"Makes me strip bare, buff 'n buttocks.
"And take them oaths. Oaths fromme! I axed 'im if I looked like a traitor, or a Dago."
"A Dago, like me?"
Red gave me his grubby sticky hand in sudden sympathy, bidding me cheer up. "'Cause even a Dago ain't so bad as niggars."
I mopped my eyes with a handkerchief and begged him not to comfort me too much lest I shed unmanly tears. "Tell me," I went on, "about the man you kicked."
"Ruptured, I 'ope. You see I went into the C.P.R. office and ast for a job, and 'e said no English need apply. I'd best go, says 'e, to the Society for the Relief of Destitute Englishmen. So I ast 'im wot 'e was and 'e says, 'Canadian, get-to-'ell-out-of-'ere.' Then I 'ummedGawd Save the Queenat 'im for maybe fifteen minutes to lure 'im out from behind that 'ere bulkhead.
"The girl with the parcels was buying a ticket to Troy, and 'im showin' off of 'is manners and gold-filled teeth. Sort of, 'Yes, madame, the twelve o'clock train leaves at noon to-morrow, and the fare don't h'include no Pullman bunk nor meals nor an extra h'engine, and in the event of Indians you won't be scalped, madame, 'cause you're just too beautiful.' And she is, too.
"Meanwhile I just sang the national anthem at 'im, knowing it was bound to work if I kep' on patient, 'e gettin' as red as a lobster with 'is un'oly passions, until at last she says, 'Good-by,' an' drops 'er parcels. Stands like an 'elpless angel, saying 'ow silly she is.
"Yuss. There's me at 'er little feet a-pickin' up the pawcels 'and over 'and, when h'out comes Mr. Clerk from 'is sheltered 'utch to say I'm a thief—so I lets out a mule kick and 'e performs the high trajectory—yuss, and busts his bloomin' hypotenuse right fair across the seat. And I never said nothin' to nobody. Nar! Then just as I'm opening the door for 'er ladyship to pawss out 'e comes along for another, and gets some more of the same in 'is bleedin' gizzard. I gives it to 'im abundant, enough to lawst, but the lidy says, ''Ow could yer!' and wants to offer me money. Says I to meself, 'I 'ear thee speak of a better land,' so not wanting to interfere with them 'ippopotamus police I comes 'ere for sanctimony.
"Oh, yuss. She was h'angels h'ever bright and fair by the nime o' Vi'let Burrows. That's 'er tally. Tells the clerk she 'ails from 'Elena, Montana."
"What!"
"Vi'let Burrows, of 'Elena, Montana. 'Ere, what's up?"
But Violet Burrows, of Helena, Montana, was the lady I had swapped for a sucking pig to the cook who traded her for a dog to the sergeant-major who sold her for a pair of boots to the good Inspector Sarde. Then I had written advising her to bring an action against poor Sarde for breach of promise of marriage. According to Brat's last letter, Inspector Sarde was at Fort Qu'Appelle twenty miles north of Troy station, on the Canadian Pacific. And here was Violet Burrows on her way to Troy. It would never do. She was much too good for Sarde. She belonged to me.
I rushed at the corporal of the guard, and told him to parade me to the officer commanding.
"Oh, go and die," said he, still at his cards, "my deal."
But I had him firmly by the ear. "Come quick," said I, "come on. I've got to get transferred—tomorrow's train—a little widow—a grandmother of mine, and bound for Troy. Oh, by my sainted aunt's dear speckled socks, come on!"
III
A mile outside of Winnipeg station, just at the end of the sidings, the west-bound train slowed down, then stopped to admit three passengers who came in a government sleigh. These boarded the train and marched through the cars in procession: an important dog snuffling at the passengers on an official tour of inspection, a red-haired sailor tramp, so badly wanted by the local police that he had to be shipped outside their jurisdiction, and a black-avised soldier who, to judge by contemporary portraits, looked rather like the devil.
As we three entered the day-car the tramp shouted, "There she is!"
I told him it was rude to point, bade him stow my luggage and sit down, and then approached the lady, throwing a salute.
"Widow Burrows?" I asked.
"MissBurrows," was the prim answer.
She was a pretty, tip-tilted blonde, of the best housemaid type, a dead common young animal, yet quite attractive in a land where women were still rare. In England I used to sample them by dozens, taking an educational course in any favors that they had to offer. This one had a pert fur cap, a coat of the same which fitted crushingly over a most pretentious bustle. The skirt seemed hung the wrong way round. From the size, shape and condition of the hands, gloves would have been advisable. She giggled under inspection.
From Sarde's photographs, of course, she knew the uniform of the mounted police and airily supposed me to be his messenger; so I told her I was to be escort as far as Troy, then shed my hot furs and asked if I might sit down.
For a mere messenger she thought that rather familiar, so I told her not to bristle because it was not becoming. "Now, don't drop your parcels, my dear." I pointed out Red Saunders in the corner.
"The kicker you hired yesterday is tamed and eats out of my hand. But have you engaged assassins for to-day?" I searched under the seats, and told her that I was timid about being kicked.
"Oh, say!" She was all of a flutter. That species usually got excited when they expected kisses. It was well to keep them expecting, for when they had nothing to hope for interest was apt to flag.
"Now don't be formal, young woman. A smile, please. There, how charming the sudden sunshine! And how is your late husband? The one in Hel—in Helena?"
"Sir!"
"How stupid of me. Not introduced, eh? Miss Burrows, allow me to present Mr. la Mancha who wrote to you once or twice, you may remember, eh?"
"Oh!"
"Please do that 'Oh!' again. Lips perfectly enchanting, Mrs. Burrows. I could arrange my kisses in that vase like roses."
Miss Burrows played at indignant heroine molested by a villain.
"I—I—I'm n-not Mrs. Burrows. I told you before."
"So? You've exorcised the ghost of the late husband? May his divorced spirit fry, for all I care, Miss Burrows. Or perhaps you're only a widow, at home in Helena."
"Now you go away, Mr. la Mancha, or I'll get right mad."
"Don't call me mister. Call me Blackguard."
"I got no use for you anyways."
"You advertised for me."
"I didn't! I never! You advertised!"
"Ah! And you sent me the photograph of an ugly aunt—a scarecrow—instead of your lovely self. Why—why?"
"Say," she bridled, "if Mr. Sarde sent you to —wall—all I kin say is—"
"Don't you meanwas?"
"I'll tell Mr. Sarde—there!"
"Do you know that his father was hanged when his mother stole the ducks?"
My arm stole round her waist.
"Oh, we'll be noticed! I'll scream! I swear I'll scream!"
"We'll both scream. Then we're sure to be noticed."
"You're just too horrid. It's not respectable."
"I hang in thy sunshine all spread out, like a kipper. Make me what you will." My arm closed round her waist, and was hardly long enough.
"Now you want to let me go right now, or—"
"My dear, you've never enjoyed yourself so much in all your life."
"I shall call for help!"
"Do. If I'd only a tuning fork, I'd give you the note—the high Q."
"When the brakeman comes, or the conductor, I will, I swear I will!"
