He followed more cautiously now. Another hundred yards and he stopped to sniff the air. Ahead of him the spruce and balsam grew close and thick, and from that shelter he was sure that something was coming to him on the air. At first he thought it was the odor of the balsam. A moment later he knew that it was smoke.
Force of habit brought his hand for the twentieth time to his empty pistol holster. Its emptiness added to the caution with which he approached the thick spruce and balsam ahead of him. Taking advantage of a mass of low snow-laden bushes, he swung out at a right angle to the trail and began making a wide circle. He worked swiftly. Within half or three-quarters of an hour Bucky would reach the ridge. Whatever he accomplished must be done before then. Five minutes after leaving the trail he caught his first glimpse of smoke and began to edge in toward the fire. The stillness oppressed him. He drew nearer and nearer, yet he heard no sound of voice or of the dogs. At last he reached a point where he could look out from behind a young ground spruce and see the fire. It was not more than thirty feet away. He held his breath tensely at what he saw. On a blanket spread out close to the fire lay Scottie Deane, his head pillowed on a pack-sack. There was no sign of Isobel, and no sign of the sledge and dogs. Billy’s heart thumped excitedly as he rose to his feet. He did not stop to ask himself where Isobel and the dogs had gone. Deane was alone, and lay with his back toward him. Fate could not have given him a better opportunity, and his moccasined feet fell swiftly and quietly in the snow. He was within six feet of Scottie before the injured man heard him, and scarcely had the other moved when he was upon him. He was astonished at the ease with which he twisted Deane upon his back and put the handcuffs about his wrists. The work was no sooner done than he understood. A rag was tied about Deane’s head, and it was stained with blood. The man’s arms and body were limp. He looked at Billy with dulled eyes, and as he slowly realized what had happened a groan broke from his lips.
In an instant Billy was on his knees beside him. He had seen Deane twice before, over at Churchill, but this was the first time that he had ever looked closely into his face. It was a face worn by hardship and mental torture. The cheeks were thinned, and the steel-gray eyes that looked up into Billy’s were reddened by weeks and months of fighting against storm. It was the face, not of a criminal, but of a man whom Billy would have trusted— blonde-mustached, fearless, and filled with that clean-cut strength which associates itself with fairness and open fighting. Hardly had he drawn a second breath when Billy realized why this man had not killed him when he had the chance. Deane was not of the sort to strike in the dark or from behind. He had let Billy live because he still believed in the manhood of man, and the thought that he had repaid Deane’s faith in him by leaping upon him when he was down and wounded filled Billy with a bitter shame. He gripped one of Deane’s hands in his own.
“I hate to do this, old man,” he cried, quickly. “It’s hell to put those things on a man who’s hurt. But I’ve got to do it. I didn’t mean to come— no, s’elp me God, I didn’t— if Bucky Smith and two others hadn’t hit your trail back at the old camp. They’d have got you— sure. And she wouldn’t have been safe with them. Understand? She wouldn’t have been safe! So I made up my mind to beat on ahead and take you myself. I want you to understand. And you do know, I guess. You must have heard, for I thought you were sure-enough dead in the box, an’ I swear to Heaven I meant all I said then. I wouldn’t have come. I was glad you two got away. But this Bucky is a skunk and a scoundrel— and mebbe if I take you— I can help you— later on. They’ll be here in a few minutes.”
He spoke quickly, his voice quivering with the emotion that inspired his words, and not for an instant did Scottie Deane allow his eyes to shift from Billy’s face. When Billy stopped he still looked at him for a moment, judging the truth of what he had heard by what he saw in the other’s face. And then Billy felt his hand tighten for an instant about his own.
“I guess you’re pretty square, MacVeigh,” he said, “and I guess it had to come pretty soon, too. I’m not sorry that it’s you— and I know you’ll take care of her.”
“I’ll do it— if I have to fight— and kill!”
Billy had withdrawn his hand, and both were clenched. Into Deane’s eyes there leaped a sudden flash of fire.
“That’s what I did,” he breathed, gripping his fingers hard. “I killed— for her. He was a skunk— and a scoundrel— too. And you’d have done it!” He looked at Billy again. “I’m glad you said what you did— when I was in the box,” he added. “If she wasn’t as pure and as sweet as the stars I’d feel different. But it’s just sort of in my bones that you’ll treat her like a brother. I haven’t had faith in many men. I’ve got it in you.”
Billy leaned low over the other. His face was flushed, and his voice trembled.
“God bless you for that, Scottie!” he said.
A sound from the forest turned both men’s eyes.
“She took the dogs and went out there a little way for a load of wood,” said Deane. “She’s coming back.”
Billy had leaped to his feet, and turned his face toward the ridge. He, too, had heard a sound— another sound, and from another direction. He laughed grimly as he turned to Deane.
“And they’re coming, too, Scottie,” he replied. “They’re climbing the ridge. I’ll take your guns, old man. It’s just possible there may be a fight!”
He slipped Deane’s revolver into his holster and quickly emptied the chamber of the rifle that stood near.
“Where’s mine?” he asked.
“Threw ’em away,” said Deane. “Those are the only guns in the outfit.”
Billy waited while Isobel Deane came through low-hanging spruce with the dogs.
VI
THE FIGHT
There was a smile for Deane on Isobel’s lips as she struggled through the spruce, knee-deep in snow, the dogs tugging at the sledge behind her. And then in a moment she saw MacVeigh, and the smile froze into a look of horror on her face. She was not twenty feet distant when she emerged into the little opening, and Billy heard the rattling cry in her throat. She stopped, and her hands went to her breast. Deane had half raised himself, his pale, thin face smiling encouragingly at her; and with a wild cry Isobel rushed to him and flung herself upon her knees at his side, her hands gripping fiercely at the steel bands about his wrists. Billy turned away. He could hear her sobbing, and he could hear the low, comforting voice of the injured man. A groan of anguish rose to his own lips, and he clenched his hands hard, dreading the terrible moment when he would have to face the woman he loved above all else on earth.
