The Country Beyond Part 14

"And they are near," she cried softly.

"You are nervous, Yellow Bird," he said, thinking of the two days and three nights of her conjuring, when she had neither slept nor taken food, that she might more successfully commune with the spirits. "There is no danger. The night is a hard one for sleep. It has frightened you."

"It has warned me," she persisted, standing as motionless as a statue at his side. "Neekewa, the spirits do not forget. They have not forgotten that winter when you came, and my people were dying of famine and sickness--when I dreaded to see little Sun Cloud close her eyes even in sleep, fearing she would never open them again. They have not forgotten how all that winter you robbed the white people over on the Des Chenes, that we might live. If they remember those things, and lie, I would not be afraid to curse them. But they do not lie."

Jolly Roger McKay did not answer. Deep down in him that strange something was at work again, compelling him to believe Yellow Bird. She did not look at him, but in her low Cree voice, soft as the mellow notes of a bird, she was saying:

"You will be going very soon, Neekewa, and I shall not see you again for a long time. Do not forget what I have told you. And you must believe. Somewhere there is this place called the Country Beyond. The spirits have said so. And it is there you will find your Oo-Mee the Pigeon--and happiness. But if you go back to the place where you left The Pigeon when you fled from the red-coated men of the law, you will find only blackness and desolation. Believe, and you shall be guided.

If you disbelieve--"

She stopped.

"You heard that, Neekewa? It was not the wing of a duck, nor was it the croak of a loon far up the sh.o.r.e, or a fish leaping in the still water.

_It was a paddle_!"

In the star-gloom Jolly Roger McKay bowed his head, and listened.

"Yes, a paddle," he said, and his voice sounded strange to him.

"Probably it is one of your people returning to camp, Yellow Bird."

She turned toward him, and stood very near. Her hands reached out to him. Her hair and eyes were filled with the velvety glow of the stars, and for an instant he saw the tremble of her parted lips.

"Goodby, Neekewa," she whispered.

And then, without letting her hands touch him, she was gone. Swiftly she ran to Slim Buck's tepee, and entered, and very soon she came out again with Slim Buck beside her. Jolly Roger did not move, but watched as Yellow Bird and her husband went down to the edge of the lake, and stood there, waiting for the strange canoe to pa.s.s--or come in. It was approaching. Slowly it came up, an indistinct shadow at first, but growing clearer, until at last he could see the silhouette of it against the star-silvered water beyond. There were two people in it.

Before the canoe reached the sh.o.r.e Slim Buck stood out knee-deep in the water and hailed it.

A voice answered. And at the sound of that voice McKay dropped like a shot beside Peter, and Peter's lips curled up, and he snarled. His master's hand warned him, and together they slipped back into the shadows, and from under a piece of canvas Jolly Roger dragged forth his pack, and quietly strapped it over his shoulders while he waited and listened.

And then, as he heard the voice again, he grinned, and chuckled softly.

"It's Ca.s.sidy, _Pied-Bot_! We can't lose that redheaded fox, can we?"

A good humored deviltry lay in his eyes, and Peter--looking up--thought for a moment his master was laughing. Then Jolly Roger made a megaphone of his hands, and called very clearly out into the night.

"Ho, Ca.s.sidy! Is that you, Ca.s.sidy?"

Peter's heart was choking him as he listened. He sensed a terrific danger. There was no sound at the edge of the lake. There was no sound anywhere. For a few moments a death-like stillness followed Jolly Roger's words.

Then a voice came in answer, each word cutting the gloom with the decisive clearness of a bullet coming from a gun.

"Yes, this is Ca.s.sidy--Corporal Terence Ca.s.sidy, of 'M' Division, Royal Northwest Mounted Police. Is that you, McKay?"

"Yes, it's me," replied Jolly Roger. "Does the wager still hold, Ca.s.sidy?"

"It holds."

There was a shadowy movement on the beach. The voice came again.

"Watch yourself, McKay. If I see you I shall fire!"

With drawn gun Ca.s.sidy rushed toward the spot where Jolly Roger and Peter had stood. It was empty now, except for the bit of old canvas.

