Isobel Read Free

down
at the thing under his hand. It was a long, rough box. He drew back a
step.
    "Good God!" he said. "Are you alone?"
    She bowed her head, and he heard her voice in a half sob.
    "Yes— alone."
    He passed quickly around to her side. "I am Sergeant MacVeigh, of the
Royal Mounted," he said, gently. "Tell me, where are you going, and
how does it happen that you are out here in the Barren— alone."
    Her hood had fallen upon her shoulder, and she lifted her face full to
MacVeigh. The stars shone in her eyes. They were wonderful eyes, and
now they were filled with pain. And it was a wonderful face to
MacVeigh, who had not seen a white woman's face for nearly a year. She
was young, so young that in the pale glow of the night she looked
almost like a girl, and in her eyes and mouth and the upturn of her
chin there was something so like that other face of which he had
dreamed that he reached out and took her two hesitating hands in his
own, and asked again:
    "Where are you going, and why are you out here— alone?"
    "I am going— down there," she said, turning her head toward the
timber-line. "I am going with him— my husband—"
    Her voice choked her, and, drawing her hands suddenly from him, she
went to the sledge and stood facing him. For a moment there was a glow
of defiance in her eyes, as though she feared him and was ready to
fight for herself and her dead. The dogs slunk in at her feet, and
MacVeigh saw the gleam of their naked fangs in the starlight.
    "He died three days ago," she finished, quietly, "and I am taking him
back to my people, down on the Little Seul."
    "It is two hundred miles," said MacVeigh, looking at her as if she
were mad. "You will die."
    "I have traveled two days," replied the woman. "I am going on."
    "Two days— across the Barren!"
    MacVeigh looked at the box, grim and terrible in the ghostly radiance
that fell upon it. Then he looked at the woman. She had bowed her head
upon her breast, and her shining hair fell loose and disheveled. He
saw the pathetic droop of her tired shoulders, and knew that she was
crying. In that moment a thrilling warmth flooded every fiber of his
body, and the glory of this that had come to him from out of the
Barren held him mute. To him woman was all that was glorious and good.
The pitiless loneliness of his life had placed them next to angels in
his code of things, and before him now he saw all that he had ever
dreamed of in the love and loyalty of womanhood and of wifehood.
    The bowed little figure before him was facing death for the man she
had loved, and who was dead. In a way he knew that she was mad. And
yet her madness was the madness of a devotion that was beyond fear, of
a faithfulness that made no measure of storm and cold and starvation;
and he was filled with a desire to go up to her as she stood crumpled
and exhausted against the box, to take her close in his arms and tell
her that of such a love he had built for himself the visions which had
kept him alive in his loneliness. She looked pathetically like a
child.
    "Come, little girl," he said. "We'll go on. I'll see you safely on
your way to the Little Seul. You mustn't go alone. You'd never reach
your people alive. My God, if I were he—"
    He stopped at the frightened look in the white face she lifted to him.
    "What?" she asked.
    "Nothing— only it's hard for a man to die and lose a woman like you,"
said MacVeigh. "There— let me lift you up on the box."
    "The dogs cannot pull the load," she objected. "I have helped them—"
    "If they can't, I can," he laughed, softly; and with a quick movement
he picked her up and seated her on the sledge. He stripped off his
pack and placed it behind her, and then he gave her his rifle. The
woman looked straight at him with a tense, white face as she placed
the weapon across her lap.
    "You can shoot me if I don't do my duty," said MacVeigh. He tried to
hide the happiness that came to him in this companionship of woman,
but it trembled in his voice. He stopped suddenly,