It was her voice that brought him about. She had risen to her feet, and she stood before him panting like a hunted animal, and Billy saw in her face the thing which he had feared more than the sting of death. No longer were her blue eyes filled with the sweetness and faith of the angel who had come to him from out of the Barren. They were hard and terrible and filled with that madness which made him think she was about to leap upon him. In those eyes, in the quivering of her bare throat, in the sobbing rise and fall of her breast were the rage, the grief, and the fear of one whose faith had turned suddenly into the deadliest of all emotions; and Billy stood before her without a word on his lips, his face as cold and as bloodless as the snow under his feet.
“And so you— you followed— after— that!”
It was all she said, and yet the voice, the significance of the choking words, hurt him more than if she had struck him. In them there was none of the passion and condemnation he had expected. Quietly, almost whisperingly uttered, they stung him to the soul. He had meant to say to her what he had said to Deane— even more. But the crudeness of the wilderness had made him slow of tongue, and while his heart cried out for words Isobel turned and went to her husband. And then there came the thing he had been expecting. Down the ridge there raced a flurry of snow and a yelping of dogs. He loosened the revolver in his holster, and stood in readiness when Bucky Smith ran a few paces ahead of his men into the camp. At sight of his enemy’s face, torn between rage and disappointment, all of Billy’s old coolness returned to him.
With a bound Bucky was at Scottie Deane’s side. He looked down at his manacled hands and at the woman who was clasping them in her own, and then he whirled on Billy with the quickness of a cat.
“You’re a liar and a sneak!” he panted. “You’ll answer for this at headquarters. I understand now why you let ’em go back there. It was her! She paid you— paid you in her own way— to free him! But she won’t pay you again—”
At his words Deane had started as if stung by a wasp. Billy saw Isobel’s whitened face. The meaning of Buck’s words had gone home to her as swiftly as a lightning flash, and for an instant her eyes had turned to him! Bucky got no further than those last words. Before he could add another syllable Billy was upon him. His fist shot out— once, twice— and the blows that fell sent Bucky crashing through the fire. Billy did not wait for him to regain his feet. A red light blazed before his eyes. He forgot the presence of Deane and Walker and Conway. His one thought was that the scoundrel he had struck down had flung at Isobel the deadliest insult that a man could offer a woman, and before either Conway or Walker could make a move he was upon Bucky. He did not know how long or how many times he struck, but when at last Conway and Walker succeeded in dragging him away Bucky lay upon his back in the snow, blood gushing from his mouth and nose. Walker ran to him. Panting for breath, Billy turned toward Isobel and Deane. He was almost sobbing. He made no effort to speak. But he saw that the thing he had dreaded was gone. Isobel was looking at him again— and there was the old faith in her eyes. At last— she understood! Dean’s handcuffed hands were clenched. The light of brotherhood shone in his eyes, and where a moment before there had been grief and despair in Billy’s heart there came now a warm glow of joy. Once more they had faith in him!
Walker had raised Bucky to a sitting posture, and was wiping the blood from his face when Billy went to them. The corporal’s hand made a limp move toward his revolver. Billy struck it away and secured the weapon. Then he spoke to Walker.
“There is no doubt in your mind that I hold a sergeancy in the service, is there, Walker?” he asked.
His tone was no longer one of comradeship. In it there was the ring of authority. Walker was quick to understand.
“None, sir!”
“And you are familiar with our laws governing insubordination and conduct unbecoming an officer of the service?”
Walker nodded.
“Then, as a superior officer and in the name of his Majesty the King, I place Corporal Bucky Smith under arrest, and commission you, under oath of the service, to take him under your guard to Churchill, along with the letter which I shall give you for the officer in charge there. I shall appear against him a little later with the evidence that will outlaw him from the service. Put the handcuffs on him!”
Stunned by the sudden change in the situation, Walker obeyed without a word. Billy turned to Conway, the driver.
“Deane is too badly injured to travel,” he explained, “ Put up your tent for him and his wife close to the fire. You can take mine in exchange for it as you go back.”
He went to his kit and found a pencil and paper. Fifteen minutes later he gave Walker the letter in which he described to the commanding officer at Churchill certain things which he knew would hold Bucky a prisoner until he could personally appear against him. Meanwhile Conway had put up the tent and had assisted Deane into it. Isobel had accompanied him. Billy then had a five-minute confidential talk with Walker, and when the constable gave instructions for Conway to prepare the dogs for the return trip there was a determined hardness in his eyes as he looked at Bucky. In those five minutes he had heard the story of Rousseau, the young Frenchman down at Norway House, and of the wife whose faithlessness had killed him. Besides, he hated Bucky Smith, as all men hated him. Billy was confident that he could rely upon him.
Not until dogs and sledge were ready did Bucky utter a word. The terrific beating he had received had stunned him for a few minutes; but now he jumped to his feet, not waiting for the command from Walker, and strode up close to Billy. There was a vengeful leer on his bloody face and his eyes blazed almost white, but his voice was so low that Conway and Walker could only hear the murmur of it. His words were meant for Billy alone.
“For this I’m going to kill you, MacVeigh,” he said; and in spite of Billy’s contempt for the man there was a quality in the low voice that sent a curious shiver through him. “You can send me from the service, but you’re going to die for doing it!”
Billy made no reply, and Bucky did not wait for one. He set off at the head of the sledge, with Conway a step behind them. Billy followed with Walker until they reached the foot of the ridge. There they shook hands, and Billy stood watching them until they passed over the cap of the ridge.
He returned to the camp slowly. Deane had emerged from the tent, supported by Isobel. They waited for him, and in Deane’s face he saw the look that had filled it after he had struck down Bucky Smith. For a moment he dared not look at Isobel. She saw the change in him, and her cheeks flushed. Deane would have extended his hands, but she was holding them tightly in her own.
“You’d better go into the tent and keep quiet,” advised Billy. “I haven’t had time yet to see if you’re badly hurt.”
