CHAPTER XVIIIShe’d come again, and with a greedy earDevour up my discourse:—Othello: ActI,Sc. 3One glorious September afternoon, appreciating the girl’s fondness for riding Johnny, Ellis rode over to the Trainors’, leading his favorite mount. Entering the house, he received the usual kindly welcome from the rancher and his wife; the latter a stoutish, jolly-looking woman with a great mass of fair, fluffy hair—some years her husband’s junior.“Well, well,” she said, looking up at him with playful amusement. “And where,sir, haveyoubeen hiding yourself lately? We’d begun to think you must have fallen down a gopher hole or something.”He walked through into the kitchen and drank a dipperful of water thirstily, before he answered. Returning, he grinned significantly at his hostess.“All right, let it go at that, Mrs. Trainor,” he replied. “Here, Gwyn!” he continued, slewing around and catching hold of that little blonde seven-year-old fairy, “where’s Miss O’Malley?”“Shan’t tell you!” came the mutinous giggle.“Oh, yes, you will,” he said, tickling her. “Come on, now; you tell, or I’ll—I’ll take you out and put you right on top of the barn for that big sparrow-hawk to come and get! He likes little girls like you. One! Two!—are you going to tell me—?”“Yes, yes!” came the smothered squawk. “Pu-put me down, though. She—she’s drying her hair in the sun back of the house,” she whispered gravely.“Is she? Well, you go and tell her I want her,” he whispered back. “Run like anything.”“Oh, she’ll come quick enough when she knows you’ve got Johnny for her to ride,” remarked Trainor, smiling. “She won’t look at that Pedro horse of mine so long ashe’saround. Say!” he broke off. “Bert’s sure getting to be some marksman, ain’t he? He’ll be running you pretty close when he gets older, Sergeant. Look at that, now!”These remarks were occasioned by the entrance of a sturdy youngster of nine, who was proudly dangling the carcasses of half a dozen fat gophers.“No, no, Bert! You mustn’t bring them in here!” cried his mother sharply. “Take them outside and give them to Tom and Jerry!”Hugging a small “twenty-two” rifle and his dead gophers, the boy gave a roguish grin at Ellis and departed, followed by two huge mewing tomcats.“Little brutes were just ruining the garden,” said Trainor, “so I put Bert onto them. He’s just having the time of his life with that new gun I bought him.”Ellis, seating himself at the piano with an assurance that bespoke long familiarity in that kindly, homelike household, began to idly strum. “Come, Lasses and Lads,” with a whistling accompaniment. Suddenly a shadow darkened the open door, and a mischievous voice greeted him with:“Hello, ‘Mancatcher’! What brings you here this late along? We’d begun to think something had happened to you.”With her great, shimmering, glorious mass of glossy black hair rippling and tumbling about her teasing, slightly sunburnt face, Mary looked like a girl of eighteen. And as she stood there, with her superb figure drawn up to its full height, she made a picture that aroused the Sergeant’s slumbering passion anew with increased fervor.But his well-trained visage and voice evinced nothing of his feelings as he returned her pleasantry with, an answering careless:“Why, hello, ‘Mousetrap’! Comin’ for a ride?”Mrs. Trainor exploded with bubbling mirth.“Why, why! whatever new nicknames are these? You two’ll be forgetting what your real names are altogether soon. I never heard such nonsense.”“It isn’t, Mrs. Trainor,” said Ellis aggrievedly. “It’s justthat—mice! I found her busy catching ’em in one of the oat bins in the stable the other day. She just catches and plays with ’em—lets ’em run, then grabs ’em again.”“Huh!” said the girl contemptuously. “That’s nothing! I’m not afraid of mice. Poor little things. Besides, I had gauntlets on.”“No,” said Ellis slowly, with a mocking chuckle, “it’d take more than a mouse to scareyou—we know that! Come! I’ll trade you aliases.Ihaven’t caught a man for over two months now.”His mischievous meaning was only too obvious, and the girl colored to her laughing eyes, grabbing, next instant, a ball of wool from Mrs. Trainor’s lap, which she shied at him.Benton, dodging this missile, gazed piercingly at her for several seconds without moving a muscle of his face; then, suddenly swinging around on the music-stool, he brought down his hands with a crash of chords and, in a great rollicking voice and a broad Somersetshire dialect, commenced to sing a bucolic love ditty. Something that went:“Vor if yeou conzents vor tu marry I now,Whoy—Vather ’e’ll gie uns ’is old vat zow!With a rum dum—dum dum—dubble dum day!”“Boo-o-oo! La, la, la!” shrilled poor Mary, covering her ears. “Oh,please, Mrs. Trainor,domake him stop!”“What’s the use, my dear?” cried that merry dame, in great amusement. “He wouldn’t listen to me. He’s too impudent for anything.”While Trainor slapped his thigh and guffawed uproariously.“Oh, oh!” screamed the girl, stamping and pirouetting about the room, “he’s startinganotherverse! Oh, quit, quit, quit! orI’llstart in opposition! I’ll make such a noise they won’t be able to hear you!”And at the top of her voice she started to declaim lustily:“Arrah, go on! You’re only tazin!Arrah, go on! You’re somethin’ awful!Arrah, go on! You’re mighty plazin!Oh, arrah go way! go wid yer! go way! go on!”“That settles it,” shouted Ellis, jumping up. “I’ll sure give in tothat. Peccavi! I’ll chuck up the sponge. But you be good after this now, or I’ll sing you somemore‘Zummerzet.’ Don’t bother about getting your hair done up again, Miss O’Malley. It looks ‘Jake’ like that. Just tie a bit of red ribbon round. Come on; go and get your riding things on. Johnny’s feeling pretty good—hasn’t been out for three days now.”“Oh, my, but that’s great!” gasped Mary ecstatically, half an hour later, as they pulled their excited, eager horses up to a walk, after a perilous neck-and-neck gallop, supremely careless of whatever badger-holes lay in their course on the long, flat stretch. “Aha, Johnny, old boy! you sure do like to be let out for a run, don’t you?” she continued caressingly, as she patted the arched, swelling neck of the great springy beast under her who, with a network of quivering, hard, grain-fed muscles rippling beneath his smooth, black-satiny coat, sidled and paced with daintily uplifted forefeet. The powerful animal carried his substantially-built rider as if she were only a child, flattening his ears and biting with equine playfulness meanwhile at Billy, the big, upstanding, well-coupled-up bay that Ellis was riding.“Well, whither away?” he inquired. “Where shall we go? Gosh, but it’s hot!”“Let’s go up on the top of that big hill over to the west there—where that flat stone is,” she said, indicating a high, conical hill, something like a South Africankopjethat loomed up in the distance. “I always call it ‘Lone Butte’ because it’s all by itself. It’s cooler up there, and we can lazy around and look at the mountains.”Half an hour’s ride over steadily rising ground brought them to their destination and, arriving at the foot of the aforesaid butte, they dismounted and, leaving their horses to graze, with dropped lines, slowly made the ascent. There, on the extreme top, a relic of some vast upheaval in the past, was a huge, long, low-lying flat stone, upon which Mary seated herself and, removing her Stetson hat, let the cool breeze play on her forehead and blow the shining tendrils of hair about her face. Ellis flung himself out at full length on the short turf at her feet and together they silently gazed in huge contentment at the panorama that lay unfolded before them.Below, looking east, shimmering with the little heat waves, the long rolling vistas of greenish-brown prairie lay stretched out to the horizon, through which, like a gleaming silver thread, wound the Bow River; while to the west, above the pine-dotted foothills of a great Indian Reserve, rose the upflung, snow-capped violet peaks of the mighty “Rockies,” the hot afternoon’s sun enveloping all in its sleepy golden haze.The Sergeant, with his chin resting in his hands, looked long and lovingly at the peaceful beauty of the scene.“Begad, just look atthatnow!” he murmured. “No wonder a fellow loves an open-air life in the West ... there’s a picture for some poor beggar that’s p’r’aps cooped up in an office all day, what? ... just the kind of background Charley Russell always manages to get into his pictures, isn’t it? To my mind he and Remington are the only artists who can depict the prairie and its life properly—theydon’t slur over detail like some of ’em. No matter whether it’s landscape, Indians, cow-punchers, horses, cattle, hunting scenes, gun-scraps, or what not, they give you the real thing—correct in every item.That’swhat hits us who liveinsuch backgrounds. They not only make youseeit on, canvas, they positively make youfeelit.... Well, Charley Russell ought to know, if any man!... he punched cattle and wrangled horses for a living—long before he ever thought of painting!”A gopher popped up its head out of a hole a few feet away from Benton and, after blinking inquisitively awhile with its beady brown eyes at the two human beings who remained so still, it apparently decided that there was nothing to fear from them and emerged fully from its retreat. With tucked-in paws, it sat bolt upright and regarded them with grave interest.Ellis eyed the rodent indolently for a space; then, reaching cautiously to his hip, he half drew a deadly-looking “Luger” pistol from its holster—to which previously mentioned confiscated weapon sinister memories were attached. The girl saw his movement and involuntarily thrust out a protesting hand.“No, no!” she said, in a loud eager whisper. “Don’t shoot the poor little chap—it isn’t as if he was in the garden. ‘Live, and let live,’ you know. Oh, younastything!”As the Sergeant, laughing quietly, in lazy acquiescence, jerked his gun home again and, instead, spat with unerring aim on the gopher’s fat back, which insult caused it to dive instantly into its hole again. For a long time they remained silent, drinking in the fresh air; then the girl who, with elbows-in-lap, was leaning forward absently swinging her quirt, flicked her abstracted companion playfully.“Come! don’t go to sleep,” she said. “A dime for your thoughts, O man of many moods! You look like Hamlet watching the play—lying gazing away there.... Wake up and talk to me, sir!”Ellis, who lay stretched out with his back, turned to her, rolled over and looked up into the long-lashed, half mocking, half serious hazel eyes.“‘Hamlet’!” he echoed, with an amused chuckle. “And pray what haveIdone to deserve the honor of being likened unto ‘the melancholy Dane,’ kind lady? ‘Wot shall I tork abaht?’ as old Bob Tucker would say. ‘Bid me discourse—I will enchant thine ear!’—à la ‘Baron Munchausen.’”“No, don’t be foolish,” she said beseechingly. “Can’t you be serious for once in a while, please? I don’t feel in the mood for any ‘Munchausen’ nonsensejustnow. Confine yourself strictly to the truth on this occasion. Just tell mewhoyou are—where you came from—and what you’ve done for your living ever since you can remember! There, now, you’ve got your orders in full ... fire away!”Ellis gave a dismal whistle. “Pretty big order on short notice,” he said. “If you expect me to fill all that, extempore, I’ll have to limit it to a synopsis.”There was, undoubtedly, a strong fascination about Benton, and few there were of either sex who came into contact with him that did not fall under the spell of his personal magnetism. The dry humor he emitted at times, and the utter absence of self-consciousness or vanity in his quiet, forceful personality, may have accounted for this in a great measure. Also, in a simple, direct fashion, he could “talk well”; and when he chose to exert himself, or was in the mood, could be a most interesting companion as a raconteur, drawing upon a vast reserve of experiences accumulated during his stirring, eventful, wandering life.The quiet peace of his surroundings were conducive to such a mood just now and, as the girl adroitly drew him on, he responded, and talked of his past life as perhaps he had never done to man or woman before. Those who love make good listeners and, as Mary, sitting there, heard with an all-absorbing interest of his strange ups and downs, trials, hopes, and adventures, she gained a vivid and lasting impression of the career of a strong man who, early in life, had cut himself adrift from kith and kin; glimpsing something of the real, deep, complex nature of this careless soldier of fortune who, all unconsciously, had won her heart long ago.His story began with his early schoolboy recollections. The unhappy period following his mother’s death, and his final emigration to the United States; then passed on, fantastically, through innumerable chops and changes of life. It told of a wild, haphazard existence in camps, and on the range in Montana and Wyoming, the lure of the gaming table, and the companionship with men of nearly every nationality under the sun. Desperate ventures in bubble speculations that either broke or made the investors, of chances missed by the merest margin of time and travel. It touched on all the phases of his pugilistic career, his later adventures on the South African veldt and memories of the great war. He described his return from that unquiet land, how he had eventually joined the Mounted Police, the years that had followed in that Force, and some of the various cases that had brought him his third stripe. Sometimes on foot, more often on horseback, now fairly prosperous, now poor, in and out, back and forth, chore boy, cookee, bronco-buster, pugilist, Chartered Company’s servant, Irregular soldier, and finally Mounted Policeman, moved Ellis Benton, taking his chance honestly and bravely in the great game of Life.All this he related without bravado, deprecating false modesty or extravagant gesture, and the simple, earnest manner in which he told his life’s story caused the great, generous heart of the listening girl to go out to him in a wave of love and sympathy—the outward expression of which she had difficulty in controlling.Gradually, however, his mood changed, and the trend of his experiences veering from the hard-bitten facts of ordinary police duty to the more humorous occurrences that from time to time vary its red-tape-bound monotony, he recounted several laughable episodes in which he had been involved at different periods. The relation of these tickled the girl’s imagination greatly.