SCHEMING
Annette was standing at the window of the living-room. She was alone
and glad to be so. Never in her life had she been more thankful for
solitude and the shadows about her.
The room was in darkness, except for the ruddy glow under the damper
of the wood stove. Beyond the window it was inky black, for night
had fallen, and a silent, windless snowstorm was burying the prairie
outside under a new white shroud.
The girl’s day had been long and difficult. She had found it prolonged
purgatory.
After those swift-moving events about noon the period of waiting and
dissembling had taxed Annette’s impatient nature to the uttermost. But
she had forced herself to endure. She had smiled on her father, and
even more upon the Wolf. She had ministered to them and watched them
eat the frugal meals it was her work to prepare. And she had betrayed
nothing. With all her strength she had struggled that no suspicion
should find place in the minds of her menfolk. Now, now at last, she
was free, and there was no longer need of disguise.
Her eyes were shining with a cold, hard reflection of the ruddy
firelight. Her cheeks were drawn by the set of her jaws. Her lips were
pressed tight, so that her breathing dilated her delicate nostrils.
Annette was never more the untamed half-breed than at that moment.
The hot blood in her veins was as full of mad impulse as a freshet in
springtime.
But Annette’s passionate mood was not all that the firelight revealed.
There was something else. Deep in her soul something was striving for
place, something which no resolve could altogether shut out. It was not
doubt. It was not weakness. Yet it conveyed something of them both.
Unhappiness? Possibly. Or was it grief? Whatever it was the result was
there in a queer dissatisfied frown which marred the even marking of
her brows. In another woman that frown would surely have indicated the
nearness of tears. But Annette had known no tears since childhood.
But softer emotions were resolutely dealt with. Annette was too surely
a young human animal; she was too surely bred of debased and calamitous
stock to yield to the gentler spirit of her sex. She was potential for
good or evil in just such measure as those who claimed her affections
were powerful to influence her. And just now her whole desire was for
the man Ernest Sinclair, and to do his bidding.
Sinclair’s bidding! But Annette saw nothing of its enormity. She was
blind to everything but the bait which the man had held out to her.
Her faith, her credulity, these were the woman in her. Her lack of all
scruple was a reaction of the unlovely father she was called upon to
betray.
Standing there in the play of the firelight, Annette’s thought flowed
on unchecked, unguided. Her frown remained. And that which struggled so
vainly for place in her soul continued its impotent striving.
At last her thought settled, and she found herself gazing upon a mental
picture of the Wolf. And as she gazed an angry, scornful, half smile
drove the frown from her face.
Memory was astir. It was memory of that which had passed between them
only that morning. The man’s violence. His hectoring. His disregard of
anything she might desire or feel. He was a fool. A vain, crazy fool,
whose confidence ran away with him. Well, he would soon learn where his
vanity was to lead him.
Penitentiary! She thought of it coldly, grimly. The Wolf. Why not?
Oh, it would serve him right. She wondered. What sentence would the
Court pass on him when she delivered him into Sinclair’s hands? She
remembered the men’s talk when considering their risk. Five years. It
had always been of five years in penitentiary.
Five years! They would both get five years. A shiver passed through
her body. But she did not pause. Penitentiary for her father had no
power to quicken a single pulse beat. He was of no account in her
life in spite of his affection for her. But the Wolf was different.
The fate of the Wolf could never be a matter of indifference to her.
She told herself fiercely that she hated him too much for that. She
assured herself of the satisfaction his penalty would give her. She was
glad. Very glad. It would break his conceit. It would smash his crazy
insolence. It would be the ending of their long drawn-out conflict with
victory, complete victory, for her.
She sighed.
But her sigh was gone on the instant. She could still feel the hurt of
the Wolf’s crushing fingers, first on her arms, then on the soft flesh
of her shoulders. Then the brutal way he had hurled her from him, as if
she were something he hated and loathed.
