CHAPTER XXIV

Where the shadow of Pierre Gourdon's cabin fell deepest a man had dragged himself and lay like a dark and lifeless blot. Since Peter had tapped at the window this man had scarcely moved, except to breathe and change his position a little as he watched the lovers out in the light of the moon and stars. They were very near to him, so near he might have touched them with a pole less than the length of that which Peter had used. And he heard the girl speak of Carter, and of what Carter had done.

It was then he drew himself slowly away, moving with the stealth and caution of one to whom freedom from discovery meant a great deal. Not until the cabin was fully between him and those he had spied upon did he rise to his feet. This movement was slow and brought a gasp of pain from him. He did not stand straight. His shoulders were bent. He was hatless and ragged and his arms and breast were half stripped of clothing. In his hand he carried a heavy stick, and with this stick he helped himself to walk as he struck out in the moonlight.

He tried to hurry, but at best his progress was not fast, and to make up for lack of speed he kept the cabin[326] between him and the two from whom he was running away. In the shadow of a second cabin he stopped to rest, breathing deeply, as if what he had accomplished had cost him great effort. One at a time he passed the dwellings in the settlement and made his way across the green open to the little log church. Here he rested for a longer period, and in these moments he noted with satisfaction that trees threw a deep and continuous shadow between him and the edge of the forest.

The door of Father Albanel's church was never locked and after a little he opened it and entered. But he bolted it carefully behind him. Then he groped his way through the moonlit seats and opened a window. After that he found the rope which rang the bell.

Never in its history had Five Fingers roused itself to the ringing of the bell as it was rung tonight. It was not the Sabbath message. It was not Father Albanel's sweet, slow tolling of peace on earth and good will toward men, nor was it the sad and slumberous requiem for the dead. It was, instead, a wild exultation, an almost savage triumph, a pealing alarm that called upon every soul in the settlement to rise up in instant wakefulness. It filled the forest until its notes beat one upon another and the hills and ridges caught them up and flung them back as they had never done before. Men rose out of their sleep and stumbled for matches; a light appeared here, another there, and still the bell continued to ring until not a cabin in Five Fingers remained in darkness.

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Not until then did the man who had rung the bell drop from the window of the little church and steal through the shadows of the trees into the forest. There he did not pause but went on with the slowness of either age or exhaustion until he was swallowed in the deeper secrecy of the woods.

Pierre Gourdon came first out into the night, bareheaded and in his shirt-sleeves, and in front of his cabin he found Mona ahead of him with her long hair streaming down her back and a strange man's arms tightly about her. Almost fiercely he tore them apart—and then he saw it was Peter.

Jame Clamart came running up a moment later, and it was Jame who first sent the news abroad in a shout which, next to the mad ringing of the bell, was the wildest thing ever heard in Five Fingers between the hour of midnight and one o'clock in the morning.

"Peter McRae has come back!" he yelled. "Peter McRae—has—come—back!"

Swifter almost than men could travel word passed that this was the reason for the ringing of the bell—Peter McRae had come home after two years, and Father Albanel, or some other, had wakened them from their sleep to welcome him.

Pierre's women were first to take Peter away from Mona—Josette, coming first, and then Marie Antoinette. And after them came Adette Clamart. When she saw Peter she gave a little screech and threw her arms around his neck, kissing him before her husband[328] and all, and then she fell upon Mona and cried hard in her gladness. The little group grew larger; voices, glad laughter, tremulous excitement filled the air, but suddenly a hush fell as a tall and gaunt-faced figure stalked up through the silvery haze of the night and old Simon McQuarrie shouldered his way among them.

He said nothing when he came face to face with Peter, but for a moment held him off at arm's length, his stern face working in a strange sort of way, and then, as Mona crept to his side, he clasped them both in his arms and stood for a few moments with his head bowed close down to theirs.

And then a whisper of gladness ran among the women, for Father Albanel stood beside Mona and Peter and the little gray missioner's face was streaming with tears of happiness as he, too, put his arms gently about them.

"It was Father Albanel who rang the bell," the women whispered softly among themselves.

And to this day the people of Five Fingers believe that he did.

But on this night, Father Albanel was neither crooked nor bent, nor did he walk with the aid of a stick.

To Peter it was like a dream, a glorious dream of friendship and of a love that lifted his soul above all thought of fear and tragedy, and not until he was alone with Simon in the cabin which had been his home for[329] so many years before he went away with his father did he think of Aleck Curry or of the payment he had promised himself to be ready to make to the law. But the thing which happiness had held back came out now.

