CHAPTER VIII
Peter, thrust back from the door through which through which his masterhad gone, listened vainly for the sound of returning footsteps in thebeat of rain and the crash of thunder outside. A strange thing hadburned itself into his soul, a thing that made his flesh quiver and sethot fires running in his blood. As a dog sometimes senses the stealthyapproach of death, so he began to sense the tragedy of this night thathad brought with it not only a chaos of blackness and storm, but ananguish which roused an answering whimper in his throat as he turnedtoward Nada.
She was crumpled with her head in her arms, where she had flung herselfwith Jolly Roger's last kiss of worship on her lips, and she was sobbinglike a child with its heart broken. And beside her knelt the old grayMissioner, man of God in the deep forest, who stroked her hair with histhin hand, whispering courage and consolation to her, with the wind andrain beating overhead and the windows rattling to the accompaniment ofghostly voices that shrieked and wailed in the tree-tops outside.
Peter trembled at the sobbing, but his heart and his desire were withthe man who had gone. In his unreasoning little soul it was Jed Hawkinswho was rattling the windows with his unseen hands and who was poundingat the door with the wind, and who was filling the black night with itsmenace and fear. He hated this man, who lay back in the trail with hislifeless face turned up to the deluge that poured out of the sky. And hewas afraid of the man, even as he hated him, and he believed that Nadawas afraid of him, and that because of her fear she was crying therein the middle of the floor, with Father John patting her shoulderand stroking her hair, and saying things to her which he could notunderstand. He wanted to go to her. He wanted to feel himself closeagainst her, as Nada had held him so often in those hours when she hadunburdened her grief and her unhappiness to him. But even stronger thanthis desire was the one to follow his master.
He went to the door, and thrust his nose against the crack at the bottomof it. He felt the fierceness of the wind fighting to break in, and thebroken mist of it filled his nostrils. But there came no scent of JollyRoger McKay. For a moment he struggled at the crack with his paws. Thenhe flopped himself down, his heart beating fast, and fixed his eyesinquiringly on Nada and the Missioner.
His four and a half months of life in the big wilderness, and his weeksof constant comradeship with Jolly Roger, had developed in him a brainthat was older than his body. No process of reasoning could impingeupon him the fact that his master was an outlaw, but with the swiftexperiences of tragedy and hiding and never-ceasing caution had comeinstinctive processes which told him almost as much as reason. He knewsomething was wrong tonight. It was in the air. He breathed it. Itthrilled in the crash of thunder, in the lightning fire, in the mightyhands of the wind rocking the cabin and straining at the windows. Andvaguely the knowledge gripped him that the dead man back in the trailwas responsible for it all, and that because of this something thathad happened his mistress was crying and his master was gone. And hebelieved he should also have gone with Jolly Roger into the blacknessand mystery of the storm, to fight with him against the one creature inall the world he hated--the dead man who lay back in the thickness ofgloom between the forest walls.
And the Missioner was saying to Nada, in a quiet, calm voice out ofwhich the tragedies of years had burned all excitement and passion:
"God will forgive him, my child. In His mercy He will forgive RogerMcKay, because he killed Jed Hawkins to save YOU. But man will notforgive. The law has been hunting him because he is an outlaw, and tooutlawry he has added what the law will call murder. But God will notlook at it in that way. He will look into the heart of the man, the manwho sacrificed himself--"
And then, fiercely, Nada struck up the Missioner's comforting hand, andPeter saw her young face white as star-dust in the lampglow.
"I don't care what God thinks," she cried passionately. "God didn't doright today. Mister Roger told me everything, that he was an outlaw, an'I oughtn't to marry him. But I didn't care. I loved him. I could hidewith him. An' we were coming to have you marry us tonight when God letJed Hawkins drag me away, to sell me to a man over on the railroad--an'it was God who let Mister Roger go back and kill him. I tell you Hedidn't do right! He didn't--he didn't--because Mister Roger brought methe first happiness I ever knew, an' I loved him, an' he loved me--an'God was wicked to let him kill Jed Hawkins--"
Her voice cried out, a woman's soul broken in a girl's body, and Peterwhimpered and watched the Missioner as he raised Nada to her feetand went with her into his bedroom, where a few minutes before he hadlighted a lamp. And Peter crept in quietly after them, and when theMissioner had gone and closed the door, leaving them alone in theirtragedy, Nada seemed to see him for the first time and slowly shereached out her arms.
