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Isobel: A Romance of the Northern Trail, a novel by James Oliver Curwood |
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Chapter 23. At The End Of The Trail |
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_ CHAPTER XXIII. AT THE END OF THE TRAIL The long days and nights of inactivity which Billy had passed in the Indian camp had given him the opportunity to think more calmly of the tragedy which had come into his life, and with returning strength he had drawn himself partly out from the pit of hopelessness and despair into which he had fallen. Deane was dead. Isobel was dead. But the baby Isobel still lived; and in the hope of finding and claiming her for his own he built other dreams for himself out of the ashes of all that had gone for him. He believed that he would find McTabb at the cabin and he would find the child there. So confident had he been that Isobel would live that he had not told McTabb of the uncle who had driven her from the old home in Montreal. He was glad that he had kept this to himself, for there would not be much of a chance of Rookie having found the child's relative. And he made up his mind that he would not give the little Isobel up. He would keep her for himself. He would return to civilization, for he would have her to live for. He would build a home for her, with a garden and dogs and birds and flowers. With his silver-claim money he had fifteen thousand dollars laid away, and she would never know what it meant to be poor. He would educate her and buy her a piano and she would have no end of pretty dresses and things to make her a lady. They would be together and inseparable always, and when she grew up he prayed deep down in his soul that she would be like the older Isobel, her mother. His grief was deep. He knew that he could never forget, and that the old memories of the wilderness and of the woman he had loved would force themselves upon him, year after year, with their old pain. But these new thoughts and plans for the child made his grief less poignant. It was late in the afternoon of a day that had been filled with sunlight and the warmth of spring that he came to the Little Beaver, a short distance above McTabb's cabin. He almost ran from there to the clearing, and the sun was just sinking behind the forest in the west when he paused on the edge of the break in the forest and saw the cabin. It was from here that he had last seen little Isobel. The bush behind which he had concealed himself was less than a dozen paces away. He noticed this, and then he observed things which made his heart sink in a strange, cold way. A path had led into the forest at the point where he stood. Now it was almost obliterated by a tangle of last year's weeds and plants. Rookie must have made a new path, he thought. And then, fearfully, he looked about the clearing and at the cabin. Everywhere there was the air of desolation. There was no smoke rising from the chimney. The door was closed. There were no evidences of life outside. Not the sound of a dog, of a laugh, or of a voice broke the dead stillness. Scarcely breathing, Billy advanced, his heart choked more and more by the fear that gripped him. The door to the cabin was not barred. He opened it. There was nothing inside. The old stove was broken. The bare cots had not been used for months-- perhaps for two years. As he took another step an ermine scampered away ahead of him. He heard the mouselike squeal of its young a moment later under the sapling floor. He went back to the door and stood in the open. "My God!" he moaned. He looked in the direction of Couchée's cabin, where Isobel had died. Was there a chance there, he wondered? There was little hope, but he started quickly over the old trail. The gloom of evening fell swiftly about him. It was almost dark when he reached the other clearing. And again his voice broke in a groaning cry. There was no cabin here. McTabb had burned it after the passing of the plague. Where it had stood was now a black and charred mass, already partly covered by the verdure of the wilderness. Billy gripped his hands hard and walked back from it searchingly. A few steps away he found what McTabb had told him that he would find, a mound and a sapling cross. And then, in spite of all the fighting strength that was in him, he flung himself down upon Isobel's grave, and a great, broken cry of grief burst from his lips. When he raised his head a long time afterward the stars were shimmering in the sky. It was a wonderfully still night, and all that he could hear was the ripple and song of the spring floods in the Little Beaver. He rose silently to his feet and stood for a few moments as motionless as a statue over the grave. Then he turned and went back over the old trail, and from the edge of the clearing he looked back and whispered to himself and to her: "I'll come back for you, Isobel. I'll come back." At McTabb's cabin he had left his pack. He put the straps over his shoulder and started south again. There was but one move for him to make now. McTabb was known at Le Pas. He got his supplies and sold his furs there. Some one at Le Pas would know where he had gone with little Isobel. Not until he was several miles distant from the scene of death and his own broken hopes did he spread out his blanket and lie down for the night. He was up and had breakfast at dawn. On the fourth day he came to the little wilderness outpost-- the end of rail-- on the Saskatchewan. Within an hour he discovered that Rookie McTabb had not been to Le Pas for nearly two years. No one had seen him with a child. That same night a construction train was leaving for Etomami, down on the main line, and Billy lost no time in making up his mind what he would do. He would go to Montreal. If little Isobel was not there she was still somewhere in the wilderness with McTabb. Then he would return, and he would find her if it took him a lifetime. Days and nights of travel followed, and during those days and nights Billy prayed that he would not find her in Montreal. If by some chance McTabb had discovered her relatives, if Isobel had revealed her secret to him before she died, his last hope in life was gone. He did not think of wasting time in the purchase of new clothes. That would have meant the missing of a train. He still wore his wilderness outfit, even to his fur cap. As he traveled farther eastward people began to regard him curiously. He got the porter to shave off his beard. But his hair was long. His moccasins and German socks were ragged and torn, and there were rents in his caribou-skin coat and his heavy Hudson's Bay sweater-shirt. The hardships he