he Missioner could not hear:

"Peter, I was wrong. God wasn't wicked to let Mister Roger kill Jed
Hawkins. He oughta been killed. An' God meant him to be killed.
Peter--Peter--we don't care if he's an outlaw! We're goin' with him.
We're goin'--goin'--"

She sprang to the window, and Peter was at her heels as she strained at
it with all her strength, and he could hear her sobbing:

"We're goin' with him, Peter. We're goin'--if we die for it!"

An inch at a time she pried the window up. The storm beat in. A gust of
wind blew out the light, but in the last flare of it Nada saw a knife
in an Eskimo sheath hanging on the wall. She groped for it, and
clutched it in her hand as she climbed through the window and dropped
to the soggy ground beneath. In a single leap Peter followed her.
Blackness swallowed them as they turned toward the trail leading
north--the only trail which Jolly Roger could travel on a night like
this. They heard the voice of the Missioner calling from the window
behind them. Then a crash of thunder set the earth rolling under their
feet, and the lull in the storm came to an end. The sky split open with
the vivid fire of lightning. The trees wailed and whined, the rain fell
again in a smothering deluge, and through it Nada ran, gripping the
knife as her one defense against the demons of darkness--and always
close at her side ran Peter.

He could not see her in that pitchy blackness, except when the
lightning flashes came. Then she was like a ghostly wraith, with
drenched clothes clinging to her until she seemed scarcely dressed, her
wet hair streaming and her wide, staring eyes looking straight ahead.
After the lightning flashes, when the world was darkest, he could hear
the stumbling tread of her feet and the panting of her breath, and now
and then the swish of brush as it struck across her face and breast.
The rain had washed away the scent of his master's feet but he knew
they were following Jolly Roger, and that the girl was running to
overtake him. In him was the desire to rush ahead, to travel faster
through the night, but Nada's stumbling feet and her panting breath and
the strange white pictures he saw of her when the sky split open with
fire held him back. Something told him that Nada must reach Jolly
Roger. And he was afraid she would stop. He wanted to bark to give her
encouragement, as he had often barked in their playful races in the
green plain-lands on the farther side of Cragg's Ridge.