Then from a greater distance:
Number four: All's well!
And, faint as a little echo, far away:
All's well!
And silence is the rhetoric of lovers. Why should it matter? What difference could it make? Why should the innocent passions of good beasts be interdict for men?
The women were being loaded into their special sleighs when Sarde first missed his wife. With growing anxiety he visited every place where she could be, asked questions and heard rough laughter the moment his back was turned. He found that Mrs. Sarde had crossed toward the gate-house at nine o'clock, carrying a large bundle. He failed to notice a bright and growing light which flickered in the surgery window above the guard-room; but pressed on through the covered way, and asked impatient questions of the sentry who answered him in gibberish about a waggy, a mutt and a whiffle-swoggle. Yes, Mrs. Sarde had passed hours ago with a bundle and a gold-topped umbrella, turning off sharply to the left.
So for the second time poor Sarde found his pretty mistress in my arms. He stood beside us unnoticed and there was a quivering agony of shame in his first words, "Oh, don't mind me."
We leaped apart. The woman nipped round the corner screaming. The powerful impulse of a soldier's self-respect compelled me to stand to attention, forced me to salute that long thin fool, poor Sarde.
"You?" he said in a husky whisper, "You!"
"That's me."
"Give me the 'Sir', confound you!"
"Why, dammit, I nearly did!" The impulse to obey was almost overwhelming, yet only by pressing a quarrel could I compel him to release the woman.
"Prisoner: right turn—quick march—get to the guard-room—or—or—"
"Orwhat?" He had threatened. He had ceased to be an officer, to claim respect for his rank. He was only the peasant with the grotesque dull rage of a mere lout. I laughed. "Orwhat? Eh, bumpkin?"
This was mutiny, and Sarde lifted his whistle to blow a call for help. I snatched the whistle, blew the call myself. They seemed to have a bonfire in the fort, quite a big one, too, and so much clamor that nobody heard the call. I watched Sarde's sluggish northern way of reaching for his revolver, fumbling at the holster flap, and lugging out the gun. The Anglo-Saxon peasantry are so slow!
With one flash I had him covered.
"No, you don't," said I. "Hands up, hands up, my fool. That's right. Now be good." I pitched his whistle over the stockade, then wrenched his gun from the lanyard until the shackle parted. With both guns I jumped back, bidding him drop his hands and stand easy for a nice, cozy little chat. "There are no witnesses," I had to reassure him, "so you see we're man to man."
"Until—" Sarde's voice was full of menace, for that sort of animal is never more than half tamed at the best.
"Until," said I, "you bring a charge, and I call Miss Burrows for my first witness."
"Then since we're man to man," he shouted—they always have to shout—"what were you doing with my wife?"
"Pooh! She's not your wife."
"You dare—"
"Stand back, Sarde. I don't like your perfume. No, the question, my good man, is whether you loose this woman—"
"Because—you—"
A little sound caught my ear from round the corner, and at first I whistledThree Blind Micelest Sarde should hear it. But that seemed unfair. For a moment I had to think, scratching my head with Sarde's gun. Then I jammed it into my belt, bolstered my own revolver and picked up the ax.
"Look here, Sarde," I had to explain, "it's deuced awkward, but I heard your—ahem—good lady listening round the corner. I didn't mean to give you away, old chap. Excuse my country manners. You see she's found out she's not your wife. She'll interfere now; she'll spoil our fight. Suppose we move, eh? We'll go to the back of the fort. Come on, you've got to. By your left, quick march—left—left—left, right, left—and if you hail the bastion, I'll drop you! Left—left—you need a setting up drill, Sarde. Left, turn. I know you don't want to come, so you needn't explain. Left—left—left, right, left. There. Halt! About turn! Stand at—ease. Stand easy."
I set the ax down against the curtain wall, thinking, I remember, that it must be a deuced big bonfire they were having inside the fort. The sniping was a nuisance here at the back, and one bullet splashed between us. Poor Sarde was convinced, I suppose, that a dangerous lunatic had best be humored. He was getting patient, too.
"I guess," he remarked quite affably, "you mean to murder me, eh?"
"Certainly not. Don't be silly. Will you release this woman? Yes or no?"
He wanted to argue the point, to keep me in argument until somebody came to his rescue. He had to be roused from such dreamspronto.
"All right," said I, "you needn't get excited. You see I dislike you, Sarde. I take exception to the shape of your feet, you mule-foaled outrage on nature's modesty; you bandy-legged, stridulating, peevish, pop-eyed anachronism; you supercilious, illegitimate, high-bounding, beef-faced, misdirected, spatch-cocked swab of erring parents! You don't seem really to understand me even now. Let me explain."
I whipped one of my mitts gently, swiftly across his stupid face, and stood back to see how he liked it. I certainly had done my best for him, and he was obliged to clench his teeth to steady his rasping voice, hissing staccato:
"The reckoning is not to-night!"
"Bad form, Sarde. Melodrama. You mean well but you're rotten in the part. You should say, 'The r-r-reckoning is to-night! Ha! Ha!' That's how the villain talks. If you live, you can blame the rebels, and say the snipers got me, see? We have our revolvers, and so—" What more could he want?
"Constable," he played up another excuse. "I hold Her Majesty's commission. You forget yourself."
"Ah! Let us be calm. José Maria Sebastian Sant Iago de la Mancha y O'Brien consents to waive the difference of rank." I raised my hat and bowed. "Come, Sarde, we know that you're a coward and dueling is forbidden and all that, but never mind. For once you shall behave exactly like a man. Brace up!" I struck him hard and harder across the face. "You—really—must—understand. At fifteen paces we turn, and as I give the word we fire, and keep on firing. No? Now don't disappoint me, please, I beg you. Have you no inside? Are you an empty pretense?Nombre de Dios! What have you done with your manhood?"
"I've told you already that officers can't possibly fight with—"
"With me, señor? Haven't I explained? The Marquis de las Alpuxarras consents to waive the difference of rank, and meet a peasant. You scrambled skunk, take your gun! I insist. I command! Now you're armed, and at the word I shoot. I step back ten paces and at the word three, I fire. One! Two!—"
Sangre de Cristo! The beastly cad fired at "Two," and there was I clutching a burning pain in my gun arm above the elbow.
"What the devil do you mean," I asked him, "by firing before I gave the word, eh? I'll smack your beastly head!"
He fired twice more while I rushed him. Then, with a swinging left-hander, I got the point of his chin, and he went down.
A gentleman must always think for others before he thinks for himself, but Sarde being attended to, I had time to look around.
Sergeant-Major Dann had been first to see that glare in the surgery window, and Buckie reminded him of the hay left round the stove-pipe. At the head of the hospital stairs they found Baugh, the heroic orderly, fighting the flames with a sack and getting badly burned. The sergeant-major picked up Sergeant Gilchrist and ran with him down-stairs. Chatter McNabb jeered at Buckie's attempt to do as much for him, and shot as he was through the lungs, made his own way out of the building. Buckie found the hospital orderly with his face apparently burned off, in the act of falling among the flames. He dragged Baugh down the stairs.
The bugle was crying the terrible monotone of the "General assembly." But while the work of rescue blocked the stairway, the fire leaped from room to room, and before the brigade could form for organized work the whole gate-house was in flames, barring the only exit from the fort. The conflagration was spreading through old dry wooden buildings and the garrison was trapped beyond all hope of escape.