Ca.s.sidy's Indian came up and stood behind him, and for many minutes they listened for the crackling of brush. Slim Buck joined them, and last came Yellow Bird, her dark eyes glowing like pools of fire in their excitement. Ca.s.sidy looked at her, marveling at her beauty, and suspicious of something that was in her face. He went back to the beach. There he caught himself short, astonishment bringing a sharp exclamation from his lips.

His canoe and outfit were gone!

Out of the star-gloom behind him floated a soft ripple of laughter as Yellow Bird ran to her tepee.

And from the mist of water--far out--came a voice, the voice of Jolly Roger McKay.

"Goodby, Ca.s.sidy!"

With it mingled the defiant bark of a dog.

In her tepee, a moment later, Yellow Bird drew Sun Cloud's glossy head close against her warm breast, and turned her radiant face up thankfully to the smoke hole in the tepee top, through which the spirits had whispered their warning to her. Indistinctly, and still farther away, her straining ears heard again the cry,

"Goodby, Ca.s.sidy!"

CHAPTER XII

In Ca.s.sidy's canoe, driving himself with steady strokes deeper into the mystery of the starlit waters of Wollaston, Jolly Roger felt the night suddenly filled with an exhilarating tonic. Its deadness was gone. Its weight had lifted. A ripple broke the star gleams where an increasing breeze touched the surface of the lake. And the thrill of adventure stirred in his blood. He laughed as he put his skill and strength in the sweep of his paddle, and for a time the thought that he was an outlaw, and in losing Nada had lost everything in life worth righting for, was not so oppressive. It was the old, joyous laugh, stirred by his sense of humor, and the trick he had played on Ca.s.sidy. He could imagine Ca.s.sidy back on the sh.o.r.e, his temper redder than his hair as he cursed and tore up the sand in his search for another canoe.

"We're inseparable," Jolly Roger explained to Peter. "Wherever I go, Ca.s.sidy is sure to follow. You see, it's this way. A long time ago someone gave Ca.s.sidy what they call an a.s.signment, and in that a.s.signment it says 'go get Jolly Roger McKay, dead or alive'--or something to that effect. And Ca.s.sidy has been on the job ever since.

But he can't quite catch up with me, _Pied-Bot_. I'm always a little ahead."

And yet, even as he laughed, there was in Jolly Roger's heart a yearning to which he had never given voice. Half a dozen times he might have killed Ca.s.sidy, and an equal number of times Ca.s.sidy might have killed him. But neither had taken advantage of the opportunity to destroy. They had played the long and thrilling game like men, and because of the fairness and sportsmanship of the man who hunted him Jolly Roger thought of Ca.s.sidy as he might have thought of a brother, and more than once he yearned to go to him, and hold out his hand in friendship. Yet he knew Corporal Ca.s.sidy was the deadliest menace the earth held for him, a menace that had followed him like a shadow through months and years--across the Barren Lands, along the rim of the Arctic, down the Mackenzie, and back again--a menace that never tired, and was never far behind in that ten thousand miles of wilderness they had covered. Together in the bloodstirring game of One against One they had faced the deadliest perils of the northland. They had gone hungry, and cold, and more than once a thousand miles of nothingness lay behind them, and death seemed preferable to anything that might lie ahead. Yet in that aloneness, when companionship was more precious than anything else on earth, neither had cried quits. The game had gone on, Ca.s.sidy after his man--and Jolly Roger McKay fighting for his freedom.

As he headed his canoe north and east, Jolly Roger thought again of the wager made weeks ago down at Cragg's Ridge, when he had turned the tables on Ca.s.sidy and when Ca.s.sidy had made a solemn oath to resign from the service if he failed to get his man in their next encounter.

He knew Ca.s.sidy would keep his word, and something told him that tonight the last act in this tragedy of two had begun. He chuckled again as he pictured the probable course of events on sh.o.r.e. Ca.s.sidy, backed by the law, was demanding another canoe and a necessary outfit of Slim Buck. Slim Buck, falling back on his tribal dignity, was killing all possible time in making the preparations. When pursuit was resumed Jolly Roger would have at least a mile the start of the red-headed nemesis who hung to his trail. And Wollaston Lake, sixty miles from end to end, and half as wide, offered plenty of room in which to find safety.