"Peter!" she whispered. "Peter--Peter--"
In the minutes that followed, Peter could feel her heart beating.Clutched against her breast he looked up at the white, beautiful face,the trembling throat, the wide-open blue eyes staring at the one blackwindow between them and the outside night. A lull had come in the storm.It was quiet and ominous stillness, and the ticking of a clock, old andgray like the Missioner himself, filled the room. And Nada, seated onthe edge of Father John's bed, no longer looked like the young girl of"seventeen goin' on eighteen." That afternoon, in the hidden jackpineopen, with its sweet-scented jasmines, its violets and its crimsonstrawberries under their feet, the soul of a woman had taken possessionof her body. In that hour the first happiness of her life had come toher. She had heard Jolly Roger McKay tell her those things which shealready knew--that he was an outlaw, and that he was hiding down onthe near-edge of civilization because the Royal Mounted were after himfarther north--and that he was not fit to love her, and that it was acrime to let her love him. It was then the soul of the woman had cometo her in all its triumph. She had made her choice, definitely anddecisively, without hesitation and without fear. And now, as she staredunseeingly at the window against which the rain was beating, thewoman in her girlish body rose in her mightier than in the hour of herhappiness, fighting to find a way--crying out for the man she loved.
Her mind swept back in a single flash through all the years she hadlived, through her years of unhappiness and torment as the foster-girlof Jed Hawkins and his broken, beaten wife; through summers and wintersthat had seemed ages to her, eternities of desolation, of heartache,of loneliness, with the big wilderness her one friend on earth. As thewindow rattled in a fresh blast of storm, she thought of the day monthsago when she had accidentally stumbled upon the hiding-place of RogerMcKay. Since that day he had been her God, and she had lived in aparadise. He had been father, mother, brother, and at last--what shemost yearned for--a lover to her. And this day, when for the first timehe had held her in his arms, when the happiness of all the earth hadreached out to them, God had put it into Jed Hawkins' heart to destroyher--and Jolly Roger had killed him!
With a sharp little cry she sprang to her feet, so suddenly that Peterfell with a thump to the floor. He looked up at her, puzzled, his jawshalf agape. She was breathing quickly. Her slender body was quivering.Suddenly Peter saw the fire in her eyes and the flame that was rushinginto her white cheeks. Then she turned to him, and panted in a wildlittle whisper, so low that the Missioner could not hear:
"Peter, I was wrong. God wasn't wicked to let Mister Roger killJed Hawkins. He oughta been killed. An' God meant him to be killed.Peter--Peter--we don't care if he's an outlaw! We're goin' with him.We're goin'--goin'--"
She sprang to the window, and Peter was at her heels as she strained atit with all her strength, and he could hear her sobbing:
"We're goin' with him, Peter. We're goin'--if we die for it!"
An inch at a time she pried the window up. The storm beat in. A gust ofwind blew out the light, but in the last flare of it Nada saw a knife inan Eskimo sheath hanging on the wall. She groped for it, and clutched itin her hand as she climbed through the window and dropped to the soggyground beneath. In a single leap Peter followed her.
Blackness swallowedthem as they turned toward the trail leading north--the only trail whichJolly Roger could travel on a night like this. They heard the voiceof the Missioner calling from the window behind them. Then a crash ofthunder set the earth rolling under their feet, and the lull inthe storm came to an end. The sky split open with the vivid fireof lightning. The trees wailed and whined, the rain fell again in asmothering deluge, and through it Nada ran, gripping the knife as herone defense against the demons of darkness--and always close at her sideran Peter.
