its
beating.

Reaching away from him, miles upon miles of it, east, west and
south--was a dead and char-stricken world.

Up to the foot of the ridge itself had come the devastation of flame,
and where it had swept, months ago, there was now no sign of the
glorious spring that lay behind him.

He looked for Indian Tom's swamp, and where it had been there was no
longer a swamp but a stricken chaos of ten thousand black stubs, the
shriven corpses of the spruce and cedar and jackpines out of which the
wolves had howled at night.

He looked for the timber on Sucker Creek where the little old
Missioner's cabin lay, and where he had dreamed that Nada would be
waiting for him. And he saw no timber there but only the littleness and
emptiness of a blackened world.

And then he looked to Cragg's Ridge, and along the bald crest of it,
naked as death, he saw blackened stubs pointing skyward, painting
desolation against the blue of the heaven beyond.

A cry came from him, a cry of fear and of horror, for he was looking
upon the fulfilment of Yellow Bird's prediction. He seemed to hear,
whispering softly in his ears, the low, sweet voice of the sorceress,
as on the night when she had told him that if he returned to Cragg's
Ridge he would find a world that had turned black with ruin and that it
would not be there he would ever find Nada.

After that one sobbing cry he tore like a madman dawn into the valley,
traveling swiftly through the muck of fire and under-foot tangle with
Peter fighting behind him. Half an hour later he stood where the
Missioner's cabin had been and he found only a ruin of ash and logs
burned down to the earth. Where the trail had run there was no longer a
trail. A blight, grim and sickening, lay upon the earth that had been
paradise.

Peter heard the choking sound in his master's throat and chest. He,
too, sensed the black shadow of tragedy and cautiously he sniffed the
air, knowing that at last they were home--and yet it was not home.
Instinctively he had faced Cragg's Ridge and Jolly Roger, seeing the
dog's stiffened body pointing toward the break beyond which lay Nada's
old home, felt a thrill of hope leap up within him. Possibly the
farther plain had escaped the scourge of fire. If so, Nada would be
there, and the Missioner--

He started for the break, a mile away. As he came nearer to it his hope
grew less for he could see where the flames had swept in an inundating
sea along Cragg's Ridge. The