In that moment Mona felt for the first time in her life the giving way of living tissue under the sudden overwhelming stress of complete shock. Strength left her body, her arms dropped limply, and she felt herself swaying, as if about to fall. Had there been anything near her she would have caught at it. She did not know that to Aleck Curry she was betraying no physical sign of her weakness—that she was standing like a lifeless creature carved out of rock, except that her wide eyes were blazing and her lips parted. What seemed an age to her covered but a few seconds. Then her mind leaped back, fierce in its command of her. She was wrong! Simon had not been to the island! He had not harmed Aleck Curry—and Aleck had returned in Peter's boat. What had happened to Peter?
She did not ask the question. It blazed out of her eyes as Aleck advanced until he was almost within arm's reach of her. He had on only shirt and trousers, and he was barefooted. She could see his naked throat. And surprise, joy, the knowledge of his mastery lay in his heavy face. It was transformed. He smiled at her, and his great arms reached[251] out as if he were Peter and she would come into them.
"I made a bargain with Peter," he said, "and he changed places with me. I made him see how much it meant for him, and for his father, and for you. I'd let his father go and forget everything—for something I want. So he changed places with me, and I've come to see you. Lucky you're here. Lucky you called."
It was a clumsy lie, and stumbled on his lips. The menace of him filled her with horror. But she did not let him see it—now. He came a step nearer, and she backed away from him. Suddenly her mind whipped inspirational words from her lips. She looked up swiftly to the top of the cliff. "I don't want Carter to see you here," she cried quickly. "He walked down the point with me, and I think he's up there."
The significance of her words was not lost upon Aleck. He moved nearer to the cliff, so that one above could not see them. She followed him, fighting back her fear.
"Why don't you want Carter to see us?" he asked in a throaty whisper.
"Because—if he saw us—everything would be lost. You would not dare help me then. And you will, Aleck—you will help me, won't you?" He was stunned by the change in her. She had laid a hand on his arm. Her eyes were shining at him. "But you must tell me the truth. There isn't any need to lie. What did you do to Peter—when he came to the[252] island?" Her fingers pressed his flesh. There was almost a smile on her lips.
"The smoke was thick," said Aleck. "I heard him coming and hid in the water. Then I stunned him with a club. He ain't bad—not badly hurt—but he's safe enough on the island!"
Mona crushed back the little cry of relief that wanted to come to her lips. Her eyes glowed at Aleck, and suddenly one of his big hands closed about the one she had laid on his arm. She could feel his breath as he bent over her. "I told you my time would come," he cried in a husky, exultant voice. "My day! And it's here. I got 'em both—safe—one to hang, the other——"
"Sh-h-h!"
She placed a finger to her lips. It was an excuse to draw away from him, get her hand free—and not let him hear the terrified beating of her heart. She looked up again at the cliff.
"Did you hear anything?"
"No. And if anyone hears us it's going to be your fault and not mine!"
It was impossible to escape the look in his face and eyes. It was not necessary for him to use words. But Mona did not flinch from her peril. It was not only her danger, but Peter's, and Donald McRae's, and Simon's if he had harmed Carter. It had suddenly and unexpectedly become her fight—all hers, and she knew that Aleck Curry thought she was yielding,[253] and that the brute in him was held in leash only by this belief that was beginning to possess him. If he guessed the truth, guessed that she was fighting to trick him, nothing would save her, not even her assertion that Carter was on the cliff above them. So she smiled again at Aleck, and laughed very softly, with a nervous twisting of her hands. Her eyes had never looked at him as they were looking at him now. They were like glowing stars, velvety-soft—hiding hate and desperation behind them. She had never looked half so beautiful, or so unresisting, to Aleck Curry.
Her fingers pressed his arm again.
"I must get Carter away," she whispered. "I've got to do it, Aleck! He mustn't know. I'll hurry. And then I'll come back. I promise!"
Horror seized her as she felt him drawing her toward him. But still she did not resist. With a low cry his great arms were about her. She felt herself almost broken against him, and then she was helpless, her head bent back, and his thick lips killing her with kisses. Again her strength left her, and she lay limp in his arms, smothered in his passion. Those moments of helpless and agonized passiveness saved her. To Aleck it was surrender. His arms loosened and allowed her to breathe. Weakly she pressed against him, and he allowed her partly to free herself. But she could still feel his hot breath like a poisonous fume in her face. He bent forward and kissed her again—on the mouth. It almost choked her.
