A Gentleman of Courage by James Oliver Curwood

For a few minutes after leaving the shore Peter did not trust himself to speak. He could see nothing but a gray chaos except landward, where the red sky and the darker blot of the cliff were visible through the smoke gloom. Even the weather-stained canvas of Simon's boat was indistinguishable, and where his father lay on a pile of blankets at his feet he could make out only a shadow. Now that the fire had burned itself out of the forests between the shore and the ridges the heated winds gave way quickly to a growing calm. The smoke hung like a dense fog and with this change came a strange stillness in which sound seemed to multiply itself until he heard clearly the wailing of a dog at Five Fingers.

Then the faint rattle of oarlocks came to him and his hand tightened on the tiller. It was Aleck Curry again -- Aleck and the man-hunter, Carter, hurrying to cut them off before they could leave the shore! And suddenly in fierce passion he wanted to shout back his defiance to them just as years ago -- three days before he came to Five Fingers -- he had felt the desire to kill the men who had driven his father into the forest. Something in these moments brought that day back to him -- a vivid memory of the big log behind which they were sheltered, and armed men in the thickets, the blue jay screeching at them, his thirst and hunger and his father's pale, strong face waiting with courage for darkness to come; then the dusk, their escape on a log in the flooded river and their first fugitive camp in the big woods. How wonderful his father had been in those hours of peril which he as a boy could scarcely understand! And now he was lying at his feet, a pitiable wreck because of that same merciless and unfair law which had pursued him then -- --