Isobel (20 page)

The third he turned over several times before he opened it. It did not
look much like a letter. It was torn and ragged at the edges, and was
so soiled and water-stained that the address on it was only partly
legible. It had been to Fond du Lac, and from there it had followed
him to Fort Chippewyan. He opened it and found that the writing inside
was scarcely more legible than the inscription on the envelope. The
last words were quite plain, and he gave a low cry when he found that
it was from Rookie McTabb.

He went close to a window and tried to make out what McTabb had
written. Here and there, where water had not obliterated the writing,
he could make out a line or a few words. Nearly all was gone but the
last paragraph, and when Billy came to this and read the first words
of it his heart seemed all at once to die within him, and he could not
see. Word by word he made out the rest after that, and when he was
done he turned his stony face to the white whirl of the storm outside
the window, his lips as dry as though he had passed through a fever.

A part of that last paragraph was unintelligible, but enough was left
to tell him what had happened in the cabin down on the Little Beaver.

McTabb had written:

"We thought she was getting well... took sick again.... did
everything... could. But it didn't do any good,... died just five
weeks to a day after you left. We buried her just behind the cabin.
God... that kid... You don't know how I got to love her, Billy....
give her up..."

McTabb had written a dozen lines after that, but all of them were a
water-stained and unintelligible blur.

Billy crushed the letter in his hand. The new inspector wondered what
terrible news he had received as he walked out into the blinding chaos
of the storm.

For ten minutes Billy buried himself blindly in the storm. He scarcely
knew which direction he took, but at last he found himself in the
shelter of the forest, and he was whispering Isobel's name over and
over again to himself.

"Dead— dead—" he moaned. "She is dead— dead—"

And then there rushed upon him, crushing back his deeper grief, a
thought of the baby Isobel. She was still with McTabb down on the
Little Beaver. In the blur of the storm he read again what he could
make out of Rookie's letter. Something in that last paragraph struck
him with a deadly fear. "God... that kid... You, don't know how I got
to love her, Billy,... give her up..."

What did it mean? What had McTabb told him in that part of the letter
that was gone?

The reaction came as he put the letter back into his pocket. He walked
swiftly back to the inspector's office.

"I'm going down to the Little Beaver. I'm going to start to-day," he
said. "Who is there in Churchill that I can get to go with me?"

Two hours later Billy was ready to start, with an Indian as a
companion. Dogs could not be had for love or money, and they set out
on snowshoes with two weeks' supply of provisions, striking south and
west. The remainder of that day and the next they traveled with but
little rest. Each hour that passed added to Billy's mad impatience to
reach McTabb's cabin.

With the morning of the third day began the second of those two
terrible storms which swept over the northland in that winter of
famine and death. In spite of the Indian's advice to build a permanent
camp until the temperature rose again Billy insisted on pushing ahead.
The fifth night, in the wild Barren country west of the Etawney, his
Indian failed to keep up the fire, and when Billy investigated he
found him half dead with a strange sickness. He made the Indian's
balsam shelter snow and wind proof, cut wood, and waited. The
temperature continued to fall, and the cold became intense. Each day
the provisions grew less, and at last the time came when Billy knew
that he was standing face to face with the Great Peril. He went
farther and farther from camp in his search for game. Even the brush
sparrows and snow-hawks were gone. Once the thought came to him that
be might take what food was left and accept the little chance that
remained of saving himself. But the idea never got farther than a
first thought. On the twelfth day the Indian died. It was a terrible
day. There was food for another twenty-four hours.

Billy packed it, together with his blankets and a few pieces of
tinware. He wondered if the Indian had died of a contagious disease.
Anyway, he made up his mind to put out the warning for others if they
came that way, and over the dead Indian's balsam shelter he planted a
sapling, and at the end of the sapling he fastened a strip of red
cotton cloth— the plague signal of the north.

