Chapter 10. Isobel's Disappearance

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_ Chapter X. Isobel's Disappearance

Four hundred miles as an arrow might fly, five hundred by snowshoes and dog-sledge; up the Pelican Lake waterway, straight north along the edge of the Geikie Barrens, and from Wollaston westward, Philip hurried--not toward the hiding place of William DeBar, but toward Lac Bain.

A sledge and six dogs with a half-breed driver took him from Le Pas as far as the Churchill; with two Crees, on snow-shoes, he struck into the Reindeer country, and two weeks later bought a sledge and three dogs at an Indian camp on the Waterfound. On the second day, in the barrens to the west, one of the dogs slit his foot on a piece of ice; on the third day the two remaining dogs went lame, and Philip and his guide struck camp at the headwater of the Gray Beaver, sixty miles from Lac Bain. It was impossible for the dogs to move the following day, so Philip left his Indian to bring them in later and struck out alone.

That day he traveled nearly thirty miles, over a country broken by timbered ridges, and toward evening came to the beginning of the open country that lay between him and the forests about Lac Bain. It had been a hard day's travel, but he did not feel exhausted. The full moon was rising at nine o'clock, and Philip rested for two hours, cooking and eating his supper, and then resumed his journey, determined to make sufficient progress before camping to enable him to reach the post by the following noon. It was midnight when he put up his light tent, built a fire, and went to sleep. He was up again at dawn. At two o'clock he came into the clearing about Lac Bain. As he hurried to Breed's quarters he wondered if Colonel Becker or Isobel had seen him from their window. He had noticed that the curtain was up, and that a thin spiral of smoke was rising from the clay chimney that descended to the fireplace in their room.

He found Breed, the factor, poring over one of the ledgers which he and Colonel Becker had examined. He started to his feet when he saw Philip.

"Where in the name of blazes have you been?" were his first words, as he held out a hand. "I've been hunting the country over for you, and had about come to the conclusion that you and Bucky Nome were dead."

"Hunting for me," said Philip. "What for?"

Breed shrugged his shoulders.

"The colonel an'--Miss Isobel," he said. "They wanted to see you so bad that I had men out for three days after you'd gone looking for you. Couldn't even find your trail. I'm curious to know what was up."

Philip laughed. He felt a tingling joy running through every vein in his body. It was difficult for him to repress the trembling eagerness in his voice, as he said: "Well, I'm here. I wonder if they want to see me--now."

"Suppose they do," replied Breed, slowly lighting his pipe. "But you've hung off too long. They're gone."

"Gone?" Philip stared at the factor.

"Gone?" he demanded again.

"Left this morning--for Churchill," affirmed Breed. "Two sledges, two Indians, the colonel and Miss Isobel."

For a few moments Philip stood in silence, staring straight out through the one window of the room with his back to the factor.

"Did they leave any word for me?" he asked.

"No."

"Then--I must follow them!" He spoke the words more to himself than to Breed. The factor regarded him in undisguised astonishment and Philip, turning toward him, hastened to add: "I can't tell you why. Breed--but it's necessary that I overtake them as soon as possible. I don't want to lose a day--not an hour. Can you lend me a team and a driver?"

"I've got a scrub team," said Breed, "but there isn't another man that I can spare from the post. There's LeCroix, ten miles to the west. If you can wait until to-morrow--"

"I must follow this afternoon--now," interrupted Philip. "They will have left a clean trail behind, and I can overtake them some time to-morrow. Will you have the team made ready for me--a light sledge, it you've got it."

By three o'clock he was on the trail again. Breed had spoken truthfully when he said that his dogs were scrubs. There were four of them, two mongrels, one blind huskie, and a mamelute that ran lame. And besides this handicap, Philip found that his own endurance was fast reaching the ebbing point. He had traveled sixty miles in a day and a half, and his legs and back began to show signs of the strain. In spite of this fact, his spirits rose with every mile he placed behind him. He knew that it would be impossible for Isobel and her father to stand the hardship of fast and continued travel. At the most they would not make more than twenty miles in a day, and even with his scrub team he could make thirty, and would probably overtake them at the end of the next day. And then it occurred to him, with a pleasurable thrill, that to find Isobel again on the trail, as he had first seen her, would be a hundred times better than finding her at Lac Bain. He would accompany her and the colonel to Churchill. They would be together for days, and at the end of that time--

He laughed low and joyously, and for a spell he urged the dogs into a swifter pace. That he had correctly estimated the speed of those ahead of him he was convinced, when, two hours later, he came upon the remains of their mid-day camp-fire, nine or ten miles from Lac Bain. It was dark when he reached this point. There were glowing embers still in the fire, and these he stirred into life, adding armfuls of dry wood to the flames. About him in the snow he found the prints of Isobel's little feet, and in the flood of joy and hope that was sweeping more and more into his life he sang and whistled, and forgot that he was alone in a desolation of blackness that made even the dogs slink nearer to the fire. He would camp here--where Isobel had been only a few hours before. If he traveled hard he would overtake them by the next noon.

