"I've done with this fool talk," Steve cried almost roughly. "I've listened to too much already. I'm not figgering to let you break things between us. There's more than you and me in it. There's that poor little kiddie in the other room. Say, I've seen this coming. I've seen it coming—weeks. I've seen a whole heap that hurts a man that loves his wife, and guesses he wants to see her happy. I've seen what isn't good for a father to see, either. You've told me the things you guess you feel, and now I'm going to tell you the things I feel. You reckon the things I say about your good time coming are hot air. They're not. But you've got to get fool notions out of your head, and work for the things you want, the same as I reckon to. I'm out to make good—for you. Understand, for you, and for little Coqueline. I'm out to make good with all that's in me. And it don't matter a curse to me if all hell freezes over, I'm going to make good. Get that, and get it good. It's a sort of life-line that ought to make things easy for you. There's just one thing that can break my play, Nita. Only one. It's your weakening. It's up to me to see you don't weaken. You need to take hold of the notion we're partners in this thing. And don't forget I'm senior partner, and my word goes. Just now my word is kind of simple. If you don't feel like carrying on for me, you need to remember there's our little Coqueline. She's part of you. She's part of me. And she's got a claim on you that no human law can ever rob her of. Well, the proposition between us has two sides. My side means the trail, and the job that's mine. I need to face it with a clear head, and an easy mind. My side means I got to get busy with every nerve in my body to get you an ultimate good time, and see you get all you need to make you good an' happy. That's the one purpose I dream about. Maybe your side's different. But I don't guess it's any easier. You've got to wait around till those things come along. But you've got more to do than that. You've got to play this old game right. Your work's by this home. It don't matter if it's winter or summer, if it's storming or sunshine. You've got to do the chores you're guessing you hate, and you need to do them right, and willingly. We're man and wife. And these chores are yours by all the laws of God, and the Nature that made you the mother of our little Coqueline. You've got to cut this crazy notion for fool pleasures right out, till the pleasure time comes around. That time isn't yet. The woman who lets her child and her home suffer for joy notions isn't worth the room she'll take in hell later. Well, see and get busy, and let's have no more fool talk and crazy notions. Here, take this," he went on, in his deliberate, forceful way, thrusting the baby's feeding bottle into the girl's hands. "That's the kiddie's feed. Guess I fixed it because—well, maybe because you're tired. Take it to her. Give it to her. And, as long as you live don't you ever forget she's the right to your love, and to my love, and every darn thing we know to make things right for her."
The force of the man was irresistible. It was something the girl had never witnessed before. She had only known the husband, devoted, gentle, almost yielding in his great love. The man that had finished talking now was the man Julyman regarded above all others.
Nita took the bottle thrust into her hands, and, without a word, she rose from her chair and passed into the bedroom which the baby's room adjoined.
Steve watched her go. His hungry eyes followed her every movement. His heart was torn by conflicting emotions. His love told him that he had been harsh almost to brutality, but his sense warned him he had taken the only course which could hope to achieve the peace and happiness which was Nita's right as well as his own.
He had meant to fight for these things as he would fight on the trail against the forces of Nature seeking to overwhelm him. He would yield nothing. For all his words had cost him he was conscious of the rightness of the course he had taken. But he was fighting a battle in which forces were arrayed against him of which he was wholly unaware.
As Nita passed into the bedroom the sound of footsteps outside broke the silence of the room. A moment later he turned in response to a knock on his door.
Ten minutes later Steve was seated at the desk in his office. He was in the company of Major Hervey Garstaing, the Indian Agent. The Corporal, from Reindeer, was already rolled up in the blankets which were spread out in the corner of the room. His work had been accomplished. He was physically weary. And, judging by the sound of his regular breathing, Nature had claimed her own the moment his head had touched the carefully folded overcoat which served him for a pillow.
The bare severity of the room was uninviting. There was little display in the work of the police. Utility and purpose was the keynote of their lives and at the year's end the tally of work accomplished was the thing that mattered.
Steve preferred to receive the Indian Agent in his office. Garstaing had never been an intimate of his. Their relations were official, and just sufficiently neighbourly for men who lived within two miles of each other in a country where human companionship was at a premium.