Chapter 10

"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 damned half-breed?"

Billy was gripping his hands now. Over near the stove, still kneeling before the closed door, he saw the dark face of an Indian turned toward him.

"It was Couchée," he said. "He hit me with the butt of his whip, and I've had funny spells ever since. Before I have another I want to tell you what I'm up against, Rookie. My Gawd, it's a funny chance that ran me up against you-- just in time! Listen."

He told McTabb briefly of Scottie Deane's death, of Couchée's flight from the cabin, and the present situation there.

"There isn't a minute to lose," he finished, tightening his hold on McTabb's hand. "There's the kid and the mother, and I've got to get back to them, Rookie. The rest is up to you. We've got to get a woman. If we don't-- soon--"

He rose to his feet and stood there looking at McTabb. The other nodded.

"I understand," he said. "You're in a bad fix, Billy. It's two hundred miles to the nearest white woman, away over near Du Brochet. You couldn't get an Indian to go within half a mile of a cabin that's struck by the plague, and I doubt if this white woman would come. The only game I can see is to send to Fort Churchill or Nelson House and have the force send up a nurse. It will take two weeks."

Billy gave a gesture of despair. Indian Joe had listened attentively, and now rose quietly from his position in front of the stove.

"There's Indian camp over on Arrow Lake," he said, facing Billy. "I know squaw there who not afraid of plague."

"Sure as fate!" cried McTabb, exultantly. "Joe's mother is over there, and if there is anything on earth she won't do for Joe I can't guess what it is. Early this winter she came a hundred and fifty miles-- alone-- to pay him a visit. She'll come. Go after her, Joe. I'll go Billy MacVeigh's bond to get the Service to pay her five dollars a day from the hour she starts!" He turned to Billy. "How's your head?" he asked.

"Better. It was the run that fixed me, I guess."

"Then we'll go over to Couchée's cabin and I'll bring back the kid."

They left Joe preparing for his three-day trip into the south and east, and outside the cabin McTabb insisted on Billy riding behind the dogs. They struck back for Couchée's trail, and when they came to it McTabb laughed.

"I'll bet they're running like rabbits," he said. "What in thunder did you expect to do if you caught 'em, Billy? Drag the woman back by the hair of 'er 'ead? I'm glad you tumbled where you did. You've got to beat a lynx to beat Couchée. He'd have perforated you from behind a snow-drift sure as your name's Billy MacVeigh."

Billy felt that an immense load had been lifted from him, and he was partly inclined to tell his companion more about Isobel and himself. This, however, he did not do. As McTabb strode ahead and urged on the dogs he figured on the chances of Joe and his mother returning within a week. During that time he would be alone with Isobel, and in spite of the horrible fear that never for a moment left his heart it was impossible for him not to feel a thrill of pleasure at the thought. Those would be days of agony for himself as well as for her, and yet he would be near, always near, the woman he loved. And little Isobel would be safe in Rookie's cabin. If anything happened--

His hands gripped the edges of the sledge at the thought that leaped into his brain. It was Pelliter's thought. If anything happened to Isobel the little girl would be his own, forever and forever. He thrust the thought from him as if it were the plague itself. Isobel would live. He would make her live, If she died--

McTabb heard the low cry that broke from his lips. He could not keep it back. Good God, if she went, how empty the world would be! He might never see her again after these days of terror that were ahead of him; but if she lived, and he knew that the sun was shining in her bright hair, and that her blue eyes still looked up at the stars, and that in her sweet prayers she sometimes thought of him-- along with Deane-- life could not be quite so lonely for him.

McTabb had dropped back to his side.

"Head hurt?" he asked.

"A little," lied Billy. "There's a level stretch ahead, Rookie. Hustle up the dogs!"

Half an hour later the sledge drew up in front of Couchée's cabin. Billy pointed to the tent.

"The little one is in there," he said. "Go over an' get acquainted, Rookie. I'm going to take a look inside to see if everything is all right."

He entered the cabin quietly and closed the door softly behind him. The inner door was as he had left it, partly open, and he looked in, with a wildly beating heart. He could no longer hesitate. He stepped in and spoke her name.

"Isobel!"

There was a movement on the bed, and he was startled by the suddenness with which Isobel sprang to her feet. She drew aside the heavy curtain from the window and stood in the light. For a moment Billy saw her blue eyes filled with a strange fire as she stared at him. There was a wild flush in her cheeks, and he could hear her dry breath as it came from between her parted lips. Her hair was still undone and covered her in a shimmering veil.

"I've found a trapper's cabin, Isobel, and we're taking the baby there," he went on. "She will be safe. And we're sending for help-- for a woman--"

He stopped, horror striking him dumb. He saw more plainly the feverish madness in Isobel's eyes. She dropped the curtain, and they were in gloom. The whispered words he heard were more terrible than the madness in her eyes.

"You won't kill her?" she pleaded. "You won't kill my baby? You won't kill her--"

She staggered, back toward the bed, whispering the words over and over again. Not until she had dropped upon it did Billy move. The blood in his body seemed to have turned cold. Be dropped upon his knees at her side. His hand buried itself in the soft smother of her hair, but he no longer felt the touch of it. He tried to speak, but words would not come. And then, suddenly, she thrust him back, and he could see the glow of her eyes in the half darkness. For a moment she seemed to have fought herself out of her delirium.

"It was you-- you-- who helped to kill him!" she panted. "It was the Law-- and you are the Law. It kills-- kills-- kills-- and it never gives back when it makes a mistake. He was innocent, but you and the Law hounded him until he died. You are the murderers. You killed him. You have killed me. And you will never be punished-- never-- never-- because you are the Law-- and because the Law can kill-- kill-- kill--"

She dropped back, moaning, and MacVeigh crouched at her side, his fingers buried in her hair, with no words to say. In a moment she breathed easier. He felt her tense body relax. He forced himself to his feet and dragged himself into the outer room, closing the door after him. Even in her delirium Isobel had spoken the truth. Forever she had digged for him a black abyss between them. The Law had killed Scottie Deane. And he was the Law. And for the Law there was no punishment, even though it took the life of an innocent man.

He went outside. McTabb was in the tent. The gloom of evening was closing in on a desolate world. Overhead the sky was thick, and suddenly, with a great cry, Billy flung his arms straight up over his head and cursed that Law which could not be punished, the Law that had killed Scottie Deane. For he was that Law, and Isobel had called him a murderer.

XVII

ISOBEL FACES THE ABYSS

It was not the face of MacVeigh-- the old MacVeigh-- that Rookie McTabb, the ex-constable, looked into a few moments later. Days of sickness could have laid no heavier hand upon him than had those few minutes in the darkened room of the cabin. His face was white and drawn. There were tense lines at the corners of his mouth and something strange and disquieting in his eyes. McTabb did not see the change until he came out into what remained of the day with little Isobel in his arms. Then he stared.

"That blow got you bad," he said. "You look sick. Mebbe I'd better stay with you here to-night."

"No, you hadn't," replied Billy, trying to throw off what he knew the other saw. "Take the kid over to the cabin. A night's sleep and I'll be as lively as a cat. I'm going to vaccinate her before you go."

He went into the tent and dug out from his pack the small rubber pouch in which he carried a few medicines and a roll of medicated cotton. In a small bottle there were three vaccine points. He returned with these and the cotton.

"Watch her close," he said, as he rolled back the child's sleeve. "I'm going to give you an extra point, and if this doesn't work by the seventh or eighth day you must do the job over again."

With the point of his knife he began to work gently on baby Isobel's tender pink skin. He had expected that she would cry. But she was not frightened, and her big blue eyes followed his movements wonderingly. At last it began to hurt, and her lips quivered. But she made no sound, and as tears welled into her eyes Billy dropped his knife and caught her up close to his breast.

