THE WOLF PACK

THE
WOLF PACK

By RIDGWELL CULLUM
Author of
“Child of the North,” “The Forfeit,” “The Golden
Woman,” “The Heart of Unaga,” “In the Brooding
Wild,” “The Law Breakers,” “The Luck of the
Kid,” “The Night Riders,” “The One-Way Trail,”
“The Riddle of Three Way Creek,” “The
Triumph of John Kars,” “The Twins of
Suffering Creek,” etc.

A. L. BURT COMPANY
Publishers New York
Published by arrangement with J. B. Lippincott Company
Printed in U. S. A.

COPYRIGHT, 1927, BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY

CONTENTS

PART I

THE WOLF PACK

CHAPTER I
THE RUNAWAY

THE ancient train was laboring heavily. It was climbing, and stated the fact vociferously to the wilderness of echoing hills. Its speed was little better than that of a weary team of horses on an outward journey.

It was passing through a broken, tattered world of wind-swept, stunted northern forest. There were bald crags, and open, water-logged flats. There was snow, too; melting snow, for the Canadian spring was hungrily devouring the last remnants of a fierce winter. The sun was brilliant. The cloud-flecked sky was a steely blue. And the crisp, mountain air even contrived to refresh the superheated atmosphere within the passenger coaches.

Luana’s dark eyes were without concern for the natural beauties beyond the windows of the fantastic old observation car. The small boy-child, who was her charge, occupied her whole attention.

The infant was sturdily clinging to a brass stanchion. He was peering out at the wonders of the endless panorama passing before his baby eyes. But his chubby hand was unequal to its task. He had spent much time and energy in falling down and scrambling again to his feet as the train lumbered drearily over its uneven track. However, he was quite undismayed. In fact, he seemed to consider every struggling effort to be an essential joy of his infant life.

He was only a few brief months beyond his second birthday. But he was wonderfully grown and sturdy. Perhaps it was his warm, woolly suit that helped the impression. But it certainly had nothing to do with the full, rosy cheeks, and the bright intelligence of his smiling black eyes.

In response to a fierce jolt of the train, Luana dropped her sewing in her lap and spoke warning in a deep voice of almost mannish quality.

“Hold fast, boy-man,” she cried. “Bimeby, you get hurt. Then your moma get mad with Luana. Maybe she send her right away. Then boy-man see her no more. And you not happy again. Yes?”

The boy smiled. Then he turned to the window and pressed the palm of his disengaged hand against the window-pane. He spread out his little fingers, and presently pointed at the slowly passing hill-crests as though counting them. Then, all in a moment, he squatted on the floor of the car with a bump.

A gurgle of laughter broke from him.

“Up-ee!” he crowed. And he scrambled again to his feet, and came with a rush to his nurse’s knee.

“Hurt, boy-man?”

The nurse was smiling happily as she put the unnecessary question.

“Bad ole puffer!” came the laughing reply, as two chubby hands clapped themselves on the dark-skinned hand that was held out to caress.

Luana fondled one of the little hands. She drew a deep breath.

“Bimeby we mak home on the big lake,” she said. “No more holiday. No more big city. No more old bad puffer. Boy-man see big lake. He see all the dogs. Nap. Ketch. Susan. An’ the Indian papooses at the mission. And all the mans. Yes? And Luana play the forest game with boy-man. She run an’ hide. Yes? Oh, yes. Maybe to-morrow—after boy-man sleep.”

“Why us jump like anything?” the child asked, as the train crashed its way over some uneven points.

Luana laughed.

“Cos it’s—bad ole puffer, eh?”

“Ess.”

The child nodded his dark tuque-enveloped head in solemn agreement. Then he turned away and grabbed again at his stanchion. Finally he lurched to his window in comparative safety and gazed out of it.

Luana watched him, a hungry light in her smiling eyes. The half-breed in her was passionately stirring. A creature of almost volcanic impulse and hot emotion, there was something lawless in her mentality. It was her heritage from savage forbears.

The long journey was nearing its end. More than half the continent had passed under train wheels since the Reverend Arthur Steele and his little family had set out to return from the cities of the East to his mission on Lake Mataba. Vacation came to him once in three years, and this was the end of his first holiday since taking up his appointment.

Luana was glad it was over. Civilization had no appeal for her. She was of the outlands. Bred in the wilderness of the Rocky Mountains, she had no love for the crowded streets of the city. She felt that only in the hills, in the twilit forests, on the wind-swept waterways, was it possible to breathe. It was only where Indians dwelt could she feel that she was at home.

No, she did not want the white folks’ cities, with their dazzling life and their paved roads, and where white women eyed her askance. She wanted the great lake, and the mission that was full of those whose blood she shared. She wanted that, and the knowledge that little Ivan Steele looked to her for everything necessary to his small life.

Luana loved the white child with all her woman’s soul. Hers had been the first arms to caress, to nurse him. Helen Steele was too deeply immersed in the work of her husband’s mission to fulfill all the natural demands of motherhood. She was one of those whose sense of duty would never allow her to be wholly satisfied with the simple felicities of her humanity. The domestic claims of home and wifehood came under the ban of her distorted view of all that which she looked upon as selfishness. So her boy-child, from the earliest moment of his small life, was relegated to the only too willing care of his half-Indian nurse.

In a woman of Luana’s temperament the result was inevitable. She looked upon Ivan as something of her very own. She even believed that the boy looked to her as his mother. And she rejoiced in the thought. She was consumed with jealousy when Helen Steele found time to notice the infant; and a frenzy possessed her at the sight of the white woman’s caresses. It was at such moments that she hated the white woman with all the savage in her. But she bore these trials without outward sign or protest, and consoled herself that the boy’s love was wholly hers.

Away from the mission, and on vacation, Luana’s emotional trials had been profoundly increased. During the four months of respite from the routine at the mission, Helen Steele, in a measure, had discovered her child. The mother in her had found opportunity to assert itself. The result to the half-breed had been almost unendurable. And so it came that within a dozen hours of the end of their homeward journey a certain sense of content and easement was already settling down upon the nurse’s passionate soul.

To-morrow! Yes, to-morrow the mother and father would have forgotten Ivan in the engrossing claims of return to their spiritual work. They would have forgotten the merry life gazing up at them out of the infant’s happy eyes. They would have forgotten the wonderful caress of his soft, white arms. But she, Luana, would remember.

The Reverend Arthur Steele looked up from the book on the table in front of him. His dark eyes scanned the broken mountain scene through which the train was passing. There was still a white skin of snow on the hilltops. But it was a moist, dank, dripping world, in spite of the brilliant spring sunshine pouring down out of a cloudless sky.

