CHAPTER XXI

Nine days Peter and his father spent in their hiding-place under the walls of the lagoon. At the end of that time Donald's burns were healed and his strength had returned. He had taken on flesh and his shoulders were straighter. His eyes were clear again but their vision was strangely shadowed and at a hundred yards the wall of the lagoon was like a dark curtain. For a time it was impossible for Peter to believe that his father's mind was not keeping pace with his physical revivement. Yet with the passing of each day Donald's mental grip concentrated itself more and more on the past until he seemed not to have lived at all beyond those years when Peter was a boy. Together they picked up old threads as if they had never been broken or lost, and in those occasional dark and brooding intervals when Donald's mind dragged itself back into the haunting tragedy of the present Peter found himself praying for the return of that partial amnesia which at first had terrified him.

On the evening of the ninth day Peter once more set out to sea. Fifty miles westward he ran ashore in the illusive, gray dusk of morning and burned Simon's boat.

[282]

Now that their flight northward had actually begun there were moments when his father's attitude almost frightened him. At first Donald's mind was keenly alive to the nearness of danger and in his half blindness he became more watchful and alert than Peter. But it was the peril of years ago that haunted him—the menace of the men who had driven them from their cabin home and who had nearly killed them when Peter was a boy.

After the third day Peter began to mark the beginning of the final change in his father. Donald became less watchful and sounds no longer seemed to disturb him. Instincts which warned him of peril became ghosts and at last faded away entirely. By the end of the seventh day there remained only one consciousness of living in Donald's soul; Peter was his little boy, and he was with Peter. Physically he betrayed no sign that his mind had crumbled. His scarred eyes, in which vision had grown even dimmer, held in them a deep and abiding clearness and a strange gentleness grew in his face. And Peter, holding tight to keep his own heart from breaking, knew what it meant. His father was forgetful of all things now but his boy, and was happy.

This change more than anything else killed in Peter's breast his last hope of returning to Five Fingers. Sheer madness with its darkness and its misery might have driven him back to Simon and Father Albanel, taking Donald McRae to asylum doors instead of to the hangman. But this which he saw growing in his father[283] was to him a quietly working miracle of God instead of breaking down of body and soul and brain.

As day followed day and one cool, dark night added itself to another, a warm and thrilling reaction came to replace with new emotions the gloom and desolation in his heart. Not for an hour did he stop thinking of Mona; her face was with him, her voice, the touch of her lips and hands; she walked with him in the thick aisles of the forest, slept near his side at night, wakened with him in the morning and became in each increasing hour of their separation more completely a part of him. But with this thought of her returned also the old passion of his childhood—his love for his father. His heart stirred strangely to the gentle caress of Donald's hand as it had thrilled when he was a boy. The old chumship rose out of its ashes, smoldered for a while and then burned steadily as if the broken years had never been. Home, mother, father, all the joys and dreams of childhood and early boyhood crept upon him a little at a time, until at last he knew that to sacrifice his father was as unthinkable as to surrender that part of his heart which Mona filled.

Between these two loves, encouraged on one side by duty and on the other by desire, lay his grief. Until the end of the third week he did not give up fully his resolution to send word back to Mona. By that time the hazard of such an act had fully impressed itself upon him. He no longer feared Aleck Curry, whose stupidity he had fully measured, but almost as frequently[284] as Mona filled his mind came also dread of Carter. A cold and abiding fear of this man entered into him and he was confident it would not be long before this human ferret of the forests would in some way find their trail. At times he was oppressed by the feeling that Carter was close behind them and he tried to establish in his mind the certainty of his action if his father's enemy should suddenly appear. Thought of what might happen—what probably would happen—made him shudder. For there could be no halfway measures with Carter now.

Always on the alert, with his rifle never far from reach of his hands, he swung still farther north and west. Autumn found him in the Dubaunt River country, and the beginning of winter on the Thelon. Here he traded his watch in a Dogrib camp for a score of traps, blankets and new moccasins, invested the last of his money in flour, sugar, salt and tea, and took possession of an abandoned cabin in the neighborhood of Hinde Lake. All through the winter he trapped and set deadfalls and snares.

A hundred times during the long winter he fought against his desire to send a word to Mona. Months had not dulled his caution and as soon as the spring break-up made it possible to travel he led his father into the Artillery Lake country. Through the spring and early summer they were constantly on the move, always making a little southward. By the time August came they had completed two-thirds of an immense circle[285] and south of the Athabasca country found themselves in the unmapped region between the Cree River and the McFarland. Here, in a country of ridges and swamps and deep forests, Peter made up his mind that at last they were safely hidden from Carter and all the rest of the world.

