From the cabin McKay went first to the great rock that jutted from the
broken shoulder of Cragg's Ridge, and as they stood there Peter heard
the strange something that was like a laugh, and yet was not a laugh,
on his master's lips. But his scraggly face did not look up. There was
an answering whimper in his throat. He had been slow in sensing the
significance of the mysterious thing that had changed his old home
since months ago. During the hours of afternoon, and these moonlit
hours that followed, he tried to understand. He knew this was home. Yet
the green grass was gone, and a million trees had changed into
blackened stubs. The world was no longer shut in by deep forests. And
Cragg's Ridge was naked where he and Nada had romped in sunshine and
flowers, and out of it all rose the mucky death-smell of the
flame-swept earth. These things he understood, in his dog way. But what
he could not understand clearly was why Nada was not in the cabin, and
why they did not find her, even though the world was changed.
He sat back on his haunches, and Jolly Roger heard again the whimpering
grief in his throat. It comforted the man to know that Peter
remembered, and he was not alone in his desolation. Gently he placed a
soot-grimed hand on his comrade's head.
"Peter, it was from this rock--right where we're standing now--that I
first saw her, a long time ago," he said, a bit of forced cheer
breaking through the huskiness of his voice. "Remember the little
jackpine clump down there? You climbed up onto her lap, a little
know-nothing thing, and you pawed in her loose curls, and growled so
fiercely I could hear you. And when I made a noise, and she looked up,
I thought she was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen--just a kid,
with those eyes like the flowers, and her hair shining in the sun, an'
tear stains on her cheeks. Tear stains, _Pied-Bot_--because of that snake
who's dead over there. Remember how you growled at me, Peter?"
Peter wriggled an answer.
"That was the beginning," said Jolly Roger, "and this--looks like the
end. But--"
He clenched his fists, and there was a sudden fierceness in the
grotesque movement of his shadow on the rock.
"We're going to find her before that end comes," he added defiantly.
"We're going to find her, _Pied-Bot_, even if it takes us to the
settlements--right up into the face of the law."
He set out over the rocks, his boots making hollow sounds in the
deadness of the world about them. Again he followed where once had been
the trail that led to Mooney's shack, over on the wobbly line of rail
that rambled for eighty miles into the wilderness from Fort William.
The P. D. & W. it was named--Port Arthur, Duluth & Western; but it had
never reached Duluth, and there were those who had nicknamed it
Poverty, Destruction & Want. Many times Jolly Roger had laughed at the
queer stories Nada told him about it; how a wrecking outfit was always
carried behind on the twice-a-week train, and how the crew picked
berries in season, and had their trapping lines, and once chased a bear
half way to Whitefish Lake while the train waited for hours. She called
it the "Cannon Ball," because once upon a time it had made sixty-nine
miles in twenty-four hours. But there was nothing of humor about it as
Jolly Roger and Peter came out upon it tonight. It stretched out both
ways from them, a thin, grim line of tragedy in the moonlight, and from
where they stood it appeared to reach into a black and abysmal sea.
Once more man and dog paused, and looked back at what had been. And the
whine came in Peter's throat again and something tugged inside him,
urging him to bark up into the face of the moon, as he had often barked
for Nada in the days of his puppyhood, and afterward.
But his master went on and Peter followed him, stepping the uneven ties
one by one. And with the black chaos of the world under and about them,
and the glorious light of the moon filling; the sky over their heads,
the journey they made seemed weirdly unreal. For the silver and gold of
the moon and the black muck of the fire refused to mingle, and while
over their heads they could see the tiniest clouds and beyond to the
farthest stars, all was black emptiness when they looked about them
upon what once had been a living earth. Only the two lines of steel
caught the moon-glow and the charred ends of the fire-shriven stubs
that rose up out of the earth shroud and silhouetted themselves against
the sky.
To Peter it was not what he failed to see, but what he did not hear or
smell that oppressed him and stirred him to wide-eyed watchfulness
against impending evil. Under many moons he had traveled with his
master in their never-ending flight from the law, and many other nights
with neither moon nor stars had they felt out their trails together.