He could not see her in that pitchy blackness, except when the lightningflashes came. Then she was like a ghostly wraith, with drenchedclothes clinging to her until she seemed scarcely dressed, her wet hairstreaming and her wide, staring eyes looking straight ahead. Afterthe lightning flashes, when the world was darkest, he could hear thestumbling tread of her feet and the panting of her breath, and now andthen the swish of brush as it struck across her face and breast. Therain had washed away the scent of his master's feet but he knew theywere following Jolly Roger, and that the girl was running to overtakehim. In him was the desire to rush ahead, to travel faster through thenight, but Nada's stumbling feet and her panting breath and the strangewhite pictures he saw of her when the sky split open with fire held himback. Something told him that Nada must reach Jolly Roger. And he wasafraid she would stop. He wanted to bark to give her encouragement, ashe had often barked in their playful races in the green plain-lands onthe farther side of Cragg's Ridge. But the rain choked him. It beat downupon him with the weight of heavy hands, it slushed up into his facefrom pools in the trail and drove the breath from him when he attemptedto open his jaws. So he ran close--so close that at times Nada felt thetouch of his body against her.
In these first minutes of her fight to overtake the man she loved Nadaheard but one voice--a voice crying out from her heart and brain andsoul, a voice rising above the tumult of thunder and wind, urging heron, whipping the strength from her frail body in pitiless exhortation.Jolly Roger was less than half an hour ahead of her. And she mustovertake him--quickly--before the forests swallowed him, before he wasgone from her life forever.
The wall of blackness against which she ran did not frighten her. Whenthe brush tore at her face and hair she swung free of it, and stumbledon. Twice she ran blindly into broken trees that lay across her path,and dragged her bruised body through their twisted tops, moaning toPeter and clutching tightly to the sheathed knife in her hand. And thewild spirits that possessed the night seemed to gather about her, andover her, exulting in the helplessness of their victim, shrieking inweird and savage joy at the discovery of this human plaything strugglingagainst their might. Never had Peter heard thunder as he heard it now.It rocked the earth under his feet. It filled the world with a ceaselessrumble, and the lightning came like flashes from swift-loading guns, andwith it all a terrific assault of wind and rain that at last drove Nadadown in a crumpled heap, panting for breath, with hands groping outwildly for him.
Peter came to them, sodden and shivering. His warm tongue found the palmof her hand, and for a space Nada hugged him close to her, while shebowed her head until her drenched curls became a part of the mud andwater of the trail. Peter could hear her sobbing for breath. And thensuddenly, there came a change. The thunder was sweeping eastward. Thelightning was going with it. The wind died out in wailing sobs among thetreetops, and the rain fell straight down. Swiftly as its fury had come,the July storm was passing. And Nada staggered to her feet again andwent on.
Her mind began to react with the lessening of the storm, dragging itselfout quickly from under the oppression of fear and shock. She began toreason, and with that reason the beginning of faith and confidence gaveher new strength. She knew that Jolly Roger would take this trail, forit was the one trail leading from the Missioner's cabin through thethick forest country north. And in half an hour he would not travel far.The thrilling thought came to her that possibly he had sought shelter inthe lee of a big tree trunk during the fury of the storm. If he had donethat he would be near, very near. She paused in the trail and gatheredher breath, and cried out his name. Three times she called it, and onlythe low whine in Peter's throat came in answer. Twice again during thenext ten minutes she cried out as loudly as she could into the darkness.And still no answer came back to her through the gloom ahead.
The trail had dipped, and she felt the deepening slush of swamp-mireunder her feet. She sank in it to her shoe-tops, and stumbled into poolsknee-deep, and Peter wallowed in it to his belly. A quarter of an hourthey fought through it to the rising ground beyond. And by that time thelast of the black storm clouds had passed overhead. The rain had ceased.The rumble of thunder came more faintly. There was no lightning, and thetree-tops began to whisper softly, as if rejoicing in the passing of thewind. About them--everywhere--they could hear the run and drip of water,the weeping of the drenched trees, the gurgle of flooded pools, and thetrickle of tiny rivulets that splashed about their feet. Through a riftin the breaking clouds overhead came a passing flash of the moon.
