THE MARCH OF EVENTS
Annette returned to the home of the wolf pack in a desperate mood. She
was terrified.
It was a small frame house on one floor only, standing in the shadow
of the iron-roofed store. It contained three sleeping rooms, a
living-room, and adjoining the main building was a lean-to kitchen
place.
It was an abode without any refinement. It had all the makeshift of
those whose culture belongs to the primitive. It was the only sort of
home which Pideau understood. And his had been the provision of it and
its designing, on their first arrival in Buffalo Coulee.
It had been improved not one iota since that time, in spite of an
abounding prosperity. Its whole furnishing was of the crudest. And its
decorations were a survival through years of rough use and comparative
disregard for cleanliness. It possessed, too, that unclean atmosphere
which no half-breed habitation ever escapes.
Annette flung the door closed behind her to cut off the stream of cold
that might well have had good effect upon the stale human atmosphere
of the place. It was the careless, violent act of a mind distraught.
She crossed the living-room, which was littered with the evidence
of her menfolk. And, passing a second door, she slammed that behind
her as well, and sighed relief as she gazed about her at the familiar
surroundings of her own sleeping room.
A moment or two later her fur cap was lying on the patchwork coverlet
of her bed, and her coat was tumbled beside it.
She moved across to the makeshift dressing chest which was still the
same piece of furniture which had served her in childhood. Its only
development since that time was its litter of toilet articles, which
from time to time had been bestowed upon her by the Wolf. It was truly
a litter, in which was displayed none of that pride and refinement
of taste usually associated with a woman of youth and real beauty.
Everything remained just where its user had chanced to set it down.
The girl gazed at her reflection in the cheap swing mirror. It was no
act of vanity, it was in no sense a desire to admire the wonderful
dark-haired reflection she discovered there. It was a simple expression
of her mood; an involuntary impulse which had no other meaning than to
supply her with an object upon which to concentrate while she thought.
Annette was breathing quickly as she stood there. She made no effort to
conceal her agitation here in the privacy of her own room. Her brain
was almost reeling.
She knew she was face to face with a real crisis. And she knew the
magnitude of it. In whatever direction she looked, from whatever angle,
the position was always the same. Motherhood was hers. Only was it a
question of time before it was physically accomplished. The future--her
future--the whole of everything that counts in a woman’s life was
trembling in the balance.
She wanted to think. She told herself she must think with all her
might, but coldly, calmly. She must leave all feeling out. She must
beat down all emotion.
In practice, however, none of these things were possible to her. It was
not real thought that came to her. Only a headlong tumbling of feeling
and emotion which urged her blindly and without reason.
Then came the Wolf.
It was a sound in the living-room. It was the padding of moccasined
feet on a boarded floor. And, in a moment, Annette found herself back
in the living-room with her slim back turned to the comforting wood
stove and confronting the smiling creature whose undesired presence
spurred her further to hasty impulse.
The Wolf’s eyes were frigid.
“Say,” Annette greeted him, “Pideau didn’t reckon you’d be along back
for days yet. What’s brought you?”
The ungraciousness was more than usually accentuated. Annette had no
thought for their years of childhood together. Only she remembered her
bitter antagonism and her present need. Her lips closed tightly over
her words, giving them the sharpness to which the Wolf was accustomed.
The only sign in the man was a deep intake of breath.
He saw the girlhood he worshipped under its simple covering of silk,
and a brief, knee-length cloth skirt that revealed flesh-hued stockings
below it, and he was satisfied. It was all sufficient. Annette’s moods
were her own. They were of no serious matter. He knew them all. He had
known them in her as a babe. He knew them no less in the grown woman.
He accepted her now as he would have accepted the wayward child of
years ago. It was only the man with whom he had seen her who would
learn the measure of the devil that was driving him.
“I’m through,” he said. He unbuttoned his coat and began to roll
himself a cigarette. “There’s five hundred gallons standin’ ready for
the teams. It goes across to-morrow night.”
Annette was startled. But she watched the moving fingers, missing
nothing of the Wolf’s expression.
Her mind had leaped back to her lover, and the thing he had said to
her. It was almost like Fate. Five hundred gallons, the Wolf had said.
And it was to be passed across the border to-morrow night.
“Five hundred gallons?”
Her echo of the Wolf’s announcement was much in the manner of Pideau’s.
She watched the thrusting of the cigarette into the man’s mouth, and
the lighting of it.
“It’s a swell bunch,” he observed easily. “It’s the biggest brew yet.”
He inhaled deeply. Then he gestured with an expressive hand. “I’ll
run you into Calford so you can make a big buy for yourself out of
my share. That’s right after to-morrow night, when we’ve pouched the
dollars, an’ got away with it.”
Annette regarded him in silence. She saw in him the most picturesque
creature in Buffalo Coulee. His tall figure, his dark, intelligent
eyes. His clean-cut features and shining black hair. But then there was
his manner, his maddening assurance. Now, as always, it stirred the
flame of her stormiest resentment.
The Wolf looked for no gratitude, and found none. Annette occupied his
whole soul. It was not only his privilege to minister to her pleasure,
it was not simply a right, a happiness; it was his most treasured duty.
She was Annette. She was utterly desirable. She was a deep feminine
mystery that fired his every sense, and made him glad. She was his
whole worship. All his being was centred on that sublime ultimate which
he intended should be theirs.
For the rest? What did it matter that she preferred to anger him? Then
her power to hurt was infinite. However she drove him, however deeply
she hurled him into the abyss of soul-despair, it was all a part of
the transcendent whole of his man’s adoration.
But Annette’s manner abruptly changed. It became eager. She forgot her
desire to hurt.
“Say, boy,” she cried eagerly. “You must have run the old tank night
an’ day.”
The Wolf nodded.
“Sure. I needed to get through quick.”
“Why?”
“Why?” The Wolf glanced round. His gaze encountered the frost-rimmed
window. He could see through it a doubtful outline of the distant
police quarters. Then he jerked it out. “To get right back to--here.”
Annette ignored the significance of his reply.
“How’re you goin’ to handle such a dope of juice as that?” she asked
sharply. “You can’t make it in a single jump. An’ the trail’s red hot
with those who’re yearning. Five hundred gallons? You’ll never get away
with it. They’ll never let you pouch those dollars. How? Tell me.”
And the Wolf told her. He told her in rough outline without a shadow
of concern. He only withheld the hour of dispatch because it was not
yet settled. And Annette listened to him with all her ears. Again, she
forgot to scorn when he had finished. Her eyes simply hardened, and she
shook her head.
“Why leave it to Pideau?” she asked. “He hasn’t your slickness.”
Then she broke into a laugh. It was the return to the mocking and
jeering which were overdue.
“Say, you aren’t as wise as you reckon, boy. Not by a lot. Pideau?
Psha! Pideau’s a mule. An’ his sense is about equal. Five hundred? And
you’d risk a big bunch of money to his hands? If you mean to hand me
that buy in Calford you best tote the stuff yourself. If you’ve two
grains of sense in your fool head, that’s what you’ll do.”
“No!”
The Wolf flung the remains of his cigarette under the damper of the
stove. Then he rolled a fresh one. And while he considered the work of
his fingers his eyes grew hot. He was thinking of the man, Sinclair,
and the blood surged through his veins.
He lit his cigarette and it hung on his lower lip. Then he returned
his tobacco sack to his pocket and looked up. As his eyes encountered
hers, Annette read the challenge in them. Instantly she was caught in a
whirlwind of passion.
“Why?” she demanded roughly. Then she turned away to the stove with her
hands outheld to it.
But it was only for a second. The next moment she found herself flung
about with a force that nearly threw her off her balance. The eyes of
the Wolf were blazing as he gripped her and held her where she stood.
“Because ther’s a heap too much Sinclair to this fool township when
I’m out of it,” he cried savagely. “Say, if I thought Sinclair ’ud hit
my trail, an’ pull police med’cine on me, I’d trade the dope myself,
surely, an’ cut Pideau right out of the play. But he wouldn’t. With
me on the trail he’ll stop around here handin’ you all the stuff that
comes natural to his sort, the same as I found him to-day when I pulled
in from the hills. That’s why. Pideau’ll trade. I’ll stop around to see
Sinclair--don’t.”
The Wolf’s hold relaxed. It was as though his sudden storm had expended
itself. He flung the cigarette away and looked into the girl’s furious
face as she hurled the madness of her moment at him.
“Too much Sinclair?” she shrilled, striving for derision but
accomplishing only violence. “I’ll see all of Sinclair I fancy to. All!