"Won't the newsboy do? Don't eat me, try a banana."
I bought one from the newsboy for fifteen cents, half peeled it and held it to her lips.
"I won't touch it," she said, and bit. "I—"
"Bite, ruby lips, clutch hard, oh, pearls, and give your tongue a rest, 'cause you can't talk with your mouth full, greedy. To think that all your ancestors lived on nuts! Exit banana up center. And now with its tender inside skin I wipe the powder gently off thy nose."
"We'll be seen!" she pleaded.
"And envied. Don't I flirt nicely? Banana skin should be good to swab off rouge, but I think this must be a preparation of pig fat and brick dust, for it won't come off. I use cherry tooth paste, but then, I'm a brunette. And now, my dear, if you'll turn your nose half left, I don't mind kissing you."
"I dare you!"
"This way. Um. If I weren't so painfully shy, yes, you may tickle me."
"I didn't."
"Then you should. Now, when you're finished huffing like the female puff bird, you'll tickle me, or I'll dance you the length of the car."
"Will that do?"
"Nicely, thanks. Now left ear."
"There's the brakeman, he'll see us!"
The brakeman passed, followed by the conductor who examined tickets, but Miss Violet with her nose in the air and my arm around her waist, pretended total strangers.
I began to lose interest. The girl was mine for the asking. Any man in the force could have won her easy favors. She only interested me as Sarde's property. "And so," said I, "you're meeting him at Qu'Appelle."
"Mind you own business."
"It is my business. Didn't I tell you to sue him for breach of promise?"
"There isn't any breach. We're engaged, so there."
"So you've got to marry him, eh?" and I led her on to talk about herself, the only topic she had for conversation.
Miss Burrows, was, I believe, not fortunate in the selection of her parents, and had been adopted at the age of fourteen by an uncle, Eliphalet P. Burrows, known as Loco, because he happened to be cracked. He was caretaker at a bankrupt mine near Helena, absorbed in a fool invention which used up all his wages, and glad to have Miss Violet because she was cheap. A servant would expect to be paid.
To those who have eyes, ears and a heart, the wilderness gives a better education than the schools, but the girl turned her back on that, sprawling in the parlor with windows draped to shut out all things beautiful. The place was full of shams and plush vulgarities, and there she spent her leisure reading novels.
Now fiction honestly made by craftsmen may be true to human life, and at its best a mirror reflecting the world. But an average novel depicts a hero perfectly sweet, canned virtue, guaranteed bullet proof; and a heroine who is potted chastity and warranted tender: two figures void of human character, whose respectable passions are thwarted for about three hundred pages, saleable at one dollar and thirty-five cents. Then they marry, and live happily ever after. Truth may be stranger than that—but I have doubts.
Miss Violet's novels depicted villains of spotless blackness, the good flawlessly innocent but painfully underfed. Vice lived in guilty splendor, wicked earls lunched in their coronets, lurid adventuresses went hurtling to the bad, and nobody had the slightest sense of humor. She fed on offal.
Old Burrows had a stepson, young Joe Chambers, a cow-hand earning forty dollars a month, a decent fellow, tongue-tied and a lout, but with the makings of a first-rate husband. He spent his money on presents, his spare time in devotion, while Miss Violet, who had nobody else to flirt with, made love to him out of books, had him for dummy to keep herself in practise, and wrecked his life without the least compunction.
She waited for the lover of her dreams, the hero of fiction, and in this condition replied to my mock advertisement in the Matrimonial Ashbin. Some shreds or casual patches of modesty impelled her to send the portrait of a repulsive aunt, and to fit herself out in bogus widowhood.
Decent women avoid that sort of correspondence, and our boys of C Troop felt that the girls who made love by post were fair game for any sort of lark. For the sheer repulsiveness of the photograph she sent, this correspondence was a standing joke in the troop until Inspector Sarde was fool enough to take her seriously. She sent him a photograph of herself and dropped the pose of widow. I sent her ample warning.
Had she shown my letter to her lover, Joe would have ridden across and shot me. Had she shown it to Uncle Loco, he would have prated and been tiresome. Even her conscience told her she had laid herself open to insult and as a matter of common sense, had better take no risk of something worse. But her vanity had been wounded and in a silly rage, she must needs get even. She would take my advice and lead Sarde on into a promise of marriage, then if he broke his pledge threaten an action at law.
So came Sarde's photograph in uniform, and with quite regular features and a viking mustache he seemed her ideal lover, her hero of fiction. He wrote too as lonely men are apt to do. After all, he held Her Majesty's Commission in a distinguished corps, had official rank as a gentleman, was ex-officio justice of the peace, could give her a social position, offered marriage, and was now in earnest. The poor fool thought herself in love.
Sarde was not very clever. An Ontario farm, a military college, and some forlorn outposts on the frontier had not completed him in worldly wisdom. With a lieutenant's pay, to marry on the strength of a pretty photograph gave him distinction in a world of fools. By running into debt, he managed to send an engagement ring, and afterward that sealskin cap and coat, cut as the fashion was, to fit over a bustle. All that I knew, from my chum Buckie who sent me a letter of gossip from Fort French. Later, Sarde sent the girl a hundred dollars, a month's pay, and got himself transferred to Fort Qu'Appelle within reach of civilization.
For her part Miss Violet developed lumbago in the left leg, so that Loco had to engage a Chinese servant. Released from housework, she decided that her mission in life was to help Loco with his invention, for which she must prepare by spending a year at college. Thus Loco was induced to borrow sixty dollars for her fare down East—"spoiling the Egyptians" she called that, and Joe raised forty dollars. "All's fair in love," said she.
Heart-broken, she left old Loco to his fate, boarding the train at Helena in floods of tears. "I cried my eyes out." By the time she reached Fargo, she cheered up. "Can't be helped," said she, and took the train for Winnipeg. There, feeling much better, she bought a ticket for Troy. A stage sleigh thence would take her to Fort Qu'Appelle, and she wired Sarde the date of her arrival. By the time I met her outside Winnipeg on board the west-bound train, she had recovered from her late bereavement. "It's all in a lifetime," said she.
"It's love at long range," said I. "The adoring swine sends you a first-class ticket for Cupid's express, saying, 'Come to my arms, regardless of expense.' But, my dear, why Sarde?"
"And why not?"
"There's me."
"You? You're only an enlisted man, but my Cyril is an officer."
"Comfort me," I squeezed her, "or I'll scream."
My attention wandered to Rich Mixed, to Saunders who grinned and winked, to the few passengers and the passing landscape. But Miss Burrows, to bring me back to the main thing, herself, produced a grubby hand while she talked palmistry, bidding me read her fortune.
I told her, between yawns that the paws of little cats are much alike, useful for mousing.
"But I'm a lady."
"Ladies and cats are pretty much the same. Both wash themselves all over every day."
It was not in that sense Miss Burrows had claimed to be a lady, and with an angry flush she set to work to put me in my place.
"Oh, say," she asked incisively, "ain't English common soldiers with red coats called Tommies?"
"Toms," I corrected, "not Tommies. Toms. A she puss, who uses cheap scent instead of licking her fur, is apt to get scratched by Toms."