“It’s not bad,” Deane assured him. “I bumped into a rock sliding down the ridge, and it made me sick for a few minutes.”
Billy knew that Isobel’s eyes were on him, and he could almost feel their questioning. He began to take wood from the sledge she had loaded and throw it on the fire. He wished that Scottie and she had remained in the tent for a little longer. His face burned and his blood seemed like fire when he caught a glimpse of the steel cuffs about Deane’s wrists. Through the smoke he saw Isobel still clasping her husband. He could see one of her little hands gripping at the steel band, and suddenly he sprang across and faced them, no longer fearing to meet Isobel’s eyes or Deane’s. Now his face was aflame, and he half held out his arms to them as he spoke, as though he would clasp them both to him in this moment of sacrifice and self-abnegation and the dawning of new life.
“You know— you both know why I’ve done this!” he cried, “You heard what I said back there, Deane— when you was in the box; an’ all I said was true. She came to me out of that storm like an angel— an’ I’ll think of her as an angel all my life. I don’t know much about God— not the God they have down there, where they take an eye for an eye an’ a tooth for a tooth and kill because some one else has killed. But there’s something up here in the big open places, something that makes you think and makes you want to do what’s right and square; an’ she’s got all I know of God in that little Bible of mine— the blue flower. I gave the blue flower to her, an’ now an’ forever she’s my blue flower. I ain’t ashamed to tell you, Deane, because you’ve heard it before, an’ you know I’m not thinking it in a sinful way. It ’ll help me if I can see her face an’ hear her voice and know there’s such love as yours after you’re gone. For I’m going to let you go, Deane, old man. That’s what I came for, to save you from the others an’ give you back to her. I guess mebbe you’ll know— now— how I feel—”
His voice choked him. Isobel’s glorious eyes were looking into his soul, and he looked straight back into them and saw all his reward there. He turned to Deane. His key clicked in the locks to the handcuffs, and as they fell into the snow the two men gripped hands, and in their strong faces was that rarest of all things— love of man for man.
“I’m glad you know,” said Billy, softly. “It wouldn’t be fair if you didn’t, Scottie. I can think of her now, an’ it won’t be mean and low. And if you ever need help— if you’re down in South America or Africa— anywhere— I’ll come if you send word. You’d better go to South America. That’s a good place. I’ll report to headquarters that you died— from the fall. It’s a lie, but blue flower would do it, and so will I. Sometimes, you know, the friend who lies is the only friend who’s true— and she’d do it— a thousand times— for you.”
“And for you,” whispered Isobel.
She was holding out her hands, her blue eyes streaming with tears of happiness, and for a moment Billy accepted one of them and held it in his own. He looked over her head as she spoke.
“God will bless you for this— some day,” she said; and a sob broke in her voice. “He will bring you happiness— happiness— in what you have dreamed of. You will find a blue flower— sweet and pure and loyal— and then you will know, even more fully, what life means to me with him.”
And then she broke down, sobbing like a child, and with her face buried in her hands turned into the tent.
“Gawd!” whispered Billy, drawing a deep breath.
He looked Deane in the eyes; and Deane smiled, a rare and beautiful smile.
For a quarter of an hour they talked alone, and then Billy drew a wallet from his pocket.
“You’ll need money, Scottie,” he said. “I don’t want you to lose a minute in getting out of the country. Make for Vancouver. I’ve got three hundred dollars here. You’ve got to take it or I’ll shoot you!”
He thrust the money into Deane’s hands as Isobel came out of the tent. Her eyes were red, but she was smiling; and she held something in her hand. She showed it to the two men. It was the blue flower Billy had given her. But now its petals were torn apart, and nine of them lay in the palm of her hand.
“It can’t go with one.” She spoke softly and the smile died on her lips. “There are nine petals, three for each of us.”
She gave three to her husband and three to Billy, and for a moment the men stared at them as they lay in their rough and calloused palms. Then Billy drew out the bit of buckskin in which he had placed the strands of Isobel’s hair and slipped the blue petals in with them. Deane had drawn a worn envelope from his pocket. Billy spoke low to Deane.
“I want to be alone for a while— until dinner-time. Will you go into the tent— with her?”
When they were gone Billy went to the spot where he had dropped his pack before crawling up on Deane. He picked it up and slipped it over his shoulders as he walked. He went swiftly back over his old trail, and this time it was with a heart leaden with a deep and terrible loneliness. When he reached the ridge he tried to whistle, but his lips seemed thick, and there was something in his throat that choked him. From the cap of the ridge he looked down. A thin mist of smoke was rising from out of the spruce. It blurred before his eyes, and a sobbing break came in his low cry of Isobel’s name. Then he turned once more back into the loneliness and desolation of his old life.
“I’m coming, Pelly,” he laughed, in a strained, hard way. “I haven’t given you exactly a square deal, old man, but I’ll hustle and make up for lost time!”
A wind was beginning to moan in the spruce tops again. He was glad of that. It promised storm. And a storm would cover up all trails.
VII
THE MADNESS OF PELLITER
Away up at Fullerton Point amid the storm and crash of the arctic gloom Pelliter fought himself through day after day of fever, waiting for MacVeigh. At first he had been filled with hope. That first glimpse of the sun they had seen through the little window on the morning that Billy left for Fort Churchill had come just in time to keep reason from snapping in his head. For three days after that he looked through the window at the same hour and prayed moaningly for another glimpse of that paradise in the southern sky. But the storm through which Isobel had struggled across the Barren gathered over his head and behind him, day after day of it, rolling and twisting and moaning with the roar of the cracking fields of ice, bringing back once more the thick death-gloom of the arctic night that had almost driven him mad. He tried to think only of Billy, of his loyal comrade’s race into the south, and of the precious letters he would bring back to him; and he kept track of the days by making pencil marks on the door that opened out upon the gray and purple desolation of the arctic sea.
At last there came the day when he gave up hope. He believed that he was dying. He counted the marks on the door and found that there were sixteen. Just that many days ago Billy had set off with the dogs. If all had gone well he was a third of the way back, and within another week would be “home.”
