James Oliver Curwood

“ 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. ”

“ The gentle smile did not leave Pierre's eyes. A forest man, and son of many generations of wilderness people, a warm thrill of superstition and an immeasurable faith in the God that had made his beautiful world lay deep in his soul. Simon guessed what was in his mind when he saw him looking at a green patch of flower-strewn slope where lay the graves of Mona's father and mother.
The smile faded slowly from Pierre's face, and a little of anxiety, of dread almost, replaced it.
"The years have been kind to us," he said, speaking more to himself than to Simon. ”

“ The glow of the moon, the softness of the stars, the gentle whisperings of the wind, the low music of running water and the thrill and tremble of inanimate and voiceless life about him were a part of his religion.
"Love a tree and you love God," had been his text for Peter. And as long as there remained trees and flowers and the songs of birds and eyes and ears with which to see and hear, hope could never die. His brain cleared and his heart grew stronger as he paced more swiftly through the moonlight. The world was gloriously big, he told himself again and again. ”

“ And tonight it was so quiet Peter could hear his own heart beating. At times it hurt him. It rose up in him somewhere and choked him. Once or twice, if Simon had been awake, he could have heard the boy sobbing.
But Peter was beyond that now. His pale, thin face looking at the moon over the tree-tops had grown tense and set in its understanding and grief. Out under that moon his father was being hunted. Men were after him—men who would kill him or hang him if they caught him. ”

“ Under the ash tree, for a few moments Peter was the boy again; the boy of yesterday, of years ago, when the world had held nothing for him but his father; and there was no change in the touch of the hands that had always given him comfort and courage and a love that was almost like a woman's in its gentleness. Not until Donald McRae held his boy off, with a hand on each shoulder, did something besides the madness of joy at his father's homecoming begin to thrust itself upon Peter. ”

“ He caught his breath sobbingly as he stared into the wall of chaotic darkness beyond the firelight. It was only Peter who counted now, and this night was the last Peter would be with him. Tomorrow he would be alone, an outlaw, a hunted man running away to save his life. And Peter....
A moan came to his lips, a dry and broken cry of hopelessness, and his eyes fixed themselves in their anguish upon the heart of the fire. Without Peter, would God give him strength to live? What would the days be like—and the nights—and the months and years to come without Peter? For Peter was not only Peter. ”

“ For a moment after that a great shadow of fear darkened the Ferret's soul. A hundred times in their associations on the trail he had witnessed the tests and measured the possibilities of Aleck's huge body and herculean strength. And now he was at death grips with it. That day he had seen a wood-mouse in the fangs of a weasel, and he was the wood-mouse now. And then he thought of Peter—of Peter and Mona and the battle at the pool two years ago when they had beaten this great hulk of a man. Fear went out of him. His biggest thrill in life was in the main chance against death. ”

“ And a little later, while Pierre and Dominique still smoked and painted their futures, the moon rose over the forest-tops in a great golden welcome to the pioneers, and the wind came in softly and more coolly from the lake, and at the last, from far away, rose faintly a wilderness note that thrilled them—the cry of wolves.
Dominique listened, and silently emptied the ash from his pipe into the palm of his hand.
"Where wolves run there is plenty of game, and where there is game there is trapping," he said. ”

“ Even now he would not have sent Peter back to the safety of the cabin. That would have meant dissolution for himself—and strangers and a heartbreaking tragedy of aloneness for Peter.
Across the river there was hope, and a refuge for Peter at Five Fingers with Simon McQuarrie. A woman had put an undying faith in the justness of God [52] in Donald McRae's soul, and always there were two things in his breast, faith and memory of the woman, like stars which no darkness could dim. Their glow lay warmly in his eyes as he saw the courage with which the boy waited for the setting of the sun. ”

“ So he came without sound of footfall or crackling brush to the edge of a little opening beyond a thicket of poplars and birch, and here he stopped suddenly and his heart jumped up into his mouth.
Standing in a warm pool of sunlight not twenty feet away from his concealment was a young girl. She was almost as tall as Peter and so lovely to look upon that he stared at her in amazement and admiration. He thought she had seen him, and his first vision was of her face and a pair of beautiful dark eyes, laughing up at a red squirrel, chattering in a tree top a few paces away. ”

“ They had come through a half-mile of the rapids then. The last of the rocks snapped at them, like growling dogs at their heels, and suddenly the water grew deep and smooth where it swung shoreward in a great eddy. For the first time Peter felt a hurt. It was his father's hand, holding him in a grip that only death could have broken. And then he saw his father's face. Donald McRae was gasping for breath. Even Peter would never know the fight he had made to keep the log running right during those three or four minutes in the rapids. ”

