CHAPTER III
"Soldier, soldier, where are your breeches, pray?
Soldier, soldier, get up and dust;
Where the deuce have you hidden your brains away?
Soldier, soldier, get up and dust.
Busted the bugler? Send him to hospital;
Can't you shut up that confounded row?
Show a leg, and no damned profanity—
Get out and sweat for a shillin' a day."
When the bugle had concluded making these remarks, when the echoes of the hills were calling back their greeting, the valley stirred under its blanket of mist, the Alps blushed red to the sun's first kiss, and the shadows of night ran to covert among the scented pines. The bugler was raking up a fire in front of the guard-tent with a view to his morning coffee, the picket was lounging drowsily home from the horse lines, and from every tent came sleepy execrations.
"Show a leg there! Get a move on you! Who the —— told you to tread on my legs! Réveille! Oh, give us a rest; who said Réveille?"
The bugler sounded "Dress!" and there was a further stirring as though half the tents would be overthrown. One by one the canvas flaps were thrown open, as men came out with their towels in search of tin basins generally mislaid. Then, it seemed but a few minutes afterwards, the bugler set the brazen tormentor to his lips to call stables—
"Oh, come to the stables and water your horses,
And groom them a little and give them some hay,
Groom them damned little and give them bad hay,
Government grooming and Government hay;
For if you don't do it the Colonel will know it,
Then orderly-room—and the devil to pay."
At that the troop fell in, each man with his curry-comb and brush, some in canvas jackets, some without, one or two in deer-skin coats, all with long boots, and otherwise compromising their civilian appearance with traces of uniform, except the Orderly Sergeant, who wore correct undress. He had to bring parade to attention and call the roll, then, after a smart numbering off, to give the "Fours right, quick march!" which sent the column briskly away to the horse lines. Half an hour sufficed to water horses, clean up bedding, groom and feed, then the beasts were left in charge of a picket detailed to herd them to pasture for the day. The parade was dismissed, and the men strolled home to their tents thinking audibly on the subject of breakfast.
"Constable La Mancha," the Orderly Sergeant had been consulting his notes.
"Well?"
"Consider yourself under arrest."
"Kiss my socks!" said the Blackguard. "Why, what have I done?" he continued innocently.
"Done? You'll find out soon enough."
"Yes, Sergeant—but which charge in particular—I've got to prepare my defence."
"Oh, give us a rest! Get off to breakfast,—I'm busy."
"'Twas ever thus!" said the Blackguard sorrowfully. "Thank goodness, the Colonel's away." But even as he turned abruptly towards the tents a mounted man coming up from behind barely avoided riding over him. "What d'you think you're doing?" cried the Blackguard angrily. The rider swerved gracefully clear with a touch of the rein, a hard-featured, clear-eyed veteran, grey with long service, sitting his horse with an easy dignity, dressed in rough frontier clothes, weary, travel-stained—the Colonel himself.
La Mancha saluted in haste, startling the horse into a succession of desperate plunges. "Just like my luck!" groaned the Blackguard, and would have gone on towards the camp fires of his mess, but the Colonel, alighting now before his tent on the far side of the parade ground, called to him, "La Mancha!"
"Yes, sir!" the Blackguard ran to the tent.
"Just take my horse to the lines, unsaddle, give him a rub down, then water, and send my servant."
So the Blackguard was busy, and cursing until long after the breakfast bugle; but the Colonel, refreshed by a wash and a hasty change into uniform, made his way to the table set under an awning for the officers' mess.
"Good-morning, gentlemen."
His kindly grey eyes had noted a civilian sitting with his two officers at breakfast, a handsome English youngster, neatly built but small, perhaps twenty years old, to judge by the light down of an incipient moustache; unused to the world, as might be known from the awkward self-consciousness of manners; very green, to judge by the ridiculous bourgeois attempt at a riding costume.
The two Inspectors had risen, big Fraser Gaye, late of Carrington's Horse in South Africa, and little Gunby, from the Kingston Military School.
"Good hunting, sir?" asked the one, but the other was kicking the Englishman furtively to make him stand up. "Good-morning, sir;" he was kicking strenuously, his face reddened with the exertion,—"let me present Mr. Ramsay."
"You're welcome, Mr. Ramsay. Glad to see you;—sit down."
The Colonel had taken a chair at the head of the table, observant of Mr. Ramsay, and smiling with inward laughter. "Why," he wondered, "must a green youngster try to hide his ignorance with a cloak of affectation? He's speechless still with a sort of stage fright, so he pretends a lofty reserved indifference." "No," the Colonel turned suddenly upon Fraser Gaye, talking to give his guest a chance of cooling off, "the hunting was not very good. June is a bad month when one has to respect the game laws. Do you know what game is always in season, Mr. Ramsay?"
The Colonel's winning smile meant, as his subalterns knew, the advent of his very oldest joke. "No?" for Mr. Ramsay was still speechless. "Ah, the kind of sport I speak of is out of date where you come from. Man is the one game animal never out of season in the West."