The rising of the wind, which came from the south and west, was pleasing to Jolly Roger, and he put less caution and more force into the sweep of his paddle. For two hours he kept steadily eastward, and then swung a little north, guiding himself by the stars. With the breaking of dawn he made out the thickly wooded sh.o.r.e on the opposite side of the lake from Slim Buck's camp, and before the sun was half an hour high he had drawn up his canoe at the tip of a headland which gave him a splendid view of the lake in all directions.

From this point, comfortably encamped in the cool shadows of a thick clump of spruce, Jolly Roger and Peter watched all that day for a sign of their enemy. As far as the eye could reach no movement of human life appeared on the quiet surface of Wollaston. Not until that hazy hour between sunset and dusk did he build a fire and cook a meal from the supplies in Ca.s.sidy's pack, for he knew smoke could be discerned much farther than a canoe. Yet even as he observed this caution he was confident there was no longer any danger in returning to Yellow Bird and her people.

"You see, _Pied-Bot_," he said, discussing the matter with Peter, while he smoked a pipeful of tobacco in the early evening, "Ca.s.sidy thinks we're on our way north, as fast as we can go. He'll hit for the upper end of the Lake and the Black River waterway, and keep right on into the Porcupine country. It's a big country up there, and we've always taken plenty of s.p.a.ce for our travels. Shall we go back to Yellow Bird, Peter? And Sun Cloud?"

Peter tried to answer, and thumped his tail, but even as he asked the questions there was a doubt growing in Jolly Roger's mind. He wanted to go back, and as darkness gathered about him he was urged by a great loneliness. Only Yellow Bird grieved with him in his loss of Nada, and understood how empty life had become for him. She had, in a way, become a part of Nada; her presence raised him out of despair, her voice gave him hope, her unconquerable spirit--fighting for his happiness--inspired him until he saw light where there had been only darkness. The impelling desire to return to her brought him to his feet and down to the pebbly sh.o.r.e of the lake, where the water rippled softly in the thickening gloom. But a still more powerful force held him back, and he went to his blankets, spread over a thick couch of balsam boughs. For hours his eyes were wide open and sleepless.

He no longer thought of Ca.s.sidy, but of Yellow Bird. Doubt--a charitable inclination to half believe--gave way in him to a conviction which he could not fight down. More than once in his years of wilderness life strange facts had compelled him to give some credence to the power of the Indian conjurer. Belief in the mastery of the mind was part of his faith in nature. It had come to him from his mother, who had lived and died in the strength of her creed.

"Think hard, and with faith, if you want anything to come true," she had told him. And this was also Yellow Bird's creed. Was it possible she had told him the truth? Had her mind actually communed with the mind of Nada? Had she, through the sheer force of her illimitable faith, projected her subconscious self into the future that she might show him the way? His eyes were staring, his ears unhearing, as he thought of the proof which Yellow Bird had given to him. A few hours ago she had brought him warning of impending danger. There had been no hesitation and no doubt. She had come to him unequivocal and sure.

Without seeing, without hearing, she knew Ca.s.sidy was stealing upon him through the night.

In the darkness Jolly Roger sat up, his heart beating fast. Without effort, and with no thought of the necessity of proof, Yellow Bird had given him a test of her power. It had been a spontaneous and unstaged thing, a woman's heart reaching out for him--as she had promised that it would. And yet, even as the simplicity and truth of it pressed upon him, doubt followed with its questions. If, after this, Yellow Bird had told him to return to Nada as swiftly as he could, he would have believed, and this night would have seen him on his way. But she had warned him against this, predicting desolation and grief if he returned. She had urged him to go on, somewhere, anywhere, seeking for an illusion and an unreality which the spirits had named, to her as the Country Beyond. And when he reached this Country Beyond, wherever it might be, he would possess Nada again, and happiness for all time.