The Project Gutenberg eBook ofThe cheerful blackguardThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: The cheerful blackguardAuthor: Roger PocockRelease date: March 28, 2023 [eBook #70400]Language: EnglishOriginal publication: United States: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1915Credits: Al Haines*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CHEERFUL BLACKGUARD ***
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: The cheerful blackguardAuthor: Roger PocockRelease date: March 28, 2023 [eBook #70400]Language: EnglishOriginal publication: United States: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1915Credits: Al Haines
Title: The cheerful blackguard
Author: Roger Pocock
Author: Roger Pocock
Release date: March 28, 2023 [eBook #70400]
Language: English
Original publication: United States: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1915
Credits: Al Haines
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CHEERFUL BLACKGUARD ***
By
ROGER POCOCK
Author ofA MAN IN THE OPEN, CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE, ETC
Good people, since God alone, can make you wiseand kind, the jester's province ismerely to amuse you
INDIANAPOLISTHE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANYPUBLISHERS
COPYRIGHT 1915THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
PRESS OFBRAUNWORTH & CO.BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERSBROOKLYN, N. Y.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
IThe Glamour of YouthIIThe Age of KnighthoodIIIThe Swing of EventsIVThe Passions of WarVThe WumpsVIBratVIIA Ship Without a RudderVIIIMr. RamsIXThe SacrificeXThe Ordeal by TortureXIThe Soul of La ManchaXIIInspector Buckie's Narrative
THE CHEERFUL BLACKGUARD
I
I, José de la Mancha y O'Brien, was born on the ninth day of November, 1865, in Spain, of an Irish mother and a Spanish sire. Ten years later my parents entered the service of God, my father from a battle-field, my mother living in a convent.
With my brother, Don Pedro, the Brat, then eight years old, I was sent away from Spain to Tita, a fat Irish aunt, whose highly poisonous husband, Uncle Tito, was English, and lived in London. From their house, when he was old enough, I took the Brat to my school where I attended to his morals with a small strap. I had been busy for several terms explaining to the other chaps at school that they were heretics and doomed to hell, and as my skin was not large enough to hold the lickings they supplied me, they paid the balance to my little brother. He spoke as yet but very broken English and could not understand why he should share with me the glories of an early martyrdom. He shunned me.
Yet, when in 1883 I went to college, the Brat was not content to be left alone. Indeed he ran from school, and when I next heard from him, was in America, where he had gone to work for a man called Lane. When the summer vacation left me free, Aunt Tita supplied me with money and sent me off to collect my Brat. I was to bring him home and place him at a private school in Oxford where I could always keep him out of mischief. Thus I set out, determined to tear the Brat's hide off over his ears when I caught him. Perhaps he expected as much and was ungrateful, for when in due course I arrived in Winnipeg—from whence his letter appeared to have been posted—I could find no trace of my brother or of any man called Lane in Manitoba. There the search ended in bitter disappointment.
When I had lost my brother, with nothing left in all the world to love, a dog adopted me. Rich Mixed was named after a biscuit box containing twenty-seven distinct species of biscuits. You will realize that a dog must be of the noblest pedigree who had twenty-seven quarterings on his coat of arms and showed unmistakable descent from every possible kind of thoroughbred from daschund to great Dane. I loved him dearly and was consoled for my brother's loss.
Since I could not take Brat home, and would not return without him, I had no use for the remaining funds. Most of the cash was disposed of at a race-meeting where the wrong horses won. The rest of it merely dispersed.
At that time, a laundress pursued me with a bundle of my washing and a bill I could not pay. To dispose of this poor widow, I despatched her with a note to the Presbyterian minister. My letter accused him of deserting one whom he had sworn always to love and cherish. Mrs. Minister appears to have been morbid, for she put the police after me for attempting to levy blackmail. I could not safely remain in Winnipeg.
And yet I had not then the means for flight until I thought of Tito's dressing-case, a gift from His late Catholic Majesty to my fat uncle. It proved good enough to pay for a farewell dinner, at which I consulted my friends on the idea of flight from the city. Then just as they began to give me good advice, the police became obnoxious. I fled with my advisers in a cab beyond the city limits, and there we found a bad house where wine was plentiful. At the door we left cabby crowned with a chaplet of ham frill and crooning lullaby songs to his aged horse. Indoors we drank more wine than we could carry. Later in the evening Rich Mixed and I set forth to find my brother. We had no place to go to, and no money, so we did not get very far before I fell asleep out on the starlit prairie.
Once Rich Mixed woke me up to hear a terrible wailing close beside us, a wolf-howl, but for its human throb a thing beyond all anguish of the beasts, heartrending desolation keening star-high, while its faint echoes throbbed on the horizon. The huskies at the mission gave tongue in answer, the tame dogs bayed in distant Winnipeg. For some time Rich Mixed and I lay listening, while above us the star-blaze drowned in depths of the vast sky.
Again I woke, feeling the frosty crispness of the grass, breathing delicious air scented with perfume of roses. The green dawn widened, edged at the sky-line with clear topaz light. There, in the electric air of the Great Plains, life was all delight, up from the perfumed ground to those immensities of aerial splendor heralding the sun. I had never felt so well, or half so happy. And I had been drunk. Is the reader shocked? Why? If we poor moths were horrified by candles, our wings would not get burned.
Through sleep itself, and from the very moment of awaking, I was disturbed by the noise of the middle night, those agonized and desolating howls. Who howled? And what the deuce was it howling about? To see about that I got up, stretching myself and feeling rather dizzy, as though from running in circles. Then I lurched forward, tripped and sat down with a bang on a grave mound. The place was full of graves!
And as I fell the mournful wailing in the twilight changed at mid-howl into a funny chuckle. Then a soft voice said to me, "So. You come!"
I looked up, and saw Rain.
You may remember Tennyson's words, about the Woman you, and I, and all true men have loved:
"As I beheld her, ere she knew my heart,My first, last love, the idol of my youth,The darling of my manhood, and alasNow the most blessed memory of mine age."
The wilderness has always been to me a visible expression of that great Holy Trinity, of Power, Love and Truth, which we call God.
In Rain, the glamour of God's wilderness had taken human form as a red Indian girl with youth's delicious gravity of bearing, the childlike purity of the untainted savage, hale strength, athletic grace and eyes derisive. Sorrow had made her at that time aloof, remote from the world I lived in as a Madonna set above an altar, and yet her smile seemed to make fun of me. I looked up at her with reverence, with wonder, and if I loved, the love I offered to her was sacred, not profane. Yet if I seemed to worship, she would ridicule, so I had to pretend as a boy does to a girl. "Oh, don't mind me," I stuttered. "Please go on with that howl!"
"Boy-drunk-in-the-morning," she answered. "My dream, he say you come."
"So I have come," said I.
Years afterward, when I had learned her language, Rain told me in Blackfoot the whole story of the adventure, which led her to that meeting with me there on the plains at dawn.