“Yes,” he said musingly. “We do get up against some funny propositions at times, that any one who’s blessed in the least degree with the saving sense of humor can’t help but appreciate. If it wasn’t for these occasional little happenings our life would be pretty dull. I remember one time”—he checked himself, with a laugh. “Bah! I’m yarning away like an old washerwoman full of gin and trouble.”“Will you go on?” Mary said, leaning towards him with dancing eyes.The thrill in her voice—strangely contagious it was—told how much she was interested. It was not to be wondered at. There was only one man on earth for whom she really cared—he lay stretched before her then, and probably what attracted her most in him was his manly simplicity and the sincerity of his tones and expression which, somehow, always had the knack of carrying absolute conviction with them in the narration of even the most trivial story.“Well,” Ellis went on, “I was on Number Thirteen—south-bound—one day, about eighteen months back, I guess, returning to my line detachment at Elbow Vale. As we pulled away from Little Bend—the first stop—the Con’ came into the car I was in with a wire in his hand. ‘Benton,’ he said. ‘Anybody here by that name?’ I was in mufti—had been on a plain-clothes job. ‘Right here!’ I said, and opened it up. It was from the O.C., and as far as I can remember, ran something like this: ‘Definite information just to hand. Arthur Forbes escaped Badminton Penitentiary; is on No. 13; forty-five; weight, one hundred and ninety; five feet ten; thick black eyebrows; hook nose; triangular scar top bald head; dress unknown; search train thoroughly; arrest without fail, signed R. B. Bargrave.’“It wasn’t much of a description to work on, but I realized it was a hurry call and was very likely all the O.C. had been able to get. It was up to me to make good somehow. So I started in to investigate that train with a fine-tooth comb, and I put the Con’ wise, too. It’s only a short train—the Southbound—and I thought I’d have an easy job locating my man if he was on it. I sauntered casually through, from end to end, and sized all the passengers up. There was only one who came anything near the description I’d had given me. Beggar was a parson at that, too. I passed him up for the time being, and when we stopped at Frampton, I and the Con’ made a pretty thorough search of the tender, baggage, and mail coaches—also the rods underneath the whole length of the train. Nothing doing, though, so we got aboard again. Then we ransacked every cubby hole we could think of. Nothing doing again there, either. I began to figure I was up against a hard proposition, or that p’r’aps he wasn’tonthe train at all. But the wire read so positive, and our O.C. isn’t the man to send you on a wild goose chase. Besides, I hated to think this gink might slip it over on me after all, and make his get-away.“Consequence was—I only had this parson to fall back on. I was only two seats back from him, so I could watch him good. He was a big, stout, broad-shouldered chap about the height and weight of the description, all right; clean-shaved and very pale, with a hook nose and thick black eyebrows, too. Didn’t fancy, somehow, that his expression and the cut of his jaw was exactly in keeping with his clerical dress—and his hair—what little I could see of it under his shovel hat—was pretty short. But there! you can’t always judge a man by his personal appearance. It isn’t wise or fair. Though honestly—I tell you, Miss O’Malley, Ihaveseen parsons before now with faces tough enough to get them six months—without the option of a fine—just on sight. I casually moved up to the seat alongside his, on the other side of the aisle, where I could keep good tab on him. He’d got some magazines and two or three clerical papers—The Pulpit,The Clerical Review, etc., that he seemed very interested in, and I began to think what ridiculous nonsense it was for me ever for an instant to associatehimin my mind with an escaped convict on the mere coincidence of his answering a vague description. While all this was running in my head something happened which caused me to change my mind a bit and feel kind of uneasy and suspicious of my Reverend ‘Nibs.’“All the way from Frampton, the whole bunch of us in the car—with the exception, of course, of the divine—had been in turn amused and annoyed at the antics of a bleary-eyed-looking bohunk who’d come aboard there with a bottle of ‘Seagram’s’ rye sticking out of his pocket. He’d got a proper singin’ jag on, and every now and again he’d pull out his bottle and whet his whistle. Might have been anything from a camp cookee to a section hand out on a ‘toot.’Idon’t know what the beggar was. Anyhow, getting tired of sitting still and singing on his lonesome, he comes zig-zagging up the aisle, pitching cheerfully into some one’s lap at every lurch of the train. The last lap he hit happened to be this parson’s, who shoved him off disgustedly, and drew in the hem of his garments, so to speak, all same Pharisee and Publican. The way he did it got that drunk goin’ properly—made him pretty nasty. So he gets back at the parson by pulling out his bottle and offering him a drink right then and there. Of course that fetched a great big ignorant laugh out of the whole lot of us, watching this Punch and Judy show. Parson never let on, though—kept his face on one side, staring out of the window. Well, the drunk, seeing his offer of a nip was turned down, takes one himself and, swaying all over the place, puts his hand on the parson’s knee and looks up into his face.“‘Sh-shay, Mister!’ he says, as solemn as an owl. ‘Idon’t believe in Heaven!’“Of course we all started in to grin again, and the parson looked like a proper goat. But still he took no notice—kept as mum as you please, though; I guess if it’d beenme, that drunk’d have got a back hander across the mouth and kicked off the train by the Con’ at the next station.“Beggar got tickled with the fun he was causing, and he kept on repeating this conviction of his over and over again like a parrot; but, as the parson took not a bit of notice, he shut up for a bit and dozed off to sleep—much to our relief. We were getting a bit fed up with him. Then it was ‘Mister’ Parson made a darned bad break. He began fumbling in his pockets for something—a penknife, if I remember—to cut the leaves of a magazine. Well, his gloves seemed to hamper him, so he took them off and I got a good look at his hands. They—like his mug—didn’t fit in with his dress at all. Pretty rough-looking mitts, that it was very evident had recently done heavy manual work—all grimed up, with black broken nails and hard callosities on the palms.“Still I hung fire—forhiscloth always demands a certain amount of respect. Hemighthave been working in his garden, I argued to myself. I didn’t want to make any fool break by humiliating a, p’r’aps, perfectly innocent man and a gentleman on mere suspicion, and without any positive proof. While I was twisting things over in my mind, the brakeman came through, calling: ‘Baker’s Lake! Baker’s Lake!’ And presently the train began to slow down. Parson began to gather all his belongings together as if he was going to get off there. I was ‘between the devil and the deep sea’—properly. For it was a case of ‘Going! going!’ and the next minute it’d be ‘Gone!’ with me, p’r’aps, for the goat instead of him.“But just then Providence, in the shape of the drunk, settled all my doubts for me at the eleventh hour. The brakeman calling out the name of the station, and the parson rustling around with his traps, had combined to wake this beggar up, and he started in to sing again. He quite brightened up at the sound of his own music—takes another swig at his bottle and, squinting at our reverend friend, starts in again with his old parrot squawk:“‘Idon’t believe in Heaven, mister!Idon’t believe in Heaven!’“Parson stands up and reaches for his bag off the rack.“‘Don’t you?’ he says, showing his teeth in a nasty sort of grin. ‘Don’t you? Well, then—you can go to H—l!’“That fixed it—absolutely. I jumped up and followed my ‘wolf in sheep’s clothing’ down the aisle and out onto the platform.“‘Just a minute, please,’ I said. ‘I’m a sergeant of the Mounted Police. I don’t think there’s any doubt aboutyou.’ And I collared him.“For answer, he dropped his bag on the instant and closed with me—desperate—tried to trip me up. Oh, I tell you, he surewassome handful. Well, he wouldn’t give in, quiet, and I began to get mad at the way he was scuffling with me, so I let go of him and broke away for a second. Then I came in on him quick and flopped him out with an uppercut and a back-heel—and as he keeled over his hat flew off and I saw the scar on the top of his bald block. Regular entertainment for the people on the train and the platform. They were wondering what the deuce was up when they saw us scrapping and rolling around there. I shoved the steels on him and took him back next train.”Mary laughed heartily at the conclusion of this episode.“Wherever had he got the parson’s clothes from?” she queried.“Oh,” said Ellis, with a grin, “when I landed back to the Post with him I heard the city police’d received a report from the Reverend Seccombe—the Baptist minister—to the effect that his house had been broken into the night before and some of his clothes pinched. We got him to come down to the guardroom right away, and he immediately identified the clothes the prisoner was wearing as his—and the bag, too. He and the other gink were just about the same build and height. Oh, his understudy pleaded guilty to burgling this house then and there, when he saw a bluff wouldn’t go. Made a statement and told us the whole business.“It appears he’d broken into a shack when he first made his get-away from the ‘pen,’ and stolen some workman’s clothes. He was kind enough to leave these behind him when he exchanged with Seccombe. Oh, he sure was some ‘Holy Roller,’ this Mr. Arthur Forbes.Justsuch another flim-flammer as that Jabez Balfour, who put that smooth ‘Liberator gold brick come-on’ over a lot of the smug Nonconformist fraternity in the Old Country many years back, and then skipped out to Buenos Ayres. This beauty was doing eight years for a somewhat similar fake—a big oil well ‘salting’ swindle. He’d defrauded the public out of something like four hundred thousand dollars.”He rolled and lit a cigarette and, after carefully extinguishing the match, gazed dreamily awhile across at the mountains, behind which the sun was gradually disappearing. Presently, looking up at his companion with a faint, whimsical smile playing over his stern features, he said quietly:“Now it’syourturn to be Scherazerade. So far, I’ve been in the rôle of Sinbad—completely monopolizing this ‘Arabian Nights’ entertainment in a very one-sided manner. Won’t you tell me something ofyourlife—in return?”She shrugged her broad, gracefully rounded shoulders with a queer little hopeless gesture, all the life seeming to have gone suddenly out of her mobile face as she regarded him now with grave introspection.“I’ll tell you a little,” she said slowly. “But I’m afraid you won’t find it very interesting.”What she related was a very fair corroboration of the facts previously told him by Trainor; and though in their narration she strove to appear indifferent to the changing fortunes of her family, and to gloss over her father’s improvidence and selfishness, reading between the lines it was very apparent to Ellis what sacrifices she had made willingly for those same young brothers of whom she spoke with such loving solicitude.“So ye see, me frind,” she wound up with a kind of forced gaiety:Fwat ups an’ down an’ changes there beE’en in the lives av th’ loikes av me.Four years ago the fortunes av the House of O’Malley were in the ascendant; today they are shtrictly on th’ wane.”She threw up her head and smiled gamely in a forlorn sort of way; but the quivering lips belied the careless, inconsequent tones, and he, guessing that the tears were not far from the surface, dimly sensed something of the bitter struggle that that brave heart must have been forced to make at times to keep up appearances in past periods of adversity. With this in his mind, he impulsively held up his hand to the girl, and she, choking back a little sob in her throat, reached out and clasped it warmly in hers.“Eyah!” he said; “I guess we’ve both had our ups and downs, all right, but there’s one consolation about our respective lots—they might have fallen in worse places, though there’s littlerealpeace in the lives of us who are comparatively poor and have to earn our own livings forever dependent on the whims and fancies of the powers that be, set in authority above us.“Take the life of the average non-com, or ‘buck,’ in this Force, for instance. It may seem rot to get harping on grievances at such a time and place as this, I know,” (he made a sweeping gesture to the landscape with outflung arm) “but there’s no lasting peace of mind or future in it. People see us patrolling around in a smart uniform, and riding the pick of the country in horseflesh, thinking, I suppose, what a fine time we have of it. They little guess it’s one continual round of worry and trouble. All the way from murder and robbery to settling neighbors’ trivial squabbles over dogging each other’s cattle, paying the cost of divisional fences, and all those kind of petty disturbances. Either that, or being chased around from one detachment to another, though in that respect I must say this Division isn’t as bad as some of ’em. Couldn’t have a better O.C. or Inspectors’n we’ve got in L. As long as you’re onto your job and do your work right, they let you pretty well alone. But it’s the confounded office work that we have to do in addition to our ordinary police duty thatweget fed up on. Talk about red tape! This outfit’s sure the home of it! Every report, every little voucher for p’r’aps fifty cents’ expenditure—four, and sometimes five, copies of each. Statistics for this, and statistics for that; monthly returns, mileage reports, and the copy of your daily diary. Oh, Lord! you should just see what we have to get through. Most of us use typewriters, of course, or we’dnevermake the grade at all. It’s much easier and handier. Guess you saw that one of mine in the detachment.