It was Peter who roused Jolly Roger many hours later; Peter nosing
about the still burning embers of the fire, and at last muzzling his
master's face with increasing anxiety. McKay sat up out of his nest of
balsam boughs and blankets and caught the bright glint of sunlight
through the treetops. He rubbed his eyes and stared again to make sure.
Then he looked at his watch. It was ten o'clock and peering in the
direction of the open he saw the white edge of it glistening in the
unclouded blaze of a sun. It was the first sun--the first real sun--he
had seen for many days, and with Peter he went to the rim of the barren
a hundred yards distant. He wanted to shout. As far as he could see the
white plain was ablaze with eye-blinding light, and never had the sky
at Cragg's Ridge been clearer than the sky that was over him now.
He returned to the fire, singing. Back through the months leapt Peter's
memory to the time when his master had sung like that. It was in Indian
Tom's cabin, with Cragg's Ridge just beyond the creek, and it was in
those days before Terence Cassidy had come to drive them to another
hiding place; in the happy days of Nada's visits and of their trysts
under the Ridge, when even the little gray mother mouse lived in a
paradise with her nest of babies in the box on their cabin shelf. He
had almost forgotten but it came back to him now. It was the old Jolly
Roger--the old master come to life again.
In the clear stillness of the morning one might have heard that
shouting song half a mile away. But McKay was no longer afraid. As the
storm seemed to have cleaned the world so the sun cleared his soul of
its last shadow of doubt. It was not merely an omen or a promise, but
for him proclaimed a certainty. God was with him. Life was with him.
His world was opening its arms to him again--and he sang as if Nada was
only a mile away from him instead of a thousand.
When he went on, after their breakfast, he laughed at the thought of
Breault discovering their trail. The Ferret would be more than human to
do that after what wind and storm and fire had done for them.
This first day of their pilgrimage into the southland was a day of
glory from its beginning until the setting of the sun. There was no
cloud in the sky. And it grew warmer, until Jolly Roger flung back the
hood of his parkee and turned up the fur of his cap. That night a
million stars lighted the heaven.
After this first day and night nothing could break down the hope and
confidence of Jolly Roger and his, dog. Peter knew they were going
south, in which direction lay everything he had ever yearned for; and
each night beside their campfire McKay made a note with pencil and
paper and measured the distance they had come and the distance they had
yet to go. Hope in a little while became certainty. Into his mind urged
no thought of changes that might have taken place at Cragg's Ridge; or,
if the thought did come, it caused him no uneasiness. Now that Jed
Hawkins was dead Nada would be with the little old Missioner in whose
care he had left her, and not for an instant did a doubt cloud the
growing happiness of his anticipations. Breault and the hunters of the
law were the one worry that lay ahead and behind him. If he outwitted
them he would find Nada waiting for him.
Day after day they kept south and west until they struck the Thelon;
and then through a country unmapped, and at times terrific in its cold
and storm, they fought steadily to the frozen regions of the Dubawnt
waterways. Only once in the first three weeks did they seek human
company. This was at a small Indian camp where Jolly Roger bartered for
caribou meat and moccasins for Peter's feet. Twice between there and
God's Lake they stopped at trappers' cabins.
It was early in March when they struck the Lost Lake country, three
hundred miles from Cragg's Ridge.
And here it was, buried under a blind of soft snow, that Peter nosed
out the frozen carcass of a disemboweled buck which Boileau, the French
trapper, had poisoned for wolves. Jolly Roger had built a fire and was
warming half a pint of deer tallow for a baking of bannock, when Peter
dragged himself in, his rear legs already stiffening with the palsy of
strychnine. In a dozen seconds McKay had the warm tallow down Peter's
throat, to the last drop of it; and this he followed with another dose
as quickly as he could heat it, and in the end Peter gave up what he
had eaten.
Half an hour later Boileau, who was eating his dinner, jumped up in
wonderment when the door of his cabin was suddenly opened by a grim and
white-faced man who carried the limp body of a dog in his arms.
For a long time after this the shadow of death hung over the
Frenchman's trapping-shack. To Boileau, with his brotherly sympathy and
regret that his poison-bait had brought calamity, Peter was "just dog."
