Books: Isobel

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Then he forked out a deep bed of burning coals and soon the odor of
coffee and frying bacon aroused his companion. She raised her head and
threw back the blanket with which he had covered her shoulders. It was
warm where she sat, and she took off her hood while he smiled at her
companionably from over the fire. Her reddish-brown hair tumbled about
her shoulders, rippling and glistening in the fire glow, and for a few
moments she sat with it falling loosely about her, with her eyes upon
MacVeigh. Then she gathered it between her fingers, and MacVeigh
watched her while she divided it into shining strands and pleated it
into a big braid.

"Supper is ready," he said. "Will you eat it there?"

She nodded, and for the first time she smiled at him. He brought bacon
and bread and coffee and other things from his pack and placed them on
a folded blanket between them. He sat opposite her, cross-legged. For
the first time he noticed that her eyes were blue and that there was a
flush in her cheeks. The flush deepened as he looked at her, and she
smiled at him again.

The smile, the momentary drooping of her eyes, set his heart leaping,
and for a little while he was unconscious of taste in the food he
swallowed. He told her of his post away up at Point Fullerton, and of
Pelliter, who was dying of loneliness.

"It's been a long time since I've seen a woman like you," he confided.
"And it seems like heaven. You don't know how lonely I am!" His voice
trembled. "I wish that Pelliter could see you-- just for a moment," he
added. "It would make him live again."

Something in the soft glow of her eyes urged other words to his lips.

"Mebbe you don't know what it means not to see a white woman in-- in--
all this time," he went on. "You won't think that I've gone mad, will
you, or that I'm saying or doing anything that's wrong? I'm trying to
hold myself back, but I feel like shouting, I'm that glad. If Pelliter
could see you--" He reached suddenly in his pocket and drew out the
precious packet of letters. "He's got a girl down south-- just like
you," he said. "These are from her. If I get 'em up in time they'll
bring him round. It's not medicine he wants. It's woman-- just a sight
of her, and sound of her, and a touch of her hand."

She reached across and took the letters. In the firelight he saw that
her hand was trembling.

"Are they-- married?" she asked, softly.

"No, but they're going to be," he cried, triumphantly. "She's the most
beautiful thing in the world, next to--"

He paused, and she finished for him.

"Next to one other girl-- who is yours."

"No, I wasn't going to say that. You won't think I mean wrong, will
you, if I tell you? I was going to say next to-- you. For you've come
out of the blizzard-- like an angel to give me new hope. I was sort of
broke when you came. If you disappeared now and I never saw you again
I'd go back and fight the rest of my time out, an' dream of pleasant
things. Gawd! Do you know a man has to be put up here before he knows
that life isn't the sun an' the moon an' the stars an' the air we
breathe. It's woman-- just woman."

He was returning the letters to his pocket. The woman's voice was
clear and gentle. To Billy it rose like sweetest music above the
crackling of the fire and the murmuring of the wind in the spruce
tops.

"Men like you-- ought to have a woman to care for," she said. "He was
like that."

"You mean--" His eyes sought the long, dark box.

"Yes-- he was like that."

"I know how you feel," he said; and for a moment he did not look at
her. "I've gone through-- a lot of it. Father an' mother and a sister.
Mother was the last, and I wasn't much more than a kid-- eighteen, I
guess-- but it don't seem much more than yesterday. When you come up
here and you don't see the sun for months nor a white face for a year
or more it brings up all those things pretty much as though they
happened only a little while ago.'"

"All of them are-- dead?" she asked.

"All but one. She wrote to me for a long time, and I thought she'd
keep her word. Pelly-- that's Pelliter-- thinks we've just had a
misunderstanding, and that she'll write again. I haven't told him that
she turned me down to marry another fellow. I didn't want to make him
think any unpleasant things about his own girl. You're apt to do that
when you're almost dying of loneliness."

The woman's eyes were shining. She leaned a little toward him.

"You should be glad," she said. "If she turned you down she wouldn't
have been worthy of you-- afterward. She wasn't a true woman. If she
had been, her love wouldn't have grown cold because you were away. It
mustn't spoil your faith-- because that is-- beautiful."

He had put a hand into his pocket again, and drew out now a thin
package wrapped in buckskin. His face was like a boy's.

"I might have-- if I hadn't met you," he said. "I'd like to let you
know-- some way-- what you've done for me. You and this."

