cheer about him even in this night of terror outside, and when he had driven his snowshoe into the snow wall, and had placed the lamp on it, he grinned companionably at Peter.
Then, with a deep breath of satisfaction, he puffed out clouds of smoke from his pipe, and stood up to look about their room.
“Not so bad, is it?” he asked. “We could have a big house here if we wanted to dig out rooms–eh, Peter? Parlors, and bed-rooms, and a library–and not a policeman within a million miles of us. That’s the nice part of it, PIED-BOT–none of the Royal Mounties to trouble us. They would never think of looking for us in the heart of a big snow-dune out in this God-forsaken barren, would they?”
The thought was a pleasing one to Jolly Roger. He spread out his blankets on the snow floor, and sat down on them, facing Peter.
“We’ve got ’em beat,” he said, a chuckling note of pride in his voice. “The world is small when it comes to hiding, Pied-Bot, but all the people in it couldn’t find us here–not in a million years. If we could only find a place as safe as this–where a girl could live–and had Nada with us–“
Many times during the past few weeks Peter had seen the light that flamed up now in his master’s eyes. That, and the strange thrill in Jolly Roger’s voice, stirred him more than the words to which he listened, and tried to understand.
“And we’re GOING to,” finished McKay, almost fiercely, his hands clenching as he leaned toward Peter. “We have made a big mistake, Pied-Bot, and it has taken us a long time to see it. It will be hard for us to leave our north country, but that is what we must do. Maybe Yellow Bird’s good spirits meant that when they said we would find happiness with Nada in a place called The Country Beyond. There are a lot of ‘Countries Beyond,’ Peter, and as soon as the spring break-up comes and we can travel without leaving trails behind us we will go back to Cragg’s Ridge and get Nada, and hit for some place where the law won’t expect to find us. There’s China, for instance. A lot of yellow people. But what do we care for color as long as we have her with us? I say–“
Suddenly he stopped. And Peter’s body grew tense. Both faced the round hole, half filled with softly packed snow, which McKay had cut as a door into the heart of the big drift. They had grown accustomed to the tumult of the storm. Its strange wailings and the shrieking voices which at times seemed borne in the moaning sweep of it no longer sent shivers of apprehension through Peter. But in that moment when both turned to listen there came a sound which was not like the other sounds they had heard. It was a voice–not one of the phantom voices of the screaming wind, but a voice so real and so near that for a beat or two even Jolly Roger McKay’s heart stood still. It was as if a man, standing just beyond their snow barricade, had shouted a name. But there came no second call. The wind lulled, so that for a space there was stillness outside.
Jolly Roger laughed a little uneasily.
“Good thing we don’t believe in ghosts, Peter, or we would swear it was a Loup-Garou smelling us through the wall!” He thumbed the tobacco down in his pine, and nodded. “Then–there is South America,” he said. “They have everything down there–the biggest rivers in the world, the biggest mountains, and so much room that even a Loup-Garou couldn’t hunt us out. She will love it, Pied- Bot. But if it happens she likes Africa better, or Australia, or the South Sea–Now, what the devil was that?”
Peter had jumped as if stung, and for a moment Jolly Roger sat tense as a carven Indian. Then he rose to his feet, a look of perplexity and doubt in his eyes.
“What was it, Peter? Can the wind shoot a gun–like THAT?”
Peter was sniffing at the loosely blocked door of their snow-room. A whimper rose in his throat. He looked up at Jolly Roger, his eyes glowing fiercely through the mass of Airedale whiskers that covered his face. He wanted to dig. He wanted to plunge out into the howling darkness. Slowly McKay beat the ash out of his pipe and placed the pipe in his pocket.
“We’ll take a look,” he said, something repressive in his voice. “But it isn’t reasonable, Peter. It is the wind. There couldn’t be a man out there, and it wasn’t a rifle we heard. It is the wind– with the devil himself behind it!”
With a few sweeps of his hands and arms he scooped out the loose snow from the hole. The opening was on the sheltered side of the drift, and only the whirling eddies of the storm swept about him as he thrust out his head and shoulders. But over him it was rushing like an avalanche. He could hear nothing but the moaning advance of it. And he could see nothing. He held out his hand before his face, and blackness swallowed it.