But when at last he saw the strong shoulders of the grim-faced stranger
shaking over Peter's paralyzed body and listened to the sobbing grief
that broke in passionate protest from his white lips, he drew back a
little awed. It seemed for a time that Peter was dead; and in those
moments Jolly Roger put his arms about him and buried his despairing
face in Peter's scraggly neck, calling in a wild fit of anguish for him
to come back, to live, to open his eyes again. Boileau, crossing
himself, felt of Peter's body and McKay heard his voice over him,
saying that the dog was not dead, but that his heart was beating
steadily and that he thought the last stiffening blow of the poison was
over. To McKay it was like bringing the dead back to life. He raised
his head and drew away his arms and knelt beside the bunk stunned and
mutely hopeful while Boileau took his place and began dropping warm
condensed milk down Peter's throat. In a little while Peter's eyes
opened and he gave a great sigh.
Boileau looked up and shrugged his shoulders.
"That was a good breath, m'sieu," he said. "What is left of the poison
has done its worst. He will live."
A bit stupidly McKay rose to his feet. He swayed a little, and for the
first time sensed the hot tears that had blinded his eyes and wet his
cheeks. And then there came a sobbing laugh out of his throat and he
went to the window of the Frenchman's shack and stared out into the
white world, seeing nothing. He had stood in the presence of death many
times before but never had that presence choked up his heart as in this
hour when the soul of Peter, his comrade, had stood falteringly for a
space half-way between the living and the dead.
When he turned from the window Boileau was covering Peter's body with
blankets and a warm bear skin. And for many days thereafter Peter was
nursed through the slow sickness which followed.
An early spring came this year in the northland. South of the Reindeer
waterway country the snows were disappearing late in March and ice was
rotting the first week in April. Winds came from the south and west and
the sun was warmer and clearer than Boileau had ever known it at the
winter's end in Lost Lake country. It was in this first week of April
that Peter was able to travel, and McKay pointed his trail once more
for Cragg's Ridge.
He left a part of his winter dunnage at Boileau's shack and went on
light, figuring to reach Cragg's Ridge before the new "goose moon" had
worn itself out in the west. But for a week Peter lagged and until the
darker red in the rims of his eyes cleared away Jolly Roger checked the
impetus of his travel so that the goose moon had faded out and the
"frog moon" of May was in its full before they came down the last slope
that dipped from the Height of Land to the forests and lakes of the
lower country.
And now, in these days, it seemed to Jolly Roger that a great kindness,
and not tragedy, had delayed him so that his "home coming" was in the
gladness of spring. All about him was the sweetness and mystic
whispering of new life just awakening. It was in the sky and the sun;
it was underfoot, in the fragrance of the mold he trod upon, in the
trees about him, and in the mate-chirping of the birds flocking back
from the southland. His friends the jays were raucous and jaunty again,
bullying and bluffing in the warmth of sunshine; the black glint of
crows' wings flashed across the opens; the wood-sappers and pewees and
big-eyed moose-birds were aflutter with the excitement of home
planning; partridges were feasting on the swelling poplar buds--and
then, one glorious sunset, he heard the chirruping evening song of his
first robin.
And the next day they would reach Cragg's Ridge!
Half of that last night he sat up, awake, or smoked in the glow of his
fire, waiting for the dawn. With the first lifting of darkness he was
traveling swiftly ahead of Peter and the morning was only half gone
when he saw far ahead of him the great ridge which shut out Indian
Tom's swamp, and Nada's plain, and Cragg's Ridge beyond it.
It was noon when he stood at the crest of this. He was breathing hard,
for to reach this last precious height from which he might look upon
the country of Nada's home he had half run up its rock-strewn side.
There, with his lungs gasping for air, his eager eyes shot over the
country below him and for a moment the significance of the thing which
he saw did not strike him. And then in another instant it seemed that
his heart choked up, like a fist suddenly tightened, and stopped its
beating.
Reaching away from him, miles upon miles of it, east, west and
south--was a dead and char-stricken world.
Up to the foot of the ridge itself had come the devastation of flame,
and where it had swept, months ago, there was now no sign of the
glorious spring that lay behind him.