“Office work or not, though, this job’s away ahead of being stuck in the Post. The daily round of a ‘straight duty buck’ doing prisoners’ escort about Barracks is, without doubt,themost demoralizing existence goin’. The monotony’s something fierce. And a non-com’s isn’t much better, either. Sent out on every little rotten job that turns up, hanging around stables and the orderly-room, always expected to be on hand and within call. Taking charge of grousing fatigue parties, etc. Thank goodness! I never had much of it to do. I was only in the Post a month when I first took on. Been on detachment ever since, barring six weeks I once put in as Acting Provo’ in charge of the guardroom, while Hopgood was sick.”He rolled another cigarette and, inhaling and expelling a whiff of smoke, continued reflectively: “This is a good outfit—this Force—no doubt about it. I guess as regards its system, discipline, and results, it’s out and away the best Military Police Force in the world—with the exception, p’r’aps, of the Royal Irish Constabulary. Good men take on and serve their time. Some reengage, and some quit. But just as good men take their place and the work goes on. But, as I said before, there’s no rest, or future in it for the average non-com, or buck. You never know when your day’s work’s done.“No, it’s just one continual round of listening to, and settling other people’s troubles. Seems nonsense, I know, to get talking like this for, after all, it’s only what we’re paid for. Somebody’s got to do it. But there it is—trouble, trouble, trouble, the whole time. All my life, with the exception of the time I deliberately struck into the fighting game, I’ve wanted to live peaceably; but it seems to have been my luck, somehow, to always get the reverse. Especially on this job. No matter how quiet and easy-going you try to rub along there are always some nasty, bullying, ignorant, cunning beggars who, just because you’re a bit decent to them, take it for granted you’re easy and try to impose on you. Anyway, that wasmyexperience on the first two or three detachments I struck. Not onthisone, though! Didn’t give ’em a chance. Fellow that was before me, corporal named Williamson—decent head, all right—but he tried that ‘live, and let live’ stunt and it didn’t work a bit. No,sir! They just took advantage of him every turn and corner. Oh, I tell you, Miss O’Malley, it sure was some tough district—this—when I took it over.”His brows contracted loweringly, and a menacing light gleamed in his deep-set eyes.“I soaked it to ’em, though, the dirty dogs!” he muttered, with a savage snap of his strong white teeth. “They wanted to beshown.... I’ve sureshownsome of ’em, all right. The inside of a ‘Pen’,’ at that. Kept ’em on the high jump ever since. It’s the only waytodeal with that class. Treat ’em like the scum they are, and they’ll be good then and eat out of your hand. They’re too ignorant and cunning to appreciate any civility or kindness.”He smoked thoughtfully on awhile after this slight outburst of bitterness, amidst a silence that was presently broken by Mary.“You’re fond of reading, aren’t you?” she inquired. “And music?”His moody face cleared instantly, like the sun coming from behind a cloud.“Aye! you just bet I am!” he said fervently. “I’ve read, and played, and sung every chance I’ve got—wherever I’ve been. Fond!—well, I should say I am. I fancy if it hadn’t been forthat, I’d have gone to the devil long ago.”He was sitting up on the grass, with his elbows on his knees and his face buried in his hands. Neither of them spoke for a time and he, still gazing across at the distant “Rockies,” muttered, half unconsciously, to himself:“No, justpeace—that’s all I feel I want now. To have some steady job to work at, with a future, and a home ahead of it. Neither molesting, or being molested by any one.”The girl leaned forward, listening wonderingly, as she watched the hard, clean-cut profile of his faraway, moody face, surprised to hear him ramble on so. He appeared to be entirely oblivious of her presence. He made a very long pause and then, when she thought he was thinking of something quite different, he suddenly said:“I’m getting older now, and I’ve got more patience than I used to have but, all the same—I’ll take no abuse, back-lip, or stand for being imposed upon by any man. It’s been a word and a blow with me all my life, and I guess that’s the reason why I’m only a poor man today. For many’s the jackpot it’s landed me into. Aye! and many’s the good job I’ve had to quit through the same thing.“Justpeace!” he repeated again, dreamily. “You realize it in some of George Eliot’s tales of old-fashioned English country life, in Gray’s ‘Elegy,’ in Marie Corelli’s song of ‘The Lotus Lily.’ Ah, yes! she felt it when she wrote that beautiful thing in her Egyptian tale of ‘Ziska’:“‘Oh, for the passionless peace of the Lotus-Lily!It floats in a waking dream on the waters chilly,With its leaves unfurledTo the wondering world,Knowing naught of the sorrow and restless painThat burns and tortures the human brain;Oh, for the passionless peace of the Lotus-Lily!’”He ceased, and sunk his face in his hands again. The breeze stirred the grizzled-brown hair on his temples, and he remained still for so long that she thought he had fallen asleep; but presently he seemed to rouse himself a little, and said idly, in a low voice:“Men like me don’thaveto care what people say, or think, about us. Ever since Mother died, I’ve been practically alone in the world, and steered my course as I saw fit—just gone ahead and done what I thought was right. Am I the worse man for being poor, I wonder? I’ve never crawled to hold a job—or for money, anyway! Badly though I’ve always wanted it. For it makes all the difference in the world—money. I’ve kept my self-respect as far asthatgoes—poor consolation though it may be now—just when I need it most.”The girl flicked him with her quirt.“Don’t you think we’d better be going?” she said gently. “It’s getting late. The sun’s gone down a long time now.”At the touch, and the sound of her voice, he roused himself with a start and regarded her absently.“By George!” he muttered. “I must have been dreaming. Sorry, Miss O’Malley.” He pulled out his watch. “Sureislate,” he said. “Why didn’t you give me a good slap and wake me up before? Letting me go to sleep like that. Well, I guess we’ll toddle on down to the horses.”“Youhaven’tbeen asleep,” she said, with a faint smile. “But you’ve been sitting there talking away to yourself like a man in a dream.”He flushed, and laughed a little, shamefacedly.“Have I?” he answered. “I sure must be getting as ‘nutty’ as a sheep herder! What was I talking about?”“Oh, all sorts of things,” she said evasively. “I’ll tell you sometime.”He laughed again and, after eyeing her incredulously for an instant, turned and strode down the declivity to where the patient horses still waited. The girl gazed wistfully for a moment or two after his retreating form, with its slim waist and square, splendidly-drilled shoulders; then, with a little weary sigh, she arose and, mechanically putting on her hat and dusting her dress, followed him.Catching up Johnny, who nickered at her approach and picked up his forefoot for sugar, she mounted with the lithe agility of the expert horsewoman. Ellis swung up on Billy, and in silence they set out at a brisk lope for home.
CHAPTER XVIIIShe’d come again, and with a greedy earDevour up my discourse:—Othello: ActI,Sc. 3One glorious September afternoon, appreciating the girl’s fondness for riding Johnny, Ellis rode over to the Trainors’, leading his favorite mount. Entering the house, he received the usual kindly welcome from the rancher and his wife; the latter a stoutish, jolly-looking woman with a great mass of fair, fluffy hair—some years her husband’s junior.“Well, well,” she said, looking up at him with playful amusement. “And where,sir, haveyoubeen hiding yourself lately? We’d begun to think you must have fallen down a gopher hole or something.”He walked through into the kitchen and drank a dipperful of water thirstily, before he answered. Returning, he grinned significantly at his hostess.“All right, let it go at that, Mrs. Trainor,” he replied. “Here, Gwyn!” he continued, slewing around and catching hold of that little blonde seven-year-old fairy, “where’s Miss O’Malley?”“Shan’t tell you!” came the mutinous giggle.“Oh, yes, you will,” he said, tickling her. “Come on, now; you tell, or I’ll—I’ll take you out and put you right on top of the barn for that big sparrow-hawk to come and get! He likes little girls like you. One! Two!—are you going to tell me—?”“Yes, yes!” came the smothered squawk. “Pu-put me down, though. She—she’s drying her hair in the sun back of the house,” she whispered gravely.“Is she? Well, you go and tell her I want her,” he whispered back. “Run like anything.”“Oh, she’ll come quick enough when she knows you’ve got Johnny for her to ride,” remarked Trainor, smiling. “She won’t look at that Pedro horse of mine so long ashe’saround. Say!” he broke off. “Bert’s sure getting to be some marksman, ain’t he? He’ll be running you pretty close when he gets older, Sergeant. Look at that, now!”These remarks were occasioned by the entrance of a sturdy youngster of nine, who was proudly dangling the carcasses of half a dozen fat gophers.“No, no, Bert! You mustn’t bring them in here!” cried his mother sharply. “Take them outside and give them to Tom and Jerry!”Hugging a small “twenty-two” rifle and his dead gophers, the boy gave a roguish grin at Ellis and departed, followed by two huge mewing tomcats.“Little brutes were just ruining the garden,” said Trainor, “so I put Bert onto them. He’s just having the time of his life with that new gun I bought him.”Ellis, seating himself at the piano with an assurance that bespoke long familiarity in that kindly, homelike household, began to idly strum. “Come, Lasses and Lads,” with a whistling accompaniment. Suddenly a shadow darkened the open door, and a mischievous voice greeted him with:“Hello, ‘Mancatcher’! What brings you here this late along? We’d begun to think something had happened to you.”With her great, shimmering, glorious mass of glossy black hair rippling and tumbling about her teasing, slightly sunburnt face, Mary looked like a girl of eighteen. And as she stood there, with her superb figure drawn up to its full height, she made a picture that aroused the Sergeant’s slumbering passion anew with increased fervor.But his well-trained visage and voice evinced nothing of his feelings as he returned her pleasantry with, an answering careless:“Why, hello, ‘Mousetrap’! Comin’ for a ride?”Mrs. Trainor exploded with bubbling mirth.“Why, why! whatever new nicknames are these? You two’ll be forgetting what your real names are altogether soon. I never heard such nonsense.”“It isn’t, Mrs. Trainor,” said Ellis aggrievedly. “It’s justthat—mice! I found her busy catching ’em in one of the oat bins in the stable the other day. She just catches and plays with ’em—lets ’em run, then grabs ’em again.”“Huh!” said the girl contemptuously. “That’s nothing! I’m not afraid of mice. Poor little things. Besides, I had gauntlets on.”“No,” said Ellis slowly, with a mocking chuckle, “it’d take more than a mouse to scareyou—we know that! Come! I’ll trade you aliases.Ihaven’t caught a man for over two months now.”His mischievous meaning was only too obvious, and the girl colored to her laughing eyes, grabbing, next instant, a ball of wool from Mrs. Trainor’s lap, which she shied at him.Benton, dodging this missile, gazed piercingly at her for several seconds without moving a muscle of his face; then, suddenly swinging around on the music-stool, he brought down his hands with a crash of chords and, in a great rollicking voice and a broad Somersetshire dialect, commenced to sing a bucolic love ditty. Something that went:“Vor if yeou conzents vor tu marry I now,Whoy—Vather ’e’ll gie uns ’is old vat zow!With a rum dum—dum dum—dubble dum day!”“Boo-o-oo! La, la, la!” shrilled poor Mary, covering her ears. “Oh,please, Mrs. Trainor,domake him stop!”“What’s the use, my dear?” cried that merry dame, in great amusement. “He wouldn’t listen to me. He’s too impudent for anything.”While Trainor slapped his thigh and guffawed uproariously.“Oh, oh!” screamed the girl, stamping and pirouetting about the room, “he’s startinganotherverse! Oh, quit, quit, quit! orI’llstart in opposition! I’ll make such a noise they won’t be able to hear you!”And at the top of her voice she started to declaim lustily:“Arrah, go on! You’re only tazin!Arrah, go on! You’re somethin’ awful!Arrah, go on! You’re mighty plazin!Oh, arrah go way! go wid yer! go way! go on!”“That settles it,” shouted Ellis, jumping up. “I’ll sure give in tothat. Peccavi! I’ll chuck up the sponge. But you be good after this now, or I’ll sing you somemore‘Zummerzet.’ Don’t bother about getting your hair done up again, Miss O’Malley. It looks ‘Jake’ like that. Just tie a bit of red ribbon round. Come on; go and get your riding things on. Johnny’s feeling pretty good—hasn’t been out for three days now.”“Oh, my, but that’s great!” gasped Mary ecstatically, half an hour later, as they pulled their excited, eager horses up to a walk, after a perilous neck-and-neck gallop, supremely careless of whatever badger-holes lay in their course on the long, flat stretch. “Aha, Johnny, old boy! you sure do like to be let out for a run, don’t you?” she continued caressingly, as she patted the arched, swelling neck of the great springy beast under her who, with a network of quivering, hard, grain-fed muscles rippling beneath his smooth, black-satiny coat, sidled and paced with daintily uplifted forefeet. The powerful animal carried his substantially-built rider as if she were only a child, flattening his ears and biting with equine playfulness meanwhile at Billy, the big, upstanding, well-coupled-up bay that Ellis was riding.“Well, whither away?” he inquired. “Where shall we go? Gosh, but it’s hot!”