carried in his heart--that last crying agony of
the girl when she had sent him out on the trail of Roger McKay,
entreating him to bring back the man she loved and would always love in
spite of all the broken and unbroken laws in the world.

That night, as they lay beside the Burntwood, Peter heard his master
crying out Nada's name in his sleep.

And the next dawn they went on--still farther north.

In these days and weeks, with the hot inundation of the wilderness
about him, McKay fought doggedly against the forces which were
struggling to break down the first law of his creed. The law might
catch him, and probably would, and when it caught him the law might
hang him--and probably would. But it would never _know_ him. There was
something grimly and tragically humorous in this. It would never know
of the consuming purity of his worship for little children, and old
people--and women. It would laugh at the religion he had built up for
himself, and it would cackle tauntingly if he dared to say he was not
wholly bad. For it believed he was bad, and it believed he had killed
Jed Hawkins, and he knew that seven hundred men were anxious to get
him, dead or alive.

But was he bad?

He took the matter up one evening, with Peter.

"If I'm bad, mebby it isn't all my fault, _Pied-Bot_," he said. "Mebby
it's this--" and he swept his arms out to the gathering night. "I was
born in the open, on a night just like this is going to be. My mother,
before she died, told me many times how she watched the moon come up
that night, and how it seemed to look down on her, and talk to her,
like a living thing. And I've loved the moon ever since, and the sun,
and everything that's outdoors--and if there's a God I don't believe He
ever intended man to make a law that wasn't right according to the
plans He laid out. That's where I've got in wrong, _Pied-Bot_, I haven't
always believed in man-made law, and I've settled a lot of things in my
own way. And I guess I've loved trees and flowers and sunshine and wind
and storm too much. I've just wandered. And I've done things along the
way. The thrill of it got into me, _Pied-Bot_, and--the law wants me!"

Peter heard the subdued humor of the man, a low laugh that held neither
fear nor regret.

"It was the Treaty Money first," he went on, leaning very seriously
toward Peter, as if he expected an argument. "You see, Yellow Bird was
in that particular tribe, _Pied-Bot_. I remember her as she looked