"We'll find him now, Peter," moaned the girl. "We'll find him--now. Hecan't be very far ahead--"
And Peter waited, holding his breath, listening for an answer to the crythat went out for Jolly Roger McKay.
The glory of July midnight, with a round, full moon straight overhead,followed the stress of storm. The world had been lashed and inundated,every tree whipped of its rot and slag, every blade of grass and flowerwashed clean. Out of the earth rose sweet smells of growing life, themusky fragrance of deep moss and needle-mold, and through the clean airdrifted faintly the aroma of cedar and balsam and the subtle tang ofunending canopies and glistening tapestries of evergreen breathing intothe night. The deep forest seemed to tremble with the presence of aninvisible and mysterious life--life that was still, yet wide-awake,breathing, watchful, drinking in the rejuvenating tonic of the air whichhad so quietly followed thunder and lightning and the roar of wind andrain. And the moon, like a queen who had so ordered these things,looked down in a mighty triumph. Her radiance, without dust or fog orforest-smoke to impede its way, was like the mellow glow of half-day. Itstreamed through the treetops in paths of gold and silver, throwing darkshadows where it failed to penetrate, and gathering in wide pools whereits floods poured through broad rifts in the roofs of the forest.And the trail, leading north, was like a river of shimmering silver,splitting the wilderness from earth to sky.
In this trail, clearly made in the wet soil, were Jolly Roger'sfoot-prints, and in a wider space, where at some time a trapper hadcleared himself a spot for his tepee or shack, Jolly Roger had pausedto rest after his fight through the storm--and had then continued on hisway. And into this clearing, three hours after they left the Missioner'scabin, came Nada and Peter.
They came slowly, the girl a slim wraith in the moon-light; in the openthey stood for a moment, and Peter's heart weighed heavily within him ashis mistress cried out once more for Jolly Roger. Her voice rose only ina sob, and ended in a sob. The last of her strength was gone. Her littlefigure swayed, and her face was white and haggard, and in her drawn lipsand staring eyes was the agony of despair. She had lost, and sheknew that she had lost as she crumpled down in the trail, crying outsobbingly to the footprints which led so clearly ahead of her.
"Peter, I can't go on," she moaned. "I can't--go on--"
Her hands clutched at her breast. Peter saw the glint of the moonlighton the ivory sheath of the Eskimo knife, and he saw her white faceturned up to the sky--and also that her lips were moving, but he did nothear his name come from them, or any other sound. He whined, and foot byfoot began to nose along the trail on the scent left by Jolly Roger. Itwas very clear to his nostrils, and it thrilled him. He looked back, andagain he whined his encouragement to the girl.
"Peter!" she called. "Peter!"
He returned to her. She had drawn the knife out of its scabbard, and thecold steel glistened in her hand. Her eyes were shining, and she reachedout and clutched Peter close up against her, so that
he could hear thechoke and throb of her heart.
"Oh, Peter, Peter," she panted. "If you could only talk! If you couldrun and catch Mister Roger, an' tell him I'm here, an' that he must comeback--"
She hugged him closer. He sensed the sudden thrill that leapt throughher body.
"Peter," she whispered, "will you do it?"
For a few moments she did not seem to breathe. Then he heard a quicklittle cry, a sob of inspiration and hope, and her arms came from abouthim, and he saw the knife flashing in the yellow moonlight.
He did not understand, but he knew that he must watch her carefully. Shehad bent her head, and her hair, nearly dry, glowed softly in the faceof the moon. Her hands were fumbling in the disheveled curls, and Petersaw the knife flash back and forth, and heard the cut of it, and then hesaw that in her hand she held a thick brown tress of hair that she hadsevered from her head. He was puzzled. And Nada dropped the knife, andhis curiosity increased when she tore a great piece out of her tattereddress, and carefully wrapped the tress of hair in it. Then she drewhim to her again, and tied the knotted fold of dress securely about hisneck; after that she tore other strips from her dress, and wound themabout his neck until he felt muffled and half smothered.
