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.