But always, under him and over him on all sides of him, there had been
_life_. And tonight there was no life, nor smell of life. There was no
chirp of night bird, or flutter of owl's wing, no plash of duck or cry
of loon. He listened in vain for the crinkling snap of twig, and the
whisper of wind in treetops. And there was no smell--no musk of mink
that had crossed his path, no taste in the air of the strong scented
fox, no subtle breath of partridge and rabbit and fleshy porcupine. And
even from the far distances there came no sound, no howl of wolf, no
castanet clatter of stout moose horns against bending saplings--not
even the howl of a trapper's dog.
The stillness was of the earth, and yet unearthly. It was even as if
some fearsome thing was smothering the sound of his master's feet. To
McKay, sensing these same things that Peter sensed, came understanding
that brought with it an uneasiness which changed swiftly into the chill
of a growing fear. The utter lifelessness told him how vast the
destruction of the fire had been. Its obliteration was so great no life
had adventured back into the desolated country, though the
conflagration must have passed in the preceding autumn, many months
ago. The burned country was a grave and the nearest edge of it, judged
from the sepulchral stillness of the night, was many miles away.
For the first time came the horror of the thought that in such a fire
as this people must have died. It had swept upon them like a tidal
wave, galloping the forests with the speed of a race horse, with only
this thin line of rail leading to the freedom of life outside. In
places only a miracle could have made escape possible. And here, where
Nada had lived, with the pitch-wood forests crowding close, the fire
must have burned most fiercely. In this moment, when fear of the
unspeakable set his heart trembling, his faith fastened itself grimly
to the little old gray Missioner, Father John, in whose cabin Nada had
taken refuge many months ago, when Jed Hawkins lay dead in the trail
with his one-eyed face turned up to the thunder and lightning in the
sky. Father John, on that stormy night when he fled north, had promised
to care for Nada, and in silence he breathed a prayer that the
Missioner had saved her from the red death that had swept like an
avalanche upon them. He told himself it must be so. He cried out the
words aloud, and Peter heard him, and followed closer, so that his head
touched his master's leg as he walked.
But the fear was there. From a spark it grew into a red-hot spot in
Jolly Roger's heart. Twice in his own life he had raced against death
in a forest fire. But never had he seen a fire like this must have
been. All at once he seemed to hear the roar of it in his ears, the
rolling thunder of the earth as it twisted in the cataclysm of flame,
the hissing shriek of the flaming pitch-tops as they leapt in lightning
fires against the smoke-smothered sky. A few hours ago he had stood
where Father John's Cabin had been and the place was a ruin of char and
ash. If the fire had hemmed them in and they had not escaped--
His voice cried out in sudden protest.
"It can't be, Peter. It can't be! They made the rail--or the lake--and
we'll find them in the settlements. It couldn't happen. God wouldn't
let her die like that!"
He stopped, and stared into the moon-broken gloom on his left.
Something was there, fifty feet away, that drew him down through the
muck which lay knee deep in the right-of-way ditch. It was what was
left of the cutter's cabin, a clutter of burned logs, a wind scattered
heap of ash. Even there, within arm's reach of the railroad, there had
been no salvation from the fire.
He waded again through the muck of the ditch, and went on. Mentally and
physically he was fighting the ogre that was striving to achieve
possession of his brain. Over and over he repeated his faith that Nada
and the Missioner had escaped and he would find them in the
settlements. Less than ever he thought of the law in these hours. What
happened to himself was of small importance now, if he could find Nada
alive before the menace caught up with him from behind, or ambushed him
ahead. Yet the necessity of caution impinged itself upon him even in
the recklessness of his determination to find her if he had to walk
into the arms of the law that was hunting him.
For an hour they went on, and as the moon sank westward it seemed to
turn its face to look at them; and behind them, when they looked back,
the world was transformed into a black pit, while ahead--with the glow
of it streaming over their shoulders--ghostly shapes took form, and
vision reached farther. Twice they caught the silvery gleam of lakes
through the tree-stubs, and again they walked with the rippling murmur
of a stream that kept for a mile within the sound of their ears. But
even here, with water crying out its invitation to life, there was no
life.
