Isobel (2 page)

MacVeigh left his dogs to rest up at the igloo village and swung
northwest on snow-shoes with the break of arctic dawn, which was but
little better than the night itself. He planned to continue in this
direction until he struck the Barren, then patrol in a wide circle
that would bring him back to the Eskimo camp the next night. From the
first he was handicapped by the storm. He lost Bye-Bye's snow-shoe
tracks a hundred yards from the igloos. All that day he searched in
sheltered places for signs of a camp or trail. In the afternoon the
wind died away, the sky cleared, and in the wake of the calm the cold
became so intense that trees cracked with reports like pistol shots.

He stopped to build a fire of scrub bush and eat his supper on the
edge of the Barren just as the cold stars began blazing over his head.
It was a white, still night. The southern timberline lay far behind
him, and to the north there was no timber for three hundred miles.
Between those lines there was no life, and so there was no sound. On
the west the Barren thrust itself down in a long finger ten miles in
width, and across that MacVeigh would have to strike to reach the
wooded country beyond. It was over there that he had the greatest hope
of discovering a trail. After he had finished his supper he loaded his
pipe, and sat hunched close up to his fire, staring out over the
Barren. For some reason he was filled with a strange and uncomfortable
emotion, and he wished that he had brought along one of his tired dogs
to keep him company.

He was accustomed to loneliness; he had laughed in the face of things
that had driven other men mad. But to-night there seemed to be
something about him that he had never known before, something that
wormed its way deep down into his soul and made his pulse beat faster.
He thought of Pelliter on his fever bed, of Scottie Deane, and then of
himself. After all, was there much to choose between the three of
them?

A picture rose slowly before him in the bush-fire, and in that picture
he saw Scottie, the man-hunted man, fighting a great fight to keep
himself from being hung by the neck until he was dead; and then he saw
Pelliter, dying of the sickness which comes of loneliness, and beyond
those two, like a pale cameo appearing for a moment out of gloom, he
saw the picture of a face. It was a girl's face, and it was gone in an
instant. He had hoped against hope that she would write to him again.
But she had failed him.

He rose to his feet with a little laugh, partly of joy and partly of
pain, as he thought of the true heart that was waiting for Pelliter.
He tied on his snow-shoes and struck out over the Barren. He moved
swiftly, looking sharply ahead of him. The night grew brighter, the
stars more brilliant. The zipp, zipp, zipp of the tails of his
snow-shoes was the only sound he heard except the first faint, hissing
monotone of the aurora in the northern skies, which came to him like
the shivering run of steel sledge runners on hard snow.

In place of sound the night about him began to fill with ghostly life.
His shadow beckoned and grimaced ahead of him, and the stunted bush
seemed to move. His eyes were alert and questing. Within himself he
reasoned that he would see nothing, and yet some unusual instinct
moved him to caution. At regular intervals he stopped to listen and to
sniff the air for an odor of smoke. More and more he became like a
beast of prey. He left the last bush behind him. Ahead of him the
starlit space was now unbroken by a single shadow. Weird whispers came
with a low wind that was gathering in the north.

Suddenly MacVeigh stopped and swung his rifle into the crook of his
arm. Something that was not the wind had come up out of the night. He
lifted his fur cap from his ears and listened. He heard it again,
faintly, the frosty singing of sledge runners. The sledge was
approaching from the open Barren, and he cleared for action. He took
off his heavy fur mittens and snapped them to his belt, replaced them
with his light service gloves, and examined his revolver to see that
the cylinder was not frozen. Then he stood silent and waited.

Out of the gloom a sledge approached slowly. It took form at last in a
dim shadow, and MacVeigh saw that it would pass very near to him. He
made out, one after another, a human figure, three dogs, and the
toboggan. There was something appalling in the quiet of this specter
of life looming up out of the night. He could no longer hear the
sledge, though it was within fifty paces of him. The figure in advance
walked slowly and with bowed head, and the dogs and the sledge
followed in a ghostly line. Human leader and animals were oblivious to
MacVeigh, silent and staring in the white night. They were opposite
him before he moved.

