CHAPTER VIIITHE BEAUTY OF THE NIGHT
THERE was nothing phenomenal, fantastic, or sensational in the methods of police work adopted by Sergeant Stanley Fyles.
He was one of those, who in moments of expansiveness, admitted that police work in the world of the Northwest had little of the jig-saw puzzle about it, but much of the bricklayer’s craft. He insisted on the necessity of choosing the bricks of evidence with the utmost discrimination and appreciation of values; the mortar of common sense, he believed, required real skill in application; then the officer must certainly have the nerve for feats of strenuous physical effort and a deadly eye for alignment in emergency.
Given these things, and an imagination kept well under control, the process of establishing a civilization, where only wilderness had existed since the world began, became a natural corollary.
But with all his clear-sightedness, and the calm pose of his logical mind, there was one necessity in Stanley Fyles’ calling that he quite failed to appreciate. Being a man of very distinct personality himself, he utterly failed to recognize how heavily that weighed in the balance of his success. It never for a moment occurredto him that his own individuality could be the asset which made the mention of his name a matter to inspire the gravest apprehension even in the most hardened among the outlaws of the hills and plains.
It was unquestionably so, however. 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 something Napoleonic in the manner of the little procession. Fyles rode clear ahead over the well-defined snow trail. He was a sturdy, dark, muffled figure.
There was no sound of hoof beats on the snow, and there was no jangle of sleigh bells to betray. It was a ghostly, significant procession. Fyles intended to descend upon Buffalo Coulee without herald of any sort. He had determined to reach the police quarters under cover of night, and, with the empty sleigh already on its way back to Calford, find himself an established fact in the life of the township by the time the morrow’s sun rose.
As yet his bricks of evidence were few, and so far their quality had not seriously impressed him. But he saw the advantage of his plan very clearly and wassatisfied with it. No word had leaked out of his going, and so swift had been the reaction from Calford to the information received that he felt reasonably confident that the slumbers of Buffalo Coulee would remain undisturbed, and the town’s ordinary peace of mind would endure until sunup.
But like all men of simple wisdom Fyles’ optimism was carefully bounded. He knew only too well the value of leaving a wide margin for the unexpected in his calculations. He saw a more than usually interesting problem ahead of him, and he was approaching it with an open mind.
The night was profoundly still. It was one of those clear, perfect winter nights which should receive greater appreciation than is usually the case. Stanley Fyles owed it no grudge. Although the depths below zero were biting into the marrow of his bones, although at the moment the roar of a blazing wood stove suggested the most comforting thing in life to him, he could still appreciate the calm beauty of radiant moonlight on the snow, and the pall of black velvet, studded with a million gleaming jewels, which overhung the world to which his life was dedicated.
It was all a little wonderful, that limitless white world. In only one direction lay any variation. That was ahead of him. Far away on the twilit skyline a sharp, dark line was drawn right across his path. How far on it was, Fyles could only roughly estimate. Somethingless than ten miles would bring him to the wood-lined banks of Buffalo Coulee.
Fyles’ mare required neither check nor urging, and certainly no guidance. The deep snow trail was under her feet. And outside it depths of snow in which she had no desire to flounder. So she would go on at that easy gait of the prairie broncho that eats up distance so voraciously.
The journey had been long and the man was drowsy from monotony and hours spent in the crisp cold air. Furthermore the glare of snow, even in the moonlight, afforded an overwhelming desire to close his tired eyes. Again and again they closed. But each time they did so the nod of his head startled him at once to wakefulness.
Fyles’ mare was breasting an easy incline to the crest of a higher wave than usual in the roll of prairie undulations. The rise shut out the dark line which was their goal. In place of it was the sharp cut where the starry heavens came down to the earth. Fyles awoke as his head jerked.
He was at the summit of the wave crest. The far distance was in more pronounced view. For he was gazing down a long slope that was deeper than usual.
But now he was wider awake than had been the case for more than an hour. There was no longer any desire to close his eyes. The brain of the man was keenly searching.
Sharply outlined against the general background of snow ahead, a horseman was sitting motionless at the trail side. He was there without shelter. He was there utterly alone in the white waste of winter. Why?
The mud-brown mare flung up her head with a faint whinny of glad greeting. An answer came back and disposed of all possibility of illusion.