He had unfolded the buckskin, and gave it to her. In it were the big
blue petals and dried, stem of a blue flower.

"A blue flower!" she said.

"Yes. You know what it means. The Indians call it i-o-waka, or
something like that, because they believe that it is the flower spirit
of the purest and most beautiful thing in the world. I have called it
woman."

He laughed, and there was a joyous sort of note in the laugh.

"You may think me a little mad," he said, "but do you care if I tell
you about that blue flower?"

The woman nodded. There was a little quiver at her throat which Billy
did not see.

"I was away up on the Great Bear," he said, "and for ten days and ten
nights I was in camp-- alone-- laid up with a sprained ankle. It was a
wild and gloomy place, shut in by barren ridge mountains, with stunted
black spruce all about, and those spruce were haunted by owls that
made my blood run cold nights. The second day I found company. It was
a blue flower. It grew close to my tent, as high as my knee, and
during the day I used to spread out my blanket close to it and lie
there and smoke. And the blue flower would wave on its slender stem,
an' bob at me, an' talk in sign language that I imagined I understood.
Sometimes it was so funny and vivacious that I laughed, and then it
seemed to be inviting me to a dance. And at other times it was just
beautiful and still, and seemed listening to what the forest was
saying-- and once or twice, I thought, it might be praying. Loneliness
makes a fellow foolish, you know. With the going of the sun my blue
flower would always fold its petals and go to sleep, like a little
child tired out by the day's play, and after that I would feel
terribly lonely. But it was always awake again when I rolled out in
the morning. At last the time came when I was well enough to leave. On
the ninth night I watched my blue flower go to sleep for the last
time. Then I packed. The sun was up when I went away the next morning,
and from a little distance I turned and looked back. I suppose I was
foolish, and weak for a man, but I felt like crying. Blue flower had
taught me many things I had not known before. It had made me think.
And when I looked back it was in a pool of sunlight, and it was waving
at me! It seemed to me that it was calling-- calling me back-- and I
ran to it and picked it from the stem, and it has been with me ever
since that hour. It has been my Bible an' my comrade, an' I've known
it was the spirit of the purest and the most beautiful thing in the
world-- woman. I--" His voice broke a little. "I-- I may be foolish,
but I'd like to have you take it, an' keep it-- always-- for me."

He could see now the quiver of her lips as she looked across at him.

"Yes, I will take it," she said. "I will take it and keep it--
always."

"I've been keeping it for a woman-- somewhere," he said. "Foolish
idea, wasn't it? And I've been telling you all this, when I want to
hear what happened back there, and what you are going to do when you
reach your people. Do you mind-- telling me?"

"He died-- that's all," she replied, fighting to speak calmly. "I
promised to take him back-- to my people, And when I get there-- I
don't know-- what I shall-- do--"

She caught her breath. A low sob broke from her lips.

"You don't know-- what you will do--"

Billy's voice sounded strange even to himself. He rose to his feet and
looked down into her upturned face, his hands clenched, his body
trembling with the fight he was making. Words came to his lips and
were forced back again-- words which almost won in their struggle to
tell her again that she had come to him from out of the Barren like an
angel, that within the short space since their meeting he had lived a
lifetime, and that he loved her as no man had ever loved a woman
before. Her blue eyes looked at him questioningly as he stood above
her.

And then he saw the thing which for a moment he had forgotten-- the
long, rough box at the woman's back. His fingers dug deeper into his
palms, and with a gasping breath he turned away. A hundred paces back
in the spruce he had found a bare rock with a red bakneesh vine
growing over it. With his knife he cut off an armful, and when he
returned with it into the light of the fire the bakneesh glowed like a
mass of crimson flowers. The woman had risen to her feet, and looked
at him speechlessly as he scattered the vine over the box. He turned
to her and said, softly:

"In honor of the dead!"

The color had faded from her face, but her eyes shone like stars.
Billy advanced toward her with his hands reaching out. But suddenly he
stopped and stood listening. After a moment he turned and asked again:

"What was that?"

"I heard the dogs-- and the wind," she replied.

"It's something cracking in my head, I guess," said MacVeigh. "It
sounded like--" He passed a hand over his forehead and looked at the
dogs huddled in deep sleep beside the sledge. The woman did not see
the shiver that passed through him. He laughed cheerfully, and seized
his ax.

