injustice of the girl's unreasoning complaint was staggering. But it smote the heart of the man no less for that. Whatever his inward feelings, however, outwardly he gave no sign. He did not even raise his eyes from the saucepan he was stirring with so much deliberation and care.
"You're wrong, little girl," he said with quiet emphasis, and without one shadow of the emotion that was stirring behind the words. "You're dead wrong. You've got all those things before you. The things you're crazy for. And when they come along I guess they'll be all the sweeter for the waiting, all the better for the round of chores you're hating now, all the more welcome for the figgering you need to do now with the cents we get each month. You don't know how I stand with Ottawa. I do. There's just two years between me and the promotion you reckon I can't get. That's not a long time. Then we move to a big post where you can get all the dancing you need, and that won't be in Abe's saloon. You know that when my old father goes—and I'm not yearning for him to go—he'll pass me all he has, which is fifty thousand dollars and his swell farm in Ontario."
He paused and dipped out some of the contents of the saucepan in the spoon he was stirring it with. He tested its temperature. Then he went on with his preparations.
"Is there a reasonable kick coming to any woman in those things?" he demanded. "You knew most of what I'm telling you now when you guessed you loved me enough to marry me, and to help me along the road I'd marked out. Have I done a thing less than I promised?" he went on passing back to the table and picking up the glass bottle lying there, and removing its top. "If I have just tell me, and I'll do all I know—" He shook his head. "It's all unreasonable. Maybe you're tired. Maybe——"
"It isn't unreasonable," Nita cried sharply. "That's how men always say to a woman when they can't understand. I tell you I'm sick with the hopelessness of it all. You aren't sure of your promotion. You haven't got it yet. And maybe your father will live another twenty years. Oh, God, to think of another twenty years of this. Do you know you're away from home nine months out of twelve? Do you know that more than half my time I spend guessing if you're alive or dead? And all the time the grind of the work. The same thing day after day without relief." She watched the man as he poured the contents of the saucepan into the bottle, and her eyes were hot with the state of hysterical anger she had worked herself into. "Oh," she cried with a helpless, despairing gesture, as Steve returned the saucepan to the table. "I'm sick of it all. I hate it all, when I think of what life could be. The thought of it drives me mad. I hate everything. I hate myself. I hate——"
"Stop it!"
Steve thrust the stopper into the neck of the bottle. He had turned. His steady eyes were sternly compelling. They were shining with a light Nita had never witnessed in them before. She suddenly became afraid. And her silence was instant and complete. She sat breathlessly waiting.
"I've done with this fool talk," Steve cried almost roughly. "I've listened to too much already. I'm not figgering to let you break things between us. There's more than you and me in it. There's that poor little kiddie in the other room. Say, I've seen this coming. I've seen it coming—weeks. I've seen a whole heap that hurts a man that loves his wife, and guesses he wants to see her happy. I've seen what isn't good for a father to see, either. You've told me the things you guess you feel, and now I'm going to tell you the things I feel. You reckon the things I say about your good time coming are hot air. They're not. But you've got to get fool notions out of your head, and work for the things you want, the same as I reckon to. I'm out to make good—for you. Understand, for you, and for little Coqueline. I'm out to make good with all that's in me. And it don't matter a curse to me if all hell freezes over, I'm going to make good. Get that, and get it good. It's a sort of life-line that ought to make things easy for you. There's just one thing that can break my play, Nita. Only one. It's your weakening. It's up to me to see you don't weaken. You need to take hold of the notion we're partners in this thing. And don't forget I'm senior partner, and my word goes. Just now my word is kind of simple. If you don't feel like carrying on for me, you need to remember there's our little Coqueline. She's part of you. She's part of me. And she's got a claim on you that no human law can ever rob her of. Well, the proposition between us has two sides. My side means the trail, and the job that's mine. I need to face it with a clear head, and an easy mind. My side means I got to get busy with every nerve in my body to get you an ultimate good time, and see you get all you need to make you good an' happy. That's the one purpose I dream about. Maybe your side's different. But I don't guess it's any easier. You've got to wait around till those things come along. But you've got more to do than that. You've got to play this old game right. Your work's by this home. It don't matter if it's winter or summer, if it's storming or sunshine. You've got to do the chores you're guessing you hate, and you need to do them right, and willingly. We're man and wife. And these chores are yours by all the laws of God, and the Nature that made you the mother of our little Coqueline. You've got to cut this crazy notion for fool pleasures right out, till the pleasure time comes around. That time isn't yet. The woman who lets her child and her home suffer for joy notions isn't worth the room she'll take in hell later. Well, see and get busy, and let's have no more fool talk and crazy notions. Here, take this," he went on, in his deliberate, forceful way, thrusting the baby's feeding bottle into the girl's hands. "That's the kiddie's feed. Guess I fixed it because—well, maybe because you're tired. Take it to her. Give it to her. And, as long as you live don't you ever forget she's the right to your love, and to my love, and every darn thing we know to make things right for her."
The force of the man was irresistible. It was something the girl had never witnessed before. She had only known the husband, devoted, gentle, almost yielding in his great love. The man that had finished talking now was the man Julyman regarded above all others.
Nita took the bottle thrust into her hands, and, without a word, she rose from her chair and passed into the bedroom which the baby's room adjoined.
Steve watched her go. His hungry eyes followed her every movement. His heart was torn by conflicting emotions. His love told him that he had been harsh almost to brutality, but his sense warned him he had taken the only course which could hope to achieve the peace and happiness which was Nita's right as well as his own.
He had meant to fight for these things as he would fight on the trail against the forces of Nature seeking to overwhelm him. He would yield nothing. For all his words had cost him he was conscious of the rightness of the course he had taken. But he was fighting a battle in which forces were arrayed against him of which he was wholly unaware.
As Nita passed into the bedroom the sound of footsteps outside broke the silence of the room. A moment later he turned in response to a knock on his door.
Ten minutes later Steve was seated at the desk in his office. He was in the company of Major Hervey Garstaing, the Indian Agent. The Corporal, from Reindeer, was already rolled up in the blankets which were spread out in the corner of the room. His work had been accomplished. He was physically weary. And, judging by the sound of his regular breathing, Nature had claimed her own the moment his head had touched the carefully folded overcoat which served him for a pillow.
The bare severity of the room was uninviting. There was little display in the work of the police. Utility and purpose was the keynote of their lives and at the year's end the tally of work accomplished was the thing that mattered.
Steve preferred to receive the Indian Agent in his office. Garstaing had never been an intimate of his. Their relations were official, and just sufficiently neighbourly for men who lived within two miles of each other in a country where human companionship was at a premium.
The office table stood between them. The spare chair beyond the desk always stood ready for a visitor, and Garstaing had accepted it. Steve had moved the oil lamp on one side, that their view of each other might be uninterrupted.
They were both smoking, and Garstaing was doing the talking. At all
