"Cut that out, Dakota, you tarnation ijut!" growled Bean Slade. "This ain't no skull-crackin' holiday. Neither it ain't Montany. Not by a damn sight!" he added, with sudden excitement, pointing down the street with his quirt.
Round the corner from South Railway Street four Mounted Police were riding nonchalantly.
Dakota looked from the red town-uniforms of the Police to the little figure hurrying up the Provincial steps. But the sudden burst of life behind him decided him for discretion. Up the street, faster than they had ridden in their orgy, a group of satisfied cowboys tore.
Medicine Hat reopened its windows. The loungers reappeared on the Provincial verandah. Evening strollers returned to the streets. Inspector Barker locked his office door and went home to a tardy supper.
Three days later a khaki-coated Policeman loped up to the cook-house door of the H-Lazy Z, stooped to look inside, and spoke:
"Dakota, I want you."
Six cowpunchers gasped. Dakota opened his mouth and closed it without speaking, but his face reddened.
"Come here!"
Dakota stumbled to his feet and came to the doorway. Constable Hughes handed him a blue paper and waited for the reading. Dakota's anger flamed. With an oath he tore the paper in two—but as the two parts separated, his hands stayed.
"Now you're coming with me, Dakota Fraley!"
The Policeman dismounted without haste and stepped up to the part-owner of the best paying ranch in the Medicine Hat district, the boss of the toughest outfit of cowpunchers in Western Canada.
"Well, this is one h—l of a country!" growled Dakota, putting on his Stetson and starting for the stables.
"Itmightbe," said Hughes.
Morton Stamford sat in his office staring at a blank sheet of copy paper. Already he was an hour behind his schedule for the day, and the compositors upstairs had sent down twice for copy. According to schedule this was his morning for preparing the week's editorials, but, though the town bell would announce noon in less than half an hour, he had not yet written a word.
What he should like to say he dare not. A certain diffidence, impelled by his Western experiences, held his pen from an attack on the Mounted Police. Back East as a newspaperman he had worked in so closely with the local police that he knew their every move in the development of their cases. Yet in the ten days since the murder of his friend, Corporal Faircloth, the Mounted Police seemed to have done nothing. Stamford knew of no clue, no sleuthing, and only vague suspicions. As a dignified newspaperman there was deep within him an instinct that he should, therefore, accept it as evidence of official inertia.
As a newspaperman, too, he had struggled to arrive at definite deductions as to the murderer, only to be confronted with a blank wall that drove him to the beginning again to reconstruct his case. It was the dead body of Kid Loveridge that upset all his calculations. The Kid's reputation was more along the line of proving him a murderer than the murdered, and that there was any connection between the Corporal and one of the wildest cowboys in Western Canada was impossible.
Hitting in and out of his conjectures were the forms of Cockney Aikens and Dakota Fraley, two men apparently as antagonistic in inclinations as they were intimate in business interests. Cockney's careless, good-natured ways appealed to him in a way that denied belief in inherent badness. Yet he had gathered the impression during the Police investigations on the spot that the big Englishman was not outside their suspicions. He resented that. Cockney was a friend of his. If the Police were working on that line he was prepared to stake——
His ruminations were interrupted by the opening of the door to the outer office, and the clumsy tramp of a heavy man. For a moment he waited for the familiar tap on his own door. All Medicine Hat knew where to find him. Not hearing the expected summons, he went out.
A great hulk of a stranger was standing in the middle of the office, feet braced, peering about him through large horn spectacles. His shoulders were stooped, his hands limp and awkward, his whole attitude and appearance more than hinting at anæmia and flabbiness. On his long black hair was perched a ludicrously small stiff hat; and he wore a high white collar and loose black bow tie, a suit built in a factory, and a pair of "health" boots that could not possibly possess any other attraction.
He seemed entirely oblivious of Stamford's presence, continuing to stare about at the untidy arrangement of tables and chairs, and over the partition that separated the office from the "job" room. He was interested; also he was accustomed to concentrating.
Stamford wanted most to laugh. The fellow filled the office with such an air of innocent curiosity that he felt no resentment at his own small share in the scene.
Someone laughed from the doorway, and Stamford started. It was such a merry, chuckling sort of laugh, so much in line with just the feeling Stamford himself had, that, though the laugh was a woman's, he vaguely thought of some uncanny echo that repeated what was in his mind.
When he turned to the doorway he was more doubtful than ever of the reality of the scene. A girl stood there—a beautiful girl—Stamford realised that first of all. Under her soft felt hat, with a sprig of flowers slanting nattily up toward the back, a fluffy bit of dark brown hair protruded. Stamford saw that next. He had a curious feeling that it would be nice to touch—and he flushed at the entrance of such unaccustomed thoughts.
She was looking at him, quizzically, still laughing. One little step forward she took.
"Amos," she said, and in the tone was the indulgence of a mother, though the man was years her senior, "Amos, don't you think you two had better meet? This is my brother Professor Amos Bulkeley, of the Smithsonian Institute," she said, turning to Stamford.
Her brother swept his big frame about with the cheeriest of smiles and extended his hand.
"You're the local editor, I suppose," he said, in a gentle voice. "We've come to you for help—naturally. Appealing to a newspaper for help is a habit we all have, from politicians up to ordinary burglars."
"So long as you're not collecting," grinned Stamford, "my resources are at your command. My week's accounts show that last week my charity expenses were seven dollars and twenty-five cents. To date that's about my net income per week."
"It's only information we're collecting," explained the girl. "We——"
"Excuse me, dear." Her brother stopped her sternly. "You haven't yet met Mr.—Mr.——"
"Morton Stamford," said the editor.
"Mr. Stamford, my dear. Mr. Stamford, this is my sister Isabel, as yet possessing the same ultimate name as myself. But there's still hope."
"I'm certain of it," murmured Stamford over her hand.
"Ahem!" said the Professor. "That's not starting badly."
"If you imply by that that we're to see more of each other——" began Stamford gallantly—and went crimson with wonder at the strange things his tongue was saying.
"Ahem again!" said the Professor slyly. "Isabel, I have always thought, has such a strange effect——"
"I'm sure Mr. Stamford has other uses for his time, Amos, and so have we." Isabel Bulkeley was blushing a little herself.
"I forgot," apologised the Professor. "This is strictly business. I'm here—we're here in the interests of the Smithsonian Institute. You may not suspect it, but you have history embedded in you—in the form of fossils that should have disappeared when your much-removed grandpa was scuttling through the tree-tops by his tail. I'm in hopes that the geanticlinal discoveries of my predecessors among the argillaceous cliffs of the Red Deer River will support my contention that somewhere the course of the river to the north of you may yield up the secrets of the Triassic, or at least the Jurassic stage of the Mesozoic period. Perhaps the Palæozoic. Who knows?"
"I confessIdon't," said Stamford. "In fact, except that you seem to be using the language my mother taught me, I wouldn't know what you're talking about, were it not that I happen to be aware of the palæontological discoveries on the Red Deer. But that was three hundred miles west of here."
