CHAPTER XITHE BATTLE
PIDEAU ate noisily. There was something of animal greed in his obvious appreciation of his food. It was a revolting spectacle. His appetite was always large, and he greedily devoured large mouthfuls, breathing stertorously in the process, while he belched without disguise.
The man was at the table alone. A table that was without cover, and furnished only with the implements imperative for his feeding. Annette was there to minister to him. But the Wolf was back in the store until such time as his partner returned.
Annette had already eaten her supper. That was her custom. At no time did she take her meals with her menfolk. 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.
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. With him it was only a question of the rightness of interpretation.
The man’s mind had been as busy as his jaws, and his narrowed eyes, so intent upon his food, no less. But not for an instant during his meal did he permit the betrayal of a single passing thought. He simply sat in verbal silence, and ate till he could eat no more.
Then it was that he pushed back from the table, awaiting the replenishment of his massive coffee cup. Annette supplied his want. She set the cup on the table with a clatter, and with the contents slopping. And as she did so the man broke the silence between them.
“I bin figgerin’ ’bout Fyles,” he said harshly.
Pideau’s black eyes blinked into Annette’s face as she turned back to him.
She did not reply at once. The man’s words had startled her.
“We’ll need to figger hard, with Fyles around,” she agreed at last.
“You know the feller he is then?”
The girl shrugged her shapely shoulders. But her face betrayed nothing. Even the brooding of her eyes had vanished under the quickening of her mental processes.
“Everybody knows about him,” she said. “He’s their special man. His comin’ means things.”
“Sure. His comin’ means things. Maybe it’s only that Sinclair has—ain’t around. It looks that way.”
Pideau was endeavoring to draw Annette into the open. He was trying to test out the thing his mind had decided was the cause of her new manner. He knew what Sinclair meant to her. He had seen Sinclair lying dead, and the Wolf’s gun lying beside his body. And he wanted to find out just how much the girl knew of the shooting, and that which had brought it about.
Annette shrugged. Her father’s efforts were obvious to her.
“Yes. It looks that way,” she replied.
Pideau drank half his coffee and shook his head.
“It ain’t the liquor. It ain’t our play. It’s Sinclair, sure. Queer about Sinclair.”
Annette looked straight into the black eyes.
“Yes,” was all she replied, and turned away.
“Sinclair was good to you?”
Annette nodded as she was going.
“Maybe he was too good?”
Annette swung about and faced her father. Tempestuous fires were raging instantly. Pideau saw their reflection in her eyes. He saw the reaction of them in the heaving of her bosom.
“You ken cut that stuff right out,” she cried hotly.“You’re my father. I can’t help that. But it ends right there. You get on with your play. With Fyles around that’ll take all your spare worry.”
Pideau remained unruffled.
“Oh, the liquor’s all right. That’s fixed. It’s been away days, an’ the dollars pouched. We’ll sit right down on our play till Fyles is through, an’ they send Sinclair—or some other—back to mother us. I wonder wher’ he’s quit to. You wouldn’t say he’s skipped across the border?”
“He ain’t skipped. He was hot for his job.”
The man’s eyes sparkled.
“I guessed you’d know.” Pideau drank the rest of his coffee. “Does the Wolf know? I bin wonderin’ days. Y’know, Annette, I am your father, an’ maybe it goes further than you reckon. The way I see it ther’s two boys want you bad. An’ one of ’em, anyway, ain’t the sort to lose you easy. Would you say the Wolf knows—why—Sinclair ain’t been around fer two weeks?”
Pideau’s nimbleness was driving the girl. She drew a deep breath. A wild impulse urged. But she withstood it. She avoided the search of her father’s eyes and stood gazing down at the yellow flame of the oil lamp on the table. Her reply came slowly, and in a low voice.
“You needn’t beat around,” she said. “If the Wolf knows why Ernie Sinclair ain’t around I reckonit’s bad fer him a man like Fyles has come around.” Then her eyes sought his, and the manner of it told Pideau all he wanted to know. “The Wolf’s been my playmate since I can remember. But if I’d proof he’d—he’d killed Ernie Sinclair I’d do all I knew to make him pay.”
Pideau’s eyes twinkled cunningly.
“That’s tough. I’d lose a swell partner.”
The girl was moving away. But she flashed around at him.
“Partner?” she cried. “That’s not a thing to what I’ve lost.”
She was gone. And Pideau looked after her as she passed to the cook stove. He stood up and remained standing for a moment. Then he called out.
“Guess I’m gettin’ back to the store, and the Wolf’ll be along t’ eat.”