But he had underestimated his own exhaustion. After he had put up his tent before the fire he made himself a bed of balsam boughs and tell into a deep sleep, from which neither dawn nor the restless movements of the dogs could awaken him. When at last he opened his eyes it was broad day. He jumped to his feet and looked at his watch. It was nine o'clock, and after ten before he again took up the pursuit of the two sledges. Not until several hours later did he give up hope of overtaking Isobel and her father as he had planned, and he reproved himself roundly for having overslept. The afternoon was half gone before he struck their camp of the preceding evening, and he knew that, because of his own loss of time, Isobel was still as far ahead of him as when he had left Lac Bain.

He made up some of this time by following the trail for an hour when the moon was at its highest, and then pitched his tent. He was up again the next morning and breaking camp before it was light. Scarcely had he traveled an hour over the clear-cut trail ahead of him when he suddenly halted his dogs with a loud cry of command and astonishment. In a small open the trails of the two sledges separated. One continued straight east, toward Churchill, while the other turned almost at right angles into the south. For a few moments he could find no explanation for this occurrence. Then he decided that one of the Indians had struck southward, either to hunt, or on some short mission, and that he would join the other sledge farther on. Convinced that this was the right solution, Philip continued over the Churchill trail. A little later, to his despair, it began to snow so heavily that the trail which he was following was quickly obliterated. There was but one thing for him to do now, and that was to hasten on to Fort Churchill, giving up all hope of finding Isobel and the colonel before he met them there.

Four days later he came into the post. The news that awaited him struck him dumb. Isobel and her father, with one Indian, had gone with the sledge into the South. The Indian who had driven on to Churchill could give no further information, except that he knew the colonel and his daughter had suddenly changed their minds about coming to Churchill. Perhaps they had gone to Nelson House, or York Factory--or even to Le Pas. He did not know.

It was with a heavy heart that Philip turned his face once more toward Lac Bain. He could not repress a laugh, bitter and filled with disappointment, as he thought how fate was playing against him. If he had not overslept he would have caught up with the sledges before they separated, if he had not forced himself into this assignment it was possible that Isobel and her father would have come to him. They knew that his detachment was at Prince Albert--and they were going south. He had little doubt but that they were striking for Nelson House, and from Nelson House to civilization there was but one trail, that which led to Le Pas and Etomami. And Etomami was but two hours by rail from Prince Albert.

He carried in his breast pocket a bit of written information which he had obtained from the Churchill factor--that helped to soften, in a way, the sting of his disappointment. It was Colonel Becker's London address--and Isobel's, and he quickly laid out for himself new plans of action. He would write to MacGregor from Lac Bain, asking him to put in at once the necessary application for the purchase of his release from the service. As soon as he was free he would go to London. He would call on Isobel like a gentleman, he told himself. Perhaps, after all, it would be the better way.

But first, there was DeBar.

As he had been feverishly anxious to return into the North, so, now, he was anxious to have this affair with DeBar over with. He lost no time at Lac Bain, writing his letter to Inspector MacGregor on the same day that he arrived. Only two of the dogs which the Indian had brought into the post were fit to travel, and with these, and a light sledge on which he packed his equipment he set off alone for Fond du Lac. A week later he reached the post. He found Hutt, the factor, abed with a sprained knee, and the only other men at the post were three Chippewayans, who could neither talk nor understand English.

"DeBar is gone," groaned Hutt, after Philip had made himself known. "A rascal of a Frenchman came in last night on his way to the Grand Rapid, and this morning DeBar was missing. I had the Chippewayans in, and they say he left early in the night with his sledge and one big bull of a hound that he hangs to like grim death. I'd kill that damned Indian you came up with. I believe it was he that told the Frenchman there was an officer on the way."

"Is the Frenchman here?" asked Philip.

"Gone!" groaned Hutt again, turning his twisted knee. "He left for the Grand Rapid this morning, and there isn't another dog or sledge at the post. This winter has been death on the dogs, and what few are left are out on the trap-lines. DeBar knows you're after him, sure as fate, and he's taken a trail toward the Athabasca. The best I can do is to let you have a Chippewayan who'll go with you as far as the Chariot. That's the end of his territory, and what you'll do after that God only knows."

"I'll take the chance," said Philip. "We'll start after dinner. I've got two dogs, a little lame, but even at that they'll have DeBar's outfit handicapped."

