Isobel (4 page)

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."

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!"

The dogs, with the company man at their head, were already making for
the camp. Billy grinned at the corporal as they followed.

"Had a pretty good chance to get me, if you'd been alone, didn't you,
Bucky?" he asked, in a voice that Walker did not hear. "You see, I
haven't forgotten your threat."

There was a steely hardness behind his laugh. He knew that Bucky Smith
was a scoundrel whose good fortune was that he had never been found
out in some of his evil work. In a flash his mind traveled back to
that day at Norway House when Rousseau, the half Frenchman, had come
to him from a sick-bed to tell him that Bucky had ruined his young
wife. Rousseau, who should have been in bed with his fever, died two
days later. Billy could still hear the taunt in Bucky's voice when he
had cornered him with Rousseau's accusation, and the fight had
followed. The thought that this man was now close after Isobel and
Deane filled him with a sort of rage, and as Walker went ahead he laid
a hand on Bucky's arm.

"I've been thinking about you of late, Bucky," he said. "I've been
thinking a lot about that affair down at Norway, an' I've been lacking
myself for not reporting it. I'm going to do it— unless you cut a
right-angle track to the one you're taking. I'm after Scottie Deane
myself!"

In the next breath he could have cut out his tongue for having uttered
the words. A gleam of triumph shot into Bucky's eyes.

"I thought we was right," he said. "We sort of lost the trail in the
storm. Glad we found you to set us right. How much of a start of us
has he and that squaw that's traveling with him got? "

Billy's mittened hands clenched fiercely. He made no reply, but
followed quickly after Walker. His mind worked swiftly. As he came in
to the fire he saw that the dogs had already dropped down in their
traces and that they were exhausted. Walker's face was pinched, his
eyes half closed by the sting of the snow. The driver was half
stretched out on the sledge, his feet to the fire. In a glance he had
assured himself that both dogs and men had gone through a long and
desperate struggle in the storm. He looked at Bucky, and this time
there was neither rancor nor threat in his voice when he spoke.

"You fellows have had a hard time of it," he said. "Make yourselves at
home. I'm not overburdened with grub, but if you'll dig out some of
your own rations I'll get it ready while you thaw out."