It was Nada's cry, a cry wild and sobbing and filled with gladness, that told him the truth, and with the precious paper clutched in her hand she smothered her face against McKay's breast, while Breault came up grinning behind them, and Jolly Roger heard the click of his key in the handcuffs.
"I am also loaded down with a number of foolish messages for you," he said, attending to the fire again. "For instance, that red-headed good-for-nothing, Cassidy, says to tell you he is building a four-room bungalow for you in their clearing, and that it will be finished by the time you arrive. Also, a squaw named Yellow Bird, and a redskin who calls himself Slim Buck, sent word that you will always be welcome in their hunting grounds. And a pretty little thing named Sun Cloud sent as many kisses as there are leaves on the trees—"
He paused, chuckling, and did not look up to see the wide, glorious eyes of the girl upon him.
"But the funniest thing of all is the baby," he went on, preparing to slice bacon. "They're going to have one pretty soon—Cassidy's wife, I mean. They've given it a name already. If it's a boy it's Roger—if it's a girl it's Nada. They wanted me to tell you that. Silly bunch, aren't they? A couple of young fools—"
Just then something new happened in the weirdly adventurous life of Frangois Breault. Without warning he was suddenly smothered in a pair of arms, his head was jerked back, and against his hard and pitiless mouth a pair of soft red lips pressed for a single thrilling instant. "Well, I'll be damned," he gasped, dropping his bacon and staggering to his feet like a man who had been shot. "I'll be—CUSSED!"
And he picked up his pack and walked off into the thick young spruce at the edge of the timber, without saying another word or once looking behind him. And breakfast waited, and Nada and Jolly Roger and Peter waited, but Frangois Breault did not return. For a strange and unaccountable man was he, a hard and pitiless man and a deadly hunter who knew no fear. Yet the wilderness swallowed him, a coward at last—running away from the two red lips that had kissed him.
So went Breault, for the first time in his life a messenger of mercy; and at the top of the silver birch the little warbler knew that something glad had happened, and offered up its gratitude in a sudden burst of song.
THE END
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The Country Beyond Page 25