He was a tall, ascetic creature, who lived for his missionary work at Lake Mataba. He was desperately in earnest, and impatient of everything that interfered with his spiritual labors. His long vacation had been forced upon him. It had not occurred to him as a holiday. His mission needed money. And he had used his vacation for the purposes of raising it.

“We’re about at the divide,” he said to his wife beside him.

Helen Steele did not even look up from her book.

“I’m glad,” she said without interest. “It won’t take long to run down the gradient to the river.”

“No. And home to-morrow morning. We’re only about eight hours late.” The missionary laughed. “I should call it something like a record at this time of year. We’re in luck.”

He turned and glanced down the queer, little old-fashioned restaurant car in which the evening meal had just been served. There were only about ten other passengers, most of whom were well known to him. They included, in a remote corner, an Indian huddled in his parti-colored blanket, and two commercial men who were making the journey in the vain hope of selling farming machinery in a territory given up to fur-trading.

The missionary’s comment was not without justification. There was no time in the year when the hardy human freight which found itself compelled to use the Sisselu Northern Railroad but did so in a spirit of complete resignation. The road was the offshoot of a great line which bridged the Canadian Dominion from ocean to ocean. Its three hundred miles of ill-laid track, from Fort Sura in the south, to the shores of Lake Mataba, was one of those grudging concessions to a prosperous fur-trading industry.

The result was inevitable. The whole organization suffered from managerial unwillingness. There was only one train in each direction in each week, and the rolling stock was the decaying cast-off of the greater road. In winter, without regard to schedule, the train groaned and clanked its way to its home depot, provided always a snowstorm had not chanced to bury it on the way. In spring the hazard of its journey was added to by the chances of “washouts,” and the devastating ice jams on the rivers which crossed its track. Summer, of course, was its best season. But even in summer forest fires became a source of perilous interference.

The missionary’s comment was more than warranted. And his claim to luck was well enough founded. So he had eaten the uninteresting supper provided, with an appetite that was inspired by ease of spirit.

Now he was waiting for his bill and the next stop. Then he would make his way back to the end of the train, behind a dozen or more freight cars. There he would join his tiny son and the nurse, Luana.

The man closed his book as the waiter staggered towards him. The uniformed trainman stood at the table swaying to the merciless jolting of the car. And he scrawled a bill, and made change to the note which the missionary handed him.

“We’re doing well, Jim,” Steele ventured hopefully, as the waiter accepted his proffered tip. “If we pass the Sisselu down below without interference, we ought to make the lake by noon to-morrow.”

Optimism, however, was not the trainman’s strong point. He had been too long on the road.

“You just can’t say,” he doubted, with a shake of his gray head. “You folks have got Sisselu Ford bad. ’Tain’t that way with us. The ford ain’t a circumstance to the ‘washouts’ we ken hit on the flats. A ‘washout’ ken easy hold us up twenty-four hours. It’s true it don’t worry. We ken sit around dry, and I got food aboard fer a week. I just got to have it. The Sisselu gradient’s a dead straight run to the bottom and no water can worry. There ain’t a bend till you hit the river bank, and the timbers of the trestle’ll stand up to any old river ice. No. It’s the ‘washouts’ on the flats this time o’ year that holds us up.”

“Any news of them?” There was anxiety in Steele’s tone, and the pretty eyes of his wife were raised waiting for the trainman’s reply.

The waiter grinned sardonically.

“We don’t need noos,” he observed lugubriously. “You see,” he added, as he prepared to move on to the next table, “they happen along when the notion takes the flood water. Then you just got to set around.”

Helen Steele laughed outright and closed her book as the waiter passed on.

“He would hate to afford us comfort,” she commented, and glanced out of the window.

At that instant three prolonged blasts on the locomotive siren came back to them.

“Wait for the answer,” the missionary said listening. “We’ll see how right is our dismal friend.”

They waited in silence. And presently, faint and far off, came an answering single hoot from the signal station down on the river.

“All clear. Jim’s right, and our fears are groundless,” sighed Helen. “I do hope the flats will be all right, too. It’s good to be getting home.”

“Good?” Again came the man’s ready laugh. “Think of it, dear. From Montreal to Fort Sura we ran to transcontinental schedule. It’s taken us thirty-six hours already on the run home, and we aren’t there yet by more than twelve hours. It’s enough to depress a saint.”

The grinding of brakes under them added to their confidence.

“The descent,” the missionary commented, preparing to return to his reading.

But Helen wanted to talk. She was no less earnest in her work than her husband. And the journey home had been a time of profound yearning.

“I’ve been thinking, Arthur,” she said seriously, her pretty dark brows drawn in concentration. “Four thousand dollars! It isn’t much with which to found and build our church. You know our Society asks a lot of us. In a way they’re right. We should give all there is in us. But—but—it’s a pity money has to come into our lives at all.” She sighed. “Still, so it is. Beyond the barest necessities I don’t want us to touch that money they’ve given us for the actual building. I want to stir up the right spirit in our Indians, and the white folks on the lake. Surely the lumber can be felled, and hauled, and the whole church can be carpentered voluntarily? Can’t we stir up a spiritual pride that will rise above mere—— What’s that?”

The woman broke off and a quick apprehension lit her questioning eyes. Arthur Steele turned instinctively to the window beside him. The hold of the brakes under the car had suddenly been taken off. There had been a queer jarring and clanking under them. Then the train seemed to leap forward at great speed down the steep gradient.

Steele was gazing at the wooded slope which lined the track. In a moment it seemed the dark green of the trees had started to race by and become a mere continuous verdant smudge.

There was a restless stirring throughout the car. Every eye contained a look of sharp inquiry. A few passengers had risen from their seats the better to gaze out of windows. Then, too, a sound of urgent voices had risen above the rattle of the speeding train.

A railroader flung open a door. He hurried down the aisle of the rocking car and passed out at the other end. The door slammed behind the man’s overall-clad figure.

“Something’s—wrong!”

Helen spoke in a low tone, and her eyes searched the face of her man.

“We’re running—free,” the missionary replied. “It’s a gradient of one in forty.”

“And there’s a bend at the river bank.”

“It’s nearly two miles to the river. And by—I wonder?”

“You don’t think the brakes have gone wrong, Arthur?”

Helen’s voice was low. Her anxiety had leaped to something like panic.

The man shook his head, but without conviction. He knew well enough the quality of the rolling stock on the Sisselu Northern.

“If they have——”

He gestured hopelessly.

“And we can’t get back there to Ivan and Luana.”

“No, dear. We can’t do anything. Oh! Here’s Jim,” Steele cried in a tone of relief, as the waiter reëntered the car. “Maybe——”

In those brief moments the speed of the rocking train had become terrific, and the trainman staggered down the car with the greatest difficulty. The uneven track, combined with inadequate springing, set the wheels jumping perilously.

