That night, as they lay beside the Burntwood, Peter heard his master crying out Nada’s name in his sleep.

And the next dawn they went on—­still farther north.

In these days and weeks, with the hot inundation of the wilderness about him, McKay fought doggedly against the forces which were struggling to break down the first law of his creed.  The law might catch him, and probably would, and when it caught him the law might hang him—­and probably would.  But it would never know him.  There was something grimly and tragically humorous in this.  It would never know of the consuming purity of his worship for little children, and old people—­and women.  It would laugh at the religion he had built up for himself, and it would cackle tauntingly if he dared to say he was not wholly bad.  For it believed he was bad, and it believed he had killed Jed Hawkins, and he knew that seven hundred men were anxious to get him, dead or alive.

But was he bad?

He took the matter up one evening, with Peter.

“If I’m bad, mebby it isn’t all my fault, Pied-Bot,” he said.  “Mebby it’s this—­” and he swept his arms out to the gathering night.”  I was born in the open, on a night just like this is going to be.  My mother, before she died, told me many times how she watched the moon come up that night, and how it seemed to look down on her, and talk to her, like a living thing.  And I’ve loved the moon ever since, and the sun, and everything that’s outdoors—­ and if there’s a God I don’t believe He ever intended man to make a law that wasn’t right according to the plans He laid out.  That’s where I’ve got in wrong, Pied-Bot, I haven’t always believed in man-made law, and I’ve settled a lot of things in my own way.  And I guess I’ve loved trees and flowers and sunshine and wind and storm too much.  I’ve just wandered.  And I’ve done things along the way.  The thrill of it got into me, Pied-Bot, and—­the law wants me!”

Peter heard the subdued humor of the man, a low laugh that held neither fear nor regret.

“It was the Treaty Money first,” he went on, leaning very seriously toward Peter, as if he expected an argument.  “You see, Yellow Bird was in that particular tribe, Pied-Bot.  I remember her as she looked to me when a boy, with her two long, shining black braids and her face that was almost as beautiful to me as my mother’s.  My mother loved her, and she loved my mother, and I loved Yellow Bird, just as a child loves a fairy.  And always Yellow Bird has been my fairy, Peter.  I guess child worship is the one thing that lasts through life, always remaining ideal, and never forgotten.  Years after my mother’s death, when I was a young man, and had been down to Montreal and Ottawa and Quebec, I went back to Yellow Bird’s tribe.  And it was starving, Pied-Bot.  Starving to death!”

Reminiscent tenderness and humor were gone from McKay’s voice.  It was hard and flinty.