"Give me a kiss," he demanded.
Isobel complied, putting her two little hands to his face.
"You"re a-- a little peach," he cried. "There ain"t been a whimper out of you all day. And now we"re going to have a fire-- a big fire."
He set about his work, whistling for the first time since morning. He set up his silk Service tent, cut spruce and balsam boughs until he had them a foot deep inside, and then dragged in wood for half an hour. By that time it was dark and the big fire was softening the snow for thirty feet around. He had taken off Isobel"s thick, swaddling coat, and the child"s pretty face shone pink in the fireglow. The light danced red and gold in her tangled curls, and as they ate supper, both on the same blanket, Billy saw opposite him more and more of what he knew he would find in the woman. When they had finished he produced a small pocket comb and drew Isobel close up to him. One by one he smoothed the tangles out of her curls, his heart beating joyously as the silken touch of them ran through his fingers. Once he had felt that same soft touch of the woman"s hair against his face. It had been an accidental caress, but he had treasured it in his memory.
It seemed real again now, and the thrill of it made him place little Isobel alone again on the blanket, while he rose to his feet. He threw fresh fuel on the fire, and then he found that the warmth had softened the snow until it clung to his feet. The discovery gave him an inspiration. A warmth that was not of the fire leaped into his face, and he gathered up the softened snow, raking it into piles with a snow-shoe; and before Isobel"s astonished and delighted eyes there grew into shape a snow-man almost as big as himself. He gave it arms and a head, and eyes of charred wood, and when it was done he placed his own cap on the crown of it and his pipe in its mouth. Little Isobel screamed with delight, and together, hand in hand, they danced around and around it, just as he and the other girls and boys had danced years and years ago. And when they stopped there were tears of laughter and joy in the child"s eyes and a filmy mist of another sort in Billy"s.
It was the snow-man that brought back to him years and years of lost hopes. They flooded in upon him until it seemed as though the old life was the life of yesterday and waiting for him now just beyond the edge of the black forest. Long after Isobel was asleep in the tent he sat and looked at the snow-man; and more and more his heart sang with a new joy, until it seemed as though he must rise and cry out in the eagerness and hope that filled him. In the snow-man, slowly melting before the fire, there was a heart and a soul and voice. It was calling to him, urging him as nothing in the world had ever urged him before. He would go back to the old home down in G.o.d"s country, to the old playmates who were men and women now. They would welcome him-- and they would welcome the woman. For he would take her. For the first time he made himself believe that she would go. And there, hand in hand, they would follow his boyhood footprints over the meadows and through the hills, and he would gather flowers for her in place of the mother that was gone, and he would tell her all the old stories of the days that were pa.s.sed.
It was the snow-man!
XV
LE MORT ROUGE-- AND ISOBEL
Until late that night Billy sat beside his campfire with the snow-man.
Strange and new thoughts had come to him, and among these was the wondering one asking himself why he had never built a snow-man before.
When he went to bed he dreamed of the snow-man and of little Isobel; and the little girl"s laughter and happiness when she saw the curious form the dissolving snow-man had taken in the heat of the fire when she awoke the following morning filled him again with those boyish visions of happiness that he had seen just ahead of him. At other times he would have told himself that he was no longer reasonable.
After they had breakfasted and started on the day"s journey he laughed and talked with baby Isobel, and a dozen times in the forenoon he picked her up in his arms and carried her behind the dogs.
"We"re going home," he kept telling her over and over again. "We"re going home-- down to mama-- mama-- mama!" He emphasized that; and each time Isobel"s pretty mouth formed the word mama after him his heart leaped exultantly. By the end of that day it had become the sweetest word in the world to him. He tried mother, but his little comrade looked at him blankly, and he did not like it himself. "Mama, mama, mama," he said a hundred times that night beside their campfire, and before he tucked her away in her warm blankets he said something to her about "Now I lay me down to sleep." Isobel was too tired and sleepy to comprehend much of that. Even after she was deep in slumber and Billy sat alone smoking his pipe he whispered that sweetest word in the world to himself, and took out the tress of shining hair and gazed at it joyously in the glow of the fire. By the end of the next day little Isobel could say almost the whole of the prayer his own mother had taught him years and years and years ago, so far back that his vision of her was not that of a woman, but of an elusive and wonderful angel; and the fourth day at noon she lisped the whole of it without a word of a.s.sistance from him.
