Джеймс Оливер Кервуд
The Country Beyond: A Romance of the Wilderness

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 shaggy 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 shores." 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 passing him, paused to lay a hand on his head.

"Some day it may please God 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 associated 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 pass 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?"

Her voice trembled a little in the gloom.

"No, I am not afraid. But it is dark – so dark – "

"The moon will be with us again in a few nights – your moon, with the Old Man smiling down on us. I know how the Man in the Moon must feel when he's on the other side of the world, and can't see you, Nada."

Her silence made him lean toward her, striving to get a better view of her face where the starlight broke through an opening in the tree-tops.

And in that moment he heard a little breath that was almost a sob.

"It's Peter," she said, before he could speak. "Oh, Roger, why didn't we bring Peter?"

"Possibly – we should have," he replied, skipping a stroke with his paddle. "But I think we have done the best thing for Peter. He is a wilderness dog, and has never known anything different. Over there, where we are going – "

"I understand. And some day, Father John will bring him?"

"Yes. He has promised that. Peter will come to us when Father John comes."

She had turned, looking into the pit-gloom ahead of them, so dark that the canoe seemed about to drive against a wall. Under its bow the water gurgled like oil.

"We are entering the big cedar swamp," he explained. "It is like Blind Man's Buff, isn't it? Can you see?"

"Not beyond the bow of the canoe, Roger."

"Work back to me," he said, "very carefully."

She came, obediently.

"Now turn slowly, so that you face the bow, and lean back with your head against my knees."

This also, she did.

"This is much nicer," she whispered, nestling her head comfortably against him. "So much nicer."

By leaning over until his back nearly cracked he was able to find her lips in the darkness.

"I was thinking of the brush that overhangs the stream," he explained when he had straightened himself. "Sitting up as you were it might have caused you hurt."

There was a little silence between them, in which his paddle caught again its slow and steady rhythm. Then,

"Were you thinking only of the brush, Roger – and of the hurt it might cause me?"

"Yes, only of that," and he chuckled softly.

"Then I don't think it nice here at all," she complained. "I shall sit up straight so the brush may put my eyes out!"

But her head pressed even closer against him, and careful not to interrupt his paddle-stroke she touched his face for an instant with her hand.

"It's there," she purled, as if utterly comforted. "I wanted to be sure – it is so dark!"

With cimmerian blackness on all sides of them, and a chaotic tunnel ahead, they were happy. Staring straight before him, though utterly unable to see, McKay sensed in every movement he made and in every breath he drew the exquisite thrill of a miracle. And the same thrill swept into him and through him from the softly breathing body of Nada. Light or darkness made no difference now. Together, inseparable from this time forth, they had started on the one great adventure of their lives, and for them fear had ceased to exist. The night sheltered them. Its very blackness held in its embrace a warmth of welcome and of unending hope. Twice in the next half hour he put his hand to Nada's face, and each time she pressed her lips against it, sweet with that confidence which so completely possessed her soul.

Very slowly they moved through the swamp, for because of the gloom his paddle-strokes were exceedingly short, and he was feeling his way. Frequently he ran into brush, or struck the boggy shore, and occasionally Nada would hold lighted matches while he extricated the canoe from tree-tops and driftwood that impeded the way. He loved the brief glimpses he caught of her face in the match-glow, and twice he deliberately wasted the tiny flares that he might hold the vision of her a little longer.

At last he began to feel the pulse of a current against his paddle, and soon after that the star-mist began filtering through the thinning tree-tops again, so that he knew they were almost through the swamp. Another half-hour and they were free of it, with a clear sky overhead and the cheering song of running water on both sides of them.

Nada sat up, and it was now so light that he could see the soft shimmer of her hair in the starlight. He also saw a pretty little grimace in her face, even as she smiled at him.

"I – I can't move," she exclaimed. "Ugh! my feet are asleep – "

"We'll go ashore and stretch ourselves," said McKay, who had looked at his watch in the light of the last match. "We've two hours the start of Breault, and there is no other canoe."

He began watching the shore closely, and it was not long before he made out the white smoothness of a sandbar on their right. Here they landed and for half an hour rested their cramped limbs.

Then they went on, and in his heart McKay blessed the deep swamp that lay between them and Breault.

"I don't think he can make it without a canoe, even if he guesses we went this way," he explained to Nada. "And that means – we are safe."

There was a cheery ring in his voice which would have changed to the deadness of cold iron could he have looked back into that sluggish pit of the Burntwood through which they had come, or could he have seen into the heart of the still blacker swamp.

For through the swamp, feeling his way in the black abysses and amid the monster-ghosts of darkness, came Peter.

And down the Burntwood, between the boggy mucklips of the swamp, a man followed with slow but deadly surety, guiding with a long pole two light cedar timbers which he had lashed together with wire, and which bore him safely and in triumph where the canoe had gone before him.

This man was Breault, the man-hunter.

"The swamp will hold him!" McKay was saying again, exultantly. "Even if he guesses our way, the swamp will hold him back, Nada."

"But he won't know the way we have come," cried Nada, the faith in her voice answering his own. "Father John will guide him in another direction."

Back in the pit-gloom, with a grim smile now and then relaxing the tight-set compression of his thin lips, and with eyes that stared like a night-owl's into the gloom ahead of him, Breault poled steadily on.

CHAPTER XXII

Dripping from the bog-holes and lathered with mud, it was the mystery of Breault's noiseless presence somewhere near him in the still night that drew Peter continually deeper into the swamp.

Half a dozen times he caught the scent of him in a quiet air that seemed only now and then to rise up in his face softly, as if stirred by butterflies' wings. Always it came from ahead, and Peter's mind worked swiftly to the decision that where Breault was there also would be Nada and Jolly Roger. Yet he caught the scent of neither of these two, and that puzzled him.

Many times he found himself at the edge of the black lip of water, but never quite at the right time to see a shadow in its darkness, or hear the sound of Breault's pole.

But in the swamp, as he went on, he saw nothing but shadow, and heard weird and nameless sounds which made his blood creep, even though his courage was now full-grown within him.

He was not frightened at the ugly sputter of the owls, as in the days of old. Their throaty menace and snapping beaks did not stop him nor turn him aside. The slashing scrape of claws in the bark of trees and the occasional crackling of brush were matters of intimate knowledge, and he gave but little attention to them in his eagerness to reach those who had gone ahead of him. What troubled him, and filled his eyes with sudden red glares, were the oily gurgles of the pitfalls which tried to suck him down; the laughing madness of muck that held him as if living things were in it, and which spluttered and coughed when he freed himself.

Half blinded at times, so that even the black shadows were blotted out, he went on. And at last, coming again to the edge of the stream, he heard a new kind of sound – the slow, steady dipping of Breault's pole.

He hurried on, finding harder ground under his feet, and came noiselessly abreast of the man on his raft of cedar timbers. He could almost hear his breathing. And very faintly he could see in the vast gloom a shadow – a shadow that moved slowly against the background of a still deeper shadow beyond.

But there was no scent of Nada or Jolly Roger, and whatever desire had risen in him to make himself known was smothered by caution and suspicion. After this he did not go ahead of Breault, but kept behind him or abreast of him, within sound of the dipping pole. And every minute his heart thumped expectantly, and he sniffed the new air for signs of those he most desired to find.

Dawn was breaking in the sky when they came out of the swamp, and the first flush of the sun was lighting up the east when Breault headed his improvised craft for the sandbar upon which Nada and McKay had rested many hours before.

Breault was tired, but his eyes lighted up when he saw the footprints in the sand, and he chuckled – almost good humoredly. As a matter of fact he was in a good humor. But one would not have reckoned it as such in Breault. A hard man, the forests called him; a man with the hunting instincts of the fox and the wolf and the merciless persistency of the weazel – a man who lived his code to the last letter of the law, without pity and without favoritism. At least so he was judged, and his hard, narrow eyes, his thin lips and his cynically lined face seldom betrayed the better thoughts within him, if he possessed any at all. In the Service he was regarded as a humanly perfect mechanism, a bit of machinery that never failed, the dreaded Nemesis to be set on the trail of a wrong-doer when all others had failed.

