CHAPTER I

THE WOLF PACK

THE

WOLF PACK

BY RIDGWELL CULLUM

AUTHOR OF

“Child of the North,” “The Forfeit,” “The Golden

Woman,” “The Heart of Unaga,” “In the Brooding

Wild,” “The Law Breakers,” “The Luck of the

Kid,” “The Night Riders,” “The One-Way Trail,”

“The Riddle of Three Way Creek,” “The

Triumph of John Kars,” “The Twins of

Suffering Creek,” etc.

[Illustration]

A. L. BURT COMPANY

Publishers New York

Published by arrangement with J. B. Lippincott Company

Printed in U. S. A.

COPYRIGHT, 1927, BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

PART I

I. THE RUNAWAY 9

II. THE WOLF PACK 25

III. ELEVEN YEARS LATER 37

IV. THE “KILL” 49

V. THE WISDOM OF THE WOLF 59

VI. PARTNERSHIP 64

VII. THE HEART OF THE WOLF 71

PART II

I. TEN YEARS OF PROSPERITY 85

II. SINCLAIR MEETS THE ACCOUNT 102

III. THE MARCH OF EVENTS 118

IV. SCHEMING 130

V. PAYMENT 141

VI. THE CACHE 155

VII. WHERE THE CRIMINAL FINDS NO MERCY 171

VIII. THE BEAUTY OF THE NIGHT 183

IX. BUFFALO COULEE STARTS TO GUESS 195

X. MURDER 206

XI. THE BATTLE 217

XII. THE BLOOD OF THEIR FOREFATHERS 234

XIII. THE WOLF AT BAY 242

XIV. THE CONFOUNDING OF JUSTICE 257

XV. RELEASE 272

XVI. THE LAUGH OF THE WOLF 281

XVII. THE WOLF BAYS THE TRAIL 289

XVIII. THE “FOUR-FLUSH” 302

XIX. THE HILLS 311

PART I

THE WOLF PACK

CHAPTER I

THE RUNAWAY

The ancient train was laboring heavily. It was climbing, and stated the

fact vociferously to the wilderness of echoing hills. Its speed was

little better than that of a weary team of horses on an outward journey.

It was passing through a broken, tattered world of wind-swept, stunted

northern forest. There were bald crags, and open, water-logged flats.

There was snow, too; melting snow, for the Canadian spring was hungrily

devouring the last remnants of a fierce winter. The sun was brilliant.

The cloud-flecked sky was a steely blue. And the crisp, mountain

air even contrived to refresh the superheated atmosphere within the

passenger coaches.

Luana’s dark eyes were without concern for the natural beauties beyond

the windows of the fantastic old observation car. The small boy-child,

who was her charge, occupied her whole attention.

The infant was sturdily clinging to a brass stanchion. He was peering

out at the wonders of the endless panorama passing before his baby

eyes. But his chubby hand was unequal to its task. He had spent much

time and energy in falling down and scrambling again to his feet as the

train lumbered drearily over its uneven track. However, he was quite

undismayed. In fact, he seemed to consider every struggling effort to

be an essential joy of his infant life.

He was only a few brief months beyond his second birthday. But he was

wonderfully grown and sturdy. Perhaps it was his warm, woolly suit that

helped the impression. But it certainly had nothing to do with the

full, rosy cheeks, and the bright intelligence of his smiling black

eyes.

In response to a fierce jolt of the train, Luana dropped her sewing in

her lap and spoke warning in a deep voice of almost mannish quality.

“Hold fast, boy-man,” she cried. “Bimeby, you get hurt. Then your moma

get mad with Luana. Maybe she send her right away. Then boy-man see her

no more. And you not happy again. Yes?”

The boy smiled. Then he turned to the window and pressed the palm of

his disengaged hand against the window-pane. He spread out his little

fingers, and presently pointed at the slowly passing hill-crests as

though counting them. Then, all in a moment, he squatted on the floor

of the car with a bump.

A gurgle of laughter broke from him.

“Up-ee!” he crowed. And he scrambled again to his feet, and came with a

rush to his nurse’s knee.

“Hurt, boy-man?”

The nurse was smiling happily as she put the unnecessary question.

“Bad ole puffer!” came the laughing reply, as two chubby hands clapped

themselves on the dark-skinned hand that was held out to caress.

Luana fondled one of the little hands. She drew a deep breath.

“Bimeby we mak home on the big lake,” she said. “No more holiday. No

more big city. No more old bad puffer. Boy-man see big lake. He see all

the dogs. Nap. Ketch. Susan. An’ the Indian papooses at the mission.

And all the mans. Yes? And Luana play the forest game with boy-man. She

run an’ hide. Yes? Oh, yes. Maybe to-morrow--after boy-man sleep.”

“Why us jump like anything?” the child asked, as the train crashed its

way over some uneven points.

Luana laughed.

“Cos it’s--bad ole puffer, eh?”

“Ess.”

The child nodded his dark tuque-enveloped head in solemn agreement.

Then he turned away and grabbed again at his stanchion. Finally he

lurched to his window in comparative safety and gazed out of it.

Luana watched him, a hungry light in her smiling eyes. The half-breed

in her was passionately stirring. A creature of almost volcanic impulse

and hot emotion, there was something lawless in her mentality. It was

her heritage from savage forbears.

The long journey was nearing its end. More than half the continent had

passed under train wheels since the Reverend Arthur Steele and his

little family had set out to return from the cities of the East to his

mission on Lake Mataba. Vacation came to him once in three years, and

this was the end of his first holiday since taking up his appointment.

Luana was glad it was over. Civilization had no appeal for her. She was

of the outlands. Bred in the wilderness of the Rocky Mountains, she

had no love for the crowded streets of the city. She felt that only

in the hills, in the twilit forests, on the wind-swept waterways, was

it possible to breathe. It was only where Indians dwelt could she feel

that she was at home.

No, she did not want the white folks’ cities, with their dazzling life

and their paved roads, and where white women eyed her askance. She

wanted the great lake, and the mission that was full of those whose

blood she shared. She wanted that, and the knowledge that little Ivan

Steele looked to her for everything necessary to his small life.

Luana loved the white child with all her woman’s soul. Hers had been

the first arms to caress, to nurse him. Helen Steele was too deeply

immersed in the work of her husband’s mission to fulfill all the

natural demands of motherhood. She was one of those whose sense of duty

would never allow her to be wholly satisfied with the simple felicities

of her humanity. The domestic claims of home and wifehood came under

the ban of her distorted view of all that which she looked upon as

selfishness. So her boy-child, from the earliest moment of his small

life, was relegated to the only too willing care of his half-Indian

nurse.

In a woman of Luana’s temperament the result was inevitable. She looked

upon Ivan as something of her very own. She even believed that the

boy looked to her as his mother. And she rejoiced in the thought. She

was consumed with jealousy when Helen Steele found time to notice the

infant; and a frenzy possessed her at the sight of the white woman’s

caresses. It was at such moments that she hated the white woman with

all the savage in her. But she bore these trials without outward sign

or protest, and consoled herself that the boy’s love was wholly hers.

Away from the mission, and on vacation, Luana’s emotional trials had

been profoundly increased. During the four months of respite from the

routine at the mission, Helen Steele, in a measure, had discovered

her child. The mother in her had found opportunity to assert itself.

The result to the half-breed had been almost unendurable. And so it

came that within a dozen hours of the end of their homeward journey a

certain sense of content and easement was already settling down upon

the nurse’s passionate soul.

To-morrow! Yes, to-morrow the mother and father would have forgotten

Ivan in the engrossing claims of return to their spiritual work. They

would have forgotten the merry life gazing up at them out of the

infant’s happy eyes. They would have forgotten the wonderful caress of

his soft, white arms. But she, Luana, would remember.

* * * * *

The Reverend Arthur Steele looked up from the book on the table in

front of him. His dark eyes scanned the broken mountain scene through

which the train was passing. There was still a white skin of snow on

the hilltops. But it was a moist, dank, dripping world, in spite of the

brilliant spring sunshine pouring down out of a cloudless sky.

He was a tall, ascetic creature, who lived for his missionary work at

Lake Mataba. He was desperately in earnest, and impatient of everything

that interfered with his spiritual labors. His long vacation had been

forced upon him. It had not occurred to him as a holiday. His mission

needed money. And he had used his vacation for the purposes of raising

it.

“We’re about at the divide,” he said to his wife beside him.

Helen Steele did not even look up from her book.

“I’m glad,” she said without interest. “It won’t take long to run down

the gradient to the river.”

“No. And home to-morrow morning. We’re only about eight hours late.”

The missionary laughed. “I should call it something like a record at

this time of year. We’re in luck.”

He turned and glanced down the queer, little old-fashioned restaurant

car in which the evening meal had just been served. There were only

about ten other passengers, most of whom were well known to him. They

included, in a remote corner, an Indian huddled in his parti-colored

blanket, and two commercial men who were making the journey in the

vain hope of selling farming machinery in a territory given up to

fur-trading.

The missionary’s comment was not without justification. There was

no time in the year when the hardy human freight which found itself

compelled to use the Sisselu Northern Railroad but did so in a spirit

of complete resignation. The road was the offshoot of a great line

which bridged the Canadian Dominion from ocean to ocean. Its three

hundred miles of ill-laid track, from Fort Sura in the south, to the

shores of Lake Mataba, was one of those grudging concessions to a

prosperous fur-trading industry.

The result was inevitable. The whole organization suffered from

managerial unwillingness. There was only one train in each direction

in each week, and the rolling stock was the decaying cast-off of the

greater road. In winter, without regard to schedule, the train groaned

and clanked its way to its home depot, provided always a snowstorm had

not chanced to bury it on the way. In spring the hazard of its journey

was added to by the chances of “washouts,” and the devastating ice jams

on the rivers which crossed its track. Summer, of course, was its best

season. But even in summer forest fires became a source of perilous

interference.

The missionary’s comment was more than warranted. And his claim to

luck was well enough founded. So he had eaten the uninteresting supper

provided, with an appetite that was inspired by ease of spirit.

Now he was waiting for his bill and the next stop. Then he would make

his way back to the end of the train, behind a dozen or more freight

cars. There he would join his tiny son and the nurse, Luana.

The man closed his book as the waiter staggered towards him. The

uniformed trainman stood at the table swaying to the merciless jolting

of the car. And he scrawled a bill, and made change to the note which

the missionary handed him.

“We’re doing well, Jim,” Steele ventured hopefully, as the waiter

accepted his proffered tip. “If we pass the Sisselu down below without

interference, we ought to make the lake by noon to-morrow.”

Optimism, however, was not the trainman’s strong point. He had been too

long on the road.

“You just can’t say,” he doubted, with a shake of his gray head.

“You folks have got Sisselu Ford bad. ’Tain’t that way with us. The

ford ain’t a circumstance to the ‘washouts’ we ken hit on the flats.

A ‘washout’ ken easy hold us up twenty-four hours. It’s true it don’t

worry. We ken sit around dry, and I got food aboard fer a week. I just

got to have it. The Sisselu gradient’s a dead straight run to the

bottom and no water can worry. There ain’t a bend till you hit the

river bank, and the timbers of the trestle’ll stand up to any old river

ice. No. It’s the ‘washouts’ on the flats this time o’ year that holds

us up.”

“Any news of them?” There was anxiety in Steele’s tone, and the pretty

eyes of his wife were raised waiting for the trainman’s reply.

The waiter grinned sardonically.

“We don’t need noos,” he observed lugubriously. “You see,” he added, as

he prepared to move on to the next table, “they happen along when the

notion takes the flood water. Then you just got to set around.”

Helen Steele laughed outright and closed her book as the waiter passed

on.

“He would hate to afford us comfort,” she commented, and glanced out of

the window.

At that instant three prolonged blasts on the locomotive siren came

back to them.

“Wait for the answer,” the missionary said listening. “We’ll see how

right is our dismal friend.”

They waited in silence. And presently, faint and far off, came an

answering single hoot from the signal station down on the river.

“All clear. Jim’s right, and our fears are groundless,” sighed Helen.

“I do hope the flats will be all right, too. It’s good to be getting

home.”

“Good?” Again came the man’s ready laugh. “Think of it, dear. From

Montreal to Fort Sura we ran to transcontinental schedule. It’s taken

us thirty-six hours already on the run home, and we aren’t there yet by

more than twelve hours. It’s enough to depress a saint.”

The grinding of brakes under them added to their confidence.

“The descent,” the missionary commented, preparing to return to his

reading.

But Helen wanted to talk. She was no less earnest in her work than her

husband. And the journey home had been a time of profound yearning.

“I’ve been thinking, Arthur,” she said seriously, her pretty dark

brows drawn in concentration. “Four thousand dollars! It isn’t much

with which to found and build our church. You know our Society asks a

lot of us. In a way they’re right. We should give all there is in us.

But--but--it’s a pity money has to come into our lives at all.” She

sighed. “Still, so it is. Beyond the barest necessities I don’t want us

to touch that money they’ve given us for the actual building. I want

to stir up the right spirit in our Indians, and the white folks on the

lake. Surely the lumber can be felled, and hauled, and the whole church

can be carpentered voluntarily? Can’t we stir up a spiritual pride that

will rise above mere---- What’s that?”

The woman broke off and a quick apprehension lit her questioning eyes.

Arthur Steele turned instinctively to the window beside him. The hold

of the brakes under the car had suddenly been taken off. There had been

a queer jarring and clanking under them. Then the train seemed to leap

forward at great speed down the steep gradient.

Steele was gazing at the wooded slope which lined the track. In a

moment it seemed the dark green of the trees had started to race by and

become a mere continuous verdant smudge.

There was a restless stirring throughout the car. Every eye contained a

look of sharp inquiry. A few passengers had risen from their seats the

better to gaze out of windows. Then, too, a sound of urgent voices had

risen above the rattle of the speeding train.

A railroader flung open a door. He hurried down the aisle of the

rocking car and passed out at the other end. The door slammed behind

the man’s overall-clad figure.

“Something’s--wrong!”

Helen spoke in a low tone, and her eyes searched the face of her man.

“We’re running--free,” the missionary replied. “It’s a gradient of one

in forty.”

