“Let him yearn,” Pideau cried roughly. “I don’t care a curse.” He shook his ugly bullet head. “Here, doc,” he went on bestirring, “I know you. We ken talk like men. That boy’s welcome. He’ll never locate our cache. We folk, the Wolf Pack, as you around here call us, came to Buffalo Coulee ten years back fer jest one thing. We’re needin’ good American dollars, an’ we know how to get ’em. We ain’t crooks agin our law. We’re jest here to feed them crazy Prohibitioners all the booze they’re yearnin’ to pay for. And they’re payin’ good. We’re goin’ right on doin’ it. Ther’s no law yet agin it. Let him yearn.”
“But there’s ‘homebrew.’”
“You mean the makin’?”
“Yes. There’s a pretty severe penalty for making that dope, or any other poison, up in the hills—if they get you in the act. If you boys shipped in bonded liquor, the right stuff that didn’t do more than make a feller glad, and sold it at a swell profit down south, there’d be no kick beyond that the Prohibition officers could pass you. But a poison still, ’way up in the hills, is different. If they get you making ‘homebrew’ it’s right up against good Canadian law. And one day you’ll all be sitting around in penitentiary wishing you hadn’t. The police aren’t Prohibition officers. There’s no graft to them. They’re right out after their jobs, and there’s no human bunch I know can do it better. One day your play will end suddenly. And I think I’ll be sorry.”
“Why?” Pideau laughed unsmilingly.
Fraser gestured.
“Why ’ud you feel that way?” Pideau asked, a little eagerly, thinking of Annette and estimating this white doctor who was unmarried.
Fraser’s gaze turned on the far door of the store.
“Because I’ll be sorry when that girl of yours hasn’t her menfolk around to see she don’t skid.”
“You mean—Sinclair?”