"How dare you say I'm no lady?"
"You're not, my dear. You're nice and common, frightfully attractive, pretty enough to turn the head of any Tom. Why, pussie, dear, if you lived in England, any of our chaps would walk out with you in the park. They'd charge half-a-crown—but, by jove, I'd do it for a bob."
"Holy snakes! Me to pay you for—wall, I guess that's all you red-coats are fit for anyway. We thrashed the stuffing out of you!"
"We're better without the stuffing. Oh, much better. I never pad. Do you?"
"We chased you out of Amurrica."
"We liked it. We like being noticed. What breaks our hearts is being ignored by a proud people."
"How about Bunker Hill?"
"Ah, yes. How true. But if he'd been a good Amurrican you'd call him Bunker G. Hill, or Bunker Zee Hill, eh?"
"It was a battle, and you ran like rabbits."
"Eh? Did we smell some beer? At the slightest whiff of beer we outleap the longest rabbit. Makes me thirsty to think of. Wish I'd been there. Pussie, where is Bunker V. Hill? There may be some beer left."
"Boston, of course."
"Boston. We've got a little town named after it. And where's Boston?"
"You ain't so ignorant as that. Wall, I reckon it's the capital of New England."
"Oh, we've got a place named after New England, too. Let's see—oh, yes, isn't it run, like ours, by the Irish?"
"You make me sick."
"How charmingly frank you are."
"And you," she sniveled, "just"—sniff—"treating me"—sniff—"as if I wasn't a lady."
"That," said I gravely, "I shall never be."
"So I'm no account," said Miss Burrows with asperity. "I think you've got just the homeliest face, and the most or'nary manners I ever seen. You're no gentleman."
"Alas, no! I was found in an ashbin with dead cats. My manners were a disgrace to my native slum. My face is my misfortune. Pity me."
"You're a brute!" she sobbed.
"Cry, but take care, my dear, not to sniff. There, you spoil it all by sniffing."
"Beast!"
"Beauty! And so we're Beauty and the Beast. She loved him."
At that she cheered up, and scratched.
"The beast," said she, "was a prince in disguise, but you're a—"
"No, my dear. He wasn't a mere prince. He traveled in white goods, a real gent, a swell."
"You're laughing at me."
"All the time," said I.
"Oh!"
"Because you're angry, my dear, for once in your life you're behaving simply and naturally—first lesson in being a lady. You'll get on."
"Oh, that's what you think."
"American girls are the cleverest in the world at the great business."
"Wall now, what's that? I'd love to hear."
"Getting on. The principal word in the great American language is the verb to get. I get, you get out, he gets there. We are getting on, you are getting way up, they are busted. Do you use hair oil?"
"No, of course not."
"Then you may lay your golden head upon my—hold on. I'll spread my handkerchief—so. Now, cuddle up for a sleep."
She had supper with me at the dining station, and afterward while I smoked, ate candy until she could hold no more, and played with Rich Mixed until both were tired.
"Sleep is good," I told her, "so two sleeps are better than one. I told the brakeman to wake us up at Troy. Sweet dreams."
Sometime in the dead middle of the night, Inspector Sarde boarded the train at Troy, and came swaggering through the cars in search of a girl with an aureole of bright hair, a dainty tip-tilted nose and pouting lips, wearing the furs he had sent her, awaiting his first kiss, demure, shy, innocent.
He found his promised wife clasped in my arms, her head upon my shoulder and both of us fast asleep. He never really loved me, anyway.
Being a Canadian he had the national qualities of strength and self-control, and yet was capable of a blind white fury in which his eyes would blaze from a livid deathly face. Because he did not lift his voice or use unnecessary words I found him quite impressive. On this occasion a stroke from his whip aroused me so that I started broad awake staring up at an officer of the corps. I threw off the girl, stood to attention with wooden gravity and saluted.
As to Miss Burrows, with one blink she sprang into his arms and said, "Oh, Cyril!" which made him rather comic in his high authority. He licked his dry lips before he could even speak.
"Constable," said he, very cold and rigid, like some cold monumental lamp-post entwined by a siren or a mermaid, "what are you doing here?"
"Transferred, sir, Winnipeg to Regina."
"Get off the train," his words were stinging, his tone had malice. "I'll wire the commissioner that I detained you on my detachment, and in the morning you report at my office for duty."
"I understand, sir," for he had me at his mercy. I saluted and turned to obey.
Then Sarde faced the woman who had betrayed him.
"Come," he said icily, and turned on his heel.
"Oh, Cyril!"
"Come," he repeated, over his shoulder, "unless you prefer to go on with the train; you can go to hell for all I care."
"Oh, Cyril, let me explain!"
"Are you coming or not?"
So he left the train, with the woman trailing after him, making a scene. I followed.
IV
Far back in the long ago time an Indian woman lay in her teepee dying and with her last breath called her lover's name. And many miles away her lover heard. He pulled up his dog-train and stood beside the cariole, and listening to the silence, cried, "Who calls?"
The French Canadian voyagers would tell that story of the Indian who heard a spirit voice, and answering cried, "Qu' Appelle?" From that cry was the valley named, and the old Hudson's Bay Fort is still called Qu'Appelle.
On the hillside overlooking the fort stood our log shanties of the police detachment, but Inspector Sarde, the officer commanding, and his new wife had quarters at the hotel.
I was posted to Sarde's detachment and as all soldiers know, when an officer commanding is down upon any trooper he can easily drive the man to mutiny, desertion or suicide within the first few weeks. Sarde did his very best to that intent, hazed me, nagged at me, goaded me, set traps to catch me in some lapse of temper, told me off to impossible duties and used false charges to give me ruthless punishment. My pay was collected in fines, the other fellows had their leave stopped on my account that they might be turned against me, and once I passed a night in the cells with a hundred degrees of frost. Of course I deserved all I got, and made no moan because I had so richly earned Sarde's hatred. He put me on my mettle, forced me to excel in every duty, made me the best man in his command, set me to keep the other chaps in good spirits and make him a good example in the way of manners.
Of course, our men told nothing to civilians about affairs within our family; but passers-by on the road who saw me undergoing punishment, began to spread the scandal until nobody in the place would speak to Sarde or call upon his wife.
Buckie, the dear chap who first had introduced me to the outfit, was recently transferred to this division, and posted to Fort Qu'Appelle. He was my friend in very bitter need, feeding me coffee when I was like to freeze on pack drill, rousing the other fellows until they would perjure themselves to the eyes in my defense, getting me help with my extra work, turning the crowd against Sarde. And then he used to comfort me in private.
One Sunday afternoon Sarde was away to Troy, and Buckie helped me at the stable where I had to set the ring for a stove-pipe in the roof of an A tent. For some time we were busy while we measured and cut the canvas. Then, sitting on up-ended buckets in the warm dusk, we began the stitching. After a morning talk with Sarde I felt so ill that I asked Buckie if the man intended to kill me.
