Page:MacLeod Raine - The Sheriff's Son.djvu/25

 They had been companions of his tenderest years. He loved them with a devotion from which no fairy tale could wean him.

Before he had quite surrendered to the lullaby, his father aroused him to share the bacon and the flapjacks he had cooked.

"Come and get it, big son," Beaudry called with an imitation of manly roughness.

The boy ate drowsily before the fire, nodding between bites.

Presently the father wrapped the lad up snugly in his blankets and prompted him while he said his prayers. No woman's hands could have been tenderer than the calloused ones of this frontiersman. The boy was his life. For the girl-bride of John Beaudry had died to give this son birth.

Beaudry sat by the dying fire and smoked. The hills had faded to black, shadowy outlines beneath a night of a million stars. During the day the mountains were companions, heaven was the home of warm friendly sunshine that poured down lance-straight upon the traveler. But now the black, jagged peaks were guards that shut him into a vast prison of loneliness. He was alone with God, an atom of no consequence. Many a time, when he had looked up