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

stronger grew in him the desire to return to his old country along the shores of the big Bay far to the west. He had partly planned to join the railroad builders on the new trans-continental in the mountains of British Columbia, but in August, instead of finding himself at Edmonton or Tête Jaune Cache, he was at Prince Albert, three hundred and fifty miles to the east. From this point he struck northward with a party of company men into the Lac La Ronge country, and in October swung eastward alone through the Sissipuk and Burntwood waterways to Nelson House. He continued northward after a week's rest, and on the eighteenth of December the first of the two great storms which made the winter of 1909-10 one of the most tragic in the history of the far northern people overtook him thirty miles from York Factory. It took him five days to reach the post, where he was held up for several weeks. These were the first of those terrible weeks of famine and intense cold during which more than fifteen hundred people died in the north country. From the Barren Lands to the edge of the southern watershed the earth lay under from four to six feet of snow, and from the middle of December until late in January the temperature did not rise above forty degrees below zero, and remained for the most of the time between fifty and sixty. From all points in the wilderness reports of starvation and death came to the company's posts. Trap lines could not be followed because of the intense cold. Moose, caribou, and even the furred animals had buried themselves under the snow. Indians and half-breeds dragged themselves into the posts. Twice at York Factory Billy saw mothers who brought dead babies in their arms. One day a white trapper came in with his dogs and sledge, and on the sledge, wrapped in a bearskin, was his wife, who had died fifty miles back in the forest.
During these terrible weeks Billy found it impossible to keep Isobel and the baby Isobel out of his mind night or day. The fear grew in him that somewhere in the wilderness they were suffering as others were suffering. So obsessed did he become with the thought that he had a terrible dream one night, and in that dream baby Isobel's face appeared to him, a deathlike mask, white and cold and thinned by starvation. The vision decided him. He would go to Fort Churchill, and if McTabb had not been driven in he would go to his cabin, over on the Little Beaver, and learn what had become of Isobel and the little girl. A few days later, on the twenty-seventh day of January, there came a sudden rise in the temperature, and Billy prepared at once to take advantage of the change. A half-breed, on his way to Churchill, accompanied him, and they set out together the following morning. On the twentieth of February they arrived at Fort Churchill.
Billy went immediately to detachment headquarters. There had been several changes in two years, and there was only one of the old force to shake hands with him. His first inquiry was about McTabb and Isobel Deane. Neither was at Churchill, nor had been there since the arrival of the new officer in charge. But there was mail for Billy-- three letters. There had been half a dozen others, but they were now following up his old trails somewhere out in the wilderness. These three had been returned recently from Fond du Lac. One was from Pelliter, the fourth he had written, he said, without an answer. The "kid" had come-- a girl-- and he wondered if Billy was dead. The second letter was from his Cobalt partner.
The third he turned over several times before he opened it. It did not look much like a letter. It was torn and ragged at the edges, and was so soiled and water-stained that the address on it was only partly legible. It had been to Fond du Lac, and from there it had followed him to Fort Chippewyan. He opened it and found that the writing inside was scarcely more legible than the inscription on the envelope. The last words were quite plain, and he gave a low cry when he found that it was from Rookie McTabb.
He went close to a window and tried to make out what McTabb had written. Here and there, where water had not obliterated the writing, he could make out a line or a few words. Nearly all was gone but the last paragraph, and when Billy came to this and read the first words of it his heart seemed all at once to die within him, and he could not see. Word by word he made out the rest after that, and when he was done he turned his stony face to the white whirl of the storm outside the window, his lips as dry as though he had passed through a fever.
A part of that last paragraph was unintelligible, but enough was left to tell him what had happened in the cabin down on the Little Beaver.
McTabb had written:
"We thought she was getting well... took sick again.... did
everything... could. But it didn't do any good,... died just five
weeks to a day after you left. We buried her just behind the cabin.
God... that kid... You don't know how I got to love her, Billy....
give her up..."
McTabb had written a dozen lines after that, but all of them were a water-stained and unintelligible blur.
Billy crushed the letter in his hand. The new inspector wondered what terrible news he had received as he walked out into the blinding chaos of the storm.