“We have been chased so much that we’re what you might call super- sensitive,” he said, pulling himself back and nodding at Peter in the gray light of the alcohol lamp. “Guess we’d better turn in, boy. This is a good place to sleep–plenty of fresh air, no mosquitoes or black flies, and the police so far away that we will soon forget how they look. If you say so we will have a nip of cold tea and a bite–“
He did not finish. For a moment the wind had lessened in fury, as if gathering a deeper breath. And what he heard drew a cry from him this time, and a sharper whine from Peter. Out of the blackness of the night had come a woman’s voice! In that first instant of shock and amazement he would have staked his life that what he heard was not a mad outcry of the night or an illusion of his brain. It was clear–distinct–a woman’s voice coming from out on the Barren, rising above the storm in an agony of appeal, and dying out quickly until it became a part of the moaning wind. And then, with equal force, came the absurdity of it to McKay. A woman! He swallowed the lump that had risen in his throat, and tried to laugh. A WOMAN–out in that storm–a thousand miles from nowhere! It was inconceivable.
The laugh which he forced from his lips was husky and unreal, and there was a smothering grip of something at his heart. In the ghostly light of the alcohol lamp his eyes were wide open and staring.
He looked at Peter. The dog stood stiff-legged before the hole. His body was trembling.
“Peter!”
With a responsive wag of his tail Peter turned his bristling face up to his master. Many times Jolly Roger had seen that unfailing warning in his comrade’s eyes. THERE WAS SOME ONE OUTSIDE–or Peter’s brain, like his own, was twisted and fooled by the storm!
Against his reasoning–in the face of the absurdity of it–Jolly Roger was urged into action. He changed the snowshoe and replaced the alcohol lamp so that the glow of light could be seen more clearly from the Barren. Then he went to the hole and crawled through. Peter followed him.
As if infuriated by their audacity, the storm lashed itself over the top of the dune. They could hear the hissing whine of fine hard snow tearing above their heads like volleys of shot, and the force of the wind reached them even in their shelter, bringing with it the flinty sting of the snow-dust. Beyond them the black barren was filled with a dismal moaning. Looking up, and yet seeing nothing in the darkness, Peter understood where the weird shriekings and ghostly cries came from. It was the wind whipping itself up the side and over the top of the dune.
Jolly Roger listened, hearing only the convulsive sweep of that mighty force over a thousand miles of barren. And then came again one of those brief intervals when the storm seemed to rest for a moment, and its moaning grew less and less, until it was like the sound of giant chariot wheels receding swiftly over the face of the earth. Then came the silence–a few seconds of it–while in the north gathered swiftly the whispering rumble of a still greater force.
And in this silence came once more a cry–a cry which Jolly Roger McKay could no longer disbelieve, and close upon the cry the report of a rifle. Again he could have sworn the voice was a woman’s voice. As nearly as he could judge it came from dead ahead, out of the chaos of blackness, and in that direction he shouted an answer. Then he ran out into the darkness, followed by Peter. Another avalanche of wind gathered at their heels, driving them on like the crest of a flood. In the first force of it Jolly Roger stumbled and fell to his knees, and in that moment he saw very faintly the glow of his light at the opening in the snow dune. A realization of his deadly peril if he lost sight of the light flashed upon him. Again and again he called into the night. After that, bowing his head in the fury of the storm, he plunged on deeper into darkness.
A sudden wild thought seized upon his soul and thrilled him into forgetfulness of the light and the snow-dune and his own safety. In the heart of this mad world he had heard a voice. He no longer doubted it. And the voice was a woman’s voice! Could it be Nada? Was it possible she had followed him after his flight, determined to find him, and share his fate? His heart pounded. Who else, of all the women in the world, could be following his trail across the Barrens–a thousand miles from civilization? He began to shout her name. “Nada–Nada–Nada!” And hidden in the gloom at his side Peter barked.
Storm and darkness swallowed them. The last faint gleam of the alcohol lamp died out. Jolly Roger did not look back. Blindly he stumbled ahead, counting his footsteps as he went, and shouting Nada’s name. Twice he thought he heard a reply, and each time the will-o’-the-wisp voice seemed to be still farther ahead of him. Then, with a fiercer blast of the wind beating upon his back, he stumbled and fell forward upon his face. His hand reached out and touched the thing that had tripped him. It was not snow. His naked fingers clutched in something soft and furry. It was a man’s coat. He could feel buttons, a belt, and the sudden thrill of a bearded face.
