"You'll take the north trail right here, see?" he jerked, pointing to where a dim break in the dead grass announced the direct trail to the Red Deer, avoiding the town.
"An' ain't I to have no time in town?" whined the driver. "It ain't my fault that——" His voice sank away.
"You've had two nights of it already. Now git that wagon away as fast as you know how."
The last picture in Stamford's mind of the Red Deer shipping was a stream of swaying wagons rattling down the deep trail to town to the cheers and whip-cracking of their drivers. And off to the north one lone wagon rolled silently and slowly northward over the dead grass toward the lonely stretches of the Red Deer. And Stamford wondered.
CHAPTER V
DAKOTA RUNS AMOK
Cattle shipping, as any other event that collected cowboys, was a time of some anxiety in Medicine Hat. Stores closed early, citizens with any claim to being old-timers—and that was the leading ambition locally—retired unobtrusively to their homes, and even the bars, which stood to profit materially from the visit of lively young bloods whose veins had been swelling for months without outlet—or inlet—contemplated the occasion with misgiving amounting almost to trepidation.
The daily life of the West in those days, especially the part of it that dealt with law enforcement, was sufficient training in itself to arouse something like indifference to ordinary perils. Still, everything considered, it was well not to be associated with the maintenance of peace when broad-brimmed sombreros and sheepskin, angora, or leather chaps careered down Main or Toronto Streets on bronchos that seemed as appreciative of the excitement as their riders themselves.
At such time it was no matter of regret among the Mounted Police that the policing of incorporated towns in the Canadian West was in an equivocal position to which they bowed. According to the strict interpretation of the law, the jurisdiction of the Mounted Police was without geographical limits within the prairie provinces; but no town policeman would admit that such a reading was not blind prejudice. Thus it came to pass, to avoid endless squabbling and overlapping, that the red-coats confined their attention to the great stretches where man was seldom seen breaking the law—until such time as the town police, in shamefaced recognition of their physical limitations, called in their better known brethren.
When the cowboys ran amok in town, he was a tenderfoot red-coat who envied the town policeman his monopoly.