lifelessness told him how vast the
destruction of the fire had been. Its obliteration was so great no life
had adventured back into the desolated country, though the conflagration
must have passed in the preceding autumn, many months ago. The burned
country was a grave and the nearest edge of it, judged from the
sepulchral stillness of the night, was many miles away.

For the first time came the horror of the thought that in such a fire
as this people must have died. It had swept upon them like a tidal wave,
galloping the forests with the speed of a race horse, with only this
thin line of rail leading to the freedom of life outside. In places
only a miracle could have made escape possible. And here, where Nada had
lived, with the pitch-wood forests crowding close, the fire must have
burned most fiercely. In this moment, when fear of the unspeakable set
his heart trembling, his faith fastened itself grimly to the little old
gray Missioner, Father John, in whose cabin Nada had taken refuge many
months ago, when Jed Hawkins lay dead in the trail with his one-eyed
face turned up to the thunder and lightning in the sky. Father John, on
that stormy night when he fled north, had promised to care for Nada, and
in silence he breathed a prayer that the Missioner had saved her from
the red death that had swept like an avalanche upon them. He told
himself it must be so. He cried out the words aloud, and Peter heard
him, and followed closer, so that his head touched his master's leg as
he walked.

But the fear was there. From a spark it grew into a red-hot spot in
Jolly Roger's heart. Twice in his own life he had raced against death
in a forest fire. But never had he seen a fire like this must have been.
All at once he seemed to hear the roar of it in his ears, the rolling
thunder of the earth as it twisted in the cataclysm of flame, the
hissing shriek of the flaming pitch-tops as they leapt in lightning
fires against the smoke-smothered sky. A few hours ago he had stood
where Father John's Cabin had been and the place was a ruin of char and
ash. If the fire had hemmed them in and they had not escaped--

His voice cried out in sudden protest.

"It can't be, Peter. It can't be! They made the rail--or the lake--and
we'll find them in the settlements. It couldn't happen. God wouldn't let
her die like that!"

He stopped, and stared into the moon-broken gloom on his left. Something
was there, fifty feet away, that drew him down thr