CHAPTER XIV
WOLVES—AND DUDLEY
It was cleverly done. So was the desperate gesture of Macartney's hand across his blood-shot, congested eyes. If I had not had Thompson's deuce of hearts in my pocket I might have doubted if Macartney really were Hutton, or had had any hand in the long tale of tragedy at La Chance. But as it was I knew, in my inside soul, bleakly, that if Dudley were dead Macartney had killed him,—as only luck had kept him from killing me.
I saw him give a quick, flicking sign to his men with the fingers of the hand that still covered his eyes, and I knew I was right in the last thing, anyhow, for the men straggled back from us, as to an order. They were to do nothing now, before Paulette and Marcia, if their first instructions had been to ambush inside the shack to dispose of me when I got back from the Halfway,—which I had not been meant to do. I did not drop my gun hand, or fling the truth at Macartney. But I made no move to pick up Marcia. I said, "How d'ye mean Dudley's killed? Who killed him?"
"Wolves!" If Macartney meant me to think he was too sick to answer properly he was not, for he spoke suddenly to the bunk-house men. "There is no good in your waiting round, or looking any more. They've got Mr. Wilbraham, and"—he turned his head to me again—"they damn nearly got me!"
Later, I wished sincerely that they had, for it would have saved me some trouble. At that minute all I wanted was to get even with Macartney myself. I said, "Pick up Marcia and get into the house. You can talk there!"
Macartney glanced at me. Secretly, perhaps, neither of us wanted to give the other a chance by stooping for a heavy girl; I knew I was not going to do it. But Paulette must have feared I was. She sprang past me and lifted Marcia with smooth, effortless strength, as if she were nothing.
Macartney started, as though he realized he had been a fool not to have done it himself, and wheeled to walk into the house before us, where he could have slipped cartridges into his gun; I knew afterwards that it was empty. But Paulette had moved off with Marcia and a peremptory gesture of her back-flung head that kept Macartney behind her. I came behind him. And because he had no idea of all I knew about him, he took things as they looked on the surface. With Paulette leading, and me on Macartney's heels, we filed into the living room. There was a light there, but the fire was out. I guessed Charliet was hiding under his bed,—in which I wronged him. But I was not worrying about Charliet or cold rooms then. Paulette laid Marcia down on the floor, and I stood in the doorway. I did not believe the bunk-house men would come back till an open row suited Macartney's book, but there was no harm in commanding the outside doors of the shack, all the same. And the sudden thought that we were all in the living room but Dudley, and that he would never come back to it, gripped my soul between fury and anguish. "Get it out—about Dudley," I said; and I did not care if my voice were thick.
Macartney looked over at me just as an honest, capable superintendent ought to have looked. "I can't; because I don't know it. All I do know's this. After you went off yesterday Wilbraham got to drinking; the wolves began to howl round the place after dark, and he said they drove him mad. He got a gun and went out after them—and he never came back. I didn't even know he was gone till midnight. I thought he'd shut himself in his office as he often does, till I heard shots outside, and found he wasn't in the house. I turned out the bunk-house men to look for him that instant, and when the lot you saw waiting in the shack for me came home toward morning, and said they couldn't find a sign of Wilbraham, and the bush was so full of wolves they were scared to go on looking, I went myself——"