CHAPTER XIXTHE HILLS
THERE was something wholesome and comforting in the police quarters after the stark hideousness of the scene in the office of the store across the township.
To Stanley Fyles it was an environment that never failed in its appeal. The sink of crime in which all his work lay made the bare walls, the hard chairs, the carpetless floors and rough sleeping blankets seem like luxury of the most superlative quality.
The Wolf was impressed in another direction.
He was sitting in a chair with his moccasined feet thrust up on a cheerfully roaring wood stove. And he was thinking of his last visit to that station.
Fyles had produced a capacious flask of rye whisky. He had poured a stiff “four fingers” into the glass he had carefully wiped with a coarse towel. He left his desk and crossed to the stove, and offered the drink to the Wolf.
“It’ll take the bad taste out of your mouth, Wolf,” he said pleasantly. “We got hours before us till the boy that runs this station pulls in for the night. The weather’s good and he won’t rush. It’s good to get a wash when you’ve mixed with dirt.”
The Wolf shook his head in refusal.
“I haven’t use fer the stuff, Sergeant, anyway. You see, I’ve been years makin’ it. I’m through with liquor now. But I got to smoke.”
Fyles made no attempt to press his offer. He just drew up a chair while the Wolf pulled out his tobacco sack. He sat down and set the glass and his flask near by on the bare floor. Then, as the other’s nimble fingers turned in his paper and twisted the ends of it, he nodded smilingly and drank down half the liquor.
“You can tell me,” he urged, as the well watered spirit warmed him. “You’re the only feller can—now.”
The Wolf inhaled. He shifted his feet, which were becoming uncomfortably hot. His gaze came round with its quaint smile.
“Are we still just men, Sergeant?”
“Surely.”
“Yes, that’s so,” the Wolf nodded. “I always feel that way with you.”
Fyles ignored the frank compliment, but it came pleasantly.
“Say, boy,” he said, “it’s a cinch you reckoned Annette killed Sinclair. And Annette was dead sure you’d killed Sinclair. And it was Pideau contrived you should both think that way. How?”
The Wolf sucked his cigarette for a reflective moment and finally blew a cloud of smoke.
“It’s easy now,” he said thoughtfully. “You see, Annette’s told me the things I didn’t know. After Sinclair set out fer the cache Annette had a crazy worry. I guess she was scared fer the thing she’d done. Maybe she was scared fer Sinclair—or me—or both. You can’t ever tell with a woman. Maybe she didn’t know herself. Anyway, she followed along, an’—she found Sinclair dead, an’ my gun lyin’ along with him. One guess was all she took. An’ it set her stark crazy.” He paused. Then he went on quickly. “I was beating fer the cache to clear the liquor. I got there. The lamp was alight. Annette was standin’ over Sinclair with my gun in her hand. I went crazy, too. It was Annette. An’ she’d shot up a police boy. That’s how I got it. I ought to’ve jumped in right ther’. But I didn’t. An’ in my craziness I let her beat it without a word.”
The Wolf spread out his hands in a gesture of helplessness.
“Then she didn’t see you as she said she did?” Fyles asked sharply.
“No. She just said that. She figgered sure I’d pulled on Sinclair, and reckoned to make it red hot fer me.”
Fyles nodded. He recognized the half-breed in Annette’s deliberate lie in support of her accusation.
“But Pideau didn’t plan any of that,” he objected.
“No. I guess they were chances he hadn’t figgered. He only figgered one play. To have it so I shot up Sinclair. Pideau played his hand good till his nerve broke.”
The Wolf sucked his cigarette and held his great hands to the stove so that their wrists were bared. Fyles saw the wrists, and his memory went back. The Wolf raised his head.
“You see, Sergeant,” he said. “Pideau reckoned he had a big score on me. I knew it. I’d known it years. An’ someday I was dead sure he’d try and pay it. But he played this so bright I didn’t guess. He certainly did.”
The Wolf laughed.
“The thing in Pideau was his father feelin’ fer Annette. An’ even that wasn’t the big thing it needed to be. But Annette was his an’ he felt good about it. He just hadn’t use fer me and was sick to death I was crazy fer Annette. Oh, I knew it. But he never said a word. Then he got wise to what Sinclair had done, an’ he was madder than a bull at breedin’ time. Sinclair’s number went right up when Pideau got wise. But Pideau, bein’ what he was, reckoned to have me do the killin’. If I didn’t feel that way then he’d play his hand. I’m wise now. I wasn’t then. Pideau played me, an’ I was surely crazy to kill. But I didn’t know all Sinclair had done then.”
Fyles nodded.
“There wouldn’t have been waiting if you had?”
“Waitin’? Say, I’d have pulled on sight an’ shot him to death in his tracks!”
Again Fyles nodded, and the Wolf went on.
“No. I didn’t know. An’ like a crazy kid I went along to Annette. I went along an’ pulled all I could say. It was a big lot. Maybe it was too much. But I was just mad. There was a tough time, but I reckoned I had my way. Annette swore to cut Sinclair right out. So I quit the notion of killin’ an’ meant to get after the liquor with Pideau.”
“That night Pideau an’ I sat in on the play. An’ I told him I wasn’t killin’ Sinclair. He was rough, but he took it. An’ I told him Annette was cuttin’ Sinclair out. He figgered she couldn’t. But I didn’t guess even then. I handed out the game. You see, I always handed things out to him. And while we were talkin’ we heard somethin’ out in the store.”
