CHAPTER XVIITHE WOLF BAYS THE TRAIL
STANLEY FYLES was in no easy mood. He had passed through a particularly bad time as a result of the Buffalo Coulee affair. He knew it was failure. And failure hurt him as nothing else in the world could hurt.
From the moment of his first meeting with Annette on the night trail he had apprehended disaster. It had truly enough been only vague apprehension. But that simply made it all the worse. From his point of view disaster had certainly supervened. And his one thought now was to get back on the ill fortune of it all by doing what was possible to remedy it.
As he made his way towards the troop stables his eyes were shining with the light of battle.
He had spent an hour at the Orderly Room with Superintendent Croisette, and another half-hour with his sergeant-major. Now, at last, he was free to pursue the course upon which he had finally decided.
His mare was standing saddled and bridled at the entrance to the stables. A trooper was putting a finishing touch to the mud-brown creature’s toilet. Fyles glanced quickly round her. He felt the cinches of thesaddle. He examined the heavy bits in her mouth. And, the while, the creature restlessly pawed the snow and snatched for freedom.
Fyles turned up his collar and pulled on his fur mitts. The next moment he was in the saddle. The trooper clapped the dancing mare over the quarters, by way of friendly parting, and the eager creature leaped forward in one of those cat-jumps by which the broncho so dearly loves to express its satisfaction.
Fyles moved out on to the barrack square and passed down towards the sergeant-major’s quarters to report departure. It was the final act of official procedure.
As the mare ambled over the hard-beaten snow Fyles had a full view of the barrack square, right down to the front gate on the far side, where stood the guardroom. It was the latter in which he found interest. Two saddle horses were standing there, near to the barrack gate, beyond the sentry’s beat.
They were long-tailed, lean, tough-looking prairie horses, with none of the sleekness of the mare under him. The man in charge of them had their reins linked over his arm, and was smoking a cigarette.
It required no second glance for Fyles to recognize the figure of the Wolf. Besides, he knew the man had already been waiting with his charges for some time. And of the object of that waiting he was fully aware.
It was Annette, and the policeman smiled to himself as he remembered that those two would soon be travelling the same trail as himself, at the best gait they could get out of their prairie horses.
The sight merely interested him. It gave him no particular concern. He intended to reach Buffalo Coulee first, considerably first, no matter at what pace they urged their horses. For much depended on the speed of his journey, and he knew he could trust the creature under him to behave generously.
No. The sight of the Wolf standing there waiting to set out for his home, gave him no anxiety as to his own plans. But as, a few minutes later, he nodded farewell to Sturt and left the barracks by a back way to avoid the waiting man, he wondered profoundly to what extent the Wolf and Annette, if left to their own headlong methods, would further complicate their foolish lives. How absurdly they would contrive to destroy the limited chances of human happiness which life was still willing to afford them.
The Wolf had smoked many cigarettes. He had smoked incessantly. He would probably go on smoking indefinitely. It was an expression of his preoccupation.
The man was hard set by his purpose, from which nothing would be permitted to deflect him. The delayin Annette’s coming gave him no anxiety. She would come, he knew. For it was a very different Annette returning with him to Buffalo Coulee from the fury who had determined upon his destruction.
But the Wolf was not now thinking of Annette. At no time in his life had she been far from his thoughts before. But now, for once at least, she found no place in them. The journey before him, that rush back to Buffalo Coulee and the thing it meant, preoccupied him to the exclusion of all else.
The Wolf had undergone one of those swift transformations to which, under stress, human nature is so susceptible. He was bitterly determined. Scruple was flung to the winds.
Hitherto he had looked on all life tolerantly. He had seen good in all men, in all things. He had always felt that the simple fact of life, with all its tremendous appeal, all its human possibilities, was something for which to be joyously thankful. But that wholesome phase had gone, shattered beyond repair. The confining bars of a prison had brought him his awakening. He had delved to the true meaning of his presence in Calford.
The man’s mood was written large in eyes that still smiled, but which shone coldly, implacably, in spite of their natural expression. It was there in his set jaws, in the tight-set lips closed over his cigarette. Itwas in his calm patience, awaiting Annette’s coming. He was master of himself, steeled to the last fibre of his being for the bitter task he had set himself.
Finally she came. Annette came alone. She came padding, a bundling, fur-clad figure over the snow, from one of the long, low huts of the barrack married quarters, where she had been housed since her coming to Calford. She came slowly, almost reluctantly. And she was carrying a bundle of clothing tied up hastily, without care for appearance.
At sight of her the Wolf bestirred out of his preoccupation.