“Let’s go up on the top of that big hill over to the west there—where that flat stone is,” she said, indicating a high, conical hill, something like a South Africankopjethat loomed up in the distance. “I always call it ‘Lone Butte’ because it’s all by itself. It’s cooler up there, and we can lazy around and look at the mountains.”Half an hour’s ride over steadily rising ground brought them to their destination and, arriving at the foot of the aforesaid butte, they dismounted and, leaving their horses to graze, with dropped lines, slowly made the ascent. There, on the extreme top, a relic of some vast upheaval in the past, was a huge, long, low-lying flat stone, upon which Mary seated herself and, removing her Stetson hat, let the cool breeze play on her forehead and blow the shining tendrils of hair about her face. Ellis flung himself out at full length on the short turf at her feet and together they silently gazed in huge contentment at the panorama that lay unfolded before them.Below, looking east, shimmering with the little heat waves, the long rolling vistas of greenish-brown prairie lay stretched out to the horizon, through which, like a gleaming silver thread, wound the Bow River; while to the west, above the pine-dotted foothills of a great Indian Reserve, rose the upflung, snow-capped violet peaks of the mighty “Rockies,” the hot afternoon’s sun enveloping all in its sleepy golden haze.The Sergeant, with his chin resting in his hands, looked long and lovingly at the peaceful beauty of the scene.“Begad, just look atthatnow!” he murmured. “No wonder a fellow loves an open-air life in the West ... there’s a picture for some poor beggar that’s p’r’aps cooped up in an office all day, what? ... just the kind of background Charley Russell always manages to get into his pictures, isn’t it? To my mind he and Remington are the only artists who can depict the prairie and its life properly—theydon’t slur over detail like some of ’em. No matter whether it’s landscape, Indians, cow-punchers, horses, cattle, hunting scenes, gun-scraps, or what not, they give you the real thing—correct in every item.That’swhat hits us who liveinsuch backgrounds. They not only make youseeit on, canvas, they positively make youfeelit.... Well, Charley Russell ought to know, if any man!... he punched cattle and wrangled horses for a living—long before he ever thought of painting!”A gopher popped up its head out of a hole a few feet away from Benton and, after blinking inquisitively awhile with its beady brown eyes at the two human beings who remained so still, it apparently decided that there was nothing to fear from them and emerged fully from its retreat. With tucked-in paws, it sat bolt upright and regarded them with grave interest.Ellis eyed the rodent indolently for a space; then, reaching cautiously to his hip, he half drew a deadly-looking “Luger” pistol from its holster—to which previously mentioned confiscated weapon sinister memories were attached. The girl saw his movement and involuntarily thrust out a protesting hand.“No, no!” she said, in a loud eager whisper. “Don’t shoot the poor little chap—it isn’t as if he was in the garden. ‘Live, and let live,’ you know. Oh, younastything!”As the Sergeant, laughing quietly, in lazy acquiescence, jerked his gun home again and, instead, spat with unerring aim on the gopher’s fat back, which insult caused it to dive instantly into its hole again. For a long time they remained silent, drinking in the fresh air; then the girl who, with elbows-in-lap, was leaning forward absently swinging her quirt, flicked her abstracted companion playfully.“Come! don’t go to sleep,” she said. “A dime for your thoughts, O man of many moods! You look like Hamlet watching the play—lying gazing away there.... Wake up and talk to me, sir!”Ellis, who lay stretched out with his back, turned to her, rolled over and looked up into the long-lashed, half mocking, half serious hazel eyes.“‘Hamlet’!” he echoed, with an amused chuckle. “And pray what haveIdone to deserve the honor of being likened unto ‘the melancholy Dane,’ kind lady? ‘Wot shall I tork abaht?’ as old Bob Tucker would say. ‘Bid me discourse—I will enchant thine ear!’—à la ‘Baron Munchausen.’”“No, don’t be foolish,” she said beseechingly. “Can’t you be serious for once in a while, please? I don’t feel in the mood for any ‘Munchausen’ nonsensejustnow. Confine yourself strictly to the truth on this occasion. Just tell mewhoyou are—where you came from—and what you’ve done for your living ever since you can remember! There, now, you’ve got your orders in full ... fire away!”Ellis gave a dismal whistle. “Pretty big order on short notice,” he said. “If you expect me to fill all that, extempore, I’ll have to limit it to a synopsis.”There was, undoubtedly, a strong fascination about Benton, and few there were of either sex who came into contact with him that did not fall under the spell of his personal magnetism. The dry humor he emitted at times, and the utter absence of self-consciousness or vanity in his quiet, forceful personality, may have accounted for this in a great measure. Also, in a simple, direct fashion, he could “talk well”; and when he chose to exert himself, or was in the mood, could be a most interesting companion as a raconteur, drawing upon a vast reserve of experiences accumulated during his stirring, eventful, wandering life.The quiet peace of his surroundings were conducive to such a mood just now and, as the girl adroitly drew him on, he responded, and talked of his past life as perhaps he had never done to man or woman before. Those who love make good listeners and, as Mary, sitting there, heard with an all-absorbing interest of his strange ups and downs, trials, hopes, and adventures, she gained a vivid and lasting impression of the career of a strong man who, early in life, had cut himself adrift from kith and kin; glimpsing something of the real, deep, complex nature of this careless soldier of fortune who, all unconsciously, had won her heart long ago.His story began with his early schoolboy recollections. The unhappy period following his mother’s death, and his final emigration to the United States; then passed on, fantastically, through innumerable chops and changes of life. It told of a wild, haphazard existence in camps, and on the range in Montana and Wyoming, the lure of the gaming table, and the companionship with men of nearly every nationality under the sun. Desperate ventures in bubble speculations that either broke or made the investors, of chances missed by the merest margin of time and travel. It touched on all the phases of his pugilistic career, his later adventures on the South African veldt and memories of the great war. He described his return from that unquiet land, how he had eventually joined the Mounted Police, the years that had followed in that Force, and some of the various cases that had brought him his third stripe. Sometimes on foot, more often on horseback, now fairly prosperous, now poor, in and out, back and forth, chore boy, cookee, bronco-buster, pugilist, Chartered Company’s servant, Irregular soldier, and finally Mounted Policeman, moved Ellis Benton, taking his chance honestly and bravely in the great game of Life.All this he related without bravado, deprecating false modesty or extravagant gesture, and the simple, earnest manner in which he told his life’s story caused the great, generous heart of the listening girl to go out to him in a wave of love and sympathy—the outward expression of which she had difficulty in controlling.Gradually, however, his mood changed, and the trend of his experiences veering from the hard-bitten facts of ordinary police duty to the more humorous occurrences that from time to time vary its red-tape-bound monotony, he recounted several laughable episodes in which he had been involved at different periods. The relation of these tickled the girl’s imagination greatly.“Yes,” he said musingly. “We do get up against some funny propositions at times, that any one who’s blessed in the least degree with the saving sense of humor can’t help but appreciate. If it wasn’t for these occasional little happenings our life would be pretty dull. I remember one time”—he checked himself, with a laugh. “Bah! I’m yarning away like an old washerwoman full of gin and trouble.”“Will you go on?” Mary said, leaning towards him with dancing eyes.The thrill in her voice—strangely contagious it was—told how much she was interested. It was not to be wondered at. There was only one man on earth for whom she really cared—he lay stretched before her then, and probably what attracted her most in him was his manly simplicity and the sincerity of his tones and expression which, somehow, always had the knack of carrying absolute conviction with them in the narration of even the most trivial story.“Well,” Ellis went on, “I was on Number Thirteen—south-bound—one day, about eighteen months back, I guess, returning to my line detachment at Elbow Vale. As we pulled away from Little Bend—the first stop—the Con’ came into the car I was in with a wire in his hand. ‘Benton,’ he said. ‘Anybody here by that name?’ I was in mufti—had been on a plain-clothes job. ‘Right here!’ I said, and opened it up. It was from the O.C., and as far as I can remember, ran something like this: ‘Definite information just to hand. Arthur Forbes escaped Badminton Penitentiary; is on No. 13; forty-five; weight, one hundred and ninety; five feet ten; thick black eyebrows; hook nose; triangular scar top bald head; dress unknown; search train thoroughly; arrest without fail, signed R. B. Bargrave.’“It wasn’t much of a description to work on, but I realized it was a hurry call and was very likely all the O.C. had been able to get. It was up to me to make good somehow. So I started in to investigate that train with a fine-tooth comb, and I put the Con’ wise, too. It’s only a short train—the Southbound—and I thought I’d have an easy job locating my man if he was on it. I sauntered casually through, from end to end, and sized all the passengers up. There was only one who came anything near the description I’d had given me. Beggar was a parson at that, too. I passed him up for the time being, and when we stopped at Frampton, I and the Con’ made a pretty thorough search of the tender, baggage, and mail coaches—also the rods underneath the whole length of the train. Nothing doing, though, so we got aboard again. Then we ransacked every cubby hole we could think of. Nothing doing again there, either. I began to figure I was up against a hard proposition, or that p’r’aps he wasn’tonthe train at all. But the wire read so positive, and our O.C. isn’t the man to send you on a wild goose chase. Besides, I hated to think this gink might slip it over on me after all, and make his get-away.“Consequence was—I only had this parson to fall back on. I was only two seats back from him, so I could watch him good. He was a big, stout, broad-shouldered chap about the height and weight of the description, all right; clean-shaved and very pale, with a hook nose and thick black eyebrows, too. Didn’t fancy, somehow, that his expression and the cut of his jaw was exactly in keeping with his clerical dress—and his hair—what little I could see of it under his shovel hat—was pretty short. But there! you can’t always judge a man by his personal appearance. It isn’t wise or fair. Though honestly—I tell you, Miss O’Malley, Ihaveseen parsons before now with faces tough enough to get them six months—without the option of a fine—just on sight. I casually moved up to the seat alongside his, on the other side of the aisle, where I could keep good tab on him. He’d got some magazines and two or three clerical papers—The Pulpit,The Clerical Review, etc., that he seemed very interested in, and I began to think what ridiculous nonsense it was for me ever for an instant to associatehimin my mind with an escaped convict on the mere coincidence of his answering a vague description. While all this was running in my head something happened which caused me to change my mind a bit and feel kind of uneasy and suspicious of my Reverend ‘Nibs.’“All the way from Frampton, the whole bunch of us in the car—with the exception, of course, of the divine—had been in turn amused and annoyed at the antics of a bleary-eyed-looking bohunk who’d come aboard there with a bottle of ‘Seagram’s’ rye sticking out of his pocket. He’d got a proper singin’ jag on, and every now and again he’d pull out his bottle and whet his whistle. Might have been anything from a camp cookee to a section hand out on a ‘toot.’Idon’t know what the beggar was. Anyhow, getting tired of sitting still and singing on his lonesome, he comes zig-zagging up the aisle, pitching cheerfully into some one’s lap at every lurch of the train. The last lap he hit happened to be this parson’s, who shoved him off disgustedly, and drew in the hem of his garments, so to speak, all same Pharisee and Publican. The way he did it got that drunk goin’ properly—made him pretty nasty. So he gets back at the parson by pulling out his bottle and offering him a drink right then and there. Of course that fetched a great big ignorant laugh out of the whole lot of us, watching this Punch and Judy show. Parson never let on, though—kept his face on one side, staring out of the window. Well, the drunk, seeing his offer of a nip was turned down, takes one himself and, swaying all over the place, puts his hand on the parson’s knee and looks up into his face.“‘Sh-shay, Mister!’ he says, as solemn as an owl. ‘Idon’t believe in Heaven!’“Of course we all started in to grin again, and the parson looked like a proper goat. But still he took no notice—kept as mum as you please, though; I guess if it’d beenme, that drunk’d have got a back hander across the mouth and kicked off the train by the Con’ at the next station.“Beggar got tickled with the fun he was causing, and he kept on repeating this conviction of his over and over again like a parrot; but, as the parson took not a bit of notice, he shut up for a bit and dozed off to sleep—much to our relief. We were getting a bit fed up with him. Then it was ‘Mister’ Parson made a darned bad break. He began fumbling in his pockets for something—a penknife, if I remember—to cut the leaves of a magazine. Well, his gloves seemed to hamper him, so he took them off and I got a good look at his hands. They—like his mug—didn’t fit in with his dress at all. Pretty rough-looking mitts, that it was very evident had recently done heavy manual work—all grimed up, with black broken nails and hard callosities on the palms.“Still I hung fire—forhiscloth always demands a certain amount of respect. Hemighthave been working in his garden, I argued to myself. I didn’t want to make any fool break by humiliating a, p’r’aps, perfectly innocent man and a gentleman on mere suspicion, and without any positive proof. While I was twisting things over in my mind, the brakeman came through, calling: ‘Baker’s Lake! Baker’s Lake!’ And presently the train began to slow down. Parson began to gather all his belongings together as if he was going to get off there. I was ‘between the devil and the deep sea’—properly. For it was a case of ‘Going! going!’ and the next minute it’d be ‘Gone!’ with me, p’r’aps, for the goat instead of him.“But just then Providence, in the shape of the drunk, settled all my doubts for me at the eleventh hour. The brakeman calling out the name of the station, and the parson rustling around with his traps, had combined to wake this beggar up, and he started in to sing again. He quite brightened up at the sound of his own music—takes another swig at his bottle and, squinting at our reverend friend, starts in again with his old parrot squawk:“‘Idon’t believe in Heaven, mister!Idon’t believe in Heaven!’“Parson stands up and reaches for his bag off the rack.“‘Don’t you?’ he says, showing his teeth in a nasty sort of grin. ‘Don’t you? Well, then—you can go to H—l!’“That fixed it—absolutely. I jumped up and followed my ‘wolf in sheep’s clothing’ down the aisle and out onto the platform.“‘Just a minute, please,’ I said. ‘I’m a sergeant of the Mounted Police. I don’t think there’s any doubt aboutyou.’ And I collared him.“For answer, he dropped his bag on the instant and closed with me—desperate—tried to trip me up. Oh, I tell you, he surewassome handful. Well, he wouldn’t give in, quiet, and I began to get mad at the way he was scuffling with me, so I let go of him and broke away for a second. Then I came in on him quick and flopped him out with an uppercut and a back-heel—and as he keeled over his hat flew off and I saw the scar on the top of his bald block. Regular entertainment for the people on the train and the platform. They were wondering what the deuce was up when they saw us scrapping and rolling around there. I shoved the steels on him and took him back next train.”Mary laughed heartily at the conclusion of this episode.“Wherever had he got the parson’s clothes from?” she queried.“Oh,” said Ellis, with a grin, “when I landed back to the Post with him I heard the city police’d received a report from the Reverend Seccombe—the Baptist minister—to the effect that his house had been broken into the night before and some of his clothes pinched. We got him to come down to the guardroom right away, and he immediately identified the clothes the prisoner was wearing as his—and the bag, too. He and the other gink were just about the same build and height. Oh, his understudy pleaded guilty to burgling this house then and there, when he saw a bluff wouldn’t go. Made a statement and told us the whole business.“It appears he’d broken into a shack when he first made his get-away from the ‘pen,’ and stolen some workman’s clothes. He was kind enough to leave these behind him when he exchanged with Seccombe. Oh, he sure was some ‘Holy Roller,’ this Mr. Arthur Forbes.Justsuch another flim-flammer as that Jabez Balfour, who put that smooth ‘Liberator gold brick come-on’ over a lot of the smug Nonconformist fraternity in the Old Country many years back, and then skipped out to Buenos Ayres. This beauty was doing eight years for a somewhat similar fake—a big oil well ‘salting’ swindle. He’d defrauded the public out of something like four hundred thousand dollars.”He rolled and lit a cigarette and, after carefully extinguishing the match, gazed dreamily awhile across at the mountains, behind which the sun was gradually disappearing. Presently, looking up at his companion with a faint, whimsical smile playing over his stern features, he said quietly:“Now it’syourturn to be Scherazerade. So far, I’ve been in the rôle of Sinbad—completely monopolizing this ‘Arabian Nights’ entertainment in a very one-sided manner. Won’t you tell me something ofyourlife—in return?”She shrugged her broad, gracefully rounded shoulders with a queer little hopeless gesture, all the life seeming to have gone suddenly out of her mobile face as she regarded him now with grave introspection.“I’ll tell you a little,” she said slowly. “But I’m afraid you won’t find it very interesting.”What she related was a very fair corroboration of the facts previously told him by Trainor; and though in their narration she strove to appear indifferent to the changing fortunes of her family, and to gloss over her father’s improvidence and selfishness, reading between the lines it was very apparent to Ellis what sacrifices she had made willingly for those same young brothers of whom she spoke with such loving solicitude.“So ye see, me frind,” she wound up with a kind of forced gaiety:Fwat ups an’ down an’ changes there beE’en in the lives av th’ loikes av me.Four years ago the fortunes av the House of O’Malley were in the ascendant; today they are shtrictly on th’ wane.”She threw up her head and smiled gamely in a forlorn sort of way; but the quivering lips belied the careless, inconsequent tones, and he, guessing that the tears were not far from the surface, dimly sensed something of the bitter struggle that that brave heart must have been forced to make at times to keep up appearances in past periods of adversity. With this in his mind, he impulsively held up his hand to the girl, and she, choking back a little sob in her throat, reached out and clasped it warmly in hers.“Eyah!” he said; “I guess we’ve both had our ups and downs, all right, but there’s one consolation about our respective lots—they might have fallen in worse places, though there’s littlerealpeace in the lives of us who are comparatively poor and have to earn our own livings forever dependent on the whims and fancies of the powers that be, set in authority above us.“Take the life of the average non-com, or ‘buck,’ in this Force, for instance. It may seem rot to get harping on grievances at such a time and place as this, I know,” (he made a sweeping gesture to the landscape with outflung arm) “but there’s no lasting peace of mind or future in it. People see us patrolling around in a smart uniform, and riding the pick of the country in horseflesh, thinking, I suppose, what a fine time we have of it. They little guess it’s one continual round of worry and trouble. All the way from murder and robbery to settling neighbors’ trivial squabbles over dogging each other’s cattle, paying the cost of divisional fences, and all those kind of petty disturbances. Either that, or being chased around from one detachment to another, though in that respect I must say this Division isn’t as bad as some of ’em. Couldn’t have a better O.C. or Inspectors’n we’ve got in L. As long as you’re onto your job and do your work right, they let you pretty well alone. But it’s the confounded office work that we have to do in addition to our ordinary police duty thatweget fed up on. Talk about red tape! This outfit’s sure the home of it! Every report, every little voucher for p’r’aps fifty cents’ expenditure—four, and sometimes five, copies of each. Statistics for this, and statistics for that; monthly returns, mileage reports, and the copy of your daily diary. Oh, Lord! you should just see what we have to get through. Most of us use typewriters, of course, or we’dnevermake the grade at all. It’s much easier and handier. Guess you saw that one of mine in the detachment.“Office work or not, though, this job’s away ahead of being stuck in the Post. The daily round of a ‘straight duty buck’ doing prisoners’ escort about Barracks is, without doubt,themost demoralizing existence goin’. The monotony’s something fierce. And a non-com’s isn’t much better, either. Sent out on every little rotten job that turns up, hanging around stables and the orderly-room, always expected to be on hand and within call. Taking charge of grousing fatigue parties, etc. Thank goodness! I never had much of it to do. I was only in the Post a month when I first took on. Been on detachment ever since, barring six weeks I once put in as Acting Provo’ in charge of the guardroom, while Hopgood was sick.”He rolled another cigarette and, inhaling and expelling a whiff of smoke, continued reflectively: “This is a good outfit—this Force—no doubt about it. I guess as regards its system, discipline, and results, it’s out and away the best Military Police Force in the world—with the exception, p’r’aps, of the Royal Irish Constabulary. Good men take on and serve their time. Some reengage, and some quit. But just as good men take their place and the work goes on. But, as I said before, there’s no rest, or future in it for the average non-com, or buck. You never know when your day’s work’s done.“No, it’s just one continual round of listening to, and settling other people’s troubles. Seems nonsense, I know, to get talking like this for, after all, it’s only what we’re paid for. Somebody’s got to do it. But there it is—trouble, trouble, trouble, the whole time. All my life, with the exception of the time I deliberately struck into the fighting game, I’ve wanted to live peaceably; but it seems to have been my luck, somehow, to always get the reverse. Especially on this job. No matter how quiet and easy-going you try to rub along there are always some nasty, bullying, ignorant, cunning beggars who, just because you’re a bit decent to them, take it for granted you’re easy and try to impose on you. Anyway, that wasmyexperience on the first two or three detachments I struck. Not onthisone, though! Didn’t give ’em a chance. Fellow that was before me, corporal named Williamson—decent head, all right—but he tried that ‘live, and let live’ stunt and it didn’t work a bit. No,sir! They just took advantage of him every turn and corner. Oh, I tell you, Miss O’Malley, it sure was some tough district—this—when I took it over.”His brows contracted loweringly, and a menacing light gleamed in his deep-set eyes.“I soaked it to ’em, though, the dirty dogs!” he muttered, with a savage snap of his strong white teeth. “They wanted to beshown.... I’ve sureshownsome of ’em, all right. The inside of a ‘Pen’,’ at that. Kept ’em on the high jump ever since. It’s the only waytodeal with that class. Treat ’em like the scum they are, and they’ll be good then and eat out of your hand. They’re too ignorant and cunning to appreciate any civility or kindness.”He smoked thoughtfully on awhile after this slight outburst of bitterness, amidst a silence that was presently broken by Mary.“You’re fond of reading, aren’t you?” she inquired. “And music?”His moody face cleared instantly, like the sun coming from behind a cloud.“Aye! you just bet I am!” he said fervently. “I’ve read, and played, and sung every chance I’ve got—wherever I’ve been. Fond!—well, I should say I am. I fancy if it hadn’t been forthat, I’d have gone to the devil long ago.”He was sitting up on the grass, with his elbows on his knees and his face buried in his hands. Neither of them spoke for a time and he, still gazing across at the distant “Rockies,” muttered, half unconsciously, to himself:“No, justpeace—that’s all I feel I want now. To have some steady job to work at, with a future, and a home ahead of it. Neither molesting, or being molested by any one.”The girl leaned forward, listening wonderingly, as she watched the hard, clean-cut profile of his faraway, moody face, surprised to hear him ramble on so. He appeared to be entirely oblivious of her presence. He made a very long pause and then, when she thought he was thinking of something quite different, he suddenly said:“I’m getting older now, and I’ve got more patience than I used to have but, all the same—I’ll take no abuse, back-lip, or stand for being imposed upon by any man. It’s been a word and a blow with me all my life, and I guess that’s the reason why I’m only a poor man today. For many’s the jackpot it’s landed me into. Aye! and many’s the good job I’ve had to quit through the same thing.“Justpeace!” he repeated again, dreamily. “You realize it in some of George Eliot’s tales of old-fashioned English country life, in Gray’s ‘Elegy,’ in Marie Corelli’s song of ‘The Lotus Lily.’ Ah, yes! she felt it when she wrote that beautiful thing in her Egyptian tale of ‘Ziska’:“‘Oh, for the passionless peace of the Lotus-Lily!It floats in a waking dream on the waters chilly,With its leaves unfurledTo the wondering world,Knowing naught of the sorrow and restless painThat burns and tortures the human brain;Oh, for the passionless peace of the Lotus-Lily!’”He ceased, and sunk his face in his hands again. The breeze stirred the grizzled-brown hair on his temples, and he remained still for so long that she thought he had fallen asleep; but presently he seemed to rouse himself a little, and said idly, in a low voice:“Men like me don’thaveto care what people say, or think, about us. Ever since Mother died, I’ve been practically alone in the world, and steered my course as I saw fit—just gone ahead and done what I thought was right. Am I the worse man for being poor, I wonder? I’ve never crawled to hold a job—or for money, anyway! Badly though I’ve always wanted it. For it makes all the difference in the world—money. I’ve kept my self-respect as far asthatgoes—poor consolation though it may be now—just when I need it most.”The girl flicked him with her quirt.“Don’t you think we’d better be going?” she said gently. “It’s getting late. The sun’s gone down a long time now.”At the touch, and the sound of her voice, he roused himself with a start and regarded her absently.“By George!” he muttered. “I must have been dreaming. Sorry, Miss O’Malley.” He pulled out his watch. “Sureislate,” he said. “Why didn’t you give me a good slap and wake me up before? Letting me go to sleep like that. Well, I guess we’ll toddle on down to the horses.”“Youhaven’tbeen asleep,” she said, with a faint smile. “But you’ve been sitting there talking away to yourself like a man in a dream.”He flushed, and laughed a little, shamefacedly.“Have I?” he answered. “I sure must be getting as ‘nutty’ as a sheep herder! What was I talking about?”“Oh, all sorts of things,” she said evasively. “I’ll tell you sometime.”He laughed again and, after eyeing her incredulously for an instant, turned and strode down the declivity to where the patient horses still waited. The girl gazed wistfully for a moment or two after his retreating form, with its slim waist and square, splendidly-drilled shoulders; then, with a little weary sigh, she arose and, mechanically putting on her hat and dusting her dress, followed him.Catching up Johnny, who nickered at her approach and picked up his forefoot for sugar, she mounted with the lithe agility of the expert horsewoman. Ellis swung up on Billy, and in silence they set out at a brisk lope for home.
