Both the inspector and the sergeant-major were so delighted that I made them a fair copy while both of them sat by without suspicions. In this I explained to the widow how she had been swapped for a sucking pig, a dog and a pair of boots, her latest proprietor being Inspector Sarde. The fair copy was duly posted.
Still all went merrily and no harm was done. But none of us liked Sarde. With all his undoubted merits he had a meek and guileful tongue which curried favor, and a smile a deal more friendly than his eyes. An officer who creeps in search of popularity is sure to be detested by soldiers, and their opinion is not far astray.
One night in the barrack room a debate arose as to whether Inspector Sarde was a gentleman. I took his part and bet a dollar I would prove him thoroughbred. Next day I addressed a post-card to Constable Buckie who was still at Slide-out, and on the back of it wrote the story of a little jest I had at Sarde's expense. The card was posted at the orderly room, found by the clerk and shown to Inspector Sarde. I am sorry to say that Sarde read my post-card, and handed it to the officer commanding, who refused to look and told him he was a cad. So it proved by testing that poor Sarde was not a gentleman, and I lost my bet. Moreover, from that time onward he was my enemy, a fact observed by every officer and man in C Division. This was a boy's feud with a man, the quarrel of a trooper with an officer, the risks on one side, the power on the other, and I preferred an open breach without any sneaking, free from degrading secrecy. Looking back I know I was a fool, but not unmanly.
In the good old times there was a law of prohibition excluding liquor from the territories lest it should reach the Indians. In an arid country, such a law produces unnatural thirst, and even the most temperate men take a delight in outwitting a fool government. So the law breeds law-breakers, informers, whisky thieves, drunkards, bad liquor and delirium tremens, promotes the use of drugs and generally plays havoc with public morals. Let any man who doubts my statement ask the nearest policeman whose duty it is to know the actual facts, while legislators live in a world of dreams.
During a severe winter drought, Inspector Sarde's mother sent him a case of eggs. As far as one could see it was quite in order that Mrs. Sarde should send twelve dozen eggs to her abstemious son inpartibus infidelium, where luxuries are scarce. They were packed in salt, shipped C.O.D. by express, forwarded from Fort Benton in the stage sleigh, consigned per I. G. Baker and carried to Sarde's quarters by a constable on fatigue. That was I.
In course of duty, I just bumped the eggs to see if they were "fragile" as advertised on the case, and at once there arose a perfume which no police constable could possibly ignore. Did hens, I wondered, lay eggs filled with whisky? Or having laid eggs full of meat did the hens blow them, fill them with comfort, and seal them up with wax? Or had they matured on the way? Or was an officer, a justice of the peace, importing illicit refreshments? Would they be good for Sarde? Was it not my duty to save the officers' mess from making a beast of itself?
I took that case to the barrack room and submitted it to a board of constables, who pronounced each several egg to contain more than two and five-tenths per cent. of alcohol, and resolved to compensate the owner for that disgusting state of intoxication to which he was no longer liable. The case was therefore reloaded with a dead cat, and a puppy of last year's vintage, and a twelve horse-power bouquet on which we laid an epitaph in verse.
"Toll for the eggsThe eggs which are no moreAll sunk within the BravesFast by their destined shore.We were not in the bottle,No barrel met the shock,We sprang a fatal leak,We ran on Duty's Rock.These are but cat and pup,Not alcoholic eggs,So weigh the vessel up;Stand firm upon your legs:Then boil the tea and pass it roundTo the Guardians of our Land,You bet your life it's not our faultThat whisky's contraband!"
Next day at morning stables, Inspector Sarde, being orderly officer, put all the duty men under arrest for making chicken talk when told to answer names. He said he was surprised.
Afterward, at breakfast time, he opened his case of refreshments, which stampeded the officers' mess. He really was surprised.
Before office, old Wormy, our officer commanding, sent for Mr. Sarde. "My yong frien', how you charge my mans for dronk on catan'puppy,hein? Or you say dronk on veeskeyegg. Whose veeskeyegg? Yours? How you come by dose veeskeyegg? Where you get,hein?Bien, M'sieu L'InspecteurVeeskey-smoggle!Sacremo'jew Ba'teme. Damn!"
So we were all released without trial, but Mr. Sarde would like to see Constable la Mancha at his quarters. I told the orderly sergeant that I was suffering from severe alcoholic depression, but all the same I was paraded up before the bereaved inspector.
"My man," said Mr. Sarde, "you know that a commissioned officer can not threaten a constable."
I was shocked at the very idea.
"But I may promise, La Mancha, to watch over your interests like a guardian angel."
I told him he was a tripe hound.
"Orderly Sergeant," said the officer, "you will note the words used, and place this man under close arrest."
So I got a month's imprisonment, and they say it was most impressive in the guard-room to hear my voice in the cells as I prayed for Sarde.
II
You may not remember, but an American cowboy won my dress suit at cards. When he got back to his outfit over in Montana, he met my brother, and gave him my address. Then Brat wrote to me, telling me how on the day we parted he had struck grub with the Double Crank beef round-up who took him on as wrangler, at twenty, while they worked the Kato-yi-six.
This being translated from cow talk into English means that Brat as he wandered afoot down Milk River coulée, came to a wagon where a cook was busy molding pies on the tail-board. The cook told Brat that his wagon attended the riders of the Double Crank ranch, who were collecting beef cattle for shipment on the Sweet Grass Hills of Montana. They had mislaid the boy who handled their pony herd, so their foreman, when he rode in at sundown, engaged my Brat to take the job at twenty dollars a month.
Moreover, Brat, being a good boy whom I had raised by hand, kept his job for four months, and because he had a wooden face at poker won, in addition to his education, wages and board, three ponies, a pair of shaps, a saddle and spurs damaskened with gold. But as the winter closed down, and spare men were discharged, my brother's heart filled with dumb yearnings, so he took his pay, and rode across to Lane's where he showed off his wealth, splendor and success in front of Got-Wet. She very nearly succumbed.
Along came Buckie on patrol from Slide-out, very smart in a buffalo coat and fur cap, a Russian grand duke to the very life with a ruby and diamond engagement ring he had picked up cheap from a Montana robber.
Brat found himself outnumbered, "by a mere Canadian, too," and in his desolation blamed the soldier's scarlet serge. He wanted a red coat more than all else on earth since cowboys were of no account in the eyes of Got-Wet.
Slick Buckie was no fool. His triumph might last its little hour, but his official visits were rare as transits of Venus, whereas the cow-hand, a mere civilian, could be there all the time. So he talked seductively about the outfit, but doubted if Brat was old enough to join, or brave enough to face a rough career. Oh, he was very doubtful about vacancies for recruits, and couldn't be bothered anyway with Brats. They had one La Mancha in C Troop already, and that was enough in all conscience with his devilish practical jokes, when he fired that load of coal, got an officer mixed up with one of his cast girls, and the whole division drunk on smuggled eggs. So gently Slick lured his rival away from the arms of Got-Wet, and got him duly enlisted at Fort French a hundred miles from temptation.