She was a Blackfoot, of the Piegan or southern tribe, which settled in Montana, and her father was Brings-down-the-Sun, a war chief and a priest. In the winter before we met, the Piegan chiefs came to her father's lodge. At their request, he opened the sacred bundle of the Buffalo Mystery, whose ancient and solemn ritual engaged them for a day and a night in prayer. Afterward, they held a meeting of the council, to discuss the manifest wasting away of the bison herds on which the people depended for their food.
For years, the Stone-hearts (white men) had been slaughtering bison by millions for their hides, leaving the meat to rot. Now the last herds were surrounded by hungry tribes, and the end was in sight when the people must die of famine. So the chiefs sat in council.
Flat Tail had been told by his dream that all the buffaloes were hidden in a cave. Iron Shirt believed that the Stone-hearts were hiding the main herd in the country beyond the World-Spine (the Rocky Mountains). But Brings-down-the-Sun spoke of an Ojibway from the far East, who told him about the Man-it-o-ba or Land of the Great Spirit near to the lodge where the Sun God lived, from whence he rose each morning to cross the sky. "I am going," he told the council, "to this Land of God, and there I will open again my sacred bundle. I will speak to the Sun Spirit about our herds of bison, and How they are being wasted by the Stone-Hearts. I will pray that hearts of stone may be changed to flesh and blood lest all the people die."
So taking his daughter, Rain, to serve him in the ritual, Brings-down-the-Sun set out from their home beside the World-Spine, and traveled eastward for a thousand miles, crossing the plains to Manitoba, which was the Land of God. There at the sunrise making his prayer, he died, passing the threshold of God's house into the presence.
Rain showed me the hole where the Stone-hearts had buried her father. The ground spirits would catch him there, so she had torn up the earth and taken out the body. She had built a scaffold, where now her dead lay robed and armed in majesty, facing the sunrise. She had shot her father's horse so that its ghost might carry his shadow to the Sand Hills.
And afterward she had prayed.
"Oh, great Above-Medicine Person, Spirit in the Sun, I pray to you!
"All you Above Spirits and Under Spirits carry my prayer to the Sun!
"And all you holy Animals, wiser and stronger than I, have pity! Pray for me.
"I have made sacrifice of my jewels, and my long braids of hair. Great Sun God, take my father's shadow to the Sand Hills, that he may be with our dead."
The Seven Persons, our stars of the Great Bear, were pointing to the earth; the Lost Children, our Pleiades, were sleepy on their way to bed, when Rain felt the spirit leaving her father's body to ride the Wolf Trail, the milky way which leads to the hereafter.
And there was Morning Star. "Dear Morning Star," she pleaded, "don't give long life to me, for I am all alone."
She threw herself upon the upturned soil. "Oh, mother," she sobbed, "I'm all alone, and oh, so frightened. And you, dear Beaver Woman, my Dream Helper, can't you send me help? Oh, send a man to take me to my people."
The Piegan camp was a thousand miles away. What chance had she of escaping death among the hostile tribes between, or outrage at the hands of the Stone-hearts?
It was then she lifted up her voice in the Indian death-wail, and so continued mourning until I came in the gray of dawn, sent by her secret helper in answer to her prayer.
I saw the rifled grave, the scaffold and her dead. "The people," said I, "who run this graveyard will be so pleased!"
"You think so? My old man, he seeks the Mán-it-ou, but the Black Robe," she pointed to the Mission of St. Boniface, "the sacred man, he say 'The King of God is within you.' So my old man," this with a great gesture sweeping toward the skies, "he go seek!"
Rain's talk was a compound of charm, French half-breed patois, two or three English words, and the sign language. But, as we Spaniards have it, she wassympática, her eyes, her smile, expressing all she felt, and I have found love a great interpreter.
Her blanket, fallen wide apart, disclosed a beautiful tunic of white antelope skin, set with the teeth of elk, which tinkled softly.
"You little duck!" I whispered. That was profane love, but it really couldn't be helped.
"K'ya!" She drew back, folding the blanket across her breast. "Boy-drunk-in-the-morning, you métis, es?"
"Half-breed!" said I, not at all pleased. "No. Español."
"Why you come?"
"Well, you see, my little brother, Brat, was at school."
"All same mission?"
"Yes, a place called Eton, mission school for half-breeds. He ran away to be a pirate, and I ran after him to keep him out of mischief."
"Meescheef? I not understand. You catchum?"
"No, he's with a man called Shifty Lane."
"Bad Mouth, I know him. He dog-faced man." She darted forked fingers from her mouth, the sign of snake tongue, meaning that Lane was a liar.
"You come," she pleaded, "I take you to Dog-Face Lane. My dream, he say I take you."
"That's awfully decent of you."
Day filled the sky, but as yet there was neither sunlight nor shadow, only a clear fine radiance full of hushed fussiness of birds, a growing blaze of color from goldenrod and prairie sunflower, and fresh wild perfume.
Some little devil possessed me at that moment, for I flung my arms about the girl, only to find I held an empty blanket, while at arms' length the jolly little beggar stood flushed and panting, while she mocked me. Had I plenty scalps? Was my lodge red with meat? How many horses had I to buy Rain? "Oh, Little-boy-drunk-in-the-morning, the quick fox catchum trap!"
Ah, me! I never could withhold the tribute due to women, which every citizen must pay to her sovereign power. So long I pleaded mercy that the sun burned the sky-line, and the whole east was one vast glory before she would consent to be my mother. A girl who chaffs is irresistible.
"Swear!" she said. "You touch me, you go hell plenty quick."
"I swear I love you."
"You love as the wind, eh? Too many."
"I'm frightfully nice when I'm kissed."
"Maybe so. Now you catchum horse."
My horse? I had no horse.
"You poor?" she asked.
"I'm all I've got," I told her.
"S'pose," said Rain gaily, "I make 'um Indian man?"
"What! You'll make me an Indian? Oh, what a lark! Come on!"
She led me through an aspen grove, all tremulous green and silver, and in her little teepee, Rich Mixed and I had breakfast. Then she left us to watch a copper pot of herbs which simmered on the fire, and slid away to her father's burial scaffold. There, with some quaint apology to the Sun God, she took back her braids of hair and sacrificed instead the tip of her left little finger. When she returned to the teepee, she showed me her bandaged hand, and said she had cut her finger, but at the time I felt more interested in my cigarette, the last. Then, while I sat with a shaving mirror before me, she wove her braids of hair into my black thatch, so that the long plaits came down in front of my shoulders almost to the waist. I was delighted, especially when she set at the back of my head one straight-up eagle plume.
My dress suit, which last night had astonished Winnipeg, seemed no longer congruous. Rain bade me take it off, showing me the juice from her pot of herbs, also a breech clout, at which I shied a little. Still it was not long before I stripped, to play at red Indians with the brown juice and the clout, until Rain came back to see. She opened a trunk of parfleche (arrow-proof hide) to show me her father's clothes, then squatting by the fire she burned sweet grass for incense to cleanse us both.
To me, the dressing-up was a joke; to her, a sacred rite, the putting on of manliness and honor. With each new garment, she recited prayers: as I put on the buckskin leggings and war-shirt, with their delicious perfume of wood smoke, the parfleche-soled moccasins, from which the Blackfoot nation takes its name, and the broad belt studded with brass carpet tacks. Then she gave me a painted robe of buffalo cow-skin, and showed me how to carry myself with the medicine-iron, a .45-70 Winchester.