"God bless your dear little heart," he cried, smothering his face in her silken curls. "You've been hurt so much, an' you've froze, an' you've starved, an' you ain't never said a word about it since that day up at Fullerton! Little sweetheart--"

McTabb heard him whispering things, and little Isobel's arms crept tightly about his neck. After a little Billy held her out to him again, and a part of what Rookie had seen in his face was gone.

"It won't hurt any more," he said, as he rubbed the vaccine point over the red spot on her arm. "You don't want to be sick, do you? And that 'll keep you from being sick. There--"

He wound a strip of the cotton about her arm, tied it, and gave part of what remained to McTabb. Then he took her in his arms again and kissed her warm face and her soft curls, and after that bundled her in furs and put her on the sledge. Rookie was straightening out the dogs when, like a thief, he clipped off one of the curls with his knife. Isobel laughed gleefully when she saw the curl between his fingers. Before McTabb had turned it was in his pocket.

"I won't see her again-- soon," MacVeigh said; and he tried to keep a thickness out of his voice. "That is, I-- I won't see her to-- to handle her. I'll come over now and then an' look at her from the edge of the woods. You bring 'er out, Rookie, an' don't you dare to let her know I'm out there. She wouldn't know what it meant if I didn't come to her."

He watched them as they disappeared into the gloom of night, and when they had gone a groan of anguish broke from his lips. For he knew that little Isobel was going from him forever. He would see her again-- from the edge of the forest; but he would never hold her in his arms, nor feel again her tender arms about his neck or the soft smother of her hair against his face. Long before the dread menace of the plague was lifted from the cabin and from himself he would be gone. For that was what Isobel, the mother, had demanded, and he would keep his promise to her. She would never know what happened in these days of her delirium. She would not have to face him afterward. He knew already how he would go. When help came he would slip away quietly some night, and the big wilderness would swallow him up. His plans seemed to come without thought on his own part. He would go to Fort Churchill and testify against Bucky Smith. And then he would quit the Service. His term of enlistment expired in a month, and he would not re-enlist. "It was the Law that killed him-- and you are the Law. It kills-- kills-- kills-- and it never gives back when it makes a mistake." Under the dark sky those words seemed never to end in his ears, and each moment they added to his hatred of the thing of which he had been a part for years. He seemed to hear Isobel's accusing voice in the low soughing of the night wind in the spruce tops; and in the stillness of the world that hung heavy and close about him the words chased each other through his brain until they seemed to leave behind them a path of fire.

"It kills-- kills-- kills-- and it never gives back when it makes a mistake."

His lips were set tensely as he faced the cabin. He remembered now more than one instance where the Law had killed and had never given back. That was a part of the game of man-hunting. But he had never thought of it in Isobel's way until she had painted for him in those few half-mad, accusing words a picture of himself. The fact that he had fought for Scottie Deane and had given him his freedom did not exonerate himself in his own eyes now. It was because of himself and Pelliter chiefly that Deane and Isobel had been forced to seek refuge among the Eskimos. From Fullerton they had watched and hunted for him as they would have hunted for an animal. He saw himself as Isobel must see him now-- the murderer of her husband. He was glad, as he returned to the cabin, that he had happened to come in the second or third day of her fever. He dreaded her sanity now more than her delirium,

He lighted a tin lamp in the cabin and listened for a moment at the inner door. Isobel was quiet. For the first time he made a more careful note of the cabin. Couchée and his wife had left plenty of food. He had noticed a frozen haunch of venison hanging outside the cabin, and he went out and chopped off several pieces of the meat. He did not feel hungry enough to prepare food for himself, but put the meat in a pot and placed it on the stove, that he might have broth for Isobel.