Pelliter’s thin, fever-flushed face relaxed into a wan smile as he counted the pencil marks again. Long before that week was ended he figured that he would be dead. The medicines— and the letters— would come too late, probably four or five days too late. Straight out from his last mark he drew a long line, and at the end of it added in a scrawling, almost unintelligible, hand: “Dear Billy, I guess this is going to be my last day.” Then he staggered from the door to the window.
Out there was what was killing him— loneliness, a maddening desolation, a lifeless world that reached for hundreds of miles farther than his eyes could see. To the north and east there was nothing but ice, piled-up masses and grinning mountains of it, white at first, of a somber gray farther off, and then purple and almost black. There came to him now the low, never-ceasing thunder of the undercurrents fighting their way down from the Arctic Ocean, broken now and then by a growling roar as the giant forces sent a crack, like a great knife, through one of the frozen mountains. He had listened to those sounds for five months, and in those five months he had heard no other voice but his own and MacVeigh’s and the babble of an Eskimo. Only once in four months had he seen the sun, and that was on the morning that MacVeigh went south. So he had gone half mad. Others had gone completely mad before him. Through the window his eyes rested on the five rough wooden crosses that marked their graves. In the service of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police they were called heroes. And in a short time he, Constable Pelliter, would be numbered among them. MacVeigh would send the whole story down to her, the true little girl a thousand miles south; and she would always remember him— her hero— and his lonely grave at Point Fullerton, the northernmost point of the Law. But she would never see that grave. She could never come to put flowers on it, as she put flowers on the grave of his mother; she would never know the whole story, not a half of it— his terrible longing for a sound of her voice, a touch of her hand, a glimpse of her sweet blue eyes before he died. They were to be married in August, when his service in the Royal Mounted ended. She would be waiting for him. And in August— or July— word would reach her that he had died.
With a dry sob he turned from the window to the rough table that he had drawn close to his bunk, and for the thousandth time he held before his red and feverish eyes a photograph. It was a portrait of a girl, marvelously beautiful to Tommy Pelliter, with soft brown hair and eyes that seemed always to talk to him and tell him how much she loved him. And for the thousandth time he turned the picture over and read the words she had written on the back:
“My own dear boy, remember that I am always with you, always thinking of you, always praying for you; and I know, dear, that you will always do what you would do if I were at your side.”
“Good Lord!” groaned Pelliter. “I can’t die! I can’t! I’ve got to live— to see her—”
He dropped back on his bunk exhausted. The fires burned in his head again. He grew dizzy, and he talked to her, or thought he was talking, but it was only a babble of incoherent sound that made Kazan, the one-eyed old Eskimo dog, lift his shaggy head and sniff suspiciously. Kazan had listened to Pelliter’s deliriums many times since MacVeigh had left them alone, and soon he dropped his muzzle between his forepaws and dozed again. A long time afterward he raised his head once more. Pelliter was quiet. But the dog sniffed, went to the door, whined softly, and nervously muzzled the sick man’s thin hand. Then he settled back on his haunches, turned his nose straight up, and from his throat there came that wailing, mourning cry, long-drawn and terrible, with which Indian dogs lament before the tepees of masters who are newly dead. The sound aroused Pelliter. He sat up again, and he found that once more the fire and the pain had gone from his head.
“Kazan, Kazan,” he pleaded, weakly, “it isn’t time— yet!”
Kazan had gone to the window that looked to the west, and stood with his forefeet on the sill. Pelliter shivered.
“Wolves again,” he said, “or mebbe a fox.”
He had grown into that habit of talking to himself, which is as common as human life itself in the far north, where one’s own voice is often the one thing that breaks a killing monotony. He edged his way to the window as he spoke and looked out with Kazan. Westward there stretched the lifeless Barren illimitable and void, without rock or bush and overhung by a sky that always made Pelliter think of a terrible picture he had once seen of Doré’s “Inferno.” It was a low, thick sky, like purple and blue granite, always threatening to pitch itself down in terrific avalanches, and between the earth and this sky was the thin, smothered world which MacVeigh had once called God’s insane asylum.
Through the gloom Kazan’s one eye and Pelliter’s feverish vision could not see far, but at last the man made out an object toiling slowly toward the cabin. At first he thought it was a fox, and then a wolf, and then, as it loomed larger, a straying caribou. Kazan whined. The bristles along his spine rose stiff and menacing. Pelliter stared harder and harder, with his face pressed close against the cold glass of the window, and suddenly he gave a gasping cry of excitement. It was a man who was toiling toward the cabin! He was bent almost double, and he staggered in a zigzag fashion as he advanced. Pelliter made his way feebly to the door, unbarred it, and pushed it partly open. Overcome by weakness he fell back then on the edge of his bunk,
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!”
VIII
LITTLE MYSTERY
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.
“It’s a girl— a little girl!” he almost shouted to Kazan. “Quick, boy— go back— get out!”
He laid the child upon the other blankets, and then thrust back Kazan. He seemed suddenly possessed of the strength of two men as he tore at his own blankets and dumped the contents of the pack out upon the snow. “She sent us, boy,” he cried, his breath coming in sobbing gasps. “Where’s the milk ’n’ the stove—”
In ten seconds more he was back in the igloo with a can of condensed cream, a pan, and the alcohol lamp. His fingers trembled so that he had difficulty in lighting the wick, and as he cut open the can with his knife he saw the child’s eyes flutter wide for an instant and then close again.
“Just a minute, a half minute,” he pleaded, pouring the cream into the pan. “Hungry, eh, little one? Hungry? Starving?” He held the pan close down over the blue flame and gazed terrified at the white little face near him. Its thinness and quiet frightened him. He thrust his finger into the cream and found it warm.
