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.