The old Scotchman heard Peter's story from the night of the flight almost two years ago, when the forests were burning in the great fire about Five Fingers. And then Peter learned, in turn, that Aleck Curry had built himself a shack in the edge of the timber and was quite frequently at Five Fingers, usually remaining for a week or two at a time. He was there now. That very evening Simon had met him face to face in company with one of the half-dozen government surveyors who for a year or more had been working up and down the shore. He was surprised that the ringing of the bell and the excitement had not brought Curry upon the scene. Probably he was with the surveyors at their camp. Tomorrow he would show up.

"And you haven't any idea what became of Carter?" Simon asked.

Peter shook his head. "He simply disappeared. I cannot guess why. Maybe he, too, will show up tomorrow."

"Peter, who rang the bell?"

Peter flushed under his darkened skin. "I think Father Albanel saw Mona and me in the moonlight. He always loved to wander about late at night, when the moon was bright."

Simon's gaunt face broke into a strange smile.

[330]

"It wasn't Father Albanel who rang the bell," he said.

"No?" Peter looked at him sharply. "Then it was you, Simon! You saw us?"

"No. I was asleep—sound asleep. But I know who rang the bell. It was Carter!"

A little thrill leaped through Peter. "It is impossible. Carter would not have run away from me for that. Besides——"

He did not finish, for Simon had risen and was looking out through the window in a way that puzzled him.

"I'm going down to the church," he said. "And I'm going the back way, along the edge of the woods, so that no one will see me. Want to go?"

They stole forth through the moonlight into the shadows of the forest. When they came to the church Simon tried the door.

"Locked!" he said. "That is unusual!"

A few seconds later they stood at the open window. Through this they climbed and one after another the Scotchman lighted a dozen matches until they knew that no one could have remained hidden inside. Simon then closed the window and led the way out through the door, leaving it unlocked.

"Careless of him," he grunted. "We'll leave the place just as he found it. Fewer questions will be asked."

He did not speak again until they were once more in their own cabin. Peter, feeling the completeness of his[331] exhaustion now, was about to ascend the ladder to his own bed when Simon rested a hand on his shoulder.

"Boy," he whispered, "whatever happens after this, forget that Carter came down from the north with you and that he ran away from you back there on the trail. Understand, laddie? Forget it! Lie about it if you have to. For I believe it was Carter who rang that bell tonight, and if he did, and it should so turn out that something has happened to Aleck Curry—why—you see—it might be a suspicious circumstance, pointing to a thing which you and I, with God's blessing on us, will always know could never be true!"

Even these words, making significantly clear the suspicion which was in Simon's mind, could not keep Peter from thinking of Mona, and of Mona alone, when he went to bed. But he awoke with the first crowing of Simon McQuarrie's roosters, three hours later. He was going to take breakfast with Mona, he told Simon, and as he was an appalling mess he needed a lot of time to prepare for it. For two hours he scrubbed and shaved and shampooed and manicured himself, and then dressed in the best outfit he had left behind him two years ago.

It was only a quarter of six when he finished, but an hour before, he had seen a light in Mona's room and now smoke was rising from the chimney over Josette Gourdon's kitchen.

He went out the back way, as he and Simon had gone a few hours earlier, and was sure he had succeeded in[332] coming up behind Pierre's cabin without giving any evidence of himself. But Mona's eyes were bright and her cheeks were flushed as he stood very still for a few moments in the doorway, though her back was toward him, and she seemed to be absorbed in a number of purposeless little details at the kitchen table. Peter made no sound, unless the pounding of his heart could be called that.

There was a change after all—a change which the silvery radiance of the moon had veiled from him last night. Mona was taller, and—even as he was looking at her now, without clearly seeing her face—she was so much lovelier than when he had left Five Fingers that he was a little frightened. Carter was right. It had taken those two years to make her even more beautiful than Marie Antoinette. And he continued to stand where he was, thinking himself undiscovered, worshiping her in silence from the heels of her little feet to the top of her lustrous head as if a word or a movement from him would destroy the transcendent reality of it all.

Mona's cheeks grew pinker and her eyes brighter.

Then she turned upon him so suddenly and with such an unexpected knowledge of his presence filling her eyes with laughter and joy that in one swift moment Peter had her in his arms, and kissed her so wildly on eyes and lips and hair that she was compelled to hide her face against his breast to get breath.

"You are—breaking me," she protested. "You have[333] grown so strong, Peter. And you are tumbling my hair down that I put up with so much care, because this is Sunday!"

She leaned back and shook her head so that the loosened coils of her hair flooded down about her shoulders in a radiant protest to her words.

"The two happiest days of my life have been Sundays," he said, holding her more gently.

"This is one, Peter?"

"Yes."

"And the other?" she asked, as if she had forgotten it entirely.

"Was that first day you took me to church, when I thought you were a little white angel, and sang with you, and dared to take a tress of your hair in my fingers when I thought you didn't know it."

"And since that day I've loved you, Peter. Yes, I loved you in that very hour when you bit Aleck Curry's ear!"

He filled his hands with the loosened masses of her hair, crushing the soft coils between his fingers.

"Kiss me."

"Sh-h!" She put a finger to his lips. "It is Aunt Josette! I hear her coming! I must run up the back way and fix my hair!"

"It is unthoughtful of Aunt Josette——"

"But she is coming!"

"Kiss me!"

She pressed her warm lips to his, and he let her go.[334] Scarcely had she escaped when Josette's light footsteps sounded in the dining-room, and a moment later she appeared in the kitchen. Peter was stirring pancake batter.

"Mona gave me this job," he tried to explain. "She'll be back in a minute."

Josette smiled at him sweetly, and then quite innocently picked up several hairpins from the floor. "How careless of me to lose these!" she exclaimed, but there was a roguish light in her dark eyes which did not quite escape Peter as she tucked the pins in her own thick tresses.

To Peter it was as if he had gone away yesterday, and returned today. Pierre came in yawning, and found him helping with the breakfast. When Mona reappeared her hair was in a long braid. Never had he seen such lovely, velvety softness in her eyes or such sweet color in her face.

Josette, with a sly signal to Pierre, maneuvered them to the open door. "When we are ready for you children we'll call you," she said.

They walked toward the forest. And there, in the edge of the beautiful green meadow which had always been hallowed as their playground, he saw for the first time a new cabin nearly finished. Mona was looking at him. She saw the surprise and then the cloud that gathered in his face. She took his hand, and her fingers clung to his.

"You don't like it?" she asked.

[335]

"It is a nice cabin, but——"

He did not know how to finish. She looked down, very demurely, so that he could not see her eyes for the long lashes that hid them.

"It is my cabin."

"Yours!"

"Yes, mine. Maybe I shouldn't tell you the secret, Peter, but I'm going to be married."

It seemed impossible that a human heart could rise up and choke one as quickly as Peter's did.

Mona was still looking at the ground.

"You see, Carter told me in his letter to confide in Simon. And when Simon knew you were coming, and would of course have to marry me very soon, we planned this cabin together and Simon is going to give it to me as a wedding present. Then I'm going to let you live in it. Don't you think I'm nice?"

Peter stopped. Mona looked up, frightened.

"Don't, Peter—don't!" she entreated. "Aunt Josette is looking, and Uncle Pierre will see you, and all the rest of Five Fingers——"

But all the rest of the world could not have stopped Peter. He crumpled her in his arms.

That day was one in which Peter could not bring himself to reveal to Mona the uncertainty which had been a part of his homecoming. Her happiness completely possessed him, and as hour after hour passed he found himself further than at the beginning from[336] carrying out his resolution to tell her the price which he fully expected the law would ask of him. That he could expect no mercy from Aleck Curry, he assured himself through Simon. But he did not see Aleck, nor did he mention him to Mona. She sensed no danger. No one in Five Fingers could guess at the menace which hung over him, for he believed that even Simon did not know of that first morning of his father's flight when he had committed the fatal sin of firing upon the law. From the fact that Aleck had kept this crime a secret he realized the nearness and deadliness of the trap which would soon spring upon him.

But Aleck did not appear. It was not until after morning service in the little church that Mona mentioned him quite casually. He was bigger and coarser and more detestable than ever, she told Peter. He had tried to pay some attention to her, and she knew that he and Simon had frequently had words. It was through his uncle, she said, that he had been given this lazy assignment, covering the country between the railroad settlements and Five Fingers.

In the afternoon Peter met Simon alone.

The lines in the old Scotchman's face seemed to have grown deeper since morning. They were like little creases cut in stone.

"I have been over to the surveyors' camp," he said. "Curry hasn't been there since yesterday morning. And he didn't sleep in his bed last night."

"He has gone to the settlements," suggested Peter.

[337]

"His pack and traveling dunnage are in his shack," answered Simon. "He hasn't gone to the settlements." Simon did not once let his eyes meet Peter's squarely. He spoke even carelessly as he looked away. "You haven't forgotten what I told you about Carter?"

"No."

"That is well. I wouldn't be surprised if something happened to Curry last night. I saw him dead drunk at dusk—starting out alone along the cliff to the west. I told him to come back, and he cursed me."

Simon McQuarrie could not hide a lie. And Peter knew he was lying.

A little later Simon struck off into the woods to the east and did not return until after dark. At bedtime Peter asked if he had found anything of interest.

"Only a hungry man. I happened to have a lunch in my pocket. The poor devil was so weak he was hobbling along with a stick."

"Who was he?"

"I didn't ask his name." Simon turned his back to Peter as he prepared for bed. "Queer I didn't ask his name—but I didn't."

