Isobel

by James Oliver Curwood

  "I will go to her," said Billy, softly. "And I swear here on my knees before the great and good God that I will do what an honorable man should do!"

  Deane's rigid body relaxed, and he sank back on his blankets with a sigh of relief.

  "I worried— for her," he said. "I've always believed in a God— though I killed a man— an' He sent you here in time!" A sudden questioning light came into his eyes. "The man who stole little Isobel," he breathed— "who was he?"

  "Pelliter— the man out there— killed him when he came to the cabin," said Billy. "He said his name was Blake— Jim Blake."

  "Blake! Blake! Blake!" Again Deane's voice rose from the edge of death to a shriek. "Blake, you say? A great coarse sailorman, with red hair— red beard— yellow teeth like a walrus! Blake— Blake—" He sank back again, with a thrilling, half-mad laugh. "Then— then it's all been a mistake— a funny mistake," he said; and his eyes closed, and his voice spoke the words as though he were uttering them from out of a dream.

  Billy saw that the end was near. He bent down to catch the dying man's last words. Deane's hands were as cold as ice. His lips were white. And then Deane whispered:

  "We fought— I thought I killed him— an' threw him into the sea. His right name was Samuelson. You knew him— by that name— but he went often— by Blake— Jim Blake. So— so— I'm not a murderer— after all. An' he— he came back for revenge— and— stole— little— Isobel. I'm— I'm— not— a— murderer. You— you— will— tell— her. You'll tell her— I didn't kill him— after all. You'll tell her— an'— be— good— good—"

  He smiled. Billy bent lower.

  "Again I swear before the good God that I will do what an honorable man should do," he replied.

  Deane made no answer. He did not hear. The smile did not fade entirely from his lips. But Billy knew that in this moment death had come in through the cabin door. With a groan of anguish he dropped Deane's stiffening hand. Little Isobel pattered across the floor to his side. She laughed; and suddenly Billy turned and caught her in his arms, and, crumpled down there on the floor beside the one brother he had known in life, he sobbed like a woman.

  XIII - The Two Gods

  *

  It was little Isobel who pulled MacVeigh together, and after a little he rose with her in his arms and turned her from the wall while he covered Deane's face with the end of a blanket. Then he went to the door. The Eskimos were building fires. Pelliter was seated on the sledge a short distance from the cabin, and at Billy's call he came toward him.

  "If you don't mind, you can take her over to one of the fires for a little while," said Billy. "Scottie is dead. Try and make the chief understand,"

  He did not wait for Pelliter to question him, but closed the door quietly and went back to Deane. He drew off the blanket and gazed for a moment into the still, bearded face.

  "My Gawd, an' she's waitin' for you, 'n' looking for you, an' thinks you're coming back soon," he whispered. "You 'n' the kid!"

  Reverently he began the task ahead of him. One after another he went into Deane's pockets and drew forth what he found. In one pocket there was a small knife, some cartridges, and a match box. He knew that Isobel would prize these and keep them because her husband had carried them, and he placed them in a handkerchief along with other things he found. Last of all he found in Deane's breast pocket a worn and faded envelope. He peered into the open end before he placed it on the little pile, and his heart gave a sudden throb when he saw the blue flower petals Isobel had given him. When he was done he crossed Deane's hands upon his breast. He was tying the ends of the handkerchief when the door opened softly behind him.

  The little dark chief entered. He was followed by four other Eskimos. They had left their weapons outside. They seemed scarcely to breathe as they ranged themselves in a line and looked down upon Scottie Deane. Not a sign of emotion came into their expressionless faces, not the flicker of an eyelash did the immobility of their faces change. In a low, clacking monotone they began to speak, and there was no expression of grief in their voices. Yet Billy understood now that in the hearts of these little brown men Scottie Deane stood enshrined like a god. Before he was cold in death they had come to chant his deeds and his virtues to the unseen spirits who would wait and watch at his side until the beginning of the new day. For ten minutes the monotone continued. Then the five men turned and without a word, without looking at him, went out of the cabin. Billy followed them, wondering if Deane had convinced them that he and Pelliter were his friends. If he had not done that he feared that there would still be trouble over little Isobel. He was delighted when he found Pelliter talking with one of the men.

