traveled slowly and cautiously,
and with each day Peter came to understand more clearly there was
some reason why they must be constantly on their guard. His master,
he noticed, was thrillingly attentive whenever a sound came to their
ears--perhaps the cracking of a twig, a mysterious movement of brush, or
the tread of a cloven hoof. And instinctively he came to know they were
evading Man. He remembered vividly their escape from Cassidy and their
quiet hiding for many days in the mass of sun-baked rocks which Jolly
Roger had called the Stew-Kettle. The same vigilance seemed to be a part
of his master's movements now. He did not laugh, or sing, or whistle, or
talk loudly. He built fires so small that at first Peter was absorbed
in an almost scientific analysis of them; and instead of shooting
game which could have been easily secured he set little snares in the
evening, and caught fish in the streams. At night they always slept
half a mile or more from the place where they had built their tiny
supper-fire. And during these hours of sleep Peter was ready to rouse
himself at the slightest sound of movement near them. Scarcely a night
passed that his low growl of warning did not bring Jolly Roger out of
his slumber, a hand on his gun, and his eyes and ears wide open.

Whether he would have used the gun had the red-coated police suddenly
appeared, McKay had not quite assured himself. Day after day the same
old fight went on within him. He analyzed his situation from every point
of view, and always--no matter how he went about it--eventually found
himself face to face with the same definite fact. If the law succeeded
in catching Him it would not trouble itself to punish him for stealing
back the Treaty Money, or for holding up Government mails, or for any of
his other misdemeanors. It would hang him for the murder of Jed Hawkins.
And the minions of the law would laugh at the truth, even if he told
it--which he never would. More than once his imaginative genius had
drawn up a picture of that impossible happening. For it was a truth so
inconceivable that he found the absurdity of it a grimly humorous thing.
Even Nada believed he had killed her scoundrelly foster-father. Yet it
was she--herself--who had killed him! And it was Nada whom the law would
hang, if the truth was known--and believed.

Frequently he went back over the scenes of that tragic night at Cragg's
Ridge when all the happiness in the world seemed to be offering