JIM
by A. A. Strachan
A former officer of the Canadian Mounted Police here vividly recounts the extraordinary adventure that befell him and his dog in the “bush.”
I must confess that Jim did it under protest.
Jim was a regimental dog, and had no use for anyone who did not wear a red tunic. He had been brought up in the barracks and knew every bugle-call as well as any trooper of the Canadian Northwest Mounted Police. When the bugler went to the parade-ground, Jim punctiliously followed him, and while he sounded, the puppy squatted on his hind legs and imitated the calls to his own entire satisfaction. When the dinner bugle pealed across the square, Jim was always first at the mess-room door, and his day ended with Retreat as regularly as the sun went down.
So you can see that when I took my discharge from the service one April in the nineties and filed on a bush homestead some distance north of the North Saskatchewan River, it nearly broke Jim’s heart. Fond as he was of me, I don’t believe I could have persuaded him to follow me to the homestead if I had not brought my old regimental tunic along and worn it at intervals to satisfy his doggish mind. For weeks after we settled down he moped, only reviving at any slight indication that I might be going to take the trail out. Then such a tail-wagging, such agonized whines and yaps, such yanks at my trouser-legs, such coaxing running ahead on the trail and barked invitations to quit this foolishness and go back to where he considered we both belonged. But I was obdurate; and at last, finding that I had no intention of quitting, Jim became reconciled to exile. For a long time, though, he seemed to miss the sound of the bugle more than anything else; and each day, about the hours of Reveille and Retreat, poor Jim would squat on his stumpy tail and howl his heart out.
Except for Jim I was practically alone, my nearest neighbor being six miles away. I had chosen the bush country because I preferred to have wood and water about, and felt there were more ways in which I could make a living in such a district than there were on the prairie, where your homestead is a piece of dirt with a piece of sky on top that is too far away to keep you warm in winter.
I had been in the country for ten years and knew it as a member of the Northwest Mounted must—was acclimatized, had friends in Prince Albert, the nearest town, and liked the semi-hermit life that I elected to lead. I was resolved to go it alone, and so Jim and I got right down to brass tacks.