The man was grinning as he came. But, to the missionary, his grin was unreal, and wholly extravagant. His raucous voice made itself heard above the deafening clatter of the train as he replied to an urgent inquiry from one of the commercial men.

“No,” he shouted. “Guess ther’ ain’t nothin’ amiss. They’re lettin’ her rip some. Makin’ up time. We’re late,” he warned, as though it were something unusual. “You see, this gradient’s dead straight till you get to the bottom. There ain’t no chances. Jest kep your seats, folks. They’ll brake her at the right moment. Ther’ ain’t no worry.”

The man paused at the missionary’s table, and clutched it to steady himself. He bent over it, and anxious eyes looked into those of Arthur Steele.

“They’ve broke away, Mister Steele,” he said, in a tone intended for the missionary’s ears alone. “She’s doing sixty. And she’ll be doing a hundred and twenty when we hit the river. Ther’ ain’t a thing to be done but keep the folks from jumpin’. That way they’ll be killed sure. Ther’s a chance they’ll hold her up in time by reversing the ‘loco.’ I’m going forrard to the handbrakes. Will you kep ’em quiet? It’s the only chance. The vacuum’s petered plumb. We’ve got the boys on the freight brakes. It’s our best hope.”

The conductor hurried away. The panic he feared in the passengers was certainly looking out of his own eyes. Steele’s hand suddenly sought that of his wife as the man passed on with his sickly grin.

“Keep calm,” he said. “I must lie to them.”

Helen gave no outward sign of any fear beyond the anxiety in the eyes which clung to her husband’s face. The missionary stood up and turned to the panic-stricken passengers.

It was evident to him at once how desperately charged was the human atmosphere of the car. Scarcely restrained panic was in every face. And it was tugging at his own heart as he thought of the little son at the far end of the train, and of the helpless woman beside him. But he resolutely smothered his fears and lied in a voice that rang out above the din of the speeding train. He lied far beyond anything the trainman had attempted. And he had his reward.

Every passenger had resumed his seat when the missionary sat down.

“The bend can’t be far off.”

Helen’s voice was barely audible in the din.

“We shall jump the track if——”

The woman suddenly gestured.

“Oh, I wish I could get to the boy.”

“You can’t. Sit still.” Steele’s voice was harsh. The mention of his son had driven him almost beyond endurance. Then he said more quietly, “They’ll get the locomotive——”

But that which he would have said remained unspoken. There was a terrible crash ahead. There was a fierce rending. The train lurched, and Helen was flung from her seat and sprawled across the car. The floor rose up. A wild shriek rang out above the din. And in a moment pandemonium reigned.

The forward end of the car rose sheer. Then it flung over sideways and every window shattered. Then came hideous descent. The car was falling, falling.

It was all over in seconds. The restaurant car had fulfilled its last service. It was lying deep buried in fathoms of the ice-cold bosom of the Sisselu River.

Inspector Landan of the Mounted Police was standing on the rear platform of the caboose of the waiting “breakdown” train. He was weary with many hours of hopeless, depressing labor. The pipe in his mouth had burned itself out, and he had not troubled to refill it. Truth to tell, as he gazed out on the flare-lit scene of wreckage which was piled about the track where it approached the river, he was without inclination even to smoke. He was yearning to get away. For twenty-four hours he and his detachment had prosecuted their indefatigable search of succor, and he knew that the work remaining to be done was the ordinary routine for the breakdown gang.

For all his weariness, however, his mind and feelings were very active. He was contemplating the report he would have to send in to his headquarters. He had studied the disaster in its every aspect and had bitterly realized its cause. Then, too, he had obtained much information from the man at the flag station on the river bank.

From all he could discover the railroad company was criminally responsible. It was no case of “washout” or natural disaster. It was, according to the flag-station operator, a sheer case of old rolling stock and defective brakes. The operator, in horrified accents, had told him all he needed to know in a few poignant words.

“Ther’ ain’t a guess in my mind, sir,” he had said. “She came thundering down that gradient at a hundred miles. An’ that after I’d signalled ‘brakes’ to her, and got her answer. She was a ‘runaway’ and quit the metals at the bend, as she was bound to do at that pace.”

Well, the railroad management would hear something. Two injured, unconscious bodies, and ten corpses! That was the tally of human salvage. For the rest? A full-laden train completely wrecked. And as the inspector’s weary gaze searched the moonlit scene, he wondered shudderingly at the despairing horror of those who had found a grave beneath the frigid waters of the river.

Several figures were moving up beside the track, towards the waiting train. The inspector saw them, and breathed his relief. They were his four men returning. And they came empty-handed.

Three of the men passed on up the train, but the corporal in charge of them swung himself up onto the platform of the caboose.

The man saluted.

“There’s nothing more we can do down there, sir,” he said. “There isn’t an inch we haven’t explored. We’ve searched the woods along the track. And, beyond the locomotive man and his fireman we’ve already got aboard here, no one seems to have had time or nerve to make a jump for it. The rest of ’em are down there in the cars in the river, I guess. And we shan’t get them till the company salves the cars. It’s pretty sickening, sir,” he added with a sight of feeling.

“Sickening? It’s damnable, Perrin,” the officer cried. “By God! There’s going to be a red-hot report on this!”

“I’m glad, sir. I think I can hand you some stuff for it. I’m a bit of an engineer myself, and I’ve gone over all the running gear of the cars at the rear of the train. It’s all ‘scrap’ stuff. Has the doc pulled round that poor woman with her little kid?”

The inspector nodded.

“Yes. She’s come to, and the kid doesn’t seem to have had worse than a bumping. You see, she seems to have held him hugged tightly to her bosom when the crash came. Her body kind of acted as a buffer. She got all that was coming and saved her kid. And she’s only a poor half-breed.”

Corporal Perrin gazed out over the moonlit scene where the busy railroaders were indefatigably laboring.

“It’s pretty fine, sir, when you think of it. There’s nothing to beat a mother when her kid’s threatened. Took it all herself, eh? I’m glad for that woman. Is she going to come back all right, sir? Did the doc say?”

“He thinks so. You see, the observation car only went over on its side. It wasn’t wrecked. The mother was badly crushed about the head. Yes. The doctor thinks she’ll be right in a week or so. We’ll pull out seeing there’s nothing more for us.”

“Shall I go forward and give the trainman the order, sir?”

“Yes. I’m sick to death. Tell him right away.”

“Very good, sir.”

The corporal saluted and dropped off the car.

A few moments later the clang of the locomotive bell rang out on the night air, and the couplings of the train jolted taut. Then came movement. And the train labored heavily up the steep ascent.

