s caution. For a
few seconds he resisted, then thrust himself out toward it an inch at a
time, made a sudden grab, and swallowed it at one gulp.

Breault laughed outright, and with the first of the sun striking into
his face he did not look like an enemy to Peter.

A second slice of bacon followed the first, and then a third--until
Breault was frying another mess over the fire.

"That's partial payment for what you did up on the Barren," he was
saying inside himself. "If it hadn't been for you--"

He didn't even imagine the rest. Nor after that did he pay the slightest
attention to Peter. For Breault knew dogs possibly even better than he
knew men, and not by the smallest sign did he give Peter to understand
that he was interested in him at all. He washed his dishes, whistling
and humming, reloaded his pack on the raft, and once more began poling
his way downstream.

Peter, still in the edge of the scrub, was not only puzzled, but felt a
further sense of abandonment. After all, this man was not his enemy, and
he was leaving him as his master and mistress had left him. He whined.
And Breault was not out of sight when he trotted down to the sandbar,
and quickly found the scent of Nada and McKay. Purposely Breault had
left a lump of desiccated potato as big as his fist, and this Peter ate
as ravenously as he had eaten the bacon. Then, just as Breault knew he
would do, he began following the raft.

Breault did not hurry, and he did not rest. There was something almost
mechanically certain in his slow but steady progress, though he knew
it was possible for the canoe to outdistance him three to one. He was
missing nothing along the shore. Three times during the forenoon he saw
where the canoe had landed, and he chuckled each time, thinking of the
old story of the tortoise and the hare. He stopped for not more than two
or three minutes at each of these places, and was then on his way again.

Peter was fascinated by the unexcited persistency of the man's movement.
He followed it, watched it, and became more and more interested in the
unvarying monotony of it. There were the same up-and-down strokes of
the long pole, the slight swaying of the upstanding body, the same eddy
behind the cedar logs--and occasionally wisps of smoke floating behind
when the pursuer smoked his pipe. Not once did Peter see Breault turn
his head to look behind him. Yet Breault was seeing everything. Five
times that morning he saw Peter, but not on