On the morning of the fifth day Billy struck the Gray Beaver, and little Isobel grew serious at the change in him. He no longer amused her, but urged the dogs along, never for an instant relaxing his vigilant quest for a sign of smoke, a trail, a blazed tree. At his heart there began to burn a suspense that was almost suffocating. In these last hours before he was to see Isobel there came the inevitable reaction within him. Gloom oppressed him where a little while before joyous antic.i.p.ation had given him hope. The one terrible thought drove out all others now-- he was bringing her news of death, her husband"s death. And to Isobel he knew that Deane had meant all that the world held of joy or hope-- Deane and the baby.
It was like a shock when he came suddenly upon the cabin, in the edge of a small clearing. For a moment he hesitated. Then he took Isobel in his arms and went to the door. It was slightly ajar, and after knocking upon it with his fist he thrust it open and entered.
There was no one in the room in which he found himself, but there was a stove and a fire. At the end of the room was a second door, and it opened slowly. In another moment Isobel stood there. He had never seen her as he saw her now, with the light from a window falling upon her.
She was dressed in a loose gown, and her long hair fell in disheveled profusion over her shoulders and bosom. MacVeigh would have cried out her name-- he had told himself a hundred times what he would first say to her-- but what he saw in her face startled him and held him silent while their eyes met. Her cheeks were flushed. Her lips burned an unnatural red. Her eyes were glowing with strange fires. She looked at him first, and her hands clutched at her bosom, crumpling the ma.s.ses of her l.u.s.trous hair. Not until she had looked into his eyes did she recognize what he carried in his arms. When he held the child out to her she sprang forward with the strangest cry he had ever heard.
"My baby!" she almost shrieked. "My baby-- my baby--"
She staggered back and sank into a chair near a table, with little Isobel clasped to her breast. For a time Billy heard only those words in her dry, sobbing voice as she crushed her burning face down against her child"s. He knew that she was sick, that it was fever which had sent the hot flush into her cheeks. He gulped hard, and went near to her. Trembling, he put out a hand and touched her. She looked up. A bit of that old, glorious light leaped into her eyes, the light which he had seen when in grat.i.tude she had given him her lips to kiss.
"You?" she whispered. "You-- brought her--"
She caught his hand, and the soft smother of her loose hair fell over it. He could feel the quick rise and fall of her bosom.
"Yes," he said.
There was a demand in her face, her eyes, her parted lips. He went on, her hand clasping his tighter, until he could feel the swift beating of her heart. He had never thought that he could tell the story in as few words as he told it now, with more and more of the glorious light creeping into Isobel"s eyes. She stopped breathing when he told her of the fight in the cabin and the death of the man who had stolen little Isobel. A hundred words more brought him to the edge of the forest. He stopped there. But she still questioned him in silence. She drew him down nearer, until he could feel her breath. There was something terrible in the demand of her eyes. He tried to find words to say, but something rose up in his throat and choked him. She saw his effort.
"Go on," she said, softly.
"And then-- I brought her to you," he said.
"You met him?"
Her question was so sudden that it startled him, and in an instant he had betrayed himself.
Little Isobel slipped to the floor, and Isobel stood up. She came near to him, as she came that marvelous night out on the Barren, and in her eyes there was the same prayer as she put her two hands up to him and looked straight into his face.
He thought it would be easier. But it was terrible. She did not move.
