“Well? Where is it? The still?”
The girl flung out her hands.
“The Coulee. Spruce Coulee. Back to the hills.”
Sinclair stared.
“Why Spruce Coulee’s only eight miles back to the hills, and I ride that trail every month of the year.”
“I know. That’s his bluff—the Wolf’s. He figgered you’d never locate it if it was right under your nose.”
The man had forgotten Annette entirely. He was thinking of the men. He was furious at the bluff which the Wolf had flung at him.
“Just where?” he asked, with a sharpness that sounded harsh in the stillness of the half-lit room.
Annette’s slim hands came together sharply. There was a queer straining in the eyes that gazed up at her lover. She drew a deep breath as she remembered the child that was to be born to her.
“’Way back of the big bluff of jack pine wher’ the freshet cuts out o’ the hills into the coulee. It’s the break in the hillside that’s full o’ water come spring, an’ snow in winter. You seen it, an’ passed it, and reckoned it wasn’t worth a thought. It’s just a split in the rock wher’ it starts. But it opens out to a widish cañon right inside, an’ it goes back miles. The still’s set up in a cave west o’ the third bend, a cave big enough to drive a team an’ spring wagon into. It needs findin’ even at that, for it’s hid up close by a fall of loose rock and a wall of scrub. But it’s ther’. An’ ther’s five hundred gallons kegged an’ waitin’ shipment. They’re to tote the stuff eight o’clock to-morrow night.”