Perhaps I should mention that Rich Mixed flew at and bit this Indian, before he realized that the person inside was me. But I had never been so pleased.
Let me confess most humbly to an unusual strength and grace of body, the carriage of a gentleman, and a most lamentable face: the pinched forehead and strong features of an Indian, the pointed ears, the devilish eyes and brows, and wide flexible mouth of a faun. In civilized clothing, I had been grotesque; but there was mystery in the Indian dress, which made me for the first time real and natural. I had always a passionate sick craving for all things beautiful, a fierce delight in color, line, proportion, harmony, and now with the change of dress was no longer hideous. I had come to my own, and while Rain struck camp, ran yelling with delight to round up her herd of ponies.
At this point, I should pause to be sententious with sentimental comment on all the blessings I had left behind me:
Item. My worthy aunt, damp with many tears, but much relieved. She had hopefully predicted my untimely end.
Item. My pernicious uncle, who in due time appeared before a judge in Chambers asking leave to presume my brother's death and mine, so that his wife might have our heritage.
Item. My prospects. Mine was the only kind of education which can be guaranteed to turn out drunken wasters.
Item. Winnipeg. This city was supported at the time by the single industry of cheating in real estate. I had been offered employment as a cheat.
Item. The House of the Red Lamp, where my guests of the night before awaited me.
II
Any reader who hates geography had better skip this passage. It is a dull subject, only introduced when the writer wants to show off. That should be enough to choke off the skipping reader, and so I may safely divulge to the gentle reader that I allude to the geography of love.
Rain led be along the boundary trail, which follows the main divide between the land of boyhood and the domain of manhood. It is a narrow trail, no wider than a tight rope, so we fell off on both sides. Rain's adopted son was too old, you see, for motherly caresses, too young for the other kind. And Rain herself set me a bad example. She never could hit the motherly attitude without exaggerating, but was usually about a hundred years old before breakfast, and lapsed to five at the first cup of coffee. Then I would waste time being her affectionate infant son when it was my manly duty to murder a rabbit for supper. I was never traceable of a frosty morning, when mother sent me off to my bath in an ice-filled slough. That daily bathing in all weathers is a most gruesome habit of the Blackfeet, whereas I like being warm. An adopted child, too, ought not to cuddle mother while she is cooking, yet when she clouted me, I would take offense. And how could Rain howl of an evening for her poor father, while I sang ribald songs, such as "Obediah! Obediah! Oh, be damned!"
I fancied myself as an Indian warrior, and expected Rain to admire me in the part. Play up? Of course I did. Had I been rigid English, forcing the world to fit me, too proud to make a fool of myself, too austere to see the fun, but I am not. I am human, Spaniard with a touch of Irish, fluid to fit my surroundings. I riotously overplayed so wild a burlesque redskin that Rain would laugh, ache, sob and have hysterics.
We played at the hand talk, until we could converse. We played at the Blackfoot language, until I understood when she didn't gabble. I learned my roping, packing, tracking and sign quicker than she could teach me. Yet what was the use of Rain playing the teacher, when her pupil would chase her round the camp-fire, then rumple her with infant hugs and kisses as a reward for having been too good. In vain, she reminded me of my oath that I would go to hell if ever again I touched her.
"Me Injun now," said I. "White man's hell too full: no room for Injun."
She could not teach me the craft of warriors, and my ideas of finding water led always to dry camps. I liked a nice big fire in the evening, and by day delighted in riding along the sky-line firing off my gun—in that land the Crees, Dakotas, Grosventres and Absarokas collected scalps as you do postage stamps.
My notion of hunting was to ride down wind and miss the game on the wing, which suited the antelope and the jack rabbit. As to the prairie chickens and ducks, they sat out my rifle shooting in perfect confidence at no risk whatever. Even before I fired my last cartridge, Rain was obliged to add my work to her own, and had she not snared ground game, we should have starved to death. Her religion forbade the eating of fish and ground game, so in her most pious moods I ate for both. And since I was neither of use nor ornament, Rain mothered me. Mothering is the play of girls, the life of women. Rain enjoyed me, too, as a comic relief to life.
I would have you understand that we were boy and girl together, not man and woman. We played at love as one of many games, but lived apart. We played at mother and son, teacher and pupil, but not at husband and wife. I thought my honor must be a thing heroic, sacred, absolute, like a great fortress, while Rain trusted me.
A gentleman, I suppose, is one who expects much of himself, little of others. He is liable to be disappointed with himself if ever he betrays a woman's trust, fails to live by his own resources and opportunities, or marries for money, or finds himself kept by a woman. Yet he may engage to be a woman's servant, be she queen or peasant, and fight for her defense without loss of honor. I was content for the time to be Rain's servant while she was in danger. And afterward? Boys do not worry about afterward.
From the Red River to the Rocky Mountains, the Canadian Plains form three steps, the lower or Manitoban, the middle or Saskatchewan, and the upper or Albertan, in all about one thousand miles across. At the time of our journey, these lay in almost unbroken solitude. In many districts, the bison skulls lay like the white tombstones of a graveyard, reaching in all directions beyond the sky-line. The herds were gone, the hunters had followed, and the land lay void, a desolation such as our world has never known and never may again.
Rain steered us clear of the few and scattered homes of frontiersmen, wide of the camp grounds used by possibly hostile savages, and at the end of the tenth week, led me to the high western scarp of the Cypress Hills.
Beneath us the grass, with many a tawny ridge and faint blue vale, reached away into golden haze, and like a cloud belt far above soared the gray World-Spine, streaked and flecked with snow. Yonder, beside the Rockies, lived her people. Here at our feet was the Writing-on-Stone by Milk River, where my young brother worked for Shifty Lane.
For that day's rations we chewed rabbit skins, and at sundown came to Lane's trading post, expecting after we make camp to barter for provisions. But while Rain unloaded the ponies, and I composed myself upon a robe to watch her, Miss Lane rode over from the house. The trader's half-breed daughter was eager to show off in her dress of cotton print, a sunbonnet, real shoes of leather and jewelry of rolled gold set with gems of glass, insignia of her grandeur and importance.
"K'ya!" she cried, when Rich Mixed had finished barking, then reining her roan cayuse, surveying our beggarly camp. "Kyai-yo." She patted her lips with one hand, so that the exclamation came out in broken gusts. "Ky-ai-i-yo-o! You poor, hungry ones!"
"I have a horse," said I, "to trade for food." But she ignored me, pattering in Blackfoot. "Don't," she chattered, "don't think of trading horses to my father. All people try to trade them off for food, but we haven't enough grub for winter, and he gets mad. So then they go away and eat a pony."
"My rifle," said I, "won't he take that in trade?"
"No buffalo left," said Miss Lane, "and the people can't find any deer. Why, Flat Tail's band are reduced to fish, and you know that the Sun God forbids them to eat fish."
"Don't you hear?" asked Rain. "Oh, Got-Wet, we'll sell the rifle."
But Got-Wet stared at me, then turned to Rain with a grin as she declared in English, "He sham Injun!"
Rain bribed the girl to silence with a gift from St. Boniface Mission, a pincushion cover made of Berlin wool, which represented a blue cat on a green sky, seated, head at right turn, eyes of pink beads. In excruciating raptures, Got-Wet promised a supper after dark. Meanwhile, she stayed for a gossip, advising Rain in the art of pitching camp, with now and again a peep at the sham Indian, followed by great pantomime of fright. As for me, I was too proud to be routed out of camp by a girl's impudence, too hungry to search for my brother, too shy to interview the trader and buy food. How could I, with Rain's last streak of yellow face-paint across my lordly nose, confront a white man? I sat in high gloom, disdaining to notice Got-Wet.
And in excited whispers, Got-Wet divulged to Rain how Pedro, a white boy of marvelous incompetence, had run away with her cow. Yes, only last night he had stolen her cow and run for the Medicine Line (United States-Canada boundary).
Oh, so handsome, too! And how he admired her. Why, once, the rest was told in whispers, and must have been a secret I was too young to hear.
Pedro, of course, was my Brat, but I could hardly imagine a La Mancha stealing a mere cow. Still, this could be none other than my brother.
Yet, according to Got-Wet, my brother had skipped the country, and a rider had been sent in haste to fetch the pony soldiers. I had not heard of any mounted troops. Who were these pony soldiers?
I could see that, whoever the soldiers were, Got-Wet was thoroughly frightened lest they should catch my brother. She began to plead with Rain to ride at once, to ride hard all night, to catch my Brat, and bring home the stolen cow. Yes, she would pay us a sack of flour and a side of bacon, if we would fetch the cow. And while we were about it, we might just as well warn the foolish boy to hide himself in the rocks, until the soldiers passed.
Rain gave me a glance, to show that she understood my brother's danger. Yes, she would ride with me, as soon as we finished supper and had the flour and bacon for our journey. But who was the messenger who had gone to fetch the soldiers?
"Why, Tail-Feathers-round-his-neck. Who else could go?"
I saw Rain flush. "But," she said, "Tail-Feathers went to the buffalo hunting."
"There were no buffaloes," said Got-Wet. "So Tail-Feathers came back. You know, he's the greatest rifle-shot that ever— Well, that's how he got a job, with rations and big pay. He's scout-interpreter now to the pony soldiers."
With nods and winks, Got-Wet would have us understand that Tail-Feathers also adored her. Not that she would stoop to marry a mere Indian. "Oh, no," she simpered. "Die first. Still, he adores me, and rode off at once when I told him to fetch the soldiers."
"How far had he to go to fetch the soldiers?"
"Only to Slide-out. They'll be here by daybreak. Oh, Rain, you'll ride and warn that boy to-night? Promise me, dear."
"Shall I tell Pedro you love him?" asked Rain demurely.
But Got-Wet shouted, "No," then swung her pony and galloped homeward, calling over her shoulder, "Tell him I'm going to marry your sham Indian. There!"
However hungry, I always liked to see Rain pitching camp. She took the four key-poles of her teepee and lashed them together near their smaller ends; then set their butts four square upon the ground, so that they made a pyramid. Next, she laid the spare poles against the crotch of the key-poles, so that their butts made of the square a circle. Taking the skin cover of the tent, she draped it round the cone of poles, mounting its ears on the ear-poles to hoist it up into position, so that the ears, or wind-vanes, and the door opened down wind. She had cut the lodge down small as a sign of mourning, with barely room for our two back rests and sets of robes beside the middle fire. It was none the less snug for being small, so when I saw its lighted smoke in the dusk, I crept in to sulk at home. I found Rain laughing softly, while she laid down the beds, and bubbling over at intervals, she explained to me all the news of how my brother had stolen a cow, and how his enemy, the Blackfoot warrior, Tail-Feathers, had gone to fetch pony soldiers. Rain blushed to the roots of her hair, and told me then about Tail-Feathers. She was to be Mrs. Tail-Feathers as soon as she got home to the Piegan camp.
"Then," said I, "why does Tail-Feathers flirt with that fool?"
Got-Wet, Rain told me, was artful, and a liar.
I sulked. The time was in sight when I must part with Rain or marry her. It did not seem right in those days that my father's son should marry a mere squaw, and yet the thought of parting hurt me very sorely. I hated Tail-Feathers the worse because I saw Rain loved him. And I was so hungry.
At dark came Got-Wet, her pony loaded with flour and bacon, which she made us hide at once because it was stolen out of her father's store. She had also a dish of scrapings, cold fried potatoes and bacon, with soggy slapjacks and a can of tepid coffee, good enough for Indians. She squatted in the teepee to watch our ravenous eating, while she gave trail directions in a gale of talk. So came a gray and long-haired frontiersman, old Shifty Lane, shaggy and roaring, who cursed his daughter for feeding Indian beggars, and drove her homeward storming through the darkness. Rain wanted to talk, but I who had been empty was now full, and snored with intention. Presently the fire fluttered out.
When Rain awoke, a slender ray of moonlight was creeping across the darkness near where I lay, and seated in the chief's place, she saw her father's spirit. He was always there to guard her through the night, perhaps to hear her sigh of deep content when she changed dreams.
III
At midnight, Rain bustled me out to round the ponies up while she struck camp. Why should she be so eager to warn my Brat? She would not spare me time to water the ponies, but drove the outfit hard, wasting whole hours in bad ground by starlight which in the morning we could have crossed at ease. Day broke at last, and we took up the tracks of the stolen cow. Beside them went the marks of a white man's boots, just large enough for Brat and too small for any one else. Rain trailed her travois of lodge poles and our loose ponies, to blot out those telltale signs, while I rode well ahead down the Milk River Valley, under long cliffs of castellated rock. There were orchards of wild ripe fruit, but Rain insisted on a racking pace, while the sun climbed up the eastern and down the western sky. So when the sun was waning down the west, we came upon our quarry, El Señor Don Pedro de la Mancha, with his arms round the cow's neck, sobbing bitterly.
Such was the heat, that I rode in breech clout and moccasins, the Indian war-dress. Add to that the devilish Indian war screech, and the charging horse, and you will realize that poor Brat had scarcely time to jump out of his skin with fright, before a wild and naked roaring savage galloped over him.
He sat up, quite prepared for death, and yet, his nose being crushed, and his heart full of indignation, he resolved to sell his life dearly. Heroes, he remembered, in redskin fiction, always sell their lives dearly, but are never seriously killed because that would spoil the plot. The proper thing was to lug out his .44 Colt revolver with its eight and a half inch barrel and thus be prepared for great deeds of war. It was a pity that all his cartridges should be .45. Had they only fitted the gun, what a scene of blood!
"What d'ye mean by stealing cows?" I asked him. "Eh, you dirty rotter? Stand up and have yer head punched! I'll teach you to get into mischief! Now, Brat, I'm going to give you the durnedest hiding."
