Isobel (8 page)

It seemed an age before he heard steps. They were slow and stumbling,
and an instant later a face appeared at the door. It was a terrible
face, overgrown with beard, with wild and staring eyes; but it was a
white man's face. Pelliter had expected an Eskimo, and he sprang to
his feet with sudden strength as the stranger came in.

"Something to eat, mate, for the love o' God give me something to
eat!"

The stranger fell in a heap on the floor and stared up at him with the
ravenous entreaty of an animal. Pelliter's first move was to get
whisky, and the other drank it in great gulps. Then he dragged himself
to his feet, and Pelliter sank in a chair beside the table.

"I'm sick," he said. "Sergeant MacVeigh has gone to Churchill, and I
guess I'm in a bad way. You'll have to help yourself. There's meat—
'n' bannock—"

Whisky had revived the new-comer. He stared at Pelliter, and as he
stared he grinned, ugly yellow teeth leering from between his matted
beard. The look cleared Pelliter's brain. For some reason which he
could not explain, his pistol hand fell to the place where he usually
carried his holster. Then he remembered that his service revolver was
under the pillow.

"Fever," said the sailor; for Pelliter knew that he was a sailor.

He took off his heavy coat and tossed it on the table. Then he
followed Pelliter's instructions in quest of food, and for ten minutes
ate ravenously. Not until he was through and seated opposite him at
the table did Pelliter speak.

"Who are you, and where in Heaven's name did you come from?" he asked.

"Blake— Jim Blake's my name, an' I come from what I call Starvation
Igloo Inlet, thirty miles up the coast. Five months ago I was left a
hundred miles farther up to take care of a cache for the whaler John
B. Sidney, and the cache was swept away by an overflow of ice. Then we
struck south, hunting and starving, me 'n' the woman—"

"The woman!" cried Pelliter.

"Eskimo squaw," said Blake, producing a black pipe. "The cap'n bought
her to keep me company— paid four sacks of flour an' a knife to her
husband up at Wagner Inlet. Got any tobacco?"

Pelliter rose to get the tobacco. He was surprised to find that he was
steadier on his feet and that Blake's words were clearing his brain.
That had been his and MacVeigh's great fight— the fight to put an end
to the white man's immoral trade in Eskimo women and girls, and Blake
had already confessed himself a criminal. Promise of action, quick
action, momentarily overcame his sickness. He went back with the
tobacco, and sat down.

"Where's the woman?" be asked.

"Back in the igloo," said Blake, filling his pipe. "We killed a walrus
up there and built an icehouse. The meat's gone. She's probably gone
by this time." He laughed coarsely across at Pelliter as he lighted
his pipe. "It seems good to get into a white man's shack again."

"She's not dead?" insisted Pelliter.

"Will be— shortly," replied Blake. "She was so weak she couldn't walk
when I left. But them Eskimo animals die hard, 'specially the women."

"Of course you're going back for her?"

The other stared for a moment into Pelliter's flushed face, and then
laughed as though he had just heard a good joke.

"Not on your life, my boy. I wouldn't hike that thirty miles again—
an' thirty back— for all the Eskimo women up at Wagner."

The red in Pelliter's eyes grew redder as he leaned over the table.

"See here," he said, "you're going back— now! Do you understand?
You're going back!"

Suddenly he stopped. He stared at Blake's coat, and with a swiftness
that took the other by surprise he reached across and picked something
from it. A startled cry broke from his lips. Between his fingers he
held a single filament of hair. It was nearly a foot long, and it was
not an Eskimo woman's hair. It shone a dull gold in the gray light
that came through the window. He raised his eyes, terrible in their
accusation of the man opposite him.

"You lie!" he said. "She's not an Eskimo!"

Blake had half risen, his great hands clutching the ends of the table,
his brutal face thrust forward, his whole body in an attitude that
sent Pelliter back out of his reach. He was not an instant too soon.
With an oath Blake sent the table crashing aside and sprang upon the
sick man.

"I'll kill you!" he cried. "I'll kill you, an' put you where I've put
her, 'n' when your pard comes back I'll—"

His hands caught Pelliter by the throat, but not before there had come
from between the sick man's lips a cry of "Kazan! Kazan!"

