“Maybe I do,” Annette admitted. “I hate her. She beats me when Pideau’s not around. When he’s away she makes me work while she sits around with you, an’ acts foolish. It’s all you—you! I’ll be glad when she’s dead. She’s got mountain fever. Pideau said so. Same as my mother did. An’ she’s goin’ to die, too. What’ll you do when she’s buried so the wolves can’t eat her fool body? Guess Pideau’ll fix you.”
But the Wolf’s bad moment had passed. He understood. It was just Annette. So he grinned.
“I’m not scared any,” he said, making a sound with his lips that brought the dogs to his caressing hand. “I’m as big as Pideau, an’ he can’t rawhide me. He wouldn’t anyway. Maybe he daren’t. I can shoot as quick as Pideau. He can’t worry me a thing—now.”
Annette stared. To her childish mind the boy’s spoken defiance of her father was something almost terrible. She knew Pideau’s temper. She knew something of his cruelty. She knew he had no love for her white playmate, and had often seen him lay the rawhide on his bare shoulders.
She glanced back up at the dugout as though she feared Pideau might be there to hear the boy’s defiance. Then she pointed at the youth with a thin, brown finger.
“You’re crazy,” she said, in a low tone. “Pideau could just—kill you.”
The Wolf only shook his head and smiled.
“Maybe it’s you that’s crazy. Who hunts pelts for Pideau? Who gets meat fer him to eat? Who rebrands his stolen cows, an’ herds ’em? Pideau’s no fool, kid. He hates me. But he needs me. An’ he knows I can shoot quick an’ straight. Soon I’ll be a man. Then you’ll see.”
The dogs had gone back to the river bank, and Annette was watching them again. She felt that the Wolf had got the best of the talk, and her wicked mind was searching for fresh mischief.
“He said Luana’d die,” she declared, returning to the thing she knew was a sure hurt.