But this morning, with every bone and muscle in him aching from his long night of tedious exertion, the chuckle grew into a laugh as he looked upon the telltale signs in the sand.

He stretched himself and his tired bones cracked.

Breault did not think aloud. But he was saying to himself.

"There, against that rock, Jolly Roger McKay sat There is the imprint of only one person sitting. The girl was in his arms. Here are little holes where her outstretched heels rested in the sand. She is wearing shoes and not moccasins."

He grinned as he drew his service pack from the two-log cedar raft.

"Plenty of time now," he continued to think. "They are mine this time – sure. They believe they have fooled me, and they haven't. That's fatal. Always."

Not infrequently, when entirely alone, Breault let a little part of himself loose, as if freeing a prisoner from bondage for a short time. For instance, he whistled. It was not an unpleasant whistle, but rather oddly reminiscent of tender things he remembered away back somewhere; and as he fried his bacon and steamed a handful of desiccated potatoes he hummed a song, also rather pleasant to ears that were as closely attentive as Peter's.

For Peter had crept up through a tangle of ground-scrub and lay not twenty paces away, smelling of the bacon hungrily, and watching intently from his concealment.

Peter knew the fox and the wolf, but he did not know Breault, and he did not guess why the man's whistling grew a little louder, nor why his humming voice grew stronger. But after a time, with his back and not his face toward Peter, Breault called in the most natural and matter-of-fact voice in the world,

"Come on, Peter. Breakfast is ready!"

Peter's jaws dropped in amazement. And as Breault turned toward him, his thin face a-grin, and continued to invite him in a most companionable way, he forgot his concealment entirely and stood up straight, ready either to fight or fly.

Breault tossed him a dripping slice of bacon which he held in his hand. It fell within a foot of Peter's nose, and Peter was ravenously hungry. The delicious odor of it demoralized his senses and his caution. For a few seconds he resisted, then thrust himself out toward it an inch at a time, made a sudden grab, and swallowed it at one gulp.

Breault laughed outright, and with the first of the sun striking into his face he did not look like an enemy to Peter.

A second slice of bacon followed the first, and then a third – until Breault was frying another mess over the fire.

"That's partial payment for what you did up on the Barren," he was saying inside himself. "If it hadn't been for you – "

He didn't even imagine the rest. Nor after that did he pay the slightest attention to Peter. For Breault knew dogs possibly even better than he knew men, and not by the smallest sign did he give Peter to understand that he was interested in him at all. He washed his dishes, whistling and humming, reloaded his pack on the raft, and once more began poling his way downstream.

Peter, still in the edge of the scrub, was not only puzzled, but felt a further sense of abandonment. After all, this man was not his enemy, and he was leaving him as his master and mistress had left him. He whined. And Breault was not out of sight when he trotted down to the sandbar, and quickly found the scent of Nada and McKay. Purposely Breault had left a lump of desiccated potato as big as his fist, and this Peter ate as ravenously as he had eaten the bacon. Then, just as Breault knew he would do, he began following the raft.

Breault did not hurry, and he did not rest. There was something almost mechanically certain in his slow but steady progress, though he knew it was possible for the canoe to outdistance him three to one. He was missing nothing along the shore. Three times during the forenoon he saw where the canoe had landed, and he chuckled each time, thinking of the old story of the tortoise and the hare. He stopped for not more than two or three minutes at each of these places, and was then on his way again.

Peter was fascinated by the unexcited persistency of the man's movement. He followed it, watched it, and became more and more interested in the unvarying monotony of it. There were the same up-and-down strokes of the long pole, the slight swaying of the upstanding body, the same eddy behind the cedar logs – and occasionally wisps of smoke floating behind when the pursuer smoked his pipe. Not once did Peter see Breault turn his head to look behind him. Yet Breault was seeing everything. Five times that morning he saw Peter, but not once did he make a sign or call to him.

