Wolf Breed | Page 6

look out for him, Koot," grinned Blunt Rand. "Them kind carry
cold steel sharp on both edges. They get it between your shoulder
blades and then twist it. It's awful uncomfortable."
Rand had drunk his share of toasts to the eternal joy of the Marquettes
and the drinking had given to his tongue a wee bit of recklessness, to
his heart a little venom. Out of a clear sky, his words falling crisply
through the little silence, he demanded of no one in particular and in all
seeming innocence:
"What's happened to No-luck Drennen? I ain't seen him here of late."
Kootanie George turned his head slowly and stared at him. Rand was
fingering his cards, his eyes hastily busied with their corners. George
turned from him to Ernestine. She bit her lips and a spurt of red leaped
up into her cheeks. Her eyes met his a moment, steely and hard. Then
they went to Blunt Rand, as bright and hateful as twin daggers.
The man upon Rand's right started to laugh. He altered his mind as

Kootanie George's eyes turned slowly upon him and changed the laugh
to a cough behind his hand. Nobody offered to answer the question; it
was accepted as one of those utterances put into the form of an
interrogation merely for rhetorical reasons and requiring no reply. For it
was common talk through the camps that No-luck Drennen had done
the impossible and gotten blood from a turnip; in other words that he
had drawn love out of the heart of Ernestine Dumont. And it was
known that the miracle had been a twin wonder in that Drennen had
refused to see and when he had at last seen had refused to accept.
Ernestine's love had been like Ernestine herself, reckless. And, yes,
Drennen had laughed at her. He had told her brutally that he had no
more use for a woman in his life than he had for a cat. Certainly not for
a woman like her. His words had been given after Drennen's fashion;
like a slap in the face. All this had been less than a year ago.
Elated at the success with which his words had met, Blunt Rand
laughed. Again Kootanie George looked at him steadily.
"What are you lookin' for Drennen for?" he asked quietly.
"Oh, nothin'," rejoined the other lightly. "Only when I come through
Little Smoky the other day an ol' flame of his asked about him. The
Fire Bird they call her. Know her?"
Ernestine Dumont's face grew a shade redder in its mortification even
while she knew that the man was lying to tease her. Then she sat back
with a little gasp and even slow moving Kootanie George turned
quickly as a heavy voice called from the door:
"You're a liar, Blunt Rand."
It was No-luck Drennen just come in and standing now, his hat far back
upon his head, his hands upon his hips, staring across the room at Blunt
Rand.
CHAPTER III
THE MAN UNDER THE CLOAK

Dave Drennen was a big man, no man here so big save Kootanie
George alone, who was two inches the taller and fully thirty pounds the
heavier. The Canadian stood four inches better than six feet in his squat,
low-heeled boots and must turn sideways to get his massive shoulders
through most doors hereabouts. Unlike most very tall men George
carried himself straight, his enormous chest thrust forward.
Drennen was younger by half a dozen years, slenderer, of cleaner build.
Any man at Père Marquette's would have emptied his pockets that night
to witness a fight between the two. Men as a rule liked Kootanie
George, slow moving, slow spoken, heavily good humoured. And as an
even more unbroken rule they disliked Dave Drennen. Throughout the
far places of the great northwest into which of recent years he had fitted
restlessly he was known as a man at once too silent and too
quarrelsome. He trod his own trail alone. Other men had "pardners";
Drennen was no man's friend. He was hard and he was bitter. Not yet at
the end of his first score and ten, his mouth had grown set in stern,
harsh lines, his heavy brows had acquired the habit of bunching
ominously over eyes in which was the glint of steel. He was a man
whose smile was unpleasant, whose laugh could be as ugly as many a
man's curse.
It looked like a quarrel between No-luck Drennen and Blunt Rand. And
yet the men who ceased their playing at the snap of his voice forgot
Rand and hungered for trouble between Drennen and Kootanie George.
Rand had been measured long ago and didn't count. He blabbed big
words when he was drunk and whined when a man struck him. He