Through cracks in the palisade I could see the impending death of the whole garrison, but I was crazy with pain and rapidly losing strength, while every stroke I clove with the ax made me scream with agony. Then in a sudden rage with Sarde, I turned round and kicked him.
"Who told you to lie down, you dirty dog? Get up! Don't you see the damned fort's on fire? And you, a Canuck with an ax, letting the outfit burn to death! Get up!"
He scrambled up, dazed, leaning against the wall, and peered stupidly through a slit while I kicked him savagely from behind. What was the good of moccasins? I needed boots!
"Get to it," I howled, "you blithering disgrace, and I'll forgive you for shooting me, you cad, and let you off the charge of cowardice. Strike, you whelp of sin! Strike, and I'll let you stay in the force, my bleeding hero. Harder! Harder! Sick 'im! Bite 'im! Tear 'im and eat 'im!"
In Canadian hands the quivering haft and gleaming blade of an ax ring out wild music to its whirl, its bite, its rending and swirl of splinters.
"Go it, you cripple!" I yelled. Then from within I heard the quick live clamor of a second ax and a third.
The fire, with gathering strength at frightful speed, now roared along the buildings round the square, flames leaping high through crashing roofs to light the jammed confusion of sleighs and rearing horses, while the whole mass were driven scorched against this northern wall. But the call of Sarde's ax had roused the whole of our ax-men to help, hewing a gap through the wall; its tall posts reeled and fell one by one, the breach was widening, at last there was room, and the sleighs began to file past me. I had swooned by that time with the loss of blood, but somebody with a handkerchief and a gun made a rough tourniquet, which stopped the spurting blood until Doctor Miller came. They put me into the last sleigh as it left the abandoned fort.
As we slowed down to climb the Prince Albert hill, I looked back at that red splendor which had been Fort Carlton. Across the meadow, on snow that glowed like blood, some one was running, a woman who lugged a bundle and brandished an umbrella while her big bustle wagged from side to side. The sleigh was stopped and Mrs. Sarde climbed in.
So the long night retreat began, and as we gained the rim of the plains, we saw the first vedettes of the astounded rebels commence their swoop for plunder on what was left of Carlton. Thus ended the busiest hour in my life, for trouble rains on those already wet.
IV
At dusk on the eve of Palm Sunday our sleighs drew into Prince Albert. For three days and three nights our people had not slept, but there was still no rest because a first-class panic broke out among the settlers at the fort of refuge. The doctor had to find some sort of shelter for the wounded men, and the only place free from slush within the Prince Albert stockade consisted of a stack of up-edged planks. He laid us there, and dressed our wounds while the panic raged all round us with deafening clamor of screaming men, sobbing women, children in hysterics, a hammering which they mistook for musketry, and the alarms of the church bell overhead.
My turn came last, for Sarde had given me only a trifling flesh wound through the upper arm. "Is it hurting?" asked Doctor Miller.
It was.
"That's healthy granulation," said he. "Does you good. Serves you right. I'm going to sit with you and have a pipe, or else I'll be asleep in another minute. Got a match?"
His face was long, lean, whimsical, his speech a gentle drawl aching with humor. All of us loved him and the memory of that unhappy gentleman shines down the years just like a ray of light.
"And now, my boy," said he, stuffing his clinical thermometer under my tongue, "I'm going to feel your conscience, if you've got one."
He had me gagged with that infernal instrument.
"Inspector Sarde," said he, "rode with me a-ways on the trail confessing all your sins. You don't seem to get on with my brother officer to any great extent. Wall, sonny, you've both got a temperature and you've both got clinical thermometers in your mouths to allay the heat. Nothing like a thermometer for a hot patient. The day a soldier marries, seems to me, he hangs up all his weapons, and swaps a little drill for bloody war. You're in jolly good luck it wasn't you she married. You ought to be sorry for Mr. Sarde, not hit him because he's down."
I nodded.
"Quite so. But he keeps his temper and everything else he gets. You give yourself and all you've got, away. I like a fool, too. But why bring a false charge of cowardice?"
I took the thermometer out of my mouth to say I withdrew the charge. He clapped it back again and told me to shut up.
"Do you think," he asked, "that it's your solemn duty as a buck policeman to interfere between your superior officer—and the devil?"
I shook my head.
"And why wear moccasins when you kick an officer? Need boots."
My toes were still hurting.
"Mr. Sarde was hurt," said the doctor. "I should feel hurt if you kicked me. That's only natural. I'd shoot you, too, or operate—which is much the same thing. You see, my dear boy, even the commissioner might object to having his troopers kicking his officers, and his officers shooting his troopers when both should be shooting rebels. If he finds out, he'll kick Mr. Sarde out of the force, and have you shot for mutiny. Serve you both dam' well right.
"I don't mind that at all, but what if these bally civilians get to know too much? Scandals in our outfit—there's the rub. Scandals in our outfit! Won't do. The civvies will get too happy. It isn't good for 'em. They oughtn't to be encouraged. Just look at them, screeching with fright, as if there were no hereafter. Did you ever see such a howling disgrace to the whites!"
"Let's see," he whipped the thermometer out of my mouth, "I guess you've been pinked by a rebel sniper, eh?"
"Yes, sir. Shot by a rebel."
"And Mr. Sarde is a good officer?"
"Hero of Carlton!"
"And at Duck Lake fight you misunderstood Mr. Sarde's order to turn back after wounded men, eh?"
"Yes, sir."
"So long as you're left alone you don't bring any charges, and so long as you behave he brings no charges, eh?"
"Please tell him, sir, that I think he's a disgrace to the force, and I'll get him pitched out if I can. But it won't be by any dirty trick or by giving the outfit away."
"What makes you hate him, lad?"
"Instinct. He's poison."
"Why?"
"Well, sir, compare him with old Sorrel Top, or Paddy, or the great Sam himself, or dear old Wormy, or young Perry, or dammit, even Paper Collar Johnny."
"Canadians all. Mr. Sarde is Canadian, too."
"The others are gentlemen. A cad with a commission is an outrage. He means well, but he doesn't set me a good example, sir; he's bad for my morals; he makes me peevish. What have I done that this bounder should come to reign over me?"
The dear man held up his thermometer as a threat.
"When the patient," he chuckled, "gets full of repartee, poor charity takes wings. I'm off to torture a wounded volunteer, and after me comes the parson. Beware of doctors, Blackguard." He gave me my pet name!
Next day the wounded were moved to Miss Baker's house—to be haunted by an angel. I used to nip out of bed and help her while she threatened to turn me into the horse corral. To that house came Mrs. Sarde secretly, with a pudding. I like chocolate shapes. She threatened widowhood and overdressed the part. She told me in stage whispers how she had crawled and crouched behind the corner of the stockade at Carlton, with creepy gestures in the shuddering gloom, to hear me reading the gospel to poor Sarde. She made me tell her all I had heard, and more, about Happy Bill, the converted railroad stoker, how he wasn't exactly a parson, and his monkey business not precisely a marriage. Oh, she was great as the outraged wife, betrayed but calm, trapped in a bogus marriage, but chock-full of respectability, a helpless prey. Fact is, the woman was having the time of her life, reeking adventure like a born adventuress. She clawed the air, she capsized my pudding, she spouted melodrama drivel about her marriage lines and bloody doom. This way lies madness! Gimme the dagger! She had a fat part to play in real melodrama, pleased all to pieces, having paroxysms of rage and grief, with one eye cocked at my shaving glass. Then she was washed away in floods of tears, while I taught her how to do coyote howls, until at last she looked up with a grin as if to say, "How's that, umpire?"