The change in Annette was even more pronounced than was the change in the Wolf. All the old wilful spirit and impishness had gone out of her. And as she came to the horses and to the waiting man, her peering eyes were apprehensive within the depths of her storm collar. She came with that uncertainty, that dreadful diffidence that suggested imminent, precipitate flight were her inclination given free play. She looked pathetically lonely and helpless.
There was no verbal greeting. For an instant the Wolf’s expression softened. That was all. He took the girl’s bundle from her and tied it on his saddle. Then he flung the reins over the horses’ heads, and the girl leaped astride of her saddle and moved off.
Their way lay through the heart of the city withits morning traffic in full tide. It was down one of the broad avenues, dotted with automobiles and horse sleighs, and heavy double-bob commercial vehicles. The way was lined with houses and stores heavily burdened with slowly melting snow. Then there were the besmirched drifts rotting against the sidewalks.
The horses ambled their way through the traffic. The Wolf had no desire to draw attention to their going. And it was not till the river bridge was crossed, and they breasted their way out of the valley to the plains above, that the eager horses stretched out into the devouring gait that was to bear them to their destination.
As the last habitation fell away behind them the Wolf breathed his relief.
There in the city he felt he had no place. It was the world of civilization to which his claim had always been small enough, and now less than ever. Down there the snow had been soft and rotten, and it appealed to him as though it were symbolical of the life that was lived there. Up on the plains, with the keen breath blowing down from the far hills, the trail was iron hard, and he was glad.
He rode on beside the girl with the silence unbroken between them. Pace was increased to something commensurate with Fyles’ anticipation. And the Wolf’s mood eased under the influence of activity and the friendliness of his surroundings.
This was the world to which he belonged. The wintry sky, the keen wind that could leap to storm in minutes, the depths of snow, and then—the hills.
Those hills of his childhood. It was good to think of them. And particularly so now. The deeps of forest. The chaos of snowy crests. The vast hidden valleys that only knew the denizens of the wilderness and Nature’s flaming moods. The wild life of it all. The intense hush and infinite solitude.
The dreams of boyhood came again to the Wolf. Those early vanities and schemings. But were they dreams? It almost seemed as though they were not. Perhaps they were visions vouchsafed to him of realities to come. At any rate now the memory of them revived, and he found them to be alive with new and profound meaning.
“Wolf!”
Annette had turned. She had released the storm collar from about her throat, and the sting of the wind had restored the flush of well-being to the oval of her cheeks. Apprehension had abated in her eyes. And the Wolf’s heart quickened at the sight of it.
“Why, Wolf?” she cried quickly, anxiously. “What d’you need me back home for? It’s no sort of good my ever goin’ ther’ again. I—I just can’t. It’s cruel! Quit me, an’ let me beat it back to the city. I can get work. I can clean for folks in their houses.That way things wouldn’t seem so—so bad. I don’t want to see ’em. Any of ’em. I can’t face it.”
The Wolf reined his horse to a walk. Annette’s pony responded on the instant.
It was so different. A few weeks ago the girl’s tone, her words, would have been so very different. There would have been no appeal. She would have spoken her will and none too easily. And somehow the Wolf would rather have listened to the old hectoring.
His reply did not come at once. There flashed before his mind a picture of all that had brought about the pitiful change in this girl who could never be less than all the world to him. Those dreadful last moments of his trial. And then the almost brutal method he had used in forcing her present obedience to his will. He thrust it all aside. He had learned his lesson.
“You won’t need to face it, kid,” he said quietly. “We’ll make home at nightfall. By mornin’ we’ll be makin’ the hills.”
Annette’s lips moved, but no sound came. Her eyes were wide with incredulous amazement.
The Wolf rolled a cigarette and lit it. He left his reins hanging loose over the horn of his saddle.
Suddenly he heard the girl’s whisper.
“The hills?”
“Sure. The home we’ll make ther’ together.” A sound followed the Wolf’s announcement. It was something like a laugh. But it was without mirth. “Ther’s fish in the creeks, an’ pelts in the forests. Same as ther’ was years back when we reckoned those things figgered bigger than the pile of dollars I’ve pouched in Buffalo Coulee. We’re goin’ to the hills, when I’m through to-night.”
As though the man’s words impelled her, Annette turned upon the long line of the western hills. The Wolf watched her out of the tail of his eye. He saw the stormy rise and fall of her bosom, which had nothing to do with the movement of the horse under her. He warmed. A sense of gladness swept through him.
“You want me up in the hills?”
The girl was still gazing at the far-flung rampart whose jagged outline cut the wintry sky.
The Wolf pitched his cigarette end away with a vicious jerk.
