“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.