A little sound broke from the girl. The boy’s eyes flashed in her direction. But for once Annette’s eyes contained no taunt. For once there was something in them that told of feeling other than of her habitual antagonism.
Pideau’s voice came again. Its tone further maddened the Wolf.
“Mother? She’s no mother o’ yours,” the man sneered. “She never was an’ couldn’t be. She never had a man. She stole you. She stole you from your folks. You’re a white spawn. An’ you’ll never know your folks now she’s dead.”
The Wolf remained in the doorway. He stood without a movement. His long rifle was still in his hand beside him. And in that moment his longing was almost beyond restraint.
The girl watched him. She missed nothing. She read the frantic passion to which her father had goaded the boy. And suddenly she forgot her own love of tormenting. Suddenly all desire to hurt him left her. The woman in her found its natural expression. Her prerogative had been usurped. He had been smote by another. Her father.
She moved. She came to the doorway where the Wolf was standing wild-eyed, gazing on the man who had so brutally hurt him. She laid a slim brown hand on his arm. And a half-tamed softness was in the beautiful boldness of her eyes as she looked up into his face.
“We’ll bury her, Wolf—you an’ me,” she said, in a low voice that was full of something the boy had never heard in it before. “She loved you. She beat me. It don’t matter. She was a mother to you, whatever he says. And you got the right. I—I just want to help you. Father ken see to the beasts himself. They’re his, anyway. Luana belonged to you. An’ I guess you belong to—me.”
A heavy mattock and a digging fork lay on the ground near by, and the child picked the former up and stood with it across her shoulder. Again she laid a brown hand on the boy’s arm.
“We don’t need food till we’re through with—her. Let’s go get her an’ carry her down.”
The Wolf bestirred. He took possession of the appealing hand and crushed it fiercely in his while his glance held the man who had goaded him. Quite suddenly he spoke. He spoke coldly in spite of his passion.