He breathed easier and began the building of a cabin. This was on a dark-watered, silent little stream, with a vast swamp at their back door, ridge country to right and left of them and an illimitable forest reaching out in front. The nearest point of habitation that Peter knew of was a Hudson's Bay Company post sixty miles away.

And this cabin with each log that went into it became a closer and more inseparable part of Donald McRae. Out of that forgetfulness which could scarcely be called madness began to creep memories so warm and vivid that they seemed to breathe with life itself. For Donald was building the old home again, the home of Peter's mother, where the moon had looked in through the window on the night he was born—a home, sweet and whispering with the presence of a woman one had worshiped in the flesh and the other had visioned as an angel in his dreams. After a little it was Donald and not Peter who was building the cabin, and by the time it was finished it seemed to Peter that a strange and unseen spirit of life, gentle as prayer itself, had come to dwell in it with them.

Autumn came again with its paradise of color. The[286] cedars, spruces and balsams took on a deeper, richer green; each sunrise bathed the ridges of poplar and birch in new splendor of red and yellow and gold; the nights grew colder, the days were filled more and more with the autumn tang that made blood run red and warm. God was with them here. Donald said that, as in the days of old. And Peter began to believe—and as faith rose in him hope and dreams returned. Mona's prayer was answered—the prayer they had said together for years asking that his father might be returned to him, and that they might all find refuge together somewhere in the wilderness world which they loved. And this was the refuge, given to them through the sweet and charitable guidance of God. All that was needed to complete it was Mona.

He began to thrill with a greater excitement as the first snows came. Would it be safe to return for Mona now? There were times when his whole soul cried out in the affirmative and he was almost ready to begin the long journey. But his caution never quite died and he always pulled himself back in time. Sixteen months had seemed an eternity to him but prudence warned him not to hurry. He would wait until spring. By that time, if Carter were on their trail, the climax would surely come. If the winter passed safely, he would go to Five Fingers and bring Mona back with him. Not for a moment did he doubt she would come, and he continued to add to the glorious castles he built in his mind, shadowed only now and then by oppressing[287] thoughts of the many things which might have happened at Five Fingers in almost two years of absence.

Late in February he left for the trading-post with two Indian dogs and a light toboggan to sell his furs. It was not unusual now for Donald to remain alone for several days at a time, for Peter knew the home they had built had become a part of his heart and soul and that nothing short of actual force or his own wishes and plans could drag his father from it. On this trip to the post he expected to be gone five days.

It was very cold. Trees cracked and snapped with the piercing bite of the frost and the snow crackled underfoot. For a long time after Peter had disappeared Donald stood in the little clearing staring over the trail where his boy had gone.

Something unknown to Peter was finding its way into Donald's brain. Through the night it had worked, gnawing its way slowly and stealthily, and now that Peter was gone it grew bolder. Even as he turned the cabin took on a new aspect for Donald. Though the sun was shining and the sky was clear, a shadow seemed to have fallen over it and the welcoming spirit which had always clasped him closely to its heart was missing when he entered through the door. As the day passed a change came in Donald's face. He was restless and uneasy. Sounds startled him again. In the dusk of evening he did not light a candle but sat quietly in a corner, staring into darkness with his half-blind eyes, and all that night he did not go to bed.

[288]

The next day there was no sun; the sky was heavy with gloom, the air thick and difficult for Donald to breathe. Mysterious shadows crept about him and at times he tried futilely to seize these with his hands. As the hours passed his mind became more and more like a broken limb from which the last prop had been taken. A hundred times he whispered Peter's name. Then came the beginning of the storm. It broke in mid-afternoon and by night was a howling blizzard. In darkness the cabin shook and the wind screamed overhead and the snow beat like shot against the window. It would be a long time before the forest people would forget this storm because of its ferocity and the tragedy which it left in its wake, but to Donald it was more than a storm—it was a personal thing. In it was the cumulative chaos of all the evils from which he had been a fugitive through the years, and now, cornering him at last, they were fighting to break through the log walls of the cabin.

He built up the fire until it roared in the chimney and lighted candles until the cabin was aflame with light. And then, suddenly as a bolt of lightning, some thing came to him. It was voice—voice screaming at the window, voice howling over the roof logs, voice moaning and wailing and dying away in the sweeping of the wind. "Peter! Peter! Peter!" It was crying—nothing but Peter's name, repeating it a thousand times in its laughing, taunting, moaning efforts to make him understand.