“And there’s a bend at the river bank.”

“It’s nearly two miles to the river. And by--I wonder?”

“You don’t think the brakes have gone wrong, Arthur?”

Helen’s voice was low. Her anxiety had leaped to something like panic.

The man shook his head, but without conviction. He knew well enough

the quality of the rolling stock on the Sisselu Northern.

“If they have----”

He gestured hopelessly.

“And we can’t get back there to Ivan and Luana.”

“No, dear. We can’t do anything. Oh! Here’s Jim,” Steele cried in a

tone of relief, as the waiter reëntered the car. “Maybe----”

In those brief moments the speed of the rocking train had become

terrific, and the trainman staggered down the car with the greatest

difficulty. The uneven track, combined with inadequate springing, set

the wheels jumping perilously.

The man was grinning as he came. But, to the missionary, his grin was

unreal, and wholly extravagant. His raucous voice made itself heard

above the deafening clatter of the train as he replied to an urgent

inquiry from one of the commercial men.

“No,” he shouted. “Guess ther’ ain’t nothin’ amiss. They’re lettin’ her

rip some. Makin’ up time. We’re late,” he warned, as though it were

something unusual. “You see, this gradient’s dead straight till you

get to the bottom. There ain’t no chances. Jest kep your seats, folks.

They’ll brake her at the right moment. Ther’ ain’t no worry.”

The man paused at the missionary’s table, and clutched it to steady

himself. He bent over it, and anxious eyes looked into those of Arthur

Steele.

“They’ve broke away, Mister Steele,” he said, in a tone intended for

the missionary’s ears alone. “She’s doing sixty. And she’ll be doing a

hundred and twenty when we hit the river. Ther’ ain’t a thing to be

done but keep the folks from jumpin’. That way they’ll be killed sure.

Ther’s a chance they’ll hold her up in time by reversing the ‘loco.’

I’m going forrard to the handbrakes. Will you kep ’em quiet? It’s the

only chance. The vacuum’s petered plumb. We’ve got the boys on the

freight brakes. It’s our best hope.”

The conductor hurried away. The panic he feared in the passengers was

certainly looking out of his own eyes. Steele’s hand suddenly sought

that of his wife as the man passed on with his sickly grin.

“Keep calm,” he said. “I must lie to them.”

Helen gave no outward sign of any fear beyond the anxiety in the eyes

which clung to her husband’s face. The missionary stood up and turned

to the panic-stricken passengers.

It was evident to him at once how desperately charged was the human

atmosphere of the car. Scarcely restrained panic was in every face.

And it was tugging at his own heart as he thought of the little son at

the far end of the train, and of the helpless woman beside him. But he

resolutely smothered his fears and lied in a voice that rang out above

the din of the speeding train. He lied far beyond anything the trainman

had attempted. And he had his reward.

Every passenger had resumed his seat when the missionary sat down.

“The bend can’t be far off.”

Helen’s voice was barely audible in the din.

“We shall jump the track if----”

The woman suddenly gestured.

“Oh, I wish I could get to the boy.”

“You can’t. Sit still.” Steele’s voice was harsh. The mention of his

son had driven him almost beyond endurance. Then he said more quietly,

“They’ll get the locomotive----”

But that which he would have said remained unspoken. There was a

terrible crash ahead. There was a fierce rending. The train lurched,

and Helen was flung from her seat and sprawled across the car. The

floor rose up. A wild shriek rang out above the din. And in a moment

pandemonium reigned.

The forward end of the car rose sheer. Then it flung over sideways and

every window shattered. Then came hideous descent. The car was falling,

falling.

It was all over in seconds. The restaurant car had fulfilled its last

service. It was lying deep buried in fathoms of the ice-cold bosom of

the Sisselu River.

* * * * *

Inspector Landan of the Mounted Police was standing on the rear

platform of the caboose of the waiting “breakdown” train. He was weary

with many hours of hopeless, depressing labor. The pipe in his mouth

had burned itself out, and he had not troubled to refill it. Truth to

tell, as he gazed out on the flare-lit scene of wreckage which was

piled about the track where it approached the river, he was without

inclination even to smoke. He was yearning to get away. For twenty-four

hours he and his detachment had prosecuted their indefatigable search

of succor, and he knew that the work remaining to be done was the

ordinary routine for the breakdown gang.

For all his weariness, however, his mind and feelings were very

active. He was contemplating the report he would have to send in to

his headquarters. He had studied the disaster in its every aspect

and had bitterly realized its cause. Then, too, he had obtained much

information from the man at the flag station on the river bank.

From all he could discover the railroad company was criminally

responsible. It was no case of “washout” or natural disaster. It was,

according to the flag-station operator, a sheer case of old rolling

stock and defective brakes. The operator, in horrified accents, had

told him all he needed to know in a few poignant words.

“Ther’ ain’t a guess in my mind, sir,” he had said. “She came

thundering down that gradient at a hundred miles. An’ that after I’d

signalled ‘brakes’ to her, and got her answer. She was a ‘runaway’ and

quit the metals at the bend, as she was bound to do at that pace.”

Well, the railroad management would hear something. Two injured,

unconscious bodies, and ten corpses! That was the tally of human

salvage. For the rest? A full-laden train completely wrecked. And as

the inspector’s weary gaze searched the moonlit scene, he wondered

shudderingly at the despairing horror of those who had found a grave

beneath the frigid waters of the river.

Several figures were moving up beside the track, towards the waiting

train. The inspector saw them, and breathed his relief. They were his

four men returning. And they came empty-handed.

Three of the men passed on up the train, but the corporal in charge of

them swung himself up onto the platform of the caboose.

The man saluted.

“There’s nothing more we can do down there, sir,” he said. “There

isn’t an inch we haven’t explored. We’ve searched the woods along the

track. And, beyond the locomotive man and his fireman we’ve already got

aboard here, no one seems to have had time or nerve to make a jump for

it. The rest of ’em are down there in the cars in the river, I guess.

And we shan’t get them till the company salves the cars. It’s pretty

sickening, sir,” he added with a sight of feeling.

“Sickening? It’s damnable, Perrin,” the officer cried. “By God! There’s

going to be a red-hot report on this!”

“I’m glad, sir. I think I can hand you some stuff for it. I’m a bit of

an engineer myself, and I’ve gone over all the running gear of the cars

at the rear of the train. It’s all ‘scrap’ stuff. Has the doc pulled

round that poor woman with her little kid?”

The inspector nodded.

“Yes. She’s come to, and the kid doesn’t seem to have had worse than

a bumping. You see, she seems to have held him hugged tightly to her

bosom when the crash came. Her body kind of acted as a buffer. She

got all that was coming and saved her kid. And she’s only a poor

half-breed.”

Corporal Perrin gazed out over the moonlit scene where the busy

railroaders were indefatigably laboring.

“It’s pretty fine, sir, when you think of it. There’s nothing to beat a

mother when her kid’s threatened. Took it all herself, eh? I’m glad for

that woman. Is she going to come back all right, sir? Did the doc say?”

“He thinks so. You see, the observation car only went over on its

side. It wasn’t wrecked. The mother was badly crushed about the head.

Yes. The doctor thinks she’ll be right in a week or so. We’ll pull out

seeing there’s nothing more for us.”

“Shall I go forward and give the trainman the order, sir?”

“Yes. I’m sick to death. Tell him right away.”

“Very good, sir.”

The corporal saluted and dropped off the car.

A few moments later the clang of the locomotive bell rang out on the

night air, and the couplings of the train jolted taut. Then came

movement. And the train labored heavily up the steep ascent.

CHAPTER II

THE WOLF PACK

It was a baby girl. And she was sprawling in a sort of wallow in the

dust-dry ground at the man’s feet. She was on her back, and her tiny

legs were vigorously kicking the air. Her small hands were aimlessly

clawing the loose soil on either side of her, and the while her solemn

eyes were gazing darkly up at the sunlit sky without blinking.

Her dirt was deplorable. Her garments were negligible rags. Her round

chubby face was stuck up with the dirt which she had somehow contrived

to moisten into the consistency of mud. It was in her mouth, her

ears. It was caked in the soft down of her dark hair. Nor had her

eyes escaped contamination. But she was crowing and gurgling with the

sheer infantile joy of well-being, and the sight of her held fast the

thoughtful stare of the man’s black eyes. He was unsmiling.

Pideau Estevan was a half-breed and tough. He was anything and

everything which made him a prospective inmate of the penitentiary,

or even worse. But then Pideau sprang from stock that never failed to

breed his kind, and the hallmark of his vices was deeply stamped on his

cold, dusky face, and in the snapping black eyes which peered alertly

from beneath shaggy brows.

Humanly speaking he had nothing to recommend him but a nimble wit and

monumental industry. There was nothing unintelligent about him, and

none of the usual half-breed laziness. But he was thoroughly bad, and

utterly callous. And, as he sat on his upturned box, gazing down on his

motherless infant, his black-bearded face was coldly considering.

For once in his life the man was seriously troubled. He was also

fiercely resentful. And, deep in his heart, he knew he was helpless.

Crisis had leaped at him almost without warning. He saw ahead a

position that threatened to overwhelm him. And such was his nature

that he gave way to vengeful anger and fierce impatience. Sitting

there before his dugout home on the hillside, he surveyed, without any

enthusiasm, the ridiculous antics of his offspring wallowing in the

loamy dust.

The tragedy had come so swiftly that it was only now in the moment of

its accomplishment that Pideau realized its full measure. Three weeks

ago there had been no cloud to mar his doubtful horizon. Three weeks

ago he had lived in what he considered a smiling world. Spring had been

breaking and his activities, like those of the rest of the world about

him, were breaking into renewed life. His woman was there to minister

to his comfort. Down in the valley below him his herd of stolen cattle

was fattening and breeding satisfactorily. Then his hidden store of

crisp currency was growing to proportions which satisfied even his

avaricious soul. It was then that the swing of the pendulum of Fate

moved against him.

Mountain fever!

It was always the dread lying at the back of his busy mind. It came

subtly. It killed quickly. And it had stolen upon the mother of his

child, a young woman of his own heart, and mind, and breed, and had

slain her in those three swiftly passing weeks.

Only that morning had he completed the labor of her burial down in the

valley below. Less than an hour ago he had returned, having shovelled

the last of the soil into the deep grave that was to keep the woman’s

cold body safe from the hungry activities of the scavenging timber

wolves. He had returned to his noon meal, and the little life his woman

had left behind her.

He was not mourning his loss with any spiritual sense. It was not in

him to regard his woman as anything but a chattel. It was the material

consideration of his position that stirred him to an unreasoning

resentment against the dead Annette whose going had brought it about.

Alone with his babe, what was he to do? What must he do?

The great heart of the Rocky Mountains afforded him a safe enough

hiding from the ubiquitous red-coats, but it also involved him in

prolonged journeys and long absences from his home, in the prosecution

of his nefarious traffic as a cattle thief. How could he carry on with

a miserable brat of a child to be kept alive in his absence? There was

not a living soul within three days’ journey of him.

Pideau’s fiercest savagery was apparent. Without shrinking or hesitancy

he considered the alternative that naturally leaped to his callous

mind. The little Annette. Why should he permit himself the burden

she imposed? She was only a year old. She was fat, and happy, and

knew nothing. Why should he let her grow to knowledge, and learn the

harshnesses that life must ultimately show her?

It would be so easy. And she would never know. He could hold her to

him and caress her. She would gurgle, and crow, and pull his whisker.

And his hand could very gently feel her soft neck. And then--and then

his grip could tighten swiftly. She would be dead, like her foolish

mother, without a single cry. It would really be merciful to her. And

to himself----?

That, in his position, he pointed out, was surely the sense of things.

It certainly was the sense of things. He thrust up a yellow hand and

pushed back the cloth-visored cap he was wearing.

The baby squirmed in the dust and rolled over on her little stomach.

She gurgled out fresh sounds of delight. He eyed the rolls of healthy

fat. He saw the scraping, dimpled hands picking at the dirt and

conveying it to her moist baby lips. And the latter sight gave him

a feeling of amusement in spite of his mood, while the inarticulate

sounds that fell upon his ears were not unpleasing.

With the little life destroyed, and no tie holding him, Pideau

considered further. He would be freer than ever before. He would be

free to make his long journeys after cattle. He would not always have

to hurry back. Then, too, he could go farther afield for his trade. Oh,

yes. It would give him much wider scope and freedom. And then----

He glanced about him at the valley which had become his home.

His gaze took in the far woods across the valley. It shifted restlessly

to the jagged uprising of snow-clad peaks which cupped the valley in

every direction. Down below him lay a parkland of new-born grass and

budding trees lit by flashes of sunlight that found reflection in the

shining surface of the waters of a swift-flowing mountain river.

He glanced away over the great lake to his right that was the source

of the river, and which spread out far as the eye could see till its

confines became lost in the haze of the southern distance. He turned in

the opposite direction, where the river and valley lost themselves in a

maze of forest-robed hills, beyond which, many leagues on, lay the open

sea of prairie land that was his great hunting ground. And then his

quick eyes came back to the child who was the pivot of his thought.

No. The freedom he had it in his power to achieve for himself was not

the freedom he sought. He would be alone, and he did not want to be

alone. Solitude was something he abhorred. With his woman alive he had

had the sort of partner with whom he could deal satisfactorily. He had

been glad of her. She had been very useful. Somehow he felt the babe

she had left behind her would also be some sort of companion. She would

be a grievous burden. But----

The sea of woods claimed him again. They were limitless. They were

forbidding. The mountains ... they were desperately lonesome. The

winter, which had only just given way before the warmth of the new

season, was one long nightmare of struggle for comfort, to keep the

cold from his marrow, even to save life itself.

Yes. That crazy babe made for companionship. Besides, he liked the

sound of her ridiculous crowing.

Pideau had no real understanding of the thing that was happening.

Absorbed in a cold review of his own desires, he was without

understanding of the subtle power with which Nature endows the

weakness, the appealing helplessness of childhood. He had no

realization that that dirty, dusky little life, from the very moment of

its beginning, had been burrowing its way into the only really human

spot which his savage soul possessed.

The half-breed kicked a stone with impotent impatience. He delved into

a pocket in his rough tweed coat for his pipe. But he left it there.