“Say, kid, have I got to tell you?” he cried roughly. The man’s eyes lit as he spoke. There flashed into them the light of sudden passion, all that passion which nothing the girl could do, or say, had ever had power to abate. “Haven’t you got it yet you’re mine? Can’t I beat it into your fool head you belong me? Have always belonged me? Ther’ ain’t no life fer you without me. An’ I guess ther’s no life I ken see without you. Ther’ hasn’t ever been. We’regoin’ to those old hills, wher’ ther’s all the things we know. It’s goin’ to be the same as when we were fool kids. Only you’ll be mine. Mine fer good an’ all. An’ there won’t be any Pideau.”
The sight of the vast mountains seemed to hold the girl fascinated.
“But—ther’s—the——”
The Wolf suddenly reached out. He caught the girl’s arm in a grip and swung her round in the saddle so that she faced him. The storm in his eyes was something that found her thrilling with an emotion she had never yet known. The dusky blood receded from her cheeks. But she looked back into his eyes unafraid.
“God in heaven! Do I care?” he cried hoarsely. “Do you reckon Sinclair’s kid ken rob me of you? Do you guess his dirt to you makes me want you less? He don’t figger with me. An’ I guess that baby thing’ll seem good to me, seein’ it’s mostly part of you. Ther’s goin’ to be no fool talk that way. Fate handed you to me years back an’ I’ve a grip on things I ain’t lettin’ go. I’ve told you love for years, kid, when you fancied laffin’ in my face, or shoutin’ murder at me. I don’t need tell you more now. It goes all the time. It goes jest as long as I got air to breathe.”
The last of the girl’s fear fell from her. It fell away like a nightmare before the golden sun of day. Her bosom suddenly seemed to fill to choking withsome queer wonderful sensation such as she had never known before.
She turned away to the hills again, and their crystal purity seemed to be shining with a new light that set her yearning. And in her ears rang those fierce, savage tones which told her that which the Wolf had never told her before.
Oh, she knew it now. She gladly saw it and admitted it. It had been so all along, but she had been blind to it. The Wolf was her master. She was his slave.
The hills? With him? Yes, yes! A thousand times, yes! The ends of the earth! Anywhere! She felt that sinewy body near her. She knew the physical strength of those great hands. The trunk-like neck that held that head so fearlessly confident. At that instant she would have been glad to feel the crushing strength of his hands in chastisement for the things she had done to hurt him.
Suddenly she swung round from the mountains.
“The hills!” she cried urgently. “Wolf! Wolf! Why did you do it? Oh, I’m not grievin’ you killed him. But why did you? Yes. Sure. It means the hills, an’ I’m ready. But it’ll be the hills always—for you—or——”
“Yes. After to-night. But not for other reason!”
The Wolf stared out ahead over the white expanseof winter. Far away beyond the bare horizon lay Buffalo Coulee, and that—to-night. He was glad of to-night. There was no other emotion in him than satisfaction as he contemplated it. A sharp ejaculation broke.
“Tcha! Say, kid, why talk that fool stuff? Ain’t it beat from your head yet? I didn’t kill that skunk Sinclair. You know it, unless you’re crazy. Get it right here. I didn’t—kill—Sinclair.”
“But I saw. You’d been ther’! Your gun! An’ he was dead!”
It was the old Annette. All the old spirit. And it gladdened the man’s heart.
The Wolf flung back his head and laughed. It was a laugh of sheer joy, carefree, and good to hear. She had come back. It was the old Annette riding beside him.
“Say, kid, we got a dope of sense between us that wouldn’t save a maggot from the bughouse. You saw my gun, with Sinclair dead. Maybe you did. I saw you standin’ with my gun in your hand lookin’ down at the carcass you’d shot the life right out of. Well?”
“I didn’t! I didn’t! I guessed it was you.”
“Sure. An’ I felt good they should choke me to death so you could get all the daylight comin’ to you.”
“Man, man! You’re crazy. Who killed Sinclair?”
The Wolf was preparing another smoke.
“You’ll be wise to-night,” he said, pouring the grains of tobacco into the paper.
“An’ the hills—after to-night.”
There was the hush of awe in the girl’s voice.
“After—to-night.”
Annette reached out. She caught the man’s arm with a jerk that shot his tobacco from its paper.
“Father—Pideau!”
The Wolf was grinning into twin black depths of horror. Annette’s grip on his arm tightened spasmodically.
“You shan’t! You crazy fool, I tell you, you shan’t!” she cried.
With his other hand the Wolf took hold of her. He tore her hand from his arm and crushed it violently in his great palm.
“You’re my woman, kid,” he said, in a tone that brooked no denial. “You’re mine, now. Ther’s not a thing to this life fer you but—me. I say it’s the hills—to-morrow!”