Isobel Read Free Page A

listening.
    "What was that?"
    "I heard nothing," said the woman. Her face was deadly white. Her eyes
had grown black.
    MacVeigh turned, with a word to the dogs. He picked up the end of the
babiche rope with which the woman had assisted them to drag their
load, and set off across the Barren. The presence of the dead had
always been oppressive to him, but to-night it was otherwise. His
fatigue of the day was gone, and in spite of the thing he was helping
to drag behind him he was filled with a strange elation. He was in the
presence of a woman. Now and then he turned his head to look at her.
He could feel her behind him, and the sound of her low voice when she
spoke to the dogs was like music to him. He wanted to burst forth in
the wild song with which he and Pelliter had kept up their courage in
the little cabin, but he throttled his desire and whistled instead. He
wondered how the woman and the dogs had dragged the sledge. It sank
deep in the soft drift-snow, and taxed his strength. Now and then he
paused to rest, and at last the woman jumped from the sledge and came
to his side.
    "I am going to walk," she said. "The load is too heavy."
    "The snow is soft," replied MacVeigh. "Come."
    He held out his hand to her; and, with the same strange, white look in
her face, the woman gave him her own. She glanced back uneasily toward
the box, and MacVeigh understood. He pressed her fingers a little
tighter and drew her nearer to him. Hand in hand, they resumed their
way across the Barren. MacVeigh said nothing, but his blood was
running like fire through his body. The little hand he held trembled
and started uneasily. Once or twice it tried to draw itself away, and
he held it closer. After that it remained submissively in his own,
warm and thrilling. Looking down, he could see the profile of the
woman's face.
    A long, shining tress of her hair had freed itself from under her
hood, and the light wind lifted it so that it fell across his arm.
Like a thief he raised it to his lips, while the woman looked straight
ahead to where the timber-line began to show in a thin, black streak.
His cheeks burned, half with shame, half with tumultuous joy. Then he
straightened his shoulders and shook the floating tress from his arm.
    Three-quarters of an hour later they came to the first of the timber.
He still held her hand. He was still holding it, with the brilliant
starlight falling upon them, when his chin shot suddenly into the air
again, alert and fighting, and he cried, softly:
    "What was that?"
    "Nothing," said the woman. "I heard nothing— unless it was the wind
in the trees."
    She drew away from him. The dogs whined and slunk close to the box.
Across the Barren came a low, wailing wind.
    "The storm is coming back," said MacVeigh. "It must have been the wind
that I heard."

III - In Honor of the Living
*
    For a few moments after uttering those words Billy stood silent
listening for a sound that was not the low moaning of the wind far out
on the Barren. He was sure that he had heard it— something very near,
almost at his feet, and yet it was a sound which he could not place or
understand. He looked at the woman. She was gazing steadily at him.
    "I hear it now," she said. "It is the wind. It has frightened me. It
makes such terrible sounds at times— out on the Barren. A little
while ago— I thought— I heard— a child crying—"
    Billy saw her clutch a hand at her throat, and there were both terror
and grief in the eyes that never for an instant left his face. He
understood. She was almost ready to give way under the terrible strain
of the Barren. He smiled at her, and spoke in a voice that he might
have used to a little child.
    "You are tired, little girl? "
    "Yes— yes— I am tired—"
    "And hungry and cold?"
    "Yes."
    "Then we will camp in the timber."
    They went on until they came to a growth of spruce so dense that it
formed a shelter from both snow and wind, with a thick carpet of brown
needles under foot. They were shut out from