Yet, though I addressed the Brat in my very best Eton manner, the tone of the public schools, as proceeding from a naked savage, entirely failed to convince. It was not until I dismounted, and diligently performed my promise, and having given him a jolly good hiding, proceeded to give him some more, that Brat began dimly to realize that I was indeed his brother.
So far, dear Rain, very impatient with us, had from her saddle watched the ceremonial observances of white men, when brothers meet after long separation. Now seeing that I had dropped a tail of my false hair, she made me squat down while she hurriedly braided it on again, cooing with sympathy when she tugged too hard. Brat sat down opposite, to pant and make friends with my dog, and while his nose bled, announced that he also would turn red Indian.
I asked him, gravely, "How?"
"Then," said he, "I'll be a robber, anyway."
"Look here," said I, "you know I've come a long way and taken no end of trouble to keep you out of mischief. You're not going to play the hog. You Gadarene swine, if you're not respectable in this life, where will you go when you die?"
Brat couldn't see why I should have all the fun, so I invited him to another thrashing, and he excused himself.
"Promise," said I, "to be good."
Seeing preparations for war, he gave a sullen promise.
"S'elp you Bob?"
"S'elp me."
"Honor bright?"
"Bet yer sixpence."
"Brat, why not turn cowboy?"
"But is that respectable?"
"Extremely so. Go and be good in the United States, where you'll have lots of room. I don't want to crowd you, Brat."
"I know that, Hosay."
Of course, we were talking in Spanish, and in our language my name is spelled José, lest the English should guess the pronunciation.
"And you can say," I added lavishly, "that this gun," I was taking sights, "was stolen from you by Indians. Also the cow."
"But it's not true!"
"It is."
"Oh, but it's not fair!"
"Child," said I, "our ancestors were not caught by mere pony soldiers with such trifles as a gun and a cow."
"Pony-soldiers?"
"Yes."
"You don't mean the mounted police?"
I had never heard of mounted police, but I looked grave and wooden.
"I don't care!" he cried. "I bought that gun from their sergeant."
"And a license?"
"But the cartridges," said poor Brat, "are forty-fives, and they don't fit the forty-four bore. You might let me keep my gun."
"Oh, all right." I must own I was reluctant. "Catch!"
"And the cow. Shifty Lane wouldn't pay me my wages, so I collected his cow. The police will say it served him jolly well right."
I was too hungry to relinquish real beef. "No," said I firmly, "you'd better let me look after the poor cow."
So Brat began to tell me his adventures, and how he had been fool enough to flirt with Got-Wet. I was disgusted with him, especially as Lane's half-breed daughter had been making violent love to the Indian, Tail-Feathers. I told Brat he really must remember his social position, the natural obligations of his rank, the utter folly of stooping to such a creature as Got-Wet. Indeed, I had some hope of improving my brother's morals, laying down precept and example, when Rain said the soldiers were coming. She had been worrying us all the time we talked.
I kissed poor Brat, and we promised to write letters, though neither of us thought of giving a postal address. Then I sent him away with my blessing.
"Vaya usted con Dios!"
"Adios," the Brat sobbed, "Adios!"
So we parted, and my little brother went on down the valley, very grateful. At an angle of the cliffs, he waved his hat in farewell, and passed on out of sight.
For my part, I mounted my sorrel and rode off, driving the cow toward a break in the cliffs, where I proposed to dine for once on beef without any foolish delays. But Rain trailed after me with the pack beasts, pleading that there were soldiers in pursuit. She spoke of some awful fate awaiting Indian cow thieves caught red-handed with the white man's beef.
Of course, what she said was all very well for Indians, but I told her I was white, and all the pony soldiers could go to blazes. I was hungry.
Poor little girl! I suppose she craved as much as I did for a juicy rib, a tongue, the kidneys. Unable to resist the kidneys, Rain followed. The low sun was right in our eyes. The meadow was all haze; we could not see very well. And Rain was crying.
And through her sobs, Rain warned me. The scout-interpreter, who was bringing the soldiers to take a cow thief, was none other than her own betrothed lover. Tail-Feathers would see us two together. He would be angry, jealous. He was the champion rifle-shot of the Blackfoot nation. I had a rifle to threaten, no cartridges to fire. So she made me fly from him, and march swiftly these weary hours. To delay our flight was death.
I set my teeth, and refused her the slightest notice. I hated Tail-Feathers!
IV
Between the meadow and the foot of the cliff some former channel of Milk River had left a narrow lake. This pulled me up short, and as I looked for a way round the water, a smoke-puff appeared at the rim of the cliff overhead, a rifle-shot rang out with rumbling thunder echoes, and my sorrel horse crashed down dead, leaving me more or less in the air. A second shot crumpled my cow. A third grazed my naked shoulder, lifting blood. Then came Rain at full gallop to my rescue, screaming in Blackfoot to the man up there on the cliff.
"Tail-Feathers! Oh, Tail-Feathers, how could you? Killed my pony, spoiled the cow! Don't kill my squaw!"
Her squaw! She called me a squaw!Me! I jumped up and down in my fury.
"See," Rain shrieked. "My squaw is dancing! Look!"
"How dare you!" I shouted at her.
"Boy-drunk-in-the-morning," her eyes were dancing with fun, "I'm saving your life, you silly."
"Mind your own business!"
"See!" She pointed at a gaunt, middle-aged Indian in a gray slop suit, who rode along the sky-line seeking a way down the cliffs. "There," she said. "My man."
It was certainly very awkward.
"I am his woman," she said demurely, then tossing her head with a flash of royal pride, "and he's my man! He comes now to take me to his lodge."
"But what right had the fellow to shoot me? Confound his cheek, he has shot me!"
"Not much," she caressed the long wale carved in my shoulder. Then she gabbled so quickly in her sweet liquid speech, that I could only just catch flying words.
She was telling Tail-Feathers to stop killing me. As if I cared!
Tail-Feathers was a mighty warrior, who could never stoop to killing a mere boy with no scalp, a boy with a false wig of woman's hair. She begged me to set to the camp work, the squaw's work, so I could stay alive until the soldiers got me.
Blind with tears, moaning with rage, I shot back the lever and jammed it home, as though I were loading my rifle. Tail-Feathers should think he had an armed man to fight, not a squaw begging his mercy. I knelt down and took a sight at the approaching horseman. If it were only loaded!
Rain was nervous. Her little toil-worn hands were trembling as they caressed my head. "You're not an Indian," she crooned. "Not like an Indian, kneeling out here in the open, exposed, with an empty rifle. Fight-in-the-open-with-an-empty-gun is the sort of person who makes my man laugh. Oh, surely he must see that you're a mere boy, a child, too young for killing.
"See how he leaves his pony and climbs down—and comes from bush to bush and hides behind the rocks— He's coming very near to see what's wrong, why you don't fire. And I stand behind you, so if he fires he'll get us both. Hear how he shouts— Wants me to get out of his line of fire. I'm so frightened!" She rumpled up my hair, and laughed with queer, little, tremulous chuckles. "Ho, Tail-Feathers," she called, "you're not to kill my funny boy any more. I'll never love you if you hurt my boy."
But Tail-Feathers yelled from behind a rock, denouncing her for a wanton unfit to be his woman.