[254]
"I must—must get Carter away!" she gasped. "Then I'll come back. If you won't let me do that, I'll—I'll scream—and Carter will hear us. But if you'll let me get him away, so he'll never know—never be able to tell Peter——"
It was unnecessary for her to finish. Aleck's face was transformed by an iniquitous joy. He looked close into her face, and she looked back at him, unafraid.
"I'll let you go—and get Carter away," he said. "If you don't come back soon, I'll go to Five Fingers—and you know what that means for Peter and his father."
"I'll come," she lied.
She climbed up the narrow footpath to the top of the cliff, and getting her breath there, she called Carter's name—loudly enough for Aleck to hear.
Then she began to run. She was still weak, and it seemed to her that the poison of Aleck Curry's embraces and kisses followed her. She began to sob under her breath. There was no turning of the ways for her now. She must tell someone the truth—anyone—the first man she met. But Simon first of all. On the little island Peter might be dying. Maybe Aleck had killed him, for it was in his power to do so and still be within the law. She began to moan his name. Then she came to the crest of a high knoll which was bare of trees, and what she saw ahead of her stopped her, gulping for breath and almost falling in her exhaustion.
[255]
A wind was in her face. And northward there was no longer a black pall of smoke but a world afire. The glow of the conflagration reached from the earth to the sky. It swept in a great arc, and red seas of flame were leaping from peak to peak of the farther ridges. Pierre Gourdon's fear had become a reality. The fire was racing with the speed of the wind itself upon Five Fingers!
She ran on. Her hair caught in the brush, and she clutched it in front of her. She came at last to the edge of the clearing and staggered across it. There were lights in the cabins, in her own home, in Adette Clamart's, in Dominique Beauvais's and half a dozen others. But Simon's was dark. Yet she swayed toward that, hopeful to the last—and almost at the door she came upon Simon. He was rigid and still, like a shadow. She could see his gray, hard face. Then he heard her panting, heard her trying to gasp out her terrible news, and his arms reached out and gathered her to him—and she told him what had happened to Peter.
Ten minutes later Simon was leaving in a sailboat.
"It's so dark Curry won't see me when I pass through the mouth of the inlet," he said. "And I'll reach Peter in half an hour."
Mona went back to McQuarrie's cabin, climbed to Peter's room and lighted a lamp. In a cedar box she found Peter's thirty-eight-caliber automatic and loaded it with skilful fingers. Then she extinguished[256] the light, descended the ladder and left the cabin in the direction of her tryst with Aleck Curry. There was only one thing for her to do, and her mind was quite fixed. It was her right to be at the end of the point waiting for Simon and Peter. And if Aleck threatened her—or put his hands on her again—she would kill him. That was the one way out. It would save Peter, and Peter's father, and herself.
It was not a monstrous thing but a just and righteous act—this wiping out of existence of a creature who threatened to destroy everything that made her world a fit place to live in.
She had nearly passed the Clamart cabin when a white figure ran out of the gloom, and she had only time to hide the pistol in her dress when Adette Clamart was holding her excitedly by the arm. Adette's lovely face was white, and she was half out of breath from running.
"It is terrible!" she cried. "Jame says the fire will be at your beaver pond within an hour, and he has just started in that direction with Jeremie Poulin and Carter—to keep it from coming over the last ridge——"
"Carter!" gasped Mona.
"Yes. Jame told him about the cabin Peter built, and Carter said it was a shame not to save it, and the beavers. Jame says it is impossible—that a hundred men couldn't keep the fire back—but Carter insisted, and they've gone!"