He began to find signs of her presence in the room as he moved about. Hanging on a wooden peg in the log wall he saw a scarf which he knew belonged to her. Under the scarf there was a pair of her shoes, and then he noticed that the crude cabin table was covered with a litter of stuff which he had not observed before. There were needles and thread, some cloth, a pair of gloves, and a red bow of ribbon which Isobel had worn at her throat. What held his eyes were two bundles of old letters tied with blue ribbon, and a third pile, undone and scattered. In the light of the lamp he saw that all of the writing on the envelopes was in the same hand. The top envelope on the first pile was addressed to "Mrs. Isobel Deane, Prince Albert, Saskatchewan"; the first envelope of the other bundle to "Miss Isobel Rowland, Montreal, Canada." Billy's heart choked him as he gathered the loose letters in his hands and placed them, with the others, on a little shelf above the table. He knew that they were letters from Deane, and that in her fever and loneliness Isobel had been reading them when he brought to her news of her husband's death.

He was about to remove the other articles from the table where a folded newspaper clipping was uncovered by the removal of the cloth. It was a half page from a Montreal daily, and out of it there looked straight up at him the face of Isobel Deane. It was a younger, more girlish-looking face, but to him it was not half so beautiful as the face of the Isobel who had come to him from out of the Barren. His fingers trembled and his breath came more quickly as he held the paper in the light and read the few lines under the picture:

ISOBEL ROWLAND, ONE OF THE LAST OF MONTREAL'S DAUGHTERS OF THE NORTH, WHO HAS SACRIFICED A FORTUNE FOR LOVE OF A YOUNG ENGINEER

In spite of the feeling of shame that crept over him at thus allowing himself to be drawn into a past sacred to Isobel and the man who had died, Billy's eyes sought the date-line. The paper was eight years old. And then he read what followed. In those few minutes, as the cold, black type revealed to him the story of Isobel and Deane, he forgot that he was in the cabin, and that he could almost hear the breathing of the woman whose sweet romance had ended now in tragedy. He was with Deane that day, years ago, when he had first looked into Isobel's eyes in the little old cemetery of nameless and savage dead at Ste. Anne de Beaupré; he heard the tolling of the ancient bell in the church that had stood on the hillside for more than two hundred and fifty years; and he could hear Deane's voice as he told Isobel the story of that bell and how, in the days of old, it had often called the settlers in to fight against the Indians. And then, as he read on, he could feel the sudden thrill in Deane's blood when Isobel had told him who she was, and that Pierre Radisson, one of the great lords of the north, had been her great-grandfather; that he had brought offerings to the little old church, and that he had fought there and died close by, and that his body was somewhere among the nameless and unmarked dead. It was a beautiful story, and MacVeigh saw more of it between the lines than could ever have been printed. Once he had gone to Ste. Anne de Beaupré to see the pilgrims and the miracles there, and there flashed before him the sunlit slope overlooking the broad St. Lawrence, where Isobel and Deane had afterward met, and where she had told him how large a part the little old cracked bell, the ancient church, and the plot of nameless dead had played in her life ever since she could remember. His blood grew hot as he read of what followed the beginning of love at the pilgrims' shrine. Isobel had no father or mother, the paper said. Her uncle and guardian was an iron master of the old blood-- the blood that had been a part of the wilderness and the great company since the day the first "gentlemen adventurers" came over with Prince Rupert. He lived alone with Isobel in a big white house on the top of a hill, shut in by stone walls and iron pickets, and looked out upon the world with the cold hauteur of a feudal lord. He was young David Deane's enemy from the moment he first heard about him, largely because he was nothing more than a struggling mining engineer, but chiefly because he was an American and had come from across the border. The stone walls and iron pickets were made a barrier to him. The heavy gates never opened for him. Then had come the break. Isobel, loyal in her love, had gone to Deane. The story ended there.

For a few moments Billy stood with the paper in his hand, the type a blur before his eyes. He could almost see Isobel's old home in Montreal. It was on the steep, shaded road leading up to Mount Royal, where he had once watched a string of horses "tacking" with their two-wheeled carts of coal in their arduous journey to Sir George Allen's basement at the end of it. He remembered how that street had held a curious sort of fascination for him, with its massive stone walls, its old French homes, and that old atmosphere still clinging to it of the Montreal of a hundred years ago. Twelve years before he had gone there first and carved his name on the wooden stairway leading to the top of the mountain. Isobel had been there then. Perhaps it was she he had heard singing behind one of the walls.

