The half-breed turned and frowningly contemplated the boy’s smiling face. All the old murderous feelings had leaped out of the background again. And for some moments he looked into the fearless eyes that challenged him. Then he shrugged and inclined his head in submission.
CHAPTER VII
THE HEART OF THE WOLF
THE noon sun was right overhead, a molten globe of merciless fury. The heat of the valley was fierce. Flies and mosquitoes swarmed in the still air. The cattle were munching wearily, indifferent to the dogs harrying them, indifferent to the luxurious knee-deep grass through which they were ploughing their somnolent way.
The Wolf’s eyes were anxious. There was no smile in them now. The child in him was uppermost. His whole thought was for that home on the hillside which had just come into view, and the human associations it contained for him.
Annette was there. Annette, and his sick mother, Luana. It was of Luana he was thinking most. And his thought was pregnant with grave anxiety. Mountain fever. It was fierce, and deadly, and very swift. Would he find her better, or worse? Would he——?
He wished the smoke from the fire were showing. Surely it should be, with noon at hand. Had Annette forgotten? She might have forgotten. Then perhaps Luana had no need of food.
He glanced at the figure of Pideau, who had uttered no word since his earlier submission. The morose creature displayed no interest whatsoever in the home that was now so very near. He displayed no interest in anything. Not even in the cattle which would ultimately make him a handsome return for the trouble in which they had involved him. The man saw nothing but the visions of his busy brain.
The Wolf understood. And it turned him from his own natural anxieties to the big thing that had taken possession of his life. He knew where he stood with Pideau now. From now on, until full manhood came to his rescue, a chasm of disaster would always be gaping at his feet. He had nothing to save him from it but his own wit and courage. So he watched, for the time, the thing lying back of the half-breed’s eyes and revelled in the thought of the battle in which they had joined issue.
It was an amazing transformation that twenty-four hours had wrought in him. Outwardly he was just the same, lank, muscular, developed out of all proportion to his years. The simple directness which had always characterized him had undergone no change. The wilderness with its battle for survival was deep in his soul. He feared nothing. He feared no human creature. And least of all, he feared Pideau.
Spiritually his development had been in the nature of the miraculous. He had leaped from childhood to real manhood in one amazing stride. A few short hours ago he had talked to Annette of marriage, and of a primitive life lost in the hills he loved. Now he knew that all that had been the talk of a child’s mind.