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Discovering Diverse Content Through
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"You have not harmed him?"
"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 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.
 CHAPTER XXII

In the long days and weeks which followed Peter's return to the
cabin and the death of his father a change which seemed to him a
little short of a miracle came over the man-hunter. The pitiless
Carter, the human ferret, whose years of duty had never been
tempered with mercy or conscience, was gone, and in his place was
a new Carter, dragging himself a little at a time out of the paths of
tragedy and misery which he had followed for so long.
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. Yet the law had
been always at his back, urging him on and exulting in his triumphs;
he had committed no crime, no sin, and the world had applauded his
exploits when it heard of them, visioning him as a splendid part of
that mighty mechanism of legal force which made peace and good
will on earth possible among men. Yet Carter, in these strange days
of his mental and spiritual transformation, knew differently.
He knew that he had served too well, and for that reason he hated
himself, and called himself a fiend. It was now, after he had hunted
Peter's father to his death, that his successes began to dig
themselves out of their graves and reappear to him as haunting
ghosts. And he prayed God to keep Peter, of all men, from hating
him.
"I killed your father," he said to him frankly. "I hunted him until his
mind and his body broke down and he died. And in the end he
accepted me as a son, and I loved him. If I had only known! But I
didn't, and my life belongs to you. I give it willingly as the price of a
great mistake."
And as the sullen winter's end passed Peter found it impossible to
hate Carter. Instead, there grew in him a slow and irresistible feeling
of brotherhood for the man who had trailed them to their hiding-
place at last, and who, in the hour of his deepest grief, had knelt
with him in prayer over the frozen grave of his father. In those
moments he had learned that it was not Carter who was
accountable. It was the system—the law and its inalienable right to
strike and kill.
Now, late in April, they were going home.
Six hundred miles behind them lay the wilderness of the Pipestone
and the McFarland, where the hunt had ended and the final tragedy
had been enacted.
Ahead of them, beyond four hundred miles of still deeper forests
was Five Fingers.
On this night, as they sat in the yellow glow of a birchwood fire
which they had built in the chill of sunset, Carter had drawn a rough
map in the edge of the ash. The somber depths of a moonless night
lay like a curtain of heavy velvet behind him, and against this his
thin and hawk-like face was set so vividly that Peter saw the odd
twitch of his lips as he said:
"One week for Jackson's Knee, another for the country of Lac St.
Joe, two more for the Height of Land, and then you'll be looking
down on Five Fingers! They'll all be glad to see you, Peter. And Mona
——" He shrugged his shoulders and a little throb came in the pit of
his throat when he spoke of Peter's sweetheart. "God knows a man
should be happy with a girl like her waiting for him at the end of the
trail."
"I've been away two years," replied Peter, for it was always that
thought which kept pounding at his heart. "At times I am afraid of
what may have happened since that night you and Aleck Curry
almost got dad and me in the edge of the burned lands."
Carter made no sign that he had heard. He was staring into the
deep, red embers of the fire.
"Your mother was an angel," he said, so quietly and unexpectedly
that his words fell upon Peter almost with the effect of a shock. "In
the last of those days when your father and I were shut up together
by storm and cold in the cabin, and he was accepting me as his son
in his madness, he talked of her almost as if she were alive and we
were going home to her."
"She has been dead twenty years," said Peter.
"I know. Dead, and yet living. I can scarcely believe that I hunted
Donald McRae until I drove him mad—for doing a thing which I
would have done had I stood in his shoes that day when he killed a
man! It was justice, Peter. My mother I cannot remember. But your
mother he made very near and real for me in those last days of—I
can't call it his madness!—it was——"
"Forgetfulness," said Peter.
Carter bowed his head. "Yes, forgetfulness. Yet some things lived so
vividly—things of the past. He made them live and breathe for me—
and one picture makes me want to kill!—that picture of the little
cabin in the clearing more than twenty years ago—your mother—you
in her arms—Donald McRae's homecoming and the vengeance he
dealt out to the snake who had come to take advantage of his
absence. When I see that vision I want to choke the life out of a
human beast I know—Aleck Curry!"
Peter made no answer.
"I can't undo what I've done," Carter went on. "I tracked your father
until his mind broke under the strain, but I can't help that now. It is
over. All I can do in the way of reparation is to help you—you and
Mona Guyon. And between you two—between your happiness and
hers—is one man, a slimy, conscienceless serpent, waiting and
watching for your return."
"You mean—Aleck Curry?"
"Yes, Aleck Curry."
Carter stood up, his tall, catlike form bathed in the fire glow, and his
hard lips were tightly closed as he stared off into the darkness of the
forest.
"Sounds queer—that word 'conscienceless' coming from me," he
mocked bitterly. "I've never had a conscience or a heart in obeying
the word of the law—but I've never thought bad of a woman in the
way Aleck Curry thinks of Mona Guyon. He would sell his soul, if he
had one, to possess her—even if she came to him for only an hour
as the price of your safety and freedom. And you're going home—an
outlaw!"
"By that you mean Curry will hold me in his power when I reach Five
Fingers?"
"Yes."
"And will attempt to force from me a price——"
Peter stood looking straight into Carter's eyes.
"Yes, partly from you, but mostly from Mona. That is why I've been
holding you back, a drag from the beginning. Curry's uncle has
become a power politically, and Aleck was given a corporalship a
year ago. I would stake my life that he is keeping his secret about
you and the part you played in your father's escape two years ago.
The knowledge is too precious for him to divulge. You assaulted him,
almost killed him, and freed your father; you kept him—an officer of
the law—a prisoner on an island; later you fired upon Curry and me
with the rifle which Simon McQuarrie gave you—and all this means
from five to fifteen years in prison for you, and Curry knows it. The
fact that your father was almost blind, and that his mind had broken
down, won't help you. Law is law, especially in Canada. Our judges
and juries go by the code and not by emotions. And this law, its
inviolability, is why Aleck Curry is a greater menace to you now than
all the dangers you have encountered since you led your father into
the north.
"He is moved entirely by two passions, one his desire for Mona
Guyon and the other his hatred for you. On the night when we
almost caught you both in your escape from Five Fingers he offered
me a thousand dollars and his uncle's influence in getting me a
sergeancy if I would keep the secret of your capture, and turn our
prisoners over to him. It was my humor to let him think he had
bought me. And then, in the dawn of that morning, you filled our
boat full of bullets—and got way. That's the story, Peter. There is no
escaping the trap if you return to Five Fingers. Curry will descend
upon you, demand marriage of Mona, or probably worse—and if she
refuses——"
"She can visit me occasionally in prison," said Peter.
His face reflected no trace of the white heat that had mounted into
Carter's; he spoke quietly and his hands had lost their clenched
tenseness. For a moment Carter gazed at him in silence.
"You mean that?"
"I do. Aleck Curry holds no power over me that can in any way
endanger Mona. If I owe a debt, I am willing to pay it. Neither Mona
nor I have anything that we want to sell, and Aleck Curry has
nothing that we want to buy."
Carter drew in a deep breath.
"If you look at it in that way——"
"There is no other way."
"But Curry and I are the only two men on earth who can swear that
you have done these things. The smallest restitution I can make to
you for all the wrong I have done your father is to keep my
knowledge secret. Torture could not tear it from me. Now—if we can
silence Curry, tie his tongue, break him——"
"None of which we can do," interrupted Peter. "He has hated me
since the day we first fought over Mona when we were boys. Only
one thing could stop his vengeance. I would have to kill him, and
that is inconceivable. For my father I would have done that. I had
even prepared myself to kill you, Carter, if such an act became
necessary to save him. But for myself—no!"
Carter thrust out his hand, but as it gripped Peter's he turned his
face away. "You're a lot like your dad," he said. "I see it more every
day. I'm going to bed. Good night!"
Caution and habit had made the ferret spread his blankets in the pit
of gloom outside the glow of firelight. He disappeared in the
darkness and a moment later Peter heard him as he stretched
himself out for the night.
But Carter had no idea of sleeping. For days past a thought had
been building itself up slowly in his brain, and tonight he had almost
revealed that thought to Peter. 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. In this
one warm emotion of his cold and merciless life Carter felt a deeper
thrill than in the hour of his greatest man-hunting triumph, and as
he lay in stillness, strengthening that thought which was becoming a
larger and more definite thing between Peter and Mona and the
tragedy which threatened them, his lips parted in the grim and
humorless smile which in all the years of his service had made men
fear and avoid him.
