His first night in Five Fingers would always remain an unchangeable
page in the history of Peter McRae. Time would not dim nor obliterate
it but would only mellow the memory of its loneliness and its torture.
In the hours when it seemed to him his world had come to an end,
years pressed their weight of experience and understanding upon his
shoulders, and for a little while pain and the poignancy of fears made
him old, and he ceased to be a boy of fourteen.
Simon McQuarrie had left a candle burning in the loft of his cabin.
By its light he had made Peter's bed, and had hugged the boy to him
for a moment before saying good night; and in going, with his head
and shoulders above the trap in the floor, he had paused for a moment
to say: "Don't worry, Peter. They won't get your father. And you must
sleep, because Mona will be looking for you early in the morning."
Then he had gone.
And now, two hours later, Peter was alone and still awake. The candle
had burned out, but the moon was coming up over the eastern forests. It
was a splendid spring moon, big and round and full of golden fire, and
its glow came in a flood through the open window of the loft.
At the window sat Peter, huddled and quiet. He knew Simon was sound
asleep. All of Five Fingers was asleep. From the window he counted six
or seven of the dozen log homes which made up the little settlement,
and their windows were dark. They were floating in a great, yellow sea
of moonlight. He could make out the dark walls of the forest and the
silvery sheen of Middle Finger Inlet.
From beyond that sheen came the low murmur of Lake Superior beating
against the rocks half a mile away. In springtime there was always this
moaning of the big lake at Five Fingers, even on still nights when
there was no wind.
And tonight it was so quiet Peter could hear his own heart beating. At
times it hurt him. It rose up in him somewhere and choked him. Once or
twice, if Simon had been awake, he could have heard the boy sobbing.
But Peter was beyond that now. His pale, thin face looking at the moon
over the tree-tops had grown tense and set in its understanding and
grief. Out under that moon his father was being hunted. Men were after
him--men who would kill him or hang him if they caught him. He was no
longer puzzled. His father was gone forever, just as his mother was
gone, only she was dead.
He gulped hard, and his fingers clutched at the rough wood of the
windowsill. He could not remember his mother except as a beautiful
dream. She had come to him sometimes that way, and he had felt the soft
warmth of her hands and the sweet breath of her kisses in his sleep.
In his brain he treasured a picture of her, but it was only a picture,
while his father had been very real. Since the first day he could
remember, it was his father who had made up his world, his father who
had been pal, comrade and mother to him all his life, and who now--out
under the light of the wonderful moon--was being hunted by men with
guns, just as they had so often hunted the big white rabbits in the
swamps.
Again and again as he sat alone at the window his mind went over the
events which had passed so swiftly since the day before yesterday, when
his father galloped in from the railroad settlement with the officers
of the law at his heels, and together they ran into the safety of the
woods, leaving the little cabin in the clearing which had been their
home. After that had come the longer flight, two days and nights of
exhaustion and hunger, and the final parting when they heard the axes
of the men at Five Fingers. It was when he came to that point his heart
rose up and choked him, and he wanted to cry out in the stillness of
the night. If only his father had put greater faith in his strength
and years, and had let him go along! He could run, and hide, and live
without anything to eat for a long time, and he could sleep on the
naked ground, and swim streams, and he wasn't afraid. But his father
had sent him on alone to this strange settlement of Five Fingers, where
he had met Mona, and Aleck Curry, and Simon McQuarrie....
When his thoughts came to Mona a bit of comfort crept into Peter's
soul. It wasn't so bad, with Mona near him. She had come into his
life in a most unexpected and beautiful way, and had helped him whip
the beast of a boy who had kicked her dog. He could still feel the
warm thrill of her little hand as she led him through the woods and
slashings into Five Fingers and he could see her eyes glowing at him in
the dusk as she said:
"Your father is alive and he _can_ come back. But mine can't, Peter. He
is dead. And so is my mother."
Peter could almost hear her speaking those words now, whispering them,
as if she realized in that instant the sacredness of the trust he had
put in her. And she was right. His father was alive, and could come
back, while hers....
The distant murmuring of the lake came to him faintly. It made him
shiver. Out there, somewhere, her father and mother had been drowned.
He wondered if Mona was awake and was also listening to that sound, so
faint at times that it was like a breath of air. It must haunt her, he
thought. It was always telling her about what had happened, just as
she had told it to him, coming down the slope into Five Fingers, and
probably it made her cry when she was alone nights. It was terrible
to remember one's father and mother dying like that, both at once, and
Peter shuddered.