Another hour after that Jolly Roger's pulse beat a little faster as he
strained his eyes to see ahead. Somewhere near, within a mile or two,
was the first settlement with its sawmill and its bunkhouses, its one
store and its few cabins, with flat mountains of sawdust on one side of
it, and the evergreen forest creeping up to its doors on the other.
Surely they would find life here, where there had been man power to
hold fire back from the clearing. And it was here he might find Nada
and the Missioner, for more than once Father John had preached to the
red-cheeked women and children and the clear-eyed men of the Finnish
community that thrived there.
But as they drew nearer he listened in vain for the bark of a dog, and
his eyes quested as futilely for a point of light in the wide canopy of
gloom. At last, close together, they rounded a curve in the road, and
crossed a small bridge with a creek running below, and McKay knew his
arm should be able to send a stone to what he was seeking ahead. And
then, a minute later, he drew in a great gasping breath of unbelief and
horror.
For the settlement was no longer in the clearing between him and the
rim-glow of the moon. No living tree raised its head against the sky,
no sign of cabin or mill shadowed the earth, and where the store had
been, and the little church with its white-painted cross, was only a
chaos of empty gloom.
He went down, as he had gone to the tie cutter's cabin, and for many
minutes he stared and listened, while Peter seemed to stand without
breathing. Then making a wide megaphone of his hands, he shouted. It
was an alarming thing to do and Peter started as if struck. For there
were only ghosts to answer back and the hollowness of a shriven pit for
the cry to travel in. Nothing was there. Even the great sawdust piles
had shrunk into black scars under the scourge of the fire.
A groaning agony was in the breath of Jolly Roger's lips as he went
back to the railroad and hurried on Death must have come here, death
sudden and swift. And if it had fallen upon the Finnish settlement,
with its strong women and its stronger men, what might it not have done
in the cabin of the little old gray Missioner--and Nada?
For a long time after that he forgot Peter was with him. He forgot
everything but his desire to reach a living thing. At times, where the
road-bed was smooth, he almost ran, and at others he paused for a
little to gather his breath and listen. And it was Peter, in one of
these intervals, who caught the first message of life. From a long
distance away came faintly the barking of a dog.
Half a mile farther on they came to a clearing where no stubs of trees
stood up like question marks against the sky, and in this clearing was
a cabin, a dark blotch that was without light or sound. But from behind
it the dog barked again, and Jolly Roger made quickly toward it. Here
there was no ash under his feet, and he knew that at last he had found
an oasis of life in the desolation. Loudly he knocked with his fist at
the cabin door and soon there was a response inside, the heavy movement
of a man's body getting out of bed, and after that the questioning
voice of a woman. He knocked again and the flare of a lighted match
illumined the window. Then came the drawing of a bar at the door and a
man stood there in his night attire, a man with a heavy face and
bristling beard, and a lamp in his hand.
"I beg your pardon for waking you," said Jolly Roger, "but I am just
down from the north, hoping to find my friends back here and I have
seen nothing but destruction and death. You are the first living soul I
have found to ask about them."
"Where were they?" grunted the man.
"At Cragg's Ridge."
"Then God help them," came the woman's voice from back in the room.
"Cragg's Ridge," said the man, "was a burning hell in the middle of the
night."
Jolly Roger's fingers dug into the wood at the edge of the door.
"You mean--"
"A lot of 'em died," said the man stolidly, as if eager to rid himself
of the one who had broken his sleep. "If it was Mooney, he's dead. An'
if it was Robson, or Jake the Swede, or the Adams family--they're dead,
too."
"But it wasn't," said Jolly Roger, his heart choking between fear and
hope. "It was Father John, the Missioner, and Nada Hawkins, who lived
with him--or with her foster-mother in the Hawkins' cabin."
The man shook his head, and turned down the wick of his lamp.
"I dunno about the girl, or the old witch who was her mother," he said,
"but the Missioner made it out safe, and went to the settlements."
"And no girl was with him?"
