CHAPTER II
"Women and wine and war!
War and wine and love!
With a sword to wear, and a steed to ride,
And a wench to love—give me nought beside,
But a bottle or so at the eventide:
Women and wine and war!
Women and wine and war!
War and wine and love!
Oh, war's my trade, and wine's my play,
Wine crown the night, and war the day—
With a kiss or so in a casual way:
Women and wine and war!
Women and wine and war!
War and wine and love!
Here's a broken head, and a drunken spree,
And the blue-eyed wench deserted me,
Go! lecture the woman, and let me be:
Women and wine and war!"
So sang the Blackguard, while all his riotous gang roared out the chorus, and Mother Darkness, perched on the bar with my Lord of Misrule's big arms about her waist, rocked to and fro, crying "Lordy! Lordy!" at intervals.
"Boys," said the Blackguard, "who wouldn't be a soldier at fifty cents a day and die for a living!"
"Shut yer jaw! Can't you drink, Blackguard, without making speeches? Why, the smell of a cork sets you off. You'd talk the legs off a brass monkey!"
"What I say is," shouted Mutiny Saunders, in hot argument with his chum, Tribulation Jones,—"what I sez is, when a man's got an 'orse and looks after that 'orse, and grooms that 'orse, and gits to like 'is 'orse, and some 'alf-breed hofficer wants to take that 'orse away from 'im, and 'e bucks stiff-legged,—what I sez is, 'air on 'im!"
"Camp on 'is trail!" suggested Tribulation,—"make 'is life a burden to 'im. Oh, my Gawd, tear a bone out of 'im! What do you say, Blackguard?"
"Oh, keep it till the break of day.
"'Women and wine and war!'
Eh, Mother Darkness? Come and be Mrs. Blackguard. Boys, celebrate our nuptials, dance at our wedding, for Mother Darkness is to be Queen of the May—and share my Government straight, and pay my debts, and take in washing, and be my wife."
He kissed her ugly black face, while she rocked to and fro muttering "Lordy! Lordy!"
"I'll take a scarecrow in—I'll have a bally scarecrow for my wife!" shouted Billy Boy out of a corner. "Send round the poison, Blackguard."
"Yes, and to the blazes with poverty. Mother Darkness, my last dollar for the drinks—for now I'm clean-busted."
So while the drinks went round once more the Blackguard snatched up his guitar, and caught the lilt of some grand old Andalusian dance—
"Sing with me,
Carita;
Dance with me,
Carita,
Let the mad world sing the lilt of our gladness!
Dance with me,
Carita;
Merrilie,
Carita,
Let the glad earth catch the lilt of our madness!"
The log-cabin allowed but space to swing a cat, as the saying is—although nobody had ever swung cats in it since its erection a month ago. Kept by a motherly negress, enterprising in the matter of illicit whisky, this shanty served as a canteen for the camp, levied half the available pay of D Troop, occasioned more trouble than all the Red Indians in Kootenay, and generally played the very deuce with public morals. As to the men who sat on soap boxes and barrels round the walls, or perched on the bar, giving cheek to Mother Darkness, well, of course, they should have been in bed long ago, and certainly they ought to have abstained from the trash which passed current at a shilling a drink for whisky; but then—the shanty was by proclamation "out of bounds"; to be found in it meant a heavy fine; to be caught beyond the limits of the camp after "lights out" meant punishment, and to drink illicit liquor was officially accounted worse than all the deadly sins; so, according to the natural history of man, there was every inducement for a roaring night. And the men? To the stature and strength of an English Life Guardsman add the intelligence, courage, and impudence of a Black Watch veteran, and you have the prescription for a constable of the North-West Mounted Police. There is not in all the Empire a more splendid corps than this widely-scattered regiment of irregular cavalry, in time of peace hare-brained, half-mutinous, almost beyond the power of human control; in many a time of instant danger approved for stern endurance, utter loyalty, and headlong courage. These men in the shanty, waking the night with song and chorus, had each of them done great deeds of arms, for which nobody in authority or otherwise had given as much as a "Thank you." The tale has been told at many a camp fire, how a constable was sent once to track down a mad Indian who had killed and eaten his children. Months afterwards the Officer Commanding at Fort Edmonton was interrupted in the midst of a muster parade by a bearded civilian in rags, who walked up to him and halted at three paces with a correct salute.
"What the deuce do you want?" said the Officer Commanding.
"Come to report, sir."
"Who the devil are you?"
"Constable Saunders, sir,—got my prisoner in the guard-room."
That was Mutiny Saunders, who had tracked his victim fearlessly into goodness knows what awful recesses of the northern forest, who had been struck off the strength of the Force as "missing," but who never deigned to report himself alive until he carried out an almost impossible order and vindicated the majesty of British Justice by making the most extraordinary arrest in all the annals of the Empire.
Tribulation Jones, now arguing with Mutiny about a horse, was one of the seventy-five men who took part in the "Poundmaker Racket," when Crozier's Troop, confronted by thousands of armed Indians, charged, rode them down, wheeled, charged again, scattered them and carried off a necessary prisoner, and all without a single shot being fired.
Billy Boy, now howling out the chant of "Old King Cole," once drove a team two hundred and ten miles in two days without killing his horses, and in the darkest days of the North-West Rebellion carried despatches right through the enemy's lines.
Mackinaw Bob, leaning back against the shanty wall very drunk, was one of the thirty men who in Fort Walch defied for three days the largest Indian army ever raised, to wit, the Sioux forces of Sitting Bull, when they came to Canadian territory triumphant after the massacre of General Custer's 7th Cavalry.
The Blackguard? But the Blackguard's story is the purport of this present writing. He had taken up the bad old song called "Limerick," of many naughty verses, strung to an idiotic tune—
"Ho, there was a non-com. at Macleod
Who got so infernally proud
That he busted his vest
With the swell of his chest,
And they bore him away in a shroud.
Yah, there was a recruit at headquarters
Who loved all the officers' daughters,
But he couldn't choose which,
So occasioned a hitch,
And broke all the girls' hearts at headquarters."
"Boys, who's this Tenderfoot they've got at the officers' mess?"
"I found the duffer," said one of the boys just in from Windermere patrol,—"he'd strayed like a something Maverick—didn't know who he was or where he belonged to—lost his led horse with all his dunnage. I rounded him up and headed him in towards camp. His name's Ramsay."
"Is he any good?"
"No. Puts on enough side for a Governor-General, called me my good fellah—the blawsted Henglish jumped-up, copper-bottomed, second-hand, brass-bound swine."
"Where is he going to sleep?"
"Colonel's tent, I guess, unless the old man turns up unexpected; but he's still at the mess with a brandy-and-soda and two blanked adjectived Inspectors. I want to know what we've done that he should be palmed off on a white man's camp instead of old Isadore's Reserve, the rat-tailed, lop-eared, pigeon-livered son of a"—
"Boys, Providence has sent him here to be kicked, and shall we dispute the wisdom of Providence? I'll see to it, you fellows; and now, unless somebody's got credit with my future wife for the drinks, let us close the exercises by singing in a loud voice the words of that venerable summons known as the 'General Salute.'"
So the boys took up the goodly measure to a strenuous accompaniment of beaten pans in an uproar worthy of Pandemonium—
"Now here comes the Gen-e-ral, all venom and spleen,
And he rides like a sack, with a string round the middle, Oh
His head's full of fea-thers, and his heart's all woe,
So 'present' while the band plays 'God save the Queen!'"