And all the time she was talking to him in a half sobbing, excitedlittle voice, and the blood in Peter's body ran swifter, and the strangethrill in him was greater. When she had finished she rose to her feet,and stood there swaying back and forth, like one of the spruce-topshadows, while she pointed up the moonlit trail.
"Go, Peter!" she cried softly. "Quick! Follow him, Peter--catchhim--bring him back! Mister Roger--Jolly Roger--go, Peter! Go--go--go--"
It was strange to Peter. But he was beginning to understand. He sniffedin Jolly Roger's footprints, and then he looked up quickly, and sawthat it had pleased the girl. She was urging him on. He sniffed from onefootprint to another, and Nada clapped her hands and cried out that hewas right--for him to hurry--hurry--
Impulse, thought, swiftly growing knowledge of something to be donethrilled in his brain. Nada wanted him to go. She wanted him to go toJolly Roger. And she had put something around his neck which she wantedhim to take with him. He whined eagerly, a bit excitedly. Then he beganto trot. Instinctively it was his test. She did not call him back. Heflattened his ears, listening for her command to return, but it did notcome. And then the thrill in him leapt over all other things. He wasright. He was not abandoning Nada. He was not running away. She WANTEDhim to go!
The night swallowed him. He became a part of the yellow floods of itsmoonlight, a part of its shifting shadows, a part of its stillness, itsmystery, its promise of impending things. He knew that grim and terriblehappenings had come with the storm, and he still sensed the nearness oftragedy in this night-world through which he was passing. He did not goswiftly, yet he went three times as fast as the girl and he had traveledtogether. He was cautious and watchful, and at intervals he stopped andlistened, and swallowed hard to keep the whine of eagerness out of histhroat. Now that he was alone every instinct in him was keyed to thepulse and beat of life about him. He knew the Night People of thedeep forests were awake. Softly padded, clawed, sharp-beaked andfeathered--the prowlers of darkness were on the move. With the stillnessof shadows they were stealing through the moonlit corridors of thewilderness, or hovering gray-winged and ghostly in the ambuscades of thetreetops, eager to waylay and kill, hungering for the flesh and bloodof creatures weaker than themselves. Peter knew. Both heritage andexperience warned him. And he watched the shadows, and sniffed the air,and kept his fangs half bared and ready as he followed the trail ofMcKay.
He was not stirred by the impulse of adventure alone. Without thefinesse of what man might charitably call reason in a beast, he hadsensed a responsibility. It was present in the closely drawn stripsof faded cloth about his neck. It was, in a way, a part of the girlherself, a part of her flesh and blood, a part of her spirit--somethingvital to her and dependent upon him. He was ready to guard it with everyinstinct of caution and every ounce of courage there was in him. Andto protect it meant to fight. That was the first law of his breed,the primal warning which came to him through the red blood of manygenerations of wilderness forefathers. So he listened, and he watched,and his blood pounded hot in his veins as he followed the footprints inthe trail. A bit of brush, swinging suddenly free from where it had beenprisoned by the storm, drew a snarl from him as he faced the sound withthe quickness of a cat. A gray streak, passing swiftly over the trailahead of him, stirred a low growl in his throat. It was a lynx, and fora space Peter paused, and then sped soft-footed past the moon-lit spotwhere the stiletto-clawed menace of the woods had passed.