With a wolfish snarl the old one-eyed sledge-dog sprang upon Blake,
and the three fell with a crash upon Pelliter's bunk. For an instant
Kazan's attack drew one of Blake's powerful hands from Pelliter's
throat, and as he turned to strike off the dog Pelliter's hand groped
out under his flattened pillow. Blake's murderous face was still
turned when he drew out his heavy service revolver; and as Blake cut
at Kazan with a long sheath-knife which he had drawn from his belt
Pelliter fired. Blake's grip relaxed. Without a groan he slipped to
the floor, and Pelliter staggered back to his feet. Kazan's teeth were
buried in Blake's leg.

"There, there, boy," said Pelliter, pulling him away. "That was a
close one!"

He sat down and looked at Blake. He knew that the man was dead. Kazan
was sniffing about the sailor's head with stiffened spines. And then a
ray of light flashed for an instant through the window. It was the
sun— the second time that Pelliter had seen it in four months. A cry
of joy welled up from his heart. But it was stopped midway. On the
floor close beside Blake something glittered in the fiery ray, and
Pelliter was upon his knees in an instant. It was the short golden
hair he had snatched from the dead man's coat, and partly covering it
was the picture of his sweetheart which had fallen when the table was
overturned. With the photograph in one hand and that single thread of
woman's hair between the fingers of his other Pelliter rose slowly to
his feet and faced the window. The sun was gone. But its coming had
put a new life into him. He turned joyously to Kazan.

"That means something, boy," he said, in a low, awed voice, "the sun,
the picture, and this! She sent it, do you hear, boy? She sent it! I
can almost hear her voice, an' she's telling me to go. 'Tommy,' she's
saying, 'you wouldn't be a man if you didn't go, even though you know
you're going to die on the way. You can take her something to eat,'
she's saying, boy, 'an' you can just as well die in an igloo as here.
You can leave word for Billy, an' you can take her grub enough to last
until he comes, an' then he'll bring her down here, an' you'll be
buried out there with the others just the same.' That's what she's
saying, Kazan, so we're going!" He looked about him a little wildly.
"Straight up the coast," he mumbled. "Thirty miles. We might make it."

He began filling a pack with food. Outside the door there was a small
sledge, and after he had bundled himself in his traveling-clothes he
dragged the pack to the sledge, and behind the pack tied on a bundle
of firewood, a lantern, blankets, and oil. After he had done this he
wrote a few lines to MacVeigh and pinned the paper to the door. Then
he hitched old Kazan to the sledge and started off, leaving the dead
man where he had fallen.

"It's what she'd have us do," he said again to Kazan. "She sure would
have us do this, Kazan. God bless her dear little heart!"

Pelliter hung close to the ice-bound coast. He traveled slowly,
leading the way for Kazan, who strained every muscle in his aged body
to drag the sledge. For a time the excitement of what had occurred
gave Pelliter a strength which soon began to ebb. But his old weakness
did not entirely return. He found that his worst trouble at first was
in his eyes. Weeks of fever had enfeebled his vision until the world
about him looked new and strange. He could see only a few hundred
paces ahead, and beyond this little circle everything turned gray and
black. Singularly enough, it struck him that there was some humor as
well as tragedy in the situation, that there was something to laugh at
in the fact that Kazan had but one eye, and that he was nearly blind.
He chuckled to himself and spoke aloud to the dog.

"Makes me think of the games o' hide-'n'-seek we used to play when we
were kids, boy," he said. "She used to tie her handkerchief over my
eyes, 'n' then I'd follow her all through the old orchard, and when I
caught her it was a part of the game she'd have to let me kiss her.
Once I bumped into an apple tree—"

The toe of his snow-shoe caught in an ice-hummock and sent him face
downward into the snow. He picked himself up and went on.

"We played that game till we was grown-ups, old man," he went on.
"Last time we played it she was seventeen. Had her hair in a big brown
braid, an' it all came undone so that when I caught her an' took off
the handkerchief I could just see her eyes an' her mouth laughing at
me, and it was that time I hugged her up closer than ever and told her
I was going out to make a home for us. Then I came up here."