"I'm anxious to get beyond their tracks," said the Professor. "It was the New York fellows worked there—our deadly rivals. I contend that the Red Deer River did not in those days boast of circumscribed summer resorts. Why, a megatherium could lunch at Red Deer town and dine in Medicine Hat—at least the oneIwant to find could."
"And how can I help you?" asked Stamford.
"We don't know a thing—how we get there, where we can stay, what we can do."
"At last," sighed Stamford, "there's a tenderer tenderfoot than myself. For two long months I've been the baby of the Western family. Now I'm ousted from the cradle."
The Professor examined his own huge body doubtfully.
"How big's this cradle?" he asked.
"It'll hold you and your sister," replied Stamford gallantly. "But the man you want to see is Inspector Barker. In the West it's different: you don't consult the newspaper, but the Mounted Police."
He tapped a bell, and the "devil" stumbled down from the composing-room overhead.
"Give these to Arthurs," Stamford ordered, grabbing a handful of clippings from the pigeon-hole. "They'll keep him busy. I'll be out for a while. Watch the office till Smith comes back."
"I'm taking you down to the barracks myself," he explained to his visitors. "The Inspector might suspect you of ulterior motives. I confess," he added whimsically, "that you're different enough to justify it."
Inspector Barker and the editor of theJournalwere on the best of terms. In Stamford's little body was all the romance of men physically unfitted to play a part in the pictures of their imagination; he had a scalp that tingled easily. And the Inspector had experiences to tell that would tingle any scalp not fossilised—as well as little reluctance about clothing his experiences with what might have happened. It wasn't often he was free to let himself loose to such an appreciative audience whose ideas could expand several sizes in response to a good yarn.
But it was plain enough that Professor Bulkeley was more susceptible, less inclined to question the reasonableness of the wildest yarn. The Inspector received him and his sister with generous hand, and a smile that took them to his heart. And their summer plans only added to his eagerness. This was something new in an extended experience popularly considered to have covered every possible phase of Western life.
"All the way from Washington, D.C., eh? Special visit to our benighted town, eh? Flattered is too mild a word. Bringing your sister adds the last drop to our overfull bucket of gratitude."
"Isabel," asked the Professor gravely, "did he put it as nicely as Mr. Stamford, d'ye think?"
The Inspector gurgled into his moustache, but Stamford was annoyed.
"You'll stay at the Double Bar-O," said the Inspector, getting down to business. "I think that'll give you a good centre to work from. Westward is only the H-Lazy Z. I don't think you'd care to stop there. Cockney Aikens is a queer fish. You mightn't understand him."
Stamford, in thought, came valiantly to Cockney's support. He was certain the Police had ideas about the big rancher that they did not care to disclose.
"'The Double-Bar-O!'" repeated the Professor. "What is it—a hotel?"
Stamford and the Inspector laughed.
"A ranch," explained the latter. "My dear man, your nearest hotel, when you get to the Red Deer, is over there on South Railway Street."
"But will they—will they take us in?"
"Professor Bulkeley," said the Inspector proudly, "this is Western Canada. You can lift the latch of any ranch in the country, any day, any time, and there's a plate and a bed for you as long as you wish to remain."
"But—ah—the pay? How much—about how much——"
"The only thing I forgot," interrupted the Inspector, "is to warn you that your welcome is limited to the period during which you don't mention pay."
"But we're strangers——"
"That's the only excuse for your suggestion. There are no strangers in the West in that sense of the word."
"So hospitable—so generous—so utterly natural!" beamed the Professor to his sister. "I suppose there's a livery here—with a nice buggy and a gentle horse that I can rent for two or three months."
Inspector Barker stroked his moustache thoughtfully.
"There are liveries—yes—but they won't let you have a horse for that long." He looked up suddenly. "Let me supply you. I've a couple of horses out there eating their heads off. It's cheaper for us to hire the few times we need them. But for goodness' sake, leave the buggy out. This is not a country for driving—not if you can ride. But perhaps your sister——"
"Isabel," declared the Professor proudly, "is a centauress." He added with a deprecatory grin: "I've never been on a horse in my life."
"Amos is going to learn some day," said Isabel hopefully. "Aren't you, Amos? Perhaps this is his chance—out on the boundless prairie."
"Miss Bulkeley," Stamford warned, "I wouldn't speak of the prairie as boundless. They'll think you're a poetess—and try to unload on you a parcel of worthless real estate. We're just hungry for people like that out here. But," he added dryly, "I don't believe they'll succeed."
"Is it a compliment, Mr. Stamford?" she asked gaily.
"No," he replied solemnly, "it's the truth."
"How ingenuous! How simple and sweet and natural!" gushed the Professor. And the little editor bemoaned his lack of inches.
"Ah, man, man!" teased the Inspector, when brother and sister were gone, the cumbersome Professor passing before the window a foot behind his quick-stepping sister. "In the West it's always Spring. A country that hasn't women enough to go round——"
"What in blazes are you driving at——"
"I didn't think it was in you, Stamford. I'm delighted to see something of the gallant again; I thought the West had lost it all these many years—or never had it. The poor Corporal had traces of it—— Ah!" as Stamford frowned, "I thought you had something heavier than a pretty girl on your mind when you called. Now, let's have it."
Stamford brought his fist down on the desk.
"Who murdered Corporal Faircloth?"
Inspector Barker readjusted the ink-well.
"If you don't mind, my boy, keep your thumping for your own desk. I have this one reserved."
Stamford, stubborn as small men can be, threw himself into a chair, his hands thrust deep in his pockets.
"In ten days—what have you done? That's what I want to know. What are you planning to do? I'm going to sit here till you tell me."
The Inspector frowned, then smiled grimly.
"We close at six. Those who stay later—spend the night in there." He indicated the door leading to the cells.
Stamford's scowl drifted into a shamefaced shaking of the head.
"You don't seem to realise that your third in command was foully murdered, almost under your very nose! You don't——"
"Listen, Stamford! Did you ever hear of a murdered Mounted Policeman unavenged? Did you ever know the Mounted Police to drop the chase—even for shooting an antelope out of season?"
"But you've done nothing—nothing."
"We don't report to theJournal—it's not in the regulations."
"And there's Billy Windover," Stamford stormed on. "You haven't discovered his murderer."
"Wrap them in the same parcel——" The Inspector stopped abruptly.
"But I thought you suspected Cockney Aikens."
The Inspector turned on him fiercely. "Who said we suspected him—anyone? Stamford, Faircloth was your friend; he was not only my friend for five years but my third in command for two. Don't you think you'd better consult an oculist? Wealwayssuspect—everyone."
"Then why didn't you round up the whole gang that day?"
