Isobel (21 page)

"Thanks," said Billy, the one word choking him.

Henry came from his bunk, bent and wabbling. He looked like a dying
man, and for the first time Billy noticed that his hair was gray. He
was a little man, and his thin hands shook as he held them out over
the stove and nodded to Billy. Bucky had opened his can, and
approached the stove with a pan of water, coming in beside Billy
without noticing him. He brought with him a foul odor of stale tobacco
smoke and whisky. After he had put his water over the fire he turned
to one of the bunks and with half a dozen coarse epithets roused
Thompson, who sat up stupidly, still half drunk. Henry had gone to a
small table, and Sweedy followed him with the bacon. Billy did not
move. He forgot his hunger. His pulse was beating quickly. Sensations
filled him which he had never known or imagined before. Was it
possible that these were people of his own kind? Had a madness of some
sort driven all human instincts from them? He saw Thompson's red eyes
fastened upon him, and he turned his face to escape their questioning,
stupid leer. Bucky was turning out the can of beans he had won. Beyond
him the door creaked, and Billy heard the wail of the storm. It came
to him now as a friendly sort of sound.

"Better draw up, pardner," he heard Sweedy say. "Here's your share."

One of the thin slices of bacon and a hard biscuit were waiting for
him on a tin plate. He ate as ravenously as Henry and Sweedy, and
drank a cup of hot tea. In two minutes the meal was over. It was
terribly inadequate. The few mouthfuls of food stirred up all his
craving, and he found it impossible to keep his eyes from Bucky Smith
and his beans. Bucky was the only one who seemed well fed, and his
horror increased when Henry bent over him and said, in a low whisper:
"He didn't get my beans fair. I had three aces and a pair, of deuces,
an' he took it on three fives and two sixes. When I objected he called
me a liar an' hit me. Them's my beans, or Sweedy's!" There was
something almost like murder in the little man's red eyes.

Billy remained silent. He did not care to talk or question. No one
asked him who he was or whence he came, and he felt no inclination to
know more of the men he had fallen among. Bucky finished, wiped his
mouth with his hand, and looked across at Billy.

"How about going out with me to get some wood?" he demanded.

"I'm ready," replied Billy.

For the first time he took notice of himself. He was lame and
sickeningly weak, but apparently sound in other ways. The intense cold
had not frozen his ears or feet. He put on his heavy moccasins, his
thick coat and fur cap, and followed Bucky to the door. He was filled
with a strange uneasiness. He was sure that his old enemy had not
recognized him, and yet he felt that recognition might come at any
moment. If Bucky recognized him— when they were out alone—

He was not afraid, but he shivered. He was too weak to put up a fight.
He did not catch the ugly leer which Bucky turned upon Thompson. But
Henry did, and his little eyes grew smaller and blacker. On snow-shoes
the two men went out into the storm, Bucky carrying an ax. He led the
way through the bit of thin timber, and across a wide open over which
the storm swept so fiercely that their trail was covered behind them
as they traveled. Billy figured that they had gone a quarter of a mile
when they came to the edge of a ravine so steep that it was almost a
precipice. For the first time Bucky touched him. He seized him by the
arm, and in his voice there was an inhuman, taunting triumph.

"Didn't think I knew you, did you, Billy?" he asked. "Well, I did, and
I've just been waiting to get you out alone. Remember my promise,
Billy? I've changed my mind since then. I ain't going to kill you.
It's too risky. It's safer to let you die— by yourself— as you're
goin' to die to-day or to-night. If you come back to the cabin— I'll
shoot you!"

With a movement so quick that Billy had no chance to prepare himself
for it Bucky sent him plunging headlong down the side of the ravine.
The deep snow saved him in the long fall. For a few moments Billy lay
stunned. Then he staggered to his feet and looked up. Bucky was gone.
His first thought was to return to the cabin. He could easily find it
and confront Bucky there before the others. And yet he did not move.
His inclination to go back grew less and less, and after a brief
hesitation he made up his mind to continue the struggle for life by
himself. After all, his situation would not be much more desperate
than that of the men he was leaving behind in the cabin. He buttoned
himself up closely, saw that his snow-shoes were securely fastened,
and climbed the opposite side of the ridge.

