Isobel | Page 3

with an average of fifty miles a day to his
credit.
From Fullerton men came in nearer dead than alive when they made the
hazard in winter. MacVeigh's face was raw from the beat of the wind.
His eyes were red. He had a touch of runner's cramp. He slept for
twenty-four hours in a warm bed without stirring. When he awoke he
raged at the commanding officer of the barrack for letting him sleep so
long, ate three meals in one, and did up his business in a hurry.
His heart warmed with pleasure when he sorted out of his mail nine
letters for Pelliter, all addressed in the same small, girlish hand. There

was none for himself-- none of the sort which Pelliter was receiving,
and the sickening loneliness within him grew almost suffocating.
He laughed softly as he broke a law. He opened one of Pelliter's
letters-- the last one written-- and calmly read it. It was filled with the
sweet tenderness of a girl's love, and tears came into his red eyes. Then
he sat down and answered it. He told the girl about Pelliter, and
confessed to her that he had opened her last letter. And the chief of
what he said was that it would be a glorious surprise to a man who was
going mad (only he used loneliness in place of madness) if she would
come up to Churchill the following spring and marry him there. He told
her that he had opened her letter because he loved Pelliter more than
most men loved their brothers. Then he resealed the letter, gave his
mail to the superintendent, packed his medicines and supplies, and
made ready to return.
On this same day there came into Churchill a halfbreed who had been
hunting white foxes near Blind Eskimo, and who now and then did
scout work for the department. He brought the information that he had
seen a white man and a white woman ten miles south of the Maguse
River. The news thrilled MacVeigh.
"I'll stop at the Eskimo camp," he said to the superintendent. "It's worth
investigating, for I never knew of a white woman north of sixty in this
country. It might be Scottie Deane."
"Not very likely," replied the superintendent. "Scottie is a tall man,
straight and powerful. Coujag says this man was no taller than himself,
and walked like a hunchback. But if there are white people out there
their history is worth knowing."
The following morning MacVeigh started north. He reached the
half-dozen igloos which made up the Eskimo village late the third day.
Bye-Bye, the chief man, offered him no encouragement, MacVeigh
gave him a pound of bacon, and in return for the magnificent present
Bye-Bye told him that he had seen no white people. MacVeigh gave
him another pound, and Bye-Bye added that he had not heard of any
white people. He listened with the lifeless stare of a walrus while
MacVeigh impressed upon him that he was going inland the next
morning to search for white people whom he had heard were there.
That night, in a blinding snow-storm, Bye-Bye disappeared from camp.
MacVeigh left his dogs to rest up at the igloo village and swung

northwest on snow-shoes with the break of arctic dawn, which was but
little better than the night itself. He planned to continue in this direction
until he struck the Barren, then patrol in a wide circle that would bring
him back to the Eskimo camp the next night. From the first he was
handicapped by the storm. He lost Bye-Bye's snow-shoe tracks a
hundred yards from the igloos. All that day he searched in sheltered
places for signs of a camp or trail. In the afternoon the wind died away,
the sky cleared, and in the wake of the calm the cold became so intense
that trees cracked with reports like pistol shots.
He stopped to build a fire of scrub bush and eat his supper on the edge
of the Barren just as the cold stars began blazing over his head. It was a
white, still night. The southern timberline lay far behind him, and to the
north there was no timber for three hundred miles. Between those lines
there was no life, and so there was no sound. On the west the Barren
thrust itself down in a long finger ten miles in width, and across that
MacVeigh would have to strike to reach the wooded country beyond. It
was over there that he had the greatest hope of discovering a trail. After
he had finished his supper he loaded his pipe, and sat hunched close up
to his fire, staring out over the Barren. For some reason he was filled
with a strange and uncomfortable emotion, and he