Isobel : A Romance of the Northern Trail Part 20

You're to blame!"

You're to blame!

The words struck upon Billy's ears with a chill of horror. Starvation was in the cabin. He had fallen among animals instead of men. He saw the thin-faced man who had spoken for him sitting again on the edge of his bunk. Mutely he looked to the others to see who was Sweedy. He was the young man who had clutched the can of beans. It was he who was frying bacon over the sheet-iron stove.

"We'll divvy, Henry and I," he said. "I told you that last night." He looked over at Billy. "Glad you're better," he greeted. "You see, you've struck us at a bad time. We're on our last legs for grub. Our two Indians went out to hunt a week ago and never came back. They're dead, or gone, and we're as good as dead if the storm doesn't let up pretty soon. You can have some of our grub-- Henry's and mine."

It was a cold invitation, lacking warmth or sympathy, and Billy felt that even this man wished that he had died before he reached the cabin. But the man was human; he had at least not cast his voice with the one that had wanted to throw him back into the snow, and he tried to voice his grat.i.tude and at the same time to hide his hunger. He saw that there were three thin slices of bacon in the frying-pan, and it struck him that it would be bad taste to reveal a starvation appet.i.te in the face of such famine. Bucky was looking straight at him as he limped to his feet, and he was sure now that the man he had driven from the Service had not recognized him. He approached Sweedy.

"You saved my life," he said, holding out a hand. "Will you shake ?"

Sweedy shook hands limply.

"It's h.e.l.l," he said, in a low voice. "We'd have had beans this morning if I hadn't shook dice with him last night." He nodded toward Bucky, who was cutting open the top of a can. "He won!"

"My G.o.d--" began Billy.

He didn't finish. Sweedy turned the meat, and added:

"He won a square meal off me yesterday-- a quarter of a pound of bacon. Day before that he won Henry's last can of beans. He's got his share under his blanket over there, and swears he'll shoot any one who goes to monkeyin' with his bed-- so you'd better fight shy of it.

Thompson-- he isn't up yet-- chose the whisky for his share, so you'd better fight shy of him, too. Henry and I'll divvy up with you."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I'm ready," replied Billy.

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

He was not afraid, but he shivered. He was too weak to put up a fight.

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

"Didn't think I knew you, did you, Billy?" he asked. "Well, I did, and I've just been waiting to get you out alone. Remember my promise, Billy ? I've changed my mind since then. I ain't going to kill you.

It's too risky. It's safer to let you die-- by yourself-- as you're goin' to die to-day or to-night. If you come back to the cabin-- I'll shoot you!"

With a movement so quick that Billy had no chance to prepare himself for it Bucky sent him plunging headlong down the side of the ravine.

The deep snow saved him in the long fall. For a few moments Billy lay stunned. Then he staggered to his feet and looked up. Bucky was gone.

His first thought was to return to the cabin. He could easily find it and confront Bucky there before the others. And yet he did not move.

His inclination to go back grew less and less, and after a brief hesitation he made up his mind to continue the struggle for life by himself. After all, his situation would not be much more desperate than that of the men he was leaving behind in the cabin. He b.u.t.toned himself up closely, saw that his snow-shoes were securely fastened, and climbed the opposite side of the ridge.

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

Billy now found himself in a position to measure the amount of energy contained in a slice of bacon and a cold biscuit. It was not much.

Long before noon his old weakness was upon him again. He found even greater difficulty in dragging his feet over the snow, and it seemed now as though all ambition had left him, and that even the fighting spark was becoming disheartened. He made up his mind to go on until the beginning of night, then he would stop, build a fire, and go to sleep in its warmth.

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

Then the floundering figures caught him up, and he was carried to the circle of snow mounds. The last that he knew was that warmth was entering his lungs.

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

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

"It is the last fish."