"Now for the camp," he announced. "We're going to get the storm within
an hour."

On the box the woman carried a small tent, and he pitched it close to
the fire, filling the interior two feet deep with cedar and balsam
boughs. His own silk service tent he put back in the deeper shadows of
the spruce. When he had finished he looked questioningly at the woman
and then at the box.

"If there is room-- I would like it in there-- with me," she said, and
while she stood with her face to the fire he dragged the box into the
tent. Then he piled fresh fuel upon the fire and came to bid her good
night. Her face was pale and haggard now, but she smiled at him, and
to MacVeigh she was the most beautiful thing in the world. Within
himself he felt that he had known her for years and years, and he took
her hands and looked down into her blue eyes and said, almost in a
whisper:

"Will you forgive me if I'm doing wrong? You don't know how lonesome
I've been, and how lonesome I am, and what it means to me to look once
more into a woman's face. I don't want to hurt you, and I'd-- I'd"--
his voice broke a little--"I'd give him back life if I could, just
because I've seen you and know you and-- and love you."

She started and drew a quick, sharp breath that came almost in a low
cry.

"Forgive me, little girl," he went on. "I may be a little mad. I guess
I am. But I'd die for you, and I'm going to see you safely down to
your people-- and-- and-- I wonder-- I wonder-- if you'd kiss me good
night--"

Her eyes never left his face. They were dazzlingly blue in the
firelight. Slowly she drew her hands away from him, still looking
straight into his eyes, and then she placed them against each of his
arms and slowly lifted her face to him. Reverently he bent and kissed
her.

"God bless you!" he whispered.

For hours after that he sat beside the fire. The wind came up stronger
across the Barren; the storm broke fresh from the north, the spruce
and the balsam wailed over his head, and he could hear the moaning
sweep of the blizzard out in the open spaces. But the sounds came to
him now like a new kind of music, and his heart throbbed and his soul
was warm with joy as he looked at the little tent wherein there lay
sleeping the woman whom he loved.

He still felt the warmth of her lips, he saw again and again the blue
softness that had come for an instant into her eyes, and he thanked
God for the wonderful happiness that had come to him. For the
sweetness of the woman's lips and the greater sweetness of her blue
eyes told him what life held for him now. A day's journey to the south
was an Indian camp. He would take her there, and would hire runners to
carry up Pelliter's medicines and his letters. Then he would go on--
with the woman-- and he laughed softly and joyously at the glorious
news which he would take back to Pelliter a little later. For the kiss
burned on his lips, the blue eyes smiled at him still from out of the
firelit gloom, and he knew nothing but hope.

It was late, almost midnight, when he went to bed. With the storm
wailing and twisting more fiercely about him, he fell asleep. And it
was late when he awoke. The forest was filled with a moaning sound.
The fire was low. Beyond it the flap of the woman's tent was still
down, and he put on fresh fuel quietly, so that he would not awaken
her. He looked at his watch and found that he had been sleeping for
nearly seven hours. Then he returned to his tent to get the things for
breakfast. Half a dozen paces from the door flap he stopped in sudden
astonishment.

Hanging to his tent in the form of a great wreath was the red bakneesh
which he had cut the night before, and over it, scrawled in charcoal
on the silk, there stared at him the crudely written words:

"In honor of the living."

With a low cry he sprang back toward the other tent, and then, as
sudden as his movement, there flashed upon him the significance of the
bakneesh wreath. The woman was saying to him what she had not spoken
in words. She had come out in the night while he was asleep and had
hung the wreath where he would see it in the morning. The blood rushed
warm and joyous through his body, and with something which was not a
laugh, but which was an exultant breath from the soul itself, he
straightened himself, and his hand fell in its old trick to his
revolver holster. It was empty.