[257]
Mona tried to force words from her lips, and thanked God that Adette hurried on, crying back to her that she was making an effort to overtake Jame before he got out of the clearing, to give him a lunch which he had forgotten. Carter had returned—and was on his way to the cabin in which Peter's father was hidden! And that cabin, Jame said, would be in the heart of the fire within an hour! With Peter dead or wounded on the island, and Simon gone, what hope was there now for Donald McRae? If the fire did not reach his cabin first, Carter would get him, and if the fire beat out Carter——
Mona's dry lips gave a little cry. Through the pitch-filled evergreen forest about the beaver pond the fire would sweep in a destroying inundation which no living creature could outrace if the wind was behind it; and Donald McRae, sick and helpless, would be the first human victim in its descent upon Five Fingers.
The peril which was threatening Peter's father from two directions worked a swift and thrilling change in Mona. She must beat out Carter—and she must beat out the fire! Thought of Aleck Curry became secondary to this more immediate necessity. She could settle with Aleck later. But she must reach the cabin now. There was not a minute or a second to lose if she was to get there ahead of Jame and Carter. She began to run again, following a path through the meadow into the strip of forest between the settlement and the shore of the lake. Her feet[258] and Peter's had worn this trail smooth, and she knew that in the thickening gloom of smoke and night she was traveling faster than Carter and Jame Clamart, who were going by the rougher tote-road. In ten minutes she reached the cliff which ran westward along the lake.
Here she was high, and there were no trees to shut out her view of the ridge country. What she saw appalled her. Nowhere in the north was there any longer a wall of blackness. The world was red, with lurid flashings that came and went like mighty explosions. Westward, beyond the beaver pond, she could see the leaping of the flames in the thick spruce and cedar timberlands where ten thousand barrels of pitch and resinous oils were turning sleeping forests into boiling caldrons of fire. The smell of this oil and pitch was heavy in her nostrils, and she could hear the moaning, distant roar of the conflagration as one hears the roar of great furnaces when the fuel doors are opened. But it was the wind that brought quicker fear to her heart. It was beginning to blow strongly from the north and west, and carried with it a heat that was stifling. And with this heat and wind came also a thickening cloud of ash particles, until at last, afraid of their increasing sting, she stopped to take off her skirt and fasten it about her hair and face.
Halfway to the pond, with still another mile to go, she saw the flames leaping over the last ridge, and her heart seemed suddenly to give way in a sobbing cry[259] of agony and despair. She was too late. Between that ridge and Peter's father was less than a mile of spruce and cedar and balsam forest, with pitch-sodden jackpines interspersed so thickly that no power less than God could hold back the speed of the holocaust. With the wind that was behind them the flames would be at the cabin before she could cover a quarter of the distance to Peter's father.
For a few moments she sank down helpless and without strength, sobbing for breath as she stared at the merciless red death which had beaten her—and Carter. And in these moments her agony was greater than when Aleck had told her about Peter, for now she was picturing a man, creeping out on his hands and knees to face that sea of flame—a man, sick and helpless, crying out for Peter, for her, and dying by inches with their names on his lips.
She staggered to her feet and went on, and in her dazed mind lived a prayer that Donald McRae might be given strength to drag himself to the shore of the lake. If that strength had not already come to him, it was now too late, for as she toiled over a high and craggy point in the cliff the wind blew hot in her face, and where the beaver pond should be was a red hell of flames.
The trail descended as she forced herself on—descended from the ramparted ledge to the smooth, sandy level of the beach, and suddenly she was conscious of the crashing of bodies in the thickets and the[260] frenzied sound of living things. A great moose swept so near her that she sprang from his path—a monstrous beast with flaming eyes and snorting nostrils, closely followed by a darker, rounder object that she knew was a bear, racing for the safety of the water. She came to the sandy open where the trail swung straight ridgeward toward the beaver pond, and stopped, knowing she could go no farther unless she defied the death from which all other living creatures were flying.
Piteously Mona cried out—to Peter, to Simon, to Donald McRae, and then to God; and at last she fell down with her face buried in her skirt, ready to welcome death itself in this hour when not only her world but all that she loved in it were doomed to destruction.