  "I've found a flunkey here whose lingo I can get along with," cried Pelliter. "I've been telling 'em what bully friends we are, and have made 'em understand all about Blake. I've shaken hands with them all three or four times, and we feel pretty good. Better mix a little. They don't like the idea of giving us the kid, now that Scottie's dead. They're asking for the woman."

  Half an hour later MacVeigh and Pelliter returned to the cabin. At the end of that time he was confident that the Eskimos would give them no further trouble and that they expected to leave Isobel in their possession. The chief, however, had given Billy to understand that they reserved the right to bury Deane.

  Billy felt that he was now in a position where he would have to tell Pelliter some of the things that had happened to him on his return to Churchill. He had reported Deane's death as having occurred weeks before as the result of a fall, and when he returned to Fort Churchill he knew that he would have to stick to that story. Unless Pelliter knew of Isobel, his love for her, and his own defiance of the Law in giving them their freedom, his comrade might let out the truth and ruin him.

  In the cabin they sat down at the table. Pelliter's arm was in a sling. His face was drawn and haggard and blackened by powder. He drew his revolver, emptied it of cartridges, and gave it to little Isobel to play with. He kept up his spirits among the Eskimos, but he made no effort to conceal his dejection now.

  "I've lost her," he said, looking at Billy. "You're going to take her to her mother?"

  "Yes."

  "It hurts. You don't know how it's goin' to hurt to lose her," he said.

  MacVeigh leaned across the table and spoke earnestly.

  "Yes, I know what it means, Pelly," he replied. "I know what it means to love some one— and lose. I know. Listen."

  Quickly he told Pelliter the story of the Barren, of the coming of Isobel, the mother, of the kiss she had given him, and of the flight, the pursuit, the recapture, and of that final moment when he had taken the steel cuffs from Deane's wrists. Once he had begun the story he left nothing untold, even to the division of the blue-flower petals and the tress of Isobel's hair. He drew both from his pocket and showed them to Pelliter, and at the tremble in his voice there came a mistiness in his comrade's eyes. When he had finished Pelliter reached across with his one good arm and gripped the other's hand.

  "An' what she said about the blue flower is comin' true, Billy," he whispered. "It's bringing happiness to you, just as she said, for you're going down to her—"

  MacVeigh interrupted him.

  "No, it's not," he said, softly. "She loved him— as much as the girl down there will ever love you, Pelly, and when I tell her what has happened— her heart will break. That can't bring happiness— for me! "

  The hours of that day bore leaden weights for Billy. The two men made their plans. A number of the Eskimos agreed to accompany Pelliter as far as Eskimo Point, whence he would make his way alone to Churchill. Billy would strike south to the Little Beaver in search of Couchée's cabin and Isobel. He was glad when night came. It was late when he went to the door, opened it, and looked out.

  In the edge of the timber-line it was black, black not only with the gloom of night, but with the concentrated darkness of spruce and balsam and a sky so low and thick that one could almost hear the wailing swish of it overhead like the steady sobbin
g of surf on a seashore. It was black, save for the small circles of light made by the Eskimo fires, about which half a hundred of the little brown men sat or crouched. The masters of the camp were all awake, but twice as many dogs, exhausted and footsore, lay curled in heaps, as inanimate as if dead. There was present a strange silence and a strange and unnatural gloom that was not of the night alone, a silence broken only by the low moaning of the wind out on the Barren, the restlessness in the air above the tree-tops, and the crackling of the fires. The Eskimos were as motionless as so many dead men. Their round, expressionless eyes were wide open. They sat or crouched with their backs to the Barren, their faces turned into the still deeper blackness of the forest. Some distance away, like a star, there gleamed the small and steady light in the cabin window. For two hours the eyes of those about the fires had been fixed on that light. And at intervals there had risen from among the stony-faced watchers the little chief, whose clacking voice joined for a few moments each time the wailing of the wind, the swish of the low-hanging sky, and the crackling of the fires. But there was sound of no other voice or movement. He alone moved and spoke, for to the others the clacking sounds he made was speech, words spoken each time for the man who lay dead in the cabin.