The timber thinned out again, and Billy struck out boldly into the low
bush. As he went he wondered what would happen in the cabin. He
believed that Henry, of the four, would not pull through alive, and
that Bucky would come out best. It was not until the following summer
that he learned the facts of Henry's madness, and of the terrible
manner in which he avenged himself on Bucky Smith by sticking a knife
under the latter's ribs.

Billy now found himself in a position to measure the amount of energy
contained in a slice of bacon and a cold biscuit. It was not much.
Long before noon his old weakness was upon him again. He found even
greater difficulty in dragging his feet over the snow, and it seemed
now as though all ambition had left him, and that even the fighting
spark was becoming disheartened. He made up his mind to go on until
the beginning of night, then he would stop, build a fire, and go to
sleep in its warmth.

During the afternoon he passed out of the scrub into a rougher
country. His progress was slower, but more comfortable, for at times
he found himself protected from the wind. A gloom darker and more
somber than that of the storm was falling about him when he came to
what appeared to be the end of the Barren country. The earth dropped
away from under his feet, and far below him, in a ravine shut out from
wind and storm, he saw the black tops of thick spruce. He began to
scramble downward. His eyes were no longer fit to judge distance or
chance, and he slipped. He slipped a dozen times in the first five
minutes, and then there came the time when he did not make a recovery,
but plunged down the side of the mountain like a rock. He stopped with
a terrific jar, and for the first time during the fall he wanted to
cry out with pain. But the voice that he heard did not come from his
own lips. It was another voice— and then two, three, many of them, it
seemed to him. His dazed eyes caught glimpses of dark objects
floundering in the deep snow about him, and just beyond these objects
were four or five tall mounds of snow, like tents, arranged in a
circle. He knew what they meant. He had fallen into an Indian camp. In
his joy he tried to call out words of greeting, but he had no tongue.
Then the floundering figures caught him up, and he was carried to the
circle of snow mounds. The last that he knew was that warmth was
entering his lungs.

It was a face that he first saw after that, a face that seemed to come
to him slowly from out of night, approaching nearer and nearer until
he knew that it was a girl's face, with great, dark, strangely shining
eyes. In these first moments of his returning consciousness the
whimsical thought came to him that he was dying and the face was a
part of a pleasant dream. If that were not so, he had fallen at last
among friends. His eyes opened wider, he moved, and the face drew
back. Movement stimulated returning life, and reason rehabilitated
itself in great bounds. In a dozen flashes he went over all that had
happened up to the point where he had fallen down the mountain and
into the Cree camp. Straight above him he saw the funnel-like peak of
a large birch wigwam, and beyond his feet he saw an opening in the
birch-bark wall through which there drifted a blue film of smoke. He
was in a wigwam. It was warm and exceedingly comfortable. Wondering if
he was hurt, he moved. The movement drew a sharp exclamation of pain
from him. It was the first real sound he had made, and in an instant
the face was over him again. He saw it plainly this time, with its
dark eyes and oval cheeks framed between two great braids of black
hair. A hand touched his brow, cool and gentle, and a low voice
soothed him in half a dozen musical words. The girl was a Cree.

At the sound of her voice an indian woman came up beside the girl,
looked down at him for a moment, and then went to the door of the
wigwam, speaking in a low voice to some one who was outside. When she
returned a man followed in after her. He was old and bent, and his
face was thin. His cheek-bones shone, so tightly was the skin drawn
over them. Behind him came a younger man, as straight as a tree, with
strong shoulders and a head set like a piece of bronze sculpture. This
man carried in his hand a frozen fish, which he gave to the woman. As
he gave it to her he spoke words in Cree which Billy understood.

"It is the last fish."

For a moment a terrible hand gripped at Billy's heart and almost
stopped its beating. He saw the woman take the fish and cut it into
two equal parts with a knife, and one of these parts she dropped into
a pot of boiling water which hung over the stone fireplace built under
the vent in the wall. They were dividing with him their last fish! He
made an effort and sat up. The younger man came to him and put a
bearskin at his back. He had picked up some of the patois of
half-blood French and English.

"You seek," he said, "you hurt— and hungry! You have eat soon."

He motioned with his hand to the boiling pot. There was not a flicker
of animation in his splendid face. There was something god-like in his
immobility, something that was awesome in the way he moved and
breathed. He sat in silence as the half of the last fish was brought
by the girl; and not until Billy stopped eating, choked by the
knowledge that he was taking life from these people, did he speak, and
then it was to urge him to finish the fish. When he had done, Billy
spoke to the Indian in Cree. Instantly the Indian reached over his
hand, his face lighting up, and Billy gripped it hard. Mukoki told him
what had happened. There had been a camp of twenty-two, and there were
now fifteen. Seven had died— four men, two women, and one child. Each
day during the great storm the men had gone out on their futile search
for game, and every few days one of them had failed to return. Thus
four had died. The dogs were eaten. Corn and fish were gone; there
remained but a little flour, and this was for the women and the
children. The men had eaten nothing but bark and roots for five days.
And there seemed to be no hope. It was death to stray far from camp.
That morning two men had set out for the nearest post, but Mukoki said
calmly that they would never return.

That night and the next day and the terrible night and day that
followed were filled with hours that Billy would never forget. He had
sprained one hip badly in his fall, and could not rise from the cot
Mukoki was often at his side, his face thinner, his eyes more
lusterless. The second day, late in the afternoon, there came a low
wailing grief from one of the tepees, a moaning sound that pitched
itself to the key of the storm until it seemed to be a part of it. A
child had died, and the mother was mourning. That night another of the
camp huntsmen failed to return at dusk. But the next day there came at
the same time the end of both storm and famine. With dawn the sun
shone. And early in the day one of the hunters ran in from the forest
nearly crazed with joy. He had ventured farther away than the others,
and had found a moose-yard. He had killed two of the animals and
brought with him meat for the first feast.

This last great storm of the winter of 1910 passed well into the
"break-up" season, and, once the temperature began to rise, the change
was swift. Within a week the snow was growing soft underfoot. Two days
later Billy hobbled from his cot for the first time. And then, in the
passing of a single day and night, the glory of the northern spring
burst upon the wilderness. The sun rose warm and golden. From the
sides of the mountains and in the valleys water poured forth in
rippling, singing floods. The red bakneesh glowed on bared rocks.
Moose-birds and jays and wood-thrushes flitted about the camp, and the
air was filled with the fragrant smells of new life bursting from
earth and tree and shrub.

With return of health and strength Billy's impatience to reach
McTabb's cabin grew hourly. He would have set out before his hip was
in condition to travel had not Mukoki kept him back. At last the day
came when he bade his forest friends good-by and started into the
south.

The long days and nights of inactivity which Billy had passed in the
Indian camp had given him the opportunity to think more calmly of the
tragedy which had come into his life, and with returning strength he
had drawn himself partly out from the pit of hopelessness and despair
into which he had fallen. Deane was dead. Isobel was dead. But the
baby Isobel still lived; and in the hope of finding and claiming her
for his own he built other dreams for himself out of the ashes of all
that had gone for him. He believed that he would find McTabb at the
cabin and he would find the child there. So confident had he been that
Isobel would live that he had not told McTabb of the uncle who had
driven her from the old home in Montreal. He was glad that he had kept
this to himself, for there would not be much of a chance of Rookie
having found the child's relative. And he made up his mind that he
would not give the little Isobel up. He would keep her for himself. He
would return to civilization, for he would have her to live for. He
would build a home for her, with a garden and dogs and birds and
flowers. With his silver-claim money he had fifteen thousand dollars
laid away, and she would never know what it meant to be poor. He would
educate her and buy her a piano and she would have no end of pretty
dresses and things to make her a lady. They would be together and
inseparable always, and when she grew up he prayed deep down in his
soul that she would be like the older Isobel, her mother.