The Blackguard

ROGER POCOCK.
WARD, LOCK & CO., LIMITED, LONDON, NEW YORK, & MELBOURNE.

THE BLACKGUARD
Think of your sins, What made you a soldier a-serving the Queen: God save the Queen, And God save the duffer who thinks of to-morrow. God save the man who remembers his sorrow, God save the man who can think of the past, Sundown at last: Here's rest for the past, and here's hope for the morrow!
That is exactly what the bugle said to a man who was sitting on the edge of the bench-land in the evening calm. He was a very big man, dressed in a grey woollen undershirt, worn-out riding-breeches with a two-inch yellow stripe down the legs, and jack-boots. By his side lay a broad grey slouch-hat, such as cowboys wear; on his knees a bath-towel—dry; and in his neighbourhood lingered a faint aroma of stables. The man's bare arms were like the thighs of an average sinner, his shoulders, thighs, breast, neck, all of gigantic strength and beauty, a sight that would have appealed to any athlete as beyond the loveliness of women.
The setting sun just touched his wavy, crisp, black hair with a lustre of metal. Again, his face, still, strong, silent, had an odd suggestiveness of a bronze statue, that of something Greek but uncanny, a faun, perhaps, or a satyr. The hair, sweeping low over his brows, might almost conceal incipient horns; his ears might have been tufted; his features defying all the rules—stuck on anyhow; the subtle devilry of his deep black eyes, the ugly fascination, the whimsical dignity; the bearing lofty, defiant, almost magnificent; and again, an air, indefinite enough, of sorrowful majesty;—how well everything about the man fitted one name—the Blackguard.
That was La Mancha's name, by consent of the five troops of the Mounted Police; and somehow the common use of it conveyed no sense of reproach but rather of endearment. From the Commissioner down to the smallest recruit the whole five hundred were half-afraid of him, except one man; yet no civilian ventured to speak ill of the Blackguard, or he would have had his head punched. To say bad things about the Blackguard was to slight the Force.