Isobel : A Romance of the Northern Trail Part 15

With the quickness of a cat Pierre raised the b.u.t.t of the heavy dog-whip which he held in his hand and it came down with a sickening thud on Billy's head. As he staggered into the middle of the cabin floor, groping blindly for a moment before he fell, he heard a strange, terrified cry, and in the open inner door he saw the white-robed figure of Isobel Deane. Then he sank down into a pit of blackness.

It was Isobel's face that he first saw when he came from out of that black pit. He knew that it was her voice calling to him before he had opened his eyes. He felt the touch of her hands, and when he looked up her loose, soft hair swept his breast. His head was bolstered up, and so he could look straight into her face. It frightened him. He knew now what she had been saying to him as he lay there upon the floor.

"You must get up! You must go!" he heard her mooning. "You must take my baby away. And you-- you-- must go!"

He pulled himself half erect, then rose to his feet, swaying a little.

He came to her then, with the look in his face she had first seen out on the Barren when he had told her that he was going with her through the forest.

"No, I am not going away," he said, firmly, and yet with that same old gentleness in his voice. "If I go you will die. So I am going to stay."

She stared at him, speechless.

"You-- you can't," she gasped, at last. "Don't you see-- don't you understand? I'm a woman-- and you can't. You must take her-- my baby-- and go for help."

"There is no help," said MacVeigh, quietly. "Within a few hours you will be helpless. I am going to stay and-- and-- I swear to G.o.d I will care for you-- as he-- would have done. He made me promise that-- to care for you-- to stick by you--"

She looked straight into his eyes. He saw the twitching of her throat, the quiver of her lips. In another moment she would have fallen if he had not put a supporting arm about her.

"If-- anything-- happens," she gasped, brokenly, "you will take care-- of her-- my baby--"

"Yes-- always."

"And if I-- get well--"

Her head swayed dizzily and dropped to his breast.

"If I get-- well--"

"Yes," he urged. "Yes--"

"If I--"

He saw her struggle and fail.

"Yes, I know-- I understand," he cried, quickly, as she grew heavier in his arms. "If you get well I will go. I swear to do that. I will go away. No one will ever know-- no one-- in the whole world. And I will be good to you-- and care for you--"

He stopped, brushed back her hair, and looked into her face. Then he carried her into the inner room; and when he came out little Isobel was crying.

"You poor little kid," he cried, and caught her up in his arms. "You poor little--"

The child smiled at him through her tears, and Billy suddenly sat down on the edge of the table.

"You've been a little brick from the beginning, and you're going to keep it up, little one," he said, taking her pretty face between his two big hands. "You've got to be good, for we're going to have a-- a--" He turned away, and finished under his breath. "We're going to have a devil of a time !"

XVI

THE LAW-- MURDERER OF MEN

Seated on the table, little Isobel looked up into Billy's face and laughed, and when the laugh ended in a half wail Billy found that his fingers had tightened on her little shoulder until they hurt. He tousled her hair to bring back her good-humor, and put her on the floor. Then he went back to the partly open door. It was quiet in the darkened room. He listened for a breath or a sob, and could hear neither. A curtain was drawn over the one window, and he could but indistinctly make out the darker shadow where Isobel lay on the bed.

His heart beat faster as he softly called Isobel's name. There was no answer. He looked back. Little Isobel had found something on the floor and was amusing herself with it. Again he called the mother, and still there was no answer. He was filled with a sort of horror. He wanted to go over to the dark shadow and a.s.sure himself that she was breathing, but a hand seemed to thrust him back. And then, piercing him like a knife, there came again those low, moaning words of accusation:

"It was you-- it was you-- it was you--"

In that voice, low and moaning as it was, he recognized some of Pelliter's madness. It was the fever. He fell back a step and drew a hand across his forehead. It was damp, clammy with a cold perspiration. He felt a burning pain where he had been struck, and a momentary dizziness made him stagger. Then, with a tremendous effort, he threw himself together and turned to the little girl. As he carried her out through the door into the fresh air Isobel's feverish words still followed him:

"It was you-- you-- you-- you!"

The cold air did him good, and he hurried toward the tent with baby Isobel. As he deposited her among the blankets and bearskins the hopelessness of his position impressed itself swiftly upon him. The child could not remain in the cabin, and yet she would not be immune from danger in the tent, for he would have to spend a part of his time with her. He shuddered as he thought of what it might mean. For himself he had no fear of the dread disease that had stricken Isobel.

He had run the risk of contagion several times before and had remained unscathed, but his soul trembled with fear as he looked into little Isobel's bright blue eyes and tenderly caressed the soft curls about her face, If Couchee and his wife had only taken her! At thought of them he sprang suddenly to his feet.

"Looky, little one, you've got to stay here!" he commanded.

"Understand? I'm going to pin down the tent-flap, and you mustn't cry.

If I don't get that d.a.m.ned half-breed, dead or alive, my name ain't Billy MacVeigh."

He fastened the tent-flap so that Isobel could not escape, and left her alone, quiet and wondering. Loneliness was not new to her.

