Ridgwell Cullum

“ Pace was increased to something commensurate with Fyles’ anticipation. And the Wolf’s mood eased under the influence of activity and the friendliness of his surroundings.
[295] This was the world to which he belonged. The wintry sky, the keen wind that could leap to storm in minutes, the depths of snow, and then—the hills.
Those hills of his childhood. It was good to think of them. And particularly so now. The deeps of forest. The chaos of snowy crests. The vast hidden valleys that only knew the denizens of the wilderness and Nature’s flaming moods. The wild life of it all. ”

“ Annette started back as though he had struck her in the face. Her lips sucked in the cold air, and the color faded out of her cheeks.
“Me hand them—penitentiary? Me?” she gasped.
“Do you want to herd with the wolves in snow-time? Say, there’ll be no marrying talk when the Wolf knows. The Wolf, who reckons you’re marked down his chattel. The Wolf, who you can’t ever hope to stand up to.” ”

“ Her eyes were shining with a cold, hard reflection [131] 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 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Buffalo Coulees of the prairie were everyday experiences of Sergeant Fyles. And the people of them were his most intimate study. No one knew better than he how swiftly human nature, in these far-flung places, can drift back to the primitive. No one knew better than he that human nature without stern control was by no means a pleasing thing. He was fully conscious that his visit of less than a week and his arrest of the Wolf for the murder of Constable Sinclair had had an extremely salutary effect upon the men of the prairie township. ”

“ There was fear in the swift movement of the furtive glance [63] 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. ”

“ 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 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 [42] 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The sight of the Wolf standing there waiting to set out for his home, gave him no anxiety as to his own plans. But as, a few minutes later, he nodded farewell to Sturt and left the barracks by a back way to avoid the waiting man, he wondered profoundly to what extent the Wolf and Annette, if left to their own headlong methods, would further complicate their foolish lives. How absurdly they would contrive to destroy the limited chances of human happiness which life was still willing to afford them. ”

“ 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. ”

“ His chair was faced about from his desk so that he could gaze into the face of his visitor as the light from the window fell upon it.
“You know I think you’re lucky, Wolf,” Fyles said, sucking his big pipe thoughtfully. He smiled. “You see, you don’t get the law, and the ways of folks who administer it, like I do. One of the crazy things in life to me is the queer fashion in which the outward seeming of human nature transforms the moment it finds itself in the position of having to hand out correction to the other fellow. The balance of justice is the notion—in theory. ”

“ Fyles studied the passionate eyes gravely for some moments.
“I get all that,” he said at last. “I don’t think you’re lying. I know we’re going to find Sinclair shot. I know that. I’m believing you all right. We’ll talk later.”
Fyles felt a certain relief as the girl turned, and her pony moved on with a jump, driven by the savage spur.
Minutes later they were clearly outlined in the moonlight, halted before a yawning, black cavern, whose bowels the moon failed to penetrate. Annette pointed.
“It’s all in there,” she said. “The gear. The still. The dead man. I’ll go light the way.” ”

“ The Wolf moved round to the table. Fyles watched the careful manner in which he avoided the body of his partner. He saw him tear the letter open and glance at its contents. Then he saw him thrust it into the pocket of his pea-jacket.
After that he picked his way round to the stove, and began to shake it down in the preoccupied fashion of a man whose physical action has nothing to do with his thought. ”

“ One break was natural. But that was where an irresistible freshet had driven a way for itself through the rocky barrier of the hills in a boisterous effort to reach and swell the waters of the superior stream. Its achievement was doubtless the work of ages. But it was complete. A deep rift split the face of the gray stone cliffs to a breadth of something over twenty feet.
On the prairie bank the break was a narrow enough opening, barely sufficient for the passage of a horse-drawn vehicle. It had nothing of the naturalness which had split the face of the opposite cliff. ”

“ And as the sergeant sat astride his favorite trooper, a rawboned, mud-brown broncho mare, with the double bobsleigh and team that was carrying his scanty outfit on its way to Buffalo Coulee behind him, with his watchful eyes peering out over the moonlit snow from between the folds of his storm collar, there could be little question as to the personality he radiated. ”

“ There was no particular incentive to early rising in Buffalo Coulee at any time, and, human nature being itself, the citizens of the prairie township displayed little enough enthusiasm for undue activity. It was usually well after sunrise that the first pair of eyes looked out on the day, and the first odor of cooking robbed the air of something of its purity.
The morning following Sergeant Fyles’ arrival in Buffalo Coulee it was a woman who first looked out of her doorway upon the cold white world to discover his presence. ”

“ There stood all the complicated paraphernalia which made up the primitive still. There stood the various rough adjuncts, denoting human occupation. Then there was that store of liquor ready prepared for shipment.
But the gaze that took in these details found nothing in them to interest. For the time being they were completely meaningless. It was that by the stack of kegs, and in the full rays of lantern light, that stirred a [164] spasm of horror so deep that it left the faculties stunned.
A figure, a living human figure was standing over a dead body sprawled on the ground at its feet. ”

“ Police life was never made easy.
The room was narrow and low-ceiled, and its walls were boarded. At one time in their career they had been varnished, but that was long ago. Now they were dingy with the smoke of many winters. A bed-cot of trestles and boards, with a straw palliasse and brown blankets on it, was the man’s sleeping place. A well-polished wood stove abated some of the winter cold. The only thing that could have been considered luxury was a washbowl on a makeshift table with a water bucket standing beside it. ”

“ The Wolf never killed Sinclair. It was that half-breed wench. And that crazy goat of a man intends to swing for a trollop that ought to be flayed alive. I feel hot, sir. They got me fooled between ’em, and it makes me sore. But that’s not the worst. I think that Wolf’s a pretty fine man. Oh, I know he’s a crook. He’s a bootlegger. Maybe he’s anything at all. But he’s a man. And if he dodges the gallows, one day he’ll show he is.”
Superintendent Croisette smiled. Sergeant Fyles was his favorite officer, and, in private, was distinctly privileged. ”

“ The horses were standing nose to nose. They were greeting each other in silent, equine fashion. Their riders were no less interested in each other.
The mud-brown mare was hands taller than the other. She dwarfed it to the diminutive proportions of an Indian cayuse. The wiry little creature, well-shaped and superbly muscled as it was, became almost ghostly in contrast. It was piebald. And the great splashes of white, which was its predominating color, somehow seemed to merge into its surroundings of snow. ”

“ With the Wolf certain to be set free Pideau had fled from Calford, headlong, pursued by all the hounds of hellish fear. And Fyles knew that that fear was well enough founded. With the Wolf free, and baying the trail, God help the man who had sought to do him injury. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As for her father, no familiarity, no use could accustom her to the revolting with which his eating filled her.
But on the evening following her night journey with Stanley Fyles she had more than disgust to make her desire to avoid her parent. She knew she must be there. She knew she must do the work that was hers. But nothing, no effort of hers could conceal the brooding which was writ large in her smouldering eyes.
[218] And Pideau saw and read. And, as was inevitable, he searched his mind for a right explanation. Nothing in his child, and in his partner, ever escaped his watchfulness. ”

“ 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.
[96] He had fulfilled his early promise. In manhood he was superbly grown. He was big. ”

“ 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. ”