"No, there was no girl," came the woman's voice again, and Peter jerked
up his ears at the creaking of a bed. "Father John stopped here the
second day after the fire had passed, and he said he was gathering up
the bones of the dead. Nada Hawkins wasn't with him, and he didn't say
who had died and who hadn't. But I think--"
She stopped as the bearded man turned toward her.
"You think what?" demanded Jolly Roger, stepping half into the room.
"I think," said the woman, "that she died along with the others.
Anyway, Jed Hawkins' witch-woman was burned trying to make for the
lake, and little of her was left."
The man with the lamp made a movement as if to close the door.
"That's all we know," he growled.
"For God's sake--don't!" entreated Jolly Roger, barring the door with
his arm. "Surely there were some who escaped from Cragg's Ridge and
beyond!"
"Mebby a half, mebby less," said the man. "I tell you it burned like
hell, and the worst of it came in the middle of the night with a wind
behind it that blew a hurricane. We've twenty acres cleared here, with
the cabin in the center of it, an' it singed my beard and burned her
hair and scorched our hands, and my pigs died out there from the heat
of it. Mebby it's a place to sleep in for the night you want, stranger?"
"No, I'm going on," said Jolly Roger, the blood in his veins running
with the chill of water. "How far before I come to the end of fire?"
"Ten miles on. It started this side of the next settlement."
Jolly Roger drew back and the door closed, and standing on the railroad
once more he saw the light go out and after that the occasional barking
of the settler's dog grew fainter and fainter behind them.
He felt a great weariness in his bones and body now. With hope struck
down the exhaustion of two nights and a day without sleep seized upon
him and his feet plodded more and more slowly over the uneven ties of
the road. Even in his weariness he fought madly against the thought
that Nada was dead and he repeated the word "impossible--impossible" so
often that it ran in sing-song through his brain. And he could not keep
away from him the white, thin face of the Missioner, who had promised
on his faith In God to care for Nada, and who had passed the settler's
cabin _alone_.
Another two hours they went on and then came the first of the green
timber. Under the shelter of some balsams Jolly Roger found a resting
place and there they waited for the break of dawn. Peter stretched out
and slept. But Jolly Roger sat with his head and shoulders against the
bole of a tree, and not until the light of the moon was driven away by
the darkness that preceded dawn by an hour or two did his eyes close in
restless slumber. He was roused by the wakening twitter of birds and in
the cold water of a creek that ran near he bathed his face and hands.
Peter wondered why there was no fire and no breakfast this morning.
The settlement was only a little way ahead and it was very early when
they reached it. People were still in their beds and out of only one
chimney was smoke rising into the clear calm of the breaking day. From
this cabin a young man came, and stood for a moment after he had closed
the door, yawning and stretching his arms and looking up to see what
sort of promise the sky held for the day. After that he went to a
stable of logs, and Jolly Roger followed him there.
He was unlike the bearded settler, and nodded with a youthful smile of
cheer.
"Good morning," he said. "You're traveling early, and--"
He looked more keenly as his eyes took in Jolly Roger's boots and
clothes, and the gray pallor in his face.
"Just get in?" he asked kindly. "And--from the burnt country?"
"Yes, from the burnt country. I've been away a long time, and I'm
trying to find out if my friends are among the living or the dead. Did
you ever hear of Father John, the Missioner at Cragg's Ridge?"
The young man's face brightened.
"I knew him," he said. "He helped me to bury my brother, three years
ago. And if it's him you seek, he is safe. He went up to Fort William a
week after the fire, and that was in September, eight months past."
"And was there with him a girl named Nada Hawkins?" asked Jolly Roger,
trying hard to speak calmly as he looked into the other's face.
The youth shook his head.
"No, he was alone. He slept in my cabin overnight, and he said nothing
of a girl named Nada Hawkins."
"Did he speak of others?"
"He was very tired, and I think he was half dead with grief at what had
happened. He spoke no names that I remember."
Then he saw the gray look in Jolly Roger's face grow deeper, and saw
the despair which could not hide itself in his eyes.