He dragged out his blankets, but the weapon was not between them. He
looked into the corner where he had placed his rifle. That, too, was
gone. His face grew tense and white as he walked slowly beyond the
fire to the woman's tent. With his ear at the flap he listened. There
was no sound within-- no sound of movement, of life, of a sleeper's
breath; and like one who feared to reveal a terrible picture he drew
back the flap. The balsam bed which he had made for the woman was
empty, and across it had been drawn the big rough box. He stepped
inside. The box was open-- and empty, except for a mass of worn and
hard-packed balsam boughs in the bottom. In another instant the truth
burst in all its force upon MacVeigh. The box had held life, and the
woman--

Something on the side of the box caught his eyes. It was a folded bit
of paper, pinned where he must see it. He tore it off and staggered
with it back into the light of day. A low, hard cry came from his lips
as he read what the woman had written to him:

"May God bless you for being good to me. In the storm me have
gone-- my husband and I. Word came to us that you were on our
trail, and we saw your fire out on the Barren. My husband made the
box for me to keep me from cold and storm. When we saw you we
changed places, and so you met me with my dead. He could have
killed you-- a dozen times, but you were good to me, and so you
live. Some day may God give you a good woman who will love you as I
love him. He killed a man, but killing is not always murder. We
have taken your weapons, and the storm will cover our trail. But
you would not follow. I know that. For you know what it means to
love a woman, and so you know what life means to a woman when she
loves a man. MRS. ISOBEL DEANE."

IV

THE MAN-HUNTERS

Like one dazed by a blow Billy read once more the words which Isobel
Deane had left for him. He made no sound after that first cry that had
broken from his lips, but stood looking into the crackling flames of
the fire until a sudden lash of the wind whipped the note from between
his fingers and sent it scurrying away in a white volley of fine snow.
The loss of the note awoke him to action. He started to pursue the bit
of paper, then stopped and laughed. It was a short, mirthless laugh,
the kind of a laugh with which a strong man covers pain. He returned
to the tent again and looked in. He flung back the tent flaps so that
the light could enter and he could see into the box. A few hours
before that box had hidden Scottie Deane, the murderer. And she was
his wife ! He turned back to the fire, and he saw again the red
bakneesh hanging over his tent flap, and the words she had scrawled
with the end of a charred stick, "In honor of the living." That meant
him. Something thick and uncomfortable rose in his throat, and a blur
that was not caused by snow or wind filled his eyes. She had made a
magnificent fight. And she had won. And it suddenly occurred to him
that what she had said in the note was true, and that Scottie Deane
could easily have killed him. The next moment he wondered why he had
not done that. Deane had taken a big chance in allowing him to live.
They had only a few hours' start of him, and their trail could not be
entirely obliterated by the storm. Deane would be hampered in his
flight by the presence of his wife. He could still follow and overtake
them. They had taken his weapons, but this would not be the first time
that he had gone after his man without weapons.

Swiftly the reaction worked in him. He ran beyond the fire, and
circled quickly until he came upon the trail of the outgoing sledge.
It was still quite distinct. Deeper in the forest it could be easily
followed. Something fluttered at his feet. It was Isobel Deane's note.
He picked it up, and again his eyes fell upon those last words that
she had written: But you would not follow. I know that. For you know
what it means to love a woman, and so you know what life means to a
woman when she loves a man. That was why Scottie Deane had not killed
him. It was because of the woman. And she had faith in him! This time
he folded the note and placed it in his pocket, where the blue flower
had been. Then he went slowly back to the fire.

"I told you I'd give him back his life-- if I could," he said. "And I
guess I'm going to keep my word." He fell into his old habit of
talking to himself-- a habit that comes easily to one in the big open
spaces-- and he laughed as he stood beside the fire and loaded his
pipe. "If it wasn't for her!" he added, thinking of Scottie Deane.
"Gawd-- if it wasn't for her!"

He finished loading his pipe, and lighted it, staring off into the
thicker spruce forest into which Scottie and his wife had fled. The
entire force was on the lookout for Scottie Deane. For more than a
year he had been as elusive as the little white ermine of the woods.
He had outwitted the best men in the service, and his name was known
to every man of the Royal Mounted from Calgary to Herschel Island.
There was a price on his head, and fame for the man who captured him.
Those who dreamed of promotions also dreamed of Scottie Deane; and as
Billy thought of these things something that was not the man-hunting
instinct rose in him and his blood warmed with a strange feeling of
brotherhood. Scottie Deane was more than an outlaw to him now, more
than a mere man. Hunted like a rat, chased from place to place, he
must be more than those things for a woman like Isobel Deane still to
cling to. He recalled the gentleness of her voice, the sweetness of
her face, the tenderness of her blue eyes, and for the first time the
thought came to him that such a woman could not love a man who was
wholly bad. And she did love him. A twinge of pain came with that
truth, and yet with it a thrill of pleasure. Her loyalty was a
triumph-- even for him. She had come to him like an angel out of the
storm, and she had gone from him like an angel. He was glad. A living,
breathing reality had taken the place of the dream vision in his
heart, a woman who was flesh and blood, and who was as true and as
beautiful as the blue flower he had carried against his breast. In
that moment he would have liked to grip Scottie Deane by the hand,
because he was her husband and because he was man enough to make her
love him. Perhaps it was Deane who had hung the wreath of bakneesh on
his tent and who had scribbled the words in charcoal. And Deane surely
knew of the note his wife had written. The feeling of brotherhood grew
stronger in Billy, and thought of their faith in him filled him with a
strange elation.