The mare felt the check of the rein. She halted on the instant. Her ears were sharply pricked, and her nose was flung up. Presently Fyles was speaking to the teamster who had driven abreast.
“You’ll wait right here, Arnold,” he ordered. “Don’t move till I get along back. There’s some boy waiting around for me down there ahead. Guess he’d best find me.”
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.
But Stanley Fyles, after one quick glance at the stranger’s general outfit, had no great interest beyondthe face of the rider. The moonlight was streaming down upon it. It relentlessly searched it in the recesses of a well-worn buffalo storm collar. And it showed him a pair of big, coal-black, velvet-soft eyes that shone with a queerly sullen expression. But it showed him more than that. He was gazing upon the dusky beauty of a half-breed girl whose youth was unmistakable.
In the brief moments of meeting Fyles’ realization of the girl’s personality was no swifter than his thought. He understood she was waiting for him, the messenger from the police to whom she had written. And he asked himself the meaning of the encounter. Its hour. Its place. And then there was the sex of the stranger.
He wondered what extent of ugliness there could be back there in Buffalo Coulee to drive a young and beautiful girl to brave the cold of the night and a lonesome vigil. And all with a crazy hope of intercepting him.
“You’re waiting for me?” he inquired. His manner was the brusque tone of unquestioned authority. “The ‘red-coated gophers’ have a way of answering quick. What’s back of the letter you wrote?”
Fyles found what he was looking for. He saw the start, the sudden widening of the black eyes. And he knew his instinct had served him well.
“Everything!” The girl’s tone was low. “I bin waitin’ for you.”
Fyles forgot the hour, the cold. Even he forgot his teamster.
“Who are you?” he asked shortly.
“Annette Estevan, Pideau’s daughter. Who are you?”
The girl’s retort had a tone in it. Fyles understood. He also noted her exactness.
“Fyles. Sergeant Fyles from Calford. Why are you here—waiting?”
The final question rapped out.
There was a definite pause before Annette made reply. Her sullen eyes had lowered. There was movement in her body, too, under its heavy fur coat. When at last her answer came it was with a rush that intrigued the officer.
“Because I ken hand you word who shot up Ernie Sinclair. I ken show you wher’ his body’s lyin’—right now.”
Fyles lost nothing of the girl’s emotion. But her sullenness puzzled him. What did it indicate? It almost seemed like reluctance. And yet——
The policeman remembered his teamster.
“Just stop right here till I get back,” he said. “I got to pass my outfit right on to Buffalo Coulee. After that we can talk without folk around.”
Fyles swung his mare about and loped back to the waiting team. When he returned to the girl they satthere together beside the trail, and watched the sleigh pass on its way to the township.
The night swallowed up the retreating vehicle and Annette found herself alone with the man whose name had never failed to inspire her with disfavor and even fear. She suddenly felt as though the earth had opened at her feet and she was staggering at the brink of the chasm. Her nerve had stood the test of her purpose. It had shown no sign of weakening at the moment of encounter. The identity of this man, however, had been curiously terrifying.
She remained silent for so long that initiative was forced upon the policeman.
“You’d best talk,” he said, forced again to his well-tried challenge.
“How d’you know I wrote that letter?”
“I didn’t.”
“But you said, ‘that letter you wrote’?”
Annette’s eyes were peering a little anxiously in the moonlight.
“It was a woman’s letter. An’ you were waiting—here.”
The girl made no reply, and again Fyles was forced to break the silence.
“It’s too cold for the horses. We’ll ride on. Guess we can talk as well that way.”
“No. I quit you right away here after we’rethrough. Ther’s folk in Buffalo Coulee who don’t sleep a deal.”
Annette gazed out in the direction of the distant township. And as she gazed the smoulder in her eyes flared up. Deep fires were burning behind them and memory was feeding them fuel. Generations of savagery were busy within her. A tangle of fierce emotion was driving. It was as though all the wayward impishness of her youth had suddenly developed into a surge of mad desire that was beyond her powers of control. And yet there was something she neither recognized nor understood, delaying a tongue that was usually ready.
Fyles refrained from urging. He was watching, watching.