Marry him? Marry the Wolf? Would she? Never, never, never! He could go
to penitentiary. It would be she who sent him there, not Sinclair. And
after five years, when he came out, she would be a wife. Ernie Sinclair
would be her husband, the father of her child. And maybe even, by that
time, the Wolf would find her crowned by a generous motherhood.
It would be triumph. What a triumph for all he had done to her. Yes, it
certainly would be a triumph.
But even as Annette thought of her triumph that queer stirring in the
deep of her heart became more insistent, and her pretty brows frowned
the more surely.
It was at that moment it came. That which she had been awaiting. It
was a light shining through the snowfall outside. The office window
of the store had lit up. And she knew that the Wolf and Pideau had
foregathered to complete their plans for the conveyance of those five
hundred gallons of liquor.
She turned from her window. She picked up her fur coat. She clad
herself against the storm. Then, closing down the stove damper for
safety, she passed out of the home of the wolf pack.
* * * * *
Pideau was lounging back in his hard square chair in the office of
the store. His ill-shod feet were thrust up on the desk which was
the repository for such accountings as his partnership with the Wolf
necessitated. His mood was more than usually suspicious. He was
chewing, and the cuspidor, more than a yard away from him, testified
revoltingly to his habit.
The Wolf was in happier heart than he had known for a long time. He
was contentedly smoking, sprawled in a low rocker-chair. He understood
Pideau. He read the working of his mind beyond all doubt, and it
disturbed him not at all.
The half-breed, however, was in a dangerous mood. Suspicion with him
was symptomatic. It was always a danger signal. He was guessing and
disturbed. The Wolf had left him that noon a potential killer. Now
killing never seemed farther from his mind.
He knew the Wolf had searched out Annette after leaving him. He had
made it his business to know all the Wolf’s movements. He knew their
meeting had been violently stormy. Then why this change? Why had hours
passed, and the Wolf made no attempt to carry out his threat? The
position had not changed. Sinclair was still Annette’s lover.
Pideau’s temper was on edge. The Wolf was still the Wolf of old to him.
He was still the one witness of his own earlier crimes.
Pideau spat with a splash.
“Well?” he demanded, his ill humor never less disguised.
The Wolf sucked his cigarette and pondered the face before him.
“Guess we need to make our plans right away,” he said after a while.
“The liquor needs to go right off to-morrow night for a clean-up. I
fixed it eight o’clock. That’s to hand us the best of the night to get
through. Ther’s no moon. If it storms, the better. We’ll have to get
right back before daylight.”
“We?”
Pideau was startled. And the Wolf, as he watched him, noted the sparkle
of his eyes.
“Yes,” he said, “I make the trip with you after all.”
“Why?”
The Wolf pitched the stump of his cigarette away, and pulled out his
tobacco sack.
“You guessed it was a two-man job--five hundred gallons,” he said
quietly.
“An’ you didn’t.”
“No, you put me wise.” The Wolf’s laugh was derisive.
“Guess you need to tell me,” Pideau said sharply. “It’s one thing now,
an’ another when your belly eases.”
“Sure!” The Wolf was intent on the cigarette he was rolling. “Talk’s
waste. I’m goin’ to make the cache, an’ haul those kegs ready. You’ll
make the creek bank under the bluff with the teams, an’ I’ll tote ’em
over. That’ll be eight to-morrow night. You best have Pete an’ Kat with
the teams. They’re red hot in a scrap. Then you’ll be in one sled, an’
me in the other, an’ we’ll pick up the O’Hagan bunch at the border to
hand over, an’ pouch the stuff. O’Hagan’s had word and is crazy for the
dope. He’s wanting it bad. Say,” he paused. And the smile in his eyes
hardened to a glitter, “when O’Hagan’s yearnin’ he needs watchin’ most.
We’ll need a bunch of guns. A whole blamed arsenal. That boy ’ud shoot
up his dying mother for the gold in her teeth.”
While the Wolf talked Pideau made no sign. He just listened to his
orders without any change of expression. But he was still guessing.
