QuietlyMona went out to meet Peter. "He is sleeping," she said, as Peter's arm closed about her in the thickening darkness. "If he can only pass the night that way he will be strong and well again in the morning." Yet her voice trembled as she tried to bring him comfort. "Aleck is safe?" she whispered. "He is on the island?"
"Yes, he is safe for tonight—and maybe for a number of days. After that——"
He stopped, not knowing how to finish, and Mona's soft hand caressed his cheek. "We will tell Simon, and Uncle Pierre, and Father Albanel," she suggested. "Surely they will know how to help us!"
"I've been thinking about that," he said slowly, with his lips against her hair. "You must promise me not to tell them, Mona. I think it is necessary. At least they must not know until tomorrow or the next day. Will you remember that?"
"You are sure it is best?"
"I believe so."
"Then I will remember."
They drew near to the door of the cabin andlistened. Faintly they could hear Donald McRae's breath as he slept.
"I must take you home," he whispered.
They hurried through the gloom, hand in hand. In half an hour they had reached the cliff trail that led to Five Fingers, and here Mona insisted that Peter turn back, while she went on alone. She was glad Pierre and Josette were at Joe's house when she came to the settlement. She called good night to them through the open door, and went to her room, with the excuse that she was tired.
She sat down at her window, and watched the moon come up. Later she heard Pierre and Josette when they returned. And after that, one after another, the lights went out in Five Fingers until the cabins lay like great shadows in the slumbering stillness. In this stillness she heard the clock in her bedroom tick off every second of the hours.
Until now she had never believed that answered prayer could bring with it a grimness and torture of tragedy like that which had descended upon her life and Peter's. Passionately she sobbed out her hatred for Aleck Curry, the monster who at last had descended upon them with his vengeance.
As the hours dragged on she found herself fighting more and more desperately against the desire to steal quietly from her room, tiptoe down the stairs and go to Simon McQuarrie's cabin that she might confide in him all that had happened that afternoon. OnlyPeter's warning to keep their secret locked tightly in her own breast held her back. Yet in Simon rested her last hope, for from the first day Peter had come into the old Scotchman's life he had found home—and a protection and love which in Mona's thoughts made him almost of Simon's flesh and blood. The impulse to go to him—to be false to Peter for the first time in her life—was a torment in her brain, and where one little voice had urged her at first, a hundred added to their insistence now. Slowly the revolt became a conviction that it was right and reasonable she should go to Simon, in spite of her promise to Peter.
Quietly she opened the door to her room and went down the stairs, making no sound to disturb Pierre and Josette Gourdon. A slim, pale figure, she crossed the clearing and paused in the shadow of the cabin where the Scotchman lived. Instinctively she looked up at Peter's window even though she knew he was in the forest with his father. Then she knocked on the door. Her heart throbbed as she listened for a response inside. It seemed to beat loudly, as if crying out against her faithlessness in breaking a promise to Peter. She knocked again, and in a moment she could hear McQuarrie moving. She counted his slow footsteps as they came across the floor. Then the door opened, and his tall, gaunt figure stood above her, swathed in a nightgown that fell to the toes of his feet. At any other time Mona would have laughed at the grotesqueness of his appearance as he stareddown into her white face, with a nightcap on the back of his head.
He reached out a hand. "Ange!" he gasped. "You!What is the matter?"
She slipped past him and closed the door.
"Please light a lamp," she said. "Please——"
Simon struck a match. The flare of it illumined his face, tense and set in its amazement. When the lamp was lighted he took down a coat from a peg in the wall and put it on. Then he turned to Mona again. She stood before him with her hands clasped at her breast, and in her dark eyes was a look that alarmed him. And he could see in her bare throat the little heart-beating throb that always came when she was stirred by deep emotion.
With a desperate little cry she caught his hand. "Something terrible has happened," she whispered. "Something—you should know. But I promised Peter. I promised him I would tell no one—not even you. But I've got to turn that promise into a lie. If I don't——" The words broke on her lips. And then: "Peter's father has come back. He is with Peter now in the cabin near the beaver pond!"
Simon McQuarrie stood back from her, his hands dropping slowly and limply to his sides. Then he raised one of them as if to brush a shadow from his forehead, and his nightcap fell to the floor. "Donald McRae—has come back!" he repeated, and the deep lines in his face softened as Mona looked at him, andjoy trembled in his voice when he spoke. "Thank God,Ange! Why do you think it is so terrible? We have waited and hoped for a long time——" He stopped. What he saw in her face and eyes swept a sudden change into his own, and he caught her arm as the gladness died on his lips. "Has anything happened?" he demanded. "Has anything happened—to Peter—or to Donald McRae?"
She began telling him in a low voice, while Simon stared at her with his big hands reaching out as if to grip at something in the space between them.
"I was at the beaver pond when Peter's father staggered out of the willows and almost fell at my feet. I didn't know who the man was, but he was sick and tired and starving—so hungry he ate carrots I had meant for the beavers. I gave him our lunch, and while he was eating I learned he was Peter's father. It made me happy. Peter was coming to join me, and I told Donald McRae. He begged me not to let Peter know he was there. He wanted to hide in the bushes, and look at him without being seen, and then go away again. He said that was why he had come back—just to get a look at his boy. He told me the police were after him again, that they were driving him like a rat from hole to hole, and that his presence could only bring unhappiness and tragedy to Peter. So he hid in the willows, and Peter came."
"And then?"
"In the end Peter's father staggered out of thebushes, and I left them together. Peter called me a little later and I ran back. Donald McRae was on the ground and at first I thought he was dead. Not until then did I realize how terribly sick and weak he was. We were on our knees beside him when he looked up, and there—there—grinning down at us—was the man Peter's father had been running away from. Oh, he was terrible—big and sweaty and leering down at us, almost laughing in his triumph, and—Simon—Simon—it wasAleck Curry!"
Her despair broke in a sobbing cry, and now the bones of Simon's great hands made a snapping sound as he clenched them, and his thin, hard face was gray in the glow of the lamp. "What happened then, Mona?"
"When Aleck went to put the manacles on Peter's father there was a fight—a terrible fight—and Aleck tried to kill Peter with a gun. He shot twice. I helped with a stone, and at last Peter got him into the pond, and almost drowned him. His father was still unconscious when we carried him to the cabin. Then Peter took Aleck down to his boat and to the little rock island two miles out from the shore. He is there now—a prisoner. And—what will happen to Peter? What can the law do to him?"
Simon paced slowly back and forth across the floor. His face was a mask of iron. His long nightgown flapped about his feet, and again his big, hard hands hung limp and straight at his sides.
"If Aleck escapes from the island and arrests Peter, or reports the affair to headquarters, it means the penitentiary," he said as if speaking to himself rather than to Mona. "And that is what will happen—if Curry has his way. He hates Peter. He would like to see Donald McRae hung, and Peter in prison, andyou——" A tigerish gleam was in his eyes as he faced her. "Why didn't Peter kill him when he had the chance?" he cried, as for a single moment his self-control broke its leash. "As a boy he was a brute and a bully, and as a man his soul is that of a monster—even though now he is a part of the law. He wanted you—always. I know it and could see it even when you were children. And for what he wants he would wreck the world. Why didn't Peter kill him? Why—with these two hands——" He reached out his long arms and his fingers closed like talons of steel. Then he checked his passion. His arms dropped again. "But it is best he didn't," he finished. "It is best—even though a snake has a better right to live than Aleck Curry!"
He continued his pacing across the floor, and with each step his stern face grew harder until at last it seemed to have no emotion at all—the hard, set, fighting face which Simon McQuarrie always turned upon his enemies. For a few moments he seemed to forget Mona. Then he asked: "What is Peter going to do? What does heplanto do?"
The question was so sharp it sent a little shiverthrough her, and Simon's eyes were looking at her with the steely coldness of ice.
"I don't know. Peter doesn't know—except that he means to keep Aleck Curry on the island until his father is well and can get safely away."
Simon grunted. "You mean the rock with nothing on it—two miles straight out from the beaver pond?"
"Yes."
The fingers of Simon's hands were twisting again.
"Constable Carter dropped in on us late this afternoon," he said shortly. "He told Pierre and Dominique he was on his way into the Georgian Bay country and would rest here for a few days. He lied. He's working with Aleck Curry, and if Aleck doesn't show up soon—if he starts smoke signals going out on the island, and Carter sees them——"
"Aleck hasn't any matches," Mona interrupted him quickly. "Peter took them away from him."
Simon's face was lightened for an instant by a flash of exultation. "Peter is improving," he conceded. "If he had only used as good judgment at the beaver pond, when he could have rid us of this snake forever——"
Mona's cry of horror stopped him. In a moment he was at her side, and his long arms were about her tenderly. "I didn't mean that, Ange!" he cried, trying to laugh as he saw the agony of fear in her eyes. "It's a bad situation, so bad that I don't see a way out for Peter just now—but we won't kill Aleck, and we'll getPeter out of it somehow. He was right in making you promise not to tell anyone, and I'll keep it all to myself—even from Peter and my old friend Donald McRae—until Carter leaves the settlement. I'll manage to get him away in a day or two. And meanwhile you and Peter must keep Curry on the island, and watch every step you take so that Carter won't get suspicious. And above everything else—most important of all—don't tell Peter you have confided in me. Let me know everything that happens, but don't tell Peter that I know. Do you understand, Mona?"
She felt the suppression of something in his voice that was unlike Simon McQuarrie, something that thrilled and frightened her, yet she nodded her head and said: "Yes, I understand. I won't let Peter know. And I'll tell you—everything."
His arms drew her a little closer, and in him above all other men she had faith in that moment. She did not see his face above her, a face which for a single instant darkened with a look so pitiless and menacing that even Simon sensed the danger of its betrayal, and held her for a moment longer. Then with the gentleness which love for Mona and Peter had bred into his stern nature, he led her to the door.
"You must go home now, and to bed," he said. "It is your fight as well as Peter's, and you mustn't let anyone see that you are worried tomorrow—especially Carter." He opened the door. "Good night,Ange!"
"Good night!" she whispered as she slipped out.
He closed the door and listened for a moment to her retreating footsteps. When he faced the lamp and looked up at Peter's room, a new and strange light was in his eyes, and he spoke softly, as if to the spirit of someone who was waiting and listening up there.
"It's my turn now, and I'll care for Peter," he said. "A long time ago Donald McRae killed the man who insulted his mother, and it is no more than right and just that Simon McQuarrie should kill the man who would destroy her boy."
Then, slowly, he began to dress.
For a little while Mona hesitated in the shadow of the tall spruce tree that grew not far from Simon's door. She could hear her heart beating as she looked back at the light in the cabin. She was glad it was over, glad she had told Simon the truth, even as she thought of her promise to Peter.
Yet one thing she had kept to herself, and for a moment she felt the urge to go back and confide in the iron-willed Scotchman her own personal fear of Aleck Curry. Never until this night had she been afraid of him. She had defied and hated him as a young girl, and as she grew older had loathed and repulsed him for the persistence of his passion. To fear him had never entered her head, even in the days when once or twice she had used her hands in defending herself against, his unwelcome attentions.
But now she knew that Aleck's hour had come.Even though he was temporarily a prisoner on the island, he held her happiness and Peter's fate in the hollow of his hand. That fact, its significance, its terrible import for her, she had seen in Aleck's exultant face and eyes at the pool. In that hour his joy and triumph was not that he had run down Peter's father, but thatsheat last had come within the reach of his desires. And the fight had added to his mastery, for it had outlawed Peter and had given to the man she hated the final power to wreck her world. And she, of all that world, was the only one who knew what Aleck's price for the freedom of those she loved would be.
The thought was a monstrous thing in her brain. She had fought it, had beaten it back with the strength of her will, and she struggled with it again as she turned away from the light in Simon's window. Her hands clenched and a bit of savagery leaped through her blood as she went again through the moonlight. She had seen the deadly fire in the Scotchman's eyes, and that fire was now in her own. Over and over she told herself that she was still unafraid of Aleck Curry. Her lips whispered the words. But in her heart, fixed and implacable, remained the fear.
She had almost reached the shadow of Pierre Gourdon's cabin when a figure stepped out to meet her. It was Peter. His startled face questioned her in the moonlight.
"I thought you were asleep," he said in a low voice."And so—I was passing under your window. I wanted to be near you for a few moments."
He put his arms about her and looked anxiously into her face, and then he laid his lips against her soft hair.
"It was impossible." She shivered against him. "I undressed, as you told me to do, and I went to bed. But I had to get up. I kept thinking, thinking—until I felt like screaming, or jumping out of my window and running to you."
"You are a little frightened,Ange—after what happened at the pool. But it will all come out right. Aleck is safe. He can't harm us——"
She looked up quickly, and saw in his eyes the same look that had been in Simon's. Her arms tightened about him.
"Peter, you don't need to hide anything from me," she protested. "We're both thinking the same thing—afraid of the same thing. It's Aleck Curry—and what he will do when he gets off the island. We can keep him there until your father is well, and safe. But after that—what will happen to you?"
Peter tried to laugh. "They can't do anything worse than send me to prison, and if they do that—would you mind waiting for me,Ange?"
She knew the effort he was making to speak lightly, almost playfully, and her heart throbbed with the eager quickness of her answer. "I would wait for you all my life, Peter."
With a sudden movement he drew her into the shadow of the cabin. His eyes were searching the farther edge of the clearing.
"Look!" he said.
Her eyes pierced the moon glow. And then, dimly, she saw a moving shadow. It came nearer, and turned toward Simon's cabin. Instinctively she guessed who it was, but waited for Peter to speak.
"I found him nosing around when I returned to the settlement," he said. "A little while ago he was here, looking up at your window; then he went to Simon's, and afterward sneaked off into the edge of the forest. I don't know who he is, but I was within ten feet of him and he wears a uniform like Aleck's. He is watching for dad. He is also suspicious and is wondering why Aleck doesn't show up."
"His name is Carter," said Mona. "He came to Five Fingers this afternoon."
Fora long time they stood in the shadow of the cabin, and the sleepy stillness of the night with its soft chirping of crickets and gentle murmuring of the lake surf brought a soothing peace to Mona. With Peter's arms about her she was no longer afraid. He told her what had happened since she left his father. Twice Donald McRae had awakened from his sleep of exhaustion and had asked for her. A thrill of pleasure was in Peter's voice as he told her this; it made him happy to know that his father loved her, and that he even whispered her name in his feverish slumber. Some day the whole of their prayer would be answered; things would turn out right; and they would all be happy.
Not until he had gone, and she was alone in her room, did Mona note how swiftly the time had passed. The hour hand of the little clock was at three. She did not undress, but sat down at her window, with her face turned toward the coming of the dawn. And now that Peter's love and the unbreakable strength of his optimism were no longer at her side, her thoughts began pressing upon her again, dispelling the comfort he had given her and weakening once more her faithand hope in what the day would bring. She was glad she confided in Simon, for he was the rock to which she clung in these hours of her own helplessness. And yet—what could Simon do? Wherein was he less helpless than herself—or Peter? She shivered as she recalled the grim and terrible look that had last rested in his face. And that same look had been in Peter's—a flash which he had tried to hide from her! Her heart jumped and for an instant her fingers clutched at the sill of her window. Would one of them—Simon or Peter—kill Aleck Curry?
It seemed to her that a terrible truth rushed upon her all at once and caught like a living thing at her throat until it was difficult for her to breathe. There was no hope for Peter as long as Aleck lived! The words almost came from her lips. Unless Peter ran away, wandering and hiding like his father, no power could keep him from going to prison. But if Aleck should never leave the little island—if he died there—and no one knew of the fight at the pool——
She bowed her face in her arms. It would be so easy of accomplishment—so terribly and frighteningly easy! Peter might do it! And Simon—the look in his face—his eyes—what he said——
"No, no, no," she whispered to herself. "Anything—anything but that!"
She raised her head to meet the first rose-flush of the dawn. But this morning there was no responsive thrill in Mona's breast. A question was repeatingitself in her brain. Would she be able to go through the day without giving herself away? Could she meet Pierre and Josette Gourdon, and Marie Antoinette, and Father Albanel, and Adette and Jame Clamart—and not let them see her torture? Would it show in her face when she met Carter, of the Provincial Police?
Until the first white spirals of smoke began rising from the cabin chimneys she sat at her window. Then she rose, and her beautiful face was almost stern in its resolution. She let the sunlight stream into her room, and in its radiance she unbraided her hair and brushed it until it lay about her in the rippling glory that made Peter the happiest and proudest of all men. She dressed it carefully, and tried to sing as she made herself ready to help Josette with the breakfast—for she always sang in this first hour of the day. But the notes seemed to stifle her this morning.
It was then, looking out from her window, that she saw a grayish haze rising between her and the face of the sun, and the smell of it came to her faintly. It was smoke.
When she went below it was Pierre she met first. He kissed her. But anxiety was in his face.
"It is happening again this year," he said. "The forests to the north and west are afire. It will not come near Five Fingers, but it makes my heart ache to know that a world is being turned dead and black because of someone's carelessness!"
So it was the fire which gave Mona an excuse for what was lacking in her eyes when she went to help Josette with the breakfast. And it was this same fire, with its thickening gloom of smoke, which helped her through the day. For to Mona a living tree had life and soul, and to see trees destroyed in countless thousands was a tragedy in her life only a little less terrible than the plague of smallpox which had once cast its shadow upon Five Fingers.
She went to Simon's cabin as soon after breakfast as she could make an excuse, and there she met Carter. Her first glimpse of him filled her with uneasiness and dislike. He was a hawk-nosed, shifty-eyed man in whom nature seemed to have sacrificed every softening quality to an uncompromising sense of duty, and his eyes rested upon her face so intently as Simon introduced them that she felt her heart tremble. But if he knew of her previous visit to Simon's cabin, or of her meeting with Peter, he gave no evidence of it, and after a casual remark or two about the fire he left her alone with the Scotchman.
A worried look was in McQuarrie's eyes.
"I've found out more about Carter," he said. "He is the best man in this division and is never sent out on minor affairs. Leaving us so quickly right now shows how clever he is. He doesn't want to create suspicion. He dropped in to ask me the best trail northwest, and says he is going to leave in half an hour to make a report on the fire. That's another lie.In the woods he is like a cat, and he won't go half a mile from the settlement. He is wondering where Peter is, and if he once gets on his trail——" Suddenly he drew his hands together, and a grim smile gathered about his mouth. "If Carter goes to that fire, I'm going with him!" he exclaimed. "Five Fingers is interested, and he cannot very well turn me down."
In a few words Mona told of Peter's visit; and then, standing so near that he could not avoid the directness of her eyes, she gave low voice to her suspicion that either he or Peter was planning to kill Aleck Curry.
The effect of her words on Simon startled her. He stood dumb, staring at her. Then one of his bony hands reached out and rested on her shoulder. Its fingers hurt her. "Don't even whisper that anywhere—but here," he said. "You understand?Don't!Peter won't kill him. And I'm not worrying about Aleck Curry now. It's Carter."
He left her without another word, and went out to overtake Carter. There was something so grim and foreboding in his movement that it chilled her, and as she dropped a few steps behind him she noticed his boots. At midnight she had seen them in his cabin, clean and freshly oiled. Now they were frosted with half-dried mud to their tops. His sourness, the harshness of his fingers on her shoulder, his silence now and the aggressive hunch of his shoulders, togetherwith the mud on his boots, tightened her breath. Had Simon already accomplished the thing she feared? Was that why he was so anxious to follow Carter, go with him—get him away from Five Fingers? She ran up to him, meaning to demand the truth.
He anticipated her intention and spoke almost roughly. "Don't ask questions, Mona. Carter has stopped, and is looking. Go home—and stay in if you can't keep control of yourself."
The rest of the morning Mona waited anxiously for Peter. At noon, when they were at dinner, Pierre Gourdon talked of little but the fire. It had surely crossed the line of rail thirty miles north, he said, and was traveling steadily eastward. If the wind should quicken and swing into the south there would be danger to the forests about Five Fingers. But the settlement itself was safe, protected as it was by fire-lines and cultivated fields on three sides, and Lake Superior on the other.
