cry wild and sobbing and filled with gladness, that
told him the truth, and with the precious paper clutched in her hand
she smothered her face against McKay's breast, while Breault came up
grinning behind them, and Jolly Roger heard the click of his key in the
handcuffs.

"I am also loaded down with a number of foolish messages for you,"
he said, attending to the fire again. "For instance, that red-headed
good-for-nothing, Cassidy, says to tell you he is building a four-room
bungalow for you in their clearing, and that it will be finished by
the time you arrive. Also, a squaw named Yellow Bird, and a redskin who
calls himself Slim Buck, sent word that you will always be welcome in
their hunting grounds. And a pretty little thing named Sun Cloud sent as
many kisses as there are leaves on the trees--"

He paused, chuckling, and did not look up to see the wide, glorious eyes
of the girl upon him.

"But the funniest thing of all is the baby," he went on, preparing to
slice bacon. "They're going to have one pretty soon--Cassidy's wife, I
mean. They've given it a name already. If it's a boy it's Roger--if it's
a girl it's Nada. They wanted me to tell you that. Silly bunch, aren't
they? A couple of young fools--"

Just then something new happened in the weirdly adventurous life of
Frangois Breault. Without warning he was suddenly smothered in a pair of
arms, his head was jerked back, and against his hard and pitiless mouth
a pair of soft red lips pressed for a single thrilling instant. "Well,
I'll be damned," he gasped, dropping his bacon and staggering to his
feet like a man who had been shot. "I'll be--CUSSED!"

And he picked up his pack and walked off into the thick young spruce
at the edge of the timber, without saying another word or once looking
behind him. And breakfast waited, and Nada and Jolly Roger and
Peter waited, but Frangois Breault did not return. For a strange and
unaccountable man was he, a hard and pitiless man and a deadly hunter
who knew no fear. Yet the wilderness swallowed him, a coward at
last--running away from the two red lips that had kissed him.

So went Breault, for the first time in his life a messenger of mercy;
and at the top of the silver birch the little warbler knew that
something glad had happened, and offered up its gratitude in a sudden
burst of song.

THE END

End of Project Gutenberg's The Country Beyond, by James Oliver Curwood

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG E