CHAPTER XXIV. TELLS HOW THE CONSTABLES ENJOYED THEMSELVES.
CAESAR—"Let me have men about me that are fat—
Sleek-headed men, and such as sleep o' nights."
The five constables that Mr. Mercier sent down to Megantic put up in the village hotel.
Within an hour Donald had received the following note:—
"Dear Donald,—Action at last. Five men from Quebec after you. Keep away from Marsden for a day or so. I don't think there is much to fear. They would not know you, I believe, if they met you, and they are so frightened by the stories they have heard about you, that I don't believe they would dare to arrest you, even if they found you. However, as well be on the safe side. Go into the woods a little bit"
The people soon knew that an attempt was to be made to arrest Donald. The young men gathered in the hotel round the constables, and told blood-curdling stories of his dare-devilism in the North-West. The constables were fat, phlegmatic, and anything but heroic. What they had been accustomed to was an unexciting and steady beat in the drowsy old city of Quebec, and small but unfailingly regular drinks of whiskey blanc. This duty was new. Worst of all, it was perilous. This Morrison—he might shoot at sight. True, they were armed with rifles and revolvers; but they had heard that he was a dead shot. Perhaps he might shoot first. That would, to say the least, be awkward, perhaps dangerous, perhaps even fatal. No, they had not much stomach for the work, and the people, perceiving this, encouraged their fears. In a very short time Donald became a combination of Italian brigand, Dick Turpin, and Wild West Cowboy, as these latter are depicted in the dime stories.
Whenever, therefore, the officers took their walks abroad, they stepped very gingerly as they approached the village of Marsden. It never occurred to them to enter Donald's home. They might have found him half-a-dozen times a day. They never once crossed the threshold of the woods.
Did not this terrible character know every tangled path, and might he not open fire upon them without being seen?
The country roads are really white lines through the green of the woods.
One morning the constables left the hotel, primed with a little whiskey. They took the road to Marsden. The woods skirted the narrow way on either side. The summer was now well advanced, and the foliage was so thick as to form an impenetrable lacery.
"We have been here a month now," said the officer in charge, in French, "and we have accomplished nothing. I shall ask to be relieved at once. The people will not help us. How could we ever find a man in these woods? He might be here this moment," pointing to the trees at his right, "yet what chance would we have of taking him?"
With one accord, the four subordinates answered "None."
"Suppose he were here," and the officer halted on his step, "how—What is that? Did you hear anything?"
"Yes," said one of the constables timorously, "I heard a noise in the brushwood."
"Suppose it were Morrison?"
And they looked at each other apprehensively.
"We will return," said the officer. "It is probably a bear. If I thought it were Morrison, I would enter the wood," he said valorously. When they were gone, a brown face peeped out. It was Donald. "They're scared," he said to himself, laughing. "Not much danger from them. I don't believe they would know me. I'll test it."
He laid down his rifle at the foot of a tree, looked to his pistols, and walked rapidly in the direction the constables had taken. Overtaking them, he pushed his way through the brushwood, in advance of them, and then, at a bend in the road which hid him from view, he leaped out upon the road, turned, and met the party. He walked straight up to them, looked them in the eye, and passed on. They did not know him; or, if, as was alleged against them afterwards, they knew him, they were afraid to arrest him. The statement that Donald carried his audacity so far as to enter the hotel, and drink with them, he himself laughingly denied to his friends.
The opposition papers jeered at the failure of the expedition. Ridicule is the most powerful of weapons. Man is not half so humorous as the dog or the elephant. With the latter it is an instinct. With the former it is an acquirement. Still, the perception of humor is fairly general. Don't argue with your opponent, Kill him with ridicule. Laughter is deadly. When the people laugh at a Government it can put its spare collar and shirt in its red handkerchief, and retire to the privacy of its family. Mr. Mercier is sensitive to ridicule.
Mr. Mercier withdrew that expedition, and offered $3,000 reward for the capture of Morrison!