She’d come again, and with a greedy earDevour up my discourse:—Othello: ActI,Sc. 3
She’d come again, and with a greedy earDevour up my discourse:—Othello: ActI,Sc. 3
She’d come again, and with a greedy ear
Devour up my discourse:
—Othello: ActI,Sc. 3
One glorious September afternoon, appreciating the girl’s fondness for riding Johnny, Ellis rode over to the Trainors’, leading his favorite mount. Entering the house, he received the usual kindly welcome from the rancher and his wife; the latter a stoutish, jolly-looking woman with a great mass of fair, fluffy hair—some years her husband’s junior.
“Well, well,” she said, looking up at him with playful amusement. “And where,sir, haveyoubeen hiding yourself lately? We’d begun to think you must have fallen down a gopher hole or something.”
He walked through into the kitchen and drank a dipperful of water thirstily, before he answered. Returning, he grinned significantly at his hostess.
“All right, let it go at that, Mrs. Trainor,” he replied. “Here, Gwyn!” he continued, slewing around and catching hold of that little blonde seven-year-old fairy, “where’s Miss O’Malley?”
“Shan’t tell you!” came the mutinous giggle.
“Oh, yes, you will,” he said, tickling her. “Come on, now; you tell, or I’ll—I’ll take you out and put you right on top of the barn for that big sparrow-hawk to come and get! He likes little girls like you. One! Two!—are you going to tell me—?”
“Yes, yes!” came the smothered squawk. “Pu-put me down, though. She—she’s drying her hair in the sun back of the house,” she whispered gravely.
“Is she? Well, you go and tell her I want her,” he whispered back. “Run like anything.”
“Oh, she’ll come quick enough when she knows you’ve got Johnny for her to ride,” remarked Trainor, smiling. “She won’t look at that Pedro horse of mine so long ashe’saround. Say!” he broke off. “Bert’s sure getting to be some marksman, ain’t he? He’ll be running you pretty close when he gets older, Sergeant. Look at that, now!”
These remarks were occasioned by the entrance of a sturdy youngster of nine, who was proudly dangling the carcasses of half a dozen fat gophers.
“No, no, Bert! You mustn’t bring them in here!” cried his mother sharply. “Take them outside and give them to Tom and Jerry!”
Hugging a small “twenty-two” rifle and his dead gophers, the boy gave a roguish grin at Ellis and departed, followed by two huge mewing tomcats.
“Little brutes were just ruining the garden,” said Trainor, “so I put Bert onto them. He’s just having the time of his life with that new gun I bought him.”
Ellis, seating himself at the piano with an assurance that bespoke long familiarity in that kindly, homelike household, began to idly strum. “Come, Lasses and Lads,” with a whistling accompaniment. Suddenly a shadow darkened the open door, and a mischievous voice greeted him with:
“Hello, ‘Mancatcher’! What brings you here this late along? We’d begun to think something had happened to you.”
With her great, shimmering, glorious mass of glossy black hair rippling and tumbling about her teasing, slightly sunburnt face, Mary looked like a girl of eighteen. And as she stood there, with her superb figure drawn up to its full height, she made a picture that aroused the Sergeant’s slumbering passion anew with increased fervor.
But his well-trained visage and voice evinced nothing of his feelings as he returned her pleasantry with, an answering careless:
“Why, hello, ‘Mousetrap’! Comin’ for a ride?”
Mrs. Trainor exploded with bubbling mirth.
“Why, why! whatever new nicknames are these? You two’ll be forgetting what your real names are altogether soon. I never heard such nonsense.”
“It isn’t, Mrs. Trainor,” said Ellis aggrievedly. “It’s justthat—mice! I found her busy catching ’em in one of the oat bins in the stable the other day. She just catches and plays with ’em—lets ’em run, then grabs ’em again.”
“Huh!” said the girl contemptuously. “That’s nothing! I’m not afraid of mice. Poor little things. Besides, I had gauntlets on.”
“No,” said Ellis slowly, with a mocking chuckle, “it’d take more than a mouse to scareyou—we know that! Come! I’ll trade you aliases.Ihaven’t caught a man for over two months now.”
His mischievous meaning was only too obvious, and the girl colored to her laughing eyes, grabbing, next instant, a ball of wool from Mrs. Trainor’s lap, which she shied at him.
Benton, dodging this missile, gazed piercingly at her for several seconds without moving a muscle of his face; then, suddenly swinging around on the music-stool, he brought down his hands with a crash of chords and, in a great rollicking voice and a broad Somersetshire dialect, commenced to sing a bucolic love ditty. Something that went:
“Vor if yeou conzents vor tu marry I now,Whoy—Vather ’e’ll gie uns ’is old vat zow!With a rum dum—dum dum—dubble dum day!”
“Vor if yeou conzents vor tu marry I now,Whoy—Vather ’e’ll gie uns ’is old vat zow!With a rum dum—dum dum—dubble dum day!”
“Vor if yeou conzents vor tu marry I now,
Whoy—Vather ’e’ll gie uns ’is old vat zow!
With a rum dum—dum dum—dubble dum day!”
“Boo-o-oo! La, la, la!” shrilled poor Mary, covering her ears. “Oh,please, Mrs. Trainor,domake him stop!”
“What’s the use, my dear?” cried that merry dame, in great amusement. “He wouldn’t listen to me. He’s too impudent for anything.”
While Trainor slapped his thigh and guffawed uproariously.
“Oh, oh!” screamed the girl, stamping and pirouetting about the room, “he’s startinganotherverse! Oh, quit, quit, quit! orI’llstart in opposition! I’ll make such a noise they won’t be able to hear you!”
And at the top of her voice she started to declaim lustily:
“Arrah, go on! You’re only tazin!Arrah, go on! You’re somethin’ awful!Arrah, go on! You’re mighty plazin!Oh, arrah go way! go wid yer! go way! go on!”
“Arrah, go on! You’re only tazin!Arrah, go on! You’re somethin’ awful!Arrah, go on! You’re mighty plazin!Oh, arrah go way! go wid yer! go way! go on!”
“Arrah, go on! You’re only tazin!
Arrah, go on! You’re somethin’ awful!
Arrah, go on! You’re mighty plazin!
Oh, arrah go way! go wid yer! go way! go on!”
“That settles it,” shouted Ellis, jumping up. “I’ll sure give in tothat. Peccavi! I’ll chuck up the sponge. But you be good after this now, or I’ll sing you somemore‘Zummerzet.’ Don’t bother about getting your hair done up again, Miss O’Malley. It looks ‘Jake’ like that. Just tie a bit of red ribbon round. Come on; go and get your riding things on. Johnny’s feeling pretty good—hasn’t been out for three days now.”
“Oh, my, but that’s great!” gasped Mary ecstatically, half an hour later, as they pulled their excited, eager horses up to a walk, after a perilous neck-and-neck gallop, supremely careless of whatever badger-holes lay in their course on the long, flat stretch. “Aha, Johnny, old boy! you sure do like to be let out for a run, don’t you?” she continued caressingly, as she patted the arched, swelling neck of the great springy beast under her who, with a network of quivering, hard, grain-fed muscles rippling beneath his smooth, black-satiny coat, sidled and paced with daintily uplifted forefeet. The powerful animal carried his substantially-built rider as if she were only a child, flattening his ears and biting with equine playfulness meanwhile at Billy, the big, upstanding, well-coupled-up bay that Ellis was riding.
“Well, whither away?” he inquired. “Where shall we go? Gosh, but it’s hot!”
“Let’s go up on the top of that big hill over to the west there—where that flat stone is,” she said, indicating a high, conical hill, something like a South Africankopjethat loomed up in the distance. “I always call it ‘Lone Butte’ because it’s all by itself. It’s cooler up there, and we can lazy around and look at the mountains.”
Half an hour’s ride over steadily rising ground brought them to their destination and, arriving at the foot of the aforesaid butte, they dismounted and, leaving their horses to graze, with dropped lines, slowly made the ascent. There, on the extreme top, a relic of some vast upheaval in the past, was a huge, long, low-lying flat stone, upon which Mary seated herself and, removing her Stetson hat, let the cool breeze play on her forehead and blow the shining tendrils of hair about her face. Ellis flung himself out at full length on the short turf at her feet and together they silently gazed in huge contentment at the panorama that lay unfolded before them.
Below, looking east, shimmering with the little heat waves, the long rolling vistas of greenish-brown prairie lay stretched out to the horizon, through which, like a gleaming silver thread, wound the Bow River; while to the west, above the pine-dotted foothills of a great Indian Reserve, rose the upflung, snow-capped violet peaks of the mighty “Rockies,” the hot afternoon’s sun enveloping all in its sleepy golden haze.
The Sergeant, with his chin resting in his hands, looked long and lovingly at the peaceful beauty of the scene.
“Begad, just look atthatnow!” he murmured. “No wonder a fellow loves an open-air life in the West ... there’s a picture for some poor beggar that’s p’r’aps cooped up in an office all day, what? ... just the kind of background Charley Russell always manages to get into his pictures, isn’t it? To my mind he and Remington are the only artists who can depict the prairie and its life properly—theydon’t slur over detail like some of ’em. No matter whether it’s landscape, Indians, cow-punchers, horses, cattle, hunting scenes, gun-scraps, or what not, they give you the real thing—correct in every item.That’swhat hits us who liveinsuch backgrounds. They not only make youseeit on, canvas, they positively make youfeelit.... Well, Charley Russell ought to know, if any man!... he punched cattle and wrangled horses for a living—long before he ever thought of painting!”