“A cup, Kazan! Why didn’t I bring a cup?” He darted out again and returned with a tin basin. In another moment the child was in his arms, and he forced the first few drops of cream between her lips. Her eyes shot open. Life seemed to spring into her little body; and she drank with a loud noise, one of her tiny hands gripping him by the wrist. The touch, the sound, the feel of life against him thrilled Pelliter. He gave her half of what the basin contained, and then wrapped her up warmly in his thick service blanket, so that all of her was hidden but her face and her tangled golden hair. He held her for a moment close to the lantern. She was looking at him now, wide-eyed and wondering, but not frightened.
“God bless your little soul!” he exclaimed, his amazement growing. “Who are you, ’n’ where’d you come from? You ain’t more’n three years old, if you’re an hour. Where’s your mama ’n’ your papa?” He placed her back on the blankets. “Now, a fire, Kazan!” he said.
He held the lantern above his head and found the narrow vent through the snow-and-ice wall which Blake had made for the escape of smoke. Then he went outside for the fuel, freeing Kazan on the way. In a few minutes more a small bright blaze of almost smokeless larchwood was lighting up and warming the interior of the igloo. To his surprise, Pelliter found the child asleep when he went to her again. He moved her gently and carried the dead body of the little Eskimo woman through the opening and half a hundred paces from the igloo. Not until then did he stop to marvel at the strength which had returned to him. He stretched his arms above his head and breathed deeply of the cold air. It seemed as though something had loosened inside of him, that a crushing weight had lifted itself from his eyes. Kazan had followed him, and he stared down at the dog.
“It’s gone, Kazan,” he cried, in a low, half-credulous voice. “I don’t feel— sick— any more. It’s her—”
He turned back to the igloo. The lantern and the fire made a cheerful glow inside, and it was growing warm. He threw off his heavy coat, drew the bearskin in front of the fire, and sat down with the child in his arms. She still slept. Like a starving man Pelliter stared down upon the little thin face. Gently his rough fingers stroked back the golden curls. He smiled. A light came into his eyes. His head bent lower and lower, slowly and a little fearfully. At last his lips touched the child’s cheek. And then his own rough grizzled face, toughened by wind and storm and intense cold, nestled against the little face of this new and mysterious life he had found at the top of the world.
Kazan listened for a time, squatted on his haunches. Then he curled himself near the fire and slept. For a long time Pelliter sat rocking gently back and forth, thrilled by a happiness that was growing deeper and stronger in him each instant. He could feel the tiny beat of the little one’s heart against his breast; he could feel her breath against his cheek; one of her little hands had gripped him by his thumb.
A hundred questions ran through his mind now. Who was this little abandoned mite? Who were her father and her mother, and where were they? How had she come to be with the Eskimo woman and Blake? Blake was not her father; the Eskimo woman was not her mother. What tragedy had placed her here? Somehow he was conscious of a sensation of joy as he reasoned that he would never be able to answer these questions. She belonged to him. He had found her. No one would ever come to dispossess him. Without awakening her, he thrust a hand into his breast pocket and drew out the photograph of the sweet-faced girl who was going to be his wife. It did not occur to him now that he might die. The old fear and the old sickness were gone. He knew that he was going to live.
“You,” he breathed, softly, “you did it, and I know you’ll be glad when I bring her down to you.” And then to the little sleeping girl: “And if you ain’t got a name I guess I’ll have to call you Mystery— how is that?— my Little Mystery.”
When he looked from the picture again Little Mystery’s eyes were open and gazing up at him. He dropped the picture and made a lunge for the pan of cream warming before the fire. The child drank as hungrily as before, with Pelliter babbling incoherent nonsense into her baby ears. When she had done he picked up the photograph, with a sudden and foolish inspiration that she might understand.
“Looky,” he cried. “Pretty—”
To his astonishment and joy, Little Mystery put out a hand and placed the tip of her tiny forefinger on the girl’s face. Then she looked up into Pelliter’s eyes.
“Mama,” she lisped.
Pelliter tried to speak, but something rose like a knot in his throat and choked him. A fire leaped all at once through his body; the joy of that one word blinded him with hot tears. When he spoke at last his voice was broken, like a sobbing woman’s.
“That’s it.” he said. “You’re right, little one. She’s your mama!”
IX
THE SECRET OF THE DEAD
On the eighth day after Pelliter found the Eskimo igloo Billy MacVeigh came up through a gray dawn with his footsore dogs, his letters, and his medicines. He had traveled all of the preceding night, and his feet dragged heavily. It was with a feeling of fear that he at last saw the black cliffs of Fullerton rising above the ice. He dreaded the first opening of the cabin door. What would he find? During the past forty-eight hours he had figured on Pelliter’s chances, and they were two to one that he would find his partner dead in his bunk.
And if not, if Pelliter still lived, what a tale there would be to tell the sick man! For he knew that he must tell some one, and Pelliter would keep his secret. And he would understand. Day after day, as he had hurried straight into the north, Billy’s loneliness and heartbreak weighed more and more heavily upon him. He tried to force Isobel out of his thoughts, but it was impossible. A thousand visions of her rose before him, and each mile that he drew himself farther away from her seemed only to add to the nearness of her spirit at his side and to the strange pain in his heart that rose now and then to his lips in sobbing breaths that he fought with himself to stifle. And yet, with his own grief and hopelessness, he experienced more and more each day a compensating joy. It was the joy of knowing that he had given back life and hope to Isobel and her husband. Each day he figured their progress along with his own. From the Eskimo village he had sent a messenger back to Churchill with a long report for the officer in command there, and in that report he had lied. He reported Scottie Deane as having died of the injury he had received in the snow-slide. Not for a moment had he regretted the falsehood. He also promised to report at Churchill to testify against Bucky Smith as soon as he reached Pelliter and put him on his feet.
On this last day, as he saw the towering cliffs of Fullerton ahead of him, he wondered how much he would tell to Pelliter if he found him alive. Mentally he rehearsed the amazing story of what came to him that night on the Barren, of the dogs coming across the snow, the great, dark, frightened eyes of the woman, and the long, narrow box on the sledge. He would tell pelliter all that. He would tell how he had made a camp for her that night, and how, later, he had told her that he loved her and had begged one kiss. And then the disclosures of the morning, the deserted tent, the empty box, the little note from Isobel, and the revelation that the box had contained the living body of the man for whom he and Pelliter had patrolled this desolate country for two thousand miles. But would he tell the truth of what had happened after that?