"Sarde," answered Buckie, "says he'll tone you down or kill you, one or the other. You need it a whole lot. Why? Because you'd got to think you were Adam before the creation of Eve. The world is not inhabited entirely by one Blackguard. Suppose you think about somebody else for a change."
That was straight from the shoulder anyway. Since first I had seen him a rookie of the rookiest, he had become tremendously grown-up into the very stock pattern of buck policeman.
"The C Troop crowd," he went on, "think you're the sort of bounder who needs to live in lime-light on salvos of applause."
Buckie's respectable soul was in full revolt at my enormities. I tried not to flinch.
"I ain't much on soldiering"—he was so nice in the vernacular!—"but I been taking stock of the men who count, who do things and get the outfit a good name."
I thought of Buckie's first advent on the charging steed, and how I halted his trooper, so that the cavalier sped at me through the air, gun still in hand and resolute for duty.
"The real men," said he, "keep their mouths tight except when they've something to say. That gives 'em time to think; you don't get any. They obey orders, and there's nothing else in life until they've done their job. So they've no time to show off; you have. You'd make a showman, or a clown in a circus, whereas this outfit is something serious."
I reminded Buckie of being really serious once when Rain stole his clothes and he paraded around in my painted cow-skin robe tracking a malefactor.
"Now, Sarde," he went on, "was only a corporal when he took a prisoner out of Big Bear's camp in face of two thousand guns. He's a man, and he'll be superintendent before he's through. You'll never get your stripes. Why, Blackguard, Sarde wouldn't be a man at all if he allowed you to monkey with his wife."
I told Buckie to pet me, or I'd cry. He said he couldn't because he was using his foot to hold the canvas down.
Then, stitching away with sail-needle and palm thimble, he looked up at me with just the expression of some prim old maid. "Did you ever hear tell," he asked, "of old Fort Carlton?"
Rather! Fort Carlton stood on the bank of the ice-clad North Saskatchewan, a cluster of framed log houses inside a stockade with bastions on the two rear corners. How well I remembered the picture! It was a trading post, strong against bows and arrows, but from the high edge of the plains even a trade musket had range enough to pick men off in the square. All that, I had read as a boy in fine adventure books, longing to ride with the French half-breeds and the Cree Indians running buffaloes up there on the plains above the fort. I wanted to taste the pemmican made by their squaws of bison beef and berries, to sail with the gay brigades which carried that food to other Hudson's Bay posts all down the great Mackenzie. But now the bison herds were swept away, they and the hunters and the brave voyagers.
"We're going there," said Buckie.
"What, to Fort Carlton?"
"You bet. That's why Sarde ordered a stove-pipe hole for this tent. It's to cover a sleigh for his wife. The sleigh will be rigged as a shack with a stove, kitchen, bed, everything."
Now I began to understand why men were being drafted in to Fort Qu'Appelle, the tons of harness and gear we had been overhauling, Sarde's visit to Troy and lots of other happenings.
Buckie began to gossip.
"Down at the Hudson's Bay store yesterday a Scotch half-breed from the North was talking of Louis Riel, the man, you know, who got up the Red River Rebellion way back in '71. He is up there now, among the old buffalo runners and voyagers, who used to hunt and man the brigades for the Hudson's Bay Company at Fort Carlton. He is spreading treason among the breeds and the Crees. God has sent him, he says, to raise war against the police, the white men and the pope, to found a republic of hunters and voyagers, to be the father of all the prairie men. They are to burn Fort Carlton, to kill all the mounted police, to drive the whites from the plains—for then the buffaloes will come back, and their lodges will be red with meat as in the good old times."
"So there'll be war?" I asked and my heart was jumping with excitement.
"When the grass comes." Buckie threaded his needle neatly as a housewife. "War," said he. "That's why we're going to Carlton, and Sarde won't have much time to spare for hazing you, eh, Blackguard?"
Buckie proved right in all that he had told me. Within the week we marched, some sixteen men, mostly green recruits, each driving a one-horse sled known as a jumper, laden with forage, bedding, kit, camp gear, grub and even fire-wood. As on a sea voyage, there was nothing to be had by the wayside, so our jumpers were laden like so many little ships, as our flotilla drove on the great snows. The mercury was frozen, and at the Salt Plains, it was sixty degrees below zero, rough travel for Mrs. Sarde in her sleigh-tent, not comfortable for us. One of our fellows, Crook, had his brain chilled, and in high delirium drove off to chase a star until a little chap called Sheppey rounded him up and herded him to camp. We had to leave Crook at the Salt Plain station, and Doc, with his face frozen off, stayed with him by way of nurse.
Sarde was quite friendly to me on that trail, and for once I liked him because he played the man, taking his share with us, not with his wife. And I was happy trotting beside my jumper, pulling my horse out of snowdrifts, busiest man in the crowd when we set up the tents and cooked, rolled down our beds and slept, broke up our camp and marched.
I even made Buckie own up I was not a bounder.
Indeed, that five days' journey had been quite perfect if only one might have left the baggage behind, and gone without a cold uncomfortable body, a sled and a weary horse. The spirit needs no baggage to enter that great White Silence of the snow-field or to visit the night splendors of the star drift.
On our last march of sixty miles we drove through the log village of Batoche where Louis Riel was hatching his new rebellion, and some of his hunters lounged sullen in their doorways. There we crossed the South Saskatchewan and all day long were driving through the land between the two branches of that river, so very soon to become the seat of war. It was dusk when we came to the edge of the plains, looking down on the valley of the North Saskatchewan. It was starlight when we reached the foot of the hill, and swung round the stockade to enter the river gate of old Fort Carlton.
I
Two human lives flow sparkling down childhood's merry rapids, and more sedately across the sadder years, to draw together, then to run apart, until at last they meet midway upon their journey, and as one life go married toward their rest.
Two rivers tumbling down the Rocky Mountains, sparkling through the foot-hills, racing across the plains, draw near together, then flow apart a while before they meet, and marry to form the great Saskatchewan rolling toward the sea.
There is my map, but I was always bad in my geography, and as to history—well, what can you expect of a blackguard?
Just where the two Saskatchewans first draw near, and are but fifty miles or so apart, our base, Fort Carlton, stood on the northern branch, and Batoche, the rebel camp, was on the southern river. Below these, in the land between the rivers, lay the Prince Albert settlement, and its trading village stood on the northern branch fifty-five miles down-stream from Fort Carlton. So you see, the rebels commanded the main approach both to the fort and the settlement. They were strong enough to threaten one while they attacked the other. But neither fort nor settlement had strength sufficient to attack the rebels. So much for strategy.
Louis Riel commanded at Batoche four hundred buffalo runners, dead shots at full gallop, and perhaps the finest marksmen in the world. He had two hundred Assiniboin warriors, and twenty-two hundred Crees—in all three thousand men. His envoys were at large among the Blackfeet, and if they rose—good night! Still worse, the Irish Fenians in the United States seemed able to control the government, for they were openly preparing, in Riel's interest, their third armed raid upon Canada. Worst of all, we could not arrest the rebel because he happened to be French Canadian, and had the active sympathy of fifteen hundred thousand brave compatriots. Our first motion might give the whole Dominion to the flames of civil war.