"But there were a number of girls who passed here, alone or with their
friends," he said hopefully. "What sort of looking girl was Nada
Hawkins?"
"A--kid. That's what I called her," said Jolly Roger, in a dead, cold
voice. "Eighteen, and beautiful, with blue eyes, and brown hair that
she couldn't keep from blowing in curls about her face. So like an
angel you wouldn't forget her if you'd seen her--just once."
Gently the youth placed a hand on Jolly Roger's arm.
"She didn't come this way," he said, "but maybe you'll find her
somewhere else. Won't you have breakfast with me? I've a stranger in
the cabin, still sleeping, who's going into the fire country from which
you've come. He's hunting for some one, and maybe you can give him
information. He's going to Cragg's Ridge."
"Cragg's Ridge!" exclaimed Jolly Roger. "What is his name?"
"Breault," said the youth. "Sergeant Breault, of the Royal Northwest
Mounted Police."
Jolly Roger turned to stroke the neck of a horse waiting for its
morning feed. But he felt nothing of the touch of flesh under his hand.
Cold as iron went his heart, and for half a minute he made no answer.
Then he said:
"Thanks, friend. I breakfasted before it was light and I'm hitting out
into the brush west and north, for the Rainy River country. Please
don't tell this man Breault that you saw me, for he'll think badly of
me for not waiting to give him information he might want. But--you
understand--if you loved the brother who died--that it's hard for me to
talk with anyone just now."
The young man's fingers touched his arm again.
"I understand," he said, "and I hope to God you'll find her."
Silently they shook hands, and Jolly Roger hurried away from the cabin
with the rising spiral of smoke.
Three days later a man and a dog came from the burned country into the
town of Fort William, seeking for a wandering messenger of God who
called himself Father John, and a young and beautiful girl whose name
was Nada Hawkins. He stopped first at the old mission, in whose shadow
the Indians and traders of a century before had bartered their wares,
and Father Augustine, the aged patriarch who talked with him, murmured
as he went that he was a strange man, and a sick one, with a little
madness lurking in his eyes.
And it was, in fact, a madness of despair eating out the life in Jolly
Roger's heart. For he no longer had hope Nada had escaped the fire,
even though at no place had he found a conclusive evidence of her
death. But that signified little, for there were many of the missing
who had not been found between the last of September and these days of
May. What he did find, with deadly regularity, was the fact that Father
John had escaped--and that he had traveled to safety ALONE.
And Father Augustine told him that when Father John stopped to rest for
a few days at the Mission he was heading north, for somewhere on
Pashkokogon Lake near the river Albany.
There was little rest for Peter and his master at Fort William town.
That Breault must be close on their trail, and following it with the
merciless determination of the ferret from which he had been named,
there was no shadow of doubt in the mind of Jolly Roger McKay. So after
outfitting his pack at a little corner shop, where Breault would be
slow to enquire about him, he struck north through the bush toward Dog
Lake and the river of the same name. Five or six days, he thought,
would bring him to Father John and the truth which he dreaded more and
more to hear.
The despondency of his master had sunk, in some mysterious way, into
the soul of Peter. Without the understanding of language he sensed the
oppressive gloom of tragedy behind and about him and there was a
wolfish slinking in the manner of his travel now, and his confidence
was going as he caught the disease of despair of the man who traveled
with him. But constantly and vigilantly his eyes and scent were
questing about them, suspicious of the very winds that whispered in the
treetops. And at night after they had built their little cooking fire
in the deepest heart of the bush he would lie half awake during the
hours of darkness, the watchfulness of his senses never completely
dulled in the stupor of sleep.
Since the night they had stopped at the settler's cabin Jolly Roger's
face had grown grayer and thinner. A number of times he had tried to
assure himself what he would do in that moment which was coming when he
would stand face to face with Breault the man-hunter. His caution,
after he left Fort William, was in a way an automatic instinct that
worked for self-preservation in face of the fact that he was growing
less and less concerned regarding Breault's appearance. It was not in
his desire to delay the end much longer. The chase had been a long one,
with its thrills and its happiness at times, but now he was growing
tired and with Nada gone there was only hopeless gloom ahead. If she
were dead he wanted to go to her. That thought was a dawning pleasure
in his breast, and it was warm in his heart when he tied in a hard knot
the buckskin string which locked the flap of his pistol holster. When
Breault overtook him the law would know, because of the significance of
this knot, that he had welcomed the end of the game.