Then he strode out quickly, with a loud holloa. At the sound of his
voice there followed a low cry, the dogs stopped in their traces, and
the figure ran back to the sledge. MacVeigh drew his revolver. Half a
dozen long strides and he had reached the sledge. From the opposite
side a white face stared at him, and with one hand resting on the
heavily laden sledge, and his revolver at level with his waist,
MacVeigh stared back in speechless astonishment.

For the great, dark, frightened eyes that looked across at him, and
the white, staring face he recognized as the eyes and the face of a
woman. For a moment he was unable to move or speak, and the woman
raised her hands and pushed back her fur hood so that he saw her hair
shimmering in the starlight. She was a white woman. Suddenly he saw
something in her face that struck him with a chill, and he looked down
at the thing under his hand. It was a long, rough box. He drew back a
step.

"Good God!" he said. "Are you alone?"

She bowed her head, and he heard her voice in a half sob.

"Yes— alone."

He passed quickly around to her side. "I am Sergeant MacVeigh, of the
Royal Mounted," he said, gently. "Tell me, where are you going, and
how does it happen that you are out here in the Barren— alone."

Her hood had fallen upon her shoulder, and she lifted her face full to
MacVeigh. The stars shone in her eyes. They were wonderful eyes, and
now they were filled with pain. And it was a wonderful face to
MacVeigh, who had not seen a white woman's face for nearly a year. She
was young, so young that in the pale glow of the night she looked
almost like a girl, and in her eyes and mouth and the upturn of her
chin there was something so like that other face of which he had
dreamed that he reached out and took her two hesitating hands in his
own, and asked again:

"Where are you going, and why are you out here— alone?"

"I am going— down there," she said, turning her head toward the
timber-line. "I am going with him— my husband—"

Her voice choked her, and, drawing her hands suddenly from him, she
went to the sledge and stood facing him. For a moment there was a glow
of defiance in her eyes, as though she feared him and was ready to
fight for herself and her dead. The dogs slunk in at her feet, and
MacVeigh saw the gleam of their naked fangs in the starlight.

"He died three days ago," she finished, quietly, "and I am taking him
back to my people, down on the Little Seul."

"It is two hundred miles," said MacVeigh, looking at her as if she
were mad. "You will die."

"I have traveled two days," replied the woman. "I am going on."

"Two days— across the Barren!"

MacVeigh looked at the box, grim and terrible in the ghostly radiance
that fell upon it. Then he looked at the woman. She had bowed her head
upon her breast, and her shining hair fell loose and disheveled. He
saw the pathetic droop of her tired shoulders, and knew that she was
crying. In that moment a thrilling warmth flooded every fiber of his
body, and the glory of this that had come to him from out of the
Barren held him mute. To him woman was all that was glorious and good.
The pitiless loneliness of his life had placed them next to angels in
his code of things, and before him now he saw all that he had ever
dreamed of in the love and loyalty of womanhood and of wifehood.

The bowed little figure before him was facing death for the man she
had loved, and who was dead. In a way he knew that she was mad. And
yet her madness was the madness of a devotion that was beyond fear, of
a faithfulness that made no measure of storm and cold and starvation;
and he was filled with a desire to go up to her as she stood crumpled
and exhausted against the box, to take her close in his arms and tell
her that of such a love he had built for himself the visions which had
kept him alive in his loneliness. She looked pathetically like a
child.

"Come, little girl," he said. "We'll go on. I'll see you safely on
your way to the Little Seul. You mustn't go alone. You'd never reach
your people alive. My God, if I were he—"

He stopped at the frightened look in the white face she lifted to him.

"What?" she asked.

"Nothing— only it's hard for a man to die and lose a woman like you,"
said MacVeigh. "There— let me lift you up on the box."