"Including yourself and Mrs. Aikens, Inspector West, four ranchers, sixty cowboys——"
"But I——"
"Yes, I know. Same with the others. It isn't always the obvious that explains. Suppose we'd arrested Cockney—or anyone at that time, where would have been our proof? We didn't even find the rifles—except Kid Loveridge's. Clues don't grow on bulberry bushes in a country where everyone can shoot—and so many do."
Stamford was thinking rapidly. The repetition of Cockney's name seemed to confirm his suspicions of the direction of the Police search.
"The thing has got a bit too much for my nerves—or something," he declared abruptly. "I've got to get away from it for a time—take a holiday. In reality it was to tell you that I came down."
"It isn't in the Police regulations, you know."
"Perhaps not, but I wanted you to know in case—in case anything happened."
"Nothing will happen—if you mind your own business."
But Stamford did not seem to hear; he was examining himself in a broken-framed mirror above the desk.
"I need bucking up. Meals—change of air—new methods and manners—something doesn't agree with me. I can't sleep."
"Never mind explaining," grunted the Inspector. "I'm not interested in your health. Here's West now. I've an appointment with him."
"By the way, West," he said, as the brand-inspector entered, "the local scribe is enquiring why we didn't arrest the whole countryside for Faircloth's murder that day."
West smiled in some confusion.
The Inspector laughed mirthlessly. "Yes, West, you're as critical as he. But if you—or Stamford here—had given me that day the details you've remembered since, other things might have happened."
"But I knew—I saw everything!" stammered Stamford.
"And told so little," snapped the Inspector. "So many after-thoughts are too late!"
He waved Stamford out. As the editor passed through the door he turned.
"Honest now, Inspector, whom do you suspect?"
But the Inspector was already talking to the brand-inspector.
The door closed—and opened again to admit Stamford's head.
"By the way, Inspector, I didn't tell you where I was going to take my holiday."
"You don't need to. The H-Lazy Z's as good as anywhere. Tell the Professor—if you see him; the Double Bar-O's only ten miles away—that I'm of the opinion that the schistosity of the stratification in the flexure of the Cretaceous period exposed thereabouts will simplify his investigations—or words to that effect. Give my love to his sister."
When the door closed again the Inspector ruminated. Then he scribbled a message to the police back at Stamford's Ontario home and called a constable to despatch it.
"West," he said, wheeling suddenly on the brand-inspector, "you don't happen in your wanderings to have come across two large dogs new to the district—part Russian wolf, part greyhound, I believe? A week ago they were under lock and key in the barracks corral. One night they disappeared. Nobody seems to have seen or even heard them go—and they were wild as wolves, with a howl that would shame a husky on a Labrador island on a moonlight night."
"Hm-m-m!" grunted the brand-inspector. "Large tracking dogs in the Police corral—deductions obvious."
"I don't care a hang for deductions. It's the dogs I want obvious. I was depending on them to run down these measly cattle-thieves who've been fooling my men all year. I thought maybe a good hound or two——"
"So did the cattle-thieves apparently," laughed West.
"Therefrom comes one interesting deduction; the cattle-thieves are local. But the stealing is too persistent and small to be otherwise."
"And now, I suppose, you'll get another pair to track the first?"
"No-o," replied the Inspector cheerfully. "It only makes another mystery to solve. At one time this looked like being a dull summer."
Cockney Aikens was striding up and down the little gravel walk before the ranch-house—the walk that Mary herself had built from the loose rock of the river-bed—his hands thrust deep in his pockets. Mary, raising her head sadly from her work to peer at him through the window, read the symptoms. So did the cluster of grinning cowboys from the darkened depths of the cookhouse.
Presently Cockney stopped in his stride to stare off over the valley to the opposite cliff, his eyes returning slowly to the trail and away up it toward town, sixty miles away.
Muck Norsley, from far back in the cook-house, looked through the window, watch in hand.
"Yer winning, Gin'ral, o.k. Jest about seventeen minutes now, I reckon, and he'll be saddling—unless he has to black his boots and crease his pants."
Cockney turned suddenly, kicked two innocent stones into the grass, and pushed open the ranch-house door.
"Mary, I'm off to town."
He spoke roughly. She lifted the sock she was darning and set it on the table.
"You'll take me this time, won't you, Jim?"
"Haven't you enough here to keep you busy?" He would not meet her eyes. "A fellow don't want a woman tagging after him every time he goes to town."
"He doesn't have her," she replied with quiet dignity.
She might have told him that one of the troubles was that she hadtoo muchto do about the H-Lazy Z. Most of her married life had been a drudgery, girls refusing to drown themselves in the isolation of the Red Deer—sixty miles from town, without a living soul between, and the nearest ranch ten miles to the east. Westward was nothing but wilds for further than anyone had travelled.
A tear squeezed into her eyes. He saw her struggling to hold it back, and hastily retreated outside.
The H-Lazy Z ranch may not have been quite equal to its reputation in a district where not a dozen citizens had ever visited it, but it could boast of luxuries—especially its ranch-house—that few other ranches considered worth the trouble and expense. This ranch-house was a two-story structure of numerous and ample rooms, erected by one with money to spare and English ideas of expenditure.
When Cockney Aikens selected his wife in a mid-Western American town on one of the many unreasonable and indefinite trips he made in those days to distant parts, he insisted on leaving her at her own home until he had built for her a residence his uncertain conscience told him was fit for a woman.
In those days Mary Aikens wanted her Jim more thananyhouse but Cockney was obdurate, with a stubbornness that hurt her lovesick heart early in their married life. He had won her rapidly, with his big, joyous, reckless ways, and his pictures of the life in the Canadian West. With four years to look back on since she left the Eastern seminary, her little body crammed with romance, his pictures were all the more alluring from the monotonous similarity and repetition of the letters of her late schoolmates, each of whom, according to her own story, had captured the one and only sample of real American manhood.
When a girl's friends write month after month of home magnificence that radiates largely round the conventional "carriage and pair" that is the dream of schoolgirls, a whole ranch of horses and cattle looks like the earmarks of a fairy prince, especially when they belong to such a stunning big chap as Jim Aikens.
Mary Aikens often looked back on those days now with a sad smile. Jim was still the stunning big chap—at times. At other times—— But that was the effect of Western haze. In the two years of their married life she had never become really acquainted with her husband. At the very moment—it happened again and again—when the sympathy she craved was lifting the latch, Jim Aikens kicked it from the door with brutal foot and rode madly off on the southern trail on one of his periodical sprees in town.
The ranch-house stood half way down a long slope that stretched northward to the Red Deer River. A half-mile away, across a valley that might have been a garden in a wilderness, rose a sheer line of jagged cliffs, before which ran the tumbling river. Up and down the stream, on both sides of it, sometimes crowding the current, sometimes set back of a deep valley filled with weirdly protuberant mounds of rock from about which the soft clays had been washed by the rains and currents of ages, the cliffs were repeated. Only at long intervals did the banks slope to the river as they did before the H-Lazy Z ranch buildings, and that only on the southern shore. Elsewhere the Red Deer rushed through hundreds of miles of a hundred-and-fifty-foot canyon.
