Isobel : a Romance of the Northern Trail, James Oliver Curwood [have you read this book .TXT] 📗

said. "I've always believed in a God-- though I killed a man-- an' He sent you here in time!" A sudden questioning light came into his eyes. "The man who stole little Isobel," he breathed-- "who was he?"
"Pelliter-- the man out there-- killed him when he came to the cabin," said Billy. "He said his name was Blake-- Jim Blake."
"Blake! Blake! Blake!" Again Deane's voice rose from the edge of death to a shriek. "Blake, you say? A great coarse sailorman, with red hair-- red beard-- yellow teeth like a walrus! Blake-- Blake--" He sank back again, with a thrilling, half-mad laugh. "Then-- then it's all been a mistake-- a funny mistake," he said; and his eyes closed, and his voice spoke the words as though he were uttering them from out of a dream.
Billy saw that the end was near. He bent down to catch the dying man's last words. Deane's hands were as cold as ice. His lips were white. And then Deane whispered:
"We fought-- I thought I killed him-- an' threw him into the sea. His right name was Samuelson. You knew him-- by that name-- but he went often-- by Blake-- Jim Blake. So-- so-- I'm not a murderer-- after all. An' he-- he came back for revenge-- and-- stole-- little-- Isobel. I'm-- I'm-- not-- a-- murderer. You-- you-- will-- tell-- her. You'll tell her-- I didn't kill him-- after all. You'll tell her-- an'-- be-- good-- good--"
He smiled. Billy bent lower.
"Again I swear before the good God that I will do what an honorable man should do," he replied.
Deane made no answer. He did not hear. The smile did not fade entirely from his lips. But Billy knew that in this moment death had come in through the cabin door. With a groan of anguish he dropped Deane's stiffening hand. Little Isobel pattered across the floor to his side. She laughed; and suddenly Billy turned and caught her in his arms, and, crumpled down there on the floor beside the one brother he had known in life, he sobbed like a woman.


XIII
THE TWO GODS
It was little Isobel who pulled MacVeigh together, and after a little he rose with her in his arms and turned her from the wall while he covered Deane's face with the end of a blanket. Then he went to the door. The Eskimos were building fires. Pelliter was seated on the sledge a short distance from the cabin, and at Billy's call he came toward him.
"If you don't mind, you can take her over to one of the fires for a little while," said Billy. "Scottie is dead. Try and make the chief understand,"
He did not wait for Pelliter to question him, but closed the door quietly and went back to Deane. He drew off the blanket and gazed for a moment into the still, bearded face.
"My Gawd, an' she's waitin' for you, 'n' looking for you, an' thinks you're coming back soon," he whispered. "You 'n' the kid!"
Reverently he began the task ahead of him. One after another he went into Deane's pockets and drew forth what he found. In one pocket there was a small knife, some cartridges, and a match box. He knew that Isobel would prize these and keep them because her husband had carried them, and he placed them in a handkerchief along with other things he found. Last of all he found in Deane's breast pocket a worn and faded envelope. He peered into the open end before he placed it on the little pile, and his heart gave a sudden throb when he saw the blue flower petals Isobel had given him. When he was done he crossed Deane's hands upon his breast. He was tying the ends of the handkerchief when the door opened softly behind him.
The little dark chief entered. He was followed by four other Eskimos. They had left their weapons outside. They seemed scarcely to breathe as they ranged themselves in a line and looked down upon Scottie Deane. Not a sign of emotion came into their expressionless faces, not the flicker of an eyelash did the immobility of their faces change. In a low, clacking monotone they began to speak, and there was no expression of grief in their voices. Yet Billy understood now that in the hearts of these little brown men Scottie Deane stood enshrined like a god. Before he was cold in death they had come to chant his deeds and his virtues to the unseen spirits who would wait and watch at his side until the beginning of the new day. For ten minutes the monotone continued. Then the five men turned and without a word, without looking at him, went out of the cabin. Billy followed them, wondering if Deane had convinced them that he and Pelliter were his friends. If he had not done that he feared that there would still be trouble over little Isobel. He was delighted when he found Pelliter talking with one of the men.
"I've found a flunkey here whose lingo I can get along with," cried Pelliter. "I've been telling 'em what bully friends we are, and have made 'em understand all about Blake. I've shaken hands with them all three or four times, and we feel pretty good. Better mix a little. They don't like the idea of giving us the kid, now that Scottie's dead. They're asking for the woman."
Half an hour later MacVeigh and Pelliter returned to the cabin. At the end of that time he was confident that the Eskimos would give them no further trouble and that they expected to leave Isobel in their possession. The chief, however, had given Billy to understand that they reserved the right to bury Deane.