CHAPTER II
THE WOLF PACK

IT was a baby girl. And she was sprawling in a sort of wallow in the dust-dry ground at the man’s feet. She was on her back, and her tiny legs were vigorously kicking the air. Her small hands were aimlessly clawing the loose soil on either side of her, and the while her solemn eyes were gazing darkly up at the sunlit sky without blinking.

Her dirt was deplorable. Her garments were negligible rags. Her round chubby face was stuck up with the dirt which she had somehow contrived to moisten into the consistency of mud. It was in her mouth, her ears. It was caked in the soft down of her dark hair. Nor had her eyes escaped contamination. But she was crowing and gurgling with the sheer infantile joy of well-being, and the sight of her held fast the thoughtful stare of the man’s black eyes. He was unsmiling.

Pideau Estevan was a half-breed and tough. He was anything and everything which made him a prospective inmate of the penitentiary, or even worse. But then Pideau sprang from stock that never failed to breed his kind, and the hallmark of his vices was deeply stamped on his cold, dusky face, and in the snapping black eyes which peered alertly from beneath shaggy brows.

Humanly speaking he had nothing to recommend him but a nimble wit and monumental industry. There was nothing unintelligent about him, and none of the usual half-breed laziness. But he was thoroughly bad, and utterly callous. And, as he sat on his upturned box, gazing down on his motherless infant, his black-bearded face was coldly considering.

For once in his life the man was seriously troubled. He was also fiercely resentful. And, deep in his heart, he knew he was helpless.

Crisis had leaped at him almost without warning. He saw ahead a position that threatened to overwhelm him. And such was his nature that he gave way to vengeful anger and fierce impatience. Sitting there before his dugout home on the hillside, he surveyed, without any enthusiasm, the ridiculous antics of his offspring wallowing in the loamy dust.

The tragedy had come so swiftly that it was only now in the moment of its accomplishment that Pideau realized its full measure. Three weeks ago there had been no cloud to mar his doubtful horizon. Three weeks ago he had lived in what he considered a smiling world. Spring had been breaking and his activities, like those of the rest of the world about him, were breaking into renewed life. His woman was there to minister to his comfort. Down in the valley below him his herd of stolen cattle was fattening and breeding satisfactorily. Then his hidden store of crisp currency was growing to proportions which satisfied even his avaricious soul. It was then that the swing of the pendulum of Fate moved against him.

Mountain fever!

It was always the dread lying at the back of his busy mind. It came subtly. It killed quickly. And it had stolen upon the mother of his child, a young woman of his own heart, and mind, and breed, and had slain her in those three swiftly passing weeks.

Only that morning had he completed the labor of her burial down in the valley below. Less than an hour ago he had returned, having shovelled the last of the soil into the deep grave that was to keep the woman’s cold body safe from the hungry activities of the scavenging timber wolves. He had returned to his noon meal, and the little life his woman had left behind her.

He was not mourning his loss with any spiritual sense. It was not in him to regard his woman as anything but a chattel. It was the material consideration of his position that stirred him to an unreasoning resentment against the dead Annette whose going had brought it about.

Alone with his babe, what was he to do? What must he do?

The great heart of the Rocky Mountains afforded him a safe enough hiding from the ubiquitous red-coats, but it also involved him in prolonged journeys and long absences from his home, in the prosecution of his nefarious traffic as a cattle thief. How could he carry on with a miserable brat of a child to be kept alive in his absence? There was not a living soul within three days’ journey of him.

Pideau’s fiercest savagery was apparent. Without shrinking or hesitancy he considered the alternative that naturally leaped to his callous mind. The little Annette. Why should he permit himself the burden she imposed? She was only a year old. She was fat, and happy, and knew nothing. Why should he let her grow to knowledge, and learn the harshnesses that life must ultimately show her?

It would be so easy. And she would never know. He could hold her to him and caress her. She would gurgle, and crow, and pull his whisker. And his hand could very gently feel her soft neck. And then—and then his grip could tighten swiftly. She would be dead, like her foolish mother, without a single cry. It would really be merciful to her. And to himself——?

That, in his position, he pointed out, was surely the sense of things. It certainly was the sense of things. He thrust up a yellow hand and pushed back the cloth-visored cap he was wearing.

The baby squirmed in the dust and rolled over on her little stomach. She gurgled out fresh sounds of delight. He eyed the rolls of healthy fat. He saw the scraping, dimpled hands picking at the dirt and conveying it to her moist baby lips. And the latter sight gave him a feeling of amusement in spite of his mood, while the inarticulate sounds that fell upon his ears were not unpleasing.

With the little life destroyed, and no tie holding him, Pideau considered further. He would be freer than ever before. He would be free to make his long journeys after cattle. He would not always have to hurry back. Then, too, he could go farther afield for his trade. Oh, yes. It would give him much wider scope and freedom. And then——

He glanced about him at the valley which had become his home.

His gaze took in the far woods across the valley. It shifted restlessly to the jagged uprising of snow-clad peaks which cupped the valley in every direction. Down below him lay a parkland of new-born grass and budding trees lit by flashes of sunlight that found reflection in the shining surface of the waters of a swift-flowing mountain river.

He glanced away over the great lake to his right that was the source of the river, and which spread out far as the eye could see till its confines became lost in the haze of the southern distance. He turned in the opposite direction, where the river and valley lost themselves in a maze of forest-robed hills, beyond which, many leagues on, lay the open sea of prairie land that was his great hunting ground. And then his quick eyes came back to the child who was the pivot of his thought.

No. The freedom he had it in his power to achieve for himself was not the freedom he sought. He would be alone, and he did not want to be alone. Solitude was something he abhorred. With his woman alive he had had the sort of partner with whom he could deal satisfactorily. He had been glad of her. She had been very useful. Somehow he felt the babe she had left behind her would also be some sort of companion. She would be a grievous burden. But——

The sea of woods claimed him again. They were limitless. They were forbidding. The mountains ... they were desperately lonesome. The winter, which had only just given way before the warmth of the new season, was one long nightmare of struggle for comfort, to keep the cold from his marrow, even to save life itself.

Yes. That crazy babe made for companionship. Besides, he liked the sound of her ridiculous crowing.

Pideau had no real understanding of the thing that was happening. Absorbed in a cold review of his own desires, he was without understanding of the subtle power with which Nature endows the weakness, the appealing helplessness of childhood. He had no realization that that dirty, dusky little life, from the very moment of its beginning, had been burrowing its way into the only really human spot which his savage soul possessed.

The half-breed kicked a stone with impotent impatience. He delved into a pocket in his rough tweed coat for his pipe. But he left it there. Then of a sudden he leaned down and lifted little Annette to his lap.