  A dozen times Pelliter and MacVeigh had looked out to the fires, and looked each time at the hour. This time Billy said:

  "They're moving, Pelly! They're jumping to their feet and coming this way!" He looked at his watch again. "They're mighty good guessers. It's a quarter after twelve. When a chief or a big man dies they bury him in the first hour of the new day. They're coming after Deane."

  He opened the door and stepped out into the night. Pelliter joined him. The Eskimos advanced without a sound and stopped in a shadowy group twenty paces from the cabin. Five of these little fur-clad men detached themselves from the others and filed into the cabin, with the chief man at their head. As they bent over Deane they began to chant a low monotone which awakened little Isobel, who sat up and stared sleepily at the strange scene. Billy went to her and gathered her close in his arms. She was sleeping again when he put her down among the blankets. The Eskimos were gone with their burden. He could hear the low chanting of the tribe.

  "I found her, and I thought she was mine," said Pelliter's low voice at his side. "But she ain't, Billy. She's yours."

  MacVeigh broke in on him as though he had not heard.

  "You better get to bed, Pelly," he warned. "That arm needs rest. I'm going out to see where they bury him."

  He put on his cap and heavy coat and went as far as the door, then turned back. From his kit he took a belt-ax and nails.

  The wind was blowing more strongly over the Barren, and MacVeigh could no longer hear the low lament of the Eskimos. He moved toward their fires, and found them deserted of men, only the dogs rema g in their deathlike sleep. And then, far down the edge of the timber, he saw a flare of light. Five minutes later he stood hidden in a deep shadow, a few paces from the Eskimos. They had dug the grave early in the evening, out on the great snow-plain, free of the trees; and as the fire they had built lighted up their dark, round faces MacVeigh saw the five little black men who had borne forth Scottie Deane leaning over the shallow hole in the frozen earth. Scottie was already gone. The earth and ice and frozen moss were falling in upon him, and not a sound fell now from the thick lips of his savage mourners. In a few minutes the crude work was done, and like a thin black shadow the natives filed back to their camp. Only one remained, sitting cross-legged at the head of the grave, his long narwhal spear at his back. It was O-gluck-gluck, the Eskimo chief, guarding the dead man from the devils who come to steal body and soul during the first few hours of burial.

  Billy went deeper into the forest until he found a thin, straight sapling, which he cut down with half a dozen strokes of his belt-ax. From the sapling he stripped the bark, and then he chopped off a third of its length and nailed it crosswise to what remained. After that he sharpened the bottom end and returned to the grave, carrying the cross over his shoulder. Stripped to whiteness, it gleamed in the firelight. The Eskimo watcher stared at it for a moment, his dull eyes burning darker in the night, for he knew that after this two gods, and not one, were to guard the grave. Billy drove the cross deep, and as the blows of his ax fell upon it the Eskimo slunk back until he was swallowed in the gloom. When MacVeigh was done he pulled off his cap. But it was not to pray.

  "I'm sorry, old man," he said to what was under the cross. "God knows I'm sorry. I wish you was alive. I wish you was going back to her— with the kid— instid o' me. But I'll keep that promise. I swear it. I'll do— what's right— by her."

  From the forest he looked back. The Eskimo chief had returned to his somber watch. The cross gleamed a ghostly white against the thick blackness of the Barren. He turned his face away for the last time, and there filled him the oppression of a leaden hand, a thing that was both dread and fear. Scottie Deane was dead— dead and in his grave, and yet he walked with him now at his side. He could feel the presence, and that presence was like a warning, stirring strange thoughts within him. He turned back to the cabin and entered softly. Pelliter was asleep. Little Isobel was breathing the sweet forgetfulness of childhood. He stooped and kissed her silken curls, and for a long time he stood with one of those soft curls between his fingers. In a few years more, he thought, it would be the darker gold and brown of the woman's hair— of the woman he loved. Slowly a great peace entered into him. After all, there was more than hope ahead for him. She— the older Isobel— knew that he loved her as no other man in the world could love her. He had given proof of that. And now he was going to her.