He heaved his sturdy body into his furs and buried his black head in his greasy fur cap. And as he passed out there was no sign of his customary ill humor in his mean face.
Stanley Fyles filled his wood stove and sent the consuming flames roaring up the stovepipe by widening the opening of the damper. Then he stood up, moved over to a small table and lit a second oil lamp. Then he turned to the tall figure of the Wolf, who stood silently watching him and curiously observing thebare surroundings of the private room of the police quarters.
The Wolf’s face expressed only his curiosity. Nothing else. There was neither doubt, nor the faintest shadow of apprehension. His easy confidence was quite undisturbed as he watched each movement of the renowned and feared Stanley Fyles going about his chores.
But the Wolf was actively searching. Every fibre of the man was strung alertly. The policeman’s movements were telling him so much.
The Wolf was standing just within the doorway of the room, and near by to the desk on which lay Sinclair’s official diary. He was still wearing his furs, cap and coat. For the room was none too warm in the bitter temperature.
At last Fyles came over to the desk. He sat in the chair which he turned about to face the stove. He looked up into the Wolf’s face, and his scrutiny, while officially cool, had nothing particularly harsh or threatening in it.
“Say, you best shed that coat, boy, and pass over to the stove and thaw some of the cursed ice out of your bones. We got to make a long talk before we’re through, and it’s not good to sit around in furs. I had to ask you to come along over. But I left it till you were through with your day’s business before worrying you. I’m here to learn things about Sinclair.”
The Wolf inclined his head and unfastened his coat. He flung it off and removed his cap. And, as Fyles watched him pass across to the chair beside the stove it was with eyes of frank admiration. The Wolf’s manhood could not be disguised under the roughness of his hard prairie clothing.
The policeman’s thought flew to the only creature that to his mind was comparable with the body he was observing. It had all the grace, muscle, and sinuous activity of a tiger. There flashed through his mind in that instant a queer gladness that he had carefully prepared for any eventuality. He knew that unarmed, for all his experience, for all his own physical strength, if it came to a “show-down” between them his chances would be small indeed.
“I reckoned that way, Sergeant,” the Wolf replied, taking possession of the chair set ready for him, and thrusting his moccasined feet on the stove rail. “How d’you figger I can help you?”
The man’s smile intrigued Fyles no less than had the personality of the woman of the trail, only in a totally different way. He possessed a strange attraction, such as, for all her beauty and youth, for Fyles at least, Annette had failed to exercise. The Wolf’s quiet assurance, his never-failing, rather pleasant smile, his superb body, and obvious nerve made a tremendous appeal.
Yet Fyles saw in him a murderer, and a law-breakerin perhaps every direction. He wondered what was his born name.
“Say, you’re nicknamed ‘the Wolf’?” Fyles put his question with the abruptness of which he so well understood the value.
The other shook his head.
“That’s my name,” he said.
“Born name?”
The Wolf’s smile became real.
“Guess I haven’t a born name.”
Fyles’ eyes widened.
“But you must have?”
“No, Sergeant, it’s a fact I haven’t. I haven’t a notion of my father or mother. Nor has anybody around me. I bin ‘the Wolf’ all the time, an’ I’ll have to go on being that way.”
There was a shade of regret in the man’s tone. Fyles was swift to appreciate it. It was almost unthinkable to him that anyone could go through life without a name, and with no knowledge of his origin.
“I came along down on this trip thinking you to be—belonging Pideau Estevan in some way.”
“You came down figgerin’ about us?”
Fyles smiled at the man’s intense quickness.
“I always need to think of the folks where my work lies.”
“So you thought of us?”
There was no escape. And Fyles made no further attempt.
“Why, yes. You see there’s things doing here one way and another. There’s all sorts of stories make our headquarters.”
“’Bout liquor?”
The Wolf laughed outright. And his laugh was without offence and good to hear.
“Yes, and other things.”
“Sure. Sinclair.”
The Wolf’s downrightness was almost disconcerting. Fyles was puzzled. His experience taught him to look for evasion, shuffling, watchfulness. The Wolf displayed none of these. So the officer drove straight to his purpose.
“Exactly—Sinclair.”
“He’s on a trip,” the Wolf smiled. “You told Pideau yesterday. I was there. You’re relievin’ him.”
Fyles shook his head.
“He’s on no trip—we know about. He should be sitting right here. And he isn’t. He was keen for his job. He was trailing the liquor that pours across the border in this neighborhood. Well, he hasn’t been seen or heard of for more than two weeks. I wonder. It’s queer. And before I quit here I’ve got to know why. I’d be glad for any talk you——”
Fyles broke off. He turned an ear listening, and his manner carefully conveyed a start of surprise.
