The Country Beyond Part 23

For a long time after that he forgot Peter was with him. He forgot everything but his desire to reach a living thing. At times, where the road-bed was smooth, he almost ran, and at others he paused for a little to gather his breath and listen. And it was Peter, in one of these intervals, who caught the first message of life. From a long distance away came faintly the barking of a dog.

Half a mile farther on they came to a clearing where no stubs of trees stood up like question marks against the sky, and in this clearing was a cabin, a dark blotch that was without light or sound. But from behind it the dog barked again, and Jolly Roger made quickly toward it. Here there was no ash under his feet, and he knew that at last he had found an oasis of life in the desolation. Loudly he knocked with his fist at the cabin door and soon there was a response inside, the heavy movement of a man's body getting out of bed, and after that the questioning voice of a woman. He knocked again and the flare of a lighted match illumined the window. Then came the drawing of a bar at the door and a man stood there in his night attire, a man with a heavy face and bristling beard, and a lamp in his hand.

"I beg your pardon for waking you," said Jolly Roger, "but I am just down from the north, hoping to find my friends back here and I have seen nothing but destruction and death. You are the first living soul I have found to ask about them."

"Where were they?" grunted the man.

"At Cragg's Ridge."

"Then G.o.d help them," came the woman's voice from back in the room.

"Cragg's Ridge," said the man, "was a burning h.e.l.l in the middle of the night."

Jolly Roger's fingers dug into the wood at the edge of the door.

"You mean--"

"A lot of 'em died," said the man stolidly, as if eager to rid himself of the one who had broken his sleep. "If it was Mooney, he's dead. An'

if it was Robson, or Jake the Swede, or the Adams family--they're dead, too."

"But it wasn't," said Jolly Roger, his heart choking between fear and hope. "It was Father John, the Missioner, and Nada Hawkins, who lived with him--or with her foster-mother in the Hawkins' cabin."

The man shook his head, and turned down the wick of his lamp.

"I dunno about the girl, or the old witch who was her mother," he said, "but the Missioner made it out safe, and went to the settlements."

"And no girl was with him?"

"No, there was no girl," came the woman's voice again, and Peter jerked up his ears at the creaking of a bed. "Father John stopped here the second day after the fire had pa.s.sed, and he said he was gathering up the bones of the dead. Nada Hawkins wasn't with him, and he didn't say who had died and who hadn't. But I think--"

She stopped as the bearded man turned toward her.

"You think what?" demanded Jolly Roger, stepping half into the room.

"I think," said the woman, "that she died along with the others.

Anyway, Jed Hawkins' witch-woman was burned trying to make for the lake, and little of her was left."

The man with the lamp made a movement as if to close the door.

"That's all we know," he growled.

"For G.o.d's sake--don't!" entreated Jolly Roger, barring the door with his arm. "Surely there were some who escaped from Cragg's Ridge and beyond!"

"Mebby a half, mebby less," said the man. "I tell you it burned like h.e.l.l, and the worst of it came in the middle of the night with a wind behind it that blew a hurricane. We've twenty acres cleared here, with the cabin in the center of it, an' it singed my beard and burned her hair and scorched our hands, and my pigs died out there from the heat of it. Mebby it's a place to sleep in for the night you want, stranger?"

"No, I'm going on," said Jolly Roger, the blood in his veins running with the chill of water. "How far before I come to the end of fire?"

"Ten miles on. It started this side of the next settlement."

Jolly Roger drew back and the door closed, and standing on the railroad once more he saw the light go out and after that the occasional barking of the settler's dog grew fainter and fainter behind them.

He felt a great weariness in his bones and body now. With hope struck down the exhaustion of two nights and a day without sleep seized upon him and his feet plodded more and more slowly over the uneven ties of the road. Even in his weariness he fought madly against the thought that Nada was dead and he repeated the word "impossible--impossible" so often that it ran in sing-song through his brain. And he could not keep away from him the white, thin face of the Missioner, who had promised on his faith In G.o.d to care for Nada, and who had pa.s.sed the settler's cabin _alone_.

Another two hours they went on and then came the first of the green timber. Under the shelter of some balsams Jolly Roger found a resting place and there they waited for the break of dawn. Peter stretched out and slept. But Jolly Roger sat with his head and shoulders against the bole of a tree, and not until the light of the moon was driven away by the darkness that preceded dawn by an hour or two did his eyes close in restless slumber. He was roused by the wakening twitter of birds and in the cold water of a creek that ran near he bathed his face and hands.

Peter wondered why there was no fire and no breakfast this morning.

The settlement was only a little way ahead and it was very early when they reached it. People were still in their beds and out of only one chimney was smoke rising into the clear calm of the breaking day. From this cabin a young man came, and stood for a moment after he had closed the door, yawning and stretching his arms and looking up to see what sort of promise the sky held for the day. After that he went to a stable of logs, and Jolly Roger followed him there.

He was unlike the bearded settler, and nodded with a youthful smile of cheer.

"Good morning," he said. "You're traveling early, and--"

He looked more keenly as his eyes took in Jolly Roger's boots and clothes, and the gray pallor in his face.

"Just get in?" he asked kindly. "And--from the burnt country?"

"Yes, from the burnt country. I've been away a long time, and I'm trying to find out if my friends are among the living or the dead. Did you ever hear of Father John, the Missioner at Cragg's Ridge?"

The young man's face brightened.

"I knew him," he said. "He helped me to bury my brother, three years ago. And if it's him you seek, he is safe. He went up to Fort William a week after the fire, and that was in September, eight months past."

"And was there with him a girl named Nada Hawkins?" asked Jolly Roger, trying hard to speak calmly as he looked into the other's face.

The youth shook his head.

"No, he was alone. He slept in my cabin overnight, and he said nothing of a girl named Nada Hawkins."

"Did he speak of others?"

"He was very tired, and I think he was half dead with grief at what had happened. He spoke no names that I remember."

Then he saw the gray look in Jolly Roger's face grow deeper, and saw the despair which could not hide itself in his eyes.

"But there were a number of girls who pa.s.sed here, alone or with their friends," he said hopefully. "What sort of looking girl was Nada Hawkins?"

"A--kid. That's what I called her," said Jolly Roger, in a dead, cold voice. "Eighteen, and beautiful, with blue eyes, and brown hair that she couldn't keep from blowing in curls about her face. So like an angel you wouldn't forget her if you'd seen her--just once."

Gently the youth placed a hand on Jolly Roger's arm.

"She didn't come this way," he said, "but maybe you'll find her somewhere else. Won't you have breakfast with me? I've a stranger in the cabin, still sleeping, who's going into the fire country from which you've come. He's hunting for some one, and maybe you can give him information. He's going to Cragg's Ridge."

"Cragg's Ridge!" exclaimed Jolly Roger. "What is his name?"

"Breault," said the youth. "Sergeant Breault, of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police."

Jolly Roger turned to stroke the neck of a horse waiting for its morning feed. But he felt nothing of the touch of flesh under his hand.

Cold as iron went his heart, and for half a minute he made no answer.