[289]

A half-savage cry rose out of his breast. He was not afraid, not when his boy needed him—and hatless and coatless he flung up the birchwood bar to the door and faced the storm.

"Peter!" he called. "Peter! Peter!"

It all had but one meaning for Donald now. The storm had Peter. It was playing with him, killing him, and these devils in the wind had come to tell him about it in their glee. He could feel them clawing and striking at his breast and face; the snow struck his eyes like tiny spear points and he found it difficult to get his breath in the face of the blast which tried to overwhelm him. He called again as he fought his way out into the blackness and snow. His words drifted away in shreds, whipped to pieces by the wind. Creatures seemed picking up handfuls of snow and hurling it in his face—he could hear their swift movement, the hissing of their breath, their evasion as he struck out at them, and he called Peter's name louder than before to give his boy courage and let him know he was coming.

That Peter was near the cabin, that he had turned back and was making a desperate fight to reach its shelter was as firmly a part of Donald's mind as the conviction that all the forces of the darkness and evil were trying to keep him away from his boy.

His head was bare and his woolen shirt was unbuttoned at the throat, but he did not sense the terrible cold that came with the blizzard. Among the trees his[290] feet found instinctively the beginning of the trail that was blazed through the forest and he reached out his naked hands and plunged knee-deep through windrows of snow that lay in his way. The thickets whipped and beat at him and branches, ambushed in darkness, reached out from twisting trees to strike him, but he did not feel sting or pain.

At last he was sure he heard an answer to his calling but the wind came and roared in his ears and the snow beat so fiercely in his face that he could not locate the quarter from which it came. Then he tricked the wind. He stumbled in the snow behind a tree and lay there until a brief lull followed in the wake of it, when he called again as loudly as he could. But he had the direction of it now and a hundred paces brought him to the edge of a rocky ravine which ran near the trail. Down this he clambered and in the pit-like darkness at the bottom found what he was seeking. Beside a figure rumpled and twisted in the snow he fell upon his knees, moaning Peter's name.

Half an hour later Donald came back to the light in the clearing, staggering under the weight of his burden. He opened the door and together the two crashed in upon the floor. On his hands and knees Donald turned and shut the door against the storm. Then he crept to the younger man whose wide-open eyes were staring at him from a thin, white, strangely contorted face, and put his arms about him, holding his head closely against his breast.

[291]

"You're all right now, Peter," he comforted in a broken, gasping voice. "You're all right——" He tried to laugh as his frozen fingers wiped the snow from the other's hair. "We're home and it's warm and I'll get something to eat——"

He crawled to the stove, almost crooning in his joy, and opened the iron door to thrust in more wood. The flames lighted up his face, bloodless from the cold and wet with snow that had already begun to melt and trickle down his cheeks to his bare neck and chest. His hair glistened white—whiter, it seemed, than an hour ago; his breath came huskily as if driven through a sieve; he was a crumpled, frozen, wind-broken wreck, and yet as he turned from the flaming door of the stove to look at the man on the floor there was a strange miracle of triumph and happiness riding over the torture in his face and a smile was on his lips. The storm might beat and howl outside and all the evils of darkness might scream and rage to get in for all he cared now. He had saved his boy!

He rose to his feet and stood swaying for a moment, smiling, trying to speak. Then he fell upon a cot.

The man on the floor had pulled himself to his elbow. He put a mittened hand to his throat as if to free himself from fingers that were gripping him there. His face too was bloodless. It was a thin face, driven white and hard by exhaustion and pain. He was a man who had been close to death and the shadow of it was still in his eyes.

[292]

He drew off his mittens and a foot at a time dragged himself across the floor. When he reached the cot he pulled himself up to it and put his arms over the stricken form of the one who had saved him.

Donald felt the nearness and raised a hand weakly to the other's face.

"You—Peter?" he asked.

"Yes, it's me."

Donald's blue lips smiled.

"They didn't get us, did they, boy? We got away from them——"

"Yes, we got away."

"And you're warm now—good and warm?"

The head over him bowed itself slowly until almost reverently it touched Donald's breast. It was not Peter's head. It was not Peter's voice that answered. But Donald gave a deep sigh of contentment as his fingers found a hand which he thought was Peter's and for a time neither one nor the other spoke again, while near them the fire crackled merrily in the stove and the candles sputtered and flared as if laughing at the storm which was lashing itself into a wailing madness outside the cabin walls.