No sound came from her tight-drawn lips as he told her of the meeting with Deane, and of her husband"s illness. She guessed what was coming before he had spoken it. At his words, telling of death, she drew away from him slowly. She did not cry out. Her only evidence that she had heard and understood was the low moan that fell from her lips. She covered her face with her hands and stood for a moment an arm"s length away, and in that moment all the force of his great love for her swept upon MacVeigh in an overwhelming flood. He opened his arms, longing to gather her into them and comfort her as he would have comforted a little child. In that love he would willingly have dropped dead at her feet if he could have given back to her the man she had lost. She raised her head in time to see his outstretched arms, she saw the love and the pleading in his face, and into her own eyes there leaped the fire of a tigress.
"You-- you--" she cried. "It was you who killed him! He had done no wrong-- save to protect me and avenge me from the insult of a brute!
He had done no wrong. But the Law-- your Law-- set you after him, and you hunted him like a beast; you drove him from our home, from me and the baby. You hunted him until he died up there-- alone. You-- you killed him."
With a sudden cry she turned and caught up little Isobel and ran toward the other door. And as she disappeared into the room from which she had first appeared Billy heard her moaning those terrible words.
"You-- you-- you--"
Like a man who had been struck a blow he swayed back to the outer door. Near his dogs and sledge he met Pierre Couchee and his half-French wife coming in from their trap line. He scarcely knew what explanation he gave to the half-breed, who helped him to put up his tent. But when the latter left to follow his wife into the cabin he said:
"She ess seek, ver" seek. An" she grow more seek each day until-- mon Dieu!-- my wife, she ess scare!"
He cut a few balsam boughs and spread out his blankets, but did not trouble to build a fire. When the half-breed returned to say that supper was waiting he told him that he was not hungry, and that he was going to sleep. He doubled himself up under his blankets, silent and staring, even neglecting to feed the dogs. He was awake when the stars appeared. He was awake when the moon rose. He was still awake when the light went out in Pierre Couchee"s cabin. The snow-man was gone from his vision-- home and hope. He had never been hurt as he was hurt now.
He was yet awake when the moon pa.s.sed far over his head, sank behind the wilderness to the west, and blackness came. Toward dawn he fell into an uneasy slumber, and from that sleep he was awakened by Pierre Couchee"s voice.
When he opened his eyes it was day, and the half-breed stood at the opening of the tent. His face was filled with horror. His voice was almost a scream when he saw that MacVeigh was awake and sitting up.
"The great G.o.d in heaven!" he cried. "It is the plague, m"sieur-- le mort rouge-- the small pox! She is dying--"
MacVeigh was on his feet, gripping him by the arms.
He turned and ran toward the cabin, and Billy saw that the half-breed"s team was harnessed, and that Pierre"s wife was bringing forth blankets and bundles. He did not wait to question them, but hurried into the plague-stricken cabin. From the woman"s room came a low moaning, and he rushed in and fell upon his knees at her side. Her face was flushed with the fever, half hidden in the disheveled ma.s.ses of her hair. She recognized him, and her dark eyes burned madly.
"Take-- the baby!" she panted. "My G.o.d-- go-- go with her!"
Tenderly he put out a hand and stroked back her hair from her face.
"You are sick-- sick with the bad fever," he said, gently.
"Yes-- yes, it is that. I did not think-- until last night-- what it might be. You-- you love me! Then take her-- take the baby and go-- go-- go!"
All his old strength came back to him now. He felt no fear. He smiled down into her face, and the silken touch of her hair set his heart leaping and the love into his eyes.
"I will take her out there," he said. "But she is all right-- Isobel."
He spoke her name almost pleadingly. "She is all right. She will not take the fever."
He picked up the child and carried her out into the larger room.
Pierre and his wife were at the door. They were dressed for travel, as he had seen them come in off the trap line the evening before. He dropped Isobel and sprang in front of them.
"What do you mean?" he demanded. "You are not going away! You cannot go!" He turned almost fiercely upon the woman. "She will die-- if you do not stay and care for her. You shall not run away!"
"It is the plague," said Pierre. "It is death to remain!"
"You shall stay!" said MacVeigh, still speaking to Pierre"s wife. "You are the one woman-- the only woman-- within a hundred miles. She will die without you. You shall stay if I have to tie you!"