With Brat in barracks, I felt that my responsibilities were overwhelming. There was so little room in number 4 cell for setting a good example, and through the loop-hole in the log wall at the back it would be difficult to train a young man in the paths of virtue. Thrice daily I had him up outside the loop-hole to see that he cleaned his nails and had no high water mark about his neck, that he committed the standing orders to memory, brushed his teeth, wrote to his mother, threw a smart salute, and minded his manners when addressing a superior officer. He must not play cards except with rookies, or borrow money from chaps who ought to be kept at a distance, or get acquainted with any beastly civilians, or make silly practical jokes, or give cheek to a blanked inspector, or correspond with girls. Long years later, he explained to me why he had been content to stand and freeze while I lectured. I was all he had in the way of parents, and my voice reminded him of one which was hushed at the solemn gates of Paradise "except of course," he added, "when you used bad language."
It was rotten luck for him that I should be in prison just when he needed me. Nobody else could be bothered to teach a mere coyote. Nobody, for example, took the trouble to warn him to have moccasins in his pockets during a sopping thaw out on the Milk River Ridge. The patrol were wet to the waist when they camped, but by midnight it was thirty degrees below zero, and the frozen boot cut the toes off my brother's right foot, laying him up for two years.
Brat's great soft black eyes seemed always to be lighted from within, his smile had a haunting tenderness. In him I could see my mother, as I remember her before she left us.
III
Rain often used to tell me about her hero, her elder brother, Many Horses, chief of the Crazy Dog band in the Piegan tribe of the Blackfeet, and of his woman, the daughter of the head chief, whose name was Owl-calling-"Coming."
Many Horses stood six foot two, lithe as a whip, rode like a god, and had the surly pride of Lucifer. You may see his likeness, both as to form and color, in old bronze portraits of Augustus Cæsar. But please take that in profile, because poor Many Horses had a most sinister spirit. Apart, however, from that, his was an astounding combination of blessings—youth, health, beauty, grace, dignity, high rank as a warrior, and virtues so exalted that I found him painful to contemplate. He was a mixture of Bayard, Galahad and the Cid, a knight-errant of stainless honor who had never seen a joke in his life, being void of the slightest vestige of any sense of humor. Among the merry Blackfeet that man was a freak.
At the time I lay in the cells, this savage gentleman discovered my address and came north to kill me. Ideas with him were very rare events, and in this one he took the pride of an inventor. But how could he get inside the fort? A white man had merely to walk in through open gates, but these were closed to Indians. He hoped for the vacancy left by Tail-Feathers of scout-interpreter, but found that the place had been filled by old Beef Hardy. A clever man would have seen a dozen ways of getting in, but this hero was stupid as heroes are in fiction, so he thought that only as prisoner could he gain admittance. To get himself made prisoner he rode to Stand-off, reined his horse at the door of the police detachment, made sure that the boys were watching him through the windows, then fired at their pet dog. So he was brought as a prisoner to Fort French, and lodged in the cell next to mine.
Confinement knocks the morals out of any Indian, so after the first night this poor chap was lonely and frightened. I was bored to tears, and both of us were glad to have a gossip. Thus, before we had heard each other's names or seen each other's faces, we were fast friends, whispering Blackfoot through a knot-hole in the bulkhead.
We talked through Saturday afternoon and Sunday, we gossiped in the sign language when out at work on Monday. By Monday evening, I had given him full directions for finding and killing Boy-drunk-in-the-morning, his sister's lover, his mortal enemy.
And so he told me the story of Rain's adventures during the Winter of Death.
IV
When the buffalo hunting failed, Many Horses took his women and children up into the valleys of the World-Spine and there, through the moon of falling leaves, they had meat in plenty. But when cold weather came, he and his woman Owl-calling-"Coming," out hunting far from camp, got snowed up for more than a week. Only after much prayer and sacrifices to Old Man were they able to climb through the soft snow and get a back-load of meat to their home lodge on Cut-Bank Creek. And then they came too late.
When Many Horses told me that, I had my eye at the knot-hole to watch the sign talk. He finished with a sort of apologetic squint as though he hated to worry me with trifles. It seems that toward the end of the long waiting, his little son, aged five, had moved to the chief's place, facing the door of the lodge, and there said family prayers with the sacred pipe in his little frozen hands. So his father found him, and the two younger wives with all the children sat in their places, dead.
Owl-calling-"Coming" ran mad, but Many Horses got her down to Two Medicine Lake, hoping for human company to lure her spirit back. There they found a lodge with Tail-Feathers and his woman Rain, dying of hunger.
It was in a dry, cold, dreary way that Many Horses answered my questions concerning his sister Rain. She had married Tail-Feathers because he wished her to. Now she was very poor, her property and that of her man being sold for food in the early days of the famine. Moreover, instead of hunting, Tail-Feathers would tumble down dead and lie doggo, until Rain snared a rabbit and he smelt food. But the big snow had put an end to Rain's poor foraging, and the man lay doggo while the woman prayed.
It was then she vowed that if her man got well she would dedicate a temple to the Sun God. Rain's prayers were very strong, for sure enough her brother came with meat, and her man got well. So she sat for days chirping and twittering like a small brown squirrel while she fed her man with soup, and his strength returned. In those days, Owl thawed to weeping, and her spirit came back to her body.
When all the meat was finished, Rain's secret helper came in a dream bidding her send the two men, Tail-Feathers, her husband, and Many Horses, her brother, to steal ponies from the Stone-hearts, and use them for hunting the white man's buffalo (cattle). The men obeyed and very soon her lodge was red with meat.
Now it was time, said Rain, to lay her vow before the chiefs in council, so they broke camp and went down to the agency. There they found the great chiefs begging the agent to have mercy upon their people, for already a fourth part of them were dead, and the rest were dying.
But the agent fed their corn to his fat chickens, and said he was grieved at the deplorable superstitions of the Indians. Then the chiefs starved in council until Rain sent them a pony-load of meat, so that their hearts were warm, and they consented to her plea. If the tribe lived at the full moon, in the moon of falling leaves she should be made a priestess, and dedicate a temple to the Sun.
"My prayer is heard," she said, in her great joy. "My man is saved from death, the Sun has given us food, and the animals will be kind to us and pity us. In three suns, the wicked agent will be sent away, and there will be food for all our people."
Three days were scarcely past before a big Stone-heart chief arrived at the agency, who gave the corn and the agent's chickens to feed the dying women crouched beside the gate. The wicked agent was sent away in shame, and a wagon train of the Long Knives (United States cavalry) brought food for all the people. Surely Rain's medicine was very strong!
But as it happened, the trader, Bad Mouth, together with his woman, and his daughter, Got-Wet, were staying at the agency, and when they heard that Rain was to be made priestess of the sun, they put a rumor about that she was unclean. She had lived, said Got-Wet, with a white man disguised as an Indian, aye and traveled with him all last summer. The chiefs had chosen a harlot to be their sacred woman.
Many there are among us who see appearances only, who live to keep up appearances, even as a coffin does with varnishing and brass-work though that within is something less than man. Tail-Feathers had kept up appearances as became a virtuous husband as long as Rain's wealth lasted, and now must make up appearance as an outraged husband, casting his woman out of the lodge which was all that remained of her dowry. She sat in the snow, her head covered with ashes, hiding her face from women she had fed, who passed by holding their noses. Even Many Horses believed her guilty, but Owl bought her a little lodge lest she should die of cold.
