CHAPTER VIPARTNERSHIP
THE Wolf had eyes only for the distance. He had a profound revolting for his companion, and all that in which he had found himself so amazingly involved. The cleanness of his boyish innocence had been badly fouled, and he would have given all he possessed to be able to forget.
Pideau was riding beside him, morose, silent. His expression was brooding. His eyes were narrowed to mere slits as though striving to conceal the evil of the mind behind them. He, too, was gazing far ahead, but he was concerned with nothing he beheld.
Every now and again a quick sidelong glance took in the youth at his side. And apparently the Wolf remained unconscious of the attention, which was without a shadow of friendliness or good will.
But, in fact, the boy was acutely alive to his companion’s glances. And, moreover, he possessed full understanding of the reason and purpose lying behind them. Years of bitter experience had taught him so much of Pideau. He understood the mire of evil that filled the man’s soul. Well enough he knew that the name with which he had himself been dubbed rightly should have been bestowed on the father of Annette. For there was no attribute of the fierce marauder of the forest that Pideau did not possess. Right down to the queer, haunting cowardice which is a fundamental of it.
The Wolf knew that dire threat was overshadowing him. And in Pideau the nature of such a threat could only possess one interpretation.
The cattle were moving ahead, herded with the skill of trained sheep dogs by Rene and Pete. It was the boy who controlled their work. Pideau took no hand. It was the boy, in fact, who had controlled everything from his first confronting of Pideau in the act of his crime, to the ghastly work which had occupied the long hours of night.
It was little wonder that the boy longed for forgetfulness. 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. And, with a generosity he could not deny, he had hurled himself to the man’s support.
The reaction of the horror of the night still crowded down upon him. It was all utterly unforgettable. The two murdered policemen. Their two horses. Then the ghastly task to which his hunter’s training and instinct had been put.
He had seen the fire devouring equipment and clothing till not a single recognizable shred remained to betray. He had seen the stiffened human bodies hurled to the hungry maw of the bottomless mire of the muskeg. Then there had been that worst of all necessity. Two fine-mettled bronchos, full of life and equinebeauty, had been turned adrift in the forests with the reasonable certainty that they would hardly survive more than a few days.
And all the while there had not been one moment when he had dared relax his vigilance for his own personal safety. Pideau was a coward. And the boy’s woodcraft, hunting the timber wolf, had long since taught him the treachery of which the coward is capable.
The Wolf had learned so much since he had parted from Annette the morning before. In a few short hours he had learned his own strength. And he knew that what he had done had placed Annette’s father in the position of a trapped fox. He had a shrewd understanding. And the sum of possible consequences came to him easily. He was, metaphorically, watching the snapping jaws of the trapped fox, and knew that his own safety lay in his wit in avoiding them.
Pideau’s mood as he rode beside the Wolf on the homeward journey was full of ugly possibilities. His thought was searching. It was the guilty, fearful searching of a mind poisoned by terror and hate.
The Wolf—knew!
That was the man’s dominating thought. It had leaped to that fact in its panic. And it overshadowed every other consideration.
The boy—knew!
Pideau summoned the wit that had always served him. What did it mean? What could he do? And he found answers to those questions swimming through his brain like noxious vapors rising from the bowels of evil which were his. The meaning was deadly,and there was only one thing to do. Now was his opportunity. 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. His mind was made up.
He glanced at the youth from the tail of his eye. And as he did so the Wolf’s voice grated in the queer fashion which comes in youth’s approach to manhood.
“Guess you killed enough, Pideau,” he said. “You murdered them p’lice boys. You killed their hosses. Leastways you passed ’em to the wolves. You best finish right ther’. It ain’t any sort o’ use wantin’ to kill me. An’ you can’t anyway.”
The Wolf’s eyes were smiling as he gazed at the man he read like an open book. There was no fear in him. But there was something in his smiling gaze that Pideau could not face.
The half-breed’s eyes fell away and sought refuge in the cattle ahead of them.
