“He won’t.”
The Wolf shook his head.
“You can tell him all you want,” he went on. “I don’t care. Pideau’s quittin’. He’ll make you quit with him. If I fancy I’ll stop around. I ken make as good as Pideau right here. Maybe you’ll have to go live in some dirty town, where you can’t fish, an’ you ain’t got a pony to ride. Maybe——”
“I won’t go!”
The girl’s voice had something in it that was not all anger. There were tears of real grief behind her hot denial.
“You’ll have to—’less——”
“’Less what?”
The Wolf had become seriously thoughtful.
“Pideau reckons the furs I took last winter gave him more’n five hundred dollars,” he said meaningly. “That’s a deal of money. It ’ud have been more—a lot more—only I cached haf my catch. I got ’em ’way off in the forest. I ken make big money. An’ I don’t need to steal.”
“You hid ’em from Pideau? That’s talk. Fool talk,” Annette cried.