For two days the chiefs debated her case in council and Many Horses, though he believed her guilty, would not allow his fellows to accuse his sister. At the end, he brought her before them for judgment, she standing woefully frightened, with clenched teeth and fists lest her timid feet should be tempted to run away.
"Woman," said the head chief, Medicine Robe, "we know that your mysterious power saved your man from death. We know that your dream foretold the coming of the Long Knives with food for our dying people. We have heard your claim to be a sacred woman, and we may not deny that right lest we offend the Spirit in the Sun.
"Yet by our law, no woman may be priestess unless her man declares her a wife and mother of clean life.
"Your man accuses you of being a harlot. He asks that your nose may be cut off as a warning to all the people. Come, I promise full pardon if you confess your guilt."
"Am I a harlot," Rain answered angrily, "because I was sister to a helpless, useless boy? Would God have spared my man because a harlot prayed? Would God have sent food to our people but for this mysterious power which is in me? Let God be my judge!"
The head chief was sorely troubled. "If you are a harlot," he said, "and we make you a priestess to defile the holy ground, to profane the House of the Sun, your death is nothing to us when God stamps out our fires. Once more I offer mercy. You are free to go, so we never again shall see your face."
Rain clutched at her breasts with both hands. "And my baby," she cried, "my baby that is to come—shall it be called the White Man's Sin? Do you think I will go away like a guilty woman, and have my baby shamed? I stay, and in the name of God, I demand my right to prove myself clean, a faithful wife, an honorable mother, a sacred woman."
"Then we must open the Sun Lodge," answered Medicine Robe, "not by the Blackfoot, but by the Absaroka rites. Among the Sparrowhawk people the sacred woman comes up from the river bearing a fagot of wood, and a bucket of water. She walks to the Sun Lodge, there to make fire, to boil water, to keep house for the Holy Spirit."
"I am content," said Rain.
"But," said the chief, "her path is lined on either side by all the warriors, and they will see that no woman suspected of foul life shall reach God's house, for if any man knows that she has sinned, he must thrust a spear through her body, and all the men must bathe their weapons in her blood.
"Are you content?"
"I am content."
"In the moon of falling leaves, at the full moon, the Sun Lodge shall be built at Two Medicine Lake, and there you shall walk through the lane of warriors, to die as a harlot, or to live as a sacred woman."
"And I shall live," said Rain.
Many Horses, being of crossed vision, confused the issues. He was shocked that his own sister should be accused, indignant with her for being condemned to death, but most of all, enraged against the white man who had caused the scandal. In his poor stupid heart, his honor was the important thing at stake, and not his sister's innocence and life. So he came to find me out and kill me, then take the consequences as became a chief.
"Your sister," I told him, "has two friends, two champions. So one must be murdered and the other hanged. Then Rain will have no friends."
He had not thought of that.
V
Our superintendent commanding was painfully short of men, with half his troop out on the plains, while the rest had staff jobs exempting them from duty. At the great ten o'clock parade, the orderly officers, sergeant-major and orderly corporal would assemble to hear one rookie answer his name for recruit drill, stable orderly, mess fatigue and odd jobs. So, at the end of a fortnight's rest in the cells I received a hint that an apology to Inspector Sarde would win me back my freedom, to do half the work of the post. I asked leave to appear before Superintendent Fourmet, and when I was paraded at the orderly room, was so jolly glad to see the old chap again that I could not help smiling brightly.
"Prisonnier," said Wormy, "you withdraw the tripe 'ound?"
"Yes, sir." I cocked up one eye at Sarde.
"You apologize?"
"I wish I hadn't said it."
"Bien! You promise to be'ave?"
"For six months, sir; till the moon of falling leaves."
"Eh? Vat you means?"
"Then I'll put in for a pass, if you please, sir, and blow off steam outside."
Bubbles of suppressed joy disturbed the serenity of the court. I always find joy pays.
"Return to duty," said Wormy.
"About tur-r-n! Mar-r-r-ch!" said the sergeant-major.
But I snatched my forage cap out of his hand, jammed it on and threw a salute.
"May I speak, sir?"
"You are permit to spik."
"Release the Indian, sir, and let me serve his sentence. Please, sir, the poor devil's a friend of mine. He's innocent, and belongs to the South Piegans, so what's the good of wasting government grub to feed a United States Indian. If he's free, sir, you won't need a guard."
"Stoff a nonsense. You would be prisonnier! How you say no guard?"
"Oh, sir, that's all right. I'll keep the guard-house clean and lock myself in at night."
Dear Wormy loved a joke. "You say zees Indians he is ennocent,hein? How you know?"
"I talk Blackfoot, sir."
"Vell done, my boy! Veil done."
"He's in for shooting up a dog. Can't be done, sir. His rifle used to be mine—so I know it shoots round corners, and that dog, sir, is all corners. Why, sir, if you aim at a cow with that old gun you have to fire backward. The Blackfeet are rotten shots, anyway, and this man's a champion misser with a squint. Let him off, sir."
"You offer to serve hees sentence?"
"Yes, sir."
"Can you proof hee's not guilty?"
"You have my word of honor, and his squint, sir."
"Humph! You can go to your duty."
I cleared out quick lest Wormy should change his mind, and whistled piercing shrills to Rich Mixed across the square.
For Many Horses, that day was one of bewilderment. From the interpreter he learned that I was the very man he had come to kill, that I had offered to serve his sentence for him, and that he was pardoned. On his release at sundown I met him outside the gates and gave him a long knife, just borrowed from the cook-house. "You came," said I, "to kill me. When does the fun begin?"
For a long time he stood looking down into my eyes, then swung the knife close to my ribs to see if I would flinch.
"Frightened?" I asked.
He dropped the knife between us in the snow.
"If I kill you," he muttered, "and they hang me, Rain will have no friends."
I gave him some tobacco and my pipe. Then we sat down in the snow and smoked, while some of the boys were jeering at us from the gateway. But we spoke in signs and in Blackfoot, so that they did not understand.
The man's very slow mind was working out new ideas. "We are Rain's friends," he said, holding the pipe to the four winds, to sky, and then to earth.
"And we believe," I said, "that she is innocent."
He made the sign of assent.
"You are ready," I asked, "to stake your life that Rain is innocent?"
"You and I," he answered, "are her brothers."
"I was her brother."
"Then," he said, clasping my hand, "I give you my name, and call you Many Horses. I take your new name, Charging Buffalo."
He offered me blood brotherhood, the greatest honor that one Indian can pay to another. But I laughed.
"You," said I, "shall be Charging Buffalo, but I'm too poor to be called Many Horses. My name shall be No-horses-but-wants-to-owe-for-a-mule."
He shook his head, bewildered, and made the sign, "No good," flicking his fingers at me. How dull must life be for men who never see a joke.
"Go," said I, "tell Rain to keep her courage up, and not to fuss." So I made the moon sign and the zigzag fluttering down of a falling leaf. "I will be there in the autumn."
VI
"Think of your sins.What made you a soldier a-serving the Queen,God save the Queen!And God save the duffer who thinks of to-morrow,God save the man who remembers his sorrow,God save the man who must mourn for the past,Sundown at last.Here's rest for the past, and here's hope for the morrow."
That is what the bugle said, thrilling the clear dusk with torrential music, as I came over from seeing my frozen Brat in hospital. Rich Mixed danced ahead on three legs sidewise, while his eyes worshiped me. For this day he had seen me at guard mounting, chosen as cleanest man for commanding officer's orderly. The bugle thrilled my bones, my heart was lifted up to the angel glories, which followed the sun to his rest, but all the same to me most beautiful of all things visible were the glowing scarlet of my own serge jacket, the poised forage cap, the flash and gleam of my boots, the silver note of my spurs, as I swaggered across the parade ground. For five months, I had been a beauteous example of piety in humble life, and though I was rather stiff from yesterday's patrol of sixty miles, both loveliness and virtue were my portion. Rich Mixed lay on his back to pant with adoration, and my riding whip flicked him tenderly as I passed. For, in that instant, I thought of Rain. All my hopes, dreams and desire made throne and clouds and rainbows for her court.
In thirty days more, I was to die for her, and had no other wish or expectation.
Close in the wake of the bugle music tame the soft, distant, mournful howl of a wolf. That was Rain's call!
Oh, then I knew I had been too good too long. With a sigh for departed virtue, I swung off round the stables, dodged behind them, climbed the manure heap piled against the stockade, and there stood looking out across the plains. From somewhere close at hand in the dusk, I heard a most seductive little howl. At that, I sent Rich Mixed home, dropped lightly down the outer side of the rampart, and pounded across the boulder flats until I saw a little heap of something up against the sky-line.
"Oo-oo!" said the little heap, and "Oo-oo-oo!"
I scrambled up the bank of Old Man's River and whispered: "Is that you?"
"Oo."
So I squatted, with ominous cracks at the seams, on one spurred heel, then lighted a cigarette, so she might see my little new mustache. "Well," I puffed, with becoming condescension. "What's up?"
Of course, I adored her, but with a woman it never pays to be monotonous, for if she knows exactly what to expect, she loses interest.
"Once, in the very-long-ago-time," she crooned, in a sing-song voice, "there used to be a queer person called Boy-drunk-in-the-morning."
"Oh, bosh!" said I, hating the memory of such a name. "You mean Charging Buffalo."
"Um?" With one wicked eye cocked up, shemouedat me. And that struck me cold, for she had never flirted. "I used to like being kissed," and she turned the other cheek.
"You little liar," said I, disgusted, "you never once let me kiss you, made me swear I'd go to hell if I touched you. Why, half the time you wouldn't let me into your lodge, so I had to freeze outside. And when it was warm, you slept outside yourself. And when I said I'd let you be my woman, you went and married Tail-Feathers."
"Still," she crooned, "I liked your attempts at kisses, and cuddles, yes, and little wee, tender scratches round my neck."
The seductive little rogue! And yet how could a buck policeman in barracks run his own squaw on fifty cents a day—and keep our wolf pack out of her teepee—and not be caught by the authorities? Think of the chaff, Sarde spying, the fury of the officer commanding, the disgrace to the service!
Besides, there was something wrong, something artificial, unreal, unworthy about Rain to-night. It was not to a cheap flirt I had given the worship due to my mother, and to the Queen of Heaven.
"Go back to your man," I said sternly, "it's his job to scratch your neck."
"I come," she purred, "to be your woman."
"I'll see you damned first!" I rose to go.
Then Rain stood up erect, all pride and joy, holding a baby at her breast, for all the world like the great sacred pictures of Our Lady.
"See," she whispered. "My own man, Tail-Feathers, has a baby son. I nurse this ever-so-small Two Bears. I love him, oh, so dearly. Isn't he beautiful!"
"The deuce." It wrenched my heart to think what might have been—my child, my happiness.
"Growls-like-a-Bear. Says 'Woof! Woof!' because I love my son!"
"Oh, I don't care," said I in a jealous rage. "It's nothing to me. Once we were sister and brother, you and I, innocent children playing in camp, and on the trail, playing at being grown up. You never were my woman."
Then all about me in the gloaming, I heard a ripple of laughter, and one by one there rose up out of the dusk gaunt Indians, trying not to laugh lest they should seem ill-mannered. One grand old chief lifted his head, palm forward, to the stars, making the peace sign. "My son," he said, "I ask you to shake hands, after the way of your people."
"How!" came the greetings all around me. "How, Shermogonish! Greeting, soldier! We all want to shake hands."
"My son," said the head chief, "you are a Stone-heart. We believe that your tribe are like ghosts, because you have no hearts, and do not really live. Because you have no heart, our daughter, Rain, is innocent."
My memory flashed back to that world I had left behind me ever so many weeks ago, to happy parishes in Mayfair and St. James's, where men were simple and unpretentious, frank and kind. So I saluted Medicine Robe as one would address a minister of state, expecting a blessing from Mad Wolf as though he were a cardinal, and felt that Flat Tail was a retired general who had led an army in battle not so long ago. Then there was Many Horses, my blood brother. I was so glad to see them!
"My son," said the head chief, throwing his robe wide open, disclosing the bow in his hand, the arrows at his belt. "I came to kill you. It is well I waited. You will eat in my lodge?"
I said I was hungry enough to eat the lodge.
So they escorted me, walking in single file, with feet straight to the front, as softly shod people do, lest they should bruise their toes against the trail edge. When we came to the lodge, the head chief took his seat with his guest and the men on his left, his wife and all the women on the right. We had an Absaroka sausage, full of interest and excitement as a haggis, Chicago bully beef, and a dish of berries, with graceful acts of tribute to the gods, and the decorous ceremony of the pipe to follow. Then Medicine Robe, as host, spoke with a tender irony of the white men, but said that some were straight even as Rising Wolf, his oldest friend. For Charging Buffalo had given courtesy to Rain, his daughter, and lately delivered Many Horses from prison.
Mad Wolf spoke next with grave sweet dignity, saying that his prayers were answered as to Rain. They knew her powerful medicine came of a pure life, and as a sacred woman she would bring good fortune to the people.
But Many Horses said, "Let us wait till after the storm before we dry our clothes. Some of the chiefs are seeking my sister's death, and her own man has sworn to kill her at the Medicine Lodge. I ask my white brother to attend the holy rites of the Sun God, and tell the people he has done no evil to our sacred woman."
On this, the white brother made his first speech in Blackfoot, with a strong foreign accent, somewhat to this effect: "I've been most frightfully good for five whole moons, because I'm putting in for a pass in civvies, for the moon of falling leaves on urgent private business; and the Great White Chief, Old Wormy, will have to stretch his heart to the size of a kit-bag before he'll trust me out of sight in the dark. His heart is small this week, because somebody stuffed his parrot till it bust.
"Unless he believes I bust his bird, I think he'll be all right. My little brother, Brat, has lent me his cowboy kit. I'd have his horses, too, but Brat lost them at poker to the hospital orderly. Look here, Many Horses, your white brother wants you to come with a spare pony, and show me the way to your circus."
"It is good," sighed my blood brother, who disliked lending his ponies.
"All right," said I, "that sausage has made my heart warm to my Indian fathers," I waved my hand to the women, "and aunts, and things. I'll be on hand at the medicine joint to speak with persons who talk bad about Rain, and I've put in five months' pay at revolver practise.
