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Updated: May 5, 2025
"That was the beginning," said Jolly Roger, "and this looks like the end. But " He clenched his fists, and there was a sudden fierceness in the grotesque movement of his shadow on the rock. "We're going to find her before that end comes," he added defiantly. "We're going to find her, Pied-Bot, even if it takes us to the settlements right up into the face of the law."
"Something happened there tonight something she wouldn't tell me about," he said, speaking half to Peter and half to himself. "I could FEEL it. I wish I could have seen her face." He set out over the plain; and then, as if remembering that he must explain the matter to Peter, he said: "She can't get out tonight, Pied-Bot, but she'll come to us in the jackpines tomorrow afternoon.
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.
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. "It was winter," he continued, "the dead of winter. And cold.
"Pied-Bot, you devil you little devil " His fingers closed in the cloth about Peter's neck, and his heart jumped when he saw what it was a piece of Nada's dress. Peter, realizing that at last the importance of his mission was understood, waited in eager watchfulness while his master untied the knot.
So cold that even the wolves and foxes had buried themselves in. No fish that autumn, no game in the deep snows, and the Indians were starving. Pied-Bot, my heart went dead when I saw Yellow Bird. There didn't seem to be anything left of her but her eyes and her hair those two great, shining braids, and eyes that were big and deep and dark, like beautiful pools.
He was not a beautiful pup, this Peter Pied-Bot or Peter Club-foot, as Jolly Roger McKay who lived over in the big cedar swamp had named him when he gave Peter to the girl. He was, in a way, an accident and a homely one at that.
I've done a lot of things since then, but I've done it all with my naked fists, and I've never put a bullet or a knife into a man except Roach the Free Trader. And the funniest thing of the whole business, Pied-Bot, is this I didn't kill Jed Hawkins. Some day mebby I'll tell you about what happened on the trail, the thing which you and Nada didn't see. But now "
If Cassidy sees her, and talks with her, something in those blue-flower eyes of hers might give us away if she knew we were hiding up among the rocks of the Stew-Kettle. But I'm hopin' God A'mighty won't let her see Cassidy. And I'm thinking He won't, Pied-Bot, because I've a pretty good hunch He wants us to settle with Jed Hawkins before we go."
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.
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