Of a sudden the girl gestured. To the man it was as if she were thrusting something from her with two passionately impelled hands.
“It’s the Wolf, I tell you!” she cried, with sudden fierceness. “He shot Ernie Sinclair to death. He’d threatened. And—I know.”
“The Wolf? That’s your brother?”
There was something almost of horror in the policeman’s tone.
“He’s not my brother. He’s no relation to me. None. He’s white like you. He’s just Pideau’s partner in the liquor.”
“And you—know?”
The girl flashed around at him. Her pony stirred eager for movement to escape the cold. She checked him savagely.
“Yes, I tell you,” she cried, her eyes flaming in the moonlight. “The Wolf did it. It’s out ther’.” She pointed with an arm outflung to the westward. “Right on Spruce Coulee wher’ the hills quit. He brews the liquor in a cave. It’s all hid up. Sinclair’s ther’. He’s stone dead an’ froze solid. The Wolf tricked him ther’, an’ shot him to death. An’ he’ll stop right ther’ till the spring thaw. Then the Wolf’ll bury him. He’ll fix it so ther’ ain’t any tracks. He’s ther’ I tell you—dead. I know. An’ I ken show you.”
Fyles nodded.
“Sure.”
“Right away—it’ll have to be right away. To-morrow night.”
“Yes—to-morrow night.”
Fyles peered out at the woods where Buffalo Coulee lay. A queer sense of unreality was taking possession of him.
“Where’s the Wolf now?” he asked.
“Back to home.”
“Can you make a getaway without——?”
A harsh sound which was almost a laugh broke from the girl.
“I said I could show you to-morrow night.”
Fyles knew the half-breeds. No one knew them better. But hardened as he was to the ways of thesepeople he experienced something of a shock. And feeling added harshness to his manner.
“The Wolf shot Sinclair,” he said. “You know that. You saw. Tell me; and don’t lie. Why did you write that letter? Why are you on the trail waiting for me with the thermometer twenty-five below zero? Sinclair? Why are you worried a policeman’s been shot up? You—a half-breed. You got to tell me right now.”
Annette flung out her mitted hands. This time there was no doubt about the meaning of her gesture. Ungoverned fury was driving her like a tornado.
“I tell you the Wolf’s no brother to me,” she cried passionately. “He’s shot up my man, Ernie Sinclair, an’ left his unborn kid without a father. Now d’you want to know. Now d’you guess I’m lyin’? I know. Oh, I know you p’lice. You’re mean as hell when you got the pull on folk. I’m a kid, a woman. I’m a hafbreed. A dirty hafbreed. You want to know all there is. You want to see it all. See it clear to the bone. Well, you got it. I’m to have a kid. It’s Sinclair’s kid. One of you p’lice. An’ I tell you the Wolf’s shot him because that’s so. Is the hafbreed dirt—lyin’?”
“We’ll know to-morrow night.”
Again came that sound that was almost a laugh.
“Yes. You’ll know to-morrow night.”
“What hour can you make it?”
“After father an’ the Wolf are abed.”
“Right.” Fyles inclined his head. Then he spoke without harshness. But his eyes were hard and cold. “You need to be smart, Annette. I guess that won’t worry you. But I don’t want you to take a chance. If the Wolf shot up Sinclair he’s going to—hang.”
The man’s gaze was on the moonlit distance. He was not looking at the girl. But even so he was aware of the effect of his announcement. The little start under the heavy buffalo coat. The sudden widening of those beautiful black eyes. He saw these things out of the tail of his eye, and he noted the awe in the whisper that replied to him.
“Hang?”
“Sure. The Wolf’s going to hang—if he shot up Sinclair. That’s what I’m here for.”
The pinto cayuse bestirred. It threw up its head. Perhaps it was in reply to the snatch of the girl’s reins.
“I’ll be right along to-morrow night.” Annette’s voice was hard and cold. “An’ I’ll take no chance.”
The next moment the policeman was alone, gazing after the pinto pony which quickly lost itself against the snow.
For some thoughtful moments Fyles remained where the girl had left him. He sat there quite still gazing, gazing at the point where horse and rider had passed out of view. Then at last he lifted his reins, and the mud-brown mare eagerly responded. He shook his head.
“It’s too easy. It’s too darned easy.”