You get that? I like Ernie Sinclair. I like him good. He’s a man. He’s
a decent police boy, an’ not a crook ‘homebrew’ runner. He’s not the
sort to brew poison up in the hills, an’ send folks raving crazy into
the bughouse down across the border for the rotten dollars they haven’t
more sense than to pass you. Who’re you? What sort of a man? You Wolf!
I’ll tell you,” she raved. “A no-account. A poor ‘stray’ roped by
the fool woman who stole you. God! I hate you! You ain’t a thing to
me. Nothin’. I wouldn’t stand for you a brother. You hear? I’ll see
Sinclair when I fancy. I’ll see him all I choose. If I feel that way
I’ll marry----”
“You won’t kid!”
The storm in the man broke again. The Wolf’s face was ashen against
his dark cap. Suddenly he leaped. It was like the noiseless spring of
a puma, so swift, so sudden. The girl was caught by her shoulders and
held by hands that crushed the flesh under them. And she stood there
struggling for release while the man’s passion burned in eyes that
seemed to be reading every secret of her soul.
“You won’t, kid,” the Wolf reiterated, through gritting teeth. “You’re
goin’ to quit him right away. I know him. You don’t. You can’t know
the scum he is. He isn’t for your sort. Only---- Say, you’re from the
hills, clean as God made you. You’re not Molly Gros. If he gets around
you after this, as sure as it’s snow-time in Buffalo Coulee, I’ll shoot
him to death so ther’ ain’t enough meat left over to make a burial.
That goes.”
The tenacious hands bruised mercilessly. Annette’s efforts to escape
were unavailing.
“Quit, kid,” the Wolf went on. “It’s just no sort of use kickin’. I’ve
got you now, an’ you’re goin’ to hear it all. I tell you ther’s only
room for me around you. Not another livin’ soul. I’ve told you that
years. I’ve told it ever since we fished together in the darn hills.
You’re goin’ to marry me whatever he thinks, whatever you think. I love
you. I love you to death. Say, I love you so I could beat the life out
of your beautiful body rather than see it for another. You ken rave
an’ shout. You ken claw with your darn mean hands. You ken raise all
the hell your dandy notions set you to. It don’t matter a curse. Not a
curse. Get it right now. Get it good. You’re mine. An’ you always will
be. Psha!”
The girl reeled and nearly fell on the blazing stove. It was a sweeping
gesture that came with the man’s final exclamation. It was the storm
of his passion finding physical outlet. It was the man swept by the
violence of the sex in him.
He stood there a wonderful figure of manly beauty, straight, and clean.
And his burning eyes never left the face of the girl. He saw the
violence behind it. He realized the fury in the heaving bosom for which
he yearned. He remained silent and waiting.
And Annette came at once. But it was a different Annette from that
which he knew. With superhuman effort the girl choked back the fury
that well-nigh strangled her. She even forced a smile. The Wolf stared
in amazement.
“Wolf!”
In place of anger there was something like humility. Then the smile
Annette had forced deepened. It looked even more real.
“I hadn’t thought you’d the guts, Wolf,” she said.
The man stared.
“No,” he said helplessly. “That’s how you’ve most always said.”
Annette nodded. Her smile broadened still further. But the sight of it
only gladdened the man when it should have warned him.
“I did it because I thought that way,” the girl went on humbly. She
drew a deep breath. “Say, I don’t care a curse for him. I never did. He
couldn’t ever be a thing in my life. I’m not Molly Gros.”
Reaction swept over the man.
“Say, kid, I’m--I’m sorry----”
He stood with his long arms outheld. But Annette shook her head.
“No, Wolf,” she said gently. “Not that. But--but you’re dead right.
There’ll be no more fool’ry and Sinclair. I’m thro’. It was a crazy
game, and I’d ought to’ve known better. He’s dirt when a woman’s
around, an’ I’m not looking for dirt.”
She sighed profoundly.
“Say, you can go right on an’ trade that dope yourself. I’m all for
that buy in Calford. An’--an’ I won’t get it if you trust father. Say,
boy, it’s a deal? Our trade’s bigger to me than even gettin’ you mad.
You go to it, an’ put that trade thro’. An’ I’ll swear to cut Sinclair
right out from between us--here an’ now.”
The Wolf had no learning. He only had his own understanding of loyalty
and love, and the invincible courage of utter fearlessness.
Annette had achieved with her smile what no raging could have done for
her. And she knew that that was so as she watched the Wolf pick up and
relight his cigarette.