CHAPTER IIITHE 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 withthe 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 ofchildhood 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 hurledhim 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 abrother. 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 swearto 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.