The Country Beyond Part 21

He was thinking of Breault as he drew off his mittens and fumbled for a match. It was Breault he feared. The Ferret would find his cabin and his trail if the storm died out too soon.

He lighted the tin lamp on his table and after that, a.s.sured that wastefulness would cost him nothing now, he set two bear-drip candles going, one at each end of the cabin. The illumination filled the single room. There was little for it to reveal--the table he had made, a chair, a battered little sheet-iron stove, and the humped up blanket in his bunk, under which he had stored the remainder of his possessions.

Back of the stove was a pile of dry wood, and in another five minutes the roar of flames in the chimney mingled with a fresh bl.u.s.ter of the wind outside.

Defying the exhaustion of limbs and body, Jolly Roger kept steadily at work. He threw off his heavier garments as the freezing atmosphere of the room became warmer, and prepared for a feast.

"We'll call it Christmas, and have everything we've got, _Pied-Bot_.

We'll cook a quart of prunes instead of six. No use stinting ourselves--tonight!"

Even Peter was amazed at the prodigality of his master. An hour later they ate, and McKay drank a quart of hot coffee before he was done.

Half of his fatigue was gone and he sat back for a few minutes to finish off with the luxury of his pipe. Peter, gorged with caribou meat, stretched himself out to sleep. But his eyes did not close. His master puzzled him. For after a little Jolly Roger put on his heavy coat and parkee and pocketed his pipe. After that he slipped the straps of his pack over head and shoulders and then, even more to Peter's bewilderment, emptied a quart bottle of kerosene over the pile of dry wood behind the hot stove. To this he touched a lighted match. His next movement drew from Peter a startled yelp. With a single thrust of his foot he sent the stove crashing into the middle of the floor.

Half an hour later, when Peter and Jolly Roger looked back from the crest of the ridge, a red pillar of flame lighted up the gloomy chaos of the unpeopled world they were leaving behind them. The wind was driving fiercely from the Barren and with it came stinging volleys of the fine drift-snow. In the teeth of it Roger McKay stared back.

"It's a good fire," he mumbled in his hood. "Half an hour and it will be out. There'll be nothing for Breault to find if this wind keeps up another two hours--nothing but drift-snow, with no sign of trail or cabin."

He struck out, leaving the shelter of the ridge. Straight south he went, keeping always in the open s.p.a.ces where the wind-swept drift covered his snowshoe trail almost as soon as it was made. Darkness did not trouble him now. The open barren was ahead, miles of it, while only a little to the westward was the shelter of timber. Twice he blundered to the edge of this timber, but quickly set his course again in the open, with the wind always quartering at his back. He could only guess how long he kept on. The time came when he began to count the swing of his snowshoes, measuring off half a mile, or a mile, and then beginning over again until at last the achievement of five hundred steps seemed to take an immeasurable length of time and great effort. Like the ache of a tooth came the first warning of snowshoe cramp in his legs. In the black night he grinned. He knew what it meant--a warning as deadly as swimmer's cramp in deep water. If he continued much longer he would be crawling on his hands and knees.

Quickly he turned in the direction of the timber. He had traveled three hours, he thought, since abandoning his cabin to the flames. Another half hour, with the caution of slower, shorter steps, brought him to the timber. Luck was with him and he cried aloud to Peter as he felt himself in the darkness of a dense cover of spruce and balsam. He freed himself from his entangled snowshoes and went on deeper into the shelter. It became warmer and they could feel no longer a breath of the wind.

He unloaded his pack and drew from it a jackpine torch, dried in his cabin and heavy with pitch. Shortly the flare of this torch lighted up their refuge for a dozen paces about them. In the illumination of it, moving it from place to place, he gathered dry fire wood and with his axe cut down green spruce for the smouldering back-fire that would last until morning. By the time the torch had consumed itself the fire was burning, and where Jolly Roger had sc.r.a.ped away the snow from the thick carpet of spruce needles underfoot he piled a thick ma.s.s of balsam boughs, and in the center of the bed he buried himself, wrapped warmly in his blankets, and with Peter snuggled close at his side.

Through dark hours the green spruce fire burned slowly and steadily.

For a long time there was wailing of wind out in the open. But at last it died away, and utter stillness filled the world. No life moved in these hours which followed the giving up of the big storm's last gasping breath. Slowly the sky cleared. Here and there a star burned through. But Jolly Roger and Peter, deep in the sleep of exhaustion, knew nothing of the change.

CHAPTER XVI

It was Peter who roused Jolly Roger many hours later; Peter nosing about the still burning embers of the fire, and at last muzzling his master's face with increasing anxiety. McKay sat up out of his nest of balsam boughs and blankets and caught the bright glint of sunlight through the treetops. He rubbed his eyes and stared again to make sure.

Then he looked at his watch. It was ten o'clock and peering in the direction of the open he saw the white edge of it glistening in the unclouded blaze of a sun. It was the first sun--the first real sun--he had seen for many days, and with Peter he went to the rim of the barren a hundred yards distant. He wanted to shout. As far as he could see the white plain was ablaze with eye-blinding light, and never had the sky at Cragg's Ridge been clearer than the sky that was over him now.