Now that he was alone, and no longer accompanied by a human presencewhose footsteps and scent held the wild things aloof and still, Peterfelt nearer and nearer to him the beat and stir of life. Powerful beaks,instead of remaining closed and without sound, snapped and hissed athim as the big gray owls watched his passing. He heard the rustling ofbrush, soft as the stir of a woman's dress, where living things weresecretly moving, and he heard the louder crash of clumsy and piggishfeet, and caught the strong scent of a porcupine as it waddled to itsmidnight lunch of poplar bark. Then the trail ended, and Jolly Roger'sscent led into the pathless forest, with its shifting streams andpools of moonlight, its shadows and black pits of darkness. Andhere--now--Peter began his trespass into the strongholds of the Peopleof the Night. He heard a wolf howl, a cry filled with loneliness, yetwith a shivering death-note in it; he caught the musky, skunkish odor ofa fox that was stalking prey in the face of a whispering breath of wind;once, in a moment of dead stillness, he listened to the snap ofteeth and the crackle of bones in one of the dark pits, where afisher-cat--with eyes that gleamed like coals of fire--was devouring thewarm and bleeding carcass of a mother partridge. And beaks snapped athim more menacingly as he went on, and gray shapes floated over hishead, and now and then he heard the cries of dying things--the agonizedsqueak of a wood-mouse, the cry of a day-bird torn from its sleepingplace by a sinuous, beady-eyed creature of fur and claw, the noisyscreaming of a rabbit swooped upon and pierced to the vitals by one ofthe gray-feathered pirates of the air. And then, squarely in the centerof a great pool of moonlight, Peter came upon a monster. It was a bear,a huge mother bear, with two butter-fat cubs wrestling and rolling inthe moon glow. Peter had never seen a bear. But the mother, who raisedher brown nose suddenly from the cool mold out of which she had beendigging lily-bulbs, had seen dogs. She had seen many dogs, and she hadheard their howl, and she knew that always they traveled with man.She gave a deep, chesty sniff, and close after that sniff a WHOOF thatstartled the cubs like the lashing end of a whip. They rolled to her,and with two cuffs of the mother's huge paws they were headed in theright direction, and all three crashed off into darkness.
In spite of his swelling heart Peter let out a little yip. It wasa great satisfaction, just at a moment when his nerves were gettingunsteady, to discover that a monster like this one in the moonlightwas anxious to run away from him. And Peter went on, a bit of pride andjauntiness in his step, his bony tail a little higher.
A mile farther on, in another yellow pool of the moon, lay the partlydevoured carcass of a fawn. A wolf had killed it, and had fed, and nowtwo giant owls were rending and tearing in the flesh and bowels of whatthe wolf had left. They were Gargantuans of their kind, one a male, theother a female. Their talons warm in blood, their beaks red, their slowbrains drunk with a ravenous greed, they rose on their great wings insullen rage when Peter came suddenly upon them. He had ceased to beafraid of owls. There was something shivery in the gritting of theirbeaks, especially in the dark places, but they had never attacked him,and had always kept out of his reach. So their presence in a blackspruce top directly over the dead fawn did not hold him back now. Hesniffed at the fresh, sweet meat, and hunger all at once possessed him.Where the wolf had stripped open a tender flank he began to eat, andas he ate he growled, so that warning of his possessorship reached thespruce top.
In answer to it came a stir of wings, and the male owl launched himselfout into the moon glow. The female followed. For a few moments theyfloated like gray ghosts over Peter, silent as the night shadows. Then,with the suddenness and speed of a bolt from a catapult, the giant maleshot out of a silvery mist of gloom and struck Peter. The two rolledover the carcass of the fawn, and for a space Peter was dazed by thethundering beat of powerful wings, and the hammering of the owl's beakat the back of his neck. The male had missed his claw-hold, and drivenby rage and ferocity, fought to impale his victim from the ground,without launching himself into the air again. Swiftly he struck, againand again, while his wings beat like clubs. Suddenly his talons sankinto the cloth wrapped about Peter's neck. Terror and shock gave way toa fighting madness inside Peter now. He struck up, and buried his fangsin a mass of feathers so thick he could not feel the flesh. He tore atthe padded breast, snarling and beating with his feet, and then, asthe stiletto-points of the owl's talons sank through the cloth into hisneck, his jaws closed on one of the huge bird's legs. His teeth sankdeep, there was a snapping and grinding of tendon and bone, and ahissing squawk of pain and fear came from above him as the owl made amighty effort to launch himself free. As the five-foot pinions beatthe air Peter was lifted from the ground. But the owl's talons werehopelessly entangled in the cloth, and the two fell in a heap again.Peter scarcely sensed what happened after that, except that he wasstruggling against death. He closed his eyes, and the leg between hisjaws was broken and twisted into pulp. The wings beat about him in adeafening thunder, and the owl's beak tore at his flesh, until the poolof moonlight in which they fought was red with blood. At last somethinggave way. There was a ghastly cry that was like the cry of neither birdnor beast, a weak flutter of wings, and Gargantua of the Air staggeredup into the treetops and fell with a crash among the thick boughs of thespruce.