He nodded. Then he suddenly turned an ear. The movement was so apparent
that the Wolf gave a final twist to his cigarette and thrust it quickly
to his mouth, and searched in the direction of Pideau’s gaze.
“What’s up?” he asked after a moment.
For answer Pideau’s feet came down from the desk without a sound. He
stood up. He passed swiftly to the door, and opened it noiselessly and
peered through a narrow aperture. Then he passed out, closing the door
gently behind him.
The Wolf remained where he was smoking. But he watched the door through
which his partner had passed.
Presently Pideau returned. The Wolf asked no question. He sat eyeing
him.
“Tho’t I heard someone movin’ around in the store,” Pideau said quietly
when he had closed the door. “But--I’d say I was wrong. Maybe it’s the
darn rats chasing the crackers an’ cheese.”
He sat down, and his feet again went up on to the desk. The Wolf
watched him bite at his black tobacco plug but offered no comment.
For some moments there was complete silence, and Pideau’s face was
heavy with thought. Then his eyes snapped.
“That stuff’s all right,” he growled suddenly. “It’s the usual play,
only two teams. But I got to know the other boy. What’s the big thing?
You cooled off, ain’t you? You ain’t killin’ Sinclair? Maybe that don’t
seem the joy it did? Annette? You aren’t worried fer her any more? She
turned you down? Or hev you jest--weakened? You wer’ stoppin’ around to
kill Sinclair. It was a swell talk of killin’ you handed me. I was a
fool. I figgered you’d the guts. I’d ought to’ve guessed better.”
The Wolf’s easy humor was impervious to the jibe. He laughed.
“Maybe the father would like good to have me do the killin’ that
rightly belongs him.”
“It was you talked killin’.”
Pideau’s eyes sparkled angrily.
“Yes.”
“An’ now?” Pideau threw into his manner all that was foulest in him.
“Sinclair’s leave-over’s good enough without a kick, eh? I surely made
a poor guess.”
The Wolf gestured.
“It don’t matter what you guessed, Pideau,” he said coldly. “It’s
wrong, anyway. Cut out the ‘leave-over’ though. Ther’ ain’t no
‘leave-over’ where Annette’s concerned. Annette’s the greatest thing
ever stepped this crazy wilderness. An’ I don’t know how it comes she
belongs a father like you. I’d kill Sinclair same as I’d kill you, if
either of you hurt body or soul of Annette. You can get that right now.
Annette’s cut Sinclair out fer me. Fer me! Do you get that, too? Ther’s
no sort of need fer a killin’ now--none. I’m not goin’ around killin’
police boys fer pastime or to hand you joy.”
The Wolf looked for an outburst. But Pideau only shook his bullet head.
“She cut him out fer you?” he scorned. “She can’t!”
The Wolf’s eyes glittered.
“Why?”
“Molly Gros.”
The Wolf stood up. It was almost as though a spring had been released
under him. He stood there, his tongue passing slowly across his lips.
Then his jaws shut tight with a snap. His eyes were blazing. And the
manner in which he searched the face confronting him stirred a deep
feeling of unease in the pit of the half-breed’s stomach.
Just for a few moments the lash of his fury beat upon the Wolf’s brain.
Then the crisis passed.
He turned away. He moved swiftly to the door. It was flung open. Then
it closed behind him with a slam, and the Wolf was gone.
Pideau made no move to leave his seat. He remained precisely where
the Wolf had left him with his feet thrust up on the desk. The only
difference was that now he was staring thoughtfully at the empty
rocker-chair. He was considering the Wolf’s refusal to kill Sinclair.
Pideau had built on it. Pideau had seen murder in the Wolf’s eyes that
noon. And the sight had rejoiced him as could nothing else on earth. He
had believed then that at long last the shadow of the Wolf was to be
removed from his life.
So in his disappointment the man pondered morosely. He searched the
position through and through, and it took him hours.
But his work was not unfruitful. And there was something like a smile
in his wicked eyes when he finally left the store. In the long hours he
had sat there he had solved several problems. And among them was that
one which related to “rats chasing the crackers and cheese.”