He wondered where Simon McQuarrie was, and asked Mona if she had seen Peter. He surmised they had gone back to the crests of the high ridges to make a closer observation of the fire. He had already sent out Jame Clamart and Poleon Dufresne to guard the northern ridges, and if the fire threatened to break coastward, all the men in Five Fingers would go out to fight it. He had made preparations. But he didn't like the way Peter and Simon were missing, without leaving any word behind them. Carter was gone, too.
Afternoon saw smoke settling like a thin fog about the clearing. The sun was entirely hidden. Animals and fowls came up to the buildings, and men and women gave up their work to discuss with one another the possibilities of the next few hours. A dozen times Mona repressed the desire to steal away and go to the little cabin where Donald McRae was hidden. She knew Peter was there, and now that the smoke was thickening she believed he would soon leave for the settlement.
She noticed how hot and sultry it had grown in the last hour. Scarcely a breath of air was stirring, and in the middle of the afternoon Adette Clamart insisted that she go with her for a swim down in the inlet. While they were in the water Peter came up from the lake in a boat. His sail was down and he was rowing. Adette Clamart covered her pretty eyes with her two hands while he bent over to kiss Mona, and in that moment he whispered, "I want to see you in the cabin." He was acting strangely, Mona thought.
A few minutes later she joined him in the cabin.
"Dad is better," Peter said. "But tonight I'm going to get him away—somewhere. I'm afraid of the fire. With a bad wind it would be on us in an hour or two. Right now I want to take some supplies over to Aleck Curry. Then I'll come back and see you before I return to dad. There's a little breeze on the lake, and I can make the island in an hour. Have you seen Carter?"
"This morning. He hasn't been here since then."
"And Simon?"
"He is gone, too."
She got a bundle she had prepared and said good-by to Peter but not until he had promised to return directly from the island by way of the inlet. She watched him until he disappeared in the gray haze that hung over the water, and then looked at the clock to mark the time he would be returning. Scarcely had she done this when a figure stalked past one of the windows. Instantly she recognized it as Simon McQuarrie. He went straight to his cabin, entered it and closed the door.And Carter was not with him!
Her heart throbbed as she went outside, determined to follow him. But something held her back. Then she forced herself to follow her first impulse, and a moment later was knocking at Simon's door. There was no answer. She persisted, knocking loudly and calling his name, and still there was no response. Then she tried the door and found it locked. Where there had been fear in her breast there was now conviction. The tiger in the old Scotchman had been at work, and in his own way—and the only way—he had solved the great problem of her life and Peter's, and had made the world free again for his old friend Donald McRae. He had rid the island of Aleck Curry, and had done away with Carter. And now he wanted to be alone—alone in his cabin!
Not for a moment did she question the reasonablenessof her conviction. It seized upon her like a many-tentacled thing, choking back her doubt and overwhelming her with its certainty. It made her steal pantingly to the edge of the forest, and then to the beginning of the long finger of spruce and cedar that reached away out to the entrance of Middle Finger Inlet. Half an hour later she was on the sand and gravel beach under the big cliff, waiting for Peter's return. And now she noticed a change in the wind. Loose tresses of her hair blew seaward. That meant the fire would come over the ridges!
In another quarter of an hour she could scarcely see the farther side of Middle Finger Inlet. A black pall of smoke was creeping closer in the north and west. Then, very faintly, she saw something creeping up like a ghost out of the smoke gloom of the sea. She knew it was Peter. He was coming with nerve-racking slowness, it seemed to her. Yet she did not want to cry out to him until he was nearer. He was using his oars, and at times there was a half-minute interval between his strokes. Why was he so slow? Was it because of what he had found on the island? Surely Simon would have left no telltale signs. So far as Peter was concerned Aleck Curry could only bemissing—nothing more!
A shudder ran through her. Then she cried Peter's name. Her voice carried strangely clear. There was silence in the boat. The oars were resting without a sound.
"Peter," she cried again. "Peter! I am here—on the point!"
He must have heard her, and it was unusual that he did not answer. But the oars rattled again, and she could see the shape of the boat turning slowly, and then growing larger as it came toward her. It was odd, too, that Peter did not come directly to the point, but grounded his boat among the big rocks fifty yards below her—a place where he knew it was difficult for her to go. So she stood on the white sand, waiting for him. She could hear his boots on the rocks; then she saw him approaching through a dusk of early twilight thickened by the smoke of the fire.
"Here I am, Peter," she called softly.
It did not seem like Peter, for the figure was grotesquely large, and slower of movement. She held out her arms, and her eyes were glowing. It was the smoke and the dusk that made Peter look like that! And then her heart stopped beating. The figure was within ten feet of her. It was not Peter.It was Aleck Curry!
Inthat moment Mona felt for the first time in her life the giving way of living tissue under the sudden overwhelming stress of complete shock. Strength left her body, her arms dropped limply, and she felt herself swaying, as if about to fall. Had there been anything near her she would have caught at it. She did not know that to Aleck Curry she was betraying no physical sign of her weakness—that she was standing like a lifeless creature carved out of rock, except that her wide eyes were blazing and her lips parted. What seemed an age to her covered but a few seconds. Then her mind leaped back, fierce in its command of her. She was wrong! Simon had not been to the island! He had not harmed Aleck Curry—and Aleck had returned in Peter's boat.What had happened to Peter?
She did not ask the question. It blazed out of her eyes as Aleck advanced until he was almost within arm's reach of her. He had on only shirt and trousers, and he was barefooted. She could see his naked throat. And surprise, joy, the knowledge of his mastery lay in his heavy face. It was transformed. He smiled at her, and his great arms reachedout as if he were Peter and she would come into them.
"I made a bargain with Peter," he said, "and he changed places with me. I made him see how much it meant for him, and for his father, and for you. I'd let his father go and forget everything—for something I want. So he changed places with me, and I've come to see you. Lucky you're here. Lucky you called."
It was a clumsy lie, and stumbled on his lips. The menace of him filled her with horror. But she did not let him see it—now. He came a step nearer, and she backed away from him. Suddenly her mind whipped inspirational words from her lips. She looked up swiftly to the top of the cliff. "I don't want Carter to see you here," she cried quickly. "He walked down the point with me, and I think he's up there."
The significance of her words was not lost upon Aleck. He moved nearer to the cliff, so that one above could not see them. She followed him, fighting back her fear.
"Why don't you want Carter to see us?" he asked in a throaty whisper.
"Because—if he saw us—everything would be lost. You would not dare help me then. And you will, Aleck—you will help me, won't you?" He was stunned by the change in her. She had laid a hand on his arm. Her eyes were shining at him. "But you must tell me the truth. There isn't any need to lie. What did you do to Peter—when he came to theisland?" Her fingers pressed his flesh. There was almost a smile on her lips.
"The smoke was thick," said Aleck. "I heard him coming and hid in the water. Then I stunned him with a club. He ain't bad—not badly hurt—but he's safe enough on the island!"