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

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

He motioned with his hand to the boiling pot. There was not a flicker of animation in his splendid face. There was something G.o.d-like in his immobility, something that was awesome in the way he moved and breathed. He sat in silence as the half of the last fish was brought by the girl; and not until Billy stopped eating, choked by the knowledge that he was taking life from these people, did he speak, and then it was to urge him to finish the fish. When he had done, Billy spoke to the Indian in Cree. Instantly the Indian reached over his hand, his face lighting up, and Billy gripped it hard. Mukoki told him what had happened. There had been a camp of twenty-two, and there were now fifteen. Seven had died-- four men, two women, and one child. Each day during the great storm the men had gone out on their futile search for game, and every few days one of them had failed to return. Thus four had died. The dogs were eaten. Corn and fish were gone; there remained but a little flour, and this was for the women and the children. The men had eaten nothing but bark and roots for five days.

And there seemed to be no hope. It was death to stray far from camp.

That morning two men had set out for the nearest post, but Mukoki said calmly that they would never return.

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

This last great storm of the winter of 1910 pa.s.sed well into the "break-up" season, and, once the temperature began to rise, the change was swift. Within a week the snow was growing soft underfoot. Two days later Billy hobbled from his cot for the first time. And then, in the pa.s.sing of a single day and night, the glory of the northern spring burst upon the wilderness. The sun rose warm and golden. From the sides of the mountains and in the valleys water poured forth in rippling, singing floods. The red bakneesh glowed on bared rocks.

Moose-birds and jays and wood-thrushes flitted about the camp, and the air was filled with the fragrant smells of new life bursting from earth and tree and shrub.

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

XXIII

AT THE END OF THE TRAIL

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

His grief was deep. He knew that he could never forget, and that the old memories of the wilderness and of the woman he had loved would force themselves upon him, year after year, with their old pain. But these new thoughts and plans for the child made his grief less poignant.

It was late in the afternoon of a day that had been filled with sunlight and the warmth of spring that he came to the Little Beaver, a short distance above McTabb's cabin. He almost ran from there to the clearing, and the sun was just sinking behind the forest in the west when he paused on the edge of the break in the forest and saw the cabin. It was from here that he had last seen little Isobel. The bush behind which he had concealed himself was less than a dozen paces away. He noticed this, and then he observed things which made his heart sink in a strange, cold way. A path had led into the forest at the point where he stood. Now it was almost obliterated by a tangle of last year's weeds and plants. Rookie must have made a new path, he thought. And then, fearfully, he looked about the clearing and at the cabin. Everywhere there was the air of desolation. There was no smoke rising from the chimney. The door was closed. There were no evidences of life outside. Not the sound of a dog, of a laugh, or of a voice broke the dead stillness.

Scarcely breathing, Billy advanced, his heart choked more and more by the fear that gripped him. The door to the cabin was not barred. He opened it. There was nothing inside. The old stove was broken. The bare cots had not been used for months-- perhaps for two years. As he took another step an ermine scampered away ahead of him. He heard the mouselike squeal of its young a moment later under the sapling floor.

He went back to the door and stood in the open.

"My G.o.d!" he moaned.

He looked in the direction of Couchee's cabin, where Isobel had died.

Was there a chance there, he wondered? There was little hope, but he started quickly over the old trail. The gloom of evening fell swiftly about him. It was almost dark when he reached the other clearing. And again his voice broke in a groaning cry. There was no cabin here.

McTabb had burned it after the pa.s.sing of the plague. Where it had stood was now a black and charred ma.s.s, already partly covered by the verdure of the wilderness. Billy gripped his hands hard and walked back from it searchingly. A few steps away he found what McTabb had told him that he would find, a mound and a sapling cross. And then, in spite of all the fighting strength that was in him, he flung himself down upon Isobel's grave, and a great, broken cry of grief burst from his lips.

When he raised his head a long time afterward the stars were shimmering in the sky. It was a wonderfully still night, and all that he could hear was the ripple and song of the spring floods in the Little Beaver. He rose silently to his feet and stood for a few moments as motionless as a statue over the grave. Then he turned and went back over the old trail, and from the edge of the clearing he looked back and whispered to himself and to her: