flash of a satisfied smile in the face of the Man in the
sky.

CHAPTER XVII

From the cabin McKay went first to the great rock that jutted from the
broken shoulder of Cragg's Ridge, and as they stood there Peter heard
the strange something that was like a laugh, and yet was not a laugh,
on his master's lips. But his scraggly face did not look up. There was
an answering whimper in his throat. He had been slow in sensing the
significance of the mysterious thing that had changed his old home
since months ago. During the hours of afternoon, and these moonlit
hours that followed, he tried to understand. He knew this was home. Yet
the green grass was gone, and a million trees had changed into
blackened stubs. The world was no longer shut in by deep forests. And
Cragg's Ridge was naked where he and Nada had romped in sunshine and
flowers, and out of it all rose the mucky death-smell of the
flame-swept earth. These things he understood, in his dog way. But what
he could not understand clearly was why Nada was not in the cabin, and
why they did not find her, even though the world was changed.

He sat back on his haunches, and Jolly Roger heard again the whimpering
grief in his throat. It comforted the man to know that Peter
remembered, and he was not alone in his desolation. Gently he placed a
soot-grimed hand on his comrade's head.

"Peter, it was from this rock--right where we're standing now--that I
first saw her, a long time ago," he said, a bit of forced cheer
breaking through the huskiness of his voice. "Remember the little
jackpine clump down there? You climbed up onto her lap, a little
know-nothing thing, and you pawed in her loose curls, and growled so
fiercely I could hear you. And when I made a noise, and she looked up,
I thought she was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen--just a kid,
with those eyes like the flowers, and her hair shining in the sun, an'
tear stains on her cheeks. Tear stains, _Pied-Bot_--because of that snake
who's dead over there. Remember how you growled at me, Peter?"

Peter wriggled an answer.

"That was the beginning," said Jolly Roger, "and this--looks like the
end. But--"

He clenched his fists, and there was a sudden fierceness in the
grotesque movement of his shadow on the rock.

"We're going to find her before that end comes," he added defiantly.
"We're going to find her, _Pied-Bot_, even if it takes us to the
settlements--right up into the face of the law."

He se