I don't know whether that paragraph is politics or tactics, but the position was very awkward.
For eleven years now, with only from three to five hundred riders, the mounted police had held that big wild empire of the plains, so that civilians went entirely unarmed because we kept the peace. Now the settlers were threatened with every horror of red Indian warfare, and they had no guns.
And we were isolated. No help could reach the plains. There was not then, and is not now, any trail connecting the plains with Eastern Canada, or with the Pacific coast. On either side of us rolled the terrific and unbroken forest, and the Canadian Pacific Railway was still a string of gaps. When Canada raised a field force for our rescue the United States refused a passage for her troops. Neither could England help us, for the Russians were marching on India, and war might be declared at any moment.
So everything depended on little scattered clusters of the police and on our big chief, Sorrel Top, commissioner of the outfit, gentle, brave, strong, wise and greatly loved. All through the winter he had been throwing small detachments into Carlton until on the first of March, in '85, we numbered a hundred men. Fifty civilians joined us as volunteers, and all the loyal Scotch half-breeds came to us for refuge. The rest of the Prince Albert settlers held their village, some of them armed with sticks.
On the twenty-sixth of March, at 2 A.M., a despatch came in from Sorrel Top to Paddy, our commandant at Carlton. At three o'clock the rider was released to catch some supper, and from the mess-room his news went through the fort Rich Mixed and I were over at stables, for Anti, my poor horse, had all his pasterns badly stocked from too much work patrolling. So he had some sugar, and we were getting on quite nicely with the treatment when somebody came over from the mess-room.
"That you, Buckie?"
"Remnants of," he growled.
I told him I was on picket again at four. Life was too good just then to waste on sleep.
"It's war," said Buckie.
War at last! He sat on the bail between two stalls, drooping with weariness, while the lantern light cast shadows on his face, dead white with smoldering eyes.
"Turn in," said I, "or you'll be crocked by morning." He told me he was on flying sentry until four, then gave me news.
By stripping his far-flung outposts, our big chief, Sorrel Top, had scratched up another hundred men and was marching from Fort Qu'Appelle. Two men were badly frozen, sixty-five were snow-blind, the horses had played out, and some civilian teamsters lagging behind were captured. Then a rebel ambush had been discovered just four miles ahead, so Sorrel Top, with a sixty-mile march, had swung into Prince Albert. There he was resting twenty-four hours to organize the settlers for defense. He would arrive this day, the twenty-sixth, take over our command, and with the combined force crush the rebellion before it got too strong. But we were not to move until he came. That is a wise delay which makes the road safe.
"Who do you think," asked Buckie, "rode in with that despatch?"
I supposed he would be some poor B Troop coyote.
"His name," said Buckie impressively, "is Joe Chambers."
But that was the name of Mrs. Sarde's old lover, the Montana cowboy. Had he joined the force?
"Asked for you, Blackguard."
"Go, fetch him."
By the time I had saddled Anti and bridled him—he was Anti-everything, especially the bit—Buckie came back with Chambers. He was a suspicious, jealous, clear-eyed sort of beast without any small talk. He sized me up, judging my points as though he were asked to buy me, but not one word would he say until Buckie cleared. Then he spoke slowly, tersely, and with weight in all he said, most clean of heart, direct and sterling man.
Miss Burrows, he told me, had wrote from Troy in the British possessions, to Loco, her fool uncle. Claimed that she'd met in the cars going west a man which belonged to the police, name of La Mancha. Was that my name?
I owned up.
Name sounded Dago, but I seemed to be white. Had treated her white, anyways. He thanked me, and I bowed.
At Troy this lady got off the cars to marry an officer, name of Sarde. Was he any good?
"No."
She was Sarde's wife, she wrote, and heaps miserable.
I could have opened Mr. Chambers' eyes. His lady had a smile for one man, "Oh, thank you, how nice!" for another, dropped her gloves for a third—she was great at dropping parcels—made eyes at all the rest. She had three-fourths of our garrison in a state of day-dreams and fond hopes for more, the kind of flirt who ogles niggers so that they go crazy and have to be burned. I could not tell Chambers all I thought of his lady, who wrote that her heart was broke.
Nothing had this real man to say about his own engagement to the woman, of the ranch he had stocked with cattle under her brand, registered in her name, not his own "with the stock association up to Helena." He told me nothing then of the 'dobe cabin, the fixings, the pi-anner, all for her, of the months' wages he had given that she might get eddicated down in civilization, or of the callous way she had betrayed him.
Only he stiffened, and his voice came near to breaking as he told me of suspicions. This guy she'd married up with must be some swine, and needed shooting a whole lot for making her unhappy. So he'd rode to Troy and found her gone. That meant, I suppose, that he had sacrificed his living, to ride a thousand miles for a woman who had not even troubled to send a post-card. At Troy he reckoned to find the preacher who had hitched up that team. I had tried also, but only discovered that Miss Burrows went with Mr. Sarde from Fort Qu'Appelle for a sleigh-ride, and came back married.
Chambers had tracked the pair to Troy, where he found that the ceremony had been performed by Happy Bill, a converted railroad fireman, not in holy orders; not licensed to marry people. He had broken the law to perform a sacrilege.
"He ain't no branded preacher," so Chambers put it, "but a maverick which ain't allowed in the herd, and railroad men is worse than sheep herders, anyhow."
Sarde had found the woman in my arms, and as she played crooked with him, so he had done with her. There had been no marriage. She was not his wife.
"And now," said Chambers, "I done joined the police, to follow this here Sarde. Your general give me a despatch to ride, and I shorely burned this trail to get here quick." He pulled the service-revolver from its holster.
"I hain't stuck on this hyre soldier gun," he said, "but I had to hang up my Colt at the Troy hotel—so this will have to do. Where's Sarde?"
"I'd like to see Sarde killed," said I, "but I'd hate to see you hanged."
"Where's Sarde?"
"Search me," said I, "he's not my property."
"Where's Sarde?"
"Find him," said I, and swinging to the saddle, rode away.
II
At 4 A.M. I relieved the chap on picket just at the brow of the plains where the road curves over southward, toward Batoche. The orders he repeated showed quite clearly that Paddy expected the rebels to rush the fort at dawn.
Orion was setting already, and the stillness became more terrible every moment, the live menacing silence. Before I had even time for an alarm shot the rebel scouts might rush me, for if they meant to attack the fort at dawn it was high time they put me out of action. Stars rose upon my left, they set upon my right, then the earth's edge darkened black against the east, and it looked as if some angel with a brush made a faint wash of stars to paint the sky.
Up the hill behind me came thud of hoofs, and swish of skidding runners, clank of harness, voices, "Gid-up you! Haw, Mollie!" I sensed a mounted man leading a string of sleighs up the long hill from the fort, but never saw them until they topped the brow curving past me filmy-gray like ghosts. They were bound, they told me, to get the traders' stores from Duck Lake Post before the rebels came.
