Nor could he speak in
words the message which he carried in his heart--that last crying
agony of the girl when she had sent him out on the trail of Roger
McKay, entreating him to bring back the man she loved and would
always love in spite of all the broken and unbroken laws in the
world.
That night, as they lay beside the Burntwood, Peter heard his
master crying out Nada's name in his sleep.
And the next dawn they went on--still farther north.
In these days and weeks, with the hot inundation of the wilderness
about him, McKay fought doggedly against the forces which were
struggling to break down the first law of his creed. The law might
catch him, and probably would, and when it caught him the law
might hang him--and probably would. 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.
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