The wolf pack

The ancient train was laboring heavily. It was climbing, and stated the fact vociferously to the wilderness of echoing hills. Its speed was little better than that of a weary te...

It was a baby girl. And she was sprawling in a sort of wallow in the dust-dry ground at the man’s feet. She was on her back, and her tiny legs were vigorously kicking the air. H...

Annette was standing on the river bank. She was intensely preoccupied. Her willow rod swung up. It whistled through the hot summer air. Then her homemade fly struck the calm sur...

The Wolf had boasted his prowess to a derisive Annette, and the girl’s jeer was still pursuing him. But his boast was no idle one. And the girl who had derided knew well enough...

The Wolf was still in hiding with the screen of foliage sheltering him. There was not a movement in him beyond the tumultuous beating of his heart. He was thinking with all the...

The Wolf had eyes only for the distance. He had a profound revolting for his companion, and all that in which he had found himself so amazingly involved. The cleanness of his bo...

The noon sun was right overhead, a molten globe of merciless fury. The heat of the valley was fierce. Flies and mosquitoes swarmed in the still air. The cattle were munching wea...

Pideau Estevan had spent a busy morning in his long, low, iron-roofed store at Buffalo Coulee, which for ten years had become the home of his partnership with the Wolf.

The Wolf was standing in the open doorway when the other reached him. And together, for a moment, they stood peering out over the snowy waste in the direction of the police quar...

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...

Annette was standing at the window of the living-room. She was alone and glad to be so. Never in her life had she been more thankful for solitude and the shadows about her.

It was a bare enough place. It was no more than sufficient for the simplest human needs. But then no more was asked of it. Police life was never made easy.

The moon was at its full. Its cold brilliance was a perfect match for the temperature prevailing. It was a clear, bitter night, without a breath of wind out of the western hills...

Sergeant-major Sturt, of the Mounted Police, pulled on his short buffalo coat. As he turned up its storm collar about his neck and ears, and set his yellow-badged fur cap on his...

He was one of those, who in moments of expansiveness, admitted that police work in the world of the Northwest had little of the jig-saw puzzle about it, but much of the bricklay...

The “coming-to” of Buffalo Coulee on a winter’s morning was a matter of heavy labor. It was a prolonged, piecemeal process, like the first bubbles rising to the surface of water...

Annette’s pony snatched at its bit and halted. And the mud-brown mare came to a stand responsively. The eyes into which Stanley Fyles found himself gazing were shining in the co...

Pideau ate noisily. There was something of animal greed in his obvious appreciation of his food. It was a revolting spectacle. His appetite was always large, and he greedily dev...

Annette’s eyes were gloomy. Her cheeks seemed to have lost something of their roundness, something of their youthful bloom. They were pale, almost green in the yellow light of t...

The Buffalo Coulees of the prairie were everyday experiences of Sergeant Fyles. And the people of them were his most intimate study. No one knew better than he how swiftly human...

The atmosphere of the Court was intolerably heavy. It was the reek of humanity and steam heat. But there was no desire for ventilation. Winter was winter to the people in Calfor...

Chief Justice Pansarta sat back in his capacious chair. His stout legs were crossed comfortably. His somewhat benign personality was never more emphasized than as he sat there e...

Stanley Fyles noted the ease, the almost extravagant calm of the youth. And he could not but admire. The Wolf had sprawled himself on the bed as though his presence in the offic...

Stanley Fyles was in no easy mood. He had passed through a particularly bad time as a result of the Buffalo Coulee affair. He knew it was failure. And failure hurt him as nothin...

The stillness was grave-like. The room was lit by a glimmer of light percolating through the thickly smoked glass of a kerosene lamp. The shadows were deep in the angles of the...

To Stanley Fyles it was an environment that never failed in its appeal. The sink of crime in which all his work lay made the bare walls, the hard chairs, the carpetless floors a...