Then of a sudden he leaned down and lifted little Annette to his lap.

He would not destroy that life. He would keep his motherless babe. And

queerly he found satisfaction that he would no longer have to share her

with another--even her mother. She would be his--just his. And he would

raise her somehow. But, in God’s name, how?

The tiny fingers seized his thick beard and tugged at it ruthlessly.

The infant chuckled and made happy, inarticulate sounds. And Pideau

laughed. He laughed outright.

* * * * *

The noon meal was over. The camp fire had been allowed to die down to

smouldering ashes. The litter of Pideau’s activities lay scattered

about. A plate had been flung aside unwashed. So, too, with a tin

pannikin, and the cooking pot with its contents, sufficient to provide

another meal or two. Then, near by, was an iron boiler half filled

with soapy water, and beside it a little pile of the rags which had

been removed from Annette’s body.

Pideau had spent a busy noon. Under his new-born resolve he had

discovered new duties, which he had tackled in his naturally energetic

way. He had eaten. And, having ministered to the comfort of his own

stomach, he had done his best for the babe. New milk; rich, fat, creamy

milk from his herd of stolen beasts. His understanding considered that

milk was indicated. So forthwith he poured Annette’s rapidly expanding

body as full of the creamy liquid as was conveniently possible.

Then came a burst of real inspiration. He heated water, and sought out

the soap he never used on himself. Then he washed the infant all over

from the downy crown of her head to the soles of her pretty feet. After

that he raided the child’s scant wardrobe, and arrayed her small body

in those clean garments which the dead mother had so jealously hoarded.

It had not been easy. No. But somehow the work had afforded Pideau a

measure of amusement, and Annette seemed to regard it as an entirely

new game. So it was, with the babe smelling reminiscently of powerful

soap, that the man returned to his doorway, and, with a deep sense of

satisfaction, prepared to attack once more the problems confronting him.

Annette fell asleep on his lap, and Pideau filled and lit his pipe.

The half-breed was a creature who believed in a carefully planned and

well considered future. There was nothing that was haphazard about him.

His desire for wealth knew no limits. And every dollar added to his

store of currency was a further step on the road he designed to travel.

It was money, money, money, all the time with him. He believed that

money could satisfy every desire of his life. So every beast he could

lay hands on, every beast he could sell safely across the southern

border, was a step in the right direction. There was a bunch of ten

Polled Angus cows he deeply desired to acquire. It would take some ten

days to get them. How could----?

Pideau’s thought came to an abrupt termination. It broke off with a

sharp sound like a sudden intake of breath whistling through the dense

whisker obscuring his mouth. His eyes widened to their fullest extent.

Then they narrowed. He leaned forward in his seat peering.

He remained unmoving, and the child slept on. He was peering down at

a wide woodland bluff where it gave on to the open grass of the river

bank. He had discovered movement at the edge of the bluff. And it was

the movement of something or someone lurking, and, to his mind, spying.

That at least was his inevitable conclusion.

For some moments there was no fresh development. Pideau’s searching

eyes relaxed. He even thought of one of his own stray cows. Then,

without warning, or thought for the slumbering Annette, he leaped to

his feet, and the screaming infant lay kicking in the dust where she

had fallen. A human figure had broken from the sheltering bluff. It was

making its way uphill towards the dugout. Pideau had vanished into his

hut.

When he reappeared it was with a Winchester sporting rifle, with

telescope sights and a hair trigger. And he held it against his

shoulder levelled at the intruder upon his hiding. His intent was

plain. It was there in the fierce black eye that searched the sights,

and in the lean, brown forefinger within a fraction of releasing the

trigger. His purpose was death. And he had no intention of wasting a

shot.

Moments passed, however, and the shot was withheld. Then of a sudden

Pideau raised his head and lowered his weapon. The intruder was a

woman. She was heavily burdened. And she was breasting the ascent to

the dugout at a gait that told of the last stages of exhaustion.

* * * * *

Pideau Estevan was unimaginative. Romance, the miraculous, were things

without a shadow of appeal for him. Yet the thing that had happened had

stirred him to a queer, incredulous amazement.

While he set his cooking pot back on his fire, and laid fresh fuel

under it, he flung backward glances at the figure of his sister, Luana,

sitting wearily huddled in his doorway. Then from her he gazed at the

two children squatting on the ground confronting each other with a calm

stare of voiceless, infantile interest.

Pideau felt the whole thing was as crazily remarkable as it well could

be. Only that morning had he buried his wife. Only a brief half-hour

ago had he been planning the difficulties resulting from his loss. And

now--now Luana had appeared from nowhere. And every difficulty seemed

to have melted into thin air.

It was amazing.

Exhausted as she was, Luana had told him in brief outline the story of

the disaster that had befallen on the Sisselu Northern Railroad.

She had told of the death of the missionary and his wife, for whom she

had been working. She had told him how she and the boy-child she had

brought with her were the only survivors of the disaster. And she had

told him of the thing she had determined, and now, at last, had finally

accomplished.

Pideau hurried again to the tired woman when the leaping flame assured

him that her food would soon be ready for her.

“An’ so you steal him?” he said, gazing down at the weary figure of the

girl as she leaned against the door-casing.

Pideau was thinking hard. And his manner had in it a sort of playful

cunning.

Luana stirred into full mental activity. Her dark eyes lit with sudden

passion. Her whole body seemed to thrill with emotion.

“Oh, it is the miracle, Pideau,” she cried. “Mine the eyes he look

into first. Mine the arms that first hold him. His mother no. His

father--tcha! They nothing. He knows me. He loves me. Always I make him

love me. They both are dead. So I steal him. Yes. Why not?”

“This missionary. His folks? The police?”

Pideau was deeply considering. Luana laughed voicelessly in spite of

her weariness.

“There are folks way east,” she said. “They hear of the death of them,

an’ they think my boy-man killed, too. The police know nothing. How

should they know? They find me. They say, ‘this woman an’ her child.’

When I wake they ask me. I tell ’em quick. I am a breed woman who goes

on a visit to folk at Lake Mataba. Oh, yes. My boy. He’s dark like the

half-breed mother. I say my man way south, at Calford. I ask ’em quick

send me to Calford. They say ‘yes.’”

Luana shrugged her drooping shoulders contemptuously, and her gaze

turned to the magnet that always held her. The children were stirring.

Annette was reaching out towards the little bare feet of the boy. It

was a gesture of infantile friendliness.

“An’ they bring you to Calford? They ask no more?”

Pideau wanted to be very sure. He must know it all before taking his

final decision.

“I go before the inspector. He ask much,” Luana went on easily. “But I

all ready. I think my story good. I tell him I go to High Creek, where

is my man. I think they ask on the telephone. So I say quick he works

on a farm ’way out on the foothills. The inspector, the fat inspector,

says he send me in police wagon. I say, ‘Yes--you are so good to poor

woman. When?’ He say, ‘to-morrow.’ I say, ‘yes.’ I go. I think hard. I

buy food in the stores. I set it in a sack across my shoulders. Then

I make the sling for my back, so boy-man ride easy. An’ I go quick. I

walk. I walk far. One hundred--two hundred mile. I don’t know. Twice I

nearly die in the muskeg in the hills. I’m scared of the timber wolves.

I light plenty fires. I follow quick on the trail I know. And I say,

‘Pideau in the hills.’ I come to him. So I keep my boy-man.”

Luana drew a deep breath, and closed her tired eyes. Pideau watched

her. Suddenly he looked away down into the valley below.

“I bury Annette this morning,” he said.

Luana’s eyes were wide open, and she sat up.

“Annette--dead?” Then she gazed at the child Annette. “I think she

maybe at work somewhere. Dead?”

Pideau shook his head without a sign of emotion.

“The mountain fever kill her,” was all he said. “She go, an’ leave me

with little--Annette.”

Both were gazing at the two children. And the silence between them

prolonged.

At last the woman’s gaze was withdrawn, and she sought the man’s dark

face with a question.

“It good,” she said at last. “Then I raise your Annette with my

boy-man. Yes?”

Pideau eyed the two infants who had now approached each other more

nearly. They were mixed up in the aimless way of babyhood. There were

sounds coming from them. Gurgles from Annette. And leaping words from

the boy. Pideau’s face had no smile, but he suddenly laughed with his

voice.

“Yes,” he said. “You stop here while I mak good trade. You cook. An’ I

teach you the work of the cattle. I go now. I get ten cows. It’s a farm

’way out on the prairie. Then I come back with them. You raise Annette

with your boy-man. I am glad. The wolf pack grows!”

He moved off to the fire where Luana’s food was cooking. And as he went

he laughed at his own humor.

CHAPTER III

ELEVEN YEARS LATER

Annette was standing on the river bank. She was intensely preoccupied.

Her willow rod swung up. It whistled through the hot summer air. Then

her homemade fly struck the calm surface of the shady pool with a

lightness, a dexterity, that displayed her child’s skill.

Her dark eyes were alight. There was eagerness in the pose of her tall,

angular body. Her pretty lips were parted, and her breath came quickly.

She was very happy.

The boy was watching from beneath the visor of the old cloth cap he

had inherited from Pideau. He, too, had all the enthusiasm of a keen

fisherman. But he was not fishing. He was squatting on the sun-dried

grass of the river bank cleaning his rifle, the breech of which was

dismantled, with its parts spread out on a grease rag on the ground

beside him.

Two lean husky dogs were at the water’s edge near by. They were great

creatures of the trail. But they were also hunting dogs, trained to

an efficiency which only the limitless patience of the boy could have

achieved. They were searching the distance with eager eyes. Their long

muzzles were pointing at a far distant forest line beyond the river.

And their bodies were a-quiver with that canine excitement which finds

expression so readily.

Farther back from the river, where the haylike grass was abundant, a

pinto pony was tethered, grazing. He was without saddle or bridle.

He wore only an old rope head collar and the tether by which he was

secured.

The valley was bathed in blazing sunshine which told of the summer’s

height. Forest, grass, and shrub were ripe with the maturity of the

season. The silence and solitude of the mountain world were profound.

The girl cast, and recast again. Then of a sudden her whole body

stiffened. And a sharp little ejaculation broke from her. The boy

watched the play. And as he waited, the whimper of his dogs broke into

a howl that sounded full of mourning in the silence of the valley.

Annette struck sharply. In a moment there was a flash of wriggling

silver in the sunshine. Then a large fish lay flapping on the grass,

and the girl was on her knees with her strong, brown fingers busy

salving her precious fly.

“Say, you!” she cried, flinging the words back over her angular

shoulder. “Send your crazy dogs to home. They’re spoilin’ things. I

hate ’em.”

The boy smiled. He made no attempt to obey. He turned to gaze at the

creatures that had angered Annette.

They were standing in an attitude of savage threat. Their manes were

bristling. The howl had given way to ferocious deep-throated snarls

at a direction where the river lost itself in the dark forests to the

northeast.

Annette stood up from her task of readjusting her fly. She had flung

her capture amongst the round dozen of already stiffening fish that

were lying on the grass. Her angry eyes watched the offending dogs.

She was tall for her twelve years; tall and lathlike. Her limbs were

thin, and brown, and shapeless. Clad in a brief skirt that barely

covered her bony knees, and in a dark worsted jersey, that seemed to

flatten her body the more surely, there was little enough of the beauty

of figure that might develop later.

It was different, however, with her dusky face, and the mass of

raven-black hair that fell below her shoulders. Her hair was wonderful

in its untrained profusion. And her face was already showing signs of a

beauty that was almost classical. Her eyes were profoundly expressive

of emotions that rarely knew discipline. Her whole expression was full

of infinite possibilities. Certainly the half-breed was dominant in

her, with all its potentialities for mischief.

The eleven years that had passed since an exhausted Luana had arrived

at the door of Pideau Estevan’s dugout had brought little outward

change in the half-breed’s mountain hiding, except for the development

of Annette, and the boy the woman had brought with her.

The dugout showed no signs of the passage of years, or of the

devastating mountain storms. For the rest the valley still served

its purpose. The hills, the forests, the rivers, they were all as

unchanging as the glacial fields and eternal snows that crowned the

lofty summits where earth and sky met.

The unseen changes, however, were in the progress of Pideau’s fortunes.

His illicit trade had gone on without interruption. He had bled the

harassed settlers on the far eastern plains without mercy or scruple.

And it was the smallness of his thefts which had assured his long

success.

He never stole cattle in bulk. His thefts looked mean and small. But by

a process of raiding in twos and threes, and never more than six head

of cattle at a time, he had built up a herd which yielded him ample

profit across the United States border to the south of him.

Pideau’s avaricious soul was comparatively satisfied. His fortune was

growing and had already opened out pleasing visions of the future. But

his astute mind was never resting, and he realized that his immunity

from consequences could not continue indefinitely.

From across the southern border something more than rumor had reached

him. The Americans down south were talking Prohibition. They were not

only talking of it, they were moving on towards it in that thorough

fashion in which they did most things. Well, Prohibition had served him

more than well at different times in the Western Territories of Canada.

It would be a poor bet if he could not turn this new trend of American

politics to good account for himself. So, as he saw the end of his

present traffic approaching, he was well enough satisfied.

His sister Luana had served her purpose. She had raised Annette for

him with the boy he had long since dubbed “the Wolf.” She had done her

best. She had taught them both to read, and write, and to figure simple

sums, to the limit of her own stock of education. Then she had taught

them to work, which was what Pideau most desired. The only thing that

had offended him had been her partiality for the Wolf. But even that,

he had been able to counter-balance in his own cruel way.

But the boy was approaching manhood now. He had outgrown Luana’s care,

while Annette was still of an age to come under her controlling hand,

which was often enough unsparing.

These things, however, were of no real concern to the boy and girl.

They were inseparable playmates and had little enough thought for

Pideau’s affairs. Besides Pideau was away on his trade. And Luana was

sick--very sick with mountain fever.

Annette turned at last from the dogs to the boy.

