THE BLOOD OF THEIR FOREFATHERS
“He’s taken him--the Wolf!”
Annette’s eyes were gloomy. Her cheeks seemed to have lost something
of their roundness, something of their youthful bloom. They were pale,
almost green in the yellow light of the smoky oil lamp. She stood in
the doorway of the little office at the back of the store, her swelling
bosom rising and falling stormily under her emotion. She was an
all-unconscious figure of tragedy.
Pideau merely glanced in her direction. His quick eyes took in the
picture, and, instantly, turned again to his stove. He was lounging in
a hard chair with his feet on the stove rail. Not for an instant did he
betray any feeling at the girl’s announcement. There was not even the
lift of his lowering brows to suggest further inquiry. The Wolf might
have been a stranger to him for the interest he displayed. Yet interest
was there. His reply was a growl.
“Best come right in an’ shut that darn door,” he said. He stooped and
set the stove damper wide open. “Did you shut the outer one, girl?”
Annette glanced over the littered room. Somehow it possessed even less
attraction for her than ever with her father its sole occupant. Her
eyes rested for a moment on the chair which the Wolf usually occupied.
There was something dreadful in its emptiness. She came at once to the
stove, closing the door behind her with a slam.
Pideau sat back in his chair again. His muscular body filled it to its
uttermost. His look expressed the man, no more, no less. But his eyes
were very active.
“It’s--Fyles?” he said. “Arrested him?”
Annette made no verbal response. There was just a nod.
“Why? What’s he got agin him? What’s he located?”
There was urgency in Pideau’s final question.
“He’s killed Ernie Sinclair!”
Annette had asked Sergeant Fyles for protection against her father.
She had given him the impression of real fear. Yet, within an hour of
leaving the police quarters, where she had seen the steel handcuffs
snapped upon the Wolf’s wrists, she was confronting her father with
the announcement of his partner’s arrest, risking all the chances of
whither her act might lead.
Annette was the daughter of Pideau. But her wit was supported, at
least, by courage. Reflection had told her of her necessity. In years
of association she had learned of her parent’s weaknesses as well as
his brutalities. She felt it safest, and easiest, for her to show him
that which had been done. She knew she had a deeper place in his life
than he would have admitted. Besides, she was not really afraid of him
and never had been. At least never since that moment, years ago, when
she and the Wolf had defied him together.
“I know.”
There was almost a grin on the face looking up into Annette’s.
“You know?”
Pideau turned to the tin lamp with its dirty chimney.
“Yes. He showed it me.” Pideau nodded at the lamp. “Guess it was at our
getaway with the liquor. I was waitin’ around at the bluff with the
team. An’ he came along in a hurry. He took me right over to the cache.”
“He told you he’d--killed him?”
There was incredulity as well as a dash of awe in the girl’s manner.
Pideau’s head shook.
“His gun was lyin’ right ther’ wher’ he’d flung it--beside Sinclair. I
showed him. He just grinned.”
“He admitted?”
Again Pideau denied. His eyes were snapping.
“He said he hadn’t.”
There was a sudden flaming in Annette’s cheeks.
“But he had! He did!” she cried stridently.
“I know.” Pideau’s tone became his surliest. His eyes were on the
stove again. “The Wolf’s gun didn’t make the cache on its own two feet.
Guns ain’t that way. It can’t pull its own darn trigger. A police
boy don’t get shot up ’cos a gun’s lying around. It needs the feller
belongin’ it behind it, handlin’ it right. The Wolf shot up Sinclair.
Oh, yes. Did he tell you? How did you know?”
While Pideau was growling out his argument Annette was looking into
his unlovely face. But she was gazing through and beyond it. She was
looking at the pictures her mind conjured. But his question brought her
back on the instant.
“I saw,” she said. “I went along, an’ I saw. Sinclair was dead--stone
dead, an’ the Wolf’s gun shot him. One shot. Just one shot--from
behind. Like you, I saw.”
“You wer’ ther at the cache? What for?” Pideau’s challenge rapped out
harshly.
Annette flung up her head.
“Ernie Sinclair meant to beat your play. Your’s an’ the Wolf’s!”
“You sent him?” The man’s retort spat fiercely.
“Well?”
Tense moments swept by. For Annette they were moments of crisis. She
saw the storm and was waiting, watching. Pideau? Who could tell?
“Why?”
Pideau’s monosyllable was the girl’s cue.
“Because Ernie was my man. Mine. You understand? I bin his woman.”
Pideau drew a deep breath. He aimed a vicious kick at the stove damper,
closing it with a clatter. Then he stared down at the red-hot patch in
the stove’s iron top.