And with that smile, deadly and uncompromising, Carter whispered
to himself: "I guess maybe you needn't worry, Peter. I don't think
Aleck Curry and the law are going to get you—not if I can help it."
With this settled, it was easier for Carter to give himself up to sleep.
For a long time Peter sat near the fire. The birch logs burned down
into a mass of coals, and as deeper shadows closed in about the
camp he felt himself alone except for the visions which came and
went in the dying embers. With a clearness that brought almost
physical pain the years passed before his eyes, and when they had
gone they had taken with them his boyhood, the father he had
worshiped, his dreams and happiness, leaving behind in the ash of
the fire only memories shadowed with the gloom of tragedy. But
calmly and with a courage inspired by his own grief he was ready to
accept what lay ahead of him. The fight, as a physical thing, was
over—and he was going home. On that point his mind was fixed and
no sense of self-preservation could move it. What was to happen to
him when he reached Five Fingers was a matter which Fate should
decide.
Even in these moments of his decision he felt Mona's nearness and
her protest. If in defense of his father he had become an outlaw,
there was still a wide world in which he could hide, and Mona would
come to him. So the persistent voice of caution whispered to him,
and at times that voice was Mona's.
Haggard-faced, Peter went to bed, and in the morning it was Carter,
cold and mechanically efficient, who pointed out the same way to
him.
But even as he pressed his reasoning home, Peter observed there
was a still deeper and more mysterious change in his companion. It
lay more in Carter's eyes than in his voice or the unemotional lines
of his face.
"You've learned how big the woods are," he said. "Go north, into the
Yukon or Alaska. I will see that Mona comes to you—safely."
Peter shook his head.
"I've also learned what it means to run from thicket to thicket,
guarding a hunted thing you love. That would be Mona's share—
years of it, until the end. And the end would come sometime. I'd
rather pay the debt—and have free years left to me afterward."
It was Carter's last effort. From that hour he traveled steadily
homeward with Peter, making no protest against this new code
which had come into his life of giving, instead of taking, a tooth for a
tooth and an eye for an eye.
The middle of May found them halfway between Lac St. Joe and the
Height of Land, with Five Fingers still a hundred and eighty miles
ahead of them.
"We'll make it in seven days," said Peter.
"Unless the melting snows flood the streams," said Carter.
Spring was breaking gloriously. Scents filled the air. Crushed balsam
and cedar gave out a redolence that was tonic. The poplar buds
were bursting. Birds were returning. On the sides of slopes where
the sun struck warmly the snow was gone, grass sprang up lush
green, and flowers that budded while the earth was still white began
to bloom. Sap dripped from broken limbs, and the whispered breath
of a wakening life, of growing things, and of matehood, hope and
happiness, seemed to rise between the earth and the sky, night and
day.
Both Peter and Carter sensed the thrill of these things, yet neither
felt their joy. The floods held them back, so that at first their loss
was in hours, and then in days. Carter was glad, but he gave no
betrayal of that fact. His face in these last weeks had grown quietly
and splendidly different from the old Carter's. It was cold, deeply
lined, austere, but its sharpness was mellowed and there was no
longer the ferret-like gleam in his eyes or the grim hardness in his
lips and chin. Not a day passed that his hand did not rest on Peter's
shoulder or arm, and in his touch was a gentleness that at times was
reflected in the look of his eyes. But in the secrecy of his own
thoughts was a dread of the day they would arrive at Five Fingers.
Dread—and yet not fear.
Peter did not reveal his own fears except as they became a part of
his face and eyes in certain moments which a man like Carter could
not fail to observe. These fears were not inspired by visions of
personal danger, for in adjusting his mind to the necessity of paying
his debt to the law he had eliminated the menace of Aleck Curry in
so far as it could possibly affect the future of Mona or himself.
What he dreaded were the changes which nearly two years might
have brought to Five Fingers, and the evil which Aleck Curry could
have accomplished in that time. Just what outrage his enemy could
have successfully consummated he had no definite idea. Yet the
thought seized upon him at times and held him under a dark and
oppressive apprehension.
On the last day before crossing the Height of Land Carter spoke of
what he knew to be in Peter's mind.
