His manner softened. But he did not look in her direction. He was watching a quick-moving figure in a pea-jacket that had just left the store across the township.
“Say, little kid, don’t worry a thing,” he soothed her. “Forget it,” he went on, with a short laugh. “Don’t try to say a thing now. I wouldn’t have you to. You see, I just love you to death. I’m crazy to have you my wife. If I don’t get that promotion, why, we’ll just have to wait around till I do. See? Maybe that’ll mean a year or so. Still I just want you, kid, and I’ll wait sure. Now beat it. It’s time I fixed my plugs back in the barn. And anyway, I’ve just seen that darn skulking Wolf slide out of the store. Beat it, kid, and think things out in your own cute way.”
CHAPTER III
THE MARCH OF EVENTS
ANNETTE returned to the home of the wolf pack in a desperate mood. She was terrified.
It was a small frame house on one floor only, standing in the shadow of the iron-roofed store. It contained three sleeping rooms, a living-room, and adjoining the main building was a lean-to kitchen place.
It was an abode without any refinement. It had all the makeshift of those whose culture belongs to the primitive. It was the only sort of home which Pideau understood. And his had been the provision of it and its designing, on their first arrival in Buffalo Coulee.
It had been improved not one iota since that time, in spite of an abounding prosperity. Its whole furnishing was of the crudest. And its decorations were a survival through years of rough use and comparative disregard for cleanliness. It possessed, too, that unclean atmosphere which no half-breed habitation ever escapes.
Annette flung the door closed behind her to cut off the stream of cold that might well have had good effect upon the stale human atmosphere of the place. It was the careless, violent act of a mind distraught. She crossed the living-room, which was littered with the evidence of her menfolk. And, passing a second door, she slammed that behind her as well, and sighed relief as she gazed about her at the familiar surroundings of her own sleeping room.
A moment or two later her fur cap was lying on the patchwork coverlet of her bed, and her coat was tumbled beside it.
She moved across to the makeshift dressing chest which was still the same piece of furniture which had served her in childhood. Its only development since that time was its litter of toilet articles, which from time to time had been bestowed upon her by the Wolf. It was truly a litter, in which was displayed none of that pride and refinement of taste usually associated with a woman of youth and real beauty. Everything remained just where its user had chanced to set it down.