The boy permitted his pony to drop back slightly, to a position of advantage. The beast’s nose was abreast of the withers of Pideau’s horse.
“I guess we need to square things up,” the Wolf went on, as Pideau attempted no verbal response. “Just cut murder right out till we’re through talkin’. Maybe you’ll see sense then. Since ever we quit back there you bin worried thinkin’ I knew the thing you’ve done. You bin guessin’ you couldn’t stand for it. You’re scared I’ll hold you up—when it suits me.”
Pideau still remained watching the cattle.
“I’m not out to hold you up, Pideau,” the boy went on quietly. “We ain’t friendly. We never bin. Maybe it’ll always be that way. It don’t matter. You gave me shelter when I couldn’t find it for myself. You handed me food, too, when there wasn’t a deal lying around for me. Well, I haven’t learned a deal. But ther’s jest one thing I have got back of my head. I’d hate worse than death to hurt the feller that did those things for me when I couldn’t do ’em for myself. If you get that you’ll see it’s crazy to kill the feller that can help you now, and is willing to. Just as crazy as killing those two police boys.”
Pideau experienced a soothing of his murderous spirit as he listened to the raucous, confident tones. His hate was unabated. But his fear knew a relief that had seemed well-nigh impossible. A curious calm spread through his senses and eased his tension.
“I had to kill ’em,” he growled morosely. “It was that or the penitentiary. A fool ’ud see it.”
“Was it?” The boy’s smile was full of shrewdness. “They’d trailed you, but they hadn’t got you. They’d never have got you in these hills. They’d have got the cattle. But that wouldn’t have hurt a thing. No. It was foolish to kill. Now you’ll get no morecattle. There’ll be a thousand police to say so. They’ll watch for you day an’ night. They’ll never quit your trail. There’s a big bunch of cattle stole from boys who know they’ve lost ’em. And the police know that two men on that station are missing. You’ve got to quit cattle now, because you killed those boys. It was foolish.”
There was no offence in the Wolf’s manner. Only argument. And somehow the argument took hold of the cattle thief, and made him want to hear more.
“Ther’s less chance trailin’ me—now,” he said sharply.
“An’ less chance getting cattle,” the Wolf retorted. “You’re safe—dead safe—if you quit cattle right away.”
“I was reckonin’ to—soon,” Pideau admitted, his gaze wandering southwards in the direction of the United States border.
“Well, it’s got to be right away, if you aren’t yearnin’ for penitentiary an’ a hangin’. We best git farther back into the hills for awhile. The police search is dead sure to come. It won’t be good if chance should show ’em our outfit. So it’s best not killin’ me, Pideau, as you were reckonin’. You’ll need me farther up in the hills. We got to trap, an’ hunt pelts to get our food. Then later——”
The fear and hate in Pideau had receded still further. A grin lit his fierce eyes as he interrupted.
“The Yanks are goin’ dry,” he said, meaningly, with a swift reaction to the needs of the new position. “Last time I was across I heard tell. The border folkare gettin’ busy. They figger it’ll not be for a year or so yet, but when they do——”
“When they do?”
The Wolf was frankly intrigued.
“Why, liquor’ll fetch all sorts of dollars.”
The boy was gazing out ahead over the familiar scene of the valley. His eyes were thoughtful.
“It ’ud be a swell trade,” he agreed at last. “An’ honest.”
“From this side the border.”
Pideau had forgotten the murder he had contemplated. He had forgotten everything in the prospections it contained for him.
“I got the dollars, too,” he went on eagerly. “I could set up a still, an’ brew rotgut fer big money.”
“An’ it would need the two of us to handle it.”
“Yes.”
“As partners.”
“Ye-es.”
The Wolf laughed. He read the meaning of the hesitation.
“We need to be partners—now, Pideau,” he said firmly.
The half-breed turned and frowningly contemplated the boy’s smiling face. All the old murderous feelings had leaped out of the background again. And for some moments he looked into the fearless eyes that challenged him. Then he shrugged and inclined his head in submission.