Mona crushed back the little cry of relief that wanted to come to her lips. Her eyes glowed at Aleck, and suddenly one of his big hands closed about the one she had laid on his arm. She could feel his breath as he bent over her. "I told you my time would come," he cried in a husky, exultant voice. "My day!And it's here. I got 'em both—safe—one to hang, the other——"
"Sh-h-h!"
She placed a finger to her lips. It was an excuse to draw away from him, get her hand free—and not let him hear the terrified beating of her heart. She looked up again at the cliff.
"Did you hear anything?"
"No. And if anyone hearsusit's going to be your fault and not mine!"
It was impossible to escape the look in his face and eyes. It was not necessary for him to use words. But Mona did not flinch from her peril. It was not only her danger, but Peter's, and Donald McRae's, and Simon's if he had harmed Carter. It had suddenly and unexpectedly become her fight—all hers, and she knew that Aleck Curry thought she was yielding,and that the brute in him was held in leash only by this belief that was beginning to possess him. If he guessed the truth, guessed that she was fighting to trick him, nothing would save her, not even her assertion that Carter was on the cliff above them. So she smiled again at Aleck, and laughed very softly, with a nervous twisting of her hands. Her eyes had never looked at him as they were looking at him now. They were like glowing stars, velvety-soft—hiding hate and desperation behind them. She had never looked half so beautiful, or so unresisting, to Aleck Curry.
Her fingers pressed his arm again.
"I must get Carter away," she whispered. "I've got to do it, Aleck! He mustn't know. I'll hurry. And then I'll come back. I promise!"
Horror seized her as she felt him drawing her toward him. But still she did not resist. With a low cry his great arms were about her. She felt herself almost broken against him, and then she was helpless, her head bent back, and his thick lips killing her with kisses. Again her strength left her, and she lay limp in his arms, smothered in his passion. Those moments of helpless and agonized passiveness saved her. To Aleck it was surrender. His arms loosened and allowed her to breathe. Weakly she pressed against him, and he allowed her partly to free herself. But she could still feel his hot breath like a poisonous fume in her face. He bent forward and kissed her again—on the mouth. It almost choked her.
"I must—must get Carter away!" she gasped. "Then I'll come back. If you won't let me do that, I'll—I'll scream—and Carter will hear us. But if you'll let me get him away, so he'll never know—never be able to tell Peter——"
It was unnecessary for her to finish. Aleck's face was transformed by an iniquitous joy. He looked close into her face, and she looked back at him, unafraid.
"I'll let you go—and get Carter away," he said. "If you don't come back soon, I'll go to Five Fingers—and you know what that means for Peter and his father."
"I'll come," she lied.
She climbed up the narrow footpath to the top of the cliff, and getting her breath there, she called Carter's name—loudly enough for Aleck to hear.
Then she began to run. She was still weak, and it seemed to her that the poison of Aleck Curry's embraces and kisses followed her. She began to sob under her breath. There was no turning of the ways for her now. She must tell someone the truth—anyone—the first man she met. But Simon first of all. On the little island Peter might be dying. Maybe Aleck had killed him, for it was in his power to do so and still be within the law. She began to moan his name. Then she came to the crest of a high knoll which was bare of trees, and what she saw ahead of her stopped her, gulping for breath and almost falling in her exhaustion.
A wind was in her face. And northward there was no longer a black pall of smoke but a world afire. The glow of the conflagration reached from the earth to the sky. It swept in a great arc, and red seas of flame were leaping from peak to peak of the farther ridges. Pierre Gourdon's fear had become a reality. The fire was racing with the speed of the wind itself upon Five Fingers!
She ran on. Her hair caught in the brush, and she clutched it in front of her. She came at last to the edge of the clearing and staggered across it. There were lights in the cabins, in her own home, in Adette Clamart's, in Dominique Beauvais's and half a dozen others. But Simon's was dark. Yet she swayed toward that, hopeful to the last—and almost at the door she came upon Simon. He was rigid and still, like a shadow. She could see his gray, hard face. Then he heard her panting, heard her trying to gasp out her terrible news, and his arms reached out and gathered her to him—and she told him what had happened to Peter.
Ten minutes later Simon was leaving in a sailboat.
"It's so dark Curry won't see me when I pass through the mouth of the inlet," he said. "And I'll reach Peter in half an hour."
Mona went back to McQuarrie's cabin, climbed to Peter's room and lighted a lamp. In a cedar box she found Peter's thirty-eight-caliber automatic and loaded it with skilful fingers. Then she extinguishedthe light, descended the ladder and left the cabin in the direction of her tryst with Aleck Curry. There was only one thing for her to do, and her mind was quite fixed. It was her right to be at the end of the point waiting for Simon and Peter. And if Aleck threatened her—or put his hands on her again—she would kill him. That was the one way out. It would save Peter, and Peter's father, and herself.
It was not a monstrous thing but a just and righteous act—this wiping out of existence of a creature who threatened to destroy everything that made her world a fit place to live in.
She had nearly passed the Clamart cabin when a white figure ran out of the gloom, and she had only time to hide the pistol in her dress when Adette Clamart was holding her excitedly by the arm. Adette's lovely face was white, and she was half out of breath from running.
"It is terrible!" she cried. "Jame says the fire will be at your beaver pond within an hour, and he has just started in that direction with Jeremie Poulin and Carter—to keep it from coming over the last ridge——"
"Carter!" gasped Mona.
"Yes. Jame told him about the cabin Peter built, and Carter said it was a shame not to save it, and the beavers. Jame says it is impossible—that a hundred men couldn't keep the fire back—but Carter insisted, and they've gone!"
Mona tried to force words from her lips, and thanked God that Adette hurried on, crying back to her that she was making an effort to overtake Jame before he got out of the clearing, to give him a lunch which he had forgotten. Carter had returned—and was on his way to the cabin in which Peter's father was hidden! And that cabin, Jame said, would be in the heart of the fire within an hour! With Peter dead or wounded on the island, and Simon gone, what hope was there now for Donald McRae? If the fire did not reach his cabin first, Carter would get him, and if the fire beat out Carter——
Mona's dry lips gave a little cry. Through the pitch-filled evergreen forest about the beaver pond the fire would sweep in a destroying inundation which no living creature could outrace if the wind was behind it; and Donald McRae, sick and helpless, would be the first human victim in its descent upon Five Fingers.
The peril which was threatening Peter's father from two directions worked a swift and thrilling change in Mona. She must beat out Carter—and she must beat out the fire! Thought of Aleck Curry became secondary to this more immediate necessity. She could settle with Aleck later. But she must reach the cabinnow. There was not a minute or a second to lose if she was to get there ahead of Jame and Carter. She began to run again, following a path through the meadow into the strip of forest between the settlement and the shore of the lake. Her feetand Peter's had worn this trail smooth, and she knew that in the thickening gloom of smoke and night she was traveling faster than Carter and Jame Clamart, who were going by the rougher tote-road. In ten minutes she reached the cliff which ran westward along the lake.