"You will find Mona safe and well, and as true as the day you left
her," he said. "And lovelier, too, Peter, for she needed these two
years to round out her glorious womanhood. I'm not worrying about
her. I'm putting all my faith in another gamble."
"And that?"
Carter gave his thin shoulders a suggestive shrug.
"Has it occurred to you how nice it will be if—in these two years of
change you have anticipated—something has happened to Curry?
Death, for instance?"
Peter looked at his companion to see if he was joking. Carter's face
was set and unsmiling.
"Why not?" he argued. "Aleck, although a brother of the Devil, isn't
calamity-proof. With him under six feet of good, honest dirt, or
mysteriously missing, or kicked out of the force by an authority
greater than his uncle—you would be a free man, and Father Albanel
could ring the wedding bell the day you reach Five Fingers. Maybe
it's only a dream I've had—but I seem to see Aleck Curry safely out
of your way, now or very soon. If he has tried to take advantage of
Mona Guyon during your absence——"
"Simon McQuarrie or Pierre Gourdon would kill him!"
"Exactly!" And Carter lighted his pipe and said no more, nor did he
raise his eyes to see the strained look which he knew was in Peter's
face.
That night they slept on the northward slope of the ridge that
separated the waterways of a continent.
Two days later, on the first of June, they crossed the southern line of
rail and camped in the deep wilderness between it and Lake
Superior.
Carter made his bed with more than usual care.
"Our last night," he said. "Tomorrow we should pass the high ridge
country before dark and reach Five Fingers in the early light of the
moon. Are you a little excited?"
"I should like to go on," said Peter.
Carter smiled a bit wistfully. Now and then this flash of gentleness
had crept into his face of late. "I'd be willing to give up the rest of
my life if for a few hours I could have someone waiting for me as
Mona Guyon is waiting for you," he answered in a low voice.
"Strange that I've let all the years go by without thinking of that,
isn't it? But I'm thinking now. And I'm sorry—for a lot of things."
"You say you are going to resign from the police as soon as you
can," said Peter, looking into the darkness that lay between him and
home. "When you do that—come to Five Fingers. Simon McQuarrie
and Pierre Gourdon and Joe and Father Albanel and all the others
will make it home for you. And Mona and Marie Antoinette and
Josette will love you because you were four-square and helped us.
And after that—somewhere—maybe at Five Fingers—there will be a
girl——"
A cough came from the gloom behind Peter, a thick and husky cough
as if Carter were choking something back that was in his throat.
"One of the few things I remember from years ago is a song called
'The City Four-Square,'" he said. "And when you, of all men, call me
four-square—why——" Darkness hid his face. "Good night, Peter!"
"Good night," said Peter.
 CHAPTER XXIII

Carter, as usual, had made his bed in deep shadow, and there after
a time he slept. The moon rose, but still the shadow enveloped him,
while Peter lay in a glow of light when the man-hunter roused
himself. He looked at his watch and found the hour a little after
midnight. A second time he slept, and a second time he awakened,
and thick darkness had come in place of the moonglow. This he
knew to be the dark prelude to dawn, and he rose out of his blanket
and crept cautiously away from the camp, moving a foot at a time
and making no sound. In a quarter of an hour darkness and distance
had swallowed him. He waited then. Dawn broke first over the tree-
tops and filtered down softly and swiftly into the lower depths of the
forest until Carter could see to travel. He lighted a last match to look
at his watch and compass and struck due south.
He traveled fast, free of pack and gun. Dawn grew into the grayer
softness of day. Peter would be awakening now, he thought, or very
soon. In an hour, or two at the most, he would know he had been
tricked. Even with his advantage Carter sensed the thrill of an
impending race and the tragedy of it, if he should lose. Peter was
swift and sure in the woods and it was a long way to Five Fingers.
High up in the sky a fleet of white clouds took on a crimson flush.
The sun rose, and it found Carter's face settling into the hard and
grim lines of the hunter whose game had so frequently been the
lives of men. In a small leather pouch he had stored some food, and
a part of this he ate as he traveled. He lost no time in seeking log
and driftwood dams to pave his way over streams but plunged waist-
deep into water that was still cold with the chill of snow and ice. It
was noon before he stopped to rest and eat what was left of the
food in the leather pouch.
