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 once did he make a sign or call to him.

He drove his raft ashore at twelve o’clock to prepare his dinner, and after he had built a fire, and his cooking things were scattered about, he straightened himself up and called in that same matter-of-fact way, as if expecting an immediate response,

“Here, Peter!—­Peter!—­Come in, Boy!”

And Peter came.  Fighting against the last instinct that held him back he first thrust his head out from the brush and looked at Breault.  Breault paid no attention to him for a few moments, but sliced his bacon.  When the perfume of the cooking meat reached Peter’s nose he edged himself a little nearer, and with a whimpering sigh flattened himself on his belly.