It was a sound close to her that uncovered her face, a sound that came strangely above the moaning roar of heat-wind and flame, and staring through the gloom and against the red glare of the burning forests, she saw a grotesque shadow—something that was not moose nor deer nor any four-footed thing she had ever seen in the wilderness; and rising up before it she saw that it was a man bent under a huge, limp burden which he carried. She cried out, and a choking voice answered her—a strange, terrible, unhuman sort of voice, yet the sound of it nearly split her heart, and when the figure deposited its burden in the white sand and stood up she saw that it was Peter. She[261] stumbled toward him. His arms caught her, and she could hear him sobbing under the strain of his fight, and his heart was beating so hard that each throb of it sent a tremor through his body. In his weakness her own strength returned, and in a moment her hands had left his face and she was at the side of the man who lay upon the sand.
It was Donald McRae. Now a great light was flaming in the sky over their heads, and she saw that his face and hands were black, and his eyes were closed, though he was breathing. She tore the skirt from about her head and ran to soak it in water, but when she returned Peter was kneeling beside his father, and held back the dripping cloth.
"Not water," he said. "We must get—something else. He is burned."
She put her arms about Peter, and his face rested for a moment on her shoulder. In that moment he told her that Aleck had tricked him, and had left him on the island. With the aid of a piece of dry driftwood he had managed to swim ashore, but too late to reach the cabin ahead of the flames. He found his father halfway to the lake, fighting his way on hands and knees in the van of the fire. His face and hands were badly burned, but that was all. Another minute and he would have been too late. His voice choked, and Mona's hand stroked his face gently, and she kissed his hot forehead.
Then they carried Donald McRae under the shelter[262] of the cliff, where they were free from smoke and heat, with the water rippling in and out among the stones at their feet. And here Mona told Peter of Aleck's coming to the point, though she kept to herself what happened there, and that Simon McQuarrie had gone to the island in a sailboat and would surely come straight to this beach when he found Peter gone. And as they made Donald easier, and waited in the coolness of the cliff for the fire-storm to burn itself out, she told him also of Carter and that no time must be lost in getting away to a place of greater safety.
Peter knew what that meant as he bent over his father. In scarcely more than a whisper he told Mona. He, too, must go. It would not be for long—maybe a week, a month, or a little longer. It was not for himself. He was not afraid of either Aleck or the law, because he had done at the pool just what he would do again if it were before the eyes of the whole world. But his father needed him, and never would his heart beat the same, nor would she ever again look at him with a bit of the pride and love which made him so strong, if he failed to do what was right in this hour. Without him his father was lost. He hoped Simon would come with the boat, for in that boat they would escape into the wilderness farther west.
Mona made no answer to these things, for it was hard enough for her to breathe with the thickness that was in her throat. But her hand stroked Peter's, and her cheek lay against his, and above the grief in[263] her breast rose a great pride in this man who loved her. And a thought came to her of Sir Nigel, the chivalrous young knight who looked so much like this Peter of hers with his sensitive boyish face, and of how Mary so bravely sent him away to the great wars in which through long years he rose to undying fame; and she subdued her heart, as Sir Nigel's sweetheart must have conquered her own, and at last told Peter it was the thing to do—the one thing to do—and that God and she would love him for it. And even as she did this there was creeping over her an unutterable foreboding, and death seemed to pierce her heart when she heard Simon McQuarrie's boat grounding on the sand. But she smiled, and kissed Peter—and then Simon stood before them. And in another five minutes he was gone again—this time to the settlement for the supplies and medicines which would go with Peter and his father.
For an hour they were alone, and Donald McRae tried to keep back the moans of pain that came to his lips. But he could not open his eyes, and Mona fanned him gently with a piece of her wet skirt, and told him Simon was hurrying with ointments which would make him comfortable. Peter even laughed and spoke of the sudden on-sweep of the fire as if it were an exciting adventure, and it was good that Donald could not see their tense and grief-filled faces in the gloom.
The fire roared through the last of the evergreens and burned itself out against the bare stone knolls and[264] ledges of the lake shore. And then came again the sound of Simon's boat on the sand.
"Carter has returned to the settlement and was preparing to come this way in a boat when I slipped out through the inlet," Simon whispered to Mona.
With Peter she went to the boat, leaving Simon alone for a few moments with his old friend. And it was Simon who came at the end of a brief interval bearing the burden of Peter's father in his arms. Very tenderly he laid him on the blankets in the boat.
"God be with you, Donald," he whispered, a broken note in his voice. "God be with you—always."
