As he headed his canoe north and east, Jolly Roger thought again of the wager made weeks ago down at Cragg’s Ridge, when he had turned the tables on Cassidy and when Cassidy had made a solemn oath to resign from the service if he failed to get his man in their next encounter.  He knew Cassidy would keep his word, and something told him that tonight the last act in this tragedy of two had begun.  He chuckled again as he pictured the probable course of events on shore.  Cassidy, backed by the law, was demanding another canoe and a necessary outfit of Slim Buck.  Slim Buck, falling back on his tribal dignity, was killing all possible time in making the preparations.  When pursuit was resumed Jolly Roger would have at least a mile the start of the red-headed nemesis who hung to his trail.  And Wollaston Lake, sixty miles from end to end, and half as wide, offered plenty of room in which to find safety.

The rising of the wind, which came from the south and west, was pleasing to Jolly Roger, and he put less caution and more force into the sweep of his paddle.  For two hours he kept steadily eastward, and then swung a little north, guiding himself by the stars.  With the breaking of dawn he made out the thickly wooded shore on the opposite side of the lake from Slim Buck’s camp, and before the sun was half an hour high he had drawn up his canoe at the tip of a headland which gave him a splendid view of the lake in all directions.

From this point, comfortably encamped in the cool shadows of a thick clump of spruce, Jolly Roger and Peter watched all that day for a sign of their enemy.  As far as the eye could reach no movement of human life appeared on the quiet surface of Wollaston.  Not until that hazy hour between sunset and dusk did he build a fire and cook a meal from the supplies in Cassidy’s pack, for he knew smoke could be discerned much farther than a canoe.  Yet even as he observed this caution he was confident there was no longer any danger in returning to Yellow Bird and her people.

“You see, Pied-Bot,” he said, discussing the matter with Peter, while he smoked a pipeful of tobacco in the early evening, “Cassidy thinks we’re on our way north, as fast as we can go.  He’ll hit for the upper end of the Lake and the Black River waterway, and keep right on into the Porcupine country.  It’s a big country up there, and we’ve always taken plenty of space for our travels.  Shall we go back to Yellow Bird, Peter?  And Sun Cloud?”

Peter tried to answer, and thumped his tail, but even as he asked the questions there was a doubt growing in Jolly Roger’s mind.  He wanted to go back, and as darkness gathered about him he was urged by a great loneliness.  Only Yellow Bird grieved with him in his loss of Nada, and understood how empty life had become for him.  She had, in a way, become a part of Nada; her presence raised him out of despair, her voice gave him hope, her unconquerable spirit —­fighting for his happiness—­inspired him until he saw light where there had been only darkness.  The impelling desire to return to her brought him to his feet and down to the pebbly shore of the lake, where the water rippled softly in the thickening gloom.  But a still more powerful force held him back, and he went to his blankets, spread over a thick couch of balsam boughs.  For hours his eyes were wide open and sleepless.