Here she was high, and there were no trees to shut out her view of the ridge country. What she saw appalled her. Nowhere in the north was there any longer a wall of blackness. The world was red, with lurid flashings that came and went like mighty explosions. Westward, beyond the beaver pond, she could see the leaping of the flames in the thick spruce and cedar timberlands where ten thousand barrels of pitch and resinous oils were turning sleeping forests into boiling caldrons of fire. The smell of this oil and pitch was heavy in her nostrils, and she could hear the moaning, distant roar of the conflagration as one hears the roar of great furnaces when the fuel doors are opened. But it was the wind that brought quicker fear to her heart. It was beginning to blow strongly from the north and west, and carried with it a heat that was stifling. And with this heat and wind came also a thickening cloud of ash particles, until at last, afraid of their increasing sting, she stopped to take off her skirt and fasten it about her hair and face.
Halfway to the pond, with still another mile to go, she saw the flames leaping over the last ridge, and her heart seemed suddenly to give way in a sobbing cryof agony and despair. She was too late. Between that ridge and Peter's father was less than a mile of spruce and cedar and balsam forest, with pitch-sodden jackpines interspersed so thickly that no power less than God could hold back the speed of the holocaust. With the wind that was behind them the flames would be at the cabin before she could cover a quarter of the distance to Peter's father.
For a few moments she sank down helpless and without strength, sobbing for breath as she stared at the merciless red death which had beaten her—and Carter. And in these moments her agony was greater than when Aleck had told her about Peter, for now she was picturing a man, creeping out on his hands and knees to face that sea of flame—a man, sick and helpless, crying out for Peter, for her, and dying by inches with their names on his lips.
She staggered to her feet and went on, and in her dazed mind lived a prayer that Donald McRae might be given strength to drag himself to the shore of the lake. If that strength had not already come to him, it was now too late, for as she toiled over a high and craggy point in the cliff the wind blew hot in her face, and where the beaver pond should be was a red hell of flames.
The trail descended as she forced herself on—descended from the ramparted ledge to the smooth, sandy level of the beach, and suddenly she was conscious of the crashing of bodies in the thickets and thefrenzied sound of living things. A great moose swept so near her that she sprang from his path—a monstrous beast with flaming eyes and snorting nostrils, closely followed by a darker, rounder object that she knew was a bear, racing for the safety of the water. She came to the sandy open where the trail swung straight ridgeward toward the beaver pond, and stopped, knowing she could go no farther unless she defied the death from which all other living creatures were flying.
Piteously Mona cried out—to Peter, to Simon, to Donald McRae, and then to God; and at last she fell down with her face buried in her skirt, ready to welcome death itself in this hour when not only her world but all that she loved in it were doomed to destruction.
It was a sound close to her that uncovered her face, a sound that came strangely above the moaning roar of heat-wind and flame, and staring through the gloom and against the red glare of the burning forests, she saw a grotesque shadow—something that was not moose nor deer nor any four-footed thing she had ever seen in the wilderness; and rising up before it she saw that it was a man bent under a huge, limp burden which he carried. She cried out, and a choking voice answered her—a strange, terrible, unhuman sort of voice, yet the sound of it nearly split her heart, and when the figure deposited its burden in the white sand and stood up she saw that it was Peter. Shestumbled toward him. His arms caught her, and she could hear him sobbing under the strain of his fight, and his heart was beating so hard that each throb of it sent a tremor through his body. In his weakness her own strength returned, and in a moment her hands had left his face and she was at the side of the man who lay upon the sand.
It was Donald McRae. Now a great light was flaming in the sky over their heads, and she saw that his face and hands were black, and his eyes were closed, though he was breathing. She tore the skirt from about her head and ran to soak it in water, but when she returned Peter was kneeling beside his father, and held back the dripping cloth.
"Not water," he said. "We must get—something else. He is burned."
She put her arms about Peter, and his face rested for a moment on her shoulder. In that moment he told her that Aleck had tricked him, and had left him on the island. With the aid of a piece of dry driftwood he had managed to swim ashore, but too late to reach the cabin ahead of the flames. He found his father halfway to the lake, fighting his way on hands and knees in the van of the fire. His face and hands were badly burned, but that was all. Another minute and he would have been too late. His voice choked, and Mona's hand stroked his face gently, and she kissed his hot forehead.
Then they carried Donald McRae under the shelterof the cliff, where they were free from smoke and heat, with the water rippling in and out among the stones at their feet. And here Mona told Peter of Aleck's coming to the point, though she kept to herself what happened there, and that Simon McQuarrie had gone to the island in a sailboat and would surely come straight to this beach when he found Peter gone. And as they made Donald easier, and waited in the coolness of the cliff for the fire-storm to burn itself out, she told him also of Carter and that no time must be lost in getting away to a place of greater safety.
Peter knew what that meant as he bent over his father. In scarcely more than a whisper he told Mona. He, too, must go. It would not be for long—maybe a week, a month, or a little longer. It was not for himself. He was not afraid of either Aleck or the law, because he had done at the pool just what he would do again if it were before the eyes of the whole world. But his father needed him, and never would his heart beat the same, nor would she ever again look at him with a bit of the pride and love which made him so strong, if he failed to do what was right in this hour. Without him his father was lost. He hoped Simon would come with the boat, for in that boat they would escape into the wilderness farther west.
Mona made no answer to these things, for it was hard enough for her to breathe with the thickness that was in her throat. But her hand stroked Peter's, and her cheek lay against his, and above the grief inher breast rose a great pride in this man who loved her. And a thought came to her of Sir Nigel, the chivalrous young knight who looked so much like this Peter of hers with his sensitive boyish face, and of how Mary so bravely sent him away to the great wars in which through long years he rose to undying fame; and she subdued her heart, as Sir Nigel's sweetheart must have conquered her own, and at last told Peter it was the thing to do—the one thing to do—and that God and she would love him for it. And even as she did this there was creeping over her an unutterable foreboding, and death seemed to pierce her heart when she heard Simon McQuarrie's boat grounding on the sand. But she smiled, and kissed Peter—and then Simon stood before them. And in another five minutes he was gone again—this time to the settlement for the supplies and medicines which would go with Peter and his father.
For an hour they were alone, and Donald McRae tried to keep back the moans of pain that came to his lips. But he could not open his eyes, and Mona fanned him gently with a piece of her wet skirt, and told him Simon was hurrying with ointments which would make him comfortable. Peter even laughed and spoke of the sudden on-sweep of the fire as if it were an exciting adventure, and it was good that Donald could not see their tense and grief-filled faces in the gloom.
The fire roared through the last of the evergreens and burned itself out against the bare stone knolls andledges of the lake shore. And then came again the sound of Simon's boat on the sand.
