"I'm afraid these beasts don't understand regulations, and I had to bring them as best I could," I answered; and my assistant shouted, "Get out of the daylight, sergeant, dear, while your shoes are good."
Mackay seemed to resent this familiarity, and sat still, with one hand on his hip, an incarnation of official dignity, though he kept his eyes upon the fast advancing herd until the big freight locomotive which was awaiting us set up a discordant shrieking, and backed a row of clanging cars across the switches. That was sufficient for the untamed cattle. With a thunder of pounding hoofs they poured tumultuously down the rutted street, and I caught a brief glimpse of the sergeant hurriedly wheeling his horse before everything was blotted out by the stirred-up dust. The streets of a prairie town are inches deep in powdered loam all summer and in bottomless sloughs all spring.
A wild shout of "Faugh-a-ballagh!" rang out; and I found myself riding faster than was prudent along the crazy plank sidewalk to pass and, if possible, swing the stampeding herd into the railroad corral. How my horse gained the three-foot elevation and avoided falling over the dry-goods bales and flour bags which lay littered everywhere, I do not remember; but my chief assistant, Dennis, who, yelling his hardest, charged recklessly down the opposite one, afterwards declared that his beast climbed up the steps like a kitten. Then, as I drew a little ahead, Mackay became dimly visible, riding bareheaded, as though for his life, with the horns, that showed through the tossed-up grit, a few yards behind him. Fortunately the stockyard gates were open wide, and Dennis came up at a gallop in time to head the herd off from a charge across the prairie, while a second man and I turned their opposite wing. Mackay did his best to wheel his horse clear of the gates, but the beast was evidently bent on getting as far as possible from the oncoming mass, and resisted bit and spur. Then there was a great roar of laughter from loungers and stockyard hands as the dust swept up towards heaven and the drove thundered through the opening.
"Where's the sergeant?" I shouted; and Dennis, who chuckled so that his speech was thick, made answer: "Sure, he's in the corral. The beasts have run him in, but it's mighty tough beef they'd find him in the old country."
Dennis was right, for when the haze thinned the sergeant appeared, as white as a miller, flattened up against the rails, while a playful steer curveted in the vicinity, as though considering where to charge him. He was extricated by pulling down the rails, and accepted my apologies stiffly.
"This," he said, disregarding the offer of a lounger to wash him under the locomotive tank, "is not just what I would have expected of ye, Rancher Ormesby."
While the stock were being transferred to the cars amid an almost indescribable tumult, I met Miss Redmond on the little sod platform.
"I am glad I have met you, because I am going to Winnipeg, and may never see you again," she said. "There is much I do not understand, but I feel you have been wronged, and want to thank you for your consideration."
Redmond's daughter had received some training in an Eastern convent, it was said, and I found it hard to believe that the very pale, quietly-spoken girl was the one who had called down the curses upon Foster Lane. Still, I knew there was a strain of something akin to insanity in that family, and that, in addition, she was of the changeful nature which accompanies pure Celtic blood.
"You should not indulge in morbid fancies, and you have very little cause for gratitude. We were sincerely sorry for you, and tried to do what we could," I said.