The Wolf’s eyes were on the door communicating with the outer room. He, too, was showing something like surprise. But his brows had drawn sharply, and there was clearly no pretence in him.
There was a sound in the outer room. It was unmistakable. It was the pad of moccasined feet. And the sound was approaching the door of the room in which they sat. Fyles was watching. He saw the lithe figure stir as though about to spring to its feet. And in a moment the man of authority anticipated him. He was on his feet and moving to the door.
Fyles flung the door wide. Annette stood framed in the doorway as once before in the night she had stood there.
It was an intense moment. The dusky beauty was pale under the low-pressed fur cap when the door opened. But it flushed darkly the instant the girl’s eyes took in the tall, standing figure of the Wolf near the stove. The Wolf was staring wide-eyed. The smile that would not leave his eyes was now without meaning. He was frankly amazed at the sight of Annette. And a queer look of trouble somehow marred his recent air of assurance.
Fyles lost nothing of what was passing. The thing he saw in the girl’s face needed no searching to interpret. All her ungoverned anger had leaped at the sight of her old playmate. But the Wolf was only questioning, painfully questioning.
Fyles stood aside for the girl to enter. Annette did so. And recklessness seemed to urge her gait. For a moment Fyles feared for what she might do. He closed the door, and, all unobserved, slipped the catch of the spring lock. Then he indicated the chair on which the Wolf had been sitting.
“Will you sit right here by the stove?” he said, addressing Annette. Then he quickly set another chair near by to the desk, and offered it to the Wolf. The youth moved automatically towards it and sat. Annette remained standing at the stove.
Fyles turned to her.
“Is there a thing I can do for you?” he asked quietly.
“Yes.” Annette’s gaze was fixed. Her expression had died to a smoulder of its original fury, as she looked straight into the eyes of her old playmate. “You ken take him. You ken hand him to penitentiary. He’s shot Ernie Sinclair to death. I saw him!”
For an instant her eyes blazed. Then she turned to the stove and looked down at the glowing patch where the iron had reddened.
The atmosphere of the gathering had become electrical. It was charged with every possibility which human emotion could suggest. The yellow lamplight fostered significance of it all. Fyles sat down at the desk and looked at both his visitors in turn.
These two had been raised together—he knew that—likebrother and sister—playmates. Now they were confronting each other in a deadly encounter. One, at least, was in a fury of hate, seeking a vengeance that knew no limits. It was a dire exhibition of the driving passions which go to make up the sum of human life.
“You saw him? You saw the Wolf shoot Constable Sinclair to death? You’re charging him with murder? Will you tell us?”
Fyles spoke sharply. He spoke coldly, warningly. He was there with a balance he meant to hold firmly. He was the hardened investigator once more, accustomed to delve in the deepest mire of human nature.
“I tell you he shot Ernie to death. I—saw him!” Annette’s tone was icy. “I can tell to his face what I told you before. And he can’t deny. No!”
The Wolf flashed round at the policeman. And Fyles understood. The man recognized that he had been trapped. But the look was gone in a moment. For the youth was absorbed in the girl he worshipped. He offered no word. He just sat silent, motionless, as the girl went on, patiently enduring the storm of invective she hurled at him.
“You Wolf!” she cried hotly. “You thought you’d get away with it an’ rob me of my man. Oh, you’ve robbed me. Sure you have. But you ain’t gettin’ away with it. No. You’re goin’ to pay good. You’re goin’ to pay all I ken make you. D’you know how much? Maybe you don’t. It’s your life for his.Your life for my man’s. You’re goin’ to hang, cos you shot my Ernie to death!”
The girl ceased speaking. Perhaps she was hoping for reply. Swift, hot retort, the same as it had always been between them. But the Wolf sat gazing at her, and her fury was further goaded by his attitude.
“You crazy fool,” she shrilled at him. “I was to cut him out, cos you said so. I was to marry you! You! Never in your life! Oh, I know. I know the way you did it. Spyin’! That’s it! You spied on me. Ernie an’ me, when we fixed it—you Wolf! But you didn’t figger on me. I was the fool girl to act the way you said. I was a no-account. You planned to get around waitin’ on him, when Ernie came along. That way you’d fix him, an’ no one ’ud be wise. That was you. If you hadn’t a mind to kill him you could have quit your plans, an’ set your liquor play earlier. But it wouldn’t suit the man who figgered to kill Ernie. No. You needed to kill him. So you got around ahead an’ when he came you shot him up from behind, scared to face him. You got him cold. I saw. I was there, too. Watchin’. If I’d had a gun I could have dropped you in your tracks. But I hadn’t a gun. An’ anyway ther’ was better than that, you Wolf. The rope! The rope they’ll set about your fool neck! The rope fer killin’ my man!”
Annette turned to Fyles and gestured in the Wolf’s direction.
“There he is!” she cried, with deadly venom. “That’s your killer. I saw him! I’m witness!”
Neither sound or movement followed the girl’s final denunciation. The Wolf simply looked into Annette’s fiercely accusing eyes. Fyles was watching both. And what he saw stirred him with a feeling of uncertainty.
The girl’s story, and the manner of it’s telling, left him without alternative. He felt it to be real. It rang with the stormy spirit of avenging. This man had murdered her lover. No one could witness her confronting of him and doubt that. Then what was it that gave him his feeling of uncertainty? Was it some unexpressed emotion in the girl, some emotion of which Annette was herself unaware, stirring under the insensate burden of her fury? And if so, what was that emotion? Surely it was not fear? Certainly it was not pity for her old playmate? Fyles wondered. These half-breed women were creatures of mad passion. Was it love for the dead man driving this girl? Or was she actuated solely by a furious desire for revenge?
In the Wolf he saw less to puzzle him. There was enough to amaze, but not to puzzle. The calm of the man’s attitude told its own story. There was neither resentment, nor fear in it. But there was a queer sort of understanding patience.
He was gazing at Annette much as might a faithful dog who accepts chastisement at the hands of one itloves. He was obviously concerned. But it was not for himself. Only was it for her.
“Why were you there? You’d done your work. You’d betrayed them to your lover. Why were you watching?”
Fyles’ questions rapped sharply in the silence.
“Because he was my man.”
“You were scared for him—your man?”
Annette laughed harshly.
“I knew Pideau, an’—the Wolf.”
“You went to protect a policeman?”
“I went to watch an’ warn. But the Wolf was too quick.”
Fyles turned on the Wolf, looking for some reply. None was forthcoming. The man only had eyes for the girl who meant the whole of life to him.
Suddenly Fyles made up his mind. He must break through the youth’s defences by the only means to his hand. The brutality of it must not even be considered.
“Sinclair was the father of your child that’s going to be born?” he flung at Annette.
Annette almost leaped from her chair. She seemed about to spring at the throat of the man who had proclaimed her shame. Her eyes lit wildly, and her arms flung out. She stood. And then, as though drawn by a magnet, her gaze turned on the Wolf. Then it fell.
“Yes,” she admitted.
But Fyles had achieved his purpose. Annette’sreply meant nothing to him. He was watching the Wolf.
The change in the Wolf was almost demoniac. He was leaning forward in his seat, and his hands were gripping the chair arms as though they were striving to crush the hard wood under them. His widened eyes were almost insane, and the thick young veins stood out like ropes on his forehead.
Fyles went on relentlessly.
“And Sinclair was to marry you? He was to give your child its rightful father? And you were to betray your own father, and—the Wolf here? That was Sinclair’s price—for marriage?”
Annette seemed to collapse in her chair.
“Ye-es.”
The answer came faintly. But as it did so the Wolf suddenly relaxed.
It was an amazing reaction, like the passing of a fierce summer storm. The man’s hands, those hands that looked so tremendous in their power to crush, released their hold upon the chair. Then he leaned back comfortably, and his eyes, which only a moment before had looked murder, had returned again to the calm of their pleasant smile.
The officer strove hard for the meaning of it all. Certain things were clear enough. But they were not all. No. It was obvious to him that Annette’s admission that marriage was the price of her betrayal hadrestored calmness to the Wolf’s murderous mood. But why? What difference did it make to the other? The thing that had maddened him. Why should so sordid a transaction have made so much difference? The girl’s baby, that was yet to be born, still remained the child of another man.
Fyles felt himself to be as far from real comprehension as ever. He felt there was something in the Wolf’s mind which the man had no intention of letting him read. If only——
But he was given no time for speculation. The Wolf started up from his chair. He stood up tall and straight, and his smile had become real laughter as he gazed down into the policeman’s cold eyes. It was a laugh of derision, yet lacking in offence. He thrust out his arms, and his fists were clenched. They were pressed together with knuckles upwards, and the gesture bared the massive wrists from his coat sleeves.
“You heard?” he cried, in a tone that matched his laugh. “Your Sinclair! He’s dead! Murdered! Well?”
Fyles never hesitated for a second. He acted on the instant. Those great wrists. He reached out, and the shackles snapped on those outheld wrists almost with the last sound of the Wolf’s taunting challenge.
But, later, as he took up the telephone to speak with his superiors at Calford, that haunting phrase of his came back to him again. “It’s too darned easy!”