Dripping from the bog-holes and lathered with mud, it was the mystery
of Breault's noiseless presence somewhere near him in the still night
that drew Peter continually deeper into the swamp.
Half a dozen times he caught the scent of him in a quiet air that
seemed only now and then to rise up in his face softly, as if stirred
by butterflies' wings. Always it came from ahead, and Peter's mind
worked swiftly to the decision that where Breault was there also would
be Nada and Jolly Roger. Yet he caught the scent of neither of these
two, and that puzzled him.
Many times he found himself at the edge of the black lip of water, but
never quite at the right time to see a shadow in its darkness, or hear
the sound of Breault's pole.
But in the swamp, as he went on, he saw nothing but shadow, and heard
weird and nameless sounds which made his blood creep, even though his
courage was now full-grown within him.
He was not frightened at the ugly sputter of the owls, as in the days
of old. Their throaty menace and snapping beaks did not stop him nor
turn him aside. The slashing scrape of claws in the bark of trees and
the occasional crackling of brush were matters of intimate knowledge,
and he gave but little attention to them in his eagerness to reach
those who had gone ahead of him. What troubled him, and filled his eyes
with sudden red glares, were the oily gurgles of the pitfalls which
tried to suck him down; the laughing madness of muck that held him as
if living things were in it, and which spluttered and coughed when he
freed himself.
Half blinded at times, so that even the black shadows were blotted out,
he went on. And at last, coming again to the edge of the stream, he
heard a new kind of sound--the slow, steady dipping of Breault's pole.
He hurried on, finding harder ground under his feet, and came
noiselessly abreast of the man on his raft of cedar timbers. He could
almost hear his breathing. And very faintly he could see in the vast
gloom a shadow--a shadow that moved slowly against the background of a
still deeper shadow beyond.
But there was no scent of Nada or Jolly Roger, and whatever desire had
risen in him to make himself known was smothered by caution and
suspicion. After this he did not go ahead of Breault, but kept behind
him or abreast of him, within sound of the dipping pole. And every
minute his heart thumped expectantly, and he sniffed the new air for
signs of those he most desired to find.
Dawn was breaking in the sky when they came out of the swamp, and the
first flush of the sun was lighting up the east when Breault headed his
improvised craft for the sandbar upon which Nada and McKay had rested
many hours before.
Breault was tired, but his eyes lighted up when he saw the footprints
in the sand, and he chuckled--almost good humoredly. As a matter of
fact he was in a good humor. But one would not have reckoned it as such
in Breault. A hard man, the forests called him; a man with the hunting
instincts of the fox and the wolf and the merciless persistency of the
weazel--a man who lived his code to the last letter of the law, without
pity and without favoritism. At least so he was judged, and his hard,
narrow eyes, his thin lips and his cynically lined face seldom betrayed
the better thoughts within him, if he possessed any at all. In the
Service he was regarded as a humanly perfect mechanism, a bit of
machinery that never failed, the dreaded Nemesis to be set on the trail
of a wrong-doer when all others had failed.
But this morning, with every bone and muscle in him aching from his
long night of tedious exertion, the chuckle grew into a laugh as he
looked upon the telltale signs in the sand.
He stretched himself and his tired bones cracked.
Breault did not think aloud. But he was saying to himself.
“There, against that rock, Jolly Roger McKay sat There is the imprint
of only one person sitting. The girl was in his arms. Here are little
holes where her outstretched heels rested in the sand. She is wearing
shoes and not moccasins.”
He grinned as he drew his service pack from the two-log cedar raft.
“Plenty of time now,” he continued to think. “They are mine this
time--sure. They believe they have fooled me, and they haven't. That's
fatal. Always.”
Not infrequently, when entirely alone, Breault let a little part of
himself loose, as if freeing a prisoner from bondage for a short time.
For instance, he whistled. It was not an unpleasant whistle, but rather
oddly reminiscent of tender things he remembered away back somewhere;
and as he fried his bacon and steamed a handful of desiccated potatoes
he hummed a song, also rather pleasant to ears that were as closely
attentive as Peter's.
For Peter had crept up through a tangle of ground-scrub and lay not
twenty paces away, smelling of the bacon hungrily, and watching
intently from his concealment.
Peter knew the fox and the wolf, but he did not know Breault, and he
did not guess why the man's whistling grew a little louder, nor why his
humming voice grew stronger. But after a time, with his back and not
his face toward Peter, Breault called in the most natural and
matter-of-fact voice in the world,
“Come on, Peter. Breakfast is ready!”
Peter's jaws dropped in amazement. And as Breault turned toward him,
his thin face a-grin, and continued to invite him in a most
companionable way, he forgot his concealment entirely and stood up
straight, ready either to fight or fly.
Breault tossed him a dripping slice of bacon which he held in his hand.
It fell within a foot of Peter's nose, and Peter was ravenously hungry.
The delicious odor of it demoralized his senses and his caution. For a
few seconds he resisted, then thrust himself out toward it an inch at a
time, made a sudden grab, and swallowed it at one gulp.
Breault laughed outright, and with the first of the sun striking into
his face he did not look like an enemy to Peter.
A second slice of bacon followed the first, and then a third--until
Breault was frying another mess over the fire.
“That's partial payment for what you did up on the Barren,” he was
saying inside himself. “If it hadn't been for you--”
He didn't even imagine the rest. Nor after that did he pay the
slightest attention to Peter. For Breault knew dogs possibly even
better than he knew men, and not by the smallest sign did he give Peter
to understand that he was interested in him at all. He washed his
dishes, whistling and humming, reloaded his pack on the raft, and once
more began poling his way downstream.
