Peter, now that he had grown accustomed to the deadness of it, liked this change from Indian Tom’s cabin.  He liked his wallow of soft sand during the day, and he liked still more the aloneness and the aloofness of their ramparted stronghold when the cool of evening came.  He did not, of course, understand just what their escape from Cassidy had meant, but instinct was shrewdly at work within him, and no wolf could have guarded the place more carefully than he.  And he had all creation in mind when he guarded the rock-pile.

All but Nada.  Many times he whimpered for her, just as the great call for her was in Jolly Roger’s own heart.  And on this third afternoon, as the hot July sun dipped half way to the western forests, both Peter and his master were looking yearningly, and with the same thought, toward the east, where over the back-bone of Cragg’s Ridge Jed Hawkins’ cabin lay.

“We’ll let her know tonight,” Roger McKay said at last, with something very slow and deliberate in his voice.  “We’ll take the chance—­and let her know.”

Peter’s bristling Airedale whiskers, standing out like a bunch of broom splints about his face, quivered sympathetically, and he thumped his tail in the sand.  He was an artful hypocrite, was Peter, because he always looked as if he understood, whether he did or not.  And Jolly Roger, staring at the gray rock-backs outside their tunnel door, went on.

“We must play square with her, Pied-Bot, and it’s a crime worse than murder not to let her know the truth.  If she wasn’t a kid, Peter!  But she’s that—­just a kid—­the sweetest, purest thing God A’mighty ever made, and it isn’t fair to live this lie any longer, no matter how we love her.  And we do love her, Peter.”

Peter lay very quiet, watching the strange gray look that had settled in Jolly Roger’s face.

“I’ve got to tell her that I’m a damned highwayman,” he added, in a moment.  “And she won’t understand, Peter.  She can’t.  But I’m going to do it.  I’m going to tell her—­today.  And then—­I think we’ll be hittin’ north pretty soon, Pied-Bot.  If it wasn’t for Jed Hawkins—­” He rose up out of the sand, his hands clenched.

“We ought to kill Jed Hawkins before we go.  It would be safer for her,” he finished.

He went out, forgetting Peter, and climbed a rock-splintered path until he stood on the knob of a mighty boulder, looking off into the northern wilderness.  Off there, a hundred, five hundred, a thousand miles—­was home.  It was all his home, from Hudson’s Bay to the Rockies, from the Height of Land to the Arctic plains, and in it he had lived the thrill of life according to his own peculiar code.  He knew that he had loved life as few had ever loved it.  He had worshipped the sun and the moon and the stars.  The world had been a glorious place in which to live, in spite of its ceaseless peril for him.