He looked for Indian Tom's swamp, and where it had been there was no
longer a swamp but a stricken chaos of ten thousand black stubs, the
shriven corpses of the spruce and cedar and jackpines out of which the
wolves had howled at night.
He looked for the timber on Sucker Creek where the little old
Missioner's cabin lay, and where he had dreamed that Nada would be
waiting for him. And he saw no timber there but only the littleness and
emptiness of a blackened world.
And then he looked to Cragg's Ridge, and along the bald crest of it,
naked as death, he saw blackened stubs pointing skyward, painting
desolation against the blue of the heaven beyond.
A cry came from him, a cry of fear and of horror, for he was looking
upon the fulfilment of Yellow Bird's prediction. He seemed to hear,
whispering softly in his ears, the low, sweet voice of the sorceress,
as on the night when she had told him that if he returned to Cragg's
Ridge he would find a world that had turned black with ruin and that it
would not be there he would ever find Nada.
After that one sobbing cry he tore like a madman dawn into the valley,
traveling swiftly through the muck of fire and under-foot tangle with
Peter fighting behind him. Half an hour later he stood where the
Missioner's cabin had been and he found only a ruin of ash and logs
burned down to the earth. Where the trail had run there was no longer a
trail. A blight, grim and sickening, lay upon the earth that had been
paradise.
Peter heard the choking sound in his master's throat and chest. He,
too, sensed the black shadow of tragedy and cautiously he sniffed the
air, knowing that at last they were home--and yet it was not home.
Instinctively he had faced Cragg's Ridge and Jolly Roger, seeing the
dog's stiffened body pointing toward the break beyond which lay Nada's
old home, felt a thrill of hope leap up within him. Possibly the
farther plain had escaped the scourge of fire. If so, Nada would be
there, and the Missioner--
He started for the break, a mile away. As he came nearer to it his hope
grew less for he could see where the flames had swept in an inundating
sea along Cragg's Ridge. They passed over the meadow where the thick
young jackpines, the red strawberries and the blue violets had been and
Peter heard the strange sob when they came to the little hollow--the
old trysting place where Nada had first given herself into his master's
arms. And there it was that Peter forgot master and caution and sped
swiftly ahead to the break that cut the Ridge in twain.
When Jolly Roger came to that break and ran through it he was
staggering from the mad effort he had made. And then, all at once, the
last of his wind came in a cry of gladness. He swayed against a rock
and stood there staring wild-eyed at what was before him. The world was
as black ahead of him as it was behind. But Jed Hawkins' cabin was
untouched! The fire had crept up to its very door and there it had died.
He went on the remaining hundred yards and before the closed door of
Nada's old home he found Peter standing stiff-legged and strange. He
opened the door and a damp chill touched his face. The cabin was empty.
And the gloom and desolation of a grave filled the place.
He stepped in, a moaning whisper of the truth coming to his lips. He
heard the scurrying flight of a starved wood-rat, a flutter of loose
papers, and then the silence of death fell about him. The door of
Nada's little room was open and he entered through it. The bed was
naked and there remained only the skeleton of things that had been.
He moved now like a man numbed by a strange sickness and Peter followed
gloomily and silently in the footsteps of his master. They went outside
and a distance away Jolly Roger saw a thing rising up out of the char
of fire, ugly and foreboding, like the evil spirit of desolation
itself. It was a rude cross made of saplings, up which the flames had
licked their way, searing it grim and black.
His hands clenched slowly for he knew that under the cross lay the body
of Jed Hawkins, the fiend who had destroyed his world.
After that he re-entered the cabin and went into Nada's room, closing
the door behind him; and for many minutes thereafter Peter remained
outside guarding the outer door, and hearing no sound or movement from
within.
When Jolly Roger came out his face was set and white, and he looked
where the thick forest had stood on that stormy night when he ran down
the trail toward Mooney's cabin. There was no forest now. But he found
the old tie-cutters' road, cluttered as it was with the debris of fire,
and he knew when he came to that twist in the trail where long ago Jed
Hawkins had lain dead on his back. Half a mile beyond he came to the
railroad. Here it was that the fire had burned hottest, for as far as
his vision went he could see no sign of life or of forest green alight
in the waning sun.
