The Country Beyond: A Romance of the Wilderness

by James Oliver Curwood

  CHAPTER VI

  A frosty mist dulled the light of the stars, but this cleared away asJolly Roger and Peter crossed the plain between the creek and Cragg'sRidge.

  They did not hurry, for McKay had faith in Cassidy's word. He knew thered-headed man-hunter would not break his promise--he would wait thefull two hours in Indian Tom's cabin, and another five minutesafter that. In Jolly Roger, as the minutes passed, exultation athis achievement died away, and there filled him again the oldloneliness--the loneliness which called out against the fate which hadmade of Cassidy an enemy instead of a friend. And yet--what an enemy!

  He reached down, and touched Peter's bushy head with his hand.

  "Why didn't the Law give another man the assignment to run us down," heprotested. "Someone we could have hated, and who would have hated us!Why did they send Cassidy--the fairest and squarest man that ever worered? We can't do him a dirty turn--we can't hurt him, Pied-Bot, even atthe worst. And if ever he takes us in to Headquarters, and looks at usthrough the bars, I feel it's going to be like a knife in his heart. Buthe'll do it, Peter, if he can. It's his job. And he's honest. We've gotto say that of Cassidy."

  The Ridge loomed up at the edge of the level plain, and for a fewmoments Jolly Roger paused, while he looked off through the eastwardgloom. A mile in that direction, beyond the cleft that ran like a greatfurrow through the Ridge, was Jed Hawkins' cabin, still and dark underthe faint glow of the stars. And in that cabin was Nada. He felt thatshe was sitting at her little window, looking out into the night,thinking of him--and a great desire gripped at his heart, tugging him inits direction. But he turned toward the west.

  "We can't let her know what has happened, boy," he said, feeling theurge of caution. "For a little while we must let her think we have leftthe country. If Cassidy sees her, and talks with her, something in thoseblue-flower eyes of hers might give us away if she knew we were hidingup among the rocks of the Stew-Kettle. But I'm hopin' God A'mighty won'tlet her see Cassidy. And I'm thinking He won't, Pied-Bot, because I've apretty good hunch He wants us to settle with Jed Hawkins before we go."

  It was a habit of his years of aloneness, this talking to a creaturethat could make no answer. But even in the darkness he sensed theunderstanding of Peter.

  Rocks grew thicker and heavier under their feet, and they went moreslowly, and occasionally stumbled in the gloom. But, after a fashion,they knew their way even in darkness. More than once Peter had wonderedwhy his master had so carefully explored this useless mass of upheavedrock at the end of Cragg's Ridge. They had never seen an animal or ablade of grass in all its gray, sun-blasted sterility. It was like ahostile thing, overhung with a half-dead, slow-beating something thatwas like the dying pulse of an evil thing. And now darkness added toits mystery and its unfriendliness as Peter nosed close at his master'sheels. Up and up they picked their way, over and between raggedupheavals of rock, twisting into this broken path and that, feelingtheir way, partly sensing it, and always ascending toward the stars.Roger McKay did not speak again to Peter. Each time he came out wherethe sky was clear he looked toward the solitary dark pinnacle, far upand ahead, strangely resembling a giant tombstone in the star-glow, thatwas their guide. And after many minutes of strange climbing, in whichit seemed to Jolly Roger the nail-heads in the soles of his boots madeweirdly loud noises on the rocks, they came near to the top.

  There they stopped, and in a deeply shadowed place where there was acarpet of soft sand, with walls of rock close on either side, JollyRoger spread out his blankets. Then he went out from the black shadow,so that a million stars seemed not far away over their heads. Here hesat down, and began to smoke, thinking of what tomorrow would hold forhim, and of the many days destined to follow that tomorrow. Nowhere inthe world was there to be--for him--the peace of an absolute certainty.Not until he felt the cold steel of iron bars with his two hands, andthe fatal game had been played to the end.

  There was no corrosive bitterness of the vengeful in Jolly Roger'sheart. For that reason even his enemies, the Police, had fallen into thehabit of using the nickname which the wilderness people had given him.He did not hate these police. Curiously, he loved them. Their typewas to him the living flesh and blood of the finest manhood since theCrusaders. And he did not hate the law. At times the Law, as personifiedin all of its unswerving majesty, amused him. It was so terribly seriousover such trivial things--like himself, for instance. It could notseem to sleep or rest until a man was hanged, or snugly put behind hardsteel, no matter how well that man loved his human-kind--and theworld. And Jolly Roger loved both. In his heart he believed he had notcommitted a crime by achieving justice where otherwise there would havebeen no justice. Yet outwardly he cursed himself for a lawbreaker. Andhe loved life. He loved the stars silently glowing down at him tonight.He loved even the gray, lifeless rock, which recalled to his imaginativegenius the terrific and interesting life that had once existed--he lovedthe ghostly majesty of the grave-like pinnacle that rose above him, andbeyond that he loved all the world.

  But most of all, more than his own life or all that a thousand livesmight hold for him, he loved the violet-eyed girl who had come into hislife from the desolation and unhappiness of Jed Hawkins' cabin.

  Forgetting the law, forgetting all but her, he went at last into thedungeon-like gloom between the rocks, and after Peter had wallowedhimself a bed in the carpet of sand they fell asleep.

  They awoke with the dawn. But for three days thereafter they went forthonly at night, and for three days did not show themselves above thebarricade of rocks. The Stew-Kettle was what Jolly Roger had called it,and when the sun was straight above, or descending with the last half ofthe day, the name fitted.

  It was a hot place, so hot that at a distance its piled-up masses ofwhite rock seemed to simmer and broil in the blazing heat of the Julysun. Neither man nor beast would look into the heart of it, Jolly Rogerhad assured Peter, unless the one was half-witted and the other a fool.Looking at it from the meadowy green plain that lay between the Ridgeand the forest their temporary retreat was anything but a temptation tothe eye. Something had happened there a few thousand centuries before,and in a moment of evident spleen and vexation the earth had vomited upthat pile of rock debris, and Jolly Roger good humoredly told himselfand Peter that it was an act of Providence especially intended for them,though planned and erupted some years before they were born.

  The third afternoon of their hiding, Jolly Roger decided upon action.

  This afternoon all of the caloric guns of an unclouded sun had seemedto concentrate themselves on the gigantic rock-pile. Though it was nowalmost sunset, a swirling and dizzying incandescence still hovered aboutit. The huge masses of stone were like baked things to the touch of handand foot, and one breathed a smoldering air in between their gray andwhite walls.

  Thus forbidding looked the Stew-Kettle, when viewed from the plain. Butfrom the top-most crag of the mass, which rose a hundred feet high atthe end of the Ridge, one might find his reward for a blistering climb.On all sides, a paradise of green and yellow and gold, stretched thevast wilderness, studded with shimmering lakes that gleamed here andthere from out of their rich dark frames of spruce and cedar and balsam.And half way between the edge of the plain and this highest pinnacle ofrock, utterly hidden from the eyes of both man and beast, nestled thehiding place which Jolly Roger and Peter had found.

  It was a cool and cavernous spot, in spite of the Sahara-like heat ofthe great pile. In the very heart of it two gigantic masses of rock hadput their shoulders together, like Gog and Magog, so that under theirten thousand tons of weight was a crypt-like tunnel as high as a man'shead, into which the light and the glare of the sun never came.

  Peter, now that he had grown accustomed to the deadness of it, likedthis change from Indian Tom's cabin. He liked his wallow of soft sandduring the day, and he liked still more the aloneness and the aloofnessof their ramparted stronghold when the cool of evening came. He did not,of course, understand just what their escape from Cassidy ha
d meant, butinstinct was shrewdly at work within him, and no wolf could have guardedthe place more carefully than he. And he had all creation in mind whenhe guarded the rock-pile.

  All but Nada. Many times he whimpered for her, just as the great callfor her was in Jolly Roger's own heart. And on this third afternoon, asthe hot July sun dipped half way to the western forests, both Peter andhis master were looking yearningly, and with the same thought, towardthe east, where over the back-bone of Cragg's Ridge Jed Hawkins' cabinlay.

  "We'll let her know tonight," Roger McKay said at last, with somethingvery slow and deliberate in his voice. "We'll take the chance--and lether know."

  Peter's bristling Airedale whiskers, standing out like a bunch of broomsplints about his face, quivered sympathetically, and he thumped histail in the sand. He was an artful hypocrite, was Peter, because healways looked as if he understood, whether he did or not. And JollyRoger, staring at the gray rock-backs outside their tunnel door, wenton.

  "We must play square with her, Pied-Bot, and it's a crime worse thanmurder not to let her know the truth. If she wasn't a kid, Peter! Butshe's that--just a kid--the sweetest, purest thing God A'mighty evermade, and it isn't fair to live this lie any longer, no matter how welove her. And we do love her, Peter."

  Peter lay very quiet, watching the strange gray look that had settled inJolly Roger's face.

  "I've got to tell her that I'm a damned highwayman," he added, in amoment. "And she won't understand, Peter. She can't. But I'm going todo it. I'm going to tell her--today. And then--I think we'll be hittin'north pretty soon, Pied-Bot. If it wasn't for Jed Hawkins--" He rose upout of the sand, his hands clenched.

  "We ought to kill Jed Hawkins before we go. It would be safer for her,"he finished.