Than he struck out through the deep snows and the twisting storm,
knowing that there was no more than one chance in a thousand ahead of
him, and that the one chance was to keep the wind at his back.

At the end of his first day's struggle Billy built himself a camp in a
bit of scrub timber which was not much more than bush. He had observed
that the timber and that every tree and bush he had passed since noon
was stripped and dead on the side that faced the north. He cooked and
ate his last food the following day, and went on. The small timber
turned to scrub, and the scrub, in time, to vast snow wastes over
which the storm swept mercilessly. All this day he looked for game,
for a flutter of bird life; he chewed bark, and in the afternoon got a
mouthful of foxbite, which made his throat swell until he could
scarcely breathe. At night he made tea, but had nothing to eat. His
hunger was acute and painful. It was torture the next day— the
third— for the process of starvation is a rapid one in this country
where only the fittest survive on from four to five meals a day. He
camped, built a small bush-fire at night, and slept. He almost failed
to rouse himself on the morning that followed, and when he staggered
to his feet and felt the cutting sting of the storm still in his face
and heard the swishing wail of it over the Barren he knew that at last
the hour had come when he was standing face to face with the Almighty.

For some strange reason he was not frightened at the situation. He
found that even over the level spaces he could scarce drag his
snow-shoes, but this had ceased to alarm him as he had been alarmed at
first. He went on, hour after hour, weaker and weaker. Within himself
there was still life which reasoned that if death were to come it
could not come in a better way. It at least promised to be painless—
even pleasant. The sharp, stinging pains of hunger, like little
electrical knives piercing him, were gone; he no longer experienced a
sensation of intense cold; he almost felt that he could lie down in
the drifted snow and sleep peacefully. He knew what it would be— a
sleep without end, with the arctic foxes to pick his bones afterward—
and so he resisted the temptation and forced himself onward. The storm
still swept straight west from Hudson's Bay, bringing with it endless
volleys of snow, round and hard as fine shot, snow that had at first
seemed to pierce his flesh and which swished past his feet as if
trying to trip him and tossed itself in windrows and mountains in his
path. If he could only find timber, shelter! That was what he worked
for now. When he had last looked at his watch it was nine o'clock in
the morning; now it was late in the afternoon. It might as well have
been night. The storm had long since half blinded him. He could not
see a dozen paces ahead. But the little life in him still reasoned
bravely. It was a heroic spark of life, a fighting spark, and hard to
put out. It told him that when he came to shelter he would at least
feel it, and that he must fight until the last. The pack on his back
held no significance and no weight for him. He might have traveled a
mile or ten miles an hour and he would not have sensed the difference.
Most men would have buried themselves in the snow and died in comfort,
dreaming the pleasant dreams that come as a sort of recompense to the
unfortunate who dies of starvation and cold. But the fighting spark
commanded Billy to die upon his feet if he died at all. It was this
spark which brought him at last to a bit of timber thick enough to
give him shelter from wind and snow. It burned a little more warmly
then. It flared up and gave him new vision. And then, for the first
time, he realized that it must be night. For a light was burning ahead
of him, and all else was gloom. His first thought was that it was a
campfire miles and miles away. Then it drew nearer, until he knew that
it was a light in a cabin window. He dragged himself toward it, and
when he came to the door he tried to shout. But no sound fell from his
swollen lips. It seemed an hour before he could twist his feet out of
his snow-shoes. Then he groped for a latch, pressed against the door,
and plunged in.

What he saw was like a picture suddenly revealed for an instant by a
flashlight. In the cabin there were four men. Two sat at a table
directly in front of him. One held a dice box poised in the air, and
had turned a rough, bearded face toward him. The other was a younger
man, and in this moment it struck Billy as strange that he should be
clutching a can of beans between his hands. A third man stared from
where he had been looking down upon the dice-play of the other two. As
Billy came in he was in the act of lowering a half-filled bottle from
his lips. The fourth man sat on the edge of a bunk, with a face so
white and thin that he might have been taken for a corpse if it had
not been for the dark glare in his sunken eyes. Billy smelled the odor
of whisky; he smelled food. He saw no sign of welcome in the faces
turned toward him, but he advanced upon them, mumbling incoherently.
And then the spark, the fighting spark in him, gave out, and he
crumpled down on the floor. He heard a voice which came to him from a
great distance, and which said, "Who the hell is this?" and then,
after what seemed to be a long time, he heard that same voice say,
"Pitch him back into the snow."