"Now look here, you chaps, excuse my country manners, but that's 'First post' sounding in barracks now, so I'll have to run like a rabbit to be in time for roll-call. If I'm late, I'll be disemboweled and fined five dollars. So long, Chief. Cheer up, little girl."
I bolted, leaving the Piegan chiefs to preserve their ceremonial gravity, while the women rocked and sobbed with hysterical laughter.
VII
On the eve of my furlough, "to attend the funeral of an aunt at Billings," I was accused by the sergeant-major of bursting the esteemed green parrot of my commanding officer; and for giving cheek got one month confined to barracks.
Also the Brat, in an attempt to win back his horses, played cards with the hospital orderly, and whereby he lost his cowboy kit, a residuary interest in Rich Mixed subject to owner's decease, a three-pound pot of greengage jam and my new private revolver.
To crown all, I was warned for mess fatigue, so that when I bolted I would be missed at daybreak.
Thus dogged by undeserved misfortune, I assuaged my grief by playing cards with the hospital orderly. If he won, he was to have two black eyes, an inflamed nose and a complete set of fractures, as shown on a chart in the surgery. Perhaps this medicine man preferred not to be greedy, for he lost three horses, a cowboy kit and stock saddle, a .38 seven-chambered blue Merwin and Hulbert revolver with adjustable three-inch and six-inch barrels, a pot of jam, a residuary interest, thirty-two dollars and seventy-five cents in cash, and the cook's I.O.U. on a sucking pig.
Much soothed, I addressed a private note to the commanding officer, in which I told him that I had not spoiled his parrot, but tendered in its place a tame whisky-jack, who could swear in French almost as well as himself. With regard to breaking barracks and being absent four days without leave, I felt bound to do so on a point of honor, but left Rich Mixed as a pledge of my return to take my punishment.
The letter, the whisky-jack and the dog were to be delivered after breakfast, when Wormy was always peaceful.
The moment after roll-call, I told the corporal of my barrack room that I had an appointment to smash up the man who had busted old Wormy's parrot. As it transpired, I had already done so, but the corporal seemed pleased, and would not expect me back before he fell asleep. At the stables, I changed into cowboy kit, then took my newly-won saddle to the manure heap, where I dropped it outside the stockade, and jumped down myself. Many Horses was waiting with his ponies, and so I saddled one and we rode away, bound for the herd camp. There lived Brat's ponies which I had won from the hospital orderly, but the event of stealing them fell quite flat, since they were now my property. My blood brother's Indian silence got rather on my nerves.
We rode breast-deep in a silver mist, while the moon came glowing like a coal above the frosty levels in the East, and swung the stars blind across the awful silence. Once in two hours, we rested and took fresh horses, at times would flounder through some deadly river, or pass a sleeping herd of the range cattle, or clatter down the steeps of hills invisible. Then the slow dawn merged into frosty daylight, while on our right Chief Mountain, a snow-draped cube of limestone, captain of the Rockies, glowed in the sun's red glory as he rose. We passed the Medicine Line and entered the United States, quite safe from all pursuit.
Toward noon, when a hundred and ten miles had given us a taste for food and sleep, Mount Rising Wolf was high against the sun, edged with an icy silver to where its wall fell sheer into blue-gray shadows. Then, while the ridged and furrowed plain still seemed to sweep straight on into that shadow, with staggering abruptness a valley opened right before our feet, miles wide, of lake, meadow and timber. We looked down, through scattered Douglas pines, upon a circle of teepees a mile in girth, each tawny lodge of bison hide painted with unnatural history animals, rows of dusty stars, or symbols of lightning, flood, or a protecting spirit. The smoke of feasts went up from within the lodges, the children played about them, gamblers squatted chanting over the stick game, crowds in their gayest best watched some old battle played by warriors, and round the tent-ring crept a gorgeous procession of mounted men, singing some tribal hymn.
Midway between camp and lake, stood a tall post, whence dangled a faggot of sticks, and round it was a circular fence of branches sloping inward as though to form a dome, not quite roofed over. This was the Sun's house, completed after four days of ritual preparation, and now awaiting to-morrow's dedication. Facing its east doorway, Rain kept the long fast, attended by celebrant priests and sacred women.
Many Horses unloaded his pack pony, and after making prayer set out a scrap of looking-glass and an array of face paint, to put on symbolic colors, with all the gravity of a white man busy shaving. Next he adorned his war-horse, who showed much pride and joy. Last, he put on his own ceremonial dress—a quilled and beaded buckskin war-shirt, embroidered moccasins, leggings fringed with scalp locks, a coronal of eagle plumes and a painted robe—each with its proper formula of prayer, as befitting the whole armor of righteousness, which we Christians have abandoned since it went out of fashion. I helped him reload the pack horse, and then he passed me riding his war-horse after the manner of the Frenchhaut Ecole. No horsemen in the world rival the plain's Indians in grace, or the Blackfeet in strength, beauty and majesty of bearing, and Many Horses, noblest of all the Piegan leaders, looked gravely pleased with his magnificence. As we rode down the hill, for all my fine cowboy gear, I felt mean and common, consigned to the lower classes. One would have thought this gallant and not myself had come to challenge the nation as Rain's champion.
My reception at the chief's lodge was an affair of long and gracious procedure, which I marred by chewing a dried cow-tongue, and finally spoiled by going off to sleep with the meat in my mouth, and rude growls when disturbed. While still I slept, More Bears, the dignified public crier, drummed his round of the camp with my challenge.
"Listen, all people, to the words of Charging Buffalo, adopted son of Medicine Robe, brother of Many Horses.
"Who says I slept with Rain? Who says the sacred woman is unclean? Let him meet me in single combat to the death, or wash his mouth and keep himself free from slander.
"Does Tail-Feathers wish to prove his woman a harlot? Let him come to the meadows at sundown and make his words good, or hold his peace forever!"
When the sun was nearing the World-Spine, Medicine Robe made me wake up for coffee, dog tired, stiff and famished, feeling the sick reluctance toward life of some client in a dentist's anteroom, or prisoner given a nice breakfast prior to execution. Presently, I was to be taken out and shot by Tail-Feathers, champion rifle-shot of the Blackfoot nation. I wished I were somebody else, anybody anywhere else, yet managed to conjure up a pale and dismal grin when Many Horses arrived, leading his painted war-horse and bearing his splendid war-dress as gifts for his white brother. In return, I gave my cowboy kit and the three ponies, quite sure I would not need them any more. Then I sat cross-legged, forcing myself with sick distaste to eat, while I made lamentable jests to shock my squinting brother.
Many Horses had just seen Tail-Feathers in a frightful passion, showing the people how he could shoot at full gallop using his carbine with one hand like a pistol. Kinsmen were rallying to his support, whole clans were painting themselves for war, the duel might well be prelude to a battle, and the whole outlook was extremely black.
"Don't cheer me up any more," said I, thrusting the food away. My shoulder ached where Tail-Feathers, with a very long shot, had creased my hide only a year ago.