"The dogs cannot pull the load," she objected. "I have helped them—"

"If they can't, I can," he laughed, softly; and with a quick movement
he picked her up and seated her on the sledge. He stripped off his
pack and placed it behind her, and then he gave her his rifle. The
woman looked straight at him with a tense, white face as she placed
the weapon across her lap.

"You can shoot me if I don't do my duty," said MacVeigh. He tried to
hide the happiness that came to him in this companionship of woman,
but it trembled in his voice. He stopped suddenly, listening.

"What was that?"

"I heard nothing," said the woman. Her face was deadly white. Her eyes
had grown black.

MacVeigh turned, with a word to the dogs. He picked up the end of the
babiche rope with which the woman had assisted them to drag their
load, and set off across the Barren. The presence of the dead had
always been oppressive to him, but to-night it was otherwise. His
fatigue of the day was gone, and in spite of the thing he was helping
to drag behind him he was filled with a strange elation. He was in the
presence of a woman. Now and then he turned his head to look at her.
He could feel her behind him, and the sound of her low voice when she
spoke to the dogs was like music to him. He wanted to burst forth in
the wild song with which he and Pelliter had kept up their courage in
the little cabin, but he throttled his desire and whistled instead. He
wondered how the woman and the dogs had dragged the sledge. It sank
deep in the soft drift-snow, and taxed his strength. Now and then he
paused to rest, and at last the woman jumped from the sledge and came
to his side.

"I am going to walk," she said. "The load is too heavy."

"The snow is soft," replied MacVeigh. "Come."

He held out his hand to her; and, with the same strange, white look in
her face, the woman gave him her own. She glanced back uneasily toward
the box, and MacVeigh understood. He pressed her fingers a little
tighter and drew her nearer to him. Hand in hand, they resumed their
way across the Barren. MacVeigh said nothing, but his blood was
running like fire through his body. The little hand he held trembled
and started uneasily. Once or twice it tried to draw itself away, and
he held it closer. After that it remained submissively in his own,
warm and thrilling. Looking down, he could see the profile of the
woman's face.

A long, shining tress of her hair had freed itself from under her
hood, and the light wind lifted it so that it fell across his arm.
Like a thief he raised it to his lips, while the woman looked straight
ahead to where the timber-line began to show in a thin, black streak.
His cheeks burned, half with shame, half with tumultuous joy. Then he
straightened his shoulders and shook the floating tress from his arm.

Three-quarters of an hour later they came to the first of the timber.
He still held her hand. He was still holding it, with the brilliant
starlight falling upon them, when his chin shot suddenly into the air
again, alert and fighting, and he cried, softly:

"What was that?"

"Nothing," said the woman. "I heard nothing— unless it was the wind
in the trees."

She drew away from him. The dogs whined and slunk close to the box.
Across the Barren came a low, wailing wind.

"The storm is coming back," said MacVeigh. "It must have been the wind
that I heard."

For a few moments after uttering those words Billy stood silent
listening for a sound that was not the low moaning of the wind far out
on the Barren. He was sure that he had heard it— something very near,
almost at his feet, and yet it was a sound which he could not place or
understand. He looked at the woman. She was gazing steadily at him.

"I hear it now," she said. "It is the wind. It has frightened me. It
makes such terrible sounds at times— out on the Barren. A little
while ago— I thought— I heard— a child crying—"

Billy saw her clutch a hand at her throat, and there were both terror
and grief in the eyes that never for an instant left his face. He
understood. She was almost ready to give way under the terrible strain
of the Barren. He smiled at her, and spoke in a voice that he might
have used to a little child.

"You are tired, little girl? "

"Yes— yes— I am tired—"

"And hungry and cold?"

"Yes."

"Then we will camp in the timber."

They went on until they came to a growth of spruce so dense that it
formed a shelter from both snow and wind, with a thick carpet of brown
needles under foot. They were shut out from the stars, and in the
darkness MacVeigh began to whistle cheerfully. He unstrapped his pack
and spread out one of his blankets close to the box and wrapped the
other about the woman's shoulders.