Billy felt that he was now in a position where he would have to tell Pelliter some of the things that had happened to him on his return to Churchill. He had reported Deane's death as having occurred weeks before as the result of a fall, and when he returned to Fort Churchill he knew that he would have to stick to that story. Unless Pelliter knew of Isobel, his love for her, and his own defiance of the Law in giving them their freedom, his comrade might let out the truth and ruin him.
In the cabin they sat down at the table. Pelliter's arm was in a sling. His face was drawn and haggard and blackened by powder. He drew his revolver, emptied it of cartridges, and gave it to little Isobel to play with. He kept up his spirits among the Eskimos, but he made no effort to conceal his dejection now.
"I've lost her," he said, looking at Billy. "You're going to take her to her mother?"
"Yes."
"It hurts. You don't know how it's goin' to hurt to lose her," he said.
MacVeigh leaned across the table and spoke earnestly.
"Yes, I know what it means, Pelly," he replied. "I know what it means to love some one-- and lose. I know. Listen."
Quickly he told Pelliter the story of the Barren, of the coming of Isobel, the mother, of the kiss she had given him, and of the flight, the pursuit, the recapture, and of that final moment when he had taken the steel cuffs from Deane's wrists. Once he had begun the story he left nothing untold, even to the division of the blue-flower petals and the tress of Isobel's hair. He drew both from his pocket and showed them to Pelliter, and at the tremble in his voice there came a mistiness in his comrade's eyes. When he had finished Pelliter reached across with his one good arm and gripped the other's hand.
"An' what she said about the blue flower is comin' true, Billy," he whispered. "It's bringing happiness to you, just as she said, for you're going down to her--"
MacVeigh interrupted him.
"No, it's not," he said, softly. "She loved him-- as much as the girl down there will ever love you, Pelly, and when I tell her what has happened-- her heart will break. That can't bring happiness-- for me !"
The hours of that day bore leaden weights for Billy. The two men made their plans. A number of the Eskimos agreed to accompany Pelliter as far as Eskimo Point, whence he would make his way alone to Churchill. Billy would strike south to the Little Beaver in search of Couchée's cabin and Isobel. He was glad when night came. It was late when he went to the door, opened it, and looked out.
In the edge of the timber-line it was black, black not only with the gloom of night, but with the concentrated darkness of spruce and balsam and a sky so low and thick that one could almost hear the wailing swish of it overhead like the steady sobbing of surf on a seashore. It was black, save for the small circles of light made by the Eskimo fires, about which half a hundred of the little brown men sat or crouched. The masters of the camp were all awake, but twice as many dogs, exhausted and footsore, lay curled in heaps, as inanimate as if dead. There was present a strange silence and a strange and unnatural gloom that was not of the night alone, a silence broken only by the low moaning of the wind out on the Barren, the restlessness in the air above the tree-tops, and the crackling of the fires. The Eskimos were as motionless as so many dead men. Their round, expressionless eyes were wide open. They sat or crouched with their backs to the Barren, their faces turned into the still deeper blackness of the forest. Some distance away, like a star, there gleamed the small and steady light in the cabin window. For two hours the eyes of those about the fires had been fixed on that light. And at intervals there had risen from among the stony-faced watchers the little chief, whose clacking voice joined for a few moments each time the wailing of the wind, the swish of the low-hanging sky, and the crackling of the fires. But there was sound of no other voice or movement. He alone moved and spoke, for to the others the clacking sounds he made was speech, words spoken each time for the man who lay dead in the cabin.
A dozen times Pelliter and MacVeigh had looked out to the fires, and looked each time at the hour. This time Billy said:
"They're moving, Pelly! They're jumping to their feet and coming this way!" He looked at his watch again. "They're mighty good guessers. It's a quarter after twelve. When a chief or a big man dies they bury him in the first hour of the new day. They're coming after Deane."
He opened the door and stepped out into the night. Pelliter joined him. The Eskimos advanced without a sound and stopped in a shadowy group twenty paces from the cabin. Five of these little fur-clad men detached themselves from the others and filed into the cabin, with the chief man at their head. As they bent over Deane they began to chant a low monotone which awakened little Isobel, who sat up and stared sleepily at the strange scene. Billy went to her and gathered her close in his arms. She was sleeping again when he put her down among the blankets. The Eskimos were gone with their burden. He could hear the low chanting of the tribe.
"I found her, and I thought she was mine," said Pelliter's low voice at his side. "But she ain't, Billy. She's yours."
MacVeigh broke in on him as though he had not heard.
"You better get to bed, Pelly," he warned. "That arm needs rest. I'm going out to see