I heard reveillé sound, its notes faint silver, tingling the fine air. The eastward sky was lemon flecked with rose, the snow-field was changing from indigo to lilac, then the red sun shone level through poplar groves, and made their frosted branches cornelian in mist of fire. The sky was cobalt next, and shadows like blue pools filled all the hollows, while the poplar groves were changing to tremulous white diamond. It was time for breakfast, but my relief was late. Then I was drowsy pacing old Anti on a measured beat to keep us both awake. Half sleeping I heard at distant intervals the bugles calling "Dress," "Stables," "Grub pile."
The string of teams came rattling homeward now, at a sharp trot, taking the hills on a lope, the teamsters shouting chaff one to another, the men in the sleigh beds with their carbines ready, peering back. The sleighs came past me empty, and somebody shouted, "Rebels! Run, Blackguard! Rebels coming!"
"Send my relief," I yelled as they went swinging down the curve, the first patrol of the regiment which ever showed its tail to an enemy.
For a long time I scanned the rolling plain ahead with all its frozen pools and clumps of aspen. There was no sign of rebels. Then from the fort I heard the bugle crying a new call: "Boot and saddle!"
Not knowing what that was, I rode to the lookout, from whence I could see the square aswarm with men, all falling in like atoms of some crystal until a general parade stood rigid on command. It was but a mile. I could see Paddy making a speech, and heard the thin thread of sound, lost in a riot of cheering. Then there were short sharp barks of command while the advance guard formed fours, the little brass seven-pounder swung her little tail, dismounted men piled into all the sleighs sent out again to load at Duck Lake Post, and the rear-guard covered all—out through the water-gate, round the stockade, across the trampled meadow and up the timbered hillside. Two scouts came ramping past me and plowed on into the blinding glare. Next Paddy, attended by his bugler, rode up to the hill crest, and I begged him to let me come.
"Fall in," said he, "rear-guard." So I spurred through the drifts to get there lest he should change his mind.
The column was in half sections, the last consisting of Buckie who fancied himself with the stiff cavalry seat, and the Montana cow-hand who rode easy. I dropped in behind them and called Joe Chambers back. Had he seen Sarde, I asked.
He had not.
Sarde was just ahead, riding abreast of the column in full view, but Chambers did not know his enemy by sight, and Buckie had not told.
"You see that officer?" I asked.
"Your partner," said the cowboy, "says that's Inspector Brown."
"Yes, Bunty Brown," said I.
"Your partner called him Jocko," said the cowboy. "So that's Sarde!" He whipped out his gun and spurred forward.
"Old Bunt was a jockey," I explained, "before he went to the bad and joined the police."
Chambers fell back beside me and sheathed his gun.
"Seen Mrs. Sarde?" I asked, to change the subject.
"Sent her a note," said Chambers; "she sent a letter back."
He would not tell me what was in that letter.
Ten miles we rode through park-land with its little tarns for ducks, its aspen groves and drifted glades where soft snow lay neck-deep beside our trail. Then, as we passed through a narrow belt of bush, word came from man to man, that the scouts were racing in. Beyond the timber our column formed front on the left, extending out at right angles from the road for nearly a hundred yards. The big sleighs plunged through drifts like boats in a storm at sea, forming a rough and broken line of rampart. Then we dismounted into snow breast-deep, and sent back all the horses into the bush for shelter with one man to each bunch of four, while the rest of us took cover in clusters behind the sleighs, and our officers tramped out a pathway close behind us.
The open land ahead was only about a hundred yards across encircled by clumps of bush. On our far right, across the road, a lane deep-drifted, went off to a little shack on rising ground. That farm had a field enclosed with a snake fence which filled the angle between lane and road.
Out there along the road beside the fence was Paddy, with our interpreter, Joe McKay, a half-breed, a chap we liked. He was interpreting to the skipper while an Indian, wrapped in a dingy white blanket, stood making a long oration. This was the Cree chief, Beardy, who owned the farm on our right. He seemed to be talking forever and ever, amen.
I felt it was all some endless, rambling dream, from which I should wake for breakfast. Beside me on my right was Chambers, and half my mind was listening while he talked. He told me of the ranch he had made for Miss Burrows, the shack he had built for her, the fixings, the ornymints. Those made me chuckle, while the other half of my mind wondered resentfully what the joke was about. It seemed profane to laugh while in my dream I knew I was badly frightened.
Out on the road the Indian suddenly snatched at the interpreter's carbine, but McKay was on the alert, and emptied his revolver into Beardy, who crumpled up, staggered against the fence and lay there twitching. Our leader swung round in the saddle, and "Fire, boys!" he shouted.
"Please, sir, you're right in the way!" cried the seven-pounder gun.
"Oh, never mind me!" laughed Paddy. Beardy had held him in talk while the rebels, four times our strength, traveling light on snow-shoes, hidden within the bush, closed in a horseshoe formation with our line between its prongs, almost surrounded at point-blank range for the coming massacre. We faced a blinding snow-glare toward the sun, where trees of branched sprayed diamond sparkled along their roots with jets of flame, and gusts of smoke like pearls rolled in serene air. We fired out a blue smoke film, our bullets whipping the crests of snow-drift into spray, and dust of diamond fell from the fairy woods.
So rifles blazed and smoked, so bullets whined and sang, but still the dream sense told me it was all a mere twittering as of summer birds amid the mighty silence of the plains which filled the vault of heaven sun-high with peace. Then my mind cleared, for a gust of lead was smashing the sleigh-box above me, shattering and splintering planks into long slivers. I knew that our force was helplessly bogged down, ambushed and being destroyed. After one shot the seven-pounder jammed. Nine gallant civilian volunteers were killed attempting to charge the shack upon our right. The enemy at both ends enfiladed our broken line.
Then in the bush I saw a man leap, falling. Buckie let out a little yelp of bliss, but this was my meat and I claimed it. "And what's the next article?" said I. At my side I heard something grunt. "Pig!" said I, but Chambers rolled over against me. So Buckie and I let our carbines cool off, while we watched Chambers to see what was wrong with him. The red flush faded under the tan, the strong features became thin, pinched, frozen. His buffalo coat spread broad upon the snow, the sunlight blazed on scarlet serge and glittering buttons, but his face was in gray shadow.
"Wake up, old man," said I, stripping his serge apart to give him air. "Where is it, Joe?"
His fingers plucked at my sleeves. He whispered but I could not catch the words. Then the clay-white face relaxed, a blue shadow like rising water flooded over it. The lips parted. I took a letter out of the dead man's pocket.
A bullet whipped fur from my sleeve, one crashed against my carbine so that it stung my fingers, and half a dozen shattered through the sleigh as I turned back to the fighting. Those shadowy figures moving through the bush toward our rear must be stopped quickly.
Just then Doctor Miller came mooching along behind me, and half a dozen men were begging him to take cover, while in a gentle drawling voice he told us not to fuss.
"Fine scrapping, boys, make the most of the entertainment. Just been shot in the pocketbook myself. Bullet hit a pack o' debts but nary one receipt. So, this man's promoted, eh?" He knelt down beside Joe's body. "Beyond my jurisdiction, Blackguard, eh?"
He gave me the dead man's belt of ammunition, dusted the snow from his knees as he stood up, and went lounging back down the line, giving a new heart, a finer courage to every man he passed.
