And with that smile, deadly and uncompromising, Carter whispered to himself: "I guess maybe you needn't worry, Peter. I don't think Aleck Curry and the law are going to get you—not if I can help it."
With this settled, it was easier for Carter to give himself up to sleep.
For a long time Peter sat near the fire. The birch logs burned down into a mass of coals, and as deeper shadows closed in about the camp he felt himself alone except for the visions which came and went in the dying embers. With a clearness that brought almost physical pain the years passed before his eyes, and when they had gone they had taken with them his boyhood, the father he had worshiped, his dreams and happiness, leaving behind in the ash of the fire only memories shadowed with the gloom of tragedy. But calmly and with a courage inspired by his own grief he was ready to accept what lay ahead of him. The fight, as a physical thing, was over—and he was going home. On that point his mind was fixed and no sense of self-preservation could move it. What was to happen to him when he reached Five Fingers was a matter which Fate should decide.
Even in these moments of his decision he felt Mona's nearness and her protest. If in defense of his father he had become an outlaw, there was still a wide world in which he could hide, and Mona would come to him. So the persistent voice of caution whispered to him, and at times that voice was Mona's.
Haggard-faced, Peter went to bed, and in the morning it was Carter, cold and mechanically efficient, who pointed out the same way to him.
But even as he pressed his reasoning home, Peter observed there was a still deeper and more mysterious change in his companion. It lay more in Carter's eyes than in his voice or the unemotional lines of his face.
"You've learned how big the woods are," he said. "Go north, into the Yukon or Alaska. I will see that Mona comes to you—safely."
Peter shook his head.
"I've also learned what it means to run from thicket to thicket, guarding a hunted thing you love. That would be Mona's share—years of it, until the end. And the end would come sometime. I'd rather pay the debt—and have free years left to me afterward."