Two hundred yards from the house—Dakota Fraley had insisted on the distance—the cook-house, bunk-house, stables and corrals began, and spread out over the eastern end of the valley in conventional disarray, the bottom corral touching the rough beach that there lined the river. Dakota had no stomach for skirts about the place, especially the kind he imagined his wild master would bring. In that he failed to understand Cockney.
Before the ranch-house door Dakota met his partner retreating from Mary's tears. Behind the foreman two or three cowboys lounged in the open doorway. Three others rolled off toward the stables.
Cockney stood still, watching them with lowering eyes.
"Why the samhill, Dakota, do we need such a bunch of roughnecks about the place?" he exploded. "Every time I see them they make me think of a gang of Whitechapel foreigners fresh from Russia, or Hungary, or Poland. If they hadn't guns on their hips, there'd be knives in their bootlegs or stilettos up their sleeves."
Dakota laughed in a nasty way.
"Best bunch of cowpunchers in Alberta—in America, for that matter. Look at the ranch they've made for you."
Cockney made a wry face. "Gad! I could do without some of the dollars for cheerier countenances about me. They look as if they'd murdered their mothers and were looking for the rest of the family."
"What's it matter to you," Dakota growled, "so long's they fix you up for your gambling and boozing? You better cut butting in on personnel. That'smythird of the partnership."
Cockney was in a vile humour—that always came with his craving for town; and his wife's wet eyes had not improved matters.
"Don't forget, Dakota," he said, with deadly calmness, "it's only a third. I provided all the capital."
"And don'tyouforget,MisterAikens, that I purvided all the experience—and I'm still purviding it, far's anyone can notice—and all the work and the worry. You better go and get drunk. We don't need you. We gotrealwork to do."
Cockney restrained himself.
"What are you on now?" he enquired.
Dakota's eyes fell. He turned about and looked back toward the cook-house.
"Oh, nothing special; just the usual rush. This time it's a lot of riding, looking up a bunch of mavericks that uv been kicking up the devil. Missed 'em in the round-up and they've got chirpy."
"You're sure they're ours?"
Dakota swung on him angrily.
"What the h—l you mean? Think I'm rustling?Shorethey're ours. They've gone rampaging down Irvine way with a little bunch of steers that broke from the nighthawks a couple of days ago."
"Be away long?"
"Four or five days, I guess. You needn't worry your head. You couldn't help none."
Cockney made no reply, though he winced a little at the sneer.
"Off to town, I see," jeered Dakota. "Best place for you—when you feel that way. Taking the missus?"
Cockney remained silent, thinking.
"Or are you leaving her to us?"
Without moving his feet, Cockney's great fist shot out and caught the side of Dakota's head. As his back struck the prairie the cowboy reached for his gun, but Cockney was on him with a bound, wrenching one gun from his hand and another from a loose pocket in his chaps. With one hand he lifted Dakota to his feet and released him.
"I don't like the way you speak of my wife," he thundered.
Dakota, helpless and a little cowed without his guns, glared his fury.
"It's as good as youtreather," he snarled.
Cockney started.
"She's my wife," he said, with a new dignity.
"I don't know what you was brung up to, but in this country we'd think that something toshow, not just to talk about."
"Don't let me hear you talking about her," warned Cockney, "or anyone else," he added, raising his voice and looking over Dakota's shoulder to the cook-house.
He tossed the guns contemptuously at Dakota's feet and wheeled about. The cowboy muttered oaths at his retreating back, and rubbed the cords of his neck where the strain of the blow had come.
Mary Aikens had seen nothing of the incident—her eyes were too wet. With a dead weight at her heart she sank her head in her arms on the table and let the tears flow.
Cockney came on her that way and softly retreated, drawing the door gently behind him. After a few noisy crunches among the gravel and a preliminary kick to the outside step, he took a long breath and entered. She was darning then, her head held low. He passed quickly through to the bedroom door, but there he stopped, and, without turning, stood with his hand on the knob. Then he disappeared. Ten minutes later he reappeared in town attire.
In Cockney Aikens' ways were so many strange conventions that his friends had ceased to marvel at them. One of them was the formality of his dress for his visits to Medicine Hat. His boots were soft, light-soled, and natty, with drab cloth tops, like nothing ever seen on the prairie before; his socks silken, with white clocks. A delicate grey suit enclosed his huge frame in graceful lines that betrayed their Bond Street origin. His collar was a straight white upstanding affair with delicately rounded corners, and his cravat Irish poplin or barathea—always one of these silks, the former with a coloured diagonal stripe, the latter adorned with clusters of flowers. Above it all rested a light grey hat. From his breast pocket peeped the tips of chamois gloves, and on one little finger was a curious ring of triple cameos.
Mary Aikens always gasped when she saw him thus. It was thus she had learned to love him, thus he had turned the heads of half the girls of the northern United States towns from Seattle to Duluth. For Cockney Aikens wore his clothes as one accustomed to them. One suit he always kept in town at his tailor's, pressed and cleaned, changing at each visit.
His wife drew a sharp breath, forgetting that she was staring at him with uplifted hand. The evil temper had left his face with his leather chaps and neckerchief. He regarded her with an embarrassed twist to his face.
"Better get into your grey," he said, looking anywhere but into her eyes. "I'll be ready for you in fifteen minutes."
"Oh, Jim!"
That was all. She dropped her darning on the table and fled ecstatically to the bedroom. And big Cockney Aikens picked up the ball of darning wool and kissed it furtively.
By the time he was back from the stables with a lively team hitched to a buggy, she was almost dressed, and a suitcase stood packed outside the bedroom door. He drew a second suitcase from beneath the bed and began to fill it with his ranch clothes. She watched him, surprised.
"Why, Jim, what are you taking those for?"
He muttered something about going to do some riding perhaps, and snapped the catches, hurrying out with the suitcase to the buggy.
Mary bustled to the kitchen and began to lay various tins on the table. A side of bacon she wrapped up and suspended from a hook in the ceiling. When she was finished she stood back and struck off a list on her fingers:
"Bacon, flour, cheese, oatmeal, matches—there, I forgot the matches again."
He laughed.
"Lord, Mary, you're still expecting visitors to this corner of the moon!"
She tilted her head. "You never know. We couldn't leave the house with nothing to eat in it. Some day—perhaps—— Weshouldhave visitors——" She ended the sentence by a noisy clustering of the tins, and ran to her suitcase.
He took it from her hand and carried it out. One of the horses was trying to get back into the buggy, but he quieted it with masterful hand. With one foot on the step she paused.
"Why—that's Pink Eye! He's never been harnessed before, has he?"
"I've been breaking him to it. Good time to try him out on a long trip like this. He'll have the spirit taken out of him in that sixty miles—seventy by the Double Bar-O. We're going across there first. Maybe Cherry Gerard would like to come too; you may be lonesome."