Never in the northland had there come a spring more beautiful than this
of the year in which McKay and his dog went through the deep wilds to
Pashkokogon Lake. In a few hours, it seemed, the last chill died out of
the air and there came the soft whispers of those bridal-weeks between
May and Summer, a month ahead of their time. But Jolly Roger, for the
first time in his life, failed to respond to the wonder and beauty of
the earth's rejoicing. The first flowers did not fill him with the old
joy. He no longer stood up straight, with expanding chest, to drink in
the rare sweetness of air weighted with the tonic of balsams and cedar
spruce. Vainly he tried to lift up his soul with the song and bustle of
mating things. There was no longer music for him in the flood-time
rushing of spring waters. An utter loneliness filled the cry of the
loon. And all about him was a vast emptiness from which the spirit of
life had fled for him.
Thus he came at last to a stream in the Burntwood country which ran
into Pashkokogon Lake; and it was this day, in the mellow sunlight of
late afternoon, that they heard coming to them from out of the dense
forest the chopping of an axe.
Toward this they made their way, with caution and no sound, until in a
little clearing in a bend of the stream they saw a cabin. It was a
newly built cabin, and smoke was rising from the chimney.
But the chopping was nearer them, in the heart of a thick cover of
evergreen and birch. Into this Jolly Roger and Peter made their way and
came within a dozen steps of the man who was wielding the axe. It was
then that Jolly Roger rose up with a cry on his lips, for the man was
Father John the Missioner.
In spite of the tragedy through which he had passed the little gray man
seemed younger than in that month long ago when Jolly Roger had fled to
the north. He dropped his axe now and stood as if only half believing,
a look of joy shining in his face as he realized the truth of what had
happened. "McKay," he cried, reaching out his hands. "McKay, my boy!"
A look of pity mellowed the gladness in his eyes as he noted the change
in Jolly Roger's face, and the despair that had set its mark upon it.
They stood for a moment with clasped hands, questioning and answering
with the silence of their eyes. And then the Missioner said:
"You have heard? Someone has told you?"
"No," said Jolly Roger, his head dropping a little. "No one has told
me," and he was thinking of Nada, and her death.
Father John's fingers tightened.
"It is strange how the ways of God bring themselves about," he spoke in
a low voice. "Roger, you did not kill Jed Hawkins!"
Dumbly, his lips dried of words, Jolly Roger stared at him.
"No, you didn't kill him," repeated Father John. "On that same night of
the storm when you thought you left him dead in the trail, he stumbled
back to his cabin, alive. But God's vengeance came soon.
"A few days later, while drunk, he missed his footing and fell from a
ledge to his death. His wife, poor creature, wished him buried in sight
of the cabin door--"
But in this moment Roger McKay was thinking less of Breault the Ferret
and the loosening of the hangman's rope from about his neck than he was
of another thing. And Father John was saying in a voice that seemed far
away and unreal:
"We've sent out word to all parts of the north, hoping someone would
find you and send you back. And she has prayed each night, and each
hour of the day the same prayer has been in her heart and on her lips.
And now--"
Someone was coming to them from the direction of the cabin--someone, a
girl, and she was singing,
McKay's face went whiter than the gray ash of fire.
"My God," he whispered huskily. "I thought--she had died!"
It was only then Father John understood the meaning of what he had seen
in his face.
"No, she is alive," he cried. "I sent her straight north through the
bush with an Indian the day after the fire. And later I left word for
you with the Fire Relief Committee at Fort William, where I thought you
would first enquire."
"And it was there," said Jolly Roger, "that I did not enquire at all!"