“I said you’re to send ’em to home--you Wolf!” she cried, with that

imperiousness which her sex and age seemed to justify. Then she became

more vehement and her voice shrilled. “They’re curs, anyway. They ain’t

dogs. Only curs.” Then as the boy’s eyes smiled with deeper derision

she became still more furious. She stamped her bare brown foot on the

grass. “So’re you!” she screamed at him. “Send ’em right back, or--or

I’ll tell Pideau when he gets back to home, an’--an’ he’ll rawhide you

for not letting me fish right.”

The Wolf glanced unconcernedly at the whimpering dogs.

“You got plenty fish. Wot’s worryin’ you?”

He snapped the breech of his rifle into place, and gathered up his

tools and crammed them into the pockets of his breeches and stood up.

He was tall. The Wolf had developed far beyond his fourteen years.

He was already taller than Pideau. But that which was far less usual

was the fact that his physical strength had more than kept pace with

his growth. He was lean, rawboned, and possessed of the activity of a

wildcat. He was keen of mind and nimble-witted, and he possessed that

which was denied to all his half-breed companions. His humor was the

happiest thing imaginable.

For all that, however, he was as full of the spirit of the wilderness

as the mountain world could breed him.

The Wolf’s indifference maddened Annette. But suddenly she smiled in a

manner that should have warned him. Her whole attitude changed with her

sly smile, and her tone was full of guile.

“You know why they howl--those curs?” she asked quietly.

“Wolves.”

Annette shook her head.

“No. Luana. She’s dyin’. Anyone knows curs howl when folks are dyin’.

Pideau says so.”

The reality of the Wolf’s smile fell from him. But Nature had designed

something like a perpetual smile in the fashioning of his eyes. He was

staring at his playmate with trouble grievously shadowing his happy

face.

“I tell you it’s wolves,” he cried, with sudden vehemence. “They’re

yonder. They’re in the woods. I know. Luana ain’t dyin’. She’s--she’s

getting better, sure. She said so. You’re talkin’ foolish. Guess maybe

you want her to die.”

Annette wanted to hurt, and knew she had succeeded. She loved to hurt

the Wolf at any time. It was her way to plague the boy. She was as

ready to torment as to fight him with hands and teeth.

Usually the Wolf was satisfied and only laughed at her. Annette was

Annette, the whole joy of his budding manhood. He worshipped the little

whirlwind fury. But now, under the girl’s lash, he was only a boy, and

one who loved the woman who had raised him with a boundless affection.

“Maybe I do,” Annette admitted. “I hate her. She beats me when Pideau’s

not around. When he’s away she makes me work while she sits around with

you, an’ acts foolish. It’s all you--you! I’ll be glad when she’s dead.

She’s got mountain fever. Pideau said so. Same as my mother did. An’

she’s goin’ to die, too. What’ll you do when she’s buried so the wolves

can’t eat her fool body? Guess Pideau’ll fix you.”

But the Wolf’s bad moment had passed. He understood. It was just

Annette. So he grinned.

“I’m not scared any,” he said, making a sound with his lips that

brought the dogs to his caressing hand. “I’m as big as Pideau, an’ he

can’t rawhide me. He wouldn’t anyway. Maybe he daren’t. I can shoot as

quick as Pideau. He can’t worry me a thing--now.”

Annette stared. To her childish mind the boy’s spoken defiance of her

father was something almost terrible. She knew Pideau’s temper. She

knew something of his cruelty. She knew he had no love for her white

playmate, and had often seen him lay the rawhide on his bare shoulders.

She glanced back up at the dugout as though she feared Pideau might be

there to hear the boy’s defiance. Then she pointed at the youth with a

thin, brown finger.

“You’re crazy,” she said, in a low tone. “Pideau could just--kill you.”

The Wolf only shook his head and smiled.

“Maybe it’s you that’s crazy. Who hunts pelts for Pideau? Who gets meat

fer him to eat? Who rebrands his stolen cows, an’ herds ’em? Pideau’s

no fool, kid. He hates me. But he needs me. An’ he knows I can shoot

quick an’ straight. Soon I’ll be a man. Then you’ll see.”

The dogs had gone back to the river bank, and Annette was watching them

again. She felt that the Wolf had got the best of the talk, and her

wicked mind was searching for fresh mischief.

“He said Luana’d die,” she declared, returning to the thing she knew

was a sure hurt.

But the Wolf refused to be drawn again. He shrugged.

“I don’t care what Pideau says. He’s a liar, anyway. And a thief, too!

He’s thinkin’ of quittin’.”

Annette forgot the dogs. She forgot her fishing. She dropped the line

she was holding, and, with it, the fly she treasured. She eyed the boy

for a thoughtful moment. Then:

“Who’s the liar now?” she cried, but with a quick look of doubt

flashing in her big eyes.

“Only Pideau,” the Wolf grinned.

Annette turned away to the distance. She was disturbed. Her child’s

mind knew only the mountains. They were her whole world. She was

part of them. And the thought of quitting her beloved playground was

devastating.

“Pideau wouldn’t quit,” she argued. “He’s safe here. He’s doing swell.

He said so. Why’d he quit, anyway?”

“Cos he’s scairt. He reckons the p’lice’ll get him soon. They’re hot on

his trail. He figgers they’ll get his tracks in a while, an’ then----”

The Wolf broke off with a look of profound meaning, and the girl was

impressed. But her fear passed as she considered the source of her

information. Her scorn leaped again.

“Guess you like to think Pideau’ll get trailed by the p’lice,” she

sneered. “Maybe you’d set them wise. It was a bad day Luana brought

you. You’d be dead, starved, if it wasn’t for Pideau. Yet you hate him.

You’re a skunk. A cur like--like them,” she flung at him, nodding at

his howling dogs. “You ken shoot quicker than Pideau! Psha! I tell you

Pideau’ll beat the life out of you when he comes, an’ I tell him the

things you said.”

“He won’t.”

The Wolf shook his head.

“You can tell him all you want,” he went on. “I don’t care. Pideau’s

quittin’. He’ll make you quit with him. If I fancy I’ll stop around.

I ken make as good as Pideau right here. Maybe you’ll have to go live

in some dirty town, where you can’t fish, an’ you ain’t got a pony to

ride. Maybe----”

“I won’t go!”

The girl’s voice had something in it that was not all anger. There were

tears of real grief behind her hot denial.

“You’ll have to--’less----”

“’Less what?”

The Wolf had become seriously thoughtful.

“Pideau reckons the furs I took last winter gave him more’n five

hundred dollars,” he said meaningly. “That’s a deal of money. It ’ud

have been more--a lot more--only I cached haf my catch. I got ’em ’way

off in the forest. I ken make big money. An’ I don’t need to steal.”

“You hid ’em from Pideau? That’s talk. Fool talk,” Annette cried.

“’Tain’t. I’m a swell hunter. I ken get foxes all the time. That’s why

I don’t worry with Pideau. You want to stop around when Pideau quits?”

Annette’s eyes widened. And the Wolf saw the thing he desired as she

mutely nodded her answer.

The boy straightened himself up. His fine eyes were shining.

“You ken if you feel that way. An’ I’d be glad to have you around. I’ll

be a man soon. An’ you’ll be a grown woman. When Pideau quits we can

make a big getaway into the forests so he can’t locate us. We can marry

then. An’ I’ll hunt pelts, an’ make big money, an’ you can stop around

an’ fish trout. It ’ud be swell. An’ we’d be quit of Pideau, who’s a

thief.”

The boy was serious. Deadly serious. And Annette eyed him curiously.

Then of a sudden she began to laugh. The boy’s cheeks flamed with

sudden anger.

“Oh, you great, big, swell hunter!” Annette cried maddeningly. “Oh, you

brave fool man! You! You! Say, Wolf, you beat it an’ hunt gophers, an’

leave me to my fishing. You take your curs with you, and the gun you

can shoot so good with. Marry you? Why, I hate you, you fool kid.”

She turned and picked up her rod, and the Wolf heard it whistle through

the air. Then, out of his hot anger, he did the thing she had ordered.

He shouldered his rifle and flung his answer back at her as he went.

“Hate all you reckon to, Annette,” he cried, as he made towards the

tethered pony, with his dogs leaping about his moccasined heels. “It

won’t help you. You’ll marry me, sure. I fixed that. See?”

He grinned back at her, his anger swept away by that humor that was

never long at fault. Then he added:

“Guess I’ll get after them wolves so you’ll know it ain’t Luana dyin’.”

Annette forgot her fly, and the trout rising at it. She craned round,

her face flaming.

“Look at him. Great big hunter!” she jeered after him, as he vaulted to

the bare back of his pinto and set off at a run.

Left alone, however, Annette found no further interest in her fishing.

Her sport only appealed as long as it was shared with the Wolf. It was

the same with everything in her life. She would not have admitted it

even to herself. On the contrary, she told herself fiercely that she

hated her playmate worse, much worse than she hated the dying Luana.

She never wanted to see him again. She hoped his pinto would fall in a

gopher hole and kill the Wolf. She wished him every harm her vicious

mind could think of. And she swore to herself that she would tell

Pideau everything he had said.

For all that, however, it was with a quick sigh she quit her fishing,

and reeled in her line, and detached her precious fly and stuck it in

the worsted of her clothing. Then, after bending over her fish, and

gathering them up, and stringing them together, it was with a desperate

inclination to tears that she faced the hill for her dugout home and

her dying foster mother.

She told herself again and again of the hate with which the Wolf

inspired her. But long before the door of the dingy dugout was reached

she was thrilling with the vision of the mountain life in the woods,

alone with the boy, as the Wolf had promised it to her.

CHAPTER IV

THE “KILL”

With the picket line half-hitched in its mouth the pinto dashed off at

the distance-devouring gait of the pacer.

The Wolf had boasted his prowess to a derisive Annette, and the girl’s

jeer was still pursuing him. But his boast was no idle one. And the

girl who had derided knew well enough that was so. The Wolf, like his

namesake, was a hunter, and brimful of the elemental life that was his.

He rode like an Indian on his splash-coated pinto. The Indian was there

in his makeshift equipment. It was in the loosely dangling, moccasined

feet; in the half-hitched, single rawhide line; in the close seat on a

razor-like back. Then it was in his old buckskin suit, inherited from

Pideau’s decaying wardrobe. It was in his acute, sunburned features,

and in the all-seeing keenness of his fine, dark eyes.

Vanity helped to foster the likeness. The boy was proud of it.

Nevertheless it was by no means artificial. It went deep. There were

the long years of association with half-breeds to account for it.

There was the wild life of the mountains, with their dour solitudes

and vicious storms, and their everlasting call to the primitive. Then

there were those pastimes, savage pastimes, which in early years, make

so deep an impression. Without doubt the boy’s white-man heritage was

deeply submerged.

The dogs had set off at their long-gaited, wolfish lope. They lived

only for the chase, and the rare caresses of their youthful master.

They were obeying now. For their movements were inspired by the

inarticulate command which had fallen from the Wolf’s lips as he

vaulted to the back of his pony.

The boy went without even a glance in the direction of his playmate.

His whole interest had become absorbed in the two fierce creatures who

had done their best to wreck the girl’s fishing, and create discord

between their human companions. His mood was the enthusiasm of the

hunter. For the chase of the timber wolf never failed in its vivid

appeal.

But that which he had foreseen failed to mature. He had looked for a

swift heading for the ford, a few hundred yards farther down the river.

He had expected a crossing to the distant woods beyond, on the eastern

slopes of the valley. That had clearly been the direction of the dogs’

concern.

Nothing of the sort happened. Rene, the bitch, had, as always, taken

the lead. The less responsible Pete had boisterously attempted to head

her. But the lady would have none of him. She slashed at him with

vicious teeth, and flung him savagely back to her shoulder. She passed

the river ford as though she had no knowledge of its existence, and

headed down the valley in the determined manner of one whose mind is

clearly made up, and refuses to be deflected from her purpose.

The boy speculated. Why? His mind was acutely questioning. Why this

sudden and unaccountable abandonment of the direction which had stirred

the dogs to such profound disquiet? Had Annette been wiser than he?

Had the dogs been concerned for something which had nothing to do with

wolves? He was inclined to doubt his own first judgment.

The chase carried him on down the valley along the course of the

meandering river. And it was a run that appealed to all that was

primitive in him.

The day was brilliant, and the world about him was vividly gracious.

The still, hot air was full of that tang which only ten thousand feet

of elevation could give it. And the limitless spreads of forest on

the valley slopes, and the dense woodland bluffs, which dotted the

park-like bosom of the vast hollow, were a ripe monotony of green.

It was a panorama of wild beauty. And from the snowy glaciers on the

mountain tops, which shone in the summer sun, to the verdant delights

of the valley’s heart it was a world the Wolf claimed for his own.

They raced over the open. They searched their way down the leafless

aisles of shadowed pine woods. Sometimes they were hugging the river

bank. And again they were often a mile and more away on the higher

ground, avoiding swamps of perilous muskeg. There were times when the

hunting dogs were quite lost to view, and only an occasional whimper

afforded a clue to their whereabouts. There were others when the pinto

was close on their heels sharing the enthusiasm of the chase despite

the sweat streaming into its lean flanks.

On, on they went towards the goal which the wise old Rene had so

determinedly selected for the run.

In the Wolf’s mind there was no longer any doubt. The husky was heading

for the decoy shelter which the cunning mind of Pideau had designed,

and his hands had set up years before.

It lay beyond the muskeg defences of the valley, and was at once a

resting place for the spoils of Pideau’s cattle raids, and a carefully

designed bluff to fool any chance pursuer to whom ill luck might have

revealed his trail.

Why had the dog chosen such a destination, and run for it till she was

ready to drop from sheer exhaustion?

* * * * *

Stiff and sore from the lean back of his pony, the Wolf had dismounted.

He had tethered the weary beast, and now stood gazing down upon the

dogs crouching at his feet.

It was the bitch, Rene, that held his attention. She had sprawled

herself on the rotting underlay of the forest, and her slavering jaws

were resting on outstretched forepaws. Her fierce eyes were searching

the cover in the direction of the clearing which lay ahead.

The boy’s dark eyes wore an indulgent smile. To his mind there was

something almost humorous in the dog’s attitude. Her whole pose seemed

to be saying:

“Well, here I am, and I go not a step farther. I brought you here, and

now it’s up to you.”

For some moments he stood considering. Then of a sudden he stooped.

