Isobel | Page 7

few moments she sat with it falling loosely about her, with her eyes upon MacVeigh. Then she gathered it between her fingers, and MacVeigh watched her while she divided it into shining strands and pleated it into a big braid.
"Supper is ready," he said. "Will you eat it there?"
She nodded, and for the first time she smiled at him. He brought bacon and bread and coffee and other things from his pack and placed them on a folded blanket between them. He sat opposite her, cross-legged. For the first time he noticed that her eyes were blue and that there was a flush in her cheeks. The flush deepened as he looked at her, and she smiled at him again.
The smile, the momentary drooping of her eyes, set his heart leaping, and for a little while he was unconscious of taste in the food he swallowed. He told her of his post away up at Point Fullerton, and of Pelliter, who was dying of loneliness.
"It's been a long time since I've seen a woman like you," he confided. "And it seems like heaven. You don't know how lonely I am!" His voice trembled. "I wish that Pelliter could see you-- just for a moment," he added. "It would make him live again."
Something in the soft glow of her eyes urged other words to his lips.
"Mebbe you don't know what it means not to see a white woman in-- in-- all this time," he went on. "You won't think that I've gone mad, will you, or that I'm saying or doing anything that's wrong? I'm trying to hold myself back, but I feel like shouting, I'm that glad. If Pelliter could see you--" He reached suddenly in his pocket and drew out the precious packet of letters. "He's got a girl down south-- just like you," he said. "These are from her. If I get 'em up in time they'll bring him round. It's not medicine he wants. It's woman-- just a sight of her, and sound of her, and a touch of her hand."
She reached across and took the letters. In the firelight he saw that her hand was trembling.
"Are they-- married?" she asked, softly.
"No, but they're going to be," he cried, triumphantly. "She's the most beautiful thing in the world, next to--"
He paused, and she finished for him.
"Next to one other girl-- who is yours."
"No, I wasn't going to say that. You won't think I mean wrong, will you, if I tell you? I was going to say next to-- you. For you've come out of the blizzard-- like an angel to give me new hope. I was sort of broke when you came. If you disappeared now and I never saw you again I'd go back and fight the rest of my time out, an' dream of pleasant things. Gawd! Do you know a man has to be put up here before he knows that life isn't the sun an' the moon an' the stars an' the air we breathe. It's woman-- just woman."
He was returning the letters to his pocket. The woman's voice was clear and gentle. To Billy it rose like sweetest music above the crackling of the fire and the murmuring of the wind in the spruce tops.
"Men like you-- ought to have a woman to care for," she said. "He was like that."
"You mean--" His eyes sought the long, dark box.
"Yes-- he was like that."
"I know how you feel," he said; and for a moment he did not look at her. "I've gone through-- a lot of it. Father an' mother and a sister. Mother was the last, and I wasn't much more than a kid-- eighteen, I guess-- but it don't seem much more than yesterday. When you come up here and you don't see the sun for months nor a white face for a year or more it brings up all those things pretty much as though they happened only a little while ago.'"
"All of them are-- dead?" she asked.
"All but one. She wrote to me for a long time, and I thought she'd keep her word. Pelly-- that's Pelliter-- thinks we've just had a misunderstanding, and that she'll write again. I haven't told him that she turned me down to marry another fellow. I didn't want to make him think any unpleasant things about his own girl. You're apt to do that when you're almost dying of loneliness."
The woman's eyes were shining. She leaned a little toward him.
"You should be glad," she said. "If she turned you down she wouldn't have been worthy of you-- afterward. She wasn't a true woman. If she had been, her love wouldn't have grown cold because you were away. It mustn't spoil your faith-- because that is-- beautiful."
He had put a hand into his pocket