The boy's face brightened. He had a consummate faith in this father of his. He waited, keenly expectant, twisting one of the blue violets between his thin fingers.
"Does the creek frighten you, son?" asked the man.
"It's pretty swift, but I'm not much scared of it."
"Of course not. You wouldn't be your dad's boy, if you were. See that log down there, the big dry one, half in the water?" He pointed, and Peter nodded. "When it begins to get dusk we'll crawl down and take a ride on that. It won't be hard to get away."
For the first time a tremor came in the boy's voice.
"Dad, what are they trying to shoot us for? What have we done?"
Donald McRae made a pretense of peering through his loophole again. He wanted to cry out with the sickness that was in his heart, and in the same voice call down the vengeance of God upon the makers of that grim and merciless law which at last had come to corner and destroy him where he had built his little cabin home in the edge of the wilderness. It was impossible—now—to answer that question of Peter's, "What have we done?"
He raised his head, and faced his boy.
"It's five o'clock. We'd better have a bite to eat. When we take to the water it will spoil our grub."