"Carter has returned to the settlement and was preparing to come this way in a boat when I slipped out through the inlet," Simon whispered to Mona.
With Peter she went to the boat, leaving Simon alone for a few moments with his old friend. And it was Simon who came at the end of a brief interval bearing the burden of Peter's father in his arms. Very tenderly he laid him on the blankets in the boat.
"God be with you, Donald," he whispered, a broken note in his voice. "God be with you—always."
The stricken man raised a burned hand to the other's face.
"They have always been with me, Simon," he whispered back. "God—and Helen. And now that you have made such a fine man of Peter I hope I may go to them—soon."
In the darkness Mona crept out of Peter's arms.
"Peter, you must wait no longer. You must go."
"In a little while I will come back,Ange."
"And I—by the sweet spirit of Ste. Anne—I promise to be waiting for you when you come, Peter—though I wait until new forests grow where yours and mine have burned. So go—good-by—lover—sweetheart——"
And then she had slipped away from him and he made no effort to follow her into the smoky gloom, though a sobbing cry came back to him faintly.
For a moment Simon stood aside with Peter. Their hands gripped in the darkness and a strain was in the old Scotchman's low voice as he said:
"I've put ointment on your father's face and hands and he is easier. I don't think he is badly burned. Everything is in the boat, lad—provisions, blankets, medicines, a pack and what money I had at hand." He hesitated and the grip of his fingers tightened as he added: "In the bow is your rifle with extra ammunition in the buckskin sack beside it. You'll need it. But don't fight the law unless they force you to it, boy. Remember that. The law finds no excuse, even though scoundrels like Aleck Curry and blood-sucking ferrets like Carter are sometimes a part of it. And let me tell you that I saw with my own eyes when your father killed a man years ago when you were a baby in your mother's arms. It was for your mother he did it and he was right; but in spite of that the law won't rest until it lands him. And it's your job now to beat the law, but without the use of a gun. I love you, lad—but I'd curse you for a coward if you didn't do what you're doing now. For years you and Mona have prayed that God would send your father back to you—and now he has come—and it's God's will behind it. All that is left in a body that was once stronger than my own is his worship for you and his memories of your mother. Take care of him, Peter. And—God bless you both!"
Never had the iron-natured old Scotchman said so much in all the years since Peter had come to live withhim as a son. And without a word Peter went to the boat, for his throat was thick and choking, and Simon shoved the craft out into the sea until he was waist-deep in the water. Simply he said good-by as if Peter were going only to the nets or the islands outside the mainland, and no tremor in his hard, calm voice betrayed the tears on his cheeks which darkness hid. And as Peter raised the sail McQuarrie waded ashore and was met by a pair of arms and a sobbing voice that cried out in its grief and despair against his shoulder.
Another sound came before they turned to the cliff trail that led along the unburned shore of the lake to Five Fingers. From the direction of the settlement a light skiff bore down swiftly upon the strip of sandy beach.
Carter, who sat in the stern, was old in the service of the provincial police, a ferret on the trail, a fox in his cleverness, cold-blooded, unexcitable and merciless—and when the bow of the skiff ran into the sand and Aleck Curry leaped ashore he remained quietly in his seat and waited. In a moment he heard voices—the cold, unemotional voice of the Scotchman first and then Aleck Curry's in fierce demand and Mona Guyon's in answer. He went ashore, his thin, hard face smiling in the darkness, and heard Simon tell Aleck that the law no longer had a work to do at Five Fingers, for Peter and his father had died somewhere out in the heart of the fire. He heard Mona's sob, close to Simon's shoulder. Then he opened his flashlight, but not upon them.It illumined Aleck's face, thick-lipped and bestial in its disappointment and passion. What he saw was amusing to a man like Carter and a spark of chivalry made him leave the others in darkness. But he stepped back and cast his light upon the wet sand of the shore. And then he said quite casually, as if his discovery was a matter of small significance:
"You lie, McQuarrie! We have come only a quarter of an hour too late. Peter McRae and his father have gone in your boat, and as this breath of wind will scarcely fill a sail, I think Aleck's enthusiasm and a light skiff should make it possible for us to overtake them within an hour!"
He chuckled as he switched off his flashlight, and that chuckle was like the rattle of a snake to Mona, deadlier than all the hate and animal passion she had seen in Aleck Curry's face in the one swift moment when it had flashed out of the darkness into light. For Carter was more than a representative of the law. He was its incarnation, and more than Aleck Curry—more than any other man in the world—she feared him now as the skiff sped in the direction taken by Peter and his father.
Fora few minutes after leaving the shore Peter did not trust himself to speak. He could see nothing but a gray chaos except landward, where the red sky and the darker blot of the cliff were visible through the smoke gloom. Even the weather-stained canvas of Simon's boat was indistinguishable, and where his father lay on a pile of blankets at his feet he could make out only a shadow. Now that the fire had burned itself out of the forests between the shore and the ridges the heated winds gave way quickly to a growing calm. The smoke hung like a dense fog and with this change came a strange stillness in which sound seemed to multiply itself until he heard clearly the wailing of a dog at Five Fingers.
Then the faint rattle of oarlocks came to him and his hand tightened on the tiller. It was Aleck Curry again—Aleck and the man-hunter, Carter, hurrying to cut them off before they could leave the shore! And suddenly in fierce passion he wanted to shout back his defiance to them just as years ago—three days before he came to Five Fingers—he had felt the desire to kill the men who had driven his father into the forest. Something in these moments brought that day back tohim—a vivid memory of the big log behind which they were sheltered, and armed men in the thickets, the blue jay screeching at them, his thirst and hunger and his father's pale, strong face waiting with courage for darkness to come; then the dusk, their escape on a log in the flooded river and their first fugitive camp in the big woods. How wonderful his father had been in those hours of peril which he as a boy could scarcely understand! And now he was lying at his feet, a pitiable wreck because of that same merciless and unfair law which had pursued him then——
Peter cried out. It was not much more than a throat sound, as if the smoke had made him gasp for breath. But a hand rose out of the darkness and touched him.
"Peter!"
"Yes, dad."
"It has all gone wrong, boy. If only I hadn't been so heartsick to see you—if I had never come back——"
Peter bent over and his hand rested tenderly against the face which Simon had cooled with ointment.
"If you hadn't come I'd have lost all faith in the God you used to tell me about," he whispered. "I wanted to give up but Mona wouldn't let me. She said you would surely come. And this isn't half as bad as that day behind the log when I was a little kid. Remember how you cared for me then—kept me above water when we went into the river, caught rabbits for me to eat afterward and tucked me into bed every night near the camp-fire? Well, it'smyturn now. And I'malmost glad you're sick—just so I can show you how much I've grown up since that afternoon you sent me on alone to Five Fingers so many years ago. You lied to me then, dad. You made me believe you'd come back that night, or the next day. Haven't you ever been ashamed of that?"
