I.
The poplar groves were gemmed with diamond frost, and they stood in a fairy circle surrounding a glade of snow. Beyond lay all the immensity of the Canadian Plains, above rode the sun in a heaven of cloudless blue, but within the glade there was war. Jets of sharp flame flickered from all the groves, giving birth to clouds like pearls, which drifted on the serene air and made a bluish film of smoke above the waves of the snowdrift. Across the foot of the glade some sleighs were drawn up for defence, each giving shelter to a knot of men, though the woodwork shattered in splinters about their ears. Lying with carbines at rest underneath the sleighs, they watched for the smoke pearls in the woods, then sighting low to clear the combs of the snowdrifts, they fired steadily at hidden enemies. A shower of diamond dust would fall from some fairy tree while the marksman swore thoughtfully, and loaded to try again. So rifles blazed and crashed, so bullets whined or sang, but all this was merely a twittering as of summer birds amid that mighty silence of the plains, which filled the vault of heaven sun-high with peace.
Yesterday a village of retired buffalo-hunters, French-Indian half-breeds, sorely annoyed with the Canadian government, had set up a toy republic, and persuaded some Indian tribes to come out on the warpath. To-day a troop of the Northwest Mounted Police, assisted by a handful of volunteers, had come out from Fort Carlton to make enquiries—and been neatly ambushed. The party of the first part numbered three hundred and sixty-one and the party of the second part only ninety-six, as witnessed this Disagreement, dated near Duck Lake, in the District of Saskatchewan, in the Northwest Territory of Canada, this 26th day of March, 1885.
The trooper farthest to the left of the sleigh rampart was a man of giant girth and stature, with an ugly face. Officially he was Regimental Number 1107, Constable la Mancha, J., but his pet name was the Blackguard, presumably because of his manners and customs. When the fighting began he had been much alarmed, then displeased because a bullet whipped some fur from his buffalo overcoat, and in another minute full of cheerful fury, boiling hot with a frantic appetite for trouble. Moreover, the very moment he began pumping lead into the nearest clump of bushes a naked Indian was seen to leap into the air, and fall headlong. “My meat!” cried the Blackguard, and took a ferocious interest in getting more. A few minutes later he heard the man next him on the right utter a little grunt, and gave his hot carbine a rest while he looked round to see what was wrong. A gallant young Canadian, Corporal Buck McCannock, had been hit, and rolled over on his back beside la Mancha. The Blackguard felt rather sick, watching the red flush fade beneath the tan while the man’s strong features became wan and pinched.
“Say, Buck, old chap, can I help?” Buck’s eyes were closed, and he did not seem to hear. The sunlight glowed on the scarlet serge of his jacket, the glittering buttons, the bright accoutrements, as he lay with his buffalo coat spread wide upon the snow. Only his face was in shadow.
“Buck, old man!”
His eyes opened, his right hand moved out, his fingers plucking at la Mancha’s sleeve, then very slowly his left hand groped at the breast of his jacket, and drew out a paper until it caught between the buttons. La Mancha saw that Buck’s lips were moving now, and bending down he heard a broken whisper, “Take this—tell her—tell her—”
The clay-white face relaxed, and the Blackguard saw a bluish shadow come up like rising water over it, over the glazing eyes. Then the lips parted. He wrenched the letter from the clutch of a dead hand, which slid away down the breast of the scarlet jacket, and dropped to the ground.
It was the shattering blow of a bullet in the sleigh box above his head which roused la Mancha to turn and fight again. Hitherto he had merely disliked those men behind the snowdrifts, but now he wanted to skin, and burn a few of them slowly, and prayed to the saints that each bullet should inflict a painful and mortal wound, followed by a disagreeable hereafter.
Then he heard footsteps in the creaking snow, and knew that the troop surgeon had found the corpse beside him. He heard the doctor whisper: “Buck? Poor Buck!”
When la Mancha looked round again Dr. Miller was gone and a red-haired trooper was busy stripping the ammunition from the dead man’s belt.
“Down, fool,” said the Blackguard; “that scalp of yours draws fire—you ruddy oot.”
Red lay down on the edge of the dead man’s coat, and threw his feet across the Blackguard’s legs lest the snow should wet them. Then he grunted with content.
“Happy?” asked the Blackguard.
“’Ungry—gimme blood! Look there!”
Red jerked his thumb backwards over his shoulder and showed his chum how one of the officers, Inspector Sarde, lay near them. Sarde was hiding behind the next sleigh on the left, making an abject display of cowardice. “The lantern-jawed, swivel-eyed, white-livered, scarehead, misbegotten, jumped up son of a dog’s wife,” was the Blackguard’s comment.
“I kicked ’im,” Red grinned in ferocious joy, “cruel ’ard, too.”
“Red, help me to clear that bluff in front there; sight at one hundred yards, and fire low.”
“Low it is.” Red settled himself to work, fired, and pumped a cartridge while he watched results.
“What makes you sing, eh, Blackguard? I’m in a funk, I am—” he fired again.
“Was I singing?” La Mancha let drive at a smoke puff. “I bagged a buck Indian just now—aim low—got ’im.
“Carry him reverently, gently, slow—
Pace by the trunnions with patient tread;
Over the drifts of the rolling snow,
With arms reversed for the Dead.”
“Nice and cheerful, ain’t yer!” cried Red sarcastically, but la Mancha enjoyed himself.
“Little we thought of him while he shared
All that was worst in the long campaign;
Little he guessed that we really cared,
But drums roll now for the slain.
Spreading the Flag o’er his last long sleep,
Leading the horse which he may not ride.
Tho’ for the living the roads are steep—
The road for the Dead rolls wide.”
“’Ere, stop that!” Red howled at him, then wiped his eyes with his sleeve, as the Blackguard went on in a broken voice, revelling in grief.
“Bravely he suffer’d and manly fought;
Great with Death’s majesty rides he there;
Royal the honors he dearly bought—
The peace which we may not share.”
“Oh, shut up!” Red wailed, but la Mancha grinned at him. “Blackguard, got any more ammunition?”
The Blackguard chuckled: “For my self? why, plenty!” and he fired at a pearly gust of smoke among fairy trees of diamond. Then he heard the death scream of a horse at the rear, the shouting of orders, and a bugle crying, “Cease firing! Retire!”