Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police | Page 6

wife?"
"Has got her nerve," growled Breed irreverently. "It wouldn't be so bad
if it was only the colonel. But an old woman--ugh! What he doesn't

think of she'll remind him of, you can depend on that."
Steele thought of his mother, who looked at things through a
magnifying lorgnette, and laughed a little cheerlessly.
"I'll go out and meet them, anyway," he comforted. "Have Jack fix me
up for the hike in the morning, Breed. I'll start after breakfast."
He was glad when supper was over and he was back in his own cabin
smoking his pipe. It was almost with a feeling of shame that he took the
golden hair from his wallet and held it once more so that it shone
before his eyes in the firelight.
"You're crazy, Phil Steele," he assured himself. "You're an unalloyed
idiot. What the deuce has Colonel Becker's wife got to do with
you--even if she has golden hair and uses cream-tinted paper soaked in
hyacinth? Confound it--there!" and he released the shining hair from
his fingers so that the air currents sent it floating back into the deeper
gloom of the cabin.
It was midnight before he went to bed. He was up with the first cold
gray of dawn. All that day he strode steadily eastward on snowshoes,
over the company's trail to the bay. Two hours before dusk he put up
his light tent, gathered balsam for a bed, and built a fire of dry spruce
against the face of a huge rock in front of his shelter. It was still light
when he wrapped himself in his blanket and lay down on the balsam,
with his feet stretched out to the reflected heat of the big rock. It
seemed to Steele that there was an unnatural stillness in the air, as the
night thickened beyond the rim of firelight, and, as the gloom grew still
deeper, blotting out his vision in inky blackness, there crept over him
slowly a feeling of loneliness. It was a new sensation to Steele, and he
shivered as he sat up and faced the fire. It was this same quiet, this
same unending mystery of voiceless desolation that had won him to the
North. Until to-night he had loved it. But now there was something
oppressive about it, something that made him strain his eyes to see
beyond the rock and the fire, and set his ears in tense listening for
sounds which did not exist. He knew that in this hour he was longing
for companionship--not that of Breed, nor of men with whom he hunted

men, but of men and women whom he had once known and in whose
lives he had played a part--ages ago, it seemed to him. He knew, as he
sat with clenched hands and staring eyes, that chiefly he was longing
for a woman--a woman whose eyes and lips and sunny hair haunted
him after months of forgetfulness, and whose face smiled at him
luringly, now, from out the leaping flashes of fire--tempting him,
calling him over a thousand miles of space. And if he yielded--
The thought sent his nails biting into the flesh of his palms and he sank
back with a curse that held more of misery than blasphemy. Physical
exhaustion rather than desire for sleep closed his eyes, at last, in
half-slumber, and after that the face seemed nearer and more real to
him, until it was close at his side, and was speaking to him. He heard
again the soft, rippling laugh, girlishly sweet, that had fascinated him at
Hawkins' ball; he heard the distant hum and chatter of other voices, and
then one loud and close--that of Chesbro, who had unwittingly
interrupted them, and saved him, just in the nick of time.
Steele moved restlessly; after a moment wriggled to his elbow and
looked toward the fire. He seemed to hear Chesbro's voice again as he
awoke, and a thrill as keen as an electric shock set his nerves tingling
when he heard once more the laughing voice of his dream, hushed and
low. In amazement he sat bolt upright and stared. Was he still dreaming?
The fire was burning brightly and he was aware that he had scarce
fallen into sleep.
A movement--a sound of feet crunching softly in the snow, and a figure
came between him and the fire.
It was a woman.
He choked back the cry that rose to his lips and sat motionless and
without sound. The figure approached a step nearer, peering into the
deep gloom of the tent. He caught the silver glint in the firelight on
heavy fur, the whiteness of a hand touching lightly the flap of his tent,
and then for an instant he saw a face. In that instant he