He drove his raft ashore at twelve o'clock to prepare his dinner, and after he had built a fire, and his cooking things were scattered about, he straightened himself up and called in that same matter-of-fact way, as if expecting an immediate response,

"Here, Peter! – Peter! – Come in, Boy!"

And Peter came. Fighting against the last instinct that held him back he first thrust his head out from the brush and looked at Breault. Breault paid no attention to him for a few moments, but sliced his bacon. When the perfume of the cooking meat reached Peter's nose he edged himself a little nearer, and with a whimpering sigh flattened himself on his belly.

Breault heard the sigh, and grunted a reply,

"Hungry again, Peter?" he inquired casually.

He had saved for this moment a piece of cooked bacon held over from breakfast, and tearing this with his fingers he tossed the strips to Peter. As he did this he was thinking to himself,

"Why am I doing this? I don't want the dog. He will be a nuisance. He will eat my grub. But it's fair. I'm paying a debt. He helped to save me up on the Barren."

Thus did Breault, the man without mercy, the Nemesis, briefly analyze the matter. And he cooked five pieces of bacon for Peter.

During the rest of that day Peter made no effort to keep himself in concealment as he followed Breault and his raft. This afternoon Breault shot a fawn, and when he made camp that night both he and Peter feasted on fresh meat. This broke down the last of Peter's suspicion, and Breault laid a hand on his head. He did not particularly like the feel of the hand, but he tolerated it, and Breault grunted aloud, with a note of commendation in his hard voice.

"A one-man dog – never anything else."

Half a dozen times during the day Peter had found the scent of Nada and Roger where they had come ashore, and from this night on he associated Breault as a necessary agent in his search for them. And with Breault he went, instinctively guessing the truth.

The next day they found where Nada and McKay had abandoned the canoe, and had struck south through the wilderness. This pleased Breault, who was tired of his poling. This third night there was a new moon, and something about it stirred in Peter an impulse to run ahead and overtake those he was seeking. But a still strong instinct held him to Breault.

Tonight Breault slept like a dead man on his cedar boughs. He was up and had a fire built an hour before dawn, and with the first gray streaking of day was on the trail again. He made no further effort to follow signs of the pursued, for that was a hopeless task. But he knew how McKay was heading, and he traveled swiftly, figuring to cover twice the distance that Nada might travel in the same given time. It was three o'clock in the afternoon when he came to a great ridge, and on its highest pinnacle he stopped.

Peter had grown restless again, and a little more suspicious of Breault. He was not afraid of him, but all that day he had found no scent of Nada or Jolly Roger, and slowly the conviction was impinging itself upon him that he should seek for himself in the wilderness.

Breault saw this restlessness, and understood it.

"I'll keep my eye on the dog," he thought. "He has a nose, and an uncanny sixth sense, and I haven't either. He will bear watching. I believe McKay and the girl cannot be far away. Possibly they have traveled more slowly than I thought, and haven't passed this ridge; or it may be they are down there, in the plain. If so I should catch sign of smoke or fire – in time."

For an hour he kept watch over the plain through his binoculars, seeking for a wisp of smoke that might rise at any time over the treetops. He did not lose sight of Peter, questing out in widening circles below him. And then, quite unexpectedly, something happened. In the edge of a tiny meadow an eighth of a mile away Peter was acting strangely. He was nosing the ground, gulping the wind, twisting eagerly back and forth. Then he set out, steadily and with unmistakable decision, south and west.

In a flash Breault was on his feet, had caught up his pack, and was running for the meadow. And there he found something in the velvety softness of the earth which brought a grim smile to his thin lips as he, too, set out south and west.

The scent he had found, hours old, drew Peter on until in the edge of the dusk of evening it brought him to a foot-worn trail leading to the Hudson's Bay Company post many miles south. In this path, beaten by the feet of generations of forest dwellers, the hard heels of McKay's boots had made their imprint, and after this the scent was clearer under Peter's nose. But with forest-bred caution he still traveled slowly, though his blood was burning like a pitch-fed fire in his veins. Almost as swiftly followed Breault behind him.

Again came darkness, and then the moon, brighter than last night, lighting his way between the two walls of the forest.