The strain was gone from his voice. It was hisdadhe was speaking to again, his pal and comrade of the old days, and the thrill of that comradeship was stirring warmly in his blood.
"I knew Simon would give you a good home," said Donald. "And he has made a splendid man of you. But I'm sorry, Peter—sorry I came back. After all those years I was hungry to see you. I just wanted to look on your face and then go away again without letting you know. I didn't mean to break into your life like this——"
His hand was stroking Peter's and for a moment Peter bent down until his face was close to his father's. Donald was silent but his hand continued its caressing touch. After a little he said:
"Did I hear something, Peter?"
"I think it was thunder. A storm must be following in the trail of the fire."
"I mean out there—near at hand. It was like wood striking on wood."
He sank back and Peter reached down and made his head comfortable. "This makes me think of that last night in the woods when you tucked me in my cedar-boughbed and told me to sleep," he whispered gently. "And I'm telling you that now, dad. It's what you need. Try and sleep!"
Even as he spoke he heard the distant sound again and knew it was the clank of oarlocks. He fastened the tiller so that Simon's boat was heading for the open sea. Then he crept forward and returned with a blanket, and this blanket he quietly unfolded in the darkness, taking from it the weapon which Simon had loaded and placed there for his use. And Simon's words were running over and over in his head, as steady as the ticking of a clock. "Take care of him, Peter. It's your job now to beat the law."
As the minutes passed it seemed to Peter that sound became a living, stealthy part of the night, creeping about him in ghostly whispers, hiding behind the canvas sail, rustling where the water moved under the bow, purring at his feet and in the air. This impression of sound by its smallness and its secretiveness served to emphasize the hush which had fallen upon a burned and blasted world. Its muteness bore with it a quality of solemnity and a quickening thrill as if subjugated forces were muffled and bound and might unleash themselves without warning. In this stillness Peter heard the thunder creeping up faintly behind the path of fire. But the sound of the oar did not come again.
He strained his eyes to pierce the gloom even though he knew the effort was futile and senseless. The redline of the fire was steadily receding. In places it was lost. Where he had left the cliff and the sandy strip of beach was a black chaos, and it was this darkness with its silence which seemed to reach into his heart and choke him with its oppression and foreboding.
Through the stillness a sound came to him, floating softly over the sea, sweet and distant. His fingers slowly unclasped and he bowed his head. It was the bell over the little church of logs and Father Albanel was tolling it. Even now in this smoke-filled hour of the night he was calling the people of the settlement together that they might offer up in prayer their gratitude because homes and loved ones had been spared by the red death that had swept the land. It was like a living voice, gently sweet and soothing as it brought him faith and reverence.There was a God!Every fiber in his body leaped to that cry of his heart. Without a God his father would have died, the whole world would have burned, there would be no Mona, no hope, no anything for him in the darkness of the freedom which lay ahead. His lips moved with Mona's prayer and he stood up quietly so that he might hear more clearly until the last peal of the bell died away. And when the gray silence shut him in again he felt as if a protecting spirit had come to ride with him in the gloom.
Softly he spoke to his father but there was no answer. Exhaustion and the peace of the open sea had overcome the stricken man and he was asleep.
Encumbered by stillness and smoke, the night passed with appalling slowness. The distant thunder with its promise of rain died away. Half a dozen times Peter lighted matches and looked at his watch. At last it was three o'clock and the horizon of murk and smoke that shut him in receded as dawn advanced. Then came a sudden keen breeze, like the last sweeping of a great broom, and he could see the coast. His own heart was thrilled by the sight of it, for behind the menacing headland of barren rock that rose like a great gargoyle hundreds of feet above the lower cliff was a strip of water which he had once hazarded in a dead calm and which led back half a mile between towering walls of rock and naked ridges into that very chaos of wildness which he had wanted for a hiding-place.
Scarcely had this moment of exultation possessed him when the wind died again. At the same time a clearer light diffused itself over the sea. The horizon drew itself back like a curtain and half a mile away he saw an object that sent his heart into his throat.
For a few moments he neither moved nor seemed to breathe as he stared at a swiftly approaching skiff. Then he looked at his father. Donald McRae had not awakened. A livid scar lay across his eyes as if a red-hot iron had burned out his sight. His hands were blistered, his lips were swollen and his neck and shoulders were scarred and covered with the ointment which Simon had used. Yet—even then—his father slept! The horror of it choked Peter and his soul cried outfor vengeance against those who had made this wreck of a man. He turned and his hand rested upon his rifle. He no longer feared the law or Aleck Curry or Carter, the ferret. His desire at first was to kill them. With astonishing calmness he waited, watching the approaching skiff. When it was two hundred yards away he picked up his rifle.
He chose the small of Aleck's back for his first shot and raised his gun. In the same moment he observed that with Carter in the stern and Aleck amidships the bow of the skiff was high out of water. It was this situation which saved Aleck and Peter's first bullet crashed through the boat an inch or two below the water line. He followed with two other shots. The effect was almost instantaneous. Aleck Curry lurched away from the oars and the skiff came within an ace of upsetting. In another moment the quick-witted Carter had called Aleck into the stern and there both crouched, their combined weight raising the shattered bow above the water line while Carter stripped himself of his shirt.
The shots roused Donald, and with an effort he drew himself up beside Peter.
"What is it?" he demanded. He turned his scarred face toward Peter and then with a strange cry covered his face with his hands. "My God, I can't see!" he cried. "Peter—I can't see!"
In that darkest moment of his life Peter thanked God the wind came and filled the sail of Simon's boat andthat neither Carter nor Aleck Curry shouted after them or made a sound that his father might hear, and like an inspiration a lie came to his lips—he had done some poor shooting at a flock of mallards! He spoke cheerfully of his father's efforts to see, telling him it would be days before he could hope for vision when his eyes were swollen and scarred by burns. And Donald, seeing nothing of the agony in Peter's bloodless face, smiled cheerfully up at the clearing sky in spite of his pain. He did not mind so much about his hands, he said, but it was a hardship to have his eyes covered as Peter was bandaging them now because he wanted to see as much as he could of his boy in the short time they would be together. There was a note of happiness in his voice which was in strange contrast to the pathos of his appearance and his helplessness.
And Peter fought to keep up that spirit of cheer and of gladness that was in Donald McRae's heart. But his own heart was breaking—for he knew that his father was blind.
Hours later Simon's boat came stealing back to shore in the sunless dusk of the evening. This time the sail was down and with muffled oars Peter rowed cautiously for the break in the cliff. Blended with the deepening shadows of the sea, he worked his boat into the narrow maw of the crevasse whose rock walls rose two hundred feet over their heads. In utter darkness, with the thin streak of light far above, he felt his way for half an hour. Then the fissure widened and after anotherfifteen minutes of slow progress its walls bulged outward, losing themselves in the gloom, and ahead stretched the hidden inlet, smothered on all sides by precipitous crags and cliffs and towering forest ridges.