"Men are so stupid," she whispered in my ear. "He's going to shoot us both."
I asked her quickly and roughly if she would be my wife. If I had brought her to such a pass as this, it was her due, and as a gentleman I could do no less. Yet when she answered, "No," I felt relieved.
"To marry you," she chuckled, "to be your woman? Boy-drunk-in-the-morning will take me to his lodge of all the winds, a queer person who can not hunt or fight or even run away. He'll feed me through the hunger-death next winter. Oh, you funny boy, I hope my man won't get you."
Now she had roused me to such a pitch of frenzy that death was easy compared with the shame of life. I could see the Indian creeping behind a rock not fifty feet away. The Blackfeet have no oaths, but I could swear, and did, until Rain shrank back in horror. I sprang straight at the man, who was so startled that he fired high.
He was pumping a fresh cartridge, and praying the Great Mystery to guide his aim. By all the rules of war, I had no right to charge him, for no sane man would dare. He thought me crazy, bullet proof, inspired by the Big Spirit.
But when he turned to run, I thought I was losing him, and with a scream of passion hurled my rifle whirling through the air. It caught him just at the base of his skull, and felled him.
Then, with my foot upon his neck, I turned on Rain. "Am I a squaw or am I a man?" I asked. "Woman, come here, you're mine!"
For just one quivering moment, Rain obeyed me. Then we both felt a tremor in the ground, and looking up the valley saw a mounted man, full gallop, charging at us. "The pony soldiers! Fly for your life!" cried Rain.
V
Slide-out Detachment was an outpost of the Northwest Mounted Police, where the sergeant-in-charge had the mumps, which made him look ridiculous and feel cross. To him came Tail-Feather, the scout-interpreter, with complaint from Shifty Lane about a stolen cow. There was not a man to be spared, so a recruit was sent on patrol, Constable Buckie, with the scout for chaperon.
Poor Buckie rode in mingled pride and pain:
PRIDE. Half a mile out, he chucked his white helmet into a bush and put on a stetson, the flat-brimmed slouch hat of the prairies, which in those days the police were not allowed to wear. He took off his gauntlets because their pipe-day smeared him, and stuffed them into his wallets. He sported a silk handkerchief to dust his beautifully polished long boots about once in every mile. For the rest, he had a red dragoon tunic, indigo breeches with a yellow leg-stripe, white cross belt, a blazing bright belt of burnished cartridges, a foot-long Adams revolver in its holster, and a Snyder carbine slung athwart the horn of the stock saddle.
PAIN. The poor soretail would have died on duty rather than let his grief be seen by an Indian, but he rode well over to starboard or at times with a list to port, and hung on with bloody spurs, while he loped a rough rangy gelding whose trot was agony.
PRIDE. Approaching Lane's, he put the gauntlets on, and ogled Got-Wet, who made him first flirtation signals while she talked to the scout in Blackfoot. She was making Tail-Feathers to understand how Rain, his promised wife, was traveling just ahead with a white man disguised as an Indian. Leaving Constable Buckie to play with Got-Wet, the scout rode on to kill me. What happened afterward between Got-Wet and Buckie in the barn loft is entered in the constable's official notes as "information received." He was both proud and shocked at his own conduct, supposing that every flirt went direct to perdition.
PAIN. Buckie rode down the valley all day long wondering what could have become of his chaperon. Toward sunset, a sound of rifle-shots ahead aroused him to a sense of something wrong. He saw the chance for some great deed of war, and since he could not bear the pain either of trot or canter, he had to charge at full gallop, keeping his eyes shut because he was scared to look.
PRIDE. He pulled his gun.
Now I was standing on his chaperon's neck, whetting my knife to scalp my first real Indian, when suddenly I saw a proper Tommy Atkins, of scarlet cavalry, somehow broke loose from England and charging straight at me, blind.
"Whoa!" said I. "Whoa, hoss!"
At that, the rangy gelding pulled up dead, but the soldier came straight on until he bumped, and slid right to my feet.
"Hello!" said I.
The soldier blinked at me, leveled his gun and grunted, "Hands up, you swine!"
But at that moment, I wanted a whole regiment to defy, so I told him I'd see him damned first, for I would not throw up my hands for any bally Tommy.
"Come, hands up,nitchie(friend)."
"You silly ass," I said. "Can't you see I'm a white man?"
"You look it," said he with sarcasm; and being nicely stained brown all over by way of costume, I could only smile.
The rookie had misgivings. This episode would be grand in Saturday's letter to mother, but what would they say in barracks about pulling a revolver on an unarmed man. He smirked, so I told him to put his gun away and not try to be funny. He obeyed.
"Consider yourself under arrest," he growled, for that was the way the non-coms. always addressed him. "Now," he stood up, "what d'ye mean by killing the cow and my scout-interpreter?"
"If you—" I suggested blandly.
"If you—what?"
"If you please, pig," said I.
"Well, I'll be dog-goned! Say," he asked, almost respectfully, "have you seen a young fellow along here by the name of Pedro la Mancha?"
"You dreamed him."
"Ax that girl."
So I asked Rain in my best Blackfoot, but she did not understand it very well. Then it occurred to Constable Buckie that I might be Pedro in disguise.
"Here, you," he asked Rain, "who killed that cow?" I translated.
Now Rain was afraid of pony soldiers, but she remembered being insulted by her man, and charged with being a wanton. He should rue that!
"He killed the cow," she answered, pointing at Tail-Feathers, who lay still unconscious.
"And the pony?"
Again she pointed at the police-interpreter.
"And who killed my Indian scout?"
For answer, she showed the soldier that long red, burning wale across my shoulder, while her pointing finger accused the police-interpreter of attempted murder. "Boy-drunk-in-the-morning," she said in Blackfoot, "tell my words to the pony soldier. Tell him, I say you had no cartridges when this man tried to kill you."
"She says," I explained, "that I had no ammunition, and that's a fact, worse luck."
"Tell him," said Rain, "that you clubbed Tail-Feathers with your medicine-iron."
I blushed as I translated. "This mighty hero," she says, "charged like the great chief of all the buffalo. His name is Charging Buffalo, and all that sort of stuff, don't ye know."
The Indian began to groan.
"Say," said Buckie, "Charging Buffalo, alias Pedro la Mancha, just tell the girl you're both my prisoners."
"The silly ass," I translated, "thinks I'm Pedro, and so we're prisoners. Isn't it a lark!"
"She's a nice little piece," added Buckie. "Tell her to cut up the cow and get supper."
So I sent Rain to get supper, and she went, head bent, feet dragging, for she was terrified at being a prisoner.
"Pedro," the soldier was unsaddling his horse, "you may play at Indians, but I guess you've been raised for a lord, or some sort of pet. Say you won't run, and your word is good enough."
Having nothing to run from, and nowhere to run to, I readily gave parole. Wild horses could not have dragged me from that camp with real beef in sight.
"As to this infernal Tail-Feathers," Constable Buckie looked round. "Hello! Look out!"
The scout-interpreter felt so much better now that he was able to sit up with his rifle and take a pot-shot at my back. I had just time to jump on his stomach before the thing went off.