"I don't want Cherry, Jim," she pouted.
He lifted her in and took his seat beside her before he replied:
"It's possible I'll be leaving you for a couple of days in there."
She was looking straight ahead without a word of what was in her mind. But as the horses galloped madly up the sloping trail to the east her spirits rose, and she laughed exultantly.
"Seventy miles won't tire Pink Eye," she gurgled. "He's steel."
Dakota, standing before the door of the cook-house, watched them go, scorning to reply to Mary Aikens' waving hand. It was Bean Slade, emerging hastily from the interior of the shack, who returned it, as Pink Eye and his mate tore along the indistinct eastern trail over the edge of the prairie above.
"Hoorah!" shouted Dakota, when the moving speck had vanished over the ridge.
"Hoorah!" responded a half-dozen voices; and the Dude and Alkali seized each other for a musicless dance.
"Dassent leave her t'yore tender mercies, Dakota, ole sport," chaffed Alkali. "Yo're a reg'lar lady-killer, that's what yo are."
"Oh, I dunno," grunted the Dude jealously, buttoning the loose front of his brilliant vest. "There's others."
"Go 'long with you, Dude," jeered General. "She never looks at you. Jest about two days o' Dakota's slippery manners, and the missus ud be shore climbing his neck."
Bean Slade unwound his lanky legs from a chair and spat through the doorway.
"Yer a tarnation liar, Gin'ral. Not a doggone neck ud the missus climb that she hadn't oughter. An' you're a dang lot o' sap-heads to talk it."
"You oughter know, Bean," grinned General. "Y'ain't licking her pots fer nothing, I bet."
Bean was on his feet so quickly that no one else had moved by the time a chair whirled aloft in his hands. General slid to the cover of the table in desperate haste.
Dakota flung himself between them.
"Drop it, you fools! Nobody's saying nothing again the missus, Bean. They're just joshing you. You needn't get so touchy anyway; she ain'tyourwife."
Bean, whose anger rose and fell with disturbing unexpectedness, dropped the chair.
"No sech luck!" he growled. "If she was I wudn't risk her where you slimy coyotes was."
Alkali broke in:
"And now what's the agendar, Dakota? Takin' on that Irvine job this week. 'T should be a good time with the boss away."
Dakota screwed his eyes up thoughtfully. "That's what I had in mind."
"No rifles this time," protested Bean Slade. "We've toted 'em once too often—I don't know buttwicetoo often. Br-r-r! I won't ever forget——"
"Shut your clap, Bean! You've had your man in your day, heaps of 'em."
"They allus had their chance," growled Bean. "No rifles, I say, or I don't go."
Three or four insulting guffaws greeted the threat.
"The Reverend Beanibus Slade, him of Dead Gulch memory and Two-Shot Dick fame, will now lead us in singing the twenty-third Psalm!" scoffed General Jones. "Come along with us, Reverend sir—and bring yore burial service."
"I've said it," repeated Bean stubbornly.
Dakota tried to oil the surface. "We don't need rifles this time—it's an easy job.... But we'll shore miss the Kid. He shore was the handy kid with the blinkers on a dark night, and he'd hold a close second to yours truly with a gun. Poor Kid! I'd give my left ear to get even with the guy that got him. I've a bit o' lead resarved for him."
"There y'are, mister. That's your place."
Stamford unlimbered his stiffened legs and raised himself in the buggy to look out over the valley of the H-Lazy Z.
"It's my place all right," he moaned. "I don't care what ranch it is. I didn't think Canada was so wide as that sixty miles of prairie. Sixty miles! Humph! I've a complete set of disarticulated bones that's ready to go into any witness box and swear it's at least umpteen million miles, and then some."
The youthful driver grinned.
"Oh, you'd get used to that. I 'member whenIwas raw——"
"Look here, young man, for about eighteen hours you've been rubbing my rawness into me. Lord knows you didn't need to! This rattly, lumpy, jumpy bone-shaker you call a carriage would make any body raw that's not made of cast-iron. How the dickens Cockney Aikens, to say nothing of his wife and the ranch outfit, can contemplate that sixty miles with sufficient equanimity to stick the job is beyond my limited experience."
"Golly, mister, Dakota Fraley—Two-Gun Dakota—bosses the outfit. He's fit for anything."
"Huh! Dakota seems to have a rep."
"Dakota Fraley," confided the driver, "is a gunman, a dead shot with either hand. He's lightning on the draw and was never known to miss his man. He's the toughest of the tough, a broncho-buster that takes all the prizes at the contests—and they say he's got so many men he lost track years ago. But, say, he's a dead-game sport. Ju hear about the police-court case—for shooting up the town that time?"
Stamford knew every word of it, but the lad's story was worth hearing, so he only looked interested.
"He just ponied up seventy-five simoleons without a wink. I think old Jasper was hoping he wouldn't have it, so he could send him down for a couple of months. Gee, I wouldn't send Dakota Fraley down, not by a long sight—least, not unless I was dying or something and wouldn't be there when he got out. I wouldn't fool with Dakota Fraley, no sir-ee!"
Stamford heard it with fitting solemnity.
"I suppose," he murmured, "that's how the books put it. I mustn't blame him."
"What d'you mean, mister?"
"Oh, excuse me, lad. Don't mind me when I get wandering. I'm often taken that way. The doctor says I'm not really dangerous."
"Don't you go to wandering abouthereor you'll get plumb lost."
Stamford cast a furtive eye back on the sixty miles and shuddered. Almost at daylight—and that meant about two-thirty a.m.—they had pulled out of Medicine Hat, for he was determined to run no risk of a night in the open. One he had had already, and was content. That sixty miles of prairie hung behind him like a pall, too oppressive to be relieved by its varied monotony. Here a line of unaccountable sand-buttes, there a landscape of rolling sweeps like the billows of a petrified sea, and sometimes a stretch of dullness that melted into the horizon uncountable miles away; and over all but the sand-buttes dead whispering grass, trembling in the blazing winds of midsummer, and a lifelessness that was uncanny.
His nerves were jangling still from the memory of it and, delighted though he was at the end of his journey, sundry and impressive qualms that resembled fear made him question his ability to cope with the problem he had set himself.
He raised himself on his arms before the house and tentatively extended one dead foot, drew in his breath painfully, and held himself erect by the buggy as both feet touched the ground.
"There are the stables, I guess," he pointed out. "I confess I don't know the proper thing to do with you. Will they feed you there or here in the ranch-house?"
The driver gathered up the reins.
"They ain't going to have a chance to keep me neither places. I'm not taking chances where Two-Gun Dakota is—me with no gun or nothing. These broncs are good for another ten miles. I got a friend over at the Double Bar-O. That's good enough for me."
He tumbled Stamford's suitcase out, chirruped to the horses, and rattled away eastward up the slope.