The Piegan chiefs drifted in, each leaving his horse at the lodge door, to join the solemn gathering and profound misgivings, while I twiddled my small revolver, and showed them the tiny pellets with which I proposed to fight. Flat Tail wanted to lend me a roer, a young cannon warranted at five feet to split a grizzly bear. Iron Shirt, the sarcastic, told me I'd best clear out. Medicine Robe proposed that each chief rally his clan for a display of overwhelming force, lest there be civil war. But I explained that little medicine-irons like my small revolver had all the fierceness of the biggest cannon full of compressed ferocity, the same as with small dogs. I sent a boy with one of my cartridges as a gift to Tail-Feathers who, seeing its smallness, would not run away. That set the chiefs to laughing, and I went on chaffing until I had them happy. The honor of the outfit was in my keeping, the honor of the flag, the honor of my race. I pity cowards who daily undergo such fears as I had then, and suffer the throes of death without gaining death's release.
Five months of daily practise at the cost for ammunition of nearly all my pay had proved to me the virtue of my little killing gun up to three hundred yards. For small targets it outranged my opponent's carbine. Besides, I had filed a cross on the head of each bullet to make it spread like a mushroom, large enough to put a bear out of action. That is against the rules of war, so let the critic judge me who has faced the odds himself, and with his lone gun challenged the champion of a savage tribe in face of all his kinsmen.
Nothing had I to say about the range of my weapon, and as to my practise, it was not wise to brag. Only by striking awe into the hearts of the Blackfoot nation could I save the woman they had sworn to sacrifice.
The chiefs were busy helping me to dress, chanting the prayers which go with sacred garments, and with a strange thrill, I felt that these men loved me. They roused within me the knighthood of my fathers, that ancient chivalry which inspired men to fight for the honor of ladies.
And now I remembered my spiritual ancestor, the knight of the sorrowful countenance, el Señor Don Quixote de la Mancha. I laughed with triumph as the chiefs fell back when I stood robed and armed. Then I breathed the Ave in prayer to Our Lady, the great Queen of Heaven, whom I served, defending Her woman, Rain.
The chiefs formed my mounted escort as we rode through the camp, then past the Medicine Lodge, and that small booth where little Rain sat praying. The big empty meadow was before us now, and here on our right were all the people massed upon a hillside, the women and children like great beds of flowers, the men in clusters, mounted, their war-plumes at large upon the breeze. On our left, a solemn grove of trees in autumn gold curved with the blue lake into a haze of purple against the mighty cliffs and snow-fields of Mount Rising Wolf poised like a cloud in the windswept blue of heaven. Ahead, the low sun filled the meadow with a dust of light.
Then came a sudden impassioned roar of warning from the people, the chiefs behind me stampeded to either side clear of the line of fire, and out of the gold haze swept a rolling globe of dust. Then there was silence, save that the dust globe scattered, revealing the earth-devouring rush of a charging horse.
When danger comes at full gallop, there is no time for fear. The brain works at lightning speed, the exalted senses live an hour within each flying second. To shoot from the saddle? But would this horse I rode stand fire! To gallop for position broadside to that glare? Why make myself a target! To dismount, for cover and steady aim behind the horse? Most certainly. The turf was quivering. Can't see the man! Only fluttering plumes above the dust. Can't see his horse—but only that blur of black. Point the forefinger along the barrel, closing the hand.One!
Tail-Feathers fired also. His bullet whirred quite close.
Point, closing the hand—Two! Again—Three!
Down went the Indian's horse with a shattered shoulder, while the man came sailing on a long curve through the air, head down—smashing to earth on the nape of his neck—while the dust rolled away. There he lay black against the glare, head twisted horribly aside, legs twitching—stark now in the rigor of death.
I swung to the saddle and pricked gently forward, gun covering my enemy lest he show signs of life. The palms of my hands were sweating, my body all a-tremble, heart jumping, brain reeling, in a great roar of voices. Why were the chiefs yelling as they closed round me? Like a hurricane, the Piegan warriors, thousands strong, came charging at me, firing at me, swirling round me with uproar, like tumbling waters—distant waters—the rush of some far-away rapids—or rain at night When my head cleared, the head chief, in a blaze of passion, was roaring at the mob: "Silence! Fall back! Who fights my son, fights me!
"Silence! Silence! Hear me! That liar defamed his woman, fouled his own lodge, slandered the holy servant of the Sun, insulted God—and died!
"You saw him die—not in fair fight, but trying to steal an advantage over my son, who fought with the glare in his eyes.
"Are there any more liars here to slander our sacred woman? One at a time—come, liars! My son and I and all your chiefs, are ready to do battle.
"You, Thunder-Brooding, will you dare to fight me? You helped raise the slander. Fight, or take your shame back to your lodge, you dog-faced cur. Get home!"
The crowd was breaking, sullen, cursing me for a Stone-heart, muttering at their chiefs, while the mother and sisters of Tail-Feathers began to wail for their dead, appealing for vengeance.
"My son," said the big chief tenderly, "the anger of the people turns on you, and my young men are very hard to hold. We chiefs will be your escort until we get you safe out of this crowd, and your brother, Many Horses, will ride with you to Fort French."
I was not allowed to see the sacred woman.
VIII
There was the Union Jack ablaze up in the sunshine above the gray stockade. The bugler was sounding "Evening stables"; the duty men would assemble, number off, number by fours, march to the stables, break, and tend the horses. It was all exactly as usual, the commonplace of life, the old routine, the dear familiar duty, the knowledge of days to come shaped in the very pattern of days past—even if one dropped in from another world. Attended by Many Horses, I rode in past the guard.
Eleven poor devils were on parade in the brown canvas fatigue dress, with brushes and curry combs. The orderly corporal was calling the names, he and the sergeant-major in scarlet undress uniform, the fat Inspector Bultitude in black undress, with a saber. I tumbled off my horse and leaned against him reeling, then braced myself to attention and saluted—the back of my hand touching the great rustling coronal of eagle plumes, as I faced that staring, grinning and convulsed parade.
"Come, sir," I reported, "to give myself up."
"Drunk!" Bultitude burbled at me. "Bur-r-r! Disgrace! Take that bur-r-r—man to the guard-room, shove him bur-r-r—Cells."
"Consider yourself," said the corporal, taking me by the arm.
The air was all gray fog, and the corporal's voice was very far away. "Come, chuck a brace! Stand up, man." The ride of two hundred and twenty miles within two days had overtaxed my strength.
The gray fog went back, against the walls of old Wormy's drawing-room, and the hospital sergeant said I was all right. He gave me more brandy, and I sat up quite well.
The superintendent commanding stood with his back to the stove, and Beef, our interpreter, was questioning Many Horses. My Indian brother spoke, at first with a shy dignity, then with warmth, as he told how I had saved Rain's life, and lastly with power, as he strung wild flowers of native rhetoric pronouncing a message from his chief. When he forgot his lines, I prompted him in whispers.
"From snake-tongued agents, land thieves, and Colonel Baker we turn in our despair to the white North. We know that the fires of the north men—(the northern lights) can never give us warmth, but only portend the storm. Yet we put up our hands to that glow and feel some comfort from men who never lie. The world is very dark for Indian people. To show our hearts toward the mounted police, we send your warrior back as our adopted son, with the name, the dress, the rank of a Blackfoot chief."