It was less than two hours later when Philip and the Chippewayan set off into the western forests, the Indian ahead and Philip behind, with the dogs and sledge between them. Both men were traveling light. Philip had even strapped his carbine and small emergency bag to the toboggan, and carried only his service revolver at his belt. It was one o'clock and the last slanting beams of the winter sun, heatless and only cheering to the eye, were fast dying away before the first dull gray approach of desolate gloom which precedes for a few hours the northern night. As the black forest grew more and more somber about them, he looked over the grayish yellow back of the tugging huskies at the silent Indian striding over the outlaw's trail, and a slight shiver passed through him, a shiver that was neither of cold nor fear, yet which was accompanied by an oppression which it was hard for him to shake off. Deep down in his heart Philip had painted a picture of William DeBar--of the man--and it was a picture to his liking. Such men he would like to know and to call his friends. But now the deepening gloom, the darkening of the sky above, the gray picture ahead of him--the Chippewayan, as silent as the trees, the dogs pulling noiselessly in their traces like slinking shadows, the ghost-like desolation about him, all recalled him to that other factor in the game, who was DeBar the outlaw, and not DeBar the man. In this same way, he imagined, Forbes, Bannock, Fleisham and Gresham had begun the game, and they had lost. Perhaps they, too, had gone out weakened by visions of the equity of things, for the sympathy of man for man is strong when they meet above the sixtieth.

DeBar was ahead of him--DeBar the outlaw, watching and scheming as he had watched and schemed when the other four had played against him. The game had grown old to him. It had brought him victim after victim, and each victim had made of him a more deadly enemy of the next. Perhaps at this moment he was not very far ahead, waiting to send him the way of the others. The thought urged new fire into Philip's blood. He spurted past the dogs and stopped the Chippewayan, and then examined the trail. It was old. The frost had hardened in the huge footprints of DeBar's big hound; it had built a webby film over the square impressions of his snow-shoe thongs. But what of that? Might not the trail still be old, and DeBar a few hundred yards ahead of him, waiting--watching?

He went back to the sledge and unstrapped his carbine. In a moment the first picture, the first sympathy, was gone. It was not the law which DeBar was fighting now. It was himself. He walked ahead of the Indian, alert, listening and prepared. The crackling of a frost-bitten tree startled him into stopping; the snapping of a twig under its weight of ice and snow sent strange thrills through him which left him almost sweating. The sounds were repeated again and again as they advanced, until he became accustomed to them. Yet at each new sound his fingers gripped tighter about his carbine and his heart beat a little faster. Once or twice he spoke to the Indian, who understood no word he said and remained silent. They built a fire and cooked their supper when it grew too dark to travel.

Later, when it became lighter, they went on hour after hour, through the night. At dawn the trail was still old. There were the same cobwebs of frost, the same signs to show that DeBar and his Mackenzie hound had preceded them a long time before. During the next day and night they spent sixteen hours on their snow-shoes and the lacework of frost in DeBar's trail grew thinner. The next day they traveled fourteen and the next twelve, and there was no lacework of frost at all. There were hot coals under the ashes of DeBar's fires. The crumbs of his bannock were soft. The toes of his Mackenzie hound left warm, sharp imprints. It was then that they came to the frozen water of the Chariot. The Chippewayan turned back to Fond du Lac, and Philip went on alone, the two dogs limping behind him with his outfit.

It was still early in the day when Philip crossed the river into the barrens and with each step now his pulse beat faster. DeBar could not be far ahead of him. He was sure of that. Very soon he must overtake him. And then--there would be a fight. In the tense minutes that followed, the vision of Isobel's beautiful face grew less and less distinct in his mind. It was filled with something more grim, something that tightened his muscles, kept him ceaselessly alert. He would come on DeBar--and there would be a fight. DeBar would not be taken by surprise.

At noon he halted and built a small fire between two rocks, over which he boiled some tea and warmed his meat. Each day he had built three fires, but at the end of this day, when darkness stopped him again, it occurred to him that since that morning DeBar had built but one. Gray dawn had scarcely broken when he again took up the pursuit. It was bitterly cold, and a biting wind swept down across the barrens from the Arctic icebergs. His pocket thermometer registered sixty degrees below zero when he left it open on the sledge, and six times between dawn and dusk he built himself fires. Again DeBar built but one, and this time he found no bannock crumbs.

For the last twenty miles DeBar had gone straight into the North. He continued straight into the North the next day and several times Philip scrutinized his map, which told him in that direction there lay nothing but peopleless barrens as far as the Great Slave.

