“No, no!” she said, in a loud eager whisper. “Don’t shoot the poor little chap—it isn’t as if he was in the garden. ‘Live, and let live,’ you know. Oh, you nasty thing!”
As the Sergeant, laughing quietly, in lazy acquiescence, jerked his gun home again and, instead, spat with unerring aim on the gopher’s fat back, which insult caused it to dive instantly into its hole again. For a long time they remained silent, drinking in the fresh air; then the girl who, with elbows-in-lap, was leaning forward absently swinging her quirt, flicked her abstracted companion playfully.
“Come! don’t go to sleep,” she said. “A dime for your thoughts, O man of many moods! You look like Hamlet watching the play—lying gazing away there.... Wake up and talk to me, sir!”
Ellis, who lay stretched out with his back, turned to her, rolled over and looked up into the long-lashed, half mocking, half serious hazel eyes.
“‘Hamlet’!” he echoed, with an amused chuckle. “And pray what have I done to deserve the honor of being likened unto ‘the melancholy Dane,’ kind lady? ‘Wot shall I tork abaht?’ as old Bob Tucker would say. ‘Bid me discourse—I will enchant thine ear!’—à la ‘Baron Munchausen.’”
“No, don’t be foolish,” she said beseechingly. “Can’t you be serious for once in a while, please? I don’t feel in the mood for any ‘Munchausen’ nonsense just now. Confine yourself strictly to the truth on this occasion. Just tell me who you are—where you came from—and what you’ve done for your living ever since you can remember! There, now, you’ve got your orders in full ... fire away!”
Ellis gave a dismal whistle. “Pretty big order on short notice,” he said. “If you expect me to fill all that, extempore, I’ll have to limit it to a synopsis.”
There was, undoubtedly, a strong fascination about Benton, and few there were of either sex who came into contact with him that did not fall under the spell of his personal magnetism. The dry humor he emitted at times, and the utter absence of self-consciousness or vanity in his quiet, forceful personality, may have accounted for this in a great measure. Also, in a simple, direct fashion, he could “talk well”; and when he chose to exert himself, or was in the mood, could be a most interesting companion as a raconteur, drawing upon a vast reserve of experiences accumulated during his stirring, eventful, wandering life.
The quiet peace of his surroundings were conducive to such a mood just now and, as the girl adroitly drew him on, he responded, and talked of his past life as perhaps he had never done to man or woman before. Those who love make good listeners and, as Mary, sitting there, heard with an all-absorbing interest of his strange ups and downs, trials, hopes, and adventures, she gained a vivid and lasting impression of the career of a strong man who, early in life, had cut himself adrift from kith and kin; glimpsing something of the real, deep, complex nature of this careless soldier of fortune who, all unconsciously, had won her heart long ago.
His story began with his early schoolboy recollections. The unhappy period following his mother’s death, and his final emigration to the United States; then passed on, fantastically, through innumerable chops and changes of life. It told of a wild, haphazard existence in camps, and on the range in Montana and Wyoming, the lure of the gaming table, and the companionship with men of nearly every nationality under the sun. Desperate ventures in bubble speculations that either broke or made the investors, of chances missed by the merest margin of time and travel. It touched on all the phases of his pugilistic career, his later adventures on the South African veldt and memories of the great war. He described his return from that unquiet land, how he had eventually joined the Mounted Police, the years that had followed in that Force, and some of the various cases that had brought him his third stripe. Sometimes on foot, more often on horseback, now fairly prosperous, now poor, in and out, back and forth, chore boy, cookee, bronco-buster, pugilist, Chartered Company’s servant, Irregular soldier, and finally Mounted Policeman, moved Ellis Benton, taking his chance honestly and bravely in the great game of Life.