When Cameron brought Jack the Wolf to Fort Victor it was evident to the little teacher that he was morally an Augean stable: a man who wandered in mental darkness; his soul was dying for want of spiritual nourishment.
On the seventy-mile ride in the Red River buckboard from Edmonton to Fort Victor the morose wolf had punctuated every remark with virile oaths, their original angularity suggesting that his meditative moments were spent in coining appropriate expressions for his perfervid view of life. Twice Cameron’s blood had surged hot as the Wolf, at some trifling perversity of the horses, had struck viciously.
Perhaps it was the very soullessness of the Wolf that roused the religious fanaticism of the little school teacher; or perhaps it was that strange contrariness in nature that causes the widely divergent to lean eachotherward. At any rate a miracle grew in Fort Victor. Jack the Wolf and the little teacher strolled together in the evening as the great sun swept down over the rolling prairie to the west; and sometimes the full-faced moon, topping the poplar bluffs to the east, found Jack slouching at Lucy’s feet while she, sitting on a camp stool, talked Bible to him.
At first Cameron rubbed his eyes as if his Scotch vision had somehow gone agley; but, gradually, whatever incongruity had manifested at first died away.
As a worker Wolf was wonderful; his thirst for toil was like his thirst for moral betterment—insatiable. The missionary in a chat with Cameron explained it very succinctly: “Wolf, like many other Westerners, had never had a chance to know the difference between right and wrong; but the One who missed not the sparrow’s fall had led him to the port of salvation, Fort Victor—Glory to God! The poor fellow’s very wickedness was but the result of neglect. Lucy was the worker in the Lord’s vineyard who had been chosen to lead this man into a better life.
It did seem very simple, very all right. Tough characters were always being saved all over the world—regenerated, metamorphosed, and who was Jack the Wolf that he should be excluded from salvation.
At any rate Cameron’s survey gang, vitalized by the abnormal energy of Wolf, became a high-powered machine.
The half-breeds, when couraged by bad liquor, shed their religion and became barbaric, vulgarly vicious. The missionary had always waited until this condition had passed, then remonstrance and a gift of bacon with, perhaps, a bag of flour, had brought repentance. This method Jack the Wolf declared was all wrong; the breeds were like traindogs, he affirmed, and should be taught respect for God’s agents in a proper muscular manner. So the first time three French half-breeds, enthusiastically drunk, invaded the little log schoolhouse and declared school was out, sending the teacher home with tears of shame in her blue eyes, Jack reestablished the dignity of the church by generously walloping the three backsliders.
It is wonderful how the solitude of waste places will blossom the most ordinary woman into a flower of delight to the masculine eye; and the lean, anaemic, scrawny-haired school teacher had held as admirers all of Cameron’s gang, and one Sergeant Heath of the Mounted Police whom she had known in the Klondike, and who had lately come to Edmonton. With her negative nature she had appreciated them pretty much equally; but when the business of salvaging this prairie derelict came to hand the others were practically ignored.
For two months Fort Victor was thus; the Wolf always the willing worker and well on the way, seemingly, to redemption.
Cameron’s foreman, Bill Slade, a much-whiskered, wise old man, was the only one of little faith. Once he said to Cameron: “I don’t like it none too much; it takes no end of worry to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear; Jack has blossomed too quick; he’s a booze fighter, and that kind always laps up mental stimulants to keep the blue devils away.”
“You’re doing the lad an injustice, I think,” Cameron said. “I was prejudiced myself at first.”
Slade pulled a heavy hand three times down his big beard, spat a shaft of tobacco juice, took his hat off, straightened out a couple of dents in it, and put it back on his head:
“You best stick to that prejudice feeling, Boss—first guesses about a feller most gener’ly pans out pretty fair. And I’d keep an eye kinder skinned if you have any fuss with Jack; I see him look at you once or twice when you corrected his way of doin’ things.”
Cameron laughed.
“’Tain’t no laughin’ matter, Boss. When a feller’s been used to cussin’ like hell he can’t keep healthy bottlin’ it up. And all that dirtiness that’s in the Wolf’ll bust out some day same’s you touched a match to a tin of powder; he’ll throw back.”
“There’s nobody to worry about except the little school teacher,” Cameron said meditatively.
This time it was Slade who chuckled. “The schoolmam’s as safe as houses. She ain’t got a pint of red blood in ’em blue veins of hers, ’tain’t nothin’ but vinegar. Jack’s just tryin’ to sober up on her religion, that’s all; it kind of makes him forget horse stealin’ an’ such while he makes a stake workin’ here.”
Then one morning Jack had passed into perihelion.
Cameron took his double-barreled shot gun, meaning to pick up some prairie chicken while he was out looking over his men’s work. As he passed the shack where his men bunked he noticed the door open. This was careless, for train dogs were always prowling about for just such a chance for loot. He stepped through the door and took a peep into the other room. There sat the Wolf at a pine table playing solitaire.
“What’s the matter?” the Scotchman asked.
“I’ve quit,” the Wolf answered surlily.
“Quit?” Cameron queried. “The gang can’t carry on without a chain man.”
“I don’t care a damn. It don’t make no dif’rence to me. I’m sick of that tough bunch—swearin’ and cussin’, and tellin’ smutty stories all day; a man can’t keep decent in that outfit.”
“Ma God!” Startled by this, Cameron harked back to his most expressive Scotch.
“You needn’t swear ’bout it, Boss; you yourself ain’t never give me no square deal; you’ve treated me like a breed.”
This palpable lie fired Cameron’s Scotch blood; also the malignant look that Slade had seen was now in the wolfish eyes. It was a murder look, enhanced by the hypocritical attitude Jack had taken.
“You’re a scoundrel!” Cameron blurted; “I wouldn’t keep you on the work. The sooner Fort Victor is shut of you the better for all hands, especially the women folks. You’re a scoundrel.”
Jack sprang to his feet; his hand went back to a hip pocket; but his blazing wolfish eyes were looking into the muzzle of the double-barrel gun that Cameron had swung straight from his hip, both fingers on the triggers.
“Put your hands flat on the table, you blackguard,” Cameron commanded. “If I weren’t a married man I’d blow the top of your head off; you’re no good on earth; you’d be better dead, but my wife would worry because I did the deed.”
The Wolf’s empty hand had come forward and was placed, palm downward, on the table.
“Now, you hound, you’re just a bluffer. I’ll show you what I think of you. I’m going to turn my back, walk out, and send a breed up to Fort Saskatchewan for a policeman to gather you in.”
Cameron dropped the muzzle of his gun, turned on his heel and started out.
“Come back and settle with me,” the Wolf demanded.
“I’ll