He quickened his tired pace as the dogs climbed up from the ice of the Bay to the sloping ridge, and stared hard ahead of him. The dogs tugged harder as the smell of home entered their nostrils. At last the roof of the cabin came in view. MacVeigh’s bloodshot eyes were like an animal’s in their eagerness.
“Pelly, old boy,” he gasped to himself. “Pelly—”
He stared harder. And then he spoke a low word to the dogs and stopped. He wiped his face. A deep breath of relief fell from his lips.
Straight up from the chimney of the cabin there rose a thick column of smoke!
He came up to the door of the cabin quietly, wondering why Pelliter did not see him or hear the three or four sharp yelps the dogs had given. He twisted off his snow-shoes, chuckling as he thought of the surprise he would give his mate. His hand was on the door latch when he stopped. The smile left his lips. Startled wonderment filled his face as he bent close to the door and listened, and for a moment his heart throbbed with a terrible fear. He had returned too late— perhaps a day— two days. Pelliter had gone mad! He could hear him raving inside, filling the cabin with a laughter that sent a chill of horror through his veins. Mad! A sob broke from his lips, and he turned his face up to the gray sky. And then the laughter turned to song. It was the sweet love song which Pelliter had told him that the girl down south used to sing to him when they were alone out under the stars. Suddenly it broke off short, and in its place he heard another sound. With a cry he opened the door and burst in.
“My God!” he cried. “Pelly— Pelly—”
Pelliter was on his knees in the middle of the floor. But it was not the look of wonderment and joy in his face that Billy saw first. He stared at the little golden-haired creature on the floor in front of him. He had traveled hard, almost day and night, and for an instant it flashed upon him that what he saw was not real. Before he could move or speak again Pelliter was on his feet, wringing his hands and almost crying in his gladness. There was no sign of fever or madness in his face now. Like one in a dream Billy heard what he said.
“God bless you, Billy! I’m glad you’ve come!” he cried. “We’ve been waiting ’n’ watching, and not more’n a minute ago we were at the window looking along the edge of the Bay through the binoculars. You must have been under the ridge. My God! A little while ago I thought I was dying— I thought I was alone in the world— alone— alone. But look— look, Billy, I’ve got a fam’ly!”
Little Mystery had climbed to her feet. She was looking at Billy wonderingly, her golden curls tousled about her pretty face, and gripping two or three of Pelliter’s old letters in her tiny hand. And then she smiled at Billy and held out the letters to him. In an instant he had dropped Pelliter’s hands and caught her up in his arms.
“I’ve got letters for you in my pocket, Pelly,” he gasped. “But— first— you’ve got to tell me who she is and where you got her—”
Briefly Pelliter told of Blake’s visit, the fight, and of the finding of Little Mystery.
“I’d have died if it hadn’t been for her, Billy,” he finished. “She brought me back to life. But I don’t know who she is or where she came from. There wasn’t anything in his pockets or in the igloo to tell. I buried him out there— shallow— so you could take a look when you came back.”
He snatched like a starving man for food at the letters MacVeigh pulled from his pocket. While he read Billy sat down with Little Mystery on his knees. She laughed and put her warm little hands up to his rough face. Her eyes were blue, like Isobel’s; and suddenly he crushed his face close down against her soft curls and held her so close to him that for a moment she was frightened. A little later Pelliter looked up. His eyes shone, his thin face was radiant with joy.
“God bless the sweetest little girl in the world, Billy!” he whispered, huskily. “She says she’s lonely for me. She tells me to hurry— hurry down there to her. She says that if I don’t come soon she’ll come up to me! Read ’em, Billy!”
He looked in astonishment at the change which he saw in MacVeigh’s face. Billy accepted the letters mechanically and placed them on the edge of the bunk near which he was sitting.
“I’ll read them— after a while,” he said, slowly.
Little Mystery clambered from his knee and ran to Pelliter. Billy was staring straight into the other’s face.
“You’re sure you’ve told me everything, Pelly? There wasn’t anything in his pockets? You searched well?”
“Yes. There was nothing.”
“But— you were sick—”
“That’s why I buried him shallow,” interrupted Pelliter. “He’s close to the last cross, just under the ice and snow. I wanted you to look— for yourself.”
Billy rose to his feet. He took Little Mystery in his arms again and looked closely in her face. There was a strange look in his eyes. She laughed at him, but he did not seem to notice it. And then he held her out to Pelliter.
“Pelly, did you ever— ever notice eyes— very closely?” he asked. “Blue eyes?”
Pelliter stared at him amazed.
“My Jeanne has blue eyes—”
“And have they little brown dots in them like a wood violet?”
“No-o-o—”
“They’re blue, just blue, ain’t they?”
“Yes.”
“And I suppose most all blue eyes are just blue, without the little brown spots. Wouldn’t you think so?”
“What in Heaven’s name are you driving at?” demanded Pelliter.
“I just wanted you to notice that her eyes have little brown spots in them,” replied Billy. “I’ve only seen one other pair of eyes— just like hers.” He turned toward the door. “I’m going out to care for the dogs and dig up Blake,” he added. “I can’t rest until I’ve seen him.”
Pelliter placed Little Mystery on her feet.
“I’ll see to the dogs,” he said. “But I don’t want to look at Blake again.”