He stood up. The wind was wailing off over the Barren again, leaving an instant of stillness about him. And he shouted:
“Nada–Nada–Nada!”
An answer came so quickly that it startled him, not one voice, but two–three–and one of them the shrill agonized cry of a woman. They came toward him as he continued to shout, until a few feet away he could make out a gray blur moving through the gloom. He went to it, staggering under the weight of the man he had found in the snow. The blur was made up of two men dragging a sledge, and behind the sledge was a third figure, moaning in the darkness.
“I found some one in the snow,” Jolly Roger shouted. “Here he is– “
He dropped his burden, and the last of his words were twisted by a fresh blast of the storm. But the figure behind the sledge had heard, and Jolly Roger saw her indistinctly at his feet, shielding the man he had found with her arms and body, and crying out a name which he could not understand in that howling of the wind. But a thing like cold steel sank into his heart, and he knew it was not Nada he had found this night on the Barren. He placed the unconscious man on the sledge, believing he was dead. The girl was crying out something to him, unintelligible in the storm, and one of the men shouted in a thick throaty voice which he could not understand. Jolly Roger felt the weight of him as he staggered in the wind, fighting to keep his feet, and he knew he was ready to drop down in the snow and die.
“It’s only a step,” he shouted. “Can you make it?”
His words reached the ears of the others. The girl swayed through the darkness and gripped his arm. The two men began to tug at the sledge, and Jolly Roger seized the rope between them, wondering why there were no dogs, and faced the driving of the storm. It seemed an interminable time before he saw the faint glow of the alcohol lamp. The last fifty feet was like struggling against an irresistible hail from machine-guns. Then came the shelter of the dune.
One at a time McKay helped to drag them through the hole which he used for a door. For a space his vision was blurred, and he saw through the hazy film of storm-blindness the gray faces and heavily coated forms of those he had rescued. The man he had found in the snow he placed on his blankets, and the girl fell down upon her knees beside him. It was then Jolly Roger began to see more clearly. And in that same instant came a shock as unexpected as the smash of dynamite under his feet.
The girl had thrown back her parkee, and was sobbing over the man on the blankets, and calling him father. She was not like Nada. Her hair was in thick, dark coils, and she was older. She was not pretty–now. Her face was twisted by the brutal beating of the storm, and her eyes were nearly closed. But it was the man Jolly Roger stared at, while his heart choked inside him. He was grizzled and gray-bearded, with military mustaches and a bald head. He was not dead. His eyes were open, and his blue lips were struggling to speak to the girl whose blindness kept her from seeing that he was alive. And the coat which he wore was the regulation service garment of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police!
Slowly McKay turned, wiping the film of snow-sweat from his eyes, and stared at the other two. One of them had sunk down with his back to the snow wall. He was a much younger man, possibly not over thirty, and his face was ghastly. The third lay where he had fallen from exhaustion after crawling through the hole. Both wore service coats, with holsters at their sides.
The man against the snow-wall was making an effort to rise. He sagged back, and grinned up apologetically at McKay.
“Dam’ fine of you, old man,” he mumbled between blistered lips. “I’m Porter–‘N’ Division–taking Superintendent Tavish to Fort Churchill–Tavish and his daughter. Made a hell of a mess of it, haven’t I?”
He struggled to his knees.
“There’s brandy in our kit. It might help–over there,” and he nodded toward the girl and the gray-bearded man on the blankets.
CHAPTER XIV
Jolly Roger did not answer, but crawled through the hole and found the sledge in the outer darkness. He heard Peter coming after him, and he saw Porter’s bloodless face in the illumination of the alcohol lamp, where he waited to help him with the dunnage. In those seconds he fought to get a grip on himself. A quarter of an hour ago he had laughed at the thought of the law. Never had it seemed to be so far away from him, and never had he been more utterly isolated from the world. His mind was still a bit dazed by the thing that had happened. The police had not trailed him. They had not ferreted him out, nor had they stumbled upon him by accident. It was he who had gone out into the night and deliberately dragged them in! Of all the trickery fate had played upon him this was the least to be expected.
