CHAPTER XIITHE 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 withher 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 shehad 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. Hiseyes 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 bigpile 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 movementthat 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.