A second time a miracle of change swept over him, and in his face,
his eyes and the lithe swiftness with which he moved he was the
ferret again, hot on the trail of game. Late in the afternoon he felt
the cool breath of Lake Superior in his face. The sun sank lower.
Dusk came. In the beginning of that dusk he emerged from the last
rim of the forest and stood with the water of the big inland sea
moaning under the dark cliffs at his feet.
A sense of exultation and of triumph swept over him. It was
something to have mastered the wilderness in this way and to have
come out within half a dozen miles of Five Fingers. Peter could not
beat that, even in this country which was his own.
Thickening darkness made these last miles more difficult and for two
hours Carter progressed slowly. The sky was beautifully clear, but
rocks and slides and ragged cracks and pits at the cliff edge made
his feet wary, and countless stars only served to deepen their
shadows. When the moon came up he had reached the huge cliff
whose sheer walls rose two hundred feet above the sea, less than
half a mile from Five Fingers.
A last time he sat down, and with a strange smile on his thin lips
watched the full moon as it rose swiftly over the forests, as if eager
to reach its higher and more permanent place in the arch of the
heavens. He was tired and wet and his clothes were torn. Until now,
when the settlement was only a step ahead, he had not realized how
exhausted he was or what a fight he had gone through. Surely he
had beaten Peter by many miles and could afford to rest for a little
while before finishing his task!
His eyes closed in restful stillness. In half a dozen minutes he could
have slept, but each time that his body wavered on the rock where
he sat he forced himself into rigid wakefulness. The temptation
persisted, and at last he gave himself five minutes and slept thirty.
The rattle of a stone roused him, and he gathered himself up,
blinking at the moon. Then he heard iron nails scraping on rock.
Instantly he was wide awake. Someone was advancing along the
face of the cliff from the direction of Five Fingers. He could see first
the shadow of that person, growing in the illusive light mist of moon
and stars. It was big and grotesque and the tread of its substance
was slow and heavy. He heard a cough which was as unpleasantly
heavy as the tread, and a few steps more brought the advancing
figure to the little plateau of rock where he sat. Not until then did he
rise. The other stopped. The moon laughed down into their faces.
The stars seemed to send upon them a more brilliant light. A dozen
paces separated them. Then, uncertainly, they shortened it to half
the distance. Carter's heart gave a great throb. He would not have
to go down to Five Fingers now, for this was his man!
"Curry!" he greeted.
The other stared, half disbelieving. "Is that you—Carter?" he gasped.
He advanced again, peering into the other's face. "By Heaven, it is!"
Carter was very white and thin and strange-looking in the moonlight,
and Aleck Curry was heavy and huge, even to his neck and face. He
thrust out a hand, but Carter did not touch it.
"Yes, it's me," he said, in a voice cold as ice. "Queer why you should
be coming this way, Curry. I was going down there to find you."
Aleck's eyes pierced the blanket of moonlight behind him. "What
luck?" he asked. His voice thrilled with nervous eagerness. He bent
his big shoulders toward Carter, looking into his face, his thick lips
parted and his narrow eyes gleaming anxiously as he tried to read
an answer before words came. "Any?"
Carter's slowness was an insult, and with that insult his eyes and lips
were smiling.
"Yes, I've had luck," he said, when the tenseness of the other's
silence seemed about to break. "Donald McRae is dead, and Peter is
back there—my prisoner!"

Half an hour later, down in Five Fingers, the bell over the little log
church rang out sweetly and softly the good news that Father
Albanel had come in from his monthly trip into the farther
wilderness, and that services would be held tomorrow, which was
Sunday. In the stillness of the night the music of the bell carried far
through the forests, creeping in and out and high above the hidden
places, bearing with it the peace and gentleness of benediction and
prayer to all things.
Peter heard it, far back in the hollows between the ridges, and he
paused to offer his gratitude to God for this voice that was
welcoming him home.
And at the edge of the cliff where the moonlight and the starlight
made a vivid arena of the table of rock its message seemed to beat
with the clearness of a silvery drum. Then it stopped. Its echoes
melted away, and the two men who had heard it there remained
unchanged.
Carter seemed straighter and harder, his face more like carven
stone. But he was ready. And Aleck Curry was like a huge gorilla
gathering himself for a leap.
"Carter—if you mean that—I'll kill you!" he said in a voice that was
thick with passion.
