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.

"It was winter," he continued, "the dead