Isobel : A Romance of the Northern Trail

by James Oliver Curwood

He did not look at Pelliter, but he could feel the quick, tense stiffening of the other’s body. There was a moment’s silence. Then Pelliter spoke in a low, unnatural voice.

“Billy, you ain’t going to hunt him up, are you? That wouldn’t be fair to me or to the kid. My Jeanne ’ll love her, an’ mebbe— mebbe some day your kid ’ll come along an’ marry her—”

MacVeigh rose to his feet. Pelliter did not see the sudden look of grief that shot into his face.

“What do you say, Billy?”

“Think it over, Pelly,” came back Billy’s voice, huskily. “Think it over. I don’t want to hurt you, and I know you think a lot of her, but— think it over. You wouldn’t rob her father, would you? An’ she’s all he’s got left of the woman. Think it over, Pelly, good ’n’ hard. I’m going to bed an’ sleep a week!”

X

IN DEFIANCE OF THE LAW

Billy slept all that day and the night that followed, and Pelliter did not awaken him. He aroused himself from his long sleep of exhaustion an hour or two before dawn of the following morning, and for the first time he had the opportunity of going over with himself all the things that had happened since his return to Fullerton Point. His first thought was Pelliter and Little Mystery. He could hear his comrade’s deep breathing in the bunk opposite him, and again he wondered if Pelliter had told him everything. Was it possible that Blake had said nothing to reveal Little Mystery’s identity, and that the igloo and the dead Eskimo woman had not given up the secret? It seemed inconceivable that there would not be something in the igloo that would help to clear up the mystery. And yet, after all, he had faith in Pelliter. He knew that he would keep nothing from him even though it meant possession of the child. And then his mind leaped to Isobel Deane. Her eyes were blue, and they had in them those same little spots of brown he had found in Little Mystery’s. They were unusual eyes, and he had noticed the brown in them because it had added to their loveliness and had made him think of the violets he had told Pelliter about. Was it possible, he asked himself, that there could be some association between Isobel and Little Mystery? He confessed that it was scarcely conceivable, and yet it was impossible for him to get the thought out of his mind.

Before Pelliter awoke he had determined upon his own course of action. He would say nothing of what had happened to himself on the Barren, at least not for a time. He would not tell of his meeting with Isobel and her husband or of what had followed. Until he was absolutely certain that Pelliter was keeping nothing from him he would not confide the secret of his own treachery to him. For he had been a traitor— to the Law. He realized that. He could tell the story, with its fictitious ending, before they set out for Churchill, where he would give evidence against Bucky Smith. Meanwhile he would watch Pelliter, and wait for him to reveal whatever he might have hidden from him. He knew that if Pelliter was concealing something he was inspired by his almost insane worship of the little girl he had found who had saved him from madness and death. He smiled in the darkness as he thought that if Pelliter were working to achieve his own end— possession of Little Mystery— he was inspired by emotions no more selfish than his own in giving back life to Isobel Deane and her husband. On that score they were even.

He was up and had breakfast started before Pelliter awoke. Little Mystery was still sleeping, and the two men moved about softly in their moccasined feet. On this morning the sun shone brilliantly over the southern ice-fields, and Pelliter aroused Little Mystery so that she might see it before it disappeared. But to-day it did not drop below the gray murkiness of the snow-horizon for nearly an hour. After breakfast Pelliter read his letters again, and then Billy read them. In one of the letters the girl had put a tress of sunny hair, and Pelliter kissed it shamelessly before his comrade.