“It’s too cold for the horses. We’ll ride on. Guess we can talk as well that way.”
“No. I quit you right away here after we’re through. Ther’s folk in Buffalo Coulee who don’t sleep a deal.”
Annette gazed out in the direction of the distant township. And as she gazed the smoulder in her eyes flared up. Deep fires were burning behind them and memory was feeding them fuel. Generations of savagery were busy within her. A tangle of fierce emotion was driving. It was as though all the wayward impishness of her youth had suddenly developed into a surge of mad desire that was beyond her powers of control. And yet there was something she neither recognized nor understood, delaying a tongue that was usually ready.
Fyles refrained from urging. He was watching, watching.
Of a sudden the girl gestured. To the man it was as if she were thrusting something from her with two passionately impelled hands.
“It’s the Wolf, I tell you!” she cried, with sudden fierceness. “He shot Ernie Sinclair to death. He’d threatened. And—I know.”
“The Wolf? That’s your brother?”
There was something almost of horror in the policeman’s tone.
“He’s not my brother. He’s no relation to me. None. He’s white like you. He’s just Pideau’s partner in the liquor.”
“And you—know?”