behind on the twice-a-week train, and how the crew picked berries in season, and had their trapping lines, and once chased a bear half way to Whitefish Lake while the train waited for hours.  She called it the “Cannon Ball,” because once upon a time it had made sixty-nine miles in twenty-four hours.  But there was nothing of humor about it as Jolly Roger and Peter came out upon it tonight.  It stretched out both ways from them, a thin, grim line of tragedy in the moonlight, and from where they stood it appeared to reach into a black and abysmal sea.

Once more man and dog paused, and looked back at what had been.  And the whine came in Peter’s throat again and something tugged inside him, urging him to bark up into the face of the moon, as he had often barked for Nada in the days of his puppyhood, and afterward.

But his master went on and Peter followed him, stepping the uneven ties one by one.  And with the black chaos of the world under and about them, and the glorious light of the moon filling; the sky over their heads, the journey they made seemed weirdly unreal.  For the silver and gold of the moon and the black muck of the fire refused to mingle, and while over their heads they could see the tiniest clouds and beyond to the farthest stars, all was black emptiness when they looked about them upon what once had been a living earth.  Only the two lines of steel caught the moon-glow and the charred ends of the fire-shriven stubs that rose up out of the earth shroud and silhouetted themselves against the sky.

To Peter it was not what he failed to see, but what he did not hear or smell that oppressed him and stirred him to wide-eyed watchfulness against impending evil.  Under many moons he had traveled with his master in their never-ending flight from the law, and many other nights with neither moon nor stars had they felt out their trails together.  But always, under him and over him on all sides of him, there had been life.  And tonight there was no life, nor smell of life.  There was no chirp of night bird, or flutter of owl’s wing, no plash of duck or cry of loon.  He listened in vain for the crinkling snap of twig, and the whisper of wind in treetops.  And there was no smell—­no musk of mink that had crossed his path, no taste in the air of the strong scented fox, no subtle breath of partridge and rabbit and fleshy porcupine.  And even from the far distances there came no sound, no howl of wolf, no castanet clatter of stout moose horns against bending saplings—­not even the howl of a trapper’s dog.

The stillness was of the earth, and yet unearthly.  It was even as if some fearsome thing was smothering the sound of his master’s feet.  To McKay, sensing these same things that Peter sensed, came understanding that brought with it an uneasiness which changed swiftly into the chill of a growing fear.  The utter lifelessness told him how vast the destruction of the fire had been.  Its obliteration was so great no life had adventured back into the desolated country, though the conflagration must have passed in the preceding autumn, many months ago.  The burned country was a grave and the nearest edge of it, judged from the sepulchral stillness of the night, was many miles away.