He returned to the fire, singing. Back through the months leapt Peter's memory to the time when his master had sung like that. It was in Indian Tom's cabin, with Cragg's Ridge just beyond the creek, and it was in those days before Terence Ca.s.sidy had come to drive them to another hiding place; in the happy days of Nada's visits and of their trysts under the Ridge, when even the little gray mother mouse lived in a paradise with her nest of babies in the box on their cabin shelf. He had almost forgotten but it came back to him now. It was the old Jolly Roger--the old master come to life again.

In the clear stillness of the morning one might have heard that shouting song half a mile away. But McKay was no longer afraid. As the storm seemed to have cleaned the world so the sun cleared his soul of its last shadow of doubt. It was not merely an omen or a promise, but for him proclaimed a certainty. G.o.d was with him. Life was with him.

His world was opening its arms to him again--and he sang as if Nada was only a mile away from him instead of a thousand.

When he went on, after their breakfast, he laughed at the thought of Breault discovering their trail. The Ferret would be more than human to do that after what wind and storm and fire had done for them.

This first day of their pilgrimage into the southland was a day of glory from its beginning until the setting of the sun. There was no cloud in the sky. And it grew warmer, until Jolly Roger flung back the hood of his parkee and turned up the fur of his cap. That night a million stars lighted the heaven.

After this first day and night nothing could break down the hope and confidence of Jolly Roger and his, dog. Peter knew they were going south, in which direction lay everything he had ever yearned for; and each night beside their campfire McKay made a note with pencil and paper and measured the distance they had come and the distance they had yet to go. Hope in a little while became certainty. Into his mind urged no thought of changes that might have taken place at Cragg's Ridge; or, if the thought did come, it caused him no uneasiness. Now that Jed Hawkins was dead Nada would be with the little old Missioner in whose care he had left her, and not for an instant did a doubt cloud the growing happiness of his antic.i.p.ations. Breault and the hunters of the law were the one worry that lay ahead and behind him. If he outwitted them he would find Nada waiting for him.

Day after day they kept south and west until they struck the Thelon; and then through a country unmapped, and at times terrific in its cold and storm, they fought steadily to the frozen regions of the Dubawnt waterways. Only once in the first three weeks did they seek human company. This was at a small Indian camp where Jolly Roger bartered for caribou meat and moccasins for Peter's feet. Twice between there and G.o.d's Lake they stopped at trappers' cabins.

It was early in March when they struck the Lost Lake country, three hundred miles from Cragg's Ridge.

And here it was, buried under a blind of soft snow, that Peter nosed out the frozen carca.s.s of a disemboweled buck which Boileau, the French trapper, had poisoned for wolves. Jolly Roger had built a fire and was warming half a pint of deer tallow for a baking of bannock, when Peter dragged himself in, his rear legs already stiffening with the palsy of strychnine. In a dozen seconds McKay had the warm tallow down Peter's throat, to the last drop of it; and this he followed with another dose as quickly as he could heat it, and in the end Peter gave up what he had eaten.

Half an hour later Boileau, who was eating his dinner, jumped up in wonderment when the door of his cabin was suddenly opened by a grim and white-faced man who carried the limp body of a dog in his arms.

For a long time after this the shadow of death hung over the Frenchman's trapping-shack. To Boileau, with his brotherly sympathy and regret that his poison-bait had brought calamity, Peter was "just dog."

But when at last he saw the strong shoulders of the grim-faced stranger shaking over Peter's paralyzed body and listened to the sobbing grief that broke in pa.s.sionate protest from his white lips, he drew back a little awed. It seemed for a time that Peter was dead; and in those moments Jolly Roger put his arms about him and buried his despairing face in Peter's scraggly neck, calling in a wild fit of anguish for him to come back, to live, to open his eyes again. Boileau, crossing himself, felt of Peter's body and McKay heard his voice over him, saying that the dog was not dead, but that his heart was beating steadily and that he thought the last stiffening blow of the poison was over. To McKay it was like bringing the dead back to life. He raised his head and drew away his arms and knelt beside the bunk stunned and mutely hopeful while Boileau took his place and began dropping warm condensed milk down Peter's throat. In a little while Peter's eyes opened and he gave a great sigh.

Boileau looked up and shrugged his shoulders.

"That was a good breath, m'sieu," he said. "What is left of the poison has done its worst. He will live."

A bit stupidly McKay rose to his feet. He swayed a little, and for the first time sensed the hot tears that had blinded his eyes and wet his cheeks. And then there came a sobbing laugh out of his throat and he went to the window of the Frenchman's shack and stared out into the white world, seeing nothing. He had stood in the presence of death many times before but never had that presence choked up his heart as in this hour when the soul of Peter, his comrade, had stood falteringly for a s.p.a.ce half-way between the living and the dead.

When he turned from the window Boileau was covering Peter's body with blankets and a warm bear skin. And for many days thereafter Peter was nursed through the slow sickness which followed.

An early spring came this year in the northland. South of the Reindeer waterway country the snows were disappearing late in March and ice was rotting the first week in April. Winds came from the south and west and the sun was warmer and clearer than Boileau had ever known it at the winter's end in Lost Lake country. It was in this first week of April that Peter was able to travel, and McKay pointed his trail once more for Cragg's Ridge.

He left a part of his winter dunnage at Boileau's shack and went on light, figuring to reach Cragg's Ridge before the new "goose moon" had worn itself out in the west. But for a week Peter lagged and until the darker red in the rims of his eyes cleared away Jolly Roger checked the impetus of his travel so that the goose moon had faded out and the "frog moon" of May was in its full before they came down the last slope that dipped from the Height of Land to the forests and lakes of the lower country.

And now, in these days, it seemed to Jolly Roger that a great kindness, and not tragedy, had delayed him so that his "home coming" was in the gladness of spring. All about him was the sweetness and mystic whispering of new life just awakening. It was in the sky and the sun; it was underfoot, in the fragrance of the mold he trod upon, in the trees about him, and in the mate-chirping of the birds flocking back from the southland. His friends the jays were raucous and jaunty again, bullying and bluffing in the warmth of sunshine; the black glint of crows' wings flashed across the opens; the wood-sappers and pewees and big-eyed moose-birds were aflutter with the excitement of home planning; partridges were feasting on the swelling poplar buds--and then, one glorious sunset, he heard the chirruping evening song of his first robin.

And the next day they would reach Cragg's Ridge!

Half of that last night he sat up, awake, or smoked in the glow of his fire, waiting for the dawn. With the first lifting of darkness he was traveling swiftly ahead of Peter and the morning was only half gone when he saw far ahead of him the great ridge which shut out Indian Tom's swamp, and Nada's plain, and Cragg's Ridge beyond it.

It was noon when he stood at the crest of this. He was breathing hard, for to reach this last precious height from which he might look upon the country of Nada's home he had half run up its rock-strewn side.

There, with his lungs gasping for air, his eager eyes shot over the country below him and for a moment the significance of the thing which he saw did not strike him. And then in another instant it seemed that his heart choked up, like a fist suddenly tightened, and stopped its beating.

Reaching away from him, miles upon miles of it, east, west and south--was a dead and char-stricken world.

Up to the foot of the ridge itself had come the devastation of flame, and where it had swept, months ago, there was now no sign of the glorious spring that lay behind him.

He looked for Indian Tom's swamp, and where it had been there was no longer a swamp but a stricken chaos of ten thousand black stubs, the shriven corpses of the spruce and cedar and jackpines out of which the wolves had howled at night.

He looked for the timber on Sucker Creek where the little old Missioner's cabin lay, and where he had dreamed that Nada would be waiting for him. And he saw no timber there but only the littleness and emptiness of a blackened world.

And then he looked to Cragg's Ridge, and along the bald crest of it, naked as death, he saw blackened stubs pointing skyward, painting desolation against the blue of the heaven beyond.

A cry came from him, a cry of fear and of horror, for he was looking upon the fulfilment of Yellow Bird's prediction. He seemed to hear, whispering softly in his ears, the low, sweet voice of the sorceress, as on the night when she had told him that if he returned to Cragg's Ridge he would find a world that had turned black with ruin and that it would not be there he would ever find Nada.

After that one sobbing cry he tore like a madman dawn into the valley, traveling swiftly through the muck of fire and under-foot tangle with Peter fighting behind him. Half an hour later he stood where the Missioner's cabin had been and he found only a ruin of ash and logs burned down to the earth. Where the trail had run there was no longer a trail. A blight, grim and sickening, lay upon the earth that had been paradise.

Peter heard the choking sound in his master's throat and chest. He, too, sensed the black shadow of tragedy and cautiously he sniffed the air, knowing that at last they were home--and yet it was not home.

Instinctively he had faced Cragg's Ridge and Jolly Roger, seeing the dog's stiffened body pointing toward the break beyond which lay Nada's old home, felt a thrill of hope leap up within him. Possibly the farther plain had escaped the scourge of fire. If so, Nada would be there, and the Missioner--

He started for the break, a mile away. As he came nearer to it his hope grew less for he could see where the flames had swept in an inundating sea along Cragg's Ridge. They pa.s.sed over the meadow where the thick young jackpines, the red strawberries and the blue violets had been and Peter heard the strange sob when they came to the little hollow--the old trysting place where Nada had first given herself into his master's arms. And there it was that Peter forgot master and caution and sped swiftly ahead to the break that cut the Ridge in twain.

When Jolly Roger came to that break and ran through it he was staggering from the mad effort he had made. And then, all at once, the last of his wind came in a cry of gladness. He swayed against a rock and stood there staring wild-eyed at what was before him. The world was as black ahead of him as it was behind. But Jed Hawkins' cabin was untouched! The fire had crept up to its very door and there it had died.