Only he is fortunate with women of whom they take no notice. I was not fortunate. They always noticed me, to my undoing. Of course, they made me pay, at every gate, their toll of kisses on the hell road. Here was the puss complete who, when I called her a shammy little liar, avowed me to be the only man who really understood. Because I denied her I was the only man she ever wanted. She knew that I liked pussies, that no puss could be too fluffy—and let me see her at her fluffiest. She wanted to get rid of Sarde that she might marry me. I told her kittens were all very well to play with, but not much use to keep, because they always degenerated into cats. My ears should select my woman, not my eyes.
Oh, she was very fair, and most alluring, catching at my senses, tearing at my heart—a foul temptation to my body. And I was twenty-one years young in those days. I took her by the shoulders from behind, kissed her upon the neck—a much less tempting place than the lips I craved for—and bundled her out of the house to sulk in the horse corral while I devoured her pudding.
It was after the war was over, some time about September, that the Sardes were transferred again to Fort Qu'Appelle. And there the woman went stalking for Happy Bill. She thought herself no end of a scout when she found him. Then she paid five dollars to be told by a real live lawyer in his legal jargon that she was not a married lady. Her next act was to write a declaration of her woes and "pin it to Sarde's bosom with a dagger"—which means, I suppose, that she left a letter for him on the dressing-table before she robbed his cash-box, and streaked off home to uncle. She used to write me most inviting letters.
This job of writing puzzles me. I am like a merchant selling a pearl necklace: will you have my string or my pearls? My threadbare story is that of an obscure man, but illustrates a theme worthy of your attention. That is why I wumble most confusedly.
To make each chapter a coherent story, I have copied the great musical composers. They write a series of "movements," or moods of mental confusion to form a "symphony" or all-round muddle. So do I. The result should appeal to all men, but there is so much immoral wisdom in every woman, that I doubt if one of them will read my book.
Now I am coming to a chapter which will not stand symphonic treatment. It is a sort of footling intermezzo, and the best way to handle it is that of the songs without words. We will have a series of wumps, or songs without music.
The Blackguard's Wump
The Alpuxarras appear to have worried along without me as their marquis. The angels never seemed inclined to pay for my board as their missionary. The devil had not commissioned me as his real-estate agent, or any other business man engaged me for useful work. The police outfit was considered a last refuge for the destitute, but even in that I was not offered so much as a lance-corporal's chevron. Nobody would ever take me seriously.
One of our teamsters who spoke ancient Greek like a native said I was "the dead spit of Pan"; Buckie, to whom the proprieties, deportment and the conventions were all one God, averred me to be sub-human, a faun if only I could learn to behave half decently. I was anything but a gentleman, having, I remember, oiled his hair with birdlime while he slept, so that on waking he could not tear himself from the pillow. As to the other fellow, observing that I was lean, swart, weathered and grotesque, they urged me to pawn my face. Call even a dog by such a name as Blackguard, and you might as well hang him.
Even in those days I knew that I did not belong to the civilized world at all, and that only half of me was serving in the mounted police. That was the half of me which craved for the Burrows woman, and cut her adrift from Sarde without any intention of taking her for myself. Indeed, it was not that particular minx I cared for, but rather an impulse to chase anything in skirts. Low caste women always hunted me because I was the troop jester, the comedian, quick, vital, joyous, of brilliant moods, and blood red-hot with life.
Nobody knew the other half of me—the immortal part which worshiped the memory of Rain, the sacred woman of the Blackfeet, with a lasting growing spiritual homage; the spirit in me which for my mother's honor and Our Lady's glory defended women in the duels with Tail-Feathers and the long feud with Sarde. God made me a patrician pledged to chivalric service, wholly estranged from all material interest, from the ambitions of civilized men.
I was beginning to weary of the noise in camp and barracks, yearning even then at times for the remote hills, the uttermost solitudes. There were moments on lone patrols when I could sense the presence of shy immortal creatures, kin of forgotten gods. I kept silence lest I disturb sweet April watering her buds, or May as she tended her flowers, or June, setting immortal seeds in holy ground, while the big wind gods tumbled their clouds through the celestial heights to bring fresh rains for Eden. To me already the days were notes, the months were chords, the years were phrases of one brave melody sung by flying earth as she cleft the deeps of space, a singer in the choir of the spheres whose adoration fills eternity. I knew that I was a very little spirit which must be kept in tune, free from impurities.
The Regimental Wump
That peace which passeth all understanding goes up from the plains forever, filling the wide grass lands and the skies above. Because it passeth understanding it escapes the attention of the police retained in its service.
The summer cured our crisp grass into gold under a dome of azure, and across this floor of heaven groups of profane small creatures rode in important errands, bursting with an infinitesimal rage, exploding when they met with sudden cracklings of battle, one party following the other to various ambuscades and places of starvation within the shadows of the northern forest. Like bees and ants they seemed to have dim instincts, working upon some ordered plan of mutual destruction. And I was one of these.
We fought, we bickered through long delays, and fought again. A little Canadian army came very late, helped us most gallantly, sowed their dead, and went off home in triumph. We rode, we starved, we stamped out the last embers of revolt, hanged Riel the dreamer and tidied up the littered settlements. We settled back again to our routine of active service as officers of the peace. We saw the Canadian Pacific rails run clear from sea to sea, we heard the Canadian colonies awaken to find themselves a nation, we watched history casting her long shadows into the future.
We riders of the plains were as God made us, and oftentimes even worse. For a regiment is a thousand times more human than a man in childhood and in growth, in overstrain of war, and maladies of reaction, in pride of strength and languor of decay. Our regiment was more human than most, tremendously alive, enraged with the late rebellion as a breach of our great discipline of the peace, and frantic at the loss of our leaders, Sorrel Top and Paddy. We had a fit of nerves, with serio-comic mutinies, typhoid and an epidemic and desertion. Then came Larry, the new commissioner, a mere civilian to reign over us, who expelled our old hands if they dared so much as spit sidewise. And we were swamped under a heap of rookies—a sort of dirty animal, void of manners or morals.
The regiment was still painfully young, fighting the tyrant Larry, who was destined to be our best friend, and even to inherit the dear title of Sorrel Top. His godless rookies grew into the men who finally tamed the plains for settlement, the leaders in the conquest of the North, the officers of superb Canadian regiments in South Africa, with a deal more to be proud of than mere millionaires.
The floor of Heaven was of gold in autumn, like unto fine glass in winter, and paved with starry flowers in spring. Where our horses trampled there is peace, where we lay down to rest there grows the golden wheat, and where we sowed our dead a nation lives.
Buckie's Wump
In the fall of '86 our camp was at the breezy edge of the plains overlooking the ford of Battle River. Out on the flat beyond was pestilence-ridden Battleford, where D Troop was down with typhoid, losing a man a day. Our F Troop detachment had come from Prince Albert to take over the D Troop patrols. Our men were away close-herding the beaten sullen tribes of the Cree nation, and helping the burned-out settlers. I was in charge of the two or three men left behind in camp, and we had orders not to go near stricken Battleford. We sat in camp and watched the funerals.
At sunrise and at sunset we rode and led our horses down to the ford for water and those big four-footed babies had us bareback, so there was lots of fun. One morning young Hairy, on leaving the water, walked under the ferry cable, which scraped me off his back into a pool of dust. Then he turned round to grin and while I was reproaching him with my quirt, there came from across the river sounds of lamentation. There was Buckie, oh, yes, Corporal Buckie, if you please, of D Troop, in his Sunday best, while Rich Mixed, wet from the river, leaped all over him spoiling his pretty clothes. With his forage cap poised on three hairs, his glowing scarlet and his gleaming boots, Buckie was being absolutely ruined while he denounced my dog.
I rode across to the rescue, leading Mrs. Bond, and Buckie made the passage on her broad buttocks. Since goodness knows when, I had not seen my chum, so we spent the whole morning together among the wild flowers up on the hill near camp between the torrid sun and a jovial wind. And Buckie brought forth documents—his little official soul did dearly love a document—all lettered, and scheduled in a rubber band. To wit, viz:—
A. Ululations from Brat, at Fort French. Got-Wet was haunting him, and my little brother moaned for me to keep him out of mischief. But I never answered letters.
B. Copy. Confidential report, obtained, it seems, by art magic, from Inspector Sarde to the commissioner at regimental headquarters. He had the honor to submit that the Blackguard was an undesirable character, and needed watching. He had the honor to be, sir, your obedient servant
C. Proceedings of Buckie. Took on as orderly-room clerk to Sam, superintendent commanding D Division, and the greatest man on earth. Showed Sam the above mentioned confidential report, with further evidences of a private enmity. Sam was furious, and pitched Buckie out of the office.
D. Copy of letter from Sam requesting commission to transfer Reg. No. 1107, Const, la Mancha, J. and Reg. No. 128, Const la Mancha, Pedro, to D Division.
E. Copy of General Order No. 12,578,901, transferring Brat and me to Sam's troop from the 21st instant.
F. Copy of General Orders transferring Wormy's troop to Battle ford, and Sam's own, D Division, to Fort French!
So Brat and Buckie and I were to serve together under Sam, the greatest of all Canadian soldiers, at Fort French, the happiest post on the plains, delivered from Sarde's malice. But when in my impulsive Dago way, I tried to kiss Corporal Buckie, he ran and I gave chase for a full mile. Then he wanted to fight!
A few days later we marched from Battleford upon a glorious ride of seven hundred miles across the plains, a troop of pink and white invalids, just barely convalescent, very limp in the saddle, rather self-conscious in full uniform. We swung in haughty silence past the F Troop camp where my late comrades mourned their fate in old brown overalls. And C Troop came ramping in from their great journey, lean, hard, tanned, their eyes aflash, grinning disdainfully at our troop of patients. They had scarcely a trace of uniform among them, but rode in buckskin shirts and cowboy shaps, attended by their herd of looted ponies.
The meeting of the three troops, in perfect silence, the dusty, windy, sunny splendor of that frontier pageant, makes my heart ache as I remember now. The delight of the eyes and the pride of life are gone. And where I sowed in the sands I did not reap fish.
My Brat had been frozen in the spring of 1884, losing the toes of the right foot. When I got back to Fort French in the fall of 1886, his wound was still open, although he wore boots and walked without a limp. He was on light duty as orderly-room clerk.
Even before he joined the outfit, the boy had been in love with Got-Wet, the ridiculous half-breed flirt whose father, Bad Mouth, alias Shifty Lane, was trader at Writing-on-Stone beside Milk River. She would have none of the boy, yet would not let him go, and Brat's little heart was true. In a land where girls are scarce all hearts are faithful. By secret means of his own, Brat managed to keep watch on that lone trading post a hundred miles to the eastward. How he knew was none of my business, but my brother had been kept informed through the tedious catalogue of the girl's flirtations. Grain by grain that fowl had filled her crop, while Brat was tortured, haunted by dismal jealousies. And jealousy disclosed far more than her wiles could hide.
Especially Brat was jealous of two cow-hands who worked on a ranch about fifty miles north of Milk River, and so, being next-door neighbors to Got-Wet, had all the chance denied to an invalid lover a hundred miles away. Very bad characters, Brat moaned, were these his rivals, especially the elder, Low Lived Joe, who was in a smuggling partnership with old Shifty Lane, and had given the girl a black silk skirt, said to be of great value. Oh, a tremendous dog was Low Lived Joe, putting on awful side, the fop of local society, claiming to be engaged. Brat wailed at the very thought of that wealthy rival. As to the other cowboy, he was worse—the blue-eyed, curly-headed Alabama Kid, a Harvard graduate, no less, from whom the faithless Got-Wet had accepted a diamond engagement ring. When I chaffed him Brat was peevish, when I advised, he sulked, when I consoled him he kicked me on the shin with his bad foot.
While I was still new at Fort French, a complaint came in from one of our ex-policemen, the cock-eyed Honorable Barrington Beauclerc, rancher for whom these two cowboys were riding. Cock-eye wanted our help because the pair of scamps had run away, making off with his imported stud horse, Lightning, a notorious crock, which he thought could outrun Phoebus. Our troop detective, McBugjuice, traced the kidnaped stallion, and found him at Cheyenne, down in the left-hand bottom corner of Wyoming. Low Lived Joe and Alabama Kid had sold the horse to a livery man, and vanished.
So Brat was quit of his rivals? Not a bit! Got-Wet had disappeared and the boy was frantic. To comfort him I told him he could kick my shins with his right foot as often as he pleased. He would not be comforted.
Now the best way to capture Miss Got-Wet's two scamp lovers, was to keep a very close watch on papa, for Mr. Shifty Lane's trading post was general headquarters for horse thieves, smugglers, whisky runners and every sort of thug along the border. Of course, it would never do to post a constable at Writing-on-Stone, for it is a rule in trapping never to sit on the bait. But only a dozen miles to the west was our outpost station of Slide-out, abandoned since the rebellion had drawn our men in from detachment. So Corporal Buckie, who knew the district better than his prayer-book, was posted to Slide-out, and asked to select a brace of constables. He selected me because I knew the country, also a man called Poggles, a genius with the banjo and a cracker jack at cooking.
As for me, I flatly declined to listen to Buckie's worries because Black Prince had been grabbed by a mere officer. Black Prince was quite the most famous horse who ever served in the outfit. In those far distant times of 1886 he was a rookie, claiming—quite untruthfully—to be a four-year-old, a bouncing infant made of whalebone and rubber, shying at clouds rather than shy at nothing, full of loving-kindness, light-hearted innocence and baby fun. Range horses are never black, but his spring coat was brown, deepening to brown-black, until in autumn one almost caught a blue glint on his flank.
That such a charger should be wasted on any mere inspector was an outrage. So Black Prince and I came to a little private arrangement between ourselves. Whenever Inspector "Blatherskite" sent his servant to saddle up, I put a burr under the saddle blanket. Thus, when "Blatherskite" mounted, there were always volcanic eruptions. The horse detested the very sight of "Blatherskite," and yet was always a perfect lamb with me. To own him I would have volunteered to stew in Suez. The day he broke "Blatherskite's" off collar-bone I cheeked the sergeant-major, knowing quite well that he would try to get even with me by some unholy act of malice. The chap, by the way, is doing well now as a parson.
Sure enough Sergeant-Major Samlet palmed off Black Prince on me, and said that if I got killed I should make a jolly good riddance. At that I looked so glum and near to tears that he felt he had done me the worst turn possible. Not daring to sit in the saddle because of the burr underneath I led Black Prince to the stable. I had got him!
That evening I bought at the Hudson's Bay store a black silk shirt, and a silk scarf of ruby and orange very broadly striped. These, with my old shaps and glittering cartridge belt made the right colors for my heaven-born horse as I rode out with Buckie on the trail to Slide-out. Poggles drove the team with our supplies, and we made the eighty-eight miles in a couple of easy days.
So we began to keep house in the old 'dobe shacks at Slide-out, Corporal Buckie to give counsel on all proprieties, Poggles to make our hearts glad with the sauce-pan and the banjo, and me in a purring mood with my tail up—the happiest household that ever was or could be. Rich Mixed was the officer commanding.
In that life of the lone outposts each constable by turns was cook for the week, and had charge of the station, leaving the other fellows free for patrols which visited every settler in the district. To save the people from infection among their livestock, to preserve the game for their use, to succor them in storm, drought or famine, guard them from thieves, advise them in difficulties, assemble them to fight range fires and entertain them without charge in camp or quarters, to make aliens into citizens, to lay the foundations of the state—such was the work of police out on the frontier.
To this little outpost of Slide-out Buckie had been attached in his rookie days, when he brought me, dressed in blushes and a vest, to my enlistment. From here he had flirted with Got-Wet, and lured away his rival, my dear Brat, to be another coyote at Fort French. On the strength of all that Buckie was most paternal, and a 'dobe shack may house much dearer memories than any palace.
We had not been so very long at Slide-out when the massive detective, Sergeant Ithuriel McBugjuice came ramping down upon us, reined his portly cart horse, and in a double basso-profound roar, "How, Buckie!" he shouted; "How, Don Coyote! Hurroar, young Poggles, what's there to eat? Great Jehoshaphat! I'm absolutely starving. Bai jove, yaas!"
We fed roast antelope to the dying man until we thought he would burst, with powerful coffee, and a heap of slapjacks, and finished him off with apple dumplings. He whispered hoarsely that he felt much betteh, yaas, able to sit up, bai jove—er and take a little nourishment. He had news from the Cheyenne sheriff, a propah sportman, yaas; Low Lived Joe and Alabama Kid were heading northward indeed—ah.
Now I had seen myself that very day tracks of two unknown horsemen with a pack pony shod on the fore heading northward from Shifty Lane's trading post on the trail to Cock-eye Beauclerc's. Here then were the wicked cowboys who had stolen Cock-eye's stallion. Detective Sergeant Ithuriel F. McBugjuice ordered us all to bed for a rapid sleep, bai gingah!
At midnight Poggles and Rich Mixed, who were to remain in charge at Slide-out, awakened us for tea and ah—refreshments. By one o'clock A.M., Buckie and I helped hoist the ponderous detective on to his roomy chargah. On through that starry night we slung long miles behind us, then shivering in the dawn chill, let our horses graze until there was light enough for reading tracks. We seemed to breathe the pale fine gold of the East like some divine draught which gives perpetual youth, to stand upon a floor of living gold as wide as heaven, to wait for the sun as though God were about to rise. Then, looking back, I saw the Rocky Mountains, angels of clear flame, kneel on a wall of tenderest violet. No poet's dream brings me so near to Heaven as the plains at daybreak.
We had been waiting on a ripple of the prairie for light enough to read a little winding trail. Before the sun rose, we saw. Two shod horses, attended by a pack pony shod only on the fore, traveling swiftly, by night, and blundering through sage-brush, had passed on the way to Beauclerc's. We followed, rolling our tails for Hand Creek which we made by half past ten. The ranch was empty.
Here the signs read clear. Poor little Cock-eye Beauclerc had been surprised in bed, and tied up after a sharp tussle. His monocle lay smashed, a pathetic relic. His basket of good, old family plate had been emptied, and the young robbers had gone off south by east at a lope. Afterward the captive Beauclerc had cut loose from the rope which lashed him to his bed, had crossed to the stable, left his lantern burning, and taken his buckboard with a lame old mare, heading for Medicine Hat. He would get help from our detachment there. We cooked a meal, fed our horses, left a note for Cock-eye, and hit the trail again directed for home. So long as our hairies thought they were going home they would give us of their best. So long as we did not alarm our little jail-birds they would head for Lane's. Birds of that feather flocked to Lane by instinct. Our job was to get there first.
All day we rode on the floor of an invisible ocean, looking up at the keels of the cloud-fleet on its surface, in belts of sudden light and racing shadow. Then as the sun shone level, we cut the trail from Slide-out to Writing-on-Stone, having covered in all some ninety miles with only six to go.
"By the Great Horn Spoon!" roared bull-faced McBugjuice, "look at that, eh, what!"
Buckie and I dismounted to kneel in the trail and read sign.
"A white man," said Dandy in his best official manner, stating all that was really obvious at a mile. "Afoot," said he; "that's strange. Heading for Lane's too. Who can it be, afoot! Long boots," he crawled past me, jostling for room, "police heels. Load on the off shoulder—dead weary, too. Here's the right foot—"
"Damn that Brat," said I, for in the deeply indented right track there was no sign of the toes. Here was my wretched brother, a hundred miles from duty, limping across the plains with an open wound. The blasted Brat needed a feeding teat and a bib. I swore I would tear his hide off, and stretch the dirty pelt for a drum-head. So we rode on with His Obesity, the sergeant detective, burbling in the rear.
From the moment we turned eastward away from home our three horses said they were seriously unwell, dead lame, with symptoms of giving up the ghost; and ninety miles at a happy gait is nothing compared with six at an exhausted crawl. So we were bone-weary and sick of life when we made Lane's at dusk. There were no signs of our jailbirds as we trailed down into the Milk River coulée. They had not yet arrived.
But my Brat would be at the house, and arrested for deserting unless I warned him. I whipped out my gun and rolled it while Black Prince, Buckie and the sergeant threw hysterics.
"Don't shoot!" cried Buckie, when my gun was emptied, "we want them thieves!"
"Dam' cheek, shootin' no ordahs. Damme!" roared the sergeant when I had sheathed my gun.
When we reached the house there was Lane, lounging in the only doorway, and hailing us.
"How, Shermogonish! (Welcome, soldiers.) After deserters, eh? Well, now, I allus aim to oblige you police gents. Got one for yous right here." He jerked his thumb back. "Which he shorely tried to get away when he heerd them shots."
My Brat was caught in Shifty's trap all right, and feeling very sick I led the three horses away to stable them. But Buckie came running behind, and whispered to me, "We'll see to your brother. Don't worry about that. You want to keep your eye skinned watching Shifty. See he don't signal them horse thieves."
When I got back from the stable I found my brother sitting on the door-step.
"Hullo, Brat!" said I. "Deserting?"
Brat was weak with the pain of his wound, slack with fatigue and looked very frail for such a life as ours. I was always rough and ugly, lacking his patrician fineness, the grand air, the gentle grace, envious a little of his large, soft, brilliant eyes, his amazing charm of manner. He gave to our majestic Spanish a sweeter resonance. He pleaded with me for help, for sympathy, telling me why he came to Lane's afoot. Did I think, he asked me, that nobody but myself had the right to rescue a woman?
There was a bench by the door, with a basin, soap and a towel, so while Brat told me his trouble, I stripped to the waist and got comfy. Then I called Buckie and talked with him in whispers lest Lane should overhear.
"Buckie, my Brat says that this horse thief, Low Lived Joe, kidnaped Lane's girl and sold her."
"Got-Wet?"
"Yes. Down in Wyoming. She's a white slave at Cheyenne. She wants to be rescued."
The detective sergeant had joined us, and broke in with a hoarse stage whisper audible for miles.
"Ought to have got a pass, eh, what?"
"Refused," said Brat, "Sam wouldn't let me go."
"Long walk, by thundah. Thousand miles—more, to Cheyenne. Ought to have stolen a horse, eh? Damme! Yaas."
"It's too late now," said Brat.
"Shouldn't get caught. Desertion. Looks dam' bad. Can't be done—no, damme. Got to arrest you. Can't have this Lane person reporting me—neglect of duty. Yaas."
Brat looked up at the big whole-hearted ruffian. "Lane would report you, and Sam would break you, Sergeant. I'm not going to run away, to have you smashed. Is there no way, Sergeant?"
Ithuriel F. McBugjuice scratched his head and his piggy eyes narrowed to slits. "It's like—er—your blasted cheek," he said out loud. "Does Shifty Lane know? Eh, what?"
"Know what?" came Lane's rasping voice from the house. "Know what?"
"That your daughtah, young Got-Wet, blast your soul, has been kidnaped by Low Lived Joe, confound you, and sold for a white slave, you—er—jumped up swine, and you stand there gulping as if you liked getting half shares in the price of your girl, you toad! Yaas! damme!"
I saw the trader turning gray with horror. Rage would come next against the partner who had so betrayed him. So our detective would use Shifty Lane for the capture of Low Lived Joe. The trader made no sound, no comment, but turned away, bent down and looking very old, to collapse in his rawhide chair beside the stove. His squaw came out and beckoned that supper was ready.
After supper it was my job to unsaddle, water, feed and bed the horses, but I had a sort of muddled feeling about Low Lived Joe and his partner, the Kid. They were coming, and we wanted to see them come, but if they found police horses with banged tails in the stables they would quit coming and pass the house severally by instead of leaving cards. Moreover, they might be in need of remounts, and borrow our horses, leaving us all afoot. So I tied the horses to the fence behind the house, and made them comfy there. As for the saddles, I lugged them into the house.
And if I was any judge of blackguards, old Shifty needed watching. So I sat in the doorway for my evening pipe, trying to keep awake. From where I squatted I could see the lamp-lit living-room, as well as the moonlit yard. Lane and his squaw took the lamp with them into the little inner room where they slept, pulling its doors to, until the latch caught on its hasp with a click. The moon poured treasure of silver light into the living-room of that evil house.
McBugjuice lugged over his saddle and spread his cloak and blanket across the inner door. On the sneck he hung his serge, his waistcoat, and his boots which would fall on his head and wake him if any one tried to get out of the bedroom. In his elephantine way he had a certain slyness—that detective. He turned to my brother, who sat crouched beside the stove.
"Ah, here you are, Brat. Share my bed, eh, what?"
My brother hobbled across to thank him for his kindness.
"Promise not to run, eh?" He was belting on his side-arms for the night. Brat glanced at me, and I made "Don't" in the sign talk.
The fat detective grunted dismally, then took his hand-cuffs from the pocket of his vest, put the key back in the pocket and shackled Brat's right wrist to his own left. So they turned in—"Indeed, ah! Doosed chilly, eh, what?"
Meanwhile, the ever-dutiful Buckie fussed around in the yard, taking ostentatious precautions by way of setting me a good example. He passed the loop of his rope around a plank of the stable door, stretched its fifty-foot length to a point abreast of the house, then made the rope-end fast to the collar strap of his cloak, and lay down in his blanket with the cloak pulled over him. The only things left in the closely-guarded stable were my cloak and blanket, but when I said so, he was most ungrateful. He told me he was a corporal and my superior officer, with more to the same effect. He flounced across my outstretched legs in the doorway to get inside the house and bed down warm by the stove. But, however funny, he was never vulgar, never used coarse language to relieve harsh feelings like a common trooper. He continued to set me a good example and teach me official language, until his muttered declamation tailed off into a snore. I strolled across to take his telltale rope off the stable door, lest it should warn the robbers.
On my way to the stable, I noticed that Shifty had his lamp alight behind a red blind in his bedroom window—a danger-signal that. When I came back from a good-night talk with the horses, that lamp was still alight, but the red blind was gone. Shifty had signaled, "All clear. Police gone away, come in!"
As far as Shifty knew, the robbers would come, would find police horses with banged tails in the stable, and be on their guard as they approached the house. He never really loved the police. We should be caught asleep, in the dark house, at a disadvantage, shooting at one another by mistake.
Haste is a fool's passion, so I sat in the doorway to think.
Surely those robbers would find no sign of police until they were safely trapped inside the house. I could hear Shifty Lane fussing about in his bedroom—just like a bottled bee. I was very drowsy.
Still, in my little Dago way, I went on plotting against the whites. The robbers must have been watching from some hill until they thought it safe to approach. Now they would come, and I had barely time for the next move in my game. I slipped into the moonlit room, took the key of the handcuffs from the detective's vest pocket, unshackled my Brat, aroused him and told him to clear out and rescue Got-Wet. I had to take him by the shoulders and run him out of the house.
When he was gone, I slipped the handcuff over my own wrist, but left the key in its lock, then drew the whole of the detective's blanket over me. Being thin, I needed the blanket more than he did. And being cold, he would wake up as I intended.
Brat stole back, waited until I snored, then roused up Buckie, who grumped at him most wrathfully. Poor Brat was smoking a cigarette, quite ostentatiously at his ease, while, by the glow from the stove, I could see the big tears trickling down his face. He hawked, coughed and sniffed, getting control of his voice before he could speak without blubbering. "Corporal," he began very stiffly, "we're comparative strangers, eh?"
"Oh, give us a rest!"
"But I want this to be private—off duty—see? You and my brother are chums."
"Get to hell!"
"My brother loosed me!"
"Well, what of that?"
"He has taken my place—shackled himself to the sergeant. He'll get a year's hard labor and dismissed from the force!"
"Serve him right!"
The youngster's voice broke beyond all control. "A La Mancha," he wailed, "theLa Mancha disgracefully expelled! He'll shoot himself as sure as— We've got to save him before the sergeant wakes. Got-Wet can go to blazes!"
My medicine was working famously.
It is only on looking back that one sees events in their sequence, their ordered movement toward the inevitable end. I changed places with Brat, expecting to be in irons for half an hour or so, until we went on duty to catch the robbers. Brat, being a gentleman, could not possibly leave me in the lurch to save a dozen Got-Wets. My only idea was to show him his own heart. I never dreamed of the far-away years to come when I should owe my life to Brat's lifelong gratitude.
