The Country Beyond Part 29

And then she saw only Father John, and put her arms closely about his neck, and with wide, tearless eyes looked into his face.

"Father, you will come to us?" she whispered. "You promise that?"

The Missioner's arms closed about her, and he bowed his face against her lips and cheek.

"I pray G.o.d that it may be so," he said.

Nada's arms tightened convulsively, and in that moment there came a warning growl from outside the cabin door.

"Peter!" she cried.

In another moment Father John had extinguished the light.

"Go, my children," he commanded. "You must be quick. Twenty paces below the pool is a canoe. I had one of my Indians leave it there yesterday, and it is ready. Roger--Nada--"

He groped out, and the hands of the three met in the darkness.

"G.o.d bless you--both! And go south--always south. Now go--go! I think I hear footsteps--"

He thrust them to the door, Nada with her bundle and Roger with his pack. Suddenly he felt Peter at his side, and reaching down he fastened his fingers in the scruff of his neck, and held him back.

"Good-bye," he whispered huskily. "Good-bye--Nada--Roger--"

A sob came back out of the gloom.

"Good-bye, father."

And then they listened, Peter and Father John, until the swift footsteps of the two they loved pa.s.sed beyond their hearing.

Peter whimpered, and struggled a little, but Father John held him as he closed the door.

"It's best for you to stay, Peter," he tried to explain. "It's best for you to stay--with me. For I think they are going a far distance, and will come to a land where you would shrivel up and die. Besides, you could not go in the canoe. So be good, and remain with me, Peter--with me--"

And the Leaf Bud, standing wide-eyed and motionless, heard a strange little choking laugh come from Father John as he groped in darkness for a light.

CHAPTER XXI

A slow illumination filled the cabin, first the yellow flare of a match and then the light of a lamp, and as Father John's waxen face grew out of the darkness Peter whimpered and whined and scratched with, his paws at the closed door.

Oosimisk, the Leaf Bud, stood like a statue, with her wide, dark eyes staring at Father John, but scarcely seeming to breathe.

In the old Missioner's face came a trembling smile and a look of triumph as he read the fear-written question in her steady gaze.

"All is well, Oosimisk," he said quietly, speaking in Cree. "They are safely away, and will not be caught. Continue with your duties and let no one see that anything unusual has happened. Breault will come very soon."

He straightened his shoulders, as if to give himself confidence and strength, and then he called Peter, and comforted the dog whose master and mistress were fleeing through the dark.

"They have reached the pool," he said, seating himself and holding Peter's s.h.a.ggy head between his hands. "They have just about reached the pool, and Breault must be entering the clearing on the other side.

Roger cannot miss the canoe--twenty paces down and with nothing to shadow it overhead; I think he has found it by this time, and in another half minute they will be off. And it is very black down the Burntwood, with deep timber close to the water, and for many miles no man can follow by night along its sh.o.r.es." Suddenly his hands tightened, and the Leaf Bud, watching him slyly, saw the last of suspense go out of his face. "And now--they are safe," he cried exultantly. "They must be on their way--and Breault has not come across the clearing!"

He rose to his feet, and began pacing back and forth, while Peter sniffed yearningly at the door again. Oosimisk, with the caution of her race in moments of danger, was drawing the curtains at the windows, and Father John smiled his approbation. He did not want Breault, the man-hunter, peering through one of the windows at him. Even as he walked back and forth he listened intently for Breault's footsteps.

Peter, with a sigh, gave up his scratching and settled himself on his haunches close to Nada's door.

Father John, in pa.s.sing him, paused to lay a hand on his head.

"Some day it may please G.o.d to let us go to them," he consoled, speaking for himself even more than for Peter. "Some day, when they are far away--and safe."

He felt Peter suddenly stiffen under his hand, and from the Leaf Bud came a low, swift word of warning.

She began singing softly, and dishes and pans already clean rattled under her hands in the kitchen, and she continued to sing even as the cabin door opened and Breault the man-hunter stood in it.

The unexpectedness of his appearance, without the sound of a warning footstep outside, was amazing even to Peter. In the open door he stood for a moment, his thin, ferret-like face standing out against the black background of the night, and his strange eyes, apparently half closed yet bright as diamonds, sweeping the interior without effort but with the quickness of lightning.

There was something deadly and foreboding about him as he stood here, and Peter growled low in his throat. Recognition flashed upon him in an instant. It was the man of the snow-dune, away up on the Barren, the man whom he had mistrusted from the beginning, and from whom they had fled into the face of the Big Storm months ago. His mind worked swiftly, even as swiftly as Breault's in its way, and without any process of reasoning he sensed menace and enmity in this man's appearance, and a.s.sociated with it the mysterious flight of Jolly Roger and Nada.

Breault had nodded, without speaking. Then his eyes rested on Peter, and his face broke into a twisted sort of smile. It was not altogether unpleasant, yet was there something about it which made one shiver. It spoke the character of the man, pitiless, determined, omniscient almost, as if the spirit of a grim and unrelenting fate walked with him.

Again he nodded, and held out a hand.

"Peter," he called. "Come here, Peter!"

Peter flattened his ears a fraction of an inch, but did not move. Even that fraction of an inch caught Breault's keen eyes.

"Still a one-man dog," he observed, stepping well inside the cabin, and facing Father John. "Where is McKay, Father?"

He had not closed the door, and Peter saw his chance. The Leaf Bud saw him pa.s.s like a shot out into the night, but as he went she made no effort to call him back, for her ears were wide open as Breault repeated his question,

"Where is McKay, Father?"

Peter heard the man-hunter's voice from the darkness outside. For barely an instant he paused, picking up the fresh scent of Nada and Jolly Roger. It was easy to follow--straight to the pool, and from the pool twenty paces down-stream, where a little finger of sand and pebbles had been formed by the eddies. In this bar was fresh imprint of the canoe, and here the footprints ended.

Peter whimpered, peering into the tunnel of darkness between forest trees, where the water rippled and gurgled softly on its way into a deeper and more tangled wilderness. He waded belly-deep into the current, half determined to swim; and then he waited, listening intently, but could hear no sound of voice or paddle stroke.

Yet he knew Jolly Roger and Nada could not be far away.

He returned to the edge of the pool, and began sniffing his way down-stream, pausing every two or three minutes to listen. Now and then he caught the presence of those he sought, in the air, but those intervals in which he stopped to catch sound of voice or paddle lost him time, so the canoe was traveling faster than Peter.

Half way between himself and the bow of that canoe McKay could dimly make out Nada's pale face in the star glow that filtered like a mist through the tops of the close-hanging trees.

Scarcely above his breath he laughed in joyous confidence.

"At last my dream is coming true, Nada," he whispered. "You are mine.

And we are going into another world. And no one will ever find us there--no one but Father John, when we send him word. You are not afraid?"