  XIV - The Snow-Man

  *

  After his return from the scene of burial Billy undressed, put out the light, and went to bed. He fell asleep quickly, and his slumber was filled with many dreams. They were sweet and joyous at first, and he lived again his first meeting with the woman; he was once more in the presence of her beauty, her purity, her faith and confidence in him. And then more trouble visions came to him. He awoke twice, and each time he sat up, filled with the shuddering dread that had come to him at the graveside.

  A third time he awakened, and he struck a match to look at his watch. It was four o'clock. He was still exhausted. His limbs ached from the tremendous strain of the fifty-mile race across the Barren, but he could no longer sleep. Something— he did not attempt to ask himself what it was— was urging him to action. He got up and dressed.

  When Pelliter awoke two hours later MacVeigh's pack and sledge were ready for the trip south. While they ate their breakfast the two men finished their plans. When the hour of parting came Billy left his comrade alone with little Isobel and went out to hitch up the dogs. When he returned there was a fresh redness in Pelliter's eyes, and he puffed out thick clouds of smoke from his pipe to hide his face. MacVeigh thought of that parting often in the days that followed. Pelliter stood last in the door, and in his face was a look which MacVeigh wished that he had not seen. In his own heart was the dread and the fear, the thing which he could not name.

  For hours he could not shake off the gloom that oppressed him. He strode at the head of old Kazan, the leader, striking a course due south by compass. When he fell back for the third time to look at little Isobel he found the child buried deep in her blankets sound asleep. She did not awake until he stopped to make tea at noon. It was four o'clock when he halted again to make camp in the shelter of a clump of tall spruce. Isobel had slept most of the day. She was wide awake now, laughing at him as he dug her out of her nest.

  "Give me a kiss," he demanded.

  Isobel complied, putting her two little hands to his face.

  "You're a— a little peach," he cried. "There ain't been a whimper out of you all day. And now we're going to have a fire— a big fire."

  He set about his work, whistling for the first time since morning. He set up his silk Service tent, cut spruce and balsam boughs until he had them a foot deep inside, and then dragged in wood
for half an hour. By that time it was dark and the big fire was softening the snow for thirty feet around. He had taken off Isobel's thick, swaddling coat, and the child's pretty face shone pink in the fireglow. The light danced red and gold in her tangled curls, and as they ate supper, both on the same blanket, Billy saw opposite him more and more of what he knew he would find in the woman. When they had finished he produced a small pocket comb and drew Isobel close up to him. One by one he smoothed the tangles out of her curls, his heart beating joyously as the silken touch of them ran through his fingers. Once he had felt that same soft touch of the woman's hair against his face. It had been an accidental caress, but he had treasured it in his memory. It seemed real again now, and the thrill of it made him place little Isobel alone again on the blanket, while he rose to his feet. He threw fresh fuel on the fire, and then he found that the warmth had softened the snow until it clung to his feet. The discovery gave him an inspiration. A warmth that was not of the fire leaped into his face, and he gathered up the softened snow, raking it into piles with a snow-shoe; and before Isobel's astonished and delighted eyes there grew into shape a snow-man almost as big as himself. He gave it arms and a head, and eyes of charred wood, and when it was done he placed his own cap on the crown of it and his pipe in its mouth. Little Isobel screamed with delight, and together, hand in hand, they danced around and around it, just as he and the other girls and boys had danced years and years ago. And when they stopped there were tears of laughter and joy in the child's eyes and a filmy mist of another sort in Billy's.

  It was the snow-man that brought back to him years and years of lost hopes. They flooded in upon him until it seemed as though the old life was the life of yesterday and waiting for him now just beyond the edge of the black forest. Long after Isobel was asleep in the tent he sat and looked at the snow-man; and more and more his heart sang with a new joy, until it seemed as though he must rise and cry out in the eagerness and hope that filled him. In the snow-man, slowly melting before the fire, there was a heart and a soul and voice. It was calling to him, urging him as nothing in the world had ever urged him before. He would go back to the old home down in God's country, to the old playmates who were men and women now. They would welcome him— and they would welcome the woman. For he would take her. For the first time he made himself believe that she would go. And there, hand in hand, they would follow his boyhood footprints over the meadows and through the hills, and he would gather flowers for her in place of the mother that was gone, and he would tell her all the old stories of the days that were passed.