“It’s good the Wolf shot him,” he snarled.
“Is it? The Wolf’ll know about it later.”
Pideau made no reply. He continued to stare at the red-hot patch. His
eyes were hidden and his face told nothing of that which was going on
within his bullet head.
Again Annette was gazing through and beyond him. Suddenly the man
looked up. A sound broke from him.
“An’ you sent him to the rope?”
His words came harshly, but without feeling. They were simply
provocative.
Annette was fighting the woman in her with all the ugliness of her
mixed breed. She had sent the Wolf, her childhood’s playmate, the man
who had killed the father of her unborn child, to the rope. But the fog
of the battle cleared swiftly, and victory remained with the side that
had been bound to win from the first.
“An’ I’m glad!”
Pideau noted the vicious snap of the reply.
“Maybe it’ll hand me penitentiary, too,” he protested, without real
apprehension.
The girl’s retort was instant.
“Not on your life,” she said. “An’ you know it. You’re too hot for the
Wolf, an’ the p’lice. It’s always bin that way. I know. An’ you know.
Guess you’ve seen to it there ain’t a thing at the cache to fix you.
The p’lice can get it all. But not you. Only the fool Wolf. An’ you’ll
gamble on his not squealin’. You can’t hand me that stuff an’ get away
with it. You’ve seen to it the Wolf’s the liquor man. They ken only
beat you on the border with a cargo on your sleds.”
“It’s the game played out anyway.”
“D’you think I care? No! Have I had part in your play? Has your game
handed me a thing of profit or pleasure? No! You an’ the Wolf have
pouched every dollar. An’ I--I jest cooked your hash so you could eat
when you needed it. Yes. Your play’s through an’ I don’t care.”
At last Pideau gave a sign. The sting of the girl’s bitterness had
driven home at last. He had listened all unmoved to her arraignment of
the Wolf. Even his own risk, and the complete wrecking of his trade
seemed to have strangely enough left him unmoved. But her final charge
set a dark flush staining his ugly brow, and his wicked eyes sparkling.
“That ain’t true, girl,” he cried angrily. “I raised you an’ done all I
could to fix you right. I got a big pile that’s someday goin’ to hand
you the things o’ life you need. It’s goin’ to hand it you so the swell
looks o’ you won’t have to feel shame fer the clothin’ of your body.
It’s goin’ to tell you you’ll be able to eat right for all your days.
An’ it’s goin’ to show you a home place to make you feel good. That’s
along to come. Sure. Say, I’ve had to do most every crook play to raise
you. I’ve raised you from a brat to a woman. An’ fed you, an’ cleaned
you, when you hadn’t more sense than to breathe right. You was my kid.
See? You was bone o’ my bone, flesh o’ my flesh, blood o’ my blood. An’
you’re that way still. Your fool blood’s got away with you, an’ you’ve
had this boy, Sinclair. I guess I didn’t know, or it wouldn’t have
needed the Wolf to kill him.”
“You’d have killed my man?”
The girl’s eyes flamed. Pideau looked squarely into them.
“The Wolf’s my partner. I raised him along with you. But sure to hell
if the Wolf had monkeyed around you he’d have got it good. Same as he’s
handed it Sinclair. Say, you, you’ve queered the play that’s been good
to us. You’ve passed the Wolf along to the rope. You’ve raised all the
hell in our outfit only a crazy slut could. But you’re my gal, part o’
me. Wal, go beat it so I ken look around an’ figger the thing needed
after they choked the life out that boy, Wolf.”
The man sprang up from his chair with a movement that suggested
the last of a sorely tried violent temper. He stood for a second
threateningly, while his fierce eyes searched the face of his daughter.
He saw the sudden receding of all color from Annette’s cheeks. He saw
an actual shrinking before the lash of his final words. He knew the
girl’s reckless temper and looked for a comeback. But there was none.
The light died out of the girl’s eyes abruptly. She turned. And he
watched her go off towards the door moving almost like an automaton.
Pideau looked after her. He watched her till she reached the door, and
opened it. He saw the darkness of the store, beyond, swallow her up.
Then, and not till then, he dropped back into his chair.
But he was soon bestirring again. He reached the fuel box and fed the
stove. He pulled open the damper, and leaned forward with his hands
outspread to the warmth, for he hated the cold and worshipped the
warmth that so pleasantly eased his body.
And, somehow, as he sat there contemplating the iron that was again
reddening, there was no trace of any disturbance in the eyes that
were no longer forced to mask the thoughts behind them. He was almost
smiling.