He would not destroy that life. He would keep his motherless babe. And queerly he found satisfaction that he would no longer have to share her with another—even her mother. She would be his—just his. And he would raise her somehow. But, in God’s name, how?

The tiny fingers seized his thick beard and tugged at it ruthlessly. The infant chuckled and made happy, inarticulate sounds. And Pideau laughed. He laughed outright.

The noon meal was over. The camp fire had been allowed to die down to smouldering ashes. The litter of Pideau’s activities lay scattered about. A plate had been flung aside unwashed. So, too, with a tin pannikin, and the cooking pot with its contents, sufficient to provide another meal or two. Then, near by, was an iron boiler half filled with soapy water, and beside it a little pile of the rags which had been removed from Annette’s body.

Pideau had spent a busy noon. Under his new-born resolve he had discovered new duties, which he had tackled in his naturally energetic way. He had eaten. And, having ministered to the comfort of his own stomach, he had done his best for the babe. New milk; rich, fat, creamy milk from his herd of stolen beasts. His understanding considered that milk was indicated. So forthwith he poured Annette’s rapidly expanding body as full of the creamy liquid as was conveniently possible.

Then came a burst of real inspiration. He heated water, and sought out the soap he never used on himself. Then he washed the infant all over from the downy crown of her head to the soles of her pretty feet. After that he raided the child’s scant wardrobe, and arrayed her small body in those clean garments which the dead mother had so jealously hoarded.

It had not been easy. No. But somehow the work had afforded Pideau a measure of amusement, and Annette seemed to regard it as an entirely new game. So it was, with the babe smelling reminiscently of powerful soap, that the man returned to his doorway, and, with a deep sense of satisfaction, prepared to attack once more the problems confronting him.

Annette fell asleep on his lap, and Pideau filled and lit his pipe.

The half-breed was a creature who believed in a carefully planned and well considered future. There was nothing that was haphazard about him. His desire for wealth knew no limits. And every dollar added to his store of currency was a further step on the road he designed to travel. It was money, money, money, all the time with him. He believed that money could satisfy every desire of his life. So every beast he could lay hands on, every beast he could sell safely across the southern border, was a step in the right direction. There was a bunch of ten Polled Angus cows he deeply desired to acquire. It would take some ten days to get them. How could——?

Pideau’s thought came to an abrupt termination. It broke off with a sharp sound like a sudden intake of breath whistling through the dense whisker obscuring his mouth. His eyes widened to their fullest extent. Then they narrowed. He leaned forward in his seat peering.

He remained unmoving, and the child slept on. He was peering down at a wide woodland bluff where it gave on to the open grass of the river bank. He had discovered movement at the edge of the bluff. And it was the movement of something or someone lurking, and, to his mind, spying. That at least was his inevitable conclusion.

For some moments there was no fresh development. Pideau’s searching eyes relaxed. He even thought of one of his own stray cows. Then, without warning, or thought for the slumbering Annette, he leaped to his feet, and the screaming infant lay kicking in the dust where she had fallen. A human figure had broken from the sheltering bluff. It was making its way uphill towards the dugout. Pideau had vanished into his hut.

When he reappeared it was with a Winchester sporting rifle, with telescope sights and a hair trigger. And he held it against his shoulder levelled at the intruder upon his hiding. His intent was plain. It was there in the fierce black eye that searched the sights, and in the lean, brown forefinger within a fraction of releasing the trigger. His purpose was death. And he had no intention of wasting a shot.

Moments passed, however, and the shot was withheld. Then of a sudden Pideau raised his head and lowered his weapon. The intruder was a woman. She was heavily burdened. And she was breasting the ascent to the dugout at a gait that told of the last stages of exhaustion.

Pideau Estevan was unimaginative. Romance, the miraculous, were things without a shadow of appeal for him. Yet the thing that had happened had stirred him to a queer, incredulous amazement.

While he set his cooking pot back on his fire, and laid fresh fuel under it, he flung backward glances at the figure of his sister, Luana, sitting wearily huddled in his doorway. Then from her he gazed at the two children squatting on the ground confronting each other with a calm stare of voiceless, infantile interest.

Pideau felt the whole thing was as crazily remarkable as it well could be. Only that morning had he buried his wife. Only a brief half-hour ago had he been planning the difficulties resulting from his loss. And now—now Luana had appeared from nowhere. And every difficulty seemed to have melted into thin air.

It was amazing.

Exhausted as she was, Luana had told him in brief outline the story of the disaster that had befallen on the Sisselu Northern Railroad.

She had told of the death of the missionary and his wife, for whom she had been working. She had told him how she and the boy-child she had brought with her were the only survivors of the disaster. And she had told him of the thing she had determined, and now, at last, had finally accomplished.

Pideau hurried again to the tired woman when the leaping flame assured him that her food would soon be ready for her.

“An’ so you steal him?” he said, gazing down at the weary figure of the girl as she leaned against the door-casing.

Pideau was thinking hard. And his manner had in it a sort of playful cunning.

Luana stirred into full mental activity. Her dark eyes lit with sudden passion. Her whole body seemed to thrill with emotion.

“Oh, it is the miracle, Pideau,” she cried. “Mine the eyes he look into first. Mine the arms that first hold him. His mother no. His father—tcha! They nothing. He knows me. He loves me. Always I make him love me. They both are dead. So I steal him. Yes. Why not?”

“This missionary. His folks? The police?”

Pideau was deeply considering. Luana laughed voicelessly in spite of her weariness.

“There are folks way east,” she said. “They hear of the death of them, an’ they think my boy-man killed, too. The police know nothing. How should they know? They find me. They say, ‘this woman an’ her child.’ When I wake they ask me. I tell ’em quick. I am a breed woman who goes on a visit to folk at Lake Mataba. Oh, yes. My boy. He’s dark like the half-breed mother. I say my man way south, at Calford. I ask ’em quick send me to Calford. They say ‘yes.’”

Luana shrugged her drooping shoulders contemptuously, and her gaze turned to the magnet that always held her. The children were stirring. Annette was reaching out towards the little bare feet of the boy. It was a gesture of infantile friendliness.

“An’ they bring you to Calford? They ask no more?”

Pideau wanted to be very sure. He must know it all before taking his final decision.

