This Rider of the Plains was Sergeant Thomas Gellatly, familiarly known as Sergeant Tom. Far away as he was he could see that a woman was standing in the tavern door. He guessed who it was, and his blood quickened at the guessing. But reining his horse on the furthest edge of the lighted circle, he said, debatingly: "I've little time enough to get to the Rise, and the order was to go through, hand the information to Inspector Jules, and be back within forty-eight hours. Is it flesh and blood they think I am? Me that's just come back from a journey of a hundred miles, and sent off again like this with but a taste of sleep and little food, and Corporal Byng sittin' there at Fort Desire with a pipe in his mouth and the fat on his back like a porpoise. It's famished I am with hunger, and thirty miles yet to do; and she, standin' there with a six months' welcome in her eye. . . . It's in the interest of Justice if I halt at Galbraith's Place for half-an-hour, bedad! The blackguard hid away there at Soldier's Knee will be arrested all the sooner; for horse and man will be able the better to travel. I'm glad it's not me that has to take him whoever he is. It's little I like leadin' a fellow- creature towards the gallows, or puttin' a bullet into him if he won't come. . . . Now what will we do, Larry, me boy? "this to the broncho—"Go on without bite or sup, me achin' behind and empty before, and you laggin' in the legs, or stay here for the slice of an hour and get some heart into us? Stay here is it, me boy? then lave go me fut with your teeth and push on to the Prairie Star there." So saying, Sergeant Tom, whose language in soliloquy, or when excited, was more marked by a brogue than at other times, rode away towards Galbraith's Place.
In the tavern at that moment, Pretty Pierrre was sitting on the bar- counter, where temperance drinks were professedly sold, singing to himself. His dress was singularly neat, if coarse, and his slouch hat was worn with an air of jauntiness according well with his slight make and almost girlish delicacy of complexion. He was puffing a cigarette, in the breaks of the song. Peter Galbraith, tall, gaunt, and sombre- looking, sat with his chair tilted back against the wall, rather nervously pulling at the strips of bark of which the yielding chair-seat was made. He may or may not have been listening to the song which had run through several verses. Where it had come from, no one knew; no one cared to know. The number of its verses were legion. Pierre had a sweet voice, of a peculiarly penetrating quality; still it was low and well- modulated, like the colour in his cheeks, which gave him his name.
These were the words he was singing as Sergeant Tom rode towards the tavern:
"The hot blood leaps in his quivering breast
Voila! 'Tis his enemies near!
There's a chasm deep on the mountain crest
Oh, the sweet Saint Gabrielle hear!
They follow him close and they follow him fast,
And he flies like a mountain deer;
Then a mad, wild leap and he's safe at last!
Oh, the sweet Saint Gabrielle hear!
A cry and a leap and the danger's past
Oh, the sweet Saint Gabrielle hear!"
At the close of the verse, Galbraith said: "I don't like that song. I—I don't like it. You're not a father, Pierre."
"No, I am not a father. I have some virtue of that. I have spared the world something, Pete Galbraith."
"You have the Devil's luck; your sins never get YOU into trouble."
A curious fire flashed in the half-breed's eyes, and he said, quietly: "Yes, I have great luck; but I have my little troubles at times—at times."
"They're different, though, from this trouble of Val's." There was something like a fog in the old man's throat.
"Yes, Val was quite foolish, you see. If he had killed a white man— Pretty Pierre, for instance—well, there would have been a show of arrest, but he could escape. It was an Injin. The Government cherish the Injin much in these days. The redskin must be protected. It must be shown that at Ottawa there is justice. That is droll—quite. Eh, bien! Val will not try to escape. He waits too long-near twenty-four hours. Then, it is as you see. . . . You have not told her?" He nodded towards the door of the sittingroom.