Isobel | Page 7

was hidden, and she looked as though she had fallen asleep in the
warmth of the fire. For half an hour Mac-Veigh dragged in fuel until he
had a great pile of it in readiness.
Then he forked out a deep bed of burning coals and soon the odor of
coffee and frying bacon aroused his companion. She raised her head
and threw back the blanket with which he had covered her shoulders. It
was warm where she sat, and she took off her hood while he smiled at
her companionably from over the fire. Her reddish-brown hair tumbled
about her shoulders, rippling and glistening in the fire glow, and for a
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.