In the edge of the clearing, close to the thicket of timber, Nada had
stopped. For across the open space a strange looking creature had raced
at the sound of her voice; a dog with bristling Airedale whiskers, and
a hound's legs, and wild-wolf's body hardened and roughened by months
of fighting in the wilderness. As in the days of his puppyhood, Peter
leapt up against her, and a cry burst from Nada's lips, a wild and
sobbing cry of _Peter, Peter, Peter_--and it was this cry Jolly Roger
heard as he tore away from Father John.
On her knees, with her arms about Peter's shaggy head, Nada stared
wildly at the clump of timber, and in a moment she saw a man break out
of it, and stand still, as if the mellow sunlight blinded him, and made
him unable to move. And the same choking weakness was at her own heart
as she rose up from Peter, and reached out her arms toward the gray
figure in the edge of the wood, sobbing, trying to speak and yet saying
no word.
And a little slower, because of his age, Father John came a moment
later, and peered out with the knowledge of long years from a thicket
of young banksians, and when he saw the two in the open, close in each
other's arms, and Peter hopping madly about them, he drew out a
handkerchief and wiped his eyes, and went back then for the axe which
he had dropped in the timber clump.
There was a great drumming in Jolly Roger's head, and for a time he
failed even to hear Peter yelping at their side, for all the world was
drowned in those moments by the breaking sobs in Nada's breath and the
wild thrill of her body in his arms; and he saw nothing but the
upturned face, crushed close against his breast, and the wide-open
eyes, and the lips to kiss. And even Nada's face he seemed to see
through a silvery mist, and he felt her arms strangely about his neck,
as if it was all half like a dream--a dream of the kind that had come
to him beside his campfire. It was a little cry from Nada that drove
the unreality away.
"Roger--you're--breaking me," she cried, gasping for her breath in his
arms, yet without giving up the clasp of her own arms about his neck in
the least; and at that he sensed the brutality of his strength, and
held her off a little, looking into her face.
Pride and happiness and the courage in his heart would have slunk away
could he have seen himself then, as Father John saw him, coming from
the edge of the bush, and as Nada saw him, held there at the end of his
arms. Since the day he had come with Peter to Cragg's Ridge the blade
of a razor had not touched his face, and his beard was like a brush,
and with it his hair unkempt and straggling; and his eyes were red from
sleeplessness and the haunting of that grim despair which had dogged
his footsteps.
But these things Nada did not see. Or, if she did, there must have been
something beautiful about them for her. For it was not a little girl,
but a woman who was standing there before Jolly Roger now--Nada grown
older, very much older it seemed to McKay, and taller, with her hair no
longer rioting free about her, but gathered up in a wonderful way on
the crown of her head. This change McKay discovered as she stood there,
and it swept upon him all in a moment, and with it the prick of
something swift and terrorizing inside him. She was not the little girl
of Cragg's Ridge. She was a _woman_. In a year had come this miracle of
change, and it frightened him, for such a creature as this that stood
before him now Jed Hawkins would never have dared to curse or beat, and
he--Roger McKay--was afraid to gather her back into his arms again.
And then, even as his fingers slowly drew themselves away from her
shoulders, he saw that which had not changed--the wonder-light in her
eyes, the soul that lay as open to him now as on that other day in
Indian Tom's cabin, when Mrs. Captain Kidd had bustled and squeaked on
the pantry shelf, and Peter had watched them as he lay with his broken
leg in the going down of the sun. And as he hesitated it was Nada
herself who came into his arms, and laid her head on his breast, and
trembled and laughed and cried there, while Father John came up and
patted her shoulder, and smiled happily at McKay, and then went on to
the cabin in the clearing. For a time after that Jolly Roger crushed
his face in Nada's hair, and neither said a word, but there was a
strange throbbing of their hearts together, and after a little Nada
reached up a hand to his cheek, and stroked it tenderly, bristly beard
and all.
"I'll never let you run away from me again--Mister--Jolly Roger," she
said, and it was the little Nada of Cragg's Ridge who whispered the
words, half sobbing; but in the voice there was also something very
definite and very sure, and McKay felt the glorious thrill of it as he
raised his face from her hair, and saw once more the sun-filled world
about him.