His mind began to work more swiftly as in darkness he cut the babiche cordage that bound the patrol dunnage to the sledge. “N” Division, he told himself, was away over in the Athabasca country. He had never heard of Porter, nor of Superintendent Tavish, and inasmuch as the outfit was evidently a special escort to Fort Churchill it was very likely that Porter and his companions would not be thinking of outlaws, and especially of Jolly Roger McKay. This was his one chance. To attempt an escape through the blizzard was not only a desperate hazard. It was death.
There were only two packs on the sledge, and these he passed through the hole to Porter. A few moments later he was holding a flask of liquor to the lips of the gray-bearded man, while the girl looked at him with eyes that were widening as the snow-sting left them. Tavish gulped, and his mittened hand closed on the girl’s arm.
“I’m all right, Jo,” he mumbled. “All right–“
His eyes met McKay’s, and then took in the snow walls of the dug- out. They were deep, piercing eyes, overhung by shaggy brows. Jolly Roger felt the intentness of their gaze as he gave the girl a swallow of the brandy, and then passed the flask to Porter.
“You have saved our lives,” said Tavish, in a voice that was clearer. “I don’t just understand how it happened. I remember stumbling in the darkness, and being unable to rise. I was behind the sledge. Porter and Breault were dragging it, and Josephine, my daughter, was sheltered under the blankets. After that–“
He paused, and Jolly Roger explained how it all had come about. He pointed to Peter. It was the dog, he said. Peter had insisted there was someone outside, and they had taken a chance by going in search of them. He was John Cummings, a fox trapper, and the storm had caught him fifty miles from his cabin. He was traveling without a dog-sledge, and had only a pack-outfit.
Breault, the third man, had regained his wind, and was listening to him. One look at his dark, thin face told McKay that he was the wilderness man of the three. He was staring at Jolly Roger in a strange sort of way. And then, as if catching himself, he nodded, and began rubbing his frosted face with handfuls of snow.
Porter had thrown off his heavy coat, and was unpacking one of the dunnage sacks. He and the girl seemed to have suffered less than the other two. Jo, the girl, was looking at him. And then her eyes turned to Jolly Roger. They were large, fine eyes, wide open and clear now. There was something of splendid strength about her as she smiled at McKay. She was not of the hysterical sort. He could see that.
“If we could have some hot soup,” she suggested. “May we?”
There was gratitude in her eyes, which she made no attempt to express in words. Jolly Roger liked her. And Peter crept up behind her, and watched her as she followed Breault’s example, and rubbed the cheeks of the bearded man with snow.
“There’s an alcohol stove in the other pack,” said Breault, with his hard, narrow eyes fixed steadily on Jolly Roger’s face. “By the way, what did you say your name was?”
“Cummings–John Cummings.”
Breault made no answer. During the next half hour Jolly Roger felt stealing over him a growing sense of uneasiness. They drank soup and ate bannock. It grew warm, and the girl threw off the heavy fur garment that enveloped her. Color returned into her cheeks. Her eyes were bright, and in her voice was a tremble of happiness at finding warmth and life where she had expected death. Porter’s friendliness was almost brotherly. He explained what had happened. Two rascally Chippewyans had deserted them, stealing off into darkness and storm with both dog teams and one of their sledges. After that they had fought on, seeking for a drift into which they might dig a refuge. But the Barren was as smooth as a table. They had shouted, and Miss Tavish had screamed–not because they expected to find assistance–but on account of Tavish falling in the storm, and losing himself. It was quite a joke, Porter thought, that Superintendent Tavish, one of the iron men of the service, should have given up the ghost so easily.
Tavish smiled grimly. They were all in good humor, and happy, with the possible exception of Breault. Not once did he laugh or smile. Yet Jolly Roger noted that each time he spoke the others were specially attentive. There was something repressive and mysterious about the man, and the girl would cut herself short in the middle of a laugh if he happened to speak, and the softness of her mouth would harden in an instant. He understood the significance of her gladness, and of Porter’s, for twice he saw their hands come together, and their fingers entwine. And in their eyes was something which they could not hide when they looked at each other. But Breault puzzled him. He did not know that Breault was the best man-hunter in “N” Division, which reached from Athabasca Landing to the Arctic Ocean, or that up and down the two thousand- mile stretch of the Three River Country he was known as Shingoos, the Ferret.
