the shining thing to his face, and hold it there, while strange quivers
ran through his strong shoulders, and a wetness that was not rain
gathered in his eyes.
"God bless her!" he whispered. And then he said, "I wish I was a kid,
Peter--a kid. Because--if I ever wanted to cry--_it's now_."
In his face, even with the tears and the strange quivering of his lips,
Peter saw a radiance that was joy. And McKay stood up, and looked
south, back over the trail he had followed through the blackness and
storm of night. He was visioning things. He saw Nada in Father John's
cabin, urging Peter out into the wild tumult of thunder and lightning
with that precious part of her which she knew he would love forever.
Her last message to him. Her last promise of love and faith until the
end of time.
He guessed only the beginning of the truth. And Peter, denied the power
of thought transmission because of an error in the creation of things,
ran back a little way over the trail, trying to tell his master that
Nada had come with him through the storm, and was back in the deep
forest calling for him to return.
But McKay's mind saw nothing beyond the dimly lighted room of the
Missioner's cabin.
He pressed his lips to the silken tress of Nada's hair, still damp with
the rain; and after that, with the care of a miser he smoothed it out,
and tied the end of the tress tightly with a string, and put it away in
the soft buckskin wallet which he carried.
There was a new singing in his heart as he gathered sticks with which
to build a small fire, for after this he would not travel quite alone.
That day they went on; and day followed day, until August came, and
north--still farther north they went into the illimitable wilderness
which reached out in the drowsing stillness of the Flying-up-Month--the
month when newly fledged things take to their wings, and the deep
forests lie asleep.
Days added themselves into weeks, until at last they were in the
country of the Reindeer waterways.
To the east was Hudson's Bay; westward lay the black forests and
twisting waterways of Upper Saskatchewan; and north--always
north--beckoned the lonely plains and unmapped wildernesses of the
Athabasca, the Slave and the Great Bear--toward which far country their
trail was slowly but surely wending its way.
The woodlands and swamps were now empty of man. Cabin and shack and
Indian tepee were lifeless, and waited in the desolation of
abandonment. No smo
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