The two men went out, and while Pelliter led the dogs to a lean-to behind the cabin Billy began to work with an ax and spade at the spot his comrade had pointed out to him. Ten minutes later he came to Blake. An excitement which he had tried to hide from Pelliter overcame his sense of horror as he dragged out the stiff and frozen corpse of the man. It was a terrible picture that the dead man made, with his coarse bearded face turned up to the sky and his teeth still snarling as they had snarled on the day he died. Billy knew most men who had come into the north above Churchill, but he had never looked upon Blake before. It was probable that the dead man had told a part of the truth, and that he was a sailor left on the upper coast by some whaler. He shivered as he began going through his pockets. Each moment added to his disappointment. He found a few things— a knife, two keys, several coins, a fire-flint, and other articles— but there was no letter or writing of any kind, and that was what he had hoped to find. There was nothing that might solve the mystery of the miracle that had descended upon them. He rolled the dead man into the grave, covered him over, and went into the cabin.
Pelliter was in his usual place— on his hands and knees, with Little Mystery astride his back. He paused in a mad race across the cabin floor and looked up with inquiring eyes. The little girl held up her arms, and MacVeigh tossed her half-way to the ceiling and then hugged her golden head close up to his chilled face. Pelliter jumped to his feet; his face grew serious as Billy looked at him over the child’s tousled curls.
“I found nothing— absolutely nothing of any account,” he said.
He placed Little Mystery on one of the bunks and faced the other with a puzzled look in his eyes.
“I wish you hadn’t been in a fever on that day of the fight, Pelly,” he said. “He must have said something— something that would give us a clue.”
“Mebbe he did, Billy,” replied Pelliter, looking with a shiver at the few things MacVeigh had placed on the cabin table. “But there’s no use worrying any more about it. It ain’t in reason that she’s got any people up here, six hundred miles from the shack of a white man that ’d own a little beauty like her. She’s mine. I found her. She’s mine to keep.”
He sat down at the table, and MacVeigh sat down opposite him, smiling sympathetically into Pelliter’s eyes.
“I know you want her— want her bad, Pelly,” he said. “And I know the girl would love her. But she’s got people— somewhere, and it’s our duty to find ’em. She didn’t drop out of a balloon, Pelly. Do you suppose— the dead man— might be her father?”
It was the first time he had asked this question, and he noted the other’s sudden shudder of revulsion.
“I’ve thought of that. But it can’t be. He was a beast, and she— she’s a little angel. Billy, her mother must have been beautiful. And that’s what made me guess— fear—”
Pelliter wiped his face uneasily, and the two young men stared into each other’s eyes. MacVeigh leaned forward, waiting.
“I figured it all out last night, lying awake there in my bunk,” continued Pelliter, “and as the second best friend I have on earth I want to ask you not to go any farther, Billy. She’s mine. My Jeanne, down there, will love her like a real mother, and we’ll bring her up right. But if you go on, Billy, you’ll find something unpleasant— I— I— swear you will!”
“You know—”
“I’ve guessed,” interrupted the other. “Billy, sometimes a beast— a man beast— holds an attraction for a woman, and Blake was that sort of a beast. You remember— two years ago— a sailor ran away with the wife of a whaler’s captain away up at Narwhale Inlet. Well—”
Again the two men stared silently at each other. MacVeigh turned slowly toward the child. She had fallen asleep, and he could see the dull shimmer of her golden curls as they lay scattered over Pelliter’s pillow.
“Poor little devil!” he exclaimed, softly.
“I believe that woman was Little Mystery’s mother,” Pelliter went on. “She couldn’t bear to leave the little kid when she went with Blake, so she took her along. Some women do that. And after a time she died. Then Blake took up with an Eskimo woman. You know what happened after that. We don’t want Little Mystery to know all this when she grows up. It’s better not. She’s too little to remember, ain’t she? She won’t ever know.”
“I remember the ship,” said Billy, not taking his eyes off Little Mystery. “She was the Silver Seal. Her captain’s name was Thompson.”
He did not look at Pelliter, but he could feel the quick, tense stiffening of the other’s body. There was a moment’s silence. Then Pelliter spoke in a low, unnatural voice.
“Billy, you ain’t going to hunt him up, are you? That wouldn’t be fair to me or to the kid. My Jeanne ’ll love her, an’ mebbe— mebbe some day your kid ’ll come along an’ marry her—”
MacVeigh rose to his feet. Pelliter did not see the sudden look of grief that shot into his face.
“What do you say, Billy?”
“Think it over, Pelly,” came back Billy’s voice, huskily. “Think it over. I don’t want to hurt you, and I know you think a lot of her, but— think it over. You wouldn’t rob her father, would you? An’ she’s all he’s got left of the woman. Think it over, Pelly, good ’n’ hard. I’m going to bed an’ sleep a week!”
X
IN DEFIANCE OF THE LAW
Billy slept all that day and the night that followed, and Pelliter did not awaken him. He aroused himself from his long sleep of exhaustion an hour or two before dawn of the following morning, and for the first time he had the opportunity of going over with himself all the things that had happened since his return to Fullerton Point. His first thought was Pelliter and Little Mystery. He could hear his comrade’s deep breathing in the bunk opposite him, and again he wondered if Pelliter had told him everything. Was it possible that Blake had said nothing to reveal Little Mystery’s identity, and that the igloo and the dead Eskimo woman had not given up the secret? It seemed inconceivable that there would not be something in the igloo that would help to clear up the mystery. And yet, after all, he had faith in Pelliter. He knew that he would keep nothing from him even though it meant possession of the child. And then his mind leaped to Isobel Deane. Her eyes were blue, and they had in them those same little spots of brown he had found in Little Mystery’s. They were unusual eyes, and he had noticed the brown in them because it had added to their loveliness and had made him think of the violets he had told Pelliter about. Was it possible, he asked himself, that there could be some association between Isobel and Little Mystery? He confessed that it was scarcely conceivable, and yet it was impossible for him to get the thought out of his mind.
Before Pelliter awoke he had determined upon his own course of action. He would say nothing of what had happened to himself on the Barren, at least not for a time. He would not tell of his meeting with Isobel and her husband or of what had followed. Until he was absolutely certain that Pelliter was keeping nothing from him he would not confide the secret of his own treachery to him. For he had been a traitor— to the Law. He realized that. He could tell the story, with its fictitious ending, before they set out for Churchill, where he would give evidence against Bucky Smith. Meanwhile he would watch Pelliter, and wait for him to reveal whatever he might have hidden from him. He knew that if Pelliter was concealing something he was inspired by his almost insane worship of the little girl he had found who had saved him from madness and death. He smiled in the darkness as he thought that if Pelliter were working to achieve his own end— possession of Little Mystery— he was inspired by emotions no more selfish than his own in giving back life to Isobel Deane and her husband. On that score they were even.