He put the paper with the letters, making a note of the uncle's name. If anything happened it would be his duty to send word to him-- perhaps. And then, deliberately, he tore into little pieces the slip of paper on which he had written the name. Geoffrey Renaud had cast off his niece. And if she died why should he-- Billy MacVeigh-- tell him anything about little Isobel? Since Isobel's terrible castigation of himself and the Law duty had begun to hold a diferent meaning for him.

Several times during the next hour Billy listened at the door. Then he made some tea and toast and took the broth from the stove. He went into the room, leaving these on the hearth of the stove so that they would not grow cold. He heard Isobel move, and as he went to her side she gave a little breathless cry.

"David-- David-- is it you?" she moaned. "Oh, David, I'm so glad you have come!"

Billy stood over her. In the darkness his face was ashen gray, for like a flash of fire in the lightless room the truth rushed upon him. Shock and fever had done their work. And in her delirium Isobel believed that he was Deane, her husband. In the gloom he saw that she was reaching up her arms to him.

"David!" she whispered; and in her voice there were a love and gladness that thrilled and terrified him to the quick of his soul.

XVIII

THE FULFILMENT OF A PROMISE

In the space of silence that followed Isobel's whispered words there came to Billy a realization of the crisis which he faced. The thought of surrendering himself to his first impulse, and of taking Deane's place in these hours of Isobel's fever, filled him instantly with a revulsion that sent him back a step from the bed, his hands clenched until his nails hurt his calloused palms.

"No, no, I am not David," he began, but the words died in his throat.

To tell her that, to make her know the truth-- that her husband was dead-- might kill her now. Hope, belief that he was alive and with her, would help to make her live. So quickly that he could not have spoken his thoughts in words these things flashed upon him. If Deane were alive and at her side his presence would save her. And if she believed that he was Deane he would save her. In the end she would never know. He remembered how Pelliter had forgotten things that had happened in his delirium. To Isobel, when she awakened into sanity, it would only seem like a dream at most. A few words from him then would convince her of that. If necessary, he would tell her that she had talked much about David in her fever and had imagined him with her. She would have no suspicion that he had played that part.

Isobel had waited a moment, but now she whispered again, as if a little frightened at his silence.

"David-- David--"

He stepped back quickly to the bed and his hands met those reaching up to him. They were hot and dry, and Isobel's fingers tightened about his own almost fiercely, and drew his hands down on her breast. She gave a sigh, as though she would rest easier now that his hands were touching her.

"I have been making some broth for you," he said, scarcely daring to speak. "Will you take some of it, Isobel? You must-- and sleep."

He felt the pressure of Isobel's hands, and she spoke to him so calmly that for a breath he thought that she must surely be herself again.

"I don't like the dark, David," she said. "I can't see you. And I want to do up my hair. Will you bring in a light?"

"Not until you are better," he whispered. "A light will hurt your eyes. I will stay with you-- near you--"

She raised a hand in the darkness, and it stroked his face. In that touch were all the love and gentleness that had lived for the man who was dead, and the caress thrilled Billy until it seemed as though what was in his heart must burst forth in a sobbing breath. Suddenly her hand left his face, and he heard her moving restlessly.

"My hair-- David--"

He put out a hand, and it fell in the soft smother of her hair. It was tangled about her face and neck, and he lifted her gently while he drew out the thick masses of it. He did not dare to speak while he smoothed out the rich tresses and pleated them into a braid. Isobel sighed restfully when he had done.

"I am going to get the broth now," he said then.

He went into the outer room where the lamp was lighted. Not until he took up the cup of broth did he notice how his hand trembled. A bit of the broth spilled on the floor, and he dropped a piece of the toast. He, too, was passing through the crucible with Isobel Deane.