Rene remained unresponsive. But Pete, with the male dog’s greater

demonstrativeness, drew himself nearer to the hand whose caress he

sought. The Wolf, however, gave him no heed. His hand fell gently on

the narrow head of the bitch, and he talked to her in a fashion she

seemed to understand.

Once she raised her head and licked the caressing hand. And her narrow

eyes told plainly she was doing her best to interpret his every spoken

word.

At last the boy stood up again and turned away. The dogs would obey

him. They would remain just where they were until they received his

fresh commands.

* * * * *

The Wolf was carrying his rifle ready for immediate use. What he

expected to discover as he moved towards the edge of the clearing he

did not know. Speculation, wonder; these things had passed from him.

And in their place had come a feeling of profound disquiet.

It was just a little queer, that sense of apprehension. It was quite

foreign to him. Young as he was, the Wolf’s nerves were tuned to the

worst the mountain wilderness could show him. Never in his life had he

known real fear. Not even in his earliest days, when Pideau’s savage

hand had fallen heavily upon him.

He moved on, a shadow amongst the leafless trunks, and, like a ghost,

he glided over the intervening quarter of a mile which brought him to

the tangle of undergrowth in the midst of which lay the clearing.

He paused and considered. Ordinarily he would have thrust his way

through it without any hesitation. It would have been the simplest,

most direct method of approach to his goal. But the thought of Rene

still clung, and its influence refused to be dispelled.

He considered deeply and searched with all his eyes. Then he took his

decision. There were two openings into the clearing. The one which

Pideau had cut to the eastward, and the other, a natural, obscure

pathway, on the westward side, not easy of discovery by the uninformed.

He decided upon the latter.

It was at the moment of turning to move on that he became motionless.

A terrific hubbub crashed through the silence. Grasping his rifle in

both hands ready, he stood with eyes fearfully wide. Then he smiled a

boyish grin at his own absurdity. It was only cattle. The sudden lowing

of driven beasts. It was not a solitary bellow either. But a booming

chorus. And it came from the heart of the bush in front of him.

Then his smile passed. Oh, he understood. Pideau had returned with a

full bag from his raid. He was there in his hiding with his spoils.

He was resting the beasts, and probably feeding them hay in the

corrals from the stack that was kept stored for that purpose. Again he

considered. And considering, he remembered his dog.

Then he thought of Pideau himself. He knew Pideau would resent

intrusion; his intrusion more than anyone’s. His life in the doubtful

shelter of Pideau’s home had taught him so much of the man. The

half-breed’s veneer of tolerance was very thin. The man was desperately

suspicious, too. He was suspicious of his own sister, Luana, and

certainly contemptuously suspicious of himself. The only person who

enjoyed his trust was Annette.

The Wolf was under no illusion. He knew well enough his sudden

confronting of Pideau in his hiding would most certainly bring down an

outburst of the man’s savagery upon his head.

So he set out for the pathway upon which he had decided.

From behind a leafy screen the Wolf surveyed the scene of the clearing.

He was spying now, and he knew it. For the first time in his life he

was using his hunter’s skill to discover Pideau’s secrets.

The clearing was small. It was just that area which had been sufficient

to supply the necessary building materials for the small hut and the

corrals which occupied it. The hut with its gaping doorway occupied

the northern side. And facing it, in the centre stood three small

corrals. Beyond these, at the southern extremity, stood the remains of

a half-consumed stack of hay.

For the rest there was the smoulder of a dying camp fire before the

doorway of the hut. And littered about it were the cooking chattels

which had served their purpose. A saddled pony, streaked with sweat,

and with its flanks badly tuckered, was hungrily feeding hay near by.

But the Wolf, in his hiding, had eyes for none of these details. It was

the corrals, and the cattle they contained, and the hurried movements

of the man who was feeding them, that held his interest.

The number of cattle staggered the boy. From where he stood it was

impossible to estimate their numbers accurately as they surged and

crowded for the hay that was being flung to them. Roughly, he thought

there must be at least fifty. Pideau had stolen and driven fifty head

of steers and milch cows from the plains single-handed! The fact was

almost unbelievable. Never in his life had the Wolf known Pideau to

attempt so large a haul.

From the cattle the Wolf turned to the half-breed himself. And if the

former had inspired amazement, the latter startled him even more.

Pideau’s every movement told of haste and something else. He almost ran

on his journeys between the hay and the corrals. Every now and then his

dusky, bearded face was turned, and the Wolf could see its expression.

Anxiety was written in every line of it.

But there was something about his doings of far deeper significance to

the boy’s quick mind. Pideau’s work took him past the eastern entrance

to the clearing on every journey. And every time he went to the stack

empty-handed, he paused, searching the distance with eyes and ears.

Pursuit! The Wolf read the answer. Pideau was looking for pursuit,

and pursuit meant either the red-coated police, or those who were far

less to be feared, the settlers whose cattle Pideau had stolen. The

half-breed was clearly in the grip of real fear.

The Wolf had no love for Pideau. But loyalty to him was almost as

strong a bond. He realized instantly the thing he must do. If Pideau

needed assistance it was for him to afford it.

In those moments an extravagant sense of his own manhood came to the

boy. His soul was uplifted with a great joy, a superlative pride. He

felt that his days of boyhood were over. He would be fighting beside

Pideau on an equal footing.

The police? The Wolf knew what it meant to war with the police.

Outlawry! Penitentiary! Even, possibly, hanging, if his weapon chanced

to slay. Well, so be it. He grinned in complete disregard of all

consequence.

* * * * *

Pideau was at the head of the eastern cutting. He had been standing

there for many moments. He was listening. He was searching, too, with

every faculty alert. Of a sudden he moved. The Wolf saw him make for

his horse, snatch his rifle, which was slung on the horn of his saddle,

and hastily mount.

The next moment horse and rider crashed their way through the

undergrowth behind the hay store.

The Wolf made no movement. He, too, was watching and listening with

every faculty alert. The sounds of Pideau’s hasty retreat died out

abruptly. The boy was under no misapprehension. Pideau had not fled.

He was not the man to abandon fifty head of cattle without a desperate

fight. What next?

Fresh sounds came swiftly. They came out of the opposite distance. It

was a low, soft hammering of hoofs over sun-baked soil, and the sound

of it grew in volume, almost at the moment the Wolf first discovered it.

He was given no time for conjecture. In a moment, it seemed, the flash

of red came to him a few yards down the forest cutting. In another, two

red-coated horsemen raced into the clearing, and almost flung their

horses on their haunches as they reined them up.

The Wolf’s rifle was pressed hard against his shoulder. His finger was

on the trigger, that deadly hair trigger that needed little more than a

breath of wind to release.

But his finger remained unmoving, and a wave of panic swept over him.

His stomach nauseated as he realized the thing that had so nearly

been accomplished. Death! Another instant and his rifle would have

spat death at one of those red-coats. And he knew it would have been

murder. Cold, deliberate murder without the extenuation of a battle in

self-defence.

He lowered his rifle as one of the men flung recklessly out of the

saddle. Then it happened.

The crack of a rifle broke the stillness, and the Wolf knew whence

it came. The policeman in the saddle pitched headlong, and his horse

reared and flung its dead rider to the ground.

The Wolf gasped. His breath whistled in his throat. A queer horror

looked out of his eyes.

The man who had dismounted ran. He had drawn a revolver and was

charging in the direction of the hay store. His revolver rang out. Then

came two shots in swift succession. And the sound of them was identical

with that of the shot which had emptied the other policeman’s saddle.

The Wolf saw the second man crumple. He pitched headlong on the

sweet-scented grass, clutching at it as he fell. Then, face downwards,

he lay quite still.

CHAPTER V

THE WISDOM OF THE WOLF

The Wolf was still in hiding with the screen of foliage sheltering

him. There was not a movement in him beyond the tumultuous beating of

his heart. He was thinking with all the rapidity of a mind driven to

feverish activity. And the speed of his thought left his subconscious

mind free to become aware of the glowing sunlight out there in the

open, and the cloud of flies and mosquitoes besetting the restless

cattle in the corrals.

He turned at last to the horses grazing with their mouths full of

cumbersome bits, and their forelegs entangled in trailing reins. Then

the red coat of the second policeman obtruded itself, and he considered

the murdered man. It was at that moment he became aware of movement in

the bush behind the hay. And he turned to discover Pideau’s dark face

thrust beyond it, peering.

It was the cue which brought the boy to sharp decision. This time, with

a jerk, he flung the breech of his rifle open and emptied its magazine

of cartridges. Then, his tall body erect he moved out from his cover,

and advanced towards the man to whom his loyalty, if not his affection,

was bound.

Pideau was gazing down at the dead man on the hay. His brutish face

expressed no emotion whatever, not even satisfaction. His gimlet eyes

were fiercely bright and evil. That was all. He stooped, caught the

body in his strong arms, and flung it over in the same rough fashion

which he might have used in handling a heavy sack.

Lying face upwards the body revealed the thing the slayer sought. There

it was. A minute puncture in the red jacket, with the dark ooze of

blood staining the scarlet cloth. Pideau sucked in a breath of extreme

satisfaction. It was a shot of which he felt he could be reasonably

proud.

“A swell shot, Pideau.”

The half-breed straightened up with a jerk. He swung about to look into

the smiling eyes of the Wolf. He stared, startled beyond words. Then,

in a moment, fury leaped.

“You?” he cried fiercely. Then, with malevolent savagery: “You--you

spyin’ swine! I’ll kill you!”

Pideau’s rifle came up with his threat. Murder, more murder, was in his

gimlet eyes. The dusky flush of his cheeks further added to his threat.

The Wolf remained unmoved. He simply shook his head.

“You’d be crazy to make a third killing, Pideau,” he said, ignoring

the gun, but remaining watchful. “You need help. My help--now. You’ve

killed two red-coats, an’--more’ll come.”

Pideau’s gun lowered. It was a hardly perceptible movement. But the

quick eyes of the boy saw it, and he snatched his advantage.

“I ain’t spyin’,” he went on quietly. “I don’t have to spy on you,

Pideau. I’ve no need. I came right here because my crazy dogs led me

this way. They hit a trail. I guessed it to be a wolf trail. But it

wasn’t. It was Rene. Maybe she figgered you’d need my help.”

“You’re lyin’!”

Pideau’s snarl was ugly enough. But his anger was abating, and the Wolf

realized it.

“No,” he said. “I haven’t need to lie, either.” He glanced

significantly down at the body of the dead policeman. Then he looked at

the corrals behind him. And farther on at the grazing horses, and the

other of Pideau’s victims. “Not till more police get around, anyway.”

Pideau’s gun had come to rest with its butt on the ground.

“What d’you mean?” he cried roughly. “Ther’ ain’t more red-coats to

come. Ther’s only them two on Maple Coulee post. An’,” he laughed

harshly, “they’re both mutton dead.”

“Sure.” The Wolf’s gaze came back to the gloating face of the man who

was the father of Annette. “They’re dead. That’s the reason more’ll

come. The red-coats don’t let up. That’s how you always say. We got to

make it so ther’s no trail for them to hunt. We got to make it so they

think these boys have just quit. Maybe lit out across the border. An’

we can do it.”

The half-breed’s face was a study. As the boy talked, his smiling eyes

containing nothing but seeming good humor, the man’s eyes lost their

cruel sparkle. The flush of fury completely faded from his cheeks.

Surprise, and then amazed incredulity took possession of him. In the

end there was the dawning of satisfaction on his unsmiling face.

“How?” he asked, with a contempt that could not conceal his curiosity.

“We’ll need to strip ’em first,” the Wolf said, eyeing the body on

the hay. “Then we’ll need to bury ’em--deep.” A little frown of

concentration drew his finely marked brows together. “Then we’ll have

to burn their clothes--all of ’em.”

“An’ their cayuses?”

“We can turn ’em loose. The wolves’ll get ’em before sunup to-morrow.”

“An’ the saddles?”

“Burn ’em, too. We ken sink the iron trees in the muskeg ’way back. An’

their guns. An’ everything else that won’t burn. We ken just cover your

tracks right up so an Injun couldn’t smell it out.”

“Gee!”

The half-breed’s exclamation was an involuntary expression of

admiration. If the Wolf understood it he made no sign. He simply gazed

at the father of Annette with unfathomable eyes.

“We best get to it before---- You see, Pideau,” he went on, in his

quick way, “you just can’t tell what message these boys left behind

’em. I’ve heard you say you haven’t any sort of use for ’em, but

you’ve always allowed they’re slick. Maybe they sent word to their

headquarters. Maybe they’d hit your trail. Maybe they passed word for

folks to foller right along. See?”

Pideau nodded. And the boy watching him saw at last that which lay

beneath the surface. The narrowed eyes had lost their confidence. There

was fear in the swift movement of the furtive glance that swept over

the clearing and finally came to rest at the entrance to it.

And as the Wolf realized the truth, boy as he was, he would have been

less than human had he not experienced a thrill of contempt. Pideau!

Pideau, the ruthless tyrant who had never more than tolerated his

presence in their mountain hiding, was afraid! He was scared! Scared

like a pitiful gopher!

Rene had done him good service that day in bringing him there. Never

again would he submit to the bully. Never again would he tolerate even

the man’s authority. Pideau was just a murderer. Something of which he

had no personal fear.

No. In future they would be equals. Equals in council and in the

traffic that gave them livelihood. Partners. Yes. He would even be a

partner if it suited him. But----

He suddenly dropped on his knees and began to strip the body of the

dead policeman.

The half-breed was still watching the entrance to the clearing with

thoughts of pursuit troubling him. But at last he became aware of the

boy, and the work he was engaged upon.

The Wolf looked up as a harsh laugh jarred the quiet of the summer day.

“You got hell beat a mile, kid,” Pideau cried, as their eyes met. “You

certainly have. Of all the cool---- Say, you surely are the Wolf! Gee!”

The boy went on with his work.

“Sure,” he replied indifferently. “That’s how you always said.”

CHAPTER VI

PARTNERSHIP

The Wolf had eyes only for the distance. He had a profound revolting

for his companion, and all that in which he had found himself so

amazingly involved. The cleanness of his boyish innocence had been

badly fouled, and he would have given all he possessed to be able to

forget.

