Dawn came softly where the quiet waters of the Willow Bud ran under
deep forests of evergreen out into the gold and silver birch of the
Nelson River flats. A veiling mist rose out of the earth to meet the
promise of day, gentle and sweet, like scented raiment, stirring
sleepily to the pulse of an awakening earth. Through it came the first
low twitter of birdsong, a sound that seemed to swell and grow until it
filled the world. Yet was it still a sound of sleep, of half
wakefulness, and the mist was thinning away when, a ruffled little
breast sent out its full throat-song from the tip of a silver birch
that overhung the stream.
The little warbler was looking down, as if wondering why there was no
stir of life beneath him, where in last night's sunset there had been
much to wonder at and a new kind of song to thrill him. But the girl
was no longer there to sing back at him. The cedar and balsam shelter
dripped with morning dew, the place where fire had been was black and
dead, and ruffling his feathers the warbler continued his song in
triumph.
Nada, hidden under her shelter, and still half dreaming, heard him. She
lay with her head nestled in the crook of Roger's arm, and the birdsong
seemed to come to her from a great distance away. She smiled, and her
lips trembled, as if even in sleep she--was about to answer it. And
then the song drifted away until she could no longer hear it, and she
sank back into an oblivion of darkness in which she seemed lost for a
long time, and out of which some invisible force was struggling to drag
her.
There came at last a sudden irresistible pull at her senses, and she
opened her eyes, awake. Her head was no longer in the crook of Jolly
Roger's arm. She could see him sitting up straight, and he was not
looking at her. It must be late, she thought, for the light was strong
in his face, warm with the first golden flow of the sun. She smiled,
and sat up, and shook her soft curls with a happy little laugh.
“Roger--”
And then she, too, was staring, wide-eyed and speechless. For she saw
Peter under Jolly Roger's hand. But it was not Peter who drew her
breath short and sent fear cutting like a sharp knife through her heart.
Facing them, seated coldly on a log which McKay had dragged in from the
timber, was a thin-faced sharp-eyed man who was studying them with an
odd smile on his lips, and instantly Nada knew this man was Breault.
There was something peculiarly appalling about him as he sat there, in
spite of the fact that for a few moments he neither spoke nor moved.
His eyes, Nada thought, were not like human eyes, and his lips were
like the blades of two knives set together. Yet he was smiling, or half
smiling, not in a comforting or humorous way, but with exultation and
triumph. From looking at him one would never have guessed that Breault
loved his joke.
He nodded.
“Good morning, Jolly Roger McKay! And--good morning, Mrs. Jolly Roger
McKay! Pardon me for watching you like this, but duty is duty. I am
Breault, of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police.”
McKay wet his lips. Breault saw him, and the grin on his thin face
widened.
“I know, it's hard,” he said. “But you've got Peter to thank for it.
Peter led me to you.”
He stood up, and in a most casual fashion covered Jolly Roger with his
automatic.
“Would you mind stepping out, McKay?” he asked.
In his other hand he dangled a pair of handcuffs. McKay stood up, and
Nada rose beside him, gripping his arms with both hands.
“No need of those things, Breault,” he said. “I'll go peaceably.”
“Still--it's safer,” argued Breault, a wicked glitter in his eyes.
“Hold out one hand, please--”
The manacle snapped over Jolly Roger's wrist.
“I'm Breault--not Terence Cassidy,” he chuckled. “Never take a chance,
you know. Never!”
Swift as a flash was his movement then, as the companion bracelet
snapped over Nada's wrist. He stepped back, facing them with a grin.
“Got you both now, haven't I?” he gloated. “Can't get away, can you?”
He put his gun away, and bowed low to Nada. “How do you like married
life, Mrs. Jolly Roger?”
McKay's face was whiter than Nada's.
“You coward!” he spoke in a low, quiet voice. “You low-down miserable
coward. You're a disgrace to the Service. Do you mean you are going to
keep my wife ironed like this?”
“Sure,” said Breault. “I'm going to make you pay for some of the
trouble I've had over you. I believe in a man paying his debts, you
know. And a woman, too. And probably you've lied to her like the very
devil.”
“He hasn't!” protested Nada fiercely. “You're a--a--”
“Say it,” nodded Breault good humoredly. “By all means say it, Mrs.
Jolly Roger. If you can't find words, let me help you,” and while he
waited he loaded his pipe and lighted it.
“You see I don't exactly live up to regulations when I'm with good
friends like you,” he apologized cynically. “In other words you're a
couple of hard cases. Cassidy has turned in all sorts of evidence about
you. He says that you, McKay, should be hung the moment we catch you.
He warned me not to take a chance--that you'd slit my throat in the
dark without a prick of conscience. And I'm a valuable man in the
Service. It can't afford to lose me.”
McKay shut his lips tightly, and did not answer.
“Now, while you're helpless, I want to tell you a few things,” Breault
went on. “And while I'm talking I'll start the fire, so we can have
breakfast. Peter and, I are hungry. A good dog, McKay. He saved us up
on the Barren. Have you told Mrs. Jolly Roger about that?”
He expected no answer, and whistled as he lighted a pile of birchbark
which he had already placed under dry cedar wood which McKay had
gathered the preceding evening.
“That's where MY trouble began--up there on the Barren, Mrs. Jolly
Roger,” he continued, ignoring McKay. “You see the three of us,
Superintendent Tavish, and Porter--who is now his son-in-law--and I had
a splendid chance to die like martyrs, and go down forever in the
history of the Service, if it hadn't been for this fool of a husband of
yours, and Peter. I can't blame Peter, because he's only a dog. But
McKay is responsible. He robbed us of a beautiful opportunity of dying
in an unusual way by hunting us up and dragging us into his shelter. A
shabby trick, don't you think? And inasmuch as Superintendent Tavish is
about the biggest man in the Service, and Porter is his son-in-law, and
Miss Tavish was saved along with us--why, they reckoned something ought
to be done about it.”
Breault did not look up. With, exasperating slowness he added fuel to
the fire.
“And so--”
He rose and stood before them again.
“And so--they assigned me to the very unpleasant duty of running you
down with a pardon, McKay--a pardon forgiving you for all your sins,
forever and ever, Amen. And here it is!”
He had drawn an official-looking envelope from inside his coat, and
held it out now--not to McKay--but to Nada.
Neither reached for it. Standing there with the cynical smile still on
his lips, his strange eyes gimleting them with a cold sort of laughter,
it was as if Breault tortured them with a last horrible joke. Then,
suddenly, Nada seized the envelope and tore it open, while McKay stared
at Breault, believing, and yet not daring to speak.
It was Nada's cry, a cry wild and sobbing and filled with gladness,
that told him the truth, and with the precious paper clutched in her
hand she smothered her face against McKay's breast, while Breault came
up grinning behind them, and Jolly Roger heard the click of his key in
the handcuffs.
“I am also loaded down with a number of foolish messages for you,” he
said, attending to the fire again. “For instance, that red-headed
good-for-nothing, Cassidy, says to tell you he is building a four-room
bungalow for you in their clearing, and that it will be finished by the
time you arrive. Also, a squaw named Yellow Bird, and a redskin who
calls himself Slim Buck, sent word that you will always be welcome in
their hunting grounds. And a pretty little thing named Sun Cloud sent
as many kisses as there are leaves on the trees--”
[Illustration: “--a squaw named Yellow Bird send word that you would
be welcome.”]
He paused, chuckling, and did not look up to see the wide, glorious
eyes of the girl upon him.
“But the funniest thing of all is the baby,” he went on, preparing to
slice bacon. “They're going to have one pretty soon--Cassidy's wife, I
mean. They've given it a name already. If it's a boy it's Roger--if
it's a girl it's Nada. They wanted me to tell you that. Silly bunch,
aren't they? A couple of young fools--”
Just then something new happened in the weirdly adventurous life of
François Breault. Without warning he was suddenly smothered in a pair
of arms, his head was jerked back, and against his hard and pitiless
mouth a pair of soft red lips pressed for a single thrilling instant.
“Well, I'll be damned,” he gasped, dropping his bacon and staggering to
his feet like a man who had been shot. “I'll be--CUSSED!”
And he picked up his pack and walked off into the thick young spruce at
the edge of the timber, without saying another word or once looking
behind him. And breakfast waited, and Nada and Jolly Roger and Peter
waited, but François Breault did not return. For a strange and
unaccountable man was he, a hard and pitiless man and a deadly hunter
who knew no fear. Yet the wilderness swallowed him, a coward at
last--running away from the two red lips that had kissed him.
So went Breault, for the first time in his life a messenger of mercy;
and at the top of the silver birch the little warbler knew that
something glad had happened, and offered up its gratitude in a sudden
burst of song.
THE END
End of Project Gutenberg's The Country Beyond, by James Oliver Curwood