"Man?" Mr. Ramsay had found his tongue at last; so while the Mess Orderly was laying breakfast before him, the Colonel went on reassured—
"Yes. My Division has been sent across the Rockies here into British Columbia because the Kootenay tribes have been a little restive. There was a medicine man from somewhere in Idaho at the bottom of all the trouble, and he being an American subject, I was not willing to risk the loquacity of the newspapers yonder. To arrest him meant worry and red tape without end."
"What, sir?" the senior Subaltern spoke anxiously. "Have you"—
"No," the Colonel smiled over his coffee cup, "I went as a civilian; as a civilian I herded him like a steer across the Tobacco Plains, and left him in gaol under a bogus charge in United States territory. That's my hunting, gentlemen."
The Colonel had given his guest time enough to shake off any embarrassment; indeed, the youngster had by this time helped himself uninvited to a second rasher of bacon, put on an air of assured worldliness, and was evidently trying to assume the easy devil-may-care freedom of manners which he supposed to be characteristic of the Far West.
"A little more bacon?" said the Colonel gracefully, with a wink towards his senior Inspector.
"Oh—ah—thanks—yes—I mean I've helped myself." The Tenderfoot was blushing to the roots of his hair.
"I hope my young gentlemen have been entertaining you properly?" continued the Colonel, at which the junior Inspector burst out laughing.
"We've tried, sir." Mr. Fraser Gaye met an inquiring glance from the Colonel. "We gave this gentleman your tent, with some of our bedding; but when he tried to turn in last night he fell foul of one of the Quartermaster's sheep lashed to the cot. Mr. Ramsay says he was kicked half-way across the parade ground."
"I must say," the Colonel tried to be grave, "I had some misgivings when I met La Mancha just now. He wore that eager-child innocence of expression which always means some fresh outrage. I promise you, Mr. Ramsay, that he shall have occasion to repent."
"Aw—I wouldn't be hard on him, don't you know. I'm sure it was only"—
The Englishman was genuine now, so that despite his airs and graces the Colonel liked him. Even the mess waiter, standing with a wooden face behind, allowed a glance to escape of intelligent appreciation, and the senior Inspector, noting it, was glad that news of this plea for mercy would reach the troop.
The Colonel changed the subject. "Well, Mr. Ramsay, how do you like our mountains?"
Again the Tenderfoot fell into needless embarrassment, until little Gunby came to his relief.
"Mr. Ramsay turned up last night, sir, on horseback." The Subaltern could not refrain from grinning at the remembrance. "He's got business up at the Throne Camp, so I took the liberty of promising"—
"A man to show him the way, eh? Quite right. Mr. Ramsay is welcome. Who's Orderly Officer? Oh! Then Mr. Fraser Gaye will detail a good man—and now"—
The Colonel rose, seeming scarcely to have taken more than a cup of coffee, and with a glance drew the senior Subaltern to his own tent, where he received a full report of events during his late absence.
"Get rid of that young fool," was his last instruction before closing the interview. "If you let him stay in camp another day I shall have to punish half the men for practical jokes. Get rid of him before noon."
"Come to your mother, my love,
Come to your mother, my boy."
Defaulters Call.
"Regimental Number 1107, Constable la Mancha," the Colonel read from a sheet of blue foolscap, "you are charged with having, on the night of the 2nd instant, been drunk."
The Blackguard nodded.
"You are further charged with having, on the same instant, acted contrary to the discipline of the Force, in that you did cruelly ill-treat an animal—namely, a sheep."
The Blackguard nodded.
"You are further charged with having used insulting and abusive language to the Sergeant of the Guard."
The Blackguard smiled. "I told him to"—
"Silence!" said the Sergeant-Major quietly.
The Colonel laid down the charge-sheet with a gesture of weariness.
"Have you anything to say for yourself?"
"It's all correct, sir."
"You have no excuse or apology?"
"None, sir."
"Constable la Mancha, are you aware that your defaulter sheet is notoriously the blackest in the Force?"
The Blackguard answered with a smile of innocent frankness which would have disarmed a grizzly bear.
"In four months from now your time expires, otherwise, for continuous misbehaviour, I should be compelled to recommend your discharge. I cannot have my whole division demoralised by one"—he was going to say "blackguard!" "Consider this matter. Fined one month's pay."
The Blackguard saluted.
"Thank you, sir."
"Right about turn," said the Sergeant-Major, "quick march."
Then the Colonel chuckled. Presently he looked up at the senior Inspector.
"Have you seen to Mr. Ramsay?"
"I'm afraid, sir, that I have only one duty man available who knows the trail."
"You mean La Mancha? Hum!—I wish we had a dozen men as useful. Well, never mind the rules—he's safer occupied."
The Inspector spoke to the Orderly Sergeant, who left the tent saluting.
"Blackguard," he said, overtaking the culprit, "got a job for you. Saddle your horse and Polly. You're to take that Tenderfoot up to the Throne Mine. Report before lights out to-morrow, and see you don't 'mislay him' anywhere."