And now there fell upon him, along with the desolation of despair, a
something grimmer and more terrible--a thing that was fear. About him
everywhere reached this graveyard of death, leaving no spot untouched.
Was it possible that Nada and the Missioner had not escaped its fury?
The fear settled upon him more heavily as the sun went down and the
gloom of evening came, bringing with it an unpleasant chill and a
cloying odor of things burned dead.
He did not talk to Peter now. There was a lamp in the cabin and wood
behind the stove, and silently he built a fire and trimmed and lighted
the wick when darkness came. And Peter, as if hiding from the ghosts of
yesterday, slunk into a corner and lay there unmoving and still. And
McKay did not get supper nor did he smoke, but after a long time he
carried his blankets into Nada's room, and spread them out upon her
bed. Then he put out the light and quietly laid himself down where
through the nights of many a month and year Nada had slept in the moon
glow.
The moon was there tonight. The faint glow of it rose in the east and
swiftly it climbed over the ragged shoulder of Cragg's Ridge, flooding
the blackened world with light and filling the room with a soft and
golden radiance. It was a moon undimmed, full and round and yellow; and
it seemed to smile in through the window as if some living spirit in it
had not yet missed Nada, and was embracing her in its glory. And now it
came upon Jolly Roger why she had loved it even more than she had loved
the sun; for through the little window it shut out all the rest of the
world, and sitting up, he seemed to hear her heart beating at his side
and clearly he saw her face in the light of it and her slim arms
out-reaching, as if to gather it to her breast. Thus--many times, she
had told him--had she sat up in her bed to greet the moon and to look
for the smiling face that was almost always there, the face of the Man
in the Moon, her friend and playmate in the sky.
For a space his heart leapt up; and then, as if discovery of the
usurper in her room had come, a cloud swept over the face of the moon
like a mighty hand and darkness crowded him in. But the cloud sailed on
and the light drove out the gloom again. Then it was that Jolly Roger
saw the Old Man in the Moon was up and awake tonight, for never had he
seen his face more clearly. Often had Nada pointed it out to him in her
adorable faith that the Old Man loved her, telling him how this feature
changed and that feature changed, how sometimes the Old Man looked sick
and at others well, and how there were times when he smiled and was
happy and other times when he was sad and stern and sat there in his
castle in the sky sunk in a mysterious grief which she could not
understand.
"And always I can tell whether I'm going to be glad or sorry by the
look of the Man in the Moon," she had said to him. "He looks down and
tells me even when the clouds are thick and he can only peep through
now and then. And he knows a lot about you, Mister--Jolly
Roger--because I've told him everything."
Very quietly Jolly Roger got up from the bed and very strange seemed
his manner to Peter as he walked through the outer room and into the
night beyond. There he stood making no sound or movement, like one of
the lifeless stubs left by fire; and Peter looked up, as his master was
looking, trying to make out what it was he saw in the sky. And nothing
was there--nothing that he had not seen many times before; a billion
stars, and the moon riding King among them all, and fleecy clouds as if
made of web, and stillness, a great stillness that was like sleep in
the lap of the world.
For a little Jolly Roger was silent and then Peter heard him saying,
"Yellow Bird was right--again. She said we'd find a black world down
here and we've found it. And we're going to find Nada where she told us
we'd find her, in that place she called The Country Beyond--the country
beyond the forests, beyond the tall trees and the big swamps, beyond
everything we've ever known of the wild and open spaces; the country
where God lives in churches on Sunday and where people would laugh at
some of our queer notions, _Pied-Bot_. It's there we'll find Nada, driven
out by the fire, and waiting for us now in the settlements."
He spoke with a strange and quiet conviction, the haggard look dying
out of his face as he stared up into the splendor of the sky.
And then he said.
"We won't sleep tonight, Peter. We'll travel with the moon."
Half an hour later, as the lonely figures of man and dog headed for the
first settlement a dozen miles away, there seemed to come for an
instant the flash of a satisfied smile in the face of the Man in the
sky.