The fire was growing low, and he turned to add fresh fuel. His eyes
caught sight of the box in the tent, and he dragged it out. He was
about to throw it on the fire when he hesitated and examined it more
closely. How far had they come, he wondered? It must have been from
the other side of the Barren, for Deane had built the box to protect
Isobel from the fierce winds of the open. It was built of light, dry
wood, hewn with a belt ax, and the corners were fastened with babiche
cord made of caribou skin in place of nails. The balsam that had been
placed in it for Isobel was still in the box, and Billy's heart beat a
little more quickly as he drew it out. It had been Isobel's bed. He
could see where the balsam was thicker, where her head had rested.
With a sudden breathless cry he thrust the box on the fire.

He was not hungry, but he made himself a pot of coffee and drank it.
Until now he had not observed that the storm was growing steadily
worse. The thick, low-hanging spruce broke the force of it. Beyond the
shelter of the forest he could hear the roar of it as it swept through
the thin scrub and open spaces of the edge of the Barren. It recalled
him once more to Pelliter. In the excitement of Isobel's presence and
the shock and despair that had followed her flight he had been guilty
of partly forgetting Pelliter. By the time he reached the Eskimo
igloos there would be two days lost. Those two days might mean
everything to his sick comrade. He jumped to his feet, felt in his
pocket to see that the letters were safe, and began to arrange his
pack. Through the trees there came now fine white volleys of
blistering snow. It was like the hardest granulated sugar. A sudden
blast of it stung his eyes; and, leaving his pack and tent, he made
his way anxiously toward the more open timber and scrub. A few hundred
yards from the camp he was forced to bow his head against the snow
volleys and pull the broad flaps of his cap down over his cheeks and
ears. A hundred yards more and he stopped, sheltering himself behind a
gnarled and stunted banskian. He looked out into the beginning of the
open. It was a white and seething chaos into which he could not see
the distance of a pistol shot. The Eskimo igloos were twenty miles
across the Barren, and Billy's heart sank. He could not make it. No
man could live in the storm that was sweeping straight down from the
Arctic, and he turned back to the camp. He had scarcely made the move
when he was startled by a strange sound coming with the wind. He faced
the white blur again, a hand dropping to his empty pistol holster. It
came again, and this time he recognized it. It was a shout, a man's
voice. Instantly his mind leaped to Deane and Isobel. What miracle
could be bringing them back?

A shadow grew out of the twisting blur of the storm. It quickly
separated itself into definite parts-- a team of dogs, a sledge, three
men. A minute more and the dogs stopped in a snarling tangle as they
saw Billy. Billy stepped forth. Almost instantly he found a revolver
leveled at his breast.

"Put that up, Bucky Smith," he called. "If you're looking for a man
you've found the wrong one!"

The man advanced. His eyes were red and staring. His pistol arm
dropped as he came within a yard of Billy.

"By-- It's you, is it, Billy MacVeigh!" he exclaimed. His laugh was
harsh and unpleasant. Bucky was a corporal in the service, and when
Billy had last heard of him he was stationed at Nelson House. For a
year the two men had been in the same patrol, and there was bad blood
between them. Billy had never told of a certain affair down at Norway
House, the knowledge of which at headquarters would have meant Bucky's
disgraceful retirement from the force. But he had called Bucky out in
fair fight and had whipped him within an inch of his life. The old
hatred burned in the corporal's eyes as he stared into Billy's face.
Billy ignored the look, and shook hands with the other men. One of
them was a Hudson's Bay Company's driver, and the other was Constable
Walker, from Churchill.

"Thought we'd never live to reach shelter," gasped Walker, as they
shook hands. "We're out after Scottie Deane, and we ain't losing a
minute. We're going to get him, too. His trail is so hot we can smell
it. My God, but I'm bushed!"

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