Stamford was suddenly oppressed with the loneliness of things. About the ranch-house was not a sign of life, and the ranch buildings two hundred yards away seemed to be equally deserted. He glanced hurriedly about and launched himself on the noisy gravel walk to the door. He was thrilled with the vastness of things, the tremendous silence, the frowning cliffs across the river, the pettiness of mere man; the gravel crunched pleasantly under him as he walked.
Receiving no reply to his persistent knocking, he lifted the latch. The evidences of recent life within pleased him mightily, especially the signs of a woman's presence. Mary Aikens' darning lay on the table where she had dropped it. A pile of folded newspapers and magazines covered the top of a smaller table against the wall, almost crowding off a smoker's tray and pipestand. The pictures on the walls, the shiny stove, the cushions piled with attractive abandon on couch and chairs, and, above all, a piano—Stamford felt his spirits rise.
Here were luxury and art as he had not before seen them on the prairie. Here was more than temporary makeshift. Here, he read, was a woman determined to make life out there, sixty miles from the nearest post office, railway station, and store, independent of its isolation and inconveniences.
He spied the open door to the kitchen and passed through, gathering from the array of tin boxes that his host and hostess were more than temporarily absent. It made him uncomfortable. His mind refused to grasp the full significance of the situation in which he found himself.
He was wondering vaguely what to do, when the outer door burst violently open, and he started like a thief caught in the act. Dakota Fraley was standing in the doorway, peering about with an evil frown. Through the kitchen doorway he caught sight of Stamford and strode quickly across the sitting-room.
"What you doing here?"
Stamford's attempt at propitiation was a wan smile; his heart was pattering uncomfortably.
"Just as you entered, Dakota, I was wondering the same thing. Mr. and Mrs. Aikens are not at home, I take it."
"And won't be for a week, maybe," barked Dakota, standing with legs wide, his thumbs caught in his belt.
"I gathered that from the lay-out."
"Tell 'em you was coming?"
"No. I knew the rule of the prairie."
"What rule?"
"That a visitor is always welcome. Have they been pulling my leg in that, too?"
Dakota thought over that a moment. His dislike for the little editor since the shooting-up scene, as well as for any visitor to the ranch, inclined him to kick Stamford off the place. But there was Cockney to reckon with.
"There's nobody here to welcome you—you can see that," he grunted.
"I was noting it," said Stamford quietly.
"Look here, you two-by-four, none o' your insults. This is a mighty big prairie to be alone on of a night ten miles from the next stopping place. There's nicer things for a tenderfoot, I warn you."
"But one of them isn't forcing myself on your society, Dakota Fraley. Yet, at the moment you're my host by proxy; my lips are sealed."
Dakota calmed. He was uncertain of the efficacy of anything but a gun in dealing with insults, but to draw on such a little tenderfoot was not to be thought of.
"Driver coming back?" he asked.
"By the way he galloped away I came to the conclusion he hoped never to have to," smiled Stamford.
"We'll lend you a horse."
"Thanks, but I can walk better without one."
"I see you walking ten miles at this hour o' the night, I do?" jeered Dakota.
"I wouldn't think of taking you from your own comfortable ranch for such a trifling spectacle. I won't mind if you take it for granted.... But perhaps a horse would be company. Lead me to it."
He pushed past Dakota and started toward the ranch buildings, the foreman following, obviously ill at ease. As they neared the cook-house door a sly smile crossed the latter's face. Several cowboys came out.
"I've found it, boys!" yelled Dakota, with a wide grin. "The only and original tenderfoot—guaranteed to eat peas with a fork, crease his pants every month, say 'fudge' when he means 'damn,' and take a saddle-horn for the back of a rocking chair. Only he doesn't like us. He's decided to move on. We're bold bad men. Alkali, trot out Joe-Joe."
Dakota's grin repeated itself in several faces. Stamford, aware that silence was safest, said nothing until Dakota was through.
"It's a shame to inflict myself to the extent of a horse on your already overtaxed hospitality," he said. "I promise to pay livery rates."
"Best put it on yer will, ole hoss, an' right now," drawled Bean Slade through the whiffs of a cigarette.
Stamford looked up with a glint of understanding.
"My executors will naturally pay my debts first—if my estate is equal to it."
"Yu seem to like Heaven best, kid," muttered Bean. "It's close up to here—the way yu're going."
"One might be forgiven for preferring the other place," replied Stamford. "At least there's only one devil there."
The cowboys grinned appreciatively.
"Best call it off, Dakota," suggested Bean.
Dakota frowned.
"If you geezers know of any quicker way of getting off the H-Lazy Z than by Joe-Joe, trot the idea out and let's look at it, and precipitous-like."
Joe-Joe, a mule-faced, conscience-stricken creature, with a scraggly tail that never stopped flicking, came humbly up at the rear of Alkali, bridle and saddle having been adjusted in the stables to an accompaniment of clatter that confirmed Stamford's suspicions. Still he had no thought of funking. He reached out for the rein.
His hand was pushed roughly aside, and Bean Slade vaulted into the saddle, cigarette between his lips. With a touching appeal in his wandering eyes Joe-Joe looked about on the unsympathetic audience, then, with a jerk that was startling even to see, he lowered his head, arched his back, and leaped straight up with stiffened legs, all part of one movement.
When he landed, every bone in Bean's lanky body rattled; and before they had time to rearrange themselves Joe-Joe was in the midst of a new gyration that loosened Bean's sombrero and cigarette.
The cowboys looked on, laughing, darting sly glances at Stamford to see how he was taking his escape. Dakota was divided between anger at Bean's interference, and satisfaction at the trepidation on the little editor's face. Joe-Joe continued to leap and twist and kick, Bean shouting encouragement and slapping the steaming thigh behind him; but when the horse straightened out for a run, his rider freed his feet and slid over his rump.
"Our show outlaw," he explained to Stamford, stooping to recover hat and cigarette. "Yu can see why yu'd need to say yer say in yer will."
Dakota accepted his defeat with a laugh. He had had his fun, and the sympathies of the outfit were against him.
"Any other ladylike nags about the place you'd like to break for us, my little man?" he gibed, clapping Stamford on the back. "The H-Lazy Z's at your disposal."
"Thanks, Dakota, then I'll stay a while."
Bean Slade shoved out a long, limp hand.
"Bully fer you! Yu've got the guts!"
"If you're going to kick about till the boss comes back," said Dakota, "you'd better shake hands with the bunch. Give your hoof to Alkali Sam. Alkali wasn't christened that—if he was ever christened at all. Somebody musta been reading a wild-West story and thought Sam looked like the leading villain. It's commonly hinted he christened himself. He's a would-be devil, a gen-u-ine bad actor—in his own mind. Alkali'd rather be called that than get his man on the draw. It saves a lot o' shooting—and it's less dangerous, a rep like that.
"And this one—where's your flapper, Muck?—he's Muck Norsley. Nothing's too dirty for muck—hence, Muck.
