Isobel : A Romance of the Northern Trail Read online

  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 worldrM 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 Pe
lliter 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 an
d 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.