Rookie he was, and not over-wise at that, but Constable Buckie felt that for a scout-interpreter this Indian was too impulsive. He therefore persuaded Tail-Feathers to lie down and take a nap with contusions, then put the man under what he called close arrest, tied up like a brown paper parcel, for delivery to the sergeant-in-charge at Slide-out.
The dusk was falling, and big white stars broke through as the sky darkened. "I reckon," said Constable Buckie wearily, "we've time for a swim before supper."
So I challenged him to race me at undressing, and dived into the lake, which was nice and warm for swimming. When Buckie had shed his uniform, he joined me, and very soon our troubles were forgotten. At nineteen, it is rather hard to be officially minded after business hours. As for me, I liked Buckie first-rate, because he happened to be a clean-bred Canadian. I did not know that we should be chums for life.
Rain was ever a busy little person, and now in the twilight she made haste to get everything ready. She cut loose Tail-Feathers, who passed away into the gloaming, no longer in anyway attached to the mounted police. She used his lashings to make a neat bundle of Buckie's arms and uniform, which she dropped without a sound into deep water. Then leaving the supper to cook itself, she adjourned to an ant-heap a little way from the camp, where all alone in the gloom she howled for her poor father.
There was a tang of frost in the air when we came out chilled, famished and distressed by Rain's most dismal lamentations. The fire was dead, there was nothing to eat, and Tail-Feathers had escaped, so it seemed, with Buckie's kit. As to Rain, she said we were very rude to interrupt her grief. She was an orphan, and a prisoner.
Wrapped in my painted robe, with chattering teeth, Buckie sat by our fire, projecting schemes for tracking Tail-Feathers by torchlight and by moonshine. It was awkward, though, that the Indian had decamped with both the police carbines, both their revolvers, all the ammunition. Even when comforted with much beef, the pony soldier trembled at the thought of his doom when he made official report to the sergeant-in-charge at Slide-out. Later, in the darkness of the teepee, I heard him weeping, and at dawn he set out barefoot on some futile attempt to track Tail-Feathers. The ground was then white with frost.
On his departure, Rain sat up, a little heap of mischief, and whispered across the teepee, "If I were only free!"
And I yawned back, "What then?"
"I think," she said demurely, "I could find the soldier's clothes."
"Cat!"
She purred. "And make you back into a white man, Charging Buffalo."
"Why for?"
"So you could go and be a pony soldier."
"What's that?"
"You saw the red coat, and your eyes were so hungry! You followed him like a dog, and forgot poor little Rain. Threw out your chest, so! and your shoulders, hump! And your eyes, ever so far away. Then I call, and you yawn, so! You're tired of Rain, and playing Indians, eh?"
I made shamefaced objections, blushing hot all over as I realized at once that what Rain said was true.
I wonder if other men feel as I do. I can not look unmoved at a pretty woman, and yet the sight of the British scarlet excites me more than anything else I know of. To speak to a man who wears it makes me catch my breath. Equally strong is the appeal to my senses of revolvers, cartridge belts, long boots, skin clothes or any gear of horsemanship or wild life. To see these things makes my heart leap, to use them is a lasting enjoyment, whereas I have looked on big stacks of gold, or silver, or treasures of diamonds, without the least emotion.
As soon as Rain spoke, I was sick of Indians. Life was impossible outside the mounted police.
"I only try," she mimicked my voice when I talked to the Brat, "and take so plenty trouble to keep you out of meeschief!"
"And if I go for a soldier, what about you?" I asked.
"Me?" she sighed. "Oh, I go catch poor Tail-Feathers. He got no beef."
As a matter of fact, poor Tail-Feathers had come in the night, had loaded his horse with beef, and now, well hidden in the cliffs, was eating the same while he watched Buckie's futile attempts at tracking. The soldier came back blue with cold, gray with despair and only too glad when I proposed that Rain should be free from arrest if she could find his clothes. She placed a string in his hands, and bade him pull. So he hauled the bundle of arms and clothes out of the lake.
Over a big fire inside the teepee, we hung his clothes to dry, and after breakfast, while I made a most careful toilet, a naked constable drafted in a damp note-book the full official version of his patrol.
"How will this do?" he began. "'Dear Guts!' I mean, 'Sir, I have the honor to report for your information that when I made Lane's from information received'—from Got-Wet when we hid up in the barn loft—'to the effect, viz: that old Shifty was up to his usual games, cheating said Pedro la Mancha out of four months' wages, so Pedro skinned out with Got-Wet's cow, which didn't belong to Lane anyway, because Pedro's brother Hosay la Mancha, a respectable British subject, had gone to collect the cow for Got-Wet.' So that's all clear, eh?"
"Fine," said I, from behind the hanging clothes. "'Meanwhile, I sent the interpreter ahead'—so he wouldn't catch on to Got-Wet and me in the barn loft—'with instructions to pick up the cow tracks, and when I caught up'—Say, old fellow, don't want to let on that I invaded the damned States under arms. It wouldn't be good for Guts, and he'd throw Catherine wheels if he thought I'd raided Montana. We'll say I caught you up at the boundary line, 'where my interpreter was shooting up the cow, the pony and Hosay la Mancha. I detained the prisoner in close custody, but he skinned out'—and you can't see his tail for dust—'so I brung in Mr. la Mancha, who wants to take on in in the Outfit, and have the honor to be, sir, your obedient servant, regimental number'—I'll have to look that up—'David Buckie, Constable.' How's that, umpire?"
"Bull's-eye!" So I stepped out from behind the clothes-line. After all, my dress suit was by a jolly good cutter in Savile Row, the shirt a bit rumpled but a decent fit, the pumps and socks quite new and, nothing paid for. In my best Oxford manner, I held out the white tie and asked Buckie to make the bow. "You bally idiot!" I added, because he rolled into the fire, singeing my painted cow-skin.
Stark naked, the buck policeman rolled back over the cooking-pots and prayed to be carried away for burial. Then he sat up wiping his eyes with my necktie. "Chee! Now whar hev I put me lavender kids?" he howled. "Oh, hang my collar on the chandelier while I sweat! Me pants is split from ear to ear, and it's my night to how-w-l! Yow-ow-w!"
I told him these were all the clothes I had.
"Just turn them loose on Slide-out. Think of Guts! Why, you ring-tailed, lop-eared coyote, you can't join Our Outfit dressed like a blasted Comet!"
"What's to be done?"
"I guess I'll cache you in a prairie-dog hole until I've stole you a shirt and overalls. Allee samee, that kit would take first prize for fancy dress at a ball, or I'm a shave-tail."
Even in those days, Buckie suffered from a respectable soul, which made him a bit of a prig for routine, a glutton for etiquette, a shop-walker for deportment, and most maidenly particular about his clothes. He kept us at work for hours cleaning kit before he would get into uniform, then mourned aloud because for all my evening dress I had lost my opera hat and ought not to go bareheaded. In the end we departed riding his big horse tandem with me behind, pursued by Rain's howls, malicious, derisive, devilish little howls. Were these for her poor father?