Pideau was riding beside him, morose, silent. His expression was

brooding. His eyes were narrowed to mere slits as though striving to

conceal the evil of the mind behind them. He, too, was gazing far

ahead, but he was concerned with nothing he beheld.

Every now and again a quick sidelong glance took in the youth at his

side. And apparently the Wolf remained unconscious of the attention,

which was without a shadow of friendliness or good will.

But, in fact, the boy was acutely alive to his companion’s glances.

And, moreover, he possessed full understanding of the reason and

purpose lying behind them. Years of bitter experience had taught him so

much of Pideau. He understood the mire of evil that filled the man’s

soul. Well enough he knew that the name with which he had himself been

dubbed rightly should have been bestowed on the father of Annette. For

there was no attribute of the fierce marauder of the forest that Pideau

did not possess. Right down to the queer, haunting cowardice which is a

fundamental of it.

The Wolf knew that dire threat was overshadowing him. And in Pideau the

nature of such a threat could only possess one interpretation.

The cattle were moving ahead, herded with the skill of trained sheep

dogs by Rene and Pete. It was the boy who controlled their work. Pideau

took no hand. It was the boy, in fact, who had controlled everything

from his first confronting of Pideau in the act of his crime, to the

ghastly work which had occupied the long hours of night.

It was little wonder that the boy longed for forgetfulness. Clean,

wholesome, imbued with a frank delight in the simple fact of existence,

and the exercise of a keen, natural intelligence, he had found himself

wallowing in a sink of horror, driven to it by circumstances which had

been beyond his power of escape. He had realized that Pideau, for the

sake of Annette, must be saved from the consequences of his own savage,

blundering crime. And, with a generosity he could not deny, he had

hurled himself to the man’s support.

The reaction of the horror of the night still crowded down upon him.

It was all utterly unforgettable. The two murdered policemen. Their

two horses. Then the ghastly task to which his hunter’s training and

instinct had been put.

He had seen the fire devouring equipment and clothing till not a single

recognizable shred remained to betray. He had seen the stiffened human

bodies hurled to the hungry maw of the bottomless mire of the muskeg.

Then there had been that worst of all necessity. Two fine-mettled

bronchos, full of life and equine beauty, had been turned adrift

in the forests with the reasonable certainty that they would hardly

survive more than a few days.

And all the while there had not been one moment when he had dared relax

his vigilance for his own personal safety. Pideau was a coward. And the

boy’s woodcraft, hunting the timber wolf, had long since taught him the

treachery of which the coward is capable.

The Wolf had learned so much since he had parted from Annette the

morning before. In a few short hours he had learned his own strength.

And he knew that what he had done had placed Annette’s father in the

position of a trapped fox. He had a shrewd understanding. And the sum

of possible consequences came to him easily. He was, metaphorically,

watching the snapping jaws of the trapped fox, and knew that his own

safety lay in his wit in avoiding them.

Pideau’s mood as he rode beside the Wolf on the homeward journey was

full of ugly possibilities. His thought was searching. It was the

guilty, fearful searching of a mind poisoned by terror and hate.

The Wolf--knew!

That was the man’s dominating thought. It had leaped to that fact in

its panic. And it overshadowed every other consideration.

The boy--knew!

Pideau summoned the wit that had always served him. What did it mean?

What could he do? And he found answers to those questions swimming

through his brain like noxious vapors rising from the bowels of evil

which were his. The meaning was deadly, and there was only one thing

to do. Now was his opportunity. Annette and Luana were still unaware

that the Wolf and he had met at the corrals. They were utterly unaware

of the boy’s whereabouts. He had carefully ascertained that fact. Well?

The boy must never reach the homeward journey’s end.

The Wolf--knew!

He would become a lifelong scourge, a deadly threat. He would become

more. The lash of power would remain in the Wolf’s hand to use at any

moment he desired to impose his will in any matter.

It was an unthinkable position. It was a thought that maddened.

Pideau’s forehead sweated under his cap, and stark red almost blinded

him. It should not be. His mind was made up.

He glanced at the youth from the tail of his eye. And as he did so

the Wolf’s voice grated in the queer fashion which comes in youth’s

approach to manhood.

“Guess you killed enough, Pideau,” he said. “You murdered them p’lice

boys. You killed their hosses. Leastways you passed ’em to the wolves.

You best finish right ther’. It ain’t any sort o’ use wantin’ to kill

me. An’ you can’t anyway.”

The Wolf’s eyes were smiling as he gazed at the man he read like an

open book. There was no fear in him. But there was something in his

smiling gaze that Pideau could not face.

The half-breed’s eyes fell away and sought refuge in the cattle ahead

of them.

The boy permitted his pony to drop back slightly, to a position of

advantage. The beast’s nose was abreast of the withers of Pideau’s

horse.

“I guess we need to square things up,” the Wolf went on, as Pideau

attempted no verbal response. “Just cut murder right out till we’re

through talkin’. Maybe you’ll see sense then. Since ever we quit back

there you bin worried thinkin’ I knew the thing you’ve done. You

bin guessin’ you couldn’t stand for it. You’re scared I’ll hold you

up--when it suits me.”

Pideau still remained watching the cattle.

“I’m not out to hold you up, Pideau,” the boy went on quietly. “We

ain’t friendly. We never bin. Maybe it’ll always be that way. It don’t

matter. You gave me shelter when I couldn’t find it for myself. You

handed me food, too, when there wasn’t a deal lying around for me.

Well, I haven’t learned a deal. But ther’s jest one thing I have got

back of my head. I’d hate worse than death to hurt the feller that did

those things for me when I couldn’t do ’em for myself. If you get that

you’ll see it’s crazy to kill the feller that can help you now, and is

willing to. Just as crazy as killing those two police boys.”

Pideau experienced a soothing of his murderous spirit as he listened to

the raucous, confident tones. His hate was unabated. But his fear knew

a relief that had seemed well-nigh impossible. A curious calm spread

through his senses and eased his tension.

“I had to kill ’em,” he growled morosely. “It was that or the

penitentiary. A fool ’ud see it.”

“Was it?” The boy’s smile was full of shrewdness. “They’d trailed you,

but they hadn’t got you. They’d never have got you in these hills.

They’d have got the cattle. But that wouldn’t have hurt a thing. No.

It was foolish to kill. Now you’ll get no more cattle. There’ll be a

thousand police to say so. They’ll watch for you day an’ night. They’ll

never quit your trail. There’s a big bunch of cattle stole from boys

who know they’ve lost ’em. And the police know that two men on that

station are missing. You’ve got to quit cattle now, because you killed

those boys. It was foolish.”

There was no offence in the Wolf’s manner. Only argument. And somehow

the argument took hold of the cattle thief, and made him want to hear

more.

“Ther’s less chance trailin’ me--now,” he said sharply.

“An’ less chance getting cattle,” the Wolf retorted. “You’re safe--dead

safe--if you quit cattle right away.”

“I was reckonin’ to--soon,” Pideau admitted, his gaze wandering

southwards in the direction of the United States border.

“Well, it’s got to be right away, if you aren’t yearnin’ for

penitentiary an’ a hangin’. We best git farther back into the hills for

awhile. The police search is dead sure to come. It won’t be good if

chance should show ’em our outfit. So it’s best not killin’ me, Pideau,

as you were reckonin’. You’ll need me farther up in the hills. We got

to trap, an’ hunt pelts to get our food. Then later----”

The fear and hate in Pideau had receded still further. A grin lit his

fierce eyes as he interrupted.

“The Yanks are goin’ dry,” he said, meaningly, with a swift reaction to

the needs of the new position. “Last time I was across I heard tell.

The border folk are gettin’ busy. They figger it’ll not be for a year

or so yet, but when they do----”

“When they do?”

The Wolf was frankly intrigued.

“Why, liquor’ll fetch all sorts of dollars.”

The boy was gazing out ahead over the familiar scene of the valley. His

eyes were thoughtful.

“It ’ud be a swell trade,” he agreed at last. “An’ honest.”

“From this side the border.”

Pideau had forgotten the murder he had contemplated. He had forgotten

everything in the prospections it contained for him.

“I got the dollars, too,” he went on eagerly. “I could set up a still,

an’ brew rotgut fer big money.”

“An’ it would need the two of us to handle it.”

“Yes.”

“As partners.”

“Ye-es.”

The Wolf laughed. He read the meaning of the hesitation.

“We need to be partners--now, Pideau,” he said firmly.

The half-breed turned and frowningly contemplated the boy’s smiling

face. All the old murderous feelings had leaped out of the background

again. And for some moments he looked into the fearless eyes that

challenged him. Then he shrugged and inclined his head in submission.

CHAPTER VII

THE HEART OF THE WOLF

The noon sun was right overhead, a molten globe of merciless fury. The

heat of the valley was fierce. Flies and mosquitoes swarmed in the

still air. The cattle were munching wearily, indifferent to the dogs

harrying them, indifferent to the luxurious knee-deep grass through

which they were ploughing their somnolent way.

The Wolf’s eyes were anxious. There was no smile in them now. The

child in him was uppermost. His whole thought was for that home on the

hillside which had just come into view, and the human associations it

contained for him.

Annette was there. Annette, and his sick mother, Luana. It was of Luana

he was thinking most. And his thought was pregnant with grave anxiety.

Mountain fever. It was fierce, and deadly, and very swift. Would he

find her better, or worse? Would he----?

He wished the smoke from the fire were showing. Surely it should be,

with noon at hand. Had Annette forgotten? She might have forgotten.

Then perhaps Luana had no need of food.

He glanced at the figure of Pideau, who had uttered no word since

his earlier submission. The morose creature displayed no interest

whatsoever in the home that was now so very near. He displayed no

interest in anything. Not even in the cattle which would ultimately

make him a handsome return for the trouble in which they had involved

him. The man saw nothing but the visions of his busy brain.

The Wolf understood. And it turned him from his own natural anxieties

to the big thing that had taken possession of his life. He knew where

he stood with Pideau now. From now on, until full manhood came to his

rescue, a chasm of disaster would always be gaping at his feet. He had

nothing to save him from it but his own wit and courage. So he watched,

for the time, the thing lying back of the half-breed’s eyes and

revelled in the thought of the battle in which they had joined issue.

It was an amazing transformation that twenty-four hours had wrought in

him. Outwardly he was just the same, lank, muscular, developed out of

all proportion to his years. The simple directness which had always

characterized him had undergone no change. The wilderness with its

battle for survival was deep in his soul. He feared nothing. He feared

no human creature. And least of all, he feared Pideau.

Spiritually his development had been in the nature of the miraculous.

He had leaped from childhood to real manhood in one amazing stride.

A few short hours ago he had talked to Annette of marriage, and of a

primitive life lost in the hills he loved. Now he knew that all that

had been the talk of a child’s mind.

Annette? Yes. Annette was still the centre of everything for him. But

the setting in which she stood was changed. He had tasted of real life,

human life, in the past few hours, and he wanted more. He wanted it

all. He wanted to measure his strength in the world of men, where

every grain of success must be fought for and won over the fallen body

of some human adversary. For the moment his adversary was the man

riding beside him. That was all right. It was good to try his ’prentice

hand on such easy material. Later would come the real thrill, the real

battle.

At the foot of the slope, on which the dugout stood, Pideau drew rein.

He indicated the cattle about which the dogs circled, a needless guard.

“You best set ’em in the corrals,” he grated harshly. “Feed ’em hay.

Later we’ll fix the brands. When you’re through we ken eat.”

Pideau spoke with the confidence of authority. He spoke as though

nothing had changed their relations, as though nothing could change

them.

The Wolf never hesitated. There was no sign in him of any rebellion.

There was nothing provocative in his manner. He turned his pinto

towards the hillside and replied over his shoulder.

“I must go to Luana--first,” he cried, and breasted the hill.

Pideau gazed after him. His eyes were calculating, and one brown hand

was gripping the small of his rifle, and his fingers felt the trigger.

He saw the slim body swaying to the eager gait of the pinto as it raced

up the sharp incline. He saw the boy’s hand, which, like his own, was

grasping his rifle. And for several furious moments he was yearning.

Then he, too, began the ascent of the hill.

* * * * *

The Wolf was standing at the side of the rough bed in the inner room

of the dugout. It was the same rawhide-strung bed built of spruce

saplings from which years ago Pideau had carried his dead wife to her

grave far down in the valley.

It was a poor enough room. It had one natural earth wall formed by the

hill into which it was dug, and the rest of the walls were of laterally

set green logs that were stripped of their bark in years of habitation.

There was no light except that which was admitted through the doorway

communicating with one of the two front rooms. But it was all

sufficient to reveal the squalor in which those mountain folk lived.

The floor was dust-dry earth, and the furnishings were the makeshift of

barest necessity. It was sheer half-breed squalor of the poorest type,

suffering under the indifference of those who lived in it.

The Wolf saw none of the poverty. He knew it. He had never known

better. So it failed to offend. He had eyes only for the bed, with

its worn, colored blankets, and the still ominous ridge that centred

it. The blankets had been drawn up till that which lay beneath was

completely hidden.

The silence was profound. It was a stillness different from any other

the boy had ever known. And its effect on him was a sort of paralysis,

from which he had neither power nor will to release himself.

He knew. There was no need for him to look. There was no need for

him to raise even a corner of those blankets. The mountain fever had

claimed its victim as he had been warned it would. The mother he had

always known and loved, the one creature in all his young life who

had never spoken a word of blame to him, whose whole thought had been

always for his well-being and happiness, had gone. She was dead--dead.

She had died alone. Utterly alone. And he would have given all the

world to have been there to comfort her, and tell her of his boy’s love.

The stun of it held him helpless. He could only gaze. He could only eye

that grim outline under the blanket and wonder like a child.

The sound of voices penetrated the silence. What they said the Wolf

cared not. His ears were dead to all but a confusion of sound. But they

had an effect of which he was wholly unaware. He moved. He reached out

in an uncertain gesture. His fingers closed on the blanket cover near

the head of the bed. And as they did so, thought bestirred. Some one

must have drawn that blanket so. Who? Annette? Yes, it was Annette. And

a new warmth crept into his heart.

