The wolf pack

by Ridgwell Cullum

There was an intake of breath. The man watched the heave of a bosom that fascinated him. He was wondering what still lay waiting for him behind those eyes, that studied quiet, which was so unlike the girl as he knew her.

Annette’s purpose was quite definite. She knew her mind on every subject that concerned herself. She saw that opportunity was looming, the opportunity she had deliberately sought. And she meant to grab it, and hold it, and hug it to herself.

For ten years she had been dragged in the wake of the machine which her father and the Wolf operated. For ten years she had been compelled by Pideau to do her share in the work that was pouring dollars into the coffers of a partnership in which she had no place. She knew she was a mere chattel in the life of her parent. And she believed she was no better than a property, to be cared for, cajoled, and teased, and fought, where the Wolf, her old playmate, was concerned. She told herself she was forced to live and act as her menfolk dictated. And it was her life to work without pay or interest and to content herself with such dole as might come her way.

The girl’s volcanic temper frantically rebelled. For her father she possessed no regard whatsoever. She knew him and read him like an open book. He sickened her, not for his crimes, but for the brutishness that rendered him so unlovely. Hitherto the bond of simple relationship had been strong enough to hold her. Hitherto she had yielded to her serfdom. But with the coming of Ernest Sinclair into her life the Rubicon had been crossed. She was a child no longer.

Now she was alive with flaming passions. The irresistible laws of Nature had proclaimed themselves in no uncertain fashion. Like the offspring of the beasts of the forest, whence she hailed, her life was her own. She was as ready as they to turn and slash with gleaming teeth the parent who had given her being.

The Wolf occupied a wholly different plane from the father. The Wolf had always been Annette’s playmate. He had been more—much more. Only the girl refused to realize it. He had been the most intimate participant in her life. He was part of it. There was no moment in it, whether of joy, or sorrow, or anger, that had not in some way been associated with the Wolf. He was as much a part of her being as the warm breath that passed her pretty lips. But because that was so, because he was the Wolf, because she could think of nothing in her life without him, she the more surely resented him.

The whole position was one of warfare between conflicting wills, active on her part, and on his confident, smiling passivity. The battle had begun far back in their earliest childhood. It had gone on ever since. Its fundamental was without hate. On the contrary a wealth of affection and loyalty lay lost under the débris of conflict they had succeeded in piling upon it. They had always been inseparable. They were verily twin in soul. And for that very reason the war between them had always been the more bitter.

It was strange. Neither seemed to be capable of penetrating the fog that blinded them. And so the bitter antagonism went on and would continue to go on to its logical, human conclusion.

And with conditions prevailing, with Annette’s reckless impulse always driving her, a man like Ernest Sinclair was bound to find a part in the play of it all. He was a policeman, and so in direct opposition to Pideau and the Wolf. He was white and personable in a passionate, impulsive woman’s eyes. The Wolf resented him and said so. Then what more was needed? It infuriated the Wolf to know of Annette’s friendliness with Sinclair. So Annette had seen to it that she was very, very friendly.

The result was foredoomed. Annette was beautiful. She was superb in her youth, and full of the sexual potentialities of her race. And the man? Well, Sinclair was what he was without pretense. And so the Nemesis. Annette believed she loved. Sinclair only needed to raise a beckoning finger for the girl to follow him to the world’s end.