"I mean it," replied Carter, biting his words short. "I've taken the
trouble to tell you the whole story. But you can't understand and you
never will. You're a snake. You're a traitor to both justice and the
law. You think your power over Peter will give you vengeance and
something from Mona. But it won't. And I warn you again that if you
try to use your knowledge, if you offer Peter as a price to Mona, if
you give him up to the law when she strikes you in the face—as she
will!—then I shall go to the highest authorities and strip you to the
skin. The truth will blast you. I will tell how you offered me bribes,
and then threatened; I will tell of your affair in the home of Jacques
Gautier and expose the horrible trail you have left wherever your
slimy soul has gone. I shall investigate the death of the young
Indian girl on the Arrowhead. I——"
He did not finish. Curry, the man who had waited, the fiend who had
kept the fires of hatred and passion burning until they were
madness, saw more than the threatened ruin for himself. Reputation,
family, his place in the service meant nothing to him. What he saw
now in the white and almost deathlike face and gleaming eyes of the
Ferret was the end of the dream he had built up—the end not only
of his power over Peter but of his last chance to possess Mona. If
Carter carried out his threat, if he told the story of Gautier's wife and
laid naked the truth of the Indian girl's death on the Arrowhead—
then all that he might say against Peter would be discounted in the
eyes of the law, and punishment would fall upon himself.
But he was not thinking of this punishment. At times the evil mind in
his heavy head worked with amazing swiftness—and in this last
moment of Carter's threat and defiance he saw the yawning abyss of
the cliff behind the Ferret, and its overwhelming temptation. With
Carter down there, dead, and Peter walking straight into the trap at
Five Fingers, his own power and triumph would be more complete
than he had ever dreamed it could be—for he would make Peter also
the Ferret's murderer!
The moon revealed the monstrous thought that leaped like flame
into his face, and it was then Carter cut his words short to meet the
avalanche of flesh and fury that descended upon him.
Swift as a flash he sensed Curry's intention of throwing him over the
cliff, and twined his arms about his enemy's neck as they crashed
upon the rock. 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 this was the biggest of all!
A queer thought shot into his head, a surging back of his old pride.
He was not the wood-mouse, nor was he the weasel. He was the
ferret, and Aleck Curry was an unknown beast, ponderous and
mighty, but with that vulnerable spot which the ferret always found
in its prey. And this time Carter knew he was fighting for more than
himself. He was fighting for a man who was dead, and whose spirit
was there on the rock watching them. He was fighting for Peter. And
he was fighting for a woman.
His thin arms and legs fastened themselves about Aleck like things
made of wire steel instead of flesh and bone. Over and over they
rolled, twisting, bending, breaking, heads and faces gouging on the
rocks, and always Carter's quickness made up for the other's weight
and strength.
Their breath came in panting gasps as the nails in their boots struck
fire from the rock. A moan of anguish came from Curry when Carter
got the terrible thumb gouge in his eye, and a gasp of agony from
the Ferret when Aleck bent his head back until his neck nearly broke.
There was something merciless and horrible in the struggle.
A little cloud ran under the face of the moon. It was followed by a
larger and darker one, as if spirit hands were drawing a curtain
between it and the tragedy on the rock. The light of the stars
seemed to grow dimmer, as if they, too, shrank from this thing that
was happening between the sea and the sky. And over the edge of
the cliff came a wailing sob of wind that was already beginning to
croon its death song for the victim. Minutes were hours. Gasps,
chokings, blows and the panting of breaths were the ticking of the
seconds. Moments of stillness, when the two lay crumpled and
twisted as if they had died together, were like eternities. And foot by
foot they had rolled until they were close to the edge of the cliff.
Then it was that a shudder of deeper horror seemed to creep
through the night. A black cloud swept under the moon, hiding
entirely what was happening at the cliff's edge, and this cloud
moved away with appalling slowness. When the moon looked out
again one object remained where there had been two. For a long
time it lay crumpled there, sobbing for breath. Then it crawled away
slowly, dragging itself painfully over the rock, and disappeared at last
into the thick growth of the burned-over lands which reached far to
the north.