There was growing in him now a fear--a fear that DeBar would beat him out in the race. His limbs began to ache with a strange pain and his progress was becoming slower. At intervals he stopped to rest, and after each of these intervals the pain seemed to gnaw deeper at his bones, forcing him to limp, as the dogs were limping behind him. He had felt it once before, beyond Lac Bain, and knew what it meant. His legs were giving out--and DeBar would beat him yet! The thought stirred him on, and before he stopped again he came to the edge of a little lake. DeBar had started to cross the lake, and then, changing his mind, had turned back and skirted the edge of it. Philip followed the outlaw's trail with his eyes and saw that he could strike it again and save distance by crossing the snow-covered ice.

He went on, with dogs and sledge at his heels, unconscious of the warning underfoot that had turned DeBar back. In midlake he turned to urge the dogs into a faster pace, and it was then that he heard under him a hollow, trembling sound, growing in volume even as he hesitated, until it surged in under his feet from every shore, like the rolling thunder of a ten-pin ball. With a loud cry to the dogs he darted forward, but it was too late. Behind him the ice crashed like brittle glass, and he saw sledge and dogs disappear as if into an abyss. In an instant he had begun a mad race to the shore a hundred feet ahead of him. Ten paces more and he would have reached it, when the toe of his snow-shoe caught in a hummock of snow and ice. For a flash it stopped him, and the moment's pause was fatal. Before he could throw himself forward on his face in a last effort to save himself, the ice gave way and he plunged through. In his extremity he thought of DeBar, of possible help even from the outlaw, and a terrible cry for that help burst from his lips as he felt himself going. The next instant he was sorry that he had shouted. He was to his waist in water, but his feet were on bottom. He saw now what had happened, that the surface of the water was a foot below the shell of ice, which was scarcely more than an inch in thickness. It was not difficult for him to kick off his snow-shoes under the water, and he began breaking his way ashore.

Five minutes later he dragged himself out, stiff with the cold, his drenched clothing freezing as it came into contact with the air. His first thought was of fire, and he ran up the shore, his teeth chattering, and began tearing off handfuls of bark from a birch. Not until he was done and the bark was piled in a heap beside the tree did the full horror of his situation dawn upon him. His emergency pouch was on the sledge, and in that pouch was his waterproof box of matches!

He ran back to the edge of broken ice, unconscious that he was almost sobbing in his despair. There was no sign of the sledge, no sound of the dogs, who might still be struggling in their traces. They were gone--everything--food, fire, life itself. He dug out his flint and steel from the bottom of a stiffening pocket and knelt beside the bark, striking them again and again, yet knowing that his efforts were futile. He continued to strike until his hands were purple and numb and his freezing clothes almost shackled him to the ground.

"Good God!" he breathed.

He rose slowly, with a long, shuddering breath and turned his eyes to where the outlaw's trail swung from the lake into the North. Even in that moment, as the blood in his veins seemed congealing with the icy chill of death, the irony of the situation was not lost upon Philip.

"It's the law versus God, Billy," he chattered, as if DeBar stood before him. "The law wouldn't vindicate itself back there--ten years ago--but I guess it's doing it now."

He dropped into DeBar's trail and began to trot.

"At least it looks as if you're on the side of the Mighty," he continued. "But we'll see--very soon--Billy--"

Ahead of him the trail ran up a ridge, broken and scattered with rocks and stunted scrub, and the sight of it gave him a little hope. Hope died when he reached the top and stared out over a mile of lifeless barren.

"You're my only chance. Billy," he shivered. "Mebby, if you knew what had happened, you'd turn back and give me the loan of a match."

He tried to laugh at his own little joke, but it was a ghastly attempt and his purpling lips closed tightly as he stumbled down the ridge. As his legs grew weaker and his blood more sluggish, his mind seemed to work faster, and the multitude of thoughts that surged through his brain made him oblivious of the first gnawing of a strange dull pain. He was freezing. He knew that without feeling pain. He had before him, not hours, but minutes of life, and he knew that, too. His arms might have been cut off at the shoulders for all feeling that was left in them; he noticed, as he stumbled along in a half run, that he could not bend his fingers. At every step his legs grew heavier and his feet were now leaden weights. Yet he was surprised to find that the first horror of his situation had left him. It did not seem that death was only a few hundred yards away, and he found himself thinking of MacGregor, of home, and then only of Isobel. He wondered, after that, if some one of the other four had played the game, and lost, in this same way, and he wondered, too, if his bones would never be found, as theirs had never been.

He stopped again on a snow ridge. He had come a quarter of a mile, though it seemed that he had traveled ten times that distance.

"Sixty degrees below zero--and it's the vindication of the law!"

His voice scarcely broke between his purple lips now, and the bitter sweep of wind swayed him as he stood. _

Read next: Chapter 11. The Law Versus The Man

Read previous: Chapter 9. Philip Takes Up The Trail

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