The Wolf drew the blanket hesitatingly. His hand was shaking. He saw

the black of the dead Luana’s hair. It was still shining as it had

shone in life. Then came the waxen features without a blemishing line

or wrinkle. Yes, they were like carved marble, a sort of soft-tinted

marble that was very beautiful in his eyes. The whole of the dead face

lay revealed. And the shaking hand steadied and held the blanket still.

The sound of the voices beyond went on. He gave them no heed. The

boy’s whole soul was held by that upon which he was gazing--Luana--his

mother. And she was dead--dead. Suddenly he took a step nearer to the

bed. He leaned over it. He lowered his head and gently pressed his

young lips against the marble-cold forehead. It was his farewell.

The blanket was back in its place as Annette had set it. The Wolf

breathed a deep sigh. Then he turned away and moved out to join those,

the sound of whose voices had reached him.

* * * * *

The Wolf appeared in the doorway of the dugout.

The fire was lit, and smoke was rising sheer on the still air. Pideau

was at the fire, crouching down feeding it, and making ready for the

noon food. The Wolf’s pinto was precisely where he had left it, its

rawhide picket rope trailing but unsecured.

Annette was there. She was standing apart, and her bold, beautiful eyes

were fixed on the youth the moment he appeared. There was no disguise;

no pretense. Woman’s curiosity dominated her expression and hid any

sign of feeling that may have been lurking.

The Wolf looked her way at once. His look told nothing. It told nothing

of the shock he had endured. It told nothing of the passionate grief

ravaging his boy’s soul. It was full of a calmness that must have

disappointed the impish spirit of the girl.

“You covered her up, Annette,” he said, without a tremor of that which

he felt. “You sure did that for--me?”

The girl stirred uneasily. Her gaze averted to Pideau at the fire, who

had not looked up.

“She was dead,” she said in a low voice.

“You covered her up for--me?” the Wolf persisted.

“No!”

Pideau looked up from the fire at the sound of Annette’s fierce denial.

The Wolf smiled. Even in his grief Annette was still the little fiend

he loved.

“You did it for me, though,” he said, with that maddening assurance

which drove the girl.

“She died last night,” Annette cried. Then her eyes lit fiercely. “I

did it so the flies ’ud keep from her.”

Pideau grinned. The Wolf saw the grin. He understood the malice of it.

He ignored the man and his grin. He turned to the girl for whom his

love had never been greater than at that moment. His eyes were smiling.

“I’m kind o’ glad you kept the flies off’n her,” he said. “I can’t

ferget you did it, Annette. You see, you didn’t love her, and she

didn’t love you. I’ll need to bury her.”

Pideau stood up from his fire abruptly. For one unsmiling moment he

looked from the girl to the boy. Then he moved from his cooking pot and

came across to them. The Wolf watched him while he seemed only to be

looking at the girl.

Annette saw Pideau’s movement but continued to eye the boy. Then came

the half-breed’s harsh voice.

“You ken fix them beasts down along in the corrals,” he said in his

domineering way. “I’ll bury her when we’re through eatin’.”

The quiet of the boy’s eyes became suddenly disturbed. They lit with

passion.

“No,” he said in a tone of finality. “I bury her. She’s my mother.”

A little sound broke from the girl. The boy’s eyes flashed in her

direction. But for once Annette’s eyes contained no taunt. For once

there was something in them that told of feeling other than of her

habitual antagonism.

Pideau’s voice came again. Its tone further maddened the Wolf.

“Mother? She’s no mother o’ yours,” the man sneered. “She never was an’

couldn’t be. She never had a man. She stole you. She stole you from

your folks. You’re a white spawn. An’ you’ll never know your folks now

she’s dead.”

The Wolf remained in the doorway. He stood without a movement. His long

rifle was still in his hand beside him. And in that moment his longing

was almost beyond restraint.

The girl watched him. She missed nothing. She read the frantic passion

to which her father had goaded the boy. And suddenly she forgot her own

love of tormenting. Suddenly all desire to hurt him left her. The woman

in her found its natural expression. Her prerogative had been usurped.

He had been smote by another. Her father.

She moved. She came to the doorway where the Wolf was standing

wild-eyed, gazing on the man who had so brutally hurt him. She laid

a slim brown hand on his arm. And a half-tamed softness was in the

beautiful boldness of her eyes as she looked up into his face.

“We’ll bury her, Wolf--you an’ me,” she said, in a low voice that was

full of something the boy had never heard in it before. “She loved you.

She beat me. It don’t matter. She was a mother to you, whatever he

says. And you got the right. I--I just want to help you. Father ken

see to the beasts himself. They’re his, anyway. Luana belonged to you.

An’ I guess you belong to--me.”

A heavy mattock and a digging fork lay on the ground near by, and the

child picked the former up and stood with it across her shoulder. Again

she laid a brown hand on the boy’s arm.

“We don’t need food till we’re through with--her. Let’s go get her an’

carry her down.”

The Wolf bestirred. He took possession of the appealing hand and

crushed it fiercely in his while his glance held the man who had goaded

him. Quite suddenly he spoke. He spoke coldly in spite of his passion.

“She wasn’t my mother, Pideau?” he said, and somehow his teeth seemed

to clip over each word he spoke. “Then I don’t owe you no blood duty.

Ther’ ain’t blood of yours in my body, an’ I’m glad. I won’t say the

thing I might, with Annette right here. She’s your kid. You’re her

father. But I’ll say this--she’s right; dead right. We’re goin’ to bury

Luana, who was a good woman who served you a sight better than you’d a

right to. An’ your hands ain’t goin’ to touch her. They ain’t fit. An’

my gun here says that’s so. Them beasts you stole down there are yours

to see to. You can go to it. There’s bad blood in you for me when you

only need to hand me thanks. An’ while that’s so you ken play your own

dirty game. I ain’t scared a thing, Pideau. You want to kill me. You’ve

wanted that way ever since last night. Just get it good, if there’s to

be a killin’ ther’s two of us in the game.”

Pideau moved as though to rush in on the lank figure whose reckless

fury had flung so desperate a challenge. But as he did so the boy’s

gun leaped to his shoulder, and his eye fell to the sights.

Pideau made no further movement. Only his narrowed eyes looked

yearningly on his own rifle propped against the dugout wall close

beside the Wolf.

Then it was that Annette took a great decision. Her untamed spirit

flared up. She remembered the Wolf’s boast down on the river bank. Here

she was witness to its truth and reality. In that moment the Wolf had

grown to the proportions of the hero of her woman’s worship.

“Lay a hand on him, father, an’ I will help him beat you,” she cried,

with all the violence she was accustomed to fling at the boy. “You’re

just my father. But he’s my--Wolf.”

The Wolf’s gun had held the man. But the girl had achieved something

more. Her violence had no part in it. It was something deeper,

something of which she was all unaware.

Whatever Pideau’s crimes, whatever his evil, Annette was the child of

his body and blood. She was the child whose appeal had saved him from

his greatest crime years before. And now the nature between them went

for nothing. She had flung herself into the arms of the boy against him.

Pideau was alone; outcast; and he felt that the world of mankind was

now completely arrayed against him.

The overwhelmingness of it was too much for his hardihood. He could

not face it. His bluff failed him. Without a word he turned away. He

moved off. And passing down the hillside on his way to the cattle a

sound came back to the two who stood watching him. It was the sound of

a bitter, jarring laugh.

* * * * *

They were inside the outer room of the dugout. The Wolf had possessed

himself of the old six-chambered revolver which Pideau kept hanging on

the wall. He had just finished loading its chambers from the cartridge

belt hanging beside it. The spare cartridges he had already stuffed

into his hip pocket. His rifle was laid aside with its breech-block

removed.

“He won’t do a thing, Wolf.”

Annette’s tone was almost one of humility as she addressed the boy who

had suddenly become her hero.

“I’m takin’ no chances.”

The Wolf spoke roughly. There was only the outline of his smile left.

“That why you slipped the pin from his rifle?”

“Sure.”

The girl sighed. Her eyes were gazing at the inner room of death.

“Then we ken carry her down?” she suggested.

“I’ll carry her, kid,” the Wolf said gently. “You don’t need. You haul

that mattock an’ fork. She was good to me, an’ I loved her. She didn’t

act so good to you. You’ll jest help--me--that’s all.”

Annette nodded. Her big eyes were shining. She wanted to help the Wolf

now. That was all.

The Wolf took both her hands in his. They were small and smooth for all

their strength.

“Say, kid, you do want to help me?”

Suddenly Annette snatched her hands free and flung her arms about the

Wolf’s neck. She clung to him.

“Yes, yes,” she cried. “Anythin’ for you, Wolf. Anythin’--anythin’ at

all.”

The boy stooped and kissed the face so near to his. Then as the girl

still clung to him he released himself from her embrace.

“We got to be quick, kid,” he said without urgency. “It ain’t Pideau

worryin’. It’s the police. They’ll get along. Pideau’s played a fool

game, an’ we can’t stop around here. We got to beat it farther into the

hills. An’ we aren’t going to get more cattle. We’ll need to hustle for

pelts in the future, till--till---- Say----?”

He turned sharply to the inner room.

Annette followed him through the open doorway.

Minutes later Pideau at work amongst his cattle saw the queer little

procession. The tall youth was staggering under the burden of death.

And behind him came Annette carrying the necessary tools for a burial.

He watched them till they reached the river bank. He saw the Wolf

gently set his burden down. Then he turned back to his cattle and

morosely continued his work of feeding.

PART II

CHAPTER I

TEN YEARS OF PROSPERITY

Pideau Estevan had spent a busy morning in his long, low, iron-roofed

store at Buffalo Coulee, which for ten years had become the home of his

partnership with the Wolf.

It was the time of year when the prairie winter was the most uncertain.

Christmas and New Year’s had been left behind, but as yet there was

little easing of conditions and no sign of coming spring. There was

a momentary respite in the depths of cold, but that was all. The

temperature had been relaxed by a softening wind and the threat of snow.

Pideau’s busy morning had nothing to do with custom. Buffalo Coulee was

not buying. It was the time of year when local trade was practically

stagnated to the purchase of the barest necessities of life. He had

been distributing about his shelves a large shipment of new season’s

goods.

He hated the work of his store. Ten years of weighing, and measuring,

and endeavoring to retain his customers’ good will had inspired

him with an utter detestation of the work which bored his ruthless

temperament to extinction. He only submitted to it because it was his

share in a carefully considered plan which the Wolf and he had evolved

in their pursuit of fortune.

Now he was standing warming his body at the central stove, gazing at

the result of his work without a shadow of enthusiasm.

At last he moved away and passed down towards his open doorway, through

which no customer had passed since it had first been unfastened that

morning. His purpose was part of years of habit. He would lounge there

lazing until the cold or an arriving customer drove him back to his

counter.

There was nothing in the outlook to attract. Buffalo Coulee was a

primitive prairie township that had grown up as a whim of a handful of

settlers seeking some sort of companionship, and a community upon which

to centre their lives. Just now it consisted of an open space buried

under snow that was churned by sled-runners and the wheels of a few

decayed automobiles, fringed about by a straggling of mean habitations

heavily encrusted with snow. There were no trees in view. The woods lay

somewhere behind the store where the solidly frozen river was wrapped

in its winter slumber. There were, however, the tattered crests of the

distant mountains beyond the houses. And over all the gray dour of a

leaden sky.

Pideau concerned himself with none of these things as he approached

his doorway. His gaze became focussed on the instant upon two figures

standing at the gateway in the lateral log fence surrounding the

police quarters on the far side of the town. A man and a girl were

there talking together.

For a moment Pideau remained in full view. Then he drew back and

partially closed the door. For some reason he had become desirous of

remaining unseen. The sight had stirred him to the profoundest anger.

It was Annette, now grown to full womanhood, and Constable Ernest

Sinclair of the Mounted Police.

In the ten years since Pideau had abandoned the mountains for the open

life of the prairie the change in his fortunes was considerable. The

man himself was incapable of change, except possibly in his outward

appearance. In that he had done his best to disguise the hill tough and

cattle thief, and not without a measure of success. But there were so

many features that admitted of no disguise and would dog him to the end

of his days.

His color--nothing could alter that, even though he had introduced

himself to the luxury of a daily application of horse soap and water.

Then his eyes--those beady, snapping eyes, which never really smiled,

whatever his mood. They would remain a permanent indication of the man

behind them.

Prosperity, however, had made some outward impression. It had forced on

him a limited concern for at least some of the decencies of life. His

lank hair was no longer a greasy mat. His beard was trimmed close to

his brutish face and looked clean. Then his greasy buckskin had given

place to store tweeds. And a weekly, clean, variegated shirt produced a

striking contrast against the dark skin where its rolled sleeves left

his dusky forearms bare.

The man was consumed with greed for money. It had always been so. And

it was his money hunger that had made him grudgingly yield to a show of

uplift. He had forced himself, in the prosecution of his schemes, to

avoid outraging the community in which he had pitched his camp. He had

for ten years contrived to fling dust in the eyes of those with whom he

contacted in Buffalo Coulee. And even the watchful eyes of the police,

in the person of Constable Ernest Sinclair, had failed to discover the

full depths of his iniquities.

A storm was raging behind the man’s eyes as he watched the two figures

at the police quarters. Annette was a beautiful woman, and the only

spark of humanity in Pideau made him glad of her. Those two were

philandering. He knew. It had been going on for months. His girl

was philandering with a red-coat! To Pideau the thought was simply

maddening. Anyone else, no matter who, amongst his civilian neighbors,

would have given him no concern whatever. But a red-coat!

But then Annette had developed as she had been bound to do. The beauty

of her mother had come to her, just as she had inherited through

those channels which had created Pideau, himself. The result was no

easy blending. She was alive with headlong, passionate impulse; she

possessed a spirit of unthinking recklessness; all the sex in her was

a demonstration of her mixed blood. She knew no authority but her own

will and dismissed the father, who had once purposed to destroy her,

from her consideration. She went her own headlong way and only served

the plans of her menfolk in so far as they did not clash with her own.

Suddenly Pideau spat and turned from the sight that infuriated him. And

as he did so a man approached his door, and a cheerful voice greeted

him.