After that he lost consciousness. But in that last moment between
light and darkness he experienced a strange thrill that made him want
to spring to his feet, for it seemed to him that he had recognized the
voice that had said "Pitch him back into the snow."

A long time before he awoke Billy knew that he was not in the snow,
and that hot stuff was running down his throat. When he opened his
eyes there was no longer a light burning in the cabin. It was day. He
felt strangely comfortable, but there was thing in the cabin that
stirred him from his rest. It was the odor of frying bacon. All of his
hunger had come back. The joy of life, of anticipation, shone in his
thin face as he pulled himself up. Another face— the bearded face—
red-eyed, almost animal-like in its fierce questioning, bent over him.

"Where's your grub, pardner?"

The question was like a stab. Billy did not hear his own voice as he
explained.

"Got none!" The bearded man's voice was like a bellow as he turned
upon the others, "He's got no grub!"

In that moment Billy choked back the cry on his lips. He knew the
voice now— and the man. It was Bucky Smith! He half rose to his feet
and then dropped back. Bucky had not recognized him. His own beard,
shaggy hair, and pinched face had saved him from recognition. Fate had
played his way.

"We'll divvy up, Bucky," came a weak voice. It was from the thin,
white-faced man who had sat corpselike on the edge of his bunk the
night before.

"Divvy hell!" growled the other. "It's up to you— you 'n' Sweedy.
You're to blame!"

You're to blame!

The words struck upon Billy's ears with a chill of horror. Starvation
was in the cabin. He had fallen among animals instead of men. He saw
the thin-faced man who had spoken for him sitting again on the edge of
his bunk. Mutely he looked to the others to see who was Sweedy. He was
the young man who had clutched the can of beans. It was he who was
frying bacon over the sheet-iron stove.

"We'll divvy, Henry and I," he said. "I told you that last night." He
looked over at Billy. "Glad you're better," he greeted. "You see,
you've struck us at a bad time. We're on our last legs for grub. Our
two Indians went out to hunt a week ago and never came back. They're
dead, or gone, and we're as good as dead if the storm doesn't let up
pretty soon. You can have some of our grub— Henry's and mine."

It was a cold invitation, lacking warmth or sympathy, and Billy felt
that even this man wished that he had died before he reached the
cabin. But the man was human; he had at least not cast his voice with
the one that had wanted to throw him back into the snow, and he tried
to voice his gratitude and at the same time to hide his hunger. He saw
that there were three thin slices of bacon in the frying-pan, and it
struck him that it would be bad taste to reveal a starvation appetite
in the face of such famine. Bucky was looking straight at him as he
limped to his feet, and he was sure now that the man he had driven
from the Service had not recognized him. He approached Sweedy.

"You saved my life," he said, holding out a hand. "Will you shake? "

Sweedy shook hands limply.

"It's hell," he said, in a low voice. "We'd have had beans this
morning if I hadn't shook dice with him last night." He nodded toward
Bucky, who was cutting open the top of a can. "He won!"

"My God—" began Billy.

He didn't finish. Sweedy turned the meat, and added:

"He won a square meal off me yesterday— a quarter of a pound of
bacon. Day before that he won Henry's last can of beans. He's got his
share under his blanket over there, and swears he'll shoot any one who
goes to monkeyin' with his bed— so you'd better fight shy of it.
Thompson— he isn't up yet— chose the whisky for his share, so you'd
better fight shy of him, too. Henry and I'll divvy up with you."