Under that same moon, hours later, Peter came to the edge of Five
Fingers. Out of the sky all sign of cloud was gone and the stars
glowed in radiant constellations. Peter knew that it was midnight,
and as he looked down from the crest of the slope, where he had
first walked hand in hand with Mona when he was a boy, a strange
and gentle silence rose up from the bottom-lands to greet him. Five
Fingers was asleep. He could see no light and at first he heard no
sound. Then came to him the old familiar tinkle of silver bells on
distant cattle, and the soft murmur of the sea that was never quite
still where it ran in and out among the rocks of the Pit at the end of
Middle Finger Inlet.
For a space he stood looking down where the dark shadows of the
cabins lay in a great pool of mellow light that was like a gossamer
mist of silver and gold. His heart beat fast, so fast that he clutched a
hand at his breast and swallowed hard to get his breath. Down
there, within sound of his voice, was Mona—and all at once his
manhood seemed to leave him and he wanted to shout wildly
through his hands like a boy, calling her name, rousing her from
sleep, shrieking at the top of his voice that he had come back. A sort
of thrilling madness possessed him, but of all his desire only a
choking sob rose in his throat.
He walked down the slope and he saw Pierre Gourdon's home
among the scattered cabins. It was there he would find Mona, if——
His heart skipped a beat. If anything had happened, anything—
sickness—accident—if she had gone away! Two years was a long
time. Two years might have brought—a change.
His feet seemed to stumble, and then suddenly he stopped, and a
cry came to his lips. For he had come to the smooth little patch of
green meadow where Mona had made the men of Five Fingers bury
the scores of marauding porcupines they killed each year, and he
saw here and there freshly made little mounds of soil. Near one of
these, which was scarcely dried by a day's sun, was a spade. Eagerly
he seized it in his hands. It was their spade, with its broken edge
and the iron rod handle which Simon had put on it to replace the
wooden one which porcupines had eaten away. Mona was in Five
Fingers! She was alive—well—sleeping in her little room where he
had visioned her at prayer every night of his life!
He took off his pack and dropped it near the freshly made mound.
Then he went on, and stopped under Mona's window.
It was partly open. He could hear the soft flutter of a curtain in the
breath of wind that came up from the shore. Almost afraid to break
the stillness he called her name in a low voice.
"Mona!"
The curtain fluttered back at him. It seemed to be laughing at him,
seemed to be signaling to him like a hand from the window.
Then he saw on their nails against the log wall the long bamboo
poles which Pierre Gourdon used in his fishing. A hundred times
when he had come in from the woods late at night he had tapped at
Mona's window with one of these poles, and she had thrust out her
head to blow him down a kiss and say good night. And now, with
two hearts seeming to beat in his breast in place of one, he seized
one of the poles and gently tapped the old signal on the window-
pane. And all at once the curtain ceased its fluttering and he could
hear the two hearts pounding mightily against his ribs.
He tapped again—tap-tap-tappety-tap! and stepped back into the
deep shadow that hung around the edge of the Gourdon cabin in a
heavy fringe.
Someone came to the window. He knew it—yet he could not see
straight up above his head. He held himself back, waiting for some
response to his signal. In a moment he would step out in the
moonlight, and then——
He heard the curtain fluttering again. Sound came from her room. It
continued for a few moments, and ceased with the quiet opening of
a door. Then he heard footsteps, quick, light, almost frightened
footsteps, and a slim figure came around the end of Pierre
Gourdon's cabin and stood white-faced and trembling in the
moonlight.
It was Mona—Mona as he had left her an hour ago—yesterday—two
years ago—unchanged—except that she seemed taller to him, more
beautiful. She had thrown a long cloak about her and he could see
her hand clutching it at the throat as her wide eyes strained to solve
the mystery which the misty chaos of the moonlight was hiding from
her. For a space he seemed powerless to move. Then he tried to
speak as he revealed himself, ragged and torn and bronzed to Indian
darkness by his long fight through the wilderness, but it was only an
incoherent cry that stumbled on his lips. Mona saw him. For an
instant she swayed like a tall flower, with the whiteness of lily petals
in her face as he went to her. And then she gave a cry that even
Pierre Gourdon might have heard if he had not slept so deeply—and
Peter's arms closed about her.
A minute later she held back his face with her two hands. Her eyes
were filled with the glory of the stars and her lips were red with the
wild, sweet passion of their kisses. Slowly a shadow came, and with
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