“It’s thirst, Pideau. The thirst of a desert! I’m going right across to

hew old Amos Smith. Give me support. The biggest, yellowest schooner of

lager your capacious, if reprehensible cellar, can provide. Thank the

good Lord we Canadians aren’t quite dry yet. Thank the good Lord for a

disreputable Pideau.”

Doctor Alec Fraser was tall, and fair, and new to the prairie. He was

not long from the hospitals and unmarried. He was more than welcome in

Buffalo Coulee for other reasons than his medical skill. The township

had never before had a doctor of its own, and Fraser came as something

of a luxury.

With the collar of his fur coat flung back, and the heavy garment

itself unfastened, Doctor Fraser was eyeing Pideau behind his counter,

over the rim of the schooner pouring its cool amber liquid down his

throat.

“That’s good stuff, Pideau,” he said with a sigh of content, as he set

his glass down on the counter. “It’s better than--‘homebrew,’” he added

slyly.

Pideau shot a suspicious glance at his visitor who vaulted to a seat on

the counter.

“Ther’s worse’n ‘homebrew’ under Prohibition,” he growled.

“Is there?”

Fraser laughed and shook his head.

“Never on your life!” he went on. “There’s nothing out of hell worse.

‘Homebrew’s’ sending half the States crazy.”

Pideau shrugged. He leaned back against his newly arranged shelves.

“That don’t need to worry us across here,” he retorted. “They’ll pay

big money for all they can get of it. They lap it up same as if they

was weaned on it. You can’t blame folks makin’ it to sell ’em. Blame

the crazy guys who threw a hand fer Prohibition. I’d drink the salt

of the sea if you made it I mustn’t. ’Tain’t our worry. I’d feed ’em

prussic acid if they’d pay me fer it.”

The doctor’s eyes hardened.

“I believe you would.”

“Would? Sure! It’s their funeral.”

“Yes.”

Fraser glanced down the store. It was not really any matter of drink

that had brought him there.

“I’m wondering about that bright police boy across the way,” he said

abruptly. “When’s he going to pull you and your Wolf partner?”

Pideau looked up. He shot a swift glance into the serious eyes watching

him.

“Never,” he growled shortly.

“No? You’re wrong,” Fraser went on contemplatively. “He’ll pull your

Wolf anyway. He’s hot on the work. He’s looking for quick promotion.

And he sees it in your Wolf, and his ‘homebrew.’ That boy’s yearning.”

Fraser eyed the unlovely creature behind his counter. He had no liking

for the half-breed. He understood him too well. But he was not thinking

of Pideau. He was not even thinking of the Wolf. He was thinking of the

girl he had seen talking out there in the cold, dallying with the man,

Sinclair, over the fence. And she was the sole cause of his visit to

the store.

“Let him yearn,” Pideau cried roughly. “I don’t care a curse.” He shook

his ugly bullet head. “Here, doc,” he went on bestirring, “I know you.

We ken talk like men. That boy’s welcome. He’ll never locate our cache.

We folk, the Wolf Pack, as you around here call us, came to Buffalo

Coulee ten years back fer jest one thing. We’re needin’ good American

dollars, an’ we know how to get ’em. We ain’t crooks agin our law.

We’re jest here to feed them crazy Prohibitioners all the booze they’re

yearnin’ to pay for. And they’re payin’ good. We’re goin’ right on

doin’ it. Ther’s no law yet agin it. Let him yearn.”

“But there’s ‘homebrew.’”

“You mean the makin’?”

“Yes. There’s a pretty severe penalty for making that dope, or any

other poison, up in the hills--if they get you in the act. If you boys

shipped in bonded liquor, the right stuff that didn’t do more than

make a feller glad, and sold it at a swell profit down south, there’d

be no kick beyond that the Prohibition officers could pass you. But

a poison still, ’way up in the hills, is different. If they get you

making ‘homebrew’ it’s right up against good Canadian law. And one day

you’ll all be sitting around in penitentiary wishing you hadn’t. The

police aren’t Prohibition officers. There’s no graft to them. They’re

right out after their jobs, and there’s no human bunch I know can do it

better. One day your play will end suddenly. And I think I’ll be sorry.”

“Why?” Pideau laughed unsmilingly.

Fraser gestured.

“Why ’ud you feel that way?” Pideau asked, a little eagerly, thinking

of Annette and estimating this white doctor who was unmarried.

Fraser’s gaze turned on the far door of the store.

“Because I’ll be sorry when that girl of yours hasn’t her menfolk

around to see she don’t skid.”

“You mean--Sinclair?”

“Certain, sure. That feller’s a good policeman but that’s all. He’s

tough on dames. Doesn’t it worry you seeing a girl kid of yours

standing over a fence, on a cold winter day, dallying with him? If I

was a father, with a girl of mine falling for that boy, I’d get the

best shotgun dollars could buy, and all the shells belonging to it.

You’re taking a big chance. A hell of a chance. I just hate to see it.

She’s a kid. She’s a babe--in a way.”

Fraser paused, and thrust his cap back from his brow. He saw the fierce

smoulder in Pideau’s eyes.

“Say,” he went on, “I said Sinclair was tough on dames. It’s not

enough. There was Molly Gros. You remember. I had to bring her kid into

the world for her. She was a half-breed and a goodlooker. But nothing

to your swell girl. Poor little devil, she never opened her mouth.

She quit without giving him away. I did my best to make her talk. I’d

have had him up to Calford and seen he got his promotion in the neck.

The swine! But she wouldn’t say. She was all for him. And now she’s

traipsing the world with his kid, deserted, alone. Tcha! It sets me

crazy thinking. If Annette belonged me I’d see he didn’t get within ten

miles of her.”

Pideau leaned over his counter. His eyes were hot as they looked up

into the doctor’s face.

“If she belonged you, doc, you’d jest have to stand around cursin’ the

p’lice the same as me, an’ leavin’ it there,” he snarled. “Without

that shotgun a fool father don’t cut ice. Annette? When that kid’s on

the jump ther’ ain’t the man born who could hold her.”

“Not even the Wolf, if he stopped around instead of making poison up in

the hills?”

Pideau’s gaze broke away.

“The Wolf might keep her clear of Sinclair,” Fraser persisted.

“You think so?” Pideau shook his head decidedly. “I’d be glad for

someone else to do it tho’.” Then his manner became eager. “You see, I

ken fix her good--dollars.”

There was no mistaking his meaning. The doctor suddenly slid himself

from the counter and hastily began to fasten his coat. Pideau watched

him for a moment or two, and the eagerness died out of him. He turned

to his shelves, and the back of his bullet head, with its coarse black

hair growing low on the nape of his neck, came under the other’s

consideration.

Then came a sound. It was the padding of moccasins down the store.

Pideau turned an ear.

“The Wolf,” he said.

“From the hills?”

The doctor was smiling.

“I didn’t say,” snapped Pideau.

“No. Well, I guess I’ll get right over to Amos Smith.”

Pideau watched him go. And friendliness gave place to something else in

his look as he gazed after him.

* * * * *

Pideau and the Wolf were standing with the counter between them.

“Wal?”

The half-breed’s question came in a tone that conveyed no welcome.

The Wolf looked up from the granulated tobacco he was rolling into a

cigarette.

“Five hundred gallons,” he said.

He spoke quietly, and his eyes wore their unmeaning smile as he twisted

the ends of his paper and set his cigarette between his lips.

Pideau breathed deeply. In a flash his whole expression had

transformed. Greed, incredulity, even satisfaction, had replaced the

look he had worn at Fraser’s going.

“Fi’ hundred gallons!” he echoed. Then came the inevitable. “You’re

lyin’! You couldn’t make it in the time!”

The Wolf moved away. He stood himself over against the stove, and lit

his cigarette.

The Wolf was good to look at. His hard, rough clothing and well-worn,

fur-lined pea-jacket gave him an air. He looked capacity, energy,

resolve, in every line of figure and feature.

He had fulfilled his early promise. In manhood he was superbly grown.

He was big. He was large of bone and muscle, yet of a slim grace that

suggested almost feline activity. His face was clean-cut without

great beauty. His nose was too Indian in its sharp aquilinity. His

cheek bones were a shade too prominent. But his expression more than

compensated. His dark eyes contained the wonderful smile which Nature

had fixed there when she moulded them.

He stood regarding his partner behind the counter. And Pideau returned

his look with eyes that shone inscrutably. The Wolf’s announcement was

incredible to him because of his desire that it should be true.

He searched the youth’s face while he waited. And strangely enough his

profoundest dislike and distrust of his partner was uppermost in his

mind. He should have been glad. He should have warmed to the man. He

should have been grateful. For it was the genius of the Wolf that had

brought him prosperity and poured the dollars he loved into his greedy

hands.

But in ten years of association Pideau had known no peace of mind, no

content. Unease was the keynote of his life with the Wolf. He had never

been able to rid himself of his original suspicions. And now they had

become an obsession. From the beginning the Wolf had been a threatening

shadow brooding over his life. Now he gazed at him with the desperate

feeling with which a devastating storm about to break might have

inspired him. He never looked at the Wolf without the memory that his

partner held over him the power of life and death.

The half-breed’s weakness had grown with the years. Violent, inhuman,

ready murderer as he was, cowardice had completely undermined such

manhood as he had originally possessed. In years of association with

the fearlessness and confidence of the Wolf it had fallen away like

a hill mist before a rising sun. There was not a single day that had

passed, since the Wolf had set his authority at defiance, that Pideau

had not regretted his failure to defy the merciless gun which the boy

had levelled at him while he claimed his right to bury the dead Luana.

Even now, as the man calmly smoked beside the wood stove, with every

sign of their prosperity surrounding him, Pideau remembered more

poignantly than ever that the Wolf knew!

But never was a spectre more surely a figment of distorted imagination.

The Wolf had neither desire nor intent to take advantage of his

knowledge of Pideau’s early crimes. Pideau to him was just a necessary

evil in his life. He was an unlovely cross which he must bear. He was

Annette’s father. Then, of lesser importance, the Wolf could never

forget that shelter had been afforded him, however hatefully, in

the days when he could not help himself. It was Pideau who had made

possible his early childhood.

The Wolf spread his hands to the warmth.

“I shut her down at that,” he said. “It’s ther’, kegged. The liquor.

It’s ready fer the teams right away. An’ we need to act quick.”

He sucked his cigarette and inhaled. Then a faint cloud of smoke

escaped his nostrils.

“Teams?”

Pideau’s question was sharp. The Wolf nodded.

“It’ll mean two trips else,” he said. “The folks down ther’ are

shoutin’ fer it. Their dollars are good. You got to make the trade this

time--alone.”

“Alone? What’s the play?”

“Ther’s no play.” The Wolf shook his head.

Pideau licked his lips. The other’s cool manner of authority maddened

him.

“Quick, ain’t you?” he growled. “Why not you, too, same as we always

fix it? Five hundred ain’t a one-man play. Are you startin’--another

five hundred?”

“No, I’m not.”

The Wolf turned. With a fierce gesture he flung his cigarette away and

trod it underfoot. Then he came to the counter, and Pideau saw the

transformation. The eyes he was looking into were the eyes that had

once faced him over the sights of a rifle.

“You’ll run those cargoes,” the Wolf said, but without any change of

tone. “I stop right here in town.”

“Why?”

Pideau leaned over the counter, his folded arms supporting him. The

Wolf’s control came back to him and he sought his tobacco.

“She’s there with Sinclair,” he said frigidly. “I’ve just seen her.

She’s still with him. I’m goin’ to stop it.”

“How?”

The Wolf shrugged. But his movement carried no conviction.

“That’s for me,” he said. “It’s enough to say it’s goin’ to stop.

You’re her father. You know Sinclair. Yet you just stand around. Well,

I know Sinclair, too. Maybe I’ll stop around. But I’ll fix things--the

way you haven’t.”

Pideau’s eyes blazed.

“An’ what ken you do?” he snarled. “Ken you jump in? Ken you set a man

an’ a gal actin’ diff’rent when life looks good to ’em? Who’re you to

do it, anyway? Hev you right? Is Annette your woman? Is she the sort

to set around an’ say ‘Yes’? Not on your fool life.” Pideau held up a

clenching hand. “She’s got you right there, an’ she’ll squeeze till

you gasp for your man’s crazy life. Get busy. See an’ try to stop her.

She’ll beat you like a kid, an’ set you with your face to the wall.”

The man’s harsh scorn was withering. But the Wolf smiled maddeningly

into his face.

“You’re forgettin’ Sinclair,” he said soberly.

Pideau’s eyes bored.

“He’s a p’liceman,” he snapped.

“It don’t matter the way he’s dressed.”

Pideau sucked in a whistling breath.

“You daresn’t!”

The half-breed’s challenge came in a hoarse whisper. The thing

in his mind seemed to him to be too good to be true--the

Wolf--Sinclair--Annette. Fierce glee had replaced every other emotion.

If the Wolf took a hand----

He breathed deeply and waited.

“You don’t get it, Pideau,” the Wolf said quietly. “I’m your pardner,

and you’ve to play your hand right now. You’ve got to run those cargoes

while I stop around here. I’m goin’ to marry Annette. Get that firm in

your mind. She belongs me. She’s always belonged me, right from the

days we scratched dirt together ’way back in the hills. Do you think

that scum Sinclair’s goin’ to take her from me? Do you? I’d think you

knew better. Just make your mind up, Annette’s fer me. Annette’s my

little play-girl, an’ she’s goin’ to be my wife. Ther’s nothin’ out o’

hell to stop it.”

The Wolf refastened his coat, stuck his cigarette into the corner of

his mouth, and lit it. Then his smile became a laugh, and he turned

and moved off swiftly in the direction of the door of the store.

Pideau watched him go. His mood was jubilant. But before the other had

reached the door his joy had departed.

His suspicious mind was at work again. Suddenly he beheld everything in

a different light. The Wolf’s threat. It was not only against the man,

Sinclair. What did his last words mean? It was plain, quite plain. They

could only have one meaning. The youth had delivered an ultimatum. It

was an ultimatum to him, Annette’s father. He had demanded that Annette

should be his wife. And he, Pideau, must do his share in achieving that

end.