He was up and had breakfast started before Pelliter awoke. Little Mystery was still sleeping, and the two men moved about softly in their moccasined feet. On this morning the sun shone brilliantly over the southern ice-fields, and Pelliter aroused Little Mystery so that she might see it before it disappeared. But to-day it did not drop below the gray murkiness of the snow-horizon for nearly an hour. After breakfast Pelliter read his letters again, and then Billy read them. In one of the letters the girl had put a tress of sunny hair, and Pelliter kissed it shamelessly before his comrade.
“She says she’s making the dress she’s going to wear when we’re married, and that if I don’t come home before it’s out of style she’ll never marry me at all,” he cried, joyously. “Look there, on that page she’s told me all about it. You’re— you’re goin’ to be there, ain’t you, Billy?”
“If I can make it, Pelly.”
“If you can make it! I thought you was going out of the Service when I did.”
“I’ve sort of changed my mind.”
“And you’re going to stick?”
“Mebbe for another three years.”
Life in the cabin was different after this. Pelliter and Little Mystery were happy, and Billy fought with himself every hour to keep down his own gloom and despair. The sun helped him. It rose earlier each day and remained longer in the sky, and soon the warmth of it began to soften the snow underfoot. The vast fields of ice began to give evidence of the approach of spring, and the air was more and more filled with the thunderous echoes of the “break up.” Great floes broke from the shore-runs, and the sea began to open. Down from the north the powerful arctic currents began to move their grinding, roaring avalanches. But it was a full month before Billy was sure that Pelliter was strong enough to begin the long trip south. Even then he waited for another week.
Late one afternoon he went out alone and stood on the cliff watching the thunderous movement of arctic ice out in the Roes Welcome. Standing motionless fifty paces from the little storm-beaten cabin that represented Law at this loneliest outpost on the American continent, he looked like a carven thing of dun-gray rock, with a dun-gray world over his head and on all sides of him, broken only in its terrific monotony of deathlike sameness by the darker gloom of the sky and the whiter and ghostlier gloom that hung over the ice-fields. The wind was still bitter, and his vision was shut in by a near horizon which Billy had often thought of as the rim of hell. On this afternoon his heart was as leaden as the day. Under his feet the frozen earth shivered with the rumbling reverberations of the crashing and breaking mountains of ice. His ears were filled with a dull and steady roar, like the echoes of distant thunder, broken now and then— when an ice-mountain split asunder— with a report like that of a thirteen-inch gun. There were curious wailings, strange screeching sounds, and heartbreaking moanings in the air. Two days before MacVeigh had heard the roar of the ice ten miles inland, where he had gone for caribou.
But he scarcely heard that roar now. He was looking toward the warring fields of ice, but he did not see them. It was not the dead gloom and the gray monotony that weighted his heart, but the sounds that he heard now and then in the cabin— the laughing of Little Mystery and of Pelliter. A few days more and he would lose them. And after that what would be left for him? A cry broke from his lips, and he gripped his hands in despair. He would be alone. There was no one waiting for him down in that world to which Pelliter was going, no girl to meet him, no father, no mother— nothing. He laughed in his pain as he faced the cold wind from the north. The sting of that wind was like the mocking ghost of his own past life. For all his life he had known only the stings of pain and of loneliness. And then, suddenly, there came Pelliter’s words to him again— “Mebbe some day you’ll have a kid.” A flood of warmth swept through his veins, and in the moment of forgetfulness and hope which came with it he turned his eyes into the south and west and saw the sweet face and upturned lips of Isobel Deane.
He pulled himself together with a low laugh and faced the breaking seas of ice and the north. The gloom of night had drawn the horizon nearer. The rumble and thunder of crumbling floes came from out of a purple chaos that was growing blue-black in the distance. For several minutes he stood listening and looking into nothingness. The breaking of the ice, the moaning discontent in the air, and the growling monotone of the giant currents had driven other men mad; but they held a fascination for him. He knew what was happening, and he could almost measure the strength of the unseen hands of nature. No sound was new or strange to him. But now, as he stood there, there rose above all the other tumult a sound that he had not heard before. His body became suddenly tense and alert as he faced squarely to the north. For a full minute he listened, and then turned and ran to the cabin.
Pelliter had lighted a lamp, and in its glow Billy’s face shone white with excitement.
“Good God, Pelly, come here!” he cried from the door.
As Pelliter ran out he gripped him by the shoulders.
“Listen!” he commanded. “Listen to that!”
“Wolves!” said Pelliter.
The wind was rising, and sent a whistling blast through the open door of the cabin. It awakened Little Mystery, who sat up with frightened cries.
“No, it’s not wolves,” cried MacVeigh, and it did not sound like MacVeigh’s voice that spoke. “I never heard wolves like that. Listen!”
He clutched Pelliter’s arm as on a fresh burst of the wind there came the strange and terrible sound from out of the night. It was rapidly drawing nearer— a wailing burst of savage voice, as if a great wolf pack had struck the fresh and blood-stained trail of game. But with this there was the other and more fearful sound, a shrieking and yelping as if half-human creatures were being torn by the fangs of beasts. As Pelliter and MacVeigh stood waiting for something to appear out of the gray-and-black mystery of the night they heard a sound that was like the slow tolling of a thing that was half bell and half drum.
“It’s not wolves,” shouted Billy. “Whatever it is, there’s men with it! Hurry, Pelly, into the cabin with our dogs and sledge! Those are dogs we hear— dogs who are howling because they smell us— and there are hundreds of ’em! Where there’s dogs there’s men— but who in Heaven’s name can they be?”