Meanwhile, he had Buckie roused to a royal rage, fully alert, vindictively chucking wood into the stove. The stove was opposite to the open door, its glare would light the room for our job of trapping robbers. It would lure the robbers in with hopes of a rousing supper, and blind their eyes as they entered. Yes, my scheme worked to perfection. Buckie was rousing the detective, who sat up drawling, "Have I the bleedin' rats, or am I sobah?" Then he saw me, and asked what the deuce I was playing at. I told him the robbers were coming, so he had better loose me. He unlocked the handcuffs—indeed, ah!
Log walls, hewn planks, black beams hotly aglow with restless, flickering lights from the stove; cool still moonbeams raining to sapphire pools upon the floor; the silence, like some great visitant angel of the plains folding his wings in the doorway; our hearts beating like drums as we stood listening: then the soft pulsation of horses quivered underfoot, a quick, deep, throbbing chord of hoof-beats from the bridge, a trampling close at hand, the tinkle of a spur.
A youngster clattered in with trailing spurs, dragging a sack which crashed and rattled over the doorstep. "Rouse out!" he shouted. "On yer banglers, Shifty! Where's yer squaw? There's antelope venison coming!"
The door swung to behind him, Buckie whipped the gun from his slung holster, McBugjuice whispered, "Shut your mouth or I'll drop you!" and I clapped the handcuffs on Alabama Kid, while Brat dragged off the sack load of Beauclerc's plate.
Then a gunshot rang sharp outside, we heard a choking cough, and something fell through the door, shoving it wide open. Low Lived Joe lay dead in the pool of moonlight.
With a flying leap, I smashed through the inner door into the bedroom, and caught old Shifty climbing through the window from whence he had shot his partner. I took the smoking rifle, and led him back to the main room, where he crouched in his rawhide chair shaking all over, muttering, staring. The red glare from the stove was upon him as he faced that dread figure asprawl in the moonlit doorway. "'Twas me as done that," he kept saying with an air of surprise. "Me shorely 'as done that—'cause he sold my darter, Got-Wet, I done that."
His old squaw had followed us out of the bedroom, wrapped in a gray blanket, her gray hair streaming, her gray face cold as death, and in a dead voice, without emotion or even interest, she spoke across the room to me in Blackfoot.
"I lay aside the silence of fifty snows. It is the time for speaking. I speak to you, Charging Buffalo, and you must tell these Stone-hearts all my words."
I promised.
"My man, Bad Mouth, sitting there by the firelight, let that poor boy (Alabama Kid) run up a heap of debt. And the dead man there threatened him. Those two bad men drove the boy to stealing. They made him into a thief. The boy has done no wrong, and he is clean. Let him go."
"Mother," said I, when that was translated, "we thank you for words which will save the boy from prison."
She turned to my Brat. "Warrior," she said, and I translated phrase by phrase, "you loved my daughter, Got-Wet. The dead man there was her lover. She made him run away with her. Then she deserted him. He was too slow to keep her company on the way she went to shame. Think no more of my daughter, who laughs at you always.
"You, Bad Mouth," she spoke to her own man, "I am no longer your woman to be dragged down into shame. I am a daughter of those who do not lie, or cheat, or betray. I go to the camps of my people."
So, in the end, the Alabama Kid was acquitted, and is a wealthy rancher. Lane died in prison. His woman went to her people and lived in honor. As to my Brat, he was punished for breaking barracks, and promoted to the rank of corporal for his help in breaking up a gang of criminals.
I
If I were a painter I should make three pictures. For the painting ofLifeI should dip my brushes only in sunlight and starlight. That it contrast with the darkness his figure should stand radiant. For the painting ofHopethe sunrise should be my palette, and robed in splendors of the sky, triumphant he should ride an unstable sea of glory. But for the painting ofMemory, when I had used up all the sunset, I should pray God lend me a pot of glamour.
It is that glamour which allays the burning pain of memory, the fierce regret, the anger, shame, remorse. The stark event, the odious consequence, the bitter aftermath are all, as one looks back, arrayed in lovely hues of distance, and a sweet magic torn from the veil of time. So I recall that last year of my service in the mounted police; my soul which outlived defeat becomes victorious. He who stumbles and falls not, only mends his pace.
First I must speak of Sam, the young superintendent commanding D, an Irish-Canadian gentleman of a service family, and Regimental No. 1 of the mounted police. Because he was a born soldier, a record-breaking horseman, a great scout master and an incomparable leader, the untameable outlaws of the force were sent to him for treatment. They feared him, as they feared death, ate out of his hand, and made his division the crack troop of the outfit. He would carouse with his troopers all night, and punish us in the morning for being drunk, would drill us till we smashed, punish us without mercy and prove our best friend when we were in trouble. We loved and hated him fanatically, and like inspired fanatics made a crusade of our duties. The troop was just as brilliant as its leader.
In 1887, Chief Isadore and his Kootenay tribe were restive, so the province of British Columbia asked the Dominion government for help, and our troop was sent across the Crow's Nest Pass of the Rocky Mountains. Our base camp was the site of Fort Steele on Wild Horse Creek.
Now an English curate came to pass, and grieved at our spiritual destitution proposed an open air service. So Sam, being by his blood Anglican, Royalist and a soldier, ordered a church parade. Whereupon some of us became Roman Catholic, others found that their duties forbade attendance, and the rest of the troop went sick. Hence, a proclamation that at the sound of the bugle, cooks and Catholics, sick, lame or lazy should attend Sam's church parade on pain of death. Sam had his back up. Also the troop had its back up and in mass meeting resolved that any son of a sea cook presuming to sing, respond or contribute at a compulsory church parade should afterward be drowned. The service was therefore a duet between Sam and the curate without any sound from the chorus. Afterward Sam preached, announcing a second church parade next Sunday and hinting at setting up drills which would make the dearly beloved brethren sweat blood.
That afternoon at the bathing place we tried Beef Hardy by court-martial for contributing to the curate's offertory. He proved that he was only a civilian interpreter attached, and that his offering was a button. We had to let him off, but the whole troop yearned for somebody to drown.
"Brethren," said I. "Sinners! When that kind gentleman saved our souls this morning, it was borne in upon me what an abandoned parcel of Gadarene swine you all are—except me. You forget that our Sam is Smoothbore, the father of many children."
"Ho! Catch on to the Blackguard sucking up to Sam!"
"Triplet. I'm a man, and you're a nasty trick played on your mother."
The sentiment was cheered.
"And now," said I, "my little friends, I'm going to break out in a new place. I've got religion, and I don't propose to let you pollute my holy peace by using bad words, unless you think you can lick me."
"Why, dammit!" howled Red Saunders, who had the foulest mouth in the troop.
"My erring brother," said I.
"You go to 'ell!"
He dived, and fully dressed as I was I followed, holding him under water by his gaudy hair until he made signs for peace. Then he came up spluttering to breathe.
"But 'ow the devil—"
I told him not to brag about his father, then called him a catechumen, which knocked him out.
"Wall, I'll be damned!" said Pieface.
"True," said I, and immersed him. "Dost thou repent thee, Pieface? Art thou resolved to live a godly life, and pay me back three dollars that thou owest?"
I drowned him until he promised to sing in my choir next Sunday.
So finding that troopers were not allowed to swear, Mutiny, Tribulation and Calamity, who always hunted in concert, began a combined attack upon St. Blackguard.
