Isobel : A Romance of the Northern Trail

by James Oliver Curwood

  II - Billy Meets the Woman

  *

  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."

  III - In Honor of the Living

  *

  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.

  "You sit here while I make a fire," he said.

  He piled up dry needles over a precious bit of his birchbark and struck a flame. In the glowing light he found other fuel, and added to the fire until the crackling blaze leaped as high as his head. The woman's face was hidden, and she looked as though she had fallen asleep in the warmth of the fire. For half an hour Mac-Veigh dragged in fuel until he had a great pile of it in readiness.

  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 fo
rest 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.