A gopher popped up its head out of a hole a few feet away from Benton and, after blinking inquisitively awhile with its beady brown eyes at the two human beings who remained so still, it apparently decided that there was nothing to fear from them and emerged fully from its retreat. With tucked-in paws, it sat bolt upright and regarded them with grave interest.
Ellis eyed the rodent indolently for a space; then, reaching cautiously to his hip, he half drew a deadly-looking “Luger” pistol from its holster—to which previously mentioned confiscated weapon sinister memories were attached. The girl saw his movement and involuntarily thrust out a protesting hand.
“No, no!” she said, in a loud eager whisper. “Don’t shoot the poor little chap—it isn’t as if he was in the garden. ‘Live, and let live,’ you know. Oh, younastything!”
As the Sergeant, laughing quietly, in lazy acquiescence, jerked his gun home again and, instead, spat with unerring aim on the gopher’s fat back, which insult caused it to dive instantly into its hole again. For a long time they remained silent, drinking in the fresh air; then the girl who, with elbows-in-lap, was leaning forward absently swinging her quirt, flicked her abstracted companion playfully.
“Come! don’t go to sleep,” she said. “A dime for your thoughts, O man of many moods! You look like Hamlet watching the play—lying gazing away there.... Wake up and talk to me, sir!”
Ellis, who lay stretched out with his back, turned to her, rolled over and looked up into the long-lashed, half mocking, half serious hazel eyes.
“‘Hamlet’!” he echoed, with an amused chuckle. “And pray what haveIdone to deserve the honor of being likened unto ‘the melancholy Dane,’ kind lady? ‘Wot shall I tork abaht?’ as old Bob Tucker would say. ‘Bid me discourse—I will enchant thine ear!’—à la ‘Baron Munchausen.’”
“No, don’t be foolish,” she said beseechingly. “Can’t you be serious for once in a while, please? I don’t feel in the mood for any ‘Munchausen’ nonsensejustnow. Confine yourself strictly to the truth on this occasion. Just tell mewhoyou are—where you came from—and what you’ve done for your living ever since you can remember! There, now, you’ve got your orders in full ... fire away!”
Ellis gave a dismal whistle. “Pretty big order on short notice,” he said. “If you expect me to fill all that, extempore, I’ll have to limit it to a synopsis.”
There was, undoubtedly, a strong fascination about Benton, and few there were of either sex who came into contact with him that did not fall under the spell of his personal magnetism. The dry humor he emitted at times, and the utter absence of self-consciousness or vanity in his quiet, forceful personality, may have accounted for this in a great measure. Also, in a simple, direct fashion, he could “talk well”; and when he chose to exert himself, or was in the mood, could be a most interesting companion as a raconteur, drawing upon a vast reserve of experiences accumulated during his stirring, eventful, wandering life.
The quiet peace of his surroundings were conducive to such a mood just now and, as the girl adroitly drew him on, he responded, and talked of his past life as perhaps he had never done to man or woman before. Those who love make good listeners and, as Mary, sitting there, heard with an all-absorbing interest of his strange ups and downs, trials, hopes, and adventures, she gained a vivid and lasting impression of the career of a strong man who, early in life, had cut himself adrift from kith and kin; glimpsing something of the real, deep, complex nature of this careless soldier of fortune who, all unconsciously, had won her heart long ago.
His story began with his early schoolboy recollections. The unhappy period following his mother’s death, and his final emigration to the United States; then passed on, fantastically, through innumerable chops and changes of life. It told of a wild, haphazard existence in camps, and on the range in Montana and Wyoming, the lure of the gaming table, and the companionship with men of nearly every nationality under the sun. Desperate ventures in bubble speculations that either broke or made the investors, of chances missed by the merest margin of time and travel. It touched on all the phases of his pugilistic career, his later adventures on the South African veldt and memories of the great war. He described his return from that unquiet land, how he had eventually joined the Mounted Police, the years that had followed in that Force, and some of the various cases that had brought him his third stripe. Sometimes on foot, more often on horseback, now fairly prosperous, now poor, in and out, back and forth, chore boy, cookee, bronco-buster, pugilist, Chartered Company’s servant, Irregular soldier, and finally Mounted Policeman, moved Ellis Benton, taking his chance honestly and bravely in the great game of Life.
All this he related without bravado, deprecating false modesty or extravagant gesture, and the simple, earnest manner in which he told his life’s story caused the great, generous heart of the listening girl to go out to him in a wave of love and sympathy—the outward expression of which she had difficulty in controlling.
Gradually, however, his mood changed, and the trend of his experiences veering from the hard-bitten facts of ordinary police duty to the more humorous occurrences that from time to time vary its red-tape-bound monotony, he recounted several laughable episodes in which he had been involved at different periods. The relation of these tickled the girl’s imagination greatly.
“Yes,” he said musingly. “We do get up against some funny propositions at times, that any one who’s blessed in the least degree with the saving sense of humor can’t help but appreciate. If it wasn’t for these occasional little happenings our life would be pretty dull. I remember one time”—he checked himself, with a laugh. “Bah! I’m yarning away like an old washerwoman full of gin and trouble.”
“Will you go on?” Mary said, leaning towards him with dancing eyes.
The thrill in her voice—strangely contagious it was—told how much she was interested. It was not to be wondered at. There was only one man on earth for whom she really cared—he lay stretched before her then, and probably what attracted her most in him was his manly simplicity and the sincerity of his tones and expression which, somehow, always had the knack of carrying absolute conviction with them in the narration of even the most trivial story.
“Well,” Ellis went on, “I was on Number Thirteen—south-bound—one day, about eighteen months back, I guess, returning to my line detachment at Elbow Vale. As we pulled away from Little Bend—the first stop—the Con’ came into the car I was in with a wire in his hand. ‘Benton,’ he said. ‘Anybody here by that name?’ I was in mufti—had been on a plain-clothes job. ‘Right here!’ I said, and opened it up. It was from the O.C., and as far as I can remember, ran something like this: ‘Definite information just to hand. Arthur Forbes escaped Badminton Penitentiary; is on No. 13; forty-five; weight, one hundred and ninety; five feet ten; thick black eyebrows; hook nose; triangular scar top bald head; dress unknown; search train thoroughly; arrest without fail, signed R. B. Bargrave.’
“It wasn’t much of a description to work on, but I realized it was a hurry call and was very likely all the O.C. had been able to get. It was up to me to make good somehow. So I started in to investigate that train with a fine-tooth comb, and I put the Con’ wise, too. It’s only a short train—the Southbound—and I thought I’d have an easy job locating my man if he was on it. I sauntered casually through, from end to end, and sized all the passengers up. There was only one who came anything near the description I’d had given me. Beggar was a parson at that, too. I passed him up for the time being, and when we stopped at Frampton, I and the Con’ made a pretty thorough search of the tender, baggage, and mail coaches—also the rods underneath the whole length of the train. Nothing doing, though, so we got aboard again. Then we ransacked every cubby hole we could think of. Nothing doing again there, either. I began to figure I was up against a hard proposition, or that p’r’aps he wasn’tonthe train at all. But the wire read so positive, and our O.C. isn’t the man to send you on a wild goose chase. Besides, I hated to think this gink might slip it over on me after all, and make his get-away.
“Consequence was—I only had this parson to fall back on. I was only two seats back from him, so I could watch him good. He was a big, stout, broad-shouldered chap about the height and weight of the description, all right; clean-shaved and very pale, with a hook nose and thick black eyebrows, too. Didn’t fancy, somehow, that his expression and the cut of his jaw was exactly in keeping with his clerical dress—and his hair—what little I could see of it under his shovel hat—was pretty short. But there! you can’t always judge a man by his personal appearance. It isn’t wise or fair. Though honestly—I tell you, Miss O’Malley, Ihaveseen parsons before now with faces tough enough to get them six months—without the option of a fine—just on sight. I casually moved up to the seat alongside his, on the other side of the aisle, where I could keep good tab on him. He’d got some magazines and two or three clerical papers—The Pulpit,The Clerical Review, etc., that he seemed very interested in, and I began to think what ridiculous nonsense it was for me ever for an instant to associatehimin my mind with an escaped convict on the mere coincidence of his answering a vague description. While all this was running in my head something happened which caused me to change my mind a bit and feel kind of uneasy and suspicious of my Reverend ‘Nibs.’
“All the way from Frampton, the whole bunch of us in the car—with the exception, of course, of the divine—had been in turn amused and annoyed at the antics of a bleary-eyed-looking bohunk who’d come aboard there with a bottle of ‘Seagram’s’ rye sticking out of his pocket. He’d got a proper singin’ jag on, and every now and again he’d pull out his bottle and whet his whistle. Might have been anything from a camp cookee to a section hand out on a ‘toot.’Idon’t know what the beggar was. Anyhow, getting tired of sitting still and singing on his lonesome, he comes zig-zagging up the aisle, pitching cheerfully into some one’s lap at every lurch of the train. The last lap he hit happened to be this parson’s, who shoved him off disgustedly, and drew in the hem of his garments, so to speak, all same Pharisee and Publican. The way he did it got that drunk goin’ properly—made him pretty nasty. So he gets back at the parson by pulling out his bottle and offering him a drink right then and there. Of course that fetched a great big ignorant laugh out of the whole lot of us, watching this Punch and Judy show. Parson never let on, though—kept his face on one side, staring out of the window. Well, the drunk, seeing his offer of a nip was turned down, takes one himself and, swaying all over the place, puts his hand on the parson’s knee and looks up into his face.
“‘Sh-shay, Mister!’ he says, as solemn as an owl. ‘Idon’t believe in Heaven!’
“Of course we all started in to grin again, and the parson looked like a proper goat. But still he took no notice—kept as mum as you please, though; I guess if it’d beenme, that drunk’d have got a back hander across the mouth and kicked off the train by the Con’ at the next station.
“Beggar got tickled with the fun he was causing, and he kept on repeating this conviction of his over and over again like a parrot; but, as the parson took not a bit of notice, he shut up for a bit and dozed off to sleep—much to our relief. We were getting a bit fed up with him. Then it was ‘Mister’ Parson made a darned bad break. He began fumbling in his pockets for something—a penknife, if I remember—to cut the leaves of a magazine. Well, his gloves seemed to hamper him, so he took them off and I got a good look at his hands. They—like his mug—didn’t fit in with his dress at all. Pretty rough-looking mitts, that it was very evident had recently done heavy manual work—all grimed up, with black broken nails and hard callosities on the palms.
“Still I hung fire—forhiscloth always demands a certain amount of respect. Hemighthave been working in his garden, I argued to myself. I didn’t want to make any fool break by humiliating a, p’r’aps, perfectly innocent man and a gentleman on mere suspicion, and without any positive proof. While I was twisting things over in my mind, the brakeman came through, calling: ‘Baker’s Lake! Baker’s Lake!’ And presently the train began to slow down. Parson began to gather all his belongings together as if he was going to get off there. I was ‘between the devil and the deep sea’—properly. For it was a case of ‘Going! going!’ and the next minute it’d be ‘Gone!’ with me, p’r’aps, for the goat instead of him.
“But just then Providence, in the shape of the drunk, settled all my doubts for me at the eleventh hour. The brakeman calling out the name of the station, and the parson rustling around with his traps, had combined to wake this beggar up, and he started in to sing again. He quite brightened up at the sound of his own music—takes another swig at his bottle and, squinting at our reverend friend, starts in again with his old parrot squawk:
“‘Idon’t believe in Heaven, mister!Idon’t believe in Heaven!’
“Parson stands up and reaches for his bag off the rack.
“‘Don’t you?’ he says, showing his teeth in a nasty sort of grin. ‘Don’t you? Well, then—you can go to H—l!’
“That fixed it—absolutely. I jumped up and followed my ‘wolf in sheep’s clothing’ down the aisle and out onto the platform.
“‘Just a minute, please,’ I said. ‘I’m a sergeant of the Mounted Police. I don’t think there’s any doubt aboutyou.’ And I collared him.
“For answer, he dropped his bag on the instant and closed with me—desperate—tried to trip me up. Oh, I tell you, he surewassome handful. Well, he wouldn’t give in, quiet, and I began to get mad at the way he was scuffling with me, so I let go of him and broke away for a second. Then I came in on him quick and flopped him out with an uppercut and a back-heel—and as he keeled over his hat flew off and I saw the scar on the top of his bald block. Regular entertainment for the people on the train and the platform. They were wondering what the deuce was up when they saw us scrapping and rolling around there. I shoved the steels on him and took him back next train.”