The girl fell asleep first that night, with her cheek on her father’s shoulder. Breault, the Ferret, rolled himself in a blanket, and breathed deeply. Porter still smoked his pipe, and looked wistfully at the pale face of Josephine Tavish. He smiled a bit proudly at McKay.
“She’s mine,” he whispered. “We’re going to be married.”
Jolly Roger wanted to reach over and grip his hand.
He nodded, a little lump coming in his throat.
“I know how you feel,” he said. “When I heard her calling out there–it made me think–of a girl down south.”
“Down south?” queried Porter. “Why down south–if you care for her–and you up here?”
McKay shrugged his shoulders. He had said too much. Neither he nor Porter knew that Breault’s eyes were half open, and that he was listening.
Jolly Roger held up a hand, as if something in the wailing of the storm had caught his attention.
“We’ll have two or three days of this. Better turn in, Porter. I’m going to dig out another room–for Miss Tavish. I’m afraid she’ll need the convenience of a private room before we’re able to move. It’s an easy job–and passes the time away.”
“I’ll help,” offered Porter.
For an hour they worked, using McKay’s snowshoes as shovels. During that hour Breault did not close his eyes. A curious smile curled his thin lips as he watched Jolly Roger. And when at last Porter turned in, and slept, the Ferret sat up, and stretched himself. McKay had finished his room, and was beginning a tunnel which would lead as a back door out of the drift, when Breault came in and picked up the snowshoe which Porter had used.
“I’ll take my turn,” he said. “I’m a bit nervous, and not at all sleepy, Cummings.” He began digging into the snow. “Been long in this country?” he asked.
“Three winters. It’s a good red fox country, with now and then a silver and a black.”
Breault grunted.
“You must have met Cassidy, then,” he said casually, without looking at McKay. “Corporal Terence Cassidy. This is his country.”
Jolly Roger did not look up from his work of digging.
“Yes, I know him. Met him last winter. Red headed. A nice chap. I like him. You know him?”
“Entered the service together,” said Breault. “But he’s unlucky. For two or three years he has been on the trail of a man named McKay. Jolly Roger, they call him–Jolly Roger McKay. Ever hear of him?”
Jolly Roger nodded.
“Cassidy told me about him when he was at my cabin. From what I’ve heard I–rather like him.”
“Who–Cassidy, or Jolly Roger?”
“Both.”
For the first time the Ferret leveled his eyes at his companion. They were mystifying eyes, never appearing to open fully, but remaining half closed as if to conceal whatever thought might lie behind them. McKay felt their penetration. It was like a cold chill entering into him, warning him of a menace deadlier than the storm.
“Haven’t any idea where one might come upon this Jolly Roger, have you?”
“No.”
“You see, he thinks he killed a man down south. Well, he didn’t. The man lived. If you happen to see him at any time give him that information, will you?”
Jolly Roger thrust his head and shoulders into the growing tunnel.
“Yes, I will.”
He knew Breault was lying. And also knew that back of the narrow slits of Breault’s eyes was the cunning of a fox.
“You might also tell him the law has a mind to forgive him for sticking up that free trader’s post a few years ago.”
Jolly Roger turned with his snowshoe piled high with a load of snow.
“I’ll tell him that, too,” he said, chuckling at the obviousness of the other’s trap. “What do you think my cabin is, Breault–a Rest for Homeless Outlaws?”
Breault grinned. It was an odd sort of grin, and Jolly Roger caught it over his shoulder. When he returned from dumping his load, Breault said:
“You see, we know this Jolly Roger fellow is spending the winter somewhere up here. And Cassidy says there is a girl down south–“
Jolly Roger’s face was hidden in the tunnel.
“–who would like to see him,” finished Breault.
When McKay turned toward him the Ferret was carelessly lighting his pipe.
“I remember–Cassidy told me about this girl,” said Jolly Roger. “He said–some day–he would trap this–this man–through the girl. So if I happen to meet Jolly Roger McKay, and send him back to the girl, it will help out the law. Is that it, Breault? And is there any reward tacked to it? Anything in it for me?”
Breault was looking at him in the pale light of the alcohol lamp, puffing out tobacco smoke, and with that odd twist of a smile about his thin lips.
“Listen to the storm,” he said. “I think it’s getting worse– Cummings!”