Isobel Read Online Free

for," she said. "He was
like that."
    "You mean—" His eyes sought the long, dark box.
    "Yes— he was like that."
    "I know how you feel," he said; and for a moment he did not look at
her. "I've gone through— a lot of it. Father an' mother and a sister.
Mother was the last, and I wasn't much more than a kid— eighteen, I
guess— but it don't seem much more than yesterday. When you come up
here and you don't see the sun for months nor a white face for a year
or more it brings up all those things pretty much as though they
happened only a little while ago.'"
    "All of them are— dead?" she asked.
    "All but one. She wrote to me for a long time, and I thought she'd
keep her word. Pelly— that's Pelliter— thinks we've just had a
misunderstanding, and that she'll write again. I haven't told him that
she turned me down to marry another fellow. I didn't want to make him
think any unpleasant things about his own girl. You're apt to do that
when you're almost dying of loneliness."
    The 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