woman’s eyes were shining. She leaned a little toward him.
“You should be glad,” she said. “If she turned you down she wouldn’t have been worthy of you—afterward. She wasn’t a true woman. If she had been, her love wouldn’t have grown cold because you were away. It mustn’t spoil your faith—because that is—beautiful.”
He had put a hand into his pocket again, and drew out now a thin package wrapped in buckskin. His face was like a boy’s.
“I might have—if I hadn’t met you,” he said. “I’d like to let you know—some way—what you’ve done for me. You and this.”
He had unfolded the buckskin, and gave it to her. In it were the big blue petals and dried stem of a blue flower.
“A blue flower!” she said.
“Yes. You know what it means. The Indians call it i-o-waka, or something like that, because they believe that it is the flower spirit of the purest and most beautiful thing in the world. I have called it woman.”
He laughed, and there was a joyous sort of note in the laugh.
“You may think me a little mad,” he said, “but do you care if I tell you about that blue flower?”
The woman nodded. There was a little quiver at her throat which Billy did not see.
“I was away up on the Great Bear,” he said, “and for ten days and ten nights I was in camp—alone—laid up with a sprained ankle. It was a wild and gloomy place, shut in by barren ridge mountains, with stunted black spruce all about, and those spruce were haunted by owls that made my blood run cold nights. The second day I found company. It was a blue flower. It grew close to my tent, as high as my knee, and during the day I used to spread out my blanket close to it and lie there and smoke. And the blue flower would wave on its slender stem, an’ bob at me, an’ talk in sign language that I imagined I understood. Sometimes it was so funny and vivacious that I laughed, and then it seemed to be inviting me to a dance. And at other times it was just beautiful and still, and seemed listening to what the forest was saying—and once or twice, I thought, it might be praying. Loneliness makes a fellow foolish, you know. With the going of the sun my blue flower would always fold its petals and go to sleep, like a little child tired out by the day’s play, and after that I would feel terribly lonely. But it was always awake again when I rolled out in the morning. At last the time came when I was well enough to leave. On the ninth night I watched my blue flower go to sleep for the last time. Then I packed. The sun was up when I went away the next morning, and from a little distance I turned and looked back. I suppose I was foolish, and weak for a man, but I felt like crying. Blue flower had taught me many things I had not known before. It had made me think. And when I looked back it was in a pool of sunlight, and it was waving at me! It seemed to me that it was calling—calling me back—and I ran to it and picked it from the stem, and it has been with me ever since that hour. It has been my Bible an’ my comrade, an’ I’ve known it was the spirit of the purest and the most beautiful thing in the world—woman. I—” His voice broke a little. “I—I may be foolish, but I’d like to have you take it, an’ keep it—always—for me.”
He could see now the quiver of her lips as she looked across at him.
“Yes, I will take it,” she said. “I will take it and keep it—always.”
“I’ve been keeping it for a woman—somewhere,” he said. “Foolish idea, wasn’t it? And I’ve been telling you all this, when I want to hear what happened back there, and what you are going to do when you reach your people. Do you mind—telling me?”
“He died—that’s all,” she replied, fighting to speak calmly. “I promised to take him back—to my people, And when I get there—I don’t know—what I shall—do—”
She caught her breath. A low sob broke from her lips.
“You don’t know—what you will do—”
Billy’s voice sounded strange even to himself. He rose to his feet and looked down into her upturned face, his hands clenched, his body trembling with the fight he was making. Words came to his lips and were forced back again—words which almost won in their struggle to tell her again that she had come to him from out of the Barren like an angel, that within the short space since their meeting he had lived a lifetime, and that he loved her as no man had ever loved a woman before. Her blue eyes looked at him questioningly as he stood above her.
And then he saw the thing which for a moment he had forgotten—the long, rough box at the woman’s back. His fingers dug deeper into his palms, and with a gasping breath he turned away. A hundred paces back in the spruce he had found a bare rock with a red bakneesh vine growing over it. With his knife he cut off an armful, and when he returned with it into the light of the fire the bakneesh glowed like a mass of crimson flowers. The woman had risen to her feet, and looked at him speechlessly as he scattered the vine over the box. He turned to her and said, softly:
“In honor of the dead!”
The color had faded from her face, but her eyes shone like stars. Billy advanced toward her with his hands reaching out. But suddenly he stopped and stood listening. After a moment he turned and asked again:
“What was that?”
“I heard the dogs—and the wind,” she replied.
“It’s something cracking in my head, I guess,” said MacVeigh. “It sounded like—” He passed a hand over his forehead and looked at the dogs huddled in deep sleep beside the sledge. The woman did not see the shiver that passed through him. He laughed cheerfully, and seized his ax.
“Now for the camp,” he announced. “We’re going to get the storm within an hour.”
On the box the woman carried a small tent, and he pitched it close to the fire, filling the interior two feet deep with cedar and balsam boughs. His own silk service tent he put back in the deeper shadows of the spruce. When he had finished he looked questioningly at the woman and then at the box.
“If there is room—I would like it in there—with me,” she said, and while she stood with her face to the fire he dragged the box into the tent. Then he piled fresh fuel upon the fire and came to bid her good night. Her face was pale and haggard now, but she smiled at him, and to MacVeigh she was the most beautiful thing in the world. Within himself he felt that he had known her for years and years, and he took her hands and looked down into her blue eyes and said, almost in a whisper:
“Will you forgive me if I’m doing wrong? You don’t know how lonesome I’ve been, and how lonesome I am, and what it means to me to look once more into a woman’s face. I don’t want to hurt you, and I’d—I’d”—his voice broke a little—“I’d give him back life if I could, just because I’ve seen you and know you and—and love you.”
She started and drew a quick, sharp breath that came almost in a low cry.
“Forgive me, little girl,” he went on. “I may be a little mad. I guess I am. But I’d die for you, and I’m going to see you safely down to your people—and—and—I wonder—I wonder—if you’d kiss me good night—”
Her eyes never left his face. They were dazzlingly blue in the firelight. Slowly she drew her hands away from him, still looking straight into his eyes, and then she placed them against