“ Without going beyond his fourteen-year-old power of reasoning Peter had a strange and abiding faith in the Canadian blue jay tribe. He was a boy's bird, if there ever was one, with his everlasting cocksureness, his persevering courage and his hundred and one little tricks of outlawry and piracy—a bird who was always ready for a fight, never ran away from trouble, and who lived up beautifully to the man-made law, "Do others before others do you." He was a gentleman and a sportsman even if he was a robber and a pest, and Peter loved him. ”

“ He watched him now, and in the firelight the drooped figure and pale, sensitive face of the man he had hunted and whose happiness he had helped to destroy tightened something at his heart until he found it hard to breathe. He had never loved a woman, and had never felt the bond of a great friendship for a man, but for Peter something more than the friendship he had known—a thing that was very close to a man's love for a man—had begun to possess him body and soul. ”

“ It was a winter that began—first of all—with starvation. The icy coating of the trees left no budding for the grouse; small creatures smothered in thousands under the hardening snow crust which could soon bear the weight of a man; foxes and ermine gnawed bark in their hunger; with the rabbits gone, owls died of a sickness which ravages them in times of forest famine—and the empty stomachs of wolves brought them nearer and nearer to the clearing until frightened horses broke halters in their stalls and cattle bellowed in their terror.
Peter had never heard wolves as they cried out now. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Simon loved the mill as Pierre loved the cabins he had helped to build, for the mill had brought prosperity to the wilderness people. It had also made necessary the ugly black tug which lay down in Middle Finger Inlet. The creases grew deeper in Simon's hard face as his eyes rested on the tug. "I wish some other man than Izaak Curry was taking our lumber," he said. "Maybe I'd like him if it wasn't for his boy. If that ugly lad ever puts his hands on Peter again, or on Mona——" He hunched his gaunt shoulders with a suggestive grunt. ”

“ All we got to do is wait." Her eyes were glowing at him in the dusk. "Why, your father is alive and he can come back," she said straight from the heart. "Mine can't. He is dead. And so is my mother."
An emotion new and strange swept over Peter—a flash of dawning manhood stirred to mysterious life by that note of something which had come from Mona's lips, a woman of the future whispering to him, chivalry calling, a boy's soul and a girl's rising for a moment above their years to point out the way to a new tomorrow. ”

“ There was something wholly and beautifully satisfying about Mona, and Peter felt himself strangely alone when she left him and he found himself in the cabin with Simon. And then a thing happened which would have amazed all the people in Five Fingers could they have seen it, for Simon McQuarrie, with his honest [79] heart and hard face, had never revealed himself a man of emotion. Yet scarcely had Mona gone when he drew Peter into his arms, and his thin gray face shone with a strange light as he looked over the boy's head into the sunset that flooded the open door. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As time passed he saw his beloved forest dragged in, a log at a time, to be cut into pieces by that droning, merciless saw. He watched the life's blood of the timber pile up in great golden heaps of sweet-smelling sawdust in which the growing children loved to play, and down on the shore he saw his wilderness [22] garnered in huge piles of boards, waiting for the little black tugs to come in and drag them away. He knew that it was all as it should be, for new prosperity came with the mill, more comforts and happiness for the women and children, and a few more people to Five Fingers. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Through those years Peter knew that Carter had been a Nemesis and a destroyer. He had not known pity, but only the grim exultation of achievement. Women, love, the extenuation of circumstance, even motherhood in its most beautiful sacrifice, had not stayed his hand when once the law had set him like a hound upon the scent of his victim. He had broken men and women. He had opened doors of blackness and despair to a hundred human souls. ”

“ 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!" ”

“ The forest was back of them, a forest of high ridges and craggy ravines, of hidden meadows and swamps, a picturesque upheaval of wild country which reached for many miles from the Superior shore to the thin strip of settlement lands along the Canadian Pacific. Black and green and purple with its balsam, cedar and spruce, silver and gold with its poplar and birch, splashed red with mountain ash, its climbing billows and dripping hollows were radiantly tinted by midsummer sun—and darkly sullen and mysterious under cloud or storm. ”

“ Twilight dusk began to fill the aisles of the woods, and with this dusk the last red glow died out of the [226] west, and with it came the hour Mona loved more than all others—when darkness began to close in a velvety mantle over the world. The stillness, the soft whisperings of the forest and the peace that always came with night gave her courage and strengthened her faith. And at last, from beyond the beaver pond, she heard again Peter's cry. ”