Red Saunders had found his place too warm a corner, so he climbed over Buckie and lay down on the dead man's outspread overcoat, his legs across my own. He said he always 'ated getting wet.
"Happy?" I asked him, for I liked the sailor hobo in those days.
"'Ungry. Gimme blood! Did ye see Sarde? 'E's the only h'orficer lying dahn. Got Gilchrist's carbine. I kicked 'im—by h'accident, cruel 'ard, too. 'Ad to appollergise."
"Aim lower," said I, "point-blank. And lie low; your blazing red hair draws fire."
My next shot got my man, at least I think so, although Buckie claimed him.
"If I'm knocked," said Red, "I 'ereby wills and bequeaths to you, Blackguard, h'all my just debts. Share up them cartridges and don't be a 'og."
To cheer up my Brat in hospital at Fort French I had sent him by the last mail out a nice dirge set to our old Spanish tune ofAlcala. So I began to sing that while I loaded, pumped and fired:
"Carry Brat reverently, gently, slow,Pace by the trunnions with patient treadOver the drifts of the rolling snowWith arms reversed, for the dead."
"Cheerful, eh?" was Red's pungent comment.
"Little we thought of him while we sharedAll that was worst in the long campaign,Little he guessed that we really cared:But drums roll now, for the slain.
"Spreading the flag o'er his last long sleep,Leading the charger he may not ride;Though for the living the ways are steepThe road for the dead rolls wide.
"Bravely he suffer'd, and manly fought,Great with Death's majesty, rides he there,Royal the honors he dearly bought,The peace which we may not share."
"Oh, shut it," Red wailed.
I fired once more at a pearl of smoke under the diamond trees, while I heard the death-scream of a horse at the rear, the shouting of orders and then the bugle crying, "Cease firing! Retire!"
The rebels were charging. The horses led up to our line were bucking, fighting, breaking loose, falling as the teamsters backed them to the sleighs. Anti went down dead as I mounted. I saw a teamster crumple up, the chap whose load of coal I had burned to make him speak, Chatter McNabb!
Then I went mad with hatred of the rebels, I was mad with everything, with everybody, jostling Chatter's horses into place, snatching the traces up and hooking on, swearing at Red's bungling attempts to help me. I shouted at Chatter to keep his hair on for I wouldn't let him be scalped.
I dragged him, all white with snow out of the drifts, hoisted him to the sleigh, and tumbled him into the sleigh-bed all of a heap. There was Sarde in the sleigh-bed telling me to make haste, for he had business with the officer commanding, needed swift transport. I hated him for the trick he had played on a woman, I hated him for Joe Chambers' death, I hated him too much to look at him, or speak, but jumped to the driver's seat, and standing on it to get a better purchase, lashed the team to a gallop hoisting them over the drifts in flying snow surf and a hail of lead.
And then I heard a yell from the rear, shouts that a wounded man was being left behind. I must go back. But Sarde heard nothing of that, and cared for nothing except his errand to the commanding officer.
"Drive on!" he shouted at me as I swung the team. "Drive on! I order you to drive on!"
I swung the sleigh sharp to spill him, drove back to where some fellows were lifting the wounded man, then, standing on the seat I threatened Sarde with my whip.
"Get out, you cur!" I screamed at him. "You're a coward! A coward! Hear, you chaps! I charge this man with cowardice in the field! Get out of my sleigh or I'll flog you!"
The wounded man was lifted on board, the rest of the chaps piled in to ease him through the jolting, and once more I swung my team round to a gallop joining the retreat through clouds of flying snow. A sharp jolt brought us up to the firm ground of the road, and I swerved right, tailing in with the outfit at a swinging trot.
We had left twelve men dead in the field, we had eight wounded in the sleighs—one of them dying. We knew that we were thrashed, had let red war loose on all the settlements.
The last dropping shots astern gave way to silence, the glare was no longer blinding in our eyes, our confused rush found itself and was a disciplined column in retreat. In the presence of wounded and dying men a hushed quiet fell upon us like that of the Holy Eucharist. I drove on, praying.
Then I remembered Sarde with a sudden bitterness, and called back laughing, "Say, boys, where's Sarde, the coward?"
"In your sleigh, Constable," he answered quietly. "Is there a non-commissioned officer with us? You, Sergeant Boyle, put that man under arrest."
"Conshider yerself," said Boyle in his delicious brogue, touching my shoulder.
"And when we reach the fort," my enemy continued, "you'll put that man in the guard-room."
But Boyle was nettled, for that, at such a time, was an act of spite. "Constable la Mancha," he shouted, so that all might hear, "for charging an officer wit' cowardice in the field, ye'll be conshiderin' yershelf under close arrest, d'ye hear me?"
"You witness," said I, "to my charge of cowardice."
"Silence, prisoner!"
I handed my reins to Red Saunders as off man.
"Well, Sergeant," Sarde became affable, "might have been worse weather, eh?"
The sergeant turned his back on an officer under charge of cowardice, and a trooper at the tail end of the sleigh asked his neighbor, "When will Sarde be court-martialed?" From that moment the outfit treated Sarde as a leper.
Meanwhile I sulked, humped on the driving seat, though the blue sky and the fair snow-fields called on my soul to rest, to be at peace, and shamed by distracted spirit with their quiet. There was silence in that heaven for the space of half an hour, teaching me not to care, never to hate. I think I went off to sleep.
As we came to the rim of the plains looking down on Fort Carlton, we saw clusters of men in the square waiting for news of victory; and over to the right on the Prince Albert trail old Sorrel Top's relief force—come too late—was swinging down the curves of the long hill.
III
"jo Dear—I can't bare it any longer i ain't got nothing to love it's up to you take me away or i'll kill myself. The first nite Mister Sardes on duty meat me outside the stockade i'll bring a bundle just round the corner on the left as you go out so they wont see us from the bastion Come at nine."Your broken hearted"Vi.
There is the letter which Joe Chambers was trying to give me when he died. It made me sorry for Sarde, ashamed that I'd lost my temper and brought a false charge against him. He had been anything but coward on that winter march from Qu'Appelle, had treated me half decently ever since, and certainly played the man at Duck Lake fight. Of course, an officer should be a gentleman, has a job in which any one else is a misfit, but that was Sarde's misfortune, and not his fault. A pig is a pig, so one should make the best of him as pork, and not expect his meat to be caviar.
I was in the cells with plenty of time for sleep and remorse while all the boys were at work through the night and the day after Duck Lake fight. Toward evening Buckie came to see how I was getting on, and when he found me starving brought some grub. The provost guard had been withdrawn, he told me, because the whole garrison served the relief on patrol, picket and the inner line of defense. The men on fatigue were lugging the stock out of the Hudson's Bay store into the square. They swamped the grub with coal-oil, piled the dry goods and burned them, and had been told to help themselves to the jewelry. At midnight we should abandon and burn the fort to fall back upon the threatened settlements.