“I go before the inspector. He ask much,” Luana went on easily. “But I all ready. I think my story good. I tell him I go to High Creek, where is my man. I think they ask on the telephone. So I say quick he works on a farm ’way out on the foothills. The inspector, the fat inspector, says he send me in police wagon. I say, ‘Yes—you are so good to poor woman. When?’ He say, ‘to-morrow.’ I say, ‘yes.’ I go. I think hard. I buy food in the stores. I set it in a sack across my shoulders. Then I make the sling for my back, so boy-man ride easy. An’ I go quick. I walk. I walk far. One hundred—two hundred mile. I don’t know. Twice I nearly die in the muskeg in the hills. I’m scared of the timber wolves. I light plenty fires. I follow quick on the trail I know. And I say, ‘Pideau in the hills.’ I come to him. So I keep my boy-man.”

Luana drew a deep breath, and closed her tired eyes. Pideau watched her. Suddenly he looked away down into the valley below.

“I bury Annette this morning,” he said.

Luana’s eyes were wide open, and she sat up.

“Annette—dead?” Then she gazed at the child Annette. “I think she maybe at work somewhere. Dead?”

Pideau shook his head without a sign of emotion.

“The mountain fever kill her,” was all he said. “She go, an’ leave me with little—Annette.”

Both were gazing at the two children. And the silence between them prolonged.

At last the woman’s gaze was withdrawn, and she sought the man’s dark face with a question.

“It good,” she said at last. “Then I raise your Annette with my boy-man. Yes?”

Pideau eyed the two infants who had now approached each other more nearly. They were mixed up in the aimless way of babyhood. There were sounds coming from them. Gurgles from Annette. And leaping words from the boy. Pideau’s face had no smile, but he suddenly laughed with his voice.

“Yes,” he said. “You stop here while I mak good trade. You cook. An’ I teach you the work of the cattle. I go now. I get ten cows. It’s a farm ’way out on the prairie. Then I come back with them. You raise Annette with your boy-man. I am glad. The wolf pack grows!”

He moved off to the fire where Luana’s food was cooking. And as he went he laughed at his own humor.

CHAPTER III
ELEVEN YEARS LATER

ANNETTE was standing on the river bank. She was intensely preoccupied. Her willow rod swung up. It whistled through the hot summer air. Then her homemade fly struck the calm surface of the shady pool with a lightness, a dexterity, that displayed her child’s skill.

Her dark eyes were alight. There was eagerness in the pose of her tall, angular body. Her pretty lips were parted, and her breath came quickly. She was very happy.

The boy was watching from beneath the visor of the old cloth cap he had inherited from Pideau. He, too, had all the enthusiasm of a keen fisherman. But he was not fishing. He was squatting on the sun-dried grass of the river bank cleaning his rifle, the breech of which was dismantled, with its parts spread out on a grease rag on the ground beside him.

Two lean husky dogs were at the water’s edge near by. They were great creatures of the trail. But they were also hunting dogs, trained to an efficiency which only the limitless patience of the boy could have achieved. They were searching the distance with eager eyes. Their long muzzles were pointing at a far distant forest line beyond the river. And their bodies were a-quiver with that canine excitement which finds expression so readily.

Farther back from the river, where the haylike grass was abundant, a pinto pony was tethered, grazing. He was without saddle or bridle. He wore only an old rope head collar and the tether by which he was secured.

The valley was bathed in blazing sunshine which told of the summer’s height. Forest, grass, and shrub were ripe with the maturity of the season. The silence and solitude of the mountain world were profound.

The girl cast, and recast again. Then of a sudden her whole body stiffened. And a sharp little ejaculation broke from her. The boy watched the play. And as he waited, the whimper of his dogs broke into a howl that sounded full of mourning in the silence of the valley.

Annette struck sharply. In a moment there was a flash of wriggling silver in the sunshine. Then a large fish lay flapping on the grass, and the girl was on her knees with her strong, brown fingers busy salving her precious fly.

“Say, you!” she cried, flinging the words back over her angular shoulder. “Send your crazy dogs to home. They’re spoilin’ things. I hate ’em.”

The boy smiled. He made no attempt to obey. He turned to gaze at the creatures that had angered Annette.

They were standing in an attitude of savage threat. Their manes were bristling. The howl had given way to ferocious deep-throated snarls at a direction where the river lost itself in the dark forests to the northeast.

Annette stood up from her task of readjusting her fly. She had flung her capture amongst the round dozen of already stiffening fish that were lying on the grass. Her angry eyes watched the offending dogs.

She was tall for her twelve years; tall and lathlike. Her limbs were thin, and brown, and shapeless. Clad in a brief skirt that barely covered her bony knees, and in a dark worsted jersey, that seemed to flatten her body the more surely, there was little enough of the beauty of figure that might develop later.

It was different, however, with her dusky face, and the mass of raven-black hair that fell below her shoulders. Her hair was wonderful in its untrained profusion. And her face was already showing signs of a beauty that was almost classical. Her eyes were profoundly expressive of emotions that rarely knew discipline. Her whole expression was full of infinite possibilities. Certainly the half-breed was dominant in her, with all its potentialities for mischief.

The eleven years that had passed since an exhausted Luana had arrived at the door of Pideau Estevan’s dugout had brought little outward change in the half-breed’s mountain hiding, except for the development of Annette, and the boy the woman had brought with her.

The dugout showed no signs of the passage of years, or of the devastating mountain storms. For the rest the valley still served its purpose. The hills, the forests, the rivers, they were all as unchanging as the glacial fields and eternal snows that crowned the lofty summits where earth and sky met.

The unseen changes, however, were in the progress of Pideau’s fortunes. His illicit trade had gone on without interruption. He had bled the harassed settlers on the far eastern plains without mercy or scruple. And it was the smallness of his thefts which had assured his long success.

He never stole cattle in bulk. His thefts looked mean and small. But by a process of raiding in twos and threes, and never more than six head of cattle at a time, he had built up a herd which yielded him ample profit across the United States border to the south of him.

Pideau’s avaricious soul was comparatively satisfied. His fortune was growing and had already opened out pleasing visions of the future. But his astute mind was never resting, and he realized that his immunity from consequences could not continue indefinitely.

From across the southern border something more than rumor had reached him. The Americans down south were talking Prohibition. They were not only talking of it, they were moving on towards it in that thorough fashion in which they did most things. Well, Prohibition had served him more than well at different times in the Western Territories of Canada. It would be a poor bet if he could not turn this new trend of American politics to good account for himself. So, as he saw the end of his present traffic approaching, he was well enough satisfied.

His sister Luana had served her purpose. She had raised Annette for him with the boy he had long since dubbed “the Wolf.” She had done her best. She had taught them both to read, and write, and to figure simple sums, to the limit of her own stock of education. Then she had taught them to work, which was what Pideau most desired. The only thing that had offended him had been her partiality for the Wolf. But even that, he had been able to counter-balance in his own cruel way.

But the boy was approaching manhood now. He had outgrown Luana’s care, while Annette was still of an age to come under her controlling hand, which was often enough unsparing.