The stricken man raised a burned hand to the other's face.
"They have always been with me, Simon," he whispered back. "God—and Helen. And now that you have made such a fine man of Peter I hope I may go to them—soon."
In the darkness Mona crept out of Peter's arms.
"Peter, you must wait no longer. You must go."
"In a little while I will come back, Ange."
"And I—by the sweet spirit of Ste. Anne—I promise to be waiting for you when you come, Peter—though I wait until new forests grow where yours and mine have burned. So go—good-by—lover—sweetheart——"
And then she had slipped away from him and he made no effort to follow her into the smoky gloom, though a sobbing cry came back to him faintly.
[265]
For a moment Simon stood aside with Peter. Their hands gripped in the darkness and a strain was in the old Scotchman's low voice as he said:
"I've put ointment on your father's face and hands and he is easier. I don't think he is badly burned. Everything is in the boat, lad—provisions, blankets, medicines, a pack and what money I had at hand." He hesitated and the grip of his fingers tightened as he added: "In the bow is your rifle with extra ammunition in the buckskin sack beside it. You'll need it. But don't fight the law unless they force you to it, boy. Remember that. The law finds no excuse, even though scoundrels like Aleck Curry and blood-sucking ferrets like Carter are sometimes a part of it. And let me tell you that I saw with my own eyes when your father killed a man years ago when you were a baby in your mother's arms. It was for your mother he did it and he was right; but in spite of that the law won't rest until it lands him. And it's your job now to beat the law, but without the use of a gun. I love you, lad—but I'd curse you for a coward if you didn't do what you're doing now. For years you and Mona have prayed that God would send your father back to you—and now he has come—and it's God's will behind it. All that is left in a body that was once stronger than my own is his worship for you and his memories of your mother. Take care of him, Peter. And—God bless you both!"
Never had the iron-natured old Scotchman said so much in all the years since Peter had come to live with[266] him as a son. And without a word Peter went to the boat, for his throat was thick and choking, and Simon shoved the craft out into the sea until he was waist-deep in the water. Simply he said good-by as if Peter were going only to the nets or the islands outside the mainland, and no tremor in his hard, calm voice betrayed the tears on his cheeks which darkness hid. And as Peter raised the sail McQuarrie waded ashore and was met by a pair of arms and a sobbing voice that cried out in its grief and despair against his shoulder.
Another sound came before they turned to the cliff trail that led along the unburned shore of the lake to Five Fingers. From the direction of the settlement a light skiff bore down swiftly upon the strip of sandy beach.
Carter, who sat in the stern, was old in the service of the provincial police, a ferret on the trail, a fox in his cleverness, cold-blooded, unexcitable and merciless—and when the bow of the skiff ran into the sand and Aleck Curry leaped ashore he remained quietly in his seat and waited. In a moment he heard voices—the cold, unemotional voice of the Scotchman first and then Aleck Curry's in fierce demand and Mona Guyon's in answer. He went ashore, his thin, hard face smiling in the darkness, and heard Simon tell Aleck that the law no longer had a work to do at Five Fingers, for Peter and his father had died somewhere out in the heart of the fire. He heard Mona's sob, close to Simon's shoulder. Then he opened his flashlight, but not upon them.[267] It illumined Aleck's face, thick-lipped and bestial in its disappointment and passion. What he saw was amusing to a man like Carter and a spark of chivalry made him leave the others in darkness. But he stepped back and cast his light upon the wet sand of the shore. And then he said quite casually, as if his discovery was a matter of small significance:
"You lie, McQuarrie! We have come only a quarter of an hour too late. Peter McRae and his father have gone in your boat, and as this breath of wind will scarcely fill a sail, I think Aleck's enthusiasm and a light skiff should make it possible for us to overtake them within an hour!"
He chuckled as he switched off his flashlight, and that chuckle was like the rattle of a snake to Mona, deadlier than all the hate and animal passion she had seen in Aleck Curry's face in the one swift moment when it had flashed out of the darkness into light. For Carter was more than a representative of the law. He was its incarnation, and more than Aleck Curry—more than any other man in the world—she feared him now as the skiff sped in the direction taken by Peter and his father.