On that, five decent men who disliked foul language promptly joined my choir for next Sunday, and proceeded to enlist with contusions Mutiny, Calamity and Tribulation. These with Red and Pieface for choristers-by-force, made eleven singers. They held the ring while I fought a battle with the cook. This learned doctor of beans and sow-belly outweighed me mainly below the belt, but was so fat that I found his vitals very hard to come at, and feared I should be overlain and smothered. Nine rounds we fought before he could be converted; but with him came three penitents whom he had thrashed that summer, and when they confessed their errors I had half the duty men for choristers at a cost of only two black eyes and an inflamed ear.
Nothing would suit me now short of triumph over all the wicked, but to secure a unanimous vote I must use the curate. Him I waylaid in the dusk, and gave him so smart a salute that his mule bucked. I picked him respectfully out of a rose bush and asked permission to speak with him in private.
"I want to sample your religion, sir."
The padre seemed to be shaken and resentful, saying that his religion had that very morning been freely offered.
"Freely?" I asked.
"You mean the parade was compulsory?"
"Yes, sir, rammed down our throats, an insult to Pater Noster. Any man guilty of taking part in that was to be drowned until he apologized to the troop."
"By jove," said the padre. "The next service shall be free. But will they sing?"
"Turn loose the national anthem," said I. "Any man shying at that is a traitor. Cover your lectern with the Union Jack, and the boys will stand to attention. Leave your sermon behind."
"Why!"
"Because each of us has lived more, sir, in twenty years, than you will in sixty. You can't teach until you've lived."
"You forget," he said huffily, "that I bear a message."
"A sword, Padre, in the hands of a fool."
He stepped back, tripped and sat down with a bang, very thoughtful.
Presently he tamed himself and, thinking of my words, "Pater Noster," asked if I were a Roman Catholic. His tone was full of bitter prejudice.
"Outdoor men," said I in my cock-surest manner, "don't join indoor denominations."
"You dare to call the church—that!"
"Has it not doors?" I asked meekly.
"Yes," he shouted, "and they are wide open to all mankind!"
"With a stuffy smell inside."
"You are irreverent. The church is holy."
"Our Lord," I spoke sincerely now, "described the church of His time as a den of thieves. As to what He said about the priests! I don't want to be rude to you, Padre. To get away from the church and the clergy He preached outdoors, lived in the wilderness and replaced all your dogmas and your doctrines with one word—Love. Do you follow Him, eh, Padre?"
I stepped back. "Do you know, sir," I asked, "what the ancient Greeks did when it rained? No? They got wet, Padre. You do the same." I passed behind a bush, and he thought I vanished. Afterward he told Sam that he had met the devil, and wrestled, coming out triumphant.
On Monday, the curate came with us on our march to the sources of the Columbia River. There at Lake Windermere, a steamer brought several loads of stores which we trans-shipped by wagon to our various outposts.
And so it was in camp at Windermere that the curate held free service, all hands and the cook attending. The flag on the lectern constrained us to decent conduct. The singing, led by St. Blackguard's choir with the national anthem was a great success. It rained right heartily, and in our cavalry cloaks we watched the padre getting wet like a sportsman. He cut the sermon and got a thumping offertory. Sam was pleased all to pieces, and on the betting I came out forty-nine dollars and fifty cents in solid cash.
In sober earnest, my choir toned down the language of the camp to the verge of decency, and from Buckie's Bible, which I had been reading steadily for a year, I set a good example to the troop. Thus, when the steamer skipper sold me a box of cigars: "The wicked shall consume," said I, "at two for a quarter." They did, but some of the wicked thought, in their fond way, that they could consume on credit.
"Young Murphy," said I, "thou owest for eight of the best."
"Oh, come off! What d'ye think yer playing at?"
"Surely," said I, "the wringing of the nose bringeth forth blood."
It did, and Murphy paid.
The box of cigars having netted twelve dollars, I got seven others worse than the first which fell on a stony crowd but yielded two hundredfold.
Next, the steamer cook sold me a litter of little pigs, and our cook supplied the husks which my swine did eat, so that they grew and waxed fat and kicked over the oat bin.
"Some evil beast," I told Buckie, "hath devoured two whole sacks of oats, and the quartermaster, he rageth furiously. He calleth upon the officer commanding, so I've sold out all my pigs. They're not our pigs now, Buckie—not unto us the praise—not unto us."
Buckie had a natural aptitude for being shocked. Two of him plus one harmonium would equal a mother's meeting.
The padre was a bigot, Buckie a prude, the boys were just ruffians, and none of them understood that I, the poor troop jester, with an aching heart, felt the need, the first faint stirrings of a real religion.
II
The camp beside Lake Windermere was destined to be my last before I left the force. So I recall the last evening of my peace, dwelling on all its memories, so bitter sweet.
I was in Buckie's tent, and sat by the door with palm and buckskin needle sewing a little sack of milk-white antelope hide. Red Saunders, still my friend in those days ere ever I knew him as an enemy, sat by me with his button-stick burnishing tunic buttons for to-morrow's guard. Yonder, across the way was Sergeant-Major Samlet, a plebeian parody of Sam, out patrician chief, instructing Buckie who wore the orderly corporal's cross belt for that week. With them stood the orderly officer, poor old Blatherskite, his frogged coat sharply black against their scarlet. In the nearest tent on my right were Brat, in charge, Beef Hardy the scout, Pieface and Spud Murphy of Cor-r-k, playing poker, silent as the grave. In the nearest tent on my left, that queer triumvirate, Mutiny, Calamity and Tribulation, were concocting secret plots with which the welkin rang.
And at my side Red Saunders comfortably grousing.
"When a man's got a 'orse," he growled, staring across at Blatherskite in a somber passion, "and grooms that 'orse and feeds that 'orse and rides 'im, and gets to like 'is 'orse, and the 'orse tikes to 'im, see? And some blatherskiting —— of an orficer tikes thet 'orse awi' from 'im, and 'e bucks stiff-legged—wot I says is hair on 'im!"
I might 'ave 'eard much more about that 'orse, but Detective-Sergeant Ithuriel Fatty McBugjuice (Damme!) flicked me as he passed by with a bath towel (eh, what?) and bade me come for a swim in the blawsted lake. (Indeed, ah!) As he had taken off his serge with its gold badge of rank, I went with him in the evening calm to bathe. Afterward, Buckie's official duties permitted him to sit with me on the lake shore while I smoked.
Above the mirror lake with its flaws of silver, the dull gold hills bore scattered firs of solemn indigo, and faint in the gloaming loomed ranges of purple mist edged with the cold blue pallor of high snowfields. There floated the upper pinnacles of the Selkirks against the afterglow. And one by one white stars came out on guard.
I told Buckie that I intended to get drunk. He stiffly advised a milder line of conduct, and indeed milk with a bun would have proved too exciting for Buckie's indigestion department. His mother had a weekly letter from him to say that he wrote in the saddle, at the summit of the Rockies surrounded by hostile redskins, a bloody sword in one hand, a smoking revolver in the other. These letters were unofficial.
"Lead Kindly Light," he hummed. "Lead thou me on." The mother was his kindly light—but mine went out. He had a girl, too, who fancied him as a buck angel, whereas I suspected the prig even as corporal, and knew he would be an insufferable sergeant.
I, too, had been in love, and in my kit-bag was a photograph album of all the girls I had been engaged to marry, except the little lot which got burned in Carlton. I had tried to be good for each of these, except when they liked me bad, and even now could go straight—with occasional side-steps—if somebody really cared.