Solitude did not frighten her; and, listening with his ear close to the canvas, Billy soon heard her playing with the armful of things he had scattered about her. He hurried to the dogs and harnessed them to the sledge. Couchee and his wife did not have over half an hour the start of him-- three-quarters at the most. He would run the race of his life for an hour or two, overtake them, and bring them back at the point of his revolver. If there had to be a fight he would fight.

Where the trail struck into the forest he hesitated, wondering if he would not make better speed by leaving the team and sledge behind. The excited actions of the dogs decided him. They were sniffing at the scent left in the snow by the rival huskies, and were waiting eagerly for the command to pursue. Billy snapped his whip over their heads.

"You want a fight, do you, boys?" he cried. "So do I. Get on with you!

M'hoosh! M'hoosh!"

Billy dropped upon his knees on the sledge as the dogs leaped ahead.

They needed no guidance, but followed swiftly in Couchee's trail. Five minutes later they broke into thin timber, and then came out into a narrow plain, dotted with stunted scrub, through which ran the Beaver.

Here the snow was soft and drifted, and Billy ran behind, hanging to the tail-rope to keep the sledge from leaving him if the dogs should develop an unexpected spurt. He could see that Couchee was exerting every effort to place distance between himself and the plague-stricken cabin, and it suddenly struck Billy that something besides fear of le mort rouge was adding speed to his heels. It was evident that the half-breed was spurred on by the thought of the blow he had struck in the cabin. Possibly he believed that he was a murderer, and Billy smiled as he observed where Couchee had whipped his dogs at a run through the soft drifts. He brought his own team down to a walk, convinced that the half-breed had lost his head, and that he would bush himself and his dogs within a few miles. He was confident, now that he would overtake them somewhere on the plain.

With the elation of this thought there came again the sudden, sickening pain in his head. It was over in an instant, but in that moment the snow had turned black, and he had flung out his arms to keep himself from falling. The babiche rope had slipped from his hand, and when things cleared before his eyes again the sledge was twenty yards ahead of him. He overtook it, and dropped upon it, panting as though he had run a race. He laughed as he recovered himself, and looked over the gray backs of the tugging dogs, but in the same breath the laugh was cut short on his lips. It was as if a knife-blade had run in one lightning thrust from the back of his neck to his brain, and he fell forward on his face with a cry of pain. After all, Couchee's blow had done the work. He realized that, and made an effort to call the dogs to a stop. For five minutes they went on, unheeding the half-dozen weak commands that he called out from the darkness that had fallen thickly about him. When at last he pulled himself up from his face and the snow turned white again, the dogs had halted. They were tangled in their traces and sniffing at the snow.

Billy sat up. Darkness and pain left him as swiftly as they had come.

He saw Couchee's trail ahead, and then he looked at the dogs. They had swung at right angles to the sledge and had pulled the nose of it deep into a drift. With a sharp cry of command he sent the lash of his whip among them and went to the leader's head. The dogs slunk to their bellies, snarling at him.

"What the devil--" he began, and stopped.

He stared at the snow. Straight out from Couchee's trail there ran another-- a snow-shoe trail. For a moment he thought that Couchee or his wife had for some reason struck out a distance from their sledge.

A second glance a.s.sured him that in this supposition he was wrong.

Both the half-breed and his wife wore the long, narrow "bush"

snow-shoes, and this second trail was made by the big, basket-shaped shoes worn by Indians and trappers on the Barrens. In addition to this, the trail was well beaten. Whoever had traveled it recently had gone over it many times before, and Billy gave utterance to his joy in a low cry. He had struck a trap line. The trapper's cabin could not be far away, and the trapper himself had pa.s.sed that way not many minutes since. He examined the two trails and found where the blunt, round point of a snow-shoe had covered an imprint left by Couchee, and at this discovery Billy made a megaphone of his mittened hands and gave utterance to the long, wailing holloa of the forest man. It was a cry that would carry a mile. Twice he shouted, and the second time there came a reply. It was not far distant, and he responded with a third and still louder shout. In a flash there came again the terrible pain in his head, and he sank down on the sledge. This time he was roused from his stupor by the barking and snarling of the dogs and the voice of a man. When he lifted his head out of his arms he saw some one close to the dogs. He made an effort to rise, and staggered half to his feet. Then he fell back, and the darkness closed in about him more thickly than before. When he opened his eyes again he was in a cabin.

He was conscious of warmth. The first sound that he heard was the crackling of a fire and the closing of a stove door. And then he heard some one say:

"S'help me G.o.d, if it ain't Billy MacVeigh!"

He stared up into the face that was looking down at him. It was a white man's face, covered with a scrubby red beard. The beard was new, but the eyes and the voice he would have recognized anywhere. For two years he had messed with Rookie McTabb down at Norway and Nelson House. McTabb had quit the Service because of a bad leg.

"Rookie!" he gasped.

He drew himself up, and McTabb's hands grasped his shoulders.

"S'help me, if it ain't Billy MacVeigh!" he exclaimed again, amazement in his voice and face. "Joe brought you in five minutes ago, and I ain't had a straight squint at you until now. Billy MacVeigh! Well, I'm--" He stopped to stare at Billy's forehead, where there was a stain of blood. "Hurt?" he demanded, sharply. "Was it that d.a.m.ned half-breed?"