"The Dude there has been known to take a bath, comb his hair with axle grease, and change his shirt, all in the same year. Dude, you ain't doing us justice. Your neckerchief—well, it's a bit mussed, and a tailor might improve them chaps. Look nifty for the gent.
"General Jones derives his cognomen, so to speak—not from the army, bless you, no, but because he's generally drunk, generally loafing, generally a cuss. No one thinks his name's Jones, least of all the Police. And that's why General's so popular.
"Bean Slade, here, forced his name on us. He has to stand up seven times to make a shadow. When the wind's ripping things to kingdom-come we send Bean out to do the punching; he just turns sideways. Truth is, Bean's the lady-killer o' the bunch, that is, when Dude's not in glamorous garb. Oh, Bean's the sly one. There's only one lady in ten miles here, and Bean's her lady's-maid. Meaning nothing vulgar," he added hastily at sight of Bean's glowering brows. "Even in town Bean looks at every female as if she's val'able china and li'ble to be broke."
Stamford, conscious of his incapacity to reply in kind, solemnly shook the offered hands; which tickled them. The Dude first rubbed his palm on the side of his chaps, General Jones pumped his arm until his head shook, and Muck Norsley murmured something he'd heard somewhere about being glad to meet him. Bean Slade muttered a sheepish "Ta-ta!" and preferred his package of cigarettes.
The frowsy-headed cook thrust his face through the back doorway and announced that "chuck" was on, and, in the fading light of a late summer night—where the sun sinks about ten o'clock in mid-summer—Stamford seated himself before his first meal with a family of cowboys, a bit uncertain of the good taste of dining with an unwilling host, but determined now to carry the adventure to the end.
Throughout the meal, which seemed to Stamford's hungry but as yet fastidious taste to consist largely of pork and beans, with a later stratum of pie, there was a disposition among the others to show off, developing quickly, as Stamford's interest grew, to an effort at fun at his expense—not meanly, but with a twisted idea of sustaining their reputations before a tenderfoot. Stamford felt something of it but, not knowing how to receive it, concentrated on the meal. In that he unconsciously did well; so that when the pie was well washed down with strong coffee he remained the butt of their fun, but with less malice than before.
Muck Norsley's appetite seemed insatiable. When the others had drawn back and were smoking the package of cigarettes that was a special recognition of visitors, he continued to munch at the last piece of pie—his fourth, Stamford was certain—swallowing noisily from his coffee cup, the spoon held in the practised crook of his first finger.
"Muck always was delicate," said Dakota, by way of apology. "Don't you know, Muck Norsley, that it ain't good manners to eat when everyone's through?"
"Everyone ain't through," replied Muck. "I ain't. It mightn't be good manners, but it's good pie. Anyway, this is supper, not sassiety. If that isn't so, tell yer pal and fellow-villain to take his feet outen my coffee."
Alkali pushed his feet further on the table, brushing aside the dishes, and relit his cigarette.
"You big lubber, you!" yelled Muck. "Can't yer see this is comp'ny? You know yer dassent do it when we're alone, you—you insult ter decency!"
"Muck," warned Alkali gravely, tossing the match over his shoulder, "yo know how easy I'm roused. I've et bigger men'n yo fer breakfast."
"Alkali Sam," returned Muck, with equal gravity, "I ast yer tuh remove them blots on the innercent habits o' the H-Lazy Z seminary fer perlite young ladies. I don't often ask twice."
Alkali ostentatiously loosened his Colt.
"Here, Dakota, take this toy while I'm good-tempered. We ain't got time fer no funeral."
Stamford caught the wink that accompanied Alkali's toss of the revolver before his face, but it did not prepare him for the explosion that filled the room the instant it touched Dakota's hand. The bullet whistled so close that he ducked.
When he straightened, Dakota was looking into the smoking muzzle of the Colt with an air of intense surprise.
"Funny things, guns!" murmured the foreman.
"Darn funny!" growled Stamford, taking fresh hold of himself.
The smile he saw flitting over the faces of the cowboys had warned him that he was the victim of a bit of gun-play dangerous in the hands of less expert gunmen than Alkali and Dakota.
Muck Norsley swept his hand over the table, scooping up a sample of the flies that had all through the meal been robbing Stamford of some of his appetite, fished two from his coffee, and carried them to the door, where he gravely released them.
"I never did like the flavour of them flies," he muttered. "Now over in Dakota they come——"
During his absence at the door Alkali had liberally replenished the supply of flies in his cup, and Muck, noticing the disturbance in the liquid as he was about to swallow it, promptly despatched it into Alkali's face.
Before he could defend himself, Alkali was on his shoulders, punching wildly. Muck heaved himself to his feet, caught Alkali about the waist in a bearlike hug and, burying his face in his tormentor's stomach, seemed to be eating him alive.
Alkali beat himself free, howling all the time, and rubbed his stomach as if in terrible pain.
"Gi' me the gun, Dakota, gi' me the gun! Quick! I'll fill the ring-boned, wind-galled, spavined son-of-a-gun so full o' holes——"
"Alkali always was fluent," applauded Dakota.
The two men were fighting round and round the room, striking awkwardly, cursing, bunting with their heads. The others retreated to the two doorways and the corners, making no move to separate them. Stamford circled the table with bulging eyes; he had never seen anything so furious and brutal before.
Alkali fell over a chair, and Muck, seizing another, whirled it aloft. But Alkali squirmed beneath the table, grabbed Muck by the feet, and brought him down with a crash. Seated astride him, he leaned over his victim, punching with both fists. Muck struggled vainly for a moment, then seemed to give up in sheer weariness. Alkali gave a blood-curdling yell and jabbed his fingers at the helpless man's eyes.
In the dimming light Stamford seemed to see the horrible gouging as in a dream.
"Stop him! Stop him!" he screamed.
Alkali whooped his triumph and reached to the table for a knife. High above his victim he drew it back, gloating over the blow that would clench his victory.
"Not by a darn sight!" yelled Stamford, hurdling a fallen chair and kicking with all his might at the uplifted wrist.
Alkali uttered a howl of real pain and clambered to his feet. To Stamford's bewilderment Muck followed him, grinning, but sidling between the irate Alkali and his new foe. The injured man cursed volubly, holding his wrist with the other hand, then he plunged toward his gun, which lay on the table. But Bean Slade's long leg flashed out, and the gun rattled away to a corner.
"Yu got what was comin' tuh yu, you goat. Swallow yer medicine. Thought yu was puttin' it over on the li'l fellow, eh? Looks 's if he's got the last laugh."
"He's broke my wrist!" howled Alkali, hopping about.
"Get out!" jeered Bean. "Yer shure a soft bad-man. A li'l scrunt like him put yu out o' business! Haw! Haw!"
Stamford was squirming beneath a burden of chagrin at the revelation that all the time they had been poking fun at the tenderfoot.
"Funny thing, feet!" he murmured, contemplating his small shoes.
"Darn funny!" growled Dakota.