These things, however, were of no real concern to the boy and girl. They were inseparable playmates and had little enough thought for Pideau’s affairs. Besides Pideau was away on his trade. And Luana was sick—very sick with mountain fever.

Annette turned at last from the dogs to the boy.

“I said you’re to send ’em to home—you Wolf!” she cried, with that imperiousness which her sex and age seemed to justify. Then she became more vehement and her voice shrilled. “They’re curs, anyway. They ain’t dogs. Only curs.” Then as the boy’s eyes smiled with deeper derision she became still more furious. She stamped her bare brown foot on the grass. “So’re you!” she screamed at him. “Send ’em right back, or—or I’ll tell Pideau when he gets back to home, an’—an’ he’ll rawhide you for not letting me fish right.”

The Wolf glanced unconcernedly at the whimpering dogs.

“You got plenty fish. Wot’s worryin’ you?”

He snapped the breech of his rifle into place, and gathered up his tools and crammed them into the pockets of his breeches and stood up.

He was tall. The Wolf had developed far beyond his fourteen years. He was already taller than Pideau. But that which was far less usual was the fact that his physical strength had more than kept pace with his growth. He was lean, rawboned, and possessed of the activity of a wildcat. He was keen of mind and nimble-witted, and he possessed that which was denied to all his half-breed companions. His humor was the happiest thing imaginable.

For all that, however, he was as full of the spirit of the wilderness as the mountain world could breed him.

The Wolf’s indifference maddened Annette. But suddenly she smiled in a manner that should have warned him. Her whole attitude changed with her sly smile, and her tone was full of guile.

“You know why they howl—those curs?” she asked quietly.

“Wolves.”

Annette shook her head.

“No. Luana. She’s dyin’. Anyone knows curs howl when folks are dyin’. Pideau says so.”

The reality of the Wolf’s smile fell from him. But Nature had designed something like a perpetual smile in the fashioning of his eyes. He was staring at his playmate with trouble grievously shadowing his happy face.

“I tell you it’s wolves,” he cried, with sudden vehemence. “They’re yonder. They’re in the woods. I know. Luana ain’t dyin’. She’s—she’s getting better, sure. She said so. You’re talkin’ foolish. Guess maybe you want her to die.”

Annette wanted to hurt, and knew she had succeeded. She loved to hurt the Wolf at any time. It was her way to plague the boy. She was as ready to torment as to fight him with hands and teeth.

Usually the Wolf was satisfied and only laughed at her. Annette was Annette, the whole joy of his budding manhood. He worshipped the little whirlwind fury. But now, under the girl’s lash, he was only a boy, and one who loved the woman who had raised him with a boundless affection.

“Maybe I do,” Annette admitted. “I hate her. She beats me when Pideau’s not around. When he’s away she makes me work while she sits around with you, an’ acts foolish. It’s all you—you! I’ll be glad when she’s dead. She’s got mountain fever. Pideau said so. Same as my mother did. An’ she’s goin’ to die, too. What’ll you do when she’s buried so the wolves can’t eat her fool body? Guess Pideau’ll fix you.”

But the Wolf’s bad moment had passed. He understood. It was just Annette. So he grinned.

“I’m not scared any,” he said, making a sound with his lips that brought the dogs to his caressing hand. “I’m as big as Pideau, an’ he can’t rawhide me. He wouldn’t anyway. Maybe he daren’t. I can shoot as quick as Pideau. He can’t worry me a thing—now.”

Annette stared. To her childish mind the boy’s spoken defiance of her father was something almost terrible. She knew Pideau’s temper. She knew something of his cruelty. She knew he had no love for her white playmate, and had often seen him lay the rawhide on his bare shoulders.

She glanced back up at the dugout as though she feared Pideau might be there to hear the boy’s defiance. Then she pointed at the youth with a thin, brown finger.

“You’re crazy,” she said, in a low tone. “Pideau could just—kill you.”

The Wolf only shook his head and smiled.

“Maybe it’s you that’s crazy. Who hunts pelts for Pideau? Who gets meat fer him to eat? Who rebrands his stolen cows, an’ herds ’em? Pideau’s no fool, kid. He hates me. But he needs me. An’ he knows I can shoot quick an’ straight. Soon I’ll be a man. Then you’ll see.”

The dogs had gone back to the river bank, and Annette was watching them again. She felt that the Wolf had got the best of the talk, and her wicked mind was searching for fresh mischief.

“He said Luana’d die,” she declared, returning to the thing she knew was a sure hurt.

But the Wolf refused to be drawn again. He shrugged.

“I don’t care what Pideau says. He’s a liar, anyway. And a thief, too! He’s thinkin’ of quittin’.”

Annette forgot the dogs. She forgot her fishing. She dropped the line she was holding, and, with it, the fly she treasured. She eyed the boy for a thoughtful moment. Then:

“Who’s the liar now?” she cried, but with a quick look of doubt flashing in her big eyes.

“Only Pideau,” the Wolf grinned.

Annette turned away to the distance. She was disturbed. Her child’s mind knew only the mountains. They were her whole world. She was part of them. And the thought of quitting her beloved playground was devastating.

“Pideau wouldn’t quit,” she argued. “He’s safe here. He’s doing swell. He said so. Why’d he quit, anyway?”

“Cos he’s scairt. He reckons the p’lice’ll get him soon. They’re hot on his trail. He figgers they’ll get his tracks in a while, an’ then——”

The Wolf broke off with a look of profound meaning, and the girl was impressed. But her fear passed as she considered the source of her information. Her scorn leaped again.

“Guess you like to think Pideau’ll get trailed by the p’lice,” she sneered. “Maybe you’d set them wise. It was a bad day Luana brought you. You’d be dead, starved, if it wasn’t for Pideau. Yet you hate him. You’re a skunk. A cur like—like them,” she flung at him, nodding at his howling dogs. “You ken shoot quicker than Pideau! Psha! I tell you Pideau’ll beat the life out of you when he comes, an’ I tell him the things you said.”

“He won’t.”

The Wolf shook his head.

“You can tell him all you want,” he went on. “I don’t care. Pideau’s quittin’. He’ll make you quit with him. If I fancy I’ll stop around. I ken make as good as Pideau right here. Maybe you’ll have to go live in some dirty town, where you can’t fish, an’ you ain’t got a pony to ride. Maybe——”

“I won’t go!”

The girl’s voice had something in it that was not all anger. There were tears of real grief behind her hot denial.

“You’ll have to—’less——”

“’Less what?”

The Wolf had become seriously thoughtful.