I
Rain was a little brown hen-angel, the half-grown, all fluffy chicken of a seraph, with a tang of earth about her, just deceptively human and alluring enough to tear my heart-strings when she flew off leaving me to bleed.
To guard her, I forsook my Brat whom I care for. But when she seemed to love another man, and laughed a good-by to me I could only go. A boy may love a maid and yet love life. So I loved Rain, but not as yet more than I loved my life. That was to come, but in those days, life was calling me, yes, tugging hard.
Certain fabulists have alleged that I joined the mounted police in evening dress. This is not true, for when Buckie was escorting me to Fort French, my place of enlistment, we lunched by the trail-side with an American cowboy who had a quart of pickets. Afterward, we played cards, my kit staked against his. He won, riding away in my dress suit with the tie under his off ear, and the near end of the collar pointing S.S.E., while through his nose he sang a hymn beginning, "Oh say, can you tell?"
I still had my broken heart, and a dog, but as to the costume in which I joined the police, my modesty forbids particulars.
One of the greatest difficulties in the writing of this book is that my publishers have a craze for particulars. They say that the story is too vague. I ought to state the facts. Now if, to take an example, I give my regimental number in the mounted police, I shall be identified, extradited and hanged just as I have begun to settle down. I have borrowed Buckie's number, a cruel humiliation for me because he was always so durned respectable that he had scarcely any defaulter sheet.
"Regimental Number 1107 Constable la Mancha, J., is hereby taken on the strength of the Force from the 20th instant, and posted to C Division."
So read the orderly corporal, standing at the south end of number two barrack room in Fort French while I lay on my trestle and purred.
Presently the corporal, announcing details, told off Surly McNabb, troop teamster, to fetch a load of coal with me for off man. My purr changed to a groan.
The bugle was sounding "Last post" with a cold in its head as the orderly corporal clanked away to call the roll next door. Then Windy O'Rooke sat up and shouted he had a dollar to say that "Surly bucks stiff-legged at taking a blanked rookie on coal fatigue. It's me he wants."
"Mr. Affable McNabb," said I, "has been using influence to get me. You cuckoos who steal one another's ideas think Affable's a morose beast with a thirst. But gentlemen, he has a faithful heart. My dog to your dollar, Windy, I'll make him deliver a speech of fifteen minutes."
"Done!"
McNabb intervened with a horse brush, which I fielded, and returned to its own address. Reprisals followed, while I dived under beds capsizing their peaceful inhabitants. So there was roughhouse for the space of thirteen minutes while I was partly killed, before the bugle saved me. For at "Lights out," the room corporal ordered silence. The lamplight changed to moonlight and a red glow from the stove, the stampeding of elephants became a creeping of mice, and Windy sat up in bed for a long luxurious scratch.
Next morning Surly drove his four-horse team to an outcrop of coal about sixteen miles up the valley of Old Man's River, and not one word would he vouchsafe to me. While he watched me load the wagon he ate his lunch, and smoked for hours but still said never a word. Once when we started back toward barracks I thought he was going to speak, for I asked him politely if he were not too tired, but he only shouldered me off the wagon seat so that I lit on my tail in a blue pool of profanity. I had to climb on the tail-board, dead tired, black as Satan and most frightfully cold.
Did you ever try to whistleTe Deumin rag-time? I tried it, with my teeth for castanets, while I sat in a wind like a scythe and whittled Surly's grub box into kindlings. Then I made me a lovely fire in the load of coal, and sangLead Kindly Lightto cheer old Surly.
When it got too hot, I dropped down and walked behind singing,
"Oh, Paradise! Oh, Paradise! I greatly long to seeOld Surly in his Future Home attempting repartee,While small red devils rake the coals to keep him good and hotAnd when they ask him to cheer up, he'll say he'd rather not."
I was beginning to run short of rhymes when the horses got a whiff, and all four of them stampeded as though there were no hereafter, while Surly poured forth rhetoric from the midst of that bounding conflagration, until he managed to capsize the wagon. When I arrived on the scene I found him perched on a boulder still declaiming, so I sat down to take notes of his benediction. "Please," I would ask, "I can't do shorthand—what comes after 'lop-eared'?" or "Hold on, McNabb—from 'pigeon-toed son,'" and at last, "Say, Affable, what's the time? You've preached a good fifteen minutes so I've won my dollar bet."
Then Surly grinned for the first time on record, so I measured the smile with my pencil and noted it down at five and three-quarter inches. At that the teamster laughed until the tears rolled streaks down his dusty face.
What with reloading, and too much conversation, we got to the post an hour late for supper. So the teamster told the troop cook that I was a blackguard. Such is the origin of two famous nicknames, for he was known as Chatter McNabb, and I as the Blackguard as long as we served in the force.
The affair of theMatrimonial Gazettehas grown into a regimental myth, but that is due to Rocky Mountain liars, for whose inventions I do not claim credit. Historically the matter dates from my first patrol, when a one-horse rancher at The Leavings gave me a copy of the journal. I made haste to advertize. I announced myself as a respectable bachelor, considered extremely good-looking and very young, with pretty habits, domestic tastes, nice manners, a bewitching smile, a romantic past and enormous expectations. Ladies might correspond with a view to matrimony, and as my address was "Fort French, North West Territories, Canada," they must have felt that distance gave them safety. Sixty-eight damsels responded, ranging from fourteen years of age to eighty, and most of them sent photographs, original or borrowed. Keeping a dozen beauties for my own consumption, I sold the rest by auction or private treaty at prices varying from ten cents in cash to as many dollars promised. Each mail brought sixty-eight love-letters addressed to J. la Mancha, by his fiancées, and as Cupid's postman I distributed the ladies according to their post-marks. If two damsels happened to write from the same town, when a virgin changed her address on going to school or leaving, when our gallants at Fort French swapped, sold, traded, or pawned their dames, or parted with their dearest girls to settle a canteen bill—then there was misunderstanding and prospect of a fight. The claimants for a lady's hand would meet behind the stables while the rest of us made a ring until the pair found out which gentleman loved best. The correspondence was enormous and confused.
In these annals of true love I can only select one case as bearing upon my story. The little cat in question claimed to be Mrs. Burrows, widow, of Helena, Montana, submitted the photograph of a widowed aunt, and loved Mr. la Mancha with a headlong passion. I traded her, I remember, to the troop cook for an I.O.U. on a sucking pig for Christmas. Cook swapped her for a terrier of three sorts to Sergeant-Major Buttocks. He was caught by his wife in the act of mailing his irrevocable vows, and finding himself severely reprimanded, made a hasty sale of the Helena widow, trading her for a pair of long boots to one of our officers, Inspector Sarde.
So far the game went merrily with no harm done, but now the sergeant-major had to explain that although he was forever her adoring José la Mancha, he was about to change his penmanship. This he refused to do because his own wife forbade him, so I was sent for by Inspector Sarde. At the troop office I had to concoct a letter. In this I was Samuel Partington, requested by J. la Mancha to advise the widow Burrows that he had injured his right hand while trapping a catamaran, but was learning to write with the left, for what odds if the fist was awkward so long as the heart was true.