Peter raised himself weakly, the severed leg of the owl dropping fromhis jaws. He was half blinded. Every muscle in his body seemed to betorn and bleeding, yet in his discomfort the thrilling conviction cameto him that he had won. He tensed himself for another attack, huggingthe ground closely as he watched and waited, but no attack came. Hecould hear the flutter and wheeze of his maimed adversary, and slowly hedrew himself back--still facing the scene of battle--until in a fartherpatch of gloom he turned once more to his business of following thetrail of Jolly Roger McKay.
There was no mark of bravado in his advance now. If he had possessedan over-growing confidence, Gargantua's attack had set it back, and hestole like a shifty fox through the night. Driven into his brain was theknowledge that all things were not afraid of him, for even the snappingbeaks and floating gray shapes to which he had paid but little attentionhad now become a deadly menace. His egoism had suffered a jolt,a healthful reaction from its too swift ascendency. He sensed thenarrowness of his escape without the mental action of reasoning it out,and his injuries were secondary to the oppressive horror of the uncannycombat out of which he had come alive. Yet this horror was not a fear.Heretofore he had recognized the ghostly owl-shapes of night more orless as a curious part of darkness, inspiring neither like nor dislikein him. Now he hated them, and ever after his fangs gleamed white whenone of them floated over his head.
He was badly hurt. There were ragged tears in his flank and back, and alast stroke of Gargantua's talons had stabbed his shoulder to the bone.Blood dripped from him, and one of his eyes was closing, so that shapesand shadows were grotesquely dim in the night. Instinct and caution, andthe burning pains in his body, urged him to lie down in a thicket andwait for the day. But stronger than these were memory of the girl'surging voice, the vague thrill of the cloth still about his neck, andthe freshness of Jolly Roger's trail as it kept straight on through theforest's moonlit corridors and caverns of gloom.
It was in the first graying light of July dawn that Peter draggedhimself up the rough side of a ridge and looked down into a narrow stripof plain on the other side. Just as Nada had given up in weakness anddespair, so now he was almost ready to quit. He had traveled miles sincethe owl fight, and his wounds had stiffened, and with every step gavehim excruciating pain. His injured eye was entirely closed, and therewas a strange, dull ache in the back of his head, where Gargantua hadpounded him with his beak. The strip of valley, half hidden in itssilvery mist of dawn, seemed a long distance away to Peter, and hedropped on his belly and began to lick his raw shoulder with a feverishtongue. He was sick and tired, and the futility of going fartheroppressed him. He looked again down into the strip of plain, and whined.
Then, suddenly, he smelled something that was not the musty fog-mistthat hung between the ridges. It was smoke. Peter's heart beat faster,and he pulled himself to his feet, and went in its direction.
Hidden in a little grassy cup between two great boulders that thrustthemselves out from the face of the ridge, he found Jolly Roger. Firsthe saw the smouldering embers of a fire that was almost out--and thenhis master. Jolly Roger was asleep. Storm-beaten and strangely haggardand gray his face was turned to the sky. Peter did not awaken him. Therewas something in his master's face that quieted the low whimper in histhroat. Very gently he crept to him, and lay down. The movement, slightas it was, made the man stir. His hand rose, and then fell limply acrossPeter's body. But the fingers moved.
Unconsciously, as if guided by the spirit and prayer of the girl waitingfar back in the forest, they twined about the cloth around Peter'sneck--his message to his master.
And for a long time after that, as the sun rose over a wonderful world,Peter and his master slept.
The Country Beyond: A Romance of the Wilderness Page 8