You know how a horse has a child's brain with a saint's character. My Indian brother was like that, with intellect enough to run an errand, and majesty of character that made him seem more than human. He spoke for a conquered and dying people, who yet were a master race more spiritual than ours. Perhaps, in the life to come, we may be their servants.
Wormy shook hands with the envoy and gave back a hearty message to his brother chief, then sent off Many Horses to receive the hospitality of the fort.
The old man sat down, glaring at me, for we were now alone.
"You begin," he said, in his native French patois, "by burning my coal wagon, you make of my fort a matrimonial scandal, you steal Monsieur Sarde's egg-box, you explode my parrot, you call me Wormy behind my back, you rogue, you write that impudent letter, and break barracks, you mix with those savages to bring disgrace on the force, you run away to kill an American Indian and embroil me in an international row with those infernal states, and then you come back dressed as an Indian chief to turn my troop upside down, looking so damned innocent!"
I tried to look like an orthodox police constable in a scrape.
"Please, sir," said I in French, "I gave you my word I'd be good for six months, and I've been too frightfully good. The time was up, sir, on Monday."
"But my parrot?"
"I thrashed the man who did that."
"Who?"
"Dunno, sir."
"I see. You can not betray a comrade. Still, I should like to know. It was so mean."
"You'll know, sir. He'll be the first deserter. We're driving him out of the force."
"My boys don't hate me, then?"
I couldn't answer. He had brought up tears which I had to swallow, for we loved him.
Then he tried English. "Tink yourself, boy.Le bon Dieu. He send my wife no child, an' ze pay—not too moch for buy tings at Hodsonbay Compagnie, so? We haf not the life of luxury. Vot haf we but zee troop, an' my leetle 'orses, eh? So you call me Wormy."
"English for Fourmet, sir."
"So!"
"Men, sir, without nicknames don't count. They're not worth counting when there's trouble coming."
"They call you Blackguard."
I grinned.
"Then," he flashed round at me, "why you behave lak dam' baby, eh?"
And I flashed back, "Were you never young?"
The grizzled superintendent blushed with pleasure. "I took on," he said, "as constable—Regimental Number Six, the Constable Fourmet. But, my boy, I try. So you? Pooh! You burn my fort next! So you go to headquarters."
"Oh, not that, sir!" I pleaded. "Can't you punish me here?" For I thought of Rain.
"And I shall miss you," he sighed. "Je suis Canadien. I, too, was le beau seigneur. So I lak not to loose a gentilhomme from my troop.
"Now you call me old fool, eh? Go ron away—change you your clothes.Vite! An' to-morrow you report at orderly room to take your medicine."
So we shook hands, and for once in my wicked life I shed tears of remorse.
I had sinned against the discipline of the force, attacking the foundations of the public safety.
I had disturbed the serenity of the Blackfoot nation, the most formidable savages on earth, at a time when our weak settlements lay at their mercy.
While in the Canadian service, I had killed a subject of the United States, and nations have been embroiled in war by trifles less than that.
It was Superintendent Fourmet's duty to expel me from the service, and deport me from the country.
Oh, well for me if he had done his duty. With Rain my wife, we might have lived in honor, helping to save a dying people before it was too late.
I am an aristocrat for the same reason that a wolf is a wolf, and hold equality to be an illusion of the uncouth. And as a wolf will mate with wolf, Rain was my natural partner.
But we were held apart by an unnatural convention, that horrible fetish respectability, god of the Anglo-Saxons, enemy of Christ, forever forging chains for free and liberal spirits, parting honest lovers, selling virgins in marriage to beasts, and vending clean men to most unholy women. The temple is profaned by all who buy and sell their bodies in wedlock or without, but most of all by the respectable, who bind us with chains most grievous to be borne, and where Christ gave us the one commandment—Love, dare to forbid the banns.
I
Before I left Fort French on my way to regimental headquarters I promised old Wormy to lead a better life. The first duty then was to provide for my Brat in hospital; so I raffled my war-horse, and sold off by public auction a dozen damsels to whom I had been postally engaged; then lost the whole of the money at cards with the hospital orderly. So I said good-by to Brat.
Parted from all my vices I felt like an empty box, all chiaroscuro and good intentions, yet in the stage sleigh caught by a two days' blizzard it was really too cold to reform. That autumn storm was a hundred and eight miles long from its tail at Fort French to its nose at Fort Calgary with a hundred degrees of cold and the nip of a crocodile. Then at Fort Calgary I had to wait in barracks, for the unfinished Canadian Pacific Railroad ran trains, weather permitting, or when the driver was sober. Anyway, I had time to lose my sustenance money over a game of poker, and when Rich Mixed and I got on board the train we had nothing to reform with except a tin of crackers. We were beastly pinched on the six hundred mile crawl east to Regina, the mounted police headquarters.
I had rather looked forward to seeing civilization after some eighteen months of the other thing, but the train was jammed with men coming down from the construction camps in the Rockies and most of them had forgotten to take a bath. The floors of the cars were swamped with tobacco juice, the stoves were red, there was no ventilation. The air made my head swim, and Rich Mixed was taken sick.
I had been pining for company, but—well, there were some Canadians—fine chaps, playing cards, the stakes in hundreds of dollars. I could only afford to look on for half a minute.
There were American commercial gents, pale, high-pitched, talking millions and millions of dollars. I could not afford to listen.
Then there were navvies busy getting drunk, and even their talk never went as low as ten cents. They, too, were above my station. I even heard a man say, "Catch on to all that for fifty cents a day!" I could not tell him my pay was fifty-five cents.
That was when I stood up to take off my buffalo coat, and all the people stared at the red tunic. Somehow these good folk did not belong to my tribe, but I did not know till then that the red coat shuts off the world like a wall. Only I felt they despised me, so I blushed. It was as though a flock of sheep stared with contempt at a collie, and that made me grin.
The better half of me is Irish, sharing the same heritage with every British Tommy, every British bluejacket, every British irregular on the far flung frontiers. Even the English feel it, whose hearts are like cold fish, the glamour of the service, the magic, the witchcraft, the religion of this justice-under-arms guarding a fourth part of all mankind from war, keeping the peace of the sea! Spain was, England is, and Canada will be, a power snatching fire from Heaven to yield the peace of el Eterno Padre. Santissima Maria—I belonged to that!
Oh, but it was more, a great deal more. In the frost of the window beside me there was a patch of clear glass, and I could see a cloud race past the moon, above the driving surf of the snow-sea, while the blizzard battered and thundered, half lifting our train from the rails. I wanted to be back where I had been, riding storms. I belonged there, I belonged to that.
If we who serve with the colors under Old Glory or the Union Jack were serving for pay the public enemy could buy us for more pay. Could you bargain with us in terms of cash for the austerities of actual service, disease, wounds, death?
"Credo in unum Deum," roared the storm. "Omnipotentem," roared the storm. "Creatirem Coeli, et terrae," roared the storm. I and the storm were servants of one God. I knew then that never while I lived could I belong to a civilization which measures life in dollars.
I was at a castle in Spain tipping the groom of the chambers with one raw oyster in his extended palm, when Rich Mixed woke me up with his cold nose in my hand. The dawn was breaking, the train had pulled up at Moose jaw, and there was a new passenger approaching, all furs, frost and fuss. The men in the car were stretched or coiled on the seats, like corpses in the wan gray light of morning. The only empty place was the one which belonged to my dog, so he was saying in dog talk.