Mary laughed heartily at the conclusion of this episode.
“Wherever had he got the parson’s clothes from?” she queried.
“Oh,” said Ellis, with a grin, “when I landed back to the Post with him I heard the city police’d received a report from the Reverend Seccombe—the Baptist minister—to the effect that his house had been broken into the night before and some of his clothes pinched. We got him to come down to the guardroom right away, and he immediately identified the clothes the prisoner was wearing as his—and the bag, too. He and the other gink were just about the same build and height. Oh, his understudy pleaded guilty to burgling this house then and there, when he saw a bluff wouldn’t go. Made a statement and told us the whole business.
“It appears he’d broken into a shack when he first made his get-away from the ‘pen,’ and stolen some workman’s clothes. He was kind enough to leave these behind him when he exchanged with Seccombe. Oh, he sure was some ‘Holy Roller,’ this Mr. Arthur Forbes.Justsuch another flim-flammer as that Jabez Balfour, who put that smooth ‘Liberator gold brick come-on’ over a lot of the smug Nonconformist fraternity in the Old Country many years back, and then skipped out to Buenos Ayres. This beauty was doing eight years for a somewhat similar fake—a big oil well ‘salting’ swindle. He’d defrauded the public out of something like four hundred thousand dollars.”
He rolled and lit a cigarette and, after carefully extinguishing the match, gazed dreamily awhile across at the mountains, behind which the sun was gradually disappearing. Presently, looking up at his companion with a faint, whimsical smile playing over his stern features, he said quietly:
“Now it’syourturn to be Scherazerade. So far, I’ve been in the rôle of Sinbad—completely monopolizing this ‘Arabian Nights’ entertainment in a very one-sided manner. Won’t you tell me something ofyourlife—in return?”
She shrugged her broad, gracefully rounded shoulders with a queer little hopeless gesture, all the life seeming to have gone suddenly out of her mobile face as she regarded him now with grave introspection.
“I’ll tell you a little,” she said slowly. “But I’m afraid you won’t find it very interesting.”
What she related was a very fair corroboration of the facts previously told him by Trainor; and though in their narration she strove to appear indifferent to the changing fortunes of her family, and to gloss over her father’s improvidence and selfishness, reading between the lines it was very apparent to Ellis what sacrifices she had made willingly for those same young brothers of whom she spoke with such loving solicitude.
“So ye see, me frind,” she wound up with a kind of forced gaiety:
Fwat ups an’ down an’ changes there beE’en in the lives av th’ loikes av me.
Fwat ups an’ down an’ changes there beE’en in the lives av th’ loikes av me.
Fwat ups an’ down an’ changes there be
E’en in the lives av th’ loikes av me.
Four years ago the fortunes av the House of O’Malley were in the ascendant; today they are shtrictly on th’ wane.”
She threw up her head and smiled gamely in a forlorn sort of way; but the quivering lips belied the careless, inconsequent tones, and he, guessing that the tears were not far from the surface, dimly sensed something of the bitter struggle that that brave heart must have been forced to make at times to keep up appearances in past periods of adversity. With this in his mind, he impulsively held up his hand to the girl, and she, choking back a little sob in her throat, reached out and clasped it warmly in hers.
“Eyah!” he said; “I guess we’ve both had our ups and downs, all right, but there’s one consolation about our respective lots—they might have fallen in worse places, though there’s littlerealpeace in the lives of us who are comparatively poor and have to earn our own livings forever dependent on the whims and fancies of the powers that be, set in authority above us.
“Take the life of the average non-com, or ‘buck,’ in this Force, for instance. It may seem rot to get harping on grievances at such a time and place as this, I know,” (he made a sweeping gesture to the landscape with outflung arm) “but there’s no lasting peace of mind or future in it. People see us patrolling around in a smart uniform, and riding the pick of the country in horseflesh, thinking, I suppose, what a fine time we have of it. They little guess it’s one continual round of worry and trouble. All the way from murder and robbery to settling neighbors’ trivial squabbles over dogging each other’s cattle, paying the cost of divisional fences, and all those kind of petty disturbances. Either that, or being chased around from one detachment to another, though in that respect I must say this Division isn’t as bad as some of ’em. Couldn’t have a better O.C. or Inspectors’n we’ve got in L. As long as you’re onto your job and do your work right, they let you pretty well alone. But it’s the confounded office work that we have to do in addition to our ordinary police duty thatweget fed up on. Talk about red tape! This outfit’s sure the home of it! Every report, every little voucher for p’r’aps fifty cents’ expenditure—four, and sometimes five, copies of each. Statistics for this, and statistics for that; monthly returns, mileage reports, and the copy of your daily diary. Oh, Lord! you should just see what we have to get through. Most of us use typewriters, of course, or we’dnevermake the grade at all. It’s much easier and handier. Guess you saw that one of mine in the detachment.
“Office work or not, though, this job’s away ahead of being stuck in the Post. The daily round of a ‘straight duty buck’ doing prisoners’ escort about Barracks is, without doubt,themost demoralizing existence goin’. The monotony’s something fierce. And a non-com’s isn’t much better, either. Sent out on every little rotten job that turns up, hanging around stables and the orderly-room, always expected to be on hand and within call. Taking charge of grousing fatigue parties, etc. Thank goodness! I never had much of it to do. I was only in the Post a month when I first took on. Been on detachment ever since, barring six weeks I once put in as Acting Provo’ in charge of the guardroom, while Hopgood was sick.”
He rolled another cigarette and, inhaling and expelling a whiff of smoke, continued reflectively: “This is a good outfit—this Force—no doubt about it. I guess as regards its system, discipline, and results, it’s out and away the best Military Police Force in the world—with the exception, p’r’aps, of the Royal Irish Constabulary. Good men take on and serve their time. Some reengage, and some quit. But just as good men take their place and the work goes on. But, as I said before, there’s no rest, or future in it for the average non-com, or buck. You never know when your day’s work’s done.
“No, it’s just one continual round of listening to, and settling other people’s troubles. Seems nonsense, I know, to get talking like this for, after all, it’s only what we’re paid for. Somebody’s got to do it. But there it is—trouble, trouble, trouble, the whole time. All my life, with the exception of the time I deliberately struck into the fighting game, I’ve wanted to live peaceably; but it seems to have been my luck, somehow, to always get the reverse. Especially on this job. No matter how quiet and easy-going you try to rub along there are always some nasty, bullying, ignorant, cunning beggars who, just because you’re a bit decent to them, take it for granted you’re easy and try to impose on you. Anyway, that wasmyexperience on the first two or three detachments I struck. Not onthisone, though! Didn’t give ’em a chance. Fellow that was before me, corporal named Williamson—decent head, all right—but he tried that ‘live, and let live’ stunt and it didn’t work a bit. No,sir! They just took advantage of him every turn and corner. Oh, I tell you, Miss O’Malley, it sure was some tough district—this—when I took it over.”
His brows contracted loweringly, and a menacing light gleamed in his deep-set eyes.
“I soaked it to ’em, though, the dirty dogs!” he muttered, with a savage snap of his strong white teeth. “They wanted to beshown.... I’ve sureshownsome of ’em, all right. The inside of a ‘Pen’,’ at that. Kept ’em on the high jump ever since. It’s the only waytodeal with that class. Treat ’em like the scum they are, and they’ll be good then and eat out of your hand. They’re too ignorant and cunning to appreciate any civility or kindness.”
He smoked thoughtfully on awhile after this slight outburst of bitterness, amidst a silence that was presently broken by Mary.
“You’re fond of reading, aren’t you?” she inquired. “And music?”
His moody face cleared instantly, like the sun coming from behind a cloud.
“Aye! you just bet I am!” he said fervently. “I’ve read, and played, and sung every chance I’ve got—wherever I’ve been. Fond!—well, I should say I am. I fancy if it hadn’t been forthat, I’d have gone to the devil long ago.”
He was sitting up on the grass, with his elbows on his knees and his face buried in his hands. Neither of them spoke for a time and he, still gazing across at the distant “Rockies,” muttered, half unconsciously, to himself:
“No, justpeace—that’s all I feel I want now. To have some steady job to work at, with a future, and a home ahead of it. Neither molesting, or being molested by any one.”
The girl leaned forward, listening wonderingly, as she watched the hard, clean-cut profile of his faraway, moody face, surprised to hear him ramble on so. He appeared to be entirely oblivious of her presence. He made a very long pause and then, when she thought he was thinking of something quite different, he suddenly said:
“I’m getting older now, and I’ve got more patience than I used to have but, all the same—I’ll take no abuse, back-lip, or stand for being imposed upon by any man. It’s been a word and a blow with me all my life, and I guess that’s the reason why I’m only a poor man today. For many’s the jackpot it’s landed me into. Aye! and many’s the good job I’ve had to quit through the same thing.
“Justpeace!” he repeated again, dreamily. “You realize it in some of George Eliot’s tales of old-fashioned English country life, in Gray’s ‘Elegy,’ in Marie Corelli’s song of ‘The Lotus Lily.’ Ah, yes! she felt it when she wrote that beautiful thing in her Egyptian tale of ‘Ziska’:
“‘Oh, for the passionless peace of the Lotus-Lily!It floats in a waking dream on the waters chilly,With its leaves unfurledTo the wondering world,Knowing naught of the sorrow and restless painThat burns and tortures the human brain;Oh, for the passionless peace of the Lotus-Lily!’”
“‘Oh, for the passionless peace of the Lotus-Lily!It floats in a waking dream on the waters chilly,With its leaves unfurledTo the wondering world,Knowing naught of the sorrow and restless painThat burns and tortures the human brain;Oh, for the passionless peace of the Lotus-Lily!’”
“‘Oh, for the passionless peace of the Lotus-Lily!
It floats in a waking dream on the waters chilly,
With its leaves unfurledTo the wondering world,
With its leaves unfurled
To the wondering world,
Knowing naught of the sorrow and restless pain
That burns and tortures the human brain;
Oh, for the passionless peace of the Lotus-Lily!’”
He ceased, and sunk his face in his hands again. The breeze stirred the grizzled-brown hair on his temples, and he remained still for so long that she thought he had fallen asleep; but presently he seemed to rouse himself a little, and said idly, in a low voice:
“Men like me don’thaveto care what people say, or think, about us. Ever since Mother died, I’ve been practically alone in the world, and steered my course as I saw fit—just gone ahead and done what I thought was right. Am I the worse man for being poor, I wonder? I’ve never crawled to hold a job—or for money, anyway! Badly though I’ve always wanted it. For it makes all the difference in the world—money. I’ve kept my self-respect as far asthatgoes—poor consolation though it may be now—just when I need it most.”
The girl flicked him with her quirt.
“Don’t you think we’d better be going?” she said gently. “It’s getting late. The sun’s gone down a long time now.”
At the touch, and the sound of her voice, he roused himself with a start and regarded her absently.
“By George!” he muttered. “I must have been dreaming. Sorry, Miss O’Malley.” He pulled out his watch. “Sureislate,” he said. “Why didn’t you give me a good slap and wake me up before? Letting me go to sleep like that. Well, I guess we’ll toddle on down to the horses.”
“Youhaven’tbeen asleep,” she said, with a faint smile. “But you’ve been sitting there talking away to yourself like a man in a dream.”
He flushed, and laughed a little, shamefacedly.
“Have I?” he answered. “I sure must be getting as ‘nutty’ as a sheep herder! What was I talking about?”
“Oh, all sorts of things,” she said evasively. “I’ll tell you sometime.”
He laughed again and, after eyeing her incredulously for an instant, turned and strode down the declivity to where the patient horses still waited. The girl gazed wistfully for a moment or two after his retreating form, with its slim waist and square, splendidly-drilled shoulders; then, with a little weary sigh, she arose and, mechanically putting on her hat and dusting her dress, followed him.
Catching up Johnny, who nickered at her approach and picked up his forefoot for sugar, she mounted with the lithe agility of the expert horsewoman. Ellis swung up on Billy, and in silence they set out at a brisk lope for home.