The wolf pack

by Ridgwell Cullum

Pideau was riding beside him, morose, silent. His expression was brooding. His eyes were narrowed to mere slits as though striving to conceal the evil of the mind behind them. He, too, was gazing far ahead, but he was concerned with nothing he beheld.

Every now and again a quick sidelong glance took in the youth at his side. And apparently the Wolf remained unconscious of the attention, which was without a shadow of friendliness or good will.

But, in fact, the boy was acutely alive to his companion’s glances. And, moreover, he possessed full understanding of the reason and purpose lying behind them. Years of bitter experience had taught him so much of Pideau. He understood the mire of evil that filled the man’s soul. Well enough he knew that the name with which he had himself been dubbed rightly should have been bestowed on the father of Annette. For there was no attribute of the fierce marauder of the forest that Pideau did not possess. Right down to the queer, haunting cowardice which is a fundamental of it.

The Wolf knew that dire threat was overshadowing him. And in Pideau the nature of such a threat could only possess one interpretation.

The cattle were moving ahead, herded with the skill of trained sheep dogs by Rene and Pete. It was the boy who controlled their work. Pideau took no hand. It was the boy, in fact, who had controlled everything from his first confronting of Pideau in the act of his crime, to the ghastly work which had occupied the long hours of night.

It was little wonder that the boy longed for forgetfulness. Clean, wholesome, imbued with a frank delight in the simple fact of existence, and the exercise of a keen, natural intelligence, he had found himself wallowing in a sink of horror, driven to it by circumstances which had been beyond his power of escape. He had realized that Pideau, for the sake of Annette, must be saved from the consequences of his own savage, blundering crime. And, with a generosity he could not deny, he had hurled himself to the man’s support.

The reaction of the horror of the night still crowded down upon him. It was all utterly unforgettable. The two murdered policemen. Their two horses. Then the ghastly task to which his hunter’s training and instinct had been put.

He had seen the fire devouring equipment and clothing till not a single recognizable shred remained to betray. He had seen the stiffened human bodies hurled to the hungry maw of the bottomless mire of the muskeg. Then there had been that worst of all necessity. Two fine-mettled bronchos, full of life and equine beauty, had been turned adrift in the forests with the reasonable certainty that they would hardly survive more than a few days.

And all the while there had not been one moment when he had dared relax his vigilance for his own personal safety. Pideau was a coward. And the boy’s woodcraft, hunting the timber wolf, had long since taught him the treachery of which the coward is capable.

The Wolf had learned so much since he had parted from Annette the morning before. In a few short hours he had learned his own strength. And he knew that what he had done had placed Annette’s father in the position of a trapped fox. He had a shrewd understanding. And the sum of possible consequences came to him easily. He was, metaphorically, watching the snapping jaws of the trapped fox, and knew that his own safety lay in his wit in avoiding them.