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It was a low, thick sky, like purple and blue granite, always threatening to pitch itself down in terrific avalanches, and between the earth and this sky was the thin, smothered worldrM which MacVeigh had once called God's insane asylum. Through the gloom Kazan's one eye and Pelliter's feverish vision could not see far, but at last the man made out an object toiling slowly toward the cabin.
The Eskimos were gone with their burden. He could hear the low chanting of the tribe. "I found her, and I thought she was mine," said Pelliter's low voice at his side. "But she ain't, Billy. She's yours." MacVeigh broke in on him as though he had not heard. "You better get to bed, Pelly," he warned. "That arm needs rest. I'm going out to see where they bury him."
It was with a feeling of fear that he at last saw the black cliffs of Fullerton rising above the ice. He dreaded the first opening of the cabin door. What would he find? During the past forty-eight hours he had figured on Pelliter's chances, and they were two to one that he would find his partner dead in his bunk.
And then, piercing him like a knife, there came again those low, moaning words of accusation: "It was you it was you it was you " In that voice, low and moaning as it was, he recognized some of Pelliter's madness. It was the fever. He fell back a step and drew a hand across his forehead. It was damp, clammy with a cold perspiration.
Then ten days back, mebbe two weeks, and you'll have the medicines and the letters. Hurrah!" "Hurrah!" cried Pelliter. He turned his face a little to the wall. Something rose up in MacVeigh's throat and choked him as he gripped Pelliter's hand. "My God, Bill, is that the sun ?" suddenly cried Pelliter. MacVeigh wheeled toward the one window of the cabin. The sick man tumbled from his bunk.
The others sprang out ahead of him, and Pelliter closed and bolted the door. When he turned MacVeigh was closing and slipping the bolts to the heavy barricades of the two windows. From Pelliter's bunk Little Mystery looked at them and laughed. "So it's you?" said Billy, coming to her, and breathing hard. "It's you they want, eh? Now, I wonder why ?" Pelliter's face was flushed with excitement.
With a wolfish snarl the old one-eyed sledge-dog sprang upon Blake, and the three fell with a crash upon Pelliter's bunk. For an instant Kazan's attack drew one of Blake's powerful hands from Pelliter's throat, and as he turned to strike off the dog Pelliter's hand groped out under his flattened pillow.
From Pelliter's bunk Little Mystery looked at the strange visitors with eyes which suddenly widened with surprise and joy, and in another moment she had given the strange story that Pelliter or Billy had ever heard her utter. Scarcely had that cry fallen from her lips when one of the Eskimos sprang toward her.
You remember two years ago a sailor ran away with the wife of a whaler's captain away up at Narwhale Inlet. Well " Again the two men stared silently at each other. MacVeigh turned slowly toward the child. She had fallen asleep, and he could see the dull shimmer of her golden curls as they lay scattered over Pelliter's pillow. "Poor little devil!" he exclaimed, softly.
He was breathing as though the short run was already winding him, and without a word Billy ran up to Kazan's head and stopped the team within twenty paces. The open blade of his knife was ripping up Pelliter's sleeve before his comrade could find words to object. Pelliter was bleeding, and bleeding hard. His face was shot with pain.
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