Isobel : A Romance of the Northern Trail

by James Oliver Curwood

Billy had leaped to his feet, and turned his face toward the ridge. He, too, had heard a sound— another sound, and from another direction. He laughed grimly as he turned to Deane.

“And they’re coming, too, Scottie,” he replied. “They’re climbing the ridge. I’ll take your guns, old man. It’s just possible there may be a fight!”

He slipped Deane’s revolver into his holster and quickly emptied the chamber of the rifle that stood near.

“Where’s mine?” he asked.

“Threw ’em away,” said Deane. “Those are the only guns in the outfit.”

Billy waited while Isobel Deane came through low-hanging spruce with the dogs.

VI

THE FIGHT

There was a smile for Deane on Isobel’s lips as she struggled through the spruce, knee-deep in snow, the dogs tugging at the sledge behind her. And then in a moment she saw MacVeigh, and the smile froze into a look of horror on her face. She was not twenty feet distant when she emerged into the little opening, and Billy heard the rattling cry in her throat. She stopped, and her hands went to her breast. Deane had half raised himself, his pale, thin face smiling encouragingly at her; and with a wild cry Isobel rushed to him and flung herself upon her knees at his side, her hands gripping fiercely at the steel bands about his wrists. Billy turned away. He could hear her sobbing, and he could hear the low, comforting voice of the injured man. A groan of anguish rose to his own lips, and he clenched his hands hard, dreading the terrible moment when he would have to face the woman he loved above all else on earth.

It was her voice that brought him about. She had risen to her feet, and she stood before him panting like a hunted animal, and Billy saw in her face the thing which he had feared more than the sting of death. No longer were her blue eyes filled with the sweetness and faith of the angel who had come to him from out of the Barren. They were hard and terrible and filled with that madness which made him think she was about to leap upon him. In those eyes, in the quivering of her bare throat, in the sobbing rise and fall of her breast were the rage, the grief, and the fear of one whose faith had turned suddenly into the deadliest of all emotions; and Billy stood before her without a word on his lips, his face as cold and as bloodless as the snow under his feet.