Isobel. James Oliver Curwood
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a little distance I turned and looked back. I suppose I was foolish, and weak for a man, but I felt like crying. Blue flower had taught me many things I had not known before. It had made me think. And when I looked back it was in a pool of sunlight, and it was waving at me! It seemed to me that it was calling—calling me back—and I ran to it and picked it from the stem, and it has been with me ever since that hour. It has been my Bible an’ my comrade, an’ I’ve known it was the spirit of the purest and the most beautiful thing in the world—woman. I—” His voice broke a little. “I—I may be foolish, but I’d like to have you take it, an’ keep it—always—for me.”
He could see now the quiver of her lips as she looked across at him.
“Yes, I will take it,” she said. “I will take it and keep it—always.”
“I’ve been keeping it for a woman—somewhere,” he said. “Foolish idea, wasn’t it? And I’ve been telling you all this, when I want to hear what happened back there, and what you are going to do when you reach your people. Do you mind—telling me?”
“He died—that’s all,” she replied, fighting to speak calmly. “I promised to take him back—to my people, And when I get there—I don’t know—what I shall—do—”
She caught her breath. A low sob broke from her lips.
“You don’t know—what you will do—”
Billy’s voice sounded strange even to himself. He rose to his feet and looked down into her upturned face, his hands clenched, his body trembling with the fight he was making. Words came to his lips and were forced back again—words which almost won in their struggle to tell her again that she had come to him from out of the Barren like an angel, that within the short space since their meeting he had lived a lifetime, and that he loved her as no man had ever loved a woman before. Her blue eyes looked at him questioningly as he stood above her.
And then he saw the thing which for a moment he had forgotten—the long, rough box at the woman’s back. His fingers dug deeper into his palms, and with a gasping breath he turned away. A hundred paces back in the spruce he had found a bare rock with a red bakneesh vine growing over it. With his knife he cut off an armful, and when he returned with it into the light of the fire the bakneesh glowed like a mass of crimson flowers. The woman had risen to her feet, and looked at him speechlessly as he scattered the vine over the box. He turned to her and said, softly:
“In honor of the dead!”
The color had faded from her face, but her eyes shone like stars. Billy advanced toward her with his hands reaching out. But suddenly he stopped and stood listening. After a moment he turned and asked again:
“What was that?”
“I heard the dogs—and the wind,” she replied.
“It’s something cracking in my head, I guess,” said MacVeigh. “It sounded like—” He passed a hand over his forehead and looked at the dogs huddled in deep sleep beside the sledge. The woman did not see the shiver that passed through him. He laughed cheerfully, and seized his ax.
“Now for the camp,” he announced. “We’re going to get the storm within an hour.”
On the box the woman carried a small tent, and he pitched it close to the fire, filling the interior two feet deep with cedar and balsam boughs. His own silk service tent he put back in the deeper shadows of the spruce. When he had finished he looked questioningly at the woman and then at the box.
“If there is room—I would like it in there—with me,” she said, and while she stood with her face to the fire he dragged the box into the tent. Then he piled fresh fuel upon the fire and came to bid her good night. Her face was pale and haggard now, but she smiled at him, and to MacVeigh she was the most beautiful thing in the world. Within himself he felt that he had known her for years and years, and he took her hands and looked down into her blue eyes and said, almost in a whisper:
“Will you forgive me if I’m doing wrong? You don’t know how lonesome I’ve been, and how lonesome I am, and what it means to me to look once more into a woman’s face. I don’t want to hurt you, and I’d—I’d”—his voice broke a little—“I’d give him back life if I could, just because I’ve seen you and know you and—and love you.”
She started and drew a quick, sharp breath that came almost in a low cry.
“Forgive me, little girl,” he went on. “I may be a little mad. I guess I am. But I’d die for you, and I’m going to see you safely down to your people—and—and—I wonder—I wonder—if you’d kiss me good night—”
Her eyes never left his face. They were dazzlingly blue in the firelight. Slowly she drew her hands away from him, still looking straight into his eyes, and then she placed them against each of his arms and slowly lifted her face to him. Reverently he bent and kissed her.
“God bless you!” he whispered.
For hours after that he sat beside the fire. The wind came up stronger across the Barren; the storm broke fresh from the north, the spruce and the balsam wailed over his head, and he could hear the moaning sweep of the blizzard out in the open spaces. But the sounds came to him now like a new kind of music, and his heart throbbed and his soul was warm with joy as he looked at the little tent wherein there lay sleeping the woman whom he loved.
He still felt the warmth of her lips, he saw again and again the blue softness that had come for an instant into her eyes, and he thanked God for the wonderful happiness that had come to him. For the sweetness of the woman’s lips and the greater sweetness of her blue eyes told him what life held for him now. A day’s journey to the south was an Indian camp. He would take her there, and would hire runners to carry up Pelliter’s medicines and his letters. Then he would go on—with the woman—and he laughed softly and joyously at the glorious news which he would take back to Pelliter a little later. For the kiss burned on his lips, the blue eyes smiled at him still from out of the firelit gloom, and he knew nothing but hope.
It was late, almost midnight, when he went to bed. With the storm wailing and twisting more fiercely about him, he fell asleep. And it was late when he awoke. The forest was filled with a moaning sound. The fire was low. Beyond it the flap of the woman’s tent was still down, and he put on fresh fuel quietly, so that he would not awaken her. He looked at his watch and found that he had been sleeping for nearly seven hours. Then he returned to his tent to get the things for breakfast. Half a dozen paces from the door flap he stopped in sudden astonishment.
Hanging to his tent in the form of a great wreath was the red bakneesh which he had cut the night before, and over it, scrawled in charcoal on the silk, there stared at him the crudely written words:
“In honor of the living.”
With a low cry he sprang back toward the other tent, and then, as sudden as his movement, there flashed upon him the significance of the bakneesh wreath. The woman was saying to him what she had not spoken in words. She had come out in the night while he was asleep and had hung the wreath where he would see it in the morning. The blood rushed warm and joyous through his body, and with something which was not a laugh, but which was an exultant breath from the soul itself, he straightened himself, and his hand fell in its old trick to his revolver holster. It was empty.
He dragged out his blankets, but the weapon was not between them. He looked into the corner where he had placed his rifle. That, too, was gone. His face grew tense and white as he walked slowly beyond the fire to the woman’s tent. With his ear at the flap he listened. There was no sound within—no sound of movement, of life, of a sleeper’s breath; and like one who feared to reveal a terrible picture he drew back the flap. The balsam bed which he had made for the woman was empty, and across it had been drawn the big rough box. He stepped inside. The box was open—and empty, except for a mass of worn and hard-packed balsam boughs in the bottom. In another instant the truth burst in all its force upon MacVeigh. The box had held life, and the woman—
Something on the side of the