"Ur-r! Gur-r-r!" which means: "Isn't he poisonous. Don't let him take my seat. Yur-r-r!"
So I took Rich Mixed on my lap and said, "Sit on your tail, my septic friend."
Yet this person must needs argue about seats farther on, so the brakeman called him a fool and walked off. It seemed to me, though, that this unwholesome stranger shied, not at the dog but at me. So I told him I was only a policeman, and the dog was most particular as to what he ate. The man sat down.
As yet I had no suspicions at all, but the person must needs explain a lot of stuff about being a photographer and making good money with pictures of mountain sceneries. That set me wondering, for if he came from the Rockies, why should he board the train five hundred miles out on the plains? And if he really was a photographer, he should have the camera tripod, slide box and that well-known professional manner.
"Cur-r!" said Rich Mixed.
Where had my decent dog met this liar who shied at police? My septic friend was a town scout, so the only town where the dog could have known him would be Winnipeg. Then I jumped the rest of the way to that House of the Red Lamp, the place where this book began, where Rawhide Kate had shown me a photograph of her husband—this very man—a circus artiste with a breast of revolting decorations, and a brace of revolvers—Jonathan Withal, King of Guns. Afterward, I remembered, he murdered Rawhide Kate. The police description mentioned a wen on his neck and oddly enough this duck sat in his fur coat with the collar up while he sweated. Besides he kept his hands in the side pockets, and by the bulge, it was guns. He had me covered.
You know how one thing leads to another. We talked about Rich Mixed. Then I got confidential, telling him all about my dog's half-sister, Biscuits, and he told me exactly how much money he made. So I was envious, sick of the police, proposing to desert, that I might take to drink and photography which in his case were such a success. But he explained through his nose how some folks being prejudiced jest nachurally couldn't see the difference between a drinkin' man and a drunkard whereas he could take it or leave it alone: that's what, although there's some as would figger five dollars a day for drinks as coming rather steep, yes, sir, but them's cheap men. As for him he wanted me to know that he was bad, and wild, all hard to curry and full of fleas and could shoot the spots out of the ten of clubs at a mile.
He paused, giving me time to admire.
Then he mentioned a bottle right here in his valise.
By that time I had caught a strong Amurrican accent, yes, siree,andowned his talk made me thirsty,althoughone drink of the real quintessence would put me under the seat dead drunk, because I'd just recovered from hydrophobia.
Out came his hands from his pockets which made me real proud to have his confidence, you betcher life. Then the patient turned round to open his valise while I grabbed his collar and wrenched it down, locking his elbows behind him until I tied his thumbs together with a string.
He wanted to give a display of fireworks, but couldn't reach his guns. So I had to tell him not to say things I was too young to hear.
"Jonathan Withal," said I, when we were settled down again. "I arrest you in the Queen's name. You will be charged with the murder of your wife, and I warn you that anything you say will be used in evidence."
The episode was sordid, its memory has become unpleasant, and it would not be mentioned here but for the issue which altered the course of my life. I had been sent as a bad character for a course of recruit drill and discipline at headquarters, but arrived at Regina with a prisoner who was in due course committed to trial for capital felony at Winnipeg. I was sent as escort to give evidence of arrest, and pending the trial and hanging was posted to our detachment at Fort Osborne just outside that city. Afterward I remained on detachment during the early winter.
II
During those few weeks at Winnipeg I had a couple of letters from my Brat who had taken to crutches and felt able-bodied. He told me that there was some rumor of Sarde getting married. The inspector had bought an engagement ring, also a girl's fur cap and coat which had gone by the stage sleigh to Helena where Widow Burrows lived. He had applied for transfer to depot at Regina as being nearer to civilization. My friend Buckie was in from Slide-out Detachment and was going on prisoners' escort to Regina.
In response I sent Brat my first poem, in celebration of Sarde's alleged engagement to Widow Burrows.
When the artful MeringueMet the gay Macaroon,And they sighed, and then sangIn the light of the moon—'Twas there! 'Twas thus! 'Twas thenI met my first, my only love.'Twas warm!
One day I was on sentry at the gate of Fort Osborne when a tramp came along the street, a bare-headed, red-haired hobo shivering in remnants of a jersey and broken down sea boots.
"I'd been in Roosia once," he told me afterward, "and you made me think of a Roosian grand dook I'd seen reviewing troops—wot chanct 'ad I got, eh?"
I remember being very comfy in fur cap, short buffalo coat, long stockings, moccasins, and my belt of burnished brass cartridges in the sunlight shone as a streak of blazing light. I asked the freezing sailor if he wanted to take on in the force. For answer he gulped at me, so I pointed out the way to the recruiting office. "Second door on the left. Good luck to you."
A few minutes after the tramp had gone to his fate a municipal policeman arrived, one of the famous Winnipeg giants. He inquired after a red-haired hobo, who was badly wanted for kicking a booking clerk of the Canadian Pacific through the office door which happened to be shut. The clerk was being removed to hospital.
Yes, I remembered seeing a person with red hair—of course, the very man. Ten minutes ago he had passed going toward Red River in a parachute.
The Winnipeg police giants are ponderous of understanding and sensitive to chaff.
The guard-house was not in use, and the men on guard lived in the barrack room. So there I was when, after my relief, I lay on my trestle half dressed, doing bed fatigue, my dog asleep beside me. Yes, I was eating dates when Red Saunders, the sailor hobo, came out from the medical ordeal.
"Hullo!" I called. "What luck?"
"They snapped me up!" cried Red, and at that the corporal of the guard, who was playing cards at the table, looked up laughing.
"'Ere!" Red seized the corporal by the collar, "come and 'ave yer 'ead punched!"
"Two, four, six," said the corporal over his cards, "and a pair, eight."
"Carrots!" I shouted. Red forgot his corporal and hastened across to destroy me. "Dates, I mean," said I gently, holding out the bag. "Sit here on my bed; Rich Mixed is only snarling for effect. Won't bite. Too full to hold another mouthful. Do you know, Red, that the gentleman over there is your superior officer?"
"Swine!"
"How true. Yet for touching even a chaffy corporal the punishment is death."
"'E insulted me!"
"Death. Court-martialed and shot at sunrise, then buried in the dogs' churchyard with a dreadful epitaph. After that you'd be punished for kicking that clerk into hospital."
"'E can't 'and me over to the police," Red lowered at the corporal, "'cause we're shipmates now. I belong."
"That's so. We've all got to behave as shipmates, and we mustn't scrag the bosn."
"I can take an 'int," quoth Red, who was gulping down the dates, stones and all. "I sai—wot d'ye think the josher said in there? Axed me my catechism, s'elp me, and I 'ad to write the answers.
"''Ad I served before? Yes, before the mast.
"'Married? No, thank Gawd.
"'Could I read and write?' So I wrote down, 'Hain't I a-doing of it?
"'Character from the clergyman of my parish?' Parish, mind you. Mine's the sea, so I writes down, 'Reverend Davy Jones don't give no discharges.
"'Care and management of 'orses?' Well, I said, I'd 'ove some overboard acrost the Western.