Now I must explain that there was only one entrance to the fort, the water-gate, a square tunnel through the log building which fronted upon the North Saskatchewan. As you left the fort through this tunnel, the guard-room was on the left. The guard-room stove had an iron pipe which went up through the ceiling to warm the surgery on the upper floor. Next to the surgery was a ward where lay the two wounded men I had rescued, Sergeant Gilchrist, shot through the thigh, and Chatter McNabb, shot through the lungs. The orderly in charge of them was Baugh, the chap who got his face frozen off on our march from Fort Qu'Appelle. He had come on by the stage sleigh convalescent.
Buckie had been at work with Sergeant-Major Dann up in the surgery. They had emptied a couple of palliasses, stuffed them with clean hay and placed them in the sleigh set apart for the two wounded men. At midnight Buckie was to help the orderly to get them down to that sleigh. Since the guard-room stove had gone out, the cells were so beastly cold that I asked Buckie to bring me down the stack of old hay he had left on the surgery floor. He laughed, telling me to come out on duty and get warm with work. He left the door wide open, but I was too sulky even to leave the bed where I lay trying to shiver myself into a sweat.
Late in the evening some half-breed refugees were quartered in the guard-room, and made a hearty fire which warmed me up. I could have slept but for their clatter of talk, and then they got the stove red, and the heat was beyond endurance. Roasted out of my cell I told the half-breeds to tame their beastly stove or they would fire the fort and burn the wounded men in hospital. The breeds were merely insolent, so I took down my side-arms from a peg, slung on the belt, loaded the-gun and flounced out in a huff, refusing to stay in jail another minute unless the authorities kept my prison decent.
I found myself in the covered gateway, and on my right was the square with a bustle of men loading sleighs. On my left were the gates ajar with the sentry pacing his beat. Beyond him lay the river winding through that quiet starlit wilderness which is the only medicine for perturbed spirits. I noticed the gear on the wall for fighting fires and took down the ax which I hefted and threw across my shoulder. The sentry was only a B Troop man, so I told him I had been sent out to cut a waggy, to repair the broken mutt of a whiffleswoggle. Anything is good enough for B Troop.
Outside I swung off to the left, and all I cared for in the world just then was to be alone with my dog, and my bitter heart, there in the quiet. But rounding the end of the wall I came upon Mrs. Sarde. Then I remembered her letter, her assignation with Joe Chambers at that time and that place. Of course, she must be attended to, so I raised my cap.
"Oh!" she said. "How you frightened me! And I've waited hours. Oh, Joe!"
"Joe couldn't come—sent me."
"Mr. la Mancha!"
"At your service. I suppose you thought I was your lover's ghost."
"His ghost? Say, what d'you mean? Oh, Mr. la Mancha, he must have sent a letter, a message, something."
So she had not been told. It was damned awkward. I set my ax against the palisade. "Joe has been hurt," I explained as I bent over her, "shot in the fighting yesterday."
"Dead?" came her awestruck whisper.
"Dead. He told me to tell you."
"I must go to him," she sobbed.
"You needn't worry," I told her. "I got your letter out of his pocket and destroyed it. You're all right."
She was crying convulsively and there is nothing that annoys me more.
"Don't cry," said I, "you know you don't really care, so what's the good of shamming?"
She tried hysterics.
"Drop that," I told her. "What's the good of play-acting at me? You know you can't fool me. Drop it."
"Oh," she wailed, "how dare you say I don't care! You've b-broken my h-heart."
"Drop it."
She gulped, pulled herself together and looked up. "Well?"
"Now look here," I told her, "you stop playing the fool. You asked this man to run away with you. If you'd cared for him the least little bit, you wouldn't have asked a soldier on active service to get himself court-martialed and shot for deserting in the face of the enemy."
"I never—"
"Don't lie. Don't play crocodile tears on me. Stop shamming and lying for once in your mean little life. Joe came to save you from yourself, and died in the attempt."
That brought her to bay.
"You're cruel. You're unjust. You're insulting. You're a brute!"
"Chuck it," said I. "You've got to face the truth this once because it may save other lives. You told me you'd always despised him, thought he was stupid, dull, a fool, played with him, used him, accepted his presents, borrowed his pay and had him to flirt with and keep yourself in practise. 'It does 'em good,' you told me. Then you lied to him and left him in the lurch. Joe told me," here I had to improvise, "on the morning of his death, that you expected him to run away with you, through an enemy's country, in time of war. He saw through you at last. He said he'd see you damned first, and that's the message I bring to you from the dead."
She held her hands to her ears screaming, "Oh, let me off! Let me go!"
"Go," said I, standing aside and pointing toward the gate, "cut along, young woman, back to your duty."
She crouched down, cowering against the wall. "I daren't," she whispered, "he'll kill me!"
"Serve you jolly well right if he did. There isn't a man with any manhood in him would stand you for a day."
And I was sorry for her all the time. To be so mean a creature must be a wretched fate, endowed with pleasures but no happiness. Like a constricting snake she was created to crush the manhood out of men, to slaver them over, to destroy them, and hunt for more. To be a snake with a conscience must be horrible. So while my words were harsh I spoke only in pity to rescue this poor creature from herself.
"Your eyes," I said, "are a brace of harlots making wanton love to every man in sight. Your lips have no restraint while your tongue flatters and you make your sacred beauty a thing of hell. You fool men with sham tears, sham smiles, sham sentiments, sham emotions—playing the game of life with marked cards, cogged dice—a shark at getting, only a miser at giving."
"Oh, I don't!" She stood up to face me again. "I never! I—"
"Virtuous woman, eh? Why, Mary Magdalen and all her poor little sisters will keep house in Heaven before you've finished being grilled in hell."
"Oh, pity me," she moaned, "have mercy!"
"The pity you gave Joe, who escaped you in death? The pity you show poor Sarde who can't escape? I'm fighting Sarde to get him cashiered before he has me expelled, but yet I'm sorry for him. At worst, he's a Canadian, one of the finest, manliest race on earth. Go, make yourself worthy to have a husband, and don't stay whining here."
"I daren't. He beats me!"
"And you've richly deserved it, eh?"
She looked up with a weak, wan little smile. "Oh, yes."
"You won't be flogged unless you earn it, eh?"
"N-no."
"Run away back to your quarters. Grasp life and its thorns turn soft."
"I daren't. Oh, save me, José."
Without a rag of self-respect she flung her arms round my knees. As to her sobbing, it sounded almost real.
"So," I asked her gently, "you don't a bit mind wrecking another life?"
"I'd do anything if you told me. I'll be good, always."
"All right," said I. "Sarde found you in my arms, and that's my fault. I'll pay. Come on—get up." I lifted her to her feet. "I'll break up this marriage for you, and when you're free—"
"Oh, you're so good!" She was shamming again. "So noble!"
"Now, don't trot out your mock heroics. You're not a serial heroine by instalments. Come on. Since I've got to pay the price I may as well have the fun." I kissed her. "There, now you may kiss me. Kiss hard. It won't last long."
There were dropping shots from snipers in the hills; the hum of rapid business in the fort grew to a tumult; the sentries called from post to post:
Number one: All's well!Number two: All's well!Number three: All's well!