Stamford slept at the ranch-house and took his meals in the cook-house. It suited him perfectly—in spite of flies and mosquitoes. His search for health was accepted without question among cowboys who imagined that poor health was the curse of every tenderfoot, the dose being multiplied in one of such limited proportions. General Jones expressed the conviction that a month of roughing it would make him so eager for "home and mother" that bad health would look attractive by comparison; and Bean slyly suggested that what Stamford needed to buck him up was a few more rough-and-tumbles like the lickin' he gave Alkali.
Dakota looked into his guileless eyes and ridiculed himself for having tried to get rid of him.
Early next morning, before Stamford had made up for the sleeplessness of the first part of the night in a lone house on the prairie, surrounded by a million shrieking coyotes, a conference took place in the cook-house. The result of it was reported in part to him by the information that he and Bean Slade and the cook would have the ranch to themselves for the next few days. Stamford asked a few questions, but his ignorance of ranching deprived the replies of most of their significance. For four days, therefore, he and Bean developed the strange friendship that had commenced with Dakota's personal attack in the shooting-up of Medicine Hat, and had been strengthened by the scenes of his first evening on the ranch.
At the end of that time Dakota returned with three strange cowboys in the best of spirits. The three strangers, Stamford learned, were other members of the outfit whose work was in more intimate touch with the herds.
"Ten bucks for you, Bean!" Dakota announced jubilantly.
Stamford looked his enquiry.
"He's raisin' my wages fer lookin' after you," Bean explained; and everyone laughed.
Long after midnight of the short summer night, Cockney Aikens and his wife drove up to the Provincial Hotel, the team in a lather but Pink Eye with lots of the devil left. Mary climbed down and pounded up the night clerk, and Cockney, given the stable key, took the team back himself.
As he emerged from the lane leading to the stables, a Mounted Policeman, riding in late from patrol, pulled up before him and stooped to see his face.
"What's on at this hour, Cockney?"
The big rancher straightened furiously.
"Say! Some day I want to get somewhere where a bunch of interfering red-coats aren't dogging my steps."
The Policeman laughed. "I'm afraid you'll have trouble doing that in this country."
"Then I'll go back home, where a man's his own boss."
"It didn't seem to suit you so well when you were there."
"What do you mean?" Cockney's tone was almost a bellow.
"Sh-h!" soothed the Policeman. "Everyone's in bed but ourselves. I suppose if you'd liked England so well you'd have stayed there. No one in Canada sent for you, did they?"
Cockney wheeled about and stalked up the Provincial steps, the Policeman watching him until the door closed behind him.
Cockney Aikens hated the Mounted Police. In all his life nothing had so roused the depths of hatred usually dormant in his big body. If one came within sight he swore beneath his breath—or aloud, according to the company. He thought and spoke the worst of them, and his unqualified dislike was unwilling to accord them any credit, would grant no conceivable purpose they fulfilled. On the trail he passed them without so much as nodding, and the very few patrols that wandered at long intervals to the vicinity of the H-Lazy Z avoided the sullen hospitality of its owner.
The cause of this settled hatred was as simple and unreasonable as that which lay at the root of most of Cockney's emotions.
Early in his career in the Medicine Hat district, when he was "going the pace" more recklessly than since his marriage, one of his uncontrolled orgies of drinking and gambling had brought him hard against the red-coats, and he had learned what a ruthless wall they are for wrong-doers to butt against.
Medicine Hat was not a wild town, as cow-towns go. Drinking that threw a man on the street in a condition dangerous to himself or others was discouraged with a firm hand, but gambling, so long as it kept under cover, was winked at by the town policeman as the least objectionable of the many vices common to a section that lived largely on its nerve.
Whether there was more in it than that for the policeman was open to question. Poker, and other card games of less skill and more manipulation, were available to anyone who knew the ropes. A daring stranger to town had reported to a local friend, who happened to be an usher in the Methodist Church, that the town policeman himself had directed him to a game in progress—but this was challenged when it came up before the town council. One resort, the basement under a barber shop on Toronto Street, was Cockney's favourite den; and, with the gambling instincts of the Englishman, and copious additions developed within himself, his evenings in the fetid atmosphere of smoke and whisky were times of fever to more than himself.
One night, unlucky, urged to stake more than he had ready money to meet, he emerged from the den in a vile temper, convinced that the cards had been stacked but unable to prove it before a crowd of blood-suckers frankly hostile to him. At the moment the town policeman happened to be on his rounds in that quarter, and in sheer wantonness, Cockney banged his helmet into the roadway; and when the policeman seemed to show resentment, he was tossed after his helmet. But a Western policeman, town or Mounted, faces such contingencies with the donning of his uniform, and Mason returned to the attack with drawn baton. Mason, baton and all, proved scarcely exercise for big Cockney Aikens.
Unfortunately two Mounted Policemen, attracted by the crowd that had trickled up from nowhere, arrived on the scene.
It was a brave struggle while it lasted, and four bodies ached from it for several days, but it ended with Cockney securely locked in the cells.In the cells!The big fellow came to himself and cried like a child.
But his shame was only commencing. Next morning the scene of his disgrace was transferred to the police court, where Cockney, with bowed head, scarcely heard the sentence of fifty dollars or thirty days. He realised it when he discovered that his account at the bank was drained to the last ten dollars to pay the fine, owing to heavy recent drafts thereon in settlement of his winter accounts and the purchase of new stock for the ranch.
And there remained unpaid his gambling losses of the previous night.
That was most terrible of all. When that afternoon he slunk from town with forty dollars of gambling debts recognised only in IOU's, his shame was complete.
In his mind the Mounted Police were entirely to blame. Before they interfered he was having only an exhilarating frolic with Mason. It was that strange hold of one of the red-coats—it almost broke his neck, and twisted his arm so that it still ached—that did the thing.
And so, with the capacity for stubborn hatred that required much rousing but defied conciliation, he never forgave them. They had besmirched his honour—for four months he was ashamed to show himself in the den under the barber shop—and nothing could remove the stain. He would grind his teeth and swear that if a Mounted Policeman were dying at his feet for a glass of water he would not stoop to give it to him.
When Cockney entered their bedroom in the hotel he was too angry to speak. Mary was waiting for him, thoughtfully rocking in an old rocker that was supposed to make cosy a room that had outlasted its decorations and furnishings years ago. He glanced at her swiftly, but whatever she had in mind, his sullen mood seemed to alter it.
The clerk knocked and enquired if anything was wanted.
"Yes," cried Cockney, "a big whisky—straight."
His wife studied him anxiously as she went about preparing to retire. The hideous life that would be hers for the next few days was commencing earlier than usual. Yet she was thankful to be there to look after him.
Me seized the glass when it was handed through the crack of the door, stared at it a second, and placed it on the washstand untouched.
"I'll be away for a few days," he told Mary casually, as he washed. "You'd better sleep in; it's been a stiff day for you."