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Updated: August 3, 2024
"Are you very much afraid for her ?" "No," said MacVeigh, without lifting his head. "If you're ready, Pelly, open the door." He rose to his feet and picked up his rifle. He did not seem like the old MacVeigh; but the dogs were nipping and whining, and there was no time for Pelliter's questions. "I'm going out first, Billy," he said.
Kazan had listened to Pelliter's deliriums many times since MacVeigh had left them alone, and soon he dropped his muzzle between his forepaws and dozed again. A long time afterward he raised his head once more. Pelliter was quiet. But the dog sniffed, went to the door, whined softly, and nervously muzzled the sick man's thin hand.
He knew that it was Pelliter; and, running slowly after Kazan and the sledge, he rammed a fresh clipful of cartridges into the chamber of his rifle. The figures in the open had risen again, and Pelliter's automatic Savage trailed out a stream of fire as he ran. He was breathing heavily when he reached Billy. "Kazan has got the kid well in the lead," shouted the latter.
He stared at Pelliter, and as he stared he grinned, ugly yellow teeth leering from between his matted beard. The look cleared Pelliter's brain. For some reason which he could not explain, his pistol hand fell to the place where he usually carried his holster. Then he remembered that his service revolver was under the pillow. "Fever," said the sailor; for Pelliter knew that he was a sailor.
An overwhelming desire possessed Gordon Makimmon to go home. He forgot the pressing necessity for assistance, the searing hurt within ... he must go home. He stumbled forward, turning into an aside that led directly behind Dr. Pelliter's drug store to the road above the Makimmon dwelling. He moved blindly, instinctively, following the way bitten beneath his consciousness by a lifetime of usage.
Pelliter's first move was to get whisky, and the other drank it in great gulps. Then he dragged himself to his feet, and Pelliter sank in a chair beside the table. "I'm sick," he said. "Sergeant MacVeigh has gone to Churchill, and I guess I'm in a bad way. You'll have to help yourself. There's meat 'n' bannock " Whisky had revived the new-comer.
That, an opportunity for all, was what Gordon was providing. A number of horses were already hitched along the rail outside Valentine Simmons' store; soon the rail would hardly afford room for another animal. He passed the Presbyterian Church, Dr. Pelliter's drugstore and dwelling, and approached his home.
"Mush it go on!" Kazan tugged, with gaping jaws; and Pelliter's head dropped upon the food-filled pack. What Kazan heard was a groan. He stopped and looked back, whining softly. For a time he sat on his haunches, sniffing a strange thing which had come to him in the air. Then he went on, straining a little faster at the sledge and still whining.
For all his life he had known only the stings of pain and of loneliness. And then, suddenly, there came Pelliter's words to him again "Mebbe some day you'll have a kid." A flood of warmth swept through his veins, and in the moment of forgetfulness and hope which came with it he turned his eyes into the south and west and saw the sweet face and upturned lips of Isobel Deane.
"So it's you, is it ?" he asked again, taking her warm little face and soft curls between his two hands. "They want you, an' they want you bad. Well, they can have grub, an' they can have me, but" he looked up to meet Pelliter's eyes "I'm damned if they can have you," he finished. Suddenly the night was broken by another sound, the sharp, explosive crack of rifles.
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