But the training at the Regina school of police that a "Mountie" never fires first is strict and impressive. Constable La Marr could not take a pot shot even with the intent only to wound the flounderer.
Next moment surprise caught him—surprise that Avic, the red-handed culprit, was fighting his way back to camp. But wait, he'd have to revise that thought for this particular murder had been done in a peculiar native fashion that shed no blood. Anyhow, why should one so obviously guilty of killing a white man in a bronze man's country be headed toward the police post from which he had made a clean get-away?
No answer came to La Marr. He merely waited.
The Eskimo floundered on.
The constable's concealment was neat enough in a country where all is white. It was better even than bush or shrub, for they were so rare as to be open to suspicion. At just the right second he lunged forward and took the native entirely by surprise. The two went over in a flurry of snow.
For a moment the Eskimo struggled fiercely, possibly thinking that his fur-clad assailant was an Arctic wolf. But his resistance ceased on recognizing he was in human grip.
La Marr yanked his captive to his feet and searched for weapons, finding none. Then he remembered the rules of the Ottawa "red book" and pronounced the statutory warning.
"Arrest you, Avic, in the name of the king; warn you that anything you say may be used against you. D'ye understand?"
As he asked this last, which is not a part of the official warning, he realized that Avic did not.
"Barking sun-dogs, why didn't the good Lord provide one language for everybody?" he complained. "Anyway, there ain't much chance of my understanding anything you may say against yourself. I'll tell it all over to you when I get you to the post. Now we'll mush!"