“If only I could get a little bit warm I wouldn't mind this brutally hollow feeling in my insides,” he was saying. “Yes, I'm jolly cold, and confound it I'm edging round to fearful hunger. Thank God, I'm not thirsty. I suppose if I were lost in a desert now I'd be dying from sunstroke and thirst, so this isn't so bad, is it? Yes, thank God, I'm not thirsty.”
No one answered him.
“I wish I wasn't so tired and so devilish sleepy—it scares me to feel sleepy. Billy Kennedy used to say when he was a mounted policeman that sleepiness was the last stage—the very last stage. D'you think it's so?”
He turned on his side, his brows puckering a little with impatience, and listened for his companion's reply. Then he laughed, a crazy, little laugh, and snuggled up again into a bunch with his cheek on the horse's throat.
There was a mimic warmth yet in the animal, but not so much as in the man. The poor beast had had sixteen hours' disadvantage of his master. The man had appropriated for his individual sufferings the inadequate dribblings from a small flask.
The horse lay quite still, its big brown neck pulsing once in a long while, when the blood, slowly thickening to ice, pounded through its sluggish heart. The man lay still, too, talking in fragmentary sentences that always terminated with a question.
At last he raised himself on his elbows, and looked into the west, across the uneven regularity of his horse's ribs.
Plains, plains, everywhere, crossed by an unmeaning infinity of telegraph poles. The sun would set within a half hour, and the sky up around it was growing yellowy, with a flash or two of thinnish pink. Away off to the left an evil-looking smoke-colored cloud was bunching itself together. Westward, miles and miles away, the foot-hills bubbled up along the horizon. That was all he saw.
“The smoke-colored cloud means more snow,” said the man, attempting to rise—it was odd, that pleasant sensation in his knees; below them there was no sensation at all, and he stumbled over the horse's hoofs into a stiff little heap at the animal's neck again.
“Yes, Dobbin, we're mighty cold, you and I, aren't we, old man? Let's try our schoolboy trick.” He put his fingers in his mouth, and presently they pained him with a thin sort of agony—so intensely severe that he laughed. How soft and fleecy the snow was beginning to feel, just like warm summer grass; it was grass, he was sure of it, and it was a warm, still day, and he was saying, “Oh, this is luck to find you here, Milly. I'm just on my way over to see you; however did you muster the energy to face this blazing sun?” It was such a hot, hot day, but the girl looked beautifully cool, lolling there with her book, surrounded by timothy and under the shade of a rosy-colored parasol.
“How villainously hot your Canadian Augusts are, anyway. I'm nearly broiled,” he continued, flopping on to the grass beside her.
“Poor old fellow,” she laughed, “but you needn't growl about it; it's far cooler than it was this morning.”
“Nevertheless, you were out this morning?”
“Yes.”
“Driving?”
“Yes”—doggedly.
“With Connelly?”
“Yes, with Mr. Connelly.” The tone was lower and tinged with defiance.
He bit his under lip thoughtfully.
“Milly”—taking both her hands—“have I never asked you, dear, not to drive with Connelly?”
“Yes—but—”
“Ah! I know; it's the same old excuse. Don't say it, Milly, it's so—so—hackneyed.”
“I will say it, Ned. You've never taken me out once, and you know how I like diving. Am I to miss all my pleasure simply because I'm engaged to you? It's absurd.”
“I never asked you not to drive with the other fellows; it's Connelly I object to.”
“Yes, and it's Mr. Connelly who has the nicest horse and trap in town, and who asks me the oftenest. There's no use denying it, Ned, you're ridiculously, ungenerously jealous.”
He was keeping his temper well.
“If, dear, I had not been hoarding up every penny so as to get for us the nicest house in the nicest part of the town, you know well enough I'd drive you every day; but I'm—I'm—poor, and can't do everything.”
“Oh! I know,” she said fretfully, “and at all events, until our engagement is announced—but there! I won't quarrel with you any more; to please you I'll stay in, stay in, stay in until—”
“Milly,” he interrupted, “you are not acting the truth. Jackson told me this morning he intended driving you over to the Park, but I know as well as if I'd heard you that you shipped him on the chances of going with Connelly—it isn't Connelly's horse and trap at all—it's the man.”
It was not a flush of anger that swept into her cheeks.
“It's gone on long enough, Mill,” he continued.
“Is that a threat?”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“I don't like giving reasons, particularly when they involve people; but I'll tell you once for all, I'd have taken you out driving often this summer had my own money been in my own pocket. I've been fool enough to play cards with Connelly—do you understand?”
“Ah!”—ironically—“birds of a feather. I see no difference between man and man at a gaming table.”
“But I tell you he's a blackguard. There's not a fellow in town who'll sit down to a table with him now. The man cheats, and moreover lives by it.”
Her eyebrows arched coolly.
“I would not, were I in your place, excuse my idiotic jealousy by defaming a man's character.”
There was a heavy silence. He poked the toe of his boot with his walking cane, and listened intently when a gray locust got up cracking its wings loudly in the down-pouring sunshine. The sound was a relief. He spoke then.
“I came to tell you that I am obliged to leave with Jackson for the North-West to-night; it is a matter of business that may mean the fortunes of all my future. I will be home for Christmas”—his voice jarred on his own ears.
“Don't trouble to get back on my account, it is bothersome to be tied to time. You might just as well stay the winter there.”
She would not kiss him when he asked her, but after he had gone she threw herself at full length on the grass, her heart bleeding with anger and a soul-sickness she could not name. She never knew that he looked back when he reached the little rise in the yellow wagon road—looked, with a heartache that spoke in his eyes, at the reclining white-clad figure. The sunlight flitting through the pinky parasol cast a flush over her face—he never knew that in reality her cheeks were deadly pale, her eyes scared and troubled, or that all through the long night that followed she was saying with lips buried in her pillow, “Ned, Ned, come back to me dear, I want you; Oh! God, I want you.”
Late one December night he had said:
“Jackson, you're a good soul, lend me your horse, there's a trump. I've got to go over to Edmonton, and I'll only be away a week or ten days. I won't bother you with favors again for a long while; I'm going back to England when I return.”
“All right, old man,” said Jackson, “you'll have a devil of a trip though, I'm afraid. Try and catch the dog trains.”
Jackson's hand-clasp was so thoroughly kind and hearty, his voice so rich with good fellowship—so musical—so almost flute-like, no wonder he could sing so beautifully. Is that he singing now? No, it is only the wind getting up and swashing through the telegraph wires.
The smoke-colored cloud had come and the snow was falling softly, whirling now and again in little circles about Dobbin's ears. The man turned his head ever so slightly, bringing his cheek to rest flatly on the animal's throat—it was ice to ice. The horse was quite cold now.
“And how long will you be away in Canada, Neddy?” a pretty child was saying.
“Oh! about two years, little sister,” he answered.
“And, oh! Neddy, will you bring me back a pretty pair of Indian moccasins all worked at the toes and lined with fur like those cousin Louise has?”
“Yes, pussy-wussy, I'll bring you the moccasins.” She was tugging away at his big hands, her cheek rubbing up and down his coat sleeve, her yellow hair falling all over his wrists.
“And, Neddy, you'll wear the purple mittens grandma showed me how to make, won't you? Wear 'em all the time, won't you?”
“Oh! yes, I'll wear 'em, even with my dress clothes.”
Some one laughed then, a rippling, dulcet laugh. No, it was not laughter either, it was only the wind again in the telegraph wires.
“What's that?” said Larocque, pointing to a lumpy-looking, white mound, about fifty yards distant. His brother looked across the snow, and a Metis woman left her breakfast, came to the tepee door and looked also.
“Don't know”—this in bad Patios. “Was it there last night when we pitched?”
Larocque shook his head.
“It was snowing too hard to see.”
“It's a dead horse,” said the Metis woman in Sioux.
Larocque took a snowshoe in his hand. The train dogs started up and watched him. The Metis woman tramped at his heels. One scoop of the snowshoe, a little gust of wind whirled the floury stuff aside, and they bent down to look closely. It was a good face that lay on the rough brown throat of the horse. A good face—young, fair, with a line of pathos somewhere near the frozen lips.
She had picked up a purple woolen thing and was brushing the snow from it. Her quick eye saw the uneven stitches, the knots, the general workmanship of the thing.
“Holy Virgin!” said Larocque, “it's a mitt, a woolen mitt, and I have none; where's the other?”
As he stooped to take it from the stiff, white hand, something clutched his arm with rude gentleness: “Don't—some child made it,” said the Metis woman.