“Suspicious?” Fyles’ interest was absorbing.
The Wolf laughed mirthlessly.
“It pulled Pideau quick. He went out in a hurry. When he came back he talked ‘rats in the crackers.’ And I ate it at a gulp.”
“It was Annette—listening to your talk?”
“Sure. But I didn’t know. I guess Pideau did, though. Maybe it was that showed him the way to the things that seemed good to him. Anyway, I quithim that night with our plans all fixed fer next night at eight o’clock.”
“Just how were the plans?”
“He’d to have two teams to the bluff. I was to make the cache an’ tote the kegs across to him.”
“You think he figgered Annette was listening to carry the plans to Sinclair? He must have been quick?”
“Oh, Pideau was quick. He’d a nose filled with suspicion. He was the brightest proposition in locatin’ the other feller’s play you’d find in a year. But I take it he saw more to this thing than he’d hoped for. I’d quit on killin’ Sinclair. He hadn’t. Then there was that score on me.”
“He calculated Sinclair meant to ambush you—being single-handed?”
“Yes.”
“So he figgered to ambush Sinclair—with your gun?”
The Wolf nodded. Fyles poured himself another drink and refilled the pipe that had burned out.
“He was taking a big chance,” Fyles demurred. Then he added: “For a scared man.”
The Wolf shook his head.
“He hadn’t time for his scare. His scare would come—after. I’ve seen it act that way before.”
“I think I get it.”
“He’d kill Sinclair. An’ he’d have me where he figgered it ’ud be good fer me to be.”
“Yes. And then?”
“Why he put it through better than he guessed. Chances played fer him. He got his sleighs set an’ went along to the cache early. When Sinclair got around he got it jest where Pideau fancied that sort of shooting—through his back. An’ he left my gun with him. Then he quit in a hurry an’ went back to his teams. Then Annette got around. An’ after I came along and saw Annette. Then, like a crazy fool, I went along to Pideau, who was waitin’ at the bluff, an’ brought him along over. When he saw, his ugly grin was ready. He jest laffed at me an’ told me the crazy fool I was to leave my gun around after shooting Sinclair. An’ all through I jest hadn’t a suspicion. I thought sure Annette had killed Sinclair, an’ when I learned the thing he’d done to her I jest knew it was so. It was that last that fixed things. Annette! My little kid. I felt glad for a rope to choke the life out of me. I was sick. Sick to death then. That kid was Sinclair’s. Annette, I figgered, wanted just him. Well, there wasn’t a thing to keep me livin’ so—— An’ that way I could fix it, so they couldn’t ever touch her. She’d killed Sinclair, an’ I was glad.”
Fyles kicked in the damper. The stove was getting red hot. He picked up a hot cinder and dropped it into his pipe. For a moment he smoked heavily.
“I’d—be—glad for—the rest?” he said presently.
The Wolf looked up with a start. Their eyes met. And the steady regard of the policeman conveyed enlightenment.
“You see, Wolf, we’re still just plain men,” Fyles added, as he knocked the cinder from his pipe. “You don’t have to, unless you feel that way.”
The Wolf spread out his great hands.
“It don’t matter—with him dead,” he said. “It was when I was a kid. Annette, too. Y’see, Pideau fed me those days. That’s why I wouldn’t have told—ever. He never believed I wouldn’t. He felt I had him where I wanted him. That was the trouble. It was the dirt in his mind. He was a cattle rustler—in the hills.”
“Ah! When?”
“Eleven year back. An’ before that.”
Fyles’ eyes brightened with a consuming interest.
“We wanted him bad—then,” was all he said.
“Yes. It was the last play he made. A swell bunch. Cows and steers. I was back home with Annette. I got out on a play after wolves. I’d my pony an’ dogs. The only wolf I located was one, Pideau. I trailed him down and when I brought up with him it was in time to see him shoot up two boys who hadn’t got sense. He shot ’em cold. An’ they hadn’t more chance than Sinclair had. They wore redcoats the same as him. An’ he stripped ’em an’ dumped ’em in the muskeg. I told him that way. I helped him. I had to—fer my life. I pulled through with him on my nerve. He’d have killed me else, an’ dumped me, too.”
Fyles removed his pipe.
“McDonald and Lester,” he said. “I remember. They never got back.”
“No. The muskeg don’t let go its grip.”
“No.”
The two men sat staring at the stove. Fyles looked up.
“Yes, I’d say Pideau would have been glad to be quit of you. And now?”
“Now?”
The Wolf cocked an ear as a sound in the outer office warned of the return of the constable in charge of the station. He stood up.
“Guess I’ll beat it, Sergeant,” he said and held out a muscular hand.
Fyles took it and gripped it.
“Annette?” he questioned.
The Wolf nodded.
“We’re quittin’ to-night. The folks of Buffalo won’t see us. We’re takin’ all we reckon to. Guess we’ll have two teams, an’ all they can haul. Between us our stake’s more than good. First we’re goin’ toget fixed by a passon. Then the hills we know. Y’see, ther’s room in the hills. Then I haven’t a name but ‘Wolf.’ An’ that ain’t good amongst folks.”
Fyles watched him go. He moved out almost without a sound. There was just a faint, soft, padding of his moccasined feet. And the sound impressed itself on the man he had just left. The Wolf.
THE END