On the third day after this night Five Fingers received a stupendous shock. Simon McQuarrie and Father Albanel, in seeking lost net buoys under the Big Cliff, had found the body of a dead man. It was Aleck Curry. He was terribly broken and almost unrecognizable by the pounding of his body in the surf that washed in and out among the rocks. The story of[338] his end was quite clear. He had evidently stumbled over the edge of the cliff while drunk, inasmuch as Simon had seen him staggering in its direction on the night he had disappeared.

"We'll take him to the nearest railroad settlement and let his friends have him," Simon said to the men of Five Fingers.

But to Father Albanel he added, in a voice which others did not hear, "It would be unpleasant, mon père, to have him always in our own little cemetery where only those we love are at rest."

And so, on that same day, all that was left of Aleck Curry was borne northward through the hills and ridges to his people.

Three weeks later Mona and Peter were married. Five Fingers will never forget that day. It was in the full glory of June, and the robins and thrushes were singing outside the little church. In spite of Peter's protest Mona teased him by insisting that she would not tell him where she wanted to spend her honeymoon until the little missioner had said the last words, and they were man and wife. And then, putting her soft mouth to Peter's ear, she whispered, "I want to stay in the new cabin which Simon is giving us."

So there, from the beginning, they found their new happiness, and Pierre Gourdon and Josette would walk in the twilights of summer evenings, lovers still, and never grow tired of painting for each other the beautiful and unforgetable pictures of many years ago[339] when they had come through the pathless wilderness to make this paradise in which God, in His great goodness, had made the last of their dreams come true.

It was on an afternoon in August that Adette Clamart came to Mona's home with her cousin, Adele, who had come from the French country of Quebec to live with her, and announced that a stranger had arrived in Five Fingers and was talking with Simon in his cabin.

"Adele met him on the settlement trail," she said. "He carried a basket of flowers for her, and was so very nice that she has fallen in love with him. Haven't you, Adele?"

"He was very stiff and frightened every time I looked at him," replied Adele, "and I felt sorry for him. But he was nice—yes. And he had—how do I say it, Adette?—such a strange, stern face, with sadness in it—and——"

"Ugh!" shuddered Adette. "He was dangerously hungry, Adele. I know because Jame gets that way."

"Whoever he is—he is coming!" said Mona, looking through the open door.

And so he was, with the old Scotchman on one side of him and Peter on the other, as if they were pulling him along against his will. And as they came nearer Mona's heart gave a sudden flutter, and then a great jump, for this stranger who had carried Adele's flowers was Carter the man-hunter.

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She ran out to meet him, and though she said only a few trembling words of welcome a light which Carter saw in her eyes made him draw in a quick breath of gratitude and joy.

"The new superintendent of the mill," announced Simon a little pompously, when Adette and Adele had joined them. "I'm getting lazy and he is taking my place. Quite a surprise! But we've been planning it a long time, haven't we, Carter?" And Simon laughed mysteriously.

Then came a sudden interruption. The bell over the little church began to ring as it had rung on a certain midnight weeks ago. And this time it was surely Father Albanel who was tugging at the rope. In his face was a flush of benevolent joy, and the louder the bell rang the rosier his cheeks grew, and there alone in the church he laughed like a boy.

Nudging Carter, whose face had grown strangely fixed and staring, Simon McQuarrie chuckled softly at his shoulder: "Someone rang the bell like that on the night Peter came home. And now, Carter, it is ringing our welcome to you!"

Observing Mona a few moments later, Adette wondered what had happened to make her eyelashes wet with tears.

Peter understood, and his hand found Mona's and held it tenderly. With an inspiration born of words which Carter had once said to him about a girl waiting at the end of the trail, he found the opportunity to[341] whisper, "Ask Carter to have supper with us, and also Adele."

This Mona did in her own sweet fashion, making sure of Carter first, and after his acceptance calling upon Adele to lend herself to his entertainment in a way which gave her no possible excuse for a refusal, had such a thought come into her mind. Simon looked shrewdly at Mona and Adette. Then he turned toward the green ridges to the north over which billowy white clouds were rising.

"It's going to rain," he said. "I smell it in the air. It will come tonight."

"The crops need it," said Peter.

"And most of all—the flowers," added Adele, looking at Carter.

"Yes, the flowers—and the woods," he nodded. "It is very dry in the timber for this season of the year."

Mona and Peter turned toward their cabin, and Mona's eyes shot a sly signal to Adette. Jame's wife took firm hold of Simon's arm. "If you know what is good for you—come with me!" she whispered, with her back turned to Adele and Carter.

For a moment Carter stood helplessly. Then he moved to Adele's side and they followed Mona and Peter.

"You like flowers, Miss Adele?"

"I love them, Mr. Carter!"

As they passed through the door Mona squeezed her husband's hand.

[342]

"It was a wonderful thought, Peter. Do you think you can kiss me very quickly before they come in?"

"I am sure that I can," replied Peter—and kissed her.

The End