It made him a little ashamed, too. The sense of manhood which his
father had planted and nurtured in him began to rise above his own
hopelessness and heartache, and he leaned out of the window to look at
the cabin of Pierre and Josette Gourdon, where Mona lived. That was
dark, too. But Mona might be awake. He hoped so. Next to his father she
was the biggest thing that had ever come into his life, and thought of
her, and of her nearness, and of her lying awake thinking about him,
sent a warm and comforting feeling through him, just as her gentle
hands and soft eyes had brought him a mothering consolation in the
earlier darkness of the forest that night.
It seemed to him, now that the reaction had come in his mind, that
everything about the night was assuming a new aspect.
It was the kind of night he and his father loved, and its stillness,
its shadows and floods of yellow moonlight brought him a new message.
_Their_ moon, they had always called it.
"You were born on a night with the moon shining like that," his father
had told him. "It came in at the window to look at you, and it was
mighty pleased."
So the moon had always been a personal thing to Peter, just as it
had been to his father. And the Man in the Moon, Peter observed, was
in a friendly humor tonight. There was a sly look in his eyes and an
odd twist to his mouth, as if he were winking at Peter and telling him
how beautifully everything was coming out, both for his father and for
himself. Between Mona and the moon the sickness grew less in his heart,
and remembering he had not said the prayer which his father had never
let him forget, he bowed his face on the windowsill and whispered the
words to himself.
When he raised his head a big gray shadow was floating silently in the
air just outside his window. It was one of the huge owls which turn
snow-white in winter. He could hear the soft flutter of its wings as
it twisted and turned and disappeared, more like a ghost than a living
thing. And then a swift patter of little feet came on the roof of the
cabin. It was another of the night folk, a flying squirrel. A few yards
away was the big tree in which it must hide itself during the day. He
wondered if the owl and the winged squirrel were among Mona's pets.
His ears began to attune themselves to the different sounds of the
night. It wasn't so empty, after all. There was always the murmur of
the lake, and he could hear the occasional soft thud of hoofs in the
meadow, and the mooing of a cow. A loon sent out its quavering love
call from somewhere beyond the dark wall of the forest, and a wolf
howled to the north. Now and then, deep in his sleep, Simon McQuarrie
gave a snort in the room below. It was as if he were under water and
came up at intervals for air, Peter thought.
Then he heard an odd chuckling, and a porcupine came waddling through
the moonlight toward the cabin. Peter could see him clearly. He was
big and fat and stupidly happy, and chattered like a cooing baby as
he approached Simon's woodpile. And at last the tenseness went out of
Peter's face, and his eyes brightened in the moonglow, and he pursed
up his lips to whistle down softly at Porky. He wanted to warn him
of the doom which Mona had said hovered over all porcupines at Five
Fingers. But the creature was deaf and dumb and blind. He found the
axe which Simon had forgotten, and grunted his satisfaction. Then he
humped himself into a comfortable ball and his teeth began working like
swiftly beating little hammers upon the helve of the axe, which was
salty with the sweat of Simon's hands. Peter whistled.
"Get out, Porky!" he called softly.
He was considering the necessity of going down to save Simon's axe
when a second chattering shadow waddled in out of the moonlit open
between the cabin and the forest. It was another porcupine, a huge,
black fellow who was carrying on an animated debate with himself as
he advanced. Peter grinned. He loved to hear the porcupines talk to
themselves. But he had never heard one quite like the big black fellow.
It was as if a mother pig were coming with a litter of little grunting
ones at her heels, and he wondered if Simon would sleep through it all.
The newcomer made straight for the woodpile and the gray possessor of
the axe helve turned to meet him. The axe was between them, a sweet
morsel for porcupine teeth. Low, throaty sounds floated up to Peter. It
might have been a meeting of brothers, or of sweethearts, or at least
of very good friends if one judged by those sounds.
Then came a swift, flail-like movement of tails, followed by grunts
and squeals and blows that sent a thrill of excitement through Peter.
It was a glorious fight from the beginning, and somehow the big black
fellow made him think of Aleck Curry, and in his eagerness to see the
battle he leaned half out of the window.
The fighters rolled directly under him and he heard loose quills flying
against the cabin as the tails struck out like clubs.
For a time he could not see who was getting the bad end of it. Then the
black, who was more than ever like Aleck Curry, got a swing from the
gray's tail that must have filled him with quills wrong-side in, for he
let out a wail and began to retreat.
Not until then did Peter hear a sound from the room below him. A door
opened. In another moment Simon McQuarrie came round the end of the
cabin.
Simon was a tall and ghostly figure in his nightgown, which fell to
his knees, and in his hand he carried a club. The club rose and fell
and Peter heard a sickening blow. A feeling of horror shot through him.
"Don't kill the white one!" he cried. "Don't kill it!"