Peter, still in the edge of the scrub, was not only puzzled, but felt a
further sense of abandonment. After all, this man was not his enemy,
and he was leaving him as his master and mistress had left him. He
whined. And Breault was not out of sight when he trotted down to the
sandbar, and quickly found the scent of Nada and McKay. Purposely
Breault had left a lump of desiccated potato as big as his fist, and
this Peter ate as ravenously as he had eaten the bacon. Then, just as
Breault knew he would do, he began following the raft.
Breault did not hurry, and he did not rest. There was something almost
mechanically certain in his slow but steady progress, though he knew it
was possible for the canoe to outdistance him three to one. He was
missing nothing along the shore. Three times during the forenoon he saw
where the canoe had landed, and he chuckled each time, thinking of the
old story of the tortoise and the hare. He stopped for not more than
two or three minutes at each of these places, and was then on his way
again.
Peter was fascinated by the unexcited persistency of the man's
movement. He followed it, watched it, and became more and more
interested in the unvarying monotony of it. There were the same
up-and-down strokes of the long pole, the slight swaying of the
upstanding body, the same eddy behind the cedar logs--and occasionally
wisps of smoke floating behind when the pursuer smoked his pipe. Not
once did Peter see Breault turn his head to look behind him. Yet
Breault was seeing everything. Five times that morning he saw Peter,
but not once did he make a sign or call to him.
He drove his raft ashore at twelve o'clock to prepare his dinner, and
after he had built a fire, and his cooking things were scattered about,
he straightened himself up and called in that same matter-of-fact way,
as if expecting an immediate response,
“Here, Peter!--Peter!--Come in, Boy!”
And Peter came. Fighting against the last instinct that held him back
he first thrust his head out from the brush and looked at Breault.
Breault paid no attention to him for a few moments, but sliced his
bacon. When the perfume of the cooking meat reached Peter's nose he
edged himself a little nearer, and with a whimpering sigh flattened
himself on his belly.
Breault heard the sigh, and grunted a reply,
“Hungry again, Peter?” he inquired casually.
He had saved for this moment a piece of cooked bacon held over from
breakfast, and tearing this with his fingers he tossed the strips to
Peter. As he did this he was thinking to himself,
“Why am I doing this? I don't want the dog. He will be a nuisance. He
will eat my grub. But it's fair. I'm paying a debt. He helped to save
me up on the Barren.”
Thus did Breault, the man without mercy, the Nemesis, briefly analyze
the matter. And he cooked five pieces of bacon for Peter.
During the rest of that day Peter made no effort to keep himself in
concealment as he followed Breault and his raft. This afternoon Breault
shot a fawn, and when he made camp that night both he and Peter feasted
on fresh meat. This broke down the last of Peter's suspicion, and
Breault laid a hand on his head. He did not particularly like the feel
of the hand, but he tolerated it, and Breault grunted aloud, with a
note of commendation in his hard voice.
“A one-man dog--never anything else.”
Half a dozen times during the day Peter had found the scent of Nada and
Roger where they had come ashore, and from this night on he associated
Breault as a necessary agent in his search for them. And with Breault
he went, instinctively guessing the truth.
The next day they found where Nada and McKay had abandoned the canoe,
and had struck south through the wilderness. This pleased Breault, who
was tired of his poling. This third night there was a new moon, and
something about it stirred in Peter an impulse to run ahead and
overtake those he was seeking. But a still strong instinct held him to
Breault.
Tonight Breault slept like a dead man on his cedar boughs. He was up
and had a fire built an hour before dawn, and with the first gray
streaking of day was on the trail again. He made no further effort to
follow signs of the pursued, for that was a hopeless task. But he knew
how McKay was heading, and he traveled swiftly, figuring to cover twice
the distance that Nada might travel in the same given time. It was
three o'clock in the afternoon when he came to a great ridge, and on
its highest pinnacle he stopped.
Peter had grown restless again, and a little more suspicious of
Breault. He was not afraid of him, but all that day he had found no
scent of Nada or Jolly Roger, and slowly the conviction was impinging
itself upon him that he should seek for himself in the wilderness.
Breault saw this restlessness, and understood it.
“I'll keep my eye on the dog,” he thought. “He has a nose, and an
uncanny sixth sense, and I haven't either. He will bear watching. I
believe McKay and the girl cannot be far away. Possibly they have
traveled more slowly than I thought, and haven't passed this ridge; or
it may be they are down there, in the plain. If so I should catch sign
of smoke or fire--in time.”
For an hour he kept watch over the plain through his binoculars,
seeking for a wisp of smoke that might rise at any time over the
treetops. He did not lose sight of Peter, questing out in widening
circles below him. And then, quite unexpectedly, something happened. In
the edge of a tiny meadow an eighth of a mile away Peter was acting
strangely. He was nosing the ground, gulping the wind, twisting eagerly
back and forth. Then he set out, steadily and with unmistakable
decision, south and west.
In a flash Breault was on his feet, had caught up his pack, and was
running for the meadow. And there he found something in the velvety
softness of the earth which brought a grim smile to his thin lips as
he, too, set out south and west.
The scent he had found, hours old, drew Peter on until in the edge of
the dusk of evening it brought him to a foot-worn trail leading to the
Hudson's Bay Company post many miles south. In this path, beaten by the
feet of generations of forest dwellers, the hard heels of McKay's boots
had made their imprint, and after this the scent was clearer under
Peter's nose. But with forest-bred caution he still traveled slowly,
though his blood was burning like a pitch-fed fire in his veins. Almost
as swiftly followed Breault behind him.
Again came darkness, and then the moon, brighter than last night,
lighting his way between the two walls of the forest.