“Pideau reckons the furs I took last winter gave him more’n five hundred dollars,” he said meaningly. “That’s a deal of money. It ’ud have been more—a lot more—only I cached haf my catch. I got ’em ’way off in the forest. I ken make big money. An’ I don’t need to steal.”

“You hid ’em from Pideau? That’s talk. Fool talk,” Annette cried.

“’Tain’t. I’m a swell hunter. I ken get foxes all the time. That’s why I don’t worry with Pideau. You want to stop around when Pideau quits?”

Annette’s eyes widened. And the Wolf saw the thing he desired as she mutely nodded her answer.

The boy straightened himself up. His fine eyes were shining.

“You ken if you feel that way. An’ I’d be glad to have you around. I’ll be a man soon. An’ you’ll be a grown woman. When Pideau quits we can make a big getaway into the forests so he can’t locate us. We can marry then. An’ I’ll hunt pelts, an’ make big money, an’ you can stop around an’ fish trout. It ’ud be swell. An’ we’d be quit of Pideau, who’s a thief.”

The boy was serious. Deadly serious. And Annette eyed him curiously. Then of a sudden she began to laugh. The boy’s cheeks flamed with sudden anger.

“Oh, you great, big, swell hunter!” Annette cried maddeningly. “Oh, you brave fool man! You! You! Say, Wolf, you beat it an’ hunt gophers, an’ leave me to my fishing. You take your curs with you, and the gun you can shoot so good with. Marry you? Why, I hate you, you fool kid.”

She turned and picked up her rod, and the Wolf heard it whistle through the air. Then, out of his hot anger, he did the thing she had ordered. He shouldered his rifle and flung his answer back at her as he went.

“Hate all you reckon to, Annette,” he cried, as he made towards the tethered pony, with his dogs leaping about his moccasined heels. “It won’t help you. You’ll marry me, sure. I fixed that. See?”

He grinned back at her, his anger swept away by that humor that was never long at fault. Then he added:

“Guess I’ll get after them wolves so you’ll know it ain’t Luana dyin’.”

Annette forgot her fly, and the trout rising at it. She craned round, her face flaming.

“Look at him. Great big hunter!” she jeered after him, as he vaulted to the bare back of his pinto and set off at a run.

Left alone, however, Annette found no further interest in her fishing. Her sport only appealed as long as it was shared with the Wolf. It was the same with everything in her life. She would not have admitted it even to herself. On the contrary, she told herself fiercely that she hated her playmate worse, much worse than she hated the dying Luana. She never wanted to see him again. She hoped his pinto would fall in a gopher hole and kill the Wolf. She wished him every harm her vicious mind could think of. And she swore to herself that she would tell Pideau everything he had said.

For all that, however, it was with a quick sigh she quit her fishing, and reeled in her line, and detached her precious fly and stuck it in the worsted of her clothing. Then, after bending over her fish, and gathering them up, and stringing them together, it was with a desperate inclination to tears that she faced the hill for her dugout home and her dying foster mother.

She told herself again and again of the hate with which the Wolf inspired her. But long before the door of the dingy dugout was reached she was thrilling with the vision of the mountain life in the woods, alone with the boy, as the Wolf had promised it to her.

CHAPTER IV
THE “KILL”

WITH the picket line half-hitched in its mouth the pinto dashed off at the distance-devouring gait of the pacer.

The Wolf had boasted his prowess to a derisive Annette, and the girl’s jeer was still pursuing him. But his boast was no idle one. And the girl who had derided knew well enough that was so. The Wolf, like his namesake, was a hunter, and brimful of the elemental life that was his.

He rode like an Indian on his splash-coated pinto. The Indian was there in his makeshift equipment. It was in the loosely dangling, moccasined feet; in the half-hitched, single rawhide line; in the close seat on a razor-like back. Then it was in his old buckskin suit, inherited from Pideau’s decaying wardrobe. It was in his acute, sunburned features, and in the all-seeing keenness of his fine, dark eyes.

Vanity helped to foster the likeness. The boy was proud of it. Nevertheless it was by no means artificial. It went deep. There were the long years of association with half-breeds to account for it. There was the wild life of the mountains, with their dour solitudes and vicious storms, and their everlasting call to the primitive. Then there were those pastimes, savage pastimes, which in early years, make so deep an impression. Without doubt the boy’s white-man heritage was deeply submerged.

The dogs had set off at their long-gaited, wolfish lope. They lived only for the chase, and the rare caresses of their youthful master. They were obeying now. For their movements were inspired by the inarticulate command which had fallen from the Wolf’s lips as he vaulted to the back of his pony.

The boy went without even a glance in the direction of his playmate. His whole interest had become absorbed in the two fierce creatures who had done their best to wreck the girl’s fishing, and create discord between their human companions. His mood was the enthusiasm of the hunter. For the chase of the timber wolf never failed in its vivid appeal.

But that which he had foreseen failed to mature. He had looked for a swift heading for the ford, a few hundred yards farther down the river. He had expected a crossing to the distant woods beyond, on the eastern slopes of the valley. That had clearly been the direction of the dogs’ concern.

Nothing of the sort happened. Rene, the bitch, had, as always, taken the lead. The less responsible Pete had boisterously attempted to head her. But the lady would have none of him. She slashed at him with vicious teeth, and flung him savagely back to her shoulder. She passed the river ford as though she had no knowledge of its existence, and headed down the valley in the determined manner of one whose mind is clearly made up, and refuses to be deflected from her purpose.

The boy speculated. Why? His mind was acutely questioning. Why this sudden and unaccountable abandonment of the direction which had stirred the dogs to such profound disquiet? Had Annette been wiser than he? Had the dogs been concerned for something which had nothing to do with wolves? He was inclined to doubt his own first judgment.

The chase carried him on down the valley along the course of the meandering river. And it was a run that appealed to all that was primitive in him.

The day was brilliant, and the world about him was vividly gracious. The still, hot air was full of that tang which only ten thousand feet of elevation could give it. And the limitless spreads of forest on the valley slopes, and the dense woodland bluffs, which dotted the park-like bosom of the vast hollow, were a ripe monotony of green.

It was a panorama of wild beauty. And from the snowy glaciers on the mountain tops, which shone in the summer sun, to the verdant delights of the valley’s heart it was a world the Wolf claimed for his own.

They raced over the open. They searched their way down the leafless aisles of shadowed pine woods. Sometimes they were hugging the river bank. And again they were often a mile and more away on the higher ground, avoiding swamps of perilous muskeg. There were times when the hunting dogs were quite lost to view, and only an occasional whimper afforded a clue to their whereabouts. There were others when the pinto was close on their heels sharing the enthusiasm of the chase despite the sweat streaming into its lean flanks.

On, on they went towards the goal which the wise old Rene had so determinedly selected for the run.