  He went out, forgetting Peter, and climbed a rock-splintered path untilhe stood on the knob of a mighty boulder, looking off into the northernwilderness. Off there, a hundred, five hundred, a thousand miles--washome. It was ALL his home, from Hudson's Bay to the Rockies, from theHeight of Land to the Arctic plains, and in it he had lived the thrillof life according to his own peculiar code. He knew that he had lovedlife as few had ever loved it. He had worshipped the sun and the moonand the stars. The world had been a glorious place in which to live, inspite of its ceaseless peril for him.

  But there was nothing of cheer left in his heart now as he stood in theblaze of the setting sun. Paradise had come to him for a little while,and because of it he had lived a lie. He had not told Jed Hawkins'foster-girl that he was an outlaw, and that he had come to the edge ofcivilization because he thought it was the last place the Royal Mountedwould look for him. When he went to her this evening it would probablybe for the last time. He would tell her the truth. He would tell herthe police were after him from one end of the Canadian northland to theother. And that same night, with Peter, he would hit the trail forthe Barren Lands, a thousand miles away. He was sure of himselfnow--sure--even as the dark wall of the forest across the plain fadedout, and gave place to a pale, girlish face with eyes blue as flowers,and brown curls filled with the lustre of the sun--a face that had takenthe place of mother, sister and God deep down in his soul. Yes, he wassure of himself--even with that face rising lo give battle to his lastgreat test of honor. He was an outlaw, and the police wanted him, but--

  Peter was troubled by the grimness that settled in his master's face.They waited for dusk, and when deep shadows had gathered in the valleyMcKay led the way out of the rock-pile.

  An hour later they came cautiously through the darkness that lay betweenthe broken shoulders of Cragg's Ridge. There was a light in the cabin,but Nada's window was dark. Peter crouched down under the warningpressure of McKay's hand.

  "I'll go on alone," he said. "You stay here."

  It seemed a long time that he waited in the darkness. He could nothear the low tap, tap, tap of his master's fingers against the glassof Nada's darkened window. And Jolly Roger, in response to thatsignal-tapping, heard nothing from within, except a monotone of voicethat came from the outer room. For half an hour he waited, repeating thesignals at intervals. At last a door opened, and Nada stood silhouettedagainst the light of the room beyond.

  McKay tapped again, very lightly, and the door closed quickly behind thegirl. In a moment she was at the window, which was raised a little fromthe bottom.

  "Mister--Roger--" she whispered. "Is it--YOU?"

  "Yes," he said, finding a little hand in the darkness. "It's me."

  The hand was cold, and its fingers clung tightly to his, as if the girlwas frightened. Peter, restless with waiting, had come up quietly inthe dark, and he heard the low, trembling whisper of Nada's voice atthe window. There was something in the note of it, and in the cautionof Jolly Roger's reply, that held him stiff and attentive, his earswide-open for approaching sound. For several minutes he stood thus, andthen the whispering voices at the window ceased and he heard his masterretreating very quietly through the night. When Jolly Roger spoke tohim, back under the broken shoulder of the ridge, he did not know thatPeter had stood near the window.

  McKay stood looking back at the pale glow of light in the cabin.

  "Something happened there tonight--something she wouldn't tell meabout," he said, speaking half to Peter and half to himself. "I couldFEEL it. I wish I could have seen her face."

  He set out over the plain; and then, as if remembering that he mustexplain the matter to Peter, he said:

  "She can't get out tonight, Pied-Bot, but she'll come to us in thejackpines tomorrow afternoon. We'll have to wait."

  He tried to say the thing cheerfully, but between this night andtomorrow afternoon seemed an interminable time, now that he wasdetermined to make a clean breast of his affairs to Nada, and leave thecountry. Most of that night he walked in the coolness of the moonlitplain, and for a long time he sat amid the flower-scented shadows ofthe trysting-place in the heart of the jackpine clump, where Nada hada hidden place all her own. It was here that Peter discovered somethingwhich Jolly Roger could not see in the deep shadows, a bundle warm andsoft and sweet with the presence of Nada herself. It was hidden under aclump of young banksians, very carefully hidden, and tucked about withgrass and evergreen boughs. When McKay left the jackpines he wonderedwhy it was that Peter showed no inclination to follow him until he wasurged.

  They did not return to the Stew-Kettle until dawn, and most of thatday Jolly Roger spent in sleep between the two big rocks. It was lateafternoon when they made their last meal. In this farewell hour McKayclimbed up close to the pinnacle, where he smoked his pipe and measuredthe shadows of the declining sun until it was time to leave for thejackpines.

  Retracing his steps to the hiding place under Gog and Magog he lookedfor Peter. But Peter's sand-wallow was empty, and Peter was gone.