Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 24, 2025
There had been half a dozen others, but they were now following up his old trails somewhere out in the wilderness. These three had been returned recently from Fond du Lac. One was from Pelliter, the fourth he had written, he said, without an answer. The "kid" had come a girl and he wondered if Billy was dead. The second letter was from his Cobalt partner.
"There!" said MacVeigh aloud, straightening his rounded shoulders with a groan of relief. "It's done." From his bunk in a corner of the little wind and storm beaten cabin which represented Law at the top end of the earth Private Pelliter lifted a head wearily from his sick bed and said: "I'm bloomin' glad of it, Mac.
A cry broke from his lips, and he gripped his hands in despair. He would be alone. There was no one waiting for him down in that world to which Pelliter was going, no girl to meet him, no father, no mother nothing. He laughed in his pain as he faced the cold wind from the north. The sting of that wind was like the mocking ghost of his own past life.
Then he hitched old Kazan to the sledge and started off, leaving the dead man where he had fallen. "It's what she'd have us do," he said again to Kazan. "She sure would have us do this, Kazan. God bless her dear little heart!" Pelliter hung close to the ice-bound coast. He traveled slowly, leading the way for Kazan, who strained every muscle in his aged body to drag the sledge.
And if not, if Pelliter still lived, what a tale there would be to tell the sick man! For he knew that he must tell some one, and Pelliter would keep his secret. And he would understand. Day after day, as he had hurried straight into the north, Billy's loneliness and heartbreak weighed more and more heavily upon him. He tried to force Isobel out of his thoughts, but it was impossible.
To Pelliter alone, who was waiting for him, did Billy tell all that had happened down on the Little Beaver. There were several letters waiting for him at Churchill, and one of these told him that a silver property in which he was interested over at Cobalt had turned out well and that his share in the sale was something over ten thousand dollars.
Little Mystery was still sleeping, and the two men moved about softly in their moccasined feet. On this morning the sun shone brilliantly over the southern ice-fields, and Pelliter aroused Little Mystery so that she might see it before it disappeared. But to-day it did not drop below the gray murkiness of the snow-horizon for nearly an hour.
In a few minutes more a small bright blaze of almost smokeless larchwood was lighting up and warming the interior of the igloo. To his surprise, Pelliter found the child asleep when he went to her again. He moved her gently and carried the dead body of the little Eskimo woman through the opening and half a hundred paces from the igloo.
His black hands were already upon her, dragging the child from the bunk, when with a warning yell of rage Pelliter leaped from the door and sent him crashing back among his companions. In another instant both men were facing the seven Eskimos with leveled automatics. "If you fire don't shoot to kill!" commanded MacVeigh.
In the little cabin men have gone mad. The gloomy truth oppressed MacVeigh as he guided his dog team over the ice into the south. He was afraid for Pelliter. He prayed that Pelliter might see the sun now and then. On the second day he stopped at a cache of fish which they had put up in the early autumn for dog feed.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking