It was Annette, and the policeman smiled to himself as he remembered that those two would soon be travelling the same trail as himself, at the best gait they could get out of their prairie horses.
The sight merely interested him. It gave him no particular concern. He intended to reach Buffalo Coulee first, considerably first, no matter at what pace they urged their horses. For much depended on the speed of his journey, and he knew he could trust the creature under him to behave generously.
No. The sight of the Wolf standing there waiting to set out for his home, gave him no anxiety as to his own plans. But as, a few minutes later, he nodded farewell to Sturt and left the barracks by a back way to avoid the waiting man, he wondered profoundly to what extent the Wolf and Annette, if left to their own headlong methods, would further complicate their foolish lives. How absurdly they would contrive to destroy the limited chances of human happiness which life was still willing to afford them.
The Wolf had smoked many cigarettes. He had smoked incessantly. He would probably go on smoking indefinitely. It was an expression of his preoccupation.
The man was hard set by his purpose, from which nothing would be permitted to deflect him. The delay in Annette’s coming gave him no anxiety. She would come, he knew. For it was a very different Annette returning with him to Buffalo Coulee from the fury who had determined upon his destruction.
But the Wolf was not now thinking of Annette. At no time in his life had she been far from his thoughts before. But now, for once at least, she found no place in them. The journey before him, that rush back to Buffalo Coulee and the thing it meant, preoccupied him to the exclusion of all else.
The Wolf had undergone one of those swift transformations to which, under stress, human nature is so susceptible. He was bitterly determined. Scruple was flung to the winds.
Hitherto he had looked on all life tolerantly. He had seen good in all men, in all things. He had always felt that the simple fact of life, with all its tremendous appeal, all its human possibilities, was something for which to be joyously thankful. But that wholesome phase had gone, shattered beyond repair. The confining bars of a prison had brought him his awakening. He had delved to the true meaning of his presence in Calford.
The man’s mood was written large in eyes that still smiled, but which shone coldly, implacably, in spite of their natural expression. It was there in his set jaws, in the tight-set lips closed over his cigarette. It was in his calm patience, awaiting Annette’s coming. He was master of himself, steeled to the last fibre of his being for the bitter task he had set himself.