"It seems to me, Syme, we needn't have worried a thing," he said. "Allenwood isn't the feller to get up and shout any time. He's the sort of boy to take a punch and come up for more. There's no woman got grip enough on him to break him to small meat. I don't guess there's anything could fix him that way—and after the way he made this last trip. He's quite a feller when it comes to grit."
"Yes, sir." Syme smiled into his superior's keen face. "Maybe he doesn't care. I've heard some fellers are that way after being married a few years."
The cynicism of the younger man drew a responsive smile in reply. But it also drew a very definite and decided shake of the head.
Whatever the general opinion, one man knew, one man had witnessed the momentary baring of a man's soul torn with agony, in the candle-lit tent on the banks of the Theton River. And now, had he been in Reindeer to witness, he would have understood the reality of suffering under the stern, almost forbidding front with which Steve confronted his little world.
Not a sign did Steve give. His habitual, shadowy smile was ready when he felt it to be due. He discussed everything that needed discussion with the apparent interest of a mind wholly unabsorbed. He forced a cheerfulness which carried conviction, and even drew forth such cynical comments as those of Inspector Syme. But under it all the agony of mind was something bordering on the insupportable.
The desolation of his outlook was appalling. And during his weary hours of solitude the hopelessness of it stirred him to a bitterness that at moments became almost insanely profane. Shadows, too, crept into his mind. Ugly shadows that gained power with the passing of days. Had not such shadows come he must have been more than human. But he was very simply human, capable of the deepest passion subject to the human heart. Hate seized upon him with a force even greater perhaps than the passions that had hitherto swayed him, and hard on the heels of hate came a deep, burning desire for revenge.
His desire was not against the woman who had wronged and deceived him. A sort of pitying contempt had replaced the wealth of passionate devotion he had lavished. His whole desire was against the man. And, curiously enough, this fevered desire became a sort of palliative drug which left him with the necessary strength to withstand the pain of his heart.
Slowly at first it took possession of him, but, with each passing day, it grew, until, at last, it occupied him to the exclusion of everything. Even the thought of his child, that tender atom of humanity who had been a living part of him, and whose soft lips and baby hands could never again become anything more than a memory, was powerless to rob him of one particle of the cold delight, as, in a hundred ways, he discovered the broken, dead body of the man who had wronged him within the grasp of his merciless hands.
But none of this was outwardly visible. It was concealed with the rest. And so the cynicism of Syme, and the general comfort of those who came to cheer the sick room of a valued comrade.
So it came that one day, towards the end of Steve's convalescence, the Superintendent found himself occupying the solitary chair, with Steve lounging smoking on the be-patterned coverlet of the bed, talking of the Unaga Indians and their habits of hibernation which sounded so incredible to the man who had never seen for himself.