had gone through had left their lines in his face. There was something about him, outside of his strange attire, that made men look at him more than once. Women, more keenly observant than the men, saw the deep-seated grief in his eyes. As he approached Montreal he kept himself more and more aloof from the others. When at last the train came to a stop at the big station in the heart of the city he walked through the gates and strode up the hill toward Mount Royal. It was an hour or more past noon, and he had eaten nothing since morning. But he had no thought of hunger. Twenty minutes later he was at the foot of the street on which Isobel had told him that she had lived. One by one he passed the old houses of brick and stone, sheltered behind their solid walls. There had been no change in the years since he had been there. Half-way up the hill to the base of the mountain he saw an old gardener trimming ivy about an ancient cannon near a driveway. He stopped and asked: "Can you tell me where Geoffrey Renaud lives?" The old gardener looked at him curiously for a moment without speaking. Then he said: "Renaud? Geoffrey Renaud? That is his house up there behind the red-sandstone wall. Is it the house you want to see-- or Renaud?" "Both," said Billy. "Geoffrey Renaud has been dead for three years," informed the gardener. "Are you a-- relative?" "No, no," cried Billy, trying to keep his voice steady as he asked the next question. "There are others there. Who are they?" The old man shook his head. "I don't know." "There is a little girl there-- four-- five years old, with golden hair--" "She was playing in the garden when I came along a few moments ago," replied the gardener. "I heard her-- with the dog--" Billy waited to hear no more. Thanking his informant, he walked swiftly up the hill to the red-sandstone wall. Before he came to the rusted iron gate he, too, heard a child's laughter, and it set his heart beating wildly. It was just over the wall. In his eagerness he thrust the toe of his moccasined foot into a break in the stone and drew himself up. He looked down into a great garden, and a dozen steps away, close to a thick clump of shrubbery, he saw a child playing with a little puppy. The sun gleamed in her golden hair. He heard her joyous laughter; and then, for an instant, her face was turned toward him. In that moment he forgot everything, and with a great, glad cry he drew himself up and sprang to the ground on the other side. "Isobel-- Isobel-- my little Isobel!" He was beside her, on his knees, with her in his hungry arms, and for a brief space the child was so frightened that she held her breath and stared at him without a sound. "Don't you know me-- don't you know me--" he almost sobbed. "Little Mystery-- Isobel--" He heard a sound, a strange, stifled cry, and he looked up. From behind the shrubbery there had come a woman, and she was staring at Billy MacVeigh with a face as white as chalk. He staggered to his feet, and he believed that at last he had gone mad. For it was the vision of Isobel Deane that he saw there, and her blue eyes were glowing at him as he had seen them for an instant that night a long time ago on the edge of the Barren. He could not speak. And then, as he staggered another step back toward the wall, he held out his ragged arms, without knowing what he was doing, and called her name as he had spoken it a hundred times at night beside his lonely campfires. Starvation, his injury, weeks of illness, and his almost superhuman struggle to reach McTabb's cabin, and after that civilization, had consumed his last strength. For days he had lived on the reserve forces of a nervous energy that slipped away from him now, leaving him dizzy and swaying. He fought to overcome the weakness that seemed to have taken the last ounce of strength from his exhausted body, but in spite of his strongest efforts the sunlit garden suddenly darkened before his eyes. In that moment the vision became real, and as he turned toward the wall Isobel Deane called him by name; and in another moment she was at his side, clutching him almost fiercely by the arms and calling him by name over and over again. The weakness and dizziness passed from him in a moment, but in that space he seemed only to realize that he must get back-- over the wall. "I wouldn't have come-- but-- I-- I-- thought you were-- dead," he said. "They told me-- you were dead. I'm glad-- glad-- but I wouldn't have come--" She felt the weight of him for an instant on her arm. She knew the things that were in his face-- starvation, pain, the signs of ravage left behind by fever. In these moments Billy did not see the wonderful look that had come into her own face or the wonderful glow in her eyes. "It was Indian Joe's mother who died," he heard her say. "And since then we have been waiting-- waiting-- waiting-- little Isobel and I. I went away north, to David's grave, and I saw what you had done, and what you had burned into the wood. Some day, I knew, you'd come back to me. We've been waiting-- for you--" Her voice was barely more than a whisper, but Billy heard it; and all at once his dizziness was gone, and he saw the sunlight shining in Isobel's bright hair and the look in her face and eyes. "I'm sorry-- sorry-- so sorry I said what I did-- about you-- killing him," she went on. "You remember-- I said that if I got well--" "Yes--" "And you thought I meant that if I got well you should go away-- and you promised-- and kept your promise. But I couldn't finish. It didn't seem right-- then. I wanted to tell you-- out there-- that I was sorry-- and that if I got well you could come to me again-- some day somewhere-- and then--" "Isobel!" "And now-- you may tell me again what you told me out on the Barren-- a long time ago." "Isobel-- Isobel--" "You understand"-- she spoke softly-- "you understand, it cannot happen now-- perhaps not for another year. But now"-- she drew a little nearer-- "you may kiss me," she said. "And then you must kiss little Isobel. And we don't want you to go very far away again. It's lonely-- terribly lonely all by ourselves in the city-- and we're glad you've come-- so glad--" Her voice broke to a sobbing whisper, and as Billy opened his great, ragged arms and caught her to him he heard that whisper again, saying, "We're glad-- glad-- glad you've come back to us." "And I-- may-- stay?" She raised her face, glorious in its welcome. "If you want me-- still." At last he believed. But he could not speak. He bent his face to hers, and for a moment they stood thus, while from behind the shrubbery came the sound of little Isobel's joyous laughter. [THE END] _ |
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