his freedom.

As he headed his canoe north and east, Jolly Roger thought again of
the wager made weeks ago down at Cragg's Ridge, when he had turned the
tables on Cassidy and when Cassidy had made a solemn oath to resign from
the service if he failed to get his man in their next encounter. He knew
Cassidy would keep his word, and something told him that tonight the
last act in this tragedy of two had begun. He chuckled again as he
pictured the probable course of events on shore. Cassidy, backed by the
law, was demanding another canoe and a necessary outfit of Slim Buck.
Slim Buck, falling back on his tribal dignity, was killing all possible
time in making the preparations. When pursuit was resumed Jolly Roger
would have at least a mile the start of the red-headed nemesis who hung
to his trail. And Wollaston Lake, sixty miles from end to end, and half
as wide, offered plenty of room in which to find safety.

The rising of the wind, which came from the south and west, was pleasing
to Jolly Roger, and he put less caution and more force into the sweep
of his paddle. For two hours he kept steadily eastward, and then swung a
little north, guiding himself by the stars. With the breaking of dawn he
made out the thickly wooded shore on the opposite side of the lake from
Slim Buck's camp, and before the sun was half an hour high he had drawn
up his canoe at the tip of a headland which gave him a splendid view of
the lake in all directions.

From this point, comfortably encamped in the cool shadows of a thick
clump of spruce, Jolly Roger and Peter watched all that day for a sign
of their enemy. As far as the eye could reach no movement of human life
appeared on the quiet surface of Wollaston. Not until that hazy hour
between sunset and dusk did he build a fire and cook a meal from the
supplies in Cassidy's pack, for he knew smoke could be discerned much
farther than a canoe. Yet even as he observed this caution he was
confident there was no longer any danger in returning to Yellow Bird and
her people.

"You see, Pied-Bot," he said, discussing the matter with Peter, while he
smoked a pipeful of tobacco in the early evening, "Cassidy thinks we're
on our way north, as fast as we can go. He'll hit for the upper end
of the Lake and the Black River waterway, and keep right on into the
Porcupine country. It's a big country up there, and we've always taken
plenty of space for our travels. Shall we go back to Yellow Bird, Peter?
And Su