The Country Beyond: A Romance of the Wilderness

by James Oliver Curwood

  CHAPTER XXI

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

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

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

  "All is well, Oosimisk," he said quietly, speaking in Cree. "They aresafely away, and will not be caught. Continue with your duties and letno one see that anything unusual has happened. Breault will come verysoon."

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

  "They have reached the pool," he said, seating himself and holdingPeter's shaggy head between his hands. "They have just about reached thepool, and Breault must be entering the clearing on the other side. Rogercannot miss the canoe--twenty paces down and with nothing to shadowit overhead; I think he has found it by this time, and in another halfminute they will be off. And it is very black down the Burntwood, withdeep timber close to the water, and for many miles no man can follow bynight 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 theirway--and Breault has not come across the clearing!"

  He rose to his feet, and began pacing back and forth, while Petersniffed yearningly at the door again. Oosimisk, with the caution of herrace in moments of danger, was drawing the curtains at the windows,and Father John smiled his approbation. He did not want Breault, theman-hunter, peering through one of the windows at him. Even as he walkedback and forth he listened intently for Breault's footsteps. Peter, witha sigh, gave up his scratching and settled himself on his haunches closeto 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, speakingfor himself even more than for Peter. "Some day, when they are faraway--and safe."

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

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

  The unexpectedness of his appearance, without the sound of a warningfootstep outside, was amazing even to Peter. In the open door he stoodfor a moment, his thin, ferret-like face standing out against the blackbackground of the night, and his strange eyes, apparently half closedyet bright as diamonds, sweeping the interior without effort but withthe 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 aninstant. It was the man of the snow-dune, away up on the Barren, the manwhom he had mistrusted from the beginning, and from whom they had fledinto the face of the Big Storm months ago. His mind worked swiftly, evenas swiftly as Breault's in its way, and without any process of reasoninghe sensed menace and enmity in this man's appearance, and associatedwith 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 altogetherunpleasant, yet was there something about it which made one shiver. Itspoke 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. Eventhat fraction of an inch caught Breault's keen eyes.

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

  He had not closed the door, and Peter saw his chance. The Leaf Bud sawhim pass like a shot out into the night, but as he went she made noeffort to call him back, for her ears were wide open as Breault repeatedhis question,

  "Where is McKay, Father?"

  Peter heard the man-hunter's voice from the darkness outside. For barelyan instant he paused, picking up the fresh scent of Nada and JollyRoger. It was easy to follow--straight to the pool, and from the pooltwenty paces down-stream, where a little finger of sand and pebbles hadbeen 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 foresttrees, where the water rippled and gurgled softly on its way intoa deeper and more tangled wilderness. He waded belly-deep into thecurrent, half determined to swim; and then he waited, listeningintently, 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 waydown-stream, pausing every two or three minutes to listen. Now andthen he caught the presence of those he sought, in the air, but thoseintervals in which he stopped to catch sound of voice or paddle lost himtime, so the canoe was traveling faster than Peter.

  Half way between himself and the bow of that canoe McKay could dimlymake out Nada's pale face in the star glow that filtered like a mistthrough 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 usthere--no one but Father John, when we send him word. You are notafraid?"

  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 OldMan smiling down on us. I know how the Man in the Moon must feel whenhe'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 ofher 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 webring Peter?"

  "Possibly--we should have," he replied, skipping a stroke with hispaddle. "But I think we have done the best thing for Peter. He is awilderness 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 Johncomes."

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

  "We are entering the big cedar swamp," he explained. "It is like BlindMan'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 headagainst my knees."

  This also, she did.

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

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

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

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

  "Were you thinking only of the brush, Roger--and of the hurt it mightcause me?"

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

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

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

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

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

  Very slowly they moved through the swamp, for because of the gloomhis paddle-strokes were exceedingly short, and he was feeling hisway. Frequently he ran into brush, or struck the boggy shore, andoccasionally Nada would hold lighted matches while he extricated thecanoe from tree-tops and driftwood that impeded the way. He loved thebrief glimpses he caught of her face in the match-glow, and twice hedeliberately wasted the tiny flares that he might hold the vision of hera 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 thinningtree-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 overheadand 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 shimmerof her hair in the starlight. He also saw a pretty little grimace in herface, 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 athis watch in the light of the last match. "We've two hours the start ofBreault, and there is no other canoe."

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

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

  "I don't think he can make it without a canoe, even if he guesses wewent 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 thedeadness of cold iron could he have looked back into that sluggish pitof the Burntwood through which they had come, or could he have seen intothe heart of the still blacker swamp.

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

  And down the Burntwood, between the boggy mucklips of the swamp, a manfollowed with slow but deadly surety, guiding with a long pole two lightcedar timbers which he had lashed together with wire, and which bore himsafely 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 ifhe guesses our way, the swamp will hold him back, Nada."

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

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