He stopped and rubbed his eyes; and for an hour after that, as he
plodded onward, he mumbled things which neither Kazan nor any other
living thing could have understood. But whatever delirium found its
way into his voice, the fighting spark in his brain remained sane. The
igloo and the starving woman whom Blake had abandoned formed the one
living picture which he did not for a moment forget. He must find the
igloo, and the igloo was close to the sea. He could not miss it— if
he lived long enough to travel thirty miles. It did not occur to him
that Blake might have lied— that the igloo was farther than he had
said, or perhaps much nearer.

It was two o'clock when he stopped to make tea. He figured that he had
traveled at least eighteen miles; the fact was he had gone but a
little over half that distance. He was not hungry, and ate nothing,
but he fed Kazan heartily of meat. The hot tea, strengthened with a
little whisky, revived him for the time more than food would have
done.

"Twelve miles more at the most," he said to Kazan. "We'll make it.
Thank God, we'll make it!"

If his eyes had been better he would have seen and recognized the huge
snow-covered rock called the Blind Eskimo, which was just nine miles
from the cabin. As it was, he went on, filled with hope. There were
sharper pains in his head now, and his legs dragged wearily. Day ended
at a little after two, but at this season there was not much change in
light and darkness, and Pelliter scarcely noted the difference. The
time came when the picture of the igloo and the dying woman came and
went fitfully in his brain. There were dark spaces. The fighting spark
was slowly giving way, and at last Pelliter dropped upon the sledge.

"Go on, Kazan!" he cried, weakly. "Mush it— go on!"

Kazan tugged, with gaping jaws; and Pelliter's head dropped upon the
food-filled pack.

What Kazan heard was a groan. He stopped and looked back, whining
softly. For a time he sat on his haunches, sniffing a strange thing
which had come to him in the air. Then he went on, straining a little
faster at the sledge and still whining. If Pelliter had been conscious
he would have urged him straight ahead. But old Kazan turned away from
the sea. Twice in the next ten minutes he stopped and sniffed the air,
and each time he changed his course a little. Half an hour later he
came to a white mound that rose up out of the level waste of snow, and
then he settled himself back on his haunches, lifted his shaggy head
to the dark night sky, and for the second time that day he sent forth
the weird, wailing, mourning death-howl.

It aroused Pelliter. He sat up, rubbed his eyes, staggered to his
feet, and saw the mound a dozen paces away. Rest had cleared his brain
again. He knew that it was an igloo. He could make out the door, and
he caught up his lantern and stumbled toward it. He wasted half a
dozen matches before he could make a light. Then he crawled in, with
Kazan still in his traces close at his heels.

There was a musty, uncomfortable odor in the snow-house. And there was
no sound, no movement. The lantern lighted up the small interior, and
on the floor Pelliter made out a heap of blankets and a bearskin.
There was no life, and instinctively he turned his eyes down to Kazan.
The dog's head was stretched out toward the blankets, his ears were
alert, his eyes burned fiercely, and a low, whining growl rumbled in
his throat.

He looked at the blankets again, moved slowly toward them. He pulled
back the bearskin and found what Blake had told him he would find— a
woman. For a moment he stared, and then a low cry broke from his lips
as he fell upon his knees. Blake had not lied, for it was an Eskimo
woman. She was dead. She had not died of starvation. Blake had killed
her!

He rose to his feet again and looked about him. After all, did that
golden hair, that white woman's hair, mean nothing? What was that? He
sprang back toward Kazan, his weakened nerves shattered by a sound and
a movement from the farthest and darkest part of the igloo. Kazan
tugged at his traces, panting and whining, held back by the sledge
wedged in the door. The sound came again, a human, wailing, sobbing
cry.

With his lantern in his hand Pelliter darted across to it. There was
another roll of blankets on the floor, and as he looked he saw the
bundle move. It took him but an instant to drop beside it, as he had
dropped beside the other, and as he drew back the damp and partly
frozen covering his heart leaped up and choked him. The lantern light
fell full upon the thin, pale face and golden head of a little child.
A pair of big frightened eyes were staring up at him; and as he knelt
there, powerless to move or speak in the face of this miracle, the
eyes closed again, and there came again the wailing, hungry note which
Kazan had first heard as they approached the igloo. Pelliter flung
back the blanket and caught the child in his arms.