III.
The Blackguard slept in the cells a prisoner—“Pretty well, thank you!” as he told Red, through the window, afterwards. All day he lay at ease while the rest of the fellows made dismal lamentations about overwork. That soothed him, also the aftertaste of a nice fight, while in his cheery soul he gloated on things to come, the war, the downfall of Sarde, and meetings with that officer’s merry lady. No wonder she could not bear any more Sarde—small blame to her, for he was dismal and the lady gay, with a sense of humor, an engaging laugh, a dimple or two, and a pert eye for any fun in sight. Poor Polly! And so she let Buck hold her hand of an evening? Poor Buck! The Blackguard sighed. “But I’m rather nice”—he felt that Buck would approve—“and disengaged, too! I’m grateful, refreshing, comforting, well broken, docile, with the sweetest manners, the dearest little ways.” He chuckled as he thought of other merry ladies whom he had fondly loved, two or three at a time, charming girls by swarms down the perspectives of nice memory. “I did my duty.” He crooned, and composed himself for a nap.
Red came in the afternoon with news. The fort was to be abandoned, evacuated at midnight, and the garrison was to fall back, defending the settlements eastward. The boys had been turned loose to loot the Hudson’s Bay store—and here was the Blackguard’s share, flung in through the bars: a box of cigars, a mouth organ, a fine revolver, a baby’s bottle, some chocolate creams, and a family Bible which caught him full in the eye and floored him.
The Blackguard found that he could not play the mouth organ while he was eating chocolates and smoking, but had to take them by turns. The shadow of night stole softly in through the bars before he was bored.
Later on he began to get hungry, and as supper was delayed some hours he clamored at the door. To his amazement he was at once let out by a half-breed washerwoman, and looking round saw that the guardroom was full of civilian refugees. For a minute he stood watching them as they sat around a glowing stove, whose naked iron flue went red-hot through the wooden ceiling. “You’ll have the place on fire soon,” he said, and they only smiled at him. Where was the Guard? Away relieving sentries, he supposed, as he reached his sidearms down from a peg, belted on his revolver, and strolled outside. He found himself in the covered entry of the fort, under the gate house. On his right the great courtyard was littered with sleighs, and swarming with men at work preparing for the retreat. On his left the gates swung ajar. To look more business-like he swung an axe across his shoulder, and marched out, explaining to the sentry that he was on duty. The riverside meadows lay silver below the moon and the fresh night allured him as he skirted the stockade, answering a challenge from the bastion, then turned towards the rear side of the fort. He was thinking of the merry lady who might have been there had he come last night. She was there!
He drew near to the cloaked and silent woman, and lifted his cap; “Mrs. Sarde, I think?”
She shrank back against the upright posts of the stockade, thrust out white hands against him, and barely repressed a scream. “Who are you? What are you?” she cried.
He saw that her face was pale, touched by the moonlight into a spiritual delicacy. “The Blackguard, madam,” he answered.
“Oh, how you frightened me! What is it, la Mancha? You’ve brought a message for me?”
“You thought I was a ghost,” he whispered; “you thought I was—”
“Buck? Yes.” He saw a tear run down her cheek. “Yes, I thought so.”
“I am his messenger.” The Blackguard’s voice was soft and low, he leaned towards her, his hand against the stockade, as he bent down. “His last thought was of you, he tried to give me a message, but his voice failed then.”
“My brother! My poor brother!” The Blackguard started back.
“The deuce!” he stammered, “what a beastly sell! Your brother, madam?” He uncovered his head. “I beg your pardon, Mrs. Sarde; I beg your forgiveness.”
“Nobody knew,” her voice was broken with tears; “not even my husband. Poor boy—things had gone wrong down East. He had to change his name, and when he joined the Force—for my sake, he wouldn’t say that he was my brother. He was in the ranks, you see, and I—”
“You are in trouble, madam”—a new reverence had come into la Mancha’s manner. “I was your brother’s friend—may I take his place and serve you?”
“How kind of you to think of that, Mr. la Mancha. But then, you see, my husband—you understand?”
“Has the right to protect you; yes, he has that great honor.”
“Oh, don’t mind me!” came Sarde’s sarcastic interruption, and both of them turned round, startled, horrified, to face the officer of the guard, visiting round unattended. “You may well start—the pair of you,” said Inspector Sarde, his eyes glittering with rage, then with bitter sarcasm he went on; “A husband’s rights? Moonshine! Myths! Lies! Woman, get back to the fort at once, or I’ll have you arrested for being out of bounds.”
“But, Cuthbert,” she pleaded, “you don’t understand. This gentleman—”
“Go, I say; go! Leave me to settle with this—this gentleman!”
Poor Polly crept away, and the two men watched her in silence until she had turned the corner of the stockade.
“Ah!” the Blackguard laid his axe against the wall. “At last!”
“And now, mister gentleman, may I venture to ask what you’re doing outside your cell?”
“You may.”
“Stand to attention; call me ‘sir’ when you address an officer.”