For three days and nights no living creature could stand against the storm which swept the Athabasca country, nor could they travel in the intense cold which followed in its wake.

It was the fifth of March, twelve days after he had[293] left the cabin, before Peter crossed the Pipestone on his return into the region where he and his father had made their home.

His mind was a torment of unrest as he visioned a hundred tragic happenings, any one of which might have visited his father during his absence. The last twenty-four hours he traveled without an hour of sleep.

It was midday when he came to a high ridge from which he could look down into a cup of the forest where the cabin stood, a mile away. For the first time he breathed easily when he saw a spiral of blue smoke rising straight up into the clear sunshine of the day.

He laughed in his gladness as he came to the trail which led past the spring near their home. He would stop and drink there and then give the old-time halloo for his father. He could see Donald hurrying through the sunshine to welcome him as he heard that cry.

As he came round the last turn in the trail he stopped suddenly. Someone was at the spring. The bent figure was less than a hundred yards from him and he could see it rising slowly, lifting a pail filled with water. He shifted his rifle and made a megaphone of his mittened hands at his mouth. It would be a rousing surprise for his dad!

But the cry died before it reached his lips. The man at the spring was not his father. Tall and thin and hooded, and walking with a stick as he advanced, the stranger came toward Peter. He progressed slowly[294] and with difficulty, limping with each step he took. His head was bowed and not until they had approached within a few paces of each other did he raise it so that his face was clearly revealed. And then Peter gave a startled cry and swift as a flash swung the muzzle of his rifle upon the other.

"Carter!" he gasped.

A wan smile played over the ferret's face as he raised a hand and thrust back his hood.

"My name is not Carter," he replied. "Since twelve days ago I have been Peter McRae—Donald McRae's son."

Something in his thin face and strangely sunken eyes sent a cold chill to Peter's heart.

Carter had stopped with the muzzle of the rifle touching the pit of his stomach. He made no effort to thrust it aside but stood looking calmly into the other's eyes.

"It happened just that long ago," he said. "I was trailing you when I slipped over a ledge and almost broke a leg among the rocks. The storm came and I was about done for, when your father wandered out into the night, calling your name, and I answered. He got me into the cabin and I've been there ever since. From the beginning he thought I was you. I understand now, McRae. I know what I've done—and I wish you would pull that trigger. I deserve it."

Peter lowered the gun.

"You have not harmed him?"

[295]

"Harmed him!" A dull look of agony filled Carter's eyes as he turned slowly toward the cabin. "No, I haven't harmed him—not since twelve days ago. It was all done before that. Only God will ever know how gentle and good he was to me, thinking I was you—and if by dying I could return what I've taken away from him I'd kill myself. And if I were in your place, Peter—standing where you are—I'd shoot!"

He gave a stifled cry as Peter hurried past him. In it was a note of appeal that choked and died in his throat. But Peter did not hear it nor did he see fully the look of dread that was in Carter's eyes. He unshouldered his pack at the cabin door, laid his rifle beside it and went in. He was no longer afraid of Carter. Something tighter and more terrible was gripping at his heart.

Carter came limping up the trail and when he reached the door he bared his head and quietly followed Peter into the cabin.

Peter was on his knees beside the bunk in which Donald was lying. His arms were spread out and his head was bowed upon Donald's breast.

White-faced, Carter knelt beside him and put both his hands about his shoulders. "Until he brought me into this cabin twelve days ago I never believed in God," he said huskily. "But I do now, Peter. For twelve days your father was my father. I loved him. And I know, if he could have understood, that from the beginning he would have forgiven me—the man who hunted[296] him to his death. If by any merciful chance you can do that, Peter—if you can find it in your heart to let him remain my father and you my brother——" One of his hands found Peter's, clasping it tightly, and the other crept to Donald's face, where it lay cold and lifeless on its pillow. "In God's name say you forgive me!" he whispered.

In answer Peter's fingers returned the pressure of Carter's hand and a sob broke on the man-hunter's lips.

After a moment of silence he said: "It was the terrible cold and exposure of that night in which he was hunting for you. It reached his lungs. Until yesterday I was not afraid. Then the change came—swiftly. He died this morning, Peter, in your arms, and the last word on his lips was your name—and Mona's."

A long time there was stillness in the cabin as the two men knelt beside their dead.