The Country Beyond | Page 6

die!"
The man advanced half a step, his eye ablaze. Deep down in him Peter felt something he had never felt before. For the first time in his life he had no desire to run away from the man. Something rose up from his bony little chest, and grew in his throat, until it was a babyish snarl so low that no human ears could hear it. And in his hiding-place his needle-like fangs gleamed under snarling lips.
But the man did not strike, nor did he reach out to grip his fingers in the silken mass of Nada's hair. He laughed, as if something was choking him, and turned away with a toss of his arms.
"You ain't seein' me hit her any more, are you, Nady?" he said, and disappeared around the end of the cabin.
The girl laid a hand on the woman's arm. Her eyes softened, but she was trembling.
"I've told him what'll happen, an' he won't dare hit you any more," she comforted. "If he does, I'll end him. I will! I'll bring the police. I'll show 'em the places where he hides his whiskey. I'll--I'll put him in jail, if I die for it!"
The woman's bony hands clutched at one of Nada's.
"No, no, you mustn't do that," she pleaded. "He was good to me once, a long time ago, Nada. It ain't Jed that's bad--it's the whiskey. You mustn't tell on him, Nada--you mustn't!"
"I've promised you I won't--if he don't hit you any more. He kin shake me by the hair if he wants to. But if he hits you--"
She drew a deep breath, and also passed around the end of the cabin.
For a few moments Peter listened. Then he slipped back through the tunnel he had made under the wood-vine, and saw Nada walking swiftly toward the break in the ridge. He followed, so quietly that she was through the break, and was picking her way among the tumbled masses of rock along the farther foot of the ridge, before she discovered his presence. With a glad cry she caught him up in her arms and hugged him against her breast.
"Peter, Peter, where have you been?" she demanded. "I thought something had happened to you, and I've been huntin' for you, and so has Roger--I mean Mister Jolly Roger."
Peter was hugged tighter, and he hung limply until his mistress came to a thick little clump of dwarf balsams hidden among the rocks. It was their "secret place," and Peter had come to sense the fact that its mystery was not to be disclosed. Here Nada had made her little bower, and she sat down now upon a thick rug of balsam boughs, and held Peter out in front of her, squatted on his haunches. A new light had come into her eyes, and they were shining like stars. There was a flush in her cheeks, her red lips were parted, and Peter, looking up--and being just dog--could scarcely measure the beauty of her. But he knew that something had happened, and he tried hard to understand.
"Peter, he was here ag'in today--Mister Roger--Mister Jolly Roger," she cried softly, the pink in her cheeks growing brighter. "And he told me I was pretty!"
She drew a deep breath, and looked out over the rocks to the valley and the black forest beyond. And her fingers, under Peter's scrawny armpits, tightened until he grunted.
"And he asked me if he could touch my hair--mind you he asked me that, Peter!--And when I said 'yes' he just put his hand on it, as if he was afraid, and he said it was beautiful, and that I must take wonderful care of it!"
Peter saw a throbbing in her throat.
"Peter--he said he didn't want to do anything wrong to me, that he'd cut off his hand first. He said that! And then he said--if I didn't think it was wrong--he'd like to kiss me--"
She hugged Peter up close to her again.
"And--I told him I guessed it wasn't wrong, because I liked him, and nobody else had ever kissed me, and--Peter--he didn't kiss me! And when he went away he looked so queer--so white-like--and somethin' inside me has been singing ever since. I don't know what it is, Peter. But it's there!"
And then, after a moment.
"Peter," she whispered, "I wish Mister Jolly Roger would take us away!"
The thought drew a tightening to her lips, and the pucker of a frown between her eyes, and she sat Peter down beside her and looked over the valley to the black forest, in the heart of which was Jolly Roger's cabin.
"It's funny he don't want anybody to know he's there, ain't it--I mean--isn't it, Peter?" she mused. "He's livin' in the old shack Indian Tom died in last winter, and I've promised not to tell. He says it's a