“Dear, dear! I would shout, I would screech if I were you. Then everybody will hear.”
“The Commissioner shall hear.”
“What? That I’m here to defend your wife’s honor, which you have insulted, you—you poached cat!”
“Right about turn, quick march for the guard room, or—”
“Or what?”
The officer was silent.
“That’s right. Now be good. I want to point out,” said the Blackguard with yearning sweetness, “that although I am tempted, without witnesses, I have not kicked you. No. I have denied myself even calling you names, you—you mule-foaled outrage on nature’s modesty; you stridulating, splay-footed, pop-eyed mistake of Providence; you supercilious brass-mounted, misdirected Excuse. I will not shock myself by speaking the truth about your appearance, origin, or destiny as a spatchcocked and fried Sin, but I daresay you’ll understand this—”
He flicked his glove across the officer’s face, and stood back, smiling blandly.
“How dare you!”
“With my glove, so—” he struck again, lightly, gracefully, tigerishly. “You see there are the snipers in the hills, taking the pot-shot, eh? which will explain your death, without my inconvenience; eh? It will account for all—we have revolvers—and so! Carramba! What more does the fool want?”
“Sir! I’m an officer, a gent—”
“Exactly—gent. Something less than a gentleman, eh? Well, I waive that. I waive the matter of rank—I accommodate you with every kindness; eh, what?”
Sarde hesitated.
“Come, I know you’re a coward, but never mind that. Brace up! You shall be a man for once. There now; at fifteen paces, eh? No? Don’t disappoint me, please,” the Blackguard pleaded. “I spoil for it—I beg you—have you no inside? Are you a shadow in trousers? Nombre de Dios! It’s for your wife’s honor!”
“I tell you that officers can’t fight with—”
“With me, Senor? I waive that, I tell you—I, Jose Santa Maria Sebastian Sant Iago Nuñez Ramiro de Guzman, de la Mancha, Marques de las Alpuxarras, Conde del Pulgar, a peer of Castile, am ready to waive my rank and fight a scrambled skunk! Draw! Stand back! At the word three I fire—one—two—Sangre de Cristo!”
Sarde had fired.
“What the deuce do you mean by firing before I give the word, eh? I’ll punch your head for that!” The Blackguard clutched at a burning pain on his shoulder, his hand was dyed with the blood of a spurting artery—and yet this seemed to concern him less than the red glare from within the fort which had flushed the face of his adversary. He reeled backwards now, staring up at the stockade, whose timbers loomed black against a fiery glow, which was rapidly mounting to heaven above Fort Carlton.
“Sarde,” said la Mancha, gravely, “you see that?”
“Had enough?” asked Sarde; “I’m going to kill you now. I fire when I count three—one—two—defend yourself—”
“Presently, my good man, presently,” la Mancha waved his hand to Sarde. “Don’t you see that the fort is on fire?”
“On fire—what? On fire! By the living—”
“Hush, don’t gabble, Sarde. You’ve played the man at last; I forgive you for firing too soon—I let you off the charge of cowardice in the field. Oh, you needn’t thank me—it’s for your wife’s sake. Yes, I let you off—I ask your pardon, sir. Oh, yes, why not?”
Within the fort a bugle was crying the terrible monotonous repetitions of the General Assembly, and men were yelling, as they ran, of wounded patients shut up in the blazing house. “The fort’s on fire. The fort’s on fire,” Sarde moaned.
La Mancha clutched Sarde’s arm to steady himself as he reeled backwards faint with pain from his wound.
“Those refugees,” he explained; “half-breeds in the guard room with a red hot stove. I warned them. Look, the gate house is on fire, the gate is blocked with flames, the only gate, and the fire will spread all round the buildings! All those people going to be burned to death unless we can cut a road through the stockade—you’ve hit my shoulder—I can’t use the axe. But you”—he shook the officer with frantic violence—“a Canadian, a born axeman— Do you hear? Save the garrison or they’ll burn to death! Take that axe!”
The Canadian sprang forward, the axe became a live thing in his hands; the gleaming blade flamed in red air, buried itself in quivering timber, then swung again, and lit, and swung again in a whirl of splinters.
La Mancha sat down in the snow, his blood-drenched hand upon the wound, his body rocking to the steady swing of the axe, though he could hardly see his enemy now, because of the red smoke curling between the timbers.
“Good man!” he gasped, “you are a man at last! You’ll save the garrison, you’ll get promoted, you’ll win back that lady’s love-you’re winning back your honor! Strike, man—strike!”
It is well known to the two hundred thousand readers of this magazine that its bald-headed editor often pulls his hair on the platform. He boarded the cars one day and slung his big valise between two seats and sat down by a drummer. The drummer looked at the valise and then at the bald-headed man and bluntly asked, “Are you a traveling man, sir?” “Yes, sir,” was the reply. “What line of goods are you selling?” queried the drummer. “Sweetened wind,” was the answer. “Oh, you are!” said the drummer; “preacher or lecturer?”—Robert L. Taylor.