Simon McQuarrie, about to make for his second victim, looked up at the
window in surprise. Peter saw the gray porcupine ambling back toward
the timber, grunting and protesting as he went, and Simon made no
effort to overtake him.
"They were having a fine fight," explained Peter. "That black one was
Aleck Curry, and the other was licking him. He was smaller, too."
For a space the Scotchman stood silent in the moonlight. Then he asked,
"Have you been asleep, Peter?"
Peter shook his head. "No."
"What have you been doing?"
"Just looking at the moon."
Simon turned slowly, with a suspicious upward glance at Peter.
"Better go now," he advised. "If you don't I'll ask you to come down
and sleep with me." As he disappeared round the end of the cabin, his
scant nightgown flapping above his long and bony legs, Simon muttered
under his breath: "Donald was wrong in having me tell the lad. Better
to have lied and never let him know. As it is----"
An expression which only Donald McRae would have understood settled in
his face, and he paused for a moment at his door to look across the
open where Pierre Gourdon's home lay in the radiance of the night. He
could see the window of the room in which Mona slept, and the lines
about his stern mouth softened.
"Poor little devils, both of them," he said, and went in to his bed.
Peter heard the door close. It seemed easier for him now to lie down
upon the blankets. The moonlight streamed in upon him, and Peter could
_feel_ it. There was always that something warm and comforting about
the moon. He closed his eyes, and his thoughts no longer brought a
lump into his throat or hurt him. It was as if an older mind were
helping him over certain difficult places. It assured him his father
was safe. The police would not get him, and it would not be long before
he returned. If he failed to do that he would surely write, and Peter
could then go to him.
He began to think of Mona. She was, after all, the pleasantest thing he
had ever had to think about, in spite of his happiness with his father.
He reviewed the fight of that day and grew warm with anticipations
of tomorrow and a renewal of hostilities. His hands clenched when he
pictured Aleck Curry with his ugly face and big, heavy body, but they
relaxed when he visioned Mona as she had taken part in the fight,
with her shining black hair streaming about her and flaming eyes so
beautiful he had at first been afraid to look at them. In his life in
the wilderness he had never had much to do with girls, but here was
one who pleased him completely, and all the ideals which his father
had built up in him were roused and set on fire. His mother must have
been like Mona when she was a little girl, because it seemed to him his
father had always pictured her like that.
Then he grew uneasy and shame crept a little upon him. It made him
squirm in his blankets to think that Aleck Curry would have whipped him
if Mona hadn't joined in those last two or three minutes of the fight.
That Aleck was bigger and older than he, and that he had fought under
the disadvantages of hunger and exhaustion, did not satisfactorily
explain his own failure to Peter. He was glad his father had not seen
that fight, even though he had been taken at a great disadvantage.
But _Mona_ had seen it. She had seen him on the ground in those final
moments, with Aleck about to pommel him into disgraceful submission,
and she had come in to save him.
There was only one thing to do under the circumstances, and the
inspiration of it comforted him. He would go out early in the morning,
hunt up Aleck Curry and lick him. He was sure he could do it now, even
though he was smaller and lighter than Aleck, for he would be rested
and would have a good breakfast to start with.
He fell asleep. The big owl hooted softly from the top of a stub near
the mill, and the flying squirrel was joined by its mate in a game of
tag on the roof. The moon sailed higher, and under it a buck and a doe
crossed within a stone's throw of Peter's window. All this Peter missed
in an excitement of his own as his unsettled mind traveled swiftly
from one dream to another. First he was fleeing with his father, and
they were pursued by a horde of enemies, and all of these enemies were
Aleck Currys. After that he dreamed of Aleck and Mona, and he fought so
fiercely, with Mona's dark eyes and hair filling his vision, that Simon
heard him twisting and groaning and climbed quietly up the ladder from
below to look at him.
For a long time the stern Scotchman watched Peter, and in the fainter
light of the moon which now filled the room a miracle of change passed
over his face and it became as gentle as a woman's. No one, since long
years ago, had ever caught that gentleness in Simon McQuarrie's face.
"It seems only yesterday," he whispered softly to himself, in a moment
when Peter's pale face lay quietly in the crook of his arm. "Only
yesterday, Helen."
Something trembled inside him, and he knew the mother was in that room
with Peter, watching over him as he had seen her many times in those
years when he had cared for the two, those beautiful but pitiless years
when he had hardened his heart against all hope for himself in his
devotion and duty to his hunted friend, Donald McRae. Only yesterday!
And yet many hard and tedious years had passed since then, and through
them he had gone like a piece of iron that is hardened into steel by
the alchemy of fire. Tonight had come the mysterious change. He climbed
down softly, his heart trembling. He loved Peter. He loved him as he
had loved the mother.