XXI
THE FIGHTING SPARK
For ten minutes Billy buried himself blindly in the storm. He scarcely knew which direction he took, but at last he found himself in the shelter of the forest, and he was whispering Isobel's name over and over again to himself.
"Dead-- dead--" he moaned. "She is dead-- dead--"
And then there rushed upon him, crushing back his deeper grief, a thought of the baby Isobel. She was still with McTabb down on the Little Beaver. In the blur of the storm he read again what he could make out of Rookie's letter. Something in that last paragraph struck him with a deadly fear. "God... that kid... You, don't know how I got to love her, Billy,... give her up..."
What did it mean? What had McTabb told him in that part of the letter that was gone?
The reaction came as he put the letter back into his pocket. He walked swiftly back to the inspector's office.
"I'm going down to the Little Beaver. I'm going to start to-day," he said. "Who is there in Churchill that I can get to go with me?"
Two hours later Billy was ready to start, with an Indian as a companion. Dogs could not be had for love or money, and they set out on snowshoes with two weeks' supply of provisions, striking south and west. The remainder of that day and the next they traveled with but little rest. Each hour that passed added to Billy's mad impatience to reach McTabb's cabin.
With the morning of the third day began the second of those two terrible storms which swept over the northland in that winter of famine and death. In spite of the Indian's advice to build a permanent camp until the temperature rose again Billy insisted on pushing ahead. The fifth night, in the wild Barren country west of the Etawney, his Indian failed to keep up the fire, and when Billy investigated he found him half dead with a strange sickness. He made the Indian's balsam shelter snow and wind proof, cut wood, and waited. The temperature continued to fall, and the cold became intense. Each day the provisions grew less, and at last the time came when Billy knew that he was standing face to face with the Great Peril. He went farther and farther from camp in his search for game. Even the brush sparrows and snow-hawks were gone. Once the thought came to him that be might take what food was left and accept the little chance that remained of saving himself. But the idea never got farther than a first thought. On the twelfth day the Indian died. It was a terrible day. There was food for another twenty-four hours.
Billy packed it, together with his blankets and a few pieces of tinware. He wondered if the Indian had died of a contagious disease. Anyway, he made up his mind to put out the warning for others if they came that way, and over the dead Indian's balsam shelter he planted a sapling, and at the end of the sapling he fastened a strip of red cotton cloth-- the plague signal of the north.
Than he struck out through the deep snows and the twisting storm, knowing that there was no more than one chance in a thousand ahead of him, and that the one chance was to keep the wind at his back.
At the end of his first day's struggle Billy built himself a camp in a bit of scrub timber which was not much more than bush. He had observed that the timber and that every tree and bush he had passed since noon was stripped and dead on the side that faced the north. He cooked and ate his last food the following day, and went on. The small timber turned to scrub, and the scrub, in time, to vast snow wastes over which the storm swept mercilessly. All this day he looked for game, for a flutter of bird life; he chewed bark, and in the afternoon got a mouthful of foxbite, which made his throat swell until he could scarcely breathe. At night he made tea, but had nothing to eat. His hunger was acute and painful. It was torture the next day-- the third-- for the process of starvation is a rapid one in this country where only the fittest survive on from four to five meals a day. He camped, built a small bush-fire at night, and slept. He almost failed to rouse himself on the morning that followed, and when he staggered to his feet and felt the cutting sting of the storm still in his face and heard the swishing wail of it over the Barren he knew that at last the hour had come when he was standing face to face with the Almighty.
For some strange reason he was not frightened at the situation. He found that even over the level spaces he could scarce drag his snow-shoes, but this had ceased to alarm him as he had been alarmed at first. He went on, hour after hour, weaker and weaker. Within himself there was still life which reasoned that if death were to come it could not come in a better way. It at least promised to be painless-- even pleasant. The sharp, stinging pains of hunger, like little electrical knives piercing him, were gone; he no longer experienced a sensation of intense cold; he almost felt that he could lie down in the drifted snow and sleep peacefully. He knew what it would be-- a sleep without end, with the arctic foxes to pick his bones afterward-- and so he resisted the temptation and forced himself onward. The storm still swept straight west